"It would have been better if my charioteers had the sense to see that they cannot mass against foot armed with the new weapons," Kashtiliash grumbled. "If they had swung around wide and then dismounted, as I instructed… well, that officer is dead."
He turned his leonine head to Raupasha and bowed it slightly. "You have instructed your followers better, I hear, Princess."
"The King is kind," Raupasha said, proud that her voice was steady.
This was more nerve-wracking than lying flat at the King's feet while he talked of taking her head. Of course, my breasts and thighs were not then bared for the world to see, she thought wryly, forcing herself not to cross her arms on her chest, and went on aloud:
"I think it may be that my charioteers had to practice in concealment if at all, while the Assyrians ruled Mitanni; they did not wish the old mariyannu families who survived to keep up their skills. So they are less set in their ways. Also, while the Nantukhtar are the allies of the men of Kar-Duniash, to us they are saviors, so we are more ready to listen."
Kashtiliash tugged at a mass of wet beard that bore little trace of the careful curling irons his barbers had plied in the Shining Residence. Raupasha wondered a little at his hardihood in these rough conditions, until she remembered tales of how he'd been fostered with his hill-tribe kinfolk and spent much time in the field as a soldier and hunter while his father was King.
Perhaps he finds it a relief, to be away from court, she thought. From things Kathryn had let drop, that might well be so.
And was Kenn'et looking at her with a new touch of respect?
"Hmmm," the Babylonian said at last. "I think that these are words of some worth. Men will remain with their accustomed ways of doing, so long as those are successful. They have spent much time and effort becoming good warriors in the old way; their pride is in it. Is defeat then a better teacher than victory, like a schoolmaster with a heavier switch to beat a boy's back?"
O'Rourke spoke: "Well, that would account for his lack of popularity-as the saying goes, victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan."
Kashtiliash laughed, but went on: "And it would account for the cycles in the affairs of men; for a land raised up by fortune would grow complacent, and thus weak." He cocked an eyebrow at Kenneth. "Thus your land is in great danger, now," he concluded. "From pride and sloth."
"Nantucket's not in as much danger from pride as the land of the Hittites is in from Walker, thank God," Hollard said. "It all depends on whether we can stop them west of the Halys. Beyond that, they'd be into the Hittite heartlands."
"That is the question," Kashtiliash said. He lowered his voice a little: "And whether Tudhaliyas will remain loyal if they do push us beyond the great river. If not, we must retreat over the mountains in winter and Mitanni becomes our front line."
Raupasha winced inwardly. My poor bleeding country! It would take generations to recover from the Assyrian occupation, and if in the meantime they became the battleground of contending Great Powers…
Everyone nodded. "It's even money," O'Rourke said. "We've slowed them just a bit, we have."
"They're not sure where our separate forces are," Kenneth said. "Tudhaliyas is building up west of Hattusas; we sent him most of those Tartessian mercenaries we captured, and they're helping train his own men. Not much in the way of artillery or Gatlings, but enough Westley-Richards rifles and mortars, and now we've got the powder mill going there's plenty of ammunition. Basic stuff, but sound."
"Ah!" Raupasha said, visualizing one of the Islander maps. "And if he advances eastward to pass us, so as to strike at the Great King of Haiti, we can descend on his sides… I mean his flanks."
And yes, that was a considering look of respect. She made herself sit up, leaning back on the rocky edge of the pool with her arms out to either side, as Kathryn had, acutely conscious of how it made her breasts stand.
"I wonder that Walker has not concentrated and struck at one of our separated forces," Kashtiliash said.
Just then an orderly came up with a basket. The tantalizing smell of fresh bread came from it. "They got the earth ovens going, sir," she said proudly. "Real risen leavened bread."
"Thanks! I get so damned sick of pita," Kenneth said, rising. "Let's eat."
The air was cold; Raupasha gratefully wrapped one of the lengths of plundered-foraged, she reminded herself-cloth they were using as towels around herself, knotting it by one armpit so that it covered her from collarbone to knee. The fire hissed and sputtered as a rack of beef ribs and her gift were spitted on green sticks and suspended over the coals. The basket held cheese, raisins, olives and dried figs besides the loaves. O'Rourke showed her how to cut off a slab of the bread and toast it and some cheese over the fire while the meat cooked.
"Yeah," Kenneth Hollard said, leaning back on one elbow with a handful of olives. "It would be logical for Walker to try and destroy us piecemeal. But only if he could find us, and move fast enough on that information. He's got more troops than we do, and his weapons are just about as good… but we've got interior lines, and more important still we've got radios and aerial reconnaissance, and he doesn't."
O'Rourke nodded: "It's like fighting a big, strong fellah who's half-blind and half-deaf."
Kashtiliash shrugged: "His blows are still nothing to laugh at, when he finds a target."
"It's a matter of time," Kenneth Hollard said. "He's racing the clock. The further he advances, the less fertile the country and the more time we've had to strip it… and pretty soon, it's going to be full winter. Rain and mud down in the lowlands. Hard snow up on the plateau."
It had grown dark, only a pink glow left on the snow peaks to the north. The firelight played over the craggy planes of his face, the light dusting of golden hair over his body, the play of long smooth muscles on long limbs and the hard V-shape from broad shoulders to narrow waist. He didn't have the bulk of thew that gave Kashtiliash a Minotaur's presence, but he shone with youth and health, strength and a leopard's deadly speed. Scars only gave him the gravitas of experience.
Oh, Ishtar of the Lovers, but he is beautiful, Raupasha thought, trying to keep her thought from her face. And if some stranger were to come… even naked as we all are, and among so many proven fighting-men, still he would not have to ask who our leader is.
Marian Alston stifled a yawn with locked jaws and forced herself to listen alertly. The staff meeting was nearly finished; nobody had gotten much sleep last night, and they'd all been hard at work since before sunup. The steam ram had saved their bacon by smashing the Tartessian galleys into unthreatening splinters, but there was still plenty of damage to repair.
"Farraguts still afloat," Captain Trudeau said grimly, the ointment on his face glistening in the bright sunshine. Usually he was a humorous sort, but under the circumstances… "And that's all I can say."
The Republic's fleet lay in the shelter of… Cadiz, I suppose we can call it, Marian Alston-Kurlelo thought, with its masts and spars making a spiky leafless forest for the better part of a mile along the shore that sheltered it from the Atlantic swells. Most of them were several hundred yards offshore; they'd brought the steam ram closer in, so that it would have only a few feet to settle if it finally gave up the struggle for buoyancy.
The Farragut was looking a bit better than it had when they first arrived, mainly because the rails weren't quite so close to the water; none of the portholes were submerged anymore, either. A trickle of black smoke came from its funnel to show that the boilers were still hot; the coal smut flowed skyward through holes punched in the sheet steel by grapeshot. The reason for keeping steam up was clear enough, as long fountains of seawater poured from the vents of the ship's pumps. There were stretches of canvas and rope along the sides, where sails had been fothered under the keel to try and seal the leaking seams between the planks of her hull, and one paddle-housing was shattered and bent. A raft floated next to it, and the sound of sledgehammers and cutting chisels working on bent steel plates rang out like discordant bells. The scent of coal smoke drifted down to the watchers on shore, mingling with the brackish salt of the shoreside marshes.