TW01 The Ivanhoe Gambit NEW (25 page)

"I suppose that it will have to."

"Good, I'm so glad. Take this." He handed her a PRU.

"What is it?"

"Where you will be going, you will encounter danger. This is a charm of sorts. Keep it with you at all times. It will protect you."

She started to examine it.

"Do not play with it," he said, sternly. "It has powers you would not understand. Merely keep it on your person. Take it as a token of my concern for you."

She stared at him steadily. "Who are you?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I am your king."

"Or the devil," she said.

"If you like."

As she reached her quarters, she took out the charm that he had given her and, for a moment, she considered throwing it away. She wanted nothing to do with black arts, but it was too late for that. She had allied herself with a sorcerer and, king or not, he was her master. She hated him. She would kill him if she could, but could the sorcerer be killed? She had tried before and failed. Perhaps he had such a charm himself. She stared at it. If it could give her some measure of protection, she would do well to keep it. She knew that she would need all the protection she could get before the day was out.

Marcel assisted her in arming for battle.

"I will go with you, Andre. You'll need my help."

"No, little brother. You remain here, where it will be safe until I come for you. I would not want to lose you now."

"Nor I you," Marcel said. "Sir Brian is a strong knight. He will make a dangerous opponent.''

"And I will fight better knowing you are safe," said Andre, "than I would if you were by my side and I had to constantly watch out for you."

Marcel drew back indignantly. "I can take care of myself," he said in a wounded tone.

She pulled him to her. "Of course you can. But I would worry anyway. Indulge me and set my mind at rest. There will be other battles for you when you're older. Now I must go. Remember, stay here and do not be tempted to look outside upon the battle. The Saxon archers shoot straight and true."

With sword and shield in hand, she left him and walked quickly down the corridor. Her heart was racing, as it always did in the excitement of a battle. She would have to find a way to kill Bois-Guilbert in such a manner as to not leave herself vulnerable to the men whom he commanded in defense of the castle. She stopped by an aperture and, holding her shield ready to protect her face, risked a quick glance outside. The barbican had fallen. Any moment now, they would begin to attack the outer walls with scaling ladders and they would start ramming at the gates. Given their number, it was inevitable that they would soon gain entry to the castle. Given a firm hand and strong leadership, the defenders of Torquilstone might still repulse them, but not if they were deprived of their commanders. De Bracy was already accounted for. Only one remained.

She stopped a man at arms who went rushing by her in the corridor. He looked terrified.

"You!" She approached him. "Where are you going?"

"I... I was..."

He was running away to find a place to hide, no doubt. "Where is Sir Brian?"

The man was near hysteria. "You ask for Sir Brian," he said. "Sir Brian bellows for Sir Maurice! The Saxons bellow for our blood! They are on us like flies upon a carcass and where is De Bracy?"

"DeBracy'sdead!"

They both turned toward the sound of the voice and saw De Bracy's torturer. Andre cursed her luck.

She had bolted the door to the dungeons, but the man must have broken through. He held a mace in his hand. The beefy torturer had murder in his eyes as he pointed at her with his mace.

"There stands the culprit! Sir Maurice breathed his name before he died!"

Andre ran the man at arms beside her through with her sword and pushed his body aside. Holding the mace with both hands, the torturer advanced upon her. Suddenly, he stiffened and dropped his mace, a look of surprise upon his face. He pitched forward. As he fell, Marcel stood revealed, a bloody dagger in his hand.

"Marcel! I told you to remain behind! I could have dealt with—"

Marcel's eyes widened.
"Andre! Beware, behind you!"

Instinctively, she threw herself to one side, thereby avoiding the killing stroke. The nysteel armor might have saved her, but her reflexes were too quick for her to think of that. As it was, she caught a glancing blow on her brassard and, stunned, she dropped her shield and staggered. Marcel leapt forward with his dagger.

Andre heard him cry out and raised her head in time to see Bois-Guilbert withdrawing his sword from her little brother's stomach.

"God! Marcel!"

"So," said Bois-Guilbert, "De Bracy's dead and we have a traitor in our midst. As God is my judge, I will show you the price of treason, de la Croix!"

"I have already paid that price," said Andre, glancing at Marcel. "And in a moment, God
will
be judging you."

What opposition there was was either dead, in flight, or hiding. Finn had to find the chronoplate. It would not be where anyone could readily see it. If Irving had been using Nottingham Castle as his base of operations, then it stood to reason that he'd keep the chronoplate secure within his chambers. But which of the rooms were his?

Finn ransacked them all systematically, tearing everything apart to find the object of his search. In several of the rooms, he found men and women cowering in fright. There was a chance that they would not have attempted to interfere with him, but he could not afford to take it. He shot them all. If they succeeded in their mission, the refs would have a lot of cleaning up to do. If not, the point was moot.

There were a lot of lives at stake. Somehow, that thought did very little to comfort him.

The crossbow bolt in his shoulder was beginning to cause him a great deal of pain now. He could not afford to dwell on it. Hunter had to be right, he
had
to be. The thought of so much killing to no purpose

...

Where was it?

There remained two more places where he had not searched. Please, God, Finn thought, let it be in one of them, please. He tried the door. It was bolted from within, like several of the others had been, where people had attempted to hide from him. He took a small amount of the plastique and blew it open.

A man rushed at him with a sword. Finn shot him. There was no one else inside. He looked down at his attacker.

He wasn't even old enough to shave.

Irving clocked back into his chambers. Safe, for the moment, behind a bolted door. He was breathing hard. He was almost completely spent. Each time, he tried to rest a little, to catch his breath, but the strain of the temporal fugue was beginning to wear him out.

He had almost bought it when the fugue began. They were using a chronoplate as well! He had been certain that the other referee would not have risked it, would not have had a plate issued to his team. This changed everything. Obviously, there was no chance of tracing the plate. He hadn't been aware of it before and that meant that the tracer function had been bypassed, just as he had done on his unit. Those fools! Didn't they realize what they were forcing him to do? He had gone to a great deal of trouble to become Richard and he hated to abandon his role, but he had to recognize the possibility that he would have to clock out to another period, start a new scenario. They might never find him then. They had forced his hand. He hated to leave now when he had come so close, but it appeared that he would have little choice.

But before he did anything else, he had to bring the fugue to a conclusion. He could not risk being outmaneuvered. He had to stop that man; he was the only one left. . . . And perhaps that would even end it. He had killed the other agent. Perhaps when he killed this one the scenario would take a turn in his favor. Maybe this time the other ref would be too late. He still had a hole card.

Andre de la Croix.

She was carrying a PRU slaved to his chronoplate. He could clock her back into his chambers and bring her back into the fugue with him. He could not hope to explain the mechanics of a temporal fugue to her, but she already believed him to be a wizard, he could pass it all off as sorcery and tell her that the only thing she needed to concern herself with was the death of his opponent. Together, they would outnumber him and he would stand no chance. He had given her the unit in expectation of trouble, but he had not suspected just how badly he would need her. He would end it now.

Reaching for the control console of the chronoplate, he punched out the sequence that would clock her back to Nottingham. Then, when her usefulness was ended, he could kill her at his leisure.

Bois-Guilbert was putting up a valiant struggle, but he was being hammered into the ground. He couldn't understand how de la Croix's armor was standing up so well under his repeated assaults. Both knights were exhausted, but where Bois-Guilbert's armor bore the marks of Andre's assaults, de la Croix's armor was undamaged. She had already drawn blood.

Andre was fighting with a fury unlike anything that she had known before. For the first time, she felt the fire of blood lust coursing through her. She was tired and Bois-Guilbert was strong, but her ensorcelled armor and her charm gave her protection he did not enjoy. He had killed Marcel and he would pay.

With a savage stroke, she smashed at him. He caught the blow on his shield, which was badly battered, and the force of it was too great for him to hold on. She struck again and he lost his shield.

Holding his sword with both hands, he attempted to strike back, but de la Croix was on him with a vengeance, pounding away at him, breaking through his armor, getting past his defenses....

He was growing weak from loss of blood. He could not accept that he was losing. It could not be happening, it was impossible. Her sword came down in a vicious chopping stroke and he felt it bite into his armor, penetrate through into his arm. He cried out and felt his sword slip from his hand, felt the floor come up beneath him ....

For a moment, there was an incandescent respite. He looked up and saw de la Croix poised with sword held overhead.

"Damn," he whispered softly.

The sword—

—came down.

Irving never knew what killed him.

Andre froze. She did not know what had happened. One moment, Bois-Guilbert was at her mercy, prepared to meet his maker. The next, she was . . . elsewhere. And her sword had split the sorcerer's head right down the middle. He was at her feet, kneeling before some strange and mystifying apparatus.

His helmet was on the floor, inches away, as though he had only just removed it. Dazed, she backed away and watched the corpse topple.

The door exploded inward and Finn Delaney barged into the room. He fired a quick burst into her chest, knocking her off her feet, and then he saw the chronoplate and Irving's corpse. Andre lay on her back, not moving. She was in shock. Not giving her a second glance, Finn set the charge on the chronoplate and hit his PRU. When Andre looked up, he was gone.

It was over before Lucas realized that it had ended. The fugue had run its course and, as time caught up to them, all the Irvings and all his other selves began to disappear until only he was left, standing all alone and spinning madly, swinging his sword in all directions. As the battle raged around him, he stood alone in a cleared space as some of the outlaws looked on, jaws hanging agape, the attack on Torquilstone forgotten.

In the fury of the battle, only a few of those involved were aware of the strange scene being played out in their midst. The Saxons had broken through and were even at that moment pouring into the castle and slaughtering the Normans. Cedric and his family were being released, along with a sorrowful Isaac of York. As Lucas stopped hacking at the air and stood alone, those who had been watching began to back away, questioning their own sanity. No one approached him. No one attempted to speak to him.

What they had seen—or had thought that they had seen— had taken place in what was little more than an instant, a few moments, a brief span of unreality. Two knights had come together in deadly battle and suddenly, they seemed to have multiplied. Two became two armies and, just as suddenly, only one remained. It couldn't have been real, could it? One knight stood alone. In a brief span, surely too brief, his armor had been battered and dented, he was bloodied, he was exhausted, he was chopping at the air.

They wandered away in a daze. More sophisticated men might have believed that they had succumbed to some sort of mass psychosis, but these men did not know the meaning of the word. The word would not exist in the vocabulary of men for many, many years to come. It was sorcery. They knew of only one sorcerer. They knew better than to speak of him.

Lucas let his sword drop to the ground.

"My God," he said. "I think I've won. What happened?"

Finn Delaney walked up beside him.

"It's over," he said, putting his arm around Lucas. "Irving's dead. His chronoplate's destroyed."

Lucas stared at him, his eyes slightly unfocused.

"Did I kill him?"

"No, but it doesn't matter. He's dead just the same."

Lucas looked back at Torquilstone. The sounds of battle were still coming from within its walls. The Saxons were still invading the castle.

"Forget it," Finn said. "That doesn't concern us anymore. We've done our job, Lucas. Let's go home."

"Hunter?"

Finn smiled. "He's gone. Like the man said, he's not putting his ass on the line for anybody. He popped in out of nowhere, saved our bacon, and now he's disappeared again and taken his toys with him. Back into retirement."

"Is there any way that we can keep him out of it?" said Lucas.

Finn shrugged. "What difference does it make? We'll be debriefed. We can tell them everything we know. Hunter's smart. He won't stay around here. He'll pick himself another time, another place . . .

they'll never find him." He took Lucas' PRU. "I gave mine back to him. I've still got some explosive left.

He can probably change the code, but what do you say we blow these anyway?"