Countdown to Armageddon

by Edward M. Lerner

  “What do you mean?”

  Bertchramm stared incredulously. “Have you never seen a trial by ordeal or by combat?”

  Harry shuddered: He had.

  The standard means of Frankish “justice” was trial by compurgation. This was essentially the testimony of character witnesses. The more serious the accusation, the more witnesses were needed. If the accused had too few witnesses—seventy-two for murder trials, for example—God’s guidance was sought. In a trial by ordeal, the accused might be forced to grasp a red-hot iron, or to plunge his bare arm into boiling water to retrieve a submerged object. God, it was believed, protected the innocent from harm.

  Trial by combat operated on the same premise: God would surely grant victory to the justly aggrieved party, whether that be the truly injured or the falsely accused.

  “Of course I have,” Harry said. “What do trials have to do with our situation?”

  “After two years among us, you still do not think like a Frank.” Bertchramm studied the discreet search now under way. He hesitated, as though expressing his fears would make them real. Perhaps that was exactly what he dreaded. Finally, he sighed, and asked his own question. “Why do you think that we use such techniques to settle accusations?”

  Barbarism, Harry thought, an answer he kept to himself. You’ll grow out of it.

  Terrence broke the awkward silence. “The possibility of trial by combat, with the risk of God’s intervention, keeps false allegations to a minimum.”

  “True, but that’s like saying that a lack of money causes poverty. It misses the point.” The warlord looked again, in desperate hope, at his men digging through and prodding at everything in the wagons.

  “We believe that God intervenes in the outcome of every event. If He were to visit a catastrophe such as you have described, if our victory were to meet such Divine punishment, how many of our surviving people would assume that God must indeed be this Allah?”

  One by one, Bertchramm’s searchers returned. To a man, they reported nothing out of the ordinary. Bertchramm ignored the occasional glint of gold from deep within folds of fabric. Sticky fingers were the least of their worries.

  Could I be wrong? Terrence wondered.

  It was hard to imagine they had overlooked something the size and weight of the bomb. Terrence slumped to the ground, perplexed. It made so much sense that the nuke would be here. “So where is the damned thing?”

  “Let me think.” Harry had sat down earlier. He seemed to be following the mass with uncharacteristic attentiveness. Perhaps there were no atheists at Ground Zero.

  “Think about what?”

  “The altar.” Harry stared at that object for what seemed forever. “What would you call that color?”

  A corner of the improvised altar was just barely visible beneath the cloth draped over it. Staring into the setting sun didn’t help Terrence’s color sense. “Silver? No, not quite. Grey?”

  “Yes, and a very particular shade of gray at that. It goes with the size and shape.”

  Terrence looked again, this time in a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Mentally he stood the box on end, colored it entirely in the dreary hue that peeked out from under the altar cloth.

  “Bloody hell,” he marveled aloud. “It’s a bloomin’ office storage cabinet, in standard office grey.”

  * * * *

  The Christian hymns swelled to a crescendo; the valley gathered up the sound, focused it, and sent it soaring skyward. In his own way, Salah-ad-Din also exulted in the sound. Soon, he thought. Soon.

  An almost electric silence came over the landscape. The officiating priest said something that the Arab, from his distant perch, could not make out. The army, however, responded with heartfelt sincerity. “Karl Martel. Karl Martel. Karl Martel. Karl Martel!” The ground seemed to shake with their shouts. “Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

  Salah-ad-Din lifted his eyes to the sky, to the glorious sunset that Allah had painted across the heavens. As he prayed, he took from his pocket the small radio transmitter. He unlocked its safety and extended its telescoping antenna.

  Soon indeed these infidels would experience the hammer of God.

  A great army filled the valley. Its shouts were almost deafening.

  They cheered for the man who had led them to an almost miraculous victory. Scant centuries earlier, as Rome was falling, men had cried out similar words, but in fear. Those cries had named Attila the Hun as the Scourge of God.

  A sunbeam broke through the thin cloud cover to illuminate the priests and the altar. At this further proof of God’s favor, the multitudes redoubled their efforts. “Karl Martel! Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

  There was no way Harry could make himself understood.

  To the core of his being, Harry knew he had no time to spare. He leapt to his feet and ran. Dagger in his right hand, he swept everything off the altar with his left. The altar cloth slid to the ground.

  Terrence and Bertchramm tried to hold back enraged priests and nobles. Only Frankish reticence to unsheathe their swords at a mass, however improvised the surroundings, saved any of them.

  Harry forced the tip of his knife between the locked doors of the drab cabinet. His friends crashed and bumped into him. He tried to ignore them, ignore everything. Even if he were right, he might not live long enough to do anything about it. He pried—and the blade snapped.

  The army’s shouts had turned angry.

  Cursing, Harry forced the broken dagger between the cabinet doors. He heaved. The stub of the blade took the strain; with metallic pings, something inside broke and the latch sagged. Harry flung open the doors.

  What could only be Faisel’s atomic bomb sat inside.

  Salah-ad-Din exulted to Allah as the doomed infidels cried out their final, mistaken words. “La Ilaha illa-l-Lah,” he sang out in answer. There is no God whatsoever but God. “Muhammadun rasulu-l-Lah.” Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

  Below him, almost unheard in his fervor, the Christians kept shouting. “Karl Martel, the Hammer of God!”

  One last time he would recite the opening chapter of the Koran. His fingertip suspended over the button that would send him to heaven, and these infidels to perdition, he recited from memory:

  “Praise be to God, Lord of the universe,

  the Merciful, the Compassionate,

  Ruler on the day of judgment.

  Thee alone we worship; Thee alone we ask for aid.

  Guide us on the straight path,

  The path of those whom Thou has favored,

  not of those against whom Thou are wrathful,

  nor of those . . . .”

  Lost in his devotion, he did not hear hesitation in the Frankish cheers, nor the roar of anger that took its place.

  Not immediately.

  He gazed one last time over the panorama at his feet. In horror he saw people were fighting over the cabinet from his lab that had so amusingly been used for their idolatrous altar.

  Faisel was so shocked that he almost forgot the device in his hands. Those devils who had pursued him, then escaped from his camp . . . even now they hoped to stop him. His fingers turned white from the pressure with which he clutched the radio transmitter.

  Allah would understand why he had not the time to finish his prayers. Carefully, he aimed the antenna and stabbed his finger downward toward the large red button.

  * * * *

  Into the stunned hush between paeans to Karl and outcries of rage, Terrence screamed, “It’s the bomb!”

  Few understood—but the major domus did. At Karl’s command, his bodyguards rushed to Harry’s aid.

  Men swarmed, howling, fervid to avenge blasphemy.

  Battered and bruised, Harry tried to concentrate on the bomb. Only wires and massive amounts of what he assumed to be plastique for the trigger were visible. This wo
uldn’t be a precise controlled implosion, he thought. Lots of the plutonium would be vaporized and scattered, poisoning this area for millennia. That was probably by intent. No point of vulnerability suggested itself.

  With a grunt, he turned over the bomb, almost dropping it as a fist grazed his head. Aha! An electronics module.

  He goggled at a radio receiver wired to the thin plastic tube of a magnetic reed relay. He couldn’t spot the batteries that had to be there. They must be beneath the circuit board.

  Where was that damned broken dagger? There, beside his knee. He groped for the knife, and a heavy boot kicked it out of reach. Another boot stomped his hand.

  Cursing, Harry jerked back. He wrapped several turns of slack wire around his injured hand. He tugged hard; the looped wire ripped into his flesh.

  Harry yanked with all of his might, screaming in agony.

  Blood streamed from a cut that encircled his hand, the wire deep in a gory wound. But one end of the wire now waved wildly in the air, torn loose by his final effort.

  It was only the crystal clarity of the moment that allowed him to hear, amid the insanity and chaos, the impotent click from the radio receiver.

  Salah-ad-Din mashed the red button into the box.

  Nothing happened.

  He jabbed at the button, again and again. Nothing. Rage overwhelmed him. He beat the useless box against the trunk of the tree, reducing the transmitter to a shapeless mass, screaming wordlessly all the while.

  Reason finally mastered his fury. He started down from the tree, wincing as the bark scraped the bloody mess he had made of his hands. He tore off his keffiyeh, sawed the headdress in two with his dagger, and wrapped the pieces around his palms.

  In a way, failure made sense. He had taken great pride in the thought of his victory. Perhaps Allah had denied him holy martyrdom for his self-importance.

  But the failure was momentary, of that he was certain.

  Harry slumped to the ground.

  He was almost content now, if such be his fate, for the mob to tear him to pieces. The bomb was disarmed.

  Or so he thought until an unnatural red glow, a flickering light, caught his eye. Flashing crimson numbers. . . .

  The digital timer of a fail-safe device had awakened. It was counting downward from three hours.

  Karl’s shouted orders quickly restored order.

  Harry, Terrence, and Bertchramm were taken away. They were thrown into a tent to await their fate. At least twenty warriors stood guard.

  One way or another, Harry thought, they didn’t have long to wait.

  Karl flung back a tent flap and stormed inside. “Have you taken leave of your senses? What devil possessed you to behave so at a mass? Could you not wait to remove this bomb?”

  Bertchramm looked from man to man, indebted to all, perhaps wondering how to serve everyone at once. He seemed naked without an ax at his side.

  Neither Karl’s fiery eyes nor his set jaw deterred Harry. “And damned lucky for you that I did. This entire army was moments from total destruction!”

  Karl had not gone from disowned bastard son to the master of Francia without control over his temper. “Are you sure?”

  “Very.” Harry took a deep breath, and plunged on. “And we’re still on the brink of catastrophe.”

  “Explain.” Karl said.

  “I delayed the bomb’s explosion. I have not yet stopped it.” (Terrence nodded. He, too, had seen the timer in its deadly backward count.) “We cannot possibly move the army to safety before it will go off.”

  Karl studied first Harry’s face, then Terrence’s. Whatever he saw there satisfied him. “Then I suggest, my strange friends, that you find a way to stop it. You will have whatever aid I can give you.”

  Without waiting for a response Karl strode from the tent.

  “Like hell I’ll go!”

  Terrence paced the small tent, trying to make Harry see reason. They were alone; Bertchramm, even as they argued, was supervising the army’s dispersal. There was always the chance that Faisel’s homemade bomb wouldn’t fission completely, or even that only the nonnuclear trigger would go off.

  Getting people out of the valley—upwind—might yet save many lives.

  “Look,” Terrence tried in his most reasonable tone of voice, “there’s no point in both of us getting blown up.”

  “So? What the hell do you know about atomic bombs?”

  “And which of your physics classes covered booby traps? We’re damned lucky that you didn’t set it off out there.”

  “We’re luckier yet that I didn’t stop to worry about that.”

  Terrence raised a cautionary finger. “Hold that thought.” He turned toward the tent flap. “Yes?”

  And when Harry turned to look at the nonexistent visitor, Terrence decked him with a totally unexpected fist to the jaw.

  “All right,” Terrence shouted, pointing at the nuke. “Let’s get this sunovabitch onto a wagon and haul ass.” The guards stared blankly until he calmed down enough to repeat the command in Frankish.

  They were hitching horses to the wagon when Bertchramm galloped up. “Where is Harry?”

  Terrence said, “He’s done what he can, so I sent him on ahead.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Taking the bomb as far away as I possibly can—in the opposite direction from the army.”

  Bertchramm didn’t hesitate. “I will come with you.”

  * * * *

  Harry awoke with a groan, asprawl on the ground in the dark.

  He felt like something a cat had thrown up. Where was he? Trying groggily to stand, he leaned onto his deeply cut hand. The pain unleashed a flood of memory: the bomb, imprisonment, the argument with Terrence. That damned do-gooder had knocked him out!

  Harry staggered toward slightly paler darkness that suggested a tent flap. Throwing it open, he saw the source of that light: a dying campfire. Hundreds of warriors remained, but far fewer than . . . when? How long had he been unconscious?

  Just one among so many aches, the shooting pain in his chest did not immediately register. Odd, his pectoral muscle felt like it had been jabbed. By his pen?

  Harry took the long cherished ballpoint pen from his pocket. Reclipping it, the pen snagged on something: a wadded-up scrap of white cloth apparently torn from the tent.

  He hadn’t put it there. Harry unrolled the fabric and angled it to catch the firelight. The material was covered with writing, a note from Terrence:

  I’m taking the bomb away from camp and will try to disarm it. Sorry about hitting you, but there was no time to argue. Besides, I’m the obvious choice: Clearly I’m too stupid to reproduce. When you find a way back, give my best to Julia.

  And you must find a way back, Harry. That is Bertha’s only hope for a normal life.

  “Who has seen Terrence?” Harry bellowed. No one answered. “Where is Terrence?” He ran about the rapidly emptying camp, calling in vain.

  In vain, that was, until he stumbled into Bertha. “Have you seen Terrence?”

  “Yes. He left just after sundown with Bertchramm and a few of his men. They had a wagon. They wouldn’t let me go with.”

  “Dammit! Do you know where they went?”

  Bertha flinched, making him feel small. She pointed toward a moonlit pass to the south. An empty pass. “There.”

  If the wagon was already over the pass, Terrence had at least an hour’s head start. Harry wondered how much time remained on the accursed counter. “I need a horse.”

  “I’ll bring two.”

  Harry and Bertha rode across the countryside, with only a general direction to guide them. At that, the men they pursued might well have changed directions as soon as they left the valley. With the woods full of stragglers from both armies, calling out for Terrence as they rode would be virtual suicide.


  It was a great relief when they encountered a muddy path with wagon ruts and fresh horse droppings. They stepped up the pace to a full gallop. If these tracks were from Terrence’s wagon, they had a hope of catching up.

  They were charging ahead at full tilt when they heard the unmistakable clatter of sword striking sword.

  Only Bertchramm and two of his men were left standing, but there were also far fewer of the Saracens than when the assault began.

  Eight to three was still poor odds.

  His francisca had been taken after the commotion at the altar. When Karl had released them, Bertchramm had had no time to find it. He felt awkward without the ax, but the scramasax he had borrowed, now slippery with sweat and splattered blood, had served him well. He tightened his grip. The Saracens were closing in again. Let them: He had sworn Terrence a terrible oath that none would pass. While he lived, no one would.

  And then, as Bertchramm feared, the Arabs charged. Two galloped straight at each surviving Frank; the final two started into the woods to go around them. He couldn’t stop them all. What should he do?

  Ignoring the warriors heading straight for him, Bertchramm spurred his mount into its own charge. “For Karl Martel!” he screamed, racing after those attempting to slip past him. He must give Terrence the time that he had promised.

  And so, Bertchramm’s back was turned when Harry and Bertha raced out of the darkness to take the Saracens by surprise from the rear.

  * * * *

  Straight sword crashed upon curved; sparks flew. When the survivors separated, Harry’s and Bertha’s charge had almost evened the odds. There were only six Saracens remaining, and five of what Harry considered the good guys.

  “You bastard,” Bertha screamed, seeing Salah-ad-Din. She knew him as the leader of the cutthroats who had enslaved her.

  Bertchramm had to gallop ahead, to cut her off, to stop her suicidal attack. “He is mine.”

  “You’ll have to get in line,” Harry panted.

  There was no time for talk. The enemy had already regrouped, were once again upon them. Harry slashed and jabbed, but landed no blows. Then he was desperately parrying an enemy’s frenzied attack. Harry’s left hand, so badly cut, dropped his shield at the shock of the first solid blow.