David Wingrove - The Empire of Time

That’s true, but when I get Ernst alone again, I ask him exactly what he’s got planned.

‘It’s a thank you,’ he says.

‘A what?’

‘For doing what you did. For freeing me. You put yourself in grave danger …’

‘Of course I did. You’d have done the same.’

‘I know, but-’

And he begins to spell it out, until finally I stare at him and laugh, surprised by just how devious he can be. Devious … and yet as honest as they come. I reach and embrace him, holding him to me tightly.

‘You’re a good friend, Ernst. The very best of friends.’

‘And you, Otto, are quite mad.’

I move a little away from him. ‘Mad?’

‘Yes, and me too … for pandering to you.’

I grin. ‘So just when did you come up with this little scheme?’

‘Oh, I had time,’ he says, and his eyes take on the slightest sadness as he says it. ‘Or do you forget? Six months lying on my back. That’s a long time. Time enough to come up with a dozen such schemes.’

I look at him thoughtfully. In the last few days he seems to have changed a lot. And all for the better. So just maybe …

‘Ernst?’

‘Yes, Otto?’

‘You mustn’t hide anything from me, understand? You must tell me if it ever gets too much.’

‘Of course,’ he says, and reaches out to clasp my hand again. ‘Of course.’

One dream, one final dream, before I let them ‘purge’ me of the memory.

It is of her, of course. Not Katerina, but Gudrun.

In the dream we are on the battlements again, at Orhdruf, standing side by side as the dawn breaks. Turning to me, she lifts me up on to her massive shoulders, my legs wrapped tight about her thick, exquisitely pale neck. And there I nestle, her long golden tresses like a blanket beneath me, the perfumed scent of her in my nostrils, as I look past her at the beauty of the surrounding countryside.

Slowly she turns, and as she turns, so she lifts, light as a feather, from the flagstones, and drifts out, as the birds freeze in the air and Time stands still.

Her head turns, until she’s looking up at me, her beautiful blue eyes smiling back; and then she speaks, her voice slow and deep, like the tape’s been slowed.

‘You see, Otto? You see?’

And I wake, cold and shivering and alone, and call out. And Urte comes and lies with me, holding me until the morning, until they can locate the memory and remove it.

Because sometimes it hurts to dream. Sometimes you can see too much.