“Not that we know of,” Cassie said. “I gather we’re catching a bus?”
“The 25.” Callum checked his watch. “We have five minutes to get there.”
“Then we should go.” Cassie looked back at Mom and Anna. “This is where it gets tricky. The bus stop is at the end of this street in the exact spot where we got out of Darren’s car. We should walk determinedly without running. Anna, could you walk with Darren as if you know him well?”
Darren and Anna looked at each other. He shrugged. Anna nodded.
“Meg, you and I will stay together, and then Callum can bring up the rear,” Cassie said.
“We may have to bunch up to cross the street, but otherwise, don’t stop for anything,” Callum said. “We’ll be in the open and vulnerable.”
Darren lifted one arm, eyebrows raised, and Anna moved close enough so he could put his arm across her shoulders. She kept the backpack slung over her left shoulder, and she put her right arm around his waist. It was awkward and weird to be walking this way with a man she barely knew. Math would just have to forgive her. If she ever told him. Maybe it would never need to come up.
“There it is!” Up ahead, the bus swung around a corner. It was an orangey-yellow and turquoise double-decker—not the London red—and faces peered down at Anna from the top level. Darren raised a hand to warn the traffic that they were crossing, and they dashed across the street. The others hustled along behind. Darren ducked around the front of the bus so it couldn’t leave before they got on it unless it ran them over, and they entered through the folded front door.
The bus driver, sitting at the front of the bus to the right, didn’t even look as Darren dropped a handful of coins into the meter. Five adult tickets spat out.
“Another month and this wouldn’t have worked,” Darren said. “The buses are going to stop taking cash.”
“Yeah, and our cards would be a big fat neon sign for MI-5.” Cassie crowded onto the top step, her hand in Callum’s, and looked past Anna down the length of the bus. “There’s Mark.”
Mark looked exactly as a computer nerd should. He was in his early thirties, of average height, semi-balding, with extra padding around the middle, glasses, and rounded shoulders from too many hours spent in front of a computer. He, too, wore a backpack, and as the companions filed down the crowded aisle towards him, he made room for them to stand around him. At the front of the bus, the seats were arranged with their backs to the windows, but where Mark stood, they were in rows, two seats to a side with an aisle down the center.
Mom found a seat on the left in the first row next to the window, and Callum heaved the bag off his shoulder to lean it against the seat beside her. Anna took off her backpack and dropped it onto the seat itself, and then she sat with her back to the window, right in front of Mom. Everyone else remained standing, holding onto a floor-to-ceiling pole or the bar above their heads.
The bus hadn’t moved, and Cassie peered towards the front, standing on tiptoe to look past the other passengers that crowded the aisle. “It’s okay. The bus isn’t going because the light’s red.”
Anna shifted in her seat, anxious with the wait. She was glad to be moving, though Callum hadn’t actually said what the plan was and where they were going next. A few seconds later, the bus started forward, drove a short distance, changed lanes in order to take a right, and then passed in front of a large white building on the left.
“That’s the courthouse,” Cassie said, pointing, “and that’s City Hall beside it—” She broke off. “My God!”
People had begun exclaiming all around the bus. A woman screamed.
Anna had been looking at Cassie but now twisted in her seat, half-kneeling to look out the window—at the exact moment the front façade of City Hall ballooned outward in an explosion of yellow and red. Rubble, flames, and even vehicles that had been parked in front of the building shot up and outward. A second later, the percussion wave hit the bus, rocking it and throwing the passengers around.
If Anna hadn’t been holding onto the back of the seat, she would have fallen into Mom’s lap. As it was, Cassie’s staggered, and her backpack whacked into Callum’s arm. He caught her around the waist. “Christ.”
A few people had burst from the front doors of adjacent buildings. Others ran down the sidewalk, trying to protect their heads from falling debris. The bus had been slowing in order to stop at the bus stop in front of City Hall, but the bus driver stepped on the gas instead, ignoring the people gesturing frantically from the bench at the bus shelter, desperate to get away quickly.
All around, people were screaming both to get off the bus and for the driver to go as fast as he could. Then the bus skidded sideways, coming to a halt as a light pole crashed down across the road in front of it. The bus couldn’t go any farther forward, so with some jerky back and forth starting and stopping, throwing the passengers around in their seats as if they were ping pong balls, the bus driver managed to turn the bus around. He didn’t even bother to drive on the left side of the road as he should have, but accelerated back the way he’d come, heedless of the panicked traffic coming at him.
Callum and Anna crossed to the opposite side, pressing close to the window. Smoke billowed from the ruined City Hall, and Anna tried to make out what was happening through it. The bus driver, having just passed the near corner of the courthouse, yanked the wheel sharply to the right to avoid an oncoming car.
And then the courthouse exploded too.
Anna couldn’t say who screamed first—her or Mom or everyone on the bus together—but there was no other possible reaction. No human had any power over the mountain of stone and the wave of hot air the explosion sent hurtling towards the side of the bus. Anna put up her hands in a futile attempt to protect her face and—
Heart-stopping terror.
The black abyss.
More screams.
And Callum’s quiet voice, saying, “Here we go again.”
Chapter Nineteen
November 1291
David
It was a double-decker bus.
It was a freaking double-decker bus, bursting out of nothingness to the right and driving through Madog’s men, to come to rest on top of Madog himself, squashing him like he was a wicked witch and this was The Wizard of Oz. Except that he was already dead because David had killed him.
“Sweet Mary, mother of God.” Samuel had clearly learned to curse like the Christian soldier he’d once pretended to be. “My father has hinted over the years but—”
“Nothing could have prepared you for the truth,” David said. “I’m sorry I didn’t reveal all to you sooner, especially after Callum disappeared.”
Samuel nodded, but David didn’t think he’d really heard him. Like everyone on the field, he had eyes only for the bus.
If Bronwen were here, she might have said, “Like you couldn’t have shown up twenty minutes earlier?”
In that initial charge, Dad had taken his men down the left side of the field, David had taken his directly up the middle at Madog, and Carew had ridden up the right. Like David, Dad had dismounted during the fight, but David caught sight of his plume. He stared at the bus too. David thanked whatever intuition had urged him to leave Madog where he lay and return to where Samuel held his horse, or else he would have been squashed too. William, wherever he’d disappeared to, would be even more starry-eyed after this.
All around the giant vehicle, horses reared and men scattered. David found himself swallowing down the semi-hysterical laughter filling his throat at the incongruity of the giant turquoise and orange bus invading a medieval battlefield. The laughter didn’t last long, however. There were dead and wounded to see to, not to mention an entire army that had just learned it was defeated—first by the death of its leader, then by the arrival of Math, and now by the appearance of a modern bus.
David gestured to Justin, who’d surfed up beside Samuel. “Don’t look at it; don’t think about it. Just do your job. We need to contain and contro
l Madog’s men. Now.”
“Yes, my lord,” Justin said.
David caught his arm. “If some run, let them go rather than shooting them from behind. These are Welshmen.”
“Yes, my lord.”
David nodded. “I will explain about the vehicle later.”
The bus had split the field in half. On this side, the only side David could see, those of Madog’s men who’d seen him fall had lost the will to fight already. The front ranks had thrown down their arms, and David’s soldiers had already begun rounding them up. Ieuan’s force lay just behind David to his left, and they too were corralling Madog’s spearmen. David didn’t know what had become of Madog’s archers or Ieuan’s, but as long as no more arrows flew down from the heights to harm anyone, he wasn’t worrying about them at the moment.
While Justin raised his hand to those men who were still mounted, calling them to him, David loped towards the folding door nearest to him, which lay about two-thirds of the way down the length of the bus. Before he reached it, it opened, and Callum swung down. He wore a suit and trench coat but held his sheathed sword in his left hand.
“My lord,” he said.
Emotion rose in David’s throat, preventing him from speaking. He shook his head. Callum grinned in response to David’s muteness like he’d caught David out in the biggest practical joke imaginable. Then his eyes flicked past David’s shoulder. Samuel had followed David, and the big soldier was goggling at Callum.
“Glad to see you’re still alive too, Samuel.” Callum said, still grinning.
“Where is—” David finally managed to get two words out.
Callum’s attention swung immediately back to David. “We’re all here. We’re all safe, though the bus driver didn’t make it.” Callum had been holding onto the metal railing that ran along the steps of the bus, and he swung back to let David past him. David came up the steps and then stopped again, struck speechless again by what he saw: Mom, Anna, and Cassie, thankfully, but also two dozen other people in various states of disarray. They stared at him. It had been a bumpy ride, apparently.
“Hi,” David said in American English. “Welcome to the Middle Ages.” Because, really, what else was there to say?
A small sea of faces looked back at him, and David realized only then what they must be looking at: him. He held his bloody sword down at his side, but his hair was matted and possibly bloody too (though the blood wasn’t his), and he wore the full armor of a medieval king.
And then David whuffed as Anna barreled into him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Thank God! Thank God, we made it back. I don’t ever want to do that again,” she said.
David hugged her, though since he still held his sword in his right hand, it was an awkward embrace. Then Mom was there too, and Cassie.
“We’ve lived a lifetime since you left.” David eased his hold on Anna. “I suspect you have too.”
“Math—?” Anna began.
“Math and Dad are here, but I don’t want you going out there to find them yet. You’ve landed in the middle of a battle.” While all the windows on the north side of the bus were intact, many on the south side were broken. David bent to look towards the southern end of the field where men and horses still seethed in places, but most of the fighting seemed to be waning. With the loss of Madog and the arrival of Math, there wasn’t anything for Madog’s men to fight for. As David watched, another group of men threw down their arms rather than die for a lost cause.
Mom peered at David through the lenses of a new pair of glasses. “Have we ruined everything?”
“Oh no! This was right where you needed to come in,” David said. “It couldn’t have gone better if you’d planned it.”
While they’d been talking, the crowd had grown. People had come down from the upper level, which was accessed by a metal staircase at the rear of the bus. Callum moved to block anyone from exiting the vehicle, with Samuel filling the doorway behind him.
“It was a pretty rocky transition. We haven’t had a chance to do more than talk to a few people.” Mom gestured towards the front of the bus. A man was lying across three seats that faced inward. “The bus driver’s gone. A rock came through his window and hit his head.”
“I’ll get some men to move him. He can lie with our dead.” David turned to Callum. “How many people are we talking about?”
“At least forty, my lord,” he said.
David put a hand on Callum’s shoulder and shook him. “I missed you.”
“What’s happening out there?” Callum said.
“A rebellion led by one Madog ap Llywelyn. The tide had turned, and then you showed up to seal the deal.” David stepped away from the women, moving with Callum to the rear door. Several passengers at the front of the bus were struggling to open the front door, but they were having difficulties because it was jammed. That was a good thing, because they weren’t going to be any happier out there than in here, once they discovered what faced them. Someone was going to have to explain to them about their new reality—and convince them once they’d been told.
Cassie saw David looking towards the front of the bus and started forward. “Wait! Don’t do that.” The people in the aisle gave way before Cassie. David didn’t blame them. They had a dead man two feet from them, a battlefield outside their window, and Cassie’s face held a particularly determined look. David wouldn’t have stood in her way either.
“What are we going to do with everyone?” David said to Callum, leaving Cassie to handle the tourists up front. David had become better at delegating tasks. Managing forty modern people was going to be a monumental one, which David neither could—nor wanted to—take charge of.
One of the men who was trying to open the front door raised his voice to Cassie. “Who do you think you are?” He sounded like the worst kind of aggressive American.
David glanced through the open door behind him. His men were milling around the bus. Then Dad appeared out of the crowd.
“I’ve got to go,” David said to Callum. “I need to deal with what’s going on out there.”
“I know.” Callum looked down at himself. “I’d help, but I’m not dressed right, except for—” He pulled the sword a few inches out of its sheath. “Look what we brought. I have yours too.”
“Please tell me bringing a double-decker bus back here wasn’t part of the plan,” David said.
“No,” Callum said. “Though we had every intention of returning, we didn’t mean for it to happen this abruptly.”
David swept his eyes around the new arrivals one last time. “I don’t even know where to start with them.”
“We’ve got this, David, at least for the moment,” Anna said from beside Mom. “Do what needs doing.”
David reached out to clasp her hand briefly and then released her to step off the bus. Without a doubt, this was the craziest thing that had ever happened in all their time traveling. And there’d been plenty of crazy things. It was bad enough to have brought Marty or Callum to the Middle Ages, but an entire busload of people? David hadn’t even had the chance to ask Anna or Mom how they’d accomplished it.
Dad put a hand on the railing outside the bus doorway, and David stepped off the bottom step to stop in front of him. He looked at David, his eyes questioning, and David nodded. “They’re here. They’re fine”
“It’s just cleanup work on the field.” Dad put a hand briefly to his heart but was surprisingly subdued considering David had just told him that his wife had returned from the twenty-first century in a double-decker bus.
“Did you speak to Math?” David said.
“Briefly. His men are helping to round up Madog’s men and see to the wounded. They’re fresher than any of our men.”
“I’m on my way.” David made to move past his father, but Dad stopped him with a hand to his upper arm.
“We might have lost, Dafydd.”
“I know,” David said.
“It was only because of your heroics that
we didn’t.”
David wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. He didn’t even know if it was true, given the arrival of Math and the bus.
Then Dad added, “It’s been too long since I lost a battle. I’d forgotten what it felt like to stare death in the face and not flinch.”
David nodded. “We’ll talk later. Mom’s waiting for you.”
David didn’t want to talk about this right now, but Dad was right. Yet again, the time travel option had been a force in a victory. They hadn’t counted on it—it hadn’t even occurred to David that Mom and Anna’s return could in any way assist them—but it had come through for them anyway. The battle had been all but won, but the arrival of the bus had sealed the deal.
He didn’t know what to think about that. He didn’t know whose hand lay over him. He put his trust in God. He spoke to his people about Avalon. But the truth was that he didn’t know why any of these things happened to his family. David really hoped that the answer wasn’t an omnipotent robot living in a hidden base on the moon.
William held David’s reins, and as David mounted, he saw Mom and Dad embrace inside the bus. He looked away, already thinking about what came next, but then he looked back, registering the way Dad was listing to one side. David hadn’t noticed it when they’d been speaking. Then Mom put her hands to either side of Dad’s face, talking to him intently. David decided he could leave him to her for now.
He looked at William. “Are you injured in any way?”
“No, my lord.”
With Justin and William, David rode around the bus to the southern end of the field. Men and horses, dead and wounded, lay everywhere, reminding David strongly of that first evening in Wales when he and Anna had rescued Dad from the English ambush. That day, the dead had littered the ground. The minivan had run over the last four enemy soldiers, but Dad’s men had already been dead, having fallen while defending him. As it had then, bile rose in David’s throat, but he swallowed it back. It was a good thing he hadn’t eaten in a while. He was the King of England. It was no longer forgivable for him to lose his breakfast on the ground.
Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Page 22