*
Later that night Blaith barged in to the hut as I was burning the Stonehenge leaflet. He had the dog-man with him, cowering on his leash as usual. Sniffing the smell of burnt paper for the first time in his life, Blaith glanced suspiciously at the flame in the hearth, but then dismissed it. He ordered Vart to leave us. Vart looked at me for a lead. I nodded that he should go. I was expecting Blaith to come and ask about another torch display, so I wasn’t surprised to see him, but not dragging in the dog–man too.
Blaith handed me the dog-man’s leash, and started to tie it to my wrist. ‘You talk him.’ He checked the knot and shoved the dog-man roughly to make him sit on the floor. You Lued man. Him Lued man. You talk him. Tell me later. I come back.’
He marched out leaving me gaping at the door.
‘Nice chap isn’t he?’ said the dog-man.
‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘Did you bury the time wand? What’s he expect of us?’ This was the first time I’d had the chance to talk to him. Questions just poured out of my head.
‘You heard him. He thinks we can fly. He’s been trying to get me to tell him how for almost two years. As you can see I got my reward for none cooperation. My name is Scot Grant. Who are you?’
‘Jack Shire.’
‘Never heard of you. Are you from Haleakala? What time - when?’
‘Two-thousand and eight. What’s Haleakala?’
‘Oh God no,’ he groaned, and rolled back flat out, eyes shut tight. ‘You don’t know what any of this is about, do you?’
I stared at him. What was he talking about? ‘Did you bury the time wand?’ I asked again.
‘Well obviously, bit-brain. Who else did you think it was?’
‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’
‘The damn thing doesn’t work. It can’t. I’m stuck here. Some moron in your time took it apart and tried to reverse engineer it.’
‘Reverse eng…’
‘Copy it, bit-brain,’ he interrupted sourly. ‘Are you completely wiped,’ He raised himself up and sat on the edge of the mud block bed. ‘You don’t think your lot could actually make anything like that do you? You’re still in the dark ages as far as quantum engineering is concerned, and from what I saw of the twenty-first century everything else is too.’
‘So you’re from the future ..?’
‘Wow, what a genius. How clever to work that out all by yourself.’ He moved to sit more comfortably on the bed furs. ‘Do you realise what you are worth to them, Blaith and Serren? You are immensely valuable to Blaith and his brother, but either one could kill you to stop the other getting you.’
‘They’re brothers?’
‘Yeah, Serren, didn’t you know? Serren is the real power here, the priest king. He rules everything - priests and men. Blaith is only a glorified bully boy.’ He shook his leash and tugged at the loop around his neck. ‘That’s why he keeps me tied up. He’s scared that if Serren gets me the two of us will do a deal with the gods to kill him. So he keeps me close. He’s been trying this dog leash thing for five weeks now. He could change tactics at any time and go back to giving me my every wish, food, furs, women. He’s done it all before! He hopes that eventually I’ll share my powers with him so he can over rule Serren.’
‘Powers what powers?’
‘They think I can fly and take them to their goddess. They’ve seen our clothes and technology, and think their goddess will give them the same things.’
‘What things?’
‘They’ve got my railer.'
'What's that?'
'Railer? My pistol of course. Don't worry the gene-lock is on. They can’t fire it, but Blaith has hidden it. They’ve got my clothes, some coins, a couple of pens, but apart from the railer, it’s all from your era. But these fools think zips are magic.’ He sighed, eyeing me sourly. ‘You are a real catch for them. Somebody actually saw you in tee - em. That’s why they think you’re a god, or something.’
‘Tee –em?’
‘Temporal-metabasis of course. Don’t you know anything? How can you time leap without at least some slight intelligence?’ Laughing smugly he rolled back on the bed. ‘The new temple is for the moon goddess. They think she sent you here. You are here to make the tribe great. That’s why Blaith protects you. When they see how dumb you really are they’ll stick you on a prize rail.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a dirty big spike they impale their prisoners on. It takes them days to die. You’ll be screaming every second of it. Go down to the river and take a look, if you want to see your future,’ he sniggered.
I tried to ignore him, and quietly looked forward to introducing him to Vart. I knew he would not be so patient. ‘So why did you bury the time wand?’
‘Once I realised it was useless I had to put it where my people can find it and come and get me. That’s why I chose Stonehenge. It remains pretty well unchanged for millennia, no danger of finding a building on top of it.’
‘Well you got that wrong by at least a hundred meters. There was a building on top of it for several decades.’
‘No! That’s impossible. I buried just outside where the stone circle will be built.’
‘There were two custodians’ cottages built over it. Luckily they demolished them and I was part of an archaeological dig surveying the ground where they had been.’
‘Well no matter, you found it, and amazingly your ham-fisted engineers managed to fix it, otherwise you wouldn't be here. But, being an archaeologist and clearly stupid, you decided to take a little trip into prehistory without even the slightest preparation. You are putting everything at risk by engaging with these savage morons. If they get their hands on the time wand, God only knows what they could do. The whole fabric of time is at risk.’
Before I could speak, Vart burst in through the door and slammed it behind himself. He glared at Scot Grant, then shot me an enquiring look.
‘Blaith wants me to talk to him,’ I explained.
‘Huh, chy-dun gwireen,’ he sneered. The dog man is an idiot.
‘You’re the idiots,’ snapped Scot Grant. ‘Blaith is toying with you. When he’s tired of it, you’ll both be spiked.’ He got up to his feet and started to pace about angrily. ‘Where's the time wand now? Get it fired up and let’s get out of this hell hole.’
‘It doesn’t work.’
His jaw dropped. ‘But you fixed it. You must have – you time leapt here.’
I realised that his lack of concern that I had found the time wand and spoiled his escape plan was because he had assumed it had been repaired and could still be used to escape. ‘Wrong my friend,’ I told him, ‘I didn’t fix it, nobody did. It’s still just as it was when you buried it.’
He gaped, horrified, and then leapt at me, clawing and punching. Vart dragged him off and threw him across the room where he collided with the wall like a rag doll and lay gasping in a heap. He raised himself on to his elbow, shook his head, staring at me, his eyes widening as he tried to think through this new and unexpected situation. ‘You didn’t fix it, but it worked?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘So what did you do?’ He rose shakily to his feet. ‘Tell me exactly what you did. You must have fiddled with the controls? You put it in a magnetic field? What did you do? If we can remember exactly we could do it again and get away from this nightmare’.
‘No. I just stuffed it in to my bag. It went off all by itself.’
‘But it can’t have done. The guass trip had been compromised.’
‘The what?’
‘Guass trip – oh never mind. It’s grown-up stuff, you’d never understand.’ He started searching, yanking on the leash to get more free play. ‘Where’s your bag? I need to see the time wand.’
I didn’t trust him. I was far from ready to let him get his hands on the time wand. He spotted my rucksack and dived on it, dragging me with him.
‘Leave it alone,’ I yelled as he pulled the time wand out of the bag.
Blaith came into the hut at that moment, follow
ed by Serren. Vart leapt across the floor in front them and reached for the time wand. Blaith was startled but wheeled around and landed a punch on Scot Grant’s head sending him crashing to the floor. Vart retrieved the time wand.
Scot stared at it clutched in Vart’s hand. Vart held it to his chest unsure what to do next. He looked at me for guidance, but I was too panicked to speak. I saw that Blaith had seen us fighting over it, something that looked even more impressive than his shiny torch.
‘He can have it,’ Scot said. ‘It’s useless without a power source. Why do you think I’m still stuck here?’
‘What, do you mean? A power source like that torch?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, but that is useless, the battery is dead,’ he snarled, casting a despairing look at Blaith. ‘The fool wasted the battery. Don’t you think I tried to get hold of it when they first found it? He wouldn't let me get near it. He just ran the battery down like an idiot child. If I could have got hold of that torch, I would have dug up the time wand weeks ago and leapt out of this place.‘
‘Are you telling me it only needs a battery?’
‘No, it’s not the battery. It’s the magnetic field around the torch. It is minute fluctuations in the magnetic field that activates the Guass trip.’
Blaith who was watching with confused fascination, stepped up and shoved Scot Grant aside. Serren, looking deeply uneasy, moved to his side.
I faced up to them, Scot Grant’s words resounding in my head. If all I needed to get back to my own time was a small power source, I knew how to get one. That torch strung around Blaith's neck. ‘Make golow-beru now,’ I said to Blaith, who smiled proudly and switched on the torch.
‘It’s live! How?’ gasped Grant. He leapt at Blaith and ripped the torch from its leather thong. He lunged at Vart, grabbing for the time wand. He knew that if he put the two together he could release the Time Wand's Guass trip. The two of them fought, wrestling for control. Blaith tried to separate them, but got a kick in the face. He staggered back with blood spurting from his nose.
The time wand started to glow in Vart's hand. A blue white light fizzed and crackled into life, filling the hut with its brilliance. The smell of ozone filled the air, but in a flash we were plunged into darkness. We stood blinking as our eyes recovered from the dazzling glare. Scot Grant and Vart had vanished. Only a short length of bark rope, tied to my wrist, remained of them.
Blaith was gaping ashen faced, terror had slicked his face with sweat. I realised that if I did or said the wrong thing now I could be dead in a second. All I could think to do was try to bluff my way out. I pretended I had made Vart and Grant vanish. I raised my hands theatrically and yelled at Blaith and his startled brother. They raised their arms defensively, cowering before me.
I helped Blaith to stand up. I needed him on my side. Without Vart I was lost in this hostile world, but with Blaith as my ally, I might survive. I gripped his arms and smiled to show friendship. He stared back uncertainly.
Serren eyed me with undisguised hostility. I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. He nodded, acknowledging my gesture of friendship, but his cold eyes were full of suspicion. Serren could not explain what he'd seen, but his experience told him it was no more than a clever trick. He understood the value of a few well-rehearsed theatrics. So-called magic or divine intervention were his stock in trade. They were at the root of his power. He used them daily to control people and overcome even the boldest warriors. His disciples were everywhere, even amongst Blaith’s warriors. His apparent powers were more dangerous and far reaching than Blaith’s strong-arm tactics. I saw that even Blaith’s protection might not be enough against Serren and his crazy monks.
………..