They loaded their spare horse with loot, while Caradoc piled his own excess gear on the horse the priest had ridden. Then he rode off on a fresh horse and returned with two more. After a questioning glance at Rick, he gave the new mounts to Yanulf and Tylara. They mounted.

“Cap’n, they’re waiting for us,” Mason said.

“Yeah. Mount up.” He swung into his own saddle and gave an experimental cluck. The horse moved slightly. It seemed very well trained and responded to the reins about as he had expected. “I’ll lead yours at first,” he told Gwen. “If you want me to.”

“Please.”

Rick edged his mount over until he was next to Tylara. “Where?” he said. “Quo vadis? Donde?” He pointed helplessly in all directions.

She frowned, then seemed to understand. She pointed down the road. “Tamaerthon.”

“Your home?” Rick asked. He pointed to her, then the road. Tylara do Tamaerthon, she’d said. It must be. “You. Tamaerthon?”

She nodded vigorously, then swung her hands in abroad sweep to include the whole party. “Tamaerthon,” she said, and she sounded quite determined about it.

PART FIVE:

TAMAERTHON

I

Tylara had been away less than a year, but she had forgotten just how small her homeland was. The whole of Tamaerthon was no more than twice the extent her own lands of Chelm had been, and her father’s holdings in The Garioch would have been thought suitable for a wealthy knight—almost too mean to support a bheroman. As for her father’s great hall, it wasn’t much larger than her council chamber in Castle Dravan, and indeed her father used it for council meetings, which usually—as now—were no more than a gathering of several of his henchmen.

That wasn’t her only disappointment. Her reception was something less than enthusiastic. Her father had seen her leave as a great lady. He had sent more archers and more wealth than he could afford as her dowry.

Outside the council hall, the women of the village were keening the deaths of sons and lovers who had gone with their lady to die in a far land.

“I had thought ye might send me horses and knights,” her father said. “And gold. But ye hae returned wi’ no more than three men-at-arms and this priest.”

“What choice had I? But I have come with more than men-at-arms.” Tylara described the battle at the crossroads. “And twice more they fought when bandits and refugees would not leave us alone. Each time they left none alive.” She described the weapons; the large ones like crossbows carried over the shoulder, and the smaller one-handed weapons they carried concealed beneath their jackets.

“But where do they come from?” her father demanded.

“From the stars,” Yanulf said.

Drumold stared at the priest and back to his daughter. “Weapons of fire and thunder. . . then the old tales are true?”

“They are,” Yanulf said. “You can see for yourself, the Demon Star grows larger each ten-day.”

“Aye, I hae seen it at dawn when the night sun is low,” Drumold agreed. “But the tales speak of evil gods.” He glanced nervously toward the stone house where the newcomers were lodged. “Are these—”

“Not gods,” Tylara said. “They are men. Men with great weapons, but men. For days they were sick nearly to death. The lady with them is ill yet.”

“She carries a child,” Yanulf said. “I do not know whose.”

“Not gods,” Drumold mused. “Men. And they befriended you. With such power as they have—” He grew thoughtful.

“That had occurred to me,” Yanulf said. “When I saw the power of their weapons, I had thought to find the Lord Protector and the boy Wanax of Drantos. With the aid of these star men, we might have driven Sarakos from Drantos and returned the lady Tylara to her home.”

“But they would no aid you?” Drumold demanded.

“They could not,” Yanulf said. “In the ten-day we sought the Protector’s army, the Protector sought Sarakos. We heard the story from refugees three days after their armies met. The battle was thought to be equal at first, even though Sarakos bad many more lances. But as the battle was fought, Sarakos smote his enemies with weapons of fire and thunder.” The priest spread his hands. “Our friends are not the only men from the stars. More than a score, with weapons more terrible than any Rick carries, now are allied with Sarakos and hold Drantos for him.”

“Rick was once of their company,” Tylara said.

“Then why is he not with them?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I do not know. I heard from the lady Gwen that Rick was once the commander of the star men. I know that he does not care to have them find him again.”

“Then dare we keep him here?” Drumold demanded. “Is he a danger to our land?”

“He is our guest. He saved me from Sarakos once and twice from bandits,” Tylara said.

Her father studied her face carefully. “Aye, and he has done more than that,” he said. “When your mourning is done, will we see another stranger wed the daughter of the Mac Clallan Muir?”

Tylara had no answer to that. I wish, she thought, I wish I knew. Whose child does Gwen carry? She does not act toward Rick as a woman does to her man, but the ways of the star men are strange. I do not understand them. Especially I do not understand Rick, who likes well enough to be near me, but who has never touched me except to heal wounds…

And another memory. Rick’s shouting rage when finally he understood what Sarakos had done to her. Almost, almost he had gone back to seek out Sarakos, but then Gwen spoke to him for a long time, and they rode on again.

But he did rage. He hates the man who harmed me.

“We hae our troubles here,” Drumold was saying. “There was untimely rain, and the harvests will be poor. Wi’out the archers sent with you, we hae lost many of our pastures. Mac Clallan Muir does not stand so high as at the time you left, and when it is learned that my daughter can no longer send a thousand lances to my aid, it will go worse. Now you hae brought us guests who may draw the strength of Sarakos against us. Daughter, ‘tis no’ your fault, but this is not good.”

He looked to his silent henchmen. They had no advice for him. Then he stared moodily into the fire. “But they are guests and they have my welcome, for what good it will be to them.”

“What’s taking them so damned long?” Corporal Mason asked. “My stomach’s growling. They could at least feed us.”

“I expect that’s what the debate is about,” Gwen said. “Hospitality is taken very seriously in some cultures. If they feed us, they have to take us in and protect us from our enemies.”

“Well, I wish they’d get on with it.”

“Count your blessings,” Rick told him. “At least there’s a warm fire and we’ll get a safe night’s sleep.” Which, he thought, was more than they’d had for weeks while they fled across Drantos, staying ahead of the occupation forces that Sarakos and his new allies sent out in waves. It had been a nightmare journey, with all three of them sick with classic cases of Montezuma’s Revenge, knowing nothing of the language and customs.

“But we made it,” he said aloud. “And without leaving tracks. So now what do we do?”

“Blend in,” Gwen said. “Get established in the community.”

“Sure.” Rick pointed out the window. The scenery was lovely. The village stood on a flat alpine meadow high above the sea, ringed on three sides by snowcapped mountains. Except for the seacoast to the southeast, it might have been a scene from a picture postcard of Switzerland. “Beautiful,” he said. “But I don’t see a hell of a lot of cultivated land, and some of the fields I did see were gullied. No industry, and not much pastureland. Gwen, you’ve noticed more than I have, but it’s obvious even to me that this is a warrior society. They probably get more of their food by raiding their~ flatland neighbors than they do by growing their own. There’s only one way Mason and I can make a living here. Fortunately, it’s a trade we know.”

“Until we run out of cartridges,” Mason said. “Which may not take long.”

“So we get busy manufacturing muzzle-loaders,” Rick said. “I’ve been trying to remember the formula for gunpowder. I think I’ve got it.”

“Rick, you can’t!” Gwen protested.

“Why not? You want them unspoiled? Think arrows are a cleaner way to go than gunshots?”

“It’s not that,” Gwen said. “God, I wish my head would stop aching. Rick, if you start using gunpowder weapons, you’ll advertise our location as surely as if you sent Parsons a letter.”

Mason growled low in his throat. “Cap’n, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of worrying about Lieutenant—ha, he’s a general by now—about Parsons. You saw the country we came through gettin’ here. With five hundred good men, we could hold those passes forever. To hell with bein’ scared of Parsons and his crew. I just wish I could be sure he’d come.”

“He’s right,” Rick said. “And he’s not the only one tired of running scared.”

“Have you stopped to think that the Shalnuksis may help Parsons?” Gwen said. “Probably will. Can you fight them? Not to mention that you’re involving Tylara’s father in a needless war with the most powerful force on this planet.” She sniffed. “I’d thought better of you than that.”

“What the hell do you want us to do?” Rick demanded.

“What we agreed. Leave as few traces of our presence as possible—at least until the Shalnuksis have done with their trading. Once they’re gone, you’ll only have Parsons to fight.”

Once again, Rick thought. Once again she makes sense. But why do I think she isn’t telling me everything?

2

The cave was cold and smelled of ammonia. Rick shivered as the old priest led him down winding corridors. “This is all secret,” Yanulf said. “Although a secret better kept in the west than here.

Still, secret enough.”

“What is secret?” Rick asked. “Everyone knows there are caverns—”

“But not the size, or the location of the entrances, or how to enter them.”

“Why show me?” Rick asked. He coughed from the ammonia fumes and the chill.

“They may believe you—they pay little heed to me,” Yanulf said. “And I have learned this; that you star men put your own meaning to what you see.”

“This is all strange to me,” Rick said. “What makes it so cold?”

Yanulf held the torch close to a bulbous slimy mass that covered one wall of the cavern. “The roots of the Protector. A plant. It is why I know the stories of the Demon Sun are true. In all my life I have never seen the Protector larger than a man’s body. Recently it began to grow, and now grows daily. The growth began when the Demon Star was seen in the night sky, as the legends said it would.”

“How does a plant make ice?” Rick wondered aloud. “There must be parts above ground—”

“Aye. It is very large. Thick leaves. In the west the castles are built above caverns, and the Protector climbs the walls and battlements. In this impoverished land they build few castles, and the plant grows on the rocks. You have seen it.”

“Ah.” He remembered a broad-leafed vine with thick stems and ugly white berries. “Scientists—uh, those whose task it is to study nature—in my home would pay much to see a plant like this.” Sunlight to ammonia, and somehow the ammonia produced cold; the evolutionary advantage for such a plant on a planet in a triple-star system was obvious. “What is it you want me to see?”

“The size of the caverns and the barren storerooms. When the Time is upon us, the only safe refuge is in these caves. There will be no crops that year or the next, and poor ones for two more. So say the legends. Your drawings of the suns make me believe them.”

“Which is surprising,” Rick said. “You are a priest of Ius Pater, the Dayfather. Did you not think the stars are gods?”

“Can they not be?” Yanulf demanded. “You say yourself that they are older than worlds and burn forever.”

And I’d best leave it at that, Rick thought. I wonder why all the secrecy. Who are they hiding from?

Yanulf opened a massive wooden door. The smell of ammonia was very strong, and Rick thought the torch dimmed. The priest held the torch high, and coughing, said, “You see. A few miserable offerings. There is meat and grain, aye, enough for a few ten-days, but not enough even for a single winter. How will these people live in the Time?”

The legends said that the approach of the third sun heralded evil times: fire, flood, famine, and typhoon. Those not prepared would die. They were mixed in with tales of the wars of gods, the appearance of fabulous monsters, and garbled stories whose point was the futility of dealing with the evil gods from the skies. It was hard to sort fact from fable, but Rick didn’t doubt there would be hard times ahead. The whole climate would change.

They went deeper. The caverns were quite large, and some went far below ground level, back into the granite itself. Water trickled through some of the chambers. Others were choked with ice.

“It is said that Yatar demands sacrifices,” Yanulf said. “These are stored away, to be cared for by the priests and acolytes. In some lands the storerooms are kept filled. But not here.”

Eventually Yanulf led the way back out of the caves. Rick was surprised to see how far they’d traveled underground. “So it is in the other caverns of Tamaerthon,” Yanulf said. “The priests and acolytes tell me that their storerooms are as barren as these.”

“I’ll take their word for it,” Rick gasped. He walked faster toward the open air and sunlight.

Drumold was horrified. “No harvests for two years? Then aye are we doomed. One year of poor harvest and we are starving before spring.” For luck he spat into the log fire burning on the hearth of his council room.

“There should be a time of good harvest first,” Rick said. At least I hope so. I’m not much at climatology, but the legends say so, and it’s not unreasonable.

“You know little of Tamaerthon,” Drumold said. “In the best years we hae little enough land, and must take our chances in raids on the Empire. Nae, nae, the gods hate us, to let us be born in such times. I had hoped the legends false.”

“But we have to do something,” Tylara said. “You are Mac Clallan Muir. You have sworn to protect the clansmen.”

“And I have!” Drumold thundered. “Are we not free of the Empire? Have the imperial slavemasters come to our mountains these ten years? Lass, I do what I can, but I am no magician, to grow crops in a stone quarry!”

“We can help,” Gwen said. “We have ways of farming that may increase the yield—”

“Lassie, I tell you there is no land to farm,” Drum-old said moodily. “You hae seen that our best land is now split and cracked—”

“Yes.” She spoke to Rick in English. “Heavy rains when they didn’t expect them. Just showing them contour plowing will do a lot to stop the gullies—”

“In time to help?” Rick asked. “If we’ve got this figured right, they’ll need to work their arses off starting next spring.”

Drumold stared at them suspiciously. “I like it not when you speak so,” he said.

“Ms’ apologies,” Rick said. “Is there no land not plowed, then?”

Tylara laughed. “There’s land enough in the Roman Empire. Fields, left as parks for Caesar. Forests of game for Caesar. Herds for Caesar’s gods. There’s food and land there.”

“A cruel joke,” Drumold said. “There’s food and land, aye. And legions to defend them, and the slavemarket for those who enter the Empire without Caesar’s leave.”

“Do you forget Rick’s star weapons?” Tylara asked. She turned to Rick. “Your friends have taken all of Drantos with their weapons. Can we not do the same with the Empire?”

Dammit, I wish she wouldn’t look at me that way, Rick thought. I am not a god. “I do not think so,” he said. “Besides, there have to be better ways than fighting. Can’t we parley with the current Caesar?”

Drumold and Tylara both laughed. “The only way Caesar wants to see any kin of mine is in chains,” Drumold said. “We have little to sell to him save wool. What we get from Caesar we take with sword and bow.”

If Caesar wouldn’t parley, there might be another way to get his attention. “How strong is this Empire?” Rick asked.

“Bring the maps,” Drumold shouted. He waited while a henchman unrolled parchments. “The Empire is no so large as it was in my grandfather’s day,” he said. “But they hold the fertile lowlands, and the foothills, here and here. They keep a legion of four thousand mercenaries in this fortress.” He indicated a point some twenty miles from where the foothills became steep mountains leading to Tamaerthon. “Within a ten-day they can have two more, and another ten-day an additional three.”

And we’ve got about a hundred rounds for the rifles, Rick thought. “That’s pretty heavy odds,” he said carefully.

“The other star men have taken all of Drantos,” Tylara said. “Can you not do as well?”

“They needed the armies of Sarakos to do it.” And I suspect Sarakos has reason to regret his bargain. He’s not likely to be much more than a puppet for André Parsons. Serves him right.

Lowlands. In about five years, maybe less, that new Roman Empire was going to be under water— all but the high plateau that held Rome itself. And by that time the people of Tamaerthon would be starving. Except Mac Clallan Muir and his family. They wouldn’t starve. According to Yanulf, the clan leaders and their children would—in theory, willingly—offer themselves as a propitiation to the gods. It came with the job of leader. In Drumold’s grandfather’s time, it had happened after three years of bad harvests, which was how Drumold’s grandfather had got the position of high chief of Tamaerthon.

Damnation, there had to be something he could do. And he wasn’t too likely to talk Tylara out of jumping off that cliff into the sea, either. That was one girl who was likely to take her duties seriously.

“You have raided the Empire in the past?”

“Aye,” Drumold said.

“Tell me more of the Empire. How are the legions armed?”

“With lances and swords. How else?”

“Lances and swords—they’re horsemen, then?” Drumold seemed surprised. “Aye. Horses and centaurs. Mostly horses.”

“Not foot-soldiers.” Rick described a classical Roman legionary: square shield, pilum, andgladius hispanica.

“There are no such anywhere I know of,” Drumold said. “Ken ye any in your western lands, priest?”

“No.” Yanulf studied Rick’s face. “What makes you think there might be?”

As near as he could figure it, the Shalnuksis had brought an expeditionary force from Earth in about 200 AD, about the time of Septimius Severus. That had to be when the ancestors of these new Romans arrived. Severus still employed classical foot-marching legionnaires, a bit degenerated from those of Caesar’s time, but still the most effective infantry Earth would see until gunpowder. Evidently the same thing had happened to legions here as happened on Earth: they fell to heavy cavalry and lack of discipline. Now the heavy cavalry ruled everywhere that the terrain was suitable. This Rome was more like the Holy Roman Empire—aha! There would have been another expedition in about 800, the time of Charlemagne. This Rome must be the Holy Roman Empire. But he couldn’t explain all that.

“One of the greatest kingdoms in our history was armed that way,” he said. “Uh—what religion is the Empire?”

“They call themselves Christian,” Yanulf said. “But the Christians of the southern lands say they are not.”

“Yatar does not prosper in Rome, then?”

“No.”

“Have they ice caverns? How did Rome survive the Time?” Rick asked.

Yanulf spread his hands. “They do not welcome visitors. Or rather, their slavemasters welcome them all too well. It is said that there are caverns in Rome, but who attends them I do not know. It is also said that there is a great library with many records of previous Times, but again this is not of my own knowledge.”

Gwen had been listening with a growing look of amazement. “Rick, what are you thinking of?” she demanded.

That earned her a sharp look from Drumold, who wasn’t used to having women speak up that way.

“North is barren,” Rick said. “West is the salt marsh and west of that Parsons and Sarakos. South of us is mostly ocean. If we’re going to get anything to store up for the Time, we’ll have to take it from

Rome.”

“Man, are ye daft?” Drumold asked. “We raid the Empire, true, and done quickly, we often bring back cattle and horses. But we seldom escape punishment from the legions.”

“He is not daft,” Tylara protested. “He can—I have heard him speak of battles before. Of his victories over the Cubans—”

Yeah, I brag a lot when you’re around, Rick thought. “What kind of punishment? What do the legions do?”

“Sometimes nothing,” Drumold said. “But if we annoy them enough, they bring their army into the hills.”

“And you fight them—”

“We try,” Drumold said. “Aye, and we can win battles. But they come on, and we must take to the hills. They burn the villages and the crops and slaughter the flocks. Ofttimes we lose more than ever we gained. The Empire is a giant best left unawakened.”

“But you have won battles against them,” Rick said. “You must have, or they’d have simply occupied Tamaerthon and had done with it.”

“Aye, we’ve beaten them in the passes,” Drumold said. “In the passes, in the hills. But no one has ever beaten the legions on the plains. I think no one remembers the last time anyone tried.”

So far it sounded a lot like the Scottish border country. Scotland remained free, but just barely. But there had been a time after Bannockburn when England feared Scotland. . . The rifles would probably win a single battle. The result wouldn’t be anything more significant than looting a border province, but that could be the difference between life and death for Mac Clallan Muir. And for Tylara.

An organized raid, with a wagon train to carry out grain and a properly organized force to delay the legions while the wagons got into the passes. It was possible.

“How many men could you put into the field against the Empire?” Rick asked. “For the biggest raid ever. Something to sing about for a hundred years.”

Drumold frowned. “Not all the clans would respond to the summons,” he said. “Perhaps three hundred lances. Two thousand archers. Another three thousand lads wi’ swords. Perhaps a thousand more freedmen armed wi’ whatever they can find. No more.”

“And the nearest legion is four thousand strong,” Rick mused.

“Four thousand legionaries,” Drumold protested. “Wi’ mail shirts, and good horses. Man, on level ground they’ll ride us down.”

Two thousand archers. Edward had four times that many at Crécy, but Edward faced the entire chivalry of France, at least thirty thousand men. Proportionally, Tamaerthon could field more troops against the Empire than Edward ever had.

But there was a vast difference. Archers alone could never face cavalry. Edward’s main line at Crécy had been dismounted men-at-arms, fully armored knights. From what Rick had seen, Tamaerthon’s three hundred lances would be at most five hundred men with no more than half of them armored. There was no way five hundred could form a shield for the archers. The legionary cavalry would sweep through. Once at close quarters, it would be all over for the archers.

Gunpowder? No. Even assuming Gwen was wrong about the possibility of the Shalnuksis helping Parsons, there just wasn’t enough time. They’d need at least a thousand arquebuses and a ton of gunpowder. They’d need ring bayonets, too. It would take years. No. It wouldn’t hurt to have some of the younger clan warriors start a systematic search for sulfur, just in case, but gunpowder wasn’t the answer.

But there was another way. Heavy cavalry had been finished on Earth well before gunpowder put the final nails in their coffins. “Have any of your clansmen ever drilled with pikes?”

“Pikes?” Drumold asked.

“A long pole with a sharp metal point.”

“Ye mean spears. We have spears.”

“No, I mean pikes. How long are the spears you use? What formation do you fight in?”

That took a while. Eventually a henchman brought in a typical weapon. It was about six feet long, far too short to be any use against cavalry. The pikes used by the Swiss, and later by the landsknechts, had been eighteen feet long. As for formation, men who could afford no better weapon than a spear were peasants and didn’t fight in any formation at all. They just went off to battle in droves and died in droves.

“How long can you keep the clansmen together without fighting?” Rick asked. “To drill.” He had to explain the concept of training arid drill. By now even Tylara was wondering about his sanity.

“The fields and herds would go to waste,” Drum-old protested. “And there’s nae enough to feed such a horde in one place.”

“There’s food in the caverns.”

“For the Time,” Yanulf protested. “And not enough for that.”

“Not enough for the Time,” Rick agreed. “But enough to feed an army in training. What good will it do to keep what little we have? A properly trained army can beat the legions. We can march in—” he thought rapidly. There’d not be enough time for real training, and keeping the men too long without a battle would be disastrous for morale. “—in six ten-days.”

“Harvest time,” Drumold shouted. “Now I know ye’re daft. You’d strip the land of the men at harvest time.”

“You’ve said yourself it will be a poor harvest,” Rick said. “Leave it for the women and children to gather.”

“What do we eat for the winter?”

“It will be harvest season in the Empire, too. We take their crops. And they have to have granaries or they couldn’t support regular troops in garrison. We’ll have that grain, too.”

“And you truly believe you can defeat a legion wi’ your star weapons?” Drumold said.

No.1 can’t possibly. But they’re not invincible—or wouldn’t be if everybody didn’t think they were. There’s one way to fix that. “Sure. We’ve got other weapons you haven’t even seen. But Mason and I can’t do it alone. We’ll need your lads properly trained and properly armed.” Now’s the time to back out, he thought. To hell with that. “If we’re going to do it, late harvest season is the time.”

“Tis a bold plan,” Drumold said.

Tylara’s brother had listened in silence. Now he stood. “I have lost comrades to the imperials,” he said. “And I for one would like the chance to repay.”

Tylara smiled happily. “It would be better to lose and die on the field than to starve in the Time,” she said. “But with Rick’s aid, we will not lose.”

“You are crazy,” Gwen said in English. “Stupid, bloodthirsty crazy—”

“Is it better if we all starve, Tamaerthon and the Empire alike? Do you have a better suggestion?”

“We don’t have to stay here—”

“No,” Rick said. “We don’t have to. But I’m not running this time. I’ve given up running.”

3

Drumold was arrayed as Mac Clallan Muir, High Chief of the Clans of The Garioch. His kilts were splendid, his armor covered over with silver badges. Gwen recognized some of the symbols: the horned

bull of Crete splayed across a caidron; the ancient linked spiral found in virtually eveçy Bronze Age site in Europe and which Yanulf said represented order grown from primeval chaos; a dragon. There were others which she thought might be fabulous creatures—but after what she’d seen in the ship’s data banks, she couldn’t be sure.

Other clan chiefs were arrayed around Drumold, all dressed in their finery. Some of the bright-colored plaids might have come from the ancient Celtic tombs found in Dalmatia on Earth. The splendor of the chiefs contrasted strongly with the drab clothing of their warriors and the even drabber robes of the various priests.

Gwen could not keep track of all these. There were too many gods, and each had an order of priests. Some, like Yanulf, were full-time and consecrated; many of the minor gods, though, were served by men and women who had other tasks—artisans, landholders, ladies of households.

They all assisted at this ceremony. Reverently they opened a tomblike chamber cut into the granite cliff that towered above the alpine meadow; reverently they removed a stone box and opened it with great ceremony. Balquhain, Drumold’s oldest son, took a battle-axe from the box.

The axe was double-headed and made of flint chipped to resemble bronze. Gwen felt tingles at her spine. This double-axe might have come from Earth four thousand years ago!

Drumold took the axe from his son and displayed it aloft. Then he went to a log altar erected in the center of the village green. A ram was tethered there. Drumold felled it with a single stroke of the axe.

He dipped the axe into the flowing blood. Two priests came forward with stone bowls of blazing pitch and bound them above the axe blade. Drumold brandished the fiery axe and chanted. Everyone present took up the cry.

Where had Gwen seen this before? Then she remembered. Scott’s poem, when Roderick Dhu had summoned Clan Alpine. Roderick had sent a fiery cross through the hills, but that was in a nominally Christian land. Here they sent a stone axe with two fires. The ritual Scott described must have been more ancient than he knew.

A priest chanted curses to befall any clansman who failed to respond to the symbol, and a henchman took the axe and ran from the glen. The Garioch clans were summoned to war.

The rogue star was visible for an hour after dawn, and there was dark for several hours each night. Tran’s two suns drew closer together. Summer was gone.

“We ready, Cap’n?” Mason asked.

“No, but we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. These lads won’t stay around much longer.”

Mason nodded. “Yeah, they don’t like drill much. But they’re not that bad. Cap’n, did those battles you keep talking about really happen?”

“Most of them. I’ve mixed them up a little. Truthfully, I don’t recall any time when there was a combined force of longbows and pikes, but pike and musket was a pretty standard mix for a hundred years.” Rick grinned. “Besides, the stories cheer up the troops.”

They could use cheering. Even with all of his tales of victory—by his account, he’d led half the successful armies of history—and the demonstrations of their magic weapons, most of his troops didn’t really believe they could beat an imperial legion on fair ground. The priests, and the rogue star to confirm the priests’ stories, had scared enough of them into trying, but not many really believed they could win. Rick wasn’t sure himself.

The glen was curiously still. All summer it had rung with the sounds of hammers. A dozen smiths had been brought—some at swordpoint—to forge iron heads for pikes. The new saplings of an entire forest had gone into pikeshafts.

The hammers were still, and so were the shouts and curses of the drillmasters. Drill time was over. Now it was time to march.

Gwen was miserable. Her belly had swollen and she knew she was ugly. The midwives and even Yanulf himself had assured her that everything was normal, but they couldn’t convince her. She had too vivid an imagination, and knew too well all the things that could go wrong even in a modern hospital. She’d had friends back on Earth who’d been ecstatic about natural childbirth—but she doubted that any of them had meant to be quite this natural about it.

Outside she could hear the sounds of the army assembling. They were about to march into the Empire, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She couldn’t even run. On Rick’s advice, Drumold had sealed the passes with armed parties of his clansmen. No one would leave Tamaerthon. Rick had made it plain that this especially meant Gwen Tremaine. He was certain that she knew more than she’d told him, and he was going to make sure she stayed with him.

There was a lot she could tell him, but Les had warned her against it. There was nothing he could do anyway. What could anyone do? Her original plan had been to find a hiding place, somewhere she could blend in and wait— But she couldn’t do that alone, and when she was honest with herself, she was ashamed of wanting to. These people were human, they weren’t merely subjects of an anthropological study. And they faced starvation or worse. But she wished she had as much confidence in Rick as Tylara had.

There was a scratching at her door. “Yes?” she called.

Caradoc came in. “We are leaving, Lady.” He stood nervously at the door.

“Have you no one else to say farewells to?” she asked.

“No, Lady.”

“I’ve told you a dozen times, my name is Gwen—”

“Aye.” He hesitated. “Gwen. A lovely name. Will you wish me well?”

“Of course.” She wasn’t sure of what to say. This wasn’t the first indication she’d had that Caradoc was interested in her—more than interested. She wondered why. She certainly wasn’t pretty in her present condition, and as captain of one of the archery regiments, Caradoc could have his pick of a dozen girls.

But he seemed fascinated by Gwen and spent as much time with her as he could. He treated her like a goddess, and that was flattering—a~nd he was a very attractive man.

She wanted to hate men. All of them. But she was lonely, and the need to have someone of her own was a physical ache. “Come back, Caradoc,” she said. “Come back to me.”

“I will.” He hesitated, then came closer to her. “I will.”

She took two steps forward into his open arms. She let him hold her, but she felt her distended belly pressing against him and she was afraid, afraid to care for anyone ever again, and she hated herself for wanting to.

PART SIX:

WAR LEADER

I

Most of the outbuildings and slave quarters had been burned, but the villa still stood. Rick was surprised that it remained. Despite everything he could do, it was difficult to convince the camp followers that their purpose was loot, not pillage and rapine. He had trouble enough keeping the army itself from breaking ranks and joining in, and only constant threats to abandon them thirty miles inside the imperial boundary stones kept them in line.

A hundred candles burned inside the villa, and most of his officer corps were getting drunk in the main hall. For that matter, there was plenty of wine in the smaller room where Rick assembled the senior commanders.

“They won’t be fit for anything in the morning,” Rick complained. “Listen to them out there.”

“They’ll be all right,” Drumold said. “Tis their way of celebrating.”

“They ought to be ashamed, not celebrating,” Rick said.

“We won,” Balquhain protested.

Tylara looked at her brother in contempt. “Won a fight you were not supposed to be in,” she said. “Drove away the local militia and lost three men-at-arms doing it. Were you no told to wait for the army?”

“I do not run from a fight,” Balquhain protested. “The next time, you will,” Rick said. “Or I’ll send you back as escort for the wagon train.”

“You’ll not dare—”

“He dares,” Drumold said. “We hae all sworn an oath to fight as Rick commands. We will keep that oath.”

“I will ride with the scouts in the morning,” Tylara said. “If you do not understand what Rick wants from you, I do.”

Both Rick and Balquhain spoke at once. “There’s no need for that—”

“There is,” Tylara said. “The maps brought back today were wretched. You’ll need better.” She eyed Rick defiantly.

The problem was, she was right. Dozens of medieval armies were defeated because they hadn’t an elementary notion of the terrain they operated in. Rick had laughed in contempt when he read how the crusade commanders hadn’t even known where their own columns were, but now he was beginning to appreciate their problems. There were almost no maps, and nobody in his army thought a map was as important as any other weapon.

Nobody but Tylara. She’d had experience with maps in her western county, and she had a good eye for distance and detail. Her troops would obey her, too, which meant that a detachment she led would actually scout instead of stop at frequent intervals for loot. But dammit— There wasn’t a lot of choice. They were deep in

the imperial province, and if they marched on without locating the local garrison, they’d all be killed. “Tylara will take the scouts tomorrow,” Rick said. “Balquhain will stay with the heavy cavalry.”

Balquhain opened his mouth to protest, but he saw his father’s look and subsided.

“That’s an important job,” Rick said. “They’ll take orders only from you or your father.”

The heavy cavalrymen were a pain in the arse, and he’d be better off sending them home, but that was out of the question. The trouble was, all the armored men were aristocrats, and that meant they had silly notions about the obligation of the aristocracy to get out front and fight for their honor—which would mean that most of his officer corps would be slaughtered in the first five minutes of real combat, and that would demoralize the infantry. Somehow he’d have to keep his two hundred armored horsemen out of it until the pikes and arrows had settled the matter. “Drumold, I think you should entrust your banner to your son. We’ll give the mailed knights the honor of protecting it.”

Drumold nodded seriously, and Baiquhain seemed satisfied. Tylara concealed a grin from her brother. Sometimes Rick thought she was the only one in the army who paid attention to his lectures on tactics.

They marched in oblique order. The First Pike Regiment, a block of a thousand, was ahead and to the right. Behind and left of them was the First Archers, then the Second Pikes, his main body and two thousand strong. The Second Archers and Third Pikes, another thousand-man block, followed on the road. Rick kept the heavy cavalry force with him, just behind the First Pikes. That way he could keep an eye on them. If anyone was likely to do something stupid, it would be his armored iron-heads.

The wagons and pack horses came last. They were escorted by a screen of mounted archers acting as MPs under Mason’s command. It had taken some doing to convince Drumold and his subchiefs that carrying food into the Empire would be a good idea. There’d been shouting and sulking. By now Rick was getting very good at pretending rage. He shuddered at the alternative; the army would have to break up into foraging groups every time they wanted a meal.

Tylara’s scouts fanned ahead of the column. Rick wished he could go with her, but he didn’t dare. The troops looked more like an army than a mob, but they still thought they needed his magic star weapons to protect them. They had no real confidence in themselves, and that could just be fatal.

Caius Marius Marselius, Caesar’s Prefect of the Western Marches, was annoyed. He’d hoped to avoid trouble for two more years, after which he would retire to his estates near Rome and let someone else worry about the province. He was not surprised when a local militiaman reported an invasion of hill barbarians, but he was definitely annoyed.

He was also careful. The militia officer had seen only light cavalry, but he thought there might be a larger body of barbarians behind the cavalry screen. He’d been unable to get through to find out.

That was unusual enough to make Marselius take notice. Normally these tribesmen, came in like a flood, looted whatever they could, and ran. They had no thought of security. Marselius wondered if a Roman officer had defected and was now leading the barbarians. He couldn’t think of anyone, but it was possible.

“We’ll have to go into the hills and teach them a lesson,” he told his legates. “It’s been ten years since we had an expedition beyond the borders. High time.”

The senior legate looked at him curiously. Marselius smiled faintly. He knew what the man was thinking. Initiative was not encouraged in Caesar’s prefects. An outstanding officer might be contemplating rebellion. Caesar needed no generals who commanded greater respect from their legions than Caesar held.

And perhaps the legate was right. Marselius knew he was no threat to Caesar. He wanted only to retire. But would Caesar believe that?

The Empire would fall to that kind of suspicion someday. Marselius was convinced of it. When prefects were afraid to carry out their plain duty— “Whether we follow them to the hills or not, we will want to destroy these barbarians,” he said. “Not merely defeat them, but kill so many that they will tremble at the very thought of Caesar. For this we will require the full legion. Send for the reservists, call up the local knights, and bring in the detachments from Caracorum and Malevenutum. We will strike when they are all assembled.”

“That gives the barbarians time to gather loot. Many of the landholders will be ruined, and they will protest to Rome,” the senior legate said.

“Let them. There are few patricians in the border hills. God’s breath, must I live in perpetual fear of Caesar’s wrath?”

The legate did not answer. He did not need to.

Four days later, Marselius listened to the reports with growing amazement. The barbarians had not stopped to loot the foothill country. They had marched straight into the province.

“By nightfall they will be at the villa of Patroclus Sempronius,” the scout commander reported.

“So far?” This was ruin. Sempronius was a cousin of the Empress. Worse, the considerable town of Sentinius was just beyond. Caesar would never, never forgive the prefect who allowed a Roman city to be sacked by barbarians. They would have to be stopped, and quickly.

“How many legionnaires do we have?” he asked the legate.

“Three thousand, prefect.”

That would include all the regulars and a considerable number of the reservists under their local leaders. Marselius sighed with regret: he could remember when a full four thousand regulars were kept in the camps. Ten years of peace in this province had robbed it of half that number. Caesar did not care to keep armies larger than necessary, for fear they would rebel.

“Three thousand should be more than enough,” Marselius said.

The legate grinned agreement. “They are only barbarians. They have no armor and few horses. What can they do against our knights?”

“What indeed? Sound the trumpets. Before the True Sun sets, I want the legion between Sentinius and these tribesmen. We will attack them in the morning when two shadows show clearly.”

Rick sighed with relief when he saw Tylara return at the head of her cavalry. He still didn’t like her going out on patrols, but had to admit that she was the most effective scout commander he had.

The villa where he stood was a good example. It was large and comfortable, and she’d not only waited for the advance guard before charging the thin screen of armed retainers defending the place, she’d also kept the troops from looting and burning it. Now it could be systematically stripped of its valuables. There were over a thousand bushels of wheat in the granary, and the barns held both wagons and horses to transport it.

He went down the broad steps to meet her, and helped her down from her horse. Not that she needed help, but he found he liked being close to her.

“I have seen the legion,” she said. She spoke quietly, so that no one else heard.

“Where?”

“About thirty stadia.”

The Romans used miles, a thousand paces of a legionary, but Tylara’s people had stayed with the ancient Greek measure, about a quarter of a kilometer. “What were they doing?”

“They had dismounted and were pitching tents. I left five men to watch them. Two have crept close to the Roman camp. If the Romans begin to saddle their horses, they will bring word instantly.”

I may just have fallen in love with you, Rick thought. That is, if I didn’t weeks ago. He looked up at the suns. About an hour of daylight, and another three hours of dimmer but adequate light from the Firestealer.

“We’ll fight them here,” he said. “It’s as good a place as any.” There was a lake—not large, but big enough to stop heavy cavalry—five hundred meters to the south. It would do as an anchor for the right flank, and there was a game preserve, thickly ‘wooded, a kilometer off to the left. Fifteen hundred meters was a pretty long line to hold with the number of troops he had, but it beat hell out of trying to form squares in open country.

“Pity they didn’t come last night,” Rick said. “We had a better position between those hills. But this will do fine. Let’s find your father. We’ll have to get the men into position while there’s still light.”

The preparations didn’t take long. Rick had told them over and over the importance of bivouacking in a battle position, and eventually it had sunk in. He didn’t have to adjust the fronts of the regiments at all.

The First Pikes were forward and to the left, at the edge of the woods, with a foam of armed camp followers stiffened with a few archers in the woods itself. The Second Pikes, his largest force, were two hundred meters behind and three hundred meters to the right of the First Pikes. The diagonal between was ditched, and stakes were set. Each stake was driven into the ground so that it slanted forward. They were set in a checkerboard pattern, three-foot intervals between stakes, so that the First Archers could move through the thicket. Behind them was Mason with his battle rifle.

Slightly behind and all the way over to the lake was the Third Pike Regiment. This left a gap directly in front of the villa of nearly eight hundred meters between the right edge of the Second and the left edge of the Third. He filled that with the remaining archers, and in front of them he had the troops dig ditches, drag up wagons and brush, and dig a random pattern of small hoof-catching holes.

“I want lanes between those obstacles,” he told the engineer officer. Lanes would funnel the enemy for the archers and would also be a path for a cavalry counterattack if the moment came for one.

The engineers were a group of slaves liberated from looted farms. They’d been promised their freedom and a share of loot in exchange for their help. Rick’s offer to pay them had surprised the slaves almost as much as it surprised his own troops. Some of them had even offered to enlist, but Rick refused. During the battle, they’d be locked in their barracks. He didn’t need untrained and untrustworthy men wandering around at a crucial moment.

At dark Rick threw another screen of light cavalry forward to observe the enemy force. The other troops were allowed to fall out and make camp, leaving their weapons in place to mark their exact. position on the battle line.

He rode around the encampment for an hour, stopping to talk with groups of clansmen around their watchfires. Julius Caesar had used a pickle to illustrate obscene jokes on the night before Pharsalia. How could you measure the morale value of a pickle? Rick settled for more conventional pep talk, emphasizing the surprise the Romans would get when the star weapons began knocking them off their horses.

Eventually it was done, and he could go into the villa for his own dinner. By then it was nearly midnight.

“There’s one more order,” he told a staff officer. “I’ll hold you responsible for seeing that the cooks are up at dawn. I want hot porridge for every man in the outfit before the sun’s an hour high.”

The man who until a few hours before had been master of the villa sat across the table and glowered at Rick and his officers.

“Caesar will have your head,” he blustered.

Rick examined him curiously. The man was fat, about forty Earth years in Rick’s estimation, and didn’t look any more like a Roman than a heavy cavalry brigade resembled a legion. Rick wondered which group of kidnapped expeditionaries had furnished his ancestry. That was one question it would do no good to ask.

“As Yatar wills,” Rick said. “But you’re likely to lose yours before Caesar knows of ours.”

“I am cousin to Caesar,” the man protested.

“Caesar will ransom me.”

“We’ll see. At the moment I want information. How many troops will we be facing in the morning?”

“I am Spurius Patroclus Sempronius, and I do not betray Rome,” the fat man said.

“Hah!” Baiquhain stood and drew his dagger. “We’ll see how he likes being sent to Caesar a piece at a time.”

Sempronius turned slightly green, but he set his lips in a tight line.

“No need,” Rick said gently. “My scouts have told me all I really need to know.” He turned back to the prisoner. “Tell me this: what keeps the slaves from revolting? There were over a hundred here.”

“Three hundred. Why should they revolt? They are well treated. And Caesar’s legions would crucify them.”

That or a variant on the theme was the answer to just about every question. Caesar’s legions kept order and Caesar’s officers collected taxes. Caesar’s freedmen ran the post office, and Caesar’s slaves kept the city sewers in repair.

“Is there no Senate?” Rick asked.

“Certainly. I am a senator of Rome.”

“Curious. When does it meet?”

“When Caesar wills it, of course.”

It turned out that Caesar willed it about once every five years. The meetings were brief and did nothing more than ratify Caesar’s decisions and perhaps vote Caesar a new accolade. Compared to the Assembly, though, the Senate was nearly omnipotent: the Assembly met precisely once in each reign, to proclaim its acceptance of whatever new Caesar the army had elected. Otherwise the citizens had no part in government and wanted none; they were happy enough if Caesar would leave them alone. In exchange they got peace and order and protection from bandits like Rick.

Late Empire, Rick decided. The military was more like the time of Charlemagne, but the government

was definitely from the Dominate period of the Roman Empire. The army kept the citizens from making trouble, the Praetorian regiments kept the rest of the army under control, and Caesar spent most of his time worrying about how to control the Praetorian guard.

Once Rick had Sempronius talking about politics, he was able to extract a little more information. The most important was that there was a town about twelve Roman miles away.

It had a granary, and the harvest had been good this year. Now all he had to do was get through the Roman legion guarding it.

Tylara turned quickly at the sound of footsteps on the roof behind her.

“I thought I told all my officers to go to bed,” Rick said.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.” He came over to the parapet to stand beside her. The flat roof of the villa gave a good view of the watchfires spread out across the estate. Edward III had used a windmill as a command post at Crécy. This villa would be better.

“Do you truly believe we can win?” Tylara asked.

“Tomorrow? Yes. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We’ve got more troops, and we’ve got better weapons.”

“I know you have few thunderbolts for your weapons,” she said.

“Gwen must have told you,” Rick said. Tylara nodded. “And yet you came with us, and you haven’t told your father.”

“For all my life I believed that the Empire had the best soldiers in the world,” she said. “But now we will beat them, and it will not be because of the weapons.”

“Weapons, organization—Tylara, nothing’s ever certain in war, but if I wasn’t pretty sure of the result, you wouldn’t be here.”

“How would you send me away?”

“If necessary, tied to a led horse,” Rick said.

“Do you dislike me that much?”

“You know better. You must know better,” he said. He moved closer to her. “I don’t dislike you at all.”

“But you have a woman—”

“Gwen? She’s not my woman.”

“Her child is not yours?”

“Yatar, no! What made you think that?”

“No one wanted to ask,” Tylara said. “Then— there is no one else? No one you will return to?”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “The only girl I care about is you. Didn’t you know?”

“I hoped.” She hesitated. “Rick, I will always love Lamil. My husband—”

“And never anyone else?”

“I already love someone else.”

Custom demanded a longer mourning period, but if Rick didn’t care, she didn’t. When he came to her, she did not resist.

2

He was awakened at dawn, as he’d ordered, but the cavalry screen reported no signs of movement in the Roman camp. Rick sent out another scouting force and tried to return to bed; after half an hour he knew it was no use and went out to see that the troops all had a hot breakfast. Wellington had insisted on hot meals the morning of Waterloo, and always believed the biscuit and “stirabout” had as much to do with his victory as anything else.

If the Romans attacked early, the sun would be in his archers’ eyes. There wasn’t anything he could do about that except worry.

The camp was deathly still. It wasn’t the silence of professional soldiers confident in their abilities. There were sporadic murmurs, small jokes that normally would have brought belly laughs, speculations about various women, even some attempts to cheer, but each conversation died away to silence again.

“They’re scared, Cap’n,” Mason said. “I can feel it.”

“Me too.”

“It’s the waitin’,” Mason said. He squinted to the east. “Almost wish they’d come and get it over with, even if it’d be better with the sun higher.”

“They’ll be here soon enough. Walk around a lot. Look mean and be sure they see your rifle.”

Mason grinned. “Won’t show ‘em the bandolier, though.”

“This won’t be our only battle,” Rick warned. “Don’t shoot yourself dry.” He hesitated. “If everything comes apart, I’ll try to get Tylara out. The Romans will try to cut us off from the road back. If I can get to that first villa we sacked, I’ll wait for you there as long as I can. You do the same.”

“Right. I wouldn’t worry so much, Cap’n.”

“Don’t you worry?”

“Don’t get paid to worry. That’s what officers are for.”

The true sun was half high and the Firestealer three hands above the horizon when the scout messenger rode in. The legion was coming.

“All of them?” Rick asked. “How are they formed?”

“They are all together,” the scout reported. “They come in two large groups. The one on their left is slightly ahead of the other one.”

“And where is the lady Tylara?”

“As you commanded, she is retreating from them but keeping them in sight. She will send messengers

if they divide their force.”

“Excellent,” Rick said. He turned to Drumold. “Sound the battle horns.”

The Tamaerthon hill people were obviously of Celtic origin, and Rick had expected them to have bagpipes; but either their ancestors had been from a group that didn’t use them, or the art had been lost during the centuries on Tran. Instead they employed a long, curled horn that looked something like a thin tuba. At Drumold’s wave, these sounded, and the camp followers began the rattle of drums. The pikemen and archers ran to their weapons.

Rick climbed to the roof of the villa. It would be better for morale if he were with the ranks, but he couldn’t afford courageous gestures. More than one battle had been lost because the commander didn’t know what was happening to all his forces. The staff officers he’d chosen to keep with him didn’t like being up there either, but he’d stressed the importance of communications until at least a few of them understood how vitally he’d need messengers whose orders would be obeyed.

His view to the east was partly obscured by low hills, but from the vantage point of the roof he could just see the scarlet and yellow pennants of his light cavalry. They had stopped at the brow of the hill and were looking at something beyond. He tried to pick out Tylara, but the distance was too great. He felt a momentary panic. Suppose she’d been caught by the Romans? But there was no point in worrying about that now.

The First Pikes were moving nicely into formation, a rectangle 125 men wide by 8 deep. The Swiss had formed their pikemen into precise square blocks, but he had too broad a front to cover for that. As he watched, they grounded arms, acting nearly in unison. That way they wouldn’t be exhausted when the combat began.

What looked like a forest of pikes came up just in front of him as the two thousand men of the Second presented pikes. The binoculars let him see individual troopers. They looked nervous. Well, so was he. Here came the archers to take their places among the checkerboard of sharpened stakes that marked their position. Their ranks were nowhere near as geometrical as the pikemen. They weren’t supposed to be. If those heavy cavalrymen ever got among the archers to melee in hand-to-hand fighting, the battle would be over.

He shifted back to the horizon. His light cavalry were facing him now, and riding like hell. He raised the binoculars in time to see the first of the enemy come over the low hills twelve hundred meters away.

The Romans trotted toward them like an armored flood. Tylara had no difficulty getting the light cavalry force to simulate panic. The problem would have been to hold them once the Roman horses broke into a trot. It looked as if nothing could stop that steel tide.

They rode hard, past the First and Second Pikes and down the cleared lanes leading to the villa. Their horses were lathered before they were inside their own lines. Tylara had deliberately stayed in front, and now when she reined in, the others halted. Some of them might not have. One cavalry group—Rick called it a “platoon,” a strange word—would go on south beyond the slave barracks to warn of any Roman attempt to circle the woods and attack from behind, but Rick had stressed the importance of halting first to demonstrate that they weren’t really running away.

Once again she marveled at the details he thought of. Nothing seemed too trivial for him to worry about. Any good chieftain inspected his clan’s weapons, but Rick looked at their boots and sleeping cloaks as well. Who would have thought of bringing spades? Or grindstones? Or of having special details to bring in wood for cooking fires? Without him they’d be lost. He was right to stay on the roof of the villa instead of at the forefront of the clans. He wasn’t afraid of battle, no matter what some of the young warriors said.

She dismounted at the villa steps. Just in front, her brother sat his horse with their father’s banner, surrounded by their few armored cavalrymen. Tylara grinned to herself as she went up the stairs to the roof. These proud young men might protest that their place was at the forefront of the battle, but now that they’d seen the Romans, they didn’t look so eager to charge out.

Rick was looking through his far-seeing glass. Binoculars. She’d have to remember that word. She went to the parapet to join him. His smile warmed her.

“How close did you get?” Rick asked.

“Longbow shot. They carry short bows, and we did not want to be closer.”

“You’re learning,” Rick said. He muttered to himself in his strange language, then spoke in hers, but still more to himself than to her. “Lances and swords. No shields.”

“Why have they halted?”

“Dressing ranks,” Rick said. “But mostly they’re hoping we’ll break formation and come after them.” He turned to a staff officer. “Go out to each regiment. Make certain the commanders understand that the Romans may charge and then act as if they’re running away. They want us to scatter. If we take that bait, they’ll cut us down. The first man I see breaking formation without orders, I’ll shoot down from here.”

“I had better take that message myself,” Tylara said. “The clansmen will not like to hear it.”

“They’ve heard it before, and I’ll need you here. Get moving, Duhnhaig. And come back when you’ve told them.”

The sept chief looked curiously to Tylara. She smiled thanks and gestured him on his way. “You speak roughly to important chiefs,” she told Rick when Duhnhaig was gone.

“God damn it—no. Sorry. You’re right. It’s my fault if we lose no matter why. That’s why I need you with me. I can handle the Romans—it’s our own troops I have to worry about.”

There was a blare of horns from the Roman ranks. They had formed into two massive blocks, each ten ranks deep, horsemen knee to knee, their lances with pennants held high. The trumpets blared again, but there was no movement.

They were answered by the drums of the clan women, and the shriller sound of Tamaerthon war horns.

Prefect Marselius cursed silently. He had hoped the barbarians would either charge him or break and run, and they weren’t doing either. More and more he was certain that a Roman officer led them. He’d never heard of hill tribes standing in regular formation to wait for an attack.

Those blocks of spearmen looked remarkably steady, too. Over the centuries Rome had worked out tactics to deal with any situation. Standard practice when opposing standing spears was to come to extreme bow range and gall them with arrows until they charged, then cut them down with swords.

That wouldn’t work here. He could see all too many archers formed behind those ditches and stakes, and he’d had experience with those hillmen’s longbows. They outranged anything a horse archer could carry, and an exchange of archery fire would cost far more than it gained.

Standard tactics against archers was a charge with lance. You rode as hard as you could and lost some men getting in among them; but once there, the battle was over. If they were mixed in with spearmen, as they often were, you did the same thing. If they’d planted stakes and other obstacles, several centuries would dismount and cut a path for the rest.

The tactical writers hadn’t considered the situation of mixed blocks of archers and spears. Marselius had never heard of such a situation. But then he’d never heard of barbarians penetrating this deep and waiting for a battle, or of having cavalry screens that kept watch on him from camp to battlefield.

“The men grow restless,” his senior legate said.

“Let them. Leave time for fear to grow among our enemies.”

“We also tire the horses.”

True enough. An armored man was a heavy burden, even for a war-horse. The longer they were saddled and still, the slower they’d be in the charge. “Sound trumpets,” Marselius ordered. “Play false calls. Marching music.”

The cornu blared out, to be answered from the barbarian camp by their own horns and drums. That, at least, was standard. The hillmen’s women rattled tom-toms incessantly. It was said to be a form of supplication to their barbarous gods.

He reviewed the situation again, reconsidering his decision not to send any of his force around either the lake or the forest to fall on the tribesmen from behind. The moral effect of an attack from the rear was often devastating, but he suspected these barbarians wouldn’t be shaken by it. Anyway, in that mass of irrigation ditches south of the villa, his cavalry would be worthless. It wasn’t worth the cost of dividing his legion.

He could withdraw. Shadow the tribesmen, wait to catch them in the open. The legates would not care for that—it smacked of fear. And although in the open the barbarians would be the more easily defeated, more of them would also get away. No. They must be taught not to invade the Empire.

There was one other factor. The villa had not been burned. A bold stroke now would return it intact to Sempronius’s family—perhaps even rescue the patrician alive. Instead of hatred there might be gratitude from Caesar’s relative.

They must attack while the horses were still fresh. There was nothing to be gained by waiting. He stood in his stirrups. “Sound the calls for a charge with lance,” he ordered.

3

The steel tide broke forward into a walk, then a trot. The lances came down in unison, and the armored horsemen poured toward them, spurring to a canter. Rick felt a final twinge of fear, swallowed hard, and gained control of his nerves.

They came in a single wave four ranks deep, riding almost knee to knee, their line stretching nearly from woods to lake. “They mean to roll right over us,” Rick said. He wondered what he’d do if he were the enemy commander. A hard charge carried home? That would certainly be a more effective tactic than the French used at Crécy, where they’d come in small driblets of undisciplined feudal lords. These troops were a lot better than anything Philip had with him that August day.

They were almost within extreme archery range. Rick could be certain of the exact line because he’d had it marked with stakes. The archers lifted their bows and drew back. One or two released arrows. Rick hoped their noncoms got their names. The time of release had been carefully calculated: assume heavy cavalry moves at 15 miles an hour, and time the flight of an arrow to longest range— “Let the gulls fly!” someone called. The arrows flocked upward in a volley, arced high, and fell among the charging horsemen.

The effect was instantaneous. The lines in front of the archers lost their geometric precision and dissolved into a wave of rearing wounded horses. There were screams as horses and men felt the bite of the iron-tipped shafts.

English longbowmen could get off a flight every ten seconds. The Tamaerthon archers were just about as good. As the Roman cavalrymen—Rick still couldn’t bring himself to call a formation of armored men on horseback a “legion”—covered the final 250 yards, the Tamaerthon gulls flew three more times. Then the archers skipped back among their stakes and fired at point-blank range.

What struck the archer’s line wasn’t an orderly formation at all. The horsemen were moving too fast to stop when they saw the angled stakes, and tried to guide their mounts around them, but the horses got in each others’ way, while wounded and riderless mounts dashed randomly among them.

Meanwhile, the First Pikes had taken the initial shock—only there wasn’t one. The first rank of pikemen knelt and held their weapons butt grounded, angled at the eyes of the horses. The next three ranks held theirs high, points outthrust over the heads of the kneeling first rank. They presented a wall of pointed steel, and the horses wouldn’t stand it. They swerved about, or halted, some with a shock that dismounted their riders. Not a single lance struck home among the pikemen.

“This would be the time for a charge,” Rick muttered. “But I can’t. They’re not disciplined enough to stay in formation.”

The first line of Romans dismounted to attack the pikes with swords. They were braver than their horses, and several got in among the pikemen, although most were thrust down by the heavy points.

The few who managed to close slaughtered several of the front rank, but the rear files thrust forward to strike them down. The pikemen shouted triumph, and the cheer ran down the ranks.

It was all happening at once, and far too fast for anything Rick could do to influence the battle. The battle on Rick’s left wing was nearly over before the Roman horse could reach the much larger block of archers and pikemen close under the villa.

As the leading wave of Roman cavalry approached the broad face of the Second Pike Regiment, the horses shied away from the steady wall of points, edging to their left so that they clumped in front of the archers. The wagons and downed trees and other obstacles concentrated the enemy ever tighter as each horseman tried to go down one of the cleared lanes.

The grey gulls flew down the cleared lanes to strike down horses and riders alike. The charge came on, deeper into the pocket. The line of archers here was much thinner than that between First and Second Pikes; it had to be because there was three times the front to cover. The arrows flew less thickly, and the comparative safety of that front, compared to the solid wall of pikepoints, drew more and more of the steel-armored Romans like a magnet.

Those stopped by ditches and trees dismounted and continued forward shouting war cries.

“Now!” Tylara shouted. “Use your star weapons! Now!”

“Not yet.” Rick watched the situation develop. The Romans on foot were dangerous. Their armor partly protected them from arrows. But they were also much slower, and the archers had more opportunities to shoot. The Roman wave came forward ponderously, past the wagons, around the abatis of felled trees, around and over the ditches, onward toward the archers who now had no protection but their stakes. The archers fell back involuntarily, back again—

To be stopped by backing against the heavy cavalry and Drumold’s banner. They held for a moment, resolutely firing another volley of arrows point-blank at the Romans among the stakes that had been their final defense line.

“Now,” Rick said. He shouted to a mounted messenger below. “Now!” He ran for the stairs, shouting for his orderlies and his messengers. It was time to get into the battle.

Tylara watched the opening charge of the terrible Romans without fear. She had confidence in Rick, if not in her clansmen. When she saw the Roman wave break against archers and pikemen alike, she was certain they had won.

But the Romans pressed on. When they dismounted to charge headlong toward the archers and her father’s banner behind the archery line, Tylara took fear again. Did Rick not understand that if that banner fell, half the clansmen would try to save themselves any way they could? Why did not Rick kill them with his thunder weapons?

He seemed to have forgotten that he was armed. He was far more concerned with shouting orders to messengers. Now he ran for the stairs. Tylara followed, wondering.

The din of battle filled her ears. She heard ‘Rick shout again, but she could not understand him. Just below, not thirty yards from the steps of the villa, there was desperate fighting, with the Romans marching forward into the hail of arrows. The archers retreated, still in an orderly line, but here and there a man broke and ran— The Romans had to be stopped. Her light-cavalry escort stood near the villa. It would not be much use against armored men, even armored men on foot. But her brother’s heavier-armed men might be thrown in now—Rick was running there, and his orderly was holding a horse for him. Was Rick going to lead them himself against the Romans?

That was Rick’s affair. The light cavalry was hers. She shouted to them to dismount and led them forward to stiffen the retreating line of archers. The archers let them through gladly, and she rushed forward swinging her battle-axe. She knew she was not skilled with it, but the only way to be certain the others would attack was to lead them herself.

A Roman thrust at her with his lance. She parried with the axe, stepped inside his reach, brought the axe around to cleave at him. It struck his helmet but did not cut through, and while the man was staggered by the blow, an archer ran forward and struck the Roman again with the mallet used to place stakes. The armored man fell.

Other Romans advanced. Many of the archers had no more arrows, and although a few drew swords and stood resolutely, others melted back. They would all run soon— The Roman line halted. There were screams and shouts, and the Romans faced about, bewildered— The Third Pike Regiment had faced left and charged the Romans. They formed an irresistible battering ram of steel points, and they pressed onward, catching the Romans from the side and from behind.

There were more shouts. The rear ranks of Second Pikes had also joined the battle, wheeling to form a block thirty men square and bearing down on the Romans, mounted and dismounted alike.

Now the Romans thought of nothing but retreat. Those still on horseback tried to get back out through the narrow lanes between the ditches, while those afoot tried desperately both to catch their horses and avoid the pikes coming from either side. Another volley of arrows fired point-blank struck among the Romans caught in the pocket.

They were still dangerous. A Roman charged at Tylara and she swung her axe furiously, missing

him but causing him to flinch away. Then the pike-men came on again, and the Roman threw down his sword and fell at her knees.

Tylara turned from the battle to look for Rick, just in time to see him lead the heavy cavalry off to the right.

Rick shouted orders as he ran. “Third Pikes to face left and charge.” He saw that messenger off and called to another. “Second battalion of Second Pikes form square, face right, and charge.” Now I hope to God all that drilling we did during the summer has an effect. We’ve got them! By God, we’ve got them.

There was one weak point. When Third Pikes moved into the battle, they’d leave a gap between them and the lake, while what used to be their front would become their fully exposed right flank. A charge there or through the gap would be disastrous.

It wasn’t likely. The Romans hadn’t kept back a reserve. Poor tactics. It was always worthwhile keeping a reserve. Without reserves you couldn’t exploit the enemy’s mistakes, and victory generally went to the side that made the fewest errors— He found his horse and threw himself into the

saddle, waving to the heavy cavalrymen to follow. He cursed when he saw Drumold and his son leading. He didn’t want that banner exposed. But then he saw why. The others hadn’t moved, now reluctantly followed their chief and banner. Of course. They wanted to get in on the fight, and here Rick was leading them away from it. Drumold had worked a miracle in holding them as it was.

Okay, the banner came too. Now he didn’t dare commit this reserve until he was certain of victory. He wished he could see what was happening out in front of First Pikes. That charge had shattered there, and it would take damned good work to re-form for another—but the Romans had shown they were steady, and he had no right to assume their commander was a fool.

They rounded the right—now the rear—of Third Pikes, shouting battle cries to reassure the infantry. He didn’t want them panicked by hearing strange hoofbeats behind them.

Out in front, things were quiet for a moment. The right wing of the Roman army had pulled back and was milling around. There’d be a little more time before they could get into any formation for another charge.

First Pikes were standing at ease, looking curiously back toward the main battle. Baiquhain raised the clan banner high. A cheer ran up and down the ranks.

The archers linking First and Second had returned to their stakes, and a few were out in front of them stripping bodies and making sure what they stripped were bodies. There didn’t seem to be any way to stop that.

Inside the pocket, the slaughter continued. The escape lanes were piled with bodies, and some enterprising officer of the Second had pushed a knot of pikemen into each one. The pikemen stood behind heaps of dead and faced the villa, preventing anyone from escaping. The Romans inside that caldron were pressed so close together that they couldn’t use their weapons. They’d be tiring now, too. That was the trouble with armor. The protection it provided came at a high cost.

Ha. The Roman right wing had got itself into formation. Rick used the binoculars to pick out their commander’s scarlet cloak and gold bracelets. The man stood in his stirrups to study the battle. It was obvious that he didn’t know where to charge. The best place—Third Pike’s flank—was covered by Rick’s heavy cavalrymen; hit Third and the Romans would expose their flank to a cavalry charge. Meanwhile the Roman commander was losing half his army down in the pocket.

Aha. He was going to have another go at the junction between Second Pikes and the archers linking First and Second. If they got through there, they’d cut Rick’s forces in two, and they’d have an excellent chance to crush his main force as well as relieve the pressure on the troops caught in the caldron. It was good tactics, but stupid. If they couldn’t break the archers with their first charge, why think they could do it now when the horses were getting winded?

But what else could he do? Pouring men into the caldron would be worse than useless. What would I do if— “We stand like cowards!” Dughuilas, chief of the largest of the subclans, drew his sword. “I will not have it said that I watched this battle without taking part.”

Oh, God damn it. That’s all I need. “Hold!” Rick shouted. Half the cavalrymen had drawn weapons, and even Drumold was looking anxious. “We protect our men here. If we leave this place, the Romans will strike—”

No good. They weren’t listening. Rick drew his Mark IV .45 automatic and aimed at just past Dughuilas’ left ear. He fired.

The clan leader winced. At four feet, the muzzle blast would be enough to take off hide. “Another step forward and I strike you from the saddle,” Rick said. “You and any others who desert.”

“Desert? We want to fight!” someone shouted.

“You’ll get the chance to fight. Hah! They’re going to try it.” He pointed. The Roman line swept forward again, this time in a thick column, aimed like an arrow between First and Second Pikes.

Again three flights of arrows struck among them before they could reach the stakes. This time they pressed forward, heedless of losses, walking the horses into the staked area now hastily abandoned by the archers— It was the last of the Roman reserve. Rick spurred forward, riding hard toward the First Pike regiment. He had no thought that the others would follow him, and they didn’t; they mad& straight for the Romans. Well, that would be all right now. The important thing was to get First Pikes to face right oblique rear and charge. They’d finish the Romans a lot more thoroughly than these ironheads.

But at least the chiefs would get a chance to fight.

They do, I don’t, Rick thought. Not that I particularly want to. But this battle’s all over except the cleaning up, and I haven’t fired a shot.

Then he grinned when he remembered that he had fired exactly once.

4

The battle was ended. Wherever Rick went, the men raised cheers. Tamaerthon casualties were light, and the Romans were totally defeated. The triumph was complete.

But then he felt the elation drain away with the adrenaline that had sustained him. In the military history books, the battle ends with the victory. The chesspieces are swept into the box, and all is quiet.

But there was no quiet. There were the screams of pain, from horses and men, mingled with the shouts of triumph and joy from the victors. An archer sat stupidly as he watched the blood flow from an arm severed above the elbow. A Roman warrior writhed in pain as pikemen stripped off his armor and cursed him for bleeding on their loot. And everywhere the horses and centaurs screamed and shied away from blood.

The centaurs were the worst. Worse, somehow, than the dying humans, far worse than the horses. The beasts tried to use their ill-developed hands to pluck out arrows or stop the flow of blood. They were not intelligent enough to understand what had happened (in a million years, would they have evolved good hands and high intelligence?), but they were sentient enough to be aware. Like dogs, they howled and whimpered and begged their human masters for help that couldn’t be given. Thank God, Rick thought; thank God the Romans used few of them.

And thank God this is done. With luck we won’t have to do it again. I can be through with war. The battles in Africa weren’t so bad. The helicopters came and took the wounded away. You didn’t have to look at what you’d done.

He had no more time to brood. There were a million details to attend to at once. Stop the slaughter and let the Romans surrender: the aristocratic airs of Rick’s heavy cavalrymen helped there. It was beneath their dignity to kill an enemy who couldn’t defend himself. Some of them were even intelligent enough to realize that if your enemies thought they’d be killed anyway, they’d fight on after the battle was lost.

Slaves directed by Mason and his MPs stripped the dead and disarmed the captured. That couldn’t be trusted to the clan warriors. And Rick had to convince the chiefs, and they had to convince the archers and pikemen, that the loot would be divided fairly. The idea that a battle was won by all and all should share in the spoils was new to the hillmen.

Cavalry screens had to be sent to keep contact with the Romans who had escaped and to watch for any new Roman units. Arrows had to be recovered from the battlefield and distributed. Midwives and priests to examine the wounded. Prisoners with deep punctures in chest or abdomen to be killed mercifully—there wasn’t anything else you could do for them. Other kinds of wounds to be cauterized, or washed and bound up —thank God they hadn’t come up with the insane theory of bleeding a wounded man!

And that’s something I can do now, Rick thought. I can teach medical science. I don’t know much, but I can teach the germ theory of disease, and antiseptic practices, and get some of the acolytes interested in anatomy and dissection. But how do we develop penicillin? Maybe we can’t. Sulfa drugs? I don’t know anything about them, either. No technology. No chemistry theory, no experimentalists, no scientific method. No surgeons, and I don’t know enough, but I can make a start. I can teach them how to learn, and maybe one day a perforated gut won’t be a death sentence.

Grooms and camp followers had to be sent to collect the captured horses. Let the centaurs go— those not mortally wounded. The hill clans weren’t used to them and wouldn’t keep them. Send more MPs to see that no one stole horses or ran away with loot. And total up the butcher’s bill.

Medieval armies left that to heralds. After Agincourt the French heralds had inspected the battlefield and worked with the English heralds to collect the names of the dead and captured. That useful organization hadn’t developed on Tran. Rick had tried to foresee the problems of victory and organize for them, but even so he had to be everywhere at once.

And everywhere he went, men stopped what they were doing to cheer him. He could feel pride in that. He’d won the battle, and it was worth winning. Without the grain, the hill tribes were doomed. And the cheers were important, too, if he were to have any control over them. Men want to cheer a commander who wins victories for them. But he wished they’d get on with the work and let him hide in the villa. It was a splendid victory, but he didn’t want to see the battlefield any longer.

Tylara came into the villa leading a prisoner. “I have found the Roman commander,” she said.

He’d been stripped of his armor and gold bracelets, but she’d let him keep his red cloak. Even with that, it was difficult for Rick to recognize him as the haughty officer he’d seen organizing the final charge.

Rick invited him to sit and sent for wine. The Roman seemed surprised. He studied Rick’s face carefully and listened to his speech, then shook his head. “You are no Roman.”

“Of course not,” Rick said.

“I had thought these bar—these hillmen must have been led by an officer trained by Rome.”

Rick smiled faintly. In a way, that was true, but hardly the way this man thought. “Lord Rick Galloway, war chief of the hosts of Tamaerthon,” Rick said. Pretentious, he thought. Pretentious, but necessary. Perhaps he could use this man. Words cost very little. “I have long admired Roman ways,” Rick said. “Your men fought well, as did you.”

“Ah. I am Caius Marius Marselius, Prefect of the Western Marches.”

“Prefect. In the Rome I knew, a prefect was both military and civil governor. Is that your office?”

“Yes.” A gillie brought goblets of wine, and the Roman officer drank thirstily. “Thank you,” he said to Rick.

Rick studied the Roman officer. “Head bloody but unbowed,” he thought. A proud man holding his head up after defeat. But he knows he’s beaten, and maybe he’s sensible.

“You can prevent a great slaughter,” Rick said. “We have come for grain and loot. Now that we’ve beaten your legion, there is nothing to prevent us from sacking the town of Sentinius. I would rather not do that. If you will arrange for the wealth of the town and the contents of the granaries to be loaded on wagons and brought to me, only officers to inspect the granary will enter the city. If you do not, we will take the town by storm, and there will be no controlling the men and the camp followers.”

The Roman’s eyes narrowed. “You ask for tribute from Caesar?”

Damn. Of course he’ll see it that way. “No. I demand what is mine by conquest. I will have all of the grain and, much of the wealth. That is certain. The only uncertainty is whether or not the people of Sentinius and the city itself will survive the experience. Do you truly believe the citizens can oppose me now that their legion is destroyed?”

The Roman officer pursed his lips in thought. He took a deep breath and said, “No. The citizens would be killed to no purpose. How am I to arrange this?”

“You will be free to go. My cavalry will watch the city gates. If by sunset tomorrow there are no wagons of grain, then we will do as we will with Sentinius.” Rick paused. Might as well sweeten the pot. “In addition, I will release your soldiers and whatever equipment we cannot carry with us the day we cross Caesar’s borders to return to our mountains.” Rick shrugged. “What use are they to me? We are not foolish enough to wait for a ransom which would likely be escorted by five legions.”

Marselius seemed puzzled. “Now I am certain that you are not a barbarian,” he said. “Who are you?”

“That is no concern of yours.”

“Perhaps not. What assurance have I that you will not sack the city no matter what we do?”

“You have the word of a Tamaerthon lord,” Tylara said coldly.

“I have seen you shouting at your officers to make them spare captives,” Marselius said. “You are no barbarian.” He seemed to take comfort from that. “Very well, I agree. But may I ask, why this concern with grain? In the past, the hill tribes have raided for other wealth—”

“I remind you that I also demand some of the more usual loot,” Rick said. “Small valuables. Trinkets. Goblets. Cloak pins and ornaments. Jewelry. I do not doubt that your citizens will keep their most valuable objects, but make certain, that they send out enough gaudy luxuries to please my clansmen. As to why we are concerned with grain, if you care to return—as my guest—after the loot is transferred, I will tell you. It is a story worth knowing.”

The last of the wagons rolled westward. They were an impressive sight; over a thousand wagons loaded with wheat and barley and oats and a grain that Rick had never seen before which grew on a plant resembling a giant sunflower, and produced a seed that more resembled rice than anything else. Other wagons were loaded with onions, spinach and other vegetables needed for winter nutrition. Fifty were loaded with heavy valuables—furniture and bolts of cloth and iron implements. The lightweight loot—rings and ornaments and personal arms—had been distributed to the army. Interspersed with the wagons were flocks and herds driven by camp followers and liberated slaves.

An impressive sight. Drumold had never seen its like. Everyone was certain there was food enough for all, enough to last through two winters— And they were utterly wrong.

Columns of pikemen and archers guarded the wagon train, and the light cavalry screens were well out to the flanks and forward to warn of any Roman attempt to recapture the loot of Sentinius. Rick took a position among Mason’s mounted archers in the rear guard.

He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, not caring for the weight of the Roman mail he wore. It itched. He’d rather do without armor, but that wasn’t possible. He needed the armor and a personal bodyguard of freedmen loyal to no clan chief—and Mason at his back whenever possible. That wasn’t because he was worried about the enemy; the problem was that he might be assassinated by his own officers.

The army was loyal enough. He’d won a complete victory with trivial casualties: a score of pikemen killed when the Romans managed to close with the first rank, another score of archers and pikemen cut down in the desperate fighting that closed the day, and nearly thirty heavy cavalrymen who hadn’t sense enough to let the pikemen and archers do the work and had to go riding in to fight in personal combat with the defeated Roman heavies. Most of the armored men were related, and the survivors blamed Rick for their losses; if he had led the armored charge himself instead of riding to bring the pikemen in, they would not have lost sons and brothers .

They also resented losing the opportunity to sack a Roman city.

“Let them,” he’d told Tylara and Drumold. “If we turn those lads loose in Sentinius, they won’t be fit to fight for a ten-day. We’d be helpless against any kind of Roman attack. Don’t forget that a full thousand Romans got away—more than enough to kill us all if we scatter. I would rather stay in a strong position and let the Romans bring the loot to us.”

“We have defeated the Roman legion,” Balquhain said. “They can bring in no other for a ten-day. The chiefs know this, and they say that we can use that time to loot the province. There would be much wealth.”

“To what purpose?” Rick demanded. “We have taken more grain and loot than we have wagons to carry it in. It will take a ten-day and more to transport what we have back to the passes, and we will be fortunate to get it all into the Garioch before the snows begin. Seizing more wouldn’t help us, only harm the Romans—and when the Demon Sun is closest, we may have need of them as friends.”

“Caesar will never befriend us,” Drumold said.

“Perhaps not, but only a fool gives his enemies reason to hate him, and I am no fool.”

“No one says you are,” Balquhain protested.

“Then let them do this my way, as they have sworn.” And let me go back to the hills without a useless battle. I don’t suppose it’s possible to live the rest of my life without another fight like this. It takes a quart of wheat to feed a full-grown man for a day. The fifty thousand bushels of wheat we’ve taken can’t possibly last us two winters. But there’s no more to do this year, and for that I’m grateful. Glory’s a heady drink, but the bar bill’s damned high.

The chiefs had accepted the decision, but they had another complaint, too. Rick had distributed the loot among the soldiers rather than giving it to the chiefs to parcel out. They felt he was trying to undermine their authority.

They were right. He’d bought the loyalty of the common soldiers and noncoms, but incurred the hatred of many of the officers. The result was that he had to wear armor and endure the itch. Considering what he’d got for it, Rick thought the price worth paying.

The cavalry escorted the Roman prefect into the camp on the third night of the march. Freshly shaved and in clean clothing, he looked very different from the last time Rick had seen him—but he’d wisely refrained from wearing jewelry. His sword had been bound into its scabbard so that it couldn’t be drawn, but they had let him keep it.

“I had not thought to see you again,” Rick said. “I had even thought those troops you’ve kept ten miles south of me might be planning an attack.”

“If your information is that good, you also know I have fewer than two thousand men,” Marselius said. “I have come to see if you will honor your word and release my legionaries. Also I wished to hear this curious story you said it would be worth much to know.”

“Then you will not be disappointed,” Rick said. “But will Caesar not have your head? Surely he will say you have not done all you could to punish us for invading his realm.”

“Caesar will have my head no matter what I do,” Marselius said. “He will not deal lightly with a prefect who allowed barbarians —your pardon, but that is what he will consider you—to escape unharmed with the loot of a Roman city.” He shrugged and lifted a goblet of wine in salute. “But Rome will not be well served by wasting the balance of my troops. Your cavalry scouts would give ample warning of my approach, and if we could not face your longbows and longer spears before, how can we now? I have never seen weapons like those spears. You call them pikes?”

“Yes.”

“An interesting weapon,” Marselius said. “I have not read of its like. Although there are stories of a time when Romans fought on foot and carried throwing spears, the records say nothing of these pikes.” The Roman governor eyed Rick curiously. “In our earlier meeting, you spoke of ‘the Rome you knew,’ as if you were not certain it was the same as our Rome. Do you know of Roman history, then?”

“More than you know,” Rick said. “Rome was once a nation of free men. Its citizens were its army, and a Roman citizen did not bow to any man.”

“Are you then a Republican?” Marselius asked.

“You know of the Republic?” Rick asked.

“There are tales. In books, mostly. Caesar does not encourage Romans to read those books, but I have seen copies. Livius, and Claudius Nero Caesar, and—”

“The history written by the Emperor Claudius! It survives here?”

“Yes—”

“I would pay nearly anything for a copy,” Rick said.

“It is written in an ancient language few can read—”

“I have an officer who reads Latin.” I’d forgotten where I am, Rick thought. A treasure like that. On Earth, Claudius’s histories were lost centuries ago. I wonder what other lost documents they have in this new Rome. “Do you know that the Emperor Claudius lived on another world?” Rick asked. “That your city of Rome is but a copy, and there stands on another world lit by another sun the original city of the Tiber?”

“How do you know of this?” Marselius demanded. “I have always suspected, but the priests say it is not true, for God created but one world and anoints but one true king, who is Caesar—” he hesitated. “Christ came but once, and to but one world. The priests are certain of it. But I have never been certain that world was ours.”

“It was not,” Rick said. He wondered how much he should tell the prefect. If the Romans immediately began intensive farming of all their land, they could store up enough food to save part of their population. Otherwise nearly all would die.

There was no point in telling him about starships and the Shalnuksis. That still left a lot. “I come from a land far to the south and so far west that one could sail for weeks before reaching it,” Rick said. “There we have many old documents, and there we know that the stories of the worlds are true. If you wish a sign, look to the skies. The Demon Star comes close, and soon there will be fire and flood and famine in the land.”

The Roman’s eyes narrowed. “I have heard such tales,” he said. “And I have heard another, that you come from farther away than the other side of the world.”

Now who’s been talking? Rick spread his hands. “The old legends are true,” he said. “As to the other story, I do not gainsay it, but I make no such claim. Now listen and I will tell you of the times to come. They are times to make brave men fear.”

PART SEVEN:

SCHOLARS

I

Snow lay deep in the passes of Tamaerthon. Rick could hear the winds from the north scream past the walls of his lodge.

There were no palaces in Tamaerthon. Drumold’s lodge home, over a hundred feet long and half that wide, with walls of earth and stone ten feet thick, was the largest structure the hill country boasted. When the army returned from the raid on the Empire, the tribesmen built a lodge for Rick within the stone fortress circle and close by Drumold’s. It was nearly as large as the chief’s, which meant that the great hall was nearly impossible to heat, and Rick spent most of his time in the smaller room he had built to use as an office. It had whitewashed walls he could write on with charcoal.

He had intended to work there, but he found that very difficult. There was no glass. The best they had for windows was thin, oiled parchment; there was no good light even in daytime. He began to understand why the Northmen had slept late and spent their evenings at drinking bouts and listening to bards recite. What else could they do?

He desperately needed to plan for spring, but that was difficult. No one in Tar Tageral was skilled at making parchment, and the ink was terrible. He could make notes by scrawling on the whitewashed walls with charcoal, or using his ballpoint pen to write on a precious page of his notebook. But when pen and notebook were gone, there would be no others.

At first he’d thought it would be easy to bring ‘technology to Tran. Now he knew better. He had to concentrate on tools; in fact, tools to make tools, and often that meant going back to first principles. Wire, for example. He knew that ancient jewelers had made small quantities of wire by painstakingly hammering it. About the time gunpowder was invented, the Venetians discovered the art of drawing wire through holes in an iron plate. The craftsman sat on a swing powered by a water wheel and seized the wire with tongs, letting his weight on the swing aid the work. But how thick a plate? How do you drill holes in iron? And where do you get the copper bar stock to make wire from?

And steel. Knowing that steel was iron with just the right amount of carbon was all very well, but how much is the right amount? And how do you experiment if you can’t operate a forge and you don’t want the smiths to think you a fool?

There were dozens of similar problems, and they gave him a headache. For relaxation, he invented the English custom of tea parties. Of course they didn’t have tea here, but they had a plant whose boiled leaves made a caffeine drink. Rick was getting used to the somewhat bitter flavor—and teatime was a good way to spend an afternoon. He was drunk in the evenings more often than he liked.

Sometimes he would invite twenty or thirty people; sometimes none but Gwen, if she cared to join him. He was not unhappy if she chose to stay in her rooms at the far end of the great hall from his “office.” She had grown increasingly moody and uncommunicative as her time approached, and her gloom and that of the weather in combination were more than enough to depress him.

But each afternoon he would have tea in his great hail. Any diversion was welcome.

Corporal Mason brushed snow from his sheepskin greatcoat and dashed for the hearth fire. He warmed his hands thankfully before turning to the others. “Cap’n, it’s cold out there,” he said.

Tylara laughed. “This is a mild winter. The Fire-stealer has plunged into the True Sun, but the ice in the middle of the lochs is barely thick enough to walk on.”

“Thank God I wasn’t here for a bad winter,” Mason said.

“Each winter will be milder,” Gwen said. “And each summer hotter.” She clutched her teacup close to her swollen belly and stared into the fire.

“Aye,” Tylara said. “The Demon Star is visible a full hour after sunrise, though both suns are in the sky.”

“I’ve lost track of how many Earth days we’ve been here,’ Gwen said. She patted her swollen belly. ‘About eight months, obviously. We’ve missed Christmas.”

“It’s probably local Christmastide for the Romans,” Rick said. “Or is it? I don’t remember when the Catholic church officially adopted Winterset as the day for Christmas. Anyway, we can have our own.”

“We’ll have to share,” Gwen said. “Yanulf is making preparations for his own ceremony. . . I suppose to ensure that spring will come.”

“No,” Tylara said. “We have long known that spring will come whether we coax the Firestealer out of the True Sun or no. But should we not give thanks for the signs that winter will end?”

Mason shivered exaggeratedly. “God knows that’s something to be thankful for,” he said. He took a seat near the fire. “Be glad when spring’s here.”

“Not half as much as I will,” Rick said. He grinned at Tylara.

Her answering smile was warm. “We always celebrate the return of spring. This year will be doubly joyful.”

“Even for your father?” Rick teased.

She laughed. “It is only his way, to complain that the dowry will impoverish him. He will drink as much at our wedding as any three others.”

Rick looked curiously at Gwen. Caradoc, who had been invaluable during the battle and now was commander of the archer company that was Rick’s personal guard, was often in Rick’s great hall. Usually he had business there, but sometimes what he wanted to discuss was trivial. He always managed to say a few words to Gwen before he left.

Would the spring ceremony be a double wedding? Officially, Gwen was the widow of an Earth soldier; the story provided an acceptable explanation of her condition. Only peasant women had illegitimate children. Since no one knew precisely when by local time Gwen’s husband had been “killed,” it was decided that her period of mourning would end at the same time as Tylara’s.

“Spring’s a long time away,” Rick said. “Too long. For now, let’s have an old-fashioned Christmas. No turkey here, but we can have a goose—”

A distant trumpet sounded.

“That’s the lads down in the lower village,” Mason said. “Reckon I’d better go see what it’s about.”

“You don’t have to go out in that cold,” Rick said. “That wasn’t an alarm—”

“It’s all right, Cap’n,” Mason said. “I’m glad of something useful to do. I’ve been getting cabin fever.” He got up and put on his heavy coat. The wind blew flurries of snow into the great hall when he went out.

The letter was on thick parchment. It was brought to Rick in his office.

The Roman had spoken the same language as Tylara, and she had told Rick that there was one universal tongue from the Five Kingdoms to Rustengo. But the letter was written in Latin—Rick could read enough of it to know that. He sent for Gwen and handed her the parchment. “Can you read that?”

“Just barely. I had three years in high school.” She sat near the fire and read laboriously.

“‘From Caius Marius Marselius, onetime Prefect of the West, to Lord Rick, war leader of the tribes of Tamaerthon, greetings. Peace be with you and your house. This letter is sent by the hands of Lucius, my freedman and friend, who brings you—’ I think that’s ‘gifts’ —‘and a message which I hope —‘I don’t know that verb. It’s future tense. From the context, I’d guess it was ‘will heed.’ Anyway. He says, ‘Lucius has power to speak for me.’ It’s signed with a lot of flourishes.” She handed Rick the parchment.

He looked at it curiously. “No way to tell if it’s genuine. But I suppose it is. Who’d fake it?” He nodded to his freedman attendent, a young NCO who’d escaped from a Roman slave barracks and fled to the hills. “Send their leader in, and see that the others are given food and drink and a fire. They are my guests.”

“Sir!” Jamiy stamped to attention, did an about-face, and left the room.

Gwen giggled. Rick looked wryly at her.

“Well, it’s funny, that’s all,” she said.

“I tend to agree,” Rick said. “Blame Mason. He’s the one who’s been teaching them military manners—mostly learned from watching old British Army movies, I think. It amuses him.” And, he thought, it’s not really so funny. There’s a point to military ceremonial. Under the circumstances, I’m not so sure Mason’s wrong. We’ll probably have to fight again. Even if I manage to wriggle out of it, I’ll need disciplined forces.

The visitor was wrapped in woolen clothing so that only his nose and eyes showed. When he took off his scarves—three of them, counting the one wrapped around his face—and the hooded cloak and the thick gloves, Rick saw that he was quite elderly and very thin. His beard and long hair were nearly white, and he had almost no teeth.

Dentistry, Rick thought. Have to invent that from scratch. Thank God my teeth are in good shape, but that won’t last. If! live long enough, I’ll lose them all. Dentistry’s another benefit of civilization you take for granted until you haven’t got it.

“Were you able to read my master’s letter?” the elderly man asked.

“Yes. What is your message?”

“Do you object if I sit? My bones are old, and the cold has made them brittle.”

“Please do.” Rick indicated a chair near the fireplace. “The matter must be urgent, to bring you here at Winterset.”

Lucius sat heavily and huddled forward for warmth. “It is that. But first—” He reached down to a leather case he carried and took out a thick roll of parchment. He held that near the fire to warm it until it would unroll slightly, then held it out to Rick. “Marselius thought you might prize this,” he said.

Rick took it curiously. The letters were hand-printed in a block form and easily recognized. He read slowly. “Ego Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus—” He broke off, staring. “Is this truly a copy of the great history by the Emperor Claudius?”

“To the best of my knowledge,” Lucius said. “I have no reason to doubt it. You are pleased with the gift, then?”

“I am indeed,” Rick said. He frowned. What was this going to cost? “I am pleased that Marselius remembered my interest.”

“He has written down every word you spoke,” Lucius said. “I know, for he dictated them to me.”

“May I see?” Gwen asked.

Rick was reluctant to let the parchment scroll out of his hands. He knew that was silly. He couldn’t read it, and he’d need her help. He gave it to Gwen and watched to see that she didn’t damage it, but she held it as tenderly as she might hold a baby.

“There are other documents,” Lucius said. “One seems to be the story of how a group of soldiers came to this world from another.”

“Where are these documents?” Rick demanded. “Prefect Marselius has them,” Lucius said. “They, too, could be gifts for you.”

“Your friend is very generous,” Rick said.

“What does he want in exchange?” Gwen asked. Rick frowned at her, but Lucius didn’t seem upset. “Your friendship,” Lucius said. “And an alliance.”

“Alliance?”

“Perhaps I should begin with what has happened

since you left.” Lucius shifted in his chair.

“Jamiy,” Rick shouted. “Tea, please.”

‘‘Sir.”

“So what has happened?” Rick asked.

“The legions of the western provinces have proclaimed Marselius as Caesar,” Lucius said. “I see this does not surprise you, and indeed it was inevitable if Marselius did not wish to be recalled to Rome and executed. The soldiers you released from captivity had no more pleasant expectation, and Marselius was popular with the other troops as well—and they could see the Demon Star. They have heard the tales. We all have. They believed Marselius when he told them what he had learned from you of the times of trouble to come. Few of the province, citizen or soldier, believe that our present Caesar will know what to do—or indeed care.

“Naturally, Marselius first sent for his family. His son and grandchildren were on the family estates near Rome. I was tutor to the household, as I have been for thirty years. For the past year, I have been working in the libraries of the friends of Marselius and his son. The letter that ordered young Publius—I call him young Publius, although he is a man older than you, my lord—the letter that ordered young Publius to join his father also instructed me to take many documents including that history by Claudius.” Lucius sighed. “I fear we have betrayed many trusts, but Marselius assures me that the parchments will be replaced for all those who survive the coming times.”

Jamiy brought in a pot of tea and three stone cups. As he put the tray down, Rick studied Gwen. She didn’t seem overjoyed by the news of the documents. Rick wished he could think of a good reason to have her leave. I could simply order her out, he thought. I don’t have to be polite to anyone—well, except Tylara and her father.

What is she hiding from me? “Jamiy.”

“Sir.”

“Tell Major Mason that our new guests have brought important documents, and that I would like him to see that they are given to no one but me. No matter who might ask for them, they come to me and no one else. Is this understood?”

“Sir.” Jamiy stamped to attention.

“Excellent. Dismissed. Lucius, your story is fascinating. But has Marselius a chance? Will not Caesar bring the other legions against him?”

“Certainly he will try,” Lucius said. “But neither Caesar nor the army likes winter campaigns. They will wait for spring. By spring Mars elius will have a surprise for Caesar.” He grinned toothlessly. “Marselius has freed many slaves, and is training them to make and use those long spears you call ‘pikes.’ He has studied your methods well, and is also training crossbowmen since only your hill clans use the longbow.”

“A surprise for Caesar indeed—”

“A surprise for you,” Gwen said. “What advantage will you have now?”

“You need none,” Lucius said. “Marselius offers alliance with you.”

“A trap to get you back onto the plains,” Gwen said.

Rick switched to English to say, “Gwen, teach your grandmother to suck eggs. And please stop interrupting. I want to know everything I can about the situation, and you are not helping.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I seem to be scared all the time lately. I don’t want—I’ll shut up, Rick. And I am sorry.”

“We know that you have no reason to trust Marselius,” Lucius said. “But he does not expect you to send your soldiers to help him. What he wishes is assurance that you will not raid the western provinces. We will pay you well for that. Marselius intends to plant many of the parklands and game preserves in grain. He will build storage places in the high hills. We will keep much, but there will be enough to send you more than you could take by raiding the Empire.”

“Do you have caves to store it in?” Gwen asked. “Few, Lady.” Lucius looked thoughtful. “The older documents all stress the importance of caves as the only safe place when the fire and the deadly rains fall. There are caves in the northern hills, and others near Rome. Perhaps we can take those. But there is no chance at all if we must fight your hill tribes as well.”

It can work, Rick thought. For that matter, I could do more. Once Marselius is involved in a civil war, I could join him. The army would follow me, and with allies in the Empire, I could take Rome itself. A civilized place, with real potential. Who could stop me? “And he went forth conquering, and to conquer.”

William took all of England with less going for him, and the English were the better for it. Well, better in the long run. They didn’t see it that way at the time. “So stark a man,” the chronicles say of him. “So very stern was he, and hot, that no man durst do anything against his will.” But even his enemies said that a man could cross England with his bosom full of gold. I could govern better than Caesar.

No. I’m no conqueror, and the face of battle is not a lovely sight. I’d rather be a teacher—and we don’t have to fight anymore. “It is not my decision alone,” Rick said. “But I will counsel Drumold to accept this offer. And to make another. There is land in the hills below our mountains. The Romans do little with it because they have better. Yet we have crofters with no land at all, and our best is no better than those hills. Let us work that land in peace, and it may be that we will have gifts for Marselius in exchange for the gifts he offers.”

“Rick, you can’t turn down tribute,” Gwen said in English.

“I don’t intend to,” Rick answered. “But trade’s a lot more stabilizing than tribute.” He turned to Lucius. “There will be many details, but I believe we can agree. With the Demon Star coming near, there will be slaughter and death enough. We need not add more.”

2

Rick used charcoal to add another equation to the list on his whitewashed wall. He wished he had been a better physics student. He couldn’t remember the basic equations of harmonic motion, and he wasn’t sure he had derived them correctly. “Newton was one smart cookie,” he muttered to himself.

The wall was covered with equations and notes and memoranda. One whole section listed things urgently needed, such as paper, and better lamps, and an adequate supply of pens and ink—all of which would be needed so that he could copy out a table of logarithms from his pocket calculator before its batteries failed. Another held the best data he had been able to obtain on crop yields. Next to that were diagrams of plow designs and crop-rotation schemes.

There were endless details. The work would never be finished; but it was more satisfying work than building the army had been. The raid had bought time, but now he could do something lasting. Tamaerthon could become a center of learning, a place whose security rested on something more solid than military power. If only he had decent light to work by…

When he heard the knock at his door, he turned with relief. The work was satisfying, but conversation was a welcome diversion.

Caradoc stood uncertainly in the doorway. “Come in,” Rick invited. “There’s good wine in the flask on the table.”

“Thank you.” Caradoc poured a cup of wine and looked curiously at Rick’s charcoaled equations and the diagrams of the Tran system. Rick knew that Gwen had been teaching Caradoc to read, and the archer commander had shown a lot of interest in Rick’s work in the past. Today, though, he said nothing.

Rick frowned. “Some problem, Captain? Speak up, man.”

“I am concerned for the lady Gwen,” Caradoc said. “She sits and stares at the fire, and wants no one with her. It cannot be good that she wishes always to be alone.”

“Don’t let her be. Stay with her.”

“Lord, I try, but she has an evil temper.”

“That she does.” Lately she had taken to throwing things. Rick had long since given up trying to talk to her. He looked at his chalked calendar. Tylara had grown increasingly moody as well. Certainly the long winter had a lot to do with that, but she seemed to be brooding over something else as well— something she wouldn’t discuss. I’m surrounded by unhappy women, he thought. Just when things are going so well.

Whatever Tylara’s problem, though, there was a simple explanation for Gwen’s moods. “Her time comes near,” Rick said. “I do not have personal experience, but I am told that all women are hateful for their last days before a child is born. Especially a first child.”

And, he thought, it would be particularly tough for Gwen. She didn’t even know when the baby would come. The local day on Tran was slightly more than 21 hours long, and the gestation period seemed to have stabilized at 290 local days, as opposed to 270 on Earth; but would that be true for Gwen? No one knew. Straight mathematics; multiply 270 by 24 and divide by 21, and you’d get 300 days. How much of human physiology responded to hours passed, and how much to the day-night cycle? And was Earth’s moon involved? Women’s menstrual cycles seemed to coincide with Luna, but Tran’s double moons were small and much closer than Earth’s. Did they have an influence?

“You care for Gwen, don’t you?” Rick asked.

“Yes, lord. And before the raid, I believed she cared for me. Now I do not know.”

“She mourns her husband,” Rick said. “But you are right. She is too much alone. I’ll speak with her about it.”

“Your boyfriend’s worried about you,” Rick said. Gwen sat close to the fire. She looked up without smiling. “Oh, leave me alone!”

“For God’s sake, Gwen, snap out of it!”

“Why?”

“Do you think your problems are unique?” Rick demanded.

“Yes.”

“Okay, I put my foot in it that time,” Rick said. “Look, I’ve talked with the midwives. And Yanulf. They think everything’s normal—”

“The medical experts,” Gwen sneered.

“Well, they’ve delivered a lot of babies,” Rick said.

“Sure. And lost a lot of mothers. Rick, I’m scared out of my mind!”

“Sure you are,” Rick said. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Thanks. Look, I’ve probably started a population explosion here, but I’ve taught them the beginnings of the germ theory of disease,” Rick said.

“You couldn’t have. I’ve tried,” Gwen said.

“You didn’t go about it the right way. I told them diseases were caused by little tiny devils, and that blessed soap and boiled holy water would drive them away. They can accept that.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, I maybe right about a population explosion. It happened that way on Earth.”

Before the end of the nineteenth century, women often died of “childbed fever.” But then came Ignaz Semmelweis with his theory that childbed fever was caused by physicians’ dirty hands. His colleagues forced him to resign for saying it was their fault, but though he ended his days in a madhouse eventually enough of them believed him—after that most women lived to raise their children and have more. “There’s no way we won’t change things here,” Rick said. “It isn’t easy, but I’m trying to look ahead. Maybe we can avoid some of the problems we had on Earth.”

“Maybe we can’t.”

“Look, dammit, snap out of it,” Rick said. “You’re working yourself into a depression. Keep it up and you’ll get to me, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Gwen said. “I really am. But it all seems so futile.”

“Why? Because we can’t go home? We can make a home here,” Rick said. “And—dammit, Gwen, we’re more useful here than we ever were back on Earth. There wasn’t much chance that anything we’d do there would change history, but we can here. We’ve already changed political history. We’ve got peace with the Empire and land to farm. Even if Marselius loses, we can hold those border hills for long enough to get in a harvest. With the new plows I’ve got the smiths working on, we’ll triple the yields. We’ve helped these people already, and there’s a lot more we can do!

“Sure, I’ve got an ambiguous status. The bards are trying to make up ballads about the raid, and they keep running into the fact that I never fought anybody. They can’t figure out if I’m a war leader or a mere wizard. But whatever I am, everyone wants to learn from us.

“Gwen, we can start a university! Well, we start with grade school. But we can found a learning center that will really change this world. Look at what we can teach! Just the idea of scientific method and experimental science will bring on a revolution. And mathematics. We’re not genius level, but we know more about geometry and algebra than was known on Earth through most of history. Medicine. Dental hygiene. Physics. Even electricity. I’m not up to transistors, but I can make batteries and vacuum tubes and—what the hell’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Rick, for God’s sake—you haven’t built radios, have you?”

“Not yet. I’m still having trouble getting wire. But—”

“Don’t! Please, please don’t.” Her voice held genuine panic.

“I see,” Rick said. He stood arid went to her, then took both her hands in his. “Don’tyou think it’s time you told me about it?” he asked. “For God’s sake, Gwen, what did Les tell you, and why can’t you tell me?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “We’re safe now,” she said. “Just don’t change anything. Oh, Rick, I’m scared—”

“I know you are. But I don’t know why. Gwen, please. Please tell me.”

She buried her face in her hands and wouldn’t talk anymore.

Three days later a messenger arrived from the west. Drumold summoned his counselors to his great hall to hear the news.

The messenger was a young clansman who was proud of his mission. He said greetings to Drumold, then spoke to Tylara. “Six days ago there came to Tar Kartos a dozen lords and knights of Drantos. They had traveled in great haste and could go no farther. One lord asked if the Lady Tylara lived. All were overjoyed to learn you are safe in your father’s hall. They then asked my chief to send a messenger to you, and I left that night. They asked me to greet you as Great Lady, Eqetassa of Chelm, and to say they regret they cannot come to you. They beg you to come to them.”

“Eqetassa of Chelm? But I have been driven from that land,” Tylara said. “Who are they?”

For answer the messenger held out a signet ring.

“Camithon? But I saw him die,” Tylara said. “He was thrown from the battlements.”

“A trick to bringyou to them,” Drumold muttered. “Sarakos hates you yet.”

The messenger looked pained. “Do you say that Clan Ebolos aids enemies of Mac Clallan Muir?” he demanded.

“No, no,” Drumold protested. “But I do not understand what they want of my daughter.”

“Nor I,” the messenger said. “But Calad my chief listened long to their story. Then he bade me speak these words: ‘I have learned that which is of great importance to all the clans of Tamaerthon. I beg that Mac Clallan Muir and the Lady Eqetassa come to Tar Kartos with all haste.’”

“In this winter?” Drumold demanded. “Nay, it will wait until the snow is gone from the passes.”

“My chief says not.”

“Father, you may wait,” Tylara said. “But I have never heard that Calad is easily alarmed, or that he does not know how deep the snow lies in the passes.

As for me — do you return now?” she asked the messenger.

“As soon as I am dismissed,” he said.

“Then tell your chief that the dowager Eqetassa of Chelm will arrive as quickly as she is able.”

“Tylara, is this wise?” Rick asked.

“What has wisdom to do with it? Sarakos may sit in my council hall, but they are my people yet.”

Damnation, Rick thought. Of course she’ll go. “I’ll get things ready,” he said. “We can leave in the morning.”

“I had hoped you would come with me,” Tylara said. For the first time in several days, she smiled at him.

Drumold sighed. “Tell Calad your chief that Mac Clallan Muir will join him within a ten-day, and that the Lady Eqetassa will accompany him.”

Tar Kartos was at the western edge of the mountainous highlands that formed Tamaerthon, and over the centuries had been built into a strongly walled town. After five days’ travel across the frozen lochs, Rick was glad to reach the somber fortress.

Calad, chief of Clan Ebolos, was nominally subordinate to Drumold as Mac Clallan Muir, but that was a point no one wanted to stress too hard. When Drumold’s party was invited into Calad’s council hall, Drumold was content to take a place opposite Calad and leave the question of which end of the table was head and which foot for someone else to worry over.

Besides Calad and his advisors there were half a dozen knights and bheromen of Drantos. Before they could be presented, Tylara ran up to their leader—an elderly soldier whose craggy face held a long ugly scar. “Camithon!” she cried. “I could not believe, even though I hold your ring and heard them describe you. I saw you thrown from the battlements of Castle Dravan.”

“Nay, Lady, I was not thrown. Before they could do that, I broke free of them and jumped. Would I not know the places where the moat is closest to the walls? Once away from Dravan, I had aid from the countryside until I could join Protector Dorion and the young Wanax . . . . You must not know, then: I am Lord Protector of Drantos.”

“Protector—”

“Aye. Dorion was killed in the battle with Sarakos. To say this is to say little. He was torn to shreds by thunder weapons. Aye, at my side, and we nearly a league from the battle.”

“Mortars,” Rick said.

Camithon looked at him curiously.

“Lord Rick is our war leader. He knows of these weapons,” Drumold explained.

“Where is the Wanax Ganton?” Tylara asked.

“The lad has caught the fever,” Camithon said. “He rests in this castle.” The elderly soldier paused. “We have come as beggars,” he said. “To beg Tamaerthon aid against Sarakos. Yet, in truth, we come as more than beggars. We bring news I think you will not find unwelcome.”

“It had best be welcome news,” Drumold growled. “I am nearly frozen. What news have you that could not wait for you to come to us?”

“Hear him out,” Calad said.”I did not lightly send for you. Protector, tell Mac Clallan Muir of the war in Drantos.”

“After Castle Dravan fell, I fled to the army of the Protector Dorion,” Camithon said. “We caught Sarakos in an unfavorable situation and thought to destroy him in a great battle. I do not know who would have won that day, but suddenly our knights were cut down like wheat before the scythe. Sarakos had made alliance with men from the stars who hold evil weapons.” He paused to study Drumold’s expression. “You say nothing to this?”

“We know already,” Drumold said.

“Strange,” Camithon mused. “Yet this makes the telling easier. After Sarakos and his allies had beaten us, we fled to the mountains where we thought to fight on. Sarakos made our task the easier, for his armies ravaged the land. He turned out every bheroman in Drantos to replace them with his favorites. They so enslaved the commons that all, great and humble, were ready to join us. We fought no great battles —we knew we could not win such. But we harassed the land, burned the crops, killed his messengers, struck down his new knights and bheromen when, they took possession of their villages. Sarakos has known no peace in Drantos. Many of his horses have starved or been eaten. Even so, many of his soldiers are dead of hunger and the plague, and many more have fled. He will lose more before spring, for the snows have closed the road to the Five Kingdoms, and we have destroyed the harvests in Drantos.

“It was after winter came that we heard of your great victory over the Roman legions. I have once before seen what Tamaerthon archers can do in battle, and it came to me that with the forces I hold and can gather, and with the aid of some thousands of your archers, we can drive Sarakos from Drantos and restore the lady Tylara to her dower lands. This I have come to ask.”

Drumold leaned close to Rick. “What think you of this?”

“Lord Camithon,” Rick said, “have you forgotten the star men and their weapons?”

“No,” Camithon said. “This is the welcome news I bring. The star men have divided. Many have fled from Sarakos. Fewer than a dozen remain. Surely a dozen men will not frighten you who have bested the Romans.”

“How do you know the star men have divided?”

Rick demanded.

Camithon smiled grimly. “I have brought a present for Mac Clallan Muir and his daughter.” He turned to an officer. “Bring in the prisoner.”

The officer left and returned moments later with a man dressed in peasant woolen trousers and thick jacket. He had a scraggly beard that hadn’t been shaved or trimmed for weeks, and his hands were shackled together with iron bracelets riveted to a foot-long chain.

He stood sullenly, looking defiantly at the council table, until he saw Rick. He stared a moment, then shouted, “Captain! For God’s sake, Captain, help me!”

It was Private Warner.

Despite the blazing fire, Rick’s quarters were cold. And not just the chilly air, Rick thought. He could feel the chill radiating from where Tylara sat by the hearth.

“I had thought you would be pleased,” she said. “Are not your enemies my enemies? Sarakos can be killed, and I can rid myself of this burning hatred for him—”

“We don’t know that,” Rick said. “Tylara—Tylara, every time I think of what Sarakos did to you, I get sick. I hate him as much as you do. I love you!”

“You do not seem to.”

“More than you know,” Rick said. “It is my wish to make Tamaerthon strong without endless war. Should we risk all that for revenge?”

Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Rick called with relief.

Warner had been shaved and given better clothes. He was almost pathetically grateful when Jamiy brought him in. “Thank God you’re here, Captain. Thank God—”

“Have a seat,” Rick invited. “Jamiy, pour him a cup of wine.”

Warner sat gratefully. He chugged the wine, and Rick poured his cup full again. “Take it easy,” he said. “Before you get drunk, I want to know your story.” He laughed. “You know, it wasn’t a week ago I was wishing I had you around. I was trying to derive some of Newton’s equations. Think you can remember college physics?”

“Yes, sir,” Warner said. “Uh—ballistics?”

“Maybe,” Rick said. “But mostly just general science.” He switched to the local Tran dialect. “Warner, this is the lady Tylara. We’d both like to hear your story.”

“Yes, sir. But could I have some more wine first?” Warner drank eagerly. “Where should I begin?”

“We know Parsons made an alliance with Sarakos,” Rick said. “And that you helped him win the battle against the Drantos army. What happened after that?”

“At first it was pretty good,” Warner said. “Captain, I can tell this better in English.”

“Go ahead. I’ll translate for Tylara.”

“Yes, sir. Well, like I said, at first it was pretty good. We’d won, and we owned the country. Parsons gave each one of us a couple of local girls. It was a little funny owning slaves, but that’s the way things are here. We had women and jewels and lots of good food and pretty good wine, and it was like Parsons said it would be. We lived like kings. Even out in the field we had servants. We took over the best houses for quarters, and we didn’t have to fight much—just when the locals ran into something they couldn’t handle. Then we’d come up with the machine guns and the mortars.

“Everything was fine for a couple of months, but then it all came apart. Guerrilla war. Captain, it was like Vietnam, only worse, because we didn’t have any choppers or trucks or anything. We had to ride horses, and by the time we got anywhere, the char-lies had gone off into the hills. We weren’t safe anywhere outside castles. Ride through the woods and you never knew but what an arrow or a crossbow bolt would kill you.

“It just never stopped, and it didn’t look like it was ever going to get any better, either. Those people hated us, and we couldn’t kill all of them. And it got kind of hungry, too, even for us —and we had more to eat than the poor bastards with us. And Parsons! He got so mean, you couldn’t get near him. Claimed it was all our fault —we weren’t disciplined enough—but he’d fix that. So one day a bunch of us got fed up and rode off.”

“How many?” Rick asked.

“Twenty-two,” Warner said. “Gengrich and I organized it. We went south, to the city-state territory. We needed some way to make a living, so we arranged to hire out to the city republic of Kleistinos. They fed us and our wives — most of us brought one or both of the girls we’d been living with—and we didn’t have to fight, either. Come spring we were supposed to escort a big caravan south, and that sure sounded like easier work than what Parsons had us doing.”

“So how did you end up here?”

Warner looked sheepish.”! got drunk, passed out in a tavern, and woke up with those handcuff things. The local tavernkeeper sold me to the Drantos rebels.”

“I see. Excuse me, I’d better tell Tylara what’s going on.” Rick summarized Warner’s story.

“They are not rebels,” Tylara said coldly when Rick finished. “They are fighting for their homes against bandits.”

“Yes, Lady,” Warner said. “If you say so—”

“She did say so,” Rick said. He changed to English to say, “I’d be very careful, were I you. She’s got a sharp temper and a sharper dagger.” He poured himself a cup of wine. “What weapons did Gengrich take with him?”

“One of the mortars,” Warner said. “And our rifles and pistols, of course.”

“So André has one mortar and the recoilless. How many mortar bombs?”

“I’d guess a dozen,” Warner said.

“The star men are greatly weakened,” Tylara said. “And Sarakos has lost much of his army.”

“They’re not as strong as they were,” Warner agreed. “Captain, are you planning on fighting them?”

“I don’t know.”

Tylara looked at him coldly.

“Sweetheart, you don’t understand,” Rick said. They think because we handled the Romans so easily, Parsons can’t be that tough. They just don’t know. One mortar shell in the right place, and I don’t have a pike regiment, I have a disorganized mob. And Yatar knows what machine guns would do to my archers—”

Tylara got up and went to the door. “Jamiy,” she said. She pointed to Warner. “Take him to his quarters.”

“He’s to be well treated, but he is not to escape,” Rick said. “Warner, I really am glad to see you. If we all survive, you’re going to be a professor in the only university on Tran.”

“I’d like that,” Warner said. “It’s got to be better than fighting for a living.”

Rick waited until Jamiy and Warner had left, then turned to Tylara with a sigh. “All right, darling. Let’s have it out.”

3

Her cold look changed to one of unhappiness. “I do not like to quarrel with you,” she said.

“God knows I don’t enjoy it much either—”

“Please. Let me finish. All winter my father and I have waited for you to speak formally to him of our future.”

“I was waiting to be sure you wanted me to,” Rick said. “And I wasn’t sure when would be the right time—”

“I had hoped you wanted me.”

“I do. God knows I do. I love you,” Rick said.

“As I love you. More than you know. Our customs are not yours. Never in our memory has a woman married before she was avenged, yet —yet I was willing to do so. Rick, your ways are strange. You are not like my husband was. You are a warrior, but you do not wish to fight. I have seen men insult you, and yet you did nothing, though lesser words demand blood—”

“Is that what you want? Should I collect heads?” The Tamaerthon clansmen no longerkept the heads of their enemies as trophies, but there were many legends of heroes who had.

“Hush,” she said. “No. You should not. I have come to understand that although killing gives you no pleasure, you are no weakling. And I have seen you in the great battle, and again when you have spoken of the school you wish to build. I know which pleases you more. I have heardyou tell of the things you wish to teach, and how this will help everyone—the clans of Tamaerthon and all the others on this world. There is much about you I do not understand, but there is much I do know, and I have come to love you. Not as I loved Lamil. That was nearly unendurable—no, do not look away, and do not be sad. I was no more eager for my wedding night with Lamil than I am to have you possess me. Between us there is more than Lamil and I ever had. Lamil was handsome, but he was frivolous. He had no daemon driving him as you do. Nor did I, then, but I have since learned what duty is, and no less a daemon rides me now. You and I, we may belong to each other, but we also have ambition. Not for wealth, but for something greater.”

He came to her and nut his hands on her shoulders. “Then why are we standing like this—”

She removed his hands gently and stepped away. Her face held concern and sadness. “Please. This must be said. Rick, when I believed Sarakos secure in Drantos, I swallowed my hatred for him though it burned like fire. I had thought you must feel the same, that the man who, who—gods! that a man who had done that to me should live!”

“You can’t know,” Rick said. “God, sweetheart, you can’t know—”

“I dream of flaying him,” Tylara said. “Yet, because of what we believe you will do for Tamaerthon—aye, for all the world—I have lived with the knowledge that Sarakos would never be punished. As did my father and my brother. We agreed—you are important to Tamaerthon, and we have no hold on you. There is no reason for you to stay in Tamaerthon —none save what I hope you feel for me—yet we need you. And so I have not died trying to avenge myself. As much as I hate Sarakos, I have grown to love you more. Once I lived only to kill him. Now I have you.”

“But now you want me to kill Sarakos for you.”

“Now it is possible,” she said.

“No. What’s changed?” Rick asked. “André Parsons has fewer men, but he still has more than enough weapons to destroy us, and without the pikemen, Tamaerthon is doomed. Do you trust Marselius? I do as long as he is afraid of my pike regiments, but not longer. And we may yet have to fight Caesar if Marselius fails.”

“Are you certain nothing has changed, my husband-to-be?” Tylara asked. “The star men are divided. Sarakos has lost half his army. Is this nothing?”

“Is it enough?”

“I do not know. These are things you know,” Tylara said: “But this I do know. Chelm is mine. Lamil left no other heir. You have heard how it fares with the people there. They die. There is endless war. The Time approaches .Do I not have a duty to them?

“Me? I’ve never been there—”

“You brought the star men here,” Tylara said. “Now they are as wolves in the land. Have you no responsibility for this?” Tears welled in her eyes. “My love. My father feels as I do. If you truly believe that nothing can be done to rid the land of these evil men, then we will send Camithon on his way without aid. But I beg you, think on it.”

She would have to say that. My responsibility. I brought them here. I didn’t want to, and I— what the hell’s the point in quibbling? I brought them. But damn it— “My university will be more important than you know,” Rick said. “We can change this world. Should we risk all that merely to kill Sarakos?”

“My love, I know there is no other like you,” Tylara said. There was no banter in her voice at all. “But can not the lady Gwen and the man Warner teach much of what you could?”

There went my last argument, Rick thought. Oh, damn it. “Yes. They can,” he said. God help me, she’s right. And nobody else can stop Parsons and Sarakos. Can I? Sarakos is no problem. His medium and heavy cavalry don’t sound as effective as the Roman heavy troopers, and my pikemen have a lot more confidence now. But I still need massed formations, and Parsons has the mortar and at least a dozen riflemen—more than enough to scatter the pikes for Sarakos’s heavies— Skirmishing archers could take Parsons, if we could get him on a decent killing ground. But he’s too damn smart to be caught that way. He’ll always have enough local cavalry with him to keep the archers at a distance. So how to get the Earth troops separated from the rest of the army— “You have a plan,” she said. “I have seen that look before.”

“Something Warner said. Tylara, even if everything works properly, a lot of people are going to be killed—”

“More than will die if we do nothing?”

“No. Not nearly so many.” He sighed and took her in his arms. “I could have had my pick of a hundred women,” he said. “I could have a hundred women. So of course I have to be in love with you.” He kissed her. They stood close for a long time.

Then she pushed him gently away. “In spring,” she said. “And for now—we must send food for Camithon’s army before he loses more men and beasts to hunger.”

“Yes.” And a thousand other details. Summon the western clansmen and start drilling them in the new tactics. More pikes and arrows. Baggage and grain carts. Politics. Keeping the clans working together was hard enough; now they’d have Protector Camithon and the boy king to worry about as well.

And more details yet. Patrols to seal the passes and keep secret as long as possible the fact that Tamaerthon was arming for war. A second iron curtain so that when spies inevitably found that the clans were mobilizing they still wouldn’t be able to report that they were drilling with pikes. And inside that the greatest secret of all.

“Why do you smile?” Tylara asked.

“It would take long to explain,” Rick said. How could he tell her he’d thought of calling his inner circle “The Manhattan Project”? But of course he couldn’t use that name. It would signal Parsons as clearly as would a report that someone in Tamaerthon was gathering tons of manure and sulfur.

They’d need a secure area to leach saltpeter from manure. His scholarship wasn’t good enough to make sulfa drugs or penicillin, but something simple like that would be no problem at all. Saltpeter 75 percent, charcoal 15 percent, sulfur 10 percent: fifteen to three to two, a formula tested in war’s caldron for centuries. And they’d need a gristmill with no metal parts in which to grind it.

And there’d be a thousand more details. The business of war. They sing ballads about heroes, but the details are what win campaigns.

Or lose them.