"Came out to see to some things," he said.
O'Rourke looked back at the Marines who'd halted in the roadway. In normal times he'd have said they were clapped out and ready for rest; right now they looked almost indecently fresh.
"With two companies of the First and those heavy weapons, and a day to entrench, we can hold against anything outside the hosts of hell," he said.
"It looks like you already did, Pat," Hollard said softly, looking over the battlefield; he removed his helmet and ran a hand over cropped sandy hair. "Christ crucified… I thought you'd all been massacred, until I saw the flag still flying."
"Reverend Smith's hearing confessions right now," O'Rourke said grimly. Captain Barnes came up while he was speaking. "It didn't come cheap, I'm telling you that, I am."
"I could use some extra medics and supplies, sir," Barnes said.
Hollard shook his long head. "Of course, right away."
He turned in the saddle and gave the orders, and figures with the winged snake emblem on blue uniforms ran forward. The rest of the column seemed paralyzed, staring at the carnage around the little outpost, some of them gagging when the wind shifted.
"We can hold forever, now. Against the hosts of hell themselves," O'Rourke went on, conscious that he was repeating himself but too tired to really care.
Hollard swung down from the saddle and gave him a sympathetic slap on the shoulder. "I'm afraid that's what's heading this way," he said. "Troy's fallen, and Walker's men are pouring up from the coast-here, and up the Meneander Valley from Miletos. We're retreating."
O'Rourke nodded dully. "I'll need transport for the wounded," he said.
"Emancipator is making a run into the regimental HQ and she'll pick up anyone who can't march," Hollard said.
"What about the supplies here, sir?" Barnes asked.
"Take what you can. Burn the rest," Hollard said, his thin mouth and knob of a chin closing like granite. "Starting now, we don't let anything fall into Walker's hands that he can use. Vastatio."
"Ah, that's the way of it, then," O'Rourke said, nodding mechanically.
"One thing," Kenneth Hollard said, looking at the barley-sack ramparts, half-visible now under the men who'd died sprawled across them. "Why didn't you dig a ditch outside the walls-no time?"
"We did dig one, Brigadier sir," O'Rourke said. "It's just full."
Hollard shook his head again. "Colonel, this is going to be one for the Corps history books, up there with Chosin and Okinawa."
O'Rourke hadn't thought of it in quite that way before… but it was a notable feat of arms, after all. "I'll want to see that my lads and lasses get the recognition they deserve for it, too," he said. My one regret about that is that I'll have to recommend Kyle Hook for a medal. And there I was hopin' to send him to the punishment company.
"And we'll have to find a name for it." Hollard's mouth quirked from its chiseled line. "How about the Battle of O'Rourke's Ford?"
Even then, they could laugh. Barnes looked at them both as if they were insane… which, when he thought of it, wasn't all that far wrong. Plus she'd been barely into her teens at the Event.
"Classical reference, macushla" he said. "Classical reference."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket
October, 10 A.E.-Near Hattusas. Kingdom of Hani-land
October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket
October, 10 A.E.-Neayoruk, Kingdom of Great Achaea
October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket
November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia
October, 10 A.E.-Long Island Sound, Republic of Nantucket
"Morning, Jared," Joseph Starbuck said.
"Morning, Joseph," Jared Cofflin replied; even in the later months of the Year 10, the government of the Republic of Nantucket remained pleasantly informal.
The Councilor for Finance and the Treasury leaned back in his chair. That was in an office of the Pacific National Bank, which was also the headquarters of the Republic's departments of finance and taxation. It stood at the junction where Main Street turned southwest and Liberty branched off from it; the redbrick rectangle with its two white pillars in front had been erected in 1818, to finance the Island's expanding whaling trade in the South Seas.
Nearly two centuries ago, or more than three millennia in the future, but once again Nantucketer ships sailed all the seas of the earth.
You need bold captains for an Age of Expansion, Jared thought. You also need hardheaded bankers and a sound currency.
"Good of you to drop by; I know it's supposed to be a holiday for you," Starbuck said. "But I wanted to catch you before you talked to young Tom Hollard over on Long Island. Might be I could sweeten the meeting… for him, at least."
Jared nodded. He could imagine Joseph on his own quarterdeck easily enough, if you ran him back a half a century or so in biological age. In his late seventies, the pouched blue eyes still reflected a mind of flinty practicality, near-perfect for this job.
And it's my job to find the right people, he thought.
About two-thirds of any leadership position was knowing how to find the right people to delegate to. The other third was knowing when they were wrong.
Of course, the fourth third is knowing when to let them fail a couple of times because it's the only way they'll believe you when you say they're screwing up. And the fifth third-
"It's a busman's holiday," he said aloud. "As for Tom Hollard, well, if you can arrange for the war to be over, and the damned income tax to be abolished, it'll make things sweet as milk. Otherwise, he's going to be unhappy. Hell, I'm unhappy, but we need guns and soldiers and ships and pay for the crews."
The window was open onto Main, letting in bright fall sunlight. They'd had the first frosts, and the cool salt-scented air made him glad enough of the thick raw-wool sweater he wore.
Even this early the sound of iron-shod hooves and wheels on the Main Street cobbles was fairly loud, together with steam whistles from factories and boats down in the harbor.
"I've got the estimates," Starbuck went on. "After you've read these, you can surprise him by saying he's quite right and the taxes won't be going up any more."
As he spoke, Starbuck flicked one long bony finger toward the screen of the personal computer on his desk. It was one of the two dozen or so allowed to assist vital functions at any one time; it would be a very long time before the Islanders could make disk drives, or the new Pentium the magazines had been talking about before the Event. Starbuck's work also rated one of the even more valuable dot-matrix printers, salvaged from an attic. The tapes on those could be replaced with an ink-saturated cotton that did almost as well as the woven nylon originals.
As for toner cartridges for laser printers… About the time we get space shuttles.
"End of the story, Jared, is that there's no more fat to cut into for war production."
Cofflin took the sheets and looked through them. Ayup, he thought. There were times when he disagreed with Starbuck, but he'd never found him to be flat-out wrong yet.