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Serials - parts and parts.

Countdown to Armageddon, Episode Seven

Written by Edward M. Lerner

PART IV

Life is the game that must be played:

This truth at least, good friends, we know;

So live and laugh, nor be dismayed

As one by one the phantoms go.

—Edwin Arlington Robinson

WEST-CENTRAL FRANCIA, 732

Karl dismounted his steed with an agility that many a younger man could envy. One indiscreet aide did just that, and got a scathing look that rendered him instantly mute. Matters were too serious for such nonsense.

The major domus studied the devastated landscape, especially the great bowl-shaped subsidence crater to which he could put no name, before speaking. When he did speak, he addressed his words to his longtime friend and vassal. Bertchramm and his niece had been crouched beside a prone Harry Bowen when the mounted troop had clattered up; now Bertchramm stood before his liege lord.

“How is Harry? Where are your men?”

Looking grim, the warlord answered the simpler question first. “Everyone else is dead, either from a Saracen ambush or the explosion.” He used the last word awkwardly, an unfamiliar utterance once learned from the man unconscious at his feet. “Terrence is surely dead. He took the bomb into a deep mine so that the earth itself could shelter us.

“Perhaps one or two of our attackers survived and fled; there was such confusion in the explosion that I have no way of knowing. But one of the certain dead, slain by Harry himself, is that devil, Salah-ad-Din.”

“And how is Harry?” Karl prodded gently.

“Taken suddenly and mysteriously ill.”

Harry wore several improvised bandages, none bloody enough to explain a loss of consciousness. His face was red and feverish. Vomit and diarrhea stained his clothing and lay in puddles all around; the stench was overpowering. As Karl watched, Harry’s body convulsed. A trickle of stomach juices trickled out of his mouth.

Karl looked again, slowly and carefully, at the ruination all around him. Even two hours’ hard ride away, the shock of the explosion had been astonishing. What must it have been like here? What cataclysm would this evil magic have wrought in the very midst of his army, had Harry not somehow delayed it?

Karl spoke sternly to his chief of guards. “Watch over that man as you would me. Francia has a debt to him that is beyond all reckoning.

“Pray that our friend lives long enough that we may attempt to repay him.”

****

The poorly sprung wagon eventually jolted Harry awake. He was lying in a heap of itchy furs. His body reasserted itself in a chorus of inaudible screams: cuts, scrapes, bruises. More ominous were the internal aches.

He felt like week-old roadkill.

Bertha sat at his feet; she had not yet noticed his awakening. He prodded her with a toe. “We can’t go on meeting this way. I think Bertchramm is getting suspicious.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” No more twenty-first-century humor, he thought. God, I’m going to miss Terrence. “Where are we?”

“Almost back to Tours. Most of the army went on ahead, but we have plenty of guards. Karl’s orders.”

Harry tried to sit up, groaning. Groaning worked, sitting did not. Bertha scooted over to help, lurching as the wagon hit yet another chuckhole in the crude dirt road. “Careful, Harry. You are not well.”

No shit, Sherlock. “You seem all right, I’m glad to see. What about everyone else?”

“Bertchramm is well. There is no one else. The earth swallowed everyone that the Saracens had not already killed.”

“And the army?”

“Almost untouched.” She braced herself against the wild swaying. “Count Odo’s horse bolted. He was thrown from his horse and broke his neck. The warriors take it as a sign of the Lord’s displeasure. The new count has sworn fealty to Karl.”

Another jolt. Harry clenched his jaws to keep from crying out. “Was I knocked out by an . . . ?” He paused; if Frankish had a word for aftershock, he didn’t know it. “I mean, did the earth shake again?”

Bertha averted her eyes. “No. You just crumpled, very suddenly. You shook uncontrollably, threw up, lost control of your bowels, and turned feverish. Yet Bertchramm and I are fine. I do not understand.”

Harry did. It sounded like ionizing radiation injury, otherwise known—in more enlightened, if possibly less fortunate, times—as radiation sickness. Not all the fallout had been trapped underground; some had clearly vented. He could not know the level to which he had been exposed. He might already be on the mend—

Or terrible things might lie in store.

Radiation most affected the tissues that normally underwent fast replacement: bone marrow, intestines, skin, parts of the nervous system. As those tissues died, the victim became increasingly infection-prone. Red-blood-cell count plummeted. Arteries and veins weakened and hemorrhaged. Toxins from tissue dissolution slowly poisoned the body.

He might develop tumors and body ulcers. Wounds, if he suffered any more, would be ever slower to clot. With a shiver, Harry remembered how his long-ago radiation biology textbook had euphemistically identified the major symptom: shortened life span.

Why were Bertha and Bertchramm unaffected?

Harry ran his fingers through his hair as he pondered. Clumps caught loosely between his spread fingers came out. Think. His mind’s eye visualized as tiny bullets the subatomic debris of decaying nuclei. They whizzed, invisibly small, through air and flesh alike. Occasionally one smacked into a more solid, more critical part of a cell’s delicate internal mechanisms. One imagined cell after another was maimed and mutated.

Aha. This was the first exposure for Bertchramm and Bertha.

He wasn’t so fortunate. Terrence had mentioned low-level radiation in Faisel’s lab. Harry guessed at another exposure, a side effect of the trip to this century. The near-instantaneous release of vast energies from Rothschild’s superconducting storage ring might have drenched him in gamma rays.

It all added up. The accumulated damage from three exposures had taken him down. Harry guessed it was going to kill him.

Bertha misunderstood his sudden silence. “Do you need to sleep?”

To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub . . .

Harry shivered again. “No, I’d rather not. Will you talk with me?”

REIMS, 732

The long and narrow stone hall was cold and drafty, noisy and packed. Wall hangings and a roaring fire ameliorated the first two conditions, however minimally. Nothing could alleviate the cacophony and overcrowding. Drunken feasters bellowed and quarreled. Serving wenches squealed at pinches and gropes. Dogs fought over scraps of meat. Jongleurs capered and danced for beer and flung coins, storytelling being impractical amid the tumult.

The outlander sat quietly amid the chaos. Karl wondered: Did Harry’s silence come of lingering illness, sadness at the death of his foreign companion, or simple uneasiness at his surroundings? Despite a long sojourn in Francia, the man had never taken on Frankish ways. Take Harry’s persistent search for the rules of speech, whatever those might be, or his fastidious picking at food as though there should be implements other than fingers and knives.

No matter. Harry was guest of honor now, while Karl still had the chance.

After days of rest, Harry remained weak. His pallor and the mysterious loss of his hair only emphasized his frailty. He had aged years within days.

Karl swigged his beer, then hurled the empty golden chalice—booty from the Saracen wagon train—against the wall. Metal clanging on stone went largely unnoticed in the general clamor, the bawling of bawdy songs, and the crackling fire.

Bertchramm heard the clatter, and that was enough. The old warlord hollered until the crowd quieted.

Karl climbed unsteadily to his feet. It was time to recount Harry’s exploits, to render a saga such as the man so richly deserved. Yet at his side, merely sitting and picking at a hunk of bread, Harry was ready to collapse. He would not last through a proper retelling.

The story was unnecessary. The men in this hall had been there; most had felt, from a relatively safe distance, the fury of this bomb. Words were not necessary. Reward was.

Karl said, “The nobility of Francia is gathered to honor Harry and Terrence. All here know of their deeds. Amid celebration, we are nonetheless sad that Terrence has left us. Harry, have you given thought to how we can thank you?”

The outlander did not hesitate. “There is an abbey in Metz . . .”

Karl nodded. This was proper Frankish behavior. Each man in this room but Harry was a sworn vassal of the major domus, bound to him by a precarium, a lifetime grant of property.

Most of this land Karl had taken from the Church. The far-off Pope knew not to quarrel: Karl’s service against the Saracens far outweighed the nuisance of his land seizures. The Churchmen also valued Karl’s actions against Christian heretics—while Karl took note that the heretic Lombards held territories that bordered his own.

So Harry meant to join his truste (retinue), and to receive the corresponding reward. Good for him. Property and comfort were the least that Harry deserved. “Done. It is yours.”

Then Harry did surprise him. “No, my lord, I do not wish to own the abbey. I wish to retire there.”

“Are you sure, Harry? You have earned the respect of the kingdom.” Karl’s vassals shouted their assent, none louder than Bertchramm.

“Quite sure.” Harry boldly looked Karl straight in the eye. “But there is one boon that I would ask of you.”

Flatly: “Consider it done.”

Then Harry named it, and all Karl’s truste shouted out in amazement. It was unthinkable. They waited for the major domus to strike this outlander dead for his temerity.

Karl stood stock-still for a moment. Then, with a grin, he relaxed. “If not for you, Harry, what use would it be to me now?

“What you ask is yours, with my blessing.”

CENTRAL FRANCIA, 732

The rhythmic lope of his horse lulled Harry into a dreamlike trance. He was finally, it seemed, a soldier: He could sleep anywhere. Trusting his escorts to keep an eye on him, he dozed in the saddle. Every step brought him that much closer to his destination. To distant Metz. . . .

After long weeks of recuperation he had almost felt fit enough for this journey. Bertha had fussed at him—as she would have done, as she pined to do, for Terrence; he understood that—arguing that he was not yet ready. Gently, he had insisted on leaving, and a stern glance from her uncle had ended the discussion. Harry’s bone-deep weariness now only proved her correct. No matter—he could rest at the abbey.

After his work was done.

The clop-clop of hooves was hypnotic. He swayed as he rode, his body balancing for him. Warriors murmured all around, uncharacteristically softly. He wondered what threats Karl had made to assure his safe, speedy, and, considering the circumstances, comfortable trip.

Gradually, barely perceptibly, the ground beneath them sloped upward. His horse adjusted its gait, and on they rode. In Harry’s dreamlike state, the ascent became a romantic hike with Julia through the hills of eastern France. The whispered conversations around him transmuted into the chirping of birds, cold gusts became warm breezes. He smiled in his sleep.

Harry jerked awake, unsure what had returned him to consciousness. A misstep by his horse on the uneven ground seemed the most likely cause. He must have been asleep for quite a while—the shadow that stretched out before him was far longer than what he last remembered.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the slate-gray sky, just as one had at the mass after the victory near Tours. Harry followed the golden rays to their termination in the taller hills just ahead—and gasped. Amid ancient forest, the sunbeam illuminated a great Roman temple of pristine white marble. Some trick of light cast a pale green glow over the edifice, evergreen reflections enfolding the gleaming stone. Evening mist suffused the rays; the path to the sun seemed almost palpable.

Harry’s spirits leapt at the vision, at the unexpected loveliness. His uplifted mind conjured up the Emerald City of Oz, and a shining city on a hill. At that moment, everything seemed possible. Everything. Yes, he could do it.

Just as abruptly, the hole in the clouds snapped shut. Where once bright light made the eyes squint and hid detail behind a veil of mystery, grayness now cynically revealed all: fallen lintels, cracked columns, cracked and toppled statues, splotches of lichen, ancient stains. The old temple was in ruins—a symbol not of hope and survival, but of doom and decay.

His imagination cruelly superimposed over the scene a boundless ocean of drifting sand. His mind’s eye zoomed in on the half-shattered face of an armless statue, inventing an imperious frown, a wrinkled lip, a sneer of cold command.

The mirage of a memorial plaque suddenly shimmered before him. It bore, from the depths of his subconscious, a mocking inscription:

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Who was he to dare to lay plans?

After the ruined temple disappeared behind them, Harry removed a stained and much-read scrap of cloth from his pocket. He read Terrence’s note once more.

Perhaps he was dying, Harry thought, but he could—and he strongly suspected that he would—die trying.

METZ, 732

Someone pounded insistently—nay, imperiously—on the main gate of the abbey.

Father Gregory shook his head, no, at the one novice foolish enough to look inquiringly at him: They would not interrupt Vigilae to answer the summons. The massive wooden doors resounded from repeated blows. The abbot ignored the booming sound, and the shouting, until prayers were finished. With a twinge of pain from aging knees, he stood and went to see who came so noisily to the abbey. Neither the smoky torch that he carried nor the predawn starlight seemed to cast much light. Old eyes, he thought.

The warrior whose impatient beating on the gate the abbot now halted was unfamiliar. So were his fellows standing in an arc behind him. None looked any wearier than might be expected of a group that had traveled through the night. There was one final member of the company, however, leaning against the stone wall beside the entrance. He was exhausted and sick, and seemed somehow familiar to Gregory.

He took a moment to study this last man. The stranger looked battle-worn and old. No, not old: prematurely aged. A curious tracery of scar tissue crisscrossed his face and covered his hands. The abbot had never seen its like: He could not imagine the manner or combination of injuries that could have caused such scars. One eye was clouded over by a cataract. He had also lost much of his hair; it had come out at random instead of by thinning or receding.

Surely, Gregory thought, I am mistaken. This is not a face anyone could forget.

Yet for all the torment this man must have survived, despite the evident exhaustion and the air of a lingering disease, there was a glimmer of humor in his face, a trace of boyish high spirits. Gregory sensed that this poor soul knew him and expected, in turn, to be recognized. It pained Gregory that he must disappoint this hard-worn man.

His visitor, for such Gregory inferred the stranger to be, studied the abbot with his one good eye. “If you think I look bad,” the man began, standing away from the wall and drawing himself up to his full—and rather surprising—height, “you should see the other guy. Imagine, if you can, glow-in-the-dark worm shit.”

That self-deprecating tone, the odd phrasing . . . could it possibly be? The height, at least, fit. What could have happened to him? “Harry? Is that really you?”

Harry smiled. “More or less, Father Gregory, more or less. Buy me a beer, and I will tell all.”

METZ, 733

Rest and the serenity of the abbey were the best medicines.

In the days after Harry’s arrival, a mere few hours of idle wakefulness had sufficed to exhaust him. Within weeks, however, as his health slowly improved, he began to hobble about the monastery grounds. Strolling gave way to brisk walks, and eventually, jogging. By the time he had graduated to long hikes through the town, he finally felt well enough to devote part of his day to more private pursuits.

He had arrived in Metz well-heeled, at the insistence of a grateful major domus. Maybe he was even rich—in such a primitive, land-intensive economy, Harry was not sure what constituted monetary wealth. Whatever his financial status, many of his solidi went to the purchase of imported Egyptian papyrus. Hardy papyrus was no longer as freely traded as in Roman times, but—for a price—it remained available. He declined Gregory’s repeated offers of parchment and papyrus from the abbey’s own small stock: One of Harry’s escort had, despite Harry’s explicit orders, told Gregory that Harry had refused Karl’s grant of the entire abbey.

On days when the light was good, Harry tried to work for what he estimated to be four hours. On overcast days, or when the muse was with him, he would splurge and buy a candle. When the abbot asked with what scripture he filled so many scrolls, Harry was at an unusual loss for words. “Apocrypha,” he had finally managed.

The answer was the same when he switched to a new medium.

****

Gregory rejoiced in Harry’s slowly returning vigor but knew better than to consider him cured. Anyone who overheard Harry crying out in his sleep would have doubted. The abbot, hearing the shouted names of Terrence and Julia, of Johnny and Melissa, understood all too well that painful memories troubled his guest.

God alone knew with what demons Harry wrestled in his troubled sleep. For too many nights did Gregory pace the hall outside of his friend’s tiny cell, listening to the mutterings, the tossing and turning. Harry’s soul, like his body, carried seemingly inexplicable scars.

The ancient Romans had held that dreams were true omens. For all that this belief was surely pagan superstition, Gregory more than once found himself praying that his friend’s horrible dreams not presage more personal tragedy. What more was possible?

Was it a blessing or a curse that Harry did not consistently think in Frankish? Gregory could never decide. He simply knew that when his friend called out in his sleep, his words were often neither Frankish nor the vulgarized Latin. The anguished shouts, the sad pleas, the defiant protests were identifiable only by tone of voice, all the more poignant for their reduction to such irreducible minima.

In the mornings that followed such tortured nights, Gregory always asked how he could help. Harry would consider the question gravely. His answer never changed. “Ora pro nobis.” Pray for us. When Gregory asked who “we” were, Harry would only smile sadly.

Prayer was what monks did, but Gregory still wished he could do more. Perhaps prayer would have seemed more adequate had Harry ever worshiped with the monks. He never did.

There were times, of course, when Harry’s nighttime shouts were in Frankish. These were almost as incomprehensible. It would have been unseemly to comment uninvited; it must be Harry’s decision to share his innermost thoughts.

Harry’s freely shared waking memories—of the battle near Tours, of his deep friendship with Terrence, of a family and a strange land so distant as to somehow lie beyond any hope of return—these were enough to rend Gregory’s heart.

Harry always said that rules were made to be broken, a notion that was breathtakingly alien. Just once, just this morning, Gregory was overcome by the urge to break a rule. To break his rule against asking Harry about his anguished nights.

Who, the abbot wondered aloud, was this Humpty Dumpty that Harry named in his sleep. What did it mean that Humpty Dumpty had been pushed? Did Harry know who had pushed him?

The amazed look, followed by a hearty laugh, that Gregory got in reply were welcome indeed. Perhaps there was, in fact, hope for Harry.

METZ, 733

By the onset of spring, Harry had recovered a respectable portion of his former strength. His morning hikes took him into the countryside, where he roamed far and wide, planting trees. He was doing his small part, he explained, to repair the damage of the two recent earthquakes. That he chose to do so was inexplicable in a time when people still fought to wrest arable land from the forests.

Townsfolk and monks alike came to think of Harry as a harmless eccentric. No, not harmless—tales of his wartime prowess, grown ever grander in the retelling, precluded that fate—but certainly eccentric. His repeated, enigmatic references to himself as Johann Appleseed only reinforced the impression, especially given his predilection for planting pine trees.

By midspring his wanderings through the woods generated little notice and no interest. As the fresh air and exercise invigorated him, morning hikes became all-day treks, then overnight camping trips.

****

Harry led a swaybacked packhorse up the steep hill, singing old show tunes as he went.

He had always wanted to name a pet—say, a female dog—after his obnoxious sister-in-law. It amused him to imagine her reaction. Julia, of course, had nixed that idea. Becky—the piebald mare now bearing saplings and his few supplies—would have to suffice.

Of course, he, not Rebecca, could now fairly be described as piebald.

The forest was mostly coniferous, and undoubtedly lovely year-round. The deciduous trees had not fully greened up when he had started his explorations. Delicate buds and dainty young leaves had been sprouting everywhere then. Dark and mature green was now universal.

Wildflowers and flowering shrubbery splashed vibrant colors everywhere. A stream burbled its way downhill, somewhere off to his left. Birds chirped merrily in the branches overhead. If only, he thought, Julia were here to share this.

One other lack haunted him: To his inartistic and unobservant eye, all hills and dales looked alike. He had climbed countless hills over the past few weeks. Nothing, of course, was as he remembered it. How could it be?

He persevered; it was that or give up. All that kept his radiation-ruined body alive was sheer stubborn tenacity. Willpower would not fight off the first cold he caught.

Well, either he had persevered enough, or providence was cutting him some slack for a change. Whichever, as he crested a hill singing “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha, his voice broke off—for there it was.

Harry forced himself to continue singing, to resume his seemingly random path across the countryside. Still, an observant watcher, even one ignorant of English, could not have helped but notice the triumphant tone of the recapitulated chorus.

For once, luck was with Harry. There was no such observer.

****

As Harry continued on his meandering course, the day became cold and bleak.

Becky turned skittish; Harry blamed the weather. He tied her reins securely whenever he stopped to plant a tree. Yes, the air had the feel of a possible storm.

A rumble of thunder encouraged him to hurry. His remaining saplings could wait for another day. There would be other trips, he lectured himself. This trip must not draw attention to itself from a change in his behavior.

Good spirits, despite the best of intentions, cannot always be contained. Untying Becky for the walk back to Metz, uncontrollable joy overcame him. He had found it! Lifting his gaze to roiling clouds, he shouted to the watching skies, “I will do it!”

And in these, the darkest of the Dark Ages, when men believed that God intervened in all things, even the fall of a sparrow, the heavens replied. A bolt of lightning split the sky, striking a giant oak tree not far from where he stood. Rolling thunder drowned out the shattering of the great tree, the clatter and crash of flying shards of wood, the sizzle of vaporizing tree sap. . . .

The fall of a body.

****

Night had fallen when Harry regained consciousness. Becky was gone.

His teeth chattered. He wrapped himself in his wet cloak to trap body heat. What now? His health was fragile at best. Whatever destination he picked now might well be his last.

He chose.

Harry stumbled through the woods, tripping in the dark over unseen roots and stones. The wind howled. Rain in sheets lashed his body, his sodden clothes offering little defense. Blowing branches whipped him. Countless wounds stung: He had been blasted with splinters large and small. Liquid trickled down his face and neck, down his aching torso and weary legs. How much was blood?

Warmth was a dim memory of a former life. How long had he been slogging through the now-freezing rain? Too long—that was certain. He could not recall when he had last had feeling in his toes. They, at least, were slightly protected by his boots. His numb, but also bare, hands took the brunt of his repeated falls.

He could not stop shivering. His breath hung in front of him, a steamy vapor. Glints of white hung before him, mixed with the rain. Snow.

That he wasn’t imagining things, it really was getting colder, did not cheer him up.

He was delirious from cold and exposure, and from the onset of a raging fever, when he finally stumbled into the outskirts of Metz. The faintest glow on the horizon suggested that dawn would soon break. The abbey lay just ahead, the flickering lights in the chapel windows marking the assembly of the pious brotherhood at Matins. Voices swelled and blended in predawn prayer, an auditory beacon.

But as Harry scratched feebly on the abbey gate, the faint sounds that he was able to make were