Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  Then they were scrambling up the last few yards to the hilltop, and there was no time for further thought, no time for anything except weapon-impacts, noise and blood. The infantry line they encountered was a hastily improvised thing, and these were headquarters troops. They smashed through with scarcely a pause and were into the encampment beyond Ecdicius and his standard-bearer led the way toward the command tent, toward a fratricidal meeting of dragons.

  The day finally fulfilled its promise with a crash of thunder and a pelting rain. Sarnac was telling himself that the Artoriani would be slowed in their progress up the hills opposite side, when the first of the red-cloaked riders topped the ridge and bore down on the camp. There could be no thought of tactics now, as horsemen met among the tents in a swirl of single and small-group combats.

  Sarnac had left his lance in the belly of an infantryman, and now he let implanted reflexes wield his spatha for him as he let the maelstrom of combat carry him on through the camp. All at once, he was free of the latest struggling knot of riders in which he’d been entangled. He found himself in a large open space in front of the dragon-surmounted command tent—it must have been a parade ground or something, for there was a kind of rostrum behind which an obvious noncombatant cowered. The battle-pattern, such as it was, had left the space clear, save for a rider in high-ranking officers armor who was engaged with one of Ecdicius’ men. The officer sent his opponent reeling to the ground with a sword-stroke, then looked around for fresh enemies, and his eyes met Sarnac’s through the rain. And Sarnac felt a resistless tide of inevitability take hold of him as he recognized those green eyes.

  “Kai,” he croaked.

  The enemy general walked his horse forward, never breaking eye contact, and gave him a puzzled look. “I know you from somewhere. It was long ago…”

  “Yes, Kai. I fought beside you at Angers.” And later at Bourg-de-Deols, Sarnac didn’t add. And afterwards you were with me when I threw a sword into a lake, and you carried the tale back to Britain. But that was in another universe.

  “Bedwyr,” Kai breathed. “It’s you! So many times I’ve wondered what became of you. You just seemed to vanish, shortly before the Battle of Bourges. Ah, if only you’d been there, when we smashed the Visigoths!” A dull hurt entered his voice. “You didn’t seem the kind to desert, Bedwyr.”

  The battle had moved away from them, but it hardly mattered, for they were as oblivious to it as they were to the rain that drenched them. Sarnac was peripherally aware that the foppish figure behind the rostrum had stood up and was staring at them in bewilderment, his courtiers makeup running in the downpour.

  “I didn’t desert, Kai. I…” I didn’t go anywhere, Kai. This entire continuum veered off, taking you with it, leaving me with a Kai who had to live in a world without Artorius, a Kai who never became a general of a resurgent empire. But how do I explain that to you? “It’s a long story, Kai, and you wouldn’t believe it anyway. But believe this: I never deserted Artorius, which is why I’m here today, fighting for his heir.”

  Kai stiffened in his saddle. “His heir? Ecdicius? That damned traitor who murdered the Pan-Tarkan?”

  Sarnac recoiled as though from a slap. “What are you talking about Kai?”

  “He explained it to me.” Kai pointed at the bedraggled courtier. “The Chamberlain Nicoles. He told me how Ecdicius couldn’t wait for Artorius to die, so he poisoned the man to whom he owed everything!”

  “No, Kai! You’ve been told lies. I was there, in Constantinople, and I tell you that the men who’ve seized power there tried to murder Ecdicius. That’s why he had to flee. Join us, Kai! The East is lost, but you can help Artorius’ heir come into the Western half of his inheritance at least.”

  Kai’s eyes fled from Sarnac to Nicoles and back again, as though seeking refuge from an insoluble dilemma. Finding none, they squeezed shut, and his entire body shook convulsively. Then a crash of thunder seemed to crystallize something inside him, and the green eyes snapped open. “No! Defend yourself, Bedwyr!” And he spurred his horse forward over the few yards that separated them.

  Sarnac barely had time to get his shield up and deflect the downward-sweeping spatha. He struck back, maneuvering for an opening, slashing and parrying through a fog of unreality. This is Kai, and if there was anything even resembling a God in the universe we’d be on the same side. Then they broke apart and came together again with a clash of swords, horses rearing. Sarnacs mount foundered in the mud, and he threw himself free. Then he slithered to his feet as Kai bore down on him, striking from above. He fended off several downward blows, then dropped his spatha and rushed in, holding his shield over his head and grasping Kai’s belt with his free hand. He tugged with all his strength, and Kai toppled from the saddle. They fell to the mud in a tangle, with Kai on top.

  For an instant they wrestled clumsily. Then Sarnac slid free and retrieved his blade. They both got to their feet in the mud and faced each other warily.

  Sarnac felt an odd sensation at his midriff, like a small animal wiggling against him, an animal of metallic hardness. He looked down at the carrying case on his belt, and saw that the communicator it contained was reconfiguring.

  The instant of distraction was all Kai needed.

  Sarnac was just looking up when his opponent’s shield pushed his own aside, and a sword-blade connected with his helmet, filling his eyes with Roman candles and sending him staggering backwards. Kai pressed his advantage, and Sarnac reeled under a hail of blows, finally going over on his back. Kai was instantly atop him, drawing back his spatha for a killing stroke… and stopped.

  Sarnac’s first thought was that it had stopped raining. But it hadn’t—at least not outside the invisible hemisphere that surrounded them. That hemispheres boundaries were clearly marked by the still-falling rain that hung frozen outside it, each drop motionless. Within the hemisphere, there was a faint splattering sound, and the puddles of water settled into calmness after the impacts of the few raindrops that had been within the field at the nanosecond in which it had formed.

  But Kai had eyes for none of this. He was staring fixedly at the glowing immaterial portal that had appeared in the middle of the parade ground, and at the two figures that had emerged from it and were advancing toward him.

  “Pan-Tarkan,” he whispered as the first of them approached him.

  “Hello, Kai,” Artorius said. His face was smeared with the grime of battle, and his smile was like the sun breaking through clouds.

  Sarnac, unnoticed, took the carrying case off his belt and carefully laid it on the ground. Then he got up and stalked over to the second new arrival.

  “What kept you?” he asked Tylar grumpily.

  “Oh, I’m frightfully sorry, my dear fellow. But we were rather busy. You’ll be glad to know that the invasion of Italy has been stopped. As soon as the pursuit was well in hand and Artorius could be spared, we came here without delay.”

  “Yeah, by means of that ‘communicator’—which evidently has a few little features you forgot to tell me about.”

  “Ah, yes. It is a rather special device. In its current configuration, it can project a portal at a distance of several yards, as you can see.”

  “That’s not all, it seems.” Sarnac gazed up at the dome of motionless rain, and beyond the parade ground at the battling figures who stood like living statues. In the distance, a lightning bolt stood suspended, moving at the speed of electricity and therefore effectively stationary in terms of the rate at which time was moving inside this immaterial hemisphere.

  “True, it also generates a reverse-stasis field. You may recall this kind of time-accelerating effect, which you experienced once before.”

  “Vividly. But those devices you’d implanted in us only produced a field that surrounded a single person.”

  “This device is a good deal more powerful. I anticipated that it might be necessary to create what is in effect a zone of privacy.” He indicated the scene around them. Artorius was giving Kai a version of
the same story he’d used on the Restorer, and Nicoles was standing in openmouthed immobility. “What transpires within the field will occupy only a nanosecond or two from the standpoint of the outside universe, so Artorius and I will never be seen.”

  “Except by Kai and Nicoles, here.”

  “Yes, their presence was a problem. But it was unavoidable, for only Artorius can persuade Kai to do as we wish. And the surveillance satellite currently in a position to observe this battlefield reported that the battle had reached a crisis. And, incidentally, that you were in some personal danger.”

  “Sweet of you to care.” Sarnac turned his attention to Artorius and Kai. The latter had fallen to his knees and removed his helmet, and seemed oblivious to the wizardry that held frozen the rain and the battling figures in the camp around them. He was listening to Artorius with the air of a man who understands nothing but needs no understanding to believe.

  “But, Pan-Tarkan” he stammered, using the title he knew this man, who had by his own account never been Augustus, was entitled to, “I was told that Ecdicius had poisoned you…”

  “No, Kai. Bedwyr has spoken the truth. The traitors who’ve put that poltroon Wilhelmus on the throne sought Ecdicius’ life because he was the legitimate heir. And now…” He pointed toward the camp. Ecdicius had broken free of the battle and started toward them at a gallop in which he and his horse were now suspended. “Now I’ve been allowed to come to you and speak to you in this bubble snatched from time so I can tell you that he is carrying forward my work by leading the West along its own true path.”

  “But, Pan-Tarkan, we fought to restore the empire.”

  “And you won, Kai. And now you’ve seen the result.” Artorius spoke with enormous gentleness. “We fought like men, Kai; nothing can take that away from us. But it has pleased God to so order things in this world that right action can sometimes give birth to wrongness. And that which dwells in Constantinople is an enormous wrongness, Kai. Ecdicius knows that. I think you know it. And I call on you in the name of what you know to be true to give your allegiance to Ecdicius as Augustus of the West.”

  “NO!”

  Nicoles’ quavering scream shattered the silence into which Artorius’ final word had dropped. Before anyone could move, the eunuch drew a dagger from his belt and sprang forward toward Artorius’ back, continuing to scream in a voice from which all sanity had fled.

  Sarnac still held his sword. Without time for anything fancy, he lunged past the paralyzed Tylar, thrusting as far as his arm would reach. Nicoles, with eyes only for his target, ran onto the outthrust point, which slid into his gut.

  Simultaneously, Kai rushed past Artorius before the latter could turn around, raising his spatha and bringing it down with all his strength and all his skill in a form of swordplay which, like a crude kendo, aimed at putting the maximum possible force behind a sword-edge. His blade connected with the base of Nicoles’ neck at an angle, slicing inward. Blood spurted. The eunuch’s mouth opened to scream but expelled a retching sound and a red spray. His body sank to the ground with both their swords still in it, and Sarnac and Kai met each others eyes over it. Slowly, they both released their hilts.

  Artorius stepped up behind Kai and grasped his shoulder. “Will you do as I ask, Kai?”

  “I understand none of this wizardry, Pan-Tarkan,” Kai said, turning to face him. “But I know you, for you’ve come striding out of my very memories. You may say I’m not yours to command in this time and place, but I know better. And Ecdicius is your true heir.”

  Artorius clasped Kai in his arms—this Kai who was to all appearances his own age. “I have one other… not command, Kai, but request. Tell no one of this meeting we’ve been permitted. There are things men are better off not knowing.”

  “That’s an easy one, Pan-Tarkan,” Kai grinned. “Nobody’d believe me anyway!” And with that grin, Sarnac knew this man to be his old friend—Kai with a few more pounds and some gray hairs, but still Kai. And the world seemed mended.

  Artorius smiled back and they embraced one last time. Then the former High King turned and strode toward the portal.

  “You’d better stay for now,” Tylar murmured to Sarnac. “Your abrupt disappearance would be hard to explain. We’ll come back for you and Andreas as originally planned.” He followed Artorius through the portal, which vanished. At the instant of its vanishing, the rain resumed its descent onto the parade ground, pelting them, and the .stationary figures throughout the camp crashed back into battle. Ecdicius plunged forward, seeming to reacquire his momentum toward them. Then he reined in, puzzled, as Kai knelt before him.

  “Bedwyr, the lightning must have dazzled me—I didn’t see you get up. And Kai… ?”

  The erstwhile enemy commander extended his spatha hilt-first with his left hand while giving the Roman salute with the right. “Hail Ecdicius Augustus!” he shouted. “Accept my allegiance, and the Army of Germania!”

  Ecdicius’ jaw dropped. Sarnac grinned weakly as the accumulated exhaustion of this day began to overtake him. “We’d better have the trumpeters signal ‘Truce’ and send some heralds out to stop the fighting. And let’s get in out of this damned rain!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They rounded the remembered bend in the road and Sarnac saw the three approaching riders, coming from the direction of Cadbury. He bounded ahead of Tylar and Artorius as Tiraena sprang from her horse and ran to him. After a while, they heard a harrumph.

  “Ah, you forgot your horse,” Cerdic said. He was holding the bridle Tiraena had abandoned.

  “Thank you,” Tiraena smiled.

  “No,” the ealdorman said with a vehement headshake. “Let you never have any thought of owing me thanks, Lady. The rest of my life will be spent in your debt for the life of my son.” He dismounted and, to Tiraenas obvious consternation, fell to his knees at her feet.

  “Cerdic!” she exclaimed, voice rising to a falsetto squeak.

  “I know not where you’re going, Lady, or whether you’ll ever return. But if ever you’re in need of a Me, the life of Cerdic of the West Saxons is yours.”

  Tiraena’s coppery face turned a dark-red shade new to Sarnac—it came to him that he’d never seen her blush before. “Aw, come on, Cerdic,” she stammered. “I’m just glad Cynric is all right.” She’d said goodbye to her young erstwhile bodyguard before leaving Cadbury, where he lay raising the roof with his demands to be allowed out of bed after a recovery that had the entire countryside talking of miracles. ”That’s all the thanks I need. Now please get up!”

  “As you command, Lady.” Cerdic rose with a smile. “My debt to you is yours to release me from. But my honor, and that of my house, is mine—and you’ll never want for a shield and a sword in this land!”

  Gwenhwyvaer rescued Tiraena from her tongue-tied misery. “Ride on back, Cerdic. I’ll catch up. There are things I must say in private.”

  “Aye, Lady.” Cerdic mounted and rode off, leading Tiraena’s horse. Silence settled over those who remained. Gwenhwyvaer walked forward until she was within less than an arm’s reach of Artorius. Silence stretched as she gazed into the face, seemingly in its forties, of him who’d died in his sixties in Constantinople last spring. The late afternoon chill deepened, for winter was coming on, but neither of them showed any signs of noticing.

  “So,” the queen finally said, “you’re off—to a land I’ve never heard of, Lucasta tells me, and I can well believe it. Indeed, if I understand aright, to another world, a world of dream where you’re a legend! So I’ve lost you twice, first to death and now to what must be magic, however much you deny it.”

  “Remember what I told you: you share in the legend in that world. But think not of that, Gwen. For you’ve grown far beyond me—beyond what I became in this world, beyond what fable made of me in the other. You’ve grown into what I could never have imagined, for I never took the time to truly know you.” He sighed deeply and took her hands. “Ah, Gwen, the waste!”

  Tylar cleared his thro
at softly. “We really should be getting along,” he said to Sarnac and Tiraena. “We’ll wait for you,” he added to Artorius, who nodded abstractedly.

  “What was all that about with Cerdic?” Sarnac asked after they’d rounded the bend in the road.

  “A long story,” Tiraena replied. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re all aboard the ship.”

  *

  Sarnac gasped for breath and held his aching sides. “The Holy Pill of Antioch!” he whooped. “I love it!” Then another gust of uncontrollable laughter took him.

  Tylar didn’t share his amusement. “You really shouldn’t have, you know,” he told Tiraena primly. “Still, it probably won’t do any harm. There’ll be so many legends associated with that battle that one more won’t matter. Future generations will assume that Cynric’s wound wasn’t really as serious as it was initially thought to be.”

  “And remember,” Sarnac gasped, having gotten his breath back again, “you owe her one for making sure they burned the Interrogators body instead of burying it.”

  “True. A Korvaash skeleton, dug up by a later scientifically oriented age, would have been impossible to explain away. As it is, with no physical evidence, he’ll be written off as just one more myth. That was well done on your part.”

  “I wasn’t thinking in those terms at the time,” Tiraena admitted. “To be honest, I don’t clearly remember what I was thinking.” She stared moodily out at the panorama revealed by the “observation deck” where they reclined on the extrudable furniture that an invisible magic carpet seemed to be carrying over the English Channel under gray skies. Then she shook herself and smiled. “Anyway, Tylar, you must admit I’ve been punished for my little transgression.” She gestured aft, toward the receding British coastline. “I think I’ve just proven experimentally that it’s not possible to literally die of embarrassment!”

  Artorius, hitherto quiet, spoke up in an odd voice. “I’m afraid, Tiraena, that you’re not quite through doing it.” And, before anyone could react, he was on one knee before her, seeming to kneel in midair.