"Show me the ships you are building," he said, as they came back into the sunlight and slapped flour dust off their tunics.

"This way, my king."

There was one floating at a pier with men swarming over it, and another half built in a timber cradle at the shore. Agamemnon bit his lip in puzzlement at that one. The way the carpenters worked on it was very strange; instead of mortising the planks together with tongue-and-groove joints and then putting in ribs to strengthen the shell, they were putting up thick ribs and crossbeams and then nailing a shell of planks to them. Several forges stood around it, red-glowing iron hissing as it was quenched in vats of oil or water.

"Doesn't that take much metal?" he asked, pointing to the crews nailing the long oak planks to the frame.

"My lord sees as clearly as Horus, the Falcon of Egypt," Walkeearh said. "But now we have much metal. And building a ship in this way is so much quicker than the old manner. Less skill is needed, and it's stronger as well."

Agamemnon almost rubbed his hands. All tin and most copper for the making of bronze had to be imported, and it was so expensive, especially the tin. Iron came from within his kingdom, and it grew cheaper by the day. Cheap for him, at least. The mines and smelters were a royal monopoly, by Walkeearh's suggestion and his decree- under Walkeearh's exclusive management, and Walkeearh could not be a menace, an outlander who owed everything to the King of Men's favor.

That gave him a hand on every vassal's throat. Gunpowder and cannon gave him a spearpoint held to their eyes.

"Show me the finished one," he said.

"This way. It's called a gullet, Lord King."

Footsteps boomed out along the wharf. He looked keenly at the ship; unlike any he'd ever seen before, it was fully decked, a smooth sweep of planking from pointed prow to rounded stern. Two masts stood tall, whole pine trees smoothed down and glossy as a table, with furled sails. On either side six small cannon waited, on stubby oak carriages with four little wheels. Crewmen scattered from the king's path as he came up the gangplank-and from the ready spearpoints of his guards, glittering steel-bright in the noonday sun.

"How is it steered?" he asked, going to the stern and looking over. There was a single steering oar, pivoting like a door on its post, but no apparent way to turn it.

"This wheel," Walkeearh said. "It turns ropes that draw pulleys under the deck, moving the tiller-the bar attached to the rudder, the rear steering oar-either way. Here in front of it is the compass, the north-pointing needle."

Agamemnon shuddered a little to see a sacred oracle displayed so casually. Perhaps one should be put in the shrine of Zeus the Father and of far-shooting Apollo, he thought. Yes, with sacrifices and celebratory games.

"Shall I show you how she sails?" Walkeearh inquired.

"At once," he said. Then: "Hold, a minute-who are those? Are they doing a sacred dance?"

Men in tunics were walking about in lines and blocks not far away, holding sticks. Overseers shouted orders, and the lines turned, advanced, marched away again.

"Oh, those?" Walkeearh smiled charmingly. "Just an idle thought of mine, Lord King. Men to handle a new type of cannon. Very small cannon, such as might be useful in rough country. Men of little account-younger sons, mercenaries, farmers."

"Oh," Agamemnon said dismissively. "Poh. Well, perhaps you can get some useful work out of them. Let us sail; I hear that your ship can sail against the wind."

He laughed again, and Walkeearh with him. "Not against, Lord King, unless it is rowed. But closer to it than the old ships, yes."

"Superior violence and intensity, " Major Kenneth Hollard read on the last recruit evaluation form. That translated as "beats the hell out of opponents in training." The DI's notes went on: "Problems with discipline largely overcome. " That usually meant "no longer has to be dragged away with ropes."

"We've got visitors," a voice said, breaking his concentration.

He looked up; it was his second-in-command (and younger sister), Captain Kathryn Hollard. Sweat stained her khaki fatigues and darkened her sandy-blond hair; on her the long family face looked reasonably good even under a short-on-sides Corps haircut. She'd had Second Recruit Battalion out on a field problem, open order in forest country-they'd gotten field drill down well, but you had to be flexible; massed formations were great for fighting spear-chuckers, but that approach would be too dangerous with Walker's men. Arnstein's spies said the renegade was doing far better than expected with firearms, and so were the Tartessians.

The sounds of a working day at Camp Grant filtered in through the outer room where his orderly had her desk-the rippling thump of marching boots with someone calling cadence, hooves clopping, a distant shoonk… wonk… shoonk… wonk from a mortar team practicing on the firing range, the crackle of rifle shots, the rhythmic sound of a smith's hammer.

His eyes flicked across the rough plank of the office to the board that had his schedule for the day chalked on it. As usual, it contained enough work for about twenty hours, which was fine if you left out little luxuries like sleep. Hell, farming would have been easier work, he thought. He could have gotten a six-hundred-forty-acre grant on Long Island and a loan from the Town for start-up; all the veterans of the Alban War had been offered that, and his older brother had taken one. He'd decided to stay in the Corps instead; memories of his father, perhaps, and things with Cynthia hadn't worked out the way he expected.

Dad would have laughed himself silly, seeing me a major, he thought. Gunnery Sergeant Hollard had refused promotion to commissioned rank four times. Always said he preferred to work for a living, Ken remembered with a wry smile. Not to mention the way he'd get a rise out of a Marine Corps that was part of the Coast Guard.

Commodore Alston had firmly squelched suggestions that her command be renamed the Republic of Nantucket Navy. Ken Hollard understood that, too. His father had had a dog, and if you asked Semper Fido "Would you rather be in the Army, or dead?" he'd roll on his back, put his paws in the air, and do a fairly good dead-dog imitation.

"Who the hell is it this time, Kat?" he asked. Visiting firemen had been far too common over the last month or so. "Maybe I can unload it on Paddy…"

"I don't think so," she said. "It's the commodore."

Oh, Christ, the boss, Hollard thought, shooting reflexively to his feet and looking around like a private caught in his skivvies by a snap inspection.

"Thanks for the warning," he said, suppressing an impulse to smooth down his hair and beard and tug at his khaki uniform jacket. Instead he contented himself with a quick look in the mirror. He saw someone a few years closer to thirty than twenty, with sand-colored hair and beard and the tanned, roughened skin of a person who spent much time outdoors in all weathers.

The face beneath was long and lantern-jawed, with a jutting nose and high cheekbones. It was a common enough face among old-stock Nantucketers-those lines had intermarried until there was a general family likeness. At least Kat and I didn't get the receding chin. Six feet and an inch tall; he'd been a skinny teenager, but the passing years had put solid muscle on his shoulders and arms. The Sam Browne belt held a double-barreled flintlock pistol and a katana-style officer's sword; his helmet lay on the table he used as a desk, out in his office-cum-ready-room. He took a deep breath and scooped up the flared metal shape as he went through, tucking it under his left arm and waving to the orderly to keep working.

If she wanted everything prettied up, she'd have just given us some warning, he thought. Commodore Alston made him nervous-she had that effect on just about everybody-but she had a reassuring tendency to concentrate on function rather than form. There are a lot worse people to work for.