Against the Tide of Years (78 page)

“The ships are just out of reach,” Chong said. “Three rounds, for effect!” And then “Cease fire!” regretfully, as the boats towing the rafts turned around and began thrashing the water toward the ships they’d just disembarked from.

“Then they can’t get their guns close to the walls?” Ian said hopefully.

“ I didn’t say that, sir,” Chong said. “ They just can’t land them
here
. We’re on the highest ground around, so we can hammer them as they come ashore. They’ll have to take them out of range and then bring them within range of the walls by night one at a time. It’ll cost them heavily, but I’ve got only four tubes and my ammunition is limited. Eventually they’ll get the guns in protected positions close enough to hit us.”

“ What then? ” Arnstein asked, licking dry lips.

The Chinese-born officer buckled his binocular case with a snap. “ Then they pound us into dust,” he said quietly.

Arnstein nodded.
But we’re buying time,
he thought. It was a little comfort; not much, but a little.
Walker doesn’t deal with frustration well. If we stand him off, he’ll get mad and stay longer than he should. Probably he just showed up to get things started.

The bulk of the renegade’s troops were obviously elsewhere, judging by the numbers he could see.
Doing what?
he wondered—and then wished he hadn’t.

 

You wanted adventure and travel,
Mandy Kayle thought, licking lips dried by the airstream.
All right, Ms. Hotshot Pilot, you’ve got it. Endless deserts full of homicidal locals.

The tawny landscape rolled away beneath her, with here and there a line of greener vegetation to mark a watercourse or arroyo. The wind blew past at forty-five miles an hour, barely a crawl up here at two thousand feet. She could see the dust plumes now.

“
Eagle Eye II
here,” she said; it was a pilot’s privilege to pick her own call sign. “
Eagle Eye II.
I have the enemy under observation.”

“ You’re coming through loud and clear, Two.”

“Enemy are three miles to your northwest, proceeding in two columns of unequal size. Estimate the larger column to consist of ”—she juggled control stick and binoculars, tipping the
Eye
to the right to improve her view—“local troops, chariots one-fifty, repeat one-fifty, infantry three thousand, archers and spearmen, with oxcarts and pack donkeys to match. Over.”

“Excellent work,
Eye
. Over.”

Details sprang out at her: a charioteer’s long black hair spilling from under his helmet, ax flashing as he gestured with it; the plodding pace of infantry, breathing their own dust; a ripple of light on spearheads through the dust. The other column . . .

“ Proceeding to close on second column.”

She pushed the stick forward and to the side, working the pedals with her feet. There was the familiar lovely swooping sensation, the rattle and hum of air through the rigging, the snap of her scarf behind her. More grit at this level, but she kept the goggles up for a better view.

“Second column is troops with firearms! Repeat, troops with firearms!”

Men marching in order, in a column of fours behind a standard-bearer; mounted officers in modern saddles. Big wagons pulled by horses as well. And . . . one, two . . .
six
cannon. Something else too, something she couldn’t quite identify.

And they’d seen her, right enough, men pointing, their mouths moving silently through the lenses of her binoculars. Moving to order, their packs thrown down, blocks throwing up their rifles in unison. Muzzle flashes winked up at her . . .

Her mouth went drier, and she could feel her stomach trying to crawl up into her lungs for safety. There were an almighty
lot
of bullets coming her way; she sucked the stick back and reached up to push the throttles all the way to their not-very-powerful maximum.

“Sir, they’ve got breechloaders. Awful damned good ones, too.”

She banked sharply, jinked, threw the responsive little craft around the sky. She was standing it nearly on edge when the enemy pulled a tarpaulin off a wagon bed and swung a thick-barreled
something
on a yoke mount that let them point it rapidly to any portion of the sky. As she hung at the top of the curve, she was miserably certain that it was pointing directly at the part of the sky she occupied right then and there. It fired; she was expecting some sort of shell, but instead there was a muzzle flash like a rifle’s, only many times repeated, and a torrent of smoke, enough for a whole company volley.

“ What
is
that—”

Her speculation was cut short by the arrival of the malignant lead bee swarm. Rounds went
ptunk!
through the taut fabric of
EEII
’s wings, and cracked into the plywood of the fuselage like nails driven by a mad carpenter. Her skin went cold for a second; any one of those could hit
her
and go through her the long way. Then her heart stuttered as a bullet
pinged
off metal; let one of them hit the wrong part of the engine, and she’d have no choice but a gliding landing—and saving the last bullet in the Python at her waist for herself.

“Automatic weapon, I say again, the enemy have—”

The dead tone in her earphones when she pressed the switch alerted her. She joggled the switch, and nothing happened but a faint frying sound.
Must have been hit.
There went another of their precious pre-Event radios; more important, she’d have to deliver the news herself. That provided a perfect and honorable excuse to stop flying this very unfriendly patch of sky.

The
EEII
was at extreme rifle range now; she turned the nose back to the southeast, aiming the point at the distant column of dust that meant home and the Republic’s protecting arm.

This time she felt the little craft shudder as it was hit. The engine coughed and stuttered, and then took up its buzzing with a ragged edge, like her heartbeat. Something struck like fire and ice in her lower back, and her foot fell off the rudder bar. She reached behind her and felt a warm wetness.

And, she realized, sensation in her foot and toes as well. A wave of irrational thankfulness hit her. Not a spinal injury.
And a lot of good that does me if I bleed to death!

 

Marines were running past outside the aid tent as Justin Clemens reached behind his back to tie on his surgical gown. He glanced up; the ultralight was returning . . . but wobbling in the air and trailing smoke.

“Business in the shop, people!” he said and felt hands touch his; Azzu-ena finishing the ties with neat bowknots.

He turned to do hers as well, his mask still down around his neck. Everything looked ready, the doctors and assistants were running in and scrubbing down, and the little kerosene burners under the autoclaves were hissing.
God damn this heat and all this grit,
he thought.
We’ll need plenty of gauze coverings to keep it out of the working areas.

“ I should have stayed in Babylon,” he grumbled.

“Why?” Azzu-ena said, checking instruments on a tray beside their table, her fingers flicking rapidly. “ The epidemic is over, and you are a figure of fear. King Kashtiliash is building the water towers you requested, but you would do him no favor by staying there. Let memories cool.”

Clemens nodded. The system would purify even Euphrates water, and it would run to public fountains. And the next shipment from Nantucket was supposed to include a complete vaccination-preparation setup for Ur Base. Then, by God, he would vaccinate the whole of Kar-Duniash, if he had to chase them down and do a flying tackle on each and every one.

The stretcher bearers came in, with the bloodied form of the pilot lying facedown. The back of her uniform tunic was sopping; Azzu-ena took a pair of scissors and cut it away as he leaned forward, pulling up his mask. His hands probed the area between pelvis and spine.

“Bullet, no exit wound, internal bleeding too, we’ll have to open her up!”
And hope it didn’t destroy her liver.
“Saline, ether, stat, get someone her type in here, let’s get a move on here, people!” he snapped, then turned and saw Brigadier Hollard crouched by her head; she was still conscious, but her eyes were wandering.

“What the hell are you doing here!” Clemens roared. “You’re not sterile, you’re endangering the patient, get the hell out!”

“Shut up,” Hollard hissed, his voice flat and deadly enough to stop even Justin Clemens in midphrase.

“I’ve got it, Kayle,” Hollard said gently. “Rest now. They’ll patch you up.”

Then he was gone from the tent in four long strides.

 

“Remember Lord Kenn’et’s words!” Raupasha shouted. “Against the Hittites, fight like lions—against the wizard’s men, chariots are to flee and footmen to fall flat.” There was an unhappy murmur, and she put metal into her voice. “ There is no honor in putting yourself in the way of a
bullet
.”

The emergency demonstration with a couple of sick donkeys had been impressive; she just hoped it hadn’t killed the men’s spirit.

“ Follow me, men of Mitanni!” she said. “Once again you are called to war, you descendants of men who bestrode the universe. Teshub and Indara Thunderer are with us!”

She signaled to the driver and he pulled the heads of the horses around, clicking to them.

“Not too fast,” she said, putting the thought of Sabala’s pleading eyes out of her mind; strange that it should strike her now. “ We have a better team and a better chariot; we are to lead, not lose them in our dust.”

As she spoke she pulled the rifle from its scabbard that her friend Fusaro had made for her back at Ur Base.
Strange, to have a leather-worker as a friend, but that is the Eagle People way.
The weapon was balanced and deadly in her hands, and she’d always been a good shot—first with the bow and then with rifles. And with this rifle, all she needed was to be deft and have a keen eye, and to be as formidable as any. It was a heady feeling.

The coat of light chain mail Kenn’et had insisted on—
Mitara, Lord of Justice, preserve him!
—was only enough weight to anchor her securely; the chariot bounced far less than the ones she had grown up with, making more of a sway than a blow against her feet. She squinted under the brim of her helmet and saw the Hittite host approaching.

Rebel Hittite host,
she reminded herself. Tudhaliyas was an ally of Nantucket, therefore of hers. Then:
I am afraid, but I can master it.
The conquering of fear was as heady as the
soama
of the ancient stories, the drink that made her ancestors as one with the gods.

Now they were close enough that she could see men through the dust and flash of movement. Three-man Hittite carts, driver and warrior and shield bearer, heavier than hers, horses’ sides covered by leather blankets sewn with scales, the crews armored as well. All that weight might well slow them enough that her poor followers with their knackers-yard horses wouldn’t be at too much of a disadvantage. The footmen would be; those following the rebel lord’s chariots were fully equipped, nearly every man with helmet and good shield, long spear, sword, leather tunic boiled in vinegar or wax. When the infantry met, it would go hard for her folk. That grieved her, but the battle was to be won; so her foster father had taught her, and the Eagle People. She knew the price of defeat too well.

She brought her rifle up, looked back at the wedge of chariots that followed her. Some were out of the fight already, tumbled with wheels off or axles broken. Most followed, and she waved them to her right. They swung after her, and she brought the weapon up and aimed, knees flexing.

Crack.
A miss, and an arrow went
whirrrt
through the chariot; they were within a hundred yards. But Hittites weren’t archers of note, they preferred the javelin and thrusting spear. She pulled a bullet from the bandolier looped around her body and thumbed it home.

Crack.
A man flung up his arms and fell backward out of his chariot, tumbling as the speed of the galloping horses threw his body against the ground. That would have broken bones even if his wound was slight.

Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna shouted in exultation.

 

“They’re behind the locals, all right, behind and to the right,” O’Rourke said. “ We stung ’em.”

“What arms?” Kenneth Hollard asked, handing up his canteen. The camel-mounted commander of the Scout company leaned down and took it, drinking with appreciation. The day was growing hotter as the sun rose toward noon.

“Breechloaders for certain. Most of them Westley-Richards like we were using last year,” he said. “But they’ve got something very nasty as well, not a Gatling but something of the sort. Several of them. Cost us.”

He inclined his head. Wounded Marines were being lifted off camels and onto stretchers; some were being laid out with blankets over their faces.

“And a battery of fieldpieces—twelve-pounder Napoleons would be my guess—and something else, further back, that they didn’t use.”

“ Numbers? ”

“Around a thousand, I’d say—not counting teamsters and such. They moved from column into line very fast indeed, Brigadier, sir. Fire and movement, extended order.”

“Thanks, Paddy. Pull your people out, get them something to eat”—he’d had the field kitchens set up along with the hospital; you needed both—“and then dig in, and we’ll see what happens. With luck, they think this force is simply locals, an ultralight, and you.”

“ With luck indeed.”

Hollard looked along the line where his Marines were digging in, and the man-tall hillocks over to his left where the New Troops of Babylon waited.
One good thing is that soil doesn’t show up very well here,
he thought.
Another is that khaki blends in very well indeed.