John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

“That would mean the two armies met six days earlier, on the 19th of October,” said Paul. “I don’t think it will do us any good to arrive too soon. Both sides were harassing and probing one another throughout the week. The battle was fought on the seventh day, Saturday, October 25th, and that will probably have to be our breaching point. Let’s get Kelly working on some numbers.”

“And use the Julian Calendar,” the professor advised. “There’s as much as a ten day shift on the Gregorian calendar.”

They still had to work out the details of the mission, and Paul had some real apprehension about it. The sources on this battle were few, sketchy, and well scattered over the centuries after its conclusion.

“It’s as close as we’re likely to come,” he said with some resignation in his voice. “There just isn’t much data on this battle out there, no matter how decisive it turns out to be.” He looked at the time, well after 5:00 AM now. “Kelly… How long before we would have coordinates?”

“I could do it in an hour—with an Arion.”

“We don’t have one handy,” said Paul. “Unless you want to leave the Nexus Point with me and drive back into the City, and I don’t think we can contemplate that now. The risk of dissonance is too great, to say nothing of the fact that I siphoned most of the gas from my Honda and the other vehicles.”

“Then I need some bad ass computing power. We should have dedicated more budget to CPUs. I spent too much on RAM.”

“All water under the bridge,” said Paul. “Can we link up every desktop we have in here and do something that way?”

“Not nearly enough processing power,” said Kelly, then he stopped himself. “Hey, wait a second! The Golems! There must be an installed user base in the tens of thousands still left active out there. We’ve got the information we need on variations. We know where we want to go, and when. I can write a command prompt to tell all the Golems to join in a super-network cloud to do the calculations! All I have to do is write the algorithms with the variable data.”

“Go do it!” said Paul. “You just shifted in from ten thousand B.C., so you’re not a candidate for this mission. You get us those numbers and run the show from here.” He looked at Robert and Maeve. “I guess that leaves us to decide the rest.”

Even if they did have temporal and spatial coordinates nailed down to a reasonable breaching point, the prospect of shifting in to a Medieval battle zone was a bit daunting. Who should go? Paul was the first to volunteer.

“I’m fine now,” he said. “I’ll know the ground, and use my military horse sense to scout out this camp. You can dress me as an Arab. I’ll grab the first unattached loot I find and try to look like I’m a camp attendant.”

“Well enough,” said Robert. “I’ll be useful with the history, and I can manage a little Arabic now. I’ve been boning up, you see, and—”

“I’m the one who speaks French and Latin,” said Maeve.

Nordhausen frowned. “Now, see here, we went round and about on this the last mission. This will be dangerous, my dear, and if we’re going as Arabs we won’t need to speak French. Besides, the language of the eighth century wouldn’t sound anything like modern French. Latin, perhaps, and I can manage that as well.”

“I’m afraid he’s right, Maeve,” Paul weighed in. “I think it best that Robert and I handle it this time. And Robert… I’m willing to go this alone. No sense risking two of us.”

“Two of us doubles our chance of success,” said Robert. He was determined to get a look at the eighth century.

“It also doubles the chance that one of you gets killed,” said Maeve. “Remember, we’re not indispensable any longer. Time has shown us that she can get along without us quite well if we believe the possible outcome on the Golem report.”

“We’ll just have to risk it then,” said Robert. “Soldiers of Christ and all…” he smiled.

“And better if you stay here with Kelly,” Paul said to Maeve. “I think we owe you that much after the last mission.”

Maeve shrugged. “Alright,” she said flatly, “you’ve twisted my arm.”

“Good,” said Kelly over his shoulder. “I could certainly use the company.” He had been listening intently, his attention divided between the command prompt and the conversation they were having.

Maeve gave him a warm smile. “Then I’ll go down to the wardrobe and see what I can dig up for you. It seems to me that we sent the two of you through in Arab garb once before.” She was obviously referring to the initial mission, a lifetime ago, or several as it seemed to them now.

“Make sure the shoes fit this time,” Nordhausen complained as she went, still muttering to himself as he turned back to Paul. “I’m not blundering about in size eights again.” And for good measure he shook a finger at Kelly. “Plan it well,” he said. “Get the numbers right. I don’t want any visits to Jurassic Park again!”

“Rule number one,” said Kelly. “No coffee near the keyboard.” He reached out, picked up his mug of Peet’s, and plunked it firmly down on the desk, a safe distance away.

Paul could not help but smile, but the worried look returned to his face a moment later. “You’re sure about this?”

“Time and place?” said Nordhausen. “It’s as close as we’re going to get given the data.” He turned to Kelly again. “Make it dawn, October 25th, 732 AD.”

“Dawn?” Paul questioned the time. “The battle most likely started at dawn. Who knows how long these cavalry charges went on? The Arab tactics would be to mount rushes with the archers on horseback, then dissipate. They’d come in, fire, and fall back. Then, at some point, the heavy armored cavalry would charge. Well, the point is, the longer we are there the more time there is for something to go wrong. I’d like to push it back several hours, perhaps in the mid-afternoon.”

“What if we manifest too late?”

“Accounts are that Charles has a fairly disciplined army. You read the material. Even the Arab sources compared the Frank’s shieldwall to an implacable glacier, a wall of ice. It was one of the very few instances where infantry held their ground against a determined cavalry charge during this period.”

“You make a good point,” said Robert. “And the rout of the Arab army was supposed to have occurred near dusk. Alright then, let’s calculate the probable time of sunset. I’ve got a nifty site on the net… If it’s still there.”

It wasn’t.

“Damn,” Nordhausen swore. “Very well, let’s just get average times from recent years.” He had the information in due course. “I make it 6:40, or thereabouts. Suppose we shift in two hours before that. Would that be cutting it too close?”

“Remember we still have to find the Arab camp, in one direction or another, and work our way to this corral,” said Paul.

“Suppose one of us runs a Spook Job timed for about 4:00 PM, just to have a look? If we see too much chaos, and the Arab army appears in obvious retreat, then we’re too late, and we can still adjust.”

“A Spook Job is just a few seconds time,” said Paul. “You’d barely be able to get your bearings. I’m not opposed to the idea, but a Spook Job was designed to scout a location that was fairly fine tuned. We don’t really know what we’ll find there at all yet.”

Spook Jobs were the term they applied to a quick manifestation on distant time coordinates. Anyone there who might have seen them might think them a ghostly spirit, enfolded with the haze of frosty infinity. They would appear, then vanish, just there long enough to take a quick look and verify some important information about the potential breaching site.