He blinked a few times, remembering how life with Sarah had gone much the same way-and how that had ended.
He lay quietly in the darkness listening to Margo's steady, even breaths in the next room and tried to keep fear at bay by planning out the next phase of her training.
He wasn't terribly successful at either.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kynan Rhys Gower was trapped in hell.
Everyone here who could actually talk to him said otherwise, of course, but Kynan knew it was hell nonetheless, even if it didn't resemble anything the priests had ever described. The closest thing to a priest here, a man called "Buddy," had told him he could never escape-not to his home or even back to the accursed battle against the witch woman fighting on the side of the upstart French.
It hurt him, gnawed at him, that he was cut off forever from everything and everyone he knew and loved. A king whose laws forbade it, Kynan might have understood. But he could not understand why, if this infernal land's diabolical passageways that opened out of thin air could be made to open with the regularity of the rising and setting sun, why could the wizard or demon or hell-spawned sprite who controlled them not reopen the one passageway that would lead him home? Yet Buddy had told Kynan he would never again see the dark hills of Wales or the laughter in his son's eyes ....
At least a hundred times every day, as he struggled to understand devilish things beyond his comprehension, Kynan was tempted to do violence to something. But they'd taken away his weapons. Without them, he was less than a man. Less, even, than the commonest Welsh farm girl, who at least carried a small knife for chores.
Kynan swallowed his pain, his confusion, swallowed the demeaning status in which he found himself-a virtual slave in Satan's dominions-and worked hard to earn the scant coins he needed to pay for his tiny sleeping room and the meals of rice and strange vegetables which kept him alive. He missed meat desperately but was unable to afford it on what he earned
Several times a day, his hatred of the strange, demon birds which lived here-birds with teeth in their bills -deepened as he watched them eat colorful fish he was forbidden to take for his own meals. If he hadn't been terrified of incurring the king's wrath for killing one of the protected birds, he'd have killed and eaten one of them.
So he carried baggage for rich people whose behavior he could scarcely comprehend and whose Language he could comprehend not at all, found a second job sweeping floors in the bewildering place in which he was trapped, and quietly hugged his misery and terror and bitterness to himself. Every time he saw the grinning jackanapes who'd first told him what had happened to him, who had laughed at him while four strong men held him down...
Every time he saw the man called Kit Carson, Kynan wished to do more than violence. He wished to do murder.
But he'd watched that man practice mock fighting in the huge, lighted hall called "gym." He was a cunning, strong warrior as well as a knave. If Kynan wished to purge the stain of disgrace from his honor, it would have to come through sudden, unexpected attack. Kynan once would have sneered at any man who planned such a treacherous approach to an affair of honor, would have rightly called him blackguard. But Kynan was no longer in a land which made sense. He was in hell.
In hell, a man could be forgiven much.
So he pushed his hated broom down the hated floor, sweeping up the hated trash while trying to avoid running into hated, arrogant "tourists" and gradually filled his wheeled trash bin with little bits of refuse. Later he would have to open station trash bins along the "Commons" and empty them as we carrying the "plastic" sacks inside down to the "incinerator" and "recycling center." Even the alien, English words that somehow weren't really English made his head ache. Kynan had never spoken much English commander had translated battlefield commands -- but the so-called English spoken here ...
Even words he thought he knew made little or no sense.
He pushed his broom and wheeled cart into the area of "Commons" called "Victoria Station"-named, someone said, for a Queen of England, who had brazenly ruled in her own name despite a perfectly eligible husband who could have sat the throne in her stead, and filled another tray with dust and trash, emptying it into his bin. A spate of laughter made him grit his teeth. They weren't laughing at him, but Kynan was so lost in despair, he could scarcely endure the sound of another person's joy. It only reminded him how cruelly alone he was.
He glanced up, drawn against his will to look. A group of men in strange, long-coated suits and pretty, sweet-faced women in even stranger dresses were playing an odd game, setting out little wire hoops with weighted feet, standing up two wooden sticks painted with bright bands of color, arguing which of them would claim wooden balls banded with a matching stripe of color.
A pang ran through, him. He wondered what his wife and son might be doing now. Wondered if the village men would teach the boy to use longbow and maul-or if the French would even leave enough men alive to return to the village. What would become of his family? A sickness wrought of empty, helpless longing threatened him again, as it did many, many times each day.
Kynan straightened his back against it. He was a Welshman, a veteran soldier. He might be lost, abandoned by God and saints alike, but he would not give Satan the satisfaction of watching him buckle under the weight of fear and loss which hourly were heaped on him. Kynan watched the game players dully, wondering what these particular demons were doing.
Then he noticed the mallets.
Made of wood and banded like the balls, they were smaller than the battle mauls he was accustomed to carrying, but they were hefty wooden mallets, nonetheless. Kynan watched with mounting interest as the players began a baffling game which involved hitting the wooden balls through the wire hoops. None of them knew the first thing about using a mallet, but clearly, despite a smallish size, they would prove formidable weapons in the hands of a trained soldier. Now if he only had a proper mallet like that ...
He counted the number of players: five. Then he spotted a wooden cart on which a sixth ball and mallet rested, forgotten. None of the players paid it the slightest attention. Perhaps God had not entirely abandoned him after all? If I cannot escape hell, he thought, staring intently at that mallet, perhaps I will at least be permitted a way to restore my honor. He maneuvered his trash cart around the players, sweeping up dust and bits of paper as he went, pausing to clean up the occasional splatter of bird shit, and worked his way around to the abandoned mallet. None of the players or spectators-many of whom carried odd sticks with tautly stretched shades to protect their heads from non-existent sunshine-paid him the slightest attention.
Good.
It took half a heartbeat to lift the mallet from its resting place and slip it into his wheeled bin. Only after he had made good his escape did Kynan allow himself a long, shuddering breath. Satan's minions had not noticed the theft. If the Evil One had noticed, either he didn't care or thought it amusing to allow his latest victim a chance at vengeance. Kynan touched the hidden mallet handle with trembling fingertips. At last, he breathed silently, eyes closed, l am a man again. Soon, the knave who had laughed at him would rue the day his betters had failed to teach him manners.
If a man must die in hell, it were best to die with a weapon in hand, striking down an enemy.
Fortunately for Kit's peace of mind, Margo's injuries healed quickly and cleanly. He made certain the leg would hold the strain of a lethal encounter by sparring with her in the gym while Sven evaluated `her performance.