by Chuck Dixon
“You were older then.”
“Was I?” he asked.
“A good twenty years older than you are now.” He said nothing at first. The fine hairs stood up on her arms.
“If you say so.”
“Then this sudden urgent ride has nothing to do with that?” she asked.
“No. This is about your son.”
“Stephen? What does any of this have to do with my baby?”
“One of my parents was like you, a time traveler,” Samuel said. “Your child is the product of two parents who visited a time period not their own. Several, in fact.”
She put aside the surreal nature of their conversation. She locked down her emotional reaction to learning that her child was “different” in an unanticipated and unwelcome way. The scientist emerged. Her intellectual curiosity took over.
“You mean traveling through the chronal field altered our genetics?”
“No. Not your gene structure. Something deeper. Something simpler yet more complex.”
“Samuel, are we talking string theory here?”
“I’m not as familiar with the study of physics in your era as I should be. We may be talking about the same thing, but I do not have your terminology for it. The scientific language is different.”
“String is an area of theoretical science that seeks to explain how the basic particles of existence relate to one another,” she said. “It can be used to theorize about everything from the causation of gravity to the existence of other dimensions.”
“It sounds like Trivenchy’s thesis called Mica Prima,” Samuel said. “In it, he explains that all matter comes from a single source and all relates back to the first piece of matter in creation, the remnant that holds the answer to the existence of everything.”
“The God Particle.”
“That is an evocative way of stating it.”
“More romantic than Higgs boson, certainly,” Caroline agreed. “You’re saying that because one of your parents was displaced in time, you are significantly affected on a sub-atomic level.”
“Yes. That is the simplest way to phrase it.”
“Which of your parents?’
“My father.”
“Do I know him?” She already knew the answer before he said it.
“Yes. Richard Renzi.”
Stephen was startled awake and began crying. Caroline cooed and rocked him as they rode through the night, holding him to her, absorbing his warmth into her to fight the sudden chill she knew had nothing to do with the cold outside the car.
23
A Stolen March
The cold desert sky was clear above them the night of their first camp.
Lee Hammond was able to take a reading from the position of the stars.
“We’re late,” he announced to the others. Except for Jimbo, who was on overwatch somewhere out in the dark.
They were cold camping. No fire. They didn’t see a single human being once they passed out of the last orchard beyond the walls of Caesarea. A few wild goats were spotted but no sign of settlements or nomads. They’d mostly followed a rough eastward trail until the ground broke up. They settled on a ledge of rock scree in the lee of a hillside to rest the horses, eat, and catch some sleep.
“It’s the tenth of September, AD 16,” Lee said.
“That’s a week past our target, right?” Chaz said.
“We’re making good time,” Bat said. “We’re past the point we meant to make the first day.”
“But we lost a day getting mounts and saddles. There’s not a lot of wiggle room here,” Lee said. “We need to be ahead of the convoy to set up an ambush. That means we really hump it from here on.”
“So we hump it.” Chaz shrugged.
Boats, wrapped in a sheepskin and lying in the shelter of a scrub pine, snored on.
They broke camp and were back on the trail before dawn. Jimbo rode far ahead to scout the country. He made piles of rocks to mark where he changed directions. The ground was rising and breaking up. They counted on the fact that the topography had not changed too much in two millennia. There were more trees and brush than in The Now. The marshlands were larger than they would be one day.
They left the wetlands behind as the elevation increased on the way to the high ground before the Dead Sea rift and the Golan Heights beyond. Jimbo would find the path of least resistance around the floor of hills and avoid settlements and caravans.
They were in time now, racing east to intersect a Roman army column they knew was marching north. Any more delays and they would miss the potential ambush points they’d pre-chosen. Jimmy Smalls was riding farther in advance than any of them were comfortable with. They needed the knowledge of what lay ahead to make the best time. Besides, if the Pima ran into trouble, there was none tougher. And the rest of the team would ride in if he let off a signal shot from his Winchester.
“With all the breaks and a day of hard riding we should reach the road by nightfall,” Bat said riding even with Lee.
“Except we never get the breaks,” Lee said.
“Those Romans have no reason to push,” she said.
“They’re on foot, and they stop at every twentieth milepost and spend hours making a fortified camp. Plus they have prisoners slowing them down.”
“And we could get lost down a blind trail or run into weather or bad guys or just plain dumb luck.”
“Who’s chapping your ass?”
“This fucking horse,” Lee said and levered forward to relieve the pain in his rear.
“You sound like Chaz. He hates horses.”
“Everyone hates horses after two days in the saddle. Especially these saddles.”
They rode on into a copse of cedar growing between the brows of two hills. They stayed off high ground, where they might be visible for miles against the sky. Where it was possible, they used wooded trails to reduce the dust raised by their passage. The shade provided some relief from the heat even though the mosquito population increased. They picked up the pace to a trot to leave the annoying clouds behind. The horses seemed grateful.
The team dismounted when they’d cleared the trees. They led the animals to follow a trail that curved away along the face of an escarpment. A small pyramid of stones was visible beneath a crooked tree just beneath the ridgeline. By it was an arrow of pebbles pointing off to their right through a narrow cleft. It was hard going, and they’d need to move in single file. They were bathed in fresh sweat within minutes.
“I could buy us some time on the other end,” Bat spoke up.
“How?” Lee said.
“I catch up with Jimbo. He and I can just go full-out for the roadway without the packies to slow us. We can set up an OP and cover the road until you guys catch up.”
“What if the bad guys show before we do?”
“We can hold them. I’m a sniper too, remember? Take down an officer, and they’ll either scatter or at least stop to think about it.”
Lee looked at her, his eyes in shadow in the stark sunlight.
“That’s sweet,” she said. “You’re worried about me.”
“I was weighing the tactical advantages. I was also thinking that only a dumbass volunteers for anything.”
“Aren’t Rangers all volunteers?”
“I wasn’t casting stones.”
“Good. The guy we’re looking for doesn’t approve of that kind of thing, right?”
“Okay,” he said. “Go.”
Bat swung up into the saddle and urged her horse into a gallop. She rode to the pyramid beneath the twisted tree, jerked her reins right and drove into the shadows of the constricted trail.
Jimbo slid from his horse at the sound of hoof falls behind him. He reined the mount athwart the trail and slid the Winchester from the leather boot. He trained it toward the rising haze of dust making a whirling smear against the yellow sky back the way he came.
Through the scope, Lee’s girl leaped into view where she leaned back in the saddle of her gray mare a
nd expertly picked her way down a rocky slope. She held the reins high and guided the mount along an angled path. Bat was a natural, moving as one with the horse. Jimbo raised the rifle and stood waiting for her.
“You got farther ahead than I thought,” she said as she reined to a stop and dismounted.
“I kept a steady pace.” He slid the rifle back in its scabbard.
She explained the change in tactics.
“It’s a good option,” Jimbo said. “I been reading up on these Romans. Tacitus. The real stuff. He wrote that the legions were brave but could be easily spooked. A whole army ran, scared shitless in the Teutonburg once. Turned out it was acorns falling on their helmets.”
“Let’s go throw some acorns then,” she said.
Her mount was blown and lathered with sweat. They would lead their horses at a trot for a few miles. It was a killing pace for them over the broken ground. For the horses, it would serve as a rest, a cool-down pace free of the weight of a rider.
Jimbo led the way. He looked back a few times at the start to see Bat keeping pace, not falling behind. The girl was tough.
Lee had a keeper in her. Jimbo smiled. He hoped his friend realized this was not another girl to play with for a while and then leave without warning. This one would find Hammond and skin him alive if he strayed.
24
The Road
Exhausted, aching and thirsty, Jimbo and Bat reached the roadway as the last light was dying behind the hills at their back. The last ten miles had been spent following a game trail along a downward grade. Walking their mounts down the slope was a tiring chore as they watched for sure footing on a sliding shale surface beneath a thin layer of gray grit. The horses balked at the darkening skies until Jimbo covered their eyes with strips of cloth torn from their t-shirts.
“You look like a real Indian now,” Bat said. The Pima was bare-chested. She was down to a sports bra.
“The nose isn’t enough?” He smiled back.
“Let’s not compare noses,” she said with mock-huffiness.
The slope drew up level before a ledge beyond which the land fell away sharply. They could see the road surface down below following the floor of a natural gully that ran almost dead north/south for miles. Over the opposite side of the depression, they could make out the shape of the Golan Heights rising dramatic and black against the stars.
The road was of crushed stone rather than the square-cut blocks typical of Roman construction. It was clearly manmade, even in the uncertain light. There was a mile marker, an obelisk of white stone, visible along the verge. The road surface was of uniform width running dead center of the defile.
That was the optimal path for a military road in this era. The engineers of the legions cut the grades for their roads to run below the skyline either laterally along the face of slopes or using natural cover like forests or the depression below them. A Roman army on the march could remain concealed from its enemy until it was too late to form an adequate defense, their approach concealed by the topography.
“Are we early or late?” Bat said.
“No way to tell.” Jimbo glassed the road to the south through the scope of his rifle.
“And no one to ask,” she said. The road was empty of traffic as far as they could see in either direction even using the powerful 30x lenses. No one would be abroad at this hour in a country where bandits roamed and evil spirits were very real.
Jimbo unstowed his night-vision gear and peered through it, sweeping it along the road and surrounding heights. No telltale signs of a settlement or even a campfire. No smoke against the sky.
“We take care of the horses and make a cold camp right here,” he said. “I’ll take first watch. In the morning we follow this south a little ways, see if anyone will talk to us. Give the others a chance to catch up.”
The others caught up midmorning the following day and found the two scouts’ horses tethered in a copse of trees midway up the stony slope. The three men decided the best option was to watch along the road for Jimbo and Bat’s return. They rested their mounts and pack animals in the shade while eyeing the rocky ledge above the roadway for any sign of their teammates.
Jimmy Smalls and Bathsheba returned by noon. “What’s your best guess?” Lee asked. He and Jimbo had taken a knee overlooking the road.
“We either missed them or they’re not here yet. My money’s on them being on the march to the south of us.” Jimbo swept the country to the south with an open hand. “This is the only viable military road. They have to be along in the next few days.”
“Any human intel?”
“We haven’t seen any locals yet. Someone’s sure to be along this afternoon.”
“What’s the water situation?”
“There’s a spring about a mile and half to the north.”
Jimbo claimed he could smell water like a horse could. All Lee knew was that the Pima seldom missed when it came to finding potable water even in country like this. Especially in country like this.
“Is it near a chokepoint like this one?”
“There’s a twenty-degree turn in the canyon nearby. We set up either side and we can stop them cold,” Jimbo said.
“Let’s take a look,” Lee said, standing.
They found a caravan stopped at the spring when they arrived. Men and camels were watering there. The spring started high on the wall of the decline to trickle down a furrow in the rock worn smooth over the years. It gathered in a natural pool at the foot of the wall. The men were Arabs and dressed much the same way as the Rangers were familiar with back in The Now. The only notable absence was rifles. Each man wore a blade of some kind, and one man leaned on a spear with a rusted point.
The camels were loaded down with sacks bound to wooden racks. The men gave them water from leather buckets filled from the pool. The group visibly tensed at the sight of two men walking toward them around the turn in the canyon. They kept a wary eye but did not reach for weapons. To their eyes, one of the men was an African dressed in some kind of armor. The other was a Macedonian perhaps and dressed in peculiar leggings and a black cloth singlet of one piece. Both men were tall. They led fine horses behind them.
Chaz and Lee stopped fifty feet from the men. Desert etiquette was eternal. You didn’t just walk up to a bunch of nomads. You gave them time to make up their minds about you. Just in case they made up their minds the wrong way, the caravaneers were covered by Jimbo and Bat watching through scopes from concealment above. After a few moments, the Arabs did a pantomime of pretending to have just noticed the pair of Rangers. One of them nodded and took a step forward. Probably their headman.
They let the guy speak first. He was first to the watering hole and held the conch. He spoke to them in a stream of slurred Arabic. Chaz picked a few words from the salad. Some kind of elaborate greeting. Chaz’s Arabic was strong but the accent was hard to follow, a dialect lost to time.
“Best to you and your company and may fortune smile upon all here,” Chaz bullshitted the guy along.
The headman squinted and pursed his lips at the tall black man’s formal enunciation. He thought perhaps the African was a lord in his land or the slave of a lord. Perhaps owned by the silent Macedonian who he accompanied.
The blessings and well-wishes went on for a while and afforded Chaz a chance to accustom himself to the other guy’s dialect. The headman was slowing down his speech like he was talking to an idiot. Chaz saw some of the others politely covering their mouths to hide smiles and stifle laughter. The small talk and glad-handing were over finally, and they got down to business.
The Arab offered that they were packing salt for sale to merchants along the road.
Chaz lied and said that he and his companion were agents for a Roman merchant in Philippi. They were trying to make contact with a column of Romans from the Twenty-third with a company of slaves that were expected along this road. This caravan was coming from the south and may have seen the soldiers.
The headman rubbed his beard an
d narrowed his eyes before coming to a decision.
“There are Romans to the south. We saw them two days ago. They were not on the march,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Chaz said.
“They do not march. They make a fort along the road.”
“They make camp, you mean?”
“No! A fort. They pile stone. They dig a trench like Romans do. We sold them salt.”
Chaz looked at Lee.
“Ask him about their aquilifer,” Lee said.
Chaz did, and the Arab described a horse affixed atop their banners.
“It’s the Twenty-third Legion. But why are they stopped?” Chaz asked in English.
“Fucking ask him,” Lee growled. They’d spent all their good luck at the start just as he’d predicted.
Chaz asked, and the Arab shrugged.
“This Roman fort, where is this?” Chaz asked.
“Two days south by camel. More days on foot or by horse.” The headman nodded down the road the way he’d come.
“What is there? A town? A well?”
“A town of Jews. A quarry. A big quarry where they cut stone for the Herods.”
“What of their company of slaves?” Chaz said.
“They cut rock,” the Arab said and spat.
Chaz turned to Lee.
“A quarry. Fuck me,” Lee said.
“History ain’t what it used to be,” Boats said.
Jimbo remained along the ledge watching the road. The others camped in the shade of wild fig trees to weigh options and share rations.
“Maybe they halted their march for a reason. Illness. Something like that,” Bat offered.
“Or they got a heads-up,” Lee said.
“How could that happen? How could they know we were here?” Chaz said.
“How the fuck should I know? This Harnesh figured it out and sent someone to warn them. Maybe they knew we’d be here even before we knew we’d be here. This shit messes with your mind,” Lee said.
