Nine Eleven, page 9
part #5 of Area 51- Time Patrol Series
Moms held her rifle in one hand, the revolver and saber hanging from her belt. She made a quick scan of the area, but spotted no one nearby. She was too far away to hear what was being discussed, but she had no doubt about the subject matter: the massacre planned for the early morning. Looking up at the stars, Moms could only guess what time it was, but it was after midnight on the 11th of September 1857, and Moms knew the arguing was in vain, because dawn would bring death.
The Mormon campfire was in the gully to one side, and in the other direction, a quarter mile away, were the flicker of other fires, the besieged emigrants. Their wagons, dark silhouettes against the flames, were pulled into a tight circle for defense.
Moms was in a valley, running north-south, that made up Mountain Meadows, a popular stopping place along the Old Spanish Trail. She was on the north side of a swell of land running midway across the valley, which was four miles long. A spring provided fresh water on this side of the swell. The emigrants weren’t too far from the spring, but not close enough that they could send someone out to draw water without being fired upon.
Moms imagined it didn’t look much different in her day than it did now, and Edith’s download immediately corrected her that the land in the now was lusher, with more grass, since it hadn’t yet been over-grazed.
The actual accounts of the massacre were sketchy, since anyone who knew about it had participated in it, and they weren’t exactly keen to implicate themselves. There were, of course, the seventeen children who were spared, but the oldest was currently only six. The download had a complete list of those who would die soon, along with their ages. Entire families and children as young as seven would be slain.
Moms shivered; she’d forgotten how chilly the high desert got at night. The land was rough, with low trees and brushes. In a few hours, the ground would be drenched in blood, and Moms despaired, knowing she could do nothing about that. The Shadow was clever, pitting her against history and her own lineage even though she knew little of her seven-times-removed grandfather, and even Edith’s research had turned up little.
Today would kill not only 120 emigrants of the Baker-Fancher wagon train, it would destroy some of the killers. One would be executed many years later, the only person punished for all those murders, but the weight of what happened here had to be a demon in the brains of those who committed the atrocity. At least a reasonable person would expect that, but Moms had been around enough atrocities in her own time, meeting some of those responsible, and understood there were people who could do the worst things possible and walk away without a second thought, especially if they believed their cause to be just. Nationalism, theology, racism, and other causes were some of the fuels used to incite such actions, but it boiled down to fear of others.
According the Edith’s research, Moms’s ancestor, Josiah Turner, renounced his religion after today’s events and moved back east to Kansas, setting down roots in the land in which Moms would grow up over a century later. Land in which she would bury the man who’d destroyed her mother’s life.
That last memory came unbidden, and Moms grimaced at the implications. Who was she to judge?
It is 1857 A.D. The 7.9-magnitude Fort Tejon earthquake, still the most recent large event along the San Andreas Fault (Californians are waiting for the next); the Second Opium War; Dred Scott v. Sandford rules that negroes are not citizens and slaves cannot sue for freedom; the first elevator, by Elisha Otis, is put in place in New York City; Sheffield F.C. becomes the world’s first association football team (they probably mean soccer); an earthquake in Sicily kills over 10,000; the Mormons abandon Las Vegas (it’s never been quite the same).
Moms wondered if history would change if the massacre didn’t happen. Would someone who was supposed to die, but lived, turn out to have a huge impact on history? Or their descendants? And if so, why assume it would be a negative impact? Maybe the seven-generations-removed grandfather of someone who discovered the cure for cancer was over there, huddled behind those wagons, afraid and uncertain of what awaited?
Some things change; some don’t.
Moms looked away from the wagons, as if that physical action could change those futile thoughts into focus on the mission. She instinctively brought up her left forearm in a high block, stopping the hatchet coming toward her skull. The blow staggered both her and her attacker, but with his other hand, he grabbed the barrel of her musket and tried to take it from her. Moms jerked back, and they both lost their grip on the weapon, and it fell to the ground.
In such close proximity, Moms was following through, shifting from defense to offense with skills first learned during self-defense at West Point, honed in the pits at Ranger and Special Forces school, then beaten home by Nada on the mats while working out at the Ranch.
She jabbed with her right hand, a sharp strike into the solar plexus of the attacker, able to see that it was a half-naked man with long hair, but little more. He pulled the hatchet back as he gasped in pain.
Moms kept the initiative with a flurry of jabs, hitting his chest hard four times, then delivering an open-hand strike to his nose. It broke with an audible crack, and blood spurted.
Moms stopped her attack for a moment to get oriented. The man appeared to be Native American, but she knew some of the Mormon militia had donned native garb for their assault on the wagon train. She couldn’t make out skin tone in the dark.
The broken nose and blood didn’t deter her opponent. He drew a knife from a scabbard on his belt. Hatchet in one hand, knife in the other, he edged sideways, looking for an opening. He didn’t whirl the two weapons about like the fools in movies did, but held both in the ready position for either an attack or defense.
Which meant he was a professional.
“Who are you?” Moms asked as she reached for her pistol with one hand and the saber with the other.
He didn’t answer or give her the chance to draw, leaping to the attack. Moms stopped both hatchet and knife, but was forced to give ground, her arms stinging from the forearm blocks, knowing he’d cut her soon, once he ascertained her defense.
She turned then ran, hearing him in close pursuit. She drew the saber then wheeled about, slashing, forcing him to halt his charge and jump back, the tip of the blade slicing a thin line across his bare chest.
Moms held the saber at the ready, while he went on guard with hatchet and knife. She considered the pistol, but as her free hand drifted toward it, he spoke, confirming he wasn’t Native American, or native at all to the timeline.
“If you manage to draw and fire before I kill you, Moms, you’ll be caught between both sides.”
Chatty. Professionals weren’t chatty unless something was wrong. Uncertainty. “You’re not Legion,” Moms said, “and why should I care about both sides?”
“No. I’m not Legion. And you should care because you’re here to do something, aren’t you? If you do manage to draw and fire before I charge and kill you, which I doubt you’ll be able to do, then I’ll be dead, and my body will disappear. They’ll find you standing out here with no one else around and no one who knows who you are. Correct?”
He has better intel than I do, Moms thought. “You’re Spartan, but not of our Sparta.”
He straightened slightly, in no rush. “I am.”
“You guys have a terrible track record against my team,” Moms said.
He took a step back. “Really? Tell me.”
“As best I make it, we’ve gone up against your mercenaries four times and won all four times.”
He stood still. “Is that so? Four?”
“Four times, and more than that of your people dead. Do you have a handler here? One of the women with the bows? Diana?”
He shook his head. “No handler. It’s just you and me.”
“Your mission is to kill me?”
“Yes.” He took a sliding step to the right.
“If you had succeeded, what would you have done next?” Moms asked, her hand hovering over the holster, not quite convinced of his argument.
“The past tense? Optimistic.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like we’re told anything other than our mission. Every army I’ve fought in, it’s the same. Anxious to get you to the fight, vague about bringing you back from it.”
“I’ve experienced the same,” Moms said. “Seems we share some things. We’re both soldiers.”
“I’m a warrior,” he said. “I was a warrior. Now, I’m—” He shook his head. “I suspect they might come get me, but I doubt it. We all assume it’s a one-way mission if we’re sent through a Gate in time. Unlike our other deployments across space.”
“What do you mean?” Moms asked, watching his eyes, because the eyes always led the attack. He was acting strange, and that might be a diversion to cover a sudden assault.
“You timeline is naïve,” he said. “One can travel across timelines, but in the present, the now. The Shadow can travel back in time across timelines. Two very different things. Most of our fighting is across timelines, a deployment in space, not time.”
“We may be naïve,” Moms said, “but we must be important for the Shadow to be attacking us relentlessly.”
The Spartan stopped moving. “That is true. You say it has cost the lives of my brothers. They didn’t fight well?”
“Their heart wasn’t in it,” Moms said. “Fighting for barter or fighting for causes are different things.”
“I fight for my people. So they may survive.”
“You have nothing to gain by killing me,” Moms argued. “We’re both enemies of the Shadow.”
He sighed. “The price has already been paid.”
“What?”
“My life. It’s the currency of my people. Lives. When I was sent to the Shadow, that was payment.”
“Then the payment has been made,” Moms said. “Don’t kill me. I’d appreciate it.”
“How many of my people have yours killed?”
Moms did the math from the after-action debriefs: Scout, two in 1969; Roland, one in 493; she’d taken out an entire patrol of five, led by one of the women with the bows in pre-history; Doc had killed one in Vicksburg in 1863, which reminded her of something. “Nine. The last one thanked my team member before he died. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t believe in, isn’t it?”
“I believe in my people,” he said, but he lowered the hatchet and knife.
“As you said. The price has already been paid.”
“True.”
He was still, silent. The voices arguing in the Mormon camp were a faint murmur. No noise emanated from the emigrant wagon train. Moms imagined the families huddled there, low on food, water and ammunition, uncertain what the day would bring.
“What is happening here and now?” the Spartan asked.
“In the morning,” Moms said, “the men over there are going to kill the people behind me.”
“Why?”
“‘Why?’” Moms shook her head. “Lots of reasons, but ultimately the truest one: fear. Self-preservation.”
“We Spartans understand fear,” he said. “We conquered it, or so we thought. But that is where we were naïve. We fooled ourselves, and in our pride, the Shadow was able to defeat us.”
Moms had taken a hostage negotiation workshop a long time ago, where a maxim was get personal. “What’s your name?”
“My name doesn’t matter. I am no longer of Sparta. I am just a number on a ledger to keep the balance sheet between my timeline and that of the Shadow’s.”
“I’m not a number. You know my name. Tell me yours, so it will be remembered.”
There was a glint of teeth as he smiled in the darkness. “I’m already remembered in my agoge. I dead to them, but they will remember me.”
“As long as there is an agoge,” Moms said. “Join me. Fight the Shadow again.”
He shook his head. “No. If the Shadow learns I’ve betrayed my mission, my number will turn red on the ledger, and my people will pay the price.” He was silent for a moment. “Do you know what the Shadow doesn’t understand?”
“What?”
“The Shadow doesn’t understand the concept of self-sacrifice. It uses others.” He dropped the hatchet and knife and came forward, hands out from his sides.
Moms lowered the saber, but he took the point and pressed it against his chest, over his heart. “Do you have a strong hand, Moms?”
She could only nod.
“I wish your people well in your war. Perhaps you will do what we could not. Don’t be proud. Don’t be naïve.” He frowned. “Perhaps our conquering of fear hurt us in our war with the Shadow. Maybe fear is a good thing at times.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Strong hand, Moms.”
He shoved his body forward onto the blade.
“Quintili Vare, legions redde!”
(“Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”)
— Emperor Augustus, upon receiving word of the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest
11 September 9, Teutoberg Forest, Germania
Roland wasn’t there, and then he was there, but he’d sort of always been there. Which was true in more ways than time travel, because he was on a battlefield, and Roland had spent most of his adult life on a battlefield.
It was the best way to explain how he arrived, becoming part of his current time and place without fanfare or excitement among those around him, even more so, since they were knee deep in their own ‘excitement,’ essentially trying to kill each other, although without much commitment on one side. The clash of steel on steel echoed, causing Roland to heft his battle-axe, ready to strike out in any direction.
Beyond the perplexing physics of traveling into a time bubble created by the Shadow without upsetting those in the immediate vicinity, there was the fact that no one was directly attacking Roland, more concerned with each other. Roland was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully he wouldn’t be here afterward, because he could sense death in the air and something worse, something that stirred his memories but which he couldn’t pin down.
Roland scanned the clearing in front of him. Where the moon and starlight made inroads, he made out some of the action. It didn’t occur to him to wish for night vision goggles, as some other modern soldier might, because Roland was here, and night vision goggles weren’t. A simple concept, but Roland was simple in some fundamental and efficient ways.
It was a one-sided battle at first glance. Two Roman soldiers, back to back, parrying and thrusting with their swords, were surrounded by over two dozen Germanics, but then details became apparent, and the odds evened out a little. One Roman had the crest of a centurion on his helmet, and the other wore the plain pot helmet of a common legionnaire. The Germanic tribespeople were pre-teen boys, old men barely able to wield their weapons, and women, but there weren’t any men in prime fighting age. None of the Germanics seemed to eager to test the expertly wielded Roman swords.
And why should they? Roland thought. Where could the two Romans go, trapped deep inside tribal territory, cut off from the rest of their army? Their army was likely being massacred at the moment—or in a previous moment, or a future moment. Roland wasn’t quite sure where in the timing of the battle he’d arrived.
Should I take one side or the other? he wondered, but then the hair on the back his neck tingled, and he turned away, ignoring the half-hearted sparring in the clearing, peering into the deeper darkness underneath the thick forest to his left.
Something was coming, something Roland had sensed before.
It is 9 A.D. Due to the Roman defeat in Germania (occurring now), two new taxes are levied on citizens of the Empire—one is a five-percent inheritance tax; Claudius marries Plautia Urgulanilla (he’d later, much later, have a book and a BBC series about his life, who’d have thought?); Ovid completes Ibis, essentially a ‘curse poem’ against Emperor Augustus for exiling him for writing earlier poems against the Emperor; in order to increase the number of marriages and the Roman population, Emperor Augustus declares the Lex Papia Poppaea, which prohibits both adultery and celibacy, an interesting combination.
“Stop!” Roland yelled as he stepped out of the trees into the clearing, not sure what language was coming out, and not caring.
Some things change; some don’t.
The Germanic old men/boys/women were happy for the reprieve, stepping back, appreciative of the large warrior who appeared to be one of them. The two Romans took a step sideways, preparing to escape.
“You’ll die if you run,” Roland yelled at them. “We’ll all die. Don’t you feel it coming?”
The Germanics were confused, but the Roman soldiers turned in the same direction as Roland, years of campaigning tuning their senses to a larger threat.
Branches snapped, and approaching footfalls thudded on the forest floor much too heavily.
“What comes this way?” the Centurion called out.
“A beast,” Roland said. Edith had prepared the download well as he gave both sides the closest answer he could snatch in each of their legends. “A lemure. A Nemean lion.”
There was no more time to talk as Grendel burst into the clearing. It was twelve feet tall, the body layered in thick, overlapping green scales. It paused, surveying the situation with deep-set eyes that glittered with yellow malice.
One of the women among the Germanics screamed, and the tribespeople clustered together, makeshift weapons trembling in their hands.
Roland walked between the beast and the others, facing it, battle axe at the ready, knowing it would be futile. He needed a Naga staff, but he didn’t have one, so there was no sense crying over spilt weapons.
Another great day in the Time Patrol, he thought.
Grendel raised its massive hands, revealing thick, four-inch long claws. It snarled, displaying a wide mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth and an impressive set of fangs.
Roland snarled back at it, baring his teeth, taking a step forward. He was vaguely aware of figures to his left and right. The Romans, their swords up.
“You cannot penetrate the scales,” Roland warned them. “Go for the armpits. The back of the skull, at the base. Or into the mouth, upward into the brain.”
The Mormon campfire was in the gully to one side, and in the other direction, a quarter mile away, were the flicker of other fires, the besieged emigrants. Their wagons, dark silhouettes against the flames, were pulled into a tight circle for defense.
Moms was in a valley, running north-south, that made up Mountain Meadows, a popular stopping place along the Old Spanish Trail. She was on the north side of a swell of land running midway across the valley, which was four miles long. A spring provided fresh water on this side of the swell. The emigrants weren’t too far from the spring, but not close enough that they could send someone out to draw water without being fired upon.
Moms imagined it didn’t look much different in her day than it did now, and Edith’s download immediately corrected her that the land in the now was lusher, with more grass, since it hadn’t yet been over-grazed.
The actual accounts of the massacre were sketchy, since anyone who knew about it had participated in it, and they weren’t exactly keen to implicate themselves. There were, of course, the seventeen children who were spared, but the oldest was currently only six. The download had a complete list of those who would die soon, along with their ages. Entire families and children as young as seven would be slain.
Moms shivered; she’d forgotten how chilly the high desert got at night. The land was rough, with low trees and brushes. In a few hours, the ground would be drenched in blood, and Moms despaired, knowing she could do nothing about that. The Shadow was clever, pitting her against history and her own lineage even though she knew little of her seven-times-removed grandfather, and even Edith’s research had turned up little.
Today would kill not only 120 emigrants of the Baker-Fancher wagon train, it would destroy some of the killers. One would be executed many years later, the only person punished for all those murders, but the weight of what happened here had to be a demon in the brains of those who committed the atrocity. At least a reasonable person would expect that, but Moms had been around enough atrocities in her own time, meeting some of those responsible, and understood there were people who could do the worst things possible and walk away without a second thought, especially if they believed their cause to be just. Nationalism, theology, racism, and other causes were some of the fuels used to incite such actions, but it boiled down to fear of others.
According the Edith’s research, Moms’s ancestor, Josiah Turner, renounced his religion after today’s events and moved back east to Kansas, setting down roots in the land in which Moms would grow up over a century later. Land in which she would bury the man who’d destroyed her mother’s life.
That last memory came unbidden, and Moms grimaced at the implications. Who was she to judge?
It is 1857 A.D. The 7.9-magnitude Fort Tejon earthquake, still the most recent large event along the San Andreas Fault (Californians are waiting for the next); the Second Opium War; Dred Scott v. Sandford rules that negroes are not citizens and slaves cannot sue for freedom; the first elevator, by Elisha Otis, is put in place in New York City; Sheffield F.C. becomes the world’s first association football team (they probably mean soccer); an earthquake in Sicily kills over 10,000; the Mormons abandon Las Vegas (it’s never been quite the same).
Moms wondered if history would change if the massacre didn’t happen. Would someone who was supposed to die, but lived, turn out to have a huge impact on history? Or their descendants? And if so, why assume it would be a negative impact? Maybe the seven-generations-removed grandfather of someone who discovered the cure for cancer was over there, huddled behind those wagons, afraid and uncertain of what awaited?
Some things change; some don’t.
Moms looked away from the wagons, as if that physical action could change those futile thoughts into focus on the mission. She instinctively brought up her left forearm in a high block, stopping the hatchet coming toward her skull. The blow staggered both her and her attacker, but with his other hand, he grabbed the barrel of her musket and tried to take it from her. Moms jerked back, and they both lost their grip on the weapon, and it fell to the ground.
In such close proximity, Moms was following through, shifting from defense to offense with skills first learned during self-defense at West Point, honed in the pits at Ranger and Special Forces school, then beaten home by Nada on the mats while working out at the Ranch.
She jabbed with her right hand, a sharp strike into the solar plexus of the attacker, able to see that it was a half-naked man with long hair, but little more. He pulled the hatchet back as he gasped in pain.
Moms kept the initiative with a flurry of jabs, hitting his chest hard four times, then delivering an open-hand strike to his nose. It broke with an audible crack, and blood spurted.
Moms stopped her attack for a moment to get oriented. The man appeared to be Native American, but she knew some of the Mormon militia had donned native garb for their assault on the wagon train. She couldn’t make out skin tone in the dark.
The broken nose and blood didn’t deter her opponent. He drew a knife from a scabbard on his belt. Hatchet in one hand, knife in the other, he edged sideways, looking for an opening. He didn’t whirl the two weapons about like the fools in movies did, but held both in the ready position for either an attack or defense.
Which meant he was a professional.
“Who are you?” Moms asked as she reached for her pistol with one hand and the saber with the other.
He didn’t answer or give her the chance to draw, leaping to the attack. Moms stopped both hatchet and knife, but was forced to give ground, her arms stinging from the forearm blocks, knowing he’d cut her soon, once he ascertained her defense.
She turned then ran, hearing him in close pursuit. She drew the saber then wheeled about, slashing, forcing him to halt his charge and jump back, the tip of the blade slicing a thin line across his bare chest.
Moms held the saber at the ready, while he went on guard with hatchet and knife. She considered the pistol, but as her free hand drifted toward it, he spoke, confirming he wasn’t Native American, or native at all to the timeline.
“If you manage to draw and fire before I kill you, Moms, you’ll be caught between both sides.”
Chatty. Professionals weren’t chatty unless something was wrong. Uncertainty. “You’re not Legion,” Moms said, “and why should I care about both sides?”
“No. I’m not Legion. And you should care because you’re here to do something, aren’t you? If you do manage to draw and fire before I charge and kill you, which I doubt you’ll be able to do, then I’ll be dead, and my body will disappear. They’ll find you standing out here with no one else around and no one who knows who you are. Correct?”
He has better intel than I do, Moms thought. “You’re Spartan, but not of our Sparta.”
He straightened slightly, in no rush. “I am.”
“You guys have a terrible track record against my team,” Moms said.
He took a step back. “Really? Tell me.”
“As best I make it, we’ve gone up against your mercenaries four times and won all four times.”
He stood still. “Is that so? Four?”
“Four times, and more than that of your people dead. Do you have a handler here? One of the women with the bows? Diana?”
He shook his head. “No handler. It’s just you and me.”
“Your mission is to kill me?”
“Yes.” He took a sliding step to the right.
“If you had succeeded, what would you have done next?” Moms asked, her hand hovering over the holster, not quite convinced of his argument.
“The past tense? Optimistic.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like we’re told anything other than our mission. Every army I’ve fought in, it’s the same. Anxious to get you to the fight, vague about bringing you back from it.”
“I’ve experienced the same,” Moms said. “Seems we share some things. We’re both soldiers.”
“I’m a warrior,” he said. “I was a warrior. Now, I’m—” He shook his head. “I suspect they might come get me, but I doubt it. We all assume it’s a one-way mission if we’re sent through a Gate in time. Unlike our other deployments across space.”
“What do you mean?” Moms asked, watching his eyes, because the eyes always led the attack. He was acting strange, and that might be a diversion to cover a sudden assault.
“You timeline is naïve,” he said. “One can travel across timelines, but in the present, the now. The Shadow can travel back in time across timelines. Two very different things. Most of our fighting is across timelines, a deployment in space, not time.”
“We may be naïve,” Moms said, “but we must be important for the Shadow to be attacking us relentlessly.”
The Spartan stopped moving. “That is true. You say it has cost the lives of my brothers. They didn’t fight well?”
“Their heart wasn’t in it,” Moms said. “Fighting for barter or fighting for causes are different things.”
“I fight for my people. So they may survive.”
“You have nothing to gain by killing me,” Moms argued. “We’re both enemies of the Shadow.”
He sighed. “The price has already been paid.”
“What?”
“My life. It’s the currency of my people. Lives. When I was sent to the Shadow, that was payment.”
“Then the payment has been made,” Moms said. “Don’t kill me. I’d appreciate it.”
“How many of my people have yours killed?”
Moms did the math from the after-action debriefs: Scout, two in 1969; Roland, one in 493; she’d taken out an entire patrol of five, led by one of the women with the bows in pre-history; Doc had killed one in Vicksburg in 1863, which reminded her of something. “Nine. The last one thanked my team member before he died. It’s hard to fight for something you don’t believe in, isn’t it?”
“I believe in my people,” he said, but he lowered the hatchet and knife.
“As you said. The price has already been paid.”
“True.”
He was still, silent. The voices arguing in the Mormon camp were a faint murmur. No noise emanated from the emigrant wagon train. Moms imagined the families huddled there, low on food, water and ammunition, uncertain what the day would bring.
“What is happening here and now?” the Spartan asked.
“In the morning,” Moms said, “the men over there are going to kill the people behind me.”
“Why?”
“‘Why?’” Moms shook her head. “Lots of reasons, but ultimately the truest one: fear. Self-preservation.”
“We Spartans understand fear,” he said. “We conquered it, or so we thought. But that is where we were naïve. We fooled ourselves, and in our pride, the Shadow was able to defeat us.”
Moms had taken a hostage negotiation workshop a long time ago, where a maxim was get personal. “What’s your name?”
“My name doesn’t matter. I am no longer of Sparta. I am just a number on a ledger to keep the balance sheet between my timeline and that of the Shadow’s.”
“I’m not a number. You know my name. Tell me yours, so it will be remembered.”
There was a glint of teeth as he smiled in the darkness. “I’m already remembered in my agoge. I dead to them, but they will remember me.”
“As long as there is an agoge,” Moms said. “Join me. Fight the Shadow again.”
He shook his head. “No. If the Shadow learns I’ve betrayed my mission, my number will turn red on the ledger, and my people will pay the price.” He was silent for a moment. “Do you know what the Shadow doesn’t understand?”
“What?”
“The Shadow doesn’t understand the concept of self-sacrifice. It uses others.” He dropped the hatchet and knife and came forward, hands out from his sides.
Moms lowered the saber, but he took the point and pressed it against his chest, over his heart. “Do you have a strong hand, Moms?”
She could only nod.
“I wish your people well in your war. Perhaps you will do what we could not. Don’t be proud. Don’t be naïve.” He frowned. “Perhaps our conquering of fear hurt us in our war with the Shadow. Maybe fear is a good thing at times.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Strong hand, Moms.”
He shoved his body forward onto the blade.
“Quintili Vare, legions redde!”
(“Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”)
— Emperor Augustus, upon receiving word of the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest
11 September 9, Teutoberg Forest, Germania
Roland wasn’t there, and then he was there, but he’d sort of always been there. Which was true in more ways than time travel, because he was on a battlefield, and Roland had spent most of his adult life on a battlefield.
It was the best way to explain how he arrived, becoming part of his current time and place without fanfare or excitement among those around him, even more so, since they were knee deep in their own ‘excitement,’ essentially trying to kill each other, although without much commitment on one side. The clash of steel on steel echoed, causing Roland to heft his battle-axe, ready to strike out in any direction.
Beyond the perplexing physics of traveling into a time bubble created by the Shadow without upsetting those in the immediate vicinity, there was the fact that no one was directly attacking Roland, more concerned with each other. Roland was in the bubble of this day, not before, and hopefully he wouldn’t be here afterward, because he could sense death in the air and something worse, something that stirred his memories but which he couldn’t pin down.
Roland scanned the clearing in front of him. Where the moon and starlight made inroads, he made out some of the action. It didn’t occur to him to wish for night vision goggles, as some other modern soldier might, because Roland was here, and night vision goggles weren’t. A simple concept, but Roland was simple in some fundamental and efficient ways.
It was a one-sided battle at first glance. Two Roman soldiers, back to back, parrying and thrusting with their swords, were surrounded by over two dozen Germanics, but then details became apparent, and the odds evened out a little. One Roman had the crest of a centurion on his helmet, and the other wore the plain pot helmet of a common legionnaire. The Germanic tribespeople were pre-teen boys, old men barely able to wield their weapons, and women, but there weren’t any men in prime fighting age. None of the Germanics seemed to eager to test the expertly wielded Roman swords.
And why should they? Roland thought. Where could the two Romans go, trapped deep inside tribal territory, cut off from the rest of their army? Their army was likely being massacred at the moment—or in a previous moment, or a future moment. Roland wasn’t quite sure where in the timing of the battle he’d arrived.
Should I take one side or the other? he wondered, but then the hair on the back his neck tingled, and he turned away, ignoring the half-hearted sparring in the clearing, peering into the deeper darkness underneath the thick forest to his left.
Something was coming, something Roland had sensed before.
It is 9 A.D. Due to the Roman defeat in Germania (occurring now), two new taxes are levied on citizens of the Empire—one is a five-percent inheritance tax; Claudius marries Plautia Urgulanilla (he’d later, much later, have a book and a BBC series about his life, who’d have thought?); Ovid completes Ibis, essentially a ‘curse poem’ against Emperor Augustus for exiling him for writing earlier poems against the Emperor; in order to increase the number of marriages and the Roman population, Emperor Augustus declares the Lex Papia Poppaea, which prohibits both adultery and celibacy, an interesting combination.
“Stop!” Roland yelled as he stepped out of the trees into the clearing, not sure what language was coming out, and not caring.
Some things change; some don’t.
The Germanic old men/boys/women were happy for the reprieve, stepping back, appreciative of the large warrior who appeared to be one of them. The two Romans took a step sideways, preparing to escape.
“You’ll die if you run,” Roland yelled at them. “We’ll all die. Don’t you feel it coming?”
The Germanics were confused, but the Roman soldiers turned in the same direction as Roland, years of campaigning tuning their senses to a larger threat.
Branches snapped, and approaching footfalls thudded on the forest floor much too heavily.
“What comes this way?” the Centurion called out.
“A beast,” Roland said. Edith had prepared the download well as he gave both sides the closest answer he could snatch in each of their legends. “A lemure. A Nemean lion.”
There was no more time to talk as Grendel burst into the clearing. It was twelve feet tall, the body layered in thick, overlapping green scales. It paused, surveying the situation with deep-set eyes that glittered with yellow malice.
One of the women among the Germanics screamed, and the tribespeople clustered together, makeshift weapons trembling in their hands.
Roland walked between the beast and the others, facing it, battle axe at the ready, knowing it would be futile. He needed a Naga staff, but he didn’t have one, so there was no sense crying over spilt weapons.
Another great day in the Time Patrol, he thought.
Grendel raised its massive hands, revealing thick, four-inch long claws. It snarled, displaying a wide mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth and an impressive set of fangs.
Roland snarled back at it, baring his teeth, taking a step forward. He was vaguely aware of figures to his left and right. The Romans, their swords up.
“You cannot penetrate the scales,” Roland warned them. “Go for the armpits. The back of the skull, at the base. Or into the mouth, upward into the brain.”
