S. Stirling: Against the Tide of Years

Isketerol relaxed back onto the lounger and considered the list written on the paper before him, written in his language but using the Eagle People's alphabet. He frowned slightly; paper the Islanders would sell, glassware, tools, luxuries. But not lathes or milling machines. Well, Tartessians might not have the arts from out of time, but they were no fools… and he had the drawings, the books, the men Will had helped train in Alba.

Already they had done much; oddly, the most useful of all had been the machine with lead seals for the making of books-moveable type, in the Amurrukan tongue. He intended to see every free child in Tartessos schooled in it, even the girls.

All the common people of Tartessos called down blessings on his name; he'd given them wealth, made captains of fishermen and lords of farmers, brought in foreign slaves to do the rough work. Even the new customs, the burying-of-excrement and washing-with-soap rituals, no longer brought complaints. Not when so few died of fever or flux.

Hmmm. And now that I have an embassy there, we can-very slowly, very secretly-see if any of the Amurrukan with useful knowledge can be brought here and join me.

The Eagle People had godlike powers, but they were men with the needs and weaknesses of men. He could offer land, slaves, silver, wealth, power as nobles under him. It was a great pity Will hadn't accepted his offer, but William Walker was not a man to take second place, no matter how rich the rewards.

Rosita Menendez walked in, her robe of gold-shot crimson silk brushing the tiled floor. Isketerol winced slightly; silk was another thing the Islanders would sell in Tartessos, but the price was enough to draw your testicles up into your gut. And, of course, what one of his wives had, all the others demanded, leaving him no peace until he bought it for them.

"Hi," she said in the Amurrukan tongue, sitting on a stool by his feet. He replied in the same, to keep fluency.

"Hello, Rosita. How does your school go?"

"Fine, Iskie," she said.

Has she been drinking again? he wondered, but then he relaxed. No, it was just Eagle People gaucherie; they had no sense of ceremony or manners. Well, she's far from her people, lonely sometimes. Most of the time being a queen in Tartessos was enough compensation for her… although to be sure, he hadn't mentioned his other two wives when he'd courted her back on Nantucket.

"Actually, Iskie, some of the students could take over more of the basics, the way they do the ABC stuff now," she said. "Plus Miskelefol and a couple of others are good enough to do most of the routine translations of the books, if I help them a little with the dictionary," she went on.

"Good. You will have more time for teaching the mathematics and bookkeeping and medicine."

She rolled her eyes but kept her sigh silent. Even a queen wasn't immune from the knotted cords of her husband's belt. Especially a foreigner queen with no kindred in the city.

Well, she's pretty enough-and she'd given him one child, a son- but her knowledge is more important than her loins. She'd been a healer's helper back on Nantucket, a registered nurse in Eng-il-ish. Invaluable here.

Walker's woman, Alice Hong, would have been even more useful. A full doctor, a mistress of some of the Islanders' most powerful arts.

"Then again, no," Isketerol said to himself, shuddering slightly. "I am very glad the Lady of Pain is far, far away."

Far enough away that the thought of her was stirring. He drew aside the loincloth that was his only covering on this warm day and motioned Rosita closer. She knelt on a pillow beside the lounger.

"Use some of that Amurrukan knowledge," he said, grinning and guiding her head with a hand on the back of her neck. This was another thing he'd learned on the Island, and it was catching on fast here.

August, Year 8 A.E.

The scream was high and shrill, a wail of agony and helpless rage. Marian Alston-Kurlelo sat bolt upright in bed, then turned to shake the figure beside her gently on the shoulder.

"Wake up," she said firmly. "Wake up, 'dapa."

The Fiernan woman tossed, opened her eyes. They were blank for a moment, before awareness returned; then she seized Alston in a grip of bruising strength.

"I was-the Burning Snake had me, the Dream Eater," she gasped. "I was the Sun People's prisoner again, but you didn't come…"

Alston returned the embrace, crooning comfort and stroking the long blond hair. Had my own nightmares about that, she thought. Presumably in the original history-if "original" meant anything- Swindapa had died among the Iraiina. Her whole people had vanished, overrun and swallowed up. And I went on alone, back up in the twentieth. The room was very dark; an internal clock developed by a lifetime at sea told her it was the end of the midnight watch, around three in the morning.

She felt tears dropping on her shoulder and tenderly wiped them away. "There, there, sugar," she whispered. "I did come."

Rescuing Swindapa had been sort of a side effect; they were there to trade for stock and seed-grain, that first month after the Event. She certainly hadn't expected them to end up together. In fact, 'dapa had to pretty well drag me into bed, after months of my dithering-all those years in the closet made me timid. Christ, was I stupid.

The rest of the Guard House was quiet; evidently the children hadn't woken. Alston waited until her companion's shuddering died down into quiet sobbing, then turned up the lamp on the bedside table. The period-piece splendors of the house were a bit faded now, eight years after the Event, but with a squared-away neatness that was solely hers.

Swindapa wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a handkerchief from the dresser. Marian smiled a little, remembering teaching her to do that with something besides her fingers. The blue eyes were clear now, with the mercurial mood shifts she'd come to know since the Event. The only thing reliable about 'dapa is 'dapa, she thought with a rush of tenderness. Odd that they got on so well.

"What were you thinking?" the Fiernan said. "I could feel your eyes touch me."

"That you're my other half," Marian said. "And about that night down in the Olmec country."

She remembered that; one hand went to her left thigh, touching the dusty-white scar. Remembering the darkness and the wet heat, mud under her boots, the light of the flares and the burning temples of San Lorenzo breaking in shatters of brightness off the obsidian edges of the Olmec warriors' spears and club-swords. The quetzal feathers of their harnesses, the paint and precious stones and snarling faces. The cold sting of the spearhead in her leg; at the time all she felt was an enormous frustration that her body wouldn't obey her; that they might not get out with Martha Cofflin after all. And then Swindapa, sword flashing as she stood screaming over her fallen lover.

The Fiernan nodded. "Moon Woman has woven the light of our souls together," she said.

"And I was thinking that you're cute as hell," Marian added, grinning.

That's God's truth as well, the black woman thought. Swindapa was her own five-foot-nine almost to an inch, slender and long-limbed. There had still been a bit of adolescent gangliness when they first met, but it had gone with the years between. The oval straight-nosed face looked firmer now too, tanned to a honey color and framed by the long fall of wheat-colored hair.

"Woof!" Alson said, as the Fiernan's leap and embrace took the air out of her lungs.

"And you are as beautiful as the night sky with stars," Swindapa murmured down at her; that was as strong as compliments came, in the Fiernan Bohulugi tongue. It sounded pretty good in English, too. "Let's share pleasure. I want-"

Marian stopped her with another kiss; loving someone didn't make them more like you, and she was still embarrassed by Fiernan bluntness at times.