Times Without Number (11 page)

"Uh . . . " Jones's embarrassment was acute. "Not me personally, sir.
But I believe other probationers. Uh . . ."
"If anyone ever tries it on you, report him to your Chief Instructor.
It's no part of your duties to act as a pander. Understood?" Without
waiting for an answer Don Miguel swung around and discovered that
Jones's mistake was a very natural one, for Kristina was clearly in
view standing by the door of the carriage, while the driver was still
half-hidden in shadow as he wrestled to lift the cloak-enveloped form
of the feathered girl.
"Help the driver with his burden," he snapped at Jones. "Show him to a
room inside where there's a couch or something he can put her on."
"At once, sir," Jones said, and hurried down the steps with his cheeks
as red as fire.
"Kristina," Don Miguel said in a low voice, moving close to her, "I'm
sorry to have had to drag you here. But it looks as though I can't find
anyone to help me unless I go back to the palace. So at least I can
return you to your father now."
"You have to go back soon anyway, don't you?" she countered. "It's gone
eleven -- nearly a quarter past!"
"Is it?" Don Miguel exclaimed in dismay. "Then I'm an idiot! I came here
on a fool's errand. You see, I must have some advice from Father Ramón,
and thought he might still be in his office here -- but of course, if
it's so late, he'll already be on his way to the Commander's palace.
My wits must be woolgathering. Lord! Lord! What a mess!"
He pulled himself together with an effort. "Get back in the carriage,
then. I have one more thing to attend to before we leave."
He spun on his heel and dashed indoors.
When he came back, instead of rejoining Kristina inside the carriage,
he scrambled up to the driver's box and seized the reins. The horses
whinnied and leaned on the traces, and Kristina cried out in surprise.
"Sorry!" Don Miguel shouted down to her over the grind and clatter of
the wheels. "But that feathered girl is far too dangerous to leave in the
charge of one young man like Jones! So I paid the driver to stay and help
stand guard. Don't worry -- I'm not a bad driver, though I say so myself!"
The forced jocularity of his tone concealed an ever-growing sense of
alarm. He had told Kristina only one of the reasons why he had needed
to go into the building. In addition, he had hastened up the tower in
which the time-halls were located, and made sure that the great locks
on their doors had not been tampered with. And they had not. Jones was
indeed alone as he had claimed.
There had been the slim possibility that some drunken Probationers,
or even corrupt Licentiates, might have taken the chance offered by the
absence of everyone except Jones to secure unlawful access to the time
apparatus. The consequences of that kind of prank would have been bad
enough, but rectifiable.
Now it seemed virtually certain that something far worse must have happened.
A cold wind was blowing along the river now; their route followed the
embankment. He shivered and damned the impatience which had prevented
him from reclaiming the cloak he'd used to wrap around the feathered girl.
Driving like a fury, he brought the carriage swiftly to broad, straight
Holy Cross Avenue -- the last portion of their route on the north side of
the river. At the next bridge they would have to swing right and cross
over. And there, at the approach to the bridge, there was some sort of
commotion. At first he took it for the expected crowd of people coming
across from the south to attend Mass at midnight in the cathedrals
of the city; it was not until the carriage was already engulfed in a
wave of pale-faced, terrified men, women and children that he heard the
near-screams of civil guards trying to keep order and realised that this
was nothing so commonplace. The whole roadway was flooded with fugitives
in the grip of panic; the windows of nearby houses were being flung up
as the occupants heard the racket outside, and the air was full of a
confused moaning.
Kristina leaned from the carriage window as he slowed perforce to a crawl.
"Miguel, what's happening?" she cried.
"I don't know!" he answered curtly. "Guard! Guard!"
A civil guard on horseback, breasting the crowd as though fording a river
in spate, forged slowly in their direction, waving a gauntleted hand.
When he came close enough, he called out, "You'll have to go around
another way, your honour! It's impossible to get past here!"
Don Miguel stared, cursing the murky darkness which the lanterns barely
relieved. Under the bridge, too, there was a disturbance; he heard the
loud splashing of water.
"What's going on?" he bawled.
"No one seems to be sure, your honour! Some say it's an invasion,
some say rioting -- but either way, across the river there it's total
chaos!" The guard sounded frightened. "Men's bodies have been seen
floating downstream, stuck full of arrows, they say! And there are fires!"
Shriller and more piercing than the general tumult, there was suddenly
a scream from near the bridge, and people began incontinently trying to
run. Ignoring the guard and Don Miguel, they surged past the carriage,
making it rock.
The guard wheeled his horse and went off shouting, trying to restore some
calm to the crowd with reassuring lies. There was no hope of forcing the
carriage nearer to the bridge now, short of running down the people who
were in its way, and the best Don Miguel could manage was by jerking
the reins to sidle the horses on to the verge of the road. Even to cover
those few paces took a heartbreakingly long time. He set the brake and
leapt down from the box.
Kristina was still peering pale-faced from the window. As she saw him
descend, she threw open the door and made to step down also. He gestured
her to stay where she was.
"I'll see if I can get one of the civil guards to escort you away,"
he promised. "This is no place for -- "
"Miguel, if you throw my sex at me one more time I'll lose my temper!
I'm coming with you. The guards have all the work they can cope with,
and I'm not going to be left sitting in the carriage here when there
may be something useful I can do!"
Defiantly she jumped to the ground and belted the sash of her cloak around
her in a businesslike manner. Displeased, but realising the futility of
argument with this strong-willed young woman, Don Miguel took her arm
and together they forced a way to the broad half-moon of pavement on to
which traffic from the bridge debouched.
Here the confusion was fantastic. A small detachment of soldiers with
horse-borne light artillery had formed up at the parapet of the bridge
as though expecting in assault at any moment, but their officer seemed
to have realised that that was a false alarm and was detailing them now
to help with crowd-control instead, occasionally pausing to look up-
and down-river with a spyglass. On the south bank blurs of red could be
seen, indistinct because of traces of mist rising from the water; these
must be the fires the guard had told Don Miguel about. He wondered how
many of the fugitives had lost the homes they had abandoned half-clad,
and to what disaster . . .
Having redeployed his men, the officer in charge of the artillery troop --
a handsomely uniformed young man on a fine roan gelding -- began to move
in their direction, and Don Miguel attracted his attention by shouting
and waving.
"Miguel Navarro, Society of Time!" he introduced himself, cupping his
hands to his mouth. "What's the chance of getting over the river to
the palace?"
The officer stared down at him as though he were mad. He said explosively,
"To the palace? You're lucky to be here, aren't you, rather than there?"
Don Miguel felt as though an icy hand had been lald on his bare brain.
He said, "I'm afraid I've no clear idea of what's going on!"
"No more have I -- " The officer's horse started at some alarm, and
danced sideways three half-paces before willing to be quieted. "But
whatever devilry it is, it's far worse there than herel Haven't you
looked across the river? Here, take my glass!"
He handed the instrument to Don Miguel, who set it to his eye and turned
to the south. Instantly, what had been mere reddish blurs, half-masked
by mist, formed a coherent pattern with what few landmarks could be seen.
He burst out, "It's the palace that's on fire!"
"Correct!" The officer laughed without humour, reclaiming the spyglass.
"One of my men reported a minute ago that the roof is falling in."
"But the King's there, and the Prince Imperial, and the Commander of
the Society, and the Ambassador of the Confederacy -- !"
The hand on his arm tightened. He glanced down at Kristina and saw that
the colour had drained from her face. Yes: her father and her sister,
too . . .
"God knows what it's an about!" the officer said savagely. "But it's
the biggest disaster in a hundred years, no question of that. The night
on the other side of the river is alive with murderous shadows, killing
and looting and burning."
From near the waters edge, down-slope from the embankment, came a loud
exclamation. "Someone out there -- swimming! Someone help him! Someone
get him ashore!"
"Sounds like a job I can tackle," the officer snapped, and dug his heels
into his horse's flanks, departing with a sketched salute to Kristina. He
called together three or four of his soldiers, who ran down with ropes
to help the swimmer. Don Miguel and Kristina followed them. If by a
miracle this was a man who had managed to get across from the south bank,
he might have more exact news.
They arrived as the man was being hauled out. He had spent his last
strength, and could not stand; he collapsed face downwards on the ground.
Don Miguel saw with horror that each of his shoulders was stuck with
a short, vicious arrow, the barbs buried deep in the flesh. It was a
miracie he had kept afloat.
"Miguel!" Kristina whispered. "Isn't it your friend?"
Don Miguel strode forward. "God's name," he said. "God's name, but it is.
Felipe!"
He dropped on one knee beside the stricken form, but the officer,
dismounting, waved him back. "Wait!" he snapped. "Wait till they've
drained the water from his lungs!"
With a muttered apology Don Miguel drew aside, and a medical orderly
from the artillery troop hurried up with a case of medicines. Like a
huge waddling white owl a Sister of Mercy came after him.
Aching, Don Miguel watched as they inspected the arrows and prepared to
extract them and dress the wounds. He ignored the continuing noise from
all around and was only dimly aware that the flow of refugees across
the bridge had dropped to a final trickle of the sick, the aged and the
very young.
Abruptly his preoccupation was shattered by the rattle of a carriage
from behind him, on the approach to the bridge. A harsh voice called
out to its driver, telling him to go around another way.
Then another voice was heard, speaking from the interior of the carriage,
dry and precise. "But I must cross here and now to go to the Prince's
palace. I must be there before midnight."
Don Miguel's relief was so great he almost swooned. He started forward,
waving and shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Father Ramón! Father Ramón! Praise heaven you're here!"
V
The Jesuit master-theoretician of the Society of Time stepped down from
his carriage, brows drawn together on his bird-like face as -- for what
appeared to be the first time -- he surveyed the fantastic scene. The
roadway looked like a just-abandoned battlefield, what with the sickly
and lame refugees still hobbling past and the scattered belongings which
earlier passers-by had found too heavy to carry any further.
He said, "I fail to see, my son, why my arrival in the midst of this to-do
should so excite you, but something tells me I ought to find out, even
though I don't expect to enjoy learning the answer. Enlighten me."
Rapidly Don Miguel summed up the situation as best he could: the mysterious
attackers beyond the river, the setting on fire of the palace, the unknown
fate of the royal family, the refugees streaming north, his being in the
company of the Lady Kristina of Scania, her concern about her father . . .
Father Ramón's expression grew more and more horrified.
"I had no idea!" he exclaimed. "It's my practice to pray privately on
the way to celebrate Mass, with the curtains of my carriage drawn.
I did hear shouting and commotion, but I assumed that fights had broken
out among the New Year revellers! Have you any idea what may be at the
bottom of it all?"
"I'm very much afraid that I may," Don Miguel said soberly, and described
his encounter with the feathered girl in the middle of Empire Circle.
He was appalled to see the expression on the Jesuit's face change still
further, beyond mere horror to outright and unconcealed fear.
"Do you know who this woman is?" he demanded.
"Judging by your description, I think I do," Father Ramón answered heavily.
"A costume not recognisably of the modern world, nor of any recorded period
of history, a language you could not identify . . . But that is the worst
possible conclusion we could jump to, unless we are goaded beyond any
alternative. Is there any way we can get recent news of events the other
side of the river?"
"Ah -- yes, with luck there may be!" Don Miguel said. "Just before you
arrived, Don Felipe Basso swam the river pierced with strange arrows. See,
they're ministering to him on the river-bank." He pointed.
Father Ramón headed towards the white silhouette of the Sister of Mercy
like a shot from a gun. Don Miguel glanced at Kristina; it was clear from
her paleness and her trembling lips that her self-control was stretched
nearly to the limit. He put his arm around her reassuringly and led her
in the wake of Father Ramón.
The Jestuit was already kneeling at Don Felipe's side when they caught
up. Turning his head to the medical orderly, he snapped, "Will he live?"
If the answer was negative, of course, Extreme Unction must precede any
questioning. But the medical orderly, tossing bloody dressings into the
river, gave a nod.
"He's tough as oak, Father," he said. "He'll live."
Don Miguel heaved a sigh of relief and bent close to listen to what
Father Ramón might say. Before the latter could speak, however, Don
Felipe had opened his eyes and recognised him.