The Corridors of Time (25 page)

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 gray 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 clangor 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 gray. 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 clamor, 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 shoot-in’ 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 Lock-ridge’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
ax striking home – but Lockridge went enclosed on 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 flimmered 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 skin-boat 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.

‘Lynx,’ 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?’