Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  Tiraena felt something hard against the tips of her fingers. It was the hilt of the spatha Cynric had dropped. Her grip closed around it, and she struggled to her feet. The transcendent pain that started in her right thigh and flooded her entire being seemed to burn away some impediment to clarity, for all at once reality consisted of the tormented face of an impaled little girl. But then the girl’s blue eyes turned dark, the skin shaded from pale to coppery, the features shifted, and it was a little Raehaniv girl who stood terrified in a dimly lit place of horror created by the Korvaasha, a little girl who also bore the name Tiraena.

  The moment ended—it had lasted no more than a millisecond. Tiraena felt no pain anymore, only a calm certainty that she was about to do that for which she had been born. As though in slow motion, the Interrogator swung his club in a stroke that would have taken off her head. She dodged the blow with an unreal ease and grasped her sword in both hands—the spatha wasn’t intended for it, but it could be done. She rotated almost a full three hundred and sixty degrees as she brought the blade around in a perfect drawing cut, into what would have been the belly of a human.

  Tiraena already knew that the Korvaasha could, with difficulty, produce a sound in the human auditory range. An extremely high-pitched Korvaash scream sounded like a distant foghorn. The Interrogator emitted a loud foghorn sound as he doubled over. Recovering, Tiraena brought the spatha down on the long neck, where the hide wasn’t quite so thick.

  No human strength—not even Tiraena’s as it was at this moment—could have actually severed the neck with one of this eras blades. But the Interrogators head flopped grotesquely and the unpleasant-looking Koryaash blood fountained forth as he sank to the ground.

  Tiraena collapsed with a gasp of returning pain. Funny, she thought: she hadn’t noticed that a wide circle of spectators had formed around this combat, half Briton and half Fomorian, all of them now standing with their mouths hanging comically open. Then the tableau broke as the Fomorian half of the circle disintegrated, fleeing with howls of panic. The Britons followed in pursuit, striking at their country’s invaders as they could not strike at their own shame. Tiraena was left alone with the dead and dying.

  She tore a strip of cloth from a sleeve and used it to bind her wounded thigh. Then, using her left leg and both arms, she dragged herself painfully over to Cynric. He was breathing but unconscious; she could do nothing for him but stanch the flow of blood with a wad of cloth. Finally, she made her way to the place where Peredur lay pinned to the ground by the Interrogator’s broken sword, staring sightlessly at the sky. She reached out and closed his eyes.

  Was it you, Peredur? she wondered. Were you the Peredur who, in my reality, made the name of Sir Percival a byword for all that’s best in men? I think it must have been you. And I hope you found your Grail.

  Time passed and the distant voice of battle gradually diminished. Then she heard a clatter of hooves and looked up at Gwenhwyvaer and her attendants. The expression on the queens face told her all she needed to know, but she asked anyway. “The battle… ?”

  “Yes. Constantine struck at just the right instant, and Cerdic’s Saxons held. The imperials were crammed together so tightly they couldn’t even use their weapons. It was a butchery. We couldn’t pen them all in, of course, but the survivors are no longer an army. Our militia can harry them back down the Thames.” Even as she told the tale, Gwenhwyvaer’s eyes kept shifting to the carcass of the Interrogator, and several of the attendants crossed themselves as their horses shied nervously away.

  “I suppose we should bury it…” someone began.

  Tiraena stood up, heedless of pain. “No! You don’t want him anywhere in your food chain!” She saw their puzzled expressions and forced herself to concentrate long enough to speak words they’d understand.

  “Burn him! This earth was never meant to bear his weight Burn him! And beg your Gods forgiveness as the smoke of that burning rises into His sky!”

  It was all she had left in her. She collapsed into unconsciousness. A heartbeat of dead silence passed before men started running in search of firewood.

  Tiraena lay in the torchlight beside Cynric, who they’d carried back to the camp with her even though his wound was clearly mortal. Cerdic stood looking down at his son, tears making runnels in the blood and grime that caked his face. Cynric was no child, but a man according to his peoples lights, and therefore a fit subject for mourning.

  Gwenhwyvaer stood nearby, looking at Cerdic and his son with an expression Tiraena now understood. For her own part, she was waiting for an opportunity to pop one of the little pills in the pouch at her waist Her wound would heal anyway, but there was no reason not to speed things along.

  A horse approached, and its rider dismounted. Cerdic turned and glared at him. “Well, Constantine ap Cador, here I am, and the battles over. Have what you will of me!”

  Gwenhwyvaer seemed ready to intervene, but Constantine shook his head and looked at Cynric, who lay alternately sleeping and awakening into agony. “No, Cerdic. There’s not a man alive I’d seek a quarrel with at such a time. And besides…” He hesitated, then continued with the awkwardness of a man saying something very difficult. “I saw the line of piled Saxon corpses that marks where the shield-wall stood.” They’d all seen it from atop the hill before the sun had set, and Tiraena had thought of redcoats lying dead in square on the field of Waterloo.

  “Spilled Saxon blood should be no novelty to you,” Cerdic said, unmoved. “You Britons have spilled it in plenty.”

  “Aye, when you came as ravagers of these shores. But this day’s Saxon blood was shed in defense of this land, and your dead will be buried in the soil they died guarding. So whatever has gone before, for good or ill, your people are part of Britain and it’s part of you, from now until the ending of the world.” And he extended his hand.

  He still wouldn’t want his sister to marry one, Tiraena knew. But it’s a start—a start!

  Cerdic met Constantine’s eyes, and looked at the extended hand. Then he took it, in the Roman fashion. Gwenhwyvaer smiled, and laid a hand atop the clasped forearms.

  But Gwenhwyvaer remained, and turned to Tiraena with a smile. “Well, Lucasta, what are the bards going to do with you? How are they going to deal with the fact, witnessed by so many, that it was a woman—and a foreign woman at that—who slew the monster?”

  I imagine, Tiraena thought, that hero-tales are going to have to accommodate a little more variety in this timeline. Good. She started to say something about it, but Gwenhwyvaer was gazing down at Cynric, now mercifully unconscious, with an expression that would have puzzled Tiraena once. Then she looked up with a bitter little smile. “Ah, Cerdic,” she whispered. “I think I can understand how it is—how it must be for those who can have children!”

  So that still rankles. Aloud, Tiraena addressed the queen in British rather than their customary Latin. “Leave all thoughts of barrenness, Lady. For it’s in my heart that you’ve given birth to a nation!”

  Gwenhwyvaer gazed at her for a time before replying in the same tongue. “Oh, a nation’s been born, right enough. God knows there’s been sufficient pain and blood this day for the birth of a giant! But…” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “But it wasn’t I who gave it life. It created itself. At most, I’m the foster-mother.”

  She seemed about to say more, but men started arriving, asking questions and needing decisions made. A final quick smile for Tiraena, and Gwenhwyvaer was off to tend her infant titan.

  Alone for the moment, Tiraena slipped one of the little pills out of her pouch and swallowed. She’d just washed it down with wine from the jug that had been left beside her when Flavian, the only surgeon for this army of thousands, arrived from his rounds. He gave Tiraena a smile which vanished when he looked at Cynric.

  “There’s no hope, is there?” she asked, unnecessarily.

  “No.” The fine-boned face, clearly more Roman than Celtic, wore an expression compounded of exhaustion and despair. ‘T
he liver is pierced. He’ll die before morning. I can do nothing for him.” His features stiffened with bitterness, and he swept his arm out over the whole camp with its moaning rows of the wounded. “I can do nothing for any of them except try to ease their pain. I can’t stop them from dying, because while we know well enough what death and sickness look like we don’t really know why a man is alive one moment and dead the next. We know nothing. Nothing!” He clenched his fists in helpless fury, for he took all the suffering and death in the world as a personal affront.

  Why aren’t all doctors like this one? Tiraena asked the God in whom she did not believe. And why doesn’t this one have the tools and knowledge he needs? The universe gave no answer, but she hadn’t really expected one.

  Flavian departed to fight and lose yet another battle in his hopeless personal war, and Tiraena looked at Cynric where he lay beside her. He was awake again, and moaning softly. As she studied his profile—yes, there was some of his grandfather there if you knew what to look for—

  Tylar’s words played themselves over and over in her head. “All obvious manifestations of advanced science and technology must be kept hidden from the inhabitants of this milieu, lest the culture’s future intellectual development be distorted. It is all for the greater long-range good.…”

  She became aware that her hand, as though actuated by a will of its own, was fumbling in the pouch, withdrawing one of the recovery-stimulating pills. She turned to Cynric and spoke urgently, for soon sleep would take her.

  “Cynric!”

  The youth turned his head and recognized her. “Yes, Lady?”

  “Cynric, I want you to do something for me.” She took the hand of his good arm and pressed the pill into it. “I want you to swallow this.”

  “Swallow it?” Cynric stared dubiously at the tiny ovoid, so disconcertingly unnatural, made from no substance he’d ever seen. “Why, Lady?”

  “Never mind,” Tiraena said, fighting off the oncoming waves of sleep. “Just do it.”

  “Er… can’t I just hold it?”

  Tiraena took a deep breath. “Cynric, you must trust me. This is a very sacred object, blessed by a holy man in—” her mind flew back to one of the twentieth-century flat movies for which Bob had a perverse fondness “—Antioch. Its virtue is that it cures seemingly mortal wounds. But you must take it into your body, like… like the Holy Communion. Will you do it for me, Cynric?”

  The blue eyes took on an expression that sent a realization of her own unworthiness washing over her like a wave. “For you, Lady,” he breathed. Then he crossed himself and popped the pill into his mouth.

  She poured a swallow of wine into him, and he lay back with a smile. Sleep came almost immediately, and his features relaxed into those of the boy he still was. She made absolutely certain he was unconscious before reaching out and tousling the blond hair.

  Flavian returned and saw that Cynric was motionless. “Is he… ?”

  “No.” Though rapidly drifting off, Tiraena managed a headshake. “He’s going to be all right.”

  “What? No, Lady. It’s not possible.”

  “Flavian, believe me. I’ve had a… a vision. Just keep an eye on him. He’s gone into a deep, healing sleep that will last a long time. When he awakes, give him all the food he wants, because he’ll be… very hungry. So will I.” She roused herself for a final sentence. “And tell Cerdic… I think he’ll want to know…” She slid into a semiconscious state where speech was impossible.

  The surgeon leaned over and examined Cynric. Yes, the lad was breathing—and breathing deeply and regularly! He was sleeping peacefully, and his color actually seemed to be better.

  Flavian stood up and gazed at the woman Lucasta, now sinking rapidly into a deep sleep of her own, and his flesh prickled. She had a Power in her that was beyond his understanding, beyond even his desire to understand. But it could not be a thing of evil. What, he wondered, could be the thoughts behind that serene, almost beatific smile her face wore?

  Fuck you, Tylar, she thought just before letting sleep take her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Tylar, what the hell’s happening? I need to know!”

  “Compose yourself.” In Sarnacs ghostly holo display screen, the time travelers visage was as infuriatingly calm as ever. “I also have been unable to make contact with Tiraena. This may mean simply that she is presently unable to access her long-range communicator, which, in turn, could have any of a number of relatively benign explanations—”

  The tent-flap flew open, revealing Andreas in full battle array save for the helmet he still held in the crook of his left arm. “Come on, Bob! Things are moving!”

  “All right, all right! I’ll be along!” He instantly regretted snapping at Andreas, but he had to find out whatever Tylar knew. The young transtemporal voyager seemed to understand.

  “I’ll tell Ecdicius something or other, Bob. But hurry!” And Andreas was gone, plunging back into the turmoil of the camp.

  “Look, Tylar, I haven’t got much time, so cut the crap! What do you know about Tiraena’s status?”

  “I was just coming to that, my dear fellow. Finding myself unable to contact her, I investigated the state of affairs in Britain using surveillance satellites.”

  “Huh? What surveillance satellites?”

  “Sentient devices the ship deployed into orbit as we approached, as a matter of routine procedure. Didn’t I mention them? At any rate, you can set your mind at rest. The crisis is past in Britain. The invasion has been broken, and the Interrogator is dead.”

  “Thank God for that,” Sarnac breathed.

  “Dead by Tiraena’s own hand, no less! Of course, she sustained some damage in the process—”

  “What?!”

  “Calm yourself! She’s in no danger. But she’s still recovering with the aid of the field pharmacopeia I supplied to you both. So she’s been in no position to initiate long-range communications. And now” —he glanced over his shoulder at something unseen— “I must go. Matters are coming to a head here.”

  Here, Sarnac knew, meant the marshes shielding Ravenna, and he abruptly felt guilty for keeping Tylar distracted so long from the task of blocking the Eastern armies that sought to penetrate to the city. “Uh, yeah, of course. Good luck to you and Artorius.”

  “I’ll convey your message to him when I see him again, but he’s rather heavily engaged just now.” Tylar paused before signing off. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Be sure to keep your long-range communicator in your possession at all times.”

  Sarnac looked skeptically at the oblong device that fit into a custom-made pouch of authentic local leather. Carrying it would be a nuisance, but it could be done.

  “Well…” he began.

  “Splendid. Remember, it’s very important.” And Tylar’s image vanished.

  Sarnac was already outfitted. He wore a scale-armor hauberk.because it was expected; he couldn’t get away with going into battle in what appeared to be mere quilted cloth as he had in the good old days. Too bad—the hauberk blocked the impact armor’s microscopic sensors, leaving his “cloth”-clad arms and legs considerably better protected than his torso. He attached the communicators leather carrying case—not unlike a Civil War era cartridge box—to his belt. Then he put on his cavalry helmet and joined the cheekpieces under his chin, and stepped out into the campground. It was an unseasonably warm day for late autumn, but blustery with the promise of rain-squalls later. He paused to take in the panoramic view of what was to be today’s battlefield.

  Kai had finally forced a break in the deadlock. He’d struck out boldly, advancing westward from Toul, ignoring the road system and using his superb engineering corps to ford the upper reaches of the Marne and the Aube. He’d never read Sun Tzu, but he understood instinctively the way to force engagement: “When I wish to give battle, my enemy… cannot help but engage me, for I attack a position he must succor.” Toul had been expendable; the vital road-hub of Troyes was not.

  Ecdicius
had countermarched at a pace that had almost driven his army beyond endurance. But now they lay interposed between Kai and Troyes. It wasn’t a defensive position Ecdicius would have preferred; this low plateau where the fortified camp lay should have anchored their left flank, but thanks to Kai’s preliminary maneuvering it must hold their center. In front of Sarnac, a line of spearmen faced the dauntingly massive formation of Kai’s infantry center to the northeast, beyond which rose the hill—the highest one hereabouts—where the enemy command center lay. Behind the spearmen, and a little above them on the slope to shoot over their heads, were the crossbowmen on whom so much had been staked.

  To the left, where the plateau was lower, was a line of relatively light-armed local cavalry levies led by Basileus. Opposite them was a large enemy cavalry formation, behind which could be seen the array of red cloaks that marked the Artoriani. To the right, below a shoulder of the plateau, Ecdicius led the pick of his cavalry: heavy cataphractarii, including most of his old Brotherhood from the Visigothic wars and many of their sons. They confronted a formidable infantry formation in defensive posture.

  The dangers in having the commander-in-chief on the lower ground to the right where he couldn’t oversee the battle were obvious even in this era, with its rudimentary notions of command-and-control. But Ecdicius could see no alternative; he must lead the heavy cavalry in person, in an effort to break through and create the kind of fluid battle he liked.

  Hopefully, the two advisers “Tertullian” had lent him would be able to help in that area…

  “Are you receiving?” Sarnac subvocalized.

  “Loud and clear,” Andreas replied from his position with the right wing. “Ecdicius is still wondering why you requested to be assigned to the left wing rather than with him and the heavy cavalry.”

  Sarnac mounted up. He readjusted the communicator on his belt so it wouldn’t dig into his ribs and cursed Tylar mechanically. “But he bought my explanation that I could do the most good where the Artoriani are going to hit us, didn’t he?”