And the battle was joined. Without a live transmission of the events in the hall, the victors could write their own history. Farren’s men surged forward, frustrated in their attempts to seize me only by the obstacle of his body still on the floor. While he scrambled up from the slick tiles, I turned to the Durean nobles, on whose loyalties our lives now rested, and raised my sword on high.
“The countess lives! Down with the usurper!” And I plunged into the fray without knowing if anyone was behind me.
Farren waved forward his retainers as nearly the entire half of the hall at my back had surged forward, hoarsely shouting for Farren’s blood. The noise and commotion died away as he and I entered into our own world, so completely it was as if we had called up a screen for our own private war.
My opponent fenced conservatively, feeling me out, a pall of caution having at last fallen over his arrogant confidence. Despite the Librarian’s tutelage and my own recent experience, I was at best a decent fencer, whereas Farren fought as if the sword were an extension of his own arm. Only my greater reach was holding him at bay.
Suddenly the crush of bodies enveloped us, and we found ourselves chest-to-chest. He tried to shove me back, but I laughed at his weak attempts. I brought up my other hand, grasping his arm and forcing it backward. I could smell the sweat on his body betraying his fear: I was easily the stronger, and without his blade, his life was measured in moments. He tried to bring his knee up between my legs, but I was too old a hand to be fooled—until he stomped hard on my instep.
I staggered back, off-balance; I couldn’t help it, but instead of pursuing his advantage he stepped back to catch his breath. Even as I gathered my feet under me, I heard a sound from the dais. The Council, still undecided, had yet to enter the fray. They stared as one at Farren, as if astounded to find him still standing, and took that as their sign. An instant later their heavily-armed retainers were pouring in from both ends of the hall, outnumbering the Durean loyalists by far. We were surrounded in seconds.
Farren took his opportunity and ran to the protection of the dais as we were driven back against the wall. I found myself next to Lottric, who batted aside a blade meant for me. I thanked him as soon as my own sword took the man down.
“Look,” I pointed, for the battle had shifted for that moment to the edges of the crowd away from us. “He’s getting away!”
Sure enough, obviously intended to escape while appearing a hero and saving his peers, Farren was leading the Council along a rear wall toward a small nondescript door. I raged helplessly while he approached it—and cheered when the door flew open in his face and Timash and Maire rushed in at the head of the crew of the Dark Lady!
The crowd boiled where the incoming warriors collided with the escaping nobles, but Lottric and I began a chant of Maire’s name, which my crew quickly picked up as they swept the others before them—even if Maire’s name was liberally mixed with cries of “For Thora!” and even my own name. We were still outnumbered, but here and there amongst the pockets of warriors one and another—whether taken by a change of heart or a reassessment the odds—abruptly switched sides, loudly proclaiming the name of their new leader.
As the Council’s guards at the front of the hall turned on the new threat, those at the rear redoubled their efforts and the tide of battle swept us up again. For all that he was Nuum, Lottric fought as valiantly as any man ever by my side, and so often did we save each other’s lives that no calculation could possibly have been kept.
In the midst of it all we slowly became aware of a pounding at the doors. At first the Council guards had held them secure, but the tumult had so turned the crowd that now it was we who were backed against them. They began to splinter and give way. Something from the other side tickled the telepathic sense in my brain. I couldn’t smell it through the doors, but whatever was outside was strongly stimulating my olfactory sense through sheer mental association.
“Tell the men to fall back away from the doors at my command,” I ordered Lottric on my right, and he did so while I passed the word to the men on the left. A few moments later I gained a second’s respite from the fighting and shouted, “Now!”
Without looking to see if our men had obeyed, I spun about and torn the fastenings half off the doors, flinging them open to reveal…
…Skull and the crew of the Eyrie shoulder-to-shoulder with a score of breen!
Their stench washed over the crowd in a wave and every soldier stopped dead in his tracks. With our men spread to the sides, there was no one between the Council forces and the nightmarish man-killers. Men on both sides licked their lips and tightened fists on sword hilts. No matter the odds, the outcome of this battle was now a foregone conclusion—but how many would live to see it?
There was an abrupt commotion at the far end of the hall near the Council dais. Maire strode purposely and without fear straight through the ranks of her enemies, and such was her bearing that not one lifted a hand to stay her, but parted before her like the sea for Moses.
When she reached us, she handed her sword to me, turned to the breen I called Uncle Sam, and embraced one of the fiercest killing machines ever to walk the earth as she would her own father.
At first there was no sound at all. Then a sword clattered to the floor, and the man who owned it, clad in Dure’s own colors though he had fought for the usurper, knelt with his head bowed. Another followed, and another, and then a dozen more and at last the only men standing in the hall were Maire’s own.
The battle was over. We had won.
Chapter 51
Triumph and Tragedy
The sun set over the water that evening no faster, nor slower, than it had always done. Even with the vast majority of the planet now aware of the momentous change engineered (or prevented, depending on your point of view) this morning, pedestrians still hurried along on those individual errands insignificant to the cosmos yet crucial to their own lives. A dynasty had been rescued, but that did not mean bread would walk up to your table.
For all that a woman had embraced a breen in full sight of God and everyone —and the breen had refrained from biting off her head and tearing her to tender pieces—still mothers would chide their children into bed with stories of nasty creatures that ate naughty youngsters.
Farren himself had engineered an escape, along with a handful of his closest allies; how he had done so remained a mystery, but in the excitement of the breens’ arrival, any decent pickpocket could have scooped up half the purses in the hall without fear. Other than this, our victory appeared complete. Even Maire’s father proved further from death’s door than she had feared, once his loyal retainers burst into his quarters. The guards Farren had left with the duke had not heard the news of their master’s defeat, nor were they given a chance to learn it.
A calm had descended over the capital, as follows a huge storm leaving both destruction and survivors in its wake. Most of the Councilors had already taken their leave, and Maire was glad to see the back of them. They had served Farren’s ends, and more likely than not they knew it, but she had no proof, and no one to take it to if she had. In the sight of the world they had sworn her their friendship, and that must be enough.
“We’ve never had a war amongst ourselves,” Maire sighed.
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
She sighed again. I looked sideways at her, still watching the water.
“The world’s changing, Keryl. We haven’t seen a ship from home for almost a century. We don’t know if we ever will. Maybe it’s time we accepted that Thora is going to be our home for good.”
“But you were born here, weren’t you?”
“I just said we hadn’t had a ship in a hundred years,” she snapped in mock offense. “How old do you think I am?” In a more sensible voice she said: “Yes, I was born here. Of a Nuum father and a Thoran mother.”
The idea of mating between the two races forced to the surface a concern I had been at pains to submerge in my mind: Hana Wen. With Far
ren still alive, there loomed large the possibility that he would wreak his revenge upon her. Maire had opined that he would not bother, that she was beneath his notice and far toward the bottom of the list of his concerns, but I could not help but fear for her, the more so since there was absolutely nothing I could do.
“I was born here, too,” I said at length. “But on Earth, not Thora. There were no Nuum, only people. And they were free.” Hardly, but Maire didn’t know that. She jerked as if I had slapped her.
“We have the most equal society on Thora! No one is a slave here!”
“Unless they work for Farren!” I riposted. “Or some other noble…” She hissed as the full meaning of my words hit home. “No one—not Nuum, Thoran, white, black, red, green, or spotted—has the right to keep other human beings under his thumb. Even the breen have rights!”
She advanced on me. “Is that what you’re planning to do, then? Raise an army of breen and Thorans and steal our sky barges and kill us all in our sleep? I’ve learned some things from you, and I thought maybe you’d learned some things about us, too! I thought we—”
Once I had thought what she described was exactly what I planned to do. Now…now I was very confused.
“You thought we—what?” I prompted.
Maire turned her back, muffling her voice. “Never mind.”
We were interrupted by a signal from the door. I ordered it to admit whoever waited outside, and Bantos Han entered—leading Hana Wen! Another man trailed after, but him I hardly noticed.
Hana hugged me with a glad cry, and I held her to me with no less relief. A leviathan weight arose from my shoulders. I held her face and I kissed her—
—and she pushed me backward! Not violently, yet peremptorily, and at the same moment the young man I had all but ignored advanced upon us with an unmistakable stride as old as the first cave-dweller.
“Please, Keryl,” she said, flustered. “There’s something I—”
“No,” I interrupted gently. Bantos Han had laid a restraining hand on the other man’s arm. “I can see for myself.” And I released Hana Wen to the man who had won her.
“This is Conner,” Hana said shyly. “He was one of Farren’s retainers. Now he’s sworn fealty to the duke. He’s taken good care of me.”
Conner was a tall lad, broadly built for a Nuum, and I wondered if he, too, shared a Thoran heritage. I thanked him for his chivalry, and he thanked me for all I had done, “not only for Hana but for all of us.” She held on to him tightly.
I smiled at the girl I had once thought I loved. “It’s all right,” I told her, and it was the truth. “Now that I know you’re going to be all right, I can go home with a clear conscience.”
Her eyes widened. “Really, Keryl? You’re going home?”
“I’m going to try.”
I heard a soft cough behind me and Hana looked past my shoulder.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you weren’t alone.” I kicked myself mentally for my lapse of manners—I’d left Maire standing there without even an introduction!—but before I could remedy my error Hana had walked over and performed that duty for herself. At Maire’s reply I heard her gasp, then saw her bow hastily, but Maire put a quick end to that. They turned away, speaking quietly for a few moments, looking over their shoulders to give us men several suspicious glances which none of us could interpret, before Hana returned to me with a guarded look in her eyes.
“What have you been doing to her?” she demanded in a low voice. I had never heard such reproach in her voice.
My mouth dropped. My throat was constricted. “I—I— What?”
Hana looked deeply into my eyes. I could sense her brother-in-law and Conner shifting uneasily in the background.
“You don’t know, do you? You stand there boasting about your plans to go home—and she knows exactly what you mean, doesn’t she?” I nodded defensively. “In that case,” Hana said bitingly, her voice rising, “she’ll know exactly what I mean when I say: Keryl Clee, you are the most fat-headed man ever to walk this planet! And I mean ever!” I thought for a moment she would slap me, but she just spun around and flounced out. Bantos Han looked from her to me, shrugged, and followed with Conner.
“What was that all about?” I demanded. “What did you tell her?” When Maire did not answer, did not even deign to turn, I stalked around until I was facing her. She didn’t have time to wipe away her tears.
In an instant my world was sundered, my heart sank, and the scales fell from my eyes. God in Heaven, what had I done! I put my arms around Maire and held her. After a few moments I kissed away her tears. I prayed that she could not feel mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. But I have to go back.”
“But you can’t.”
“I must,” I insisted. “Or at least I have to try. When I stepped through the silver door, I left my men open to an ambush. I have to try to save them. I can’t abandon them. Perhaps, then… I can find a way back here.”
“Keryl, your men have been dead for almost a million years. There’s nothing you can do.”
“No! You don’t understand! To you they’ve been dead a million years, but to me it’s only been a few months! And if we can set the machine correctly, I can return to the same time I left! I can save them!”
“No, darling, you don’t understand. Even if you can find a time machine, and even if you can make it work—what about the Council?”
“Time travel is number thirteen on the list of those subjects whose research I am instructed to report to the Nuum.”
“Oh my god.” Everything I knew suddenly collapsed about me as I realized the truth that I had refused to recognize for months, the truth that—along with Hana Wen’s rescue by Conner—rendered everything I had done completely meaningless. If I could locate an operational time machine, the Nuum could find it, too, and with it they would conquer all of history.
Perhaps if Maire destroyed it after I went through? I was grasping at straws, and I dismissed the unworthy thought as soon as it appeared, but Maire caught it as it crossed my face.
She smiled through renewed tears. “If I thought it would work, I’d do it, but the man I love would never trust anyone else to do something that important.”
I nodded unhappily. “Captain MacLean would have agreed with you.”
“Who’s Captain MacLean?”
“An old friend,” I sighed. “A very old friend.”
Maire reached up and pulled my head down. She kissed me until our tears melded together.
“Keryl, I’m sorry you can’t go back.”
“So am I.”
“But I’m glad you’re staying.”
“So am I…” And I kissed again the woman I loved, for the last time. Abruptly she became limp in my arms and our lips parted through no wish of our own. “Maire?”
It was not until I had lowered her gently to the ground that I realized there was another person in the room. He was slightly built, with a high forehead, and brown hair which did not match well at all with his silvery-green tunic and pants. In his hand he held a small silver box.
“Oh, no…” I thought, but the words had no time to escape my lips.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Then he aimed his weapon at me and I knew no more.
Epilogue
The Silver Man was sincere in his apology when I awoke—as were his superiors. Having not expected to wake up at all, I could hardly say that their pleas for understanding caused me further surprise. This is not to say, however, that I was not astonished—or that I accepted their protestations at face value. In truth, they were forced to restrain me for as long as it took to tell me what had happened.
As it developed, I had not been captured by the same men who had sought my extinction, but rather their descendants, living 130 years later. In the intervening span, they had developed methods other than execution of dealing with rogue time travelers. While glad of their conversion, I questioned (to put i
t mildly) why they had gone to all the trouble to retrieve me at all.
It was a small blow to my ego when they said that, under other circumstances, they would not have bothered; I was to them a footnote in history. And as no one had ever gone forward as far as I, they had had a devil of a time figuring out how to follow. But the battle from which I disappeared was a crucial point in the war. Unless I returned, my men would be wiped out—including a Very Important Person whom they were scrupulously careful not to name. To this day I don’t know who it was.
I was kept in their compound/prison for ten days on bread and water, not through cruelty, but to thin me down. Despite my adventures, the food and care I received in the future had put several pounds on me, and given me a healthy glow no one living in freezing, muddy trenches should possess. They knew nothing of my longevity treatment, of course (and they were careful not to ask anything that might give a glimpse of the future that was forbidden even to them), so their regimen failed to have quite the desired effect, but something about “the timing of the reinsertion window” forced them to act.
Naturally, they did not discuss these matters with me, but I felt no compunction about raiding their minds for any bit of information I could rifle. Maire would have been appalled, but I didn’t care. It was my misfortune that none of the men I came into contact with were sufficiently familiar with the operation of the time door for me to make any progress toward returning to her.
When the day came for the “reinsertion,” they gave me a pre-stained copy of my original doughboy uniform to wear. I put it on, and followed them passively to the laboratory.
The door shimmered into existence, and just before they shoved me through, one of them leaned forward to inject me with a drug designed to make me forget all of my “out-of-time” experiences. How it would have worked I don’t know, but it hardly mattered, since I knew what they were going to do before they did it. I jerked backward, taking the men holding my arms with me, kicked the hypo into the air, broke free, and dove through the door.
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