The Fourth Rome

by David Drake

  ‘Ride on!” Pauli said.

  “To the left!” Gerd directed, swaying as he tried to stay on the saddle. Beckie tugged her reins with one hand and gripped the analyst’s waist with the other.

  The Germans had overrun part of Varus’ train. Lawyers traveling with the governor had been stripped and tied to frames of bent saplings. Slaves and servants were roped together nearby, weeping and terrified but not under immediate threat from their captors.

  Pauli kicked his mount to better speed in the clearing. He saw Silius Gallus, the lawyer who’d been speaking the day the team arrived in Aliso. The Germans Gallus had milked dry through his advocacy encircled him now.

  The lawyer’s lips were sewn shut with a thong. Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. One of the Germans waggled Gallus’ ripped-out tongue in his face.

  A warrior stepped in front of the ARC Riders and shouted at them to halt. Beckie’s horse shied. Neither she nor Gerd had a hand free to use their pistols. Pauli shot past his horse’s neck. He rode over the German fallen in a gush of fog.

  More Germans sprinted toward the team. Pauli dropped a pair only a few meters from his mount’s flank. Mud from the hooves of the leading animal splashed back at him. In this rear area most of the warriors had butted their spears in the mud and leaned their shields against them in miniature A-frames.

  A noble wearing checked woolen trousers and a Roman mail coat ran for his horse instead. Others followed, shouting to one another. Half the Germans present had at least some piece of Roman equipment. Several were dressed in complete legionary garb with the exception of the waterlogged shield.

  Beckie guided her horse into the unbroken forest. They crossed a game trail. A branch slapped Pauli’s forehead even though he’d tried to duck away from it. The pull-down faceshield smeared away from his left eye. He slid the headband back in place with the thumb of his gunhand.

  The ARC Riders’ mounts were tired and overburdened; the German nobles were better horsemen besides. The team was going to be ridden down with absolute certainty, even if they managed not to blunder into another of the scattered warbands.

  The analyst was looking for a route clear even as he and Beckie staggered through the forest. Specks of light twinkled in the air over the horse’s neck: raindrops scattering the scanner pack’s display.

  Pauli risked a glance over his shoulder. The leading German was barely a horse’s length behind, riding with the reins in his teeth as he guided his mount with his knees. The German carried a lance more than three meters long and an oblong shield with a prominent boss. The shield’s face was painted with star bursts and red crescents; glittering brass studs circled the rim.

  When Pauli turned, the German noble snarled around his reins and thrust with his lance. The steel point quivered a handsbreadth from Pauli’s ribs. He swept the pistol around more like a man swatting a fly than a marksman.

  The German’s shield was made of boards dovetailed together and braced across the back. The pulse hammered them apart with a loud whack! The German’s horse shied, startled by the report next to his left ear. He brushed a fir tree and rubbed the rider off his back for all the German’s skill. The lance stuck an overhanging branch and broke.

  Undergrowth twenty meters to the rear thrashed. A pair of horsemen, one mounted on a striking gray, were following fast. There’d been scores of horsemen in the band torturing the lawyers; they were probably in pursuit.

  The rain had paused. Now it returned with a roar like an aircraft passing low over the forest. The upper foliage caught the drops for a few moments, but the downpour was delayed from ground level, not stopped. When it began in earnest, German lances would have greater effective range than the team’s pistols.

  Pauli’s mount shouldered a tree hard enough to stagger himself. Pauli caught a handful of mane. The horse was going to collapse within a few minutes—if the pursuers didn’t overwhelm the team down before then.

  He thought about the way his pulse blew apart a German’s shield. He couldn’t count on that again with the rain picking up, but if he unscrewed the Skorpion’s silencer—

  No. The weapon’s muzzle blast still wouldn’t be enough to spook the Germans’ horses. The light cartridge, intended for a pocket pistol, didn’t have enough authority to impress anybody. Certainly not in the midst of a storm like this.

  The hologram display silhouetted Gerd and Beckie with a ghostly nimbus. Their horse was struggling, too.

  “Gerd, can you throw a bar of light ten or twenty meters behind us?” Pauli asked, speaking even as the thought formed. “It doesn’t have to be bright, just visible.”

  “Yes,” the analyst said. Gerd would talk your ear off in a background briefing, but he never got in the way in a crisis.

  “Beckie, we’ll dismount and use the submachine guns,” Pauli said. He transferred the microwave pistol to his left hand with the reins and rummaged in the right satchel for the Skorpion. The spare magazines were on the other side. They could wait. “When the Germans touch the light, not before. And aim for the horses. The horses’ll notice the pain.”

  “Yes,” Beckie said tersely. A moment later, “I’m ready, Pauli.”

  He knew that shooting horses would bother her even more than killing the riders, but there wasn’t any choice. The sting of a light bullet wouldn’t even slow a warrior seething with blood lust. Horses were herbivores whose reflex was to run from danger. They could be trained to obey human commands, but a jab of unexpected pain penetrated to the instinctive level.

  It wasn’t fair to the horses, but the majority of the civilians with Varus were suffering for no better reason. Hard times had hard remedies.

  The rain came down in full blinding earnest. If the team’s mounts had been in better shape, Pauli’d have tried to escape pursuit in the darkness. Wind twisted branches already strained by the weight of rain-soaked needles. They hurtled down as widowmakers.

  “Gerd, start the light close and advance it if it works,” Pauli said. “Now!”

  He reined his horse to a halt. The animal wobbled, almost falling as its rider’s weight came off.

  Pauli stood, the Skorpion in his right hand and the microwave pistol in his left. The leading German yipped and raised his long-bladed sword as he came on.

  A wedge rather than a band of pale canary light filled the air. Trees, leaves—Pauli’s own poised body—cut sharp-edged shadows from the ambience. The sensor pack’s output was only a few candlepower, but it had a shocking presence in the storm-wracked gloom.

  The gray horse drove into the lighted air. The Skorpion stuttered in Pauli’s hand as he shot the beast in the nose. It reared, screaming. The startled rider came off its back.

  The second German swerved clear of the leader’s mount, turning his horse’s head broadside to the ARC Rider. Pauli gave it a short burst. The horse corkscrewed in pain. The German sawed his reins. He was wearing a mail coat. Pauli chanced a pulse with the microwave pistol. Fog bloomed in a spreading cone, but the rider pitched over his horse’s neck.

  Another horse twisted and bucked before Pauli could get bis own weapon on. Germans were spreading to either side of the leaders, crashing through undergrowth to avoid the sudden pileup. One of them threw a lance as if it were a javelin. He must have been aiming at the glow itself. The missile didn’t come anywhere close to the ARC Riders.

  Gerd walked calmly up behind Pauli. He held the scanner pack over his head to maximize the volume of coverage. The lighted area became a hemisphere rather than a wedge. The color segued to pale red.

  Pauli shot another horse. It skidded forward on its nose and knees, killed instantly by a lucky round through the eye. Lucky for the animal, at least; and luckier than the lawyers back in the German camp had been.

  Pauli stunned the sprawling rider with the microwave pistol. Mud sprayed in a circle as the German’s head reflected -the point-blank pulse.

  A riderless horse ran past, white sweat on its breast and its bulging eyes reflecting the glow. Pauli jumped
aside. Gerd touched his pistol to the horse’s skull and knocked the beast down in the mud with its legs thrashing.

  Pauli tried to open the satchel where the ammo was packed without putting down the microwave pistol. His horse stood trembling, too tired or too terrified to bolt.

  A German with bull homs riveted to his helmet rode forward, slashing at the light itself and shouting, “Wotan! Wotan!”

  Before Pauli could aim the gutshot horse crawfished, fell, and rose in a spray of blood and water. Pauli, Gerd, and Beckie Carnes all fired. The horse collapsed again on its stunned rider. The fog of atomized rain made the glow richer and more angry.

  Gerd manipulated the pack’s controls with two fingers while holding his pistol. The glowing hemisphere expanded, engulfing more of the forest. The diffused light was scarcely a shimmer but it sent Germans bellowing away in terror.

  They weren’t afraid to die, these warriors, but they were terrified of the unknown. The team couldn’t have defeated them, but harmless light provided a symbol for the Germans to fear.

  Gerd lowered his sensor pack. The glow vanished.

  “Oh, God,” Beckie said. She stared at the submachine gun in her hand. The bolt was locked back, meaning the weapon had fired the last round in its magazine.

  “There’re some riderless horses nearby,” said Gerd Barthuli. “I wonder if we can catch them to supplement our own.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Pauli said in a dull voice.

  A horse nearby gurgled as it tried to rise. Bloody froth gurgled from its nostrils. Pauli walked to it and put a mercy shot into the back of its big skull.

  He wondered what mercy there would be for a man who’d done this to innocent animals.

  Moscow, Russia

  March 10, 1992

  Grainger had ditched Matsak as soon as they got back to Moscow. He’d worked all night and all day long with Zotov’s team in Obninsk, getting every bit of information possible. Then he got Matsak to drive him back to the city as fast as he could, but by then night was already falling.

  The rest of the ARC team wasn’t in the Métropole. What Grainger had to say couldn’t wait. When he finally found the private club where Etkin was hosting the ARC Rider women and Orlov, the club bouncer wouldn’t let him in the door.

  He considered using a tranquilizer dart to subdue the muscular doorman. Then he thought about shooting the doorman with his issue acoustic pistol and stepping over the body. But there were clearly more big boys inside.

  Finally he stood on the sidewalk cursing and arguing loudly in English. Eventually, he’d made enough fuss that an English speaker poked a head out the door of this sanctum of the nomenclature!.

  He bawled for Roebeck and Chun as loud as he could, invoking American Embassy privilege that he didn’t have. If his luck was bad, some Embassy honcho was a guest inside and his cover would be summarily blown.

  But it wasn’t an angry US official who came down the stairs. It was Roebeck, Chun right behind her.

  The ARC Riders’ team leader didn’t look pleased with him.

  “What is your problem, Tim? What kind of Embassy crisis could provoke this level of urgency?” What she meant was, Make this look good, sucker.

  He said, still playing up his agitation, “I need to talk to both of you, alone.”

  As they came down the steps and huddled with him on the pavement near the riverbank, Chun scolded him, “Pull yourself together, cowboy. Your behavior is despicable. You, too, Nan, with all due respect. I’m making good progress with Etkin and the scalar—”

  Both Roebeck and Grainger spoke at once:

  “I found the technology,” Grainger murmured urgently. “It’s in Obninsk. Some of it’s from Up The Line. We’ve got to get back to the TC.”

  “I’ve found the technology and the revisionists!” Roebeck exclaimed sotto voce. “It’s the Foreign Ministry crowd. Lip-insky. Neat. Orlov led me straight to them. We need to consult the database, maybe Central direct.”

  Chun looked from one to the other. “Impossible,” she said. “You can’t both have found it.”

  Grainger was so pumped that he glared. “The boss is mistaken. I saw enough to scare the hell out of me.”

  Roebeck’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, really? I’m mistaken? I agree with you about one point, Tim. This involves technology, maybe people, from Up The Line somehow. I found an implant—”

  “Ssh! Be quiet,” Chun pleaded. “Here comes Etkin. That means Orlov’s alone inside. This is just great, guys. We’re blowing this … Uh, Viktor Ivanovitch, you know our prodigal son, Tim Grainger.”

  Grainger had no choice but to shake hands with Etkin and smile.

  “Dr. Grainger, we had not expected you. We thought you were detained on business.” Etkin was cool, in control.

  Okay, you bastard. So I’ll apologize. “Yes, I’m sorry I was late. And if I’m too late, I’ll leave. I just needed to speak to my team leader for a minute. Please, don’t disturb yourselves…” He was backing away from Etkin. This was going too wrong, too fast.

  Etkin said, “Our hospitality is boundless. But we mustn’t leave Special Assistant Orlov alone too long. Special assistants have been known to become very worried when left suddenly sitting alone at tables in this club. Please, come inside with us. Eat. Drink. Enjoy our Russian form of entertainment.”

  One more endless meeting with strange food and constrained conversation. “No, no. Spacebo, but nyet.” Grainger refused outright. “I just needed some operating instructions. They’re expecting me back at the Embassy.”

  “Surely not,” Etkin purred, having caught Grainger in a farfetched statement that might be verifiable. “We will call your Embassy and make your excuses for you …”

  Grainger had known better than to try that. Caught, he smiled sheepishly at Etkin. Then he raised his hands to his chest, palms out, in the international sign for surrender. “I give up. I’m yours.”

  “It won’t be necessary to bother the Embassy.” Nan threw Grainger a lethal glare. “Tim can make time to join us for this important meeting, now that he’s broken away. You know how bureaucracies can take up your time with useless paperwork. You got all your work done, didn’t you, Tim?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Ma’am.” He corrected the gender, realizing that Etkin probably knew that “sir” wasn’t gender-free in the 1990s.

  And in they went. Up dark stairs into a tiny reception area hung with photos of famous visiting foreigners and infamous rulers of the Soviet state, all smiling in public-affairs-office style.

  Once seated next to Orlov at their table, Grainger started sweating almost immediately. It was hot, that was all, he decided. And he hadn’t expected scantily clad female contortionists doing splits on people’s dinner tables. Orlov was introduced to him. The young Russian was frosted from having been left alone. Grainger was having trouble concentrating on the conversation. Fire-eaters, magicians, long-legged girls in strings and pasties …

  He realized dimly that he was probably having an honest-to-God physical reaction from the combination of shots, radiation, weird food, no sleep, nicotine, alcohol, and excitement. If he’d been able to pull up his comm membrane, he could have dialed himself a physio check and some bio stabilizers. As it was, he had to sit there making insipid noises while the clock was ticking.

  He never should have come here. He’d promised Matsak he wouldn’t come. But he’d made a command decision that briefing the boss overrode everything else. Now he hadn’t accomplished his mission. Worse, he was on display to anybody here who might know Matsak or Matsak’s cronies.

  If this stunt lost him his access to Obninsk, the alternatives were going to be much harder on everyone.

  Etkin was watching him surreptitiously. Grainger caught his eye. The KGB officer leaned over his plate of borscht and smiled fraternally, showing perfect white teeth. “You are not enjoying yourself, Dr. Grainger? You are ill?”

  “No—that is, yeah. Too much celebrating.” He realized that his upper lip was
beaded with sweat. Perspiration was running down his jaw, his neck. It wasn’t going to do his comm membrane much good to get soaked. Suddenly Grainger’s stomach started to feel as if it was about to heave its contents onto the table, whether he liked it or not. He took deep breaths. He said to Etkin, still watching him, “I think I’m going to spill my guts. Here or in the loo. Your choice.” Then he pushed his chair back and put his head between his knees, trying every technique he knew to stave off a wave of dizziness.

  He felt a hand under his armpit, an arm around his shoulders. “Come. Come this way. Quickly.” Etkin half lifted Grainger from his chair, nearly dragging him toward the men’s room.

  They reached it just in time. When Grainger stopped retching and got to his feet, Etkin was waiting, watching.

  The KGB officer handed Grainger a wet linen towel.

  Grainger wiped his face, then scrubbed his mouth. “That’s better.” He lifted the knob on top of the Russian toilet to flush it. “Sorry. Too much exotic food, I guess.”

  “We will take you back to your hotel.” The handsome KGB agent seemed genuinely concerned. “You should rest. Perhaps we have all had enough of the celebration this evening.” Etkin’s cultured voice echoed from irregularly set bathroom tile.

  Great. Now he’d blown off Chun’s meeting. Worse, he’d been so sick that he’d forgotten all about his gearbag, left unguarded under the table. Momentarily he panicked. He wasn’t even sure where they’d been sitting or how to get back there on his own.

  “Thanks for understanding, Professor Etkin,” Grainger told the KGB man sheepishly. “I’m sorry to have ruined everyone’s evening.”

  “Nyet problema. It is nothing. Tomorrow, we will begin anew with your friends. And perhaps without our Assistant Secretary’s assistance.” There was something about Etkin, standing there without even wrinkling his nose in a Russian men’s room still smelling of vomit, that felt wrong to Grainger.

  But help was where you found it. The Academy of Sciences cum KGB honcho helped him solicitously back to their table, where Etkin pulled the plug on the evening’s celebration.