He hadn’t the heart to tell her Crete lay impoverished and oppressed under the Venetians, awaiting next century’s Turkish conquest. “Maybe.” He slid the boat among reeds and osiers until he reached an open stretch of shallow water. Here the island was hidden by brush and the mere blinked bright and still. Auri had taken fishing tackle as well as her garment. She baited a hook and cast skilfully toward a lurking place under a log. He sprawled back and got his pipe started afresh.
“That’s a strange rite you do,” Auri said.
“Only for pleasure.”
“Can I try? Please?”
She wheedled him into it, with the expected results. Gulping and sputtering, she handed back the pipe. “Whoo-ah!” She wiped her eyes. “No, too strong for the likes of me.”
Lockridge chuckled. “I warned you, young one.”
“I should have listened. You are never wrong.”
“Now, wait—”
“But I wish you wouldn’t speak to me as to a child.” She flushed. The long lashes quivered downward. “I am ready to become a woman whenever you want me.”
The blood mounted in Lockridge too. “I’ve promised to take the spell off you,” he mumbled. The idea occurred to him that he might die in the coming battle. “In fact, it is off. You need no further magic. Uh . . . passage through the underworld, you know . . . rebirth. Do you see?”
Gladness leaped in her. She moved toward him.
“No, no, no!” he said desperately. “I can’t—myself—”
“Why not?”
“Look, uh, look around you, this isn’t springtime.”
“Does that matter? Everything else has changed. And Lynx, you are so very dear to me.”
She pressed against him, warm, round, and eager. Her mouth and hands had an enchanting awkwardness. He thought, in the cloud of her tresses and herself, Why, my own grandfather would’ve called her husband high. . . . No, God damn it!
“I’ll have to leave you, Auri—”
“Then leave me with your child. I w-w-won’t think past that, not today.”
Strictness was beyond him. He could only hit on one thing to do. He let himself be pushed too far to one side, and the skiff capsized.
By the time they had righted it and bailed it out, matters were under control. Auri accepted the sign of godly displeasure without fear, for she had spent her life among such omens, nor even with overmuch disappointment, for the heart was too sunny in her. She peeled off the wet shift in a fit of giggles at Lockridge’s refusal to do likewise.
“At least I may look at you,” she said when a soberer mood came. “There will be other times, after you have set Avildaro free.”
A glumness had settled on him. “The village you knew won’t come again,” he said. “Remember who fell.”
“I know,” she answered gravely. “Echegon, who was always kind, and Vurowa the merry, and so many more.” But everything that had passed since had blurred her grief. Besides, the Tenil Orugaray were not given to mourning a loss as keenly as those who came after them. They had learned too well to accept what was.
“And you 11 still have the Yuthoaz to reckon with,” Lockridge said. “We may push this one band out, this one time. But there are others, strong and land-hungry. They will return.”
“Why must you always fret so, Lynx?” Auri cocked her head. “We do have this day . . . and whee, a fish!”
He wished he could join her in more than a pretence of merriment. But his own dead were too much with him: nations, kings, and the unremembered humble, through all the ages of the time war—yes, even that kid he’d killed in his own land, four hundred years hence. He saw now that his self-righteousness had been a cover for blood guilt. Oh, o’ course I never meant the thing to happen, he told himself wearily, but it did happen . . . it will happen . . . and I’d turn time inside out if I could, to undo it.
They were lunching off their catch, sashimi style, when a horn blew. Lockridge started. This fast? He rowed hard to get back.
Mareth was indeed there, with six other Wardens. They had abandoned the disguises of priest, knight, merchant, yeoman, beggar for a uniform skin-tight like the Rangers’, but forest green and with iridescent cloaks cataracting from their shoulders. Under the bronzy helmets, long dark eyes in faces eerily akin to Storm’s looked aloofly upon their helpers.
We have one more agent in the British Isles,” Mareth said.
“He will bring our army after dark. Meanwhile, we have preparations to make.”
Lockridge, Auri, and Fledelius found themselves working on tasks they did not understand. Because this corridor was secret from the enemy, and this gate opened on a vital period the anteroom was stocked with engines of war and the exits were broad enough to admit them. The American could identify some things in a general way, vehicles, guns; but what was the crystalline globe in which a night swirled studded with starlike points? What was the helix of yellow fire that felt cold to the touch? His questions were rebuffed.
Even Fledelius bristled. “I’m no serf of theirs,” he growled to Lockridge.
The American checked his own annoyance. “You know how often underlings like to throw their weight around. When we get to the queen, she’ll be different.”
“Yes, true. For Her I’ll swallow pride. . . . Throw their weight around. Haw, haw! You’ve a rare wit, lad.” Fledelius guffawed and slapped Lockridge’s back so he staggered.
Dusk fell, and dark. Down the sky there whirled the men of Harry’s England.
They were a wild, tough crew, a hundred in number: discharged soldiers, sailors half buccaneer, fortune-hunting younger sons, highwaymen, tinkers, rebellious Welshmen, Lowland cattle rustlers, gathered together from Dover to Lands End, from the Cheviot Hills to the London alleys. Lockridge could only guess how each had been recruited. Some for religion, some for money, some for refuge from the hangman—one by one, the Wardens found them and drew them into a secret league, and now the hour was on hand to use them.
Torchlight picked faces out of the mass that seethed and grumbled on the island. Lockridge stood next to a squat, pig-tailed seaman in ragged shirt and trousers, barefoot, earringed, scarred by old fights. “Where are you from, friend?” he asked.
“A Devon man, I be.” Lockridge could just understand him; even a Londoner still treated his vowels like a Dutchman, and this fellow added a dialect thick enough to cut. “But I were in Mother Colley’s stew in Southampton when the summons.” He smacked his lips. “Ah, there were a rare bouncetail trull! Had I had I had one hour the longer, not soon ’ud she forget Ned Brown. But when the medallion spoke, God’s bones, I’ve stood ’neath French gunfire and piked Caribals when they howled up the sides of our galleon, yet never ’ud I dare leave yon summons unheeded.”
“The, uh, medallion?”
Brown tapped a disc hung about his neck, stamped with the image of the Virgin. Lockridge noticed the same thing on several other hairy breasts. “What, thou wert not gi’en this token? Well, it whispers when they’ve need o’ thee, in such a way that none may hear save thyself, and tells whither thou must hie. He met me there and flitted me to a meeting ground in the wilds, thence hither. . . . I knew not the service numbered this many.”
Mareth stood forth at the cabin door. His voice rose, not loudly, but the turbulence was hushed. “Men,” he said, “long have most of you been in the Fellowship, and no few will remember times when it saved you from dungeon or death. You know you are enlisted in the cause of white magicians, who by their arts aid the Holy Catholic Faith against paynim and heretic. This night you are called to redeem your pledge. Far and strangely shall you fare, to battle against wild men while we your masters engage the wizards they serve. Go you bravely forward, in God’s name, and those who outlive the day shall have rich reward, while those who fall shall be yet more highly rewarded in Heaven. Kneel, now, and receive absolution.”