His LOC was getting warmer, too warm, uncomfortably hot on his arm. The pain of it grew sharp, piercing enough to make him gasp, although by now he shouldn’t be feeling any physical sensations.
He should be through by now. But instead of clearing, the misty grayness around him grew suddenly black, as though he’d been dropped down a hole. He had the dizzying, terrifying sensation of falling.
This had never happened before. For an instant he panicked, then he clung desperately to his training and tried to project his mind back to the laboratory. With fear curling around the edges of his thoughts, warping his ability to control himself, he envisioned the lab with its whiteness, its rows of terminals, the hush of the air, the men and women going about their jobs, faces.
He was still falling. The pain in his arm had spread to his chest. He felt as though he were being halved by a saw, slicing its way in steady strokes through the center of him. He wanted to scream, and couldn’t.
What was happening? Why couldn’t he go back?
No hearing, no sight, no feeling of anything solid around him. Complete sensory shut down. He shuddered, feeling the panic blank him again.
He sought to rebuild the lab in his mind, but he was too scared. It wasn’t working. All those drills, all that training to equip him to deal with any difficulty in traveling…nothing worked.
In desperation, he focused on an image of Tchielskov’s face, making it real to him, pretending he could hear the old man’s patient voice talking him through this, talking him back.
What was this? wondered Noel frantically. Time loop? Vortex? Aberration? Anomaly? This close to the portal, it should have registered on the monitors. Hadn’t Bruthe been paying attention? Was it sabotage?
The pain intensified, and there was only the inside of his own skull to scream in. He stopped falling and felt himself jolted, then bumped through a series of ripples like being caught in the wake of a ferry upon Lake Michigan.
He heard a voice. Hope swelled through him. He called out, certain now that he was being pulled back. The voice echoed to him, not heard exactly, but somehow sensed within his mind. He could not understand its words. Everything was gibberish, like listening to a recording played backward. He shouted in response, but it gibbered on for a while, then stopped.
The silence was even worse.
He felt as though he were spinning, end over end, eddying down, looping nowhere, like a child’s kite falling when the string is severed.
How long? he wondered.
Infinity perhaps, whispered a corner of his mind.
This then was death. And there was no end to it, no place of beginning, no point of reference. This was to be nothing, yet aware.
This was hell.
And damnation.
He had never believed in such things before. Now, sobbing in his own fear and the agony that ripped him into pieces, he was forced to believe. He had never considered death beyond a casual ending, preferably in action, hopefully quick. How little he had known, or even guessed.
He would be the first traveler to die in the time streams. They would give him a memorial service. They might even close the Institute for a day, although he doubted it. Trojan would grieve for him, if Trojan himself was not dead too. The project would probably be closed.
Bring me back! he shouted with all his might, straining until he felt something nearly snap within him.
There came a jolt, hard and tangible, as though he had struck something. Energy waved through him, scraping his nerve endings. He felt a rush of wind, and then he heard a churning babble of noise, a din that grew into a crescendo of mindless, deafening, horrible cacophony. Grayness spread before him in an arc, changing to a rainbow of colors too vivid to bear. They seared into him with their brightness. If he had eyes, he tried to shut them, but it did not keep away the colors that branded themselves upon his brain. Images hurled themselves at him, shapes without meaning, alien, confusing.
He heard a crack of sound as though the universe itself had broken apart. It spread out into deafening, numbing thunder that crashed and grumbled forever, echoing in upon itself before finally fading away.
Noel hit the ground with a thump. He had no warning—no return of vision, no smells, no sense at all that he was back in corporeal existence—until he landed. It knocked the breath from him, and at first he could but lie there limp and dazed, unable to comprehend his surroundings.
Lightning ripped the sky overhead, and with a start he came fully conscious, finding himself in the darkness of night with a rainstorm lashing about him, wind howling in his ears, thunder crashing overhead, lightning flashes illuminating a stark, unknown world of boulder and crag. He was cold, drenched to the skin, and the earth beneath him was shaking.
Noel looked up, half scrambling to his feet on instinct more than anything else. Out of the night came a group of horsemen, on top of him before he really saw them. Crying out, Noel threw himself to one side and rolled frantically to avoid the galloping slash of hooves.
One struck him a glancing blow anyway, and the pain was like a shock, numbing him all over again. More horsemen were coming, with yells that rent the night in furious counterpoint to the storm. Noel dodged and scrambled among the riders who were oblivious to his existence. Flashes of lightning in strobe action played upon upraised swords and metal helmets. The sounds of thunder, screaming horses, yelling men, and metal clanging upon metal were deafening.
Rain lashed into his eyes, half blinding him. He had one split-second glimpse of a horse coming at him before it knocked him aside with its chest, hooves digging, nostrils distended, white gleaming around its eye. Sheer instinct made Noel grab the reins to save himself from being trampled. The horse’s impetus slung him around hard enough to wrench his shoulders. He cried out and let go, stumbling to keep his balance. The rider swung at him with his sword.
Noel could not dodge it, and only luck and perhaps the darkness put the flat of the sword to him instead of the edge. Still, being struck by a yard long piece of iron packed a wallop that tumbled him down the slope.
Winded and gasping for air from his flattened lungs, he felt a sickening drop beneath him.
Fear came back, like hot bile in his throat, and he thought he had slipped back into the time stream. But it was only a short fall before he thudded onto solid ground again, and went rolling down the hillside with too much impetus to stop himself, lost in the darkness and the rain and the howling night while the battle raged on in a thunder of hooves, swords, and jingling harness, oblivious to his existence.
His shoulder hit something solid, like a boulder, and he slewed sideways, his wild progress slowed. He slid on his back several more feet down, scooping ice-cold mud down the neck of his tunic. He had time to realize that he wasn’t in Constantinople. He wasn’t in a city at all.
That realization brought a new brand of fear all its own. Then his head bumped against a stone, and the stars themselves fell upon him. He knew nothing more.
Chapter 2
“Poke ’em first ere ye cut their purses.”
“Aye, I’m doing it, ain’t I?”
“Well, poke ’em harder than that, ye dolt. The first one playing as he’s dead will put a dagger in yer throat.”
“Then ye do it!”
“Nay, get on with ye and stop dawdling. We’ve not got much time.”
“Look at this one. Not a mark on him. He must have looked up to call on God for mercy and drowned himself in last eve’s storm.”
“Blasphemous dolt! Hold yer tongue or it’ll be cut from ye.”
“All right, all right. It was only a joke.”
“A poor joke, and at God’s expense. If yer not careful, Thaddeus, ye’ll end up with a worm eatin’ out yer soft parts.”
“Don’t say to me about worms, not and ye half-poxed.”
“I’ll pox ye—”
The arguing voices buzzed in Noel’s head like angry bees. His comprehension came and faded, along with his hearing. A dim sense of curiosity entice
d him to open his eyes, but they were glued shut and too heavy to bother.
“Ooh, look at this one. A fine ring on his finger, with a diamond even.”
“Let me see.”
“’Tis mine. I saw it first!”
“Let go, ye dolt. All we find today be goin’ to the treasury.”
“No fair, I say,” said Thaddeus, his voice a whine. “You don’t have to say all we found. It’s pretty. I want to keep it.”
“And how will ye wear it if all yer fingers be cut off yer hand, eh?”
Noel managed to drag open his eyes. He found himself staring into a man’s dead face, covered with blood dried black from the side of it that had been hewn away. A single brown eye stared sightlessly back at him.
Shock and nausea rose through Noel. With difficulty he held both down and closed his eyes again. Maybe, with luck, he was dead too.
A rustle told him the scavengers were coming closer.
“What’s this then? A pilgrim, do ye think?”
“Aye, George, by the look of him. But pilgrims have slim purses. Go on to the next one.”
“Nay,” said George. “Let’s steal his cloak. It be a fine blue color, and we can sell it for a good price at market. Poke him sharp now.”
“I’m not poking him. Ye do it.”
“Ye found him.”
“So and I did? Ye poke him.”
There came an oath and a rustle. Something pointed jabbed Noel hard in the ribs. In spite of his intention to play dead, his eyes jerked open.
Two dwarves stood peering down at him, their heads looking too large for their ill-proportioned bodies. When he opened his eyes, they cried out and stumbled back. One slipped on the mud and sat down hard on his rump.
“Alive!”
“I warned ye!”
“Get away from him. He’ll go for us.”
“Be quiet, Thaddeus.” With a thump to his companion’s head, the dwarf in a green hood and homespun tunic turned back to Noel and knelt beside him. “No harm to ye, sir. No harm to ye.”
Sense returned to Noel. He was lying on his stomach, with one hand beneath him. His fingers groped stealthily and closed on the hilt of his dagger. All he had to do was draw it quick.
The dwarf in the green hood reached out his hand.
“Be careful, George!”
“Quiet,” said George over his shoulder. “Ye’ll spook him.”
“Even horses bite,” muttered Thaddeus, keeping his distance.
George reached out again, and Noel pushed himself to his hands and knees, bringing out his dagger before he keeled over again. He was as weak as a wet kitten.
He tried to lift his head. It felt incredibly heavy. “Byzantium,” he mumbled.
“What’d he say?” asked Thaddeus, creeping closer.
George pushed back his hood, revealing a shaggy mop of gray-grizzled hair so knotted and tangled it probably hadn’t been combed all year. “I made no sense of it.”
Noel raised his head higher and spat mud from his mouth. It tasted metallic and cold. He spat again. “Byzantium,” he said.
“What?”
“Byzantium,” said George. “Yer a stranger travelin’ far then, good sir, if ye mean yer from Constantinople.”
Noel frowned. “No,” he said. “Going there. I am going there.”
“Not from here ye won’t,” muttered Thaddeus. “He’s right addled, George. I’ll bet he don’t even know his name. Where does he think he is and who was he with, eh? Damned Byzantines all around us, ain’t there?”
Noel rolled himself onto one elbow and sat up. The world spun around him for a moment, then his vision cleared. He found himself looking down a slanted mountainside. Far, far below him spread a wide, flat valley plain that looked green and fertile along a narrow river. Across it to the east, the sun was only a short distance above the horizon, still fiery orange. The sky blazed with pink and silver, and the crisp cool air he sucked into his lungs might have been champagne, so invigorating was it. He felt strength seeping back into his limbs. Twisting his head, he gazed up the rest of the mountain through the blooming branches of a tiny almond tree growing nearby. The peak towered above him, as remote as Olympus. Snow could be seen up there, although from the green tint of the coarse grass and the blooming plant life, he guessed it was spring.
Beautiful, no, breathtaking…if you didn’t look at the twisted, bloody corpses littering the hillside between where he sat and the road above him.
Noel averted his eyes, although his instinct for survival urged him to look quick and closely, study clothing, determine when he was.
Ravens, or possibly buzzards, circled above him in the sky.
He swallowed, making no assessments yet, and looked to the north. Another, lesser hill shaped like a cone shouldered against the flank of the mountain range, with a narrow road scaling its terraced sides to a fortress built of stone. He could see tiled rooftops among the trees and the walls of a town perched precariously upon every available bit of ground on the hill’s slopes.
Noel frowned at the narrow archways and pointed windows. He recognized the architecture as distinctly medieval. The man lying next to him wore a long surcoat split between the legs for riding, and mail armor beneath it.
He turned on the dwarves. “Where am I?” he demanded. “Quickly. Tell me where I am.”
The dwarves exchanged troubled glances. Thaddeus, his long face twisted into a grimace, tapped his temple. “His head’s gone woodly, it has,” he whispered. “Plumb queer in his reason. Let’s kill him and be gone. She’ll be wondering why we’re not back.”
George said to Noel, “This be Mt. Taygetus—”
“Taygetus!” Noel rubbed his aching head. “Impossible. I can’t be that far off the mark.”
Mt. Taygetus was located in Greece, above the plain of Sparta. Constantinople—his intended destination—was probably a good five hundred miles to the east by land, and not much closer by sea. It might as well be a million, for he definitely had landed in the wrong century.
Glancing down at himself, he took a swift inventory. His clothes were torn and muddy, still half-damp. He’d lost one of his sandals, but the rest of his belongings seemed intact. On his left wrist, his LOC had taken on the appearance of a hammered copper bracelet, very broad and heavy. Presumably it was recording everything, but he didn’t bother to check.
His left arm still ached, with a faint, dull throbbing, reminding him of his nightmarish journey through the time stream.
He shivered. Travel wasn’t supposed to be like that. Even now, just thinking about it made a cold sweat break out across him. He was grateful to be anywhere right now, anywhere but still trapped.
He hesitated, considering the dwarves, but it had to be asked. “What year?”
Thaddeus stepped back. “Aye, see? He’s mad! Come away, George, and leave him to the wolves.”
George, however, stood his ground. His weathered face turned sly and calculating. “Ye’ve got a heavy purse at yer belt, good sir,” he said. Holding his pointed stick like a spear, he said, “Hand it over with no trouble, and we’ll let ye go. We don’t like Latins here, but we’ve no quarrel with a pilgrim either.”
“George!” growled Thaddeus.
George frowned, but his gaze never left Noel, who turned cold with the realization of danger, real and immediate, right here in his lap.
“Hand it over now,” George said.
The purse hanging at Noel’s belt was the salt Trojan had given him. His money was concealed within his clothing. Noel’s gaze watched both dwarves while he considered his chances. Although he had his dagger in his hand, to throw it at one of them was to disarm himself and still leave him with a remaining opponent. These men were small and grotesque, but they had the cold, watchful eyes of fighters. Thaddeus held his own dagger in his small hand, and George had the crude spear as well as a knife. Only twenty feet away, a mace lay upon the ground, its sharp steel spikes clotted with dried blood and brain bits. Noel swallowed. If he could
create a diversion and break around the dwarves, he could easily outrun them and reach the weapon. They’d leave him alone then.
Slowly, being careful to make no move that might be misconstrued, Noel unknotted the pouch strings and pulled the salt from his belt. He hefted it a moment in his hand, aware that as soon as he handed it over they would guess the trick. Salt was heavy enough, but it didn’t sit in the hand like money.
“Now, no tricks from ye,” warned George. “Hand it over easy.”
With a quick motion, Noel tossed the salt between them.
Both swung involuntarily toward it, and he took advantage of the moment to scramble to his feet and run for the mace, his dagger held ready just in case.
Just as he reached it and crouched down to grasp the handle, an arrow whizzed from nowhere and struck deep into the ground between his hand and the mace. George and Thaddeus howled like jackals behind him, shouting something too fast to comprehend. Noel whirled around with his heart pounding, aware that his knife was no defense against a bowman.
A figure stood on a rocky outcropping some distance away, silhouetted against the sun. Its bow was drawn in readiness, a second arrow nocked and aimed. Noel had the feeling the first shot had been a warning, not a miss. He swallowed, his mouth very dry, and stepped reluctantly away from the mace.
“Don’t stand there gawping, you two dunderheads,” shouted an angry voice in French. A woman’s voice. “Come away!”
Thaddeus ducked his big head and ran obediently. George hesitated, glancing at Noel, then followed. The archer lowered her weapon and slung it across slim shoulders. Jumping down from the outcropping, she met the dwarves halfway. Her scolding voice carried upon the thin air.
“Out all night like a pair of tomcats. And with what to show for it? A half-dozen money bags, and how many of them full? Demetrius said you were to be back by dawn. Wasn’t it made clear to you?”
“Yes, Elena,” said the dwarves meekly.
Time Trap Page 3
