Guardians of Time (15 page)

Bridget watched him go. “Poor Cadwallon. It
never occurred to him that the bandits would have removed their
masks.”

“I’m glad to know there are men like him in
the world. It gives me hope for humanity.” Peter boosted Bridget
onto her horse and then mounted his own.

Simon held their only torch, its bottom end
tucked into the spear rest near his right knee, and the light
flickered in the wind. He urged his horse a little faster, taking
the lead in order to light the road ahead. Bridget allowed her
horse to pick its way among the ruts and rocks, staying just to
Peter’s left so his sword arm remained unhindered by her presence.
Silence fell between them. She and Peter seemed to have exhausted
the topic of their search for now until they had more information
to go on, and she struggled for something else to say.

Finally, she decided she had nothing to lose
by taking the bull by the horns and pressing him on the only thing
they hadn’t yet discussed. “Are we going to, you know, talk about
what happened
?”

Peter frowned. “What do you mean? We’ve been
talking about it.”

“Not about the ambush. About the fact that
I—” Bridget made an exasperated sound, “—kissed you.” The last
words came out in a whisper, and she glanced ahead, hoping Simon
hadn’t overheard her. She’d felt relaxed and comfortable with Peter
today, but if he didn’t say something soon about how he felt about
her, she was going to scream.

“Is there—” he stopped. “Are you sorry?”

“No!”

“Oh, good. I’m not either.” Peter clicked
his teeth at his horse, directing him to skirt a puddle that took
up the full width of the road.

Bridget had to fall back to follow him,
shaking her head and glad, for once, that he wasn’t looking at her.
All the stewing around in her brain she’d done in the last few
hours about this gesture or that reference, fearing that he
regretted his decision to stay in the Middle Ages—and it turned out
he was totally oblivious to anything she was feeling.

Peter slowed his horse to wait for her to
clear the puddle, which again was a good sign and, as she came
abreast, she decided to try one more time. “Are we, you know,
together
?”

“Er—” Peter flicked his gaze in her
direction for approximately a third of a second. “Is that what you
want?”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

“I do too.” He relaxed into his saddle. “So
then it’s settled.”

Bridget shook her head. If she’d known it
was going to be that easy, she would have kissed him months
ago.

David

W
hen Callum’s phone
rang, David had been examining Tesco’s Christmas display of
chocolate, all of which was on fifty-percent-off sale now that it
was Christmas Eve. The Tesco was afraid it wouldn’t sell out in the
last few hours before the store closed.

“We should buy it all.” Cassie started to
load up her cart, which already had in it—among other things—ten
cell phones; a host of pills, lotions, and other medical supplies;
three boxes of lip balm for Bronwen; neodymium magnets in various
sizes; ziplock bags; every pair of reading glasses in the store;
dozens of packages of rubber bands; and duct tape. A second cart
held two laptops, a wireless printer, and several reams of
paper.

David grinned. “Think what an amazing gift
one of these will make to a visiting dignitary.” Then he paused. “I
almost hate to ask, but … you’re sure—now that you’re here—about
coming home? If you do return, this is the first time you will have
truly chosen it.”

Cassie stopped, a box of chocolate held in
each hand. “I know. Callum and I have talked, and we’re ready to go
back.” She canted her head, as if she was thinking this through at
the same time she was speaking to him. “Maybe it’s growing up on
the reservation as I did, but the border between this world and the
medieval one is more blurred to me than to some of the others. I
don’t feel like this decision is forever—and even if it is, I’m at
peace with it.”

“And your grandfather? What did he say?”

“We’ll be talking more, but he told me that
he knew it was me before he even picked up the phone,” Cassie said.
“To call him on Christmas means a lot to both of us. Thank you for
giving me that opportunity.” She smiled at him with tears blurring
her eyes again.

David found himself swallowing hard. “Don’t
think I’m not grateful to you both.”

“I told my grandfather that Callum and I are
going to name his grandchild, if it’s a boy, after him.”

David was so stunned he couldn’t actually
speak.

Cassie laughed. “And don’t worry, I wasn’t
thinking of Grandad’s English name, which is Arthur, but his Indian
name, ‘gentle spirit’. That’s ‘Gareth’ in Welsh.”

David shook his head. “You two sure know how
to keep a secret.”

Still grinning, Cassie said, “How big, by
the way, are these generators you want? With all this and them too,
will everything fit in the van?”

“Oh sure,” David said, hardly aware of what
he was saying. He was more thrilled than he could say that Cassie
and Callum were finally going to be parents. He was going to tease
Callum about it at absolutely the first opportunity. “They’re like
a foot and a half wide—”

“A reporter.” Callum spoke sharply into his
phone. “Jesus Christ.”

Cassie, Darren, and David gathered around
Callum, who was listening intently. Mark had been left in the
rental van, surfing the web on Tesco’s wifi, with the promise that
Cassie would bring him tea and biscuits. The Cardiff bus had been
safely disposed of, left in a turn out—what Callum called a
lay
by
—on a remote road between Bangor and Y Felinheli, a little
village to the west.

Up until now, everyone had been in a good
mood. David now knew the source of Cassie’s happiness, while David
himself had been riding high on what he was pretty sure was a
combination of pleasure at being back in the modern world, at
surviving another brush with death, and at the illicit nature of
their current existence.

But now he deflated like a popped balloon.
“Oh no.”

Darren’s mouth turned down. “That can’t be
good.”

Callum put the phone’s mouthpiece to his
chest. “Math’s talking to him right now. I told him we’d get there
as soon as we could, but I hope we don’t have to. We need to buy
what we have and get back to the van.”

The modern world was set up for buying
things. They’d lucked out with this Tesco, which had a broader
inventory than some Tescos, and it even had a self-checkout. That
meant they didn’t have to talk to anyone about their odd assortment
of purchases. Twenty minutes later, with Callum’s bank account
several thousand pounds lighter, they were back in the van. Built
to seat fifteen passengers, it fit on the narrow Welsh roads hardly
better than the giant Cardiff bus.

Cassie sat at the wheel, as was appropriate
given her superior driving skills and the fact that she’d scored
higher than Callum on the Security Service exam. David busied
himself with his phone. Even for his fourteenth birthday ten years
ago, before he’d first come to medieval Wales, his mom hadn’t given
him a smart phone. It was 2020 now, however, and he hadn’t seen a
single dumb phone on the entire rack at Tesco. Maybe nobody made
them anymore.

“What do you have for us, Mark?” Callum
said.

Callum had hung up the phone with Math,
who’d successfully put off Rupert Jones, and then Callum had given
everyone a rundown of the conversation, including the last bit
about the events at the Black Boar in Caernarfon.

“What do I have for you regarding what? The
acquisition of information that will vault the Middle Ages into the
twenty-first century or in regards to that reporter outside the
clinic?” Mark said without looking up from his laptop.

“The clinic.”

“I’m working on it,” Mark said. “Rupert
Jones is a legitimate reporter, writing for
The Guardian
. I
can’t see how our old employer is involved yet, Callum. No way
could anyone get here this fast.”

“Unless someone was already in the area,”
Callum said.

“Who? And why would they be?” Darren
said.

“Somebody whose parents live in Gwynedd,”
David said.

“Math took care of Rupert, so how about we
focus instead on getting the industrial magnet and that
microhydro-electric thingie David wants?” Cassie said over her
shoulder.

“I did find an industrial supply depot near
Bangor University,” Mark said.

Callum had taken the seat in front next to
Cassie, and he turned to look at David. “That sounds like the place
to start.”

David shook his head. “I don’t know, Callum.
How important can these things be compared to the fact that the bus
passengers are talking so much that
The Guardian
has heard
of it. Rupert could be there in a half-hour. Our cover is totally
blown, especially when someone tells him that Mom needed a breast
biopsy. He’s going to know who they were.”

“That’s why we need to let Dr. Wolff do his
job while we do ours.” Cassie looked into her rearview mirror so
she could see David’s face. “The bus passengers were never going to
do anything else, David.”

“I just hoped we’d have more time,” he said.
“It was a failure of imagination on my part. I thought a great deal
about how to get everyone here, but I didn’t spend enough time
thinking about what would happen to them and us once we did. I
spent more time worrying about ending up in China than in Gwynedd,
because I thought in the latter case they could take care of
themselves.”

“You didn’t know,” Cassie said. “It’s kind
of hard to plan for something like this.”

“At least the local constabulary seems to be
neutralized,” Callum said, “for another hour, anyway.”

Cassie pulled the van behind a row of parked
cars, many of them stopped half on the sidewalk to get them farther
out of the main flow of traffic. The streets here, as everywhere in
Wales, were half the width of American streets. Even as deserted as
the roads were at six in the evening on Christmas Eve, David found
himself having to close his eyes every time they passed a parked
car on the left or a moving car on the right. It was even worse
when they had to do both at the same time.

“Where to?” Cassie said.

“Mark and I could use an internet café with
the ability to print stuff out,” David said. “If we do nothing else
here, we need to kill a tree or two.”

“And I’m looking for anonymity before I hack
fully into the Security Service,” Mark said.

Cassie looked from Mark to Callum. “Is that
really necessary?”

David put a hand on the back of Cassie’s
seat. “I want to give them Lee if they don’t already have him.”

Cassie half-turned in her seat. “That’s what
this is about? Some kind of vengeance?”

David didn’t even know how to answer that
and gazed at her, a sickness in his belly that she would think that
of him.

Fortunately, Callum answered for him. “Not
vengeance, Cassie. Justice.”

David cleared his throat. “While I’d rather
not blow our cover for nothing, I still care about this world and
everyone in it.”

“Yeah, I get that. Okay. Sorry, David.” She
put out a hand to him. “I’d prefer to forget all about Lee.”

“He’s here, somewhere,” David said. “Mark
says there haven’t been any bombings since Cardiff, but that’s not
to say there won’t be, now that Lee’s been back here for three
months. I find it unlikely that he isn’t planning
something
.”

“Maybe we caught him when he came in,”
Darren said, and David knew he meant
the Security Service
as
the
we
. “There would have been a flash that could have led
us to him.”

“A double one, actually,” David said, “since
I came and left again. In fact, those flashes could have led any
number of organizations to him. If they were paying attention,
which they might not have been.”

“But we’ve done it again now,” Callum said,
“which could be getting everyone excited, Christmas Eve or no
Christmas Eve.”

Mark held up one finger. “I have a better
idea than an internet café, and it will solve all our problems in
one go.”

“What is that?” Callum said.

“University of Bangor,” Mark said. “I went
to school with a graduate student there, Evan Thomas.”

“In what?” David said.

“Computer science,” Mark said, and then at
everyone’s pleased looks added, “Yes, he’s a hacker. I told you he
could solve all our problems at once.”

“Let’s go before Anna calls back and tells
us that Mom’s done and they’re ready to be picked up,” David said.
“I want to be able to leave as soon as we hear from her.”

Mark accessed his laptop again, and then he
picked up his new phone to dial his friend.

“It’s Christmas Eve. He might not be there,”
Callum said.

“You don’t know him like I do,” Mark said.
“He’ll be there.”

Sure enough, Evan picked up on the first
ring. “What?”

Mark laughed. “Evan, it’s Mark Jones. You at
the university?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me where.”

“Room 221. Off Dean Street. You coming
here?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t get in the door without a key.
I’ll come down.”

“Be there in two ticks,” Mark said.

“You didn’t tell him there were a bunch of
us,” David said.

Mark smirked. “People don’t mean very much
to Evan. He won’t care one way or the other, and it would only
confuse him.”

Nothing was very far away in Bangor, though
traffic had picked up slightly now that it was the dinner hour. A
few stores were open late for last-minute shopping, though none of
these could sell David an industrial magnet for creating
electricity.

He stared out the window. “I’m beginning to
see the flaw in the plan in terms of actually bringing home
technology,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s Christmas Eve.
No wonder my mother was concerned about us stealing what we
needed.”