He had almost bought it when the fugue began. They were using a chronoplate as well! He had been certain that the other referee would not have risked it, would not have had a plate issued to his team. This changed everything. Obviously, there was no chance of tracing the plate. He hadn't been aware of it before and that meant that the tracer function had been bypassed, just as he had done on his unit. Those fools! Didn't they realize what they were forcing him to do? He had gone to a great deal of trouble to become Richard and he hated to abandon his role, but he had to recognize the possibility that he would have to clock out to another period, start a new scenario. They might never find him then. They had forced his hand. He hated to leave now when he had come so close, but it appeared that he would have little choice.
But before he did anything else, he had to bring the fugue to a conclusion. He could not risk being outmaneuvered. He had to stop that man; he was the only one left… And perhaps that would even end it. He had killed the other agent. Perhaps when he killed this one the scenario would take a turn in his favor. Maybe this time the other ref would be too late. He still had a hole card.
Andre de la Croix.
She was carrying a PRU slaved to his chronoplate. He could clock her back into his chambers and bring her back into the fugue with him. He could not hope to explain the mechanics of a temporal fugue to her, but she already believed him to be a wizard, he could pass it all off as sorcery and tell her that the only thing she needed to concern herself with was the death of his opponent. Together, they would outnumber him and he would stand no chance. He had given her the unit in expectation of trouble, but he had not suspected just how badly he would need her. He would end it now.
Reaching for the control console of the chronoplate, he punched out the sequence that would clock her back to Nottingham. Then, when her usefulness was ended, he could kill her at his leisure.
Bois-Guilbert was putting up a valiant struggle, but he was being hammered into the ground. He couldn't understand how de la Croix's armor was standing up so well under his repeated assaults. Both knights were exhausted, but where Bois-Guilbert's armor bore the marks of Andre's assaults, de la Croix's armor was undamaged. She had already drawn blood.
Andre was fighting with a fury unlike anything that she had known before. For the first time, she felt the fire of blood lust coursing through her. She was tired and Bois-Guilbert was strong, but her ensorcelled armor and her charm gave her protection he did not enjoy. He had killed Marcel and he would pay.
With a savage stroke, she smashed at him. He caught the blow on his shield, which was badly battered, and the force of it was too great for him to hold on. She struck again and he lost his shield. Holding his sword with both hands, he attempted to strike back, but de la Croix was on him with a vengeance, pounding away at him, breaking through his armor, getting past his defenses…
He was growing weak from loss of blood. He could not accept that he was losing. It could not be happening, it was impossible. Her sword came down in a vicious chopping stroke and he felt it bite into his armor, penetrate through into his arm. He cried out and felt his sword slip from his hand, felt the floor come up beneath him…
For a moment, there was an incandescent respite. He looked up and saw de la Croix poised with sword held overhead.
"Damn," he whispered softly.
The sword-
— came down.
Irving never knew what killed him.
Andre froze. She did not know what had happened. One moment, Bois-Guilbert was at her mercy, prepared to meet his maker. The next, she was… elsewhere. And her sword had split the sorcerer's head right down the middle. He was at her feet, kneeling before some strange and mystifying apparatus. His helmet was on the floor, inches away, as though he had only just removed it. Dazed, she backed away and watched the corpse topple.
The door exploded inward and Finn Delaney barged into the room. He fired a quick burst into her chest, knocking her off her feet, and then he saw the chronoplate and Irving's corpse. Andre lay on her back, not moving. She was in shock. Not giving her a second glance, Finn set the charge on the chronoplate and hit his PRU. When Andre looked up, he was gone.
13
It was over before Lucas realized that it had ended. The fugue had run its course and, as time caught up to them, all the Irvings and all his other selves began to disappear until only he was left, standing all alone and spinning madly, swinging his sword in all directions. As the battle raged around him, he stood alone in a cleared space as some of the outlaws looked on, jaws hanging agape, the attack on Torquilstone forgotten.
In the fury of the battle, only a few of those involved were aware of the strange scene being played out in their midst. The Saxons had broken through and were even at that moment pouring into the castle and slaughtering the Normans. Cedric and his family were being released, along with a sorrowful Isaac of York. As Lucas stopped hacking at the air and stood alone, those who had been watching began to back away, questioning their own sanity. No one approached him. No one attempted to speak to him.
What they had seen-or had thought that they had seen- had taken place in what was little more than an instant, a few moments, a brief span of unreality. Two knights had come together in deadly battle and suddenly, they seemed to have multiplied. Two became two armies and, just as suddenly, only one remained. It couldn't have been real, could it? One knight stood alone. In a brief span, surely too brief, his armor had been battered and dented, he was bloodied, he was exhausted, he was chopping at the air. They wandered away in a daze. More sophisticated men might have believed that they had succumbed to some sort of mass psychosis, but these men did not know the meaning of the word. The word would not exist in the vocabulary of men for many, many years to come. It was sorcery. They knew of only one sorcerer. They knew better than to speak of him.
Lucas let his sword drop to the ground.
"My God," he said. "I think I've won. What happened?"
Finn Delaney walked up beside him.
"It's over," he said, putting his arm around Lucas. "Irving's dead. His chronoplate's destroyed."
Lucas stared at him, his eyes slightly unfocused.
"Did I kill him?"
"No, but it doesn't matter. He's dead just the same."
Lucas looked back at Torquilstone. The sounds of battle were still coming from within its walls. The Saxons were still invading the castle.
"Forget it," Finn said. "That doesn't concern us anymore. We've done our job, Lucas. Let's go home."
"Hunter?"
Finn smiled. "He's gone. Like the man said, he's not putting his ass on the line for anybody. He popped in out of nowhere, saved our bacon, and now he's disappeared again and taken his toys with him. Back into retirement."
"Is there any way that we can keep him out of it?" said Lucas.
Finn shrugged. "What difference does it make? We'll be debriefed. We can tell them everything we know. Hunter's smart. He won't stay around here. He'll pick himself another time, another place… they'll never find him." He took Lucas' PRU. "I gave mine back to him. I've still got some explosive left. He can probably change the code, but what do you say we blow these anyway?"
"These?"
Finn sighed. "Yeah. Bobby's too. Hunter wasn't fast enough to save him. For what it's worth, he said he was sorry."
They stood over Bobby's body.
"It's worth something," Lucas said.
For a moment, there was an incandescent respite. He looked up and saw de la Croix poised with sword held overhead.
"Damn," he whispered softly.
The sword-
— never came down. At the last moment, he had shut his eyes, resigned to his fate. He waited for the blow that never came. He waited… and he waited, then it occurred to him that de la Croix was waiting for him to open his eyes, waiting before giving him the coup de grace so that he would open his eyes, so that the last thing he would ever see was-