Against the Tide of Years (48 page)

“Think he figured out we’re not part of the horses,” Girenas said. He raised his rifle and squeezed his knees. His well-trained horse froze. “Now, if I crease his topknot, that’ll scare ’em. And if I blow his brains out, that’ll scare ’em too.”

Before he could squeeze the trigger, Henry Morris stood in the stirrups, drew his horn-backed bow to the ear and shot. The arrow landed at the talkative warrior’s feet, with a
shunk
sound as it buried half its length in the soft prairie soil.

Another frozen silence; Girenas chanced a look over his shoulder, and saw the five remaining men and boys staring at him, or just panting and letting sweat and the blood of their wounds run down their bodies.

He turned back; the talkative one had pulled the arrow out of the ground, tested the steel head on his thumb. He spoke again. An arrow was a lot more like an atlatl dart than a bullet was.
Goddammit, Henry, that was a
bad
idea.

“They’re going to rush us,” Girenas said flatly, aloud.

The talkative warrior turned half away, as if to give the expedition’s leader the lie, then whirled. The hatchet left his hand, whirred through the air, struck Morris’s horse on the nose. The beast whinnied in shrill pain, put its head down, and bucked. The tall redhead went flying with a startled yell, and the topknot men attacked.

“Goddammit, Henry!” Girenas shouted. It seemed an appropriate war cry for this particular fight.

He shot, and the warrior folded around his gut with an
oooofff
! Girenas ignored him, since he wouldn’t be getting up again. Another one was running forward to spear Morris on the ground, and there was no time to reload. Pete’s horse bounded forward—it was half quarter horse and had great acceleration—and he threw himself out of the saddle, landing between the spearman’s shoulder blades. The impact knocked the breath out of both of them, but the Islander was expecting it. He came up first, slammed the edge of his hand into the back of the Indian’s neck, grabbed chin and hair and twisted hard. There was a green-stick
crack,
and the man went limp.

Girenas rose, whipped out his bowie, and looked around. The fight was over; the topknot warriors were running—the twenty or so left alive—with the three mounted Islanders after them. Puffs of smoke rose from their rifles, and now and then a man would go down. Girenas nodded, his breathing slowing, the diamond focus of combat opening out. They couldn’t afford to have the topknot people dogging their tracks in blood-feud mode. Good hunters could outrun horses, over days or weeks.

He sheathed the knife, found his rifle and loaded, and whistled up his horse, all the time looking at the braids-and-feathers warriors. There were five left on their feet: two men in their prime, an older one with a wrinkled face and white threads in his black hair—call him forty or so—and a teenager. The women and children were still up on the rise, but beginning to talk. The men laid down their weapons and held up their hands toward the Islander; Girenas nodded, made as many as he could remember of the peace gestures—quite different—of the tribes they’d met, and moved to his injured comrade.

Morris was semiconscious, stirring and moaning a little. Girenas knelt by his side and opened one eye, then the other.
Mild concussion,
he thought. The leg wasn’t ripped or bleeding, but Morris stirred and screamed as the ranger’s strong hands manipulated it.
Oh, great, our doctor’s injured.

Awareness returned to the green eyes. “You with us, Henry?” Girenas asked.

“S-s-sure. Ah, Christ.”

“That arrow was a bad idea, Henry.”

“ Yeah . . . Jesus, my leg!”

“Broken.”

The older man slowly, cautiously felt it himself. “I’ll say,” he said. “Two places. Should heal if it’s splinted. Look, Pete, I’m sorry; I screwed up. You’ve got a better sense of these things than I do. Won’t happen again.”

“Okay, man, no problem,” Girenas said, his anger guttering away. “What about the leg?”

“It’ll heal.” Morris hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s going to take a while, multiple fracture like this.”

“How long?”

“Ah . . . two months. Possibly three. Of course, I
could
die,” he went on, avoiding Girenas’s eyes.

The ranger came to his feet, snorting disgust. The others rode back, Sue quiet, Dekkomosu impassive, Eddie Vergeraxsson whooping and waving a couple of bloody scalps.

Girenas winced. Not many Indians in this era took scalps, but the Sun People tribes
did.
The locals were looking impressed and horrified, in various degrees.

“How’s Henry?” Sue Chau asked anxiously. “I’ll go rig a travois so we can get him back to the camp and the aid kit . . . but how
is
he?”

Girenas sighed. The travois ride would hurt like hell, which was just what Henry deserved.

“How is he?” he asked, looking around. True, it was a pretty spot. “Let’s put it this way. We’ve found the place we’re going to winter, I think.”

“M
mmmmm, ’dapa ... Oh,
God
...” Swindapa laughed softly in the darkness; the breath fluttered cool against the damp skin of Alston’s neck. They wound arms and legs around each other; Marian sighed again with contentment at the closeness, the sheer satisfaction of touching and being touched. She tasted the sweat on Swindapa’s neck and shoulder, nuzzling, hands stroking.

“ Why couldn’t we have the lamp on?” the Fiernan chuckled in her ear. “I like watching your face.”

“Put it down to inhibitions,” Marian laughed softly. Silhouettes showed through backlit canvas. “Bad enough you’re going to yell later.”

Growing up in a Fiernan greathouse, with scores of a single intermarried cousinage living from conception through birth to death under one big circular roof, did not breed an American sense of privacy. Swindapa had some inhibitions of her own, but none of them applied to making love.

Nice to have some time to relax,
Marian thought, running her fingers down the other’s spine.
Ship about ready to launch.
No sign of the Tartessians for weeks, so they’d cleared out. And right now, the camp was good and quiet; their daughters soundly asleep next door, tomorrow the day of rest—make-and-mend, no reason not to sleep in, so—

“Commodore!”

Swindapa groaned, gripped her tighter, and mouthed “Go away” silently. Alston rolled her eyes and carefully kept resentment out of her voice.
Uneasy lies the head that bears final responsibility, for everyone feels entitled to interrupt you,
she thought.

She went on aloud: “Yes?”

“Commodore, it’s the local.” The voice was Lieutenant Jenkins; he was OOD for this watch. “The one with the sore ankle? He’s
real
upset, trying to tell us something. I thought you’d want to know.”

“It’s two o’clock in the goddam morning,”
Marian whispered under her breath. In a normal tone: “Thank you, Lieutenant. That was entirely correct. I’ll be right there.”

They rose, splashed water on themselves from the basin on the table—cabin furniture hadn’t been reshipped yet—toweled down, and dressed. The air was cooler on her face after the close, musky heat of the tent and their bed. She took a deep breath and pushed her mind to alertness. The moon was down and it was dark except for a heavy frosting of tropical stars overhead and a few watch fires along the edge of the camp.

And we just dismounted the cannon to reship them,
she suddenly remembered. They were on the
Chamberlain
’s gun deck; they’d been lucky with the tidal scour in the outer passage, and it was deep enough to take the ship fully laden. But from the ship, they wouldn’t bear on the shore, and they couldn’t leave until the stores were all aboard.
Uh-oh.

Jenkins was waiting patiently; his arm was still in a cast and sling, but he was walking well again, well enough to stand watch. X’tung
’a
the hunter was behind him, with a shaken-looking sailor behind
him,
rifle slung over her shoulder and cutlass at waist.

“Ma’am . . . he was just
there,
all of a sudden, right beside me on the parapet!”

“At ease, sailor. That’s their specialty.” And they could track a ghost over naked rock; she’d learned that hunting with them these past brace of weeks.

X’tung
’a
made an impatient gesture at the conversation in a language he didn’t understand, then composed himself with an effort, squinting as Swindapa came out of the tent with a lantern. The pool of yellow light grew as she turned the screw that raised the wick; for a moment he forgot everything with the mercurial swiftness Alston had noticed among his folk, smiling with a child’s delight at the wonder. Then he shook his head again and signed to her.

Alston crouched as he did, the posture for serious conversation among his people. X’tung
’a
pointed southward, then walked two fingers over his palm. He reached out and touched the pistol at the commodore’s belt and made a scowling face.

“Ba’ad!” he said. “Many-many.”

The walking gesture again, and then he pointed to a particular bright star. When he was sure she’d fastened on the right one his pointing finger traced an arc down to the horizon.

“Uh-oh,”
Marian said aloud.
If that means what I think it means . . .

She mimed the walking movement, then traced the star down to the horizon and pointed around her. X’tung
’a
nodded vehemently, then made scowling grimaces and drew the Nantucketer bowie knife at his waist to make a cutting gesture next to his own throat.

“Tartessians,” Marian said.

X’tung
’a
nodded again; he couldn’t pronounce the word in any fashion an English-speaking ear found meaningful, but he did recognize it.

“Kawaka,”
Swindapa said softly behind her. “Shit,” in Fiernan—not normally an oath in that language. She’d picked the usage up from speaking English so long.

“Goddam right there, ’dapa,” Marian muttered.
This part’s going to be tricky.
She pointed southward.

“Ba’ad many how many?” she asked, and opened and closed her fingers repeatedly.

X’tung
’a
shrugged and stood, pointing all around to the camp, then opening and closing his fingers in imitation of her gesture.
About as many as you, maybe more,
she translated mentally.

The problem was that the San just didn’t count the way twentieth-century Westerners did, or the way Fiernans did, either. X’tung
’a
could probably describe every antelope in a herd of dozens after a single glance, but as far as she could tell, the concept of a number as an arbitrary symbol applicable to anything—a hundred men, or zebras, or trees—was utterly foreign to him. Each object in the universe was unique.

Marian Alston sighed and rose, smiling and gesturing thanks. “All right,” she said. “As near as I can tell, we’ve got a serious problem. A group of Tartessians—almost certainly the ones we saw—is headed this way and they’ll be here at dawn or a little before. X’tung
’a
thinks there are at least as many of them as there are of us. It’s suspiciously well timed; they’re arriving just the day before we planned to launch the ship—the cannon are mostly down on the beach.”

Jenkins swore. “How’d they know that?” he said. “To get that close—”

“With a good telescope, they wouldn’t have to get
that
close. There’s high ground all around here.” She held up a hand for silence, lost in thought.

Then she smiled. Swindapa sighed at the carnivore expression; she was a fighter herself at need, but she kept the Fiernan distaste for it. X’tung
’a
grinned back. His people didn’t practice war, but they were no strangers to feud and vendetta, and the Tartessians had managed to pile up what she thought was a formidable store of bad karma in their visits to the region. The Bad Ones were about to get a nasty surprise.

“We can stand them off easily enough, now that we’re warned,” Jenkins said.

Swindapa shook her head. “No, Lieutenant. I don’t think that’s what the commodore has in mind.”

“No, indeed,” Marian chuckled. “And have them hanging about, sniping at the camp, harassing us while we relaunch the
Chamberlain
?”
Sniping at a camp with my daughters in it,
she added to herself.

Orders began to form in her mind. The hardest part would be getting across to X’tung
’a
exactly what was required.

“Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant Jenkins, I want the camp turned out, but
quietly
. No lights, no alarms. Then—”

 

“Mnbununtu! How much further?”

The man the Tartessian captain called Mnbununtu winced in his mind at the hail, although his face might have been cut from scarred obsidian.

There were two reasons for his discomfort. The first was an old, niggling one—Mnbununtu wasn’t his name. In the language spoken six thousand miles to the northwest, that word just meant “man” or “person.” It was the word he’d used when the strangers landed on the beach where he’d been hunting and made an interrogative noise while pointing at his chest. Of course he’d said he was “a man.” How could he have known they were human beings too? He’d thought they were
teloshokunne,
ghost-spirits; the tribe name “Tartessian”
sounded
like that. The word had stuck, though.

The second reason was an instinctive anger at the noise his companions were making.
Blind, log-footed buffalo,
he thought. Then:
No. That is an insult to all buffalo.

Tanchewa—the name meant “leopard” in his tribe’s language—turned and trotted back down the trail. The Tartessians had mostly been farmers or fishermen before they became sailors, and they were lost and frightened in this alien wilderness; many of them flinched at his swift, noiseless passage. He considered himself a peaceable man, on the whole, but he’d demonstrated more than once to the Tartessian crewmen that he wasn’t to be trifled with. That memory remained.