1.2
The palace of King Sraddah was, without any doubt, the finest building Manuah had ever seen, which made it most likely the finest in the history of the world. It might be only half as tall as the Tower of Stars, and surrounded closely by lesser buildings that blocked the view of it, but it was covered in ornate carvings shod in gold and coppergreen leaf, and painted with red ochre and white lime. It was a battlefield of color; not only images, but also words, for those few who could interpret them. Across almost two hundred years, each generation of the royal family had added more to the display, until hardly a spot remained smooth and colorless. It was a lot to take in, and a few quick glances would hardly even convey the shape of the building, much less the carvings on it! But if one cared to spend a day studying the outer walls (which Manuah had, in his youth), they told the story of Sraddah’s ancestor Kagresh, who had united all the towns along the banks of the great river, and merged several of them to form The City. A lot of blood had been shed in the process, and many grudges were formed whose echoes lingered even today. And yet, the survivors had outnumbered the dead, and had eventually come to agree that their lives were better, and that swearing allegiance to a king and being part of his Kingdom was not such a bad thing after all.
The entrance was a door in two parts, made of great wooden planks held together with copper bands, and guarded by three soldiers dressed in leather and wooden armor, almost as if they were giant toys. But these were hard men who had fought their share of battles, and had accepted this quieter job as a reward for service. Their spears were tipped and shod with copper, and they carried nasty-looking obsidian knives. They were not to be trifled with.
One of them held a big gray dog on a leash, and the dog eyed Manuah suspiciously, as if deciding where to bite him if things went ugly. Also not to be trifled with.
Fortunately, Manuah had made an appointment, and was expected, and his golden walking stick and crimson robe and broad-brimmed sailor’s hat left little doubt as to his identity. “Harbormaster” was a secular hereditary title, and “Counter of Tides” was nominally a religious one, although the priestly trappings had fallen away from it long ago. “Lord Cousin” was one he held but never used, because it sounded pompous down on the docks, but in any case, Manuah carried enough royal blood that he was not to be trifled with either.
“Good morning,” he said to the guards, speaking familiarly, as though they were his own workmen.
“Harbormaster,” one of them acknowledged.
“I’m here to speak with my cousin,” he told them, and this was a little pompous, because he was such a distant cousin that he was not entirely sure of the lineage path himself. But still, the guards nodded and bowed and got out of his way.
“Beautiful weather,” one of them said to him as he passed, and if they had been his workmen (or especially his sailors) this would have been the start of a conversation about winds and tides and the movement of high clouds. But these were soldiers, and “weather” to them was only a question of rain or sunshine on their backs, so he simply Mm-hmm’ed his agreement and moved on into the palace.
The interior courtyards were no less beautiful than the outer walls, though in a different way. Here, ferns and cedar trees grew, and elaborate carpets were draped along the inner walls, and so many linen-robed servants were scurrying around that Manuah wondered (not for the first time) what tasks could possibly keep them all busy all day. But the question was partially answered when three of them approached him: one woman with a clay mug of water, one with a small plate bearing an even smaller piece of oiled and salted bread, and one young man with a writing board and charcoal pencil.
“Good morning to you, Lord Cousin Harbormaster,” this one said. “May I offer you refreshment?”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I broke my fast at home.”
“Yes, of course,” the scribe said quickly. “I meant no offense.”
“None taken,” Manuah assured him.
The two of them tapped hands. Then, even more delicately, the scribe asked, “May I offer to wash your feet and armpits before your audience with His Majesty?”
Manuah laughed. “No, thank you. My wife has made quite sure I’m presentable, and I haven’t stepped in anything on the way over here.”
“Of course, Lord Cousin Harbormaster. I’m ashamed to ask the question at all.”
“We all have our jobs to do.”
“As you say.”
The two women melted away on some other business, while the scribe led Manuah into the sanctum, down a series of dim corridors, and into the court chamber where King Sraddah stood, holding a slip of thin papyrus up to the unshuttered window, trying to hold it steady against the light breeze.
In a corner, the young Prince Raddiah sat, playing with little tin soldiers. Nearly a hand taller than the last time Manuah had seen him, he was dressed in a finely embroidered, red-and-yellow byssa-cloth robe that was clearly too small for him, but just as clearly too expensive to discard. He looked up for a moment, saw it was only his boring Uncle Manuah, and looked disappointed.
“Hello, Uncle,” he said, and turned back to what he was doing. Then, more softly: “Die, Surapp dogs! See what comes of defying me.”
“Your Majesty,” the scribe said to the king, “may I announce your Lord Cousin Manuah Hasis, Harbormaster of The City and Counter of Tides.”
“You may,” the king said, without looking up. He wore a thin band of gold around his head, and smelled of perfume and incense and sweat. “Damn it. One of my generals has drawn a picture of the entire Kingdom here, but I can’t seem to make sense of it. There’s a trick to it, like reading I suppose.”
He showed it to Manuah, who said, “Yes, the sailors sometimes draw pictures like that as well. Though not on papyrus, of course.” Essentially, boats were made of papyrus—tough reeds of it flattened and woven and bundled, and then flattened again, and curled up at the edges and ends, and decked with cedar planks. And then, in the case of Manuah’s own boats, caulked at the bottom with tree rosin and oil sands. But if a sailor were ever holding a sheet of papyrus, it was generally saturated with tallow, and he was about to weave it into the hull to repair a minor leak. (Major ones required drydocking and, in Manuah’s very strong opinion, a high-grade asphalt pour.)
“Hmm,” the King said, not finding the comment amusing. “Well, I have an invasion to plan, somewhere on this little picture. Can you see Surapp Great Town on here? Damnation and rot, I wonder if my eyes are bad. But how could they be? I never have trouble seeing things far away. Wouldn’t be much of a general if I did.
“In any case, the Surapp plague me. Building a city of their own! The stone there is of poor quality, but for two generations they’ve been quarrying granite in the Back Hills, and carrying the blocks down the Other River on boats. Two generations without a break! Which shows a lot of initiative, I think, but we can hardly allow it. Not unless Kingdom absorbs the Surapp.” He smiled at the idea. “Then we’ll have two cities: one on the east of the Great River, and one on the west of the Other River. That seems acceptable, yes? There’s a symmetry to it, and it might encourage landless sons to colonize the coastlands in between. And then the industrious Surapp will serve me instead of blistering my bottom.”
That idea seemed to please him. He spent several seconds just standing there, contemplating it. Then troubling thoughts seemed to leak in; the ease left his face. “We’d have to do something about their language, don’t you think? I never could understand those bastards.”
“It’s not so hard,” Manuah said, perhaps a bit too hurriedly. Indeed, the speech of Kingdom was more similar to the Surapp language than the faces of Manuah’s sons were to one another. Two weeks’ sail to the west, where the Grand Sea narrowed and finally ended, there was a collection of towns along a river of their own, and their speech was even farther removed—more a cousin than a brother to The Language. And another quite different cousin dwelt two weeks’ sail to the southeast, on a river of their own, and although Manuah had never been farther east than that, he’d heard tales of even more distant lands, with even stranger speech. If Sraddah had to learn one of those, he might have something to complain about. For that matter, if one traveled fifteen days up the Great River, past Shifpar and Erituak, there were orchard keepers and wildmen who spoke a completely different language that seemed to bear no relation whatsoever. By comparison, the Surapp tongue was nothing at all. “It’s mostly a matter of inflection.”
“But why should I learn their language? Does it benefit me? Are they delivering it to me as tribute? No, if they’re to join our Kingdom then we must all speak the same. The conqueror decides, but everyone reaps the benefit. You see? That’s how to think big! One day, won’t my great-great-grandchildren rule the entire Earth?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Sire.” Manuah said. He tried to stay out of politics as much as possible, but he had been to Surapp Great Town many times—it was less than two days’ travel!—and there were men and women there he counted as friends. If Sraddah sent his soldiers to take the place, he hoped the Surapp would surrender without too much of a fight. If they resisted, Sraddah would simply kill them all and smash their buildings, which did not seem to be in anyone’s best interest. Still, it seemed better than the wars of extermination and retreat that the wildmen were perpetually fighting. Nobody ever really won that sort of war, and half the people didn’t even survive it, whereas when Sraddah was your enemy, you could win best by capitulating utterly.
“No,” the king said absently, “I don’t suppose you would. That’s probably why my ancestors stomped the crap out of yours, ah?”
“I wouldn’t know that either,” Manuah said, now with some irritation. Neither would you, Sire. Sraddah’s ancestors had been larger and stronger, but Manuah’s were cleverer, and he imagined they simply hadn’t seen any point in battling that way. Fine, let them rule us. We’ll just keep getting wealthy.
“Well,” Sraddah said, putting the slip of paper down on his conference table and weighing it down with a copper knife. “What brings you here today, Manuah? Your aide said it was important.”
“Indeed, yes, it is. I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I’m increasingly concerned: the water level is rising in the harbor, and the ocean, and the rivers. Since the time of our grandfathers, the level has risen the height of a house. If it should rise that much again during our lifetimes, it would begin to enter The City proper. Since we live on a flat plain, Sire, with water on three sides, this is not a good situation.”
“Good for boats, I should think.” Sraddah looked thoughtful for just a moment, before snapping to a different topic: “Speaking of which, how many boats do you have? You, personally.”
“Six. We’re building the seventh one now.”
“Wow. That’s impressive, Harbormaster. Has any man ever owned more?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“And how many soldiers could each of them carry?”
“And still have room for crew? I don’t know, maybe as many as twelve. If the crew were soldiers, and there was no cargo, then perhaps two twelves at the very most. But Your Majesty—”
“So seven twelves would be…what?”
“A little over sixty, Sire,” the scribe piped up, making marks on his plank with the charcoal pencil. “And seven two-twelves would be almost three sixties.”
* * *
And here Harv Leonel felt a stab of smugness, because he’d become more and more concerned about just who these people were. They seemed to know nothing of any organized civilizations before them, which (if true) would make them, what, older than the Sumerians? Which had to be nonsense, because Kingdom, despite being smaller than Sumer, seemed quite sophisticated. But here, finally, were some things they did badly: mathematics, writing, and cartography. He’d seen their writing on the outer walls, and he saw it on the plank now, and through Manuah Hasis’ eyes and mind he could understand some of what was written there. It wasn’t much; just numbers and a few dozen pictographic nouns, and the numbers greater than twelve were all unwieldy multiples of sixty. These people didn’t really seem to know what they were doing in this area, and indeed, although Harv was no expert, this mishmash didn’t look like any other written language he’d ever seen. It looked like something a team of six-year-olds might devise.
But what did that mean? When he put his mind to the other things that were missing here, he realized he hadn’t seen any bronze, any metals at all other than copper and gold and tin. And in ancient times these were native materials on the surface of the Earth; they didn’t require any knowledge of mining or metallurgy—just heat and stone hammers. And now that he thought of it, he also hadn’t seen horses or donkeys or carts, or wheels of any sort. But that would mean…that would mean this was a Neolithic site—a stone age site—at least eight thousand years in the past. And yet these were hardly cave men!
He felt a moment of panic, as he remembered this wasn’t supposed to be happening. He was only writing patterns into his hippocampus, like graffiti on a wall. Right? But then he was gone again, before he could think of an answer.
* * *
“Right,” the king said, “Well, I’ve said it before: boats are of no military value. If the greatest boatman in all of Kingdom can only carry three sixties of troops, then how am I to transport half a sixty of sixties and invade the Surapp? How many boats would I need?”
He looked pointedly at the scribe, who gulped and said, “Uh, at least twelve and sixty of them, I think.”
Sraddah nodded at that. “Ridiculous, yes, more than the entire Kingdom possesses. You see? Boats are for fishing, and transporting valuable goods.”
“Sire,” Manuah interrupted, “I’m here to talk about the rising waters. It might be good for boats, yes, but bad for farms and buildings. And people.”
“Oh, I see,” the king said, either thoughtfully or dismissively. “You’re talking about a possible flood. And you’re certain of this rising water, yes? Not just wasting my time?” He thought for another moment and then said, “What would you have me do about the forces of nature? Increase sacrifices? You should talk to your brother about that, I think.”
Manuah pointed in the direction of the harbor, and sculpted imaginary structures there with his hands. “I had in mind something a bit more tangible, Sire. We can make the seawalls higher, and build new ones between the barrier islands out beyond the harbor. Outside the shipping lanes, of course.”
“And why would we do that? Do you know how much a block of stone costs? As much as a goat, and you’d need a lot of them for a project like that.”
“Yes. More blocks than are already there. I’ve counted over sixty sixties of blocks.”
“Well. That would be a lot, my cousin. And water has a way of sneaking around, doesn’t it?”
“It does. But waves can be broken, and storm surges deflected. I’ve seen some terrible storms, and if one were to hit us directly…Think of the water as an invading army, and better walls as a way of keeping The City safe from it.”
“Hmm,” the king said, thinking that over.
“Perhaps if you conquer the Surapp, you could demand stone blocks from them as tribute.”
“Blocks? Are you serious?”
“Yes, and in the meantime, we’ll cut our own. We can use cheap stone; it doesn’t have to look pretty.”
To prod him further, and because the king was an avid fowler, Manuah said, “When a duck swims on the water, it can’t escape easily. You can kill it with a stone before it takes flight. Sire, we are like swimming ducks here, with our asses in the air.”
“Hmm,” Sraddah said, even more thoughtfully. But then the spell was broken and he said, “You’ve given me much to think about, but I have a real invasion to plan. Come to me another time.”
Manuah felt a stab of frustration. “Seriously? What other time? Cousin, when are you not busy with military affairs?”
Sraddah clucked, as to a child. “Military affairs are what builds this country. My ancestors didn’t worry about the harbor, they gave that job to your ancestors. So perhaps you should be grateful to be granted an audience at all.”
Manuah could feel his blood rising. The king was not a bad man, nor even (on most issues as far as Manuah could tell) a bad king. Taxes had not risen during his reign, and despite his focus on military affairs, the Kingdom was mostly a peaceful place. But Gods, it was like he was deaf sometimes.
Sighing, Sraddah looked Manuah over and said, “Cousin, if there’s one thing this crown has taught me, it’s that our resources are finite. How many goats do you think The City can spare to feed the stonemasons? How many do you think we can steal away from the river towns, or the herdsmen up in the hills? Right now, our citizens are feeding the masons, one block at a time, to build their houses and garden walls, and that’s a good thing. Everyone is kept busy and happy.”
“Right up until they drown.”
Sraddah laughed at that. “Drowning, is it? I have great respect for you, Harbormaster, and I promise that in two years’ time you may remind me of this conversation, and we’ll revisit the issue. The Surapp will be pacified, the Kingdom will be greater, and I will have more time and more resources. Until then, please do what you can with the resources you have, and in two years’ time you may remind me. Fair enough?”
And Manuah could see that from Sraddah’s point of view, that must seem like a very reasonable solution indeed. While neither acknowledging nor denying the existence of the problem, he had at least acknowledged the existence of Manuah, and delegated some vague authorizations to him. He probably thought he’d never hear about it again.
“May the next month be kind,” Manuah said, resignedly. He looked again at the little prince, playing with his tin soldiers, forming quiet screams every now and then as one of them met some grisly imagined end, and it occurred to Manuah that this was a good sign, that the kid had an imagination of any sort. When Manuah had been brought here to the palace as a child, on occasions when his father had business here, Sraddah had liked to play as well, but with him it was always wooden knives, or willow spears and wicker shields, or bows and blunted darts. Or simply fistfights; Manuah had left more than once with a black eye and sore balls, or cuts and bruises across his knuckles and knees, inflicted by a triumphant prince two years his junior. In any case Sraddah had never seemed interested in using his mind. The fact that he was such a capable general owed, Manuah supposed, to the fact that his enemies’ minds were even lazier, and that their hearts quailed at the ferocity of the king’s attacks, and the unwavering loyalty (and thus, ferocity) of his troops. So much easier to surrender and accept a just peace! But still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a thinker on the kingschair someday.
“Keep after it, Raddiah,” he told the prince. “You’ve got them nearly trapped now.”
And with that, he accepted his dismissal, bowed to the king, and allowed himself to be escorted off the palace grounds.