"Still, they're heavily engaged. We may be able to run-"

He was about to raise his voice in a shouted order to close in when the chuffchuffchuff sound from the Amurru-kan camp rose in pitch and speed. A high shrill whistle clove the air; he recognized it, a steam whistle from one of the hot-water-engines the Amurrukan used on Nantucket. Then it changed to a hard quick rapping sound, as of a stick dragged quickly down a set of iron rods.

The air whistled, a different note. One of the rowers pitched sideways, threshing. Isketerol could see the fletching on the short heavy dart that stood three-quarters buried in the man's temple. Another two quivered in the timbers of the galley, sunk almost as deep. The water whickered to his right as a spray of the same missiles hit it. The full force had struck the galley to his left, and half the rowers were down. His eyes widened. That's over two thousand paces away! his mind protested. Then it leaped quickly, to the big spinning wheels the steam engines had… flywheels, that was the word. If you could somehow make a flywheel grab and throw arrows-

"Back to the ships! Retreat! Retreat!" he bellowed through the megaphone.

The galley leaped in the water as it turned. Isketerol forced himself not to crouch or cringe. "What next!" he screamed, shaking his fist backward at the taunting reach of Eagle's masts. It wasn't fair. "You'll pay for this!"

The buzzing noise overhead was back, and louder.

The radio beeped. Swindapa murmured in her sleep and then stirred, waked from her doze as much by her companion slipping out from under the blankets as by the noise. Low words followed, lost before she was fully conscious of them.

Marian was smiling as she came back toward the bed; Swindapa could feel it, if not see it, but the smile was not, a happy one. Reeds crackled and rustled under her feet, but she was invisible with only the faint reddish ghost-glow reflected from the beams and thatch above.

"What happened?" Swindapa asked drowsily.

The wicker partitions gave them privacy from sight, but none from sound. It wasn't very noisy; a dog stirring now and then, a baby crying, a couple making love, the low crackle of the central hearth. Swindapa found the noises broke her rest more than she'd expected. That's strange. This is home. How can it be hard to sleep, when I slept here all my life? Without the woven walls, either-those were for elders. She was glad of the flea powder Marian had sprinkled on their bedding, too. I've become fussy. Her relatives had stared as she ate with a fork and wiped her lips with a cloth.

"What happened?" Marian repeated. Her voice had a growling undertone. "The ships back at Pentagon Base were attacked-the Tartessians, we think, with local allies."

Swindapa stiffened and gripped her as she slid beneath the blankets. "What happened!"

Marian gave a whispering wolf-chuckle. "Let's put it this way-the flamethrowers worked."

"Oh." A bad death, she thought. On the shadow side, they deserved it. If they want to live long, let them stay at home. "Good."

The black woman sighed after a moment. "I was worried," she admitted, her voice soft against Swindapa's shoulder. "Damn worried. Complex plan. Too many things that could have gone wrong. And I couldn't be there."

The Fiernan smiled in the darkness, holding her close and stroking her back, feeling the tension in the muscles. So many worries, she thought. Only me to hear them. Marian bore a weight heavier than the Grandmother of Grandmothers knew. For everyone else she must always be strong.

"It did work," the Fiernan said. Lips met in darkness. "Now forget that, and pay attention to me. And this."

"Sugar, I'm a little tired-mmmm!"

"You're not tired, you're tense. And you're pretty… so pretty."

Some time later Marian was quivering again. "If you only knew how fine that feels," she sighed.

"I know exactly how it feels," Swindapa purred. "But maybe this will feel even better."

Marian made a choked sound, turned her head aside and bit into the coarse wool of the blanket, then relaxed with a long sigh.

"You're not tense anymore," Swindapa chuckled, raising herself on her elbows and peering up toward the other's face.

A hand ran fingers through her hair. "Any less tense and I may just flow away like watah. Why don't you move up here a little?"

Later a cry mounted up from belly to throat, escaping like the swans that bore souls to the moon.

Afterward, a fierce whisper in her ear with unwilling laughter underneath it. "Did you have to yell like that, 'dapa?"

Swindapa stretched, blinking and wiggling her toes in pure contentment. "Of course I did, my love," she said. "I had to think of your… your reputation, you'd say." She turned and snuggled closer. "Now everyone will think I'm selfish, but they'll know you aren't."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

July – August, Year 2 A.E.

Seahaven Engineering had a sales shop attached to it these days. It was a long wooden structure reaching out from one side near what had been the front entrance, covering a stretch of redundant parking lot. Most of the shop sold metalware to islanders, everything from hardware to eggbeaters, sausage grinders to sheet-steel stoves, but one corner was devoted to the mainland trade. As he came through the door Jared Cofflin suppressed an impulse to hold his breath at the sight of the four Indians there; there was just nothing they could do about diseases, except take a few precautions and otherwise let them run their course. Unless they cut the mainland off completely, and that just wasn't practical.

One of the Indians was a man, hook-nosed in a narrow high-cheeked impassive face, looking weathered and ageless and probably in his thirties; his hair was shaved to a strip down the center of his head and a pigtail behind, the bare scalp on either side painted vermilion in a fashion that seemed common to all the New England tribes in this era- at least, they hadn't met any that didn't do it that way, just as the women all wore theirs in braids. His body was naked except for a hide breechclout and an islander blanket over one shoulder; he had a steel-bladed knife on one hip, and a long-hafted island-made trade hatchet thrust through the back of his belt. The women wore a longer wraparound of soft-tanned deerskin like a short skirt, with ornaments of shell beads and bones around their necks and porcupine-quill work on their clothes. One of them was in her twenties, with a bundle-wrapped baby on her hip, the others in their early teens; they all carried heavy basketwork containers on their backs. Cofflin could smell them, a sort of hard summery odor combined with leather and the oil on their hair.

At a gesture from the man they set their burdens down on the single oak plank that served as a counter, four feet broad and four inches thick. Behind it were racks with the goods that held his eye: steel knives, spearheads, axes, hatchets, fishhooks and line, nets with lead sinkers, metal traps. The women were chattering with each other and pointing as well, at metal pots and pans, awls, scissors, cloth, cards of needles-Cofflin knew from reports that they used tailored and sewn clothing of leather in cold weather. One made a soft exclamation as she picked up a necklace of burnished copper pennies and let it run through her hands, then ducked her head obediently as the man spoke sharply and put it down again. A third looked guilty as she put aside a mirror. The islander behind the counter helped unload the sacks; Cofflin whistled silently at the sight of pure-white winter ermine pelts. Fur coats had become extremely popular over the cold winter months without oil for central heating. Besides that, the packs seemed to contain only small quantities of any one item: bark jars of nuts, crystallized maple sugar, dozens of varieties of herbs and plants and patches of deer, elk, moose, and beaver hide.