He lifted an arm. A serving youth appeared. Hu gave instructions. “I shall see you tomorrow, Malcolm,” he said, and walked off. His robe flamed about him.
Lockridge hardly noticed by what ways he was taken. In the end, a door opened. He trod through, to find a small room with another door opposite and a bed on which Auri lay. The shift she wore was quite pretty, and she had not grown thin (the local biomeds knew how to keep a specimen in good shape), but she moaned in her sleep.
With a hand that wavered, he inserted his diaglossa for her time and stroked a soft cheek. Her eyes blinked. “Lynx,” she mumbled; and then, coming bolt awake: “Lynx!”
He sat down and held her close while she laughed and wept and shuddered in his arms. The words torrented from her, “Oh, Lynx, Lynx, I thought you must be dead, take me away, take me home, anything, this is where the wicked dead must go, no, I was not beaten, but they keep people like animals, they breed them, and everybody hates everybody else, always they whisper, why do they want to own the others, every one of them does, she can’t be the Goddess, she mustn’t be—”
“She isn’t,” he said. “I came here through her land, I saw her people, and I know. Yes, Auri, we will go home.” The inner door opened. He turned his head and saw the Lady Yuria. Blonde tresses did not quite hide the thing in her ear nor did her nightcloak mask how stiffly she stood. “I almost wish you had never admitted that, Malcolm,” she said.
18
l827 B.C.
Lockridge crossed the auroral curtain. “When are we?”
Hu checked the calendar clock. “Later than I desired,” he said. “The end of August.”
So Avildaro has lived a fourth of a year since we broke Brann and the Yuthoaz, Lockridge thought. Auri, about as long. Me, a few days, though each one passed like a century. What’s Storm done here, this whole summer?
“The uncertainty factor is what makes transtemporal liaison so difficult,” Hu complained. He half turned back to the gate. “We might try again.” The four soldiers who accompanied them showed alarm. One man actually started to protest. Hu changed his mind. “No. That sort of thing can entangle you in the grisliest paradoxes, if you’re unlucky. I did get some couriers back and forth during the past several weeks. At last report, everything was still going smoothly, and that was little more than a local month ago.”
He started up the ramp. His men fell in around Lockridge and Auri. The girl clutched the American’s hand and breathed, “Are we truly home?”
“You are,” he said.
In an abstract way, he wondered why no garrison of Wardens was maintained at a gate which had become as important as this one. Well, he decided, she’s got a variety of reasons, includin’ the fact that she needs to keep as many loyal men as possible in her own era. But mainly, I reckon she doesn’t want to chance givin’ the show away, in case some Ranger scout reconnoitres this far.
They emerged. The sun stood noon high over a forest rich and vivid at season’s climax. A herd of roe deer, cropping the meadow, bolted and flushed a thousand partridge. Auri stood for a moment with glory in her face, raised her arms to the sky and shook back an unbound mane. Before they left, she had changed to the brief garb of her people. Lockridge noticed how startlingly her body had matured while he was gone.
He wished he’d had the nerve to ask for kilt, cloak, and necklace, instead of the green uniform given him.
“And we are free again, Lynx.” Abruptly the girl must leap and shout for joy.
You are. Maybe. I hope, he thought. Me? I don’t know.
They had not mistreated him, during those two days he was held in the palace before being taken here. He could stroll about as he liked, with a single guard. They asked him, quite courteously, to make his report under a drug which inhibited lying; and he had done so, spilled the whole beanpot, because the alternative could be a mind machine. Afterward Yuria had held lengthy discussions with him, not the least ill-tempered. Her position was that, imprimis, his background did not equip him to understand a totally different civilization; secundus, what he had seen was not a fair sample; tertius, tragedy must be integral to any human life which was to realise its full nobility; quartus, granted, abuses did occur, but they were correctable, and under a wiser government they would be.
He’d said nothing to that, nor accepted the favours she offered. She was too alien to him. They all were.
Hu spoke an order. The party rose and aimed for the Limfjord.
This day I’ll see Storm again, Lockridge thought. His heart slammed. He couldn’t tell how much was fear and how much—well—herself.
Nevertheless, she would judge him. No one else dared. Not only was he a chosen of hers, but he had that enigmatic word from her future.
The woods fell behind. Brilliance danced on the bay, where Avildaro stood under its holy grove. Some fisher boats were out, and women at their work between the cabins. But camped to the north and spilling eastward—
Auri screamed. Lockridge ripped out an oath.
“The Yuthoaz! Lynx, what has happened?”
“By God, Warden, start explaining” Lockridge choked.
“Be easy,” Hu called over his shoulder. “This was planned. Everything is going well.”
Lockridge slitted his eyes and counted. The Battle Axe people were no horde. He saw a dozen or so chariots, parked outside the tepees of their chieftainly owners. The men, gathering excited to stare at the flyer band, numbered little over a hundred. Others might be out hunting or whatever, but surely not many.
They had brought their women, though. No Orugaray female wore coarse wool sweaters and skirts. Small children scrambled among them. Older ones tended herds of cattle, sheep, horse, a wealth of livestock grazing miles over the range. Turf sheds were being erected.
The enemy had returned to stay.
Storm, Storm, why?
Hu brought them down at the Long House. View of the encampment was cut off by the huts clustered around. The open area before the doorway was deserted; no villager stirred in what had once been the jostling, haggling, laughing centre of the community. Voices from afar hardly touched this sunlit silence.
The house itself was changed. Garlands used to hang over the lintel, oakleaf in summer and holly in winter. Now an emblem shone in gold and silver, the Labrys across the Sun Disc. Two warriors stood proud guard, leather armoured, plumed and painted, spear, dagger, bow, and tomahawk to hand. They gave the newcomers a Warden salute.
“Is She within?” asked Hu.
“Yes, my master,” said the older of the Yuthoaz, a stocky forkbearded redhead. The wolf was painted on his shield. Tarred, Lockridge knew Withucar again. His broken arm had knitted. “She makes Her magic behind the blackness.”
“Keep this man here for Her summons.” Hu went inside. The skin curtain flapped to behind him.
Auri covered her face and sobbed. Lockridge stroked the bright locks. “You need not stay,” he murmured. “Go seek your kinfolk.”
“If they live.”
“They must. There was no second fight. The Storm brought back the strangers for some purpose of her own. Go on, now, home.”
Auri started to leave. A soldier grabbed for her. Lockridge slapped down the man’s hand. “You have no orders to detain her,” he barked. The soldier stepped back with fright on his countenance. Auri vanished among the huts.
Withucar had watched the interchange with more amusement than his awed companion. His face cracked in a grin. “But you are him who got away from us!” he bawled. “Well, well!”
He leaned his spear and came over to pummel Lockridge’s back. “That was a warrior deed,” he said with quite genuine warmth. “Ha, how you tumbled us about, and for the sake of one little girl! What fortune had you since? We’ve become your friends, you know, and I’ve seen the gods so close these past weeks that I grow jaded and think you used no wizardry, only tricks I’d be most glad to learn. Welcome, you!”