The Corridors of Time (15 page)

‘A Devon man, I be.’ Lockridge could just understand him;
even a Londoner still treated his vowels like a Dutchman, and this fellow added a dialect thick enough to cut. ‘But I were
in Mother Colley’s stew in Southampton when the summons came.’ He smacked his lips. ‘Ah, there were a rare bouncetail trull!
Had I had one hour the longer, not soon ‘ud she forget Ned Brown. But when the medallion spoke, God’s bones, I’ve stood ‘neath
French gunfire and piked Caribals when they howled up the sides of our galleon, yet never ‘ud I dare leave yon summons unheeded.’

‘The, uh, medallion?’

Brown tapped a disc hung about his neck, stamped with the image of the Virgin. Lockridge noticed the same thing on several
other hairy breasts. ‘What, thou wert not gi’en this token? Well, it whispers when they’ve need o’ thee, in such a way that
none may hear save thyself, and tells whither thou must hie.
He
met me there and flitted me to a meeting in the wilds, thence hither I knew not the service numbered this many.’

Mareth stood forth at the cabin door. His voice rose, not loudly, but the turbulence was hushed. ‘Men,’ he said, ‘long have
most of you been in the Fellowship, and no few will remember times when it saved you from dungeon or death. You know you are
enlisted in the cause of white magicians, who by their arts aid the Holy Catholic Faith against paynim and heretic. This night
you are called to redeem your pledge. Far and strangely shall you fare, to battle against wild men while we your masters engage
the wizards they serve. Go you bravely forward, in God’s name, and those who outlive the day shall have rich reward, while
those who fall shall be yet more highly rewarded in Heaven. Kneel, now, and receive absolution.’

Lockridge went through the ritual with a bad taste in his mouth. Was this much cynicism necessary?

Well – to save Storm Darroway. I’ll be seein’ her again, he thought, and the heart fluttered in him.

More hushed and serious than he would have believed possible, the English filed through the cabin door and down the ramp.
In the anteroom, before the curtain of rainbow, they got
their weapons: sword, pike, ax, crossbow. Gunpowder would be useless against the Rangers, needless against the Yuthoaz. But
Mareth beckoned to Lockridge. ‘You had best stay with me, for a guide,’ he said, and laid an energy pistol in the American’s
hand. ‘Here, you come from a sufficiently sophisticated era to operate this. The controls are simple.’

‘I know how,’ Lockridge snapped.

Mareth dropped his hauteur. ‘Yes, she singled you out, did she not?’ he murmured. ‘You are no ordinary man.’

Auri struggled through the press. ‘Lynx,’ she pleaded. The terror was back to gnaw at her. ‘Stay near me.’

‘Have her wait here,’ Mareth ordered.

‘No,’ Lockridge said. ‘She comes along if she wants to.’

Mareth shrugged. ‘Keep her out of the way, then.’

‘I have to be in the forefront,’ Lockridge told her. She shivered between his palms. He must give her a kiss … mustn’t he?

‘Come, lass,’ Jesper Fledelius laid a gorilla arm across her shoulders. ‘Stay near me. We Danes should hang together, amidst
these English louts.’ They slipped off into the crowd.

During the day, Lockridge had helped manhandle several flyers through the gate. They were sheening ovoids, transparent, not
of matter but of forces he did not comprehend. Each could hold twenty. He shoved into the lead one with Mareth. The men already
there breathed heavily, whispered prayers or curses, and flicked their eyes about like trapped animals. ‘Will they not be
too panicky to fight?’ Lockridge wondered in Danish.

‘No, I know them,’ Mareth said. ‘Besides, the initiation ceremonies involve unconscious conditioning. Their fear will turn
to fury.’

The machine rose without sound and started down the cold-white, humming bore. A Warden at every console, the others followed.
‘Since you’ve got this passage,’ Lockridge asked, ‘why didn’t you get still more reinforcements from other periods?’

‘None are available,’ Mareth said. He spoke absently, hands
moving over the control lights, features taut with concentration. ‘The corridor was built chiefly for access to this very
era. Its future end terminates in the eighteenth century, when we have another strong point in India. The Rangers are especially
active in England between the Norman Conquest and the Wars of the Roses, so we have no gates there opening on the Middle Ages
at all – nor many in earlier epochs, when the critical regions, the theaters of major conflict, are elsewhere. In fact, gates
throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age North serve as little more than transfer points. It is largely a fortunate coincidence
that we do have one here with a temporal overlap on the one in Denmark.’

Lockridge wanted to inquire further. But the flyer, remorselessly swift, was already at the year they sought.

Mareth guided it out. He left for a glance at the calendar clock in the locker. ‘Good!’ he said fiercely when he returned.
We were lucky. No need to wait. This is night, with sunrise due soon, and must be quite near the moment when she was captured.’

Force beams had kept the fleet together while they crossed the time threshold. They swept up the entry, which opened for them,
and closed again behind. Mareth set his controls for low flight eastward.

Lockridge stared out. Under the Stone Age moonlight, the Fens lay yet bigger and wilder. But beyond them, on the coast, he
spied fisher villages that might almost have been Avildaro.

That was no accident. Before the North Sea came into being, men had walked from Denmark to England; the Maglemose culture
was one. Afterward their boats crossed the waters, and Her-missionaries came from the South to both lands. The diaglossa in
his left ear told him that if they spoke slowly, the tribes of eastern England and western Jutland could still understand
each other.

Such kinship faded with inland miles. Northern England was dominated by the hunters and axmakers who centered at Langdale
Pike but traded from end to end of the island. The Thames valley had been settled, peacefully enough, by recent
immigrants from across the Channel; and the farmers of the south downs were giving up those grim rites which formerly made
them shunned. That might be due to the influence of a powerful, progressive confederation in the southwest, which had even
started a little tin mining to draw merchants from the civilized lands. Chief among those were the Beaker People, who traveled
in small companies and dealt in bronze and beer. An old era was dying in Denmark, a new one being born in England: this westland
lay nearer to the future. Looking back, Lockridge saw rivers and illimitable forests; as if from a dream, he knew how birds
winged in their millions and elk shook their great horns and men were happy. It came to him with a pang that here was where
he belonged.

No. The sea rolled beneath him. He was bound home to Storm.

Mareth went at a dawdler’s pace, waiting for the sky to lighten. Even so, only a couple of hours had passed when the Limfjord
slipped into view.

‘Stand by!’

The flyers snarled downward. Water flashed steely, dew glittered on the grass and leaves of a young summer suddenly reborn,
Avildaro’s roofs sprang from behind her sacred grove. Lockridge saw that the Battle Ax men were still encamped in the fields
further on. He glimpsed a sentry, wide-eyed by a dying watchfire, shouting men out of their blankets.

Another shimmery vessel whipped up from before the Long House. So Brann had had time to call in his people. Lightnings crackled
under the waning stars, dazzling bright, thunder at their heels.

Mareth rattled a string of commands in an unknown language. A pair of flyers converged on the Rangers’ one. Flame raved, and
that bubble was no longer. Black-clad forms tumbled through the air to spatter horribly on the ground.

‘Down we go,’ Mareth said to Lockridge. ‘They didn’t expect attack, so there aren’t many here. But if they call for help —
We have to take control fast.’

He skimmed the flyer along the bay, struck earth, and made
the force-field vanish. ‘Get out!’ he yelled.

Lockridge was first. The English poured after him. Another flyer landed beside his, Jasper Fledelius led the wave from it.
His sword flared aloft. ‘God and King Kristiern!’ he roared. The other vehicles had descended some ways off, in the meadows
where the Yuthoaz were. They rose again after their men were out. Cool and detached, the Warden pilots oversaw the battle,
spoke commands through the amulets, made each man of theirs a chess piece.

Metal clanged against stone. Lockridge dashed for the hut he recalled. It was empty. With a curse, he whirled and sped to
the Long House.

A dozen Yuthoaz were on guard. Gallant in the face of supernatural dread, they stood fast with axes lifted. Brann trod forth.

His long visage was drawn into a disquieting grin. An energy pistol flashed in his hand. Lockridge’s own gun was set to protect
him. He plunged through the fire geyser and hurled his body at the Ranger. They went over in the dust. Their weapons skittered
free and they sought each other’s throats.

Fledelius’ sword rose and fell. An axman tumbled in blood. Another smote, the Dane countered, his English followers arrived
and combat erupted.

From the corner of an eye, Lockridge glimpsed two more black-clad forms, spouts and crackles where beams played on shields.
He himself had all he could do, fighting Brann. The Ranger was inhumanly strong and skilled. But suddenly he saw who Lockridge
was, face to face. Horror stretched his mouth open. He let go and made a fending motion. Lockridge chopped him in the larynx,
got on top, and banged his head on the earth till he went limp.

Not stopping to wonder what had happened inside that long skull, the American sprang up. Elsewhere, Fledelius and his men
pursued Yutho sentries. The other Rangers lay scorched before Mareth and his Warden companions. Lockridge ignored them. He
burst through the doorway of the Long House.

Gloom filled the interior. He groped forward. ‘Storm,’ he
called shakenly, ‘Storm, are you there?’

Shadow among shadows, she lay bound on a dais. He felt sweat chill on her naked skin, ripped the wires from her head, drew
her to him and sobbed. There was a moment beyond time when she did not move and he thought her dead. Then, ‘You came,’ she
whispered, and kissed him.

Word rang through the forest, the refugees returned home, and joy dwelt in Avildaro.

The feast was not less wild and merry for being a funeral of the slain as well as a triumph. The strangers whose metal weapons
had driven out the Yuthoaz were welcomed into the frolic. They had no comprehensible language, but what did that matter? A
roasting pig spoke to them with its savor, a man with his grin, a woman with herself.

Only the Long House was avoided. For there stayed the green gods who had delivered their people. Meat and drink were brought
to the door, and every adult male vied for the honor of standing by as servant or messenger. On the second noon of celebration,
one sought out Lockridge, where he watched the dancers in a meadow, and said he was summoned.

He left with thumping eagerness. Worry about Storm had prevented him from taking much part in the sport. Now he was told that
She of the Moon commanded his presence.

Sunlight, smells of woodland and smoke and salt water, distant shouts and songs, vanished from his consciousness when he entered
the house. Not yet had the holy fire been rekindled; a promise was given that She would perform that
rite in Her good time. Luminous globes made the interior radiant, rafters and columns stood forth rugged against sooty walls,
the strewn furs glowed as if alive. Seven Wardens on the daises waited for their queen. They didn’t condescend to greet Lockridge.

But all rose when Storm appeared. The rear end of the house was now blocked off, not by a material screen but by a force curtain
which drank down light. She came through it. Next to such blackness she seemed to burn.

Or no … she shone, Lockridge thought dizzily, like that sea which was also the Goddess’. The three days and nights of her
ordeal in the mind machine still marked her, high cheekbones stood sharply forth and the eyes smoldered feverish green. But
she carried herself spear straight, and blue-black hair swept sheening past the tawniness of face and throat. From the gate
of King Frodhi there had been brought her garb befitting her time and station. In blue translucence the robe descended to
the copper belt of power; thence it broadened and rippled to the ankles, darkening toward purple, with argent emblems in-woven
that were at once foam and serpents. A brooch shaped like the Labrys upheld a cloak whose lining was white as a summer cloud
but which outside was gray for thunderheads and mares’-tails. Her shoes were gold sparked with diamond dust. A crescent of
hammered silver crowned her brow.

Mareth accompanied her. He was saying something in the Warden’s language. Storm’s gesture chopped off his words. ‘Speak so
Malcolm can understand you,’ she ordered in the Orugaray.

He looked shocked. ‘This hog-tongue, brilliance?’

‘Cretan, then. It’s subtle enough.’

‘But brilliance, I was about to report on —’

‘He needs to know.’ Storm let him swallow his humiliation while she advanced to Lockridge. She smiled. He bent unskillfully
to kiss the hand she offered.

‘I’ve not yet thanked you for what you did,’ Storm said. ‘But no words would serve. It was more than saving me. You struck
a mighty blow for our whole cause.’

‘I – I’m glad,’ he gulped.

‘Be seated, if you wish.’ Cat lithe, she turned from him and began to pace. He did not hear her footfalls on the dirt. Weak
in the knees, he sank down beside a Warden, who nodded to him with instant deference.

Vibrancy played over Storm’s features. ‘We have Brann alive,’ she said. The soft Cretan speech clanged in her throat. ‘With
what we are learning from him, we have a chance to win the upper hand in Europe for the next thousand years. Mareth, proceed.’