Prince of Time (5 page)

Then, with my uncle’s blessing, I will seek out Prince Llywelyn and join his men. And one day Hereford will pay for his family’s treatment of Cymry. I will see to it. Personally.

Hereford or Falkes; King Henry or King Edward—the names changed but the will was the same. With no Lili to interrupt me this time, I put a hand on my lord’s arm. Three men approached, walking their horses past our position. They rode unspeaking and we held our breath until they were out of sight and sound.

“How long are they going to search for us?” Dafydd said, under his breath.

“Until they find us?”

“We’re in Scotland. They have no jurisdiction here. Surely this is madness.”

“Only if they’re caught.”

“We must reach the boat,” Dafydd said.

“By what means?” I said. “Where there are three, there might be more. I don’t think Falkes will be so easy on us a second time.”

Then, the clip-clopping of another horse’s hooves sounded. I peered through the underbrush. “It’s Aaron,” Dafydd said, springing to his feet.

Aaron’s head and his horse’s were down, draggingly tired, but they both looked up at the sight of us. I tugged at Dafydd’s cloak to keep him from bursting out of the trees. “Wait,” I said.

After the first brief glance, Aaron looked away from us and pulled his horse off the road. He dismounted while Dafydd and I backed into the trees, thankful for his silent warning. It was another minute before the three soldiers from before returned and stopped as they reached Aaron.

“A Jew!” one of them spat on the road. I knew enough English to understand those words, at least.

Aaron kept his eyes fixed on the ground but it didn’t appease the Englishman. He leaned forward, grasped Aaron’s beard in his left fist, and jerked his head, forcing him to look up. “You offend me,” the man said.

A small knife appeared in his right hand. In retrospect, it’s possible he only intended to trim Aaron’s beard, but before I knew it Dafydd had his sword out and had charged out of the woods. I was quicker, however, and the man died with an arrow through his neck before Dafydd could reach him. Finding himself without an opponent, Dafydd swung around and met the sword of one of the other men with his blade.

Before the man could slash at Dafydd’s head a second time, Dafydd whipped out his belt knife and slit the horse’s throat. It crashed to the ground, trapping its owner’s leg beneath it. He screamed. Meanwhile, I pressed and loosed a second arrow at the third man who’d taken flight rather than engage either of us. The arrow hit him in the back and he too fell.

All of a sudden, I could hear again. The birds in the trees sang as before, undisturbed by the violence we’d unleashed. Aaron rested his head on his horse’s neck, one hand to his eyes while Dafydd dispatched the downed soldier. I handed my lord a cloth with which to wipe his sword. Dafydd took it. He shrugged. “We need to move,” he said. “Now.”

“A trail runs south, just there,” I said, pointing towards a spot a few yards distant. “But Aaron can’t ride much further.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

We’d not gone far down the trail, Dafydd slightly behind Aaron to encourage him and not allow him to fall behind, before the scent of the sea came strongly. The hoof beats behind us sounded more loudly too. Dafydd glanced once behind us, and then slapped the rear of Aaron’s horse with his hand. “Run!” he said. The horse took off.

“They’ve brought too many,” I said.

“I know,” Dafydd said.

Dafydd and I spurred our horses. Ahead, a gap in the trees revealed the end to the road, a cliff that faced the sea. Beyond, in the fading light, the gray sea blended in with the grayness of the sky. Below the cliff should be the village of Annan and the boat.

“Damn it!” Dafydd said. “Hurry!”

I glanced behind me again. The English were closer—far closer than they’d been last time I checked. Ahead of us, Aaron raced through the gap in the trees and turned left, following the edge of the cliff. In two heartbeats he was out of sight.

“My lord!” I said, “we might have to stand and figh—” But I couldn’t finish my sentence. An Englishman had gotten off a lucky shot with his bow and his arrow hit me in the back, low on my right side, driving through the leather armor into my ribs.

I cried out.

Dafydd heard me and looked back. “Christ!” he said. He reined in, signaling to Bedwyr with his knees and reaching for Llwyd’s reins. I struggled to stay upright but all the air had left my lungs. “Stay with me, damn you!”

He managed to catch Llywd’s reins with one hand and me with the other. He tried to hang on to me, but my weight was too much and I fell between the horses to the ground. Dafydd leaped from Bedwyr, shoving at his horse so that he blocked us from the English arrows, and bent over me. My fall had dislodged the arrow and blood poured from the wound.

I gazed into his face, trying to speak. “Hush,” Dafydd said. Then a look crossed his face, one I’d seen a few times before. It was one of resolution and I wanted to shout at him, “Whatever your plan, don’t do it! Your life is worth so much more than mine! Leave me and run!” But I choked on my own bile and couldn’t speak.

Hooves pounded along the road. They were almost upon us. Dafydd put his head close to mine. “Can you rise?”

I managed a nod. We clasped hands and he pulled me up, but instead of requiring me to walk, he stooped, grasped my arm and my waist, and threw me over his shoulder so my head hung down his back. Without looking behind us again, he took three long strides in the direction Aaron had gone. Unlike Aaron, however, Dafydd didn’t follow the path to the village. Instead, he hovered on the edge of the cliff.
Christ, what’s he doing?

He jumped.

Rocks rush passed us. I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact and the pain. But there was only darkness.

Chapter Three

Bronwen

I
had a big bite of hamburger in my mouth, with mayonnaise and ketchup dripping onto the napkin in my lap, when word came from on high that my professor wanted to see me. I knew it was important because the departmental secretary had actually gotten up from her desk and walked down the hall to the graduate lounge to find me.

Now I faced a dilemma. Do I finish the hamburger, thus delaying my visit to Professor Tillman, or do I leave the rest of the hamburger uneaten? I’d decided that morning that I needed to augment my four major food groups (coffee, diet cola, onion rings, doughnuts) with more nutritious fare if I was going to survive a second year of graduate school. Thus, the banana I ate for breakfast, and the hamburger for lunch.

I set the hamburger on the table. It looked forlorn and I knew it would be cold by the time I got back. I left it and headed down the hall to Professor Tillman’s office. I’d not seen him in some time, as I’d taken to working late to avoid him. Ever since his divorce, he’d become overly friendly. I was hardly a man-magnet (nice looking...sure...but
normal
), so it could have been all my imagination. At the same time, he wasn’t helping me with my thesis as much as in past months and I feared that he could tell that my enthusiasm for graduate school was waning. It wasn’t the enormous amount of work—I could handle that, including the interminable round of classes and papers—but that so much of it seemed to be work for work’s sake. Ultimately, however, it was the endless self-promotion that had caught me unprepared and still left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I knocked on the office door and poked in my head. Jim Tillman sat behind a large wooden desk at one end of the room. The office wasn’t very big, but lined floor to ceiling with books. A guest chair sat on the opposite side of the desk, only two paces away. Tillman held up one hand to stop me before I spoke, finished what he was typing on his laptop, and then looked up.

“Hello, Bronwen. Come in and shut the door.”

Ugh
. I came in but only closed the door most of the way. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Give it another shove,” he said.

I spun in the chair and kicked the door with my foot. It latched. I spun back and looked at him, trying to affect a bright and expectant face.

“Coffee?” He held out a small French press.

“Sure,” I said.
It
is
one of the four food groups, after all
.

“Not that we should drink this stuff with all the latest findings,” he murmured as he poured some into a cracked mug and handed it to me. “Sorry, there’s only a half a cup left.”

Despite myself, I smiled. “Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about it damaging me, since I only have half a cup.”

Tillman looked at me, and there was a pause. Then he laughed, and I remembered why I liked him so much. That was the worst part of my suspicions. Maybe I was just misinterpreting what he was doing.
Maybe it’s all in my head?

Then he dropped the bombshell.

“The selection committee reviewed your request for funding for the upcoming year. Although you’ve made good progress, we feel that others are more deserving of the annual stipend.”

I stared at him, feeling stupid, sure he couldn’t just have said what I’d heard. “They’re revoking my stipend?”

Tillman smiled, in what he probably thought was a gentle manner. “Yes, Bronwen. We have forty-five graduate students. We couldn’t fund all of them.”

“There’re forty stipends. Are you telling me I’m one of the bottom five students in the department?”

“It isn’t necessary to compare yourself with the other students, Bronwen.”

Not compare! Graduate school was nothing if not hierarchical. Full professors, like Tillman were at the top, followed by associate professors, assistant professors, and then graduate students. One of the secretaries had actually denied access to a forty-two year old, third year student—a former tax lawyer—who wanted to use the copy machine. Undergraduates were at the very bottom of the heap but usually they were oblivious enough not to know it. The whole thing would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

In the face of my silence, Tillman continued. “Your grades are more than adequate,” he said. “There were other considerations which I am not at liberty to share with you.”

Bleh.

“So, do I just pack up and leave?”

“You do have the option of continuing in the program, as my assistant or through your own monies. I’m willing to continue working with you, if you’re willing to work for me in my research.”

And that was it.

What to do? In truth, I loved archaeology. When I’d applied to college as a senior in high school, the admission programs were scrapping the ‘well-rounded’ motif of previous years, in favor of students with a ‘passion.’ That was fine by me. I didn’t have much else to offer, what with my spotty attendance record and worse grades. I hadn’t skipped school to smoke under the bridge. I’d been yanked time and again by my free-living parents for another trip.

Before I was fifteen, I’d been to every great museum in the world. I’d lived for more than three months in seven countries. I’d crossed mountains and deserts, lived in yurts and thatch huts, climbed Aztec, Mayan, and Egyptian pyramids. I’d attended seventeen schools and when I wasn’t in school, I’d worked with my parents in everything from a refugee camp in Africa, to triage medicine in Nepal, to well-digging in Guatemala. Was it any wonder that archaeology appealed to me? One, while doing it, I didn’t have to talk to anyone I didn’t know, always a plus; and two, I got to play with all the dead, old stuff that other archaeologists had brought back from all the ruins I’d seen. What could be better?

Sitting there in the chair, with my world blown apart around me, I accepted Tillman’s offer. Despite my misgivings about him, I had no actual
proof
that he wanted anything untoward from me.
And then there’s the ugly truth...where would you go if you were to leave here?
I told myself that Tillman’s research fascinated me, which is why I’d asked him to become my major professor in the first place. His specialty was Roman Britain. Hadrian’s Wall wasn’t as huge as the Great Wall of China, but just as enthralling.

Right away, he took me upstairs to his lab to show me where he wanted me to start. He talked a mile a minute all the way there, as he unlocked the lab, and until we stepped inside. He stopped when he turned on the light and both of our faces fell. The lab was packed with artifacts, mostly uncatalogued. It was a mess. He knew it was a mess. And now it was my job to deal with it.

It was past nine in the evening by the time I was able to go home. The scary thing was how many people were still in the building and I waved to a couple of them as I passed their offices. I always hated walking out to my car by myself. I thought about getting someone to come with me but told myself not to be pathetic. It was bad enough that everyone was going to know by tomorrow or the next day that I was no longer a funded student, but at school on sufferance without a stipend. I was going to have to stand on my own two feet.

I pushed open the door with my shoulder, holding my keys in my left hand and my TASER firmly in my right. I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I almost didn’t see the two men, one kneeling beside the other in the shadows of the building. As I passed them, walking quickly, the one who was kneeling jerked around and startled me. He knew it, too, for he held out his hand as if to plead with me not to run.

I backed away. He wasn’t as old as I’d first thought—more of a boy than a man—but he was a big guy, with a mop of unkempt, light brown hair and long legs. I couldn’t see very well by the light of the street lamp, but it looked like he was wearing a cloak and a thick leather coat—
could that be armor?
What really got my attention, though, was the long sword, sticking out from his left side. It looked like a real sword, not a prop. None of the SCA folks I knew had a sword like that.

He spoke. “My name is David . . .” then paused, thinking, before continuing, “Llywelyn. Please, please help us. My friend is wounded.”