Unbroken in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Do you know the answer?” Thomas was back to looking from one to the other. “Both of you?”

  “Yes,” Christopher said.

  “And you accept it as compelling, but for some reason you don’t want to tell me?”

  “Yes.” It was Bronwen’s turn to answer.

  “Does it have something to do with you all being from Avalon?”

  “Yes,” Bronwen and Christopher said together.

  Christopher had decided, by this point, that Thomas was close enough to their inner circle to know that they were time traveling (or to be technically correct, world shifting) twenty-firsters, not Avalonians, though from a certain point of view they were that too.

  It was the one secret David had kept from the Templars—even Jacques de Molay.

  Thomas was now gazing at them open-mouthed. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why David has been so relentless and so confident. He knows the future.”

  Bronwen opened her mouth to deny, but Christopher got there first. “He knows a future. A possible future. All this—” he made a sweeping gesture, “—is in the hope that he can forge a different future. Change things.”

  “And has he?” Thomas asked. “Changed things, I mean, so what he feared might happen doesn’t?”

  “Yes,” Bronwen said. “Many times.”

  Thomas rocked back on his heels. “Then don’t tell me anything more. If King David wanted me to know, he would have told me too.”

  Christopher’s expression was somewhat anxious. “It isn’t that he doesn’t trust you—”

  Thomas made a chopping motion with his hand. “If you really know the future, what a burden that must be.” Then his eyes got wide. “He really is King Arthur returned.”

  All of the Avalonians had been confronted with this question at one time or another. Thirteenth century France was steeped in legends of King Arthur. The people believed Avalon existed, and any fool could see that David was unlike any king who’d ever sat on a throne before. The Templars liked him too, Christopher had come to realize, and respected him. And on the rare occasion he borrowed money from them—or horses—he paid them back.

  In the past, Christopher’s answer to Thomas’s question had usually been one of denial, but there didn’t seem to be any point in denying who or what David was anymore.

  “Yes. He really is.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Day Two

  Callum

  The gunner had turned his attention to the battlements. Callum had archers and cannon up there. They even had brought out the MAAWS. Peter knew it well from his time in Afghanistan. But since no answering fire came, Peter might not be alive to work it. Cassie might not be alive to order it.

  Callum put his forehead back into the dirt for a moment. He knew what he had to do and he had very little time to do it in. If there was no response from the battlements soon, that army of five thousand was going to charge and he, and all of his friends, were going to die.

  While the introduction of modern weapons into Avalon was a material complication, even more it was an existential one. They were changing the world, and this time not necessarily for the better. By the very fact of having modern weapons, they were ensuring that those around them did too. And without a modern industrial economy, eventually they would run out of bullets, just in time to face new weapons from their enemies.

  There was no help for it. Callum pulled his gun from its place at the small of his back, checked the ammunition and the safety, and then gathered himself, preparing to rise.

  Hugh had watched his movements with a puzzled expression, and now said, “What in the name of the holy saints are you doing?”

  “Someone has to take out that gun.”

  “It’s impossible!”

  Callum felt a moment of light-headedness at the certainty of that exact fact, but he’d been here before, and he knew what had to be done. “If I don’t take it out, what then?”

  Hugh stared at him and then rolled up onto his hands and knees too. “I’m coming with you.” He looked behind him to his men. Most were dead, but three were unharmed, and two more, even though wounded, were looking at him with bright eyes.

  They knew what they had to do too.

  Maybe five minutes had passed since the firefight started. Callum’s internal calculations told him that the LMG could have fired five hundred rounds a minute. Each belt held a hundred rounds. They had to be changed, but eventually he would either run out or—

  Blessed silence descended on the battlefield.

  Callum didn’t let it go to waste. “Up!”

  Seven of them rose as one and ran straight for the gun. It was essentially the same path Callum had taken the night before except in the reverse direction. Three hundred yards at a full sprint in full armor, while occasionally leaping over a stone wall, was something he’d done in his time. It had been a while, and he’d been younger then. He kept his gaze on the LMG and forced himself to think about his breathing rather than how long it was going to take for the gunner to attach the next belt of ammunition.

  Nobody shot at them as they covered the first hundred yards. Before him were officers on horseback, waving their swords above their heads. Callum didn’t know if these commanders were so focused on the battlements they didn’t see the seven of them coming, or thought they were a laughable threat.

  They were close enough now that Hugh must have seen them too, because he pulled his sword from its sheath and started screaming. Callum still had his personal sidearm in his hand. He didn’t want to waste bullets, and shooting accurately from a run was literally hit and miss at the best of times, never mind his shaking hands, but he was close enough to make the effort worth the risk.

  His own weapon sounded like a cannon in his ears. Boom, boom, boom. He aimed his first two shots at the gunner and missed, instead hitting men around him who were trying to help him with the LMG. These weapons didn’t jam, so likely he was doing something wrong. Callum directed his next shot at the nearest officer, and hit him in the head. He toppled off his horse to the ground.

  It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to be enough. One of Hugh’s men took a crossbow bolt square in the chest and went down. And then a second fell. Beside Callum, Hugh was bellowing like a Viking berserker who may or may not have been one of his ancestors.

  And still, they weren’t going to make it. The last fifty yards were fully in enemy territory. Artois had five thousand men. If ten surrounded the wagon, Callum wouldn’t be able to kill them all before he himself was killed. Five against five thousand were the worst odds imaginable and didn’t bear thinking about.

  So, amazingly, he didn’t.

  Then, as if summoned by his correct thinking, making no more sound than a gust of wind, arrows descended on the army ahead of them. Someone—he prayed it was Cassie—had ordered David’s army of archers to loose. Five hundred yards was beyond the normal range even of Welsh bowmen, but they were shooting from heights that allowed the arrows a greater trajectory.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, the army in front of him convulsed. Men screamed. Others ran for cover.

  A second wave of arrows was followed by a third, both less accurate than the first, since the archers were more interested in protecting Callum and his men—and giving them time to get to the wagon—than in killing the enemy, though the arrows did that too.

  Callum took three more shots himself, boom, boom, boom, one of which finally killed the gunner. Then the first booms of cannon sounded all around them, initially from Artois’ guns, and then in reply from the battlements. Cassie was right to order her men to fire. It was one thing to protect Callum and his men. It was another to lose the battle by doing so. Within ten seconds, smoke obscured everything but what was immediately around him.

  And then he was at the wagon. He leapt into the bed while Hugh and his men barreled into its remaining defenders.

  After shoving his own gun back into its holster at the small of his back, Callum snatched up the LMG,
saw where the gunner had gone wrong with the ammunition, and fixed it. Turning the weapon on the army before him, he let loose, his vision narrowing to where he was pointing the LMG and not the hundreds of men before him he was killing.

  He could have stopped at any time, but he didn’t. He fired the weapon until all the ammunition was gone. Part of him, the part that remained detached with a bird’s eye view of the proceedings, thought that if he used every bullet now, maybe there would be no more need of them ever again.

  When the last magazine was empty, he stood on the bed of the wagon, breathing steadily in and out, the gun down at his side, taking in the destruction he’d wrought.

  Then Hugh grabbed his arm. “We should go.”

  Artois’ cannon had stopped firing two minutes earlier, since those gunners had been Callum’s first target. Enough smoke still wafted over the battlefield, however, to provide cover for Callum and Hugh, and their three surviving men, to retreat back across the field to the Martial Gate, the second LMG cradled in Callum’s arms as he ran. They passed the spot where their horses had died and scooped up a last man who’d been wounded in the leg but was still alive.

  At which point, a potent force of three hundred cavalry erupted from the Martial Gate, swarming past Callum and Hugh and descending on the French forces like a hurricane.

  The smoke was so thick, many of the pikemen wouldn’t be able to see them coming. Callum himself could see little of the battlefield but the pall of smoke that hung over it.

  He could hear it, however: the cries of the wounded; the shouts of panicked men; what he himself had wrought.

  And then Callum was inside the gate, the wounded man’s arm over his shoulder. He and Hugh settled him on the ground with his back to the stones.

  “They’re done.” Hugh turned his head to look where the cavalry had gone.

  If only that were true. Callum had learned in the years since he’d come to Earth Two that few people beyond those who saw a miracle believed it. “For now.”

  “You don’t understand.” Hugh spoke with awe in his voice. “When you told me what was possible, I didn’t believe you, and I apologize for that. Maybe you’ve won so many battles in David’s service that they all look the same to you, but nobody on earth has ever seen a man do what you did or anything like what you just threw at them. They’re done.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Day Two

  David

  Callum was alive.

  The messenger from Elisa intercepted them on the steps of the synagogue with the news. David felt a little light-headed at how close they’d come to disaster. Their plan to avoid bloodshed, to which David himself had agreed and thought a good idea, had so very nearly cost them the war.

  Then, almost instantly, he had to shift gears as he was ushered into the synagogue, to find himself facing a dozen bearded men, most of whom were twice his age, if not three times. Most also didn’t appear to appreciate his arrival in their midst. Jews tended not to go in for obsequiousness, and they made a clear distinction between the obeisance owed to men who ruled on earth and what was owed to heaven.

  As it turned out, the chief rabbi, who was the head of the synagogue, was actually ill, and several of the other men were jostling amongst themselves for power and control over this meeting.

  In a way, it was nice to know people were the same all over. It made them more predictable. Given what had just happened in Aquitaine, David could really go in for a little predictability.

  Under normal circumstances, as a gentile, he wouldn’t have been allowed in the synagogue at all, but he’d put on a kippot—the medieval version of a yarmulke—and he was the King of England after all. They couldn’t ignore him just because they didn’t like what he had to say. More to the point, they couldn’t ignore him even though they really didn’t want to believe what he had to say.

  That was okay. David could understand their reluctance to hear him out.

  But they ushered him into a meeting room anyway, and stood around him, most with impatient and disbelieving expressions on their faces as he explained what was going to happen tonight.

  After he finished his initial explanation, the uproar, very much akin to what he’d faced in the Paris Temple an hour ago, started up all over again. David looked from one man to another, seeking allies, and didn’t see much to reassure him.

  He could understand their inability to see what was happening here, even as it frustrated him. They’d all suffered at the hands of French kings, as had their parents and grandparents before them—for generations. Many strict followers of Jewish law refused to eat with gentiles or do business with them, though the Paris community tended to be more cosmopolitan, following several rabbis who taught that Christians were bound by the ways of religion and thus could be associated with.

  It was certainly what Aaron had decided. While David would have preferred to have him by his side, the timeline couldn’t be argued with, and he could feel his internal clock ticking.

  Finally, an ancient man, hunched over and using a cane, who’d been introduced at the beginning as Isaac, rose to his feet. He’d been sitting in a straight-back chair, a concession to his age, since everybody else was standing. Conversation ceased as he progressed across the carpet, the only adornment in the entire room. Then, as he reached David, he straightened to his full height, which wasn’t saying much, since he ended up at least eight inches shorter than David. He had bright blue eyes, not at all rheumy, which David would have expected, given his age.

  Isaac gestured to where Darren stood with his back to the door. “Can you understand why we might distrust you? What reason could you have for bringing him here?” Isaac was assuming Darren was a moor, a Muslim. David hadn’t known for certain he’d be mistaken for one, but he’d brought Darren specifically so he might.

  “I bring him with me to show you that in England, we do not discriminate against anyone because of their religion. I can have a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew at my side and have peace. I believe what I believe. You believe what you believe. I do not judge you, or punish you, for it—as long as you don’t inflict those beliefs on anyone else.”

  Isaac looked at Darren for a long ten seconds and then back to David. “This is something our brother Aaron told us,” he narrowed his eyes at David, “the Aaron who even now is imprisoned in la fosse noire. How can you allow that to happen and yet claim he is valuable to you?”

  “It is because he is valuable that he allowed himself to be imprisoned,” David said. “It is our intent to get everyone out of Paris, not just those we can easily save or are happy to come. Aaron knew his presence in the prison would help ensure it.”

  Isaac hobbled over to Darren, who also straightened to his full height at his approach. “And what say you? In our house, everyone speaks his opinion, regardless of how unfavorable.”

  Darren glanced for a moment towards David, who raised one shoulder slightly. They’d talked about what to say. It was up to Darren to decide how to say it.

  He met Isaac’s eyes. “I choose not to hate anyone. I can find common ground with most anyone, even those who hate me.”

  Isaac gave a snort, though of laughter, disgust, or disbelief David didn’t know. Then he swung around in a surprisingly nimble move. Once on his feet, it hadn’t taken long for him to loosen up. “Many of our people have left Paris with yours these last weeks. We haven’t heard that any have reached safety.”

  “The first of them began arriving in London last week,” David said. “I myself met with several families in Aquitaine before I came to Paris. Perhaps we have lost some, but I don’t know of any. We have people up and down the country risking their own lives to ensure it.”

  “You cannot blame us for having trouble believing you. It is the kind of thing we have heard before and believed, only to find ourselves betrayed.”

  “You’re being evicted from Paris now, so maybe it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe me.” David was struggling to keep the exasperation out of
his voice. “You have until nightfall, and then the Templars are going to ‘raid’ your houses.” As David said the word raid he made air quotes with his fingers, which probably meant nothing to them but he’d done it instinctively. “You will be marched out of the city, and I hope you will accept transportation on the boats we’re providing to take you to the English Channel. You might even find family members there to greet you.”

  Isaac canted his head. “How is that?”

  “Five hundred people means a lot of boats, most of which are provided by merchants from London, many of whom are kin to you. And, of course, your family and friends from the prison should be there too.”

  David had debated whether to mention this last item, but he could see more objections forming in the eyes of the men behind Isaac.

  This time, the conversation among the men in the room was so lengthy, David felt like he was at a meeting of the Ents in Lord of the Rings.

  Finally, Isaac returned to him. “You speak the truth? The Templars are coming for us?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “We will pray, and then we will prepare. When your Templar friends come, we will be ready. Thank you for bringing this news to us.”

  Isaac began to turn away, as if it was decided, and so it seemed from the general murmur and nods, but then David put out a hand. “One more thing, if you will. If one of your number would be interested in—” he paused, not quite sure of the phrasing, “—not so much joining us as liaising with us, we all might feel more comfortable. It is not my wish to hide anything from you.”

  That caused almost more of a hubbub than the idea that this would be their last afternoon in Paris. Everyone was speaking very fast Parisian French, which wasn’t quite the same as the Norman French David spoke. He would have to ask Henri later if he’d missed anything important.