Teki ni naru, Musashi had called it: to become the enemy.

They were moving together in a dance, the sword an extension of her back and shoulders, feet at right angles, weight centered over her chi. She let the rhythm of the combat form in her mind, a gestalt that made their interaction a single construct…

Now.

Alston sensed the rhythm of the attack and knew where the spearhead would come. Bang of steel on wood, and they were past each other. The sword flicking, reversing, stabbing-an iado move, to strike behind without turning. Soft, somehow thick sensation as the slanted-chisel point met skin. Sword looping up into the ready position as she turned, cut coming down with the stamping fall of her left foot.

"Dissaaaa! "

Crouched in the follow-through, blade out and level with the ground, she came back to herself. Seconds only had passed; Swindapa was lowering her pistol, the firefight was dying-

"We surrender!" someone shouted from the Tartessian position. "Please!"

Marian Alston looked down at the broken body of the tribesman, suddenly conscious of an enormous sadness. The face was contorted, the light painting it ghastly red as blood flowed from his mouth, but the features were still kin to hers-the features of the Dahomey, the Mandinka, the Yoruba, of tribes yet unborn in the tides of time. Of an ancestor, perhaps.

Strong, long-fingered hands clawed into the forest duff as the man tried to form words. A language she did not know, and they were gurgled through blood. Heels drummed for an instant, and he died in the usual human squalor.

Alston turned and shouted toward the Tartessians: "Throw down your weapons! Come forward with your hands up!"

Swindapa echoed it in their own language. When they obeyed, Marian shouted in her turn, for a corpsman. The medic came at a run, kneeling by the Fiernan and taking out his kit.

Swindapa winced and raised herself on her elbows. "Fast… he was so fast, I couldn't fire."

Alston knelt for a second to close the staring eyes. "Very fast," she said, with a wry quirk of her full lips. "But that's a race we all lose, in the end."

"You make the bluff," Alantethol said, despite the rough hemp of the noose about his neck and the hangman's knot under his ear. "Your law forbids you to torture prisoners of war. I will tell nothing you."

The eighty surviving Tartessians-less the wounded too injured to stand-stood sullen under the Islander guns in the waist of the ship. Alantethol and his officers stood on chairs, under the gaff of the Chamberlain's mizzenmast. The lines from the nooses ran up over that, through beckets, and down to be secured to stanchions and belaying pins along the port rail. The ship rocked slightly at her moorings, and Alston could see eyes widening and tongues moistening lips as the men shifted to keep themselves balanced. That wasn't easy, with their hands tied behind their backs.

Marian Alston smiled-at least that was technically the name for her expression. Swindapa sat in a folding chair behind her, one leg thickly bandaged. The corpsman said it would heal within a month or two, with no loss of function. Two of the Islander crew were dead, and three more unlikely to live. That the Tartessians had suffered more altered Alston's determination not at all.

"You're right," she said, looking up at the sweat-slick face of the Tartessian captain, catching a whiff of the rankness of it mixed with the olive-oil-and-garlic odor of his body.

He was in fear of his life, but the aquiline features were set, the little gold-bound chinbeard jutting with the determination that firmed his mouth.

Alston set her hands on her hips and went on: "The thing is, Tartessos and the Republic are at peace. We have a treaty. You broke it, of your own will. So you're not prisoners. You're pirates. And we don't torture pirates, either. We hang them, 'dapa, repeat that in Tartessian, would you?"

The Fiernan sighed and did; her tone was regretful, but no less determined than her partner's.

Alantethol lifted his chin toward the east, where the first hint of dawn was paling the stars, lips moving in a silent prayer.

Alston went on: "On the other hand, if any of you were to tell me what arrangements you had with your ships, signals, and so forth, I'd pardon them… and give them sanctuary in Nantucket and a thousand dollars in gold. Oh, and I'd spare the others, too; I have the authority to do that. So, who'll save his life, and his friends, and be a rich man?"

Alantethol's mouth worked again; she stepped aside smartly to avoid the gobbet of spit. It arched past her to land on the scrubbed boards with a tiny splat. Considering what the human body did when it was strangled, the deck might well be a lot messier before long.

The translation took a few moments; Tartessian was a less compact and economical language than English. Choppier than Fiernan, too, she thought absently, eyes on the faces of the men standing with the nooses around their necks.

Brave man, she thought, looking at their commander. Sadistic bastard-the San had made clear how the Tartessians had abused their hospitality, and needlessly, too, when you considered their eagerness to please a guest-but a brave sadistic bastard. She wasn't all that impressed; physical courage was not a rare commodity, particularly not here in the Bronze Age, and particularly not among those picked for a voyage of exploration by as good a judge of character as Isketerol of Tartessos.

On the other hand, human beings were variable. Brave one day and timid the next; or a lion in the face of storm or battle but unable to contemplate the slow, choking death that awaited them. Some of the other Tartessian officers tried to spit at her as well as she walked down the line; some were standing with their eyes closed. One, younger than the rest, was silently weeping.

And one had a spreading stain on his tunic below the crotch. She caught the sharp ammonia stink of urine as she walked over and put one boot on the stool he was standing on.

"You first," she said, rocking it slightly. Her Tartessian was good enough for that. "Good-bye, pirate."

The man's lips opened just as the third leg of the stool came off the deck. He began screaming words through thick sobs; several of the others were shouting as well-curses and threats, she thought, directed at the man who'd talked.

"Marian!" Swindapa said quickly. "Two red rockets at dawn- they'll be standing off the coast. That's the signal for them to come in, that we've been captured."

And raped and murdered, most of us, Marian thought, her face a basalt mask as she let the leg of the stool thump back to the deck.

"Get them down," she said to the waiting master-at-arms. "Below, in irons-except for that one."

Alantethol seemed as much startled as furious as he was bundled past her. Alston sighed as she felt the tension ease out of her neck.

"Why is it," she said softly, "that cruel bastards like that think they have a monopoly on ruthlessness?"

"I don't know," Swindapa said. "I don't like to kill, myself. There are many things that I don't like but that are necessary anyway. Moon Woman orders the stars so." After a moment: "How many would you have hung?"

"All of them," Marian said, her voice as flat as her eyes. "And then started on the crew."

"Who's Mr. Me-Heap-Big-Chief-Gottum-Chicken-On-My-Hat?" Alice asked. "Honestly, the people you bring home to dinner sometimes, Will."

William Walker hid his smile. The northern chieftain did look a little absurd, in his high, conical helmet with a wood-and-boiled-leather raven on it; the way the wings flapped when he moved didn't help, either.

Hong came stepping daintily down the middle of the brick pathway; the horses in the stalls on either side raised their heads and snorted a little, as if they could smell the blood and madness in her eyes. Her riding crop tapped against her high, glossy boots and kid-skin jodhpurs as she looked the visiting barbarian up and down.