"I hope you've been treated well," Doreen said cautiously. Golly, you've got to be careful with locals. Especially an unfamiliar breed. Got to remember they're as different from each other as they are from us.

Raupasha crossed to a canvas folding chair, walking with a dancer's stride as the hem of the long embroidered robe someone had dug up for her flared around her ankles. She sat, cat-graceful, and curled her feet up beneath her.

"Very well, thank you," she replied. "Lord Kenn'et treated me as his own kinswoman-not what I expected, traveling alone among foreign soldiers. They brought as much as possible from my home, so I have some little store of goods here."

She gestured toward a bowl on a table, an elegant burnished shape of black ceramic, and her full red lips moved in a wry grimace.

Good thing Ken's a gentleman, Doreen thought. That's quite a mantrap. Reminds me of Madonna, after she got the personal trainer.

Raupasha went on: "So I have a dowry, of sorts. I may marry some tradesman of Kar-Duniash, I suppose, since I am still virgin… although I have no living kin."

Poor kid, Doreen thought. Doing the stiff-upper-lip bit, but she's hurting. The local value system meant she had to want to avenge her blood first and foremost, but the foster parents were the ones who'd raised her, and they'd been killed in front of her eyes. At some level she had to blame herself for that, fair or not.

"Well, you're under the Republic's protection," Doreen said. Ian might not have wanted Ken to offer it, but it's irrevocable. "We could find you something different."

"Perhaps carrying one of your… rifles, are they called?" A chuckle. "My people are warriors, but that is something I hadn't considered."

Her eyes went unfocused for a moment and she chanted softly. It was definitely poetry, not rhyming but alliterative. Doreen's ears pricked up; her mother had been Lithuanian, and she'd found that extremely conservative Baltic tongue helpful in learning the languages of the Iraiina and the other charioteer tribes in Alba in this millennium. This language had a haunting familiarity from both.

" 'Our… family of warriors'?" she said.

Raupasha's head came up. "In Akkadian it would be…" She paused for a second, her lips moving silently. "As nearly as I can put it-"

Our race of heroes though they be Maruts

Is ever victorious in reaping of men

Swift their passage in brightness the brightest

Equal in beauty, unequaled in might.

She shrugged. "That is in the old tongue, though, the ariamannu. Even in the great days of Mitanni few spoke it. My foster father…" Her voice choked off for an instant, and she drew a deep breath. "My foster father brought a few things written in it from Washshukanni, our capital."

Ian will be in historian's seventh heaven, until we get him back to practical matters, Doreen thought. Perhaps someday he'd have the opportunity to trace the migrations that brought Raupasha's ancestors from the steppes of Kazakhstan to be kings among the Hurrians at the headwaters of the Khabur. Speaking of which…

"We're actually rather concerned about the Rivers district," Doreen said.

"Now it is free of the yoke of Asshur," Raupasha said, nodding toward the flap of the tent with grim pleasure.

"Well, yes, but Chaos is king there right now. And we need the area secured. Has anyone told you about William Walker?"

"The rebel against your ruler? Yes, a little. He seems a dangerous man."

"That's far too mild. He makes the Assyrians look like… like little lambs. He's not all that far away, either."

The Mitannian nodded. "On the other side of the Hittite realm, yes," she said. "Lord Kenn'et told me. And his way will be made easier, now that the Hittites are at war among themselves."

She rang a small bell, and a maidservant-probably hired locally from among the Assyrian refugees-brought in a tray with bread, cheese, and dried fruits, and the local grape wine plus a carafe of water. Raupasha poured and mixed herself, before she noticed Doreen's wide eyes.

"You did not know?" she said. "Ah, well, in the northwest we had more traffic from Hatti-land. Yes, the lord Kurunta of Tarhuntassa has thrown off allegiance to Great King Tudhaliya in Hattusas."

Oh, Jesus, Doreen thought. She frantically skimmed through the reference material in her mind.

Tudhaliya's supposed to reign for another thirty years-that was well attested. Kurunta, Kurunta… wait, that was one of Tudhaliya's supporters-there was that treaty between them. Wait a minute. Tarhuntassa is southwest of Hattusas, about where Konya would be in Turkey in the twentieth, that's nearer to the coast and the Greeks, and by now Walker must have made some substantial waves in that area, upsetting trade patterns if nothing else, maybe mixing in the politics, so-

"Oh, shit" she muttered.

They'd known that eventually events here would stop following the history books. Not only deliberate interventions, but butterfly-wing chaotic stuff; a glass jug would get traded hand to hand from Denmark to Poland and someone wouldn't be born because Dad was swilling mead out of his new possession instead of doing the reproductive thing at the precise scheduled moment. It looked like that had happened here even if Walker hadn't deliberately set out to split the Hittite realm. So now they'd lost another edge-the books were vague and full of gaps this far back, and sometimes just plain wrong, but they'd been a great help nonetheless.

With a wrenching effort she pulled her mind back to the matters at hand. I'll tell Ian when he's through with King Shuriash for today, and we'll go over it. Meanwhile, the northwest is more important than ever.

"Thank you," she went on. "That's very important news. And we'd like your opinions on what to do about your homeland."

"Mitanni?" Raupasha said. "Will the king of Kar-Duniash, your ally, not add it to his domains along with the rest of Asshur's realm?"

"Well, yes, but it's a matter of how. Garrisoning Assyria will be hard enough, even with our help. The Naharim, the Rivers, it's further away but right on the road to the Hittites. We need to get it pacified, and ideally we'd like it to contribute troops and supplies for the war against Walker…"

Raupasha brightened. "You ask me, a girl?" she said.

"Raupasha, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a girl," Doreen said. "We… People of the Eagle don't think that a woman is necessarily less than a man. And you are of the old Mitannian royal family."

"A fallen house, and myself a fugitive in hiding all my life."

"But you must have had contacts-men who visited your foster father."

A long silence. Then: "I owe you a great debt. What I know, I will tell. Some did visit; not every mariannu family was slain or deported by the Assyrians-and of those who were led away captive to Asshur, some will wish to return."

"Good," Doreen said. "We have a saying: 'Knowledge is power.' "

"Ludlul bel nemeqi."

The voice of the priest rose in a chant, as the ashipu prepared his powders and bits of bone. Clemens found himself translating automatically:

Let me praise the Lord of Wisdom

For a demon has put on my body for a garment;

Like a net, sleep has swooped down upon me.

My eyes are open but do not see;

My ears are open but do not hear;

Numbness has overcome my entire body…

The Islander doctor grimaced at the thick smell of the Babylonian equivalent of hospital tents, the stink of the liquid feces that soaked the ground under most of the men lying in rows in the scanty shade. Flies buzzed, clustering thickly on the filth, and on eyes and mouths. And carrying the bacteria, whatever it is, to the food and water of everyone else. Stretcher bearers carried bodies away, ragged men willing to incur the pollution of touching a corpse for the sake of a bowl of barley gruel. The priest continued his chant: