Romani Armada (2 page)

Ophelia smiled a little, enjoying his enthusiasm. She lifted a brow at Rob, encouraging him to speak.

He took a breath. Let it out. “It’s hard to know where to start,” he confessed.

“Sails!” Antoni hissed.

Ophelia rest on one elbow and parted the grass, looking to the north. Yes, there was the first sail, just topping the horizon. A dirty white thing, looking small and innocent from this far away. Her heart began to thud. “And so it begins,” she murmured. “Antoni, when they cross the causeway, we must leave. You will want to argue with me, but in this you must trust me. We leave when I say we do.”

“Yes, yes,” Antoni replied softly.

“Are they as fierce as history paints them?” Rob asked, looking at the long ship as the hull slipped over the horizon beneath the sail. A second sail had appeared. Then half a dozen more as they watched.

“Worse,” Ophelia assured him. “They are here to conquer and plunder. Nothing else here has meaning for them that would make them reconsider their actions.” She sighed and turned to size him up once more. “So why are you here, Rob? Why did the agency send a green recruit on a big jump like this?”

“No one else could be spared. The agency is gone, Ophelia.” He was staring into her eyes, making her believe him.

“Gone?” she said carefully, trying to understand.

“Destroyed. The station was blown up by the psi. Gabriel attacked us, with his army of hundreds of psi. They sabotaged the reactor.”

Ophelia stared at Rob, her head and heart reeling. This really wasn’t a joke.

“They’re coming!” Antoni said, his voice squeaking with excitement. “I can actually see them. And no horns on their helmets!” He sounded ferociously exultant.

Ophelia stared at the professor’s back. “Attacked,” she repeated blankly. “But...psi...? Why would they do that? It was really psi?”

“You’ve been gone a while. Jump after jump with barely enough time to recover.” Rob’s eyes seemed to be looking into hers. “I know why,” he said simply. “I know about Ezra.”

She looked down, away from his empathy.

“But you were at the meeting, so you know the psi have become organized. Militant. Gabriel targeted the station.” He glanced down at his knees and swallowed.

There was something else he was not saying. Something he would not say in front of Antoni, no matter how absorbed the academic seemed to be.

Then Ophelia realized why Rob had come to find her. “How many other travelers are stranded in history, unable to go back to the station?” she asked.

“We’re still working that out,” Rob told her. He grimaced. “We’re still trying to figure out how we’re to work out where they are in the first place. All the records, all the data...it all went with the station. We thought you were in France as usual. It was the university asking after Antoni that told us where you really were.”

A woman’s scream sounded from the village on the island. The long boats had been seen. The alarm was swiftly spread, as the villagers stirred.

“A few minutes more only, Antoni,” she murmured into the professor’s ear. She looked back at Rob.

“Is that why they sent you? A friendly face?”

Rob considered her for a moment. “They had no one else to send.”

“Not even Ryan?” Ophelia asked, her heart thundering in a way that was alarming. “Did…has something happened to Ryan? He knows this marker.”

Rob lifted his hand in a soothing, settling gesture. “He lives. But he was injured. It will take time for his symbiot to recover.”

She stared at Rob. “This was your first jump, wasn’t it?”

“Almost.” He said it calmly.

Horror touched her. “They sent you alone. Into an era you do not know.”

“Things are...grave.” He was still calm. “Ryan remembered where you were. Pritti helped him give me the marker and directions to find you.”

She swallowed against the nausea beating at her. “Oh my lord,” she murmured. “It really is that bad, isn’t it?”

The sound of wet shale shifting alerted her. She looked up. “They’re at the causeway!” She scrambled to her feet, bent down and tugged on Antoni’s arm. “Come. Come, Dimas. Now.”

He was a dead weight. “A moment,” he whispered.

“No. Now, Dimas!”

No answer. Then, after a long moment of silence, he murmured, “Fascinating...!”

She glanced at Rob, who was already on his feet, a hand under his cloak. The wind lifted the edges of it, revealing the hilt of a sword. The way he rested his hand on it told her he knew how to use it.

Capable, indeed. Nayara had a knack for measuring the talents of men and finding unexpected uses for those talents.

Ophelia tugged on Antoni’s arm again, putting her body weight into it. He barely moved. He was shorter than her, but outweighed her.

“A moment more,” he said absently.

Rob exhaled with an impatient sound, bent and picked up the man by simply grasping the back of his shirt and hauling. Antoni gave a little shriek and dropped the binoculars, which Ophelia caught and tucked into the pouch on her hip. “You got your photos?” she asked Antoni.

“Yes!” He was almost dangling from Rob’s grip, his face red as his hiked-up shirt pressed into his throat.

“Time to go,” Rob said, glancing over his shoulder. “I’ll take your professor back and come back for you. I have the marker now.” He looked around, memorizing the details. “Head for that point, there.”

She spotted the headland jutting into the ocean about a mile south of where they stood. “Hurry back, Rob,” she told him.

He wrapped his arms around Antoni. “I will,” he assured her and was gone.

She gathered her long skirt up in one hand so she could move more quickly and headed south along the coastline. The skin between her shoulder blades prickled hard as she ran. The Vikings didn’t have guns, but she had seen them throw axes and spears with terrifying efficiency. The thought let her run harder than she ever had in her life.

She was seen before she reached the point. A shout went up in the Northman language and held a triumphant note. She spared a glance over her shoulder and saw that three of them had broken away from the main body of warriors running inland. The three were heading in her direction. They were giving chase.

She tried to run faster, but fear was stealing her of energy-giving oxygen and her pace slowed. Fright blossomed ever larger in her chest and she realized she was gasping. She could hear their boots behind her now. The Northmen were fresh, rested from days in the longboats and eager for sport.

The headland was rockier than the shore and her footing became less certain. She could break an ankle in this stuff, but could not afford to slow even more.

More shouts behind her, this time with an outraged note. She risked another glance over her shoulder and saw Rob running toward her. He was coming from a sharper angle than the Northmen. He was heading from inland, while they followed the shore. But it would be a race to see who reached her first. The Northmen could see that for themselves and it would spur them on.

She knew what she had to do. Trying to ignore the hysterical sobbing building in her mind she made herself do the counter-intuitive thing. She turned and headed towards Rob, which also brought her closer to the Northmen.

He had his sword out already and put on a spurt of speed when he saw her change of direction. He was glancing at the closing Northmen, measuring distances. Even though he was sprinting and carrying a broadsword that looked to weigh at least ten pounds, his expression was one of focused, fierce calculation.

At the last moment Ophelia knew for certain that they would all come together at the same moment. She kept running hard and slammed into Rob’s chest. His arm locked around her back, as his other arm lifted the sword. She both felt and heard the impact of a battle ax against his blade, the ring of metal against metal.

“Hold on,” Rob said sharply, for they were falling forward...falling down....

No, Rob was falling into his jump, letting impetus and gravity do the work for him.

Astonishment rippled through her as they slipped into the total sensory deprivation of the jump. Then even her astonishment was halted.

They emerged into a dim light and Rob’s fall continued. She hunched herself inside his hold, her breath held against the coming impact, but he kept rolling forward so the back of his shoulder took the brunt of the fall. Then they tumbled across hard, rocky floor, but still he protected her as much as he could, until at last they came to a halt with Rob on his back and Ophelia sprawled across his chest.

She picked herself up and brushed sand off. “For a rookie, that wasn’t half bad,” she told him.

“Thanks.” He sat up, the sword in his hand clattering against the floor. “Welcome back to the Agency...such as it is.”

She looked around, to find that nearly a dozen people were watching them. They were all agency people and stood or sat at tables on the other side of a rope that was slung across the space they were in.

Ophelia looked up and behind her. “A cave? Where are we?” She glanced down at the back of her hand, which was stinging. A deep gouge across the knuckles from the sharp, pebble-strewn floor was healing as she watched. The symbiot was responding once more.

“We’re deep in the heart of the Canadian Rockies,” Rob said, getting to his feet. “There’s several thousand tons of mountain above us.”

She studied the roped off area they were in. “This is the arrival chamber?” she asked. “A piece of rope and a rocky floor?”

“The temporary one, for now,” he told her and helped her to her feet. He pointed over her right shoulder. “All the amenities of home.”

There was a big atomic clock readout attached to the wall of the cave. It looked exactly like the readouts in all the arrival chambers on the station. “Nayara has been busy.”

“We all have,” came a booming voice, made larger by the echoing effects of the cave.

The familiar voice made her stomach clench. Ophelia braced herself and turned to face Brenden. “You got my client home safely, I trust?” she asked.

Brenden crossed his arms, scowling. “The professor didn’t come here. No humans are allowed in these caves. Rob landed him at a public chamber in California.”

Nayara slipped out from between the people gathered at the tables. The tables were camping tables with benches attached, Ophelia realized. They were apparently serving as a temporary security center for Brenden.

Even in the low light in the cave, Nayara’s hair glowed a burnished, luxurious red, but she looked worn and tired. She wore plain black. Black boots, black trousers and a black shirt.

“You need to rest,” Ophelia told her judiciously.

“So do us all,” Nayara assured her. “In a week, you will feel the same.”

“Rob tried to tell me some of it.” Ophelia nodded toward the highlander, who was on his feet now. “Thank you, by the way.”

He thrust his sword back into its scabbard. “When you turned and ran towards the Northmen, that was true courage and the only reason the jump was a success.” He nodded his head in what was almost a formal bow. “It has been a pleasure, Ophelia. But I have a grieving wife to return to. Would you excuse me?”

“Of course,” Ophelia responded automatically. She watched the highlander step over the rope and head toward a split in the wall that was the only exit from the cave. He removed his cloak and folded it over his arm as he went.

She processed his parting words with something close to shock. Her eyes widened and she swiveled to look at Nayara. “Not baby Jack?” she asked. “And he still came to see me home?”

Nayara sighed. “It’s complicated,” she said, taking Ophelia’s arm. “You have some catching up to do.”

* * * * *

The Agency Home Base – 2264 A.D.:
It took a while for his thoughts to collate. He was content to linger in the peaceful void as sense returned to him. It look a long while for him to notice the missing pieces and even then there was no urgency to find out why they were missing...until he tried to trace back in his mind to the last coherent moment he could remember. Then it returned to him with a jolt of almost pure fear.

“Nayara!” Ryan sat up almost before his eyes opened, reaching for his sword. He blinked, trying to pull everything into focus. It was very dark where he was.

A fluttering shadow to his right coalesced into the wan shape of Fahmido. She bent over him, her hand on his shoulder, pressing him down again. “Rest, Ryan. Rest.”

“What happened?”

“You fell asleep again,” Fahmido said.

“Again?” He cleared his throat. “Asleep? Vampires don’t sleep.” He tried to sit up despite the pressure Fahmido was exerting on his shoulder, but she seemed to be impossibly strong.

“You’re not ready.”

“Who are you to tell me what I can do?”

Fahmido stepped back, letting him go. “Fine. Suit yourself.”

“Thank you.” He thrust his legs off the narrow cot he had been lying on, onto the rock floor beneath. Cold registered on his bare feet, along with sharp edges of the shale-splintered floor. He stood up, then waivered as weakness spread through him in a hot wave.

He fell back onto the cot, looking at his hands and legs, as if they were strange limbs grafted to him. “How long have I been...what happened to me?” he asked Fahmido.

She had her back to him, working at something on a mobile cart. When she turned to face him, she held a thick positive-pressure syringe of blood. Real blood. The sight of it set up a keening need in him. It was so strong that his fangs descended and his senses swam as the symbiot fought for control of him in a mindless bid for survival.

“I’ll inject straight into your artery,” she told him. “It’ll quiet the symbiot.”

“Hurry,” he croaked, clutching the rough material folded over the frame of the cot with both hands and willing himself to stay focused. To stay in control.

As the fresh blood circled, the symbiot quietened. Gradually, he could feel its frantic grip ease.

“Can you hear me now?” Fahmido asked.

“Yes.” He was shocked at the weaknesses in his voice.

“Can you stand, now?”

He got to his feet, moving slowly. His weakness was alarming but he managed to stay on his feet. He swallowed. “I suppose I can,” he announced.