by Chuck Dixon
“We need eyes-on,” Chaz said.
“We need a platoon, a company,” Lee said. “This goes from a simple three-point ambush to bad guys in a fortified position expecting trouble. And if they are encamped at a quarry that means the number of slaves is ramped up. Our guy is in a bigger mix now.”
“Our guy.” Boats chuckled through a mouthful of HooAH! bar.
“Yeah, well I wish he’d magic his own ass out of there and save us the trouble,” Lee spat.
“That’s not how it works,” Chaz said.
“Spare me the Sunday school,” Lee said with hand extended. “It is what it is. We ride up there and scope it out and hope that Tacitus wasn’t full of shit.”
“Tacitus?” Boats said.
“Roman historian Jimmy read. Says that the legions could turn pussy under the right circumstances,” Bat said.
“I like that.” Boats grinned. Sticky bits of protein bar dotted his teeth.
A series of high whistles brought them alert. Jimbo was waving them over from the lip of the canyon wall. Lee trotted down to him. Jimbo handed Lee his Winchester.
“Scope north. Below the dust cloud.”
Lee could see small figures coming along the road toward them. A column of men four across with more behind lost in the heat haze and the rising cloud of dust.
“Those are soldiers,” Lee said.
“Lots of ’em,” Jimbo said. “And coming the wrong way.”
25
A Change of Address
“How is your French?” Samuel asked.
Caroline had a French boyfriend for a while at college in London. They made frequent trips to Paris while they were going together and, after they broke up, she spent a summer touring Provence with some girlfriends. But Samuel didn’t want to know any of that.
“It’s fine. Better than tourist.”
“Good,” he said and pulled the Mercedes to a curb. It was night, and they were in an older part of the fifteenth arrondissement. The traffic was light on the two-lane street, and the buildings loomed close on either side along narrow sidewalks. There was Sufi music dully booming from somewhere behind the dark faces of the apartment blocks. Samuel climbed from behind the wheel to come around and open the door for Caroline. He took the baby from her and closed the door behind her before handing the sleeping Stephen back.
“The bag,” she said.
“You cannot bring it where we’re going.”
“You’ll get towed here,” she said.
“I left the keys in it. It will be stolen before the traffic wardens ever notice it.” He took her under the arm and escorted her over the broken slabs of the sidewalk.
“Stolen again, you mean.” She meant it as a joke.
“It does not matter. We will not be coming back here.” He guided them under an archway into a cramped lane between two buildings. The pounding music was reduced to a distant pulse behind them. Samuel put a hand to her back, and they stopped in the dark passageway that smelled of sour wine, stale flowers, and piss.
“This isn’t the best neighborhood, Samuel,” she said and held the baby closer under her coat as a sudden chill fell over her.
“It will improve in a moment,” he answered and raised his chin to point down the alleyway.
Caroline looked up to see a white mist building in the passage, growing more opaque by the second and climbing the walls to leave a white rime of ice on the ancient bricks.
“I don’t know about this. You didn’t say—” she began.
“Don’t worry about Stephen. He’s more suited to this sort of travel then you are,” he said in an even tone.
“I’ve followed you without questions. Well, without many questions. But this—”
“It is the best place to hide. It is where you and your child will be safe. You live through time now, Caroline. There is no turning back.” His hand pressed into her back gently.
She drew the coat tighter about Stephen to hoard their body heat together and stepped into the clinging fog. Her breath was visible now. She glanced upward and through the pale swirling haze caught a glimpse of rings above her, gleaming black rings dripping with frost. They were traveling through some version of the field generator created by her and her brother, a copy of their invention constructed by unknown hands in a time and place strange and foreign to her.
“How—” she began.
“No questions,” Samuel said and took her hand to draw her through the field.
She emerged from the mist weak and disoriented and deeper in the alley. Samuel took the baby from her and cradled it in one arm while guiding her from the chilling cloud into a courtyard lit by a single gas lamp. Caroline gulped air and fought down the urge to vomit. She was still gasping as her head cleared. She gestured for her child. Stephen was placed in her arms, and she saw that he breathed easily. His eyelids fluttered a bit, but he was still restfully asleep.
“See, he is virtually unfazed by manifestation just as I promised,” Samuel said, and Caroline thought she saw a fleeting smile of reassurance.
“When is this?” she said, looking about. The courtyard was broad and lined about by dark buildings. But now she saw that empty flower beds lined the borders and a pair of bare fruit trees stood on an island at the center. The smell of wood smoke filled the cold air. Above the rooftops, smoke rose from flues into the starry sky. The persistent drum of recorded music was gone to be replaced by a dull rhythmic sound from an unseen source. It was the tramp of boots—many boots. She realized at once that the white noise of street traffic was absent. Looking up, she saw that what she could see of the sky was not lined with the contrails of passenger jets.
“1871. Winter,” Samuel said.
“We transited through time without a waystation step between,” she said.
“I will explain more later. For now, we must move to cover.” He took her elbow and walked her across the courtyard, leaving the icy cloud to dissipate behind them.
He hurried her along cobbled streets empty of all but a few high-wheeled carriages and small columns of marching men. She wore a cap pushed low on her head, and he warned her to keep her face down as they moved swiftly from shadow to shadow.
“There is a curfew,” Samuel said, holding her hand to guide her across the street.
“Is that usual?” she said and clutched the baby closer.
“Paris is under martial law. France is at war.”
“And you thought this was a good place to bring Stephen and me?”
“War is the best place to hide,” he said and drew her under the awning of a hotel. He placed his shoulder to the door and popped the lock with a sudden thrust to swing the doors open.
They hustled into the dim lobby of a middlebrow hostelry that brazenly called itself Hotel Exemplaire. She sat cradling Stephen in a shady corner while Samuel banged on the desktop to rouse the registrar. Caroline heard him explain in fluent French that they were traveling from Canada on business and their luggage had been stolen. There was an argument too swift for Caroline to follow that ended with Samuel producing a thick sheaf of bills.
The registrar went silent at the sight of all the franc notes. Money changed hands, and Samuel returned to the lobby to take her upstairs. At this late hour, there was no bell staff to take them to their room. All as Samuel had planned, she imagined.
The room was a cramped suite with a sitting room and boudoir with a vestigial balcony over the street. There were no closets, as was the custom of the day, and no private bath or toilet, as was also the custom in bourgeois establishments such as this. There was a bowl of fruit on a table in the sitting room and wilting flowers from the day before drooped in a vase.
Caroline couldn’t help but think what the furniture in this room would be worth back in The Now. Here they were common tat. One hundred and fifty years hence, they were valuable antiques.
“What now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Samuel said.
“I have a baby, no diapers, no change of cl
othes for either of us and no clothes that are in period anyway,” she said. “I need basic toiletry items for me and Stephen. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m starving. And if I don’t eat, then Stephen goes hungry too. That’s how that works.”
“I am sorry you’re hungry,” he said. “I will pick up things in the morning if you make me a list.”
“You’ll steal? What if you’re caught? We’re stranded here, Samuel,” she said with irritation. She was losing her patience with all this mystery and intrigue.
“I have enough currency to see us through for a long period,” he said. “I can draw more from a bank account in Toronto should we need it.”
“So, you knew we were coming here, to this place, and this time,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t share that with me?”
“It was easier to convince you to cooperate closer to events.”
“Bullshit. It was easier to manipulate me,” she said and moved to the hallway door and turned the key in the lock. She removed the key and twirled it on her finger.
“I did what was best for you both and for Dwayne.”
“Fine. Noted and appreciated. But now you’re going to answer some questions, even if it’s only to take my mind off my growling tummy,” she said, taking a seat at the table and gestured for him to do the same.
26
The Testing of Tacitus
The scopes revealed that the column marching south toward them numbered around two hundred men. Two centuries. Using the NODs gear allowed for a digital view that cut through the veil of dust.
The marching men in the front were dressed in belted tunics and wore hobnailed boots. They carried packs suspended from poles held over their shoulders. Most were bareheaded. Some wore broad-brimmed reed hats or sweat-cloths tied about their heads. A marcher in the lead walked with a cloth-covered object cradled in his arms, the aquilifer that identified their unit, commander, and legion number. They were Romans.
Following behind was a more ragged formation of men in long, kaftan type garments belted at the waist. These men wore their hair in long braids and carried what looked like thin curved rods over their shoulders. These were unstrung bows.
“Assyrian archers,” Jimbo said. “Auxiliary troops.”
“They’re coming the wrong way to be our guys,” Lee said.
“A regular patrol? Maybe just a coincidence?”
“Or reinforcements for the fort the Twenty-third is building?” Lee mused, squinting at the approaching force through the scope atop Jimbo’s rifle. They were three-quarters of a mile to the north and coming on at a steady mile-consuming pace.
“Not good news either way.”
“What’s that behind them?” Lee said, handing the rifle back to its owner.
Jimbo fixed his eye to the scope cup. The rectangle of men four across and twenty deep came into sharp focus. He tilted his view and adjusted the range to take in shapes moving behind them. He wiped sweat from his eyes and fixed his eye on the shapes.
“Pack animals. Mules or donkeys,” Jimbo said. “This is no patrol. They’re mobilized. They’re fully tactical for a long deployment.”
“Shit,” Lee hissed. “What are our options?”
“We test Tacitus to see if he was right. Nail a few and see if they turn tail.”
“From our perspective, they’ve all been dead for two thousand years anyway, right?” Jimbo smiled.
Bat joined Jimbo on the ledge and both lay prone with rifles trained downrange at the slowly closing figures there. The rest of the team packed up and were ready to move depending on the initial outcome. Lee stood, aiming binoculars at the dust cloud.
“The aquilifer’s mine,” Jimbo said and swiftly adjusted his scope for the angle and drop.
“Show off,” Bat said and settled in with the butt of her Winnie braced snug to her shoulder. She found a man in the second row of the column and sipped in a lungful of air. She was letting it out slow when Jimbo’s rifle boomed beside her. She squeezed and rode the recoil of her own weapon then brought her scope down to check out the results. Her man was down, and the men directly behind him were halting mid-step. The rest moved around the stalled group like a stream of water around a rock. She saw some of the men look up suddenly, eyes betraying alarm.
The report of Jimbo’s rifle reached them now like thunder from the hills. The men flinched again as the crack of her shot echoed the first. A few were trying to rouse their fallen comrade. Bat swung her aspect to take in a similar drama as men stood about the Pima’s chosen target. One man stood holding up the cloth covered banner while others knelt by the fallen man.
“They’re not stopping,” Jimbo said and jacked a fresh cartridge home.
“Maybe they never read Tacitus,” she said, driving her bolt back in place and sighting through the scope.
“How could they? He hasn’t been born yet.”
“Man, this shit does mess with your head,” Bat said, laying the crosshairs on the head of a marching man. The drop, the descending arc of her bullet as it responded to gravity, would make for a center shot through the chest.
Boom. Jimbo’s rifle.
Bat dropped her man. She jacked a new round and took a survey. The column was at a full stop now with knots of men gathered around the fresh victims sprawled on the road. There was no way to know what they thought was happening, men among them falling under an invisible weapon, the sharp roars reaching them off the surrounding rocks, no enemy in sight.
“They need further encouragement,” Jimbo said and let out his wind to steady his eye. Bat did the same.
Their shots were nearly simultaneous. Two marchers were thrown to the road as if struck by the same hammer blow. That was enough for the rest of the legionnaires. They threw down their poles and packs and ran in a ragged mob back the way they came.
Jimbo stood and watched through the scope as the routed infantry raced back to mix in with the column of pack animals. Mules reared and broke from their handlers to join the retreat. Some of the cargo carried by the animals broke free of the racks and spilled to the ground from leather sheaths. There it was trampled by panicked men and beasts. All was soon lost in a thick pall of rising dust.
“You see what those mules were carrying?” Jimbo said.
“Arrows,” Bat said, lowering her rifle. “Thousands of them.”
“These guys are reinforcements,” Jimbo said. “And those arrows are for us.”
The third century of the Thirtieth, the Boars, was in shambles. The fourth century had stalled on the road as the column on the march before them dissembled into a rabble. Centurion Marcus Rupilius Pulcher was enraged.
His second optio and five others were dead, struck down by some invisible force. His men fled like women in a sudden rain shower. He strode among them, striking them with his staff. Gaius, his first optio, screamed himself hoarse to get them to retrieve their dropped gear and form back into ranks.
Adding to Pulcher’s rage was the delight on the faces of the auxiliaries, the Assyrian bowmen. The black scum were amused to see a mighty Roman column turned to craven wretches at the sight of a bit of blood.
More than a bit, as it turned out.
The downed men showed wounds much like the lead projectile of a slinger might make, a neat round hole punched through the flesh. But in addition to the puckered blue puncture was a matching wound far more catastrophic where the projectile made violent egress. An insult the size of a man’s fist betrayed the final destination of the pellet, gaping tears through which the white of bone gleamed. One of the men, the aquilifer named Albus, was missing half his head. The pellet entered just under his nose and sprayed the men closest with blood and brains.
The messenger had arrived by foot at their fortified castra three days before with orders from the prefect as relayed through Bachus of the Twenty-third. They were to send a force along the road into Judea to serve as an adjunct to a cohort of the Twenty-third encamped at a nameless village fifty mile
markers to the south.
Their tribune decided a token force was all that was needed to meet the letter of the prefect’s request, and so sent two centuries and the auxiliary force of archers.
Pulcher dug with his fingers in the gravel beneath one man and found a misshapen lump of lead that was hot to the touch. It was like the pellets flung by slingers. But what man could send a simple ball of lead with such speed and force? And what was the sound of thunder that reached them from the slopes all around? It was unsettling indeed. He could understand but not forgive the cowardice of his men. There would be punishments. Not here. Not now. Later, when they reached the camp of the Twenty-third.
The centurion ordered the Assyrians to climb to the ledges above and give chase while he moved the centuries down the road in full kit.
In helm and armor, with scutums gripped before them, the Boars trudged south. The bodies of their slain were left for the foxes, wolves, and buzzards. If prayers were to be sent to Zeus or Mars or Mithra in their names, then those prayers would be muttered on the march. The hired boys cautiously led the mule train on in their dusty wake past the dead Romans already black with clouds of flies.
After two miles of fast marching, a pair of Assyrians slid down a rocky slope to report to Pulcher. They reached a place ahead where the ravine turned only to see a number of riders galloping south along the ledge.
“Was there sign of a machine of some sort?” Pulcher asked them.
“Machine?” One of them shrugged, nose wrinkled.
“A ballista!” Pulcher gritted his teeth. “Some devilish instrument of some kind!”
“No machine. Just men on horses,” the little bowman said in his gutter Latin.
“Did you see them?”
“Only horses’ asses and dust.”
“Were they Jew rebels?”
“Did not see. Bandits maybe.”
