I edge closer, keeping low. The gate is only a stone’s throw away, and I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have tried scaling the wall, some place where there weren’t guards or revealing torches. But even as I reconsider this, so one of them – long-haired and dressed in furs – strides out from the gate and, lifting his cloak, begins to relieve himself into the river.
He’s standing with his back to me, in the age-old universal stance of a man pissing. In our age he would zip himself up, but here he just shakes it and tucks it back into the folds of cloth, before turning back …
And stops dead, staring across at me in shock before letting out a loud bellow and drawing his ‘dagger’, a long shard of worked flint that flashes wickedly in the torchlight.
I have a knife, too, of course, but unless I jump right out of there, I’m certain to be overpowered. As they spill out from the gate, I see that there’s a good dozen or more of them, and I throw my arms up in the eternal gesture of submission.
I’m roughly handled, half dragged and half pulled, into the torchlight by the gate, where one of them – their captain? – grabs my chin and turns my face into the light.
He makes some remark and they laugh, mockingly.
I’m shoved and poked and their chief – if that’s what he is – shouts at me, his face in mine, his foul breath making me want to retch. I haven’t a clue what he’s saying, but he seems angry. One of his men begins to search me and, almost instantly, locates my knife, there at my waist in its leather holster. He draws it and lifts it above his head, and, seeing what he holds, the rest give a great cry of wonder. I look about me and see how impressed – awed – they are by the sight of it. The polished steel is clearly something they haven’t seen before. Their ‘chief’ reaches out to take it and, as he catches the blade between his fingers, he screeches and jerks it back, his hand dripping with blood.
They’re afraid now, and I know that the next few moments are critical. Either I calm them down or jump out of there. If I get this wrong I’m dead. The kind of ‘dead’ you don’t come back from.
Keeping my hands in sight, I sink to my knees, to show that I’m no threat.
Their chief is still shrieking, hopping from foot to foot, terrified, his fist closed tightly as blood bubbles up from his damaged hand. Some of them, angry at me now, spit at me and slap me, and some have drawn their ‘blades’, threatening to cut me.
And then, almost magically, they back off, even the wounded one taking a step back, his hand cradled to his chest, his teeth gritted against the pain.
A silence falls, and into that silence steps a man … Or maybe not a man, after all, for there’s something about the look of him that seems inhuman, seems … futuristic. He’s too tall, for a start, and the shape of his arms and the structure of his torso look wrong. As for his eyes, they’re a startling violet.
Mechanists, I think, a chill passing through me.
Unlike the long-haired, fur-wearing guards, this one’s hair is cut stubble short. In fact, everything about him screams different. From his black one-piece to the pendant about his neck. Not a lazy-eight, I note, but futuristic in its design.
He steps through the small crowd that has gathered, the natives moving back out of his way, until he stands before me, looking down sternly.
‘You,’ he says, in an accented English that confirms it for me. ‘He said you might come.’
At which a shiver goes through me. He. Who else could it be?
‘Where are we?’ I ask.
He ignores me. ‘Bring him!’ he says.
And they lay hold of me, their cruel fingers gripping me as they drag me by my arms and leg and even my hair, dragging me through the crowded rows of huts to the lodge house, which lies there, up ahead of me, brightly lit, at the very summit of the settlement.
Kolya. It has to be.
461
There, beneath the wide, wooden steps that lead up into the lodge house, are another set, these made of weathered stone that lead down into the blackness of the earth. This way we go, as if into the underworld itself, three more of the strangers, curiously identical, coming up out of that darkness to take me from the hands of the natives, who fall back, joining the silent horde who have gathered at the news of my capture.
And as they do, so the first of them turns, speaking to them loudly, authoritatively, in their ur-spracht, dismissing them, for as one they turn and slope away, glancing back over their shoulders, their eyes burning with curiosity.
The tall one looks back at me, then shakes his head. ‘You should have stayed at home, Otto Behr.’
That does chill me. How does he know my name? And what else does he know?
Inside, beyond a heavy wooden door, is a cramped corridor and, at the far end of it, a door made not of wood but of steel.
The same design of door as at the Haven …
What’s going on here? Has Kolya stolen this design? And if so, is the Haven a ruin now?
I try to still my mind, to keep my thoughts from running amok. I have no proof, after all, that these are Kolya’s men, and when I think of it, it’s unlike him to use anything but his ‘brothers’. No, Kolya keeps things very much in the family.
So who are these? Mechanists, yes. But working for whom? And how did they get here, waiting for me, like the bait in a trap?
I’d ask, only I know I’d only get a kick in the ribs for an answer.
They push me through, into a spacious room that’s so out of place in this ancient time – so twenty-sixth century – that it sets alarm bells ringing.
I make to grasp the pendant round my neck, expecting them to try to stop me. Only they don’t. They watch me incuriously.
‘Who are you?’ I ask.
‘Custodians,’ he answers. ‘Servants of the Timelines. Hang about another twenty thousand years and you’ll find us.’
Custodians …
‘Then you’re on my side.’
There’s a moment’s silence, then the four of them laugh. They’re still laughing when I try to jump out of there.
And can’t …
‘There’s a field suppressor,’ one of them says. ‘You’d need to get outside its range to jump.’
‘Meantime,’ another says, his accent much heavier than the others, ‘you stay here. Our guest.’
And again all four of them laugh, and exchange looks, as if it’s the most amusing thing that’s ever happened.
They show me to a bench-like bed, set into the wall, then return to the central hub of the room, where, in some strange variant on Hecht’s old room at Four-Oh, each controls what looks like a World Tree. Only these are smaller, finer, the trunk of each no thicker than a bootlace, the branches mere threads, the colours …
I lie there, watching them, entranced by the interplay of delicate colour.
‘What is that? And why are there three of them?’
‘There’s more than three,’ one of them – the first I met – says, turning to me. ‘It’s just that these three are in our charge.’
‘Your charge?’
‘We police them. Make sure no one meddles. Like you.’
I make to protest, but he raises a finger to silence me. ‘You were the worst of all. The changes you made …’
‘Ka-ter-i-na …’ another of them says, a playful mocking in the way he says it.
Twenty thousand years, I think. And still they know about us.
‘Why don’t I know about you?’ I ask.
‘Why? Because none of this had happened.’
‘But this was our idea. To have guardians. Manning the timelines.’
‘Well, there you are, then.’
I stare at him. ‘Am I your prisoner, or your guest? And is—’
He raises his hand again, to stop me saying it. The forbidden name. All four of them look perturbed.
‘Don’t even say it,’ one of them says.
‘Don’t even think it,’ says another.
‘But he was dead. Or, at least, gone from ou
r universe.’
‘Oh, far from it. He’s very much out here. In the time-wilds. Where – usually – he can’t be tracked.’
‘Guest or prisoner?’ I insist.
Again they look to each other. A bit like clones. Which they probably are, for all their small differences.
‘Prisoner,’ one of them answers. ‘For now, anyway.’ He makes an apologetic face. ‘We’ve orders, see.’
‘So who are you working for?’
‘Can’t say.’
‘But—’
‘It’s for your own good,’ another of them says, looking up from the Tree. ‘We tracked you both as you jumped through. You and him. He we can’t mention.’
‘And me? Can I be mentioned? And if I can, doesn’t this make me the good guy in this equation?’
None of them answer that. I try a different tack. ‘Why are you keeping me here? For my own good?’
All four of them nod at that.
‘I’ve seen trivees of you,’ one of them says. ‘You had an interesting life … in Time.’
Said like I’ve been long dead … am no longer existent except as a historical figure …
‘You’re hidden here,’ the first of them says, offering some explanation. ‘The suppressor … it masks our presence. As for the natives, they think we’re some tough, battle-hardened northern tribe. It gets very cold here, in the winter. First thing we did was kill their king and his chief warriors.’ He meets my eyes, forestalling any criticism. ‘It was necessary.’
‘They had a king?’
‘Yes. The usual pompous, selfish little shit. Let him be and he’d have made all of their lives a misery.’
‘And did he?’
‘In some of the timelines. In others he had rivals.’
‘And?’
‘We killed them, too.’
‘Was there no other way?’
It’s a stupid question and I raise a hand, as if to say ‘don’t answer that’.
Kings. Yes, and emperors, too. They’re all negatives in the human equation.
‘And is that why you’re here? To kill kings?’
They look at each other once more, considering that, then one of them nods. ‘That and other things.’
So this is how it turns out. Thousands of years into our future. Four-man – four-woman? – teams, camped out in the timelines, hidden by suppressors, and busy terminating kings. And, I guess, any other serious sociopaths with empire-building tendencies.
But what am I doing here? And what is Kolya’s response to these time-embedded squads? He’s in the maze somewhere, of that I’m certain.
Yes, and I’d ask, only it’s forbidden. Apparently.
I lie down for a time, and sleep. Which surprises me, because I don’t usually sleep when I’m anxious. And I clearly am. Moreover, in the dream I have my girls are following me, trying to track me down in Time, each jump making them more and more lost in the maze that is the multiverse.
I’m shaken awake. The room is dark, the only light the glow from the trees.
‘Come,’ one of them says. ‘You need to see this.’
I go out, following him, through the metal door and along the corridor, then through the wooden door and up.
And stop dead, awed by what I’m looking at. The other four – yes, and all the villagers, are standing there, too, looking up at the great spectacle.
Starships. Hundreds and hundreds of massive starships, filling the night sky from horizon to horizon.
It’s a beautiful sight, only … what are they doing here? And whose are they?
I reach across and touch the arm of one of them. ‘Are they after me?’
He laughs, then, more soberly, ‘Don’t you know your history? This is the beginning. This was where they gathered from a thousand worlds. A crusade, they called it. You know the word?’
Know it? I was in one of the first. First in Jerusalem, and then in Prussia, all those years ago. But this …
Just looking at it makes me catch my breath. ‘Who are they fighting?’
‘Aliens. It’s always aliens of one kind or another.’
‘It used to be worse,’ another of them says. ‘They’d build empires and fight among themselves and then … Then the aliens would come, and no one would be prepared for it.’
‘And that’s why you’re here?’
‘To bear witness. Yes.’
And to kill kings. While they can yet be killed.
‘And me? When can I leave?’
One of them points up at the sky. ‘You leave when they leave. Imagine all of those warp engines firing up at once … it’ll disguise your puny little jump. Your un-nameable friend won’t be able to tell which way you jumped.’
‘I see. And who wins … you know, the War …’
‘No one wins. That’s the sad thing about it. The one thing we can’t change.’
‘Then why bother?’
‘Why did you bother, Otto Behr?’
‘Because …’ Only I know he has me. Bishop’s move to knight’s.
Two sideways and one back. Repeated and repeated.
One of them – the one, I think, who first met me – touches my arm. ‘Go,’ he says. ‘Now. Ten jumps then rest.’
I look up again, seeing how, one by one, the ships are shimmering, glowing cinder bright for just one moment before – soundlessly – they vanish.
Holding the pendant to my chest I jump. The prisoner set free. To see what circumstance or Fate brings me.
Yet even as I jump, so I hear his last words to me.
‘The odds were against you making it this far, Otto. In most universes you didn’t.’
Two
Fate and the Gypsy Woman
462
I wake, not knowing where I am. In darkness.
I gasp for air and, finding none, jump back, far back, seeking home, my head pounding, my lungs bursting, fearing I will die …
And suddenly I am in Baturin again, on the evening of the thirteenth of November, 1708, the town’s narrow streets filled with Cossack warriors and their families, waiting for the order to go north to fight Peter’s general, Menshikov. Orders that will never come.
Ernst jumped through with me an hour past, but now he’s gone and I’m far from certain just why I’m here. To wait for Reichenau?
I say that, but that name is only a name, caught up in my memory, a companion to the ghostly fact that I have been here once before.
Oh, I know what is supposed to happen here. I know that Menshikov will come and, surrounding Baturin with his cavalry, will raze the Cossack capital to the ground, killing, some say, more than twenty thousand souls, making this place a ghost town for the next three decades.
I know this, but its significance in what we’re doing escapes me. It’s like I’ve had a blow to the head. A blow that’s robbed me of my senses.
I look about me, at the narrow alleyway I’m waiting in. It’s dark where I’m standing, but it’s bright further down towards the east gate and the merchants’ quarters. I head that way, feeling in my pockets as I go, as if to find some clue as to what I’m up to.
And find? A note from Ernst, and all it reads is this:
‘Don’t get into any trouble.’
I’d like to say I’ll try, only I’m conscious that my memory is not as sharp as I’m used to. This has the feel of ‘damage’, of timestream infiltration, as our experts on that phenomenon call it. A wrong imprinting on my brain. Or an absence of imprinting.
I stumble and almost fall, putting out a hand to steady myself against the dank and crumbling wall.
‘Urd’s sake …’
What I’ve fallen over is a body. Alive or dead I can’t say. A drunk, perhaps. It certainly smells like it. But it’s none of my concern right now. Getting myself out of this shit-hole of an alley is.
Only I step out of one kind of trouble and straight into another. As I step out into the light, looking about me to get my bearings, I inadvertently collide with a small group of Cossacks –
drinking buddies by the look of it – who immediately turn on me, hands on their weapons.
I’m thrust against the wall violently. Two of them hold me there, while the other presses his heavily bearded – and ugly – face into mine. His breath reeks of sour ale. He draws his knife and brings it up to my neck, pricking me with the point.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, friend?’
The word ‘friend’ is heavily emphasised, as if it’s the worst thing he could call me. ‘Motherfucker’ has nothing on his ‘friend’.
I make to answer, only I see in his eyes that conversation isn’t what he’s looking for. He means to beat the crap out of me, or maybe slit my throat, just for fun.
Only someone else has other ideas.
‘Okay, Golubintzev, leave the man be. He’s sorry he bumped into you, but that’s no reason to kick ten shades of shit out of him.’
Straining my neck muscles, I see, past Golubintzev, a woman, her furs tightly fastened at the neck, her dark hair falling in ringlets.
‘It’s none of your business, Mariya Beskryostnov,’ he says slurringly, glaring at me.
‘No?’
‘No. Now go back inside your shop and keep your nose out of things. Who is he, after all, your long-lost brother?’
The others laugh.
Only now she says something else.
‘I saw him,’ she says. ‘This morning, in the cards.’
Golubintzev’s eyes register surprise. ‘In the cards?’
‘In the cards.’
‘It was him. Are you sure?’
‘A nemets, yes.’
Ten seconds pass, and then he sheathes the knife, standing back to look at me, his eyes contemptuous. A nemets, that’s all I am. A German. Why, he’d not sully his blade.
‘He’s yours, woman. I give you him.’
As they make their way away, I dust myself down, then look to her, my saviour. And find myself looking into a face of quite stunning beauty. Until that moment I had seen her only as a spill of dark hair against a white fur, but now …
‘Well?’ she asks, gesturing with her right hand, which holds a woven basket full of provisions. ‘Are you going to stand there gawping or will you come inside?’
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