TW07 The Argonaut Affair NEW (23 page)

"From here on, you must lead," Medea said to Jason, "as I do not know where you have hidden your ship." She pointed.

"The main road to the city lies just north and to the east of here."

"Then we must go north and to the west," said Jason. "We must keep to the shelter of the trees as much as possible, in case we should encounter any of Aietes' soldiers." He looked up at the sky. "The sun will rise soon. I had hoped to be underway by now. Theseus and the others should already be at the ship, unless something has gone amiss." He glanced at Idmon. "What do you see, soothsayer? Shall we put safely out to sea?"

Idmon was frowning. "I do not know. But I have a strong sense of death nearby."

"Whose death?" Medea said, frightened.

Idmon shook his head. "I cannot tell," he said. "I only feel death's presence. Death itself, waiting in the shadows, hidden. Death armed and waiting to do battle."

They walked along the shoreline, staying out of the open and away from the beach, which slowed them down still more. The sun was rising and starting to dispel the early morning mists by the time they neared the place where they had hidden the
Argo.

"Something has gone wrong," said Idmon, staring at the still hidden ship. "If the others had arrived, they should have uncovered the ship by now and made ready to sail."

Medea looked bewildered. "Where is it?"

"There," said Jason, pointing. "Hidden in the reeds." He gave a slight start. "I just saw something move!"

He glanced at the others. "Wait here. Guard the golden fleece."

He started to run across the open stretch toward the reed-bank where the ship was hidden. When he was not quite halfway to the ship, some of the reeds on board were thrown aside and Theseus leaped out, along with Hercules, Orpheus and several of the others. They ran toward Jason, who quickened his pace at the sight of them.

"We were beginning to think you had been killed or captured," Theseus said. "What happened to the others?"

"They are back there," Jason said, pointing, "with the golden fleece."

"You have it, then!"

"We have it!" Jason said. He turned and shouted to the others. "Come on, then! All is well! Come quickly!"

"We kept the ship hidden in case there were any patrols about," said Orpheus, "but it appears that we have foxed them." He stared hard at the approaching party. "Who is that girl? Not Aietes' daughter!"

"Yes, Medea," Jason said. "She is returning with us."

"You
have
been busy," Orpheus said with a grin. "A throne and a queen gained at one stroke!"

"Make ready to sail!" Theseus shouted back at the ship. Instantly, the camouflaging reeds were thrown aside as the Argonauts cleared the decks and started to raise the mast. "We'll be halfway back to Iolchos before Aietes is any the wiser!"

"I fear not," said Idmon softly. He pointed. "Look."

"STAND WHERE YOU ARE!" shouted Kovalos. He was seated on horseback at the head of a troop of cavalry on a crest some fifty yards away. In front of the mounted soldiers were several squads of archers, arrows nocked and bows drawn back.

"Are we in range?" asked Idmon.

"I'm afraid so," said Delaney. "And caught right out in the open."

The rest of the Argonauts quickly worked to raise the mast. "The archers can pin us down until the cavalry rides in to finish us off," said Steiger. "We can try to make a run for it, but nobody's going to be moving very fast carrying the golden fleece. And whoever carries it will be their main target."

"Th-then we sh-shall see how g-good th-their archers are," said Hercules, bending down and picking up the golden fleece as easily as if it were a sheepskin throw rug.

"What is he doing?" asked Medea. Kovalos had dismounted and he now stood before the archers, both hands raised high over his head. His voice carried down to them as he threw his head back and shouted at the heavens.

"ARISE, WARRIORS OF ARES! ARISE AND RID COLCHIS OF THE INVADERS! ARISE AND LIVE AGAIN!"

"He's gone straight off his nut," said Steiger.

"Death comes!" whispered Idmon, harshly.

"Where?" cried Jason, looking around wildly.

"Look!" said Orpheus, pointing.

Medea screamed.

A hand was clawing up from beneath the ground about a dozen yards away. Near it, two more hands appeared like crabs scuttling out from beneath the sand, twisted fingers grasping at the air. Arms were sprouting from the ground like impossibly fast growing plants, thrashing around and pushing to pull the bodies free. A head became visible, then another, and another. Dozens of upper torsos were visible, arms pushing against the sand, straining to free legs. They crawled forward, pulling themselves out, dozens of them, to stand unsteadily on their feet like stalks of wheat swaying gently in the wind.

"They are dead men," Orpheus said with horror.

They stood as if in catatonic trance, bedraggled, life-sized marionettes held up by loose strings, rotted, decomposing flesh flapping, bones protruding, eyes encrusted or absent altogether from the vacant sockets, gums retreating from yellowed and blackened teeth, wisps of white-gray hair escaping from beneath corroded helmets. The leather armor was dry and veined with cracks like the surface of some long dry, sunbaked riverbed and the cloaks hung down in tatters from bony shoulders. The rusted noseguards of the helmets shielded nonexistent noses and the earpieces covered holes no longer graced by earlobes. Worms and maggots writhed in places where decayed flesh was exposed and pieces of once living tissue dropped down onto the sand.

Medea could not stop screaming. Her hands were up over her ears, as if to shut out the sound of her own shrieks. She stood frozen to the spot, paralyzed with terror. Hercules dropped the fleece onto the sand and stared at the living dead with disbelief.

"Corpses," said Jason, his voice cracking. "How does one fight corpses? How to kill that which is already dead?"

"If a corpse cannot be killed," said Theseus, drawing his sword, "it can still be dismembered."

"Remember what you said about people who don't panic?" Andre said to Finn. She nodded at Theseus.

"There's one. You think maybe he can tell us how it's done? I just went numb all over."

"It's Drakov," Steiger said. "That bastard's brewed himself up a bunch of zombies."

"Cybernetically augmented," Delaney said. "Isn't that what he said? He found the ship, clocked back in time and buried a bunch of his hominoids out here. They died, but the cybernetics kept on working, sending impulses to circuits buried in the decomposing muscles or in the skeletal structure."

"That lunatic has set us up," said Steiger. "The only way out is to do what Theseus said, dismember them or smash their skulls and destroy the implants. Then all we have to figure out is what to do about Kovalos with his archers and his cavalry. Piece of cake. Or we could run out into the water and try swimming back to Iolchos."

"KILL THEM!" Kovalos screamed.

The corpses shambled toward them slowly, dead hands pulling rusted blades from rotted scabbards.

"Remember that emergency we were saving the warp discs for?" said Andre. "I think this is it, guys."

"I think you're right," said Finn. "Creed?"

"I'm not about to be cut up by a remote controlled cadaver," Steiger said.

He glanced over his shoulder as the main body of the Argonauts came leaping over the side of the ship to join the battle while a few remained behind with Argus to push the ship off from the shore and hoist the sail. He looked back toward the crest, where Kovalos stood watching with his soldiers.

"We'd better do something about that group up there or no one's getting out of here," he said.

"Fugue sequence?" said Delaney.

"You know any other way three can take on about fifty?" Steiger said.

"All three of us fugue clocking at once?" said Andre. "The three of us could wind up being one of us if we accidentally synchronize our fugue patterns. That could get real messy."

"Don't take this personally," said Steiger, "but I have no intention of sharing my space with you. We'll use a three/six staggered fugue sequence, zero-three-six initiation with me first, you second and Finn third.

Estimate your best coordinates for about fifteen to twenty yards behind our friends up there on the crest and make every arrow count. Got it? Now
stage,
and fast!"

As the corpses tottered toward them, swords raised, Theseus gave out a yell and charged them.

Hercules picked up the golden fleece with one arm and hoisted the hysterical Medea with the other and started sprinting toward the ship as the other Argonauts joined -Theseus and Jason in their charge.

"Staged!" shouted Delaney, left wrist cocked in front of him, right hand on the control studs.

"Staged!" shouted Andre, in a similar position.

Several of the corpse soldiers were getting dangerously close.

"Staged!" shouted Steiger.

One of the corpses was less than three feet from Delaney, but he could spare no time to deal with it. It swung its sword down in a swift arc toward his head.

"TIME! "yelled Steiger.

The sword came down, but it slashed through empty space. All three of them had disappeared.

Meleager ran a corpse through with his sword. It didn't even slow it down. It slashed at him as he pulled his sword free of the soggy flesh and only by falling quickly and rolling aside could he avoid the killing stroke. Jason parried a sword thrust, then quickly brought his blade up and around and severed a rotting arm from its shoulder. The arm, hand still holding the sword, fell to the ground, but the corpse kept coming at him. Jason ran it through. It lurched forward, impaling itself even further on the blade as its one remaining hand, fingers like talons, reached for Jason's throat. He batted the hand away and struck at the corpse's face with all his might. The head flew off and landed in the sand several feet away. As the body collapsed to the ground, the head continued to twitch slowly from side to side, moving with the spastic motion of a windup toy.

Theseus wasted no time in engaging any one of the corpses in single combat. He moved like a whirling dervish, slashing quickly at one and immediately twisting away and slashing at another. Holding his sword with both hands as if it were an axe, he spun through the grisly army like a buzz saw, taking advantage of their slow "reactions" to inflict as much damage as he could to as many of them as he could, aiming always for the extremities and putting all his power behind every stroke, accompanying each one with a grunt of effort, like a butcher laying about him with a maul.

Up on the crest, Kovalos watched the combat, his soldiers staring with horrified fascination at the army of the living dead their captain had raised. They had both feared and respected him before, but they had never dreamed he was a sorcerer and now they regarded their commander with a terrified awe. When the corpses had first started to claw their way free of the earth, not a few of them almost ran in abject panic from the sight, but they were rooted in their place both by the hypnotic aspect of the spectacle and their terror of what their commander might do to them if they showed fear. What chance would there be to flee from a man who could raise the dead?

Kovalos stood before them, watching as the corpses closed with the Argonauts, but when he spotted Hercules sprinting back toward the ship with Medea and the golden fleece, he pointed and shouted to his archers, "There! That one, Hercules! Shoot him down! He must not reach the ship!"

As one of the archers shifted his aim to the massive, running figure, an arrow came whistling between the ranks of cavalry behind him and thudded home into the base of his skull. He toppled forward and fell onto the rocks below. Several of the archers had time to loose their arrows, but they had failed to properly estimate the speed with which Hercules ran, not thinking that a man so large could move so quickly, so they did not lead him well when they had aimed. When their fellow archer fell over the edge, they hesitated and in that time two more arrows passing between the horses behind them claimed two more of their number.

The cavalry soldiers wheeled their horses as soon as they realized there was an enemy behind them, but instead of a force of opposing archers, they were confronted with a sight that baffled them completely.

Several of the horsemen near the center of the formation caught what they thought was a glimpse of a bowman, but in the next instant, he was no longer there. Several others on the right flank caught sight of a woman archer pulling back her bow, but just as they were about to charge her, she seemed to vanish.

There was a shout from the left flank of the cavalry as someone spotted yet another archer shooting at them, then confusion when the man who saw him found himself pointing to a spot where no one stood.

The mercenaries of Kovalos found themselves confronted with a phenomenon beyond any understanding. It was the most dangerous maneuver in temporal warfare, dangerous to both the attacked and the attackers-fugue clocking. With the proper skill and a great deal of luck, one man using a fugue clocking sequence could become an army. Yet one mistake could result in utter disaster, trapping the temporal soldier in limbo forever in the dead zone of non-specific time or causing him to clock in at the exact time-space coordinates as those occupied by another mass, either living or inanimate. Several temporal soldiers fugue clocking at the same time, using a hastily programmed fugue sequence, could conceivably materialize in the same place at the same time, resulting in an instant and agonizing death. For temporal soldiers, the options regarding fugue clocking were clearly and rigidly defined. It was a worst case scenario option, a tactic of last resort.

The three/six staggered sequence program with a zero-three-six initiation Steiger had called for was one of the standard drills among temporal adjustment teams. They were frightening, but necessary drills, necessary because in a situation that called for such a desperate maneuver, there could be no time for thought. The programming had to be accomplished quickly, almost by instinct, and whoever called the sequence was immediately and automatically in charge, not to be questioned under any circumstances.