“Wait, wait, wait!” Xander yelled. “Please.”
The man turned his head to squint at Xander from the corner of his eye.
To David, the look said,
Can I trust you, boy?
and he allowed himself a sliver of hope. He whispered, “Please.”
The man nodded once, then he ran down the hill toward the army. He passed an elephant trotting the other direction, no driver, no soldiers. The ground trembled as the creature tromped past the boys, crested the hill, and disappeared.
David saw that other men dressed in fur, hundreds of them, had already engaged the army. Many of them were perched on ledges above the path, picking soldiers off with arrows. Some, like Fur Man, had descended to fight on foot. They were slicing at the horsemen, pulling them off their steeds. The neat, even ranks of infantrymen had morphed into roving bands of fighters. Hundreds were trying to climb the steep mountain walls to get at their attackers; others went after the fur men who’d come among them.
“David,” Xander said, “I think I know who they are. Those soldiers.”
“Hannibal’s army,” David said, straining his arms to reel in the coat. It flapped and snapped, becoming as stiff as a board for seconds at a time. “Carthaginians.”
“That would put us in the Alps,” Xander said. “200 B.C. Something like that.”
“That’s a
long
way from home,” David said, feeling every word.
The coat snapped straight and lunged forward, toward the chaos of battle. Trying to hang on, David flipped onto his stomach. The coat didn’t stop. It flapped and lunged, like a sled dog pulling a heavy load.
“Hey,” Xander said behind him. “Stop!”
“I can’t!”
“Let go of it!” Xander’s feet pounded behind him.
“No way!” David said. Losing the coat would leave them stranded. He could not imagine finding a portal without an antechamber item leading them to it.
Xander grabbed one of David’s ankles, then the other. David used the leverage to pull the coat to him. He found an armhole and pushed into it.
“What are you doing?” Xander said.
“If it’s taking off,” David said, “then I’m taking off with it. Don’t let go.” He found the other armhole and worked his cast inside. The cast had crumbled and shrunk since it was new, allowing a snug fit. He rolled onto his back.
The coat slid up over his head. It lunged, pulling David a few feet. Xander stumbled with him.
“Help me,” David said.
Xander got on his knees and walked his hands up David’s legs. He sat on David’s shins, tugged the coat down, and started buttoning it up. “You know, I did a paper about war elephants for history a couple years ago,” Xander said. “Never thought I’d see one.”
“Anything we can use?” That’s all David wanted to know.
Xander shook his head. “They would charge an enemy line, trampling and clobbering them with their tusks. And their height gave the Carthaginians riding them a great angle of attack.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Xander worked a button in and moved to the top one.
“Those boxes on their backs? I think they’re called
howdahs
.” David frowned. “We’re not playing a trivia game here,” he said. “Anything
useful
?”
“Like what, go for their eyes?”
“Really?”
“No, not really,” Xander said. “We’re not fighting them. We’re
evading
them.”
“Tell me this, anyway,” David said. “Who are those guys they’re fighting?”
“Gauls, maybe,” Xander said. “Or one of the native tribes up here. There were a lot of them.”
“Fur men,”
David said. “Are you done?”
Xander patted David’s chest. He looked up at the battle ahead of them. “You sure about this?”
David made a firm face. He said, “Strong and courageous.”
Xander repeated it, then let a long breath out his nose. The vapors streamed out like smoke.
“Help me up,” David said. When they were standing, hugging each other to keep David from sailing away, David said, “Hold on to the collar.”
Xander turned him around to face their course. The battle raged along a mile of cliffside path. Elephants reared, stomping down on men and horses. Arrows flew back and forth. Swords and shields glinted. The cacophony of screams, yells, bellows, and clanging weapons was enough to send the bravest warrior running for home.
“Let’s do it,” David said.
With Xander gripping the back of his collar, David ran into the battle the way only a crazy person would: at full speed. The coat, billowing in front, pulled him along. If he wasn’t running faster than he ever had, then he was at least running
as
fast, and doing it with much less effort. The effort came in keeping his feet under him, in not letting the coat outpace him and cause him to fall.
The first combatants were thirty yards away: a Carthaginian with a pike and a fur man with a sword. The Carthaginian lunged, the fur man parried. David angled close to the stone cliffs. As he passed, the fur man’s sword sliced off the head of the pike. The Carthaginian dropped the weapon and reached for his own sword as the fur man rushed in. David fought the urge to look.
Ahead, an elephant panicked. It reared up and pawed at a fur man waving a sword at it. The animal swung its head. Its tusks brought down a galloping horse, whose rider flipped over its head. The cavalryman landed at the feet of the fur man, who plunged his sword in.
“Ohhh,” David moaned. He didn’t want to see this. He wished he could close his eyes and trust the coat to guide him safely through the carnage: the time-traveling version of autopilot. But he’d seen how the items blew back to the portals, bouncing off trees, tearing through bushes . . . like trash caught in a wind. If he weren’t steering the coat, he was sure it would careen into elephants, horses, people.
Not that he did much better. As he moved into the heaviest concentration of combatants, he began bumping into Carthaginians and fur men alike, shoving them out of the way, tripping over them. His soccer feet came in handy, and he tried to warn Xander: “Jump!” “Left!” “Duck!”
He came upon a narrow section of path, packed with fighters. On the right, next to the mountain, two men clashed swords. On the left, near the cliff edge, a Carthaginian on horseback was leaning low, swinging a sword at a fur man and trying to get the horse to tromp the man. And dead center were two men in weaponless hand-to-hand combat.
David headed for them.
The Carthaginian punched his opponent, who dropped to one knee. The Carthaginian saw David coming. The guy girded himself, leaning forward to take whatever it was this kid was dishing out.
David plowed into him with his right shoulder. The Carthaginian went down with an “Oooph!” and David leaped over him.
“Yeah!” he started to say, but— Xander stumbled over the man and yanked down on David’s collar.
“Yeeeeeee!” David screamed. His feet flew up, his head fell back. He landed flat on his back, unintentionally mimicking the Carthaginian he had decked: “Oooph!”
Xander’s fist dug into the top of David’s spine. The coat dragged him two feet before Xander’s grip stopped him.
David twisted to look back. The soldier had hold of Xander’s foot. The man bared his teeth and growled. Xander kicked at him.
“Xander!” David yelled.
Xander kicked. “I’m working on it.”
An arrow thunked into the ground next to Xander’s shoulder.
David saw the shooter, a Carthaginian in a
howdah
twenty yards away. The elephant he rode was sweeping its tusks at three fur men. They poked at it with swords, apparently trying to drive it over the edge. The archer nocked another arrow.
“Xander!” he said. “Roll away!”
The fur man the soldier on the ground had been fighting returned, fists pounding. The soldier let go of Xander. An arrow struck the fur man’s chest.
Xander shook his head, wiped at his face. Blood was splattered across his cheek. He rose, lifting David. “Go!” he said.
David ran—straight into the side of a horse. The horseman glared down at him and raised his sword. Instinctively, David threw up his hands to protect himself.
Stupid!
The sword would slice through his hands and arms and thunk into his skull.
Drop!
he told himself.
Go under the horse!
But, lightning fast, the horseman grabbed David’s wrist.
Xander tugged at David’s collar, trying to pull him free. The horseman held firm, a mean little smile on his lips.
Xander came around, tried to reach for the hand, but it was too high. He yelled and punched the horse. The horseman kicked him in the jaw, and Xander flew away, letting go of the collar.
The horseman lifted David straight up. When they were face-to-face, he hauled back on the sword again. He had a clear angle on David’s head or neck or just about any part of him.
The coat lunged, sending David crashing into the horseman.
David caught a glimpse of the man’s shocked expression before they both tumbled off the horse. David hit the ground and rolled away, assisted by the coat’s pull. By the time he hopped up, he was twenty feet away from the man, who twisted and sliced his sword into the ground. He scowled at the nothing he had killed.
David backed against the mountain’s stone wall. The coat pulled him backward along it. He grabbed a small outcropping and stopped. “Xander!” he called.
The horseman spotted David, and his mouth dropped open. An arrow pierced the ground by the man’s outstretched arm. From its angle, David guessed it had come from high on the mountain. Another arrow nicked the man’s shoulder. He scrambled under his horse.
Xander darted around it, rubbing his jaw. He ran to David and grabbed his collar. “Try not to run into anything else,” he said.
David stayed close to the wall. Most of the fighting was in the middle or outer edge of the path, where the Carthaginians could aim at the fur men on the mountain, and it was here the fur men landed when they jumped down to fight. It was easy going, until he noticed a group of Carthaginians aligned beside the mountain. They were jabbing pikes at fur men on a ledge above them.
The first Carthaginian saw them coming. He leveled his pike at David. When David angled out to skirt the men, the Carthaginian moved with him.
What’s with that?
David thought. Just mean-spiritedness? Orders to kill everyone? Or was it the sense people had that time travelers didn’t belong there, an intuition bothering them?
Didn’t matter. They had to handle it. David returned to the mountain wall, drawing the Carthaginian there too.
“Let go,” he told Xander.
“What?”
“Do it!” he said. “I’ll meet you on the other side.”
Xander released his grip. “Other side of what?”
David moved faster. The coat was barreling to the portal now. He hoped it would maintain its momentum. He ran straight for the pike. Its spearhead glinted in the sun.
Don’t go too soon
, he thought.
Or too late!
He hoped the coat would let him guide it—as it had when he rolled away from the horseman, which inspired his current plan.
The Carthaginian, brow furrowed, realized David wasn’t stopping. He braced himself for the jolt of David’s chest hitting his weapon.
When David was so close he could see a chip in the spearhead, he dived under it. The coat carried him forward. He tucked his arms in, turned his body, and rolled. He crashed into the legs of the Carthaginian. The man went down behind him.
David had planned on continuing to roll, just bowling down everyone in his path. But the first impact spun him ninety degrees, and he hit the next Carthaginian with his feet. The guy landed on David’s back and tumbled off. David pushed at the ground and rotated. His hip caught the following Carthaginian.
David went down the line like that, sliding, rolling, spinning. He took down ten pike-poking men, by his count.
Then he angled closer to the wall and began grabbing at stones to stop himself. His hands kept slipping off as the coat dragged him backward along the ground. His attempts to brake did slow the coat down; Xander was catching up. He was directly behind David now, displaying a huge open-mouthed grin.
He called, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Behind Xander, a Carthaginian got to his feet. He picked up a pike and threw it at Xander.
“Look out!” David said.
Xander ducked and looked back. But the pike was not designed for throwing. Its heavy spearhead immediately dived into the ground.
David seized a vertical ledge and jerked to a stop. The coat continued to tug at him.
Xander reached him, kneeling to grab his arms.
The Carthaginian behind them picked up the pike again— way back, but David thought the guy’s pride or nastiness might drive him to pursue them. “Get me up,” David said.