The Wizard from Earth (14 page)

"The Romans ensure there are never enough jobs, so that those who have jobs see themselves as fortunate though they sweat as slaves."

"You make excuses for Lowlanders, because they are your customers!"

Dran threw up his hands.  "Wizard, do you see how it is?" 

"It's called 'Divide and Rule,'" Matt said. 

Carrot shot him a glance.  He smiled back and thought,
Not so simpleton now, am I?
 

Nobody said anything for a while.  Matt used the time to ask Ivan what 'scrip' was.   

By late afternoon, they had reached the crossroads.  Geth interrupted the plodding torpor,  "Arcadia!  To the north."

Hearing a quiver in Geth's voice for the first time, they all turned north.  Matt saw at first only a sliver of glinting metal, like a giant snake, slithering over the hills.  The snake became a patchwork blanket, an oily wave that rolled southward.  Closer still, Matt saw the snake resolve into thousands of men marching across the grassland, men with swords and spears and war paint and standards made from sticks and bones.

Carrot said softly,  "It must surely be the entire army of the Britanian Rebellion.”

Geth raised and flashed his sword as they approached.  The nearest of the marchers cheered and flashed their swords in response, creating a glare that all but blinded, just as their combined roar all but deafened.

Weaving before the horde was a chariot bearing a towering woman whose mane of red hair was fluttering after her like a banner.  Every time she raised her spear, she yelled, and the men yelled too, echoing against the hills. 

"There's a queen for you!" Dran exclaimed.

Matt had to admit, he found it difficult to take his eyes off her. 

"That's – what did you call her – Boudica?" he asked.

He wouldn't be able to go to Londa for a while.  The mob streamed through the crossroads, blocking access to the eastern side of the Oksiden Road.  Croin trotted to the fringe, shoutingly conversed with the warriors, and trotted back.

He reported breathlessly,  "They've spotted the Eighth in the south – and Boudica promises a massacre!"

The eighth of what?
Matt wondered.  But taking a cue from Ivan, he figured from the context that it probably had to do with Roman soldiers.  Which the rebels were going to massacre . . . .  

Carrot addressed Matt,  "We were to part ways here at any event.  This isn't your fight."

"I wasn't going to volunteer," Matt said.  He immediately felt stupid for having said it.

"Good luck in Londa," she said.

That made him feel even stupider.  He thought back to when he had crouched behind a log while the others had fought their attackers from the woods.  That had made him feel stupid, too.  Yes, he had no business fighting here when he didn't know which side was the right side – or even whether there was a right side.  But now a girl was going off to battle, while a boy was just going to stand off in safety.  Something deep within him instinctively felt it was wrong.  And – cowardly.

His fellow travelers, now become soldiers once more, departed.  Matt sat by himself on a rock by the roadside and watched the sun sink and the army pass.  Carrot was visible for a long time because her hair had turned completely orange again.

As the army receded the background noise faded to quiet and he realized he was all alone for the first time since the day of his landing.

"You know, it's funny," he said.  "I don't seem to be missing Earth, my family, my friends, my whole past life.  All those people I knew on Earth for years and years – and now it bothers me more that I just met those people there and they could be going to their deaths."

Ivan said nothing. 

The army marched southward and was gone over the hills, and the crossroads were empty and the road  to Londa was open.  However, Matt found he had no interest in budging from the rock just then. 
Maybe
, he thought,
it's the warm sun relaxing my muscles
.  And he had walked a good deal this day already.  Maybe he would just sit here a while, and think.   

"She can handle herself.  You did the analysis on her DNA.  Designer genes for the Ultimate Warrior.  The Romans won't know what hit them."

Ivan said nothing. 

Matt sat some more and tried not to think of Carrot finally meeting one sword too many at once. 
Even ultimate warriors don't have infinite powers
, he thought. 
They can be overwhelmed, all they need is to one day meet an army too large.  And any day could be that day.
     

"I know she didn't like me, but she was okay.” 

Ivan said nothing.

“I mean, as far as genetically-engineered killing machines go."

Ivan said,  "Are you romantically interested in her?"

Matt sighed.  "No!  Of course not.  Uh, why would you think that?"

“You have spoken to her more than to any other woman in your peer group.” 

“What?  Really?  Even more than Synethesia?”

“Yes.  Of course, I am going on the word count only since my original implantation, so it is possible that you had lengthy conversations with Synesthesia over the years before which would overcome the word count that you have accumulated with Carrot in only a few days.”

Matt hadn't thought of himself as being particularly garrulous with Carrot. 
More like shy, in fact
.  And then, in hindsight, he hadn't talked that much with Synethesia either, even Before Ivan.

“Well, whatever is going on between us, what's coming from Sergeant Carrot sure doesn't feel like love.”

Ivan paused.  “I did not say that she loves you.”

“I know you didn't.  Let's not talk about this anymore, okay?”

He tried to think of everything in the universe that was Not Carrot.  Surprisingly little came to mind.  He squinted where the army had vanished, and tried to think about it as a whole and not just the tiny part of it that he really cared about.   

"Boudica," he said.  "That name is familiar.  Something I learned about in a book or video or something."

"Boudica is the name of a significant personage in Earth history.”

"Really?  How would they know about – oh, that's right, that book back at Fish Lake, the mentors taught Earth history.”

“But only European classical history, and only up to the period known as the Third Century Crisis, the Imperial Crisis, or the Anarchy.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Okay, so, twenty-five words or less, who was Boudica in Earth history?"

"Boudica was a warrior queen who in AD 70 led a rebellion of the people of Britain against the Roman Empire."

Matt snorted.  "So it's like they're doing an historical re-enactment here.  I guess it makes a kind of cock-eyed sense in terms of mass psychology.  If you want to win a war, you take the name of a victorious leader in history."

"Boudica was not a victorious leader."

"What do you mean?"

"According to the Roman historian Tacitus, her entire army was completely destroyed by the Romans in a single battle."

Matt lifted the word limit and had Ivan fill in the rest of the historical account.

When Matt didn't respond right away, Ivan said, “Matt, your pulse rate has increased significantly yet paradoxically you appear to be losing blood pressure in your upper body, and specifically your head.  Would you like me to – “

"I want a real-time satellite view of the region in the southeast of Britan.  Hurry!"

The window popped open.  The clumps of marching soldiers were easy to pick out.  There to his immediate south was the army of the rebels.  There, further south, was a much smaller army of Roman soldiers.  The Romans were being pursued into a valley.  The valley had was a boxed canyon, closed in the south.  In other words, the Romans there were about to be trapped.

So obvious and simple a trap
, Matt thought.  But it left him ill at ease. 

He remembered playing chess with his friend Random, in their childhood before either of them had an implant.  Often, Random would appear to blunder into a trap, but it always turned out that there was a counter-trap and Matt's elation would quickly transform into a sense of doom.  Eventually, whenever Random appeared to be falling into a trap, Matt had learned to skip the elation and go straight to the sense of doom.  Matt had the same feeling now.  These Romans were not the Romans of Earth history, but surely they hadn't risen to imperial dominance on their planet by blundering into obvious and simple traps.  There had to be more to this game than that.

Intensely surveying the scene on satellite view, he noticed the moving figures on the ridges of the valley that both armies were about to enter.  Dark squares were spaced regularly along the cliff tops. 

He pointed at the virtual screen hanging in front of him and said, “Zoom in there.”

The squares resolved into mechanisms:  wooden frames, winches, throwing arms. 

“
Catapults!
  The Romans have got the valley ringed with catapults.  The rebels are going to be bombarded!  We've got to stop it!”

“Why do we have to stop it?” Ivan asked.

“Because – “ Matt paused. 
Because she's cute and I'm a guy?
  He searched for a better answer.  “Because a lot of innocent people are going to die.”

“But the Britanian fighters are not innocent.  They intend to kill the Romans.”

“They're defending their homeland.” Matt guessed what Ivan was thinking and hastily added,  “It's not a pretext.  It's self-defense.  The Romans are on their land trying to take it away from them and make them slaves.  The Britanians have a right to fight back.”

“What do you wish to do?” Ivan asked.

Matt slumped.  “I have no idea.  I don't know how to get to the rebels in time to warn them, and even if I did, they wouldn't listen.”

Matt pondered the satellite view.  In the inevitability of defeat, it again reminded him of chess matches with Random.  Random had beaten him every single time they played.  Well, except that one time when they were little kids, but that didn't really count.  Matt had gotten frustrated and smashed his fist into the board, knocking over the pieces.  Random, all of six Earth-years old, had looked up and said serenely, 
“Let's call that one a draw
.
”
 

Matt blinked. 

"Ivan, patch me to Herman."

"This is Herman, Delta Pavonis Station Keeper.  Greetings, Matt.  How may I help you?"

"You still have one more OSV, right?"

"Orbit-to-Surface Vehicle Number Three is not at passenger-rated status at this time.  The human passenger would have extremely low probability of survival as the parachute deployment system and several key life support systems were transferred to Orbit-to-Surface Vehicle Number Two per the instructions of your neural implant."

Before Ivan could defend himself, Matt said,  "There isn't going to be a passenger.  I just want to know, can you release the OSV on a controlled descent, when can you do it, and how good is your aim?"

Ivan had been instructed not to disturb Matt about daytime road traffic, and Matt was so preoccupied with preparations that he didn't see their approach until their shadows fell at his feet.  There were three in front of him – along with several thousand more soldiers of the Eighth and Eleventh Legions at the crossroads, where they were pouring from east to south, preparing to cork the bottle on The Valley of Death. 

The nearest Roman soldier drew his sword and wagged the tip through Matt's augmented-reality window.
  The double sharpened edges got Matt's full attention.

"Blue Boy," the soldier said.  "Are you clown or jester?"

17.

Carrot had no trouble completely forgetting about the alleged wizard.  She was leading a squad of four into battle, and her thoughts were focused on the immediate future.  She readied her spear and sword, made sure the others were prepared as well, noted the position of the sun, the direction and speed of wind, the height of the grass.  For in battle, she knew from experience, even the smallest factor could be decisive.

Well ahead, as Boudica's three white horses pranced and frothed before her chariot, the Queen raised her spear and shouted, and the army roared in unison, and Carrot felt a wave of emotion wash over her and she screamed as loud as any man, feeling a cloud lift from her spirit for the first time since Romans burned her village and killed her father.   

Then the chanting:

"Boudica!  Boudica!  BOUDICA! Boudica!  Boudica!  BOUDICA!"

It was hypnotic and steeled Carrot in her determination. 
Father, I will avenge you.  North Umbrick, I will avenge you.  Mother, I –

Carrot paused.  What did Rome have to do with her mother's death, with anything that had happened that day?  She was not sure, but felt somehow it had to be.  If Rome was not the agency itself, it was the ally.  Somehow she was certain of that. 

"Boudica!  Boudica!  BOUDICA!" 

Carrot felt a tinge of envy.  Dran had spoken true words, that every village in the Northland had its petty royalty and that her own title of princess meant nothing.  Yet here leading the army was a true queen, who had risen from obscurity to repeatedly confound the Romans in one swift attack after another.  Fighting as a member of the Leaf, Carrot had her share of victories too, but had never massed an army, nor driven an entire Roman legion into annihilation as Boudica was about to do. 

The horses of the flame-haired giantess pranced before the masses as the warriors beat weapons to shields.  One, two, THREE.  One, two, THREE! 

"Boudica!  Boudica!  BOUDICA!  Boudica!  Boudica!  BOUDICA!"

Yet even though now she followed that queen, and would have agreed with the thousands of men that Boudica deserved to be their leader, Carrot wondered at the distant figure, 
Who made you Queen?

Boudica was said to have come from the Northland, but no one in the Umbrick region had ever heard of her, nor had anyone in the Northern Leaf.  In some ways her legend oddly paralleled Carrot's own life:  she had been a princess, her father had been murdered by Romans, she had fought back.  But the difference was that Carrot was still a girl, and no one easily trusted her with command, while Boudica's towering and voluptuous presence seemed to mesmerize grown men on sight, as if her body had been sculpted by fate for that purpose.

No matter
, Carrot thought, shaking the doubts from mind.  She would follow this woman into victory. 
We shall drive Rome from Britan, and be free!

Then Carrot felt a hand on her shoulder.  So startled, she nearly attacked the owner.  It was Dran.  She glared but then saw the concern in his eyes.  He was shouting something to her, his words drowned by the shouting around them. 

“What?” she shouted back over the tumult.

"This is all wrong!"

"Why do you say that?”

"I know this place.  There's a valley south with virtually no exit.  We're about to march straight into it!"

“Isn't that the plan?  To trap the Romans?”

"Sergeant Carrot, the Romans have been mapping Britan since before you were born.  They know exactly what is ahead.  If they seem as if they are marching into a trap, then it is something else entirely.”

The mob chanted again, more enthusiastically than ever, but Carrot's heart started to sink.  A few months ago, she'd seen a captured Roman map.  Every footpath, marker stone, hill, and brook was identified.  If the Romans knew Umbrick that well, they would not overlook an entire valley in the Lowlands.

Above the war yells, Carrot shouted,  “ARE YOU CERTAIN OF THIS PLACE?”

Dran pointed to a cluster of huts.  “That is Winchester.  I've traded there.  I'm sure!”

Carrot faced ahead to Boudica again.  The Queen waved confidently to the army, and Carrot could not see any trace of indecision or incompetence.  And Boudica's record against the Romans was unblemished.  So why was a battle-experienced tactician failing to recognize a counter-trap that was immediately spotted by a merchant of books?

“Geth!  All of you!”

Geth and the others stopped and she motioned them close so that she could speak privately.

“I am going on ahead of the army to scout,” she said.  “Follow the army for now.  However, if I am not back before battle, then you are to retreat and seek refuge in the woods!”

“We're not running!” Croin said.  “We're not cowards!”

Geth clamped a hand on his son's shoulder.  “Arcadia would never have us be that, son.  We will trust her instincts in this affair.  As you wish, Sergeant.”

Carrot blinked in the hot sun and time seemed to halt.  Geth was tall and muscular, the very image of a man who would not allow a young girl to boss him around, especially upon a battlefield, and when she had been growing up he had often been in place of a father-king who preferred to forget he had a daughter.  But again and again these past two years, Geth had loyally served her in the Leaf, always providing advice while always deferring to her leadership. 
She knew well of his innate kindness – but she also felt as if she were being groomed for a role.

And that was all the time she allowed for rumination.  With a sharp nod, she turned southward and sprinted, weaving through soldiers, jumping brambles, rapidly outpacing the main force, breaking into the open field as she ignored the startled looks of men who likely had never seen a human being move so fast.

Ahead was the slope of the northern entrance of the valley, and beyond that she saw the gleam of Roman armor.  She made a swift estimate and realized the mass of men before her, though they carried high the standards of the Eighth, fell well short of the numbers of a Legion.  The Romans, she knew, were not in the habit of splitting their legions for extended periods. 
Where is the rest of the Eighth?
  She needed to know the potential for Roman mischief before she would allow Geth and the others to risk their lives in battle.   

Spying a prominence overlooking the valley, she detoured southeast and sprinted at redoubled speed – and crossed downwind of the head of the rebel army.  And then she gasped and stumbled and lay still on the grass, staring at the sky, her limbs numb as if struck by lightning.

Neither lightning nor an arrow had struck her, but only a scent.  But it was a scent that terrified her more than a legion full of swords.  It was the same scent that she had detected faintly on the letter, but now she remembered.  For of all the things that had happened on that day long ago, she remembered the same scent from the moment closest to when she could remember nothing at all. 

And then, against her will, once more she was reliving that final moment of her mother's life.

Take this flower, dear.  How does it smell?

It smells sweet, Mother.  Like honey.  Mother, is something wrong?

There is something hiding among those trees.  Arcadia, do you smell it too?

Yes, now I do!  It's terrible!  Mother, do you know what it is?

– And then there had been a blur of reptilian skin and eyes, and claws that slashed at Mother and Carrot screamed then as she did now and that moment turned dark as it always did when she sought to remember what came next, and abruptly she was back on the field between armies.

Breaking from paralysis, Carrot rolled onto her chest and pushed herself up to a crouch.  Pulse pounding, she forced her breathing into regularity and sniffed, directionalizing the origin of the scent.  But she'd already known.  It was coming from upwind, from Boudica.

And there across the field, hundreds of meters distant, the Queen of All Britan was no longer waving her spear or cheering on her men.  She was instead staring intently at Carrot.  Carrot arose and stared back.  Sounds seemed to fade, and the armies were forgotten.  For Carrot was certain that Boudica was the true enemy.

Boudica looked nothing like Carrot's nightmare memories.  Boudica was human and undeniably female, bejeweled and shimmering in robes beneath gleaming armor that accentuated her figure.  Her skin was smooth and milky in complexion, and her fingers were not claws.  Yet Carrot knew this was the same entity.  Scents, Carrot was convinced, do not lie as do eyes and ears.  Knowing that it would take more than a stick to kill the Thing that was Boudica, Carrot dropped her spear and drew her sword, and assumed a stance for combat.         

Boudica's deep red tresses fluttered and the queen shrieked so loud that the men next to her gaped and staggered.  She snapped her reins and the horses bolted and curved toward where Carrot was standing.  Some in the army must have assumed the order to charge had been given and yelled louder than ever and broke into a run, and their example set others to running, until the whole army was running. 

The Roman soldiers to the south transitioned from quick march to run and kept their distance.  The rebels descended the slope into the valley and Boudica's chariot, coursing crosswise to their path, cut through them obliviously, forcing them to lunge or be hurled out of the way.  Clouds of dust rose from the pounding of feet and enveloped the men, the chariot, and the lone waiting figure of a girl with orange hair.  The army streamed past Carrot, ignoring her, while Boudica closed in and casually tossed away the spear with a hand that to Carrot's amazement had transformed into a crablike pincer.

I will not survive this
, Carrot thought. 

Nonetheless, she suppressed the urge to flee.  She knew that this was the moment that she had been waiting ten years for. 

Then it came. 

Carrot was turned and facing Boudica and did not see it first.  Boudica's horses were the first to react, slowing to a stop and rearing.  The army again acted piecemeal – some had been looking westward at the right instant and saw the smoldering star in the sky and stopped, and others, wondering what was happening, looked too, and then they stopped, and then the whole army stopped.

No one was shouting or cheering.  Some were exclaiming, others were groaning.  Carrot finally snapped out of her blood trance and turned to where everyone was staring.  Then she saw the star, a ball of fire trailing a line of smoke, just like the one that she'd seen days before that had impressed half of Britan into believing that a simpleton was a wizard.

This time was different, however, in that the star was heading straight toward her.

This cannot be
, she thought. 
This cannot be!
 

So convinced at the absurdity of what was happening, she remained in place as the ball of fire descended, closing with a speed nearly that of thunder.  Then came the boom, far louder than thunder.  The horses reared and twisted and upended the chariot and Boudica landed on her rear.  The army needed no further omen.  It scattered in every direction.

Once Carrot convinced herself that the gods were indeed targeting her, she realized that their aim was a little off.  The fireball streaked above and in front of her by over a hundred meters.  It hit the grass and heaved a wall of earth and dust and fire as the ground trembled so much that it knocked her to her knees.  Then the blast roared in her ears and the hot air scorched her face and the sharp edges of newly fractured rocks hurling through the air drew blood across her skin.  The blast wave lifted and tossed and tumbled her beneath a storm of raining debris.

Ignoring the throbbing of her bruises and burns, she picked herself up and saw only roiling clouds of dust with clumps of fire where shards of the fireball had landed and set the vegetation ablaze.  Carrot drew a breath, but all she could smell was dust and burning . . . things.

“Geth!” she called into the fog bank of dust and smoke.  “GETH!”

It was just too much.  The battle, the queen, the sky!  Carrot sprinted in a direction that she thought was away from army, queen, legions, and wrath of gods, half blind from dust in her eyes, stumbling and rising, gulping air and choking.  Then the dust thinned and she was among brush and trees.  She heard the babble of water and thought, 
Not the river!
  For after what had just happened, she was ready to believe that she had physically gone through time back to That Day.

But it was only a Lowland brook, not the River Umbrick, and there was no monster.  No mother, either.  Carrot staggered through the water to the other side and crawled into the bushes and sat on the ground, curling into a bleeding ball with her arms locked around her legs. 

She rocked and stared hollowly at nothing and whispered, “
What good are you, what good are you
.”  The mid-day sun projected dapples of light upon the fallen leaves until evening when it had slanted enough to leave Carrot's hiding place entirely to shade.