Champions of Time (The After Cilmeri Series, #13)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “David was going to parade across England to show everyone he’s alive, but it wasn’t really necessary, right?” The words tumbled out of Sophie’s mouth. “Everyone knows by now that the plot in Ireland failed. David went to Warenne, who surrendered. All the men have seen him, and word has spread.”

  John de Warenne had predicated his rebellion on the supposed fact of David’s death. When David had ridden to Lyons Castle to confront him, Warenne had come out alone, with bared head, and bent a knee in the middle of his drawbridge. David had accepted his obeisance, his offer of payment, and his castle. He’d instructed Warenne to lead his army against Beeston, and that’s where he now sat with Humphrey de Bohun and Edmund Mortimer, who’d insisted that if anyone was going to take down his brother, it would be he. Even now, their army of nearly five hundred men was camped around the massive plateau upon which Beeston Castle sat.

  There were nods all around, so Sophie barely paused to draw breath. “That means we should divide the army now. Those who’ve just left Chester should be diverted to Barnard Castle and Balliol. They aren’t necessary for the taking of Beeston anyway, not with the weapons we have. Those of us who go to Beeston can simply tell everyone there that David went to Barnard, and those who go to Barnard can tell everyone that David stopped at Beeston.”

  “Lie, you mean,” Ieuan said, though she didn’t get the sense his words were an implied criticism, just a point of clarification.

  Sophie shrugged. “If you like, but communication being what it is, you have no idea where David is. He could have turned around straight away and come back, and you wouldn’t know it until he showed up. Once you separate the two forces, neither will know anything at all for certain.”

  Callum laughed. “I like it. It’s clear-eyed. And with Math’s forces coming to Beeston, we’ll have more than enough men there to do what needs to be done.”

  “Would David agree?” Samuel asked.

  Lili said gently, “He’s not here. None of us can operate on what we think Dafydd might do or say in our place. Without him, it is up to us to act in his stead as we think best.”

  “Though I’ve obviously only known him for days instead of years, David isn’t the same boy who arrived here to save Llywelyn, or even the man who was crowned King of England five years ago,” Sophie said. “He is as capable as anyone of being clear-eyed and calculating.”

  Lili laughed lightly. “It’s true that my husband can be quite unpredictable.”

  “Besides, you all realize what just happened, right?” Bronwen said. “He—and we—are part of a greater plan. The fact that we know it but don’t understand it doesn’t change the fact that a plan exists.”

  Bronwen’s idea was the one part of the universe shifting with which Sophie struggled most. Still, she couldn’t argue with what she’d seen with her own eyes.

  Lili raised both hands and dropped them. “Regardless of the hows and whys, we are left to pick up the pieces, and it does us no good to be standing around while there’s work to be done. I will speak to our people now.” She headed for the door that would take her back to the wall-walk.

  “Tell them all is well, and Dafydd has gone to Avalon, and that he’ll be back,” Ieuan called. And then, after a nod from Callum, went after her. Ieuan left the door open, so Sophie could see him raising his hands to the people below, telling them to quiet so Lili could speak.

  “Right.” Callum made an expansive gesture, indicating everyone who was left in the corridor should huddle closer. “Sophie is absolutely correct. There’s no better way to show how unconcerned we are about David’s absence then to take Beeston Castle as we planned. With or without David’s physical presence, Roger Mortimer’s defiance cannot be allowed to continue for even one more day.”

  Chapter Four

  1 April 2022

  David

  They dropped three inches, landing with hardly a thud onto thick, wet grass, but even so, William’s weight caused David to stagger. He clutched his friend to him, afraid he was going to slide right out of his arms.

  Once David regained his balance, he didn’t waste time lamenting his arrival in Avalon but immediately laid William full length on the ground, unhooked the toggle on William’s cloak so the fabric had more give to it, and wadded up a handful of the cloth so he could stanch the flow of blood from William’s wound. The bolt had pierced William’s underarm at something of an angle and passed through the muscle back to front.

  A weightlifter would have more tissue in that area, but William was somewhat less large, even though as a knight he was very well muscled. It was a wound David had never seen before, and indicated that William had thrown up his arm and been twisting forward in an attempt to save David when the bolt had entered his flesh at the back, grazed his ribs, and come out the other side. He had blood staining the whole right side of his body from armpit to hip.

  It didn’t matter how it had happened, only that it had. David pressed hard on the wound, trying desperately to stem the bleeding. The only saving grace was that the hole was in about as safe a place as it was possible to be shot and not have it be fatal. William was losing a lot of blood, however, which if it went on much longer would be.

  “Help!” David looked around. “My friend needs an ambulance!”

  When they’d first come in, David had seen over William’s shoulder that upwards of a hundred people were sharing the field with them, but they’d been a football field away at the time, with archery butts between them and him. While these were out of place anywhere in Avalon David had ever been, he could recognize an archery tournament when he saw one.

  Thankfully, by now a dozen or more had begun to walk towards them. They appeared somewhat wary, however, and David would have waved at them to hurry if he wasn’t already using both hands to staunch the flow of blood from William’s wound.

  Then William groaned, and David looked into his face. “Hang in there, my friend. You’re going to be okay.”

  “I feel terrible.”

  “I’m not surprised, since you have a new hole in your body where there isn’t supposed to be one. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that your life was worth more than mine.”

  David tsked through his teeth. “Tell that to your father.” His words came out angry, but he didn’t mean to be angry at William. It was more that he was angry at himself for being caught off-guard again. So he added, “Thank you, by the way. It isn’t possible to thank you enough.”

  William took in a trembling breath. “You tried to push me aside and take the bolt yourself. You—you weren’t looking to die, were you?”

  David could hear the horror and fear in his voice. In the past there had certainly been days when David had been overwhelmed by his responsibilities, seeing them primarily as a burden, but he’d never been so far gone as to hurt himself on purpose.

  “No,” he said simply. “I knew if I was shot, I’d come here.”

  “Here?”

  “We’re in Avalon, William.”

  But William had closed his eyes, and he made no response, which he would have done if he’d heard him. David didn’t bother to repeat his words. William didn’t need to understand just yet how unnecessary his sacrifice had been. David couldn’t die if he wanted to. The fact that they were in Avalon yet again proved it.

  That wasn’t to say that David at all understood what had happened. Within the space of a single second, the crossbowman had fired his bolt, William had thrown himself at David, and David had tried to stop William from sacrificing himself by moving him out of the way. The next second, they were overcome by the darkness that heralded their arrival in Avalon.

  David could get his head around that much. The problem was that he had no real sense of how they’d traveled. He hadn’t fallen off the rampart as he had in the past. It wasn’t as if he’d just wrecked a car. He looked down at his chest. The crossbow bolt should have been sticking out of it, but while he was covered in blood, all of it seemed to be William’s. Dav
id could only conclude that before the bolt could hit him it had de-materialized.

  Or rather, he and William had.

  “I didn’t see them there! I swear it!” Members of the crowd had finally arrived, and the first man to reach them was a few inches shorter than David, more stocky, and spoke English with a Welsh accent. He held a bow, wore a quiver on his back, and was otherwise dressed from head to toe in medieval gear. “Oh my God! Oh my God! I killed him!”

  If the parking lot in the distance wasn’t enough to tell him he was in the modern world, he would have known it by the man’s choice of words. Not even hardened knights cursed as easily as modern people. Though, really, knights were the least likely to take the name of the Lord in vain since they were also some of the most superstitious men David knew.

  David tried to reassure the archer. “You didn’t, really.”

  But before he could explain, a second person, a large man in his mid-fifties, huffed up. “What in the hell are you doing back here! Where did you come from? We had this whole area blocked off.”

  “I-I—” David didn’t have the wherewithal to answer, but it wasn’t necessary since the question had been rhetorical, and the man didn’t wait to hear his explanation. He turned exasperatedly to a young woman about David’s age, who was also wearing a bow and quiver. She was gaping down at William with her hand to her mouth. “I know you still have your phone on you, despite the rules. Call an ambulance.”

  The woman’s mouth closed with a snap, and she hastily dug into a pocket in her breeches, came up with a big screen smartphone, and started poking at the screen with one finger. David had a flash of satisfaction that he knew about phones now because of Anna and Mark, but then he returned his attention to William. Though his former squire was breathing easily, implying that the bolt hadn’t gone through anything important, he’d lost a lot of blood by now, and his eyes were fluttering. David told himself that as long as William breathed, there was hope.

  “An ambulance is on its way,” the woman said.

  Beyond the field, to the west, which David could tell by the direction of the light, sat a truncated castle that he’d noticed first thing and knew didn’t exist in his world. To the south lay a parking lot full of cars, then a body of water, and beyond that were gray clouds and green hills.

  With a profound sense of relief, David recognized where he was: Gray skies? Check. Wet grass? Check. Cloud-covered mountains? Check. They were on Anglesey, the body of water was the Menai Strait, and the nearby castle was Beaumaris, which lay across the Strait from his father’s palace at Aber.

  What’s more, it was clear now that the people running towards them had been participating in a twenty-first century medieval festival. It seemed he and William had dropped into the center of nerddom in Wales. Whatever power had brought him to Avalon had made him appear at the right place at the right time, in a place where his clothing and the wound in William’s side could be explained with a minimum of fuss.

  William regained consciousness enough to grip David’s wrist above the hand that pressed against chest. “It hurts.” He closed his eyes against the pain.

  “I know. Keep your eyes open.”

  “I can’t.” He paused, his eyes fluttering a bit again. “My lord, I don’t want to.”

  For once, David wasn’t sure if William was speaking to him or actually to God.

  “What-what happened to the arrow?” This man was the fourth to speak and was distinguishable from the others by his jester’s costume. He also had bright red hair and freckles. By now, a dozen people had gathered around David and William.

  “In the woods, most likely,” the burly older man said. “Billy always was a crap shot.”

  Billy, the first man to arrive, fell to his knees near William’s head. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  David looked him up and down, feeling guilty about misleading everyone about the source of William’s wound. While he could accept the gift of his present location, he wasn’t going to let an innocent person suffer because of it. “I need to tell you straight out that it wasn’t your arrow that went through William.”

  “What do you mean? Nobody else was shooting.”

  “I know. I can’t explain what happened right now, but if I were you, I’d find your arrow. It will prove to anyone who asks that this isn’t your fault. It won’t be bloody and won’t match the wound.”

  David didn’t know if anyone would be clever enough to try to match the arrow to William’s wound, but if he did, he would find that crossbow bolts were slightly thicker than the arrows used for longbows. At least, this was true in Earth Two. Thankfully, unlike guns, bolts didn’t make bigger holes on the way out than on the way in or the hole in William’s chest would have been a lot bigger.

  “O-Okay.” Billy looked highly skeptical, but he got to his feet and set off for the woods.

  David bent over William again, and to his great relief, William’s eyes opened. “It’s okay. You’re safe. We’re in Avalon. Help is coming.” As he had earlier, he spoke in French, intending his words for William’s ears alone. William spoke Welsh with some fluency, as well as medieval English, both of which the people here might understand pieces of, and David didn’t want to risk being understood.

  “Did you just say we’re in Avalon, sire?” William was suddenly wide awake.

  David breathed a sigh of relief at William’s newfound coherency. “Yes. We arrived where a group of people were practicing archery.”

  “I thought you said they didn’t do that here?”

  “Apparently some still do.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  “Absolutely not.” The more William recovered his senses, the more relieved David became. “The bolt couldn’t have entered your chest at a spot less likely to kill you. I know it hurts like hell, but I’m telling you the truth when I say you’re going to be fine.” Provided the ambulance gets here soon! He didn’t say that, though, just smiled reassuringly.

  William gave him a tentative smile back, though it turned almost immediately into a grimace. “You better be right. My father would kill me if I died.”

  “You really should have thought of that sooner.”

  “What’s that you said?” The burly man had chosen that moment to move closer and stand with his hands on his knees, overlooking William and David.

  David looked up. “I’m just reassuring him.”

  Then someone came out of the crowd and slid to his knees beside David. “Good. He’s awake. Keep him talking.” Shorter than David, with floppy curly black hair, the man was dressed somewhat oddly to David’s eyes in a long gray robe—though David supposed it wasn’t far off from what his friend Aaron wore by preference. More importantly, the man carried a white case with a red cross on it, which in this context was the most beautiful thing David had ever seen.

  William was able to turn his head to assess the newcomer, and his eyes lit on the case. “Is he a Templar?” He sounded hopeful.

  “I think he’s an EMT. That’s a kind of healer they have here who’s trained to deal with wounds like yours.”

  William didn’t have the wherewithal to raise his head, but his eyes flicked from David to the EMT, who by now had the case open and had replaced the end of William’s cloak with a wad of gauze.

  David had initially responded to what he thought was an unspoken suggestion that he move aside and let the EMT do his work, but the man said, “Keep pressing down.”

  David obeyed, and he was feeling enough better about William to allow himself a moment of humor at the realization that the EMT hadn’t called him my lord or sire. The last time he’d been anywhere where he was treated so cursorily was here, in Avalon, two Christmases ago.

  “An arrow did this?” The man took out a pair of scissors and began to cut William’s clothing off him. The fabric parted easily.

  “Yes,” David said, not bothering to make the distinction between an arrow and a crossbow bolt. “It went in at the back and came out the front.”
>
  With William’s clothing pulled aside, David got a good look at the wound for the first time. If William hadn’t woken late, he would have had time to put on his armor before coming to speak to David, and perhaps the wound wouldn’t have been as bad. Still, a crossbow bolt fired from only thirty yards had been known to punch right through mail armor.

  “I assumed as much since the arrow isn’t sticking out of him. When I say so, I want you to move your hands aside.” The EMT was holding a white bottle, the cap of which he’d unscrewed and set aside.

  “Okay.” At a count of three, David moved his hands, and the EMT squeezed a runny clear gel from the plastic bottle into and over the wound. He got David to roll William up slightly onto his side so he could more easily get to the hole in his back. Within thirty seconds, the bleeding stopped.

  “What is that stuff?” David’s jaw was on the ground. This was battlefield medicine unlike any he’d ever seen.

  “Medigel.” The EMT ripped open a different packet, this one just made of paper, and replaced the now bloody gauze with a fresh pad, which as far as David could tell wouldn’t be needed since the wound was no longer bleeding, either on the front or at the back where the bolt had gone in. “I’m Michael. What’s your name?”

  “David. This is William. He may not understand you. He speaks French.”

  The EMT leaned over William to look into his face and said smoothly, “Comment allez-vous?” How are you?

  “Bien,” William said, with a wide-eyed look at David. I’m well.

  “Don’t listen to him. He won’t tell you the truth,” David said, back to English, not bothering with Welsh because Michael didn’t have a Welsh accent. “He can’t really be feeling good, but he’s a tough one.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Michael said. “Thank goodness this isn’t really the Middle Ages, or he’d be a goner, yeah?”