For King & Country (14 page)

Stirling blinked. No wonder Artorius looked more Eurasian than Briton.

Oh, aye, Ancelotis agreed, he's one of them, right enough, and they know it. They would dare things in battle under Artorius' direction they wouldn't even consider, when my brother, King Lot, was giving the orders. These men will follow Artorius anywhere and gladly die for him, if they must. In their eyes, he is more of a king than I will ever be, more than the Dux Bellorum of the Britons, far more than just their commander. They have given him their sacred souls for safekeeping. And he has never betrayed that trust.

Nor would he ever betray it, Stirling realized numbly. Arthur, tribal "king" of the Sarmatian
cataphracti
of Britain... The far-reaching implications shook him, even while explaining the astonishing persistence of the sword-in-the-stone tale.

He shook himself slightly, focusing his attention on the men themselves. The cavalrymen wore an assortment of gear as widely varied as their genetic heritages. Most sported iron helmets, either of Roman design—looking something like a metallic baseball cap worn backwards, with protective metal cheekpieces—or a Celtic adaptation with conical iron points jutting upward and to the rear like metallic goats' horns. Many of the helmets, whatever style they might be, sported masses of feathers designed to make the wearer seem taller and more fierce.

All the men of the
cataphracti
wore close-fitting woolen trousers in wild checks and plaids, bloused and tied at the ankles over leather boots. Some wore wild-animal skins, others linen or leather tunics beneath Roman scale or ring-mail armor which glittered dangerously in the early sunlight, but most of them wore the scale armor that was a hallmark of Sarmatian heavy cavalry and had been for hundreds of years, going back several centuries before Christ even.

They were armed with a bewildering array of Saxon war axes, single- and triple-bladed spears with typically Celtic ironwork points, which were long and heavy, with concave edges. He also saw heavy Roman cavalry broadswords plus lances and javelins, even short Sarmatian bows and quivers full of bristling arrows. Iron-studded wooden shields—long, slightly dished ovals—were painted in bright colors, with a confusing mix of Christian and pagan symbols. Many of the weapons were heavily decorated with silver inlay, particularly sword and dagger hilts. The better a man's armor, he noted with a narrow-eyed glance, the more ornate his weaponry; but all of it was lethally functional. No ceremonial nonsense anywhere in sight.

Most of the horses wore at least minimally armored leather harnesses with circular metal bosses, which were spaced at regular intervals, wrought of iron and bronze. A fair number wore heavy coats of the same Sarmatian scale armor as their riders. Saddles were cinched tightly over fringed saddlecloths, many of them wildly patterned to match their owners' trousers. The saddles themselves were oddly horned affairs with four jutting projections that cradled a man's leg front and back. Weapons, water bags, and other equipment hung from leather cords slung around the saddles' four horns.

The detail that caught his eye almost instantly, however, was the presence of solid iron stirrups. Surprise caught him again—and Ancelotis chuckled once more.
A grand invention of our Sarmatian
cataphracti
, eh? The Saxons were as shocked as you to see stirrups the first time we rode them down.
He added with justifiable pride—and a dark sense of wasted lives and effort—
Had the Roman legionary commanders understood cavalry as well as we Britons, they might not have lost an empire.

Stirling couldn't argue that. Roman generals had been notorious in their poor understanding of the proper uses of cavalry. Clearly, Artorius and Ancelotis and their Sarmatians had
not
made the same error.

Stirling was distracted by the sight of the beautiful copper-haired girl with the fur-lined cloak who had paid him a secret visit. She had already mounted a smaller horse, more suited to her petite frame than the massive horses of the armored
cataphracti.
Palfrey, they would call the smaller riding animal in later centuries. She sat easily in the saddle, however, clearly accustomed to riding astride. She looked very nearly as competent in the saddle as the armed warriors of their escort and she'd slung a smaller version of a war sword at her hip.

"Ganhumara." Artorius gave a curt nod to the lady as he accepted his own armor and helm, donning them with help from a standard bearer. Artorius' golden standard had clearly been modeled after the legionary eagles. For a legionary soldier, the eagle had been his personal "household" god and protector. The dragon standard was a brilliant ploy, echoing centuries of Roman military symbology, yet portraying a uniquely Briton symbol of nationhood.

A second rider carried another dragon standard, this one with distinctly Sarmatian alterations. The head of this second dragon was gold, as well, with silver throat and fangs. And fastened to it, exactly like those on the Sarmatian spears, was a blood-red dragon, its cloth body rippling like an angry, living beast in the stiff wind. The streamers of its tail would be visible even in the midst of battle, Stirling realized, providing a rallying point even easier to spot than the solid gold shape of the other standard.

Servants assisted Artorius into a Roman officer's burnished cuirass, ornate enough to have been worn by a victorious general during a triumph. Artorius settled onto his head a Celtic-style iron helm, covered with gold leaf and topped by a rampant dragon, clearly a Sarmatian symbol. He belted on sword and dagger and slung a crimson cloak of thick wool around his shoulders, pinning it with a heavy gold cloak pin of a style variously attributed to Celts and Vikings, then he vaulted easily into the saddle despite the weight of his armor.

His mount, a gleaming white stallion as big as a house, arched its neck and blew impatiently, pawing at the cold ground and rolling a wild, dark eye. Artorius checked the massive animal with a sharp word and a tightening of reins before accepting a long spear from the standard bearer. The bearer then mounted and took up position on Artorius' left flank, his gold-dragon standard glinting with burnished highlights in the cold sunlight.

Another servant brought up Ancelotis' armor, while others emerged from the fortress, carrying what must have been Artorius'—or Ancelotis'—personal baggage. Or maybe Ganhumara's. The heavy satchels and cases were strapped to pack animals while Stirling wrestled with unfamiliar fittings on Ancelotis' armor. The Briton king's personal armor was also of Roman design, nearly as ornate as Artorius', and must have been a well-preserved century old, at the very minimum. Unless there were still trade routes open to the Continent? Stirling didn't know enough to hazard a guess and Ancelotis wasn't saying.

Ancelotis' helm, unlike Artorius', followed the design of very late Roman cavalry. Burnished gold over the strong iron beneath, it formed a metal mask that completely enclosed his head, like an iron skullcap with cheekpieces that hinged around to cradle cheek and chin in metal. A thick blade of gold-covered iron projected above his brows, protecting eyes and to some extent nose from a glancing sword blow. He could smell dried sweat inside it, from many previous wearings as he settled it over his head.

His valet handed Stirling a thick woolen cloak of his own, dyed a brilliant scarlet-and-blue plaid, held closed across one shoulder with another circular cloak pin. His was decorated with chased dragon patterns and apparently made of solid silver. The artistry he'd already glimpsed in clothing and metalwork surprised Stirling—he'd expected such artifacts to be far more primitive. A modern man's prejudice, he realized, founded on nothing more than arrogance, when this culture was a direct heir of Roman civilization.

Morgana and Medraut appeared from the fortress a moment later, the latter carrying a heavy satchel of ornately decorated leather which he strapped to Morgana's saddle. Servants brought other satchels and bags, which they tied to pack animals. Morgana floated effortlessly into the saddle, despite the weight of a heavy, fur-lined cloak similar to Ganhumara's. Stirling gulped, realizing he would have to get onto his own horse before he could figure out how to ride it, and blessed the unknown Sarmatian who'd brought cavalry stirrups to the Scottish border country. Another woman Stirling vaguely recalled seeing from the night of his collapse appeared, blonde hair plaited neatly down her back, slim and beautiful in white woolen robes and a heavy cloak of dark fur. She, too, had a heavy satchel, which she strapped to her saddle.

The Dux Bellorum watched her mount, then spoke to Ganhumara, his voice nearly as cold as the wind. "We have a hard ride ahead, to reach Caerleul before Cutha and Creoda. We will ride by forced march, to the detriment of your comfort. I did warn you," he added. "It's no pleasure jaunt we're about, but preparation for war."

She lifted a shapely copper brow and said coolly, "I am as fine a rider as you, husband, and a battle queen in my own right, if not so skilled with a sword."

Steel-cold eyes glinted beneath glowering brows. "It is not your skill with saddle or sword which concerns me," Artorius growled. "Your stamina is
not
my equal, wife, and after the delay we've already had, to treat Ancelotis' illness, I will slow our pace for nothing and no one. If you cannot keep up, I will leave armsmen as an escort and ride on without you. Ancelotis, we dare delay no longer."

Only one beast remained riderless, clearly belonging to Ancelotis. Like Artorius' horse, his was a stallion, a dappled grey so massive, it must have been a direct ancestor of Percheron draft horses. He had to look up just to see the horse's back. Roman
heavy
cavalry was no joke. Stirling fumbled with his own sword belt and attempted to vault into the saddle, copying Artorius. Even with the assistance of the stirrup, his armor weighed so much, he stalled halfway up, lost his balance, and promptly landed in the dust, making a fine, disheveled heap under his horse's startled hooves. That damned Roman cuirass, solid armor plate formed of a single, thick slab of metal, skillfully forged to fit the human torso, gouged him in multiple, painful places.

He spat curses and glared at Morgana, trying rather desperately to shift blame to the potion she'd given him, while Ancelotis' scorn ricocheted off the insides of his skull.
It's not my fault,
Stirling growled at his host.
A man doesn't have to ride a horse to learn how to lay down suppressing fire with an MP5 submachine gun.
While Ancelotis tried to puzzle out his meaning, Stirling regained his feet and straightened his cloak, tugging at his armor and trying to recover his dignity. Morgana, far from upset at the implied criticism, merely urged her horse alongside his and reached down to test his pulse.

"The lingering effects of the medicine will be gone in a few hours," she murmured.

Artorius glanced worriedly into her eyes. "He must needs make haste with the rest of us, sister. You know the danger from these Saxons as well as I. Do what you can for his illness, along the way."

"Of course."

Stirling tried again, face flaming. He blanked his mind this time and let Ancelotis' muscles do the work—and astonished himself by making it onto the horse's back in one try. The saddle made for an awkward seat. He gripped with both thighs, grateful for even the minimal security offered by those odd, projecting saddle horns, and shoved his feet more securely into the stirrups, doing his utmost not to slide off again. The Dux Bellorum put heels to his horse's gleaming flanks and the entire body of Romanized cavalry broke into a fast canter. The red dragon battle pennon crackled like living flames in the rising light of morning and the burnished golden dragon standard floated high above their heads.

Stirling jerked in the saddle, caught off guard when his horse followed the others without any apparent signal from him. He grabbed at the mane with one hand, nearly unseated by the abrupt start. He ignored stares from the other riders, particularly the men of the
cataphracti,
who cast worried glances at him every few moments.

Stirling set his teeth and set himself the task of learning how to ride.

Colonel Hamish Ogilvie stepped out of the helicopter and headed for the laboratory's main entrance. His aide de camp scrambled out in his wake, while a detachment of troopers spread out around the site in a defensive cordon. A chap from Whitehall followed, one of the undersecretaries of the Home Office, a slightly rabbity and officious bureaucrat named Thornton Hargrove who had spent the entire journey up from London delineating the flaws, faults, and morally ambiguous antecedents of the SAS in general and Captain Stirling in particular. Ogilvie, weighing the pros and cons of tossing him out through the cargo doors, had finally snapped, "It's
your
chaps who vetted this terrorist and cleared her for top secret work. If you haven't the decency to admit your mistake, kindly refrain from blacking the reputation of the man trying to salvage this mess!"

Hargrove sputtered for several seconds, then clamped his lips shut and fell blessedly silent. Dawn had scarcely touched the Highland hills when Ogilvie stepped through the laboratory's main door, held open by a bleary-eyed, worried young man who introduced himself as Marc Blundell. "We haven't telephoned the constables, yet," Blundell said, "Captain Stirling told us not to until you'd arrived."

"Quite right," Ogilvie nodded. "Let's see it, then."

He went through the entire lab, examining everything, and had his aide photograph the entire facility. Hargrove stalked along in his wake, yammering more blithering idiocies about SAS incompetence. Ogilvie was more interested in Brenna McEgan's inert form, hooked into the time-controlling computers, than he was in the admittedly gory office where Terrance Beckett still lay where he'd fallen. And Ogilvie studied that crime scene with intense scrutiny, indeed, reconstructing the desperate fight in his mind, step by step.

The first, faint glimmerings of unease came when Ogilvie was examining Brenna McEgan's face, which was badly bruised and swollen from a terrific blow. Given her slight frame, Ogilvie wondered how in the world she'd been able to keep fighting a man taller and heavier than she after such a blow—and so effectively, she'd been able to kill him. Ogilvie would have laid a wager such a blow would have knocked her cold. The next stirring of worry came when he looked over Cedric Banning and found abrasions on his knuckles. Banning had hit someone or something very hard, and very recently. Brenna McEgan? In which case, how had she been able to fend him off long enough to set the computers, strap herself to the headset, and jump backwards through time?

The clincher came twenty minutes later, when one of Ogilvie's troopers, searching the perimeter of the site, came across a sodden bundle of cloth thrust under a rock at the bottom of a small stream which rushed past one corner of the property. "It's a woman's coat, sir," the man said, snapping out a salute. "No bloodstains on it, but there's a gun in the pocket."

Ogilvie fished the gun out using the barrel of an inkpen, never touching the weapon with his hand. There was, indeed, a gun in the coat, a wicked little Makarov 9 mm. "Now why the devil would Brenna McEgan walk into yon lab to kill a man and use a ruddy great knife—risking substantial injury to herself in the process—when she had this in her pocket?"

Thornton Hargrove had blundered up behind him, slipping in the treacherous mud and cursing in his high and irritating voice. Hargrove said, "A knife is a better weapon to send a message of terror with. I'm surprised you don't know that."

Ogilvie glanced around. "Really? Now the IRA is very good at sending messages with their weapons. Generally, they do so with car bombs and suchlike, trying to blow up the Queen Mother, taking out an entire street of British office buildings, leveling some Orangemen's favorite pub. Car bombs and AR-180s are their hallmarks. The one thing I have
not
seen them do is hack some man to pieces with a butcher's knife. Not when they've access to a perfectly serviceable firearm."

Hargrove sputtered again, turning red from the hairline down. Ogilvie studied the sopping coat, carefully slipping the Makarov back into its pocket. "And why, for the love of Mary, would she bother to hike out here in a drenching downpour and bury this at the bottom of a streambed? There isn't a sign of blood anywhere on it—and there should be, if she stabbed Beckett to death. Nor can I imagine her taking it off and burying it, with gun in pocket,
before
killing him with the knife—yet there's no blood on this coat, and a great deal of it on her blouse and skirt, which were
under
the coat. It makes no sense."

Banning, on the other hand, had been stained in gore from shoulder to ankles. There was the note, of course, the claim that he'd slipped in the puddles of blood trying to reach Beckett, but something about that note and the little pieces of evidence mounting up rang hollow in Ogilvie's ears. He turned to his aide, his voice as full of gravel as the stream where
someone
had hidden Brenna McEgan's coat and gun.

"I want a background sweep on Cedric Banning, as well as Brenna McEgan. I want to know who pushed them in their prams and what they ate for dinner on their fifth birthdays. And I bloody well want it last week!"

His aide scrambled for the helicopter and its shielded radio equipment.

Ogilvie stalked back toward the lab while a cold fear grew in his heart that Trevor Stirling had gone into the past in pursuit of the wrong terrorist.

It is perhaps a hundred sixty kilometers, straight-line, from Stirling, Scotland, to the site of the Sixth Legion's ancient stronghold at Carlisle, in England's border country, which Trevor Stirling eventually deduced must be the fortress Artorius was heading toward. His use of kilometers confused his host, who had never heard of metrics, of course, and resisted thinking in meters and centimeters and kilometers. Stirling realized it would not only be easier for him, as a twenty-first-century man, to think in terms of miles and feet and inches—he'd at least
heard
of them and knew approximately what each measurement meant—it would also be far safer if he stopped thinking in metrics, even in the privacy of his own thoughts. One slip-up in Brenna McEgan's presence...

So he started the laborious process of allowing Ancelotis' way of measuring things to filter into his mind, recasting the distance from Stirling to Carlisle as a hundred miles, more or less, as the crow flies. Ancelotis and Artorius didn't call it Carlisle, of course, another difference Stirling had to get used to. They called it Caerleul. The Romans had called the winter-camp fortress Luguvalium, and later, Caer-Ligualid, names Stirling dredged up from rusty memory. Caer-Ligualid—eventually shortened in colloquial use to Caerleul—was close to the western terminus of Hadrian's Wall, down on the Scottish border. He cast back through everything he'd ever read or heard about Roman settlements in Scotland and the border counties, from public school and university courses, from tour guides, from family holidays to museums and ruins, from road signs and chance remarks made by shopkeepers and pub owners, and dredged up a few tidbits of his own to add to Ancelotis' memories.

There were two additional forts between Carlisle and the coast, far less important to the Romans than Luguvalium, itself, which had been winter headquarters of the Sixth Legion as far back as 127 a.d. or so. Three and a half centuries Artorius' stronghold had already existed, squarely astride the crossroads of the major Roman roads through western Scotland and England. Stirling was betting Luguvalium was just as important to the Briton defenses as it had been to the Roman ones, a notion Ancelotis confirmed.

Aye, the king of Gododdin agreed, Caerleul is our greatest stronghold in the north. So long as we hold Caerleul, the Saxons will never take substantial ground from the northern Briton tribes. From Caerleul and Gododdin, we can thunder down on any army trying to enter from north, west, east or south, and meet them in force within a handful of days—and the Saxons well know it. As do the Irish and the Picts. Why else do you suppose Cutha wants alliance with Rheged? He hopes to probe our defenses at Caerleul and find a way to betray our fortress into his father's hands, which would give them free rein in the south and a great chunk of the north.

It was, Stirling realized, a sound plan on Cutha's part, since the Saxons would never have a free hand in the north of England so long as the thirty-six forts along Hadrian's and the Antonine Wall remained in Briton hands. Those fortresses threatened any Saxon troop movements with a lightning attack from Briton strongholds between the Firth of Forth and the Firths of Solway and Clyde. Just how fast could a mounted troop of heavy cavalry move across country? Given their starting point from Stirling Castle Cliff, he estimated the journey to Carlisle would take a good three days, absolute minimum, by horseback. And given Artorius' steady course southwestward along the Romans' ancient but enduringly constructed military road, they would not be traveling the shortest route, either.

He had no idea how far west they would have to swing to find a road that cut south through the mountains. After a moment's thought, however, Stirling supposed the ancient road
couldn't
be too far from the modern roadway, given the same constraints faced by engineers at both ends of history. There were a limited number of options, when faced with the daunting and expensive task of pushing a road through mountains. In which case, they might well travel halfway to the Atlantic coast before swinging down through the natural pass in the Southern Uplands.

Three days might not be
enough
time, not if they had to follow that long, snaking route—and if his guess about the number of miles they could cover in one day was anywhere close to accurate. A very large "if" based mostly on the old cavalry song he'd heard a couple of slightly drunken American soldiers singing in a pub, once:
forty miles a day on beans and hay in the regular army-o...
The shift in thinking required to calculate travel time in terms of horseback, rather than car or even military lorry, was yet another rude awakening.

No wonder Artorius had been frantic to get under way.

Riding a horse was not as easy as it looked, either. Stirling discovered a few hours into the ordeal that if he blanked his mind and let Ancelotis' muscles take over, he was less likely to jar himself beyond endurance, but it was still a grueling ride. When the last light faded above the hills, they lit torches hacked from deadwood in the forest and kept riding. They needed the torches, too. Cloud cover lay so thick above the mountain peaks, blocking any hint of moonlight, the riders couldn't even see one another, much less the road. Stirling's respect for the Celtic
cataphracti
rose enormously during a night that stretched out beyond the edge of forever. The only good thing to come of the exhausting ordeal was as unexpected as it was welcome. The more fatigue took its toll, the easier it became to let Ancelotis' muscles take over on autopilot.

They slowed to a walk periodically to rest the horses and drank from skin pouches draped over the double front horns of their saddles. Stirling discovered trail rations—dried meat and leathery bread an unknown number of days old—in the oddly shaped saddlebags behind his rump, hung from the rear horns. He hadn't even noticed them until Ancelotis reached back, digging into them for a quick meal. The stuff wasn't remotely palatable, but he'd eaten worse field rations in the twenty-first century and he was hungry enough to eat shoe leather. It was still unsettling to have what felt like his own arm move under the direction of someone else's mind; Stirling decided he did not enjoy the sensation, but couldn't really complain, given the unpleasantness he'd inflicted on poor Ancelotis
.

Ganhumara, as silent as the men of Artorius' cavalry, maintained the killing pace without complaint, although her face showed pale and strained in the flickering light from torches. Morgana and Covianna, too, rode like women carved of iron, rather than yielding and womanly flesh. It was positively humiliating, to be outmatched by women, one of whom was more than ten years his junior, maybe closer to
fifteen
years younger. What in God's name was he to do when the time came to fight the Saxons?

The dismal light of false dawn arrived with a cold dampness heavier than mist, not quite thick enough to call it drizzle. The wet air left him shivering beneath his woolen garments, deeply envious of the women's fur-lined cloaks. They flashed across the invisible border of Strathclyde—another Dark Ages kingdom from Stirling's history books—well before the sun could rise above the mountains at their backs. He wouldn't have recognized the border from any other bump of ground his horse had jolted across, if not for a brief murmur he overheard between Covianna and Ganhumara.

"Strathclyde at last," Covianna said quietly, catching the queen's glance in the oyster-grey light of predawn. "I have always loved this land."

"I would love it better without the constant wet and the God-cursed midges," Ganhumara shot back, voice bitter as the wind whipping down the mountainsides.

Stirling, who had grown up in the relatively dryer eastern half of the Scottish Lowlands, was inclined to agree with the young queen's assessment. The lowland reaches of western Scotland, far rainier than the eastern coast, were virtually uninhabitable during midge season, thanks to millions of aggressive gnats—a species apparently peculiar to the Scottish lowlands' marshes—which drove fisherman, farmers, and campers alike indoors from sheer desperation. Grown men, usually unwary foreign tourists, were occasionally reduced to gibbering lunacy by the stinging clouds. Stirling shuddered to imagine what the effect would be on a person unable to retreat indoors or—worse yet—without access to strong insect repellant. Maybe that was the origin of the Pictish practice of smearing themselves with blue-tinted mud?

Whether or not he'd hit on the answer, Ancelotis found his speculation enormously funny, which left him alternating between lunatic grins and scowls at each new jolt of his saddle against anatomy that Stirling, at least, was unused to having jolted. The whole concept of something that would repel insects captured the Scots king's fancy and he found himself attempting to explain the difficulties inherent in trying to produce from scratch something like DEET mosquito repellant, or even one of the widely available commercial brands, all of which required a fairly high-tech society with advanced knowledge of chemistry to produce.
Churlish sot,
Ancelotis complained at length.
You might at least pay for the privilege of showing up inside my skull by sharing your wizardry at keeping off the God-cursed insects.