Debt of Ages (28 page)

For a moment, she thought the Interrogator was going to kill her on the spot. But one of the "priests" stepped forward and spoke to him in mock-obsequious tones, in an English so mangled as to be incomprehensible to her. The guards hustled her away hurriedly—she could smell their acrid sweat—to a post that was all that remained of some village structure. They backed her up to it, twisted her arms around behind it, and tied the wrists roughly together. Then they tied her ankles to the post's base. By the time they were done, their spirits seemed to have risen—or perhaps they needed to banish what they had felt in the presence of the Interrogator and his votaries/manipulators, for their laughter and rib-elbowing as they felt and squeezed her bound form seemed somehow too raucous. She took it, using mental discipline techniques to remove herself temporarily from her body. After a while they tired of their play and swaggered off, slapping each other on the back a few too many times, and she was alone in the darkness.

She took stock. Her long-range communicator lay deactivated in the cave near the banks of the Cam, with the stasis-field generator and the rest of Tylar's goodies. She didn't have all that many—just things she absolutely needed and which could function in the field, like the supply of nondescript little pills that could stimulate the body to heal just about anything within reason, although you slept a lot while it was happening and were very weak and hungry afterwards. It was nothing compared to the infirmary aboard Tylar's ship, where nanoids simply took an injured body apart at the molecular level and put it back together, uninjured. (Reassembling it in an
improved
form was sternly interdicted. Tiraena gathered that Tylar's civilization had had some bad experiences with that sort of thing.) But that required elaborate equipment; the pills were Tylar's idea of very crude first-aid, and he'd cautioned her that they, like everything else, must be kept from the locals lest their cultural development be distorted. But it was all back in the cave which the folk around Cadbury had come to superstitiously shun. Just as well; the Interrogator couldn't possibly be so far gone that he wouldn't recognize high-tech artifacts for what they were. She still had the implant communicator, of course, but it wasn't doing her much good.

But that wasn't the only implant in her body. She was a survey specialist and had been given various biotechnic edges over the primitive environments she must face. There was one in particular. . . .

She twisted her shoulders, raising one and lowering the other as she tried to shift the hands the guards had tied behind the post. She could feel skin being rubbed raw by the rope, but she had to get that left forefinger pointed at the knot between her wrists, and she had to do it by feel alone. And it had to be pointing
down
, not up, which would have been relatively easy.

Finally the fingertip rested against the knot. She wasn't sure of the angle, and she'd have only one chance.
Well,
she thought as she strained to hold herself in the miserably uncomfortable position,
no time like the present.
She took a deep breath against what she knew was coming and gave a carefully trained mental command.

The almost-microscopic superconductor loop just under the tip of the finger yielded up its hoarded energy, and the tiny crystal surrounding it projected that energy as a beam of coherent photons. There was the snapping sound of air rushing in to fill the vacuum drilled through it by a weapon-grade laser. That laser left a sparkling trail of ionization which would have been visible even by daylight and which someone would surely have seen if it had flashed upward into the darkness. But it merely seared the ground, without searing her butt in the process. She clenched her teeth to hold in a cry of agony as the beam burned the flesh on the inside of her right wrist. Piled atop the throbbing pain of her battered head, it sent a wave of nausea through her. Then it all subsided a little and she gingerly tried her bonds. The laser hadn't burned away as much of the knot as she'd hoped, but after a little work the last strands parted and her hands came free. After she'd untied her feet she spared a moment to feel that fingertip, where the fortunately insensitive artificial skin had been burned away.

Good thing I resisted the temptation to use the thing on my attackers—or later on the Interrogator,
she thought. It was strictly a one-shot capability; she would never have gotten out alive. She took a deep shuddering breath—that right wrist still hurt like all the devils of hell—then slipped away through the night.

No one was keeping watch over her, securely bound as they knew her to be. She avoided any still-wakeful Fomorians and was soon clear of the village. She didn't have her light-gathering contacts, but it was—wonder of wonders—a clear night over Britain, and a three-quarter moon was up. And the constellations weren't significantly different from those of the twenty-third century Earth she had come to know. She located Ursa Minor and set her course east.

* * *

The normal British overcast and drizzle reasserted themselves by morning.
I knew it was too good to last,
Tiraena thought in her fatigue-dulled and hunger-tormented brain as she continued toiling eastward in the dreary daylight.

She had spent the entire night putting as much distance as possible between herself and her erstwhile captors. Shortly before dawn she'd stumbled onto what this milieu was pleased to call a road. She had no idea which road it was, but it ran in a more or less east-west direction, and a map summoned up on her neural display showed all such roads in these parts converging on Chester. And it beat scrambling up and down the hills that comprised the local topography. She struggled on, trying not to let herself think about pain, or food.

By the time the cavalry column appeared to the east, she was almost beyond noticing it. Only when Peredur and Cynric were supporting her did she let herself collapse.

* * *

"So that's the story," Tiraena concluded. "It's the Interrogator, beyond a doubt. Raving mad, but still dangerous. Still capable of inflicting a lot of harm, in both timelines." Her face clouded as unwanted recollections thrust themselves upward from the storehouse of nightmares into her consciousness. "Remind me to give Tylar a piece of my mind about some of the shit he inflicts on people—primitives, yes, but still people—in the course of 'policing events.' "

"I'm also going to have a few things to take up with him," Sarnac said as he studied her face in the little holographically projected display screen that hovered in midair just above his communicator. He knew that expression, and it didn't occur to him even momentarily to doubt her. "Just before I left Rome he made some typically vague noises about 'disturbing rumors' you'd been hearing." He forced himself to defer that for later. "I never considered that
he'd
be here. But it makes sense; he escaped to Ireland before the divergence of the timelines."

"It did occur to me, once. But I dismissed it out of hand, thinking he couldn't possibly have lasted this long."

"Well, it's too late to worry about that. The important thing is that you're all right now. You are, aren't you?"

"Oh, yes. My first-aid kit took care of the laser burn, though of course I'm keeping the wrist bandaged—it has no business being healed so fast, from the local standpoint. I'm also keeping my left index finger bound up. With that little hole burned through it, the artificial skin
looks
artificial. And I'm over the exhaustion. The really important question is whether the local troops will hold when they see a Korvaasha coming at them."

"And when he gets in among them," Sarnac added grimly. The Korvaasha, evolutionary products of a high-gravity planet, were even stronger relative to humans than they were larger. The Interrogator might be getting along in years, but . . .

"I'll do what I can, of course," Tiraena said. "I'll explain to Gwenhwyvaer's troops that he isn't a demon or any other supernatural being, and that he isn't deathless. I don't have much time, though. This General Marcellus—a subordinate of your old friend Kai, isn't he?—has landed at Richborough and is advancing up the Thames valley. He's been sending couriers to the Fomorians, and we're sure we haven't succeeded in intercepting all of them. The raiders are starting to move south. They're light troops, with no discipline, but they could cause us trouble if they show up at our rear while we're engaged with the imperials."

"Yeah, yeah, right," Sarnac said, distracted. "Absolutely. That makes it even more urgent for me to get in touch with Tylar."

"Tylar? Why?"

"To get you the hell out of Britain, that's why! It's going to get very dangerous there. So there's no point in you . . ."

"No!" Tiraena's tone stopped Sarnac in his rhetorical tracks. "I'm staying in Britain."

"
What?
" Sarnac took a deep breath. "Look, in case you've forgotten, your implanted skills don't include any fifth-century combat abilities. You're not supposed to be a soldier in this milieu! So what good do you think you can do when push comes to shove?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I can't help thinking that there must be
something
I can do, even though I'm not allowed to use any advanced technology. And as long as there's any possibility of that . . . Bob, I
need
to stay."

Sarnac hesitated before speaking, for he knew her well enough to know that this was nothing to be spoken of lightly. "Tiraena, I know you admire Gwenhwyvaer. And maybe you've started to take Tylar's system of trans-dimensional ethics seriously. But . . ."

"I couldn't care less about Tylar's umpteen-thousand-years-distant notions! And it's not just Gwenhwyvaer. It's all of them." She sought for the words with which to verbalize what was self-evident to her. "They're barely half a step above savagery. And they're laboring under more than their fair share of political stupidity. But if you could just be here and
know
them, Bob! And I'm not talking about the rulers, I'm talking about people like . . . oh, the two bodyguards Gwenhwyvaer has assigned to me. You'd like them, Bob: Peredur—he's one of the Artoriani; and Cynric, the son of Cerdic of the West Saxons."

"Oh, yeah, I remember. So he's the grandson of . . ." Sarnac belatedly recalled his promise to Tylar and cut himself off.

"What?"

"Never mind," Sarnac said hastily. But then he remembered it was only Artorius that Tylar wanted kept in the dark.
Oh, what the hell?
He proceeded to tell Tiraena the truth of Cerdic's parentage.

"Oho!" she said softly when he was done. "This explains a lot about Gwenhwyvaer's feelings toward Cerdic. Typical of her, you know. Some women would hate Cerdic, in her position. But not Gwenhwyvaer. As Artorius' son, he's the closest thing to a son she'll ever have."

"You're probably right. And I understand what you're saying: these people deserve a break. Well, so do a lot of people throughout history. But you can't give it to them! You've done your part by passing on the advance information Tylar transmitted to you."

"That's just it: all I've done is pass information along!

I need to
do
something!"

Sarnac tried to keep his tone reasonable. "But, Tiraena, in light of what's about to happen there . . . Tiraena, you could get
killed!
"

She grinned. "This, from a guy who was getting ready to go into battle against a Korvaash successor-state more advanced than the Realm of Tarzhgul?" There was dead silence while he sought for a reply.

"Well," he finally said, "that was my duty."
Come on!
he gibed at himself.
Is that the best you can do? If you
really
try, you can come up with something even more stilted!

"This is
my
duty—to myself! And to these people. I know it's irrational to feel guilty for having been born into a better era than theirs. But I can't escape a sense of obligation to them. It's part of
me
, Bob, so it's part of whatever it is you love in me. I have to stick it out for the duration! Tylar may send his ship here, but I won't willingly go aboard. I'll stay as much in the thick of things as I can get, so Tylar won't be able to snatch me without tipping his technological hand!"

Their eyes held each other in silence, but it was a communion and not a confrontation. Then Sarnac smiled. "Hey, if you need to do this, then do it. I'll tell Tylar not to try to pull you out until you're good and ready."

"Thanks, Bob," she said softly.

Sarnac's smile blossomed into his trademark raffish grin, and he was once again the young smart-ass she'd saved from the Korvaasha in the wilderness of Danu. "Hey, it's just the kind of guy I am!" She made a flatulent noise with her mouth. "Just promise me you'll stay in touch—and that you'll be careful."

"Aren't I always?" She signed off, her smile seeming to linger like the Cheshire cat's, before he could think of a retort.

Well
, he thought as he deactivated the communicator and the intruder alarm he was careful to employ whenever he was using anachronistic equipment in his tent,
hopefully that little turn of the good-ole-Bob routine was what she needed right now. Too bad it's all bullshit.
But he'd done rightly, he decided. He wouldn't burden her with the knowledge that he was worried sick about her, separated from savages only by troops who'd probably bolt like scared rabbits when they saw the Interrogator.
No, there's no point in undermining her morale.
A sudden flash of self-pity:
Wish somebody'd do something for
my
morale!

He shook free of the thought as he left the tent and strolled toward the field where the crossbowmen were honing their tactics under Ecidcius's eye. The new Western Emperor noticed him and waved.

"Ah, Bedwyr, I think these farm boys are beginning to get the point of your idea—or at least starting to follow orders with a snap! For whatever reason, we're getting off half again as many flights of quarrels each minute as we were when we first tried your idea."

"Good!" In response to their call they'd gotten more hunting crossbows, and men who knew how to use them, than they needed or could effectively use. The problem, as Ecdicius had instantly seen, was the things' slow rate of fire. He'd also seen the possibilities in Sarnac's third-hand idea, and had issued a call for the strongest men in the army. (That point had been emphasized, for it lent prestige to an unglamorous job.) They had become loaders, staying behind the fighting line and constantly cocking the surplus crossbows, which were then passed on to the crossbowmen by relays of boys who brought the discharged weapons back to be readied again.