Champions of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  Two EMTs got out of the ambulance, pulled a stretcher from the back, and set it up on the blacktop. A third was immediately intercepted by the female EMT. With her talking a mile a minute, the two of them headed towards William, David, and Michael. This man was older, with gray hair, and when he arrived in front of them, David saw that his nametag said, ‘Robert’. It was among the most common Anglo-Norman names in Earth Two, and David smiled to see that, in this at least, little had changed in seven hundred years.

  Robert didn’t at all like the fact that William was moving under his own power, but by now they were only thirty feet from the parking lot, so he and Michael exchanged a series of clipped sentences as they traveled the distance, with Michael detailed what he’d done for William so far.

  William just kept putting one foot in front of the other until he reached the pavement that marked the start of the parking lot. The two other EMTs were right there to greet him with the stretcher.

  David said to Robert, “I’m American. He’s French. We have no ID on us. Where will you be taking him?”

  “To Bangor.”

  “To Ysbyty Gwynedd?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Great.” David gave way to the new EMTs, who helped William ease onto the stretcher and finally lie backwards. David had almost forgotten he had Chad Treadman on the line, but now he returned the phone to his ear. “Did you get all that?”

  “Most of it, I think. My people will meet you at the hospital. Do you have a ride?”

  David looked at Robert again. “I need to go with him in the ambulance.”

  “I’m sorry; you can’t.” Robert spoke over his shoulder, since he was tightening down the lap belt over William’s hips. “It’s against policy.”

  David wavered over whether to choose this moment to throw his weight around—if he had any weight to throw—or let Chad do it—when Michael nudged his shoulder. “I’ll take you.”

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it.” He gazed around at the people who surrounded them. They had remained a respectful fifteen feet away, so as not to interfere with the ambulance workers. “Thank you all for your help. I’m sorry to have disturbed your contest.” It was what he would have said had he been their king.

  Various people gave him relieved smiles, and even the burly man who’d taken charge looked content.

  William, who was resting on the stretcher, his head elevated so he was half-sitting up, put out a hand. “What’s happening, my lord?”

  “They’re going to drive you to a hospital. They won’t let me ride in the ambulance with you, but I will be right behind you in Michael’s car.”

  William’s brows pinched together, pain and stress combining to make him anxious, which was unusual for him.

  David moved closer and took his hand. “Really. It’s going to be okay. They know what they’re doing, and they will take care of you.”

  “Are you sure? This is completely mad.”

  “Oh yes. Always. Try to keep your head about you.”

  William laughed, as David meant him to, and relaxed against his pillow. “When I asked you to take me to Avalon, my lord, I confess this isn’t entirely what I had in mind.”

  Chapter Seven

  1 April 2022

  William

  Before the battle of Tara, William had spent much of his life in fear of disappointing his father. Failure had seemed far worse a fate to him than death. Since Ireland, that fear hadn’t entirely left him, but in the wake of his exploits—and his father’s—in uncovering the plot against David, the two of them had come to a new understanding. William had felt freer in the last fortnight than in his entire life up until now. For once, he’d felt confident of the world and his place in it.

  He’d been a fool.

  He’d moved in front of David to take the crossbow bolt because he could do nothing else. He could have chosen not to do it, but then he would not have been William. That his sacrifice had brought them to Avalon could not be regretted, but he could see now that the world was a whole lot bigger than he’d ever imagined—and he’d never been so afraid in his life as over the course of the last half-hour.

  This was not how he’d imagined Avalon. Not.

  He’d known at the outset that what he’d pictured Avalon to be like was going to turn out to be wholly unrealistic, but he couldn’t understand why everything had to be so loud. There was a constant hum in the earth and in the air, occasionally growing louder as an airplane flew overhead. Motors were everywhere. People were everywhere, and they just kept talking. It was worse than London.

  Speaking of people, they were shocking too. Those to arrive initially had been dressed in breeches and shirts in a not unfamiliar cut, though with odd designs and strange hats. Many carried bows, which, as he’d said to David, he had understood to be no longer in use in Avalon. Because of them, at first he had thought David was mistaken, and they weren’t in Avalon, but rather in some far off country.

  Once David had clarified again, William had, in a sense, felt even more lost. He’d been to France and knew that people dressed differently there. He’d met dark-skinned men, some of whom were members of David’s court. But the people here in Avalon were an order of magnitude different, and not just in regards to their clothing or skin tones. He had never seen so many overweight people, men and women, and even those who were thinner had no muscle and were unfit. And still, many of the women were as tall as he was, and he was of above average height for a man.

  He thought he knew what people from Avalon looked like, since he knew so many of them, but none of those he’d met at home had hair unnaturally colored or strangely shaved (or both), jewelry pierced through their nose or lips, or tattoos—at least not that he’d seen anyway. If anything, these people looked like Danes: big, loud, and decorated. David had never mentioned that a large number of people in Avalon were pagan. William wanted to ask him about it but decided to wait and observe further before exposing that particular ignorance.

  To top it all off, it was King David’s assessment of the place that was the least accurate. According to him, he was never showed respect by anyone here—either as a king or as a man. But that wasn’t what William was witnessing today. He’d been distracted by the newness of it all—and the fear—but even he could tell that people were listening to the authority in David’s voice and responding accordingly. As they should.

  For the rest, most of the conversation and virtually all of the interactions had passed William by in a blur of anxiety and pain, including walking to the ambulance. As it turned out, it was the least unfamiliar thing here, since it bore more than a passing resemblance to the vehicles in the barn in Llangollen. He tried to deconstruct the origin of the word, which if he had to guess came from ambulare, Latin for to walk. If riding in the vehicle would somehow get him walking—and riding, and fighting—again, he was all for it.

  While a big part of him wanted to turn around and go home right now, another part that wasn’t keeping quiet told him not to be an idiot. Two weeks ago, William had fought in a battle for his life, for David, and for Ireland. In some ways, a crossbow bolt wound and a trip to Avalon paled in comparison to what he’d gone through there. That day at Tara, he’d found a courage within himself he hadn’t known he had. Although Avalon was nothing like he’d imagined, he did appreciate that everybody around him was maintaining a calm demeanor, as if a bolt through the armpit was something they encountered every day. Maybe they did. Maybe literally everything that he’d been told and thought he knew about Avalon was wrong.

  The only thing that did seem familiar about Avalon—and it gave William some comfort to see it—was the landscape. It was covered with buildings and stones and people, but the Menai Strait was still there, along with the mountains and the air and the grass beneath his feet. For all the strange wonders that were to be found here, they hadn’t changed the contours of the earth.

  And when drops of rain started to plop-plop on the black stone that covered the ground under the ambulance,
William found himself grinning.

  “Okay,” David said, speaking to someone else. He’d used the word many times since they’d arrived. Back home, people from Avalon used the word often, and William did too, but he hadn’t realized how commonly it was said until it was one of the few words he could pick out amidst the mishmash of Avalonian English.

  “No, no.” Now David was shaking his head at someone dressed all in black except for a vest of a yellow color William had never encountered before. David turned to William, switching to French. “Just tell him no.”

  “No,” William said, obeying instinctively and trusting David implicitly.

  David nodded, and the man went off.

  “What was that about?”

  David leaned into the back of the ambulance, his feet still on the ground outside and his hands deep in his pockets. “He asked if you wanted to press charges against the man who shot you.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

  “Press charges means to pursue the law against another person.” David pulled out one hand and flicked his fingers dismissively. “You may not have realized, but one of the archers missed a target just as we arrived. He thinks that your wound is his fault. I told him straight out that it wasn’t. He didn’t believe me, and since I can hardly say that we materialized out of thin air, I have no counter-argument right now. Regardless, you have just informed an officer of the law that you don’t want the poor archer arrested.”

  “Who was the crossbowman, my lord?”

  “At home, you mean? The one who really shot you? I have no idea. We have plenty of people there who will find that out.”

  “The crossbowman who shot at you, you mean.”

  David ran a hand down his front. “The blood on me is all yours.”

  “The bolt didn’t touch you at all?”

  “Nope.”

  William paused a moment. “How is that possible?”

  “That, my friend, is Avalon.”

  William stared at David. He had spent the last ten years serving him but only now was he seeing him as he really was: a miracle. He didn’t understand how the people outside could be walking around, talking to each other and David, and not realize it. Truthfully, Avalon was a miracle too. More than ever, everything here was impossible.

  David narrowed his eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t understand why it happens or how, only that it does. I don’t control it.”

  William glanced away, trying to get a grip on his emotions. The pain from his wound had eased, thanks to whatever they’d done to stop the bleeding, which was a miracle in and of itself. At David’s urging, he’d accepted a pain killer too. David had assured William that the EMT had assured him that it was a mild one and wouldn’t make him insensible. It might be a relief to fall asleep, but at the same time he didn’t want to miss anything. He’d dreamed of this day.

  He also didn’t want to be asleep if some new danger threatened. “What about our plan?” This was the first moment William remembered what effect David being in Avalon would have on their world. “What are they going to do?”

  David raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “What they must. As will we.”

  “No, my lord!” William tried to sit up, though the EMT who squeezed past David to climb into the ambulance put a gentle hand on his good shoulder, and he subsided. “You must return immediately.”

  David laughed outright. “And leave you here alone? I don’t think so.” He leaned forward. “We didn’t die, William, neither of us. We have work to do here.”

  “You have work to do, my lord.”

  David canted his head. “Oh no. You don’t get off that easy. You wanted to come to Avalon, and here you are. It may be that the lesson for you to learn is only to be careful what you wish for, but now that you’re here, we have to play it out.”

  That was the kind of statement that was a daily lesson back when William had been David’s squire. Half the time, the king’s comments left William grinding his teeth, even if he had to acknowledge that David wasn’t wrong.

  “If you could step away, sir. We need to go now.” Robert, the gray-haired ambulance man, also climbed into the back with William. His French—or what appeared to pass for French in Avalon—was as good as Michael’s.

  “Are you sure I can’t come with him?” David tipped his chin to indicate the front of the ambulance. “You have an extra seat.”

  Robert shook his head regretfully, which was a clear answer to William, but the words that followed were nothing if not murky. In fact, they made no sense whatsoever. “Liability issues, sir. These Americans ruin everything—” he paused a beat, “—no offense intended.”

  “None taken.” David let out a breath and stepped back. “I’ll be right behind you. I promise.”

  William gritted his teeth and spoke around them. “I know you don’t make promises you can’t keep.” But before David could make a reply or William could ask what liability issues were, the last EMT, the driver, closed the ambulance doors.

  Then he opened the front door behind William’s head, and the ambulance’s motor rumbled to life. Before William knew it, they’d started moving, though the motion was so smooth William could tell it had happened only because the archery field, which he could see out the two small back windows, grew more distant. Then he turned to look at the healer to his left, who wore blue gloves and a label on his shirt that said ‘Dan’. The man was tapping on the inside of William’s elbow with one finger. He seemed to be about to poke William with a needle. William’s eyes widened, and he made to pull away.

  But Robert, also with blue-gloved hands, leaned in and said, “No need to be alarmed. Your costume is really well done. Did you make it yourself?”

  William saw every reason to be alarmed, and the rest of Robert’s words were nonsensical in light of the fact that no knight would ever manufacture his own gear—and he couldn’t believe that knights did in this world either. But the man seemed sincere, and William could only conclude that the signs of a man’s station were different here.

  At home, whether a man was Welsh, Saxon, Norman, or Scot—or even Irish—one could tell at a single glance and before he opened his mouth whether or not he was a nobleman by the weave of his clothing. This man’s clothing was unlike any William had ever seen, so perhaps William was dressed poorly by their standards, and they thought he was a peasant.

  He drew himself up as best he could. “No. Someone else did.” Then he expelled a breath because Dan had inserted the needle in his arm. Robert had been talking to him to distract him.

  “As I said, no need to worry. You need antibiotics, and this is the best way to administer them. If we set the IV here, it makes everything easier once we get to the hospital.”

  Again, William heard the man’s words, but with little comprehension. He was speaking ‘French’ but William had a passing thought that maybe he ought to try a different language on the chance the meaning would be more clear. Maybe Welsh, though the little he’d heard since he arrived was even more difficult than English.

  His confusion must have showed on his face, because Robert smiled and patted his thigh in an attempt to be reassuring. “For a while, my son was really into these reenactments. I suppose you will be less so from now on.”

  William attempted a smile too. He recognized the manner of someone trying to put a very ill man at ease, and he had a moment of panic that David had lied to him. “Am I going to die?”

  The other attendant, Dan, genuinely scoffed. “Not a chance.”

  Robert glared at him, and the man replied with a contrite, “Sorry, sir.”

  “What-what do you mean? Why is he apologizing?” The hodgepodge of French and English was making William’s head spin. Still, when they spoke English, both of these men sounded very much like the Avalonians who’d come on the bus, and sorry had been something they’d said all the time.

  “It is against policy to promise anything,” Robert said shortly, with another glare at the
other healer.

  William really was starting to feel light-headed. He hadn’t understood the implications of that sentence either. “If the wound suppurates—”

  “We have antibiotics that are designed to root out infection. Though a wound from an arrow is new to me, I’ve seen men impaled on splinters and poles many times.”

  “Mine is from a crossbow bolt,” William said before he considered that maybe David wouldn’t want him talking about exactly how he’d been wounded.

  “I’m sure it was, lad.” Robert’s tone, more than his words, since William was used to being agreed with, again implied appeasement. William’s head was starting to feel woozy, and he worried now that the needle had put something into him that was making him ill. He looked up at the clear bag on the pole above his head. Water was dripping every heartbeat into the tube attached to his arm. He didn’t like it one bit.

  But William reminded himself that David had condoned what was happening here, and before he made the decision to actively protest his treatment, the ambulance slowed and stopped. Someone shouted outside, words William didn’t catch, and then the doors opened.

  To William’s great relief, David stood a few paces away from the ambulance, next to an enormous building with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Such a display of wealth and skill was almost more than William could believe existed in all the world. And here it was at a place of healing. It was one more overwhelming and unfamiliar thing in a world of overwhelming and unfamiliar things. William’s mind took a moment to note the absurdity of it, accepted what he couldn’t change, and moved on.

  With David in tow (since William was facing backwards, he could see him following the cart), William was wheeled to a little room with a curtain around it. The sign at the door to the building had said accident unit, and he had paid enough attention to Anna’s description of her experience in Avalon to understand that this place was what she’d been talking about. But like everything else about the last hour, the reality was far different from what he’d imagined. When she—or Ieuan at one time—described white floors and ceilings, with machines and men and women talking and constantly moving, and these tablets Mark Jones had showed him, William had nodded and acted like he was a confident witness to their knowledge.