The Sea Peoples(4)
Some of Hilo’s buildings were from before the Change, though none of the really tall ones you still saw now and then on the mainland, even in living cities like Boise or Portland. Those had probably been dismantled for their metal and glass, since without artificial ventilation and cooling they’d be even less practical in this climate than at home. More were new, and the great stepped stone platform in the middle distance was just finished, judging by the remains of bamboo scaffolding and hoisting cranes still being taken down. That was a heiau, a temple to the Gods who were worshipped here once more.
Unlike all of the cities and many of the duns and towns and steadings she knew at home there was no encompassing defensive wall to make a sharp distinction between dense-built settlement and open countryside, despite the obvious technical capacity to build one. The plots around buildings just got bigger, until you could say they were small farms and country villas rather than houses with gardens, and they started to include pastures for cattle and horses and runs for swine.
Which means they haven’t had war here lately, probably not since right after the Change; not great wars with massed armies and strong siege-trains, at least, órlaith thought. Lucky them!
There had been little peace in what was Montival-to-be until her parents and their comrades had brought the High Kingdom’s order with the Sword of the Lady. She had grown up among the veterans who’d fought the long grim death-grapple of the Prophet’s War across half a continent, starting with her parents, and there had been the wars against the Association before that in the time of her great, wicked maternal grandfather. Her generation had lived in a spreading peace, but the memories remained.
The most familiar single sight was a massive modern fort on the peninsula to the westward where the maps of the ancient world showed a golf course, not much different save in details and decoration from the castles in the northern parts of Montival. An orca-shaped observation balloon hung high in the air above it, tethered by a long curve of cable.
Form follows function, she thought. Everyone makes their wheels round and everyone puts a pointy stabby thing on the end of a spear.
The towers there flew the bright striped flag of the Aupuni Moˉ??ˉ o Hawai?i, and as a courtesy the green-silver-gold banner of the High Kingdom of Montival and the Hinomaru of Japan.
órlaith knew that the kingdoms of Hawai?i and Montival had been friendly as long as they’d been aware of each other’s existence. Since not long before her father Rudi Mackenzie’s accession—as Artos the First—in the year of her birth, in fact. There had been a king again in Hawai?i well before that; since right after the Change, as folk turned to ancient things as an anchor in a world gone mad. Their current ruler, Kalaˉkaua II, was his grandson and only a few years older than órlaith.
But that friendliness had been confined to good wishes, resident merchants who doubled as ambassadors, growing trade and a little cooperation against the pirates and raiders who grew right along with the traffic they preyed on. Just exchanging messages at this distance was hard and slow, despite a more or less common language, and the chances of misunderstanding vast.
It was a good sign that the vanguard of the fleet and army of Montival—frigates, smaller warships, scores of merchantmen turned troop-transports—had been welcomed within the long curving breakwater that guarded Hilo’s harbor. Many were already tied up at the wharfs, and boats and barges plied busily back and forth to the others. And there was other shipping here too, dozens of hulls and a forest of masts, the Royal Navy of Hawai?i and traders from here and around the world and others down to little fishing boats and outrigger canoes, all amid the raucous swarm of gulls and seabirds that marked a rich port.
“I wish we had more troops ashore,” her liege knight—and aide-de-camp and Head of Household and childhood friend—Heuradys d’Ath grumbled beside her.
Heuradys was trying to look everywhere at once without being obvious about it and preparing to be even more overburdened ashore, with the mixture of irritation and slightly self-mocking amusement of a hyper-competent person in a position where they knew full well no amount of competence could ever be enough. In a sense it was easier for órlaith to ignore the prospect of assassins popping up with daggers in their teeth—or waiting with concealed crossbows and poison darts—than it was for those around her. All she had to fear was death; they had the much stronger terror of living long enough to know they’d failed in their duty.
After all, the Crone comes for us all, soon or late, she thought. I don’t expect to make old bones myself, even if the Powers haven’t warned me about it the way they did Da. Either I’ll have children by then to take up the Sword, or one of the sibs will.
Then she went on aloud: “We’ve got thousands of troops ashore,” she pointed out cheerfully. “And glad to be out of the transports they are. The horses especially, poor things. We’d have lost half or better if we couldn’t stop here to let them pasture and run, and the survivors would have been useless for weeks on the other side.”
Heuradys snorted. “To clarify: more troops besides the ones in their shirtsleeves seeing the sights . . . and chatting up the better-looking locals . . . and trying to eat bananas without knowing how to peel them . . . and sucking rum out of coconuts in the shade of the palms . . . and frolicking on the beaches.”
“The beaches are wonderful here. And the oceans. The levies deserve some time off after the voyage. Fair winds and a quick passage, but it was hard sailing at times. Four hundred cases of seasickness at the same time . . .”