“Send us,” said Loaf.
“You’ll scare them,” said Param.
“I’ll smile very nicely,” said Loaf, demonstrating his best battlefield grimace.
“Oh, don’t do that,” said Olivenko. “You’d scare your own mother.”
“I need to ask them what’s happening,” said Rigg. “That’s all. I hope Vadesh was right when he said the Wall contains all languages.”
“If you can’t understand them,” said Umbo, “just signal me and I’ll bring you all back.”
“All who?” asked Param.
Loaf and Olivenko looked at her stupidly. “Us,” they said in unison.
“I’m going too,” said Param.
“Too dangerous,” said Loaf.
“As if anything we’re doing is safe,” said Param. “One of you needs to stay here with Umbo, somebody who can protect him.”
Loaf turned to Param. “You really want to see a battle? War is messy.”
“And you’re afraid I can’t deal with bodies torn apart and people screaming in agony?” asked Param.
“If you can avoid it, you should,” said Loaf.
“My mother nearly protected me to death,” said Param. “I’m done with that. I’m not strong enough to wield a sword or cut down a tree or lift a corner of a coach, like some of you. But I have eyes and ears and I want to be part of this. Directly.”
It never occurred to any of them that maybe Umbo himself would like to see the past. No, he was the anchor, he was the one who couldn’t go. “I’ll send you all,” said Umbo. “Stop arguing and hang on to each other. Rigg, tell me when you’ve picked your path.”
Olivenko rounded on Umbo. “Don’t you even care what happens to Param?”
Umbo tried to keep the anger out of his voice. “Wanting to get on with it is not the same thing as not caring. She wants to go. Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because it’s dangerous,” said Olivenko. “Because members of the royal family get no special protection against death.”
“Special protection is exactly what you’re trying to give me,” said Param.
Umbo pointed out the obvious. “If anybody can take care of herself, it’s Param.”
Then Rigg spoke, much more softly than any of the others, and yet somehow his voice made them all fall silent. How does he do that? thought Umbo.
“The thing that worries me,” said Rigg, “is that if Param starts slicing time, back there ten thousand years in the past, and disappears, how can you bring her back?”
Rigg must think we’re all stupid. “I have a really special plan to keep that from happening,” said Umbo. “Watch this.” He turned to Param and spoke very solemnly. “Param, when you’re back in the past: Don’t. Slice. Time.”
She answered in the same spirit of mock soberness. “What an excellent idea. But what if it gets really dangerous, Umbo? What if I can’t help it and I just start chopping time into little bits?”
“Well, you simply mustn’t,” said Umbo. “If things get scary, you just signal me the way Rigg does. Do you think you can do that same hand motion he does? Do your hands work like that, or do you need Rigg to show you?”
Rigg flushed with embarrassment; he wasn’t used to people mocking him.
“Stop that,” said Loaf angrily.
“Why is Umbo the only one who sees that I have as much ordinary common sense as anybody?” said Param. “Come on, Rigg, pick your path and let’s get cracking.”
“What’s the rush?” murmured Olivenko. “It’s not as if the past is going anywhere.”
“The present is,” said Umbo. What if Vadesh came out and stopped them?
Rigg still looked embarrassed—or was he angry? But he made no complaint. “I’ve got the path I want,” said Rigg. “Push us back, Umbo.”
They were all holding on to each other, the way Rigg and Loaf and Olivenko had held on to Barbfeather when they went through the Wall. And, just like that time, Umbo felt a great lurch as his push into the past swept out quickly like the current of a river, carrying them much farther into the past than Umbo could have sent them on his own. It was Rigg’s ability to hook on to someone in the past that drew them, as much as Umbo’s pushing. And it was so far that they went, ten thousand years, almost as far as the whole history of the human race on Garden.
They did not disappear, of course—Umbo could see them as well as ever. But they all stumbled because the ground must have been lower then; perhaps the thatch of the grass had not built up so high. They fell a bit, then rose up and their eyes were riveted on the grassy field in front of the city, where apparently there was a war going on. As usual, Umbo saw none of it. But when Rigg reached out and touched someone there in the past, Umbo saw a glimpse of clothing, a brief outline of a person. Rigg let go almost at once and the image disappeared.
CHAPTER 4
Battle
In all her life, Param had never been in the presence of more than about fifty people at a time. Even that was unusual, and she had preferred to avoid large dinners or recitals or whatever was being put on in Mother’s honor. And while social events could be full of vicious infighting, it was done with words, looks, and gestures. Nothing had prepared her for war.
She had imagined war, of course—that was what most of history was about, the Sessamoto lords-in-the-tent leading their marauders on devastating raids against whatever village or town looked least protected, and then as kings-in-the-tent forcing the other tribes of the northeast to unite under their rule. Finally the King-in-the-Tent had conquered every nation of the Stashi Plain and subdued every freehold and every wild tribe of the woodlands and every fishing village of the coasts and through all of her study of that history, Param had pictured it all like a combination of the game of queens and the game of clay-casting, with the clay balls alternately knocking over pawns and queens, and dashing to pieces against them.
She had an intellectual knowledge that war was bloody. King Algar One-eye was an obvious example, and General Potonokissu had worn a wooden leg when he walked, though never when he rode. They had been maimed in battle, and if such things could happen to the rulers of armies, Param could only imagine what happened to the ordinary soldiers.
But when all but Umbo joined hands and suddenly dropped into the past, Param was almost overwhelmed by the noise of it. She could hear yelling: fierce cries of warriors, shouted commands from officers, screams of wounded men. And there was a smell of burning meat that almost gagged her, mixed as it was with the other stinks of the battlefield.
Her reflex was to sliver time so she could disappear. She relied on this ability to retreat from anything that frightened her. But she caught herself, realizing that Rigg had not been wrong after all when he worried about her disappearing in the past.
She knelt up and saw that Rigg, who was more used to sudden shifts of time, was already standing up and striding toward three adult women who were watching the battle. Rigg would speak to them; Param had no desire to. The women looked careworn and grief-stricken. They stood near a stockade that surrounded the city and sheltered their party from the view of the soldiers where the battle was being waged.
The stockade looked as if it had been hastily thrown up in a day, braced from behind here and there. She wondered how well it would hold up against a determined enemy. It had been clumsily built; through gaps between the poles it was possible to see the battle.
But Param did not want to see the battle. She had thought that was what she was coming to see, but now that she was here, it was the city that fascinated her, because it was only half built. Only the lower buildings existed, and instead of the uniform black of the towers in Param’s own time, these had been brightly painted, though many were faded and weathered. Yet the colors seemed vivid on this sunny day; it was as if the city had been decorated for a festival.
From the top of one of the towers, a beam of pure heat shimmered the air. Param followed the beam and then strode the five steps to the stockade and peered through. Where the beam l
anded, the grass was erupting in flame, and men were fleeing from it.
At first Param noticed little distinction between the two armies—they were masses of human shapes brandishing weapons. The numbers seemed evenly matched. But soon, from looking at those nearest her, she realized that all the defenders were better armed—swords and bows against clubs and crude spears.
Yet instead of cutting through the attackers, the swords of the defenders seemed rarely to slice flesh. The attackers always dodged away, avoiding the cuts and blows. However, the clubs and spears of the attackers landed all the time; if it had not been for the armor of the defenders, many would have fallen.
Why were the attackers so much better at fighting?
Then Param realized that the attackers all had large, strangely shaped heads; a moment later she saw that their heads were deformed because they had facemasks almost entirely covering their heads. Many of them seemed to have weirdly misplaced eyes, as if the parasite, having covered the face of a man, grew him a new eye out of its own rough flesh. Param found them repulsive and fascinating. The men with facemasks fought savagely and skillfully. They were quick, dancing to dodge incoming arrows from the defenders, darting forward to strike blows which rarely missed, though the defenders’ armor usually turned away the blade.
Another beam came from the tower. It should have been a devastating advantage for the defenders, to have that beam of fire. But instead of striking into one of the masses of the attacking army, it struck an area that was mostly empty of living men of either side. Again flames gouted upward, and men of both sides ran from the area of flame. The battlefield was dotted with patches of flame or cinders or ash, so that neither army could maintain good order.
“Those bastards in the tower ought to be hanged,” muttered Loaf. He was standing at the stockade beside her.
“They don’t seem to aim their rod of fire very well,” she said.
“They’re hitting nobody,” said Loaf. “Useless.”
Olivenko, from the other side of her, said, “What makes the attackers so nimble? I’ve never seen soldiers who dodge so well.”
“The defenders are good soldiers,” said Loaf. “Trained, disciplined. But they hardly land a blow.”
Olivenko agreed. “It takes two of them attacking the same man at once to bring him down.”
“Maybe it’s because they don’t have any armor,” said Loaf. “Keeps them lighter on their feet.”
It’s the facemask, Param wanted to say. The facemasks help them to react more quickly. But she said nothing. Loaf and Olivenko were soldiers; they knew what they were seeing, and she didn’t.
With both of the soldiers watching the battle, it occurred to Param that neither of them was protecting Rigg. What if the women took him for some kind of enemy? What if they were armed? Param could at least take Rigg out of harm’s way, if danger threatened.
The women were speaking a language that Param had never heard before, yet she understood them. She realized that she was not mentally translating their speech into any tongue that she actually knew. Rather she simply understood them at a level below language. The Wall really did give languages to those who passed through it.
The women were angry and frightened, and like Loaf they were condemning the wielder of the firebeam. But the women did not speak of “them” who aimed; rather it was “him.”
“He won’t use it to kill them,” said the tallest of the women. “And he won’t let any of us use it—we’d have no qualms about burning them.”
“They aren’t human anymore,” said the eldest woman—the mother? “Killing them should be like killing grass, but he won’t do it.”
“He’s no friend of ours,” said the youngest.
“He has no choice but to be our friend,” said the tall one. “It’s in the way he was made.”
“He does what he wants,” said the young one.
Rigg was merely listening to them, letting them talk to him; Param understood why. He was learning vital information with everything they said. If he probed, he might not learn as much, because they would become more aware of him. Param wished she knew how he had explained who they were, these four who had suddenly appeared inside the stockade. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it was enough for these women that the strangers wore no facemasks.
“We can’t build the city without him,” complained the old woman. “But he won’t let us make a wall of fieldsteel—this miserable stockade is all we can make without him. We’ve depended too much on him! We haven’t any skills in our own hands.”
Param guessed who “he” was; who but Vadesh himself? No one else could build with fieldsteel; no one else could create a beam of pure heat, then bar the people of the city from using it themselves.
“He does us no good,” said the young one. “The city is eternal, but what good is that when we can’t defend it?”
“We can’t live anywhere else,” said the tall one. “Where would we get safe water? We’d become like them.” Having seen the men with facemasks, Param understood the woman’s dread and loathing.
Finally the old woman took notice of Param. “Are you his sister?” she asked.
Param had forgotten how much Rigg resembled her. “I am,” she said.
“I wish I could offer help,” said Rigg.
The tall woman pointed at the stockade, where Loaf and Olivenko stood. “They look like stout soldiers, and well-armed.”
“But inexperienced against such a quick and clever enemy,” said Param. “They would be beaten almost at once.”
“Where are you from?” asked the old woman suspiciously. “You speak like feeble-minded children.”
“Your language is new to us,” said Rigg.
“Our language?” said the young woman incredulously. “Is there another? They don’t speak at all, except the grunting of beasts. Where are you from?”
“Beyond the Wall,” said Param.
“The future,” said Rigg.
Param found it interesting that while they had chosen different truths to tell, neither she nor Rigg had thought of lying.
It made little difference. The women drew together as they shrank back from Param and Rigg. “Liars,” said the old woman.
“Spies,” said the young one.
But the tall one, though she was as frightened as the others, still cast a hungry, appraising gaze upon them. “The future? Then you know. Do we win this war?”
Rigg turned to Param and addressed her in the elevated language of the court. “I have learned all that I think we can. Let us get the others.”
Param glanced at the women. They had not been through the Wall; they didn’t know the language Rigg was using, and it must be frightening to hear speech they couldn’t understand. “Aren’t you going to answer her?” said Param.
“I don’t know the answer.”
“We know that the city is empty!”
“But is it this war that empties it? Telling her might change things.”
“All of her people are dead for ten thousand years. Any change would be better.”
“I can think of worse outcomes,” said Rigg. He glanced toward the stockade—toward the battle raging beyond the stockade. “What if these people despair, knowing they do not win, and so they give up and those people, the afflicted ones, survive?”
“What are you saying?” demanded the old woman.
“That isn’t language,” said the young one. “It makes no sense.”
The tall one now had a knife in her hand, long and sharp. “They’re spies.” She lunged at Rigg.
Instinctively, Param grabbed Rigg’s arm and took a leap toward what she thought of as her “hiding place”—invisibility. But as she did it, she realized she mustn’t. If she detached herself and Rigg from the timeflow that the others were in, there was no guarantee that Umbo could bring them back. So she stopped herself in the very moment of her panicky shift.
But she stopped herself too late. The women had already disappeared.
It
was night. They stood in ringlight, just herself and Rigg.
She cursed her habit of hiding; she should have pumped her arm, signaling to Umbo to bring them all back, but that would have required thought, and she acted before thought was possible.
Then she realized—her talent didn’t work like this. People didn’t disappear when she sliced time, they merely sped up and stopped being able to see her. She couldn’t change day into night.
“What did you do?” asked Rigg in a fierce whisper. “When are we?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, trying to stay calm. “I stopped myself almost at once, we should only have jumped a moment or two.”
“We can talk, so we’re out of it now, right?” asked Rigg.
“I didn’t really go into it. We never disappeared.”
“Obviously we did,” said Rigg. “Vanished right out of their time. But how far, and in which direction?”
“I can’t move backward in time, not ever,” said Param. “I just make little jumps forward.”
“This wasn’t a little jump. It got us all the way into night. Or two nights—or a hundred years, into some distant night.”
“The stockade is still here,” said Param. “And the fires are burning.”
They went to the stockade, Rigg holding tightly to her. A few patches of grass were still burning, and there were bodies lying here and there, but there was no more fighting.
“Who won?” asked Param.
“What matters is that we’re still in the past. Does that mean Umbo has lost us, or that he still has us? If he lost contact with us, wouldn’t we bounce all the way back to Umbo, to the time we came from? Or are we stranded here and he can’t find us to bring us back? I wish I understood how any of this works.”
But Param had seen something else, not out on the battlefield, but closer to the city. “Rigg, a section of the stockade is down. It’s broken through.”
“No,” said Rigg after a moment, “it was burned through. That bastard betrayed them.”
A loud cry sounded in the dim light. It was not language. Nor were the cries that answered it. The shouters were not close by, but neither were they very far.