Jorith came up beside him and offered a flask. He drank; it was citron water, and he used some to wash his eyes as well. The acid in it stung, but it would be better than leaving lime dust under his eyelids.
"Saw them off, sir," he wheezed to Padway, and Jorith clapped her hands and rose on tiptoe to kiss him. At another time, he would have paid more attention to that, but…
"For now," Padway said. "But if Justinian didn't send idiots, and his agents in rebus usually are fairly shrewd, they'll-"
The noise below had mostly been bellowing, cries of pain and shrieks of I'm blind! and departing footfalls as many of the strong-arm squad decided there were better things to do in a riot-stricken city than have quicklime poured over their heads.
Now a crackling sound arose as well. All three looked at each other, hopelessly hoping that someone would deny that the sound was fire. When smoke began to drift up from between the floorboards, no doubt at all was left.
"Captain," Padway said.
"Sir?"
"I'm going to give you an order," he said. "You're not going to like it, but you're going to do it anyway."
"Sir-"
"Grandfather-"
"Take Jorith and get out of here," Padway rasped. "No, shut up. I'm an old man-a very old man-and I haven't six months to live anyway."
Jorith went white, and Padway waved a hand and then let it fall limp. "Didn't want to spoil your birthday, kitten, but that's what the doctors say. My lungs. Maybe I shouldn't have sent that expedition to find tobacco… I've lived longer than I ever had a right to expect anyway. Now get out-they won't have enough men to chase you, not when they see I'm not with you. I put my granddaughter in your hands. That is your trust."
A racking cough, and a wheeze: "Go!"
Tharasamund hesitated, but only for an instant. Then he brought his sword up in a salute more heartfelt than most he'd made, sheathed it, and put a hand on Jorith's shoulder as she knelt to embrace her grandsire.
"Now, my lady," he said.
She came, half-stunned, looking back over her shoulder. Tharasamund snatched up a coil of rope, made an end fast, looked out to the rear. Padway had been right; there were only two men out there, and they backed away when they saw the tall soldier coming down the rope, even hindered with a woman across his shoulder. He landed with flexed knees, sweeping the princess to her feet and drawing steel in the same motion.
"Follow me… and run," he said.
"No!" He turned, surprised that she disobeyed. Then he stopped, forgetting her, forgetting everything.
Light speared his eyes, and he flung up a hand and squinted. Light, not the red of flames, but a blinding light whiter than the very thought of whiteness in the mind of God. In the heart of it, a brazen chariot shone mirror-bright, turning gently with a ponderous motion that gave an impression of overwhelming weight-it must be visible to all Florence, as well.
The roof of the building exploded upward in a shower of red roofing tile and shattered beam, and through it he could see a form rising.
It was Martinus Paduei. It could be nobody else. Borne upward on a pillar of light…
Dimly, he was aware of the remaining rioters screaming flight, followed by their Greek paymaster. He was a little more aware of Jorith beside him, tears of joy streaming down her face as she sank to her knees and made the sign of the cross again and again. He sank down beside her, holding up his sword so that it also signed the holy symbol against the sky. The light was pain, but he forced his eyes open anyway, unwilling to lose a moment of the sight.
There was a single piercing throb of sound, like the harp of an angel taller than the sky and the light was gone, leaving only the fading afterimages strobing across his vision.
"He was a saint!" Jorith sobbed. "Oh, Grandfather-"
"Yes," the young man said. "I don't think there's much doubt about that now. He was a saint."
He looked down into the girl's face and smiled. "And he told me to take care of you, my lady Jorith. We'd better go."
Martin Padway opened his eyes, blinking. For a long moment he simply lay on what felt like a very comfortable couch, looking at the faces that surrounded him. Then two thoughts sent his eyes wide:
I don't hurt. That first. All the bone-deep aches and catches were gone, all the pains that had grown so constant over the years that he didn't consciously notice them. Yes, but how I notice them now they're gone! he thought.
The second thought was: They're all so young!. There were a round dozen men and women, every color from ebony-black to pink-white via a majority of brown that included several East Asian types. But none of them looked over twenty; they had the subtle signs-the flawless fine-textured skin, the bouncing freshness of movement-that were lost in early adulthood. It was far more noticeable than the various weirdnesses of their clothing.
Behind them were what looked like movie screens showing aerial shots, or various combinations of graphs and numbers, all moving and in different colors.
"Time travelers, right?" he said. After all, I know time travel is possible. I've had going on fifty years to get used to the concept.
One man-young man-gave a satisfied smile. "Instant comprehension! Just as you'd expect from a superior individual. I told you that the Great Man theory-"
He seemed to be talking upper-class sixth-century Latin, until you noticed that his lip movements weren't quite synchronized with the words and there was a murmur of something else beneath it.
Fascinating, Padway thought. And that's an academic riding a hobbyhorse, or I was never an archaeologist. Evidently some things were eternal.
Some of the others started arguing. Padway raised a hand:
"Please! Thank you very much for saving my life, but if you wouldn't mind a little information…»
"Yes, excellent sir," another man said-he was in a plain coverall, albeit of eerily mobile material. "From four hundred years in your future. We are-well, mostly-a study team investigating a crucial point in history… your lifetime, in fact, excellent sir."
"Four centuries in which future?" Padway said. "Gothic Rome, or my original twentieth? Twentieth century A.D.," he went on, to their growing bewilderment.
There was a long moment of silence. Padway broke it. "You mean, you didn't know?" he said.
The argument started up again, fast enough that Padway caught snatches of the language it was actually in, rather than the who-knew-how translation. His mind identified it as a Romance-derived language; something like twentieth-century Italian, but more archaic, and with a lot of Germanic loan words and other vocabulary he couldn't identify.
A slow, enormous grin split the ancient American's face. "Fifty years," he murmured.
Fifty years of politics and administration and warfare and engineering. None of them his chosen profession, just the things he had to do to survive and keep the darkness from falling. If this bunch were from only four centuries ahead in the future Padway had made, he'd done that, with a vengence; they were from the date that in Padway's original history had seen the height of the Vikings.
He'd kept the darkness at bay, and now… now he could go back to being a research specialist. The grin grew wider.
Better than that, he'd actually get to know how things turned out! Making history was all very well, but he'd always wanted to read it more.