"Let's put it this way-has all that gold brought peace to Mycenae?"

"As much peace as a piece of fat pork brings to a pack of hounds," Odikweos said. "Mycenae was always a knot of vipers, but now…"

"Exactly. Also, taking only a tenth, I'm not expected to spend men and goods guarding the mines-and the natives there don't love us for taking their mountain."

"Or for making their men dig in the ground," Odikweos said.

"Exactly, again. What's more, gold can't buy more than the land produces. Real wealth comes from increasing the yield of men's hands and then gaining command of that yield-gold is simply a tool. And third and last… well, there's a poem among my birth-folk. In your language…" Walker closed his eyes in thought for a moment. "It would go something like this:

Gold for the merchant, silver for the maid;

Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade.

"Good!" laughed the king, sitting in his hall.

"But iron-cold iron-shall be master of them all."

They drew rein before the portico with its green-white stone stairs. A small form burst through the ranks of guards and servants, followed by another, and then by a woman in a gown. He recognized Eurykleia, the household's chief nursemaid.

"Dad!" the hurtling bundle cried, and leaped with a trailing mane of white-blond hair. The second just leaped.

"Whoops," Walker said mildly and caught each under an arm. "Run along, the rest of you, no need for ceremony."

"I'm sorry, lord, they got away-"

"No problem," Walker said to the nursemaid. "They're eight. You'd have to put them in a cage like Egyptian baboons to keep them quiet."

The boy and girl wiggled delightedly; they were much of an age, the girl his by an Alban slave, the boy by his wife Ekhnonpa.

"Plain to see they've got spirit," Odikweos said, grinning.

" Althea has been misbehaving again, lord," Eurykleia broke in nervously. "And…"

Walker upended the girl. "What is it this time? Bothering your Aunt Alice again? Not safe, little one."

"Sneaking away to watch the warriors practice, lord," the nursemaid said.

"If Harold can do it, why can't I?" the girl pouted. She pronounced it "Haaar-alt," like the locals.

"Why not, indeed?" Walker said. He looked up at the servant. "If she wants to train with her brother, we'll see to it."

"But, lord, it isn't seemly!" she burst out, as Althea crowed in delight.

Walker's face went cold, and the nursemaid looked down, her own face gone pale. "Seemly is what I say to be seemly, Eurykleia. I am the King."

"Yes, lord," she said quietly.

Walker hoisted his son over a shoulder and set the girl on her feet, delivering a swift spanking swat at the same time. "That's for not coming and asking me first," he said at her yelp, then gave her another. "And that's for disobeying Eurykleia. Now both of you run along and mind your manners."

He walked up the stairs. "My friend, we have a good deal to talk about," he said to Odikweos. "So that our children may inherit more than we hold today.

"Sicily grows dull," the Ithakan said. "Another man can chase bandits through the hills…" He paused. "Is that why you sent so many troublesome men to take up lands there?"

"Well," Walker grinned, "it does give them something to do, besides causing me problems."

"You are a man with a mind of many turns," Odikweos said admiringly, a little surprised when Walker laughed loud and long. "Troy next?"

"Troy, indeed," Walker said.

"That will bring in the Hittites."

"The worse for them, my friend. The worse for them."

January, Year 9 A.E.

"Uh-oh," Ian Arnstein said.

"Thunderclouds," Doreen agreed, looking at the Commodore as she lowered her binoculars.

"Mom?" David said. "Why's Aunt Marian looking so mad?"

"Shhhhh."

The Nantucket outpost on the uninhabited island of Mauritius was one of a chain the Republic was founding as time and resources permitted, staking out a claim to a global thassalocracy of trade and influence. Eventually it was supposed to be a jumping-off point for the settlement of the giant and equally human-empty island of Madagascar to the west and a base for trade throughout the Indian Ocean. The flotilla was two weeks out of a similar hamlet at the site of Cape Town, officially known as Mandela Base. That had met with Marian Alston's approval; neat little earth-and-turf fort, a well-built pier, a bored-log pipe to bring water down from a spring on Table Mountain, and half a dozen farms up the Liesbeck River to supply fresh produce.

Here…

The Islander ships stood in on an easting breeze, only a trace of white foam at their bows as they ghosted along at five knots. Eastward was a broad natural harbor where a river ran down to a silver-sand beach. Beyond rose mountains, densely green in the foreground, fading to blue-green as they rolled away inland. Green was the overwhelming first impression, huge broadleaf trees growing almost to the water's edge, and dark mangroves wherever a mudflat allowed; the white of sails, gray of hulls, and the broad red diagonal slash of the Guard along the ship's flanks were the only man-made color to break it. The settlement had run a pier out into the deep water, made of upright ebony logs and looking massively solid. Onshore…

Half-built, Ian decided; that was the best way to describe it. A couple of biggish buildings, but one of them had only the skeleton of a roof, and tiles were missing on the other. A windmill by the river looked broken, its vanes unmoving. Logs lay in untidy piles, and the patches of cleared land were weedy. Here and there were the signs of frantic last-minute effort that served only to make the rest seem more slovenly.

"By the mark, ten! By the mark, nine!" the leadsman standing braced in the bowsprit netting said, whirling the lead line around her head and throwing it far out to plop into the greening water. "By the mark… Christ, by the mark, seven. Bye the mark, six!"

"Captain Nguyen, I suggest you strike all sail," Marian Alston said tightly. "Signal to the flotilla. I'm not fully confident in the buoys marking the channel, here."

The officer nodded curtly, gave orders. Feet thundered on the Eagle's crowded deck, and teams bent to pull on ropes. Many of them included Marines, but the men and women clambering aloft in the ratlines all wore the blue sailor suits of the Guard; that was specialist work, hard and skilled and a little dangerous even in calm weather. They swarmed out along the yards and bent over them, gathering up armfuls of sail as the clewlines hoisted them up.

"Put your backs into it!" called a petty officer from the boats towing the Eagle up to the dock. The dark-blue water was fading to green as they neared the shore, and white foam curled as the ash wood oars stroked into it.

More thick ropes flew out, and the steel flank of the big windjammer kissed the coconut-fiber baffles. Further out, sails furled and anchors splashed, whistles sounded and the steaming ensigns came down, the national flag breaking out at the tops. He could see the party that stood ready to greet them on the dock bracing. Some had sickly smiles, others expressionless masks. The gangplank swung out and thumped down; Ian used councilor's rank shamelessly, crowding in behind the initial quartet of Commodore Alston, Swindapa, Colonel Hollard, Major Hollard, and Captain Nguyen of the Eagle. A bell rang from the quarterdeck.

"Eagle departing!"

"Welcome, Commodore," the commandant of Mauritius Base said.

Marian Alston returned his salute. He was a heavyset, balding man in his early forties, dressed in shorts and sandals and loose shirt and sweating until his scalp glistened through thinning black hair.

Might be the heat making him sweat, Ian thought. Mebbe not. He put Jared Cofflin's dry, skeptical Yankee voice to the thought.