S. Stirling - On the Oceans of Eternity

"Yes," he said. His fist crumpled the paper. "But that's not the whole of it." Her brows went up. "Pharaoh has denounced the treaty with the Hittites. Evidently he thinks this would be a good time to get revenge for the Battle of Kadesh. A bit startling and a bit late, seeing that that was forty years ago, but…" He shrugged.

Raupasha blinked, turning from an eighteen-year-old in love to the ruler who'd commanded a chariot squadron behind enemy lines. For a moment her living eye was as blank as the molded leather one in the mask that covered the scarred part of her face.

"But how can we turn aside to the south, if Walker moves in from the west?"

"We can't," Hollard said grimly. "Tudhaliyas has called up his southern levies and vassals. They'll have to hold Pharaoh."

"But they are troops without firearms!"

He nodded. "Possibly the commodore can send help from Sicily."

"If not…'

"If not, Ramses may walk all the way to the walls of Hattusas."

"Or to the Euphrates, and cut us here off from Kar-Duniash, which is nearly as bad."

They looked at each other and stepped into the chariot. "Iridmi!" Raupasha called crisply. "To the camp-and do not spare the team."

April, 11 A.E .- Canaan, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E .- Central Anatolia, Kingdom of Haiti-land

April, 11 A.E .- Canaan, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E .- Eurotas Valley, Kingdom of Great Achaea

April. 11 A.E .- Damascus, Kingdom of Haiti-Land

April, 11 A.E .- Meggido, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E .- Walkeropolis, Kingdom of Great Achaea

April, 11 A.E .- Meggido, Kingdom of Egypt

April, 11 A.E .- Achaean camp, western Anatolia

The cannon were keeping up well with the chariots; Pharaoh would be pleased.

Djehuty, Commander of the Brigade of Seth, was a little uncomfortable on horseback even after months of practice with the new saddle with stirrups; the son riding beside him had learned more quickly.

Still, there was no denying it was convenient. He turned his horse and rode back down along the track beside his units, with the standard-bearer, scribes, aides, and messengers behind him. The rutted track was deep in sand, like most of the coastal plain of Canaan… where it wasn't swamp mud or rocks. The infantry in their banded-linen corselets plodded along, their brown faces darker yet with dust and streaked with sweat under their striped headdresses of thick canvas. Round-topped rectangular shields were slung over their shoulders, bronze spear blades glinted in the bright sun. After them came a company of Nubians, Medjay mercenaries from far up the Nile. Djehuty frowned; the black men were slouching along in their usual style, in no order at all… although anyone who'd seen one of their screaming charges could forgive them that.

Then came one of the New Regiments; they wore only kilts and pleated loin-guards, but there were leather bandoliers of papyrus cartridges at their right hips and muskets over their shoulders. Djehuty scowled slightly at the sight of them, despite the brave show they made with their feet moving in unison and the golden-fan standard carried before them on a long pole.

Their weapons are good , he acknowledged. "But will they stand in battle?" he asked himself. They were peasants, not iw'yt , not real soldiers, raised from childhood in the barracks.

After them came the cannon themselves, wrought with endless difficulty and expense. Djehuty's thick-muscled chest swelled with pride under his iron-scale armor at the number Pharaoh entrusted to him-a full dozen of the twelve-pounders , as they were called in the barbaric tongue of their inventors. Each was a bronze tube of a length equal to a very tall man's height, with little bronze cylinders cast on either side so that the guns could ride in their chariotlike mounts. Very much like a chariot, save that the pole rested on another two-wheeled cart, the limber , and that was hauled by six horses with the new collar harness that bore on their shoulders rather than their necks.

Better for the horses , he admitted grudgingly, passing on to the chariots. Those had changed in the last few years as well. Besides a compound bow and quiver on one side, there was a scabbard on the other for two double-barreled shotguns, and the crew was now three, like a Hittite war-cart-one being a loader for the warrior who captained the vehicle.

He reined in and took a swig from the goatskin water bottle at his saddle. It cut gratefully through the dust and thick phlegm in his mouth, and he spat to the side and drank again, since there were good springs nearby and no need to conserve every drop. Years of work, to make the Brigade of Seth the finest in Pharaoh's service, and then to integrate the new weapons.

To be good commanders , his father had told him, we must love our army and our soldiers. But to win victories, we must be ready to kill the thing we love. When you attack, strike like a hammer and hold nothing back .

"Stationed in Damnationville with no supplies," he said, a soldier's saying as old as the wars against the Hyskos.

"But sir, there are plenty of supplies," his son said.

Djehuty nodded. "There are now, boy," he said. "But imagine being stuck here on garrison duty for ten years."

The young man looked around. To their left was the sea, brighter somehow than that off the Delta. The road ran just inland of the coastal sand dunes; off to the right a line of hills made the horizon rise up in heights of blue and purple. Thickets of oak dotted the plain, and stretches of tall grass, still green with summer rain. Grain turned yellow in a few patches of cultivation, here and there a vineyard or olive grove, but the land was thinly peopled-had been since the long wars Pharaoh had waged early in his reign, nearly forty Nile floods ago.

And those did not go well , he remembered uneasily-he'd been a stripling then, but nobody who'd been at Kadesh was going to believe in the great Egyptian victory that the temple walls proclaimed.

A village of dun-colored huts with flat roofs stood in the middle distance, dim through the greater dust plume of the Egyptian host passing north. The dwellers and their stock were long gone; sensible peasants ran when armies passed by.

By the standards of the vile Asiatics, the hairy dwellers in Amurru, this was flat and fertile land. To an Egyptian, it was hard to tell the difference between this and the sterile red desert that lay east of the Nile.

"War and glory are only found in foreign lands," the younger man said stoutly.

"Well spoken, son," the commander said. He looked left; the Ark of Ra was sinking toward the waters. "Time to camp soon. And Pharaoh will summon the commanders to conference in the morning."

"My Kat'ryn…" Kashtiliash of Babylon said.

"Yeah, Kash?" she said, looking up from the washstand. Beads of water ran down the smooth-muscled shoulders, over breasts like lathe-turned wine cups. The pink nipples stiffened to the touch of the chill water, in the predawn cold.

He seated sword and revolver more firmly on his hips and took a deep breath. Holding his spear firm for the charge of a lion or boar was easier than this. Kathryn took up a towel and began to dry herself; uniform and helmet and weapons waited on a stand in the corner of the rammed-earth commanders' quarters.