The Empire of Time Read online

  Meister Balk strides across and throws it open. Framed in its whiteness is one of the guards. He falls to his knees, head bowed.

  ‘Meister, you must come at once!’

  ‘What is it, Brother William?’

  The young man looks up. The horror in his eyes turns my stomach. All about me the knights are getting to their feet.

  ‘It is Brother Werner, Meister. He …’ The young man swallows. ‘The Prussians have returned him.’

  If the Hochmeister feels anything, he conceals it well. Turning back, he looks to us.

  ‘Johannes … Otto … come. Let us bring our brother back inside.’

  2

  His body lies there, not fifty paces from the fort. They have stripped him and lain him like a star upon the snow, his pale limbs smeared with blood. Kneeling beside him and seeing the rictus on his ash-white face, I feel my heart break. He is snarling, as if still in pain, even though his brief life here is ended. He was the youngest of us, perhaps the finest. Looking closer, I see the ice crystals in his blood. He has been dead some time.

  They have disfigured him badly: cut off his fingers and his feet, and opened up his chest with an axe. His eyes have been gouged out and his ears cut off, his tongue cut from his mouth. Worse still, they have carved the sign of the cross into his crudely shaven skull. And all of it while he was yet alive. For that is their way, these Prussians.

  Coming alongside me, Johannes groans, then kneels, crossing himself. I do the same, then look up, searching among the trees on the far bank for any movement. The enemy are watching us, looking to see how we react. I meet Johannes’ eyes, and we both stand, drawing our swords. Stepping forward, I plant myself there, prepared to defend the body until help comes from the fort. There are shouts now from that direction. I hear the gate swing open once again, the sound of quick, crisp footfalls.

  Meister Balk himself has come, along with two others – young knights, not Brothers yet, barely a season into the service of the Order. Seeing the body they stop, then turn away, to be sick in the snow.

  I look back, my eyes on the frosted plank bridge, knowing that if they are to attack, they must attack from there, and soon. Touching my arm, the Hochmeister urges me forward.

  ‘Otto, Johannes – to the bridge! You must delay them until we get him back inside.’

  I see them now, moving among the trees, and feel a natural hatred towards them for what they’ve done. Werner was my brother-in-arms, my comrade. When I think of him, I think of his smile, of his laughing eyes, which even the strict, almost masochistic rigours of the Order could not repress.

  It is not that we are better men than they. No, for I have witnessed atrocities enough. We have burned their villages and killed their wives and children. And for what? For the Virgin and her son? To bring God to the heathens of these accursed woods? I know this, and yet the urge for vengeance – to cleave these Prussian bastards limb from limb – overwhelms me as I stand there facing them across the river.

  Meister Balk barks orders behind me. He and the young knights have begun to drag the body back to the fort. At that very moment there is sudden movement among the trees across the river as a dozen or more men charge towards us. There is the hiss of crossbow bolts flying through the air, launched by our men in the stockade. Choked cries come from our attackers.

  Johannes looks to me and smiles grimly, then takes a fighting grip of his sword. I do likewise, bracing myself to meet their attack. But something’s wrong. Out of the corner of my eye I see a movement, below me and to my right, and realise with a shock that the river has frozen over in the night and that our enemies have crossed upon the ice and are now not merely in front of us but to our sides also, on the near bank of the river. Even as I call a warning, they climb the banks and throw themselves across the space, outflanking us as they try to cut off the little party that is halfway across the snow.

  And now our men see the danger from the walls. There are shouts. A moment later, a group of knights ventures out, hurrying towards the Hochmeister and his party.

  But that’s all I see, for in that instant the enemy are upon us. Johannes grunts and swings his heavy sword. I hear the wet sound of metal cleaving flesh, the heathen’s chilling scream, and then I too am in the thick of it, parrying a spear-thrust, then hacking at an arm. A severed hand flies up and falls, steaming obscenely on the frosted planks. For a moment it is as if I am unconscious. I thrust and parry and swing and cleave, numbed to the horror. My instinct to survive outweighs all else. Slowly we fall back, giving ground, yet keeping the small force of Prussians at bay. Then, suddenly, Johannes stumbles on to one knee. I stand in front of him, to shield him while he gets back to his feet. Yet even as I do, an axe swishes past me and thuds into his back.

  I turn, bringing my sword up viciously, taking the man’s head clean from his shoulders. It’s a feat that shocks me as much as it shocks the Prussians. But I am outnumbered now, eight to one, and the space between me and the fort is alive with barbarians. Slowly I move back, fending them off, my sword scything the air about me, but it is only a question of time.

  I kill another of them, noting, as I look past his fallen body, that there’s no sign of the Hochmeister, or of the group of knights who’d sallied out to help. All of our men are fallen. I am alone out here and the main struggle now is at the gate where, using ladders and logs, the Prussians are seeking to force an entry into the stockade. The fighting is fierce there, but I have no time to watch, for the ragged group about me now begin to press their attack with renewed vigour, thrusting at me with knife and spear and axe, forcing me back step by step. One mistake and they will be on me, like wolves on a fallen traveller.

  For a moment I press back at them, wounding one, cutting the tendons of another. He falls with a timid cry. But more of them are coming – a dozen or more, freed from the struggle at the gate – and their cries urge my attackers to greater efforts. I lift my sword to fend off a swinging axe, then grunt as a spear thrust catches me on the upper chest. My armour deflects the blow, but it’s enough to send me tottering back, my sword falling out of reach.

  There are shouts from my attackers. Shouts of delight. They’re grinning now as they watch me trip and tumble down. As I sit up, they form a circle about me, their bearded faces pushed towards me, mocking me, calling to me in their barbaric tongue – Curonian, I note, not Prussian.

  ‘Let’s skin the whoreson!’

  ‘No, let’s drain him like a pig!’

  ‘Burn him!’

  ‘Let the women have him!’

  There’s laughter at that, but then the faces turn, watching as flames begin to rise up from the fort. And when they look back, the laughter’s gone, and there is nothing but murderous intent in their cold, dark eyes. Even so, they wait, and eventually another of them comes, a chieftain by his look.

  He stands over me, a bear of a man, the comparison emphasised by the thick black fur he wears. There’s a wildness in his face that suggests a hint of madness, but maybe that’s just bloodlust. He looks down at me, enjoying my helplessness; his yellowed teeth form a grin. Then he looks beyond me to one of his fellows, who throws him my sword.

  Catching it cleanly, he raises it high, then looks about him. The others bare their teeth and howl their approval, like wolves. Lifting the sword up and back, he brings it down, grunting with the effort …

  The blade cuts the air. But I am no longer there.

  3

  With a pop of displaced matter, the great circle of Four-Oh shimmers into being, beneath me and about me. Surprised faces look up from screens at the surrounding desks, their surprise turning quickly to concern as they see the blood that laces my arms and chest.

  Young Urte is there, and Karen, Helge – eight months pregnant by the look of her – and Brigitte, herself in the first stages of pregnancy. And Bella, and Lili and …

  I stagger and then, as the ‘shield’ evaporates, let Ilse and Helge reach up and help me down, realising only then just how much the fight h
as taken out of me. I am bruised and cut, but otherwise the only serious hurt is to my pride. I have failed, and the price of my failure has been the wholesale slaughter of my friends. My brothers—

  As they lead me across and sit me in a chair, I find myself overwhelmed with sudden grief at the loss.

  ‘What is it, Otto? What happened?’

  I look up. ‘Where’s Hecht?’

  ‘I’m here,’ Hecht answers, as the hatch hisses back and he strides into the room. He comes across and, leaning over me, stares into my face.

  ‘You’re like him,’ I say.

  Hecht’s eyes ask the question.

  ‘Hochmeister Balk. He was tall, like you, and his eyes … are you sure?’

  ‘No connection,’ he says, and straightens up. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Curonians. A raiding party from the north. I think they must have known Balk was there. If so …’

  It goes unsaid. Yet Hecht nods. Russian agents. It had to be.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Physically, a few cuts and bruises, but …’

  Hecht stops me with a look. ‘De-briefing in an hour. Before then, go clean up. And see Ernst. I’m told he has some news for you.’

  I nod, then look about me. The women are smiling now, pleased to see me safely home.

  ‘It’s good you’re back,’ Helge says, touching my cheek fondly. ‘And now that we know …’

  We can put things right back there. But will we? Or does Hecht have other plans?

  4

  Ernst is mid-sentence as I enter the classroom. His six young students – the youngest eleven, the eldest fifteen, their close-shaven heads showing a stubble of ash-blond hair – stare up at him, their backs to me as I step in through the hatch.

  The lecture theatre – one of eight – is a comfy, cosy space, the shelves on its walls filled with colorful artefacts from the ages we have visited – fragments of many different pasts. Teaching aids, for when words aren’t enough. Oh, none of it is authentic, yet authenticity is something of a philosophical concept in this case, for these are perfect copies.

  I smile, warmed by the familiarity of it all. On the wall behind Ernst, in large gothic lettering, is the slogan:

  NEVER GO WHERE YOU KNOW YOU’VE BEEN BEFORE

  Ernst looks up, glancing at me, and then his eyes fly wide open. A big beam of a smile lights up his face.

  ‘Otto!’

  The young students turn in their seats to stare as Ernst walks over and embraces me.

  ‘Careful …’ I groan. ‘My ribs.’

  Ernst stands back, not sure whether to be concerned or to grin like an idiot. It’s six months subjective since I last saw him. As for him …

  I frown. ‘When is this?’

  ‘August,’ he answers. ‘August eighteenth.’

  I nod. August the eighteenth, 2999.

  ‘Did you …?’ He nods at my attire. ‘Did you become a Brother?’

  I nod, and as I do, I see, behind him, how the eyes of the young men widen with awe at the thought. If there’s a single model for us, it is the Order. The Brotherhood of Teuton Knights. And I have been there. I can see how much they envy me for that, see how their eyes drink in the sight of my battered armour, the bloodied mantle that covers my shoulders. I am a hero from the Past, and they admire me.

  My blood, incidentally. For nothing that’s not mine could pass through the screens on to the platform.

  I sigh wearily, and Ernst’s expression changes. He looks at me, concerned. ‘Are you okay? You look—’

  ‘As if I’ve been in a fight?’ I smile, but the tiredness is beginning to gnaw at me. I need to bathe, to sleep. I need …

  ‘Look,’ Ernst says, putting a hand out to touch my shoulder. ‘I know this isn’t the moment, but will you speak to the boys? Tell them about your experience? They’ve been learning about the situation back there, but … well, it would be nice to have a firsthand account.’

  I smile. ‘Sure. Later. Hecht said you had something to tell me.’

  Ernst glances back at the watching students. ‘It can wait.’

  ‘All right. Then I’ll see you—’

  ‘Tonight,’ Ernst finishes for me. ‘We’ve a session at eight.’ He laughs, seeing how blank I look. ‘It’s just after eleven, Otto, in the morning.’

  ‘Ah.’ And I laugh. But it’s hard sometimes, making these jumps through time. Harder than you could ever imagine.

  5

  Nothing stays the same for ever. Not even the Past.

  Hecht’s room is long and wide, the ceiling low, except in the central space where he seems to live, connected to his terminal. There, where the floor sinks down two feet, the ceiling also climbs to form a dome above his work space, the twelve black glass panels reflecting the faint fluorescence of the tree that hovers in the air above his desk.

  Hecht’s room is always dark. As you enter, you can see Hecht’s face in the glow of his screen, austere, carved, the only bright thing in that shadowed environment. All else is glimpsed vaguely in the surrounding darkness: his pallet bed, his shelves of books, his clothes – in boxes, as if he’s never quite moved in – and other things.

  As I enter he looks up and across at me, his fingers still moving over the pad.

  ‘Otto.’

  He smiles faintly as he says it. Like the women, he is pleased to see me home, safe and in one piece.

  I walk across, then sit cross-legged on the floor, facing him, the terminal to my right, the Tree above us both, its faint, yet ever-pulsing lights like the flow of life itself.

  ‘So?’ Hecht asks, not looking up from what he’s doing. ‘What went wrong?’

  I have been thinking about this from the moment I recognised their dialect as Curonian, not Prussian: asking myself why they should be there at just that moment in time, and having argued the pros and cons in my head, I’m certain now.

  ‘There must have been a Russian agent at Marienburg.’

  Marienburg on the Baltic coast is one of the Order’s fortresses, twenty miles west of Christburg. It was from there that Meister Balk set out to ordain me into the Order. As for the Curonians, we know they’ve been working with the Russians for some while.

  Hecht glances up. ‘It could just be coincidence.’

  ‘It could, only with Meister Balk dead, and especially after the slaughter of the Sword Brothers at Saule earlier in the year, well, I can’t think of two things more likely to destabilise the Order.’

  Hecht smiles. ‘Do you want to know what happened?’

  I shrug, as if not bothered, and yet I do, for Balk’s death, three years before his due time, was certain to have caused ripples, if not the collapse of the Order’s Northern Crusade altogether, and without that …

  Without that, there would be no Prussia, no Frederick, and, ultimately, no Greater Germany. The implications were enormous. And yet it can’t have happened that way, for if it had, things here would have changed.

  Hecht glances at the screen one last time, then removes his hand from the pad, concentrating his attention on me.

  Hecht has grey eyes. Some say they’re cold – cold with the strange, dispassionate fervour of the intellectual – yet I’ve never seen that. I understand the icy fire that burns in him, for it burns in me too. And when he smiles, those same grey eyes are warm. Warm with a father’s love for his children. Or perhaps that’s just for me, his favourite, his Einzelkind as he calls me, as if any of us here could be an ‘only child’. Yet I know what he means, for I am the wolf that hunts alone. Yet they are wrong. It is just that I do not properly fit into this regimented world of ours, although I try. Urd knows I try.

  Hecht watches me a moment longer, and then he smiles. ‘What happens is this. The Crusade does indeed falter. Support for it from the Papacy dries up. Moreover, the Swedes, dismayed by the failures of the campaign, do not invade the northern lands in 1240. They stay at home, and so Nevsky never becomes Nevsky, for there are no battles on the Neva or Lake Chud. Von Gruningen become
s Grand Master both of the Prussian and Livonian Orders, and under his leadership things go from strength to strength. In 1246 the Crusade is renewed with massive support from the Western princes. As a result, the heathen Prussians are suppressed, the Curonians defeated at Krucken.’

  ‘Then …’

  ‘Time heals itself, Otto. As is its way. From 1250 onward you would scarcely know the difference.’

  ‘And Nevsky?’

  ‘He has his moment. But not as Nevsky. As ever, a few names change, the odd detail here and there, but Time … Time flows on.’

  I smile. ‘Who did you send back to find out?’

  ‘Kramer, and Seydlitz.’

  ‘Seydlitz?’

  My surprise amuses him. ‘I thought he needed to get out in Time. He’s been too wrapped up in his project.’

  ‘Barbarossa?’

  Hecht nods. ‘Yes, but I wanted him away from here, while the Elders met.’

  ‘They’ve met?’

  Hecht sits back slightly. He is a tall, gaunt-looking man, yet the black one-piece that he’s wearing makes him seem part of the shadows. Only his face is distinct; that and his hands, which rest on the edge of the desk as he studies my face.

  ‘Let’s say I consulted them.’

  ‘And?’

  Hecht smiles, then changes the subject. ‘You understand now how weak they are back there?’

  For a moment I don’t understand. Does he mean the Teuton Knights? Or is he talking about the Russians? The thing is, we’re both spread thin. I mean, three thousand years, and only a couple of hundred agents to police them. No wonder we miss things. But then, so do they. It’s a game of chess – the most complex game imaginable – only the moves can be anything, and the board …

  The board is everywhere and any time.

  I look up at the Tree.

  It is not a tree like other trees. This is a Tree of Worlds, a tree of shining light, its trunk representing our reality, a thick thread of pearled whiteness, its various, multi-coloured branches the time-lines in which our agents operate.