by Steve White
He also trained himself. He was exercising with his hybrid sword in his room beneath the great ruined building when he heard a sound at the door. Obeying battle-honed reflexes, he whirled in that direction, sword raised over and behind his head and dagger-armed left hand extending forward for balance. Then he saw who it was and relaxed, although it took a second before he recognized Virginia Dare. He had never seen her wavy dark-chestnut hair hanging free, unconfined by its usual thick braid.
"Interesting design for a handguard," she commented, indicating the two balls at the base of the dagger's blade.
"Uh, ahem, yes," he muttered, hastily putting the ballock dagger aside and lowering his sword. "Won't you come in?"
She entered but did not sit down. Instead she rested her back against the wall and stood with her hands behind her, in a posture Winslow had never seen her adopt. For a moment there was silence.
"Do you think this is going to work?" she asked without preamble.
"Of course!" He put heartiness in his voice. "Sett 44 and all his fellow vermin will befoul themselves, or whatever it is the Grella do, when we appear in their midst. And after thousands of years of bullying the Eilonwë, they won't know how to deal with a concerted attack on their stronghold."
"And afterwards? . . . we'll be able to return to England?" She laughed unsteadily. "Will you listen to me? 'Return,' when I've never been there! But you know what I mean."
"Why, yes. We'll take a load of captured weapons back, whip the Dons out of England, and cleanse the world of the Gray Monks." He raised an eyebrow. "Why do you ask? Do you doubt it?"
"No, not really. I just wanted reassurance." Then, without the slightest change of tone or expression: "Do you have a wife or a sweetheart in England?"
"Wha—! Why, that is, no. I've never had the opportunity, you might say. And you? Among the young Englishmen here?"
"No." The negative was flat and emphatic. "We don't . . ." Her face reddened. "We don't . . . well, we only do things that . . . can't cause children to be conceived."
"But children—quite a few of them—have been born to the colonists in this world. I'm going to be leading several of them on the raid."
"Oh, yes. The elders continued to have children here. For them it was . . . habit, I suppose. They couldn't imagine not doing it. But their children—those born here and those of us who arrived here as babes—have not. Haven't you noticed the absence of small ones?"
Winslow hadn't, and now he wondered why he hadn't. In England, girls typically began childbearing in their mid teens. Even if half the infants died, as was also typical, there ought to be a gaggle of children under five or so here. But there were none.
"Why?" he asked.
"What right had we to bring children into the world—this world, that offered them nothing except inescapable doom? Life has held nothing for us except an endless, hopeless twilight struggle against the Grella. We would not force innocent children to join us in that trap. At first the elders thought we were being sinful, violating God's command to be fruitful and multiply. But they finally came to understand, and even to agree."
"Why are you telling me this?" asked Winslow after a lengthy silence.
"Because now things have changed." She advanced a step toward him. "We've been offered a way out of the trap. You have offered it to us. You've opened up possibilities we never dared dream of. The old reasoning no longer compels me, and I want to reject it." She drew a deep, unsteady breath. "I want to have a child."
All at once, Winslow became uncomfortably aware of how long it had been. And of how much he had wanted Virginia Dare since the moment he had first seen her.
But something within would not permit him to let this go any further without saying, "Our success isn't assured, you know."
She gave the same bold smile she had worn when their eyes had first met, and it was as if a bowstring twanged in his heart. "No, and I know well enough that thinking so is the shortest road to defeat. So let's give ourselves a reason why we must succeed." She stepped closer. She wore none of the perfumes of courtly ladies in England. But he could smell woman.
And it came to him that she was right. By risking a conception that would violate the tenets of her past life, she was throwing those tenets and that life to the winds and committing herself absolutely to the bold enterprise on which they were embarked.
But then she took another step forward, and all such thoughts fled his mind. There was only her. Their hands sought each other as if by a will of their own. Then they were in each other's arms.
"Do it!" she whispered harshly in his ear. Then, with sudden practicality: "And bear in mind that I'm a virgin."
He did so, with a gentleness he had never used before, and a depth of joy he had never experienced.
There were scattered clouds, but enough stars were out for the light gatherers to work their magic as twenty-four figures made their silent way through the predawn darkness, up the slope of Elf Hill.
The torturous process of getting the Eilonwë forces into position undetected was finally complete. There they would wait for two days, giving Winlsow's party time to march to the Grella fortress, enter it, and emerge fighting at the predetermined instant. Winslow would know when that instant had arrived because he wore strapped to his wrist a marvelously tiny timepiece of Eilonwë make. Naturally its markings bore no relation to honest English hours, but Riahn had shown him where the constantly moving little pointer would be at the time the frontal assault would commence. He had sworn to be in position by then, knowing full well that if he wasn't the outside attackers were doomed.
They continued uphill through the night, and Winslow looked around at the green-tinted world revealed by his light gatherer. Virginia Dare and Shakespeare wore the other two. A tightly grouped clump of seven followed closely behind each of the three of them, running through the dark in reliance on their guides.
"All right," Winslow called out in low tones, puffing for breath. "We're just about there. Remember what you've been told." He led the way over the last few steps.
"Captain!" yelled Shakespeare, shattering their rule of silence, "it's a Grella flyer!"
Winslow's head snapped around to follow the actor's pointing finger. The flyer was swooping in, its running lights glaring with unnatural brightness in the light gatherers. And of course, he thought with something close to panic, it would carry its own devices for seeing in the dark.
"Stop!" he shouted, jarring to a halt. "Turn back! We can't let them see—"
It was too late. Even as he spoke, the greenish world of the light gatherers faded into the even stranger grayish one of the Near Void.
He wrenched off the headband. Now they could all see equally well, and they all stood staring up at the flyer that could no longer see them. It hovered overhead, circling slowly, searching for the figures that had vanished. Finally, it turned west and flew away up the valley, toward the fortress, where its crew would report that the long-sought portal had been found.
Winslow took a quick roll call. Two men—a sailor named Foote from Heron, and John Prat, who had sailed to Virginia as a boy—were missing. They must have proven unable to remain in the Near Void, and passed on into the Deep Void, which meant that by now they were on Croatoan Island.
Winslow had given everyone strict instruction for such an eventuality: they were to remain on Croatoan, seeking out Manteo's people and making no attempt to return to the world of the Eilonwë, where their emergence at the portal would reveal its location.
Not, he thought bitterly, that it made any difference now.
"What do we do now, Captain?" asked John White.
"Do?" he snarled. "What do you think we're going to do? We're going to do what we planned to do. Only now it's not just a clever idea. It's something that cannot be allowed to fail. Don't you see?" He looked around. Shakespeare wore an expression of somber understanding that was beyond his years, but the others seemed bewildered. Winslow forced calmness on himself and explained. "The Grella aboar
d that flying boat watched as we disappeared. They know where the portal is. So now we have to crush them in this world and seal it off against others of their kind. Otherwise, they'll come pouring through into our world. Nothing there will be able to stand against them. The fate of England, and of all our God's creation, rests with us."
"Without intention, we showed them the way," said Shakespeare quietly. "It is up to us to put things right."
Winslow silently locked eyes with Virginia Dare. They had sought to commit themselves to the success of this raid in the most irrevocable way of which mortals were capable. It turned out they might as well have saved themselves the trouble.
Not, of course, that he regretted it.
"But Captain," someone asked, "won't the Grella in the fortress be on the alert for us?"
"No. They already know that we humans can pass through portals, but they don't know about our ability to linger in the Near Void at will. They'll think the figures they saw vanishing here tonight will have passed on into our world. That's our one advantage. Now let's use it!"
Without another word, and without looking back, he turned and strode west. He heard the others following behind him.
Fifteen
It might well be true, as Tyralair asserted, that movement in the Near Void was purely ethereal, involving no actual physical effort, and that the apparent motion of walking was a figment of their minds. But weariness is, in the last analysis, a function of the mind, and it felt like they were marching.
Nevertheless, Winslow kept them at it for almost twenty miles, with only a couple of breaks for food and water, before calling a halt. He wanted to arrive at their destination early, with plenty of time for scouting and positioning. They all kept up, even John White, about whom Winslow had been worried. Perhaps it was simply that no one wanted to be left behind in this uncanny state. Afterwards, they all fell into a relieved sleep even though in this realm night and day were the same. One good thing: there was no need to post watches, in this realm that was in some incomprehensible fashion outside or beside the real world.
A buzzing sound somehow made by the wrist timepiece awoke Winslow at a predetermined time, and they resumed their march up the valley, through the strange shadowless luminescence. This time they only had to cover twelve or so miles before the vast arch loomed up in the distance against the pearl-colored westering sun. Near its base clustered the unnatural structures Winslow had seen before, seeming like toy houses from here, dominated by the grim dome off to one side. He had told all his people what to expect, so there weren't too many muttered oaths.
All at once, visible even at this distance, the arch began to flicker with lights around its edges, colorless white of course but as bright as anything ever looked as viewed from Near Void. That was all the warning they had before a Grella airship was suddenly present under the arch in all its massiveness, speeding in their direction and growing with impossible rapidity.
This time there were cries. Afterwards, Winslow wouldn't have sworn that his own wasn't among them. But then the airship slowed and swung off to port toward an open expanse that had to be a landing field. Winslow heard a collective whoosh of released breath behind him.
"Remember what Riahn has always told us?" Virginia Dare whispered. "About how the Grella force their way directly through the Inner Void from one world to another, ripping open a portal with the forces they can command?"
"Yes," Winslow nodded, watching the airship settle down to a landing.
"Well, I wonder if the arch is a way of avoiding having to do that."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe, after opening a portal, they can build an arch like that and it provides the force. That way, a flying ship of theirs doesn't have to provide it."
"And therefore," Winslow took up the thought, "any ship of theirs can make the transit, not just specially outfitted ships like the one that burst through into our world a century ago as we measure time. Yes, that would pay for itself after a while, no matter how much the arch cost to build." He discovered that like all the others he had—involuntarily, absurdly—gone to his knees in the instant when that vessel had seemed to be shooting unerringly toward them. Slightly embarrassed, he rose to his feet. "Well, the point now is that they're going to be unloading a newly arrived vessel. Unless this place differs from all other ports I've ever seen, that's going to be engaging a lot of people's attention and causing a lot of confusion, which can only work to our benefit. Let's go. I want to see the inside of those gun emplacements."
They moved on, and soon they were among the outer structures. Winslow took the opportunity to lead them through walls, remembering how his own automatic rejection of such a manifest impossibility had needed to be overcome by experience. Even worse was the first time they saw the ghostly forms of Grella, and walked past and even through them. There was a general gasping and convulsive clutching of weapons before they all could accept the fact that they were invisible and impalpable.
They reached and entered one of the great weapon turrets that surrounded the dome. Winslow's plan was to leave a man inside each of those turrets facing the side from which the Eilonwë attack would come, to appear out of nowhere at the appointed time and slash the stunned Grella gun crew to pieces. But now . . .
"Where the Devil is the crew stationed?" he demanded of Virginia Dare as he looked around at a nearly solid mass of incomprehensible machinery.
"I don't think there is a crew," she said thoughtfully. "I think the weapon aims and fires itself in response to commands from afar. All the turrets are controlled from one central location, doubtless inside the dome."
"But—" Winslow clamped his jaw shut, reminding himself that the word impossible had a different meaning in this world, if indeed it had any meaning at all. He thought furiously. "We could leave one of our bombs here—"
"—but only if the man carrying it re-enters the material world," Shakespeare finished for him. And is stranded there, he didn't need to add.
The Welsh soldier Owain shouldered forward. "Captain, give me as many bombs as I can carry. I'll drop out of Dom-Daniel, leave one of them here, then move on to other turrets, leaving one in each."
"But Owain, you'll be unable to return to, uh, Dom-Daniel. You'll no longer be able to walk through the walls of the turrets. And the Grella will be able to see you."
"And kill or capture you," added Virginia Dare. "You're a brave man, Owain. But the instant you're caught they'll raise the alarm and our advantage of surprise will be gone."
"They'll have to catch me first!" A grin wreathed dark features which held the blood's memories of Romans and Phoenicians and Celts and nameless peoples far older than the Celts, who had raised the standing stones. "In my younger days, before entering Her Majesty's service, I had some small experience at, shall we say, moving about inconspicuously after dark."
"Poaching," Winslow stated shortly.
Owain gave him a hurt look. "That's a matter of definition, Captain. But be that as it may, if I could stay one step ahead of the damned English—no offense, Captain and milady!—I'll wager I can do the same with the Grella. Besides," he added with a wink, "there is one place hereabouts where I can duck out of the mundane world again." He smiled and sketched an arch with a forefinger.
"I never thought of that," Shakespeare breathed. "But yes, there is another portal here, isn't there?"
"One so obvious that none of us thought of it," Winslow nodded.
"But," protested Virginia Dare, "the arch is on the far side of this city. You'll never make it so far, Owain."
"It would hardly be ethical for me to place a bet on that," the Welshman grinned, "considering that if I lose I'll never have to worry about paying up!" Sobering, he turned to Winslow. "Let me try it, Captain. I'll find a way—a natural way—into the turrets, so I can plant the bombs. Then I'll work my way toward the arch. But I'll make it my first concern to stay out of their sight."
"Very well. Do it. But you'll only be the second string to our bow. The
rest of us will continue on into the dome, try to find the place from which Virginia says they control their defenses, and appear there at the moment of the attack as we originally planned." Winslow smiled grimly. "We'll use their own powers against them. If they can command everything from one place, then they're vulnerable at that place. And if their subordinate officers are used to being able to report to their distant leaders and get instructions back in the blink of an eye, they've probably lost the ability to act on their own initiative. We'll paralyze them!"
Owain took four men's bombs, which were all he could carry besides his own. Virginia Dare, who knew the Eilonwë symbols and had been instructed in the relatively simple procedure, set the bombs' timers for the moment the attack was to begin. Then she gave Owain a quick, hard hug. All the others muttered their farewells. He gave a last jaunty wave and assumed a look of concentration.
