by Glenn Cooper
“Did anyone ever tell you that you get really irritating sometimes?”
“Only all of my ex-wives. And my girlfriends. And my agent, Ronnie. And the crew on my shows.”
They gathered their possessions, their swords, packs, and remaining food and water and began walking the beach, relying on Brian’s belief that Bilbao was to the east. They had no idea about the location of Burgos. Trevor was sick of hearing Brian say that they’d just have to ring up the Automobile Association for directions.
In the distance they saw some fishermen casting nets and they headed inland to avoid contact. The beach turned to scrubland then meadowland. There was smoke rising to the east. It started as a few wisps then became a solid column of dark gray against the pale sky. Trevor reckoned it was about two miles away.
A mile closer, the smoke had not abated and they saw the reason why. Flames were visible, rising from a broad base.
“We should give that a miss,” Trevor said.
Brian agreed. “We can flank it to the south but we’d best not get too far off course.”
Closer still they saw that the conflagration was coming from burning houses. A village was up in flames. Within a few hundred yards they heard the first screams, male voices bellowing in pain and fear. Then lone, high-pitched screams which grew louder and louder.
A woman came into view, running toward them from the burning village.
Then four men running after her, shouting and waving swords.
Brian and Trevor looked at each other with the same puckered expression that needed no words. Chivalry was going to get the better of them.
“At least let’s make quick work of it,” Trevor said. “This isn’t why we’re here.”
“We’re on the same page,” Brian said, drawing his sword.
The woman saw them and froze, likely believing she was trapped.
“Aqui, aqui! Amigos!” Brian yelled, using most of the Spanish he knew.
The woman glanced over her shoulder at the approaching men. She was young and barefooted, with black hair and a long peasant skirt. She made her decision and ran toward Brian.
Trevor and Brian held their ground and the woman ran past them, her eyes flashing with fear. She kept going and stopped fifty yards beyond.
The approaching men seemed to realize a fight was coming and they slowed their pace to shout instructions to one another.
“Sword in right hand, knife in left,” Brian said, giving his student a quick refresher course. “And take off your backpack.”
“Wish I had my nine millimeter,” Trevor said, breathing hard in anticipation.
“You and me both. Ancient weapons are rubbish, aren’t they?”
The swordsmen split into two groups and began a flanking maneuver, first at a trot, then a full run.
“Steady, steady,” Brian said, his back to Trevor. “Put one down fast and it’ll be one-on-one.”
At first contact, the attackers seemed to recognize that something was different about their adversaries but there was no time for more than combat.
Brian surprised his two foes by charging them, his sword high, before dropping low and slashing one of them in the hamstring with his knife. Before Brian could capitalize on the advantage, the other one was on him, necessitating a series of parries.
Trevor stayed planted, leaning slightly forward on the balls of his feet, as Brian had instructed. His two foes did a coordinated attack and he had to deal with two blades coming at him in concert. He blocked one but the other got through, slicing his jacket. He braced for pain but felt none. Angered at the close call he launched a furious counterattack, surprising himself by yelling like a maniac.
His vocalization proved helpful. One of the men hesitated just long enough for Trevor’s downward chop to strike home before his adversary could muster an effective defense. His sword hit the man’s shoulder and his tan shirt turned red. The second man, the one who had sliced his jacket, reacted swiftly and swung his weapon with so much force into Trevor’s parry that Trevor’s sword flew out of his hand. The man smiled and seemed to dare him to bend down to pick it up. Trevor shifted the knife into his right hand and prepared to be slaughtered.
From the corner of his eye, Trevor saw a blade come into view. Brian lit into Trevor’s would-be executioner and the man reacted just in time to clash swords. That gave Trevor enough time to glance at the two bodies lying on the ground, handily dispatched by the man from the BBC.
The other soldier whom Trevor had wounded tried to bring his sword back into play but his shoulder was too damaged. He chose to run back toward the burning village.
“Need any help?” Trevor called out.
“No, stay away,” Brian shouted. “I don’t want to hit you by mistake.”
Brian and his opponent clashed and traded blows for a long minute and then they stopped as abruptly as they had started. The soldier looked down at something sticking into his flank and dropped his sword, choosing to use both hands for another purpose. He removed Brian’s knife, held it quizzically then fell forward, his blood fouling the grass.
Trevor turned to look at the woman. She let out a yelp and began running again.
“Hey,” he called out. “It’s all right. They can’t hurt you now.”
He heard Brian say, “But they can.”
Then he saw what Brian saw. A large group of men on horseback were galloping toward them from the village, coming fast.
“What do we do?” Trevor asked.
Brian threw down his weapons and held up his hands. “We surrender or we die. And I’m not too keen on dying in a minute.”
Trevor did the same and the two men awaited whatever was coming.
Most of the horses pulled up just short of them but a few charged past aiming for the fleeing woman.
The riders eyed Trevor and Brian suspiciously. Brian looked over his shoulder and saw the woman being scooped from the ground by one of the horsemen and thrown onto his saddle.
One of the riders was dressed far better than the rest. A middle-aged man with a pock-marked swarthy face, he wore a black doublet, black leggings and a floppy black hat secured with a chin strap. He dismounted and in Spanish, instructed one of his men to secure the weapons before he approached. Others dragged away the still-moving bodies of their comrades.
Then he stepped forward, staring and sniffing, screwing up his face in puzzlement.
“Who are you?” he asked in Spanish.
Brian understood the question and answered in English. “My name is Brian and my friend is Trevor. Do you speak English?”
The man answered, “English, yes, a little. Where are you from? You are not from here.”
Brian slowly lowered his arms, prompting the man to say, “no, no.” Brian obeyed and the man had them searched before he allowed them to put their arms down.
“We’re from England,” Brian said.
“Brittania?”
“No, England. We’re not from Hell. We’re from Earth,” Trevor said.
“We are all from Earth, señor. We died first. Have you died first?”
Trevor said, “We’re alive.”
“Impossible.”
“We’re alive, all right,” Brian said. “Some scientists sent us here.”
“For why?”
“To find our friends,” Trevor said.
“Who are these friends?”
“Other live people. Two women and two children who’ve been sent to Hell by mistake.”
“I do not understand what you say. Tell me, why you destroy my men?”
“They were chasing that woman,” Brian said.
“She belong to me,” the man said. “The village of Astillero belong to me. If I say burn the village, the village is burned. If I say take the woman, the woman is taked.”
“And you are?” Trevor asked.
“I am Prince Diego de Anera, the crown prince of Bilbao. You will come with me.”
“Will you help us?” Trevor asked. “One of our friends, a woman, i
s in Iberia, in Burgos we think. We need to find her.”
“Yes, I help you. You can pay? You have gold?”
“Better than gold,” Brian said. “There’s something very valuable in that bag.”
The prince picked up the backpack and opened it.
“This?” he asked, holding up the book.
“Yes.”
The prince opened it then quickly shut it. “I cannot read your language.”
“That’s okay. We can translate it,” Trevor said.
“Why is valuable?”
“Because it teaches how to make bombs,” Trevor said. “Very big bombs.”
The prince raised his eyebrows and ordered four of his riders to double-up and offered horses.
“Come. We go to my house in Bilbao.”
“That suits us fine,” Brian said. “Feeling good about riding that horse, Trev?”
Trevor let out a string of curses.
“Don’t let the animal know you’re scared of it. You’ll do fine.”
“Better than her.”
The fleeing woman was being paraded past them. She raised her head from the saddle and gave them a woeful look as her captor took her back to the village and an uncertain fate.
“We can’t save them all,” Brian said.
23
He had arrived in Hell weak as a kitten. But he had been rescued from the Babylonian slave traders who swept him up. Loyal Macedonian soldiers who had preceded him to Hell had nurtured him. Having regained his legendary strength he had returned to his Aegean homeland.
For twenty-three centuries in Hell the young man had fought enemies far and wide, conquering territory, losing territory, and conquering it again. But most of all he had fought the terrible sameness and boredom of neverending time.
“Better to be a king than a slave,” he had told his comrades countless times, “but better still to be freed from this prison with no bars which is stronger than any jail.”
But there was no release and he had little choice but to live out this existence of attacking and defending in limitless cycles of violence.
King Alexander of Macedonia had been told by more modern arrivals of the name which history had given him. Alexander the Great. The name was a source of pride. He had been great, had he not? He had created the largest empire of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to Egypt and into the Indian subcontinent. He had never been defeated in battle.
But in Hell, his military success had been far more limited. His soldiers were not as brave and disciplined as those he commanded in life. They did not fight for the glory of the gods because they no longer believed the gods existed. Many of his best men never made it to Hell at all, proving to him that battlefield killings were not universal acts of condemnation. It was only those soldiers who had committed atrocities on civilians, on prisoners, on innocents who found their way into Alexander’s afterlife ranks. These men were an undisciplined and fractious lot. And the more modern Macedonians and Greeks who arrived in his Aegean kingdom were not as superb fighters as his ancient warriors. Those men had been real men, he chronically lamented.
He had long ceased pondering the reason he had been sent Down. Had it been the Thracian general he slayed because the man had dared to look him in the eye rather than cast his gaze downward like an obedient prisoner? Or the Indian boy he had strangled in his bed? Or his own soldiers he had executed for relieving themselves inside the tomb of Cyrus the Great? He no longer thought about such things.
Astride his white horse, his shoulder muscles rippled under his bronzed skin when he pulled the reins hard and brought the beast to a halt. He was at the tip of the spear, the front of a long column of Macedonian and Slavic fighters. He had been with a few of these men for two millennia, though most of his early comrades were rotting in ditches or on lakebeds. The luckier ones who had fallen in battle or from disease were deposited in rotting rooms. At least that conferred some honor. He had prepared his own royal rotting room to house his remains if and when the day of need came to pass.
Below him stretched the Bay of Naples and the crowded grimy city that sprawled from the high cliffs all the way to the edge of the sea.
“Do you see that, Cleitus?” he said to the young general by his side, a very old friend he had killed in life after a drunken quarrel. “They must know we are here. They must know of our march from the south. And yet, where is their army? Where are their preparations?”
Cleitus laughed. “This new king of theirs must be a donkey. Off he goes through the front door of his house chasing enemies to the north and he leaves the back door open and unguarded.”
“Let us get on with it,” Alexander sighed. “This city is poor and ugly. The faster we vanquish it, the faster we take Rome.”
Two French steam cars noisily chugged along the rutted road sending wildlife fleeing. John drove the lead car with Emily at his side and Alice, Tracy, and Tony crammed in the rear seat. Charlie, whose claim that he could drive any vehicle ever invented proved to be true, drove the second car with Martin beside him and three armed French soldiers handpicked by Forneau in the back.
Forneau had a firm idea which southern route Garibaldi and the Italian army was taking.
“They will march due south to Toulouse,” Forneau had advised, “then due west to the coast to avoid the mountain crossing. From there, they will enter Iberia near Irun and then to Burgos.”
John’s rough calculations, factoring the Italians’ head start and their relative speeds, led him to believe the automobiles could catch up to the army before it crossed into Iberian territory.
The first day and first night passed without incident. They sped through the countryside and John was able to give the towns a wide berth. When they did have to pass through villages, the residents reacted as those had done the last time he’d driven these machines through Europa: they cowered behind closed shutters, scared of the noise and the imperial might the machines represented. When night fell, the French soldiers, fearful of rovers, wanted to stop but the road was good enough and well enough illuminated by the headlamps that John wanted to carry on. Only when it was clear his passengers needed rest and the boilers needed recharging with water, did he agree to pull up. Luckily, as soon as the cars were shut down, they heard the pleasant sound of running water and found a good stream by the side of the road.
They slept on top of blankets and furs in the warm night air, apprehensive, though comfortable despite the buzzing insects. John and the soldiers kept a rotating watch and at first light he and Charlie primed the boilers for the day ahead.
“I’m just going to take the ladies into the woods a bit,” Emily said, loading the blankets into the car.
“Want me to keep guard?” John asked.
“We’ll be fine.”
He pulled out his flintlock pistol from his belt and put powder into the pan. “Here.”
She took it and said, “Back in a jiffy.”
John was so close to the heating, rattling, and chugging boilers that he almost didn’t hear the gunshot.
When the French soldiers saw him running they followed, drawing their swords.
“Should we stay here?” Tony yelled after them, but they had disappeared into the thicket.
John saw the body lying beside a fallen, dead tree.
It was a scrawny man in ragged clothes clutching a curved rover’s knife in his hand, a perfectly round, black hole in his forehead.
Emily was standing protectively in front of Alice and Tracy, the pistol still smoking in her hand. Tracy was hysterical and Alice was trying to comfort her.
“Was he the only one?” John called out.
“There were more,” Emily said, surprisingly calmly. “They were sneaking up on us. The others ran off.”
Seeing John, Alice stepped forward. “Is he dead?”
“Not dead, remember?” John said, kicking his knife away, “But his rover days are over.”
Emily dropped the pistol and started shaking like a cold, wet dog.
He wrapped her up in his arms and nuzzled her until she was ready to get going.
“Pretty good shot,” he whispered.
“I think I closed my eyes.”
“I doubt it. You’re fierce, know that?”
She talked into his shoulder. “I just want to find Arabel and the children and go home.”
“Then let’s hit the road.”
On the third morning of their journey, with the smoke of thousands of cooking fires drifting upwards from the nearby city of Toulouse, they spotted the horses and wagons at the rear of the Italian column.
“Do you think that’s them?” Emily asked John.
“If we’ve hit the wrong army we’re in trouble.”
Tony half-rose in his seat and caught Martin’s attention in the trailing car. There was no point in shouting over the racket but he pointed down the road and Martin seemed to understand, waving back and giving a thumbs-up.
The first Italian soldiers to hear the cars coming turned and readied their weapons. Word spread down the line. John slowed his car and approached in as non-threatening a way as possible, waving his free hand in a greeting.
When he got within fifty yards he braked hard forcing Charlie to do the same.
A sharpshooter was training his rifle.
“Get down!” John shouted, pushing Emily below the windscreen.
But before the rifleman could pull the trigger another Italian soldier began shouting at him to lower his weapon. That man came running toward the car, waving his arms, shouting John’s name: “Signore Camp! Signore Camp,” and John recognized him as a member of his squad who’d charged the English, hurling hand grenades in the attack that had turned the tide for Garibaldi’s forces.
John stood at the wheel and shouted, “Ciao Mario!” and then to his companions, “It’s okay. I know this guy.”
Mario came to the driver’s side of the car and said in broken English, “Is you! You no go home?”
“I went home, si. Now I’m back. This is my friend, Emily.”
She reached out her arm but Mario rushed over to her side and kissed her on both cheeks.
