The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  Again Lockridge saw her, felt her. He clutched the other man’s robe. ‘Hell take it, you’re supposed to handle problems! There must be something we can do!’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Annoyed, Mareth brushed him off. ‘We must certainly act. But not precipitately. You have not experienced the oneness of time. Respect those who have.’

  ‘Look, if I could come up the local corridor, we can all go back down it. We can even arrive in the Neolithic before Brann does, and be waiting for him.’

  ‘No,’ Mareth shook his head with needless violence. ‘Time is immutable.’ He drew a breath and continued more calmly. ‘The attempt would be foredoomed. We would be certain to encounter something, like a superior enemy force within the corridor, that would frustrate us. Anyhow, I see no point in using the Danish shaft at all. We have nothing here to help us except these.’ His gesture at the Coveners, kneeling frightened on the rim of firelight, was contemptuous. ‘True, we could try to go down it by ourselves and get reinforcements from the pre-Viking era. But why do so – or why take the risk of crossing the world to seek our Oriental and African bases – when better help is so much closer at hand?’

  ‘Huh?’ Lockridge gaped at him.

  The Warden’s academic manner slipped off. He paced back and forth, thinking aloud, a war chief in friar’s gown.

  ‘Brann came alone, since he knew the Koriach – she – was also alone, and he has no more forces to spare than we do. But having caught her, he will summon men to consolidate his gains. We have to reckon with that. The uncertainty of emergence, you remember. Since we did not appear to save her that night, we will not. Therefore, the chances are that we will not appear – will not have appeared – until after he has a number of Rangers with him. And, obviously, they will post a guard on the corridor gate.

  ‘But in this present century, Denmark is not where our real European strength lies. Rather we are concentrated in Britain. King Henry has forsaken the Roman Church; but we saw to it that he did not go over to Lutheranism either, and for us his kingdom is pivotal. What you know as the episode of the two Queen Marys is a time of gain for the Wardens; the Rangers will resurge with Cromwell, but we will drive them out at the Restoration.

  ‘I know. You are wondering why anyone would wage a campaign whose outcome is known beforehand. Well, for one thing, in the course of waging it, casualties are inflicted on the enemy. More important, each milieu which is firmly held is a source of strength, of recruits, of power to call on, another weight thrown in the scalepans of the future when the final decision, whose nature we do not know, is reached.

  ‘But to continue. I have a flock in England too; and there I am not the pagan ritemaster of a few starveling peasants, but a preacher to knights and strong yeomen, urging them to stand by the Holy Catholic Faith. And … we have a corridor there whose existence the Rangers do not suspect, with its own gate on the Neolithic. That gate opens pastward of the Danish one, but there is a few months’ overlap, in the exact year we must reach.’

  He seized Lockridge’s shoulders. His visage blazed. ‘Man, are you with me? For her?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘Hai-ee-ee! Hingst, Hest, og Plag faar flygte Dag! Kommer, kommer, kommer!’

  The witchmaster’s robe flapped about him like wings. As his arms and face turned heavenward, a whirlwind unseen, unfelt, unheard, lifted him and his chosen. Upward they fled until they were lost among cold constellations. The balefire flared from its coals, threw spark and flame after its lord, and sank again. The folk of the Coven shuddered and departed.

  Auri bit back a cry, shut her eyes, clung to Lockridge’s hand. Jesper Fledelius rattled a string of foul oaths, then felt himself safe after all and whooped like a boy. The American shared some of that excitement. He’d flown before, but never at the end of a gravity beam.

  There was no airblast. The force that streamed from the belt under Mareth’s habit deflected it. One went bat silent, several hundred feet above ground, and speed mounted into the hundreds of miles per hour.

  Darkling rolled the heath; Viborg was a blot seen for an instant and lost; the Limfjord shimmered; the western dunes fell behind, and the North Sea ran in waves touched with icy gleams by a sickle moon rising ahead of dawn. Lost in night and wonder, Lockridge was startled when England bulked into view – so soon?

  Across the flatlands of East Anglia they went. Thatch-roofed villages lay among stubblefields, a castle raised battlements above a river, it was a dream and impossible that he, prosaic he, should follow a wizard through the sky on the same night as King Henry snored beside Anne Boleyn… poor Anne whose head would fly from the ax in less than a year, and none to warn her. But her daughter lay cradled in that same palace and was named Elizabeth. The strangeness possessed Lock-ridge like a vision: not merely his own fate, but the mystery that was every man’s.

  Cultivation gave way to a wilderness where islands crowded among the meres and marshy streams, the Lincolnshire Fens. Mareth swooped downward. The last withered leafage parted before him, he came to rest and deftly drew in the others. By the paling sky Lockridge saw a wattle hut.

  ‘This is my English base,’ the Warden told him. ‘The time gate lies beneath. You will remain here while I gather men.’

  Behind that primitive façade, the cabin was almost luxurious, with hardwood floors and wainscoting, ample furniture and a good store of books. Food stocks and other supplies from the future were hidden behind sliding panels; nothing showed that would have been too foreign to this century. An intruder might have noticed how the interior kept warm and dry in every season. However, none ventured here. The peasants had their superstitions, the gentry were indifferent.

  The three from Mareth’s past were only too glad of a respite. They were ordinary humans, not masterworks of an age that could shape heredity in any desired pattern, and their nerves were stretched near breaking. The next two days were an interlude of sleep and hazy half wakefulness.

  On the third morning, though, Auri sought Lockridge. He was seated on a bench outside the door, enjoying a smoke. While not an addict, he had rather missed tobacco, and it was thoughtful, if slightly anachronistic, of the Wardens to keep some on hand along with clay pipes. And the weather had turned pleasant. Sunlight spilled wan between the naked willows. A belated flock of geese made a southward V far overhead, their honking drifted down to him through a great quietness, far and lonely wander-song. Then he heard her feet patter close, looked up and was struck by beauty.

  There had been no time, before he tumbled into this drowsy interlude, to think of her as much except a child that needed what small protection he could spare. But on this morning she had gone out in a marsh almost like the one at home, clad in no more than her waist-long cornsilk hair, and was renewed. She scampered toward him with a deer’s grace, eyes blue and huge in the pert countenance. He saw laughter and marvel on her lips and stood up with his pulse begun to race.

  ‘Oh, come look,’ she cried. ‘I’ve found the most wonderful boat!’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Lockridge choked. ‘Get some clothes on, girl.’

  ‘Why? This air is warm.’ She danced before him. ‘Lynx, we can go out on the water and fish, the whole day is ours and the Goddess is happy and you must be rested now, come along, do!’

  ‘Well—’ Well, why not? ‘Yes. You get dressed, though, understand?’

  ‘If you wish.’ Puzzled but obedient, she fetched a shift from the cabin, where Fledelius was still noisily asleep among strewn ale jugs, and darted through the woods ahead of Lockridge.

  The skiff, tied to a stump, looked simple to him. But of course Auri’s boats were coracles, or dugouts with bulwarks secured by pegs and withes. This one used nails of real metal! And she gasped to see him row, instead of punt or paddle. ‘Surely this came from Crete,’ she breathed.

  He hadn’t the heart to tell her Crete lay impoverished and oppressed under the Venetians, awaiting next century’s Turkish conquest. ‘Maybe.’ He slid the boat among the reeds and osiers until h
e reached an open stretch of shallow water. Here the island was hidden by brush and the mere blinked bright and still. Auri had taken fishing tackle as well as her garment. She baited a hook and cast skilfully toward a lurking place under a log. He sprawled back and got his pipe started afresh.

  That’s a strange rite you do,’ Auri said.

  ‘Only for pleasure.’

  ‘Can I try? Please?’

  She wheedled him into it, with the expected results. Gulping and sputtering, she handed back the pipe. ‘Whoo-ah!’ She wiped her eyes. ‘No, too strong for the likes of me.’

  Lockridge chuckled. ‘I warned you, young one.’

  ‘I should have listened. You are never wrong.’

  ‘Now, wait —’

  ‘But I wish you wouldn’t speak to me as a child.’ She flushed. The long lashes quivered downward. ‘I am ready to become a woman whenever you want me.’

  The blood mounted in Lockridge too. ‘I’ve promised to take the spell off you,’ he mumbled. The idea occurred to him that he might the in the coming battle. ‘In fact, it is off. You need no further magic. Uh … passage through the underworld, you know … rebirth. Do you see?’

  Gladness leaped to her. She moved toward him.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he said desperately. ‘I can’t – myself —’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Look, uh, look around you, this isn’t springtime.’

  ‘Does that matter? Everything else has changed. And Lynx, you are so very dear to me.’

  She pressed against him, warm, round, and eager. Her mouth and hands had an enchanting awkwardness. He thought, in the cloud of her tresses and herself, Why, my own grandfather would’ve called her husband high….No, God damn it!

  ‘I’ll have to leave you, Auri —’

  ‘Then leave me with your child. I w-w-won’t think past that, not today.’

  Strictness was beyond him. He could only hit on one thing to do. He let himself be pushed too far to one side, and the skiff capsized.

  By the time they had righted it and bailed it out, matters were under control. Auri accepted the sign of godly displeasure without fear, for she had spent her life among such omens, nor even with overmuch disappointment, for the heart was too sunny in her. She peeled off the wet shift in a fit of giggles at Lockridge’s refusal to do likewise.

  ‘At least I may look at you,’ she said when a soberer mood came. ‘There will be other times, after you have set Avildaro free.’

  A glumness had settled on him. ‘The village you knew won’t come again,’ he said. ‘Remember who fell.’

  ‘I know,’ she answered gravely. ‘Echegon, who was always kind, and Vurowa the merry, and so many more.’ But everything that had passed since had blurred her grief. Besides, the Tenil Orugaray were not given to mourning a loss as keenly as those who came after them. They had learned too well to accept what was.

  ‘And you’ll still have the Yuthoaz to reckon with,’ Lock-ridge said. ‘We may push this one band out, this one time. But there are others, strong and land-hungry. They will return.’

  ‘Why must you always fret so, Lynx?’ Auri cocked her head. ‘We do have this day… and whee, a fish!’

  He wished he could join her in more than a pretense of merriment. But his own dead were too much with him nations, kings, and the unremembered humble, through all the ages of the time war – yes, even that kid he’d killed in his own land, four hundred years hence. He saw now that his self-righteousness had been a cover for blood guilt. Oh, o’ course I never meant the thing to happen, he told himself wearily, but it did happen… it will happen… and I’d turn time inside out if I could, to undo it.

  They were lunching off their catch, sashimi style, when a horn blew. Lockridge started. This fast? He rowed hard to get back.

  Mareth was indeed there, with six other Wardens. They had abandoned the disguises of priest, knight, merchant, yeoman, beggar for a uniform skin-tight like the Rangers’, but forest green and with iridescent cloaks cataracting from their shouldders. Under the bronzy helmets, long dark eyes in faces eerily akin to Storm’s looked aloofly upon their helpers.

  ‘We have one more agent in the British Isles,’ Mareth said. ‘He will bring our army after dark. Meanwhile, we have preparations to make.’

  Lockridge, Auri, and Fledelius found themselves working on tasks they did not understand. Because this corridor was secret from the enemy, and this gate opened on a vital period, the anteroom was stocked with engines of war and the exits were broad enough to admit them. The American could identify some things in a general way, vehicles, guns; but what was the crystalline globe in which a night swirled studded with starlike points? What was the helix of yellow fire that felt cold to the touch? His questions were rebuffed.

  Even Fledelius bristled. ‘I’m no serf of theirs,’ he growled to Lockridge.

  The American checked his own annoyance. ‘You know how often underlings like to throw their weight around. When we get to the queen, she’ll be different.’

  ‘Yes, true. For Her I’ll swallow prideThrow their weight around. Haw, haw! You’ve a rare wit, lad.’ Fledelius guffawed and slapped Lockridge’s back so he staggered.

  Dusk fell, and dark. Down the sky there whirled the men of Harry’s England.

  They were a wild, tough crew, a hundred in number: discharged soldiers, sailors half buccaneer, fortune-hunting younger sons, highwaymen, tinkers, rebellious Welshmen, Lowland cattle rustlers, gathered together from Dover to Lands End, from the Cheviot Hills to the London alleys. Lockridge could only guess how each had been recruited. Some for religion, some for money, some for refuge from the hangman – one by one, the Wardens found them and drew them into a secret league, and now the hour was on hand to use them.

  Torchlight picked faces out of the mass that seethed and grumbled on the island. Lockridge stood next to a squat, pigtailed seaman in ragged shirt and trousers, barefoot, earringed, scarred by old fights. ‘Where are you from, friend?’ he asked.

  ‘A Devon man, I be.’ Lockridge could just understand him; even a Londoner still treated his vowels like a Dutchman, and this fellow added a dialect thick enough to cut. ‘But I were in Mother Colley’s stew in Southampton when the summons came.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Ah, there were a rare bouncetail trull! Had I had one hour the longer, not soon ‘ud she forget Ned Brown. But when the medallion spoke, God’s bones, I’ve stood ‘neath French gunfire and piked Caribals when they howled up the sides of our galleon, yet never ‘ud I dare leave yon summons unheeded.’

  ‘The, uh, medallion?’

  Brown tapped a disc hung about his neck, stamped with the image of the Virgin. Lockridge noticed the same thing on several other hairy breasts. ‘What, thou wert not gi’en this token? Well, it whispers when they’ve need o’ thee, in such a way that none may hear save thyself, and tells whither thou must hie. Hemet me there and flitted me to a meeting in the wilds, thence hitherI knew not the service numbered this many.’

  Mareth stood forth at the cabin door. His voice rose, not loudly, but the turbulence was hushed. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘long have most of you been in the Fellowship, and no few will remember times when it saved you from dungeon or death. You know you are enlisted in the cause of white magicians, who by their arts aid the Holy Catholic Faith against paynim and heretic. This night you are called to redeem your pledge. Far and strangely shall you fare, to battle against wild men while we your masters engage the wizards they serve. Go you bravely forward, in God’s name, and those who outlive the day shall have rich reward, while those who fall shall be yet more highly rewarded in Heaven. Kneel, now, and receive absolution.’

  Lockridge went through the ritual with a bad taste in his mouth. Was this much cynicism necessary?

  Well – to save Storm Darroway. I’ll be seein’ her again, he thought, and the heart fluttered in him.

  More hushed and serious than he would have believed possible, the English filed through the cabin door and down the ramp. In the anteroom, before the cur
tain of rainbow, they got their weapons: sword, pike, ax, crossbow. Gunpowder would be useless against the Rangers, needless against the Yuthoaz. But Mareth beckoned to Lockridge. ‘You had best stay with me, for a guide,’ he said, and laid an energy pistol in the American’s hand. ‘Here, you come from a sufficiently sophisticated era to operate this. The controls are simple.’

  ‘I know how,’ Lockridge snapped.

  Mareth dropped his hauteur. ‘Yes, she singled you out, did she not?’ he murmured. ‘You are no ordinary man.’

  Auri struggled through the press. ‘Lynx,’ she pleaded. The terror was back to gnaw at her. ‘Stay near me.’

  ‘Have her wait here,’ Mareth ordered.

  ‘No,’ Lockridge said. ‘She comes along if she wants to.’

  Mareth shrugged. ‘Keep her out of the way, then.’

  ‘I have to be in the forefront,’ Lockridge told her. She shivered between his palms. He must give her a kiss … mustn’t he?

  ‘Come, lass,’ Jesper Fledelius laid a gorilla arm across her shoulders. ‘Stay near me. We Danes should hang together, amidst these English louts.’ They slipped off into the crowd.

  During the day, Lockridge had helped manhandle several flyers through the gate. They were sheening ovoids, transparent, not of matter but of forces he did not comprehend. Each could hold twenty. He shoved into the lead one with Mareth. The men already there breathed heavily, whispered prayers or curses, and flicked their eyes about like trapped animals. ‘Will they not be too panicky to fight?’ Lockridge wondered in Danish.

  ‘No, I know them,’ Mareth said. ‘Besides, the initiation ceremonies involve unconscious conditioning. Their fear will turn to fury.’

  The machine rose without sound and started down the cold-white, humming bore. A Warden at every console, the others followed. ‘Since you’ve got this passage,’ Lockridge asked, ‘why didn’t you get still more reinforcements from other periods?’