Стивен Стирлинг - Against the Tide of Years

"Smith! Rake that side of the street!" Hollard snapped. "O'Rourke, keep an eye on the mob."

The crowd had stopped as the torrent of lead plowed into it; scores were down, dead or screaming or moaning and twitching. The rest wavered and eddied. The Gatling crew ran their weapon back out of the infantry formation and wheeled it around to the left, the noncom in charge spinning the elevation wheel. Then the harsh tearing sound of the machine gun began again, long bursts this time as she worked the crank. The stream of bullets worked down the length of the rooftops on that side of the street, tearing through the soft adobe bricks and sending spatters of it back down into the roadway. More than a few bodies followed, tumbling down to thump into the packed clay.

And at last they were running, back the way they had come- except for the piled dead and wounded.

"Captain O'Rourke, we'll move forward now," he said. "Let's get them pinned back in the quarantine area."

Where they'll all die unless they come out and accept inoculation, he thought, then pushed the knowledge away.

"I think we should have parties moving forward on the roofs to either side, sir," O'Rourke said.

"See to it, Paddy. Have a couple of working parties bring out some ladders, too."

Babylonians kept those for accessing their roofs, taking them down at night when they weren't sleeping on their roofs to escape the heat.

"Yes, sir. Good idea."

The Marines moved forward in a line of bayonets, the Gatling crew dragging the bodies aside so their weapon could pass.

Hollard picked his way through the bodies. I should get some of Kash's people here to pick up the wounded rioters… How long to get the situation here under control? Couple of weeks, if Kashtiliash does the right things. Then-

A rifle fired not ten feet behind him. He spun, to see a Babylonian falling back onto the pile of dead where he'd lain concealed. Two more were up and charging, bronze knives in their hands, faces contorted and screaming. And they were close. Hollard clawed at his holster, the Python coming free with glacial slowness. An attacker's head exploded, close enough to spatter across his arm and torso. He shot the third at point-blank range, the muzzle blast of three quick shots burning the wool of the man's tunic, his body jerking under the impacts.

Raupasha was standing, lowering the Werder from her shoulder. Even in the darkness, he could see the smoke rising from the muzzle. Her dog crouched at her feet, growling.

"Ah… it seems you've paid off your debt, Princess," he said slowly, waving away the concerned faces that turned toward him.

"No," Raupasha said, her face pale and eyes wide. "I've just begun."

"Well, now that we're here, we have a slight problem-how do we keep the locals from spearing us or running away before we can talk?" Doreen Arnstein said. "Sort of hard to get them into the Anti-Walker League if they stick sharp pointies into us first."

The Anatolian plateau lay two thousand feet below them, dawn's long shadows stretching across it, stretches of green cropland and dun pasture amid a rocky, rolling landscape with high forested mountains to the north. It was bleak enough, but less so than the arid barrens Ian remembered from visits to Turkey in the twentieth; the raw bones of the earth less exposed by millennia of plows and axes and hungry goats.

Ian shrugged against his heavy sheepskin jacket. "I'm thinking, I'm thinking," he said.

The city of Hattusas, capital of the Hittite Empire, lay below. It was smaller than Babylon-he estimated its total area at around four hundred acres-and it lacked the gargantuan ziggurats that marked the cities of the Land Between the Rivers. Yet it had a brooding majesty of its own, surrounded by cyclopean walls of huge irregular blocks in the shape of a rough figure eight. On a rocky height at the eastern edge of the city was a great complex of palaces, some with ornamental gardens on the flat roofs and trees planted about them. Elsewhere were twisted streets of buildings; castlelike fortresses and temples, scores of them. The smoke of sacrifice rose up from them, and crowds were packed densely into the sacred precincts.

He suspected that they were packed everywhere in the city that had any associations of sacredness, with the Emancipator cruising overhead. They'd opened some of the slanting windows, and he could hear the turmoil as well as see it. The gates were open, and people on foot were streaming out of the city, followed by laden wagons and preceded by a few chariots whose owners lashed their teams to reckless speed.

"We don't have time to be subtle," he said. "What we've got to do is put a messenger in, someone they'll listen to, and then open negotiations."

Everyone on board turned to look at the Babylonian emissary, Ibi-Addad, who turned gray and began to raise protesting hands.

There was panic in the streets of Hattusas. Tudhaliyas, Great King of Hatti, Living Sun, stood on the battlements of his palace and listened to the screams and cries below. Sweat ran down his own long, swarthy face, running into his trimmed beard.

There was reason enough for fear; years of evil news, as if the gods had deserted the land of Hatti. Three years ago he'd suffered his great defeat at the hands of Tukulti-Ninurta of Assyria. Well before that, rumors of black sorcery and menace came from beyond the Western Ocean, among the Ahhiyawa. Then the rebellion of Kurunta, possibly in league with them; just a week before rumors had come of how an army sent to bring him to obedience had been annihilated by evil magic-and on its heels, news of a barbarian invasion in the northwest. But that was nothing beside this. The thing floated over the city of the king like some great fish of the air, needing not even wings to hold it up, though it was as long as a temple square-five hundred paces, at least. The rising sun shone on its gray covering, on the blood-red slash across it, on cryptic symbols that seemed to breath menace. A sound drifted down from it, a great buzzing as of a monstrous bee.

"It is coming this way, My Sun," one of the courtiers said. "Perhaps you should…"

"Flee in terror?" Tudhaliyas said ironically.

He was a man of middle years, dressed now in garb for hunting or war-knee-length tunic covered by a cloak thrown over one shoulder, tall pointed hat, curl-toed boots, wool leggings, with a sword at his belt and the mace of sovereignty in his hands. His hair was long and black, his square, hard face shaven close and much tanned and weathered.

"If this is evil spirits, then Teshub and the Sun Goddess Arinna and Hebat and the other gods and goddesses of the land will protect us," the king said.

"Unless our sin is too heavy, unless we have incurred pollution," someone whimpered.

"If our sin is heavy, if we have incurred pollution, then running will not help us," he said. "If this is a miracle of the gods, running may bring their anger. Stand fast!"

Most did, his guards among them, even when the thing came closer and closer still amid a great hissing and buzzing. His sweat turned cold as the monster shape cut off the sun, and his eyes blurred with fear. Then they sharpened. Were those the shapes of men behind windows like those of a house? He'd assumed that whatever it was, it was alive-did anything else besides living things move with intelligent direction, of its own accord?

Yes, he thought. A ship, a cart, a chariot-all these move. But…

A voice bellowed out, making him take a step backward.

"we come in peace! have no fear! we come in peace!"

"The gods have condemned us!" someone screamed, groveling and beating his head on the flagstones. The bronze-scale armor of the warriors rattled, eyes rolled, tongues moistened lips. Tudhaliyas raised his voice in cold command:

"The gods do not speak our Nesite tongue with a Babylonian accent," the king said. "I am the One Sun, and I will answer."