Why should I feel like weeping? she thought, turning her head away from the others. I only wish this could last forever.
That was so strange a thought she ran it over and over in her mind, forgetting the pang in her chest in puzzlement. I too am hunting the future and letting the Now slip past, she thought with a slight chill. It's catching.
Dammit, I'm a sailor, not a diplomat, Alston thought, making her fingers unclench from the rough board table that occupied the center of the HQ hut.
"We've beaten back their raids before," one of the Spear Chosen said.
"When the Sun People come against you, they're going to be coming with every man in their tribes," she replied. "This won't be a war of raids, not after the harvest is in. It'll be a war of-" She switched to English. "Oh, hell, 'dapa, what's the word for battles!"
Swindapa frowned. "I don't… I don't think there is a word, not really," she said at last. "Not if I understand the English properly."
"-of really big fights," Alston went on. "They're going to bring thousands of warriors into your land. You have to match them. Then the armies… the big groups of warrior bands… will fight until one flees. We call that a battle."
The command tent had been replaced by a post-and-board structure; she could see it made the Earth Folk leaders a little uneasy, which was all to the good. All the better to kick them out of their mental ruts. That was why she was holding this meeting at Fort Pentagon. The garrison and the locals they'd hired had done a great deal in the past month. There was a timber-framed rampart all along the edge now, and towers of squared logs at the corners and over the gates. More logs made a rough pavement for the streets, and plank-and-frame barracks had replaced the tents; the little uniflow steam engine that powered Leaton's dart-throwing machine gun could also pump water, grind grain, and saw timber. There was also a log pier, which meant that the ships-even the Eagle-could tie up regardless of the tides and transfer cargo.
"Thousands?" the Fiernan warrior said, scratching at his head. Alston suppressed an impulse to check hers. The locals were a clean enough people, by Bronze Age standards. Those standards weren't anything like twentieth-century America's, and didn't include her horror of resident insect life. He cracked something between finger and thumbnail and continued:
"How can they bring thousands of warriors all together? What would they eat?"
"Your crops," Alston answered. Maltonr, she remembered. Redheaded, the one who'd been with her when they ran head-on into that Zarthani warband. More flexible than most. He'd undone the multitude of small braids he'd worn before and cropped his hair in an American-style short cut.
"That's why they'll come after the harvest," she said. "They'll live off what you've reaped and threshed. And your livestock, to be sure."
The dozen or so Spear Chosen sitting uneasily around the table looked at each other. "But… then we would all starve," he said.
"Exactly. Except the ones the Sun People kept as slaves, of course."
Swindapa winced. Alston restrained an apologetic glance; it was ruthless, but the truth.
Maltonr nodded thoughtfully. "We can't sit behind our walls and wait for them to go away, either," he said.
"Exactly," Alston repeated. Except that that word means something more like running with the same feet, approximately, she thought. Damn, but this is awkward.
"They've got engines to batter down walls," she went on. "They're heavy and slow, but if the Sun People can move in open country, they can bring them up and smash you to sticks. And if you move out of their way and refuse to…" Damn again, no way to say give battle in this language. "… to meet them and have a really, really big fight, they can eat up your settlements one by one."
Maltonr still looked as if he was thinking hard. The others were simply appalled. "What have you Eagle People brought among us?" one whispered.
Alston felt like wincing herself. "Ask your Grandmothers," she said. "The Sun People were eating you a little bit at a time; in the end, they would have destroyed you anyway. Walker the outlaw has taught them how to do it all at once… but we can show you how to smash them all at once, too. Think of being free of their threat, forever."
That had them nodding. Except the redhead, who cast a thoughtful look around at the solid-looking American base. The very permanent-looking American base. Oho, no flies on Rufus, here. Have to talk to him later.
"Hmmm." That was Pelanatorn son of Kaddapal, the local magnate. Very much a trader, and very rich, now. "If we gather a host of thousands, how will we feed them? For that matter, there's always sickness if too many gather in one place for long."
"We can show you ways to stop the sickness," she said.
Boiling water and deep latrines, mostly. Luckily they'd gotten a lot of prestige with the locals by healing diseases their witch-doctors-and-herbs medicine couldn't, so they'd probably go along with sanitation.
"Also, there are ways to feed large groups of people. With the proper-" She stopped again.
Oh, hell. How do I say organization or logistics? She settled down to grind the right meanings out of the Fiernan Bohulugi vocabulary.
After the Spear Chosen had left, Alston slumped in her chair. "Christ, I feel like a wrung-out dishrag," she said.
Swindapa sat looking at her, chin cupped in her hands. "You really have brought a new thing here," she said slowly.
" 'Dapa-"
The girl sighed and closed her eyes. "Oh, I know you- we-must," she said. "But… other change, it's like growing old. You don't notice it every day, and when it comes, it comes to someone that Moon Woman has made ready for it. But this is like a great tree growing up between nightfall and morning. There's no… no time to get used to it, to change the way the Eagle People bring it."
Alston sighed herself, as she rose and put a hand for a moment on the girl's shoulder. There was nothing much comforting to say. In a couple of generations, the Earth Folk way of life was going to be changed beyond recognition. That was better than being overrun and butchered, but it still wasn't easy to swallow.
Andy Toffler came in, checked for a moment, then continued when she nodded. "Goin' pretty smooth, ma'am," he said. With the air survey, we should be able to estimate the harvest pretty close, and do up proper maps of the whole area with updated terrain features. Ian wants to get together with the both of us on it. They're getting records from the local bigwigs, too-seems they've got a sort of tithe system here."
He grinned. "And God Help Us, it surely does impress hell out of the locals, ma'am."
"They haven't seen people fly before," Swindapa said dryly.
Toffler ducked his head, looking surprisingly boyish for a man in his fifties. "No offense, miss. They're good folks, your people, and I'm happy to be here helpin' them against those murdering scumbags."
He scowled; they'd all seen evidence of the way the Sun People made war, and there certainly wasn't a Geneva Convention in this millennium. Seems to have hit Toffler harder than most, she thought. There were hints of a knightly soul under that good-old-boy act… and he'd been scrupulously respectful to her, whatever his private opinions, which she had to give some credit for.
"Tell Ian I can see you at…" She glanced at her watch and read down a mental checklist. The day would have to be forty hours long to get all that done. "… at about eighteen hundred hours."