by Chuck Dixon
Happy as kids, the rest all hung around while Jimbo trimmed the cloth on the poles to allow for additional handholds in the center of the stretcher. Then he had them lift again. Bruce took the job as team leader and directed the others to lift in unison with a series of cadenced commands. They bore the load well.
Now they had a stretcher team. The Rangers and Bat would have hands and eyes free to cover the withdraw. These guys looked like they’d be able to keep up. He tossed them some more candies. They smiled and nodded. They had a deal.
“I thought we freed those motherfuckers,” Chaz said, walking up.
“I’m not making them do anything, bro,” Jimbo said. “They’re doing it for the candy. It’s the free market at work.”
“Still don’t seem right.” Chaz shook his head at the men squatting on the ground, sucking on lemon balls and butterscotches and grinning like kids. Some of their backs were thick with old scar tissue from where they’d been whipped. Their ankles and wrists showed signs of manacles worn for extended periods.
“You want to carry that big bastard all the way to the Med?” Jimbo nodded at the still form of the SEAL on the makeshift carrier.
“Hell, no,” Chaz said. “But you better have a shitload of candy on you.”
They turned at Lee running down off the earthworks toward them. Bat trotted behind. Lee held the Legion banner in his fist as he ran.
“Dust cloud to the north,” Lee called as he reached them.
“That column we bushwhacked?” Jimbo asked.
“Has to be,” Lee said. “They strapped their balls back on, and chances are they’ll put whatever’s left of the Twenty-third back together when they get here and then be right in our asses.”
Bat waved her arms and shouted to the men in Hebrew. She warned them that there was an army marching on them. Most ignored her or looked at her dully. Others were stirred by her dire predictions that the approaching Romans would be looking to blame someone for the devastation of their camp. These men pointed at all the dead legionnaires lying about them and echoed Bat’s alarm to the others.
There was a babel of languages as the word was translated among them. The group was up on their feet, even the ones who looked to be at death’s door, and began moving away from the camp at the base of the escarpment at best speed.
Jimbo made a lifting gesture with his hands and his team of candy-loving former slaves raised Boats from the ground and awaited further instructions. Lee nodded approval and laid the banner on the bier alongside the SEAL.
“I’ll take drag for now,” Chaz said and waved them on.
Lee trotted ahead to take point. Jimbo waved his stretcher team forward, and the tiny column moved roughly west into the cloud of dust raised by the fleeing slaves. A couple of dozen other slaves followed after the stretcher team. Chaz noted that a number of them carried spears or swords picked off of the dead.
We have ourselves an army, Chaz thought. Until the candy runs out.
Chaz climbed a corner of the earthworks and watched the haze riding into the sky off the road to the north. It was coming straight as an arrow for them. The pyres of burning tents were still sending up a thick column of dense smoke and the centuries bearing the boar banner would be unerringly drawn toward it like hounds to the scent of the fox.
He gave some time for the rest of the team to gain some lead on him. Chaz spent the time sending up a prayer for the Father to watch over His son.
“We done all we could,” he said, squinting up into the noon sky.
Then he turned to follow his brothers across Galilee.
38
The Tally
The ground was covered in a blanket of black-winged vultures by the time the third and fourth centuries of the Boars reached the ruined fort. The kites circled in the sky above and descended through the mist of smoke to feed upon the carcasses that lay scattered singly and in heaps all about the ruined camp.
Enraged, centurion Marcus Pulcher strode into the camp swinging his staff and shouting. The carrion eaters were sent hopping from their meals and finally to flight as other soldiers joined in shouting and waving arms.
The camp was an abattoir. Everywhere lay soldiers in various stages of dismemberment. Some were burnt all over and folded into the fetal position peculiar to those who die engulfed by fire. Others were eviscerated or quartered as if by some unimaginably powerful beast. The sand was soaked with violet pools of blood, covered over with clouds of black flies and crawling insects. The smell of cooking flesh rising from the inferno of the command tent was vomit-inducing. Pulcher covered his mouth with the corner of his cloak and swallowed back bile.
All here were dead. That was something outside the experience of the centurion. Every battle resulted in approximately the same ratio of the dead to the wounded. But here there were no injured. Whoever created this slaughter saw to it that none survived. Gaius, his first optio, reported a rough count of over one hundred bodies.
“That is less than half of the company posted here,” the centurion said.
“The rest were either taken prisoner or fled,” Gaius said.
“Any enemy dead?”
“Not one, sir.”
“Isn’t that unusual, Gaius?” Pulcher said. “A battle this furious and the only corpses that remain are of Romans?”
Gaius offered no opinion.
“Sound the call. If any of our own have fled, they will hear it,” the centurion said, turning. “And bring to me any who return.”
The cornicen of the third was ordered forward. The man removed the circular horn from its protective leather cover and climbed to a spot atop the earthworks to sound four flat blasts. Any legionnaire within hearing would answer the gathering call and return to the fort. And, indeed, the survivors of the Twenty-third straggled in from the surrounding desert all around. They entered with heads hung low and without meeting the eyes of their brother legionnaires. The highest ranking, an optio of the second of the sixth, was brought to Pulcher who waited in the shade of his command tent which had been constructed upwind a distance from the ruined camp.
The optio, a Lucani named Critus, told a tale that beggared belief. He related how the Assyrian archers came to the camp with a Celt prisoner who was revealed to be some manner of demon who called down upon their heads the fires of hell. Within moments this demon consigned their centurion and his staff to a storm of fire. He brought down the men of the Twenty-third with but a gesture from his empty hand. It was if this Celt had the power of death.
Pulcher might have counted the man mad if it were not for his own experiences on the road only two days prior. That and the condition of the dead visible everywhere he looked. What sort of weapon ripped a man to bloody shreds?
“And you broke, man? The Horses turned from stallions to geldings before this one man?” Pulcher sneered.
“Yes,” Critus said and lowered his head in shame. He was an athletically-built young man, too young to have made his position without the influence of a wealthy family.
“I should have you decimated,” Pulcher said, his lip curled in disgust.
“Yes, centurion,” Critus said, looking up now with a cold fire in his eye. “It is what we deserve, and I—”
“But this Celt has already accomplished that and more!” Pulcher roared, rising from his chair.
“Honored centurion, I request that I be made an example of!” Critus said with defiance.
“I will have no useless displays of sacrifice,” Pulcher said in a softer voice now. “You will bear this dishonor on your back as you pursue this Celt.”
“Sir?”
“My men have force-marched for two days to reach here. They are exhausted. Your centuries, on the other hand, have only suffered from the exercise of running out of sight of your attacker.” Pulcher shot a dark glance around the tent to make certain that none of his officers responded to this unintended jest. He was not seeking to lighten the mood.
“I will—” Critus began.
“You wi
ll do only as I say. You will gather two score of your stoutest men. Tough bastards, you hear me? You will need runners, marathon runners if possible, do you understand me? Take only what you need. Weapons and water, but no armor. Track down this mystery Celt and all who are with him.”
Critus nodded.
“You find and follow the trail left by these rebels you will leave signs. Once my men have fed and rested, we will seek you out in force and engage this enemy. I don’t care if they are devils or if they are men, I will have their heads. Do you understand and obey?”
“To the last of my blood,” Critus said between clenched teeth.
“Then go. Leave strips of cloth as you run. We will follow with the combined force of four centuries.”
Critus thumped his chest with his right fist and departed the tent.
“Further orders, sir?” Gaius asked. Pulcher turned to regard them with a baleful eye. The second optio and the aquilifer snapped to attention.
“Have the men of the Twenty-third set to bury their dead. Our men are to stand down until the sun reaches the third quarter. We will then set out to pursue the Lucani optio and his heroes in search of these creatures who plague us.” The centurion sat down in his chair, overcome by a deeper weariness than he had ever known.
“We will seek ribbons of cloth, sir? Like a children’s game?” Gaius grinned.
“From our recent experience, we know we will more likely follow a trail of the dead to our quarry,” Pulcher said and held out a cup for his second optio to freshen with wine.
39
Under the Gaze of God
The Prussian guns started again before dawn. The shells flew from the mouths of the cannons to drop across the rooftops of the city like the tread of an angry giant. Mostly they spent themselves punching hollows in the cobbles of empty streets or shattering trees in the bands of fallow gardens that ran down the centers of the more fashionable boulevards. A few plummeted through rooftops and smashed through floorboards to find victims hidden deep in the hearts of houses. A two-hundred-pound bomb from a mortar detonated in the basement in Les Halles reduced a family of eight, including five children, their servants, and a visiting friend to vapor. The house remained standing by some miracle. The only visible damage was a hole drilled from top to bottom in its structure and cellar walls encrusted with an inches-thick layer of papier peint of clotted tissue, bone and clothing.
In the house of Mme. Villeneuve, all was quiet but for the intrusion of the manmade thunderclaps coming through the bricks and plaster. Sometimes the quakes from the shelling seemed to be closing in on the house like a fist, only to recede into the distance bringing its deadly rain upon some other helpless souls.
The madame grieved as though her son had died in the mad assault of the day before. She mourned for the loss of his youthful spirit, which she knew would be crushed by the sights he witnessed the day before.
Jeannot’s hand would heal, with only a scar and a story to recall its source. His real wound would be invisible; the dual shame of being a murderer and a coward. The young man was motivated by the peculiar brand of patriotism that only the French knew. It drove him to join the others in the forlorn and mad attack.
The horrors of reality sent his brashness flying, and he ran and hid and then killed, not in defense of his homeland, but only to save his own life. He struck at the enemy, not as a blow against those who had the gall to invade his beloved land, but in a frenzied, animal desire to survive.
His mother knew him as any loving mother knows her only son. He had a sensitive soul, unlike his father, who never saw beauty or humor or wonder in anything. It was this same spirit that pulled him along with the rising tide of his fellows on their romantic crusade to lift the ring of fire from the city. The same frail spirit that wilted before the world of carnage he entered.
Time.
Time would bring him from his brooding funk, and she would be there to see him through it. Oh, her boy would make it through, of that she was sure. He would no longer be the passionate, garrulous youth he had been. Those days were gone. That boy was gone. He would now be like so many other Frenchmen from so many other struggles: fatalistic, cynical and bitter. But he was alive, and that was all she cared about. She would see him through these days unless a German bomb erased them all in the next instant.
She sat at the dining room table playing piquet with Caroline Rivard. It was Claude who suggested that they not play at the card table in the drawing room as that room faced the street and was vulnerable to debris thrown by the shells falling without. The formal dining room was at the stout heart of the house, protected by the surrounding rooms.
Her provincial guest picked up the thirty-two-card game quickly and was playing well after only a few hands. They talked of trifles, the child asleep in a wheeled bassinet in the corner. The conversation and brisk play kept Mme. Villeneuve’s mind from the tremors that shook the house from time to time, as well as the suffering of her son still asleep in his room above. She was grateful for this unexpected company. Without Caroline’s companionship, she might have grown despondent and even been tempted to indulge further in wine fortified with laudanum. And what aid might she have been to her son then?
Caroline won the last trick on the last hand of this deal and wound up with the high score surpassing her host’s cumulative score for the first time.
“You are remarkably skilled for a beginner,” Mme. Villeneuve said and gathered the cards to shuffle them for a new hand.
“My brother won’t play any games with me anymore. He thinks I cheat,” Caroline said.
“Difficult to cheat in a game you have only become familiar with this afternoon. You have siblings?”
“Only one. An older brother. He’s a watchmaker in Ottawa.”
Mme. Villenueve caught the suggestion of a smile at the corner of Caroline’s mouth. This young woman had more than a few secrets.
“Have we eggs, Mother?”
It was Jeannot, standing in the archway to the foyer. He was dressed in a clean shirt and trousers and brocaded robe. He needed a shave, and his eyes were red-rimmed, with drooping lids as a result of the heavy dose he’d imbibed the night before. Mme. Villeneuve saw only the tousled-haired boy, bright-eyed and smiling, who had greeted her each morning during his earliest school years.
“We have not, my dear. But Anatole tells me he still has bacon, flour, and butter. I’m certain he can make you something to satisfy you,” his mother said. “I am pleased to see you have an appetite.”
“Famished. Good morning, Madame Rivard,” Jeannot said with a bow of his head.
“Afternoon, I’m afraid.” She smiled and nodded her head in return.
“Is it?” he said in an absent tone and left them for the kitchen.
Mme. Villeneuve riffled the cards together, allowed her guest to cut, and then expertly dealt the cards by twos to each of them for the start of play. She won the next two deals with scores that placed her well ahead of her opponent to take the game. The baby stirred, then cooed in his bassinet. The widow made her apologies and left Mme. Rivard alone to feed her waking child while she repaired to the kitchen to watch her own son devour one of Anatole’s creations made from the shrinking stock in their larder. Jeannot ate with relish, and she was pleased.
That evening, by the light of an oil lamp, because the gas lines had been cut by Prussians weeks ago, Mme. Villeneuve sat for the first time that week to record the events of the past three days in her journal. She wrote of her concerns for her son, the anxieties of living in a city under siege and meeting Caroline Rivard and her infant Stephen and taking them into her home at 33 Avenue Bosquet.
By penning those words, she invited into her home guests most unwelcome. The musings of the widow called down upon her house a terror from out of time.
The search program was named for Visvamitra, a Hindi demigod born of the thoughts of the god Brahma.
Visvamitra was a seer, a prophet of future events, so exacting in his predictions that
his words of truth were feared by kings and commoner alike. The program attempted to live up to the mythology of its namesake for preciseness and exhaustiveness. It was powered by a vast global network of servers belonging to various embodiments of Sir Neal Harnesh’s numberless holdings.
Its only task, and the purpose for which it was created, was to monitor Harnesh’s enormous personal library of handwritten texts. It was not a security system. It was something far more complex than that. Visvamitra actually watched the physical copies of the texts in the library. Each and every page was scanned on a regular rotation to alert Sir Neal to any changes made to the pages themselves.
The nature of anomalies in time was not a constant as theoreticians would have us believe. The Butterfly Effect was, so to speak, not in effect in the main. So many alterations in the timeline were localized in nature. Though untold millions of copies of Les Misérables, to choose an example, were in print in hundreds of languages, none of these copies would be altered in the slightest if, by chance, M. Hugo was caused to spill ink upon a page of his manuscript while at the task of writing his novel and be forced to rewrite a few passages using slightly different wording than he intended. Those changes, those rewrites, would not be reflected in any modern print version of his classic. Only by reading the actual written page would one observe that change.
And so, by theft and purchase and other means, Sir Neal collected the world’s most extensive collection of manuscripts that had only one thing in common: they were the very first iterations of their forms written in the hand of their creators, and they were all non-fiction in nature. Histories, essays, biographies, treatises, and papers written by some of the most famous, and, in the majority, the most obscure, authors from the dawn of written language until the beginning of the twentieth century. There were journals and diaries penned by everyone from the most famous personalities in history to the least known and common. From the personal memoir of a certain Egyptian queen to the daily journal of a certain Mme. Villeneuve of Paris.
