Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (36 page)

“
How are we doing?” Callum
clapped a hand on Samuel’s shoulder. As Callum had asked, Samuel
hadn’t left Cassie’s side since Callum had sent him to guard her.
She’d spent the rest of the day overseeing the well-being of the
passengers, most of whom had fallen asleep at last, exhausted and
spent. They all understood—or at least could articulate—what faced
them now, though Callum couldn’t say that any had come to terms
with it. That might be a long time coming.

For everyone.

“
All is quiet, my lord,”
Samuel said.

Callum nodded, feeling the big man’s eyes on
him, but he didn’t meet them right away. He and Samuel had
developed a camaraderie in Scotland, even if Callum was a lord and
Samuel his captain. The contours of their relationship would be
different from now on, not only because they’d spent two years
apart, but because Callum had spent those two years in Avalon. To
know that, to know that Callum had returned in a double decker bus,
was a big thing for Samuel to accept.

Callum took in a breath, dreading this
conversation but knowing they needed to have it. “I know this is
all very strange—”

But he stopped as Samuel waved a hand,
dismissing Callum’s words. “Do you remember the ambush on the road
to Edinburgh?”

“
How could I forget?”
Callum said. “It was your warning that saved us all.”

It looked like Samuel had been about to say
something else, but he arrested his speech before the words reached
his lips and said instead, “That’s what you remember?”

“
Was there something more
important to remember about it?” Callum said. “I was hit on the
head, so I admit I could have forgotten some of the more salient
bits.”

“
That’s—” Samuel laughed
silently, his broad shoulders shaking. “What was important to
remember is that because we were ambushed, you saved
Scotland.”

“
Ach,” Callum said. “We
worked together.”

Samuel shook his head. “That ambush put your
feet upon a path that has led you to this day. Because I follow
you, I have shared in that path, to my benefit. Fortune has shone
upon me since I met you.”

“
I wouldn’t have said being
held prisoner and almost dying from it was a fortunate thing,”
Callum said.

“
Ah, but because I followed
you, I was never forgotten. You saved me, James Stewart, and the
boy. And Scotland.”

Callum was starting to feel uncomfortable.
Samuel was sincere, and he was talking like Cobb. Callum certainly
tried to do the right thing, pretty much all the time. It wasn’t
too often that anyone but his wife—or David—noticed. Usually, that
was enough.

Callum cleared his throat and changed the
subject. “I hear you’ve kept Shrewsbury for me in my absence.”

“
Yes, my lord,” Samuel
said. “All was well there, too, when I left.”

“
Samuel’s being modest.”
Anna had snuck up on them, having made her way silently through the
clusters of sleeping time travelers. Cassie had been reading from a
notebook a few feet away, and Anna caught her by the arm and pulled
her forward. When they reached Callum and Samuel, Anna continued,
“You’re going to have the same problem David has, Callum: losing
captains left and right because you can’t help but promote
them.”

Callum reached out a hand to Cassie, who
took it. “I am well aware of my good fortune.”

“
Where are Darren and
Peter?” Anna said.

“
They resisted sleeping,
but I told them I needed them fresh,” Callum said.

“
And they obeyed,” Anna
said. “Of course they did.” Then she smiled and Callum knew she
didn’t mean for the words to bite.

“
Whether or not they’ll
actually sleep is a different matter,” Callum said.

“
Any news from David?”
Cassie said.

“
That’s why I’m here,
actually,” Callum said. “A message from David arrived five minutes
ago. Harlech is safe, with no loss of life.”

“
How did he manage that?”
Cassie said.

“
By being David, of
course.” Then Anna ran the back of a hand across her brow. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t mean that to come out the way it sounded. I’m just
tired.”

“
We all are,” Cassie
said.

“
You don’t have to
apologize. I know exactly what you mean,” Callum said. “Going
forward, David needs to keep being who he is if we want to turn
this world into the one we dream of.”

“
We
,” Anna said. “I wish David were here to hear you say
that.”

“
Does he still think he’s
in this alone?” Callum said.

“
Not as much as he did,”
Anna said.

Callum nodded. “None of us are alone.” He
gestured to the modern people, most of whom, for the first time in
their lives, were sleeping with only a blanket between them and the
ground. “We need to make sure all of them know it too.”

It was that issue that was bringing Callum
to his next quest. Leaving Cassie with the promise that he would
join her in sleep soon, Callum walked towards the bus. It remained
where it had come to rest, standing sentry like Cadwallon but in
the middle of the battlefield, some hundred yards from the closest
fire circle. As Callum left the light behind, the bus loomed before
him, a dark bulk against the darker hill behind it. Occasionally,
the metal siding glinted, reflecting a flicker of light coming from
the camp.

Callum’s boots made crunching noises in the
frozen grass as he walked to the back door (the front door was
still stuck shut), and pushed through it. Coming up the stairs, he
peered towards the front of the bus. He wondered if he’d have to
check upstairs, but then Mark Jones’s voice came to him out of the
darkness. “I suppose you’re looking for me.”

Callum walked down the aisle to where Anna
had been sitting moments before the bus had crashed through time to
get here. Jones hunched in the seat opposite, his backpack at his
feet. To Callum’s knowledge, he hadn’t actually left the bus
yet.

“
Don’t worry. I’m not going
to throw a wobbler.”

Callum sat heavily in the seat facing him.
“Sorry the day went so wrong.”

“
It wasn’t your
fault.”

Callum just looked at him. It was his fault.
Because of Callum, Jones had been on the bus.

Jones tipped his head back to indicate the
camp, the lights of which Callum could see from where he sat. “They
all right out there?”

“
As well as can be
expected. Thanks for getting them organized. There’ll be more of
that tomorrow and for days, if not months, to come.”

“
We are well and truly
snookered.” Jones raised a hand and then dropped it onto his
thigh.

Callum didn’t want to see his friend in such
despair. “Why haven’t you left the bus?”

“
If I sit here, cold as it
is, I can pretend for a few more minutes that none of this is
happening. I’m sitting on an empty bus, waiting for the driver.”
Jones paused. “Oh, wait. He’s dead.”

Callum had been hearing this kind of talk
for hours already. Somehow, he hadn’t expected it from Jones.

Jones read his silence correctly. “You’re
disappointed in me. You think I’m a wanker for not getting on with
it like Cobb and Jeffries.”

“
I didn’t expect it from
you, no. Which makes me think there’s something more to this. Why
don’t you tell me what that is so we can get off this bus?” Callum
tugged his cloak more tightly around himself. His muscles were
stiffening from sitting in the cold.

“
You’re happy to be back. I
could see it right way. Overjoyed in fact.”

Callum nodded.

“
Cassie too?”

“
Yes.”

Jones sighed and looked away. “So, here’s my
problem.”

Callum braced himself, with no real idea of
what was coming.

“
I was thinking just now
about my parents,” Jones said. “To them, I died today.”

“
Yes,” Callum said. There
wasn’t any point in sugarcoating it. “I imagine even if some people
swear they saw the bus disappear, cooler heads will prevail and the
story will be that the bus was pulverized by the
explosion.”

“
MI-5 will
know.”

“
They will
know.”

“
I wasted my life,” Jones
said. “Twenty-seven years old, and I hadn’t even lived yet. I spent
it in a windowless office, playing with computers. Making a
difference sometimes, sure. But how often? How many minutes of my
life did I actually make a difference to anyone?”

Jones had made a difference to Callum, but
somehow he sensed that wasn’t the answer Jones was looking for.

“
I haven’t seen my parents
since the summer,” Jones went on. “I’d started dieting. I haven’t
eaten pizza in three weeks. Look—” Jones lifted his right arm in
mimicry of a weight lifter and showed Callum his bicep. “I’ve been
working out.”

Callum had thought Jones looked a little
thinner.

“
I hadn’t even lived yet
and now I’m dead. And you know what the worst thing is? How many
people really are going to miss me?”

Callum licked his lips and ventured a
comment. “You made a difference for forty people today.”

Jones laughed without humor. “Did I? I spent
the whole time hating the fact that I had to talk to total
strangers and sure they were mocking me behind my back. I want to
be in my warm office, hacking into the Oregon DMV, eating chips and
biscuits and pouring too much cream into my tea.” He leaned
forward. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be here!”

“
But you are
here.”

“
Too right I
am.”

Callum studied him for a second. Callum
could see that Jones was frustrated. But so was he. “Are you going
to sit on this damn bus and whinge at me for another half hour, or
are you going to get off your duff and help?”

Jones gaped at him. “You haven’t heard a
single word I’ve said, have you?”

“
I heard every word. I just
don’t care. I need you smart and sober, like you’ve always been.
All these years, you’ve hidden behind that computer. Well, now you
don’t have one. Time to figure out what you do have.” Callum stood
and stalked down the aisle towards the door. When he reached it, he
stopped and looked back. “Bring the backpack when you come. You
have maps in there David needs.” He pushed through the door and set
off across the frozen grass.

Tough love didn’t always work. Jones had
been sulking on the bus for six hours now. Callum decided to give
him until morning, at which point hunger and a full bladder might
force him from the bus. Callum would have preferred he’d come of
his own accord.

And then he heard the crunching of feet
behind him and turned to see Jones, backpack over his shoulder,
hurrying towards him. Callum stopped and waited for him to catch
up.

“
My arse was frozen to the
seat. If you hadn’t showed up, in another minute I’d’ve come to
you.” Jones paused. “That was quite a speech. Did you save it for
me or have you used it six times already tonight?”

Callum laughed. “The latter.”

“
I’m not going to be
another bloke who needs saving. Bugger that. Tell me what to do and
I’ll do it. Like always.”

Chapter
Twenty-five

March 1292

David

T
he
barn-like building sat in the middle of a muddy clearing, adjacent
to the educational mecca that Anna and Math had established on the
outskirts of the village of Llangollen. The family dismounted in
front of the double doors, built big enough to allow a fully-loaded
farm cart admission. This was the first stop on the grand tour Anna
had organized of her burgeoning domain, so David could see with his
own eyes what had become of the bus.

Too bad the passengers weren’t so easy to
see to.

“
We need to confer.” Mom
had been trying to get David to talk to her about them since he’d
arrived at Dinas Bran the day before.

“
After this,” David
said.

What Mom didn’t know was that David was
already well aware of what was going on with the passengers, even
if he’d managed to skirt much in the way of responsibility towards
them up until now, happy to leave their well-being to Mom, Anna,
and Mark. At first David had thought to keep them together
somewhere—at Caerphilly or even Cardiff—because what he wanted more
than anything was access to their combined knowledge. They all had
skills, hobbies, and expertise in areas David hadn’t even begun to
tap.

But it quickly became clear that the
passengers didn’t want to be corralled, and trying to contain their
movements led to unrest. Over the last four months, more than half
of them had found some kind of employment and were doing okay. Some
were doing better than okay.

Like Callum’s new
lieutenants, Jeffries and Cobb. They’d found meaning in employment
similar to what they’d been doing back in the old world—which even
David had started to call ‘Avalon’ as a shorthand. They rode among
Callum’s
teulu
, and
not only had their medieval English and Welsh improved to
not-quite-atrocious, but they were learning—as Callum had—how to be
medieval warriors.

Among the others, two families with young
children had moved to Llangollen. The father of one family and the
mother of another had been maintenance technicians at the
University of Cardiff. Their spouses were a school teacher and an
engineer. That fateful Saturday, the two families had traveled
together into Cardiff for an excursion—which had clearly ended a
bit differently than they’d planned. Along with the three medical
personnel, all four had become teachers and sources of knowledge at
the school. All of a sudden, everybody was excited about the
future.