Barba dropped to one knee by a dark stain on the earth, brushing his waist-length beard to one side, and growled, “It’s blood, all right, and an unhealthy lot of it. But no body.” He stood and looked all round. “Everyone, look for tracks leading away, and call out if you see any. Naldo isn’t small, so it can’t possibly carry him off without a trace.”
Nobody called out.
“Shit! Where did it go?” Cei said.
Barba leaned against the trunk of a tree, bowing his head, and muttering a few words commending Naldo to the intercession of his gods. Something hit the sleeve of his jerkin. He looked at it and frowned. “Blood,” he murmured. He looked up into the tree, and saw it: dark, wet stains on the branches.
“It went up!” he shouted. He realised then that leaves high in the trees just a few dozen paces off to the north were whispering, yet there was no wind. “It’s in the trees! Going north!”
The half dozen men with bows were already notching arrows to strings. The whole troop turned north and started running, looking up into the leafy canopy above, whooping and shouting to each other. Barba let them run for a minute, then let loose a piercing whistle.
“Let it go, lads. It’s faster and it knows where it’s going. If we go on, it’ll pick us off one by one. Back to camp! Let’s get out of here.” His men drifted back to him. “March order, keep closed up, watch each other’s backs.”
Bix fell into step beside him. “This is bad, boss. The lads want to catch it. This thing needs to be ended, and the boys are gutted that we’re turning tail.”
“I know, old friend. But we need help to do it. A couple of regiments, I’d say. We need to seal off its escape routes, and pin it back. We won’t do it with a double handful of scouts, no matter how good we are at what we do.”
“But—”
“We set out with thirty-two men, Bix. The best in the whole damned province. Maybe the whole empire. There are twenty-three of us today. It took out nine of my men, and we haven’t so much as set eyes on the fucker. We haven’t come close. We don’t even know what it is!”
“Fucking flying invisible man-eating squirrel?”
Barba snorted. “That’s good. We’ll be back to gut this magical squirrel. Make sure the lads all know. We’ll be back, with more men, and better intelligence.” He scratched his beard pensively. “I’ll tell you what else, Bix. When we get back to the Batavians, we’re going to find us a wise man.”
Bix stopped dead, a look of shock on his face. “A wise man? Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Probably. Depends what you think I mean.”
“You know what the Romans think of fucking Druids, you stupid hairy bastard! Do you want to get us all fucking crucified?”
Barba chuckled. “Well, my bald little friend, we’d better make sure the Romans don’t find out, hadn’t we?”
The column of warriors vanished in a swirl of fog, under the watchful eyes of something in the trees behind them.
Chapter 3
The big man lying on the ground suddenly blinked awake. He instantly knew something was wrong, because the noise of battle had faded into silence and the sharp sulphurous smell of burnt powder had disappeared. Strange.
He sat up, and was surprised to find that his wounds no longer ached. He looked around himself, confused, but could see nothing but the white smoke of gunnery and the fog. The damned fog, that had delayed the army of the Protestant Union and gave the Imperials and the Catholic League time to entrench along the Leipzig road.
He poked a finger into a hole in the left sleeve of his moose hide coat. It sank in and he felt warm, wet blood and broken bones, but no pain. When he pulled the finger back out, it was clean and dry. Strange, again. He wondered if he was dead.
“Leather has its deficiencies when employed as armour,” said a soft voice.
Startled, he looked up and saw a tall, thin, grey-haired man with a surprisingly large dog.
“A Polish trooper put a ball in my shoulder, so I can’t wear plate—” He stopped abruptly. “That is not important. Tell me, am I dead? What is this place?”
The older man smiled. “The answers are, ‘Not yet,’ and, ‘We stand – well, to be accurate, I stand and you lie – on the battlefield of Lutzen.’”
“Then where has the battle gone?”
“It remains all around us.”
“Cease your riddles, man, and tell me plainly, what has happened!”
The older man looked thoughtful, as if trying to find a good way to explain. “Think of it like this… Time is a river, ever flowing by, and you and I have stepped away to stand on the bank for a few moments.”
“What?”
“Or perhaps… Yes, this will work: consider that we occupy the space between the tick and the tock of the universe’s clock.”
“Are you saying that you have stopped time? That cannot be possible! If that were possible, we would all be doing it!”
“No, I am saying that we are taking a brief sojourn outside of time as—” He waved a hand. “As everyone else is experiencing it.”
“You make my brain hurt!”
“On the contrary, my lord, while you tarry with me outside time, you feel no pain. Your brain does not hurt in the slightest. Neither does your arm, your chest, or your back, which have all suffered grievous wounds.” He shook his head, as if amazed. “Leading a cavalry charge yourself, if I may say so, is a little self-indulgent when your army needs leadership more than it needs heroics.”
The wounded man rose to his feet and looked all round. “My right wing was in peril of collapse. My judgement was that this was a moment for heroics! If the men see their king slinking away, their hope would slink away with him!” He peered into the fog. “How do they fare? Are we destined to be defeated? Or the reverse?”
“You were wise to make Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar your second. He will conceal your death from the bulk of the army, lest they lose heart and, as you put it a moment ago, slink away. Bernhard will stand firm. It will be a very sanguinary affair, but he will overrun the Imperial artillery at dusk, and then it will be Wallenstein who slinks away, to Leipzig.”
“Excellent! But wait… I am doomed to die, then? So, what are we doing here? Is this God’s antechamber?”
“We are all doomed to die, my lord, sooner or later. We are here because I am minded to offer you a new position.”
The wounded man drew himself to his full height, and with all the dignity at his command, he said, “I do not want for position, sir. I already have all the position any God-fearing man could want.”
“For the next second or two,” the old man replied. “A god-fearing Catholic dragoon stands poised in the act of blowing your brains out. This is the day and the hour of your death.”
The wounded man sat down heavily. “So, I am reduced to choosing your position, am I, or dying on this battlefield?”
“Yes,” was the blunt reply. “In two hours’ time, your men will find your dead body, stripped of your fine moose hide jacket and leggings by the enemy. The only question remaining is, will it be your body, or will it merely be identified as your body?”
“Who are you? Who are you to be able to be able to offer me life or death? Are you some emissary of the Almighty?”
The dog and the old man exchanged a look that the wounded man could not interpret.
“A magician, then.”
The old man smiled. “The cataphracts of my youth would be amazed by your artillery. They would, I am sure, immediately think of magic as the obvious explanation for your ability to hurl cast iron balls such an unnatural distance.”