tolerantly, you could almost say mercifully…. Never
mind fancy excuses. Magnanimous or monstrous, what he did in my history was establish the Regno, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and it outlived his dynasty and nation, in one form or another it lasted till the nineteenth century, when it became the core of the new Italian state, with everything that that was to mean to the world. I am at a pivotal point in time … But I’m glad I didn’t need to meet him before he’d crossed the mountains. I wouldn’t have slept well after watching him at work in Campania.
As ever on the verge of combat, Everard lost dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t know fear; he merely grew too busy for it. Sight turned knife-edge keen, he heard each least sound through the racket as though it breathed alone at dead of night, every sense drew taut, but the slugging of his heart and the stench of his sweat faded from an awareness grown almost mathematical.
“We’ll start in a minute,” he said low. The medallion under his armor, against his chest, picked up the Temporal and transmitted it aloft. Leaving it on continuously would soon exhaust the energy cell, but this day’s business wasn’t going to take long, whichever way it went. “Do you have Lorenzo in your optical?”
“Two of us do,” vibrated through a bone-transference module built into the crystal structure of his helmet.
“Keep locked onto him. I’ll want to know exactly where he is as we approach each other. Somebody warn me about anybody else, of course.”
“Of course. Good hunting, sir.”
Unspoken: May it indeed be good. May we save Roger the elder and the younger, and recall to reality all our loves and loyalties.
Folks. Friends. Country. Career. Sure. But not Wanda.
Duke Roger drew sword. The blade flared aloft. “Haro!” he shouted, and put spurs to horse.
His followers raised a cry of their own. Hoofs drummed, then thundered, as trot went to canter went to gallop. Lances swayed to the rhythm. The distance narrowed and the shafts came down, horns of a single dragon.
Wanda’s up in that future we mean to kill. She must be; she hasn’t come back. I couldn’t go search for her, none of us Could, our duty’s not to any single human being but to a universe of them. Maybe she died, maybe she got trapped, I’ll never know. When yonder future doesn’t exist, she won’t either. Her bravery and laughter will only be in the twentieth century when she grew up and the far past when she worked, and … I mustn’t go back to see her, ever again. From that last moment in the Ice Age, her world line will reach uptime and come to an end. It won’t unravel into the tracks of single atoms, this isn’t natural death and dissolution, it’s nothingness.
Everard rammed the knowledge into the far back of his mind. He couldn’t afford it. Later, later, when he was alone, he’d let himself grieve, and perhaps weep.
Dust clogged nostrils, stung eyes, blurred vision. He saw Rainulf’s ranks ahead as a blur. Muscles surged, saddle rocked.
“Lorenzo is detaching twenty men on the right,” said the flat voice in his helmet. “They circle around.”
Yes. The knight from Anagni and those few trusty comrades would hit Roger’s force on the left, punch through, cut down the duke, break up the assault as a hurled rock shatters glass. Dismay would fall on the Sicilians rearward. Regrouping, Lorenzo would take the lead in Rainulf’s countercharge, which would bring down the king.
And no time traveler, no human blunder or madness or vaunting ambition brought this about. The fluctuation was in space-time-energy itself, a quantum leap, a senseless randomness. There was nobody on whom to avenge Wanda.
She’s lost anyway. I have to believe that, if we’re to retrieve everybody else.
“Beware, Agent Everard. Your size makes you conspicuous…. A knight has turned from Lorenzo’s band. He seems to be targeting you.”
Damn! While I deal with that pest—
I’ll just have to deal with him fast.
“He is at ten-thirty o’clock from you.”
Everard spied him, horse and lance. “Okay, Blackie, this way, let’s get ’im,” he growled to his mount. The animal answered his knees and plunged ahead. Everard glanced back, waved and shouted at Roger’s riders, couched shaft and braced himself.
This wasn’t a tilting field, where gentlemen in plate rode at each other with a barrier between and intended nothing more than knocking the opposition to the ground. Tournaments like that lay centuries futureward. Here the aim was to kill.
I haven’t spent my lifetime practicing the art. But I’ve picked up enough, and I’ve got the weight and this superb creature under me—Here goes.
His horse veered ever so slightly. The point aimed for his throat shocked against his shield instead and glided off. Everard also missed a lethal strike but caught ring-mail and gave the impact all that was in his shoulders. The Italian went over, lost his right stirrup, fell. Foot caught in the left, he bounced behind his steed.
The encounter had yanked at the attention of those Sicilians who rode near Everard. They saw the enemy detachment on its way. As one, they left the main force and followed the Patrolman. Hoofs crunched over the fallen warrior.
Everard dropped his lance and drew sword. In a mixup at close quarters, he could do things he dared not in the open. He kept going, on into the dust toward the foe.
‘One o’clock,’ said the voice. He directed Blackie and after a moment made out Lorenzo’s pennon.
He ought to know it. He’d eaten that man’s salt, flown his falcons, chased his deer, he’d yarned and sung, laughed and gotten drunk, gone to church and gone to festival with Lorenzo, heard out his dreams, pretended to tell his own, day after day and night after night, a year in the future of this meeting. Lorenzo shed tears when they parted and called him brother.
The knights met.
Men hewed and battered, horses pushed and reared. Men yelled, horses screamed. Iron crashed and rattled. Blood welled and spouted. Bodies went to earth, threshed for a moment, got trampled to red mush and splinters of bone. The melee churned about in dust as thick as smoke. Everard crammed on through it. The watchers above warned him of danger on either side, in time for him to raise shield or parry with blade. Then he’d be past, deeper into the violence.
Lorenzo was before him. The young man had likewise abandoned his lance. He swept sword right and left. Blood drops whirled off the steel. “On, on!” he cried through the din. “St. George for Rainulf—for the Holy Father—”
He saw Everard loom out of clouds and chaos. He didn’t know the giant, of course, he’d never met him, but he grinned gamely and urged his mount around to meet this challenger.
Sportsmanship be damned. Everard pointed his weapon and squeezed in a finger-by-finger sequence. Invisibly, a stun beam sprang. Lorenzo’s jaw dropped. The sword left his grasp. He sagged forward.
Somehow he didn’t fall from the saddle. He sprawled along the neck of his horse, which whinnied and skittered aside. Were the rider’s reflexes so good as to keep him there, even unconscious? In that case, he’d soon wake up, none the worse. He’d guess somebody had dealt him a blow from behind, hard enough to knock him out through the mail and quilting on his neck.
Everard hoped so.
No time for sentiment. “C’mon, Blackie, let’s get our ass out of here. Also the rest of us.” The tongue that croaked it was dry as a block of wood.
The fight was breaking up anyhow. It had been a minor skirmish, unnoticed by most of Duke Roger’s and Rainulf’s troops. The Sicilians boomed onward, struck the enemy, scattered him, clove a path through the middle of his host.