The Sea Peoples(25)
You could tell from looking that the people here were of much the same mixture of heritages as Montival’s, albeit in greatly different proportions—there were fewer who looked like órlaith and Heuradys and more who resembled, say, Sir Droyn’s blunt features and light-brown skin, and quite a few who had Reiko’s fine-boned build, narrow tilted eyes and pale umber complexion—but apparently in the generations since the Change they’d blended and mostly taken on the heritage and attitudes of the firstcomers.
This island kingdom was simply small, though; populous as some of Montival’s member-realms, compact and well-governed and rich from fields and sea, trade and crafts, but still a little nervous about possible ambitions from its giant neighbor. Soothing those was part of her task.
And besides, I could feel it if this were destined to be Montivallan soil . . . and I don’t. It’s . . . not ours, even in potential. I get the same feeling as I do stepping across the border to, say, the Dominions or Iowa.
The journey ended with the fortress órlaith had seen from the Sea-Leopard bulking to the east. They clopped west of it, along a road turned into a tunnel of green shade by towering multi-stemmed banyan trees. An arched wrought-iron gate opened onto a walled enclosure of many acres; a squad of lightly-armored Hawaiian spearmen guarded it, and a detachment of soldiers from the 1st Brigade, United States of Boise Army. The tropical sunlight was harsh on the curved hoops of their lorica segmentata armor, the long iron shanks of their pila and the eagle and crossed thunderbolts on their big curved oval shields. And on the stiff taut curves of their faces, blank as machines. One blinked, very slowly, as a fly crawled along his eyelid.
The Boiseans were in a column of twos; they snapped their shields up, smacked the heavy six-foot javelins on them in a single echoing crack of salute, did ninety-degree turns to face each other and stepped back four paces in stamping unison to line the roadway on either side. Each pila’s butt grounded with a thud at parade rest.
órlaith nodded gravely. Her father had always thought of—and in strict privacy with her and Mother called—this sort of thing dancing a fight or simply murmured Osprey Men-At-Arms Number 46, but he’d also given unstinting praise to the Boiseans who’d fought with him through the Prophet’s War and at the Horse Heaven Hills. And professional respect to the ones who’d fought on the other side, whatever he thought of their political judgment.
Past the gateway, and the carriages were in parkland scattered with buildings that were mostly new since the Change, connected by roads of white crushed shell amid very beautiful gardens with sweeping velvety-green lawns, groves of many different trees, bright flowers, reflecting pools with golden ornamental fish . . .
“Nice,” Heuradys murmured as they were shown to their quarters; a subtle touch was the absence of noise and numbers. “Not that straw in a stable wouldn’t be a relief from that barrel of sardines packed in oil they call a ship.”
órlaith felt her soul stretching a little too, and there was a murmur of agreement from her followers as they swung down from the mounts the Hawaiians had provided. All of them were countryfolk, born and reared among fields and forests and rangelands. Cities were alien environments they visited or occasionally worked in, and the ships had been a shock.
Faramir Kovalevsky of the Dúnedain frowned in thought as the carriages and horses wheeled away, his blue-gray eyes going distant for an instant beneath the brim of the spired Ranger helm he wore for the occasion, along with a black jerkin marked with the silver Tree, seven stars and crown.
“A ship is like a jail, with the chance of being drowned added,” he said.
There was a general laugh, which he disclaimed with a raised hand:
“Not me! That’s some ancient sage Mother is fond of. Not in the Histories, I think, some Fourth Age philosopher.”
Histories was what the Rangers called the works that described ancient Middle Earth and the Quest of the One Ring, the traditions on which their founders had modeled their scattered, wilderness-dwelling nation.
Of course, Great-Aunt Astrid always claimed that she was descended from the Dúnedain in the Histories, from the House of Hador. She was a great warrior and hero, by all accounts, but Da told me many who knew her in person thought her barking mad. Though he used to say too it didn’t really matter much in the end, because she made her mad dreams sober truth.
Non-Dúnedain were more likely to regard the Histories as fanciful tales, though less fanciful than some from the ancient world. The folk in them lived more or less as real people did in modern times, after all, not flying to the moon or sailing beneath the sea. That old sage Faramir quoted had a point, too. A crofter’s cottage or even a barracks back home usually had more room than even the commanders had enjoyed on the trip out, with the added advantage that the world was just out the door. Most of them had spent as much time as they could at the mastheads and bowsprits, or hauling on ropes whenever the sailors would allow them to help, for distraction as well as keeping in trim.
“And I’m glad we’re within a perimeter, at least,” Heuradys added.
Reiko actually smiled as she dismounted from her carriage in turn and looked at an arched bridge over a pond.
“That is in our style!” she said, pulling her folded tessen from her obi and making a sweeping gesture with the steel war-fan.
The polished-looking Hawaiian guiding them—a brown, bronzed young man who showed that you could look immensely aristocratic wearing nothing but sandals, a brightly printed sarong-like wraparound they called a kikepa here, a ten-inch knife through your belt and flowers in your raven hair—smiled and bowed slightly.