Whirlwind

by Robert Liparulo

  As they watched, another man appeared beside him. This one was similarly dressed, but carried a sword. A third man stepped into view. All three angled their attention beyond the hill at the far end of this current stretch of path. As quickly as they had appeared, they vanished.

  “Who are they?” David whispered.

  Xander shook his head. He looked ahead, then over his shoulder. Indecision etched old-man lines in his face.

  “We have to keep going,” David said. The tug of the coat, urging him to continue along the path, was getting difficult to reign in. Even if they wanted to turn back, he doubted the coat would let them.

  Xander stood and pulled David to the inside edge of the path, where the stone formed slanted walls. “Single file,” he whispered. “Stay close to the mountain.”

  They continued toward the hill. Despite continually checking, neither of them saw the men again.

  As they started climbing the hill, David touched Xander’s arm. He pointed at the coat. Below the spot where his hand held the front together, the material stood straight out, as though David had strapped a blue, cloth-covered table to his belly. It vibrated with tension.

  Xander smiled. “Close,” he said. “Right over the hill, I bet.”

  The ground shook, a quick rumble, then nothing. Xander’s eyes widened. “Did you feel—” It shook again, again, again.

  A rumbling sound reached them, the low tremble of drums. The tremors under their feet continued.

  Xander grabbed David’s shoulder. “What does that remind you of ?”

  “An earthquake?” David didn’t want to be on a mountain during an earthquake. Who knew what would come tumbling down on them.

  “Jurassic Park,” Xander said. “When the T. Rex is coming and the coffee starts trembling.”

  “You think we’re in dinosaur times?” David almost screamed.

  “I’m not saying that,” Xander said. “But something’s coming.”

  “We have to get to the portal!” David said. “Now!” He ducked out of Xander’s grasp and ran up the hill. He half expected Xander to grab him or at least call his name. Instead, his brother caught up, ran alongside. Both of them scanned the rocks above them. Nothing.

  They hit the top of the hill, and David grabbed Xander’s arm. A cloud of vapors billowed from his mouth, giving form to his silent scream.

  CHAPTER

  forty - two

  An elephant charged up the other side at the boys.

  A war elephant: Armor covered its head. Its tusks curved forward from the sides of its mouth—impossibly large swords. Behind its head sat a man wearing red, flowing robes. He held a short rod, which he used to tap the animal’s head. A harness crossed over his chest and held him to the front of an ornate wooden box, which bounced precariously on the elephant’s back.

  Three men—obviously soldiers—stood in the box. They wore metal helmets and breastplates. Two gripped bows and arrows, ready for a fight. The third brandished a polelike spear—a pike, long enough to impale people on the ground.

  Behind this lead animal, a dozen more trotted, all with drivers and soldiers on their backs. Men on horseback rode among the larger animals. They galloped alongside, some crossing in front, some in full stride heading for the front.

  Farther back, foot soldiers marched, carrying a forest of pikes and shields that sparkled like the scales of a dragon. Behind them, more elephants and cavalrymen.

  The army completely filled the passage as far as David could see. In the distance, the path curved out of sight, the army curving with it.

  David started to spin around, planning to run—up the mountain, back the way they had come, anywhere. Xander shoved him from behind, toward the elephant. As he fell, he craned around to see Xander on the side of the path. Terror twisted his face into a very un-Xanderlike mask. David realized his brother had not shoved him: it had been the coat! It wanted to go home.

  David slid down the hill on his back. He batted the coat flaps off his chest, but he was lying on it—and it was moving.

  The coat carried him like a magic carpet into the elephant’s path.

  Xander yelled, “Roll off!”

  David kicked the ground and spun, but it was too late. The animal was nearly on top of him. The thing reared up on its hind legs. Its front feet pedaled in the air. It didn’t trumpet as much as it screamed, a hissing, canyon-deep bellow that announced its displeasure at this strange creature slithering toward it.

  The beast’s foot came down on David’s legs—or would have had David not thrown his legs up at the last moment. He bumped into its leg, and it reared up again. He slid under it—not fast enough. The pizza-sized foot dropped, aiming for his head. He rolled, and the foot stomped the coat. David lay facedown on top of the coat’s front panel. He rolled again, slipping his arm free from Xander’s makeshift sling. He pushed up onto his hands and knees.

  A third time, the elephant reared. The coat began sliding away. David grabbed it. More than anything, he did not want to lose it.

  The coat whipped like a flag in his hand. He stood, backed away from the animal.

  Its heavy tusks swung toward David’s head like ivory baseball bats. He ducked. The tusks passed over him, then swung back. The beast stepped toward the cliff.

  “David!” Xander yelled.

  While his name still rang in his ears, something grabbed his left arm and shoved it. His arm slammed into the ground, bringing him down with it. He gaped at a pike pinning the bandage-covered cast to the ground. His eyes followed it to the soldier standing in the box on the elephant’s back.

  He held the pike in both hands, his face twisted with cruel intentions. He yelled, “Nativi! Prepari morire! ” and pulled back on the pike.

  David’s arm went with it. He rose off the ground and landed on his feet, his arm raised and crossing in front of his face. But the spearhead of the pike, which had pierced his cast without hitting his arm, now hovered three inches in front of his eye. He jerked his head sideways as the soldier thrust the pike. The spearhead nicked David’s ear. It carried his arm with it, and the cast cracked against his head.

  The soldier pulled back, ripping the pike from the cast.

  Xander came screaming down the hill. An archer in the elephant box raised his bow, taking aim.

  The soldier with the pike did not avert his eyes from David. The spearhead wavered like a shaky hand three feet from David’s chest.

  An arrow thunked into the neck of the archer who had taken aim at Xander. He gurgled out a scream and fell backward out of David’s line of sight—until he thumped to the ground on the other side of the elephant.

  Two more arrows struck the soldier with the pike: one in the shoulder, one in the neck. The man dropped the pike.

  The spearhead bit into the ground between David’s feet. The soldier pitched forward. He tumbled out of the box, rolled over the animal’s rear end, and crashed to the ground.

  The last soldier in the box shot an arrow. It sailed high, toward the rocks above the pass. David followed it with his eyes. The cliff above the road was lined with the fur-covered men he and Xander had seen earlier. One of them shot an arrow, and David followed it back to the soldier on the elephant. It struck his breastplate and zinged away. The soldier flinched, reversed a step, and sent his own arrow flying.

  Xander stomped up to David. He grabbed him and yanked him back toward the wall under the furry warriors.

  CHAPTER

  forty - three

  David plopped down against the mountain. The road here was narrow, and even with his back pressed into the stone, David found the elephant too close for his liking.

  A shadow flashed over him, coming from the mountain.

  One of the furry men landed on the elephant’s back. He clung to the outside of the box. The soldier lunged at him, wielding an arrow like a dagger. Fur Man dodged it, raised a short sword, and chopped.

  His body shielded David from seeing where the blow landed. But that it did was clear: a scream fi
lled the air, and the soldier fell off the far side of the elephant. He did not thump to the ground as the others had done. He simply vanished over the cliff.

  The beast—sensing or seeing how near it was to the edge— turned from it. Its tusks swung toward the boys.

  David pulled his feet in and leaned into the wall behind him, wishing he could somehow climb into the stone.

  The path was not wide enough for that huge animal to turn around, but it was turning anyway. The driver furiously beat the rod against the animal’s head. He yelled commands in a foreign language. One of the elephant’s tusks struck the rock cliff and scraped against it.

  Fur Man was in the box now, directly behind the driver. He raised the sword over his head with both hands.

  The elephant stepped back. Its hind foot stomped down on the crest of the cliff. The ground under it crumbled. Its leg went over. The rear half of its massive body collapsed, sending a shockwave into the ground that David felt. The animal’s other rear leg kicked, pushing its rear over the edge. Its front legs pressed into the ground, but it could not stop its backward slide. Its feet left deep gouges in the earth. Lifting its head, raising its tusks like outstretched arms, it let loose with that deep, hissing bellow.

  Fur Man sprang up from behind its head. He planted a foot on the plate between the animal’s eyes, and leaped between its tusks.

  The beast went over.

  Fur Man landed on his feet, directly in front of David and Xander. He had a straight nose, high cheekbones, a short-cropped beard, and intelligent green eyes. David thought that in any other setting he could have been a nobleman. Glaring at David and Xander, the man cocked his sword high above his head.

  David let out a squeaky yelp—he couldn’t help it—and threw his hands up. He watched the man through splayed fingers: he would close his eyes when the blow came, but closing them now and waiting seemed much worse.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Xander yelled. “Please.”

  The man turned his head to squint at Xander from the corner of his eye.

  To David, the look said, Can I trust you, boy? and he allowed himself a sliver of hope. He whispered, “Please.”

  The man nodded once, then he ran down the hill toward the army. He passed an elephant trotting the other direction, no driver, no soldiers. The ground trembled as the creature tromped past the boys, crested the hill, and disappeared.

  David saw that other men dressed in fur, hundreds of them, had already engaged the army. Many of them were perched on ledges above the path, picking soldiers off with arrows. Some, like Fur Man, had descended to fight on foot. They were slicing at the horsemen, pulling them off their steeds. The neat, even ranks of infantrymen had morphed into roving bands of fighters. Hundreds were trying to climb the steep mountain walls to get at their attackers; others went after the fur men who’d come among them.

  “David,” Xander said, “I think I know who they are. Those soldiers.”

  “Hannibal’s army,” David said, straining his arms to reel in the coat. It flapped and snapped, becoming as stiff as a board for seconds at a time. “Carthaginians.”

  “That would put us in the Alps,” Xander said. “200 B.C. Something like that.”

  “That’s a long way from home,” David said, feeling every word.

  The coat snapped straight and lunged forward, toward the chaos of battle. Trying to hang on, David flipped onto his stomach. The coat didn’t stop. It flapped and lunged, like a sled dog pulling a heavy load.

  “Hey,” Xander said behind him. “Stop!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Let go of it!” Xander’s feet pounded behind him.

  “No way!” David said. Losing the coat would leave them stranded. He could not imagine finding a portal without an antechamber item leading them to it.

  Xander grabbed one of David’s ankles, then the other. David used the leverage to pull the coat to him. He found an armhole and pushed into it.

  “What are you doing?” Xander said.

  “If it’s taking off,” David said, “then I’m taking off with it. Don’t let go.” He found the other armhole and worked his cast inside. The cast had crumbled and shrunk since it was new, allowing a snug fit. He rolled onto his back.

  The coat slid up over his head. It lunged, pulling David a few feet. Xander stumbled with him.

  “Help me,” David said.

  Xander got on his knees and walked his hands up David’s legs. He sat on David’s shins, tugged the coat down, and started buttoning it up. “You know, I did a paper about war elephants for history a couple years ago,” Xander said. “Never thought I’d see one.”

  “Anything we can use?” That’s all David wanted to know.

  Xander shook his head. “They would charge an enemy line, trampling and clobbering them with their tusks. And their height gave the Carthaginians riding them a great angle of attack.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Xander worked a button in and moved to the top one.

  “Those boxes on their backs? I think they’re called howdahs.” David frowned. “We’re not playing a trivia game here,” he said. “Anything useful?”

  “Like what, go for their eyes?”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really,” Xander said. “We’re not fighting them. We’re evading them.”

  “Tell me this, anyway,” David said. “Who are those guys they’re fighting?”

  “Gauls, maybe,” Xander said. “Or one of the native tribes up here. There were a lot of them.”

  “Fur men,” David said. “Are you done?”

  Xander patted David’s chest. He looked up at the battle ahead of them. “You sure about this?”

  David made a firm face. He said, “Strong and courageous.”

  Xander repeated it, then let a long breath out his nose. The vapors streamed out like smoke.

  “Help me up,” David said. When they were standing, hugging each other to keep David from sailing away, David said, “Hold on to the collar.”

  Xander turned him around to face their course. The battle raged along a mile of cliffside path. Elephants reared, stomping down on men and horses. Arrows flew back and forth. Swords and shields glinted. The cacophony of screams, yells, bellows, and clanging weapons was enough to send the bravest warrior running for home.

  “Let’s do it,” David said.

  CHAPTER

  forty - four

  With Xander gripping the back of his collar, David ran into the battle the way only a crazy person would: at full speed. The coat, billowing in front, pulled him along. If he wasn’t running faster than he ever had, then he was at least running as fast, and doing it with much less effort. The effort came in keeping his feet under him, in not letting the coat outpace him and cause him to fall.

  The first combatants were thirty yards away: a Carthaginian with a pike and a fur man with a sword. The Carthaginian lunged, the fur man parried. David angled close to the stone cliffs. As he passed, the fur man’s sword sliced off the head of the pike. The Carthaginian dropped the weapon and reached for his own sword as the fur man rushed in. David fought the urge to look.

  Ahead, an elephant panicked. It reared up and pawed at a fur man waving a sword at it. The animal swung its head. Its tusks brought down a galloping horse, whose rider flipped over its head. The cavalryman landed at the feet of the fur man, who plunged his sword in.

  “Ohhh,” David moaned. He didn’t want to see this. He wished he could close his eyes and trust the coat to guide him safely through the carnage: the time-traveling version of autopilot. But he’d seen how the items blew back to the portals, bouncing off trees, tearing through bushes . . . like trash caught in a wind. If he weren’t steering the coat, he was sure it would careen into elephants, horses, people.

  Not that he did much better. As he moved into the heaviest concentration of combatants, he began bumping into Carthaginians and fur men alike, shoving them out of the way, tripping over them. His soccer feet came in ha
ndy, and he tried to warn Xander: “Jump!” “Left!” “Duck!”

  He came upon a narrow section of path, packed with fighters. On the right, next to the mountain, two men clashed swords. On the left, near the cliff edge, a Carthaginian on horseback was leaning low, swinging a sword at a fur man and trying to get the horse to tromp the man. And dead center were two men in weaponless hand-to-hand combat.

  David headed for them.

  The Carthaginian punched his opponent, who dropped to one knee. The Carthaginian saw David coming. The guy girded himself, leaning forward to take whatever it was this kid was dishing out.