Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (31 page)

“
My lord,” he
said.

Emotion rose in David’s throat, preventing
him from speaking. He shook his head. Callum grinned in response to
David’s muteness like he’d caught David out in the biggest
practical joke imaginable. Then his eyes flicked past David’s
shoulder. Samuel had followed David, and the big soldier was
goggling at Callum.

“
Glad to see you’re still
alive too, Samuel.” Callum said, still grinning.

“
Where is—” David finally
managed to get two words out.

Callum’s attention swung immediately back to
David. “We’re all here. We’re all safe, though the bus driver
didn’t make it.” Callum had been holding onto the metal railing
that ran along the steps of the bus, and he swung back to let David
past him. David came up the steps and then stopped again, struck
speechless again by what he saw: Mom, Anna, and Cassie, thankfully,
but also two dozen other people in various states of disarray. They
stared at him. It had been a bumpy ride, apparently.

“
Hi,” David said in
American English. “Welcome to the Middle Ages.” Because, really,
what else was there to say?

A small sea of faces looked back at him, and
David realized only then what they must be looking at: him. He held
his bloody sword down at his side, but his hair was matted and
possibly bloody too (though the blood wasn’t his), and he wore the
full armor of a medieval king.

And then David
whuffed
as Anna barreled
into him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“
Thank God! Thank God, we
made it back. I don’t ever want to do that again,” she
said.

David hugged her, though since he still held
his sword in his right hand, it was an awkward embrace. Then Mom
was there too, and Cassie.

“
We’ve lived a lifetime
since you left.” David eased his hold on Anna. “I suspect you have
too.”

“
Math—?” Anna
began.

“
Math and Dad are here, but
I don’t want you going out there to find them yet. You’ve landed in
the middle of a battle.” While all the windows on the north side of
the bus were intact, many on the south side were broken. David bent
to look towards the southern end of the field where men and horses
still seethed in places, but most of the fighting seemed to be
waning. With the loss of Madog and the arrival of Math, there
wasn’t anything for Madog’s men to fight for. As David watched,
another group of men threw down their arms rather than die for a
lost cause.

Mom peered at David through the lenses of a
new pair of glasses. “Have we ruined everything?”

“
Oh no! This was right
where you needed to come in,” David said. “It couldn’t have gone
better if you’d planned it.”

While they’d been talking, the crowd had
grown. People had come down from the upper level, which was
accessed by a metal staircase at the rear of the bus. Callum moved
to block anyone from exiting the vehicle, with Samuel filling the
doorway behind him.

“
It was a pretty rocky
transition. We haven’t had a chance to do more than talk to a few
people.” Mom gestured towards the front of the bus. A man was lying
across three seats that faced inward. “The bus driver’s gone. A
rock came through his window and hit his head.”

“
I’ll get some men to move
him. He can lie with our dead.” David turned to Callum. “How many
people are we talking about?”

“
At least forty, my lord,”
he said.

David put a hand on Callum’s shoulder and
shook him. “I missed you.”

“
What’s happening out
there?” Callum said.

“
A rebellion led by one
Madog ap Llywelyn. The tide had turned, and then you showed up to
seal the deal.” David stepped away from the women, moving with
Callum to the rear door. Several passengers at the front of the bus
were struggling to open the front door, but they were having
difficulties because it was jammed. That was a good thing, because
they weren’t going to be any happier out there than in here, once
they discovered what faced them. Someone was going to have to
explain to them about their new reality—and convince them once
they’d been told.

Cassie saw David looking towards the front
of the bus and started forward. “Wait! Don’t do that.” The people
in the aisle gave way before Cassie. David didn’t blame them. They
had a dead man two feet from them, a battlefield outside their
window, and Cassie’s face held a particularly determined look.
David wouldn’t have stood in her way either.

“
What are we going to do
with everyone?” David said to Callum, leaving Cassie to handle the
tourists up front. David had become better at delegating tasks.
Managing forty modern people was going to be a monumental one,
which David neither could—nor wanted to—take charge of.

One of the men who was trying to open the
front door raised his voice to Cassie. “Who do you think you are?”
He sounded like the worst kind of aggressive American.

David glanced through the open door behind
him. His men were milling around the bus. Then Dad appeared out of
the crowd.

“
I’ve got to go,” David
said to Callum. “I need to deal with what’s going on out
there.”

“
I know.” Callum looked
down at himself. “I’d help, but I’m not dressed right, except for—”
He pulled the sword a few inches out of its sheath. “Look what we
brought. I have yours too.”

“
Please tell me bringing a
double-decker bus back here wasn’t part of the plan,” David
said.

“
No,” Callum said. “Though
we had every intention of returning, we didn’t mean for it to
happen this abruptly.”

David swept his eyes around the new arrivals
one last time. “I don’t even know where to start with them.”

“
We’ve got this, David, at
least for the moment,” Anna said from beside Mom. “Do what needs
doing.”

David reached out to clasp her hand briefly
and then released her to step off the bus. Without a doubt, this
was the craziest thing that had ever happened in all their time
traveling. And there’d been plenty of crazy things. It was bad
enough to have brought Marty or Callum to the Middle Ages, but an
entire busload of people? David hadn’t even had the chance to ask
Anna or Mom how they’d accomplished it.

Dad put a hand on the railing outside the
bus doorway, and David stepped off the bottom step to stop in front
of him. He looked at David, his eyes questioning, and David nodded.
“They’re here. They’re fine”

“
It’s just cleanup work on
the field.” Dad put a hand briefly to his heart but was
surprisingly subdued considering David had just told him that his
wife had returned from the twenty-first century in a double-decker
bus.

“
Did you speak to Math?”
David said.

“
Briefly. His men are
helping to round up Madog’s men and see to the wounded. They’re
fresher than any of our men.”

“
I’m on my way.” David made
to move past his father, but Dad stopped him with a hand to his
upper arm.

“
We might have lost,
Dafydd.”

“
I know,” David
said.

“
It was only because of
your heroics that we didn’t.”

David wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.
He didn’t even know if it was true, given the arrival of Math and
the bus.

Then Dad added, “It’s been too long since I
lost a battle. I’d forgotten what it felt like to stare death in
the face and not flinch.”

David nodded. “We’ll talk later. Mom’s
waiting for you.”

David didn’t want to talk about this right
now, but Dad was right. Yet again, the time travel option had been
a force in a victory. They hadn’t counted on it—it hadn’t even
occurred to David that Mom and Anna’s return could in any way
assist them—but it had come through for them anyway. The battle had
been all but won, but the arrival of the bus had sealed the
deal.

He didn’t know what to think about that. He
didn’t know whose hand lay over him. He put his trust in God. He
spoke to his people about Avalon. But the truth was that he didn’t
know why any of these things happened to his family. David really
hoped that the answer wasn’t an omnipotent robot living in a hidden
base on the moon.

William held David’s reins, and as David
mounted, he saw Mom and Dad embrace inside the bus. He looked away,
already thinking about what came next, but then he looked back,
registering the way Dad was listing to one side. David hadn’t
noticed it when they’d been speaking. Then Mom put her hands to
either side of Dad’s face, talking to him intently. David decided
he could leave him to her for now.

He looked at William. “Are you injured in
any way?”

“
No, my lord.”

With Justin and William, David rode around
the bus to the southern end of the field. Men and horses, dead and
wounded, lay everywhere, reminding David strongly of that first
evening in Wales when he and Anna had rescued Dad from the English
ambush. That day, the dead had littered the ground. The minivan had
run over the last four enemy soldiers, but Dad’s men had already
been dead, having fallen while defending him. As it had then, bile
rose in David’s throat, but he swallowed it back. It was a good
thing he hadn’t eaten in a while. He was the King of England. It
was no longer forgivable for him to lose his breakfast on the
ground.

While their captains herded Madog’s men to
one side of the battlefield, forcing them to sit in rows near the
river with their hands on their heads, Math and Carew conferred
with each other fifty yards from David.

Taking in the scene, David had to
acknowledge that they’d been arrogant and reckless. Together, he
and Dad had committed themselves to dying—and their men to dying.
David couldn’t pretend it meant nothing. Even now, with victory
assured, his knees shook at the thought of what could have been,
and he was glad that he was mounted so nobody else could see them
tremble.

David should have known he was fooling no
one but himself.

“
What
were you thinking?” The look Math gave David as he approached
could have split wood. Math dismounted, and David did the same, the
better to face their disagreement head on.

Math hadn’t said ‘my lord’. He didn’t take
David’s hand or embrace him. He was angry, and he sounded like
Bevyn, who might have ripped David up one side and down the other
had he been here.

“
We did what we had to,”
David said.

“
That’s your defense?” Math
turned on Carew. “You condoned this action?”

Carew’s nostrils flared. “We thought we had
the advantage, or as much of one as we were going to get against a
larger force.”

“
We were supposed to come
behind Madog’s army at Harlech!” Math said.

“
Madog’s army wasn’t
there,” David said, working up to a more proper defense of their
actions. “It was they who set up the initial ambush.”

“
And you who walked into
it!” Math said. “You’re the King of England! You have the
responsibility not to be stupid!”

David rubbed his chin with one hand,
studying his brother-in-law. David didn’t see how this conversation
was going to turn fruitful, given that Math’s criticism—though
entirely valid—was after the fact. David didn’t say that to him,
however. It wouldn’t accomplish anything but cut Math down and
throw David’s own weight around. He didn’t want that kind of
relationship with his brother-in-law. Whether or not Math could
ever forget it, David didn’t want to play the King of England with
him.

“
I killed
Madog.”

Math snorted his derision, but then he
pressed his lips together, preventing himself from berating David
further.

David looked away to gather his thoughts.
Then he met Math’s gaze again. “As I said, it seemed like a good
idea at the time. The alternative to meeting Madog here was to
bypass his force and continue on to Harlech, but that would have
done us little good if he’d continued north and taken another
castle—Aber, for instance.”

Carew cleared his throat.
He had been listening to the conversation, but his eyes hadn’t left
the bus, and he used the opportunity to change the subject. “My
lord, if you could give me a word for that …
thing
?”

“
It’s called a bus. It runs
on burning naptha,” David said, hauling out the old explanation.
“There nothing magical about it.”

“
Except how it arrived,”
Carew said.

David’s lips twisted. “Except that.” He
turned to look at the bus with Carew. “Though I would also say that
magic is merely something for which we don’t yet have a proper
explanation.”

“
Your mother and sister
went to Avalon,” Justin said. “You said so earlier.”

“
So I did, and so they
did.”

“
Then that is all the
explanation we need,” Justin said.

David made a noncommittal noise. That might
be the case for Justin—and David’s most loyal followers—but not
everyone was going to feel that way.

William had retreated a few paces during
Math’s excoriation of David, but now he moved closer, his eyes wide
with excitement and expectation. “May I enter it?” The adrenaline
rush of the battle, and the fact that he’d lived through it, was
still coursing through his veins.

“
If there’s time,” David
said. “We have many wounded.”