For King and Country

by Robert Asprin

  Medraut nodded, still ash-pale in the light from the oil lamp. "Prince Creoda of Wessex asked the abbot of Glastenning Abbey to send a message to Artorius, bidding him meet Creoda and Prince Cutha of Sussex at Caerleul, to discuss matters critical to Britain's future. That's why Artorius rode for Gododdin a day ahead of us, trying to reach Lot and Ancelotis before Cutha and Creoda can arrive in Rheged. He's calling for a council of the kings of the north. Covianna Nim rode north to give Artorius the message. And she insisted on coming to Gododdin, as well. So," he added with a flush rising to his cheeks, "did Queen Ganhumara. They're both here."

  And like to be scratching one another blind, I wouldn't wonder, Morgana snorted silently, apparently not wanting to share that opinion with her young nephew. "So, it's Covianna Nim's thought to treat Ancelotis' wounds?"

  Medraut nodded. "She has studied, Aunt, at Glastenning Tor, even if she hasn't the training you had from the Nine Ladies of Ynys Manaw."

  Morgana had swung her feet out of bed, was hunting for soft leather shoes. "A rat may train with the Nine Ladies of Ynys Manaw, dear nephew, but if it speaks not a human tongue in its little rat's mouth nor hears a human's sense with its little rat's ears, then its training consists of nine years of gibberish spouted in its presence and at the end of those nine long years, all you've to show for it is a very greatly talked-at, white-bearded, old and useless rat."

  Medraut widened his eyes, gulped, and wisely, Brenna thought, considering her hostess' current mood, held his opinions to himself. Morgana drew on her outer robes against the frosty chill of the air. "Do not mistake me, lad. And fetch my satchel, please, Medraut, from the baggage there." She nodded toward a pile of cloth satchels and leather cases Brenna hadn't noticed before. "I do not hate the girl, nor even seriously dislike her, for all that she's copied the serpents themselves for the skill of weaving words with their tongues. It is only that the hour is late and the shock very dreadful, and the work that must be done this night may be worse, yet. I'll not sleep the night, as it is, and Covianna Nim simply hasn't the skills I do. She may pull the occasional splinter from some monk's holy backside—"

  Medraut sputtered with barely repressed laughter.

  Morgana smiled faintly. "And she is doubtless quite the expert on treating burns, those being the mainstay of a healer's work when she ministers to smithies who work gold and silver and forge the best weapons ever hammered against anvil. And she treats as well those who blow the glass as the Romans did, giving the Saxons' spies some innocent reason for that many forges to be running at one time on the Tor."

  "Covianna Nim said the Saxons have taken to calling it Glastonbury Tor, the Isle of Glass."

  Morgana said tartly, "Mark you, nephew, 'tis far better they mock our prettily colored glass than mark our finest steelmakers and ride across the marshes to the Tor, hacking down everything that moves to deprive us of the smithies. That threat alone," Morgana muttered as they hurried down a dark corridor toward a sound of men's voices not too far from Morgana's room, "would be enough to justify Covianna Nim scampering toward greater safety in the northern kingdoms. Doubtless, she will ingratiate herself with Artorius as much as she did with Emrys Myrddin during her last and seriously eventful visit to the northern kings."

  Satchel of healing herbs in hand, Morgana and her nephew thrust themselves through a group of deeply agitated men at the end of the corridor and there was no more time for Morgana's intense personal grief, for the wounded man was in sight, needing Morgana more than the grieving queen needed her solitude and tears. Brenna, an unhappy passenger, had absolutely no idea what to say or do that could possibly help.

  Chapter Four

  Trevor Stirling's hands sweat against the plastic cushion of the transfer couch, while Cameron Blair, the medical technician whose supervisor had committed step one of the worst terrorist atrocity in the history of humankind, fitted the transfer headset to Stirling's skull. Blair was pale, eyes shell-shocked, jaw set in anger at what McEgan had done. The Irishwoman had inherited Blair, not brought him with her, but it was clear that the medico felt the suspicion radiating from his colleagues. He'd worked for the woman... Stirling had to quell a deeper flutter in his belly, letting the man fit him for a transfer he could not control, when he hadn't had a chance to thoroughly vet the man, himself.

  No time, dammit, there's simply no time to do a proper job of this. He clenched his teeth, very much aware that his own arrival had triggered Beckett's murder and the terrorist's hasty flight into history. The only other people in the transfer room with him were senior staffers. Zenon Mylonas sat in full symbiosis with his computer equipment, preparing to insert Trevor Stirling's consciousness into the same time stream Brenna McEgan and Cedric Banning had entered. Dr. Indrani Bhaskar was attempting to give Stirling a last-minute briefing on the historical situation he would emerge into, while Cameron Blair fastened more electronic leads to his scalp, his cheeks and brow and jaw.

  He cut off Blair's attempted explanation of why the transfer equipment was attached only to his head, when the energy field of human consciousness existed throughout the body. It sounded like New Age psychobabble about chakras and out-of-body soul transference, leaving Stirling's head whirling when he needed to focus as clearly as possible on what he was about to attempt.

  "Only your consciousness will transfer," Dr. Bhaskar had taken over the explanation. "You will arrive inside a host mind. That is what Dr. Beckett described. The pattern of his consciousness entered another person's body and he shared awareness with that person for sixteen minutes."

  "Shared awareness?" Stirling frowned. "You mean, he took over the other person's mind?"

  "Not... precisely." She hesitated. "Terrance said it was more like a symbiosis of awareness. His host was terrified witless by the experience. Of course, when Dr. Beckett transferred, the power setting was lower."

  "Lower? You mean, Brenna McEgan set it high enough to displace the host's mind?"

  Indrani bit her lip. "I don't know. None of us do. We never transferred. And with only one short field test to judge by, we simply haven't the data to answer that. It's possible that the host mind is displaced."

  "Killed, you mean," Stirling interrupted grimly.

  "Or perhaps completely suppressed. Or not. There may be a synthesis of minds, a bit like split personality, with a struggle ensuing for control of the body."

  Lovely things to look forward to, Stirling groaned inwardly. Murdering an innocent bystander's personality—or driving the poor sod mad for control of the hijacked body—was not how Stirling had envisioned ending his career with the SAS. The very act of arriving might alter history in a catastrophic fashion, if a critical person's mind was the one's displaced.

  "There's no way to determine who I'll take over when I arrive?"

  Indrani shook her head. "I'm afraid not. We've theorized that you'll gravitate toward someone whose mind is very similar to yours, but there's no evidence to back it up, yet, of course. And there'll be very little to go by in identifying Dr. McEgan or Dr. Banning. Neither of them will be able to speak openly, or even act openly, for fear of giving themselves away. To one another, if not to the temporal natives."

  Stirling closed his eyes briefly. McEgan could sit like a spider at the center of a web for months, doing and saying nothing, while her pursuers blundered about, giving themselves away in the very need to search her out. And if the natives grew too suspicious, they might well either confine or kill someone who had apparently gone mad or turned traitor. Nobody ever said the SAS was an easy job. When he got his hands on McEgan, or rather on her host...

  What if she inhabited someone he couldn't safely kill?

  For that matter, could he safely kill anyone without risking the whole future?

  "Any last-minute instructions?" Stirling asked. "What's this transfer going to feel like? How do I get home again? What happens if my host's body is killed before I complete this mission?"

  Marc Blundell, who sat at a computer console beside Dr. Mylonas, s
aid over one shoulder, "Terrance Beckett said it was like being kicked in the head by a mule. As for the other, you'll return home when the timer begins shutting the transfer equipment's power down, a year from now."

  "What if the power goes off?"

  Blundell tried to smile. "We're operating on our own generators, Captain. Snap generators."

  Nuclear power in a compact package. Bloody wonderful. At least a simple thunderstorm shouldn't be able to disrupt power to the equipment.

  "We don't know what will happen if your host body is killed," Blundell added unhappily. "You might die from the mental shock. It could disrupt your own energy pattern of consciousness, when the host's pattern is disrupted. You might find yourself floating about, like a ghost, possibly a permanent state, or perhaps only until someone comes close enough for you to transfer into another host. We just don't know."

  "But I wouldn't, say, return here?"

  "No." Blundell hesitated. "What the shock might do to your body here, we don't know either. Dr. Beckett's heart was badly strained by the entire transfer process."

  "But he wasn't young," Blair put in grimly. "Bloody lousy candidate for the procedure, but it was his project, his decision. He wanted to be the first to make history. Dr. McEgan and I barely got his heart restarted, when the timer brought him back." The savage tone implied, And she killed him, afterwards, in cold blood.

  "How close will I arrive on their heels?" Stirling wanted to know, wiping sweat onto his trousers from damp hands.

  "The method isn't precise," Blundell said quietly, adjusting his equipment. "You should arrive after them, as they've been gone for more than an hour now, but it may be weeks or even months afterward. It might conceivably be prior to their arrival."

  I've let these people strap me into a time-traveling shotgun and they can't even bloody well aim it!

  Eventually, there was nothing anyone could add that wasn't sheer speculation. Dr. Mylonas detached himself from his computer long enough to say, "We're ready for the transfer, Captain. I've pinpointed it as closely as I can."

  Trevor Stirling swallowed very hard. Tried to brace himself. "Right. Do it, then."

  The last thing he heard was a chorus of good-luck wishes from the scientists.

  Then a very large mule kicked him between the eyes.

  * * *

  Lailoken the minstrel, a dark man full of dark ambitions and angers, bitter from professional failures and personal losses, strode down the verge of the ancient Roman road which angled westward out of Gododdin, singing to an audience of bracken, cracked stones, and rainclouds. His harp and flute lay nestled at the bottom of the rucksack hitched over his shoulder, wrapped in waterproof sealskin bags which were, along with the instruments themselves, the most valuable things he owned. Without them, he would've been utterly penniless. But poverty didn't matter to him this morning, any more than his tattered and patched cloak mattered, or his worn boots, or his much-mended tunic and trousers, their plaids faded nearly to grey. None of it mattered, because he was the most blessed man in Britain.

  Between sunset the previous night and dawn this morning, Lailoken had been chosen by the gods of old, the gods of thunder and blood sacrifice and revenge. They had singled him out as a worthy vessel and rode with him now, in his own mind. Banning, the god called himself, and promised wealth and fame beyond anything Lailoken could dream.

  And they both hated the Irish with cold, murderous passion.

  Who would not hate them? Banning had agreed the previous night, when Lailoken still sat reeling from the shock of being selected. They rape and pillage, destroy everything that is good and holy and civilized. Drunken, vicious brutes, heathens who can't even worship God properly. They've destroyed my people and I will destroy them utterly. And you, Lailoken, will help me.

  Lailoken understood the need for vengeance. He had watched Irish invaders hack his little family to death before he could run across the fields from the plowing to fight for them. The Irish had struck him down as well, leaving him for dead after laying open his head to the bone, but God had seen fit to let him live—the better to take vengeance upon the people who had shattered his world at the end of Irish swords.

  He had taken to the road, vowing never to farm or marry again. Lailoken had wandered from the Antonine Wall on the farthest northern border to Caer-Lundein in the south, a city almost abandoned now with the threat of Saxon invasion sending farmers and town-based traders alike scurrying toward the closest hill forts they could find, refurbishing the ancient walls and beating pruning forks and plowshares into swords and long, wicked spearpoints. From the dying city of Caer-Lundein, he had wandered west to Cerniw, where the Merry Maidens stood in a great circle, nineteen foolish girls turned to monolithic standing stones for daring to dance on a Sunday. He had loved Cerniw, where the Minack Theater lay dreaming in the summer twilight, its worn golden stones remembering the Roman engineers who had built it, centuries previously, flocking in to watch the ancient Greek dramas and the bawdy Roman comedies performed in it over a span of more than four centuries.

  Lailoken had played his harp and flute for money at Minack, standing on the semicircular stone floor where even the whisper of the breeze carried with the clarity of bronze bells, and his music floated magically to the highest tier of stone seats and drifted above the sea, skimming out across the deep turquoise waters of the Purthcurno Bay, with its lacework fringe of breakers spilling across the shingle.

  And from Cerniw, the long journey north again to Caerleul, along the Roman roads to Rheged and Strathclyde and up to Caer-Iudeu, nestled deep in Gododdin's mountain passes which guarded the way into Pictish country. Somewhere along the way, after months of starving as a desperately mediocre instrumentalist and singer, Lailoken had discovered a meager talent for composing poetry and a slightly greater one for making men laugh at the songs he sang.

  He employed those talents well, hiding his rage and the black dreams of vengeance behind foolish smiles while drunken soldiers and celebrating sailors with more money than sense gathered in tavernas to spend their hard-earned pay on cheap wine, cheaper women, and Lailoken's raunchy comic bravado. They roared with laughter and tossed him coins by way of approval and gave him answers as freely as the wine flowed, when he asked about the Irish in the port towns and trading centers he was able to reach.

  It was his dearest prayer to strike a blow that all of Ireland would bewail, leaving her screaming widows to rend their clothing in grief. Oh, yes, Banning promised darkly. We shall certainly send them to hell, my very dearest friend. Thousands of them. Do as I command and we will destroy the Irish race for all time.

  Lailoken had never been happier in his life.

  As they walked, Lailoken answered his new god's questions about where he had been, and where he had planned to go next. I left the garrison of Caer-Iudeu yesterday, when the King of Gododdin and his brother left to strike across the northern border into Pictish Fortriu. There's no money for a minstrel in a town with no soldiers left in garrison to pay my bills. There is talk of war again, rumors drifting north with every southerly breeze. When I left Caer-Iudeu, I vowed to journey to Caerleul, where the Dux Bellorum presides over the high councils of the northern kings. They send their cataphracti to him to do his bidding, defending the kingdoms of the Britons. Men of the cavalry enjoy the singing, the mead, and the women on the eve of battle or after a long, chilly patrol of the borders. A city full of soldiers, that's the place for a minstrel at such a time as this, if he wants to put food in his belly.

  The Dux Bellorum? Banning mused. Artorius, himself? Excellent, better than I could have planned. By all means, we must journey to Caerleul. I can carry out my plans there as easily as anywhere and it would be amusing to meet the great man. But, Lailoken, we cannot walk all the way to Caerleul. I have no intention of taking weeks to get there, while my enemies entrench themselves so completely I will never discover their hiding places.

  Enemies? Lailoken asked, startled. Have the Irish infiltrated spies into
Caerleul itself?

  No, I speak of other enemies. Creatures of my own kind, two of them, fools and criminals who would stop me if they could. I must discover them, Lailoken, discover who has sheltered them, as you have sheltered me, and destroy them utterly. No matter who serves them as host or hostess. Do you flinch from killing a woman, Lailoken? Or a traitor?

  He considered the question. Lailoken knew he would have had no more qualms about killing an Irish woman than he would have had about squashing lice. They had taken his woman and children away forever and deserved to lose their own, in return. But a Briton woman? That disturbed him. Still, if the woman harbored an enemy who would betray the Briton people... She would deserve a traitor's death, were she born of royal blood.

  Aye, Lailoken answered grimly. I would kill such a woman, or a man traitorous enough to harbor any creature favorable to the Irish. With my own hands, if necessary.

  In that case, Banning answered with a cold and delightful calm, I suggest we find and steal a horse.

  * * *

  He was lying on the ground. At least, it felt like the ground. Hard, lumpy, uneven beneath back and shins. He could smell smoke and dirt and rank human sweat, unpleasant odors that triggered a ballooning headache. Or maybe the headache had been there first. Disorientation swept him every few seconds, while his thoughts gibbered in a voice not quite his own.

  It wasn't precisely like hearing voices inside his head. It was more like some previously unfelt part of himself was making its presence known, as though a portion of his personality which had been submerged was now fighting to free itself from Stirling's internal censors. The sensations reminded him, oddly, of colliding air masses, which boiled up into storm fronts before mixing into something that was neither a cold front nor a warm front, neither high pressure nor low, a hybrid sort of weather that was wildly unpredictable.

  The buried part of his eerie new personality was radiating abject terror, swamped with overtones of rage. Without conscious awareness of the process, he found himself thinking in a very archaic form of Welsh—Brythonic, Dr. Bhaskar had called it. Other voices were swimming into his awareness. Men's voices, rough with worry, a woman's shrill in tones of fear. One deep voice commanded instant respect from Stirling's fractured thoughts.