Against the Tide of Years (75 page)

“ There’s nothing like having your back to the wall to make people reasonable, and they were pretty impressed with the
Emancipator
. Propaganda value alone is going to make that a cost-effective project. . . . now spit it out.”

“Sir? ”

“ Whatever it is that you’re reluctant to talk about, Colonel Hollard. Oh, by the way, for the duration of this war, you’re a brigadier general.”

Jared Cofflin lowered the microphone of the shortwave set. It was a pleasant late-spring day on Nantucket, not long before Daffodil Weekend. From the second-story radio room he could see some, nodding in yellow glory like a promise of peace.

But there is no peace,
he thought to himself.

Martha looked up from her knitting. “I suspect it’s about King Kashtiliash,” she said.

“Ah . . .” Hollard’s voice came through again. “It’s King Kashtiliash, sir. He wants to marry my sis-, ah, Lieutenant Colonel Hollard.”

Oh,
Jared Cofflin thought.
Oh, shit.

“There’s no law against marrying noncitizens, dear,” Martha pointed out. “ In fact, it generally confers automatic resident alien status on the spouse—and there are hundreds of cases.”

“ Yes, but usually the spouse moves
here
. And Kashtiliash is a head of state.”

“Swindapa is a . . . well, a Kurlelo Grandmother.”

“ That’s different. And there’s a law against citizens seizing power or aiding foreign governments.”

“ Yes, but Kathryn Hollard isn’t proposing to do either. The legitimate government of an ally is proposing to
give
her a position, and she’s not proposing to use it in a way contrary to the interests of the Republic.”

“ You caught that, Brigadier? ”

“ Yessir. All right, I’ve got the text of a goddam proposed marriage contract the two of them drew up. You want me to read it? ”

“Go ahead,” Cofflin said. After he’d listened, he whistled softly. “ Well, I’m surprised he agreed to all that.”

There was a slight smile in Kenneth Hollard’s voice. “He’s got it bad, sir.
And
it’s mostly to his advantage, too—this bit about a Nantucket tutor for any kids they have, and sending them to the Island for schooling as well. That’s not unusual here—fostering, that is.”

“Marian,” Cofflin said, “you’ve been listening? ”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” another voice said. “ You getting this, Hollard? ”

“ Yes, ma’am. A bit scratchy but clear.”

Swindapa’s voice came in: “ I think it’s sweet.”

Hollard chuckled. “ Lieutenant Commander, I don’t think
either
of the people concerned is what you could call ‘sweet.’ ”

“ Ian? ” Cofflin said. “ You’re not saying anything? ”

“ I wasn’t surprised, and the rest of you are just talking yourselves around to accepting it,” Arnstein replied, infuriatingly reasonable. “Could we do that, and get on to things that still aren’t settled? Tudhaliyas is dithering, and this barbarian invasion is looking more and more serious.”

“And I’m just about ready to go,” Marian Alston cut in. “If what I’m planning comes off, the equations in the Middle East all change, too.”

Jared Cofflin sighed.
I wonder how people like Churchill and FDR kept all their balls in the air at the same time.

 

“Alaksandrus of Wiulusiya is the key,” Tudhaliyas said.

Ian Arnstein nodded, shivering slightly. His scholar’s ear looked past the Anatolian pronunciations and supplied Hellenic alternatives—or Achaean, the archaic Mycenaean Greek he’d learned after the Event.
Alexandros of Wilios.
Later Greek would drop the
‘w’
sound altogether; it would be Ilios—Troy, as it was also known. Inquiring, he’d learned that the kingdom in question was on the northwestern coast, just south of the Dardanelles. The people were closely related to the
Ahhiyawa;
and yes, that was a powerful kingdom west across the Aegean.

Doreen leaned over and whispered in his ear, “This is getting too creepy for words.”

Ian nodded. So far the Hittites had been vastly impressed—except for King Tudhaliyas, who Ian thought wasn’t impressed by much of anything. He’d supplied mooring for the
Emancipator,
comfortable quarters, lavish gifts . . . and an endless tale of woe. Tudhaliyas had brains and guts, but he was a complainer. In fact, it would be fair to say he whined.

Still, I get to see the capital of the Hittite kings,
he thought. The great stone walls, the pointed-arch gates with monoliths of frowning gods carved beside them . . .
And then I get sucked into the Trojan War, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

“Alaksandrus is your vassal, isn’t he? ”

“He is supposed to be,” the king nodded.

They were sitting in an audience room flooded with light; unlike Babylonian architecture, Hittite ran to big square external windows, although they didn’t have window-glass, of course. Nor did they have chairs, except for royalty.

Why, O Lord, do so many countries back here have this ridiculous rule? They know
how
to make chairs, and chairs aren’t particularly
difficult
to make, so why don’t they?
He was sitting on a stool, and his back wasn’t enjoying it.

Otherwise it was quite pleasant, stuccoed inside and done in geometric designs in ocher and cinnabar, with carpets that looked astonishingly Turkish draped over built-in benches. Even more pleasant, nobody had made any objections to Doreen’s being present. The king’s wife was too. Zuduhepa was
Tawannannas
, a title in its own right; the next king’s wife wouldn’t inherit it until Zuduhepa died herself.

Arnstein unrolled his map. “ Troy is here? ”

After the exclamations and explanations, the royal couple nodded. “And that is where the . . . barbarians have invaded? ”

“ To the north of it, but they come closer every day. As I said, Alaksandrus is the problem. For years he has been scanting his tribute and sending excuses when I summon his men and chariots for war—perhaps that was why the Assyrians beat me, three years ago.”

“O King,” Doreen said, “you need not fear Asshur again. With my own eyes I saw their cities burn.”

“Would that I had been there to see it!” Zuduhepa said, clenching a fist.

She was a slight woman about ten years younger than the king, with huge, dark eyes and a towering headdress on her abundant black hair; the rest of her was invisible under layers of embroidered gown. The hand that clenched on the table bore rings set with turquoise and un-faceted emeralds.

“Would that I could have seen Tukulti-Ninurta flayed, castrated, and impaled!” she went on. “Or brought bound before my lord, beaten with rods—”

The king cleared his throat. “ We heard of his death and overthrow and questioned refugees, but the tales seemed . . . exaggerated.”

He glanced out the window; the
Emancipator
had made more than one journey, ferrying personnel and supplies up from Babylon. It had also taken Tudhaliyas’s own envoys south and back. He nodded.

Ian smiled, reading the Hittite monarch’s thoughts:
Not only do I need these Nantukhtar to ward off the menace to the West, but if I do not learn some of their arts, Kashtiliash will overshadow me as an oak-tree does a radish.
Tudhaliyas had been dropping broad hints as to whether Jared-Cofflin had a marriagable daughter he would care to wed to his son, Arunuwandas.

“And Alaksandrus’s faithlessness hurts the realm,” Tudhaliyas went on. “For the Wiulusiya are very skilled horse breeders and tamers.”

Yes,
Arnstein thought as he took a fig out of a bowl to hide his shiver. Homer had called them the “horse-taming Trojans.”

The Tawannannas cut in: “Alaksandrus son of Pirusia is a hothead—no better than a pirate, carrying off plunder and women from foreign parts.”

That fits the legends too,
Ian thought. And three thousand years from now a younger Ian Arnstein would read Homer’s immortal words, and now—

“Now the Man of Troy screams for help,” the king said. “But the question is, Will he obey? Will he cooperate? Has he even now begun to put out feelers to the enemy, as I suspect? And as I
know
my traitor cousin Lord Kurunta of Tarhuntassa has done? ”

Ian looked at the map again. Besides controlling the Bosporus, the Trojan kingdom also controlled a couple of the best land routes up onto the Anatolian plateau.

“That will be awkward,” he said. “These barbarians who’re invading—What are they like? Where do they come from? ”

Tudhaliyas shrugged. “We’re not sure. None of them speak any language that we can comprehend; none of the ones we’ve captured, at least.”

He clapped hands, and one of the guards by the door ducked out. A few minutes later two more entered the room, pushing a prisoner before them. The man was tall, taller than either of the burly Hittite guards, and had his hands tied behind his back—his elbows, rather, which looked extremely uncomfortable. His chin had been shaved at some point and was now sprouting oak-brown stubble; his long hair and droopy mustaches were much the same color, and his eyes were dark blue. The remnants of his clothes were plaid, in garish colors. Trousers and shirt and jacket, Ian noted with interest. He also carried a powerful stench, but that was probably the result of imprisonment. A partially healed wound crusted one side of his head, and his eyes were a little bright with fever.

Another trooper lugged along a sampling of equipment. The Arnsteins’ eyes narrowed. A broken-off spearhead, with a flame-shaped head and short socket; round-tipped bronze sword with flared-wing hilts cast on; a conical helmet with a model of a raven attached.

On a suspicion, Ian addressed him in the Iraiina language: “Who are you, warrior, and what is your clan and tribe? ”

The man started violently and spoke in machine-gun-rapid language. Ian strained and could
almost
follow him; it was like the haunting pseudo-familiarity of Italian to someone who could speak Spanish.

“ You know them? ” Tudhaliyas said.

“ Not them,” Doreen answered. “Relatives of theirs, very far to the north and west . . . Ian, I’d say this guy was some sort of Central European, by his looks. Probably, and if he’s typical.”

Ian nodded thoughtfully, tugging at his beard. Physical appearance tended to follow the same geographical lines here as in the twentieth, roughly—but only roughly, of course.

“ These also we took, but they don’t seem to belong with the rest,” Tudhaliyas said hopefully.

“ I’ll say they don’t,” Ian said thoughtfully, as a carpet was laid on the table and the plunder set forth.

Steel knife,
he thought. A bowie, to be exact. Steel spearheads. And resting in the center, a double-barreled shotgun, flintlock variety. The prisoner stirred uneasily as Doreen took it up, then shouted and tried to dive for the floor when she pulled back the hammers, pointed it at him and pulled the trigger.

Click-
ting,
and a shower of sparks from the right-side pan; the flint was missing from the hammer on the left. The prisoner raised his head cautiously, opening his eyes.

“Well, that tells us something,” Ian said as the man was led away again.
Namely, that this man has seen firearms in action but doesn’t know enough to know that one wasn’t loaded.

Tudhaliyas and his queen had tensed as well. “ No thunder,” he said shakily.

“ Well, there goes the gunpowder monopoly we thought we’d have, once,” Doreen muttered in English, putting the weapon down. “Damn Walker, anyway.”

“No, it needs . . . food,” Ian said. They were speaking Akkadian, and Akkadian didn’t have a word for gunpowder. Yet.

“Well, that settles it,” he said to the Hittite monarchs. “Your barbarian invasion is definitely linked to Walker—Walkheear.”

Tudhaliyas shuddered. “The Wolf Lord,” he muttered. “We’ve heard a good deal of
him
. Not least from Ahhiyawa refugees, since he killed their king and took his throne. It’s said he has a witch-queen who sacrifices men to a Dark Lady in abominable rites and from their blood brews—ah, that she practices magic.”

Ian and Doreen exchanged a glance. She’d kicked him under the table more than once in their joint diplomatic career, and probably Zuduhepa had just given her husband the same service, reminding him that the newcomers probably practiced similar sorcery, only this looked to be on
their
side.

Ian cleared his throat. Hong
did
practice all manner of abominations when she got the chance, and from her file and her record in Alba, she probably did dress them up in cultic garb. Walker would cheerfully turn that to use, of course.

“ Walker is a rebel against our rulers, just as Kurunta of Tarhuntassa is against you,” he said.

“So here we have Lord Kurunta of Tarhuntassa in rebellion against the Great Throne, probably with the Wolf Lord’s aid; and these barbarians invading us from the northwest, also with the Wolf Lord’s aid,” Tudhaliyas said. “And we have Wiulusiya, which may not be a loyal vassal . . . and Tarhuntassa will make it difficult to receive aid from your people in Babylon, since the best road—Carchemish—runs on the edge of his territory.”

Ian sighed. It was becoming increasingly obvious what they’d have to do.
The Republic calls,
he thought, and surprised himself at how little irony there was in it.
I’m getting patriotic in my old age.

“Well, always interesting to see a new town,” Doreen said in English, reading his expression.

“No,” Ian said. “I need someone here to coordinate . . . and besides, my dear, if things go wrong . . . well, it would be a hard day for David if we were
both
there, wouldn’t it? ”

Doreen scowled. “ You fight dirty,” she said.

“Of course,” he replied. “I fight to
win
.”