Anvil of Fate (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  At that moment a man spoke harshly from behind her, in Latin. “Quisnam adveho in nox noctis? Quis est… raptor?”

  “Forgive me, sir, I am no thief,” Maeve returned as best she could in Latin. “I can pay you well, but have need of a quick horse this night. Look here,” she gestured at the felt bag. “I leave you this horse, and can offer gold as well.”

  “Not for this horse,” said the man, drawing closer and eyeing her suspiciously. “Not this night,” he said darkly. He peered at her, his hand on the haft of a short sword that was tied at his waist.

  “Who are you? Show yourself!” He drew his sword, threatening.

  Maeve drew back her hood, shaking the fall of long honey blonde curls free as she did so.

  The man’s face registered real surprise. “A woman? Alone in the night on the road? Or are there others at hand?” He looked about, squinting at the hedges and trees.

  Maeve’s pulse quickened. She had to keep her wits about her, and then a sudden thought came to her. “Not alone, kind sir. My master and his retainers are on the road, close at hand. I am but a serving maid, sent hither to seek lodging and told to see what might be found in the way of livestock, for we are in need of a horse, a fresh mount. This gold and more we will pay in return.”

  “Your master comes?”

  Maeve decide to push the last of her chips out onto the table. “Dodo of Heristal, of the House of Pippin, not far from this place. He rides now on an urgent errand, and must suffer no delay.”

  This was the horse, she reasoned. It had to be. There would be no other like it found on this road tonight. Of that she was certain. If Paul’s warning that their adversaries may also be closely involved here were true, this man could be one of them, and not the simple farmer he made himself to be. The blade in his hand had an odd curve to it, unlike typical weapons of 8th century Europe. He spoke Latin, but she had the feeling the language was not native to him, and his aspect was also not European. He had a dusky look, dark eyes over a thin, prominent nose and thick black beard. In any case, by claiming association with Dodo, she gained some small leverage. Any local would know that name and, if this man was an Assassin, he would also be expecting Dodo’s arrival. But she had to be very careful here.

  The man gave her a sidelong glance, his eyes still searching the landscape around them. “I was told to expect four men,” he said quickly. “Nothing was said of a serving wench.” He pointed at her with the sword, taking a more relaxed stance, apparently satisfied that the area was secure.

  “You were told?” Maeve pressed her advantage with a question of her own. “No one was to know of my lord’s travel this night. How is it you were told of this?”

  “Never mind, woman,” the man said scornfully, dismissing her inquiry with obvious irritation. “You speak strangely,” he said, with an edge of accusation in his voice.

  “I am not born of this land,” said Maeve. “The common tongue spoken here is not my own. I hail from the land of the Angles and Saxons. I was given to the house of Dodo as a young girl when my family perished.”

  “No matter.” The man seemed uninterested, and was still somewhat restless. His dark eyes seemed to register some inner conclusion, however, and he forced a wan smile. “You seek food and rest on the road? Then the hospitality of my home is yours.” He nodded graciously, his hand gesturing to the farmhouse behind him. “But you are bold to have come here this way, and to have put your hands upon this one.” He pointed to the Arabian. “Your master is in need of a horse? This is one of the finest steeds in all the land, to be sure. It will serve him well.”

  “Then you will sell it?” Maeve was quick to take advantage of this sudden shift in the man’s attitude, but an inner sense warned her to be on her guard now. The man was all too eager to let his prize steed go, when a moment ago he had clearly been very reluctant.

  “For that?” He pointed his sword at the gray mare. “You say you offer gold as well? How much?”

  “This I was given to offer,” she said, taking the felt bag and holding it out to the man.

  He snatched it quickly, still somewhat suspicious, and hefted the bag in the palm of his hand. “How do I know this is not base stone?” he said.

  “See for yourself,” Maeve gestured.

  “I can see nothing here in the dark. Come into my home and we will sit by the fire to await your master. Then I will chew upon your gold and judge its worth, eh?”

  Maeve’s pulse quickened. She did not want to be trapped inside close quarters with this man, on unfamiliar ground and with the possibility that Dodo and his men were indeed on the road this night, close at hand. She had to find some way to remain at large, and she had to be certain the Arabian was not here should Dodo arrive. But what to do?

  “Forgive me,” she said quickly. “But I was told only to seek quarters and livestock, and to return with all speed should anything be found. My master is in some haste, and is like to ride on by, heedless of this place should I not return. But if you will offer the hospitality of your home, and this steed in trade, then I can gladly bring him these tidings, and he will surely come here at my urging.”

  The man eyed her, uncertain for a time, and obviously thinking over the ramifications of her offer. Before he could speak Maeve sweetened her argument.

  “That pouch you may keep until my master comes,” she moved as she spoke, taking up the rein of her gray mare. Now she was between the two horses, one hand resting on the back of the stallion, the other holding the rein of the mare. “But do not be greedy,” she put in a warning, “We have counted it well.” She maneuvered the mare between herself and the man, making as if she was preparing to mount.

  The man was holding the bag, his fingers squeezing the soft felt to feel the stones within. The look of suspicion and distrust was obvious in his eyes again, but he seemed to hesitate, trying to decide.

  Maeve knew it was now or never and, in a quick, steady movement, she leapt atop the horse—not the mare, but the Arabian stallion! The horse made as if it might buck, and the man shouted at her.

  “Come down off that horse!” He tried to get around the mare to seize the reins, but Maeve kicked hard, forcing the mare to step forward and block the man. At the same time she pulled at the reins and gave the stallion a firm heel. The horse reared up, hooves scoring the cold air, then bolted, leaping away, out into the green field. She leaned down, taking a firm hold on the horses mane, her legs tight on his broad back. The man was shouting, in another language now, and very angry as he pushed himself free of the mare and ran after her. But the Arabian was too fast. Maeve leaned in and whispered close by his ear, feeling the power of the animal, yet confident that she could now control the horse. “Ride with me, Kuhaylan,” she said softly.

  She let the stallion go now, clucking softly to urge him on as she steered the horse east toward the river, away from the road. If she could believe her own story, and Dodo was nigh at hand on the road this night as they hoped, then she would make certain they would not meet. The river would provide her an unerring guide north again, and she could skirt the bank until she came near to the city, then look for the place where they had shifted in to make Kelly’s retraction easier to manage.

  It was clear in her mind now that the man she had encountered was no simple farmer. He was Arabic, she decided, and had little doubt as to who this man might be, but she had neither the time nor inclination to find out more.

  Chapter 18

  Arch Complex, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Saturday, 9:00 A.M.

  “Another set of footprints?” Kelly registered surprise when Paul and Robert told him the story. “Then someone must have seen you manifest,” he said. “Not good.”

  “Not good at all,” said Paul. “But there’s no helping it now. We saw no one else in the area, and the three of us immediately went north to approach the outskirts of the city. Maeve found a horse with no problem,” he beamed.

  “That’s my girl,” said Kelly. “Well, if you were seen on arrival, then it
would have scared the fellow shitless. He probably cowered in the hedge until you were long gone.”

  “A story for his grand children,” Robert agreed.

  “Let’s hope that’s the worst of it,” said Paul. “I don’t think we have any worry about contamination with this. But it’s Maeve I’m concerned about now.”

  “She went south?” Kelly was adjusting the controls on the retraction module, carefully watching the status on his new program monitor. He still had a tenuous hold on Maeve’s pattern signature, and he could see that it was drifting well off the initial manifestation coordinates. He wondered how far she could go and still be tracked by the system.

  “How’s the quantum fuel holding up?” Paul was looking at the chamber mix integrity, assessing numbers on the reading.

  “Stable,” said Kelly. “For the moment. And the fuel on the number two generator is holding up well. That was fast work! You two were in and out. I had the system programmed to give you three hours there, but it signaled retraction after twenty minutes here. At first I thought something was wrong, but then I noticed the chronometer reading for the target Meridian was moving much faster than the time here. Three hours there was just twenty minutes here. At this rate Maeve should be ready to shift back in another twenty minutes.”

  Something distracted him and his glance was drawn to another monitor. The Golems were active again, signaling another variation. “Would you check that monitor?” he asked Paul. “I want to keep a firm hold on Maeve here.”

  Paul threw back his hood, still in his monk’s robe and looking strangely out of place in the modern environment of the lab complex. He activated the Golem module and called up the history time line. Something had changed, not greatly from the readings, but the history had varied. He clicked on the documentation button to begin calling up references. The Golems were still fishing in the data stream. In time they would reach a weight of opinion, and Paul could actually call up documents from other Meridian, altered and at variance with their touchstone data in the RAM Bank.

  “Our lady has been busy. Something has already changed,” he said. “But whatever she’s about, it isn’t that traumatic—at least not to the projected outcome of the Meridian as I read it here.”

  Robert was at his side, curious, and looking at one document after another as Paul clicked on various links. “See if you can call up anything from the Vita Landiberti Vetustissima. That failing, try searching for Carmen de Sancto Landberto. Those were the two primary sources on the life and death of Lambert.”

  “Here’s an account from the first,” said Paul, reading quickly. “And look here—there’s no trace of the previous data. Do we have that document in a cache somewhere, Kelly?”

  “Hit the number seven function key. That will compare the current document on the screen with the last cached version from earlier searches, and you can hit F8 to compare both to the RAM Bank data.”

  “Nice programming,” said Paul, but when he hit F7 the variation was somewhat disturbing. “That bit about the horse and Dodo being thrown from the ‘wilful beast’ is entirely missing!” he exclaimed. “Here, Robert, make yourself useful and read this document.”

  “Missing?” Kelly was looking at the screen now. “Well it hasn’t altered the outcome much. I mean, look at the chronology color bar. Nothing has really changed. It’s still shows first variation originating at this date on the Meridian and worsening as the time line moves forward. The outcome of the battle of Tours remains unaltered, a dramatic Arab victory, and it just gets worse from there. Maeve obviously did something to alter the Meridian, but what?”

  “It looks as though she found the horse,” said Paul. “That would explain the missing data in the story describing Dodo’s mishap. Robert? Anything more?” He was hoping there might still be unseen effects emerging in the data stream as they waited.

  Robert had been reading intently from the original source material in an on-line translation of the Carmen de Sancto Landberto, the “Song of Saint Lambert’, and seemed dismayed.

  “Paul’s correct,” he said. “The story has changed, here and in the Vita as well. There’s no mention of the horse at all now, not even in the Arabic sources. Apparently Lambert was warned of the impending plot and escaped. Look here,” he began to read. “And one came in the middle of the night to give warning, causing Lambert to flee with his domestics, away over the river. And thus was Dodo’s revenge undone, and he was roundly condemned by the Saint, and banished from Pippin’s court.”

  “Damn,” said Paul. “The history has changed again. Dodo was warned? By who?”

  “Neither account provides any more details,” said Robert.

  “The Assassins?” Kelly suggested. “You said they would most likely be operating with an agent in place on a night of this importance, perhaps even at the farm where Dodo was to have found the so called willful beast.”

  “Right,” said Paul. “That was a fair assumption, but if Maeve got to that horse first, then she may have prevented the mishap. That said, it’s clear this Pushpoint was not decisive in altering any of these events.” Then his eyes brightened with recollection. “What about that loose twine? Search for that, Robert.”

  A moment later the professor had found the entry. “It still reads the same—a loose twine, where the horses were brought to gather… But let me look at the image of the Rosetta stone again.” He opened a folder and called up the file he had stored there, searching the lines of hieroglyphics.

  “Here it is… a loose twine…. then the wavy line separating the two stories, and it reads—damn! It’s not the same in this image! Now it reads: “a loose twine… where the horses were brought to gather at the water’s edge. What’s happened?”

  Paul thought deeply, coming to some inner conclusion. “Alright,” he said. “So let’s assume Maeve got to that horse and made off with it. If you were the Assassins, what would you do in that instance?”

  “They obviously had to do something else,” said Kelly. “And the data Robert found in the source material indicates that someone warned Lambert.”

  “Undoubtedly the Assassins,” said Robert. “Damn, they must have perceived the variation the moment Maeve intervened. They ran a counter-operation!”

  “Possibly,” said Paul. “Or their operatives on that Meridian must have decided quickly that they had to take some other action. They warned Lambert. That was very risky. It involves direct intervention to influence the behavior of a Prime.”

  “Well they had no qualms about trying to knock Dodo on his ass,” said Kelly.

  “We were talking about killing Lambert ourselves. Now that’s messing with a Prime, right?” Robert folded his arms.

  “Dodo was obviously important,” said Paul, “but he was just an accessory, a means to an end. Lambert was the Prime Mover here. He had to be spared a martyr’s death, and clearly they have found a way to do that without the horse being involved at all. So we’re tilting at windmills here. The Pushpoint is somewhere else now, still a loose twine, but no longer the rein of that willful beast as we assumed.”

  “If it ever was,” Robert chided.

  “Then what do we do?” Kelly fidgeted, looking at the time. “We’ve been yakking here for ten minutes. In another ten minutes, our time, three hours will have elapsed in the altered Meridian. It will be 9:00 P.M. there, and Maeve should be back on her original manifestation coordinates if all went well. I can pull her out if the reading on her physical location matches up, otherwise we wait until midnight.”

  “No,” Paul said decisively. “Don’t pull her out just yet. We’ll need her there.”

  “For what?” Kelly complained. “There’s nothing more she can do in this situation. Hell, she doesn’t even know things have changed.”

  “Right,” said Paul, up off his chair. “So I’m going back to warn her.”

  Kelly blinked at him, somewhat surprised. “What? Another shift?” he said. “Look, we barely have the quantum fuel for Maeve’s retraction and perhaps one
more re-entry to that milieu, unless you want me to forget about our fallback plan concerning Lambert. I’ve had the Golems working on those new coordinates and I can put someone very close to Lambert’s villa if we have to take more drastic action.”

  “Keep that on ice,” said Paul. “Let’s hope we don’t need that shift. But can you manage a Spook Job? Can you put me on our original manifestation point for maybe ten seconds? That would give me enough time to warn Maeve about this variation, and perhaps she can do something about it from her end. We’ll have to postpone her retraction scheme.”

  “Ten seconds? How are you going to explain all this to her in that much time?”

  “Easy,” said Paul. “We’ll write it down—Robert, get busy with that, will ya? We’ll write it down and I can just appear and throw out the note.”

  Kelly gaped at him. “Then what?” he asked, incredulous and obviously still worried about Maeve.

  “Then Maeve has three hours in the altered Meridian to figure something out,” said Paul, “and if I know her, she will.”

  Maeve was riding hard now, away from the farm toward the river bank. When she first bolted away, she had turned south, thinking to avoid any possibility of encountering Dodo and his men should they be in the area. The farmer, or whoever the man was, might also take one of the other horses and try to follow her. Though she had little doubt that she could out run him in that instance. Neither the mare nor the brown plow horse could possible hope to catch her, but she nonetheless took a southerly route, thinking to double back and confound any pursuit once she reached the river.