Lockridge went through the ritual with a bad taste in his mouth. Was this much cynicism necessary?
Well—to save Storm Darroway. I’ll be seein’ her again, he thought, and the heart fluttered in him.
More hushed and serious than he would have believed possible, the English filed through the cabin door and down the ramp. In the anteroom, before the curtain of rainbow, they got their weapons: sword, pike, axe, crossbow. Gunpowder would be useless against the Rangers, needless against the Yuthoaz. But Mareth beckoned to Lockridge. “You had best stay with me, for a guide,” he said, and laid an energy pistol in the American’s hand. “Here, you come from a sufficiently sophisticated era to operate this. The controls are simple.”
“I know how,” Lockridge snapped.
Mareth dropped his hauteur. “Yes, she singled you out, did she not?” he murmured. “You are no ordinary man.”
Auri struggled through the press. “Lynx,” she pleaded. The terror was back to gnaw at her. “Stay near me.”
“Have her wait here,” Mareth ordered.
“No,” Lockridge said. “She comes along if she wants to.”
Mareth shrugged. “Keep her out of the way, then.”
“I have to be in the forefront,” Lockridge told her. She shivered between his palms. He must give her a kiss . . . mustn’t he?
“Come, lass,” Jesper Fledelius laid a gorilla arm across her shoulders. “Stay near me. We Danes should hang together, amidst these English louts.” They slipped off into the crowd.
During the day, Lockridge had helped manhandle several flyers through the gate. They were sheening ovoids, transparent, not of matter but of forces he did not comprehend. Each could hold twenty. He shoved into the lead one with Mareth. The men already there breathed heavily, whispered prayers or curses, and flicked their eyes about like trapped animals. “Will they not be too panicky to fight?” Lockridge wondered in Danish.
“No, I know them,” Mareth said. “Besides, the initiation ceremonies involve unconscious conditioning. Their fear will turn to fury.”
The machine rose without sound and started down the cold-white, humming bore. A Warden at every console, the others followed. “Since you’ve got this passage,” Lockridge asked, “why didn’t you get still more reinforcements from other periods?”
“None are available,” Mareth said. He spoke absently, hands moving over the control lights, features taut with concentration. “The corridor was built chiefly for access to this very era. Its future end terminates in the eighteenth century, when we have another strong point in India. The Rangers are especially active in England between the Norman Conquest and the Wars of the Roses, so we have no gates there opening on the Middle Ages at all—nor many in earlier epochs, when the critical regions, the theatres of major conflict, are elsewhere. In fact, gates throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age North serve as little more than transfer points. It is largely a fortunate coincidence that we do have one here with a temporal overlap on the one in Denmark.”
Lockridge wanted to inquire further. But the flyer, remorselessly swift, was already at the year they sought.
Mareth guided it out. He left for a glance at the calendar clock in the locker. “Good!” he said fiercely when he returned. “We were lucky. No need to wait. This is night, with sunrise due soon, and must be quite near the moment when she was captured.”
Force beams had kept the fleet together while they crossed the time threshold. They swept up the entry, which opened for them and closed again behind. Mareth set his controls for low flight eastward.
Lockridge stared out. Under the Stone Age moonlight, the Fens lay yet bigger and wilder. But beyond them, on the coast, he spied fisher villages that might almost have been Avildaro.
That was no accident. Before the North Sea came into being, men had walked from Denmark to England; the Maglemose culture was one. Afterward their boats crossed the waters, and Her missionaries came from the South to both lands. The diaglossa in his left ear told him that if they spoke slowly, the tribes of eastern England and western Jutland could still understand each other.
Such kinship faded with inland miles. Northern England was dominated by the hunters and axemakers who centred at Langdale Pike but traded from end to end of the island. The Thames valley had been settled, peacefully enough, by recent immigrants from across the Channel; and the farmers of the south downs were giving up those grim rites which formerly made them shunned. That might be due to the influence of a powerful, progressive confederation in the southwest, which had even started a little tin mining to draw merchants from the civilized lands. Chief among those were the Beaker People, who travelled in small companies and dealt in bronze and beer. An old era was dying in Denmark, a new one being born in England: this westland lay nearer to the future. Looking back, Lockridge saw rivers and illimitable forests; as if from a dream, he knew how birds winged in their millions and elk shook their great horns and men were happy. It came to him with a pang that here was where he belonged.
No. The sea rolled beneath him. He was bound home to Storm.
Mareth went at a dawdler’s pace, waiting for the sky to lighten. Even so, only a couple of hours had passed when the Limfjord slipped into view.
“Stand by!”
The flyers snarled downward. Water flashed steely, dew glittered on the grass and leaves of a young summer suddenly reborn, Avildaro’s roofs sprang from behind her sacred grove. Lockridge saw that the Battle Axe men were still encamped in the fields further on. He glimpsed a sentry, wide-eyed by a dying watchfire, shouting men out of their blankets.
Another shimmery vessel whipped up from before the Long House. So Brann had had time to call in his people. Lightnings crackled under the waning stars, dazzling bright, thunder at their heels.
Mareth rattled a string of commands in an unknown language. A pair of flyers converged on the Rangers’ one. Flame raved, and that bubble was no longer. Black-clad forms tumbled through the air to spatter horribly on the ground.
“Down we go,” Mareth said to Lockridge. “They didn’t expect attack, so there aren’t many here. But if they call for help—We have to take control fast.”
He skimmed the flyer along the bay, struck earth, and made the force-field vanish. “Get out!” he yelled.
Lockridge was first. The English poured after him. Another flyer landed beside his. Jesper Fledelius led the wave from it. His sword flared aloft. “God and King Kristiern!” he roared. The other vehicles had descended some ways off, in the meadows where the Yuthoaz were. They rose again after their men were out. Cool and detached, the Warden pilots oversaw the battle, spoke commands through the amulets, made each man of theirs a chess piece.
Metal clanged against stone. Lockridge dashed for the hut he recalled. It was empty. With a curse, he whirled and sped to the Long House.
A dozen Yuthoaz were on guard. Gallant in the face of supernatural dread, they stood fast with axes lifted. Brann trod forth.
His long visage was drawn into a disquieting grin. An energy pistol flashed in his hand. Lockridge’s own gun was set to protect him. He plunged through the fire geyser and hurled his body at the Ranger. They went over in the dust. Their weapons skittered free and they sought each other’s throats.
Fledelius’ sword rose and fell. An axeman tumbled in blood. Another smote, the Dane countered, his English followers arrived and combat erupted.
From the corner of an eye, Lockridge glimpsed two more black-clad forms, spouts and crackles where beams played on shields. He himself had all he could do, fighting Brann. The Ranger was inhumanly strong and skilled. But suddenly he saw who Lockridge was, face to face. Horror stretched his mouth open. He let go and made a fending motion. Lockridge chopped him in the larynx, got on top, and banged his head on the earth till he went limp.