Out of Time: A story of archaeology... sort of

by David LaVigne

  Mary grabbed a plate at the buffet and started to fill it but a girl quickly pulled it out of her hands and asked her what she wanted. She told her to take some of the strips of rotisserie grilled pork and some figs and past that she didn’t know the names of anything so she just started pointing to random items and the slave girl piled more food onto the plate.

  Campbell found an open recliner large enough for the two of them and sat down leaning against one edge. Mary walked over, followed by the slave girl holding the overfilled plate of food, and sat down on the other side of the recliner facing Campbell, her legs stretched along his.

  The slave girl kneeled on a cushion next to the recliner and started to hand-feed them. She pulled a long strip of pork from the plate and dipped it into Campbell’s mouth and he took a bite. While he was chewing she offered the pork to Mary and she took a bite. They were smiling at each other and laughing internally. Mary was used to luxury, but this was over the top. Before long they couldn’t hold it any more and Campbell asked the Girl to go away and leave the plate and they took turns feeding each other. They stared into each other’s eyes as they ate and Campbell looked around the room and saw that other men were kissing their slaves and he figured no one would take note, so they traded a grape stem back and forth with their tongues for a few minutes until their more modest American minds got a little self conscious and they headed back to their room, forgetting that they were supposed to be helping to gather intel.

  Marcus was lying face down on a long cushion on the floor in an almost empty room. Lunicus was on a mat next to him. Their tunics were folded in the corner of the room.

  Two young girls walked in through a side door carrying plates of oils and burning incense. The girls set their trays next to their respective clients and began spreading fragrant oil over the men’s backs, kneading into their overdeveloped and overused muscles. Marcus and Lunicus were on the verge of falling asleep when the girls turned them over and started working down to their more intimate parts.

  Marcus’s girl climbed on top of him and arranged herself for a second then carefully lowered herself down onto him. He leaned back with a big smile on his face but just when he thought she ought to being moving up again and she wasn’t he opened his eyes. He looked up just in time to see her hands above her head holding a knife, the tip pointing straight down to his throat.

  She stabbed down with the knife but Marcus moved his head to the side just in time and the knife cut into the cushion next to his ear. He grabbed her by the waist and rolled over with enough force to throw her off of him and into the girl on top of Lunicus and both girls fell to the floor on top of each other.

  Lunicus looked over at Marcus and gave him an angry look, until he realized what was happening and they both got up and ran. But the girls recovered quickly and chased after them. Just as Marcus was opening the door to leave one of the girls was already in pursuit and Lunicus almost got a knife in his gut. But this time he was prepared and he grabbed the wrist holding the knife and pulled it high. He reached for her waist with his other hand and pulled her forward until he was holding the girl against him as if they were about to do the tango.

  The other girl ran up to Marcus and tried to stab him but he sidestepped and she stabbed the door frame. He took her by the back of the head and slammed her face into the door, breaking her nose and knocking her out. He looked over at Lunicus who was playing with his would be assassin.

  He had an arm around the girl’s waist and his other hand was holding the wrist of her knife hand and she kept trying to pull away. But he kept pulling her close and spinning. He had a big grin on his face.

  “Lunicus,” Marcus yelled at him.

  “I’m busy,” Lunicus replied and spun her around again.

  “Lunicus!” Marcus barked, loud and angry.

  “Fine,” Lunicus replied with a disappointed sigh. He flung the girl toward Marcus who caught her and wrapped an arm around her throat. He squeezed her neck until she was unconscious and semi-carefully laid her limp body on the floor. He and Lunicus took the girls’ knives and headed out the door. They ran across the compound towards their rooms.

  Campbell reached off the bed and grabbed at the pile of clothes on the floor until he felt his toga. He absentmindedly searched the garment for a pack of smokes, but realized there were no pockets. Oh right, he thought to himself, we’re in ancient Rome. He rolled back over and looked at Mary.

  She was lying on her back with one leg wrapped over his and one arm under his head with her eyes closed, breathing steadily. They had been distracting each other for over an hour and now it was just after nightfall.

  Campbell gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead, not trying to wake her up and climbed out of bed. He picked up his tunic and threw it over his head. Then he walked out to the main room to see if Marcus and Lunicus had returned yet. There was no one there. Their room was well stocked and he saw a bunch of ceramic bottles on the table. He picked one up and pulled out the cork. It turned out to be sweet wine and he took a long swig. He was hoping for water, but any liquid on his dehydrated throat felt nice.

  As he turned to walk back into the bedroom the front door burst open and two out of breath and very naked men came through. He looked over as Lunicus slammed the door shut behind them. They were both holding knives and they took a second to catch their breath. Campbell stared at them for a moment, and then took another swig from the wine bottle.

  They both looked up at him and started rattling off streams of Greek simultaneously. The only word Campbell caught through the rush was assassins, and that cleared his head pretty quickly.

  Lunicus walked over to him and grabbed the bottle out of his hands. He started to take a swig and when Campbell began to ask what was going on he just held up a finger and kept drinking. Marcus hurried through the door to his bedroom to get some clothes and his sword.

  “What?” Campbell asked, looking at Marcus’ back as he walked away.

  “The naked ladies are trying to kill us,” Lunicus said when he removed the wine bottle from his lips long enough to take a breath.

  “What?” Campbell stared at him.

  “Masseuses,” he said, still out of breath. “Really assassins.”

  “And there are probably others coming here to kill you,” Marcus said loudly from the bedroom. He poked his head out and said, “We need to get out of here now.”

  Campbell ran back into his room. He picked up Mary’s dress off the floor and threw it at her, waking her up. He pulled his bag out from under the bed and rummaged through it, searching for the dagger.

  “Get dressed,” he said to Mary when she asked him what was going on. He was trying to hastily wrap his toga, but quickly gave up. “Someone is trying to kill us.”

  “Goddamnit,” she said in a plain tone that seemed more annoyed at being woken up than worried about being murdered. She lazily reached out and grabbed her dress.

  When Campbell got back into the main room he saw Lunicus sitting on a couch, his knife on the ground. He looked up to see two armored and well-armed soldiers in purple capes standing over him. Another man was walking around the room picking up random objects and examining them.

  The other man was dressed in a white toga with purple trim. He was tall and a crown of golden olive braches rested on blonde hair that was going grey in places. When looked up Campbell saw the face and he thought it looked quite a bit older than the last time they had seen each other.

  “Where is she, Doctor Campbell,” asked Hans Richter.

  “Come on out honey,” Campbell turned his head and called into the bedroom, “your fiancé is here.”

  “Crap,” Mary said from the bedroom.

  Campbell looked over at the Praetorian guards standing over Lunicus. They had swords on their belts and wore Lorica Segmentata, body armor made from overlapping metal segments that allowed them to move freely while still being very well protected. They had short spears in their hands and each had a Scutum, tall rectangular shields, reste
d against his legs.

  He dropped his dagger when Richter told him to, his eyes kept scanning the room. The other bedroom door was opened just a crack and he could see that Marcus was watching from the other side. Mary came out in the loose fitting dress she had traveled in, one she could move in very easily.

  “Where is it?” Richter asked when they were both present.

  “Where is what?” Campbell asked in return.

  “Don’t do this Campbell,” Richter said. “What was your plan? Come back here and kill me, like you were planning to do in 1776?”

  They were speaking English. Lunicus didn’t understand but since it sounded like the same language Campbell and Mary used he listened closely, trying to understand anything he may have picked up over the past month with Mary and Campbell, but he couldn’t catch anything he recognized. The Praetorian guards looked very confused.

  “I never planned to kill you Hans,” Campbell said. “And how did you know we were here anyway?”

  “It’s amazing what you can get out of a bar-slave when you control her freedom,” Richter answered. “You ought to be a little more careful about what you say over a drink in the future. Not that you have much of a future.”

  “That’s what you were doing with Amunet,” Campbell said to Lunicus. “You fucking traitor.”

  “I told you I needed a job,” Lunicus said, guessing by the look on Campbell’s face that the emperor had given him up. “He paid better than you.”

  Then Lunicus looked up at Richter. “Though you weren’t supposed to kill me!”

  Marcus held the door open just a crack, trying to listen to the conversation. Obviously that was Titus talking to Campbell, but he couldn’t make out much of what they were saying to each other since they were speaking that weird future language Campbell and Mary always talked in. Then he caught something he did understand, coming from Lunicus. “He paid better than you.”

  Fucking traitor, Marcus thought. He stifled the urge to burst through the door and stab the back-stabber in the back. Instead he gently closed the door and walked over to the window to have a look at the situation outside.

  He did a sweep around the courtyard with his eyes and spotted two more Praetorians blocking off the path to the main road. He couldn’t see anyone else out there, but his vantage point wasn’t great and there were no other windows. He looked around the room for anything that could be a weapon, but all he had that was useful was a knife and his gladius. He tucked the knife into his belt and squeezed the handle of the gladius in his right hand. He walked back to the door and held it open just enough for him to see everyone in the room as his mind tried to work out a plan.

  I need to signal Caius somehow, he thought.

  “Shut up,” Richter told Lunicus in Latin. Then he switched back to English, “now tell me how you fixed it.”

  “No,” Campbell said. “You tell me-” He was cut off by a slap from Richter.

  “I’m the one asking questions here!” Richter said. “Now you tell me how you got here with that broken device and what the hell you are doing.”

  There was a tiny flash from the bedroom door as Marcus reflected some of the candle light into Campbell’s eye with the blade of his gladius. Campbell looked over without moving his head and Marcus gave him a couple of hand gestures to indicate he was going for the guy on the left. It took Campbell a second to put it together but he did and he gave Marcus a slight nod.

  “I’m here to put things right,” Campbell said and he turned and sprinted toward the guards. He leapt over the couch and caught the guard on his right in the chest and brought him to the ground. The guard’s spear flew out of his hand and Mary ran to where it landed.

  At the same moment as Campbell’s attack, Marcus ran out from the bedroom and threw his knife at the other guard’s throat. It missed, the handle glancing off the guards cheek-plate, but it was enough of a distraction to let Marcus get close enough to knock the spear out of the way with one hand, step in close so that his foot was between both of the guard’s feet, and thrust his gladius up into the man’s groin. There was a bit of a shriek and a lot of blood, and the guard was on the floor bleeding out within seconds.

  Campbell had planned on stabbing his man in the throat with his knife but it wasn’t until he had the man tackled on the ground that he realized he had dropped his knife earlier so he punched the guard in the face and almost broke his hand on the cheek-plates of the guard’s helmet.

  “Caius,” Marcus said and Campbell looked up to see that his friend had a sword at Richter’s throat.

  Campbell rolled off of the guard and stood up. The guard stood as well and put his hands up, empty. Mary held the spear to the guard’s chest as Campbell took the guard’s sword out of its scabbard and the knife from his belt and searched him for more weapons, but he found none.

  Campbell walked over to Richter and slapped him with his empty hand. Retaliation felt good.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask the questions, Hans,” Campbell said. “Why here? Why now?”

  “What?” Richter replied.

  “WHY HAVE YOU BEEN FUCKING UP THE TIMELINE?!” Campbell yelled each word slowly, leaning close into Richter’s face.

  “I had no plans to interrupt time!” Richter yelled back, leaning in further so that their noses almost touched. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then Richter leaned back a little and calmed his voice. “I turned that stupid time machine on with no idea of what it was or how it worked. When it threw me into 1774 it stopped working. I was stuck.”

  “You’re telling me you had no motive to change history so that the Nazis win?” Campbell asked, a little confused now.

  Richter nodded. “When I saw you in 1776 I saw that as my chance to get back home.”

  “Then why didn’t you just go home?” Campbell asked.

  There was shouting from outside and they could hear footsteps. It sounded like there were a lot more guards than Marcus had counted on. Mary took a glance out the window and saw a whole platoon of men in purple capes.

  “John,” she called over to Campbell, “we have problems.”

  “You want to hurry this up a little?” Marcus urged.

  As Campbell glanced back and forth between the men outside the window and the people in the room, trying to think of what to do, Richter reached into his toga and pulled out Campbell’s device.

  Campbell looked back at Richter just in time to see him about to turn the dial and slapped the disk out of Richter’s hand. The time machine flew across the room and landed on the table next to the wine bottles.

  Everyone in the room stared at the device. Neither Marcus nor Lunicus had any clue what it was but they both pieced together by the current situation that it was important. Simultaneously they ran at the table. Lunicus got there first but Marcus was only half a step behind and he grabbed Lunicus’ leg mid-step and pulled him off his feet. Lunicus spun as he hit the ground and kicked Marcus in the shin hard enough to make him fall.

  Mary, seeing the disk fly and the two former soldiers running for it, dropped her spear and ran towards the table as well. The Praetorian, no longer having a spear on his chest, ran out the front door to join the rest of the guards converging on the room.

  Mary dove on top of Lunicus as soon as Marcus was off of him and tried to hold him down while Marcus got to his feet and took the disk off the table. But Lunicus was much stronger than Mary and he kicked her off of him and stood up. He slapped the disk out of Marcus’s hand and punched him hard in the face.

  Richter punched Campbell in the stomach hard enough to make him double over and ran to join the fight for the disk. When Campbell recovered he ran to his and Mary’s bedroom and rummaged through his bag.

  Marcus blocked the next punch from Lunicus and threw an elbow at his throat, but Lunicus was quick and he dodged to the side. Then Lunicus kicked up with his knee to Marcus’ groin but he too was quick to dodge and they both grabbed each other and fell to the floor, each trying to wrestle the othe
r to submission.

  Mary followed the disk through the air and caught it just as Richter bumped into her, knocking her to the ground and the disk flew onto the couch. Mary and Richter both scrambled on all fours towards the couch and they reached up for the disk at the same time and each had a hand on it.

  Campbell came out of the bedroom holding the metal cylinder in one hand and the Praetorian guards’ gladius in the other. He looked around the room and saw Marcus and Lunicus wrestling on the floor at one end of the room and Mary and Richter wrestling at the other end and he couldn’t help but laugh a little until he noticed the soldiers standing in the doorway. He froze: the sword and the cylinder falling out of his hands.

  Everyone in the room stopped and looked up at the Praetorian standing in the doorway. The guard stood there staring at them. He was trying to make sense of what was going on.

  Mary ripped the disk from Richter’s hand and ran towards Campbell, randomly turning the dials. Richter got up and ran after her. Lunicus pushed Marcus off of him and ran towards the bedroom to try to escape and Marcus moved to tackle Richter as he chased Mary. As he hit Richter’s legs it caused Richter to fall into Mary, who was knocked out of the way, but she recovered quickly and crawled after Richter. Richter rolled to Campbell’s feet, grabbed the disk which had landed on his chest and twisted.

  When the lightning subsided, Richter, Campbell, Marcus and Mary were in a large, well lit room. There were long wooden tables covered with various styles of rapiers, daggers and small bucklers. A large mat took up most of the room and on it were three men dressed in skin-tight pants and shirts with puffy sleeves and tight, heavily embroidered doublets. The dials on the disk read 1641.