“Not in the middle,” said Rigg. “At the edge. Far back from the edge. Out of danger. Nobody was dying right here, for instance.”
“You can see death?” asked Umbo.
“No,” said Param. “Rigg already explained—if you had come with us you’d know. He just sees where paths end.”
“There were people watching the battle,” said Rigg. “Just a few. Umbo can send me back to their time—”
“Send us,” said Loaf.
“You’ll scare them,” said Param.
“I’ll smile very nicely,” said Loaf, demonstrating his best battlefield grimace.
“Oh, don’t do that,” said Olivenko. “You’d scare your own mother.”
“I need to ask them what’s happening,” said Rigg. “That’s all. I hope Vadesh was right when he said the Wall contains all languages.”
“If you can’t understand them,” said Umbo, “just signal me and I’ll bring you all back.”
“All who?” asked Param.
Loaf and Olivenko looked at her stupidly. “Us,” they said in unison.
“I’m going too,” said Param.
“Too dangerous,” said Loaf.
“As if anything we’re doing is safe,” said Param. “One of you needs to stay here with Umbo, somebody who can protect him.”
Loaf turned to Param. “You really want to see a battle? War is messy.”
“And you’re afraid I can’t deal with bodies torn apart and people screaming in agony?” asked Param.
“If you can avoid it, you should,” said Loaf.
“My mother nearly protected me to death,” said Param. “I’m done with that. I’m not strong enough to wield a sword or cut down a tree or lift a corner of a coach, like some of you. But I have eyes and ears and I want to be part of this. Directly.”
It never occurred to any of them that maybe Umbo himself would like to see the past. No, he was the anchor, he was the one who couldn’t go. “I’ll send you all,” said Umbo. “Stop arguing and hang on to each other. Rigg, tell me when you’ve picked your path.”
Olivenko rounded on Umbo. “Don’t you even care what happens to Param?”
Umbo tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “Wanting to get on with it is not the same thing as not caring. She wants to go. Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because it’s dangerous,” said Olivenko. “Because members of the royal family get no special protection against death.”
“Special protection is exactly what you’re trying to give me,” said Param.
Umbo pointed out the obvious. “If anybody can take care of herself, it’s Param.”
Then Rigg spoke, much more softly than any of the others, and yet somehow his voice made them all fall silent. How does he do that? thought Umbo.
“The thing that worries me,” said Rigg, “is that if Param starts slicing time, back there ten thousand years in the past, and disappears, how can you bring her back?”
Rigg must think we’re all stupid. “I have a really special plan to keep that from happening,” said Umbo. “Watch this.” He turned to Param and spoke very solemnly. “Param, when you’re back in the past: Don’t. Slice. Time.”
She answered in the same spirit of mock soberness. “What an excellent idea. But what if it gets really dangerous, Umbo? What if I can’t help it and I just start chopping time into little bits?”
“Well, you simply mustn’t,” said Umbo. “If things get scary, you just signal me the way Rigg does. Do you think you can do that same hand motion he does? Do your hands work like that, or do you need Rigg to show you?”
Rigg flushed with embarrassment; he wasn’t used to people mocking him.
“Stop that,” said Loaf angrily.
“Why is Umbo the only one who sees that I have as much ordinary common sense as anybody?” said Param. “Come on, Rigg, pick your path and let’s get cracking.”
“What’s the rush?” murmured Olivenko. “It’s not as if the past is going anywhere.”
“The present is,” said Umbo. What if Vadesh came out and stopped them?
Rigg still looked embarrassed—or was he angry? But he made no complaint. “I’ve got the path I want,” said Rigg. “Push us back, Umbo.”
They were all holding on to each other, the way Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko had held on to Barbfeather when they went through the Wall. And, just like that time, Umbo felt a great lurch as his push into the past swept out quickly like the current of a river, carrying them much farther into the past than Umbo could have sent them on his own. It was Rigg’s ability to hook on to someone in the past that drew them, as much as Umbo’s pushing. And it was so far that they went, ten thousand years, almost as far as the whole history of the human race on Garden.
They did not disappear, of course—Umbo could see them as well as ever. But they all stumbled because the ground must have been lower then; perhaps the thatch of the grass had not built up so high. They fell a bit, then rose up and their eyes were riveted on the grassy field in front of the city, where apparently there was a war going on. As usual, Umbo saw none of it. But when Rigg reached out and touched someone there in the past, Umbo saw a glimpse of clothing, a brief outline of a person. Rigg let go almost at once and the image disappeared.
CHAPTER 4
Battle
In all her life, Param had never been in the presence of more than about fifty people at a time. Even that was unusual, and she had preferred to avoid large dinners or recitals or whatever was being put on in Mother’s honor. And while social events could be full of vicious infighting, it was done with words, looks, and gestures. Nothing had prepared her for war.
She had imagined war, of course—that was what most of history was about, the Sessamoto lords-in-the-tent leading their marauders on devastating raids against whatever village or town looked least protected, and then as kings-in-the-tent forcing the other tribes of the northeast to unite under their rule. Finally the King-in-the-Tent had conquered every nation of the Stashi Plain and subdued every freehold and every wild tribe of the woodlands and every fishing village of the coasts and through all of her study of that history, Param had pictured it all like a combination of the game of queens and the game of clay-casting, with the clay balls alternately knocking over pawns and queens, and dashing to pieces against them.
She had an intellectual knowledge that war was bloody. King Algar One-eye was an obvious example, and General Potonokissu had worn a wooden leg when he walked, though never when he rode. They had been maimed in battle, and if such things could happen to the rulers of armies, Param could only imagine what happened to the ordinary soldiers.
But when all but Umbo joined hands and suddenly dropped into the past, Param was almost overwhelmed by the noise of it. She could hear yelling: fierce cries of warriors, shouted commands from officers, screams of wounded men. And there was a smell of burning meat that almost gagged her, mixed as it was with the other stinks of the battlefield.
Her reflex was to sliver time so she could disappear. She relied on this ability to retreat from anything that frightened her. But she caught herself, realizing that Rigg had not been wrong after all when he worried about her disappearing in the past.
She knelt up and saw that Rigg, who was more used to sudden shifts of time, was already standing up and striding toward three adult women who were watching the battle. Rigg would speak to them; Param had no desire to. The women looked careworn and grief-stricken. They stood near a stockade that surrounded the city and sheltered their party from the view of the soldiers where the battle was being waged.
The stockade looked as if it had been hastily thrown up in a day, braced from behind here and there. She wondered how well it would hold up against a determined enemy. It had been clumsily built; through gaps between the poles it was possible to see the battle.
But Param did not want to see the battle. She had thought that was what she was coming to see, but now that she was here, it was the city that fascinated her, because it was only half built. Only the lower buildings existed, and instead of the uniform black of the towers in Param’s own time, these had been brightly painted, though many were faded and weathered. Yet the colors seemed vivid on this sunny day; it was as if the city had been decorated for a festival.