S. Stirling - Against the Tide of Years

I do wish Alaksandrus would make up his mind what he's more worried about, Ian thought several hours later when he sat down with the shortwave set in his quarters. The Marine operator looked at him and handed over the earpieces and microphone.

"Hard day with the king, sir?"

"Is it that obvious?" he asked-rhetorically.

"Hatussas, Hatussas, come in," he said. "Hatussas-"

"Hatussas here," his wife replied. "Hi, Ian. How's His Gibbering Majesty? I was expecting the Basil Rathbone of the Bronze Age, from Tudhaliyas's description."

"It's not really funny, Doreen," Ian said. "I think he was at least a self-confident pirate until he led his troops to try and stop the Ringapi crossing into Anatolia. He still can't give me a coherent explanation of what happened, except that it involved a lot of explosions and then the Ringapi chariot corps hunting his like hounds after foxes." He paused. "What happens when they win isn't funny at all."

"Yeah," Doreen said quietly. "Anyway, the latest from Colonel- pardon me, Brigadier-Hollard is that-"

"Sir!" A Marine burst into the room. "Sir, the enemy's in sight."

"Oh, shit," Arnstein muttered.

The horde that poured down the flat coastal plain from the north toward Troy was enormous-more people than the whole Republic of Nantucket, the Island, and outports put together.

I've seen as many people at a football game in L.A., Ian tried to tell himself.

That memory paled to nothing before this vision of warriors in gaudy armor in chariots, warriors on foot in plain gray undyed wool with their spears over their shoulders and shields slung at their backs, dusty women trudging beside big ox-drawn carts with their babies on their backs, chieftains' women riding in carts with leather awnings, children running about shouting or crying, herds of cattle and herds of sheep and herds of horses… and prisoners trudging behind the wagons, yoked neck to neck with Y-shaped wooden poles.

The noise was like distant surf mixed with a grumble of thunder. The smell of the horde came before it, dust and manure and massed sweat, with somehow a scent of burning. The sound changed but didn't diminish as they settled in, ringing the small hilltop city with a wall of campsites and brush corrals.

"They can't stay," Alaksandrus said, standing beside Arnstein. "They can't. There's no food out there! We brought almost everything in and burned what we didn't."

Ian nodded. Troy stank of the beasts driven inside it, and of the peasants who camped in every open space, including on some of the roads.

"I'm sorry, Lord King," he said, "but there comes their supply line."

He pointed at the ships that were sailing in out of the west, their sails gilded by the setting sun.

"The Wolf Lord's ships," Alaksandrus said desolately. Ian brought up his binoculars and looked. They were medium-size sailing vessels, not enormously different from the ones Nantucket or Tartessos turned out; a little lower in the freeboard, perhaps, and he saw differences in the sails that he couldn't name. What all of them had in common was the wolfshead banner at their mastheads, red on black.

A curious change came over the Trojan king; he sighed, and a weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. "A man without hope is a man without fear," he said. "Let's see what his herald has to say."

"You think they'll send a herald?"

"It's usually done." A small quirk of the melancholy lips. "I always did. Surrender is cheaper, if you can get it."

"What are your intentions, Lord King?" Arnstein asked.

Alaksandrus's lips quirked again. "Fight," he said. "Your men may get here before we have to give up-the city's well provisioned, and one can always hope for plague in the besieger's camp."

Things moved with glacial slowness; every so often Ian would look up at the Emancipator. He could go…

The herald had brass lungs and spoke the Trojan dialect well; he was also dressed in a uniform of gray tunic and trousers, black boots and belt-definitely not one of the horde.

"My lord summons you to parlay," he said. "Outside the walls."

"Does your lord take me for a suckling babe?" Alaksandrus yelled back.

"Do you distrust his word of honor?"

A derisive laugh arose from those crowded near the square towers that marked the gate bastions. The herald nearly wheeled his borrowed Ringapi chariot about to leave, then visibly controlled himself.

"Each party may bring six men. The meeting shall be there-" he pointed to a small hillock in plain view. "Thus neither side may gain unfair advantage."

Alaksandrus nodded slow assent. Ian felt himself doing likewise. It was the old curse; he had to know.

The sun was almost to the western horizon, backlighting the masts of the ships anchored offshore with boats going to and fro to unload barrels and sacks. Ian noted other developments with interest; from this ground level position he could see that the prisoners of the horde, and many of its members, were digging a trench and earthwork all around the city.

It would make life much easier, he thought, if villains were stupid poltroons. Unfortunately, Walker isn't. Mean as a snake, yes. Stupid, no, and nerve enough for three.

The Trojan party walked forward; three of the guards were Marines with rifles. The group standing to meet them seemed to be mixed, barbarian Ringapi flamboyance and Walker's men in their grimly plain outfits in about equal numbers-and two extra figures whom he took for midgets and then realized with astonishment were children, tow-headed and about ten years old. It wasn't until he was within talking distance that the tall figure in the center threw back the hood of his cloak and Ian Arnstein saw again that boyish, square-jawed, hated face.

Not so boyish anymore, he thought savagely. The left eye was gone, courtesy of Marian's katana, and a V of scar ran up under the eye-patch. Some lines there, too, and a weathered outdoors look. Looks healthy, dammit.

The woman beside him hadn't aged too much either, but the changes in her face-Ian shivered slightly. Objectively speaking, she was a petite, pretty, well-kept Oriental woman in her thirties. But somehow it was if the skull beneath the skin was far more visible now.

"Well, if it isn't the Professor!" Walker laughed delightedly.

Ian replied with a curt nod, making sure that the Python was there under his jacket. For a moment he considered pulling it out and using it-Walker's death was, he decided coldly, worth his own-but it would be foolish. William Walker was far more experienced and deadly at personal violence than Ian Arnstein was ever going to be.

Even the commodore had taken only his eye, the last time they were within arm's reach of each other.

Walker shrugged at his silent glare. "Okay," he said, then dropped into Achaean. A scholar's corner of Ian's mind noted that it was virtually devoid of accent now.

"Here are my terms," he said. "If the city surrenders and admits my troops, I'll keep the Ringapi out-they'll be content to move east, provided the city gives them half its gold and silver-and the lives, personal freedom, and remaining property of the inhabitants will be safe; they can have the status of freemen in the kingdom of Mycenae. If you resist, I'll turn my allies loose to sack it when I take it. And I will take it."

King Alaksandrus followed the man's words well enough, but Ian could see that their lack of the formal phrasing annoyed him, even now.

"What of the king, and the nobles?" he said.

"Deportation to Sicily, or other places of my choice," Walker said. "I'll grant them fiefs equivalent to their lands here, which are forfeit to the crown; they can take a moderate amount of their personal property. And never, never return, under pain of death. The Royal Guard to be split up and enlisted in my regiments."