She started toward the end of the alley, then cursed as she remembered the ridiculously impractical outfit she had on. Gripping the fabric of her gown, she tore a long vertical rent in the skirt, then ran. Emerging in an east-west street—if you could call such an aboveground sewer a "street"—she looked to the west and saw nothing. Then to the east . . . and, in the distance, was a group of men on horseback and afoot, moving away from her and around a corner. Bringing up the rear was a trio of riders. She recognized the one on the left.
"Bedwyr!" she called, remembering just in time to use the cover name. He didn't hear her, and he was approaching the corner.
Frantically, she sprinted after him, yelling his name.
Sarnac kept himself upright in the saddle by sheer willpower and even managed to lean over and hold Artorius steady as they moved along the dark street, following the last of the bands of fugitives that could no longer be called a retreating army. Tylar's advice to "go with the flow" had been easy to follow, for his options had ranged from limited to nonexistent.
He and Kai had managed to get themselves and the High King to Bourges, riding through an eternity of nightmare after the battle. Artorius had amazed him: he had to be in agony, but he had stayed on his horse, and had even managed to say a few words to the refugees as the evacuation had begun. Their retreat to the northwest—toward Soissons and Armorica—was cut off; they could only continue eastward, into the lands of the Roman-allied Burgundians. From there, some of them might be able to find their way back to Britain.
But Artorius was finally fading. Whatever incredible store of vitality had kept him going was depleted at last, and he could only sit his horse with assistance.
Sarnac and Kai exchanged glances from opposite sides of the High King's horse. "We'll have to find some other way of transporting him if we expect to get him to the Burgundian lands alive," the redheaded Briton stated calmly.
"Right," Sarnac agreed. "But there's no time to think about it now." No time at all, as the retreat collapsed into rout. The Visigoths had begun to arrive at the western gates of Bourges at twilight, while the withdrawal was still in progress, and panic had descended. There had been no real resistance; the barbarians were already in the city, delayed only by the collapse of their own organization in the presence of plunder. Sarnac had been too busy even to wonder what had become of Tylar. "Let's just get out of Bourges right now," he continued. "We'll think about rigging something afterwards."
Kai nodded, and they started off after the column of survivors they had managed to collect. As they were about to turn a corner of the street, Sarnac turned in his saddle for a last look to see if they had missed any stragglers. No . . . just some woman. Maybe they could bring her along—the Visigoths were getting closer.
The running female figure stopped, drew a deep gasping breath and yelled, "Bedwyr!" with all the volume she could muster. He recognized that voice.
"Kai! I've got to go back."
"Go back?" Kai turned and saw the figure in the otherwise empty street. "Leave her, Bedwyr! I know—it's a damned shame what's going to happen to her. But we can't bring all the women and girls in Bourges with us."
But Sarnac was already turning away. "I've got to, Kai! Go on ahead—I'll catch up with you." Then he applied his spurs and headed back up the street. He had almost reached a gallop before he reined the horse in and swung himself out of the saddle and into Tiraena's arms.
"How did you get here?" he asked after a while.
"Koreel sent me through the portals from Britain. He said I'd have no trouble contacting you, and that Tylar would pick us up. By the way . . . where
is
Tylar?"
"I wish to God I knew! I lost track of him during the battle. But he told me I'd have to escape with the British survivors—which is exactly what I've been doing—and get to Dijon, east of here. And," he continued grimly, "that's what the two of us will have to keep on doing, for now. Whether or not Tylar and Co. have the situation as well in hand as they claim, we sure as hell can't stay here in Bourges!" He grabbed his horse's bridle. "Let's go. I told my buddy Kai that I'd catch up with him and the others."
She smiled gamely. "Well, I complained about not getting to take part in the action! Of course, a low tech escape isn't exactly what I had in mind. Right now, I wouldn't mind going via the same portal I came through. Wait a minute . . . !" She slapped her forehead with her fingertips in a gesture which was pure Raehaniv, but which wasn't out of place in this part of Earth. "I forgot! Koreel told me to retrieve the portal device Tylar left here in Bourges. Maybe it doubles as a homing device or something."
"Yeah, maybe that's how he's going to find us in this chaos! Where is it?"
"Between these two buildings back here." She started back toward the alley. Sarnac looped the horse's reins around a post and followed.
"In here," she said. Sarnac turned the corner . . . and the world exploded into pain and whirling darkness, and then disappeared.
Fresh pain brought him around—the pain of his arm being pulled back and upwards by some very strong individual behind him, outside the range of his vision but not, unfortunately, of his smell. He couldn't have lost consciousness for more than a moment, because he was still in the alley, dimly lit by the flames to the west, and Tiraena was backed up against a wall with three Visigothic infantrymen standing around her in a half circle, grinning and making comments in their own tongue, as they put away the weapons they clearly regarded as superfluous. They looked slightly unsteady, probably from the same wine Sarnac could smell on his captor's breath.
He wondered why they hadn't simply killed him. Then he decided it was because of the cloak he wore; they must be under instructions to take prisoners, and weren't drunk enough yet to have forgotten those orders. Why they hadn't killed Tiraena was self-evident. . . .
One of the trio around Tiraena, a stout man with a nose like a pig's snout, prodded his horse-faced comrade in the ribs and made a remark that drew a bark of laughter from Sarnac's captor, as well as from Horse-Face. The fourth Visigoth, a beady-eyed type who was obviously the intellectual of the group, took a step forward and, with what he probably thought was a smile, spoke in what he probably thought was Latin.
"No worry, tall foreign lady! Us not kill you! Not even hurt you much! Just have good time, yes?" Pig-Nose and Horse-Face giggled drunkenly and made comments to each other. Sarnac couldn't understand a word, but he imagined they were discussing what an awesomely smooth operator Beady-Eyes was.
Tiraena, keeping her hands in fighting position and measuring distances with her eyes, spoke levelly. "If I understand your offer correctly, I decline it. My companion and I have no valuables."—she omitted mention of the horse—"Please let us go."
Beady-Eyes considered this and farted thoughtfully. "But, tall foreign lady, you only think you won't like because you've never had real man before—only Roman boy-buggers! You'll like—in fact, you'll beg for more!" Evidently feeling his reputation as a sophisticate was on the line, he clutched his crotch for emphasis. This occasioned renewed hilarity from Pig-Nose and Horse-Face, and also from Sarnac's captor, who evidently felt that such scintillating wit deserved another upward tug on his captive's arm.
Tiraena fell into an apparently relaxed posture that the Visigoths misinterpreted, but concerning which Sarnac saw no reason to enlighten them. Unfortunately, the shift in position moved her torn skirt so as to reveal an expanse of coppery leg that did nothing to moderate the barbarians' mood.
"To repeat, I decline your . . . invitation. I advise you to let us pass!"
Beady-Eyes' smile twisted into an altogether different expression. He spat out something that Sarnac roughly translated as a protest against Tiraena's appalling insensitivity. Then, with an animal-like noise, he lunged forward, arms spread wide—which was a mistake.
What Tiraena had trained in was not Tae Kwon Do, although it had absorbed influences from it. But what she delivered to Beady-Eyes's solar plexus was the functional equivalent—at least—of a flying side-kick. He doubled over with a kind of whistling sound, unable to produce a scream, as Tiraena landed, sprang past him, and hit the ground rolling. She came up grasping something Sarnac had missed: an undistinguished-looking dagger that had been lying in the alley.
Pig-Nose and Horse-Face came out of shock and charged, roaring. In a smooth motion, Tiraena hurled the dagger. Pig-Nose fell to the ground choking on the blade that transfixed his throat and took no further interest in the proceedings. Then Horse-Face was on top of her with a momentum that she herself continued, grasping his arms and rolling them over, with her on top. At the same instant, she drew her right arm back and then thrust it forward, using the heel of her hand to drive the bridge of Horse-Face's nose up and inward, where it achieved the difficult feat of finding his brain.
Sarnac's captor had gone slack at the sight of the manifestly impossible and unnatural, which allowed Sarnac to free his right arm and drive the elbow sharply backward. The Visigoth doubled over, and Sarnac spun around and brought his clenched hands down on the back of the man's head and his knee up into his face. A quick punch with his two leading knuckles to the Visigoth's temple finished it.
He stood up in time to see Tiraena walking toward him, past the remains of Pig-Nose and Horse-Face. Beady-Eyes, still emitting weak shrieking noises as he tried to breathe, was equally ignored. She wore an expression of genuine puzzlement. "I don't understand it! I
told
them I wasn't interested—you heard me, didn't you? So why did they persist?"
"Er, never mind—I'll explain later." She was, he decided, a lot further removed from this era than he was, after all. "I suppose that dagger is Tylar's portal gizmo."
"Yes." She stooped and retrieved it from the late Pig-Nose, who gave a spasmodic twitch as it left his throat. "Pity that we don't know how to make it reconfigure," she reflected as she wiped off the blood.
"Wouldn't do us any good if we did," Sarnac said, as he went back to the street and unhitched his horse, "unless we knew where there was another portal it was linked to, and how to signal that portal to activate. Tylar and his people obviously interface with these things mentally—we haven't a prayer. No, we'll just have to continue with this 'low tech escape.' " He swung into the saddle and offered her a hand. "Climb aboard behind me, and let's get out of here before we meet any more Visigothic good-humor men. I expect we've got a long way to travel."
As it turned out, they were on the road for two days and nights. They didn't catch up with Kai, but they saw no more Visigoths, and Sarnac relaxed after they passed the ill-defined Burgundian frontier. As they got closer to what would one day be Switzerland, the land became more and more rolling, then downright rugged. He had hoped to find, beg or steal another horse for Tiraena, but no such opportunities had presented themselves. They didn't dare push the one overloaded horse beyond endurance; they could only proceed slowly into the highlands, encountering occasional peasants. From these, Sarnac used the few coins he had to buy food—he soon found himself hoping never to see an onion again—and information as to where the Britons had gone. The trail of Kai and the other fugitives soon led them slightly to the northeast of the direct route to Dijon.
On the third day they passed through a low range of hills, beyond which the afternoon sun glittered on a lake, and gazed down upon a pretty valley, with a little town perched atop a rocky promontory at its far end. But Sarnac had eyes only for the group stopped in the middle distance under an elm tree beside a stream.
"It's them!" He nudged the horse forward into a trot that was the most the exhausted animal could manage. "Kai!"
"Bedwyr?" The Briton stood up from the supine figure beside which he had been kneeling. He was haggard and disheveled, but his grin woke to unconquerable life when they approached. "Bedwyr, it
is
you! I thought we'd seen the last of you!"
Sarnac dismounted and clasped arms with Kai, feeling a happiness he didn't bother to analyze. "I told you I'd catch up, didn't I? I had to get Lucasta here"—he offered a hand to Tiraena, whose implanted riding skills were relatively limited—"out of Bourges. She's a kinswoman of Tertullian, who's still sort of my employer."
"Ah." Kai nodded. "Yes . . . Tertullian. I haven't seen him since the battle. He must have been . . ." He gulped to a halt, flushing, and avoiding Tiraena's eyes. "He'll probably catch up with us, too," he resumed with forced heartiness. It would have been funny save for its clumsy kindness.
Sarnac's eyes ran over the other Artoriani, finally coming to rest on the figure on the ground. "How is he?"
"Dying," Kai said in a tone that was itself dead. "He's lost too much blood—he can't continue." He knelt again beside the improvised bedding.
Tiraena put her lips close to Sarnac's ear. "Is that . . . ?"
"Yes." Sarnac left her staring and knelt beside Kai, bending over the High King and thinking how very wrong that face looked, drained of almost all the life force that those around him had drawn from to become, for a little while, more than they could otherwise be.
"He's been conscious off and on," Kai continued, "but he's delirious—his mind is starting to wander."
As if in response, the High King's eyes opened. He stared at Sarnac and Kai, and at something beyond them. When he spoke, his voice was weak, but distinct.
"Uryzmag! Sozryko! Are you still here? Go, I command you, and return my sword to the lake, that its magic may cease to keep me imprisoned in this suffering flesh!"
Yes,
Sarnac thought,
his mind is starting to wander. It's wandering into the old Sarmatian hero-tales he grew up on.
All the men had heard them, and now they stood gaping.
With a weak, fumbling motion, Artorius sought the sword that lay on the ground beside him. When he found it, his hand closed around it firmly, all trembling gone. And, with what must be his last reserves of strength, he grasped the front of Sarnac's tunic with his free hand, and drew him down so their faces were inches apart.