Time Patrol (64 page)

Winter passed, rain, snow, cavernous darknesses, the night of fear before the sun turned back and the day of feast that followed, lightening skies, thaw, newborn lambs, budding boughs. Spring brought leaves and northbound wings; Niaerdh rode about the land; men and women coupled in the fields where they would plow and sow. The Sun Car rolled ever higher and slower, green swelled, thunderstorms flashed and banged above the heath, rainbows glimmered far out at sea.

Time came for the market at Kaupavik. Alvaring men gathered their wares and busked themselves. Word thrilled from homestead to homestead: this year a ship had arrived from beyond the Anglii and Cimbri, from realms of the very Romans.

No one knew much about Romaburh. It lay somewhere remote in the South. But its warriors were like locusts, they had eaten land after land; and finely made things trickled out of those realms, glass and silver vessels, metal discs bearing faces, unbelievably lifelike little figures. The stream must be strengthening, for more such goods reached the Eyn every year. Now, at last, Roman chapmen had themselves made it to the country of the Geats! Those who stayed behind in Laikian watched with envy those who left.

Having scant work to do just then, they took comfort in idleness. No sign of evil marked that day a sennight later when Edh and Heidhin strolled west to the shore.

Huge reached the heath, man-empty once they left the thorp out of sight, treeless and flat, so that most of the world was sky. Dizzyingly tall the clouds loomed, dazzlingly white, in a blue without bounds. Light and heat fell from the sun like rain. Poppies flared red, gorse yellow, amidst the murky ling. When they sat down for a while they caught a scorched smell of spurrey; bees hummed in a silence through which larksong drifted earthward; then wings racketed, a grouse hastened low overhead, they looked into one another's eyes and laughed aloud at their own astonishment. Walking, they held hands, no more, for theirs was a chaste folk and he felt himself the warder of a fragile sacredness.

Their path skirted the bluffs that stretched north from the farms and brought them through woods to a strand. Starred with wildflowers, grass grew nearly to the water's edge. Wavelets chuckled on stones they had long since worn smooth. Farther out they gleamed and glinted. Across the channel, the mainland shadowed the horizon. Closer, cormorants on a rock dried their wings in the breeze. A stork flew by, white bearer of luck and growth.

Heidhin caught his breath. His finger leaped to point. "Look!" he cried.

Edh squinted north against the brightness. Her voice wavered. "What
is
it?"

"A ship," he said, "bound this way. A big, big ship."

"No, it can't be. That thing above it—"

"I've heard about such. Men who've been abroad have sometimes seen them. They catch the wind and push the hull along. Yon's the Roman ship, Edh, it has to be, headed home from Kaupavik, and we came right in time to behold!"

Rapt, they stared, forgetting all else. The vessel glided nigh. Indeed she was a wonder. Black with gold trim, she was no longer than a large Northern craft, but much wider, round-bellied to hold an untellable freight of treasures. She was decked over, men standing high above the hold. They seemed a swarm, plenty to fight off any rovers. The stempost curved grandly up and aft, while the carving of a giant swan's neck lifted at the stern. Between them rested a wooden house. No oars drove this ship. From a great pole with a crosspiece swelled a cloth as broad as the beam. She moved along noiseless, a wave at her bow and wake aswirl behind the double steering blades.

"Surely they are beloved of Niaerdh," Edh breathed.

"Now I can see how they clutch half the world," Heidhin said shakenly. "What can withstand them?"

The ship changed course, nearer to the island. Youth and maiden saw crewmen peer their way. A hail rang faintly in their ears. "Why, I, I do think it's us they look at," Edh stammered. "What could they want?"

"Maybe . . . they would like me to join them," Heidhin said. "I've heard from travelers to western parts that the Romans will take tribesmen into their war-hosts. If those are shorthanded because of sickness or something—"

Edh cast him a stricken glance. "Would you go with them?"

"No, never!" Her fingers closed tight around his. He squeezed back. "But let's hear them out anyway, if they do land. They may want something else, and pay us well for our help." A pulse throbbed in his throat.

The yard rattled down. What must be an anchor, though it was not a stone but a hook, went out at the end of a line. A boat trailed on another line. Sailors hauled it alongside and lowered a rope ladder. Men climbed down and seated themselves on the thwarts. Their mates handed them oars. One stood up and flapped a fine cloak he carried. "He smiles and beckons," said Heidhin. "Yes, they have a wish they hope we can grant."

"How beautiful, that garment," Edh murmured. "I think Niaerdh wears the like when she visits the other gods."

"Maybe ere sundown it will be yours."

"Oh, I dare not ask."

"Ho, there!" bawled a man in the boat. He was the biggest, fair-haired, doubtless a German-born interpreter. The rest were a mixed lot, some also light of hue, some darker than Heidhin. But of course the Romans had many different folk to draw on. All wore knee-length tunics over bare legs. Edh flushed and kept her gaze from the ship, where most went naked.

"Be not afraid," the German called. "We'd fain deal with you."

Heidhin reddened too. "An Alvaring knows no fear," he shouted. As his voice cracked he grew redder yet.

The Romans rowed in. The two ashore waited, blood loud in their heads. The boat grounded. A man jumped forth and made fast. The one with the cloak led them up the strand. He smiled and smiled.

Heidhin clasped hard his spear. "Edh," he said, "I like not the look of them. I think we'd be wisest if we kept out of reach—"

He was too late. The leader yelled an order. His followers dashed forward. Before Heidhin could raise his weapon, new hands grabbed it. A man stepped behind him and caught his arms in a wrestler's lock. He struggled, screeching. A short stick, to which he had paid no heed—the gang was unarmed save for knives—struck his nape. That was a skillful blow, to stun without real harm. He sagged, and they bound him.

Edh had whirled to run. A sailor caught her hair. Two more closed in. They flung her down on the grass. She screamed and kicked. Another pair grabbed her ankles. The leader knelt between her spraddled legs. He grinned. Spit ran from a corner of his mouth. He hiked up her skirt.

"You trolls, you dog turds, I'll kill you," Heidhin raged weakly, out of the pain that stabbed through his skull. "I swear by every god of war, no peace shall your breed ever have with me. Your Romaburh shall burn—" Nobody listened. Where Edh lay pinned, the thing went on and on.

14
A.D. 43.

Tracing Vagnio's voyage back to his departure from Öland was easy. With skill and persistence, it was possible to find that a boy and a girl had walked to his home from a village about twenty miles south. But what happened earlier? Some cautious inquiries on the ground were in order. First, though, Everard and Floris planned an aerial survey over the previous several months. The more clues they collected in advance, the better. Vagnio would not necessarily hear of an event such as a murder; perhaps the family could hush it up. Or he and his men might keep silent about it before a stranger. Or Everard might simply get no chance to ask before circumstances forced him from the camp on the beach.

Leaving behind their van and horses, the agents flitted off together on separate hoppers. Their search pattern was a set of leaps from point to point of a precalculated space-time grid. If they spied anything unusual, they would take as close a look through as long a duration as needful. The procedure wasn't guaranteed to pay off, but it was better than nothing and they didn't have infinite lifespan to spend here.

A mile above the village, they flashed from midsummer balefires to a couple of weeks later and hung in an enormous blue. Wind whittered thin and cold. The view wheeled over a sunlit Baltic Sea, Sweden's hills and forests to the west, Öland a straitness mottled with heather, grass, woods, rock, sand—names no dweller would speak for unchronicled centuries to come.

Everard swept his scanner around. Abruptly he stiffened. "Yonder!" he exclaimed into the transmitter at his neck. "About seven o'clock—see?"

Floris whistled. "Yes. A Roman ship, is it not, anchored offshore?" Thoughtfully: "Gallo-Roman, most likely, out of some such port as Bordeaux or Boulogne, rather than the Mediterranean. They never had a regular trade directly with Scandinavia, you know, but records mention a few official visits, and occasional entrepreneurs sail to Denmark and beyond, bypassing the long chain of middlemen. Amber, especially."

"This might be significant for us. Let's check." Everard increased magnification.

Floris had already done it. She screamed.

"Oh, my God," Everard choked.

Floris swooped downward. Cloven air boomed behind her.

"Stop, you fool!" Everard yelled. "Come back!"

Floris ignored him, her popping ears, everything but that which was ahead of her dive. Still her shriek trailed after. So might a plunging hawk scream, or a wrathful Valkyrie. Everard struck fist on control console, cursed, and grimly, all but helplessly, trailed at a slower pace. He halted a few hundred feet aloft, keeping the sun at his back.

The men, clustered to watch the show or wait their turns, heard. They looked up and saw the death-horse bound for them. They wailed and scrambled in every direction. The one on the girl pulled from her, got to his knees, yanked out his knife. Maybe he meant to kill her, maybe it was only defensive reflex. No matter. A sapphire-blue energy bolt smote him through the mouth. He crumpled at her feet. From a hole in the back of his skull curled the smoke off his brain.

Floris whipped her cycle about. A man's height above ground, she fired at the next nearest. Gut-shot, he yammered and threshed on the grass, to Everard like an overturned beetle. Floris chased a third and dropped him cleanly. She ceased then, motionless in the saddle for a minute. Sweat mingled with tears on her face, as cold as her hands.

Breath shuddered into her. She holstered her pistol and leaf-gentle descended by Edh.

Done is done,
tolled through Everard. Swiftly he considered his options. In blind panic, surviving sailors spurted along the shore or toward the woods. Two had kept some wits, had waded out and were swimming for the ship, where horror boiled. The Patrolman bit his lip till blood ran. "Okay," he said aloud, tonelessly. With jumps around space and precise aim, he killed each of those who had landed. Finally he put the wounded man out of his misery.
I don't suppose Janne left him on purpose. She just forgot.
Everard rode back to a fifty-foot altitude and poised. By scanner and amplifier he observed what went on below him.

Edh sat up. Her stare was blank, but she plucked at her skirt and got it down over the red-streaked thighs. Hog-tied, Heidhin writhed toward her. "Edh, Edh," he groaned. He stopped when the timecycle settled between. "Oh, goddess, avenger—"

Floris dismounted and knelt beside Edh. She laid her arms about the girl. "It is over, dear," she sobbed. "It will be well with you. Nothing like this, ever again. You are free now."

"Niaerdh," she heard. "All-Mother, you came."

"No use denying your divinity," Everard snarled in Floris's receiver. "Get the hell out before you make matters worse."

"No," the woman answered. "You don't understand. I have to give her what little comfort I am able."

Everard sat mute. The crewmen in the channel heaved frantic on halyard and anchor rode. "Loose me," Heidhin pleaded. "Let me to her."

"Maybe I do understand," Everard said. "Be as quick as possible, can you?"

The daze was lifting from Edh, but unearthliness brimmed the hazel eyes. "What do you want of me, Niaerdh?" she whispered. "I am yours. As I always was?"

"Slay the Romans, all the Romans!" Heidhin bawled. "I'll pay you for it with my life if you will."

Poor muchacho,
Everard thought,
your life is already ours to take, anytime we might choose. But I could hardly expect you to act sensible right off the bat, could I?

Or ever, by my lights. You are not a scientifically educated post-Christian Western European. To you, the gods are real and your highest duty is avenging a wrong.

Floris stroked the matted hair. Her free arm drew the reeking, shivering, slight body close. "I want only your well-being, only your gladness," she said. "I love you."

"You saved me," Edh stammered, "because . . . because I must—what?"

"Listen to me, Floris, for everything's sake," Everard called between his teeth. "The time is out of joint and you can't set it right today. You
can't.
Meddle any more, and I swear there'll never be a Tacitus One book, maybe never a Tacitus Two. We don't belong in these events, and that's why the future is in danger. Leave them be!"

His partner fell altogether still.

"Are you troubled, Niaerdh?" Edh asked as a child might. "What can trouble you, the goddess? That the Romans befoul your world?"

Floris closed her eyes, opened them, and let go of the girl. "It . . . is . . . your woe, my dear," she said. Rising: "Fare you well. Fare you bravely, free from fear and sorrow. We shall meet again." To Everard: "Shall I release Heidhin?"

"No, Edh can take a knife and cut the rope. He can help her back to the village."

"True. And that should do both of them good, shouldn't it? A pitiful tiny bit of good."

Floris mounted her timecycle. "I suppose we'd best ascend, instead of winking out of sight," Everard said. "Come on."

He threw a last glance down. It was as if he felt the two there looking and looking. Out on the water, sail filled, the ship bore west. Lacking several hands and, no doubt, at least a couple of officers, she might or might not make it home. If she did, the crew might or might not relate what they had seen. It would scarcely win credence. They'd be smarter to invent something more plausible. Of course, any tale could well be taken for a fabrication, an attempt to cover up a mutiny. In that case, they had an unpleasant death in store. Maybe they'd try their luck among the Germans instead, slim though the prospects be. Knowing their fate would not affect history, Everard didn't give a damn what it was.