Anvil of Fate (Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  He bowed low and seemed to sway as he rose, a bit giddy and off balance, an odd look on his face. Maeve instinctively approached him to render assistance, but as she did so there was an odd cellophane crackle and an odor of ozone permeated the room. It was suddenly very cold.

  “Oh… Dear Lord,” said Rantgar. “There seems to be a problem…”

  They stared, amazed, as Rantgar seemed to flutter, like a badly tuned in image on a TV screen. His image wavered, faded, winked, and then he simply vanished with an audible snap. The last they saw of him was the wild eyed surprise on his face. Then there was sharp clank and they looked to see his javelin and sword had fallen to the floor where he once stood. Nothing else was there.

  He was gone.

  Chapter 23

  The Berkley Arch Complex, Saturday, 10:20 A.M.

  “What the hell happened?” Kelly looked at Paul, dumbfounded. “Was this guy a hologram or something?”

  “Do those look like holograms?” Paul pointed at the weapons Rantgar had been carrying. He was as surprised as the rest of them, but his mind immediately went to the physics. “It looks like he lost integrity, even here in a safe Nexus Point. His pattern just seemed like it could no longer hold together. Perhaps there was an error on the data they sent through the Golems, and he failed to re-materialize completely when he came through the arch. Very strange about the weapons, though. Perhaps something about their mass density…”

  “Could have been a bad shift,” said Kelly.

  “Could have been anything,” said Paul. “I was warned about this when I was at Castle Masyaf. They told me that if your weren’t properly pattern sampled you had a limited life span in the milieu where you shifted. I think they said seven days.”

  “He barely lasted seven minutes, “ said Maeve. “Was this Paradox at work?”

  “Not within a Nexus Point,” said Paul. “No matter what happened to him the effect is the same. He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” asked Robert, clearly uncomfortable.

  Paul had no answer for him. They stood there, still feeling the tinge of cold in the room, smelling the odd odor of ozone.

  “Well, maybe the Order pulled him out,” Kelly suggested.

  “Not likely,” said Paul. “Not from within our Nexus. Remember, he was expecting us to send him back. It was all they could do to get him here, and he said his shift was very experimental—a new method. And the look on his face spoke volumes. He wasn’t expecting to be pulled out at all. He was as surprised as we were—terrified even. I think something went haywire, and frankly, I don’t believe he’s likely to make his appointment with Grimwald now.”

  Maeve had a very serious look on her face. “Then we’ll have to do it,” she said firmly. “Hopefully we still have the fuel.”

  “Kelly?” Paul looked at his friend, who was still mulling over the Retraction monitors, thinking he might spot some obvious error in the numbers.“Can we do it? Do we have the fuel?”

  “We’ll have the power, alright. As for the Quantum matrix, that’s another matter. The singularity is still stable, but it’s been losing integrity with every shift.”

  Paul pursed his lips, thinking hard. They had no other clues of their own to follow, and even their own discourse was wending its way to the mysterious figure of Rantgar in the history, the impious wretch who eliminated Grimwald and thus aided Charles ascension to the position of Mayor of the Palace.

  “Maeve,” he decided. “Could you see about some wardrobe. Robert and I will draw lots. You and Kelly remain here to monitor results.”

  He looked from one to another, and heard no protest. Exhausted from all they had endured that night, the team was quietly thankful that their unseen allies in the future were able to offer some assistance. Yet now the prospect of another mission weighed heavily on them, particularly one involving murder. Robert leaned heavily on the desk, obviously weary and looking for his coffee mug again.

  “Can you do this?” asked Maeve. “I mean…we’re talking about a man in his prime, fairly hardy, and most likely wearing some sort of medium weight armor, a leather jerkin at the very least, possibly even a hauberk. He’ll be armed, and he’ll know exactly how to use whatever weapon he wields. And he won’t be alone. They’ll be a body of retainers, perhaps even a troop of soldiery with him. He was making an official visit to his father’s bedside, and he was the heir apparent of Pippin the Fat. Now…Just how do either of you—or even both of you—propose to kill this man? Ever used a sword? A Javelin? Ever fired an arrow at something with intent to kill?”

  “You’ve made your point,” said Paul. “But if Rantgar has evaporated into the ether, we have no other choice but to shift in and see that the job is done. And it’s not as grim as you paint it. He was killed at the shrine. He’ll probably be kneeling before Lambert’s tomb, and most likely alone at that point. The retainers and soldiers will be outside.”

  “Pick up that thing and see what you can hit with it,” said Maeve pointing to the javelin Rantgar had left behind.

  “It doesn’t have to be all dash and valor,” said Paul. “We can use our heads, be stealthy, and we can use a reagent…”

  “What?”

  “Poison,” said Paul. “Whatever weapon we use will have to possess a lethal bite, even if it is something as small as a needle. I’ve got compounds down in the lab that would be absolutely fatal. All we have to do is deliver the barb somehow. Our task is to eliminate Grimwald, by any means possible. His presence in that Meridian was apparently a heavy stone on Plectrude’s side of the scale. If he lives, then Charles fails to secure power before Abdul Rahman’s invasion in 732. So we’ll have to shift in and see what we can do about it. It may be that we won’t be able to do a thing. Yes, we may fail. If we lose the singularity we’ll have to shut down and it could take days to regenerate—that’s assuming we have a viable world to live in here, and the food, fuel and freedom to continue operating.”

  “Well, we’d better draw lots then,” said Robert. “There’s no point risking two of us on a venture like this, as much as moral support might make that more comfortable.” He reached into his pocket, recovering the pencil he had put there earlier, and he put it back in the cup with the others, willing to leave the matter to chance as it should be. There was no way, he realized now, that he could cheat his friend. So if fate chose him, he resolved to go, though he could not even begin to contemplate what he may have to do. Could they find allies there, other agents of the Order who might render assistance? He shared this idea with Maeve.

  “It’s very likely that they have an operation planned, and so yes, there will probably be agents there. Identifying them is the trick, I suppose.”

  “Don’t bother with the lots, Robert,” said Paul. “I’ll take care of this myself.“

  “Now, now, my man. I’m perfectly willing to stand this watch as well.”

  “You said it yourself, Robert. No need to risk the two of us, particularly after what we just witnessed with Rantgar. I have a good idea of what I will do here, so I’m going down to wardrobe. I’ll be in the Arch Bay in ten minutes, Kelly.” He picked up Rantgar’s javelin.

  “But where are you going? What’s the target? I’ll need time with the Golems to process everything.”

  “Look in the Retraction Module. Rantgar was certainly going to go somewhere, right? Put me right on those temporal coordinates. As for the pattern buffer, you’ll just have to purge his data and substitute my pattern.”

  “Alright…I’ll clear extra RAM so I can store a double pattern sweep before you shift. Don’t worry. I’ll keep a firm hold on you.”

  “Double or nothing,” Paul smiled. Then he turned and headed for the great titanium door.

  Maeve was on the intercom a few minutes later. “Kelly? we’re good to go down here. You can ramp it up at your discretion.”

  Kelly looked at Robert, and received a thumbs up for reassurance. He toggled on the power systems monitor and began to take the Arch up to 80%. The wine of the t
urbines harried them all as they listened, feeling the thrumming vibration.

  “Looks like that little worm just activated,” said Kelly. “Golems just fed a huge block of data to the breaching module, undoubtedly the coordinates for this shift. I’ve got a good pattern on Paul, double sweep, and he’s installed. OK, Robert. Get ready on the Golem Module and watch for variations. On my mark… Three, two, one. Initiating Time shift ... Looks good, a little bump there on the integrity line but it’s settled down now. I think he made a good shift.”

  A few moments later Maeve was on the intercom confirming that Paul was gone. “We’ve launched our torpedo,” she said. “He’s on his way, God help him…”

  It was completely dark when he manifested on the coordinates, and Paul spent a breathless moment regaining his senses, stooping low and groping about on what was obviously a firm wooden floor. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw he was in a circular enclosed room, with walls of hard stone and three tall embrasures or slits in the upper wall, open to the cold night air. Something loomed before him in the darkness and he reached out, tentatively, trying to feel what it was. The cold touch of metal was the last piece of the puzzle he needed.

  I’m in a bell tower, he thought. Thank God I didn’t walk right into the bell and announce myself! He moved, ever so cautiously, and peered out of one of the three window slits. He could dimly see the gleam of moonlight on water, and he guessed that he must be in the chapel that was built to house Lambert’s tomb and shrine on the banks of the River Meuse. He had no idea what time it was, but reasoned it might be the hour before dawn. The coordinates clearly meant to put Rantgar here, in a position to possibly fling his javelin or fire an arrow from one of these windows. They wouldn’t want him lurking here very long, he thought, so the hour of Grimwald’s arrival must be very near, possibly at dawn.

  He had little time to waste, so he felt his way along the wall for a door, but there was none. Then he looked down and saw a knotted rope at his feet off to one side, and realized there was a trap door in the bare wooden floor. Sweating and very nervous, he took something from beneath the folds of his robe and laid it softly on the floor, right beneath the window that opened directly above the chapel entrance, about twenty or thirty feet below.

  Maeve’s challenge concerning the javelin echoed in his mind. Yes, he knew there was no way he would ever have been able to hurl the weapon through the embrasure with any hope of hitting someone. Rantgar had undoubtedly trained to perform this task to perfection, over all the many years he lived out his assignment here. But Paul had no such training, nor even the strength that would be required to make for a lethal throw. So it was not the javelin he set down, but something else, and thankfully, Maeve had not been so meticulous about screening him before the shift. She noticed the slight bulge beneath his cassock, assuming it was the weapon.

  “Oh, Paul,” she had said. “Sorry about being such a curmudgeon, but what in the world are you going to do with that?”

  “Leave it to me,” he told her quietly. But what he didn’t tell her was that he was concealing his .22 caliber rifle beneath his robe. It was the only weapon he knew anything at all about using, and it now had a very deadly bite. He had coated the tips of three bullets with a lethal compound from the lab, and slipped them ever so carefully back into the ammo clip. They would be the first three rounds fired if it came to that, but his primary plan involved a less direct approach.

  He hesitated as he set the rifle down, afraid to leave it out of his sight for a single instant. Then he slowly pulled on the trap door rope, opening it quietly. A ladder led down into the neck of the bell tower, and he slipped his narrow frame easily through the opening, gathering his robes tight about him as he descended. His feet, in woolen slippers with leather soles, were whisper quiet. Stealth was his one advantage. Who would think anyone was up in the bell tower at this hour?

  He was down, feeling his heartbeat increasing, more from fear than any real exertion. There was a single door there with an iron latch. He tried peering through a knot hole in the wood, but could see little in the inky darkness. Then, trusting to fate and his own star, he lifted the latch very slowly and pushed open the door. It made a slight creek on its hinges, freezing him in a moment of uncertainty. He waited in the silence, hearing nothing, then slipped through the opening.

  He was in a small alcove that probably served as the sacristy of the chapel, he reasoned. Perfect! He could see shelves on the wall in the dim light, goblets, a chalice, a gourd of water, wooden pegs holding plump skins with a corked spout fitted at one end. He took one and opened it with a dull pop, muffling the sound in his cassock. A sniff told him it contained mulled wine, exactly what he was looking for!

  He took the chalice and quietly poured a small serving of wine. Then he looked about until he had found a small brass dish, used for holy water at the cisterns. Undoubtedly the gourd of water would be used for these, so he poured out a small quantity of water as well.

  Right outside the room he could see the shrine to Lambert, and it chilled him to think that Maeve was standing very near this place, just hours ago in his chronology, yet nine long years ago here on this Meridian. Dodo and his men were riding hard to this very place back then, and she had bravely set loose the barge that removed Bishop Lambert’s last route of escape. His followers eventually found the bodies of Lambert and his family, carrying them off to Maastricht. But the Bishop there, seeing that he was likely to cultivate sainthood, had wisely returned them to this place, first building a shrine, then this very chapel.

  Paul approached the shrine, the brass dish in one hand, the chalice in the other. He saw the kneeler there before the altar, which was really the bishop’s tomb, and two low stools to either side, perhaps there to hold flowers, candles or allow visitors to leave offerings. He set the water dish on the rightmost stool, and the chalice on the left. In spite of the cold, his brow was wet with sweat.

  Now he reached carefully into the pocket of his cassock, where he had secreted away a special metal cylinder containing another pen-like object with lever handled cap. It was clear glass, half full, and contained a very dangerous agent. The cap was designed to rotate slightly to one side by means of the lever that looked like a pen clip. It extended down the side of the pen so that he could lever the cap open without having his fingers anywhere near the tip, then use his thumb at the other end to squirt out precisely measured amounts of the contents.

  He slowly levered it open and seconds later he had made an offering of his own, one dose in the water, one in the wine. The sacrilegious nature of his crime was apparent to him, there before the tomb of the sleeping saint. With his lethal agents now in place, he put the pen-like container back into the metal cylinder, screwed the cap tightly shut, and slipped it into his cassock. How long would it be now? The agents would have a limited potency in the new medium of wine and water.

  He took a deep breath, looking furtively about as if he expected to be discovered and called out for his sin at any moment. Murder and assassin—that was his lot now. How was he any different than the cult they had opposed these weeks past, struggling to reverse one intervention after another in the convoluted history? This life for a billion more, he thought, consoling himself. Yet now, more than ever, he found solidarity with Maeve, knowing exactly what she must have felt like.

  The soft early light of pre-dawn filtered through the stained yellow glass window behind the altar, and he immediately wanted to be gone from this place, hidden, secreted away again in the tower.

  An inner voice whispered to him, replete with recrimination in spite of all his rationalizations. He crept slowly off, a sallow, dull feeling in his gut, and made his way back into the tower and up the ladder, his heart beating fast with fear and anxiety as he went. Once safely up, with the trap door sealed, he sat down on the rough wood floor to catch his breath, shaken by what he had just done. I didn’t even have the courage to face the man, he berated himself. Yet Maeve was right. What could he have done in a f
ace to face confrontation? No, stealth and guile was his only option here, but he still felt like a slinking rogue.

  Look what we have become, he thought. We were such children. We thought we’d go see a Shakespeare play, that was all. Now look at us…murders, assassins, rogues in the dark corners of history. I am Rantgar, he realized, an impious wretch indeed.

  He did not have time for further reproach. The sound of horses on the hard cobbled road was crisp on the morning air. The light of early dawn now streamed through the embrasure and he got up on his knees, which was just high enough to peer out the window. Moments later men came riding on sleek black horses, their flanks wet with the sheen of sweat in spite of the morning chill. Three riders, then four came up, and he noted one man, more powerfully built than the others and wearing a dark gray cape, dismounted first.

  He spoke in a deep voice, casting back his riding hood and shaking loose long black hair which fell on his broad shoulders. Maeve had been correct. He was wearing a leather jerkin, laced at the sides, but draped over this was a fall of fine laced mail that covered his chest and back. It was tied off with a thick, black stained belt.

  Paul did not understand what the man was saying. But he seemed to make some jest, as the other three men laughed quietly in the misty dawn, their foggy breath clearly evident. Then the leader looked over his shoulder, and Paul caught a glimpse of the man’s face, dark eyes, sharp features, wide nose over a thick, short cropped beard. He must have been six foot three, he thought, and all of 200 pounds. Paul realized again how ludicrous it would have been for him to try engage this man in a death duel before Lambert’s altar.