I who have slain my faith and freed my will?

Let me forget dead faith, dead mystery

Dead thoughts of things I cannot comprehend.

Enough the light mysterious in the tree.

Enough the friendship of my chosen friend.

They buckled on their webbing; knife, pouches, binoculars, and double-barreled flintlock pistols at their belts, katanas over their backs with the hilt jutting up behind the left ear. Saddlebags held their traveling kit; they carried those downstairs in their arms, slinging them over the benches beside them as they sat at the long trestle tables in the tavern's taproom.

Wild Rose Chance was an example of what "log cabin" could mean when the logs were a hundred feet long and a yard thick. The big room was already fairly warm with the fire in the long iron-backed field-stone hearth and busy-a score or more sitting down to a hearty breakfast. Alston nodded to friends and acquaintances as she loaded her own plate and sank her teeth into a slab of hot, coarse wholewheat bread with butter melting on its steaming surface.

At least I don't have to worry about my weight, she thought. Not when things like traveling fifteen miles to Camp Grant meant half a day in the saddle, not fifteen minutes in a car.

"Hey, there anyone here who speaks Fiernan?" a voice called from the open street door.

Alston and her partner looked up sharply. A woman stood there, in ordinary bib overalls, but with a shotgun over her back and a star pinned to one strap. Behind her were a young couple, dressed Islander-style except for their near-naked toddler, but obvious immigrants. Behind them was a clamoring pack-she thought she recognized several farmers, a straw boss from one of the timber mills, and the owner of the boatyard among them.

Swindapa began to rise, then sank back as the proprietor of the inn went over, drying his hands on a corner of his apron.

"Thought you did, Sarah," he said.

"Thought I did too, Ted."

Swindapa did rise then, smiling, when mutual bewilderment became too obvious. She returned chuckling.

"They speak Goldenhill dialect," she said. "Thicker than honey- I'm not surprised the sheriff couldn't make hoof or horn of it and the poor couple were frightened out of the seven words of English they had between them. The sheriff will put them up in the Town Hall tonight and find someone to explain about contracts."

Alston nodded approval and threw down her napkin. Everyone was short of labor, but that was no excuse for taking advantage of ignorance. Her inner smile grew to a slight curve of full lips. Jared's seen to that. By the time the immigrant couple had put in five years they'd speak the language and be eligible for citizenship; a few years more, and they'd probably have a farm or boat or shop of their own, and be down at the docks clamoring for a chance at a hired hand themselves. And their kids would be in school.

There had been times in the Coast Guard when she'd wondered what the hell she was doing-on the Haitian refugee patrol, for instance.

Or "cooperating" with those cowboy assholes in the DEA and BATF, she thought. If you had to be hired muscle, it was nice to work for an outfit run by actual human beings.

They took their saddlebags out; the inn's groom had horses waiting, four-year-old Alba/Morgan crosses. Alston swung into the saddle, heeling her mount out into the road.

"Worth fighting for," Swindapa said, indicating the town with an odd circling motion of her head.

"Let's go tell it to the Marines, love," Alston replied.

"Yeah, it's coming along okay, man," the blacksmith said, his long, sheeplike face neutral.

William Walker was always a little careful around John Martins. For one thing, the Californian ironworker hadn't come along to Alba willingly, like the rest of his American supporters. That had taken a knife to the throat of his woman, Barbara. For another, Walker suspected that under his vaguely Buddhisty hippy-dippy exterior, Martins was capable of a really serious dislike.

"Well, should we go for a converter, or should we do the finery-chafery method?"

He looked around the raw little settlement. Walker had been to Greece a couple of times up in the Twentieth, once on Coast Guard business and once on holiday. This looked very different from what he remembered. The plain of the Eurotas River stretched away on either hand, about forty miles of it from where it left the northern mountains to where it reached the sea. More mountains lined it on either side, and they weren't the bare limestone crags of the twentieth century, either. There hadn't been nearly as much time for the goats and axes of men to do their work; these uplands were densely forested, pine on the higher elevations, mixed with evergreen oak and chestnut and ilex further down. The glade in which they stood was waist-high grass; the wind down from the heights smelled of fir sap. Not quite like Montana-for a bitter moment he remembered the snow peaks of the Rockies and the wild, clean smell-it was warmer, somehow, in a way that had nothing to do with the air temperature. Spicier, with scents like thyme and lavender.

"Hey, I'm just a blacksmith, man," Martins said, hefting the sledge in his hand. "You get me iron, and I can work it."

Walker pushed his face closer to Martins's. The Californian was a tall man, as tall as himself, and ropily muscular. Older, of course-in his late forties now-with a ponytail more gray than brown at the rear of a head mostly bald, and absurd small lens glasses always falling toward the end of his nose.

"Don't try to bullshit me, Martins," Walker said. "I know exactly what you can and can't do, family man. Now, I think I asked you a question?"

The sad russet eyes turned away slightly. Besides Barbara, there was an infant now, and Martins knew exactly what Walker was capable of, too.

"Converter will take six months, maybe a year, if we can do it at all, man-have to, like, talk to Cuddy too. Finery I can do right away, no shit, and blister steel."

"Then get started on it. We'll work on the converter later."

Walker turned away and surveyed the work site. Trimmed timbers were piling up fast, with teams of near-naked peasants and yoked oxen hauling them out of the woods. The Achaean architect Augewas and Enkhelyawon the scribe were standing near the stream, drawing with sticks in the dirt. Walker paced over, still feeling a little odd in the Mycenaean tunic and kilt. It was comfortable clothing for this climate, however, at least in the warmer seasons.

"Gwasileus," the two Greeks said, bowing. "Lord."

In classical Greek that would come to be basileus and mean king, but here and now it was simply the word for chieftain, overlord, boss man.

"How do things go?" Walker said.

"Lord," the architect said, "there is good building stone near here-limestone, hard and dense, a blue stone. And I can build a wall across this stream."

He nodded. The creek was about chest deep in the middle and twenty feet across. By southern Greek standards it was a major river; according to the locals, it shrank by about half in summertime. Flow was seasonal here, but not nearly as much as it would be up in the twentieth. The greater forest cover held water longer, and so runoff was slower. There were more springs, too; he wasn't sure if the actual rainfall was greater, but it certainly felt as if it was.

"But, Lord, why do you wish it to be built this way?" Augewas said, indicating the ground. He'd sketched the slight narrowing a hundred yards east, where they were putting in the dam, and a curved line across it with the convex end upstream.

Ah, that's right, they don't have the arch or true dome, Walker thought. He drew his sword and used the tip as a pointer.