Sean Dalton - Time trap

Behind them, Sir Geoffrey yelled again, but Noel didn’t look back. Breathlessly he concentrated on hanging on. The mule plunged through another thicket. Locust branches raked him with thorns. Elena screamed as they caught in her hair. Noel glanced back and saw a hank of auburn hair left hanging from a branch. She pounded on his back with her fist and reached around him, trying to snatch the rope he held in his hands.

“Stop the mule!” she commanded. “Stop it now! We cannot go this way.”

The mule skidded to a halt at the edge of a gully, then jumped down into the bottom of it. Noel’s bones rattled at the unexpected change of direction. He clutched the pommel while the mule scrambled up the other side of the gully. From behind them he glimpsed Sir Geoffrey forcing his horse down the hillside at a cautious pace. He could hear Sir Geoffrey cursing steadily.

“You will kill us,” said Elena. “Stop the mule!”

“No!” said Noel. “I’m getting out of here.”

“You forget I have a knife, to make you stop!”

Noel gave the mule another hard kick in the ribs. It responded with a half rear and picked up speed, jumping recklessly off an outcropping of rock and landing with a stumble that jolted Noel half from the saddle.

He caught himself and hung on grimly.

“Do you hear me?” yelled Elena. “I have a knife.”

“Then use it,” said Noel. He saw a branch coming and ducked flat to the mule’s neck. It veered at the last moment and scraped his leg against the tree trunk. Noel yelled with pain and kicked the beast again. He realized now that it was doing its best to dislodge them. It wanted its freedom as much as he wanted his.

“Use it!” repeated Noel in a burst of complete recklessness. “But if I fall off you’ll fall too.”

“Don’t count on it,” she said and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

The pain was unexpected and intense. Noel stood up in the stirrups and twisted around, trying to grab her by the waist and sweep her off.

She clung to him, her nails digging in, her hair flying wildly.

The mule dodged to one side, and Elena slipped. She clawed at his arm, trying to pull herself back. Yelling and pleading in fear, her words were drowned out by the pounding of the mule’s hooves and the throbbing desperation within Noel’s ears. She was still sliding, her head dangling near his foot, near those dangerous hooves.

He thought about what it would be like to fall at a speed like this. He thought about what might happen if she happened to roll beneath the mule. He thought about slashing hooves cutting young flesh to ribbons, of smashing bones, of Elena being broken like a discarded doll upon the ground.

“Damn!” said Noel. He tightened his fingers around her own and heaved himself hard to the left in an effort to pull her up.

He nearly succeeded. She was sobbing “please” over and over again, struggling to help him, struggling not to pull both of them off. The nearly intolerable strain of compensating the balance eased off. She clutched his shoulder, then his neck. She settled herself astride, then screamed.

Startled by the raw terror in her voice, Noel looked ahead and saw the chasm yawning ahead. It plunged hundreds of feet down, a precipitous barrier effectively separating the base of Mt. Taygetus from its foothill Mistra.

Frozen, he stared at the looming disaster for an eternity. Elena’s scream went on and on forever. He wanted to scream with her, but he hadn’t the breath. The mule’s head came up as though it too saw the gorge ahead. It slowed, but not quickly enough, not soon enough. The awful certainty that they could not stop in time slammed through Noel with the force of a sledgehammer. He hauled back on the rope with all his might, but the mule wasn’t responding. The idiot animal actually tossed its head in protest.

“Stop!” shrieked Elena. “For the sake of God, stop!”

“I can’t!” shouted Noel.

The edge rushed closer. Suddenly there was not enough time left for anything. It was coming, coming too fast, coming like a metro shuttle.

Elena shoved hard. For an instant he thought she was trying to knock him from the saddle. Then she went sailing off. He heard the thud and her cry of pain as she hit the ground. She rolled over and over and caught herself from going off the edge.

The mule’s forefeet planted themselves, and the animal’s rear sat down to create a drag coefficient. Impetus still carried them, in a choking cloud of dust, and Noel heard the animal scream in fear of its own.

“Jump!” called Elena. “Jump before it’s too late!”

His feet were tangled in the stirrups. His grip on the rope had locked on so tightly he seemed unable to loosen his rigid fingers. He struggled, panic taking over. In the last possible second, he got free and hurled himself off to the left.

The mule’s feet went over the edge, and he heard the animal scream again. The mule did an impossible twist and scramble, but it could not stop itself from going over. Noel missed the ground and fell into the chasm as well.

A yell forced itself into his throat and lodged there. He envisioned his body twisting and plunging for hundreds of feet. It was too far; it gave him too long to think, and to remember, and to regret. He didn’t want to die, not here, not like this. Ending up mushed at the bottom of a ravine in the wrong century and the wrong country, his LOC crushed with him, all that he had learned gone to waste, all that he could still achieve unaccomplished… dear God, he didn’t want to die.

A tree growing twisted and wind-carved on the side of the ravine caught his fall. Noel hit it hard and went crashing through the branches with a snapping, crackling velocity that slowed him down but didn’t stop him. The tree, however, did deflect his body.

A few seconds later he hit the steep slope with a crunching thud that shattered the breath in his lungs and numbed him totally. He tumbled, picking up velocity again, but at this level there were too many fallen logs, spindly wind-blasted trees, and rocks choking the sides. He came to a stop at long last, halfway down, and lay there so dazed and disoriented he could not at first comprehend what had happened. His vision was a gray blur of shape, without color. His hearing was only a roar. He still experienced the sensation of falling, although another part of his brain knew that he had stopped.

He could not seem to draw breath, and he could not move.

Paralyzed, he thought and felt despair.

“Theodore!” The sound came crashing and echoing down to him from far away. “Lord Theodore!”

Noel’s eyes flickered open. He heard, but he could not make himself care. Wrong number, he thought.

The mule lay perhaps ten or fifteen feet away from him. The impossible angle of its head told him its neck was broken. Sunlight glistened on the blood that had flowed from one nostril. It had been a strong, good-looking animal, and he’d killed it.

Killed me too, he thought and wished it were over.

“Lord Theodore!” called the voice. Sir Geoffrey’s voice.

“Lord Theodore!” called Elena.

Noel shut his eyes. They could not get to him down here. He did not care.

He must have lost consciousness, for when he next awakened the sun no longer shone on his face. The air was cooler too. He could not remember why he was lying on this sloped, rocky ground. A distant memory told him there had been a purpose, but he’d lost it. There had been something to do, something urgent, something important. He had to remember.

A hand touched his face.

Noel blinked and sat upright, gasping and frantic. “Must get back,” he said aloud. “Must hurry and get back. Something’s wrong.”

“The only thing wrong,” said Elena, “is that you nearly killed yourself. How could you be so stupid?”