by Simon Hawke
She entertained, briefly, the thought that it was all the will of God, that the Lord was testing her and making her a martyr, but she could not accept that, either. She did not want to be a martyr, and martyrs were made of sterner stuff than she. To think that God intended a purging flame for her in order for her to become a martyr was an incredible conceit and, whatever other sins she might have committed, she would not go to her death having been guilty of the sin of pride. So she was left with nothing. She could see no rhyme or reason to their actions, she could take no comfort in knowing they were wrong. Silently, she began to weep. They called for her champion. There was total silence. They waited. No champion appeared. They summoned her champion once more. Again, the silence, longer this time. Broken by the voice of Bois-Guilbert, who had ridden up beside her.
"Rebecca," he said softly, "know that I did not intend this. I would have fought as your champion, had not Beaumanoir appointed me to defend the Temple. I have no wish to see you die. To perish by the flame is not a pleasant death. Before your last breath leaves you, you will suffer the agonies of the damned. And your death would serve no purpose. I desired you more than I ever wanted any woman. I still desire you. I have no wish to be a party to your death."
"I do not see how you can absolve yourself of it," Rebecca said. "I take no comfort in knowing the strength of your desire. It was that which brought me to my ruin." "Rebecca-"
"A champion!" someone cried, and the cry was taken up by others. "A champion appears!" Bois-Guilbert glanced up and saw a mounted knight approaching at the gallop. He frowned. "I can't see… de la Croix!"
The assembled crowd began to cheer. There would be combat, after all! Isaac sank to his knees and offered up a prayer of thanks to God.
"Rebecca," Bois-Guilbert said quickly, "listen to me. There is still a way for you to avoid the grisly fate awaiting you. If I fail to appear in the lists, I forfeit my rank and honor. I will be disgraced and all that I have worked for will have come to nought. All this would I bear for you if you were to say to me, 'Bois-Guilbert, I accept you as my lover.' Climb up behind me and we will quit this place. My horse will easily outdistance all pursuit. We can go to Palestine, where my friend, the Marquis of Montserrat, will give us shelter. I could ally myself with Saladin and form new paths to greatness. Let Beaumanoir speak the doom which I despise, let them erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare cast upon my scutcheon!"
"Foul tempter!" said Rebecca. "I would rather die than betray my faith and become the concubine of a bloody warlord! I will look to God for my salvation."
"Then look your last upon the sun and burn," said Bois-Guilbert. "I will not lay down my life and all that I hold dear for an ungrateful wench!"
He spurred his horse and rode away from her.
Andre de la Croix rode up to the Grand Master and, to the herald who had summoned her, she replied, "My name is Andre de la Croix, and I am a knight errant come to sustain with lance and sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York; to uphold the doom pronounced against her to be false and truthless, and to defy Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert as a traitor, a murderer, and liar, as I will prove in the field with my body against his by the aid of God."
"The words traitor and murderer coming from your lips are, indeed, an irony," said Bois-Guilbert. "You, who have slain Maurice De Bracy in a manner most foul and reprehensible, dare to impute my honor!"
"Does the Grand Master allow me the combat?" said de la Croix.
"I may not deny the challenge, provided the maiden accepts you as her champion, Sir Knight," said Beaumanoir. "If she does, then let whatever quarrel be between you and Bois-Guilbert be settled on this day, as well."
Andre rode up to Rebecca. "Do you accept me as your champion, Rebecca of York?"
"I do, Sir Knight," she said, "but you do not even know me. Why would you risk your life for mine?"
"Bois-Guilbert murdered my brother," Andre said. "His name was Marcel, and he was just a child. That, in itself, is reason enough that I should meet him with my sword, but there is yet another. A man who takes a woman against her will is a repugnant creature and deserves nothing less than death."
"Then my prayers go with you."
Both knights assumed their places at opposite ends of the lists. The herald announced that none, on pain of instant death, should dare to interfere with the combatants. The Grand Master, after a long moment of anticipatory silence, threw down Rebecca's glove and cried out the words, "Laissez aller!"
Hunter watched with a scope from a distance.
Bois-Guilbert and Andre spurred their horses and galloped at each other, lances couched. They came together hard, each taking the other's lance upon their shields. Both were unhorsed. Hunter could hear the crowd cheering the spectacle from where he stood, in the shelter of the trees. There was a moment during which both lay stunned upon the ground, then Bois-Guilbert got up, followed almost immediately by Andre. They drew their swords, advancing on each other on foot.
They struck at each other furiously, exchanging blow after blow, and Hunter wondered how long they would be able to keep up such a pace. Andre's nysteel armor should have given her a marked advantage, but Bois-Guilbert was taking the best she had to give and coming back. There was a limit to how much punishment a shield could take. If it was an ordinary shield. That was when Hunter remembered that Bois-Guilbert had seized Priest's nysteel armor.
He didn't think that Bois-Guilbert could fit into a suit of armor made for Lucas and still fight comfortably. It would be too large for him. But he could use the shield with no difficulty. As he watched the fight, he saw both of them slow down a little and then more as the effort took its toll. Andre and Bois-Guilbert had both managed to penetrate the other's guard and his armor showed some of the effects of her assault, even if his shield did not. They were now moving almost ponderously, as if in slow motion, both exhausted from the prodigious amount of energy they had expended during the first moments of their fight. The shields would sustain them; now it would only be a matter of who tired first. Andre raised her sword and, using her whole body to throw her weight into the stroke, brought it down on Bois-Guilbert's shield. Slowly, he raised his own blade and smashed it down on her shield. The recovery time of each was getting longer. They looked like two blacksmiths pounding at each other, like some grotesque wind-up toy that was running down.
The sound of distant hoofbeats distracted Hunter from the scene. He looked up and saw an armed party of men riding hard toward the tiltyard of Templestowe. He raised his scope. They rode under the banner of Coeur de Lion. Another imposter, but history would never know the difference.
It was going to be close. Hunter put down his scope and bent over the chronoplate on the ground before him, checking its programming. Then he picked up his laser and attached the scope to it. He raised it and sighted. Then he fired, aiming at Bois-Guilbert's visor.
Those who saw it weren't certain afterward that they had not imagined it. The flash of light had been astonishingly brief. Others insisted that it was the hand of God. An impossibly bright shaft of light, straight as an arrow, had struck Bois-Guilbert and he had grabbed at his helmet, dropping his shield and giving de la Croix the necessary opening to thrust into his throat.
As Bois-Guilbert fell to the ground, the knights rode into the tiltyard and there was no one who did not recognize the three lions on the chest of the one who led them. As they raised a welcoming cry for Richard of England, Andre raised her visor and slowly backed away from the corpse of Bois-Guilbert.
What happened? Why hadn't he defended himself? Had he been blinded by the sun?
Rebecca started to run across the field toward de la Croix. At the same moment, "Richard" saw Andre and motioned to several of the knights behind him, but they were somewhat hampered in their progress toward the red knight by the crowd which pressed around them. When they had broken through, they could no longer see
de la Croix. The red knight had disappeared.
Rebecca stood stock still in the middle of the tiltyard. Isaac came running up to her with tears in his eyes and he threw his arms around her, burying his head in her shoulder and sobbing, giving thanks to God.
Rebecca hardly even heard him. She stood staring, eyes glazed, at the spot where Andre de la Croix had stood. The knight had vanished before her very eyes.
EPILOGUE
It was recruiting day at Westerly Antiagathics. The army was back with its dog and pony show. The master of ceremonies, dressed casually and attractively in a clingsuit of muted terra cotta, was just finishing up his opening remarks and now the Parade of Uniforms was starting. They came from the wings of the stage, two from either side, a man and a woman dressed in period. They walked onto the stage in pairs and, as the army spokesman made some brief remarks about the periods which they were representing, they moved down the apron and onto the long runway, walking with the gait of experienced models.
Rick Cooper, a clerk in the administrative department, sat in the thirty-second row. He watched a Greek woman as she moved languidly past him on the long runway and he exhaled heavily.
"Boy, that's the life, eh? What I wouldn't give to get my hands on someone like her!"
The man beside him chuckled. "That lady ain't no trooper, son. The closest she ever came to ancient Greece was when she studied it in school."
"Well, maybe so," said Rick, "but you've got to admit that they don't make 'em like they used to."
"That's for sure," said Lucas. "As a temporal trooper, you'd be able to appreciate that. If you were lucky enough to find some time in which to enjoy a woman, she'd probably be some stinking prostitute with no teeth and a crotchful of lice. Let's hear it for the old days."
"Oh, come on now," Rick said, "you're just focusing on the bad parts."
"If the teeth and crotch are bad, I wouldn't give you much for the rest of her."
"You know what I mean. Things were simpler back then. Men were men, not just cogs in some conglomerate machine. There's no adventure anymore, no glamor."
"Sure. It's a lot more glamorous to be cannon fodder than to be a cog."
"Oh, what would you know about it?"
"I was in the Corps," said Lucas. "Name's Lucas Priest, First Lieutenant, United States Army Temporal Corps, retired."
"You were an officer? Really?"
"Well, my promotion and my honorable discharge came together."
"So you know what it's all about, then. You know the score."
Lucas nodded. "Don't let 'em scam you, kid. It's a hell of a rough gig. The roughest. They only tell you about how glamorous it is, a simpler time, the quest for adventure and glory and all that bullshit. It's a snow job. You join the service, chances are you'll never get out alive. Oh, you'll get to see all those wonderful places they tell you about, plus some they don't tell you about, like Stalingrad, Bataan, Carthage, Thermopylae. It's a real picnic-and you get a front row seat, too. Join the Temporal Corps, travel through time to wonderful, far off exotic places. Meet glamorous, exotic people. And kill them. Or get your own nuts shot off."
"Maybe you've got a point," Rick said. "Maybe it is all just a snow job. Maybe it is a lot rougher and a lot more dangerous than they let on. Maybe I won't get back alive. Maybe I'll get shot or knifed or catch an arrow in my back or God only knows what else, come down with some disease and not get cured in time, but you went through it and you made it, didn't you?"
"Only because I was very lucky," Lucas said.
"Then you can't be the only one," said Rick. "I know they lay it on pretty thick, I'm not a fool. But look at me. I'm eighteen years old and I've done nothing but go to school all my damn life. I worked my ass off so I could get a decent job and now I've got one and what do I have to look forward to? Spending the next hundred years working for the corporation, filling out forms, programming computers, sitting on my duff all day and coming home to watch the holo at night. Anyplace where you can go for some excitement, I can't afford. So that's it, right? Okay, so maybe you're a little jaded, but you've had your shot. You took the gamble and you time traveled and you made it back and now that you're older, you can settle back and enjoy a boring job and have those memories to keep you going. Me? I never even had a chance to get any memories. I say the hell with it, I'm joining up. Maybe I'm throwing my life away. Maybe I'll go through all kinds of hell and feel sick and scared and hurt, but it beats being bored to death. This job might be all right for you, Mr. Priest, because you had a chance for some adventure while you were still young. Me, I'm not going to blow that chance."
He got up and walked to the back of the hall, where the recruiting tables were set up.
Lucas sat still in his seat. "While I was still young?" he said to himself. He shook his head. "Damn kids. Think they know it all. Stupid fool's throwing his life away."
He looked up to see an armored knight walking past him on the runway, nysteel gleaming, sword held at the ready.
Maybe he's the one who's got a point, thought Lucas. It does beat hell out of being bored.
He licked his lips, sighed, then got up and followed Rick toward the recruiting tables.
"Shit," he said. "I'm really going to hate myself tomorrow morning."
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