Ides of March (Time Patrol) (27 page)

“You’ll have a husband and you’ll have a son,” Eagle said. “He’ll be important. I’ve seen it. In a vision.”

“How can a black boy, a slave, be important?” Nancy said.

“He won’t be a slave all his life,” Eagle said. “He’ll be free. He’ll write a book. An important book. I can’t tell you any more than that. But you have to trust me.”

“You want me to go back, put my chains back on for a book? You’re crazier than Uncle Harkless.”

“Both of you go back,” Eagle said. “You try running, they’ll catch you. Once they know Caldwell’s dead and find his body, you won’t get far. You know that. Every sheriff, every militia, every white man for a hundred miles around will be hunting you. And when they get you, and they will get you, they’ll hang you.”

Nancy looked down at Caldwell. “But he ain’t dead.”

“He will be,” Eagle said, picking up Caldwell’s sword.

“You’re crazy,” Nancy said. “You can’t kill him.”

“I can and I will. And then they’ll come for me. You’ll both be safe if you go back now.” Eagle pressed it home. “Take Uncle Harkless back. Once they realize I’m gone and put that together with the confrontation between Caldwell and me earlier? They’ll have no doubt I killed him. Give me the papers, too.”

“How are you going to get away?” Nancy asked, her resolve weakening in the face of reality.

“Don’t worry about that,” Eagle said. “As you said. All of this is on me. I’ll bear the burden.”

Hercules stood, having listened, even through his horror, figuring the angles like a man who’d survived his entire life by seeing them. “You’re taking care of this?” He indicated Caldwell.

“He’s on me,” Eagle said. “You saved me. Gave me my life. I’m giving you yours back.”

Hercules turned to Nancy. “He right, Nancy. You won’t make five miles before they run you down.”

“Go.” Eagle pointed with his good arm back to the Cantonment. “That meeting will be breaking up soon. Caldwell will be missed.”

Nancy looked uncertain. Eagle got close to her, leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I’m giving you hope. Not for you. But for your son and millions of our brothers and sisters. Your son’s book will help lead to freedom for all our people.” He reached into her satchel and pulled Washington’s papers out.

“How can one book do that?” Nancy asked.

“How can the Bible keep people in chains but also free them in their heads?” Eagle asked in return.

“You got that right,” Nancy said. “But . . .” She turned her head, her eyes but inches from his. There were tears in them. “Only if the boy will be free one day. That’s the only way. Only if he’ll be free one day. You gotta promise me that.”

“He will be,” Eagle said. “I promise you. On my life.”

Hercules tugged on her arm. “Come on.”

They moved toward the light of camp, but Nancy paused just before they left the trees and looked back at Eagle. “What’s your real name?”

It had been so long since he’d used it, giving it up when he joined the Nightstalkers that Eagle had to actually think for a moment. He smiled, all the pieces falling into place. “Josiah. My name is Josiah.”

Eagle watched them scurry back to slavery, feeling the weight of the moment and the hope for the future. Then he looked at Caldwell. He almost wished the preacher would come back to consciousness, to know his fate.

But there was no time to wait on that satisfaction. Eagle placed the papers on top of the body.

Eagle killed him with a single thrust through the papers into heart. He left the sword in the body and stepped back. In just a few seconds the body collapsed on itself, to ash, and then to nothing. Leaving the sword standing in the dirt, Washington’s paper pinned under it.

Eagle he turned about, away from the Cantonment. He began walking, cradling his bad arm with the other. Long strides at first. But as he covered more distance, the blood continued to seep out of the bullet wound, pushing past Hercules’ axle grease. The shock of being shot, of all that had happened in such a short time span, began to take a toll. His strides became shorter and slower.

Eagle almost fell, half unconscious. He shook his head. Something had alerted him. Then he heard it. The distant bay of hounds on the scent.

How much longer
? Eagle wondered. He moved faster, but the terrain grew steep. Storm King Mountain, Eagle realized. He was moving south and east and Storm King was that way. And over it? West Point. Where he’d—

The bloodhounds were closer.

Eagle tried to run and it jolted his mangled shoulder so painfully he almost passed out, falling to his knees.

A man can only take so much,
Eagle thought, as he got back to his feet and staggered forward. So strange. So strange that this had turned out the way it had.

“Uncle Tom,” Eagle whispered as he walked into a tree in the darkness and staggered back. “Uncle Tom.”

He could only take so much. Only so—and then there was only darkness.

Ravenna, Capitol of the Remains of the Western Roman Empire, 493 A.D.

IN THE FOREST OUTSIDE OF THE CITY,
away from any road or trail, Roland stood bare-chested between the two fresh graves wearing only a loincloth. He was caked with dried blood, brains, and dirt. Streaks of sweat had cut narrow lines through all of it. The sun had gone down a while ago and a full moon punched shafts of light through the bare branches overhead.

Eric was to the right. Teleclus to the left.

Warriors from two different timelines. Both dead and buried, today, here, in this bubble of time in order that nothing changed.

Except their deaths. Which meant, as every Time Patrol member had fundamentally understood when they signed on for the gig, that they didn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Their deaths weren’t even the tiniest ripple in the river of history, either in this timeline for Eric, or in another timeline for Teleclus.

How many people really did matter? Kings?

Apparently.

But in his last mission it had been a nun. Actually, the child that would have been if Roland had not stopped her rape. But she’d still been killed by the Time Patrol agent from that era. She’d only have mattered if Roland had failed.

It was hard for Roland to understand.

“Where was God?”

He couldn’t tell from which direction the woman’s voice came.

His sword was ten feet away, piled on top of his armor and the rest of his clothes. Nada would have bitched him out for leaving his weapon out of arms reach. A Ranger Instructor would have given him a minus spot report. He might die now because of the oversight.

He slowly turned in a circle, scanning the forest.

She was a tall, slim figure standing between two trees twenty feet away. No weapon as far as he could tell, although her hands were hidden under the cloak wrapped around her. Her breath was small puffs in the chill night air.

He could get to his sword before she could get to him. But he remembered Teleclus: weapons were not enough.

“It was actually a question,” she said. “Where
was
God for King Odoacer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Odoacer really believed in God?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you?”

“I believe in my sword.”

She laughed. “Simplistic but realistic.”

Roland hated being asked questions. “Who are you?”

“What did Teleclus tell you?”

“He told me he was screwed. His timeline was screwed.”

She laughed again. “Elegantly put.” She threw off her cloak. She wore a medium length tunic with hunting boots. Of more interest to Roland was the short bow and quiver over one shoulder.

“You’re a hunter?” he asked.

“Of sorts. I’ve had different names in different places, in different times.”

“How does Diana sound?”

“It sounds like Teleclus told you more that you admitted. What else did Teleclus say?”

“He said the Shadow’s mission, your mission, was me.”

“That was the first part of my plan,” Diana allowed.

“But you still tried to have Theodoric killed.”

“That was the second part of my plan. It would have succeeded if the first part of my plan had. But how do you know I’m from the Shadow? There are many timelines.”

“Teleclus said you were.”

“Maybe I’m from God,” she said. “Maybe I
am
a God.”

“Maybe you have a big head,” Roland said. “If you’re a God, I shouldn’t have been able to stop your plan.”

“But if Odoacer’s God were real, why was the King abandoned at the end, to die by Theodoric’s hand? Perhaps Gods have their limits?”

“Right,” Roland said. He sprinted for his sword. In his peripheral vision he saw the woman pull the bow off her shoulder with one hand, snatching an arrow out of the quiver with the other and then . . .

MOMS WAS SLIDING THROUGH
the tunnel of time, forward. To her own time. There were no images of possible timelines flickering outside of the tunnel. Just darkness so absolute, it blocked any possibility of something different having occurred on the Ides of March.

Caesar died.

Fate
, Moms thought.

That is what fate is.

No other options.

An absolute.

*****

Doc was heading toward the light without any effort on his part or urging from his subconscious or an Angel.

Was there an afterlife?
Doc wondered distantly, outside of himself, yet inside. Had he been wrong about God all his life? Was the light heaven or hell?

But then images began to flicker on either side. It took a few moments before Doc could make some sense of them and he realized he was still alive.

Instead of looking to the other timelines, he first checked his chest, half-afraid to see blood flowing from bullet wounds, but there was no blood. Only then did he cast his gaze about.

To the left, in another tunnel, King George V, with a young Alexei at his side. Abdicating in the face of virulent protests by the English people, ending the British monarchy. World War I sputtering on as Europe fell further apart. Bolsheviks joining sides with the Germans as the English withdrew from the continent. America staying an ocean away.

Germany winning the First World War, controlling France and Italy.

There were other tunnels, above, below, all around, but Doc was moving too fast to focus on more than one, and this one was the closest and clearest.

The Great Depression, which didn’t seem so great based on the images. No sign of Hitler or Nazism at all. No World War II until the Soviet Union, in a desperate attempt to funnel a rising tide of discontent outwards, attacked Germany. England allying with Germany.

An image of an American fleet of battleships traversing the Pacific, heading toward Japan, and then the tunnel veered away, into the gray of multiple timelines.

That didn’t look so bad
, Doc thought.

Possibilities.

******

Mac allowed himself be taken forward in time, arms akimbo, floating. He was breathing hard, but not out of breath. Off to one side a possible timeline flared up, showing a plague spreading outward from Spain, burning across Europe. A virus with the perfect timing: enough incubation to not kill the host too quickly, but contagious enough to spread fast.

It left behind only a handful.

A flash of the North American continent, but things were no better there as different diseases left behind by Columbus’ crew spread from the island to the mainland.

That time tunnel narrowed as Mac went further forward, until it simply snapped out of existence.

Mac closed his eyes.

At peace.

*****

Scout was sliding through space, not time. Through a gate, into the Space Between, the sphere in both hands. She was in a tunnel, just above the dark water of the Inner Sea, the smell distinctive. There were two people standing waist deep in the black water directly ahead. One of them had his hands up and as Scout went by, he snatched the sphere from her, but she knew it was all right to let go, it was the entire purpose of this journey.

She turned to look and could have sworn the man was Dane but then she was swept up into another the tunnel. Moving forward in time.

Heading to her own time.

What did I just do?
Scout wondered.

She ‘looked’ about, at the boundaries of the time tunnel. Running in the same direction, moving forward in time, were innumerable tunnels, all threads of timelines. So many they were almost a solid mass. But the threads were pulsing, alive, radiating an array of colors, indicating time was a variable, not constant. That there were possibilities.

An infinite number of possibilities.

But as she sped forward, she saw more and more lines that simply ended. Sometimes fading out. Other times terminating a splash of red or black.

How many timelines were there?

How many had been destroyed? How many had destroyed themselves? How many were fighting the Shadow?

And then the most chilling possibility:
How many constituted the Shadow?

*****

For Eagle there was nothing. Unconscious, bleeding out, he was pulled forward through the tunnel of time, life draining away.

*****

Roland was sliding forward through the tunnel of time. To his own time. There were images of possible timelines flickering off to his right.

A timeline where it was Theodoric who died and Odoacer who ruled, trying to keep his kingdom together, but being subsumed by competing tribes in just a few years.

Interestingly, it curved back into this timeline, snapping into place.

It would have made no difference.

There was another, further away.

Theodoric and Odoacer as co-consuls, ruling an amalgamation of the old Western Roman Empire and the Goths laying siege to Constantinople.

A new Roman Empire arising, east and west combined.

An Empire responding out of eastern Persia, uniting with a fledgling Islamic Caliphate.