Poul Anderson - The Shield of Time

Everard made no reply, save inside his skull. I demanded this. I pulled rank. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t quite tell you, but I’ve got to strike the blow myself.

“We have our part, you and I,” Broussard reminded Hall. “We are the reserves, here on the ground, if things go badly.” He left unspoken the fact that in that case the causality vortex would probably have grown unredeemably great.

Everard had slept in his shirt and pants. Over them went a quilted coat, plus a similar coif and spurred boots replacing shoes. The coat of mail slid smoothly down from head and shoulders to hang to his knees, divided from the crotch so he could ride. Supple, it felt less heavy than you might have expected; the weight was well distributed. A noseguarded spangenhelm was secured above. A sword belt, dagger on the right, completed the ensemble, which a Patrol workshop had produced to his specs. He hadn’t needed more than a little practice, for he’d long since made a point of acquiring as many combat techniques as possible.

He put foot in stirrup and mounted. Ideally a warhorse was raised to its master from colthood. This, though, was a Patrol animal, more intelligent than is natural among equines. Broussard reached him his shield. He slipped his left arm through its straps before taking the reins in that hand. Heraldry had not yet developed, but individuals sometimes used symbols, and in a fit of forlornness he had painted on his a fabulous bird—a turkey. Hall offered him his lance. It too handled easier than its length suggested. He gave the men a thumbs-up and trotted off.

Commotion was dwindling as squadrons formed. Borne by a squire, the banner of the younger Roger hung gaudy from a crossarm at the head of the army. He was to lead the first charge.

Everard drew nigh, reined in, and lifted his lance in a kind of salute. “Hail, my lord,” he called. “The king bade me join you in the vanguard. My thought is that I might best ride on the outside at the left.”

The duke nodded impatiently. Battle eagerness flamed in him, for his years numbered but nineteen though already he had won fame as a brilliant and gallant warrior. In the Patrol’s history, his death on another field, eleven years hence, without legitimate issue, would in the long run prove evil for the kingdom, because he was the ablest son of Roger II. But in this history, today was doomsday for the lithe and lively boy.

“As you will, Manson,” he said. With a laugh: “That should keep things quiet there!” Commanders of later military would have been appalled at such sloppiness, but so far nobody in western Europe was long on organization or doctrine. The Norman cavalry was the best you’d find this side of the Byzantine Empire or the two Caliphates.

As a matter of fact, it was the left flank that Lorenzo would hit. Everard cantered into position and studied his surroundings.

Beyond the road, the enemy had likewise marshalled. Iron glinted, color splashed a mass of horses and men. Rainulf’s knights were fewer, about fifteen hundred, but close on their tails pressed foot that brought the numbers up to Roger’s or a little more—townsmen and peasants of Apulia, pikes and bills a walking forest, come to defend their homes against this invader who had laid other lands waste.

Yeah, his own contemporaries think Roger’s too hard on rebels. But he’s only being like William the Conqueror, who tamed northern England by making a desert of it; and unlike William, when he’s at peace he governs justly,

tolerantly, you could almost say mercifully…. Never

mind fancy excuses. Magnanimous or monstrous, what he did in my history was establish the Regno, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and it outlived his dynasty and nation, in one form or another it lasted till the nineteenth century, when it became the core of the new Italian state, with everything that that was to mean to the world. I am at a pivotal point in time … But I’m glad I didn’t need to meet him before he’d crossed the mountains. I wouldn’t have slept well after watching him at work in Campania.

As ever on the verge of combat, Everard lost dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t know fear; he merely grew too busy for it. Sight turned knife-edge keen, he heard each least sound through the racket as though it breathed alone at dead of night, every sense drew taut, but the slugging of his heart and the stench of his sweat faded from an awareness grown almost mathematical.

“We’ll start in a minute,” he said low. The medallion under his armor, against his chest, picked up the Temporal and transmitted it aloft. Leaving it on continuously would soon exhaust the energy cell, but this day’s business wasn’t going to take long, whichever way it went. “Do you have Lorenzo in your optical?”

“Two of us do,” vibrated through a bone-transference module built into the crystal structure of his helmet.

“Keep locked onto him. I’ll want to know exactly where he is as we approach each other. Somebody warn me about anybody else, of course.”

“Of course. Good hunting, sir.”

Unspoken: May it indeed be good. May we save Roger the elder and the younger, and recall to reality all our loves and loyalties.

Folks. Friends. Country. Career. Sure. But not Wanda.

Duke Roger drew sword. The blade flared aloft. “Haro!” he shouted, and put spurs to horse.

His followers raised a cry of their own. Hoofs drummed, then thundered, as trot went to canter went to gallop. Lances swayed to the rhythm. The distance narrowed and the shafts came down, horns of a single dragon.

Wanda’s up in that future we mean to kill. She must be; she hasn’t come back. I couldn’t go search for her, none of us Could, our duty’s not to any single human being but to a universe of them. Maybe she died, maybe she got trapped, I’ll never know. When yonder future doesn’t exist, she won’t either. Her bravery and laughter will only be in the twentieth century when she grew up and the far past when she worked, and … I mustn’t go back to see her, ever again. From that last moment in the Ice Age, her world line will reach uptime and come to an end. It won’t unravel into the tracks of single atoms, this isn’t natural death and dissolution, it’s nothingness.

Everard rammed the knowledge into the far back of his mind. He couldn’t afford it. Later, later, when he was alone, he’d let himself grieve, and perhaps weep.

Dust clogged nostrils, stung eyes, blurred vision. He saw Rainulf’s ranks ahead as a blur. Muscles surged, saddle rocked.

“Lorenzo is detaching twenty men on the right,” said the flat voice in his helmet. “They circle around.”

Yes. The knight from Anagni and those few trusty comrades would hit Roger’s force on the left, punch through, cut down the duke, break up the assault as a hurled rock shatters glass. Dismay would fall on the Sicilians rearward. Regrouping, Lorenzo would take the lead in Rainulf’s countercharge, which would bring down the king.

And no time traveler, no human blunder or madness or vaunting ambition brought this about. The fluctuation was in space-time-energy itself, a quantum leap, a senseless randomness. There was nobody on whom to avenge Wanda.

She’s lost anyway. I have to believe that, if we’re to retrieve everybody else.

“Beware, Agent Everard. Your size makes you conspicuous…. A knight has turned from Lorenzo’s band. He seems to be targeting you.”

Damn! While I deal with that pest —

I’ll just have to deal with him fast.

“He is at ten-thirty o’clock from you.”

Everard spied him, horse and lance. “Okay, Blackie, this way, let’s get ’im,” he growled to his mount. The animal answered his knees and plunged ahead. Everard glanced back, waved and shouted at Roger’s riders, couched shaft and braced himself.