Of Beginings and Endings Read online

  The two escapees had arrived not in the past of their own world but in that of a parallel one, or so Harold Kenmore had come to believe after much study and the passing of many years. They had come to earth literally, arriving on the packed-earth floor of the lowest level of a stone defensive tower near to the bloody border between the kingdoms of England and Scotland. They had come early in the reign of King Henry VII Tudor, A. D. 1486 or 1487, in winter as in their own world, and soon after a party of Lowland Scot rievers had captured the first floor of that tower. A party of these ruffians were even at the moment of the scientists' coming in the process of brutally torturing and maiming an already wounded man in hopes that his screams of agony would bring down the remainder of the garrison from the floors above.

  Infuriated by what they witnessed being done to the captive by the savage captors, Harold Kenmore had used twenty-first-century weapons—heat-stunners, projectors which made use of sonics to cause conflagration or bring unconsciousness, depending entirely on the setting—to not only eliminate the torturers, but send the entire force of rievers spurring hard back toward Scotland, screaming mindlessly or praying, terrified at the sight of the two green-glowing man-shaped demons who had appeared from nowhere.

  The tortured man, who had been lord of this place called Whyffler Hall—then an old-fashioned motte-and-bailey residence-fortification, though with a stone tower and a stockaded bailey—had died under his torture, and his widow, heirs, and retainers had assumed the two fortuitously arrived newcomers to be at least gentlemen due to the richness of their attire and the fine swords they bore and could use so well. And in those times it was well to have the strong arms and sharp blades of any fighters available, for the Lowlands to the north were all aboil and the border was all aflame from end to end.

  In some hidden glen of the Highlands, a dark religion had been born, and had grown horrifically among the wild clansmen. Although its practitioners presumably had once been good, decent Christian folk and, indeed, still carried some of the hallmarks of the Faith—most notably, the Celtic Cross—their new and savage beliefs bore no relation to the worship of Christ or to that of any of the old pagan gods, either; for all that they called themselves Balderites, they did not reverence that pagan Norse deity, but rather a One who was female, had no name, and was referred to as Mother of All or, simply, the Mother.

  And a singularly bloodthirsty mother she was, demanding of her followers no less than every drop of the blood of every man, woman, and child who did not immediately rush to join her minions when first they heard of her. In her name, declared her priests and her priestesses, all previous allegiances, all oaths and bonds of service and fealty were declared void; not even ties of kinship were or could be stronger than obedience to her murderous dictates. In her name, not even matricide, parricide, fratricide, sororicide, filicide, mariticide, or other murders of near and distant kindred were wrong so long as these victims did not revere her.

  Worse, the gory, lunatic religion had spread like wildfire even among the close-knit, interrelated Highland clans, tearing many apart and almost exterminating others in the fierce internecine fighting. Though many a Highland chief was slain, few of them or their immediate families became Balderites, but a few did, and under their wily, war-wise leadership, the hordes of blood-mad, ill-armed, but murderously determined men and women of the new religion swept over the hills and through the glens, killing, killing, ceaselessly killing. They slew the low and the high, male and female, withered ancients and suckling babes. The terrifying word of them flew before them, and the strong and able either fled or took to their keeps or mottes or fortified steadings with all their retainers, kindred, and kine, while the weak and helpless rushed to join immediately they came in proximity to the red-handed worshipers of the Mother.

  Despite their numbers, few of these Highland Balderites were in any way well armed, and they lacked cannon or even more primitive siege engines of any description, so if any keep, hold, motte, or steading could withstand their initial attack, could beat back the horde with casualties, the Balderites were as likely as not to move on in search of more helpless prey. Those Highland folk who survived their furious rush southward did so in one of three ways: by being swift, by being strong and determined, or by joining them. All others died, their lifeblood going to soak the ground and help to appease the insatiable blood-thirst of the Mother of All. By then in their thousands, the horde of fanatics swept against, lapped about the walls of Edinburgh itself, but fewer left than had arrived, so they did not long remain. However, their numbers were swelled in the Lowlands. The Chief of Grant brought all his kin and clansfolk to become Balderites; so too did the chiefs of Kerr, Hay, Mac Adam, Kennedy, and not a few smaller clans and septs.

  From behind the stout walls of Edinburgh, the King of Scotland called upon his earls to raise an army, sent words of warning to the English border lords, and prayed speedy assistance against this heathen menace from everyone of whom he and his council could think—King Henry of England and Wales, Ard-Righ Brian VI of Ireland and all the other righs of that island, the Regulus of the Isles (which domain was just then in one of its phases of not being an actual part of the Kingdom of Scotland), the King of France, the King of Burgundy, the Holy Roman Emperor, the King of Aragon and Leon, the Caliph of Granada, the Grand Duke of Portugal, and the King of Denmark and Norway. He even dispatched a letter to Rome beseeching that a Crusade be preached against the Balderites. Then he hunkered down to await developments and troops.

  While he crouched there, powerless to do aught but hold the walled capital without the aid of the earls and other magnates of the feudal kingdom, the Kennedy Clan and its septs, all fiery with the zeal of new converts, not only sent boatloads of slavering Balderites to carry the message of the Mother to the folk of Northern Ireland, but made so bold as to launch sea-borne attacks against the islands and coastal lands held by the Clan MacLean and the Regulus of the Isles and that virtual if unnamed king's many dependent clans.

  In the Irish Kingdom of Ulaid, already racked by civil war, the Balderites were able to establish at least a foothold, but the grim Northern Ui Neills to the west of them lined their rocky coastline with poles bearing Balderite heads, stakes on which rotted impaled Balderite bodies, and frames whereon were stretched flayed skins of Balderites.

  The Regulus, Iain, already in cold fury against the Balderites because of the losses they had cost him in his mainland holdings, especially in the Inverness country, called upon his vassals at Lewis, Skye, and Uist for their famous, infamous, dreaded Scots-Dane axemen—those professional man-killers known in Ireland as galloglaiches—and remorselessly held his own at Islay against the Kennedys and the rest while he awaited the arrival of enough force to counterattack.

  Meanwhile, guided by veteran rievers of Clans Grant, Armstrong, Kerr, and Hay, mobs of Balderites were religiously butchering both across the length and width of the Scottish Lowlands and pressing over the border into England. It had been one such group, that one just then being led by the very Chief of Grant, which had been sent off in shrieking terror by Drs. Harold Kenmore and Emmett O'Malley.

  That had not been the first Balderite incursion against Whyffler Hall, nor was it the last. Occasionally reinforced by trickles of harried survivors of other Balderite raids, the two twenty-first-century men and the Whyffler family and their retainers continued to hold the hall and its nearer environs for almost two more years before the new king, Henry VII Tudor, led his host north to the beleaguered border lands, scoured them clean of the Celtic hordes, then crossed the border to join with the combined forces of the Scottish earls near Edinburgh.

  The pleas of the King of Scotland had been heeded. In Rome, the then-Pope had sent word to his bishops to preach a holy crusade against these savage pagans in Scotland, and even as King Henry's English-Welsh-Norman-Breton-Angevin host marched toward Edinburgh, ships were landing parties of crusaders along the east coast—descendants of Vikings from the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, Goths from Sw
eden, Frisians and Flemings, Burgundians, French, Leonese, Portuguese, Granadans, fighting men representing most of the small states that made up the Holy Roman Empire, a few Switzers, some Italians of various kinds, Castilians, Navarrese, Moors, and even a few scarred, black-skinned noble knights of the Kingdom of Ghana.

  For all the awesome forces at their command, nonetheless, the two royal allies did not anticipate either a quick or an easily won victory, for they now faced an aggregation of fanatics who, while they might retreat before superior force, had never been known to yield or surrender under even pain of instant death for themselves or loved ones. By that point in time, the survivors of the rampage down from the Highlands—birthplace of the murderous heresy—now were not only well armed but were become veteran warriors—younger and elder, men and women. They were well supplied in all save gunpowder and the priests' powder necessary to its fabrication, and, thanks principally to the conversions of some of the Lowlander chiefs, they now held some castles and strong points around which they could rally in the face of attack.

  When the king sent word galloping through all England and Wales, through too all his royal possessions on the continent, for more men, more supplies and sinews of warfare, the Widow of Whyffler Hall designated her stalwarts, her two most trusted and provenly courageous gentlemen, to lead her small contingent to answer the summons of her sovereign; and so did Harold Kenmore and Emmett O'Malley find themselves riding at the head of a force of some sixty-odd men—fourteen lances, as the folk figured in those days—all of them wearing white surplices over their clothing, to join the royal crusading armies gathering just southwest of Edinburgh.

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  A particularly powerful gust of the icy-toothed arctic wind sent big drops of rain rattling against the leaded-glass panes of window of the archbishop's alchemical laboratory with a sound almost as loud as that of arquebus balls showering in volleys upon stoneworks. Lifting his quill for a moment, the old man turned his head to look at the dull-gray nothingness beyond those panes, then resumed his scribbling of notes on the sheet of vellum. He well knew that his memory was not all that it once had been, and he wanted to be certain that every thought and nuance would be adequately covered in the letter that he shortly must begin to compose—compose personally, not leave to the offices of even his most trusty secretary or clerk—to be sent to Cardinals Sicola and d'Este of the Italian Faction in Rome.

  Although their physical appearances had changed very little, of course, the two men who led the Whyffler Hall retainers across the border and north into Lowland Scotland in the damp of late-spring A. D. 1489 were drastically changed by their two years of life in a sporadically embattled fortified residence. They had been deadly swordsmen to begin, but now they were become as well accomplished horsemen and more than accomplished also in the uses of spear, axe, mace, crossbow, and various primitive firearms, along with the proper laying of bombards and other engines of defensive siegecraft.

  Both now went bearded and wore clothing but little better than that of those who followed them, the clothing in which they had arrived having finally fallen apart of long and strenuous usage. Knowing full well the incipient dangers into which they rode, the peril that might lie between them and the royal camp to the northeast, all rode at least partially armed, weapons ready and slowmatches all lit and smoking, only the heavier pieces of defensive armor left off . . . though slung within easy reach at all times. True, they had no fear of ordinary bandits, for none such silly enough to attack a force of fourteen lances existed alive, but stray bands of Balderites had been known to do or try some very irrational things, like all fanatics who own little or no fear of death.

  They had not been able to plan any sort of direct route to the gathering of hosts, for across any such they had contemplated there always lay the lands of one of the Balderite clans—Armstrong, Kerr, Hay, the southeastern Gordons, and even some of the Murrays. Finally, after the intercession of Lowland Scots relatives of the Widow of Whyffler Hall, it had been arranged for the Whyffler Hall lancers to cross into Eliott lands, join the smaller Eliott contingent of clansmen, then proceed to the town of Hawick-on-Tweed, where they would fall in with the forces of Clans Douglas, Scott, Stuart and Johnstone; then the combined force would march or fight their way to Edinburgh.

  As the basically peace-loving Harold Kenmore had feared and the increasingly fire-eating Emmett O'Malley had hoped, the procession of the combined force from Hawick was one skirmish or fight or small battle after another for most of the way, but they were to find in the end that, hard and bloody as had been their hotly contested passage, other English, Welsh, and Lowland contingents as had come by land routes had suffered as much or more, shed as much or more blood in reaching Edinburgh. But reach that great gathering the most of them at last did.

  Artair Dubh, Tanist of Douglas, who had been chosen overall leader of the contingent, had commended both of the English gentlemen from Whyffler Hall in most glowing terms when he had turned them and their force over to their erstwhile overlord, His Grace Sir Humbert Howard, Duke of Northumbria. His Grace had well known just what the lavish praise of so famous and ferocious a fighter as Sir Artair Dubh of Douglas meant and had mentally marked both men as types who would bear watching in the coming campaign. True, he was unfamiliar with any family called Kenmoor and what of it, but both were patently gentlemen, and any Irish gentleman, such as this Ui Maille, could be nothing if not a fighter or a priest; the gentry of that island produced only the two kinds.

  Less than a week after their party's arrival, there had been a stir in camp, great rejoicing and feasting, when, down from the Highlands, the great host of the Clan Chattan Confederation had come, their Captain, the Mackintosh, bearing in his baggage a cask of brine containing the heads of the Balderite Chief of Grant and his three sons.

  The kings shortly announced that between the earls and the most powerful clans—MacKay, Sutherland, and MacKensie to the north, Cameron, Campbell, Chattan, Gordon, and Drummond to the south—the brutalized Highlands now had been scoured virtually clean of the bloodthirsty heretics who called themselves Balderites. Now God's will must be done as thoroughly in the Lowlands and wherever else the bestial pagan killers might be found by the fine, God-fearing, Christian fighting men here gathered.

  And done it was, messily, very bloodily, exceedingly brutally, and very thoroughly. Those who had killed so mercilessly could not hope for quarter or mercy of any kind; they knew it and fought to the very death in most cases. Those few unfortunates so very unlucky as to be taken alive invariably were, after interrogations by clerics and laity, subjected to deaths by exquisite and inhumanly prolonged torments, these exercises performed publicly, that as many Crusaders as possible might see, hear, enjoy, and exult in the entertainments.

  The continuing arrivals of Crusaders from oversea and trickles of Highlanders from the north gave the two kings more men than they really had need for, so at any strong point the Balderites chose to hold, they were simply invested by sufficient force while the bulk of the army marched on westward, deliberately herding their mobile foes in the direction of the Clan Kennedy lands and the sea.

  Although the Regulus of the Isles had contributed no forces to the host of the two kings directly, he had given aid to both the Campbells and the MacLeans in their Highland battlings against the Balderites, then commenced to prowl the islands and the sea, up firths and rivers, his galleys packed with grim axemen out of Lewes, Uist, and Barra, with equally grim and unforgiving MacLeods, MacDonnells, Mackinnons, MacFies, MacDonalds, and even a few Appin Stewarts.

  The galleys and ships landed enough men on Arran to raise two sieges, then joined with the formerly besieged Hamiltons to drive into the sea or slay every Balderite on that island. The galleys nibbled hard at the coasts of Kennedy lands, raiding, looting, burning, killing, raping, destroying standing crops, and slaying all kine they did not bear away. All communication between the Balderites now established in the northerly portions of the Irish Kingdom
of Ulaid ceased as ships and boats from Kennedy, if not taken or sunk in very sight of land, just never returned, nor did so much as one friendly curragh, boat, ship, or galley land anywhere upon their interdicted coastline.

  At last, Eideard Kennedy, chief of that ilk, had dispatched a small boat bearing a herald and a message for the Regulus. Two days later, a galley towed that boat close enough that the tide might bear it into shore. The severed and mutilated heads of its crew of oarsmen were stuck or hung to the gunwales of the blood-smeared craft and the naked, incomplete body of the herald stood impaled upon the sharpened stump of the mast, its flesh still warm to the touch; a cour bouilli tube hung from the herald's neck had contained a brusque message: "The Regulus of the Isles, Sheriff of Inverness, and always a most pious Servant of Our Lord Jesus Christ, will have no dealings with honorless, foresworn pagan heretics who delight in the butchery of women and children. There can be no terms, no hope of quarter. If the hell-spawn who styles himself Eideard Ceannaideach of that sorry ilk cravenly renders up his sword to the Regulus, he will be afforded the protracted dog's death his infamy has earned him, and if the Regulus has not the joy of hearing the death-screams of this heretical thing, then most assuredly the King of Scots will."

  Even while the host of the two kings moved inexorably westward, their outriders having already come within sight of Loch Doon on the eastern border of Clan Kennedy lands, a coalition of smaller, individually weaker neighboring clans who had never succumbed despite all their sufferings to the Balderites assaulted and conquered first Park Castle, in the lands of the Western Hays, then formidable Castle Kennedy itself. As they began to push up northward into the heart of Kennedy lands, driving before them any and all Balderites they could not catch and slay, the Regulus mounted assaults upon all five of the coastal castles with a fleet now augmented by bottoms out of Campbell, Mackensie, MacKay, and Ross. And then another coalition of the warbands of smaller clans fought their way across the River Ayr, slaughtered several hundred Balderites on the banks of the River Doon, then pushed on south into Kennedy.