A horse comes through the forest carrying the messenger Other Lidia will try to shoot but will miss in a few moments. The Now Lidia, the one in front of me, starts running for the clearing.
“Here,” Scout says, and hands me back the chaser. Though I’m sure he’d rather keep control of it, he knows I’m the only one with a handle on what’s really going on here.
Lidia is maybe a dozen feet from the meadow when the messenger and his horse emerge from the trees. As before, he pulls up the moment he sees his dead colleagues, but this time, just a few seconds before Other Lidia is about to shoot, Now Lidia begins shouting, “Over here! Over here! Over here!”
The messenger yanks his horse around and starts moving toward her voice, bringing him closer to the campfire. This time when Other Lidia pulls the trigger, she doesn’t miss.
Now Lidia laughs in triumph and then looks back at me in a way that tells me we are about to jump again.
I throw my hand behind me, my fingers spread wide, and feel the slap as Scout’s palm connects with mine just a few seconds before we vanish from the site of the Mongol massacre.
Momentum carries us forward a few steps as we come out of the jump. The pain, though, causes us to stop and cringe. A good-size jump. At least a hundred years, I think.
Through squinted eyes I check the chaser. Double what I thought. Two hundred exactly. 1442. And according to the map, we’re only thirty miles outside of London, England.
I force myself to look for Lidia. While she’s clearly in pain, she’s already running toward some smoke rising above the trees to our left.
I yank on Scout’s hand and we take off after her.
The smells of civilization hit me in waves of cooking meat and human sweat and waste of both man and animal as we near the town. Both coughing, Scout and I pull up our shirts over our mouths and noses to filter the air, but it’s a wasted effort as it only adds our own stink to the other scents.
“Lidia! Stop!” I yell.
She continues on without a break in her step. Though she hasn’t been able to add any more distance between us, we haven’t been able to gain any ground on her, either. Ahead and to the left, I spot a building through the trees maybe fifty yards away. Another appears to my right. Then more and more.
I know the smell is probably stronger now, but while my nose still feels as if it is under assault, my body has adjusted my tolerance levels enough that I can continue on without retching.
A road emerges from the forest, running right into the town. Lidia turns down it, and we follow. Though this doesn’t appear to be any kind of fortified village, the dirt road soon transitions into one of cobblestone. As the buildings begin to surround us, I notice something else strange, too. Maybe half the structures contain architectural elements that I’ve always associated with the Chinese Empire — upturned rooflines, ornate designs, and the use of bright colors. These are small things in the grand picture of the world, but they speak with the power of a god.
Kali, to be specific.
It’s all the proof I need to know that Lidia’s attempt to keep the Mongols on their march through Europe was successful.
It must be the adrenaline coursing through my veins because I’m not feeling any pain and am able to run almost as fast as I do when I’m not wounded. I feel like it’s now or never, that I can’t stop running until I capture Lidia.
Scout’s feet slap the cobblestones beside me. At the moment, we’re not currently in physical contact, but we’re both keeping a close eye on Lidia, and if she makes a move toward her chaser, I know Scout will grab on to me again.
The street grows more crowded with villagers the deeper into town we get. As our little parade races down the center of the road, we draw stares of confusion and even fear. Our clothes, our shoes, our hair, even the color of our skin stands out. These are not the Anglo-Saxons I have known. Their blood has been mixed with not just the Mongols but the other races the Mongols swept along in their move west — the Chinese, the Persians, the Arabs, the Moors.
A large Eurasian man in a gray cloak shouts words at us that — with the exception of maybe one or two — I don’t understand. Others begin doing the same, and I worry that a mob will form that will take Scout and me down before we can get to Lidia.
Thankfully the village is a small one, and I can see the buildings petering out ahead. But as we near, I spot several oxcarts entering the town and completely blocking the path.
Scout’s hand is on my shoulder before I realize Lidia is yanking up her chaser. We keep running, though, gaining a foot or two by the time she hits her go button.
We stumble over uneven ground as we come out of the jump, heads pounding with intense pain. While I’m able to stay on my feet, Scout hits the ground.
I look back, but he shouts, “Keep going. I’ll catch up.” So I do.
The reason for his fall is that we materialized in a field that has been recently plowed. Chunks of mud lie in lines that slow all of us.
Lidia glances back at me. At first, her eyes blaze with the same wild anger they have had since the chase began, but then something else creeps in, and she almost seems to smile. At that moment she whips up her chaser and starts inputting a new jump.
“Grab on!” I yell.
I thrust my hand behind me, but when I glance back, I see that Scout’s ten yards away.
“Hurry!”
Panic fills his eyes as he sprints across the field. To help, I reverse direction, and run toward him. Scout leaps the final few feet and hits me just as the jump takes hold.
Upon arrival we topple onto hard ground. More cobblestones, I realize. My shoulder aches where it’s slammed into the surface, but I can’t let that stop me.
I stagger to my feet more than spring and then help Scout up. If there is such a thing as fate, it has once more been working against us, and the gains we’ve been making on Lidia have been lost.
“Stay with me,” I say and then start running again.
Heavy gray clouds fill the sky. It hasn’t started to rain, but it won’t be long, which is probably the reason why there are only a handful of people about. As much as I’d like to, checking the chaser now to see when and where we are would just slow me down. A town somewhere, probably in Europe. It has that kind of feel, though who knows in this infinitely changed world? As for the time, it doesn’t matter.
Lidia turns a corner up ahead, momentarily disappearing from sight.
Without either of us saying anything, both Scout and I pick up our speed. From the dampness on the leg of my pants, I know that my wound has started to bleed again, but my adrenaline is still keeping me from feeling anything.
When we turn the corner I expect to see Lidia on the road ahead of us, but she’s not there. I have no choice but to consult the tracking map, which means we must slow to about half speed. The dot indicates she’s ahead and to the left, but when we get to the point where her path diverges from the road we are on, we find not an intersecting street but a building that’s been ravaged by a recent fire. The front door is missing, and much of the stone that surrounds the entrance is black with soot.
The signal from Lidia’s chaser is coming from deep inside the structure, but we enter cautiously nonetheless. The front portion of the building is open all the way to the sky. A stone stairway runs up one wall to the ghost of a second floor. What doesn’t still stick out from the walls lies before us in piles of ash and chunks of partially burned wood. A stone wall divides the building in half, making it impossible to see the back portion, where Lidia should be.
Two soot-encrusted doorways lead through the wall. We approach the one on the left, and look through. Another big room, though here, with the exception of a few burned-out holes, most of the second floor has survived. Several piles of debris scattered around give me the sense someone has started to clean this place up so it can be rebuilt.