Ides of March (Time Patrol) (17 page)

“Ah!” Eric exclaimed, wiping a dirty sleeve across his mouth.

Roland didn’t both cleaning up. The download was trying to let him know that drinking anything fermented was actually healthier in this age than drinking the water because—Roland cut that irritating information off.

The tavern resembled bars Roland had been in before: a hole in the wall, dark, dingy, filled with the type of people who’d be drinking in the middle of the day, and made their livings in ways that allowed them to drink in the middle of the day and not be killing themselves trying to plow rocks into crops.

They preferred to kill others.

At least no one would be pulling a Mac-10 and spraying the room; like a bar Roland had been in once before in some crap-hole part of the world. But there were enough swords, spears, axes, and hidden daggers to make it dangerous enough.

“They attacked you first, I assume,” Eric said.

“Who?”

“The Goths,” Eric said patiently. “Who you killed.”

Roland had no idea. “Yes.”

“They must have been waiting,” Eric said. “An ambush.”

“How would they know where to wait?” Roland asked. “And when?”

Eric shrugged. “As you said. That’s above my pay. From what I understand, the Shadow is resourceful.”

Roland considered it. Dane had mentioned that the Shadow made this bubble in time. So that meant any agent of the Shadow would have a good idea of when. And where? Perhaps they hadn’t been waiting for him, but for Odoacer? And Roland had just been in the way? But then it would have been just the four against the Twelve Protectors, and the four Infantrymen. Not a smart ambush.

“How did
you
know who I was?” Roland asked the obvious.

Eric shrugged. “Just felt it. Moment I saw you. Just knew it. You’re not of this time.”

“Doesn’t that mean everyone else can feel it too?”

“Everyone else can’t conceive of it,” Eric said. “When you can’t conceive of something, you’re blind to it. And, you have to remember, I was recruited to be a member of the Time Patrol.”

Roland tried to process that but couldn’t. “How come I don’t feel that way about you?”

“Because this is
my
time. I belong here. I’m like everyone else around you.” Eric pointed a finger, the nail black and half smashed off, at his own head. “I just know some things others don’t.”

“How did you get recruited?” Roland asked.

Eric smiled. “You have your time and your secrets. I have mine.”

Roland didn’t buy that answer and Eric must have sensed it.

“Listen, my friend. I know you cannot tell me of the future. You are from a different part of the Time Patrol. One that moves back and forth in time. Me? I’m stuck here. In this time. I was born here. Will die here. I’ll never travel like that. I have no idea how you do it. I don’t even really know
why
you do it, other than I was told it is for the safety of all of us through the ages. I know nothing of the time in which you live. How different it is. Whether the ale is better than this swill.” He indicated the mug. “And you don’t know much about me and my part of it. And that’s all for the best. We could only tell what we know if we’re captured.”

That made sense to Roland. The standard of covert ops.
The need to know
. Roland already knew the joke would Mac crack reference that.

“What now?” Roland asked.

“Whatever is to happen at the banquet shortly,” Eric said, “we have to assume that the Shadow wants the opposite to happen.”

Nada had also had a Yada about assuming, Roland remembered. One that wasn’t very original to him.

Eric shifted in irritation or perhaps from fleas and lice. “If you would tell me what is to occur, we can make plans.”

“One of them kills the other,” Roland said.

“Which one?”

“Which one kills? Or which one gets killed?”

Eric stared at him, his good humor fading momentarily. “Are you that dense?”

Roland now understood the cheap thrill Mac got from jerking someone’s chain. “One of the kings kills the other.”

“Everyone in your time as funny as you?” Eric gestured. A few seconds later a woman who appeared to be in her sixties appeared with a large pot. She poured, none too carefully, filling both mugs. Giving the era, Roland figured she was probably in her late twenties. Her clothes were an amalgamation of rags sewn together. The skin on her hands cracked and dry. Her shoulders slumped, indicating her life was already defeated and she was only living because humans almost always fought to live, no matter the circumstances.

Eric picked up his mug and began to down it, but Roland didn’t follow suit. He was watching three men entering the tavern. They were much too curious about checking out who was inside than looking for a place to sit.

Halfway through, Eric realized Roland wasn’t drinking. That didn’t stop him from finishing the mug and slapping it back down on the table. “Too much for you? Head spinning? Used to finer drink? I imagine it is indeed much better in your time.”

“There are three men near the door,” Roland said.

Eric wasn’t an amateur. He didn’t turn to look. “Armored?”

“Just leather jerkin. No insignia. They do have swords.”

“Everyone has swords in here.”

The bar ‘maid’ went to the newcomers and blocked their view of Roland and Eric. One of the men shoved her out of the way.

Roland sighed. “They’re not here to drink.”

“There’s a back door,” Eric said, glancing over Roland’s right shoulder. “Your choice.”

“If they’re here for us then it’s better to deal with it when we can see them rather than an ambush.”

Erich laughed. “’Us’? So we’re a team now? You trust me?”

Before Roland could answer, the three were approaching, amateurs, bunched too closely. Eric picked the pending attack up from Roland’s eye movement. He threw his chair back, coming to his feet as he drew his sword. Roland slid the
spatha
out of its scabbard and shoved the trestle table out of the way.

By the time he did that, Eric had already spitted one of the three through the heart with the point of his sword. But the man went down awkwardly, turning, twisting the sword in Eric’s hand. He didn’t let go soon enough and was pulled off balance. Roland was a second late trying to block the center man’s slash at Eric. The edge of the blade hit Eric’s armor on the shoulder, skidded and sliced into the neck.

The swordsman didn’t have a chance to savor his success. Roland swung his sword so hard it took off his head and had enough momentum to sink into the shoulder of the surviving attacker. Roland jerked the sword out and stepped back, reassessing the situation.

The first two attackers were dead. Eric was sitting with his back against a bench, hand trying to stem to the flow of blood from the cut on his neck. The last attacker was on the dirt floor, moaning in pain, holding his shoulder. Roland knelt next to Eric and checked the wound.

Eric nodded ever so slightly toward the man he’d killed. “He died funny.”

Roland knew exactly what Eric meant. “He did.” The man should have gone down the exact opposite of the way he had. Dead meant dead, and a dead person usually dropped straight down like a stone, but that man had died, and fallen, as Eric said, funny.

It happened at times. The vagaries of the variables in combat.

Roland grabbed a dirty rag off a nearby table and pressed it against the wound. Eric looked at his hand, at the blood.

“Too deep,” Eric said. “Black blood.”

Roland wished he had a medkit with a Quickclot; he wished Doc were here; he wished he didn’t have to see another warrior he’d fought beside die, even if they’d only just met.

“You are not very good,” Eric said.

“I moved as fast as I—”

“No,” Eric said. “Not that. You’re a good fighter.”

“What am I not good at?” Roland asked, trying to keep Eric engaged.

“Your face. As soon as you saw the wound, before I even saw the black blood, I knew I was a dead man. You didn’t hide it in your face.”

“My—” he almost said girlfriend, which seemed inappropriate somehow, here, and now—” my friend says that of me. She says she can read me quite easily.”

Eric smiled, revealing blood on his teeth. “If she is still your friend, as you call her, then she must like that about you. A wench to hold on to.”

The rag was soaked through with dark blood. In his peripheral vision, and by the growing lack of sound, Roland could tell the tavern was almost empty.

“She is a good woman,” Roland said. He’d never been good at small talk, but from the first time he’d held a dying man, he’d known one had to keep speaking. A warrior could not go into the darkness with silence from the living next to them.

“I am not your enemy,” Eric said. “I am what you thought I was. Your contact. Now you must do what must be done on your own. I know you can do that. Whatever it is.”

“I will,” Roland promised. “But there is a Shadow agent here.”

“How do you know?” Specks of red froth were on Eric’s lips.

Roland nodded toward the two dead and one wounded. “Someone sent them. Someone sent the four who attacked me earlier. There was a fifth person there. But she simply disappeared. Must have been a Gate there. She was different than the others.”

“Ah.” Eric’s eyelids were fluttering. “Tell me, fellow warrior. Which king dies tonight?”

“Odoacer.”

“I suspected so.” Eric managed a slight smile. “If you’d told me, I could have wagered on it and earned some decent coin. I also suspect the ale is better in your time.”

And then he died.

Roland lowered Eric to the floor, placed his hand on the man’s forehead for a brief moment. “Safe travels.”

Roland stood, walked over to the wounded man, grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out the back door of the tavern into a narrow alley reeking of sewage and rotting garbage.

The man was still moaning and whimpering like a hurt dog. Roland patted him down, finding a small pouch of coin.

“How much were we worth?” He glanced in, but had no clue what the roughly minted coins equaled. He imagined it was in his download, and even as he thought it, the data began to flow, but he easily cut that off. He put the pouch into his belt.

“Who sent you?”

The man shook his head, but without much vigor.

Roland pushed his blood-covered hand into the man’s shoulder wound as he shoved the bloody rag into the mouth to muffle the scream. “Who sent you? Do not make a noise other than to answer my question. Do you understand?”

The man nodded.

Roland pulled the rag out.

“I don’t know.”

Roland moved toward the wound, but the man was crying. “No! He had coin. Paid us well.”

“Dark hair? Smoothly cut beard? Sideburns to here?” Roland pointed at his own face. “Dressed in a brown tunic and black trousers?”

The man nodded vigorously. “Yes. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Was a woman with him?”

“Yes.”

Roland could hear someone shouting orders from inside the tavern. The clatter of armor and weapons. The rear door opened, a soldier stuck his head out, saw Roland, and popped his head back in.

“Killing for money.” Roland shook his head as he slid his dagger underneath man’s rib cage, into his heart, twisted. He was dead before Roland pulled the blade out.

Roland stood up as three soldiers burst out of the door, weapons at the ready. A fourth, the red crest on his helmet similar to Roland’s followed them, his weapon undrawn. He glanced from the body to Roland who was wiping the blade clean.

“Did he kill the Protector inside?” the man asked.

Roland nodded.

“King Odoacer sent us for the two of you. Be at
Ad Laurentum
Palace. An hour before sunset. He meets Theodoric.

Rome, Roman Empire, 44 B.C.

DEPARTING CAESAR’S HOME VIA THE REAR
entrance, Spurinna was met by a half dozen men and women, all slaves, who approached one by one and whispered in her ear before scurrying away.

“No one has seen Caesar,” Spurinna summarized to Moms when the last one was gone. “It is possible he has gone to Cleopatra. He does on occasion.”

“How far is it to the villa?”

“Not far from here,” Spurinna said. “I know the quick way. It is just outside the walls. Caesar has her as close as he can. A foreign leader is not allowed inside the walls of Rome without the Senate’s approval and Cleopatra—” she left the rest unsaid. “Come.” Spurinna strode off at a surprising pace, the urgency of the task pushing the pain back.

“Does he disappear often?” Moms asked.

“On occasion.”

“For any reason besides seeing Cleopatra?”

Spurinna glanced at Moms as they negotiated back alleys of Rome. “There are secrets that are not secrets. There are secrets that can be uncovered with some digging. And then there are fatal secrets. The ones if a person, regardless of station, is found in possession of, death is immediate. Caesar’s disappearances are one of those.”

“And, of course, you are in possession of that secret.”

They reached a narrow gate in the wall surrounding Rome.

“I am. And if I tell you, then you will have that burden.”

“I am not here long,” Moms said.

“I suspected you won’t be. When Caesar disappears, he goes to see a healer.”

A rush from the download gave Moms the information. Modern scholars still couldn’t agree on what had been wrong with Caesar, but all agreed he’d been an ill man later in life. Most accepted the diagnosis of Caesar’s contemporaries who wrote that he had epilepsy.

“People know of Caesar’s seizures,” Moms said.

“They do. Epilepsy. And that works to Caesar’s advantage.” They were approaching a spacious villa on a small hill.

“I don’t understand,” Moms said.

“Epilepsy is viewed as being visited by spirits. A holy affliction.” Spurinna nodded toward a path that went to the left of the house. “This way. Always the slave’s entrance for me. Never the front.” She paused before the entrance. “It is not epilepsy. The best healer’s know the sure signs and he has seen the best healer’s and they also bear this fatal secret.”