“Great God Almighty,” Benton murmured. He didn’t want to believe such an outlandish thing, but Ellsworth and the fort were gone, ancient ruins rested where nothing had been before, and this city didn’t belong to any history of which he had ever heard. Nor did Freya belong in the North America he knew, a woman wearing armor, leading her people and wielding a sword in battle, as if Joan of Arc had lived in Kansas of all places. How could such a thing have happened though? His mind seized on the memory of the moment after which nothing but the land had been familiar, and the land itself had undergone tiny changes. “That lightning during the storm. For an instant it felt as if it were tearing the world apart. Maybe it did. If you’re right, lieutenant, what happened to the Indians?”
“Probably the sort of thing that happened to the first inhabitants of places like England in our history, sir. They were either wiped out by waves of invaders or assimilated, with maybe a few survivors pushed into areas no one else wanted.”
The idea was impossible. But so was this city. So were these people. He wasn’t an ignorant man. How could such a place exist anywhere on Earth and he not have heard of it? If it did, why did the land so closely resemble the land he knew, and how had the company of cavalry been transported there instantly without its knowledge?
Lieutenant Garret’s theory was impossible, but explained what they had found here. Every other explanation required ignoring the evidence of their senses.
Freya had been watching Benton and Garret talk, and now gestured to the map, and then to Benton, clearly asking him to show where he was from.
That should have been an easy enough question to answer, but as Benton gazed at the map he realized every possible answer had problems. Strictly speaking, if Lieutenant Garret was right, then he and his cavalry company weren’t “from” anywhere which existed in this world.
This city was near where Fort Harker had stood. That answer was probably as good as any other. So Benton pointed to the city.
Freya shook her head patiently, pointing to herself and then the city symbol, then to Benton, Garret, and Tyndall before waving her hand over the map again with a questioning look.
Benton pointed to the city once more, firmly, keeping his eyes on her.
She looked annoyed, then something seemed to dawn on her and Freya spoke rapidly to the other Asterans. The two men, Agani and Costoni, spoke back just as fast, their faces lighting with enthusiasm.
Freya pointed to herself and tapped her city’s symbol again, nodding anxiously to Benton. He tapped himself and then the same symbol as well, nodding resolutely in return. With a dazzling smile, Freya drew her sword and raised it overhead, shouting so loudly it echoed through the room. The other Asterans did the same, and outside Benton could hear the cries being repeated, followed by prolonged cheering from the crowds. Belisa turned to Sergeant Tyndall, hugged him, then planted a kiss on his mouth while Tyndall looked startled. The two Asteran men had grabbed Lieutenant Garret and were almost shaking him as they smiled and spoke quickly and incomprehensibly. Sheathing her sword, Freya stepped close to Benton, her eyes shining, reaching one hand to seize his upper arm in a comradely grip and squeeze so hard it hurt. “Achates! Cronun t’achates!”
“Cap’n?” Sergeant Tyndall asked. “What did you just tell ‘em?”
“I’m not sure, sergeant.”
“Whatever it was, it sure made ‘em happy.”
#
It took several days before Lieutenant Garret had learned enough of the Asterans' language, and they had learned enough English, to be able to provide the answer. “We’ve been asked to a meeting, sir, to formalize our alliance with the city state of Astera.”
Benton gave Garret a questioning look. “Our alliance? Did you promise them something?”
“No, sir. You did, sir. As best I can tell, these people think we’re a wandering tribe of sorts, warriors who’ve been kicked out of our own lands for reasons they’re too polite to ask about. When Odwan Freya asked where you were from and you kept pointing to this city on the map, they decided that meant we had decided to settle here, to join forces with them.”
No wonder the Asterans had been so happy. From what little they’d been able to learn so far, the cavalry company was like nothing in this world. Benton looked out across the parade ground. “That wasn’t what I meant, lieutenant, but maybe that’s not a bad idea.”
Garret nodded unhappily. “We don’t seem to have anywhere else to go.”
“No. Here we have shelter, food, walls to protect us, and civilized people who need us.” He blew out a long breath. “Damn. Part of me says we should ride until we reach the east coast if necessary, confirm with our own eyes that Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth and St. Louis and Chicago and Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. aren’t there any more and never were there. But another part of me already knows the answer. This is the area around Ellsworth. We couldn’t mistake the terrain. But there’s never been an Ellsworth here, never been a Fort Harker. Instead there’s sandstone quarries and salt mines dating back a thousand years.”
The lieutenant shook his head this time, his eyes haunted by worry. “I’ve been learning everything I can, captain, and I still haven’t found anything the least bit familiar in the history of this place.”
“Me, neither.” There’d been assorted city-states over the last thousand years, empires rising and falling apart, the latest such an empire which had its capital where San Francisco should be and had covered most of the land between the west coast up to about where the Oregon Territory lay, south into Mexico, and as far east as the Mississippi. But that empire, which had built the watch towers, had slowly disintegrated over the course of the last century, leaving city states squabbling over the remnants. “I can’t find out much about Europe, and they barely seem to know anything about Africa.”
“Yes, sir. They don’t know much about either place. I’d wager there are settlements from Europe on the east coast, but these people don’t have much knowledge of what’s east of the Appalachians.” Garret looked around as if evaluating the city again. “The technology here is a millennium behind ours, captain. No gunpowder, no steam power, no printing presses. They seem just as intelligent as we are, I swear they’re learning our language faster than we’re learning theirs, so maybe people just got started later here somehow.”
“Or they didn’t advance as fast for other reasons.” He recalled that the stirrup had come into the Roman Empire along with some of those barbarian invaders from the east. How many innovations, how much progress, had been because of those migrations all dead-ending in Europe? If some of them had gone east instead, would progress have been slower everywhere? “Or maybe a combination of those things. There doesn’t appear to be any way home, though.”
“No, sir.” Garret squinted at the city around them. “We’re actually already there, it’s just not the same there.”
“Corporal Fuller is impressed by the local blacksmiths.”
“What about ammunition, captain?”
“It turns out Private Merrick worked in a powder mill as a boy. He even remembers the right proportions for the ingredients. These people have a lot of livestock so getting saltpeter won’t be a problem, and charcoal is easy enough to come by. We just have to explain what sulfur is and see if the locals can provide that. Our saddlemaker is busy showing the Asterans how to make stirrups. We’ll have to see how long we can keep the advantages of stirrups and gunpowder confined to Astera.”
Lieutenant Garret looked impressed and concerned. “You seem to have thought out what we need to do, to stay here a long time.”
“It’s my job to think things out, lieutenant.” Benton sighed. “And we both have to assume that we’re going to be here quite a while. A few of the men were married. I still haven’t worked out how to tell them we’re on permanent campaign.”
“Maybe we’ll be like Odysseus, sir, and have some strange adventures but make it home eventually.”
“Maybe.”
#
The negotiations were hard, rendered difficult both by the still limited language both sides shared and by the Asterans’ apparent insistence on driving what they thought a fair bargain. At one point, as Garret and Costoni spent an extended conversation trying to figure out what each other meant, Benton saw Odwan Freya giving him a hard look and comprehended that he had been gazing at her for a while without realizing it.
Now Freya said some things, and Costoni said some things, and Garret went back and forth with them for a while before turning a worried glance on Benton. “Captain, I’m pretty certain that they’re insisting that Odwan Freya is not part of the deal.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Ancient treaties were often sealed by marriages or, uh, other arrangements, sir.”
Benton’s reaction must have showed, because the Asterans seemed to lose some of their tense watchfulness. “Tell her - No, I have to say this directly to her. Odwan Freya, please accept my apologies for any implied inappropriate interest on my part. I would never…make your person a part of any agreement. You are the leader of these people and a free woman, and I would not so insult you as to barter for you. My country recently fought a terrible war, one which only ended five years ago, and in which many thousands of men died in order to establish the principle that no human being should ever belong to another, ever be bought or sold or treated as property. I am sworn to uphold those principles in my professional duties, and I personally believe deeply in them.”
He had no idea how much of that Odwan Freya and the other Asterans had understood, but enough seemed to have gotten across. Freya nodded to him, then surprised Benton by rendering him a passable imitation of a regulation salute. Benton returned the gesture, knowing neither of them had made it in a subservient way, but as mutual gestures of respect among equals.
#
The people here did not campaign in the cold season, so the company settled in to wait out the frigid fury of the plains winter in a degree of comfort unheard of for them. The men remained baffled as to where they were, but content to be living in comparative luxury among a citizenry who almost worshiped them. Benton continued to apply himself to learning the Asterans’ language, but found that just as Garret had said the Asterans seemed more adept at learning English. Aside from getting home, the security situation concerned Benton the most, so he questioned Freya about it as her grasp of his language improved.
“The army that was attacking Astera, the Wikosans.” Wikosa occupied roughly the same location as Kansas City had in Benton’s world. “Do you know why they attacked us without talking first?”
“Bad people, Wikosans,” Freya responded.
“But why did they assume we were enemies? Why did they try to ride us down?”
Freya seemed to think about the question this time before answering. “You get off horse. All walk, make long, thin line. Not many of you. They think, ride over you. Easy. Then bwam, bwam! Smoke and fire, like demons.”
Of course. Like the British infantry square, troops armed with pikes or spears would have had to be tightly packed, shoulder to shoulder, in order to defend against a mounted charge. Modern firearms changed that, but the hostile horsemen hadn’t known of such weapons. To them the thin line of dismounted cavalry must have looked extremely vulnerable.
The more they learned about Astera the more Benton realized that whichever fate had led them here had at least sent them to a people deserving of rescue. Astera had grown large and fairly well-off during the period when the last empire kept the peace on the plains. Trade had flowed along the road running east and west, and there had been major routes going north and south accessible through Wikosa. The surrounding area had boasted numerous farms and fields with a variety of livestock. But since the collapse of the empire Astera had suffered from the loss of trade and the unstable security outside its walls. Nonetheless, the city had remained a bastion of learning, order and civilization in a region where such things had become all too rare.
The Wikosans, on the other hand, had tried to maintain their city’s wealth by plundering surrounding regions, something which had worked in the short term but now required them to range farther and farther afield since the communities near them had been looted dry.
“Cap’n, sir?” Sergeant Tyndall asked awkwardly a few weeks after their arrival. “We got a situation that needs handling. Private Murphy keeps asking me when we’re going to hold church services.”
He should have realized the troopers of Irish descent would worry about that more than the others. “Have you found any Catholic priests, sergeant?”
“No, sir. What do I tell Murphy and the others?”
“Let me talk to the Odwan, first.” He wasn’t surprised to learn from Freya that the Catholic church didn’t exist as such in this world, or at least in this part of this world, but on the other hand the Asterans had no objection to others practicing their own beliefs as long as such beliefs didn’t involve human sacrifice. Benton informed his troopers that they could hold services as they wished and that he would officiate at any of them if asked.
The next crisis was one Benton had assumed was inevitable. Sergeant Tyndall escorted Private Bannock into Benton’s quarters, the Asteran “Sergeant” Belisa hovering in the background with an unreadable expression. With a worried glance at Tyndall, Bannock saluted. “Captain, request permission to marry, sir.”
“What happened, sergeant?” Benton asked Tyndall.
“Thanks to Bannock, one of the city girls is in a family way, captain. Belisa tells me the girl’s family is okay with that, as long as Bannock does his duty by her.”
The Asteran nodded soberly. “He binds to her, and her only. Marriage? Yes. Or he pays child-price.”
“What’s child-price?”
“Enough to take care of child until grown.”
Private Bannock owned little but the uniform on his back, and that was technically the property of the U.S. Government. Benton gave Bannock a sharp look. “You plan on marrying her? Do you understand that this will be a legal marriage that you can’t just ride away from?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any idea what I’ll do to you if I find out you have in any way mistreated that girl or acted in any way which might disappoint the people of this city in our company or damage the reputation of the United States Cavalry?”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I’ll treat her right, sir.”
“Permission granted.”
The cavalry company hunkered down within the city as winter hit hard, the winds howling from the north and snow drifts piling up against the walls of the city so deep in places that groups of citizens were sent out to clear them before anyone could use the drifts as ramps to enter the city.
His language skills improving daily, Benton found he could speak more and more naturally with Freya in a strange mix of English and the Asteran tongue. The Odwan had proven skilled at working out any conflicts among the cavalry and the city, mediating in a way which had impressed Benton. Lieutenant Garret, when not helping to supervise the company and its efforts to become self-sufficient, spent a lot of time in the city’s library, puzzling his way through documents some of which were written in languages the Asterans themselves had little command of.
Unfortunately, the more they learned the more obvious it was that one company of cavalry couldn’t miraculously solve all of the problems here. The Asterans had been able to use diplomacy to play different potential foes off of each other. This had limited attacks on the city, but as the experience with the Wikosans had shown even the most Byzantine diplomacy had its limits when it couldn’t be backed up by sufficient power. Astera’s position remained perilous, cut off from trade and with many crops and much livestock lost to the same Wikosans who had attacked the city. It would take time to get a gunpowder mill set up and a steady source of sulfur identified, and until then the cavalry was limited to the ammunition they had brought with them. The idea of equipping the Asterans with rifles manufactured here had been
raised early on, but the city simply didn’t have enough of the right metals and tools to even produce more than a few such weapons on a hand-crafted basis over the winter.
On a crisp day in what Benton thought was January, a once-more awkward Sergeant Tyndall stopped by. “Begging your pardon, cap’n. But there’s something I’ve been wondering. You see, sir, there’s a lot about this place that’s different, and sometimes it takes a while to figure if different is good different or bad different or just something you can make either way.”
Benton nodded solemnly. “I suppose that’s right, sergeant.”
“Well, cap’n, an old Indian once told me that when the great spirit gives you a horse, you don’t go around looking for another dog instead. What I mean is, even if something isn’t the way you always thought things should be, maybe it’s still okay.”
“Is that about Belisa, sergeant?”
Tyndall’s face flushed red. “Yes, sir, cap’n.”
“Do you want to know if it’s okay to get to know her better?”
“I think I already know her real well, cap’n. Not to imply anything improper. No, sir.” The sergeant let exasperation show. “But, cap’n, come campaign season, if the Asteran army goes out, Belisa goes with it. She’s made it real clear that won’t change. At first I was thinking, all right, Tyndall, you’ll rescue the lady if she needs it. But I’ve watched Belisa training and practice fighting an’ all, and now I’m thinking it’s just as likely she might be the one rescuing me. And I don’t know what to think about all that, sir. Her fighting in a battle and being real good at it. She’s a fine top sergeant as well as a fine woman, cap’n. But that ain’t what I was brought up thinking a woman should be.”
It was the sort of question he had thought would have arisen more than it already had. “Sergeant, I’ve already given considerable consideration to just that question. I believe it comes down to this. You appreciate the woman who Belisa is. If she were a different woman, would you think the same of her?”