by Bob Mayer
The body tumbled to the snow and dust.
Moms flipped open the backpack and found a half-dozen silver metal tubes, cradled in some soft material. On the end of each was a blue light, with a button next to it. The technology was different, but Moms had no doubt what they were: explosives, to destroy the cave and the art.
Would destroying those paintings have destroyed art? Surely someone, somewhere, would do the same?
She began to check the corpse, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as best she could, but as she did so, the body crumbled inward to dust. Looking about, she noted the rest of the bodies were also gone.
Moms sighed and sat down. She reached over her left shoulder and felt the shaft of the arrow. This was going to hurt, she thought, but then the arrow also disintegrated into dust. A small blessing.
But now, blood was flowing out of the wound. Moms took a piece of fur, reached back, and jammed it as hard as she could into the wound to staunch the flow.
And then she passed out.
The Present
Our Present
Area 51
“JERK,” EAGLE YELLED AT ORLANDO as he ran to the ramp then dove out.
He spread his legs and arms akimbo, getting stable and oriented. He saw Lara tumbling in the air. He pulled his arms into his sides, clamped his legs together, and dove, angled straight down.
Using just his hands, like fins for direction, he accelerated toward her.
This is Roland’s gig, Eagle thought. He began making up the distance between the two of them, losing altitude the entire way.
Six thousand feet, the altimeter warned via his earpiece.
He saw her arm move, tossing the grenade away.
Five thousand feet.
Eagle was stunned when the grenade exploded, a brief flash, the sound lost in the air rushing by.
“Double Jerk, Orlando!” Eagle screamed as he adjusted his track slightly.
Four thousand feet. She was fifty feet below.
Eagle blinked as he realized she was slowing her spin. She was experimenting, thrusting an arm this way, tucking a leg that way. Why, when she had no chute?
Three thousand feet.
Ten feet away.
She was looking at him, no longer tumbling. She’d assumed an odd position. Legs together, arms spread wide above her head. Feet straight down toward the rapidly approaching desert.
She looks like an angel, Eagle thought, apropos of nothing of importance at the moment because they were both going to splat in about two thousand feet.
Eagle over-adjusted then bumped into her, chest-to-chest.
She smiled at him.
One thousand feet.
Eagle only had time to clip a single snap link from his lowering line into her straitjacket harness, then he jerked the ripcord.
His parachute blossomed.
Eagle was jerked upright, and then he felt the abrupt tightening of his harness as she hit the end of the fifteen-foot lowering line. He barely had time to look down before she struck the ground, then he was down, hitting hard, feet on either side of her body. He collapsed to his knees, straddling her.
“Frak me,” Eagle muttered. He glanced down at the young woman lying between his legs. Now that he was this close, he noticed the poorly healed scars underneath the hair struggling to grow back on her scalp. A jigsaw puzzle of them.
Lara was still smiling. “He is a crazy man.”
“He is,” Eagle agreed. She had an American accent, not Russian. Who exactly was she?
“I like him.”
“I don’t.”
The Missions Phase IV
Normandy France, 6 June 1944 A.D.
MAC CHECKED THE BODIES of the three soldiers, ensuring they were dead by putting an extra round in each man’s head. When he turned back to the barn, he saw Brigit standing on the top step, wrapped in a towel, a Sten submachine gun in her hands.
Mac waved, and she simply turned and went back down the stairs, leaving the trapdoor open. Mac figured she wasn’t worried about light discipline at the moment. He walked to the door and down the stairs, making sure to close the trap behind him.
Brigit was under the blankets on the bed. The Sten was leaning against the rock wall behind the bed.
“You buried Maurice,” she said.
Of all the things she’d just observed, Mac thought. “Yes.”
“Was the officer the one who killed Louis?”
“No.”
“Ah,” she sighed. “Then that one is still out there.”
“Yes.”
“You must wash.”
Mac looked down. The front of his shirt was drenched with Procles’s blood.
“There is a spare field uniform on a hook to your right,” Brigit said. “Charles took it from one of the pods even though I told him keeping a British uniform was a bad idea. He looked forward to the day he could wear it in the open and fight the Germans.”
Mac pulled off his fatigue shirt.
“I left you the water,” Brigit added.
Mac looked at the muddy water in the trough. When in Rome, he thought.
Mac glanced over at Brigit. She had her back to him, her head buried inside the blanket, curled into a tight ball. He peeled off the rest of his uniform and stepped into the chilly and dirty water. He tried not to use too much of her last bar of soap. He noticed there were now streaks of red in the brown water.
Not sure he was much cleaner than when he’d gone into the tub, Mac stepped out. He used a small rag hanging next to some onions to try to dry himself.
“You Americans are so well fed,” she said.
Mac felt his face burn in embarrassment because she was looking at him. She lifted the blanket. “Come here.”
“The mission,” Mac said.
“The mission will happen. You just killed four men. What happened to the officer’s body? I have never seen that.”
“He didn’t belong here,” Mac said.
“Neither do you.”
“I think I do,” Mac said. He could see her naked body, curled up so tight her knees seemed to be in her chest.
“I will help you with your mission,” she said. “I know the fastest way to the bridge, but sometimes, there are more important things. I need you now.” She straightened out, and he could see her breasts and the dark triangle between her legs. He felt foolish, standing there naked, with just a rag.
“Are you a good man, Mac?”
It seemed an odd question coming from someone who’d just seen him kill four men, shooting one in the back, then firing a coup-de-grace into their heads afterward to make sure.
“I don’t know,” Mac answered. He realized that was the truth.
“I think you are a good man.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You can spend a lifetime with someone and not know them,” Brigit said. “Minutes of life and death are different than a lifetime of nothingness.”
Mac thought of the other guys who would have happily jumped into her bed. She was actually quite pretty with the dirt mostly gone and her hair looking softer.
“Mac. The last man inside me was a very mean German.”
Mac went over to the bed and sat next to her. “What happened?”
“He hurt me. I waited until he was done, and then cut his throat with his own knife. He bled all over me. The blood was very warm, and it was a very cold night, so that was one good thing about it, but the blood turned cold very fast. He was a mean man, but also a stupid man. I buried him in the field.”
Mac wondered how someone could be capable of hurting this woman, with eyes so blue. “I’m so sorry.”
“That is why I need your warmth, Mac. Not the other.”
Mac slid under the blanket, pulling her close, feeling her shiver. “You are cold.”
“Oh, Mac.”
He buried his face in her hair and held her tight in his arms. She was so thin. He could feel the strong beat of her heart against his chest. He held her in silence, the lamp fli
ckering long shadows on the stone walls. He sensed her body warming. Her breathing slowed down, and her muscles relaxed.
She was asleep.
The bridge must come down. Mac tried to slide out, hoping she would remain asleep.
“Is it time?” Brigit murmured.
“Yes.”
“I will come with you.”
“You should stay here,” Mac said.
“I can’t.” Brigit sat up, and he could see the ribs in her back, the arch of her spine. There were poorly-healed scars on her back, and he didn’t want to ask. “I can’t be here all alone.” She got up, grabbed her pants and began putting them on.
Mac donned his uniform, including the British fatigue shirt that Charles had saved and dreamed of wearing.
When he turned back to her, she was also dressed, but the look on her face caused his heart to ache. It was a look he’d seen before. She was done, finished.
“The war will be over soon,” Mac said. “I can promise you that.”
“By Christmas?” she asked with a sad smile. “It seems every war will be over by Christmas.”
Mac thought about this Christmas and the Battle of the Bulge, and how many would die so needlessly in the Third Reich’s last spasm, a futile attempt at victory when the war was already lost. “No. Not by this Christmas, but in the Spring after.”
“The war will never be finished for me, my dear Mac.”
He knew then that there had been other mean Germans.
He walked around the small bed and cupped her face in his hands. “Brigit. You’ll forget all of this one day and have a real life, and a husband and babies.”
“I had a husband and a baby. In Paris.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The war will never be finished for me, and now you are a part of me. You are here inside my sanctum with me. Thank you.”
Mac held her face, looking into her wet eyes, and he sensed that he wasn’t going home.
She wrapped her arms around him., He didn’t think about it at all. He held her tight and knew that he’d never be alone again, and he felt weak with the comfort of it.
Sjaelland Island, Denmark, 6 June 452 A.D.
Now, Beowulf, thee,
of heroes best, I shall heartily love
as mine own, my son; preserve thou ever
this kinship new: thou shalt never lack
wealth of the world that I wield as mine!
Full oft for less have I largess showered,
my precious hoard, on a punier man,
less stout in struggle. Thyself hast now
fulfilled such deeds, that thy fame shall endure
through all the ages. As ever he did,
well may the Wielder reward thee still!
“Who are you?” Jager replied, unfazed by the dagger. “Sent by Hel to help the mighty Beowulf? Tell me, Roland the Slayer.”
They were interrupted when a party of warriors came in through the ruined doors. The leader announced they had tracked the blood, and Grendel’s footprints, as far as possible.
“Across the moor, sire,” the leader said, “and then they ended at the edge of a blood-stained pool. We circled it, and there was no sign of the monster leaving. It is down there, rotting and being eaten by fish.”
“Optimism,” Jager said in a low voice to Roland. “How quaint.”
The maiden tending to him was confused. “What are you speaking of?”
King Hrothgar stood, chalice in hand. “All praise mighty Beowulf. Slayer of Grendel. Bravest of brave.” He emptied the chalice. “I will compensate you and the families of the men who died so bravely,” Hrothgar continued. “I will pay gold.”
“How much are you worth?” Jager asked Roland in a low voice. “How much is any man’s life worth?”
“It’s worth what we believe in,” Roland said.
“A life is worth only the lives it can take,” Jager said.
The maiden’s hands were shaking, but she continued to clean the wound. Roland gave her points for that. He wished they’d sent someone like Moms or Mac on this mission. Someone who could chat with this guy and figure this out.
Roland looked toward the front of the hall. Beowulf was being showered with gifts. Seated between the king and queen, he had just donned a new armor breastplate, the metal shiny and bright in the light from the roaring fireplace.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Roland said, focusing his attention on Jager and giving a little extra pressure to the knife.
The maiden had finished her bandaging. Her earlier come-hither attitude was gone. “Fare well, sir,” she said, and then scurried away.
“She was frightened so easily,” Jager said.
“Most people are frightened by what they don’t understand,” Roland said.
“So you’re frightened right now? Is that what you’re saying?”
Roland shrugged. “I don’t have to understand a lot of things. I just have to be able to kill what I need to kill.”
Jager nodded. “Spoken like a true Jager—a true Hunter.”
“How did you know you could penetrate into the armpit?” Roland asked.
“A Grendel only has a few vulnerable spots,” Jager said. He was watching the hall. Food was being brought in. The wine and ale were flowing, voices raised loud in relief and victory. “Armpit works, but isn’t fatal. Directly into the mouth, and then the brain, is fatal, but requires going into the beast’s attack. There is a spot on the back of head, right at the base. It’s a hard spot to get an angle on. But it is instantly fatal. That’s the best place.”
“You’ve fought its like before,” Roland said.
“I have.”
“And the scales can defeat Naga steel,” Roland wondered aloud.
“Look at my spear,” Jager said, nodding toward where it leaned against a beam. “And please, remove the dagger. It is not needed.”
Roland knew he shouldn’t, but he did. He slid the dagger back into the sheath, got up, and retrieved the spear. The haft was wood, the tip a piece of dull iron a foot long, widening to a four-inch base.
“The weight is off,” Roland said, hefting it in his hand.
Jager held his hand out. Roland handed the weapon over, ignoring the voice of Nada screaming at him in his brain.
“Your weapon,” Jager said, “which you call a Naga?”
Roland nodded.
“It’s at the core of this blade, covered in iron. We used scraps, whatever we could find, to make our weapons. The scales on the first Grendels could be penetrated by Naga steel, as you call it. Then the beast’s scales were improved. But that is not the worst thing about Grendels,” Jager added.
“What is?” Roland asked.
Jager slanted his head so he could look at Roland out of the corner of his eye. “You know nothing of them? This was the first you’ve met?”
Roland nodded.
“Good,” Jager said. “That is good.” But he didn’t answer Roland’s question, which seemed to be as much his forte as fighting.
“You still have not told me who you are or where you come from,” Roland said. “Or how you know of these Grendels.”
“Nor have you answered my question,” Jager replied.
Roland sighed. He got up and grabbed two large flagons of ale that had just been placed in front of a couple of thanes sitting at the closest trestle. The men glared at him, thought about it, then grabbed a serving girl to get them more.
Roland brought the ale back, handing one to Jager.
“Thank you,” Jager said. He raised it. “To glory and death in the Hunt!” He took a deep draft, draining half the large cup.
Roland did the same. They set the cups down.
“Jager means ‘hunter’ in my world,” Jager said, “but it will do for here. My old name is gone. It is the name I will die with. Are you indeed Roland?”
“My old name is gone, too,” Roland said. “When I joined my team, I gave it up. They gave me the name Roland.”
“It’s a good name,” Jager said. “
They could have chosen worse.”
“They could have,” Roland agreed, thinking back to some of the suggestions that had been written on the board in the Den, back at the Ranch, so many years ago when he was recruited into the Nightstalkers.
“It was chosen by comrades,” Jager said. “That is good also. And you’ve faced kraken. I hate them. Nasty things. Easier to kill than a Grendel, though. But if they get you into the water, then the odds turn against you.”
“Where are you from?” Roland was getting frustrated, knowing he was far down a slippery slope. Was Jager from the Shadow? But then, why had he fought Grendel, if Grendel was the Shadow’s creature? But the first rule of Time Patrol was not to talk about Time Patrol.
“A place far from here,” Jager said.
Roland wanted to hit something or someone. He drained the rest of his cup. Then he grabbed two more from in front of the toughest-looking of Hrothgar’s thanes. Once more, they didn’t dispute him. Apparently, being covered in black blood from Grendel gave one some carte blanche.
He brought the cups back, putting one next to Jager. “Speak to me. I came here with the directive to make sure all develops as it should in the poem.”
“‘Poem?’” Jager snorted. “What does a poem have to do with any of this?”
Roland was flustered. “The poem of Beowulf’s heroics”—Jager snorted again—“will be—” Roland didn’t know what to say.
Jager shook his head. “But his supposed heroics just happened. Other than the things he’s claimed. You speak as if you know what will be written is already written.”
The first rule of Time Patrol. The first rule of Time Patrol. Roland repeated that mantra in his head.
Jager was staring off into the distance, his forehead furrowed. “There were some who thought...” He fell silent. “You are from this world, aren’t you?”
Roland considered the question, saw no breaking of the First Rule, and answered, “Yes.”
“Yet you speak of a poem that is already written of events that are just occurring.”
Frak, Roland thought.
