Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (34 page)

Callum looked towards the ad-hoc camp where
he, Jeffries, and Cobb would find ownerless horses and armor
salvaged from men who would never need them again. If they could
find nothing in their sizes, they could scavenge from among Madog’s
men, though the noblest among them were still underneath the bus.
Callum canted his head towards Cobb and Jeffries. “Until further
notice, you two should consider yourselves my lieutenants.”

“
Yes, sir,” Jeffries
snapped off a salute.

Cobb followed Jeffries’ example. “It’s an
honor, sir.” His shoulders, if possible, got even straighter. “You
have been an inspiration, sir.”

Callum narrowed his eyes at him. He was the
Earl of Shrewsbury and had been the director of the Project, so he
was used to some admiration. But the inspiration part was new to
him. “In what way?”

Cobb cleared his throat. “You traveled here
three years ago and returned. You completed the mission, no matter
how long it took.”

Callum glanced at Jeffries,
who shook his head as if to say,
I didn’t
tell him!

“
How do you know that,
Cobb?”

“
Common knowledge in our
unit, sir.”

“
My mission was
classified.”

“
Not so much,
sir.”

Callum shook his head. The time travel
miracle had not only brought them to the right place, but it looked
like it had also brought at least some of the right people with
them.

Chapter
Twenty-two

November 1291

Anna

A
nna watched David out of the corner of her eye as he
personally eased the passing of two different men, clasping their
hands in his and holding on until the light faded from their
eyes.

“
It’s kind of him to take
the time,” Math said, coming up behind Anna and circling her waist
with his arms.

She turned and put her arms around his neck,
bending her wrists back so she wouldn’t get the blood that was on
them in his hair. He kissed her hard, and then she pressed her face
into the hollow of his neck. They stood together unspeaking because
speaking wasn’t necessary.

They stepped back from each other, not
wanting to part but knowing they both had work to do. And then Math
grinned—that wild, wicked, gorgeous grin he didn’t often show and
usually only to her—and he wrapped her up in his arms again in
order to swing her around. “Thanks be to God you returned
safely.”

“
You knew I’d come back,
right? That shouldn’t have been a question.”

“
The only question
was
when
you’d
return.” He set her down. “The bus is a nice touch, though your
brother could have done without it.”

“
We can’t seem to avoid
complications,” Anna said, her heart lighter than it had been in
two days. A little balloon was trapped inside her chest, and she
floated along with it.

Then Math and Anna each took a breath,
coming back to the reality of the field and the wounded men who lay
around them in rows. One of the modern medical people, a
twenty-something named Rachel, looked up from where she was
wrapping a cloth around a man’s leg wound. She was one of the two
medical personnel who spoke Welsh, and she seemed to be doing
remarkably well for a woman so out of place and time.

While Anna and Math had greeted each other,
David’s head had remained bowed for a few more moments, and then he
straightened and came over to them.

“
Every time,” he said.
“Every time, I swear that I will find another way to solve our
problems rather than lose men in battle.”

“
Avalon hasn’t done it,”
Anna said, even as she was horrified at herself for implying Avalon
was real. “Nobody could ever censure you for not caring about the
men you lead.”

David’s hands clenched into fists, and he
tipped his head back to look up at the sky, breathing deeply and
gathering himself for what lay ahead. Then he brought his head down
again to look at Math. “It’s time to go.”

Anna put an arm around David’s waist one
more time and hugged him. “A king isn’t much good on the remains of
a battlefield except to get in the way anyway.”

He snorted. “You’re trying to get rid of
me.”

“
I’m trying to make you
feel better about doing what you have to,” she said.

Math canted his head, indicating the
southern side of the field where the soldiers were gathering yet
again. It was a wonder that some of them weren’t falling off their
horses from exhaustion. Nobody had slept; nobody was going to sleep
for a good long while.

So after one look back, which was all David
allowed himself, he left. Duty warred with duty. Anna knew her
brother well enough to know how hard it was for him to leave the
wreckage of the battle behind him.

Ieuan and Math went with him.

But not Papa.

When Anna didn’t see Papa’s red-plumed
helmet—a match to David’s, though David’s feather had a black
tip—poking up among the men as they rode away, she scanned the
battlefield looking for Mom. Papa hadn’t been injured when they’d
come in on the bus. Maybe he’d felt more of an obligation to stay
than to go.

Then Anna spied Mom, still in the wool coat
she’d borrowed from Cassie’s aunt’s house. She blended in among the
medieval people around her better than Anna did in this purple
parka. Anna wasn’t regretting wearing it, however. The coat was
filled with down and was really warm. It kept the winter chill away
nicely.

Mom was bent over someone on the ground, but
as Anna watched her, she stood abruptly, looking this way and that.
When she spied Anna looking at her, she waved her arms high above
her head, calling Anna urgently to her. Anna’s heart rose into her
throat. She grabbed Rachel’s arm. “Please come with me.”

Rachel tied a last knot on a bandage and
stood. “What is it?”

“
I don’t know, but I’m
afraid—” Anna couldn’t articulate what she was afraid of because it
was too awful. She started across the field, picking up the pace as
she got closer and saw Papa lying on the ground. His eyes were
closed, and his mouth was open, his breath coming in gasps. Mom
must have wrestled him out of his mail tunic, because it lay beside
him, and he wore only his shirt. Cadwallon stood sentry above him,
his face drawn and white.

“
I thought he was fine! He
said he was fine.” Anna fell to her knees beside her father. She
couldn’t see any blood, so her thoughts went instantly to his
heart. He was past sixty now. Anything could have gone wrong with
him.

“
He just says it hurts. I’m
not even sure what
it
is, or that he knew it was this bad before he realized he
couldn’t ride,” Mom said. “And even then, he passed it off to David
as saddle soreness.”

“
Did David believe him?”
Anna said.

“
His father ordered him to
go,” Mom said, “and David agreed that he shouldn’t leave what was
happening at Harlech to be sorted out by someone else.”

Rachel knelt on the opposite side of Papa
from Mom and Anna. “I need you to translate,” she said to Mom, who
nodded and sat back on her heels.

“
Sire,” Rachel
said.

Papa turned his head slightly and opened his
eyes to look at Rachel.

“
Are you having trouble
breathing?”

Mom translated, and Papa shook his head and
nodded at the same time. “Just hurts.” His voice came as barely
more than a whisper.

Rachel seemed to understand what he said,
but Mom translated into English anyway. Rachel opened her backpack
and removed a small black case. She unzipped it and pulled out a
stethoscope. She glanced at Mom, who’d clasped her hands in front
of her lips. “I’m a doctor.”

Anna put a hand on Mom’s shoulder and leaned
in to whisper. “She’s actually a surgeon, though still in
residency.”

“
Thank God,” Mom
said.

Rachel listened all around Papa’s heart,
lungs, and abdomen and then pressed gently on Papa’s
breastbone.

“
Hell!” He jerked upward
and twitched away from her hand.

A number of men had clustered around them by
now, and Papa’s exclamation deepened the looks of worry and fear on
their faces.

“
Did you fall from your
horse?” Rachel said.

Papa’s breathing eased back to shallow as he
tried to master himself. “I don’t remember.”

Cadwallon made a small movement with his
hand, and everyone looked at him. “The king’s horse stumbled and
threw him moments before—” he gestured helplessly towards the bus,
“—it appeared.” Cadwallon seemed to fear that someone would blame
him—or perhaps he blamed himself—because he continued, “None of
Madog’s men got near the king, and when I helped him to his feet,
he said not to fuss over him.”

Rachel’s eyes narrowed, and this time she
felt at Papa’s head, probing with her fingers and watching his face
for indications of pain. Then she sat back on her heels and spoke
to Mom and me. “I’d love to do an x-ray, which I realize isn’t
possible. I think he has several broken ribs and a concussion.”

“
So his heart’s okay?” Anna
said.

“
Is there some reason to
think it might not be?” Rachel said.

“
He had pericarditis three
years ago,” Mom said.

Rachel’s brow furrowed. “How did you take
care of that?”

Anna didn’t want to tell
her that
sometimes
they could time travel by choice, but she would find out
eventually, and it was better not to lie. “Mom jumped off the
balcony at Chepstow Castle with Papa and ended up in modern
Aberystwyth.”

Rachel’s only reaction was a slight widening
of the eyes. Then she turned back to Papa. “In the past, I would
have bound your ribs, but to do so can prevent you from taking deep
breaths and, particularly in your case because you aren’t a young
man, it could lead to pneumonia. You aren’t going to want to move,
so I won’t bother warning you not to move abruptly.”

Mom translated what Rachel
had said, and threw in a, “
you’d better
listen to her,”
of her own at the end. Papa
reached out a hand. Mom clasped it and leaned in to kiss his
forehead. When she spoke next, there were tears in her voice. “I’d
thought I’d come back only to lose you.”

“
You’re not going to get
rid of me that easily.” Papa’s voice was soft and breathy, but
there was humor behind it.

Two of Papa’s men levered
him to his feet, and then they and Mom walked
very slowly
with him to his tent,
which had been set up near the river. No movement was going to be
comfortable for him for a good long while. The two women watched
him go, and then Rachel looked intently at Anna. “I was worried
that he’d punctured a lung. I’m not seeing that now. If he has
internal bleeding, we’ll know in the next few hours. Same with the
head wound. Under these conditions, I’m not sure I can do anything
about any of it.”

Anna studied her for a moment, but she
didn’t really need to think hard about what she said next: “With
your permission, I would like to put you in charge.”

Rachel blinked. “In charge of what?”

“
Everything medical,” Anna
said. “For years, Bronwen—that’s Ieuan’s wife—Mom, and I have been
working with medieval doctors, some of whom are very good. But you
have more knowledge in your little finger than all of us combined.
We need you to coordinate research and treatment for the entire
country—or rather,
countries:
Wales and England.”

Rachel was very good at controlling her
expressions, but Anna had learned something of her in the past five
minutes and noted the tightening of the muscles around her lips
before she relaxed them again. “You’re not serious.”

“
I am completely serious,”
Anna said. “Rachel, there is nobody else.”

Rachel looked away from
Anna, taking in the order growing out of the chaos and carnage on
the field. “How do you live like this—live
with
this?”

“
Up until now, we’ve had no
choice,” Anna said. “But if there’s one thing we’ve discovered—all
of us who’ve traveled here from the modern world—it’s that by
staying here, we have a chance to make a difference in people’s
lives. I imagine that’s why you became a doctor?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“
Well … you’ll never have a
better chance than this.”

Chapter
Twenty-three

November 1291

David

C
allum had sent a rider to let David know that his father was
okay. Or if not okay, at least that he wasn’t about to die. When
Dad had told David he was too sore to ride with him to Harlech,
David had been surprised but happy, as if his father were finally
showing some common sense. After he’d ordered David to leave,
however, David had begun to have second thoughts. His father still
didn’t always tell him the whole truth, as if David were a boy who
needed protecting from it. This time Dad had probably just wanted
David to go in his stead and would have said anything to make it
happen.

Harlech Castle was situated on a cliff edge
above the sea. In the modern world, the sea had moved far from the
castle, but in this time, the water lapped at the bottom of the
rock on which Harlech perched. This Harlech Castle was not the same
one that Edward had ordered built in 1283 either, since in this
world he’d never conquered Wales. Here, Dad had commissioned
Harlech himself, and it was built in stone in a style similar to
Rhuddlan. The castle was impenetrable from the west, with a
defended stairway that plunged two hundred feet down to the water,
and had a main gate that looked east. Its towers loomed over the
landscape for only a short distance, though, because the ground
increased in elevation as it went inland.