The Corridors of Time

20

Rain started before dawn. Lockridge awoke to the sound of it, muffled on the peat roof of the cabin where he lay, loud on the muddy ground. Through a lattice across the doorway, he looked over pastures where Yutho cattle huddled as drenched as their herdsmen. Sere leaves dropped one by one off an oak, under the steady beat of water. He couldn’t see the rest of the village from this outlier hut, nor the bay. That added to an isolation he had believed was already infinite.

He didn’t want to put his Warden uniform back on, but once out from the skins, he found the air too chill and damp. I’ll ask for an Orugaray rig, or even a Yutho one, he thought. She’ll give me that much, I hope, before she—

Does what?

He shook himself, angrily. Having managed a few hours’ sleep, after he was put here, he should now be able to hold his courage.

Hard to do, though, when everything had broken in his grasp during a single night. To learn what Storm and her cause really were—well, he’d had clues enough, had simply ducked his duty to think about them, until the sight of Brann snapped the leash she had put on him. And to know what she would make these people, whom he had become so fond of—that was too deep a wound.

Poor Auri, he thought in his hollowness. Poor Withucar.

The remembrance of the girl was curiously healing. He might yet be able to do something for her, if no one else. Maybe she could stow away on that fleet bound hither. It was evidently a joint Iberian-British venture, to judge from some remarks that passed between Storm and Hu while they oversaw the preparation of a jail for Lockridge. The size as well as composition was unique; but then, some rather large events appeared to be going on in England these days, of which the founding of Stonehenge might be one consequence. Storm was too preoccupied to care much. It satisfied her that everyone aboard, seen through infrared magnifiers, was of archaic racial type, no agents from the future. Of course, in this weather the fleet would doubtless heave to, and not arrive for an extra day or so. He might not be around then. But he could, perhaps, find ways to suggest the idea of escape to Auri.

Purpose restored him a little. He went to the entrance and stuck his face out between the lashed poles, into the rain. Four Yuthoaz stood guard, wrapped in leather cloaks. They edged from him, lifted their weapons and made signs against evil.

“Greeting, you fellows,” Lockridge said. Storm had let him keep his diaglossas. “I want to ask a favour.”

The squad leader nerved himself to reply, sullenly, “What can we do for one who’s fallen under Her wrath, save watch him as we were told?”

“You can send a message for me. I only want to see a friend.”

“None are allowed here. She ordered that Herself. We’ve already had to chase away one girl.”

Lockridge clenched his teeth. Naturally Auri would have heard the news. Many a frightened eye had seen him marched off last night, by torchlight, under Yutho spears. You she-devil, Storm, he thought. In the jail you hauled me out of, they let me have visitors.

“Well,” he said, “then I want to see the Goddess.”

“Hoy-ah!” The warrior laughed. “You’d have us tell Her to come at your bidding?”

“You can tell her with respect that I beg audience, can’t you? When you’re relieved, if not before.”

“Why should we? She knows what She wants to do.”

Lockridge donned a sneer and said, “Look, you swine, I may be in trouble but I’ve not lost every power. You’ll do as I say or I’ll rot the flesh off your bones. Then you’ll have to pray for the Goddess’ help anyway.”

They cringed. Lockridge saw foreshadowed the kind of realm that Storm would build. “Go!” he said. “And get me some breakfast on the way.”

“I, I dare not. None of us dare leave before we are allowed. But wait.” The leader drew a horn from beneath his cloak and winded it, a dull sad noise through the rain. Presently a gang of youths arrived, axes in hand, to learn what the trouble was. The leader sent them on Lockridge’s errands.

It was a puny triumph, but nonetheless drove some more hopelessness off him. He attacked the coarse bread and roast pork with unexpected appetite. Storm can break me, he thought, but she’ll need a mind machine for the job.

He was not even surprised when she came, a couple of hours later. What did astonish him was the way his heart still turned over at sight of her. In full robe she walked over the land, big and supple and altogether beautiful. The Wise Woman’s staff was in her hand, a dozen Yuthoaz at her back. Lockridge saw Withucar among them. From her belt of power sprang an unseen shield off which the rain cascaded, so that she stood in a silvery torrent, water nymph and sea queen.

She halted before the cabin and regarded him with eyes more sorrowful than anything else. “Well, Malcolm,” she said in English. “I find I must come when you ask.”

I’m afraid I’ll never come to your whistle again, darlin’,” he told her. “Too bad. I was right proud to belong to you.”

“No more?”

He shook his head. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“I know. You are that kind of man. If you weren’t, this would hurt me less.”

“What’re you goin’ to do? Shoot me?”

“I am trying to find a different way. You don’t know how hard I am trying.”

“Look,” he said with a hope wild, sweet, and doomed, “you can drop this project. Quit the time war. Can’t you?”

“No.” Her pride was sombre. “I am the Koriach.”

He had no answer. The rain hammered down around them.

“Hu wanted to kill you out of hand,” Storm said. “You are the instrument of destiny, and if you have become our enemy, dare we let you live? But I replied that your death might be the very event that is necessary to cause—what?” Her resolution flickered low and she stood isolated in the blurring waterfall. “We don’t know. I thought, how gladly I thought, when you came back to me, that you were the sword of my victory. Now I don’t know what you are. Anything I do could bring ruin. Or bring success, who can tell? I know only that you are fate, and that I want so much to save you. Will you let me?”

Lockridge looked into the haunted green eyes and said with huge pity, “They were right in the far future. Destiny makes us slaves. You’re too good for that, Storm. Or no, not good-not evil either, maybe, not anything human—but it’s wrong for this to happen to you.”

Did he see tears through the rain? He wasn’t sure. Her voice, at least, was steady: “If I decide you must die, it shall be quickly and cleanly, by my own hand; and you will be laid in the dolmen of the gate with warrior’s honours. But I beg that that need not be.”

He fought against a witchcraft older and stronger than any powers her distorted world had given her, and said: “While I wait, can I say good-bye, or somethin’, to a few friends?”

Then anger leaped forth. She stamped the staff into mud and cried, “Auri? No! You’ll see Auri wedded tomorrow, in yonder camp. I’ll talk to you again afterward and learn if you’re really such a contemptible idiot as you act!”

She turned, in a whirl of cloak and gown, and left him.

Her escort followed. Withucar dropped behind. A sentry tried to stop him. Withucar shoved the man aside, came to the door, and held out his hand.

“You’re still my brother, Malcolm,” he said gruffly. “I’ll speak for you to Her.”

Lockridge took the clasp. “Thanks,” he mumbled. His eyes stung. “One thing you can do for me. Be kind to Auri, will you? Let her stay a free woman.”

“As far as I’m able. We’ll name a son for you, and sacrifice at your grave, if things come to that. But I hope not. Luck ride with you, friend.” The Yutho departed.

Lockridge sat down on the dais and stared into the rain. His thoughts were long, and nobody else’s business.

Toward noon the downpour ended. But no sun broke through. Instead, mists began to rise, until the world beyond the door was one dripping grey formlessness. Now and then he heard a voice call, a horse neigh, a cow low, but the sound came muffled and remote, as if life had drawn away from him. So cold and damp was the air that eventually he got back under his blanket. Weariness claimed him; he slept.

His dreams were strange. When he rose out of them, inch by inch, he didn’t know for a while that he was doing so. Real and unreal twisted together, he was wrecked in a Storm-dark ocean, Auri blew past, crying his mother’s name, a horn summoned hounds, he went down into green depths and heard the clangour of iron being forged, fought his way back to where the lightnings burned, thunder smote him and—and the hut was filled with blackness, twilight seeped through the fog, men shouted and weapons clattered—

No dream!

He stumbled from his bed to the door, shook the bars and yelled into the slow wet roil, “What’s happenin? Where is everybody? Let me out, God damn you! Storm!”

Drums thuttered in the grey. A Yutho voice roared, hoofs hammered past, wheels banged and axles squealed. Elsewhere, wildly, men rallied each other. From afar, a woman shrieked, under a mounting rattle of stone. And metal, bronze had been unscabbarded, he heard the sinister whistle of an arrow flight.

Figures moved, vague in the smoky dusk, his guards. “Some attack from the shore,” the leader told him harshly.

“Why do we wait, Hrano?” shrilled another. “Our place is in the fight!”

“Stay where you are! Our place is here, till She tells us otherwise.” Feet pattered by. “Hoy, you, who’s fallen on us? How goes the battle?”

“Men from the water,” the unseen one panted. “They’re bound straight for our camps. Follow your standards! I go to my chief.”

A sentry mouthed a curse and took off. The leader bawled after him in vain. Louder grew the clamour, as the strangers met hastily formed Yutho squadrons.

Pirates, Lockridge thought. Must be that fleet the Wardens saw. Could only be. They didn’t lie to after all. Instead, they rowed day and night, and this fog gave ’em cover for a landin’ up the beach a way. Yes, sure. Some sea rover from the Mediterranean’s gotten himself together a bunch o’ tribesmen. England’s too tough, from what I hear, but across the North Sea is loot to be had.

No. What can they do, as soon as Storm and Hu start shootin’ them down?

And, well, that was probably best. Avildaro had suffered enough without being sacked, without Auri’s being taken for a slave. Lockridge strained at his bars and waited for the eruption of panic when that gang found they’d tangled with the Goddess.

A shape sprang from the fog, a tall blond man with furious eyes. The Yutho leader waved him away. “By the Maruts, you Orugaray chicken,” he ordered, “get back where you belong!” The big man rammed home his harpoon. The leader clutched a pierced stomach, uttered a strangled moan, and folded to his knees.

Another guard snarled. His tomahawk swung high. A second villager came behind him, cast a fishline around his neck, and tightened it with two great sailor hands. The third sentry went also down, head beaten in by tree-felling axes.

“We’ve got them, girl,” the tall man called. He went to the door. Sufficient light lingered for Lockridge to see the water drops that jewelled his beard, and recognize a son of Echegon. He knew a few others by name of the half score who waited uneasily beyond, and the rest by sight. Two of them had been accomplices in yesterday’s attempt at human sacrifice. They stood now like men.

Echegon’s son drew a flint knife and sawed at the thongs binding the lattice together. “We’ll have you out soon,” he said, “if none chance by to see us.”

“What—” Lockridge was too stunned to do more than listen.

“We’re bound off, I think. Auri fared around the whole day, pleading with everyone she thought she could trust to help you. We didn’t dare at first, we sat in her house and muttered our fears. And then these strangers came, like a sign from the gods, and she reminded us of what powers she got in the underworld. So let the fight last only a little while more, and we’ll be on our way. This is no good place to live any longer.” The man peered anxiously at Lockridge. “We do this because Auri swore you have the might to shield us from the Goddess’ wrath. And she ought to know. But is she right?”

Before Lockridge could reply, Auri was there, to hail him in a shivering whisper. She herself trembled under the wet cloak of her hair; but she carried a light spear and he saw that she was in truth a woman. “Lynx, you can lead us away safe. I know you can. Say you will be our head.”

The nearing battle was no more loud or violent than Lockridge’s pulse. “I don’t deserve this,” he said. “I don’t deserve you.” But he had spoken unthinkingly in English. She straightened herself and said like a queen:

“He casts a spell for us. He will take us where he knows is best.”

The thongs parted. Lockridge squeezed between two poles. Fog curled around him. He tried to guess where in the twilight the combat was going on. It seemed to be spread over a wide front, moving inland. So the bayshore ought to be deserted for now.

“This way,” he said.

They moved close to his protection. A number of women were with them, children clustered near or held as babes in arms. Anyone who’ll take such a risk to be free, he thought, has a call on everything I’ve got to offer.

No. One item more. “I’ve a duty at the Long House,” he said.

“Lynx!” Auri gripped his arm in anguish. “You can’t!”

“Go on down to the boats,” he said. “Make sure you have water skins and gear for hunting and fishing aboard. By the time you are ready to go, I will have joined you. If not, leave without me.”

“Her place?” The son of Echegon shuddered. “What must you do there?”

“Something that—well, we’ll have no good luck unless I do.”

“I will come too,” Auri said.

“No.” He stooped and kissed her, a brief touch across lips that tasted of salt. Even then he caught a scent of her hair and warmth. “Everywhere else, if you wish, but not here. Go make me a place in the boat.”

He ran off before she could say more.

Huts gloomed around him, where folk lay in twilit terror. A pig grunted by, black and swift. He remembered that She kept swine in Her aspect of the death goddess. The battle sounded close—savage yells, footfalls, clashings, arrow buzz and thud of axe striking home—but Lockridge went enclosed in his own silence.

The Long House stood unguarded, as he had hoped. Though if Storm or Hu were still within. . . . He had no choice except to cross that threshold.

The hall was empty.

He ran among machines and gods. At the curtain of lightlessness, he almost stopped. No, he told himself, you mustn’t. He passed through.

The agony of Brann seared upward at him. He put the diaglossa of a terrible tomorrow into his ear, stooped, and said, “I am going to let you die if you want.”

“Oh, I beg,” the mummy voice gasped. Lockridge recoiled. Storm had said no reasoning mind was left.

Storm lied about that, too, he thought, and went to work.

Unarmed, he couldn’t cut the Ranger’s throat. But he yanked out wires and tubes. The blackened body writhed, with little mewling appeals. Not much blood trickled from the piercings.

“Lie there,” Lockridge said. He stroked Brann’s forehead. “You won’t have long to wait. Good-bye.”

He fled, the breath rough in his throat.

As he crossed the veil, racket rolled over him. Some part of the fight was swaying back into town. And there went the sizzle of an energy gun. Light Simmered lurid past the doorway curtain. So much for the pirates, Lockridge thought. If I don’t get out of here right away, I never will.

He ran into the square.

Hu the Warden appeared at its edge. “Koriach!” he was shouting, lost and frantic. “Koriach, where are you? We must stand together—my dearest—” The gun which made fountain-play further off among the huts was not the one in his hand.

His head wove back and forth, in search of his goddess. Lockridge knew he himself couldn’t get clear away, nor even back inside the Long House, before he was seen. He sprang.

Hu saw him and yelped. The pistol slewed about. Lockridge hit the green-clad body. They went over onto the earth and struggled for control of the weapon. Hu’s grip on the butt was not to be broken. Lockridge pulled from his clawing and squirmed around to the Warden’s back. He anchored himself with a scissor lock, cast an arm around his enemy’s neck, and heaved.

A dry snap came, so loud he heard it through the tumult. Hu ceased to move. Lockridge scrambled up and saw death. “I’m sorry.” He bent to close the staring eyes, before he took the gun and was off.

For an instant he was tempted to look for Storm, now that he was armed like her. But no; too chancy; one of her Yuthoaz might well brain him while he was stalemated by her energy shield. And then what would become of Auri? He owed the world to her and that handful of her kinfolk down on the strand.

Besides, he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to fire on Storm.

The water’s edge gleamed forth. He made out a big skinboat rocking shadowlike on the ripples, filled with shadow shapes. Auri waited ashore. She sped to him with laughter and tears. He gave her, and himself, a moment’s embrace, then waded out and climbed in.

“Where now do we go?” asked the son of Echegon.

Lockridge looked back. He could still see the houses as bulks in the fog, a dim outline of the grove, a hint of men and horses where they fought. Good-bye, Avildaro, he called. God keep you.

“Iril Varay,” he said: England.

Paddles bit deep. A coxswain chanted the stroke as an invocation to Her of the Sea; for Auri, who had been reborn, told how The Storm was no goddess but a witch. A baby wailed, a woman sobbed quietly, a man lifted his spear in farewell.

They slipped around the western ness and Avildaro was gone from them. A mile or so further, through the gathering night, they descried the raider fleet. The coracles had been drawn ashore, the galley stood off at anchor. A few watchmen’s torches glowed starry, so that Lockridge saw the proud curve of figurehead and sternpost, the rake of yards into the sky.

It was a wonder that these Vikings of the Bronze Age were not yet in decimated flight. Storm and Hu would have separated, of course, to rally confused and scattered Yuthoaz around their flame guns. But then, for some reason, Hu had run off alone. Even so, Storm by herself could—well, that was behind him.

Or was it, really? Fate-ridden, she would not rest until she found and destroyed him. If somehow he got back to his own century . . . no, her furies could track him down more surely then than in the wide and lonely Neolithic world. That was the more so if he burdened himself with this boatload of aliens whom he could not abandon.

He began to doubt his choice of England. Other megalith builders were fleeing there from Denmark, he knew. He could join them, and live out his days in fear. It was no life to offer Auri.

“Lvnx,” the girl whispered beside him, “I should not be so happy, should I? But I am.”

She wasn’t Storm Darroway. And what of that? He drew her close. She was fate too, he thought. Maybe John and Mary had wanted no more than to give her gallant and gentle heredity to the human race. He wasn’t much, but her sons and daughters could be.

It came to him what he must do. He sat moveless so long that Auri grew frightened. “Are you well, my dear one?”

“Yes,” he said, and kissed her.

Throughout the night the fugitives went on, slow in the murk but every paddle stroke a victory. At dawn they entered the fowl marshes and hid themselves to rest. Later the men hunted, fished, and filled waterskins. Fog blew away on a northeast breeze, the stars next evening stood brilliant to see by. Lockridge had mast raised and sail unfurled. By morning they were at sea.

That was a passage cold, cramped, and dangerous. None but the Tenil Orugaray could have ridden out a storm they met, in this overloaded frail craft. In spite of all misery, Lockridge was glad. When the Koriach didn’t find him, she might conclude he had drowned and quit looking.

He wondered if she would be sorry. Or had her feelings for him been another lie?

After days, East Anglia rose low and autumnally vivid before them. Salt-crusted, wind-bitten, hungry and worn, they beached the coracle and devoured the sweet water of a spring they found.

They had expected to look for a seaboard community that would take them in. But Lockridge said no. “I have a better place,” he promised. “We must go through the underworld to reach it, but there we will be safe from the witch. Would you rather skulk like animals or walk in freedom?”

“We follow you, Lynx,” the son of Echegon answered.

They made their way across the land. Progress was not fast, with small children along and the need to hunt for food. Lockridge began fretting that they might reach his goal too late. Auri had a different impatience. “We are ashore now, my dearest. And yonder grows soft moss.”

He gave her a weary grin. “Not until we have arrived, little one.” Seriously: “You are too important to me.”

She glowed at him.

And in the end, they waded through icy meres to an island which the tribes roundabout shunned. Natives had told Lockridge, one night when the travellers stayed in a village of theirs, that it was haunted. He got exact directions.

Under bare trees stood a carelessly erected lean-to. One man waited, sword in hand. He was burly and kettle-bellied, with hair and beard falling grizzled about pocked, battered features.

Gladness jumped in Lockridge. “Jesper, you old devil!” he shouted. They beat each other on the back. When Lockridge had his sixteenth-century diaglossa in place, he asked what this meant.

The Dane shrugged. “I was fetched hither with the rest of the fighting men. The witchmaster asked for a volunteer to guard the gate this final while. I said I would. Why not do my lovely Lady a service? So here I’ve sat, with a bit of duck hunting and such to keep me amused. In case of trouble, I was to do something to an engine down below, that’d tell Her. Naught’s happened, though, and taking you for ordinary savages, I didn’t send any summons. I thought instead, more fun would be to scare you off. But good to see you again, Malcolm!”

“Isn’t your guardianship nearly over?”

“Yes, in a few more days. Priest Marcus told me to watch the clock and be sure to leave when the time came, or else the gate would disappear and I’d be stranded. I’ll go up to the other gate he showed me, and thence be wafted home.”

Lockridge looked on Fledelius with compassion. “To Denmark?”

“Where else?”

“I am here on secret business for our Lady. So secret that you must not breathe a word to anyone.”

“Never fear. You can trust me, as I you.”

Lockridge winced. “Jesper,” he said, “come with us. When we get where we’re bound, I can tell you—well, you deserve more than life as an outlaw under a tyrant. Come along!”

Wistfulness flickered in the little eyes. The heavy head shook. “No. I thank you, my friend, but I’m sworn to my Lady and my king. Until the bailiffs catch me, I’ll be at the Inn of the Golden Lion each All Hallows Eve, waiting.”

“But after what happened there, no, you can’t.”

Fledelius chuckled. “I’ll find ways. Junker Erik won’t stick this old boar as easily as he thinks.”

And Lockridge’s people stood freezing.

“Well . . . we must use the corridor. I can’t tell you more, and remember, this is secret from everyone. Good-bye, Jesper.”

“Good-bye, Malcolm, and you, my girl. Drink a bumper to me now and then, will you?”

Lockridge led his followers below the earth.

He had prepared a story to fool anyone who might have been on guard here. At worst, he would have used his energy gun. But it was luck finding Jesper. Or destiny? No, Satan take destiny. If Storm happened to think the fugitives had come this way, and sought out the Dane herself to inquire, he would talk; but that was extremely improbable, and otherwise he would keep his mouth shut. Lockridge would never have gotten the idea himself, except for Auri’s nearness.

He entered the gate of fire. The Tenil Orugaray gathered their whole courage and followed him.

“We need not linger,” he said. “Let us be reborn. Hold hands and come back to the world with me.”

He took them out along the opposite side of the same gate. That corresponded to the moment when it first appeared in the world, as it would vanish a quarter century afterward.

The anteroom, like the island, lay empty. He used the control tube Fledelius had given him to open the entrance above the ramp, and close it again. They emerged into summer. The fen lay green with leaves and reeds, bright with water, clamorous with wildfowl, twenty-five years before he and Storm were to reach Neolithic Denmark.

“Oh, but beautiful!” Auri breathed.

Lockridge addressed his band. “You are the Sea People,” he said. “We will go on to the sea and live. Folk like you can soon grow strong in this land.” He paused. “As for me . . . I will be your headman, if you wish. But I shall have to travel about a great deal, and perhaps call on your help from time to time. The tribes here are large and widely ranging, but they are divided. With the new time before us, coming in from the South, they will be the better for as broad a oneness as we can shape. This is my task.”

Inwardly, he looked at his tomorrows, and for a while he was daunted. He was losing so much. His mother would weep when he never came back, and that was worst of all; but himself, he surrendered his country and his people, his whole civilization—the Parthenon and the Golden Gate Bridge, music, books, cuisine, medicine, the scientific vision, every good thing that four thousand years were to bring forth—to become, at most, a chieftain in the Stone Age. He would always be alone here.

But that, he thought, would mark him out for awe and power. Knowing what he did, he could work mightily, not as conqueror but as uniter, teacher, healer, and lawgiver. He might, perhaps, lay a foundation that would stand strong against the evil Storm was to bring.

This was his fate. He could only take it.

He looked at his few people, the seeds of what would come. “Will you help me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Auri said, with her voice and her being.