"Steady there," she said.

The boats' keels grounded on sand and shingle. Oars nipped up in unison, and the landing party disembarked. The sailor crews pushed the boats off again, to wait ready just in case.

Marian Alston stepped ashore onto dry land that crunched under her boots. The chanting and stamping cut off. A bristle of trumpets sounded again, upright shapes six feet long with gaping mouths shaped like the heads of wolves and boars. The cadets formed around her and the other officer, except for those who were lugging the bundles of gifts. She blinked aside strangeness and the failing light to see what awaited her.

More of the green boughs, for starters-evidently a peace signal, like the Biblical olive branch. A group of men waited, in the leather kilts she'd come to expect but with brightly dyed tunics and leggings as well, bracelets and neck rings of chased gold, pendant necklaces of amber and gold, silver pectorals set with colored stones. Behind them their chariots were drawn up. The horses wore headdresses of nodding plumes, and hangings of felt covered with writhing colored applique shapes of animals and monsters along their flanks.

"Captain," Arnstein murmured into her ear. "Look at the ones standing off to the left."

Her eyes moved that way. Several men. Shorter than the ones about them, black-haired and olive-skinned, cleanshaven, dressed in linen tunics, their ornaments more restrained and subtly… different. She gave an imperceptible nod and kept up her steady pace. A man was moving out to meet her, flanked by warriors of his own. Big, easily six feet, three inches taller than she and towering by the standards of this age, she guessed, and massively built. His chest strained at his sheet-bronze breastplate, decorated with raised hammered spirals over the nipples and gold studs along the neck and waist. The impression of height was increased by the bronze helmet he wore, rounded at the front and back, flat sides rising to a peak embellished by a fore-and-aft crest running from brow to nape of neck.

Talk about your dickheads, she thought irreverently; it helped break the hieratic mood.

A gold disk engraved with the sun hung on his chest; the haft of the war ax sloped over his shoulder was set with rings of bronze and gold, the falcon-bill head inlaid in silver, and he bore a long bronze sword at his waist. His beard was glossy brown streaked with gray, forked and held by more rings of gold where it trailed down on his barrel chest. The beginnings of a potbelly added to his impression of thick-armed strength. He raised the ax in a curious gesture and rested it on the ground, spoke in a rumbling bass.

"Daurthunnicar son of Ubrotarix," came through eventually, with Arnstein helping out. "Rahax of the Iraiina folk."

Alston saluted; it seemed to suit the occasion. "Marian Alston, captain of the Eagle," she replied firmly, meeting the impassive blue eyes. That got through too; Ohotolarix had known what to call the ship's gilded figurehead. "American," she added.

A slender boy came forward with a platter of basket-work. It held a golden cup, a piece of coarse dark bread, a slab of cheese, and a knife. Daurthunnicar picked up the knife and pricked his thumb, squeezing out a few drops of blood into the cup. Alston felt her own hands move in dreamlike precision, stripping off a glove and placing the razor-edged bronze against her skin. Her own blood fell into the liquid in the cup; that was yellow, the color of straw. The native chief picked up the cup in both hands; it seemed to vanish in their hamlike vastness. He raised it to the setting sun and pronounced something long and sonorous; she caught Diawas Pithair, the name of their chief god. Sky Father; cognate with Zeus and Jupiter and Tiwaz and the old Norse Tyr, according to Arnstein. Others, a list of them-Mirutha, which seemed to be some sort of angels; a Horned Man or god of beasts and forests; Hepkwonsa, who was the Lady of the Horses, and her sons the Twin Riding Brothers; the Crow Goddess, whose true name was Blood Hag of Battles…

He drank, slurping, then handed the cup to her. About half the contents were gone; on impulse she took it in both hands as he'd done, tilting it back until the last drops ran down her throat. It was alcoholic, no doubt about that, and sickly-sweet.

The crowd gave a long sigh. The rahax proceeded to cut the bread and cheese and sprinkle them with salt. She ate her portion and gave a polite smile as he grinned back at her out of a crumb-filled beard. This time the watchers cheered, waving weapons and torches over their heads.

"That makes us guests," Arnstein murmured again. "At a guess, we're now holy and inviolate."

"Hell of a thing to have to guess at," she said. It made sense, though.

Daurthunnicar waved a few others forward. Introductions, Alston thought. She tried to keep the names straight-or they might be titles, of course-but she was glad of Rosenthal busy writing on her pad.

Arnstein stiffened beside her when the one of the other men, the dark clean-shaven ones, was introduced. "Isketerol of Tharatushus."

"Tartessos?" he echoed.

The Latin-looking man nodded. "Isketerol. Tharatushus," he replied, pointing southeast.

"Tartessos!"

Arnstein burst into another language. Isketerol replied, and Arnstein turned to Alston, excitement ablaze on his face.

"Captain, he speaks Greek! It's very archaic, and he's got a thick accent, it's not his native language either, but I can catch about one word in every two-more, with a little practice. He's Isketerol, and those ships on the beach are his. They're from Tartessos-it's a city-state in southwestern Spain, not much known about it except that it was wealthy and important in the late Bronze Age and down into early classical times. I didn't know it existed this early, but nobody's ever found the site of it-very obscure."

Finally! Alston thought. "You can translate through him? Excellent. Tell the sachem here we've got gifts for him. And by the way, be careful with the Iberian." Anyone who could survive as a merchant adventurer here was likely to be on the ball, and her antennae were prickling anyway. "He's sharp."

Isketerol smiled and inclined his head, before turning and speaking in the harsh choppy Iraiina language. Daurthunnicar seemed to sigh with relief as well.

"He says that he's got gifts for us too, we're his guests- 'guest-friends' is the term, it's fairly serious if it means the same thing in this dialect of Greek and if he's translating accurately-and we're to come to the feast, you and your warriors, and eat with him and his."

"Lead on," Alston said.

"Be careful," his cousin said to Isketerol. "Whether or not they're wizards, you can see these strangers aren't as brainless as the local oafs."

Isketerol nodded, legs folded gracefully before him as the feast began. "That grunting boar Daurthunnicar hasn't realized that the Nubian is a woman, did you notice? I think he knows about the one with the man who speaks a little Achaean-you can scarcely mistake those breasts- but he hasn't spotted the leader, or the ones among her spear-bearers."

The trader chief's cousin nodded. It wasn't surprising that the Tartessians saw deeper, although stay-at-home kin in their native city might have been fooled as well. When you sailed all over the Middle Sea, though, and the shores of the River Ocean, you met innumerable different styles of dress, of custom. Your eyes saw more, after a while. Tartessians were real voyagers, not like the Achaeans, who composed an epic on their own bravery if they spent one night out of sight of land.

"The plump woman is writing," he said to his elder. "That looks like papyrus, don't you think?"

"A little, but that isn't Egyptian script… although women learn to read there, sometimes, noblewomen. And they had a woman as Pharaoh long ago, what was her name… Hatshe… I can't remember. But they don't have woman warriors. How does the ink get on that pen, I wonder? Or is it like a grease stick?"