Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Angel from Heaven indeed. Garshin snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!”

“Excellent.” Still the captain looked at him. Afar, clouds eddied around two peaks, now hiding them, now baring their fangs. Underfoot, twigs snickered in the wind. “Tell me about yourself, boy. How old are you? Where from?”

“N-nineteen, sir. A kolkhoz near Shatsk.” Emboldened: “If that means anything to you, sir. The closest real city is Ryazan.”

Once more the captain nodded. “I see. Well, you seem both intelligent and faithful. I believe you will appreciate what I want of you. It is simply to deliver an object I discovered. But it may be quite an important object.” He hooked thumbs in his pack straps. “Here, help me with this.”

They got it off, set it on the ground, and hunkered above. He opened it and took forth a box. Meanwhile his unofficerlike talkativeness continued, though almost as if to himself, peering beyond anything Garshin could see:

“This is a very ancient land. History has forgotten all the peoples who held it, came and went, fought and died, to and fro, century after century. We today are but the latest. Ours is not a popular war, at home or in the world at large. Never mind the rights or wrongs, it is hurting us in the same way their war in Vietnam hurt the Americans, when you were a kid. If we can retrieve a little honor out of it, a little credit, is that not good for the motherland? Is that not a patriotic service?”

The wind walked along Garshin’s backbone. “You talk like a professor, sir,” he whispered.

The other man shrugged. His tone flattened. “What I am in civilian life doesn’t matter. Let’s say I have an eye for certain things. I came on the scene of the ambush, and among the … objects that lay there, I saw this. The Afghans must not have noticed. They were in a hurry, and are primitive tribesmen. It must have lain a long time buried, till a rocket shellburst tossed it up. Some fragments were with it—pieces of metal and bone—but I couldn’t stop to do anything about those. Here. Take it.”

He laid the box in Garshin’s hands. It was about thirty centimeters long by ten square, gray-green with corrosion (bronze?) but preserved by the highland dryness for (how many?) centuries. The lid was wired shut and sealed by a blob of pitchy material that had formerly borne some kind of stamp. Traces of figures cast in the metal were visible.

“Careful!” the captain warned. “It’s fragile. Don’t tamper with it, whatever you do. The contents—documents, I suspect—might well crumble away, unless this is opened under strict controls by the proper scientists. Is that clear, Private Garshin?”

“Yes … yes, sir.”

“Tell your sergeant, immediately when you get back, that you must see the colonel, that it’s vital, that you have information for no ears less than his.”

Dismay. “But, sir, all I have to say is—”

“You have this to deliver, so it doesn’t get lost in the bureaucracy. Colonel Koltukhov isn’t a brainless regulation machine, like too many of his kind. He’ll understand, and do what is right. Simply tell him the truth and give him the casket. You won’t suffer for it, I promise you. He’ll want my name and more. Tell him I never told you because my own mission is so secret that anything I said would necessarily be a lie, but of course he is welcome to notify GRU or KGB and let them trace me. As for you, Private Garshin, you convey nothing except a little casket, of purely archaeological interest, which you might have stumbled upon as easily as I.” The captain laughed, though his eyes stayed altogether level.

Garshin swallowed. “I see. That’s an order, sir?”

“It is. And we’d better both get on with our business.” The captain reached into his pocket. “Take this compass. I have another. I’ll explain how to find your unit.” He pointed. “From here, bear north by northeast … so—

“—and when that peak there is exactly south-southwest—

“—and—

“Is this clear? I have a notepad, I will write it for you.

“—Good luck, boy.”

Garshin groped down the mountainside. He had wrapped the box in his bedroll. However slight the weight, he imagined he felt it on his back, like the weight of boots on his feet, the drag of the earth upon all. Behind and above, the captain stood, arms folded, watching him go. When Garshin glanced rearward, a last time, he saw sunlight from behind the helmet make a kind of halo, as if on an angel who guarded some place mysterious and forbidden.

The highway followed the right bank of the River Bactrus. Travelers were glad of that. Breezes off the water, shade cast by wayside mulberry or willow, every fleeting relief came as an event when summer’s heat lay over the land. Fields of wheat and barley, orchards and vineyards in among them, even the wild poppies and purple thistles seemed bleached by the light from a sky burned empty of clouds. Nonetheless it was a rich land, the stone houses small but many, clumped in villages or strewn on farmsteads. It had been long at peace. Manse Everard wished he didn’t know that that was about to change.

The caravan plodded doggedly south. Dust puffed up around the feet of the camels. Hipponicus had shifted his wares from mules to them after he left the mountains. Ill-smelling and foul-tempered, they did carry more per animal and fared better in those arid regions that his route would trayerse. They were a breed adapted to Central Asia, scruffy now that their winter coats were shed, but one-humped. The two-humped species had not yet reached this country, from which it would take its later name. Harness creaked, metal jingled. No harness bells rang; they too were of the future.

Cheered by nearing the end of their weeks-long trek, the caravaneers chattered, japed, sang, waved at people they passed, sometimes shouted and whistled if a pretty girl was among them—or, for several, a pretty boy. They were mainly of Iranian stock, dark, slender, bearded, clad in flowing trousers, loose blouses or long coats, tall brimless hats. A couple of them were Levantine, with tunics, short hair, and shaven chins.

Hipponicus himself was a Hellene, like most present-day Bactrian aristocrats and bourgeoisie: a burly, middle-aged man with freckled face and thinning reddish hair under a flat cap. His forebears came from the Peloponnesus, where today was little of that Anatolian strain which would be prominent in the Greece of Everard’s time. On horseback, in front of the train, still he was hardly less grimy and sweaty than the rest. “No. Meander, I insist, you must stay with me,” he said. ‘I’ve already sent Clytius ahead, you know, and part of the word he carried is that my wife should prepare for a house guest. You wouldn’t make a liar of me would you? She’s got a sharp enough tongue as is, Nanno does.”

“You’re too kind,” Everard demurred. “Realty. You’ll be seeing important men in town, rich, educated, and I’m just a rough old soldier of fortune. I wouldn’t want to, uh, embarrass you.”

Hipponicus scanned his companion sideways. It had surely been difficult and expensive, finding a mount big enough for such a fellow. Otherwise Meander’s outfit was coarse and plain, apart from the sword at his hip. Nobody else bore arms any longer; the merchant had dismissed his hired guards when he reached territory reckoned safe. Meander was special.

“Listen,” Hipponicus said, “in my line of work it’s needful to be a pretty sharp judge of people. You’re bound to have learned a fair bit, knocking around the world. More than you let on. I expect you’ll interest my associates too. Frankly, that won’t hurt me any when it comes to making some deals I have in mind.”

Everard grinned. It lightened the massive features, pale blue eyes beneath brown locks, nose dented in a long-ago fight about which he had said as little as he told of his past in general. “Well, I can give them plenty of whoppers,” he drawled.