Of Chiefs and Champions Page 8

  From far and far beyond reckoning

  He will have voyaged all unknowing

  From a world to a world.

  He will have served an alien king

  He will have well served

  Before he comes to the land of

  The Sons of Miledh

  To bring all the Gaedhal under his banner.

  No king will he be or ever be

  But kings will own his blood.

  Rich in the veins of kings will it flow

  Ever prized and holy.

  He will bestride a wizard's horse

  And arrows will harm him not.

  Though foreigner-born, inheritor will he be

  Of the Old He-Witch of Tara.

  Gift of earth to earth and shining glory of our race.

  Over seas will he come, numbering kings

  And sons of kings and mighty champions in his train.

  Unworthy kings will fall before him

  His power will slay them.

  Honorable kings will he set in their places

  And the lands will all rejoice.

  All will laud this sire of kings.

  At the behest of an unworthy king

  And in pursuit of another

  Far and far will he hie him

  Over long leagues of salt sea.

  Until, in a land of apples

  Will he find his true destiny

  With Epona will he leave

  A spotted stallion dear to him

  And two sons will carry on his work there.

  Rubbing his forearms briskly to lay the gooseflesh beneath the satin sleeves of his garment, Bass Foster muttered to himself in a variety of English that no single one of his followers could have possibly understood, the language of the country and world and time that had spawned him—the American dialect of the late-twentieth-century United States of America.

  "Goddammit, it's scary. Both of the kings swear that these verses are at least seven or eight centuries old, and even my own Sir Colum recalls hearing some of them when he was a boy, years ago, says that his own father's filid averred that they outdated Christianity in Ireland, that they were the prophecies of druids."

  "So, okay, let's say they were composed by druids nearly a millennium and a half ago. So how the hell did those bastards know that not only was there a parallel universe to theirs, but I and all the others would be brought here from it? 'From far and far beyond reckoning . . . voyaged all unknowing from a world to a world . . . Gift of earth to earth.' What else could they mean?"

  "Or is it all pure gibberish that merely happens to be a little applicable here and there to my arrival in this world? No, were it only these few verses, here, that might wash, but the rest of it . . . ? Christ, it makes my hackles rise!"

  He lifted the first sheet and began to read of the second:

  Two shall voyage

  Two and ten, then three and ten together.

  Of the two, one will be savior of foreign kings

  One, a witch and sire of nobles.

  Allowing his eyes to go out of focus, Bass mused, "That's pure uncanny, those paired lines there. The two cannot be any but Hal—Dr. Harold Kenmore, now known as Harold, Archbishop of York—and Dr. Emmett O'Malley, who came to this world close to two hundred years before me and the rest. I guess a primitive mind would've considered O'Malley to be a witch or wizard of some kind, in that he could do things other men couldn't—make non-rusting, ever-keen blades, for one thing, send men reeling with the wave of his wand, that or set their clothing ablaze. I did the identical thing up in the Ui Neill country with one of the heat-stunners from the world and time of O'Malley; thank God Hal gave me those things—they saved my life and not a few others."

  "And, unlike Hal, O'Malley apparently never made any secret of his great age, for all that on the day I found his corpse, cold and stiffening on an English beach, he looked to be no more than forty-odd. To hear the tales of him told in Mide, he was some kind of a record-breaking stud, having gone through six or eight legal wives and God alone knows just how many slave and free concubines, mistresses, and occasional lays here and there, and possessed of a degree of potency that is become legendary. It seems that every other nobleman or noblewoman you meet in Mide or Laigin claims descent of him; even the queen of Airgialla told me she was a great-granddaughter of Emmett O'Malley."

  "Even I often feel a distant kinship with the man. After all, I ride his warhorse, carry his personal sword, dagger, and pistols, I wear his boots, and, until I give it to Hal, I wore his M.I.T. ring, too. That ring, noting Class of 1998, was the first thing that led me to believe that the six men, three women, and I were not the only or first ones to land somehow in this world and time."

  "It wasn't until long after that morning on that cold, windy, drizzly, stricken battlefield of a beach that Hal told me the full tale of his and Emmett's two odysseys—his in England, Emmett's in Ireland. And that's yet another reason why this compilation of old, ancient prophecies is eerie: If anyone could rightly be called a savior of kings, it's Hal of York, and no mistake. For had it not been for him and the hoard of longevity-booster capsules, part of the quantity he and Emmett had brought with them from the twenty-first century, King Henry VII's eldest son, Arthur Tudor, would've died before he ever became King Arthur II, much less sired the sire of the present English king, Arthur III."

  "It was an utterly selfless act of pure charity he did, too. On each occasion he saved royal lives; few now know or will ever know just how much he sacrificed to the continued well-being of the kings he has served, over the years. Despite the three hundred years he's lived in this world and in his natal world, he'd look younger even than I, had he selfishly used those longevity boosters for only himself, as O'Malley did until his hoard was destroyed in a fire or something."

  "That was the occasion when O'Malley came to York to beg boosters from Hal, and when he found out just how few had survived Hal's generosities to the Tudors, Hal thinks the Irishman went a little mad. He chivvied Hal into riding up to Whyffler Hall with him and then trying to use the projector that had brought them there so long ago to bring to this world the entire laboratory wherein Hal had made the boosters."

  "But he tried in vain. He really didn't understand the projector—which was a basically experimental device, anyway—well enough to achieve his ends, so he gave up, accepted the even split of the few boosters Hal had left, and went back to Ireland in despair."

  "Hal now thinks that my house and property on the banks of the Potomac River, in Virginia, was part of what, by the mid-twenty-first century, had become the Gamebird Project, wherein he and O'Malley had worked and lived and, eventually, fled via the projector. And something that O'Malley did or did not do to or with that device brought me, my house and property, two tractor-trailer trucks, and nine other people to the environs of Whyffler Hall. Bang, just like that, no preparation, no warning, no nothing, just as we all were or happened to be at the moment of transference."

  "The first time Hal came up to Whyffler Hall after my coming to this world, he had the cellar unsealed and cut the device off . . . or so he thought, before it was sealed in again, but that didn't stop my house from being snapped back into the world I came from, it didn't stop that Middle Eastern band and dancers from being projected or from apparently snapping back, most of them. And it didn't stop that murderous twenty-first-century woman, Colonel Dr. Jane Stone, from projecting into that cellar only to die there almost immediately of a kindjal in the chest—thank God for Nugai and his lightning reflexes; if not for him, she'd likely have shot me down. According to Hal, she was a vindictive, cruel, and sadistic woman. She and her type were the reason that he and O'Malley were willing to risk so much to get out of that time and place, he says."

  Behind a desk in an underground level of the governmental operation known as the Gamebird Project, a large, powerful man clad in clothing such as was worn only by higher-ranking military officers sat motionless and blank-faced while hearing the report of another
man who had but recently entered and now stood at rigid attention before the desk. Not until the man had fallen silent did the officer speak.

  "Your team is in full agreement that they both drowned, then, Lieutenant Doctor? There is no dissenting opinion?"

  "No, sir," was the short reply.

  "Well," delved the officer, "do the bodies tell you anything else about the place where they died, then?"

  "The two bodies drowned, sir, in fresh but stagnant water. They had started to decompose before they were brought back, but there appeared to be no marks of violence upon them. Aside from the water, there was nothing on them or in them of an alien nature, sir."

  The big officer nodded brusquely. "Very well, Lieutenant Doctor. Dismiss."

  Fingering the desk communicator, he barked, "I'll see the sub-project director now."

  The man who shortly was ushered in was not merely slender, but spare to the point of emaciation. His eyes were dark-ringed with fatigue and sleeplessness, a tic periodically jerked one fleshless cheek, his lips and hands trembled, and his nails had all been chewed down to the very quicks.

  When the man had saluted and properly reported, the big officer said, "Seat yourself, man, you look almost as dead as those two projectees just returned. You can stop worrying now, eat and sleep more, too. Remember, it's not your testicles that are in the crack—no, those overweening Security Services types are going to be brought to task for all of this boondoggle. And it's just too bad to my way of thinking that Colonel Dr. Jane Stone will not be around to help to pay the piper for this foolish, hellishly expensive exercise she and her service ordered your department into."

  "The President is very wroth about the costs of all this, and my immediate predecessor, Captain-General Dr. Nagy, will shortly be trying to explain how and why he granted so much power within his project to Colonel Dr. Stone and the Security Services. Of course, the President and I and a few others were already privy to just how it was done, since the President had the Security Services' files on Nagy seized and closely examined. The man owns a few dirty little secrets of an exceedingly personal nature, and Stone was, to be blunt, blackmailing the poor bastard. Had she been doing so for the good of the nation or even for her own service, it would be a different matter entirely, of course. But the President and I and you, now, know that she was not, thanks to her private journal—which affectation is, in itself, indicative of her hidden, weak, romantic, nonscientific, nonprofessional, very un-military side."

  "No, she had forced you to recommence a canceled project, to wastefully expend irreplaceable amounts of energy just on an outside chance that she might be able to bring back and torture the young man who had spurned her affections and used what he learned from and through her to escape both her and our world."

  The big officer lifted a mug beside him and sipped at the clear yellowish contents before going on with his monologue. "It is our President's order that until a scientist of sufficient professional status can be found to take over the position, I head the Gamebird Project. Initially, I will try to do the requisite job employing the staff of Nagy, but as I am no scientist, I will be from the very outset in great need of the help and advice of you and all of my other sub-project directors. I trust that you and the others will prove thoroughly cooperative, Major Dr. Baldwin; you'd better be, for there is an ongoing need for unskilled laborers in the western oil-shales industry, wherein Dr. Nagy will presently be posted for the remainder of his life . . . as long as he may live lacking any longevity boosters, that is."

  The patent injustice of so savage a sentence brought comment from even the normally reticent, overly cautious Baldwin, though immediately the words were spoken, he bit his intemperate tongue and visibly cringed, while his teeth frantically sought another nail to be chewed.

  "But Colonel-General, sir, Dr. Nagy headed the team that originally developed the longevity treatments. He and Drs. Sachs and Kenmore used their own bodies to test it, its safety and its effectiveness. He has given so much of himself to all of us, to the nation, over the years . . ." And at that point his courage, such as it was, had failed him.

  The bulky officer recognized, savored, enjoyed the evident terror of his subordinate for a long pleasurable moment. He knew then that this was going to be a blissful assignment.

  Infusing his tone with a carefully measured degree of menace, he said, "You overstep yourself, Major Doctor . . . but since we two are alone and not being recorded here, I'll just assume the lapse to be a result of the strain you've been under for the last few weeks."

  "All right, now, to business. How quickly can you shut down this projector project?"

  Trying hard to not stutter, the director replied, "It required three days the last time, sir, but I think we could do it in two this time. Will the Colonel-General want the console beamed back?"

  The officer frowned. "How much energy will that take? As much as the projections of these men has cost?"

  Baldwin stammered. "Ac . . . actually, a good bit more, sir."

  The officer shook his head vehemently. "Then absolutely not, not now, at least, probably, not ever. There's been more than enough priceless energy wasted to no purpose here as it is."

  Arsen Ademian had witnessed, had experienced, true horror in his life. Printed indelibly in his memory was the wide-eyed, open-mouthed face of that slope-head, throat frozen with shock and pain, as Arsen's big, razor-edged Marine Corps combat knife gutted him before he could get his AK-47 into deadly action. Even to the present, more than five years after the fact, the veteran sometimes awakened in a cold sweat, feeling again the hot, sticky cascade of lifeblood on his hand, the death-gurgle of his foeman sounding in his ears.

  But that remembered horror paled into insignificance in comparison to that which the optics of the carrier brought seemingly close enough to touch. That which was being perpetrated down there on that rocky riverbank was intolerable, monstrous, too terrible to even dignify with the name bestial.

  At the water's edge, a dozen or more long, heavy-looking rowboats—not a few of them mounting swivel guns at bow and stern—were drawn up onto the shelf of a shallow beach. Between their position and the palisade of what had apparently been a fortified village, the ground was littered with hacked bodies. But the sight of dead men was not the sight that gagged Arsen, that filled him with a bubbling, boiling rage.

  Near to the beached boats, a group of bearded, dirty men who wore cuirasses and the kind of helmet Arsen remembered being called morions, most of them armed with various kinds of swords, dirks, huge pistols, pole-arms, and a few longer firearms, were guarding and fitting fetters onto a smaller number of brown-skinned, black-haired captives, behaving not simply roughly but cruelly.

  Off to one side huddled a gaggle of much smaller brown-skinned forms, obviously children, some of them quite young, little more than toddlers. Two of the men dragged another little child from out the huddle, lifted his naked body, and then each grasped an ankle and stood, grinning expectantly, while another armored man with a long-bladed, bloody sword paced over, took a stance, drew back the gore-clotted blade, and slashed downward with all his strength, almost severing the little brown body into two pieces. One of the men who had held the butchered child threw the tiny corpse into the river, then turned about to help hold up another for the slaughter.

  Responding to the instructions of its operator, the carrier sent a narrow tube out from one end, changed position to properly aim the device, then activated the weapon. Even as he drew back his sword for another atrocity, the head of the armored murderer burst with such force as to spring apart the two halves of the steel morion, leaving nothing above his blood-spouting neck save shredded tendons and a bit of spine. Then, before his two "assistants" could even begin to gape at the singular sight, they lost their heads in the identical fashion.

  Chaos erupted on the beach. Arsen did not hear the swivel gun fired, but only saw the puff of smoke from the barrel, just as he saw one of the men put a metal horn to his lips. At the water's ed
ge, hard by the beached boats, the armored men formed in a half-circle around their captives—swords and pistols in hand, pole-arms presented, old-fashioned calivers fresh-primed and steady on their braces.

  "Not amateurs, those murderous bastards," thought Arsen. "They've been soldiering a long time. Formed up for a fight and recalling the patrols before a man could hardly scratch his fucking ass."

  A small party of the armored men came through the smashed gate out of the palisaded village enclosure and raced heavily the distance to join their comrades by the boats, some ten or twelve of them. From his height, Arsen could see through the thinning forest the approach of a larger party from somewhere beyond the palisades.

  Taking time to glance back to the knot of captive children, Arsen looked just in time to see the slowest of them, their erstwhile guards having rallied to their mates at the boats, disappearing into the brush at the forest edge.

  For armored men wearing clumsy jackboots and carrying heavy, awkward weapons, the larger party came out of the woods and onto the riverbank in an amazingly short time, to Arsen's way of thinking. Despite the enormities he had seen certain of them commit, he was beginning to feel a degree of kinship with these men, rationalizing that they probably had had little or no choice in being where they were, doing what they were doing, that they were simply following the orders of their superiors, like any other hapless soldiers anywhere, in any war.

  The woodland party crossed the open space at a trot in a column of twos, being led by a man in ornate armor, grasping a long basket-hilted sword and with a bedraggled orange-red plume affixed to his morion. About half of his party were not armored, lightly clothed and looking to be racially the same as the victims and captives; moreover, none of them carried swords or firearms, rather did they bear axes, clubs, knives, spears, and bows and arrows.

  After hearing the brief report of a subordinate, the plumed man sheathed his sword, drew a wheel-lock pistol from his belt and carefully checked to see that it was both spanned properly and primed, then stalked slowly over to where he could more closely view the three headless dead men. He was trailed closely by two men armed with calivers and, a few paces behind them, three of his native irregulars with nocked arrows ready on their short bows.