The Corridors of Time

by Poul Anderson

  Shouts lifted through cloudiness.

  Lockridge stopped by the dripping trees. Noise grew and grew on his right: horns and horses neighed, men whooped and screeched, bows twanged, wheels groaned, axes began to thunder.

  ‘Will she never come?’ muttered his son Arrow.

  Lockridge felt strained near breaking. He had no guarantee of success. One energy gun could scatter a host, and the thing that weighed in his hand was matched against two.

  Feet thudded from Avildaro. A dozen Yuthoaz burst into view, out of the fog. Their weapons were aloft and their faces furious. At their head ran Hu.

  I’m not goin’ to kill you this time, Lockridge thought with a shiver.

  The Warden jarred to a halt. His pistol lifted.

  The same weapon flared in Lockridge’s grasp, upon itself. Red, green, yellow, deathly blue, fire sleeted. The Yuthoaz flung themselves on the Britons, who scattered back in supernatural dread.

  ‘Koriach!’ Hu shouted above the crashing energies. ‘They are Rangers!’

  He did not know Lockridge in the man who confronted him. And within this hour, he would lie dead before the Long House. Lockridge stood frozen with the terror of it. Hu stepped closer. A Yutho howled and swung his tomahawk. The hillman who had spoken of oaths fell before him.

  That broke Lockridge’s paralysis. ‘Westhaven men!’ he yelled. ‘Strike for your kindred!’

  Arrow bounded forth. His bronze sword flashed in the fires, drove home and came back bloody. Hawk took a blow on his helmet, which belled like his own laughter as he struck. Their brothers, Herdsman and Sun Beloved, rallied to them; and so did the rest. They outnumbered the Battle Ax men. Short and unmerciful was that fight.

  Lockridge drew blade on Hu. The Warden saw his troop go down, lifted off the ground, and was lost in the mists. Above the war in the fields, he could be heard shrieking for Storm.

  So she took another route. She’s out yonder, Lockridge thought. ‘This way!’

  He came onto the meadows. A chariot careened by, aimed for a line of his men. Trained by him, they stood fast until the wheels were almost upon them, then parted, and smote the chieftain from the sides. Masterless, the horses ran into twilight and were lost. The Britons charged those Yuthoaz who followed on foot. To Lockridge it was all a shadow play. He hunted for Storm.

  Over the stricken field he went with his band. From time to time he saw a piece of the battle. A Yutho dashed out the brains of a Westhaven warrior, and was cut to pieces by an Iberian. Two men rolled in the mud like dogs, seeking each other’s throats. A boy named Thuno sprawled in blood, eyes turned empty to the hidden sky. Lockridge hurried past. His scabbard slapped his leg. Helmet and corselet grew heavy upon him.

  After some part of eternity, he heard cries. A group of his people loped by, lips set against panic. He hailed their leader. ‘We met her, at the edge of town,’ the tribesman gasped. ‘Her flames slew three before we could get away.’

  They had not bolted, though. They were following his instructions to retreat and seek another opponent. Lockridge sped the way they had come.

  First he heard her voice: ‘You and you and you. Find the clan’s chiefs. Have them come to me. I shall abide here, and when we have conferred and brought some order into our ranks, we shall destroy these sea bandits.’ Her voice was husky and lovely.

  He advanced into the clouds. They seemed to part, and she was there.

  Several Yuthoaz were at her side. Horses stamped before the one chariot, where Withucar stood with halberd ready. But Storm was alone, ahead of them. She had thrown no more than a tunic across her huntress body, and the moon crescent on her brows. The hair gleamed wet in what light remained, the countenance was vivid with life. He fired on her.

  She was too quick. Her shield went up. Rage upon rage, the energies spent each other in flame.

  ‘Ranger,’ she called across the roaring fearsome beauty of rainbows, ‘come and be slain.’ Because he wore his diaglossas, for the first time in many years, Lockridge understood. He moved nearer.

  Her Valkyrie face broke in horror. ‘Malcolm!’ she screamed.

  His sons egged on their men. Sword, spear, and tomahawk flew free.

  From the edge of an eye, Lockridge saw Withucar swing his long ax down upon Hawk. The boy dodged, sprang up onto the chariot, and stabbed. Withucar’s half-grown driver cast himself between the blade and his lord. As he crumpled, the chief drew a stone knife. Hawk could not pull his weapon out in time. He threw his arms around the redbeard. They tumbled off and fought by the wheels.

  Elsewhere, the Westhaven men closed. They met brave, skilled foes who stood fast, shield to shield, blow for blow. Battle shocked the darkening air.

  ‘Oh, Malcolm,’ Storm sobbed, ‘what has time done to you?’

  He could only be remorseless, advance on her with gun in one hand and the other one free that should have held a sword. At any moment she could flit off like Hu. But her men were being driven back by greater numbers. She retreated with them. Lockridge could not get to her, in the ruck that boiled around. When a space opened briefly between them, he and she made defense, and flames crowned her. Otherwise the grunting, panting, bestial struggle held them apart.

  In among the huts they moved. The Long House appeared, black above roofs.

  Abruptly, Arrow and Sun Beloved crashed through the Yutho line. Their feet spurned the men they had killed. Whirling about, they cut from behind. Their folk poured through the gap. The fight broke into knots, back and forth between those humble walls.

  Lockridge saw Storm before him. He leaped. So bright grew the radiance that they were both momentarily blinded. His hand chopped in a many-colored darkness. She cried in pain. He felt her gun spin loose. Before she could take off, he had dropped his own weapon and seized her.

  They went to earth. She fought with hands, nails, knees, teeth, till blood runneled down his skin. But he pinned her beneath his weight and metal. The dazzle cleared from his eyes. He looked into hers. She lifted her head and kissed him.

  ‘No,’ he choked.

  ‘Malcolm,’ she said, her breath quick upon him, ‘I can make you young again, immortal, with me.’

  He voiced an oath. ‘I’m Auri’s man.’

  ‘Are you?’ She lay suddenly calm in his grasp. ‘Then draw your sword.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’ He got up, removed her belt, helped her to her feet and kept her arms pinned behind her back. She smiled and leaned close.

  The fight had ended around them. When they saw their Goddess taken, such of the Yuthoaz as still could threw down their axes and fled. Wounded men ululated on the earth.

  ‘We have the witch,’ Lockridge said. It sounded in his ears like a stranger talking. ‘Now only her warriors remain.’

  His sons approached, glaives ready. He felt ashamed of being no happier than he was to see Hawk with them. He let Storm go. Bruised, smeared, and captive, she looked imperially at them all and said, ‘Is this the destiny you want?’ But she spoke in English.

  Lockridge couldn’t meet that gaze, he dropped his own and sighed, ‘It’s the one I’ve got.’

  ‘Do you imagine for a moment you can escape revenge?’

  ‘Yes. When they don’t hear from you, of course your spies will come to learn what happened. They won’t find you. They’ll hear about a raid where you evidently perished: not Ranger work, as far as they can tell from the confused native accounts, just an attack by an ambitious chalcolithic chief who’d heard Jutland was in trouble and saw his chance and was so lucky that stray arrows got you and Hu before you could drive him off. More than ever, your successors will think this is a bad period to meddle with. They’ve got plenty to do elsewhere and elsewhen; they’ll leave us alone.’

  Storm stood quiet a while. ‘You read shrewdly, Malcolm,’ she said at last. ‘What a hero you could be for us.’

  ‘I’m not interested,’ he said without force.

  She straightened her garment until it clung. ‘But what will you do with me?�
�� she murmured.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said in his trouble. ‘As long as you’re alive, you’re a mortal danger. But I … I can’t hurt you. I’m so thankful you came through this business that —’ He blinked hard. ‘Maybe we can hide you someplace,’ he said roughly. ‘In honor.’

  She smiled. ‘Will you come see me?’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘You will. We can talk then.’ She brushed aside the sword of the Herdsman, Auri’s son, came to Lockridge and kissed him again. ‘Farewell, Lynx.’

  ‘Take her off!’ he rapped. ‘Bind her. Be careful, though. She must not be harmed.’

  ‘Where shall she be kept, Father?’ Arrow asked him.

  Lockridge prowled a little beyond, into the square before the Long House. Hu’s body looked shrunken at his feet.

  ‘In there,’ he decided. ‘Her own place. Post a guard outside. Lay out the dead and do what you can for the wounded.’

  He watched her until she had been led through the doorway.

  War pealed in his ears like the pulse within him. On an instant, he could no longer be still. He ran through the village and shouted.

  ‘Avildaro men! Sea People! We have come to set you free! The witch is fallen. They fight for you out in the meadows. Will you lie there and strike no blow for yourselves? Come out, whoever is a man!’

  And they came: household by household, hunters, fishers, riders of the sea, they gathered beweaponed around the new-come deliverer. He called his sons to join. They went fifty strong through the holy grove and fell upon the Battle Ax ranks.

  And broke them.

  When the last chariot lay splintered and the last Yutho was chased out onto the heaths, Lockridge ordered all captives before him. Mostly those were women and children, who stumbled through the desolation of their hopes. But Withucar lived. Hands lashed behind his back, he knew Lockridge and defied him.

  A dying fire had been fueled until it lit the wet dark as wildly as the Tenil Orugaray were dancing. Lockridge saw the misery that faced him and spoke with much gentleness:

  ‘You will not be hurt further. Tomorrow you may go. This is our place, not yours. But a man from us will depart with you, to talk of peace. The land is broad; we know of ranges unpeopled for your use. At midwinter, the tribal chiefs will hold council here, when we will seek ways to meet our common needs. Withucar, I hope you will be among them.’

  The Yutho dropped to his knees. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I know not what strangeness has touched you this night. But for your ruth, we are still sworn comrades, you and I. If you will have me.’

  Lockridge raised him. ‘Take off his bonds. He is our friend.’

  Looking across his people, he, Lynx, knew his work not ended. Westhaven was strongly founded. In the next twenty or thirty years – however much time was granted him – he must build the same kind of league in Denmark.

  If only Storm —

  A man dashed to him and fell on his face. ‘We did not know! We did not know! We heard the noise too late!’

  Night closed on Lockridge like a fist. He cried for torch-bearers and ran the whole way to the Long House.

  By the unmerciful light of the globes, she lay. Her beauty was gone: one is not strangled to death without blackening skin, tongue swollen between teeth, eyes half bulged from the skull. Yet something lingered, in sheening hair and carven face, in body that had fought to the last and in bound hands which once touched him.

  Brann’s corpse was across her.

  I forgot him, Lockridge thought. I couldn’t stand to remember. So he came through the veil, with death on his heels, and saw her, his torturer, helpless.

  Storm, oh, my Storm!

  The Sea People grew hushed when their lord wept.

  He had them bring wood. He himself laid her to rest, with her lieutenant and her great enemy at her feet, and put the torch to the Long House. High and loud sprang the flames, to make another day out of darkness. We will build a sanctuary here, he thought, to the worship of Her Who one day will be called Mary.

  But for him there was only one place to go. He returned alone to the ship.

  Auri’s arms enfolded him. Toward sunrise he found peace.

  God, or fate, whatever you wanted to name it, be thanked for work.

  The Bronze Age, the new age was coming. What he had seen in his own unborn yesterdays gave him to believe it would be a time rich, peaceful, and happy: perhaps more happy than aught men would know until that distant future he had glimpsed. For the relics that afterward remained did not show burning, slaughter, or enslavement. Rather, the golden Sun Chariot of Trundholm and the lur horns, whose curves recalled Her serpents, spoke for the Northern races become one. Then widely would they fare; the streets of Knossos would know Danish feet and men depart from England for Araby. Some might even touch America, where the Indians were to tell of a wise kindly god and of a goddess named Flower Feather. But most would return. For where else was life so good as in the first land the world ever saw which was both strong and free?

  In the end it would go down, before the cruel age of iron. Yet a thousand fortunate years were no small achievement; and the spirit they brought to birth would endure. Through every century to come, the forgotten truth that men had once known generations of gladness must abide and subtly work. Those who built the ultimate tomorrow might well come back to the realm that Lynx founded, and learn.

  ‘Auri,’ Lockridge whispered, ‘be with me. Help me.’

  ‘Always,’ she said.

  About the Author

  Poul Anderson (1926–2001) grew up bilingual in a Danish American family. After discovering science fiction fandom and earning a physics degree at the University of Minnesota, he found writing science fiction more satisfactory. Admired for his “hard” science fiction, mysteries, historical novels, and “fantasy with rivets,” he also excelled in humor. He was the guest of honor at the 1959 World Science Fiction Convention and at many similar events, including the 1998 Contact Japan 3 and the 1999 Strannik Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Besides winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, he has received the Gandalf, Seiun, and Strannik, or “Wanderer,” Awards. A founder of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, he became a Grand Master, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

  In 1952 he met Karen Kruse; they married in Berkeley, California, where their daughter, Astrid, was born, and they later lived in Orinda, California. Astrid and her husband, science fiction author Greg Bear, now live with their family outside Seattle.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1965 by Trigonier Trust

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  978-1-4976-9420-0

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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