The Empire of Time Page 5

  They scuttle past her, keeping close, and then rest there, their tiny, dark-haired bodies half-submerged in the water as they drink. And all the while the mother bear stares across at us defiantly.

  None of us moves. At most we sit forward a little, as if to watch the scene more closely.

  Finished, the cubs scuttle back into the trees, play-fighting as they go. The mother half turns to watch them, then looks back at us, her massive body swaying a little from side to side as she does, weighing up what to do. Then, as if satisfied, she bends down and, using her paws, scoops water to her mouth and drinks, glancing up at us from time to time.

  Satisfied, she straightens and raises her head. Lifting it back, she growls, but whether it’s in warning or in thanks it’s hard to tell, and in a moment she’s gone. The river flows on, like a broad band of molten sunlight running between the banks.

  I turn and look to Johannes, who’s looking down now, thoughtful.

  ‘We should have killed it,’ Conrad says, feeling the edge of his sword with his thumb. ‘We could still go after it. It can’t have gone far.’

  ‘No,’ Johannes says, with a finality that surprises us all. ‘Leave it. It has a right to be here.’

  ‘I agree,’ Werner says. ‘At least until we clear this godforsaken land.’

  There’s laughter. As it fades, Werner speaks again, gesturing towards the unending forest. ‘Imagine it. All of this turned to pasture. A chapel there, where the river turns.

  ‘And there’ – he turns and points – ‘a thriving Christian village.’

  I can imagine it only too well, for though it may take several more centuries, it will be very much as Werner says. I know because I’ve seen it.

  From our right a call breaks the stillness, and as we stand and turn towards it, so Meister Dietrich and the others emerge from the trees on the far bank a hundred yards downstream.

  ‘They’ve found one,’ Werner says quietly, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Look at them, they’ve found one of their villages.’

  I can see it’s true. Though the Meister himself is sober, stern of face, the Knight Brothers just behind him are grinning excitedly.

  ‘Thanks be to our Lady,’ Johannes murmurs and crosses himself, the others – myself included – responding in an instant. Then he turns, looking to us in disgust, as if we were still naked. ‘Now dress yourselves, quick, my brothers, unless you fancy a good flogging from the Meister!’

  And then suddenly I am back there in the forest, at night, walking silently through the moonlit dark towards the village. All about me are the shadowy figures of my brother knights. They walk slowly, with a dream-like slowness, their long swords drawn, their cloaks fluttering ghostly pale between the dark, arrow-straight trunks of the trees.

  We are close now. Ahead of us there’s light and laughter. Sparks fly up into the darkness from a great bonfire in a clearing not a hundred yards away. About the fire are a dozen or so huts, crude things of daub and wattle. Families crouch before them, their faces lit, their eyes drawn to the leaping flames. Dark figures dance and whirl about the pyre, dancing to a crude yet haunting melody played on a single four-stringed instrument, its strangely exotic sound drifting out to us. The villagers sway from side to side, caught up in the song, clapping along to its rhythm, and then, suddenly, a voice picks up the melody and is quickly joined by others.

  I feel the hairs on my neck bristle. The sound is beautiful, so pure and innocent. But I’ve no time now for such sentiments. My wrist is aching from carrying the sword, the muscles of my right arm stiff with tension. We are almost upon them, and as we come to within yards of the clearing’s edge, so the Meister’s voice cries out and we begin to run, our fierce yells of rage drowning out their song, which falters and stops.

  They’re screaming now, running this way and that, trying to flee into the forest as our men go among them, swinging their swords viciously. And those who do manage to slip away find themselves confronted by a second line of our men, standing out there among the trees, waiting to cut them down.

  A young woman tears herself from the small group and runs towards me, yelling, her arms out to me. Her dark eyes implore me not to harm her, but even as I step back, a crossbow bolt knocks her down. I watch in horror as her hands scrabble at the welling patch of red in her side, a look of shocked surprise in her eyes. She struggles a moment longer, then convulses, dying with a whimper.

  I look up. The huts are burning now, forming a great circle of brightness in the midst of that primordial dark. I turn, in time to see Brother Martin swing his blade and cleave a fleeing infant crown to navel, the child tumbling like a split fruit on to the carpet of bloodied leaves.

  I howl and try to throw my sword away, but the muscles of my wrist are locked. And even as I do, the Meister himself strides across and, bellowing in my face, shoves me towards a group of cowering peasants, who crouch before a blazing hut.

  There’s fear in their eyes, and an overwhelming hopelessness, and I want to tell them that I’m sorry. I want to say, ‘I have to do this, or my own people will die’, but I can’t. I am trapped in the moment, unable to deviate from it, and as I raise my sword again, I groan aloud and call to Urd herself to make this end.

  But Urd is not watching, not protecting me from this, and as the dream goes on, I am forced once more to watch as, one by one, they die at my hand, screaming like frightened children, their souls flying up into the darkness like windswept embers. And when it’s done, I turn to find the Meister watching me, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘There,’ he says, clapping me on the back. ‘Not so hard, is it?’

  The fires are raging now on every side, filling the dark night with their dazzling light, the blazing thatch roaring, the sound like a great torrent of falling water, glowing embers drifting on the gusting draughts like fireflies, carrying the blaze into the forest, setting parts of it alight, while at the centre of it all, the Knight Brothers, helms raised, lean on their bloodied swords and look about themselves, grinning and laughing, as if they’ve won some great victory.

  Only I can’t fool myself like them. I want to tell them just how wrong this is, only I’m not here to do that. I’m here to help them establish a bridgehead in this pagan land. I’m here because Hecht sent me here. Because …

  13

  Light flickers, flashes, and I wake, pooled in my own sweat, gasping for breath.

  ‘Otto?’

  Zarah is there, sitting across the room from me, watching. I sit up, planting my bare feet firmly on the floor, then look at her.

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  I nod, but find I cannot talk. I don’t trust myself to talk.

  ‘Hecht told me,’ she says. ‘Some of it, anyway.’

  I look about me for a drink. Zarah stands and comes across, holding a cup out to me.

  ‘Drink this. It’ll help.’

  I meet her eyes, asking an unspoken query, and she smiles and nods. ‘Enough to keep you out for several days. But it’s your choice. You can keep suffering if you want to.’

  I take the cup and down its contents in three large gulps, then slump back down, letting Zarah place the blanket over me. My eyes are already closed.

  ‘If you need to talk …’

  But it’s not talk that I need. What I need is to forget. And not to dream. Not those kind of dreams, anyway.

  ‘So?’ She says, after a while. ‘Didn’t Ernst tell you?’

  This time I answer her. ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘No matter.’

  But when I open my eyes she’s gone, as if she too were a dream.

  14

  It happens that way sometimes. Things change, and we with them – our clothes, our memories, the things we’ve done in our lives. And we might not even know about it, only Hecht keeps track and lets us know.

  It doesn’t happen often. Not the big changes. But when they do we all feel strange for a time, not quite knowing why.

  When I next see Hecht, he seems diffe
rent, though in what manner I’m not sure. He looks and acts the same. Only …

  ‘What is it, Otto?’ he asks, amused by the way I’m studying him.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Good.’ He pauses, finishes something on the keyboard, then. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Yes. Much refreshed.’

  ‘Good. Then we’ll find you something to do.’

  ‘I thought …’

  He looks up patiently. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought maybe I could take Ernst back. To the Haven. I realise it’s your space, but he’s going mad, being cooped up here.’

  Hecht studies me coolly. ‘Cabin fever.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s what they used to call it. What happened when people were cooped up together for too long. Cabin fever.’

  I nod, then wait, and after a moment Hecht shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Otto, but I can’t take that risk. We tried it once, remember?’

  I look down, disappointed. Though I knew it would be his answer, I’d hoped he might perhaps relent. After all, what trouble could Ernst get up to so far back in time?

  ‘You want me to speak to him, Otto?’

  ‘No … no. I’ll go and see him now.’

  Ernst is teaching when I find him, the boys hanging on to his every word as he tells them an anecdote from one of his journeys back. It’s one I know well, and I stand there listening in the shadowed doorway until he’s finished, and then – and only then – do I make my presence known.

  ‘It’s true,’ I say, stepping past the boys and grinning at Ernst, who is surprised to see me there. ‘I was there, and that’s exactly what happened.’

  ‘You blew them up?’ Tomas asks, eyes wide.

  ‘That’s right. They just walked right in and … boom! They never knew what hit them!’

  The boys are delighted, but it’s not them I’ve come to see, and once Ernst has dismissed them, I sit him down. Only I can’t bring myself to tell him. He so wants to go back again.

  ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘What did Hecht say?’

  ‘I didn’t get to see him. He’s very busy right now.’

  ‘Busy?’

  I nod. ‘He’s got a lot on his plate. Seydlitz’s project for a start.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘You’ll just have to be patient,’ I say, and hate myself for lying to him. ‘I’ll see him later. I promise. I’ll ask him then.’

  Ernst looks down. ‘They’re still watching me.’

  ‘Watching you?’

  ‘Assessing me. To see if I’m stable. I look up sometimes and it’s like I can see them there, in the control room, watching me on the screen, looking for some nervous tick perhaps, or some self-betraying phrase.’

  ‘I guess they have to be careful.’

  ‘Careful, yes. But sometimes …’ He hesitates, glancing past me at the camera high up on the wall behind me. ‘Sometimes I think it’s more than that.’

  15

  Another night passes without rest, and when finally I sleep, I dream once more, awful bloody dreams where I am back there with the Knight Brothers, and of all the bad things we did in the name of Our Lady, and I wake, gilded with sweat, gasping for breath, as if I’ve been drowning in blood.

  Unable to settle, I go to the sanctuary, where, before the image of Ygdrasil, the Tree of Existence, I give offerings to Urd, Goddess of Fate, Queen of Life and Death.

  This is our religion, and in this I believe, strangely enough. Rational as I am, this fulfils some need in me. Why? Perhaps because it is the only faith that reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of mankind, a religion that does not ask its followers to be any better than its gods. And yet …

  Yet there is still a small, argumentative part of me that does not believe. My ‘mathematical soul’ as I call it. And that part finds such emotional comfort little more than a superior theatre show. Yet, cold as I might appear, aloof as I am, my emotional self believes. I know the gods exist, and that when I die my soul – yes, and my bodily self – will go to Valhalla, there to feast with the gods.

  I close my eyes and lower my head, saying the words of the ritual.

  ‘Great Mother Urd protect me and guide me. All-Father Odin, grant me the strength of will to do my duty.’ And it is true. Urd does protect me and watch over me. She, above all, safeguards my deeper self. She is my strength. If ever I lost my faith in her …

  I open my eyes and look up at the World Tree, nodding to myself. The great ash is the image of our cosmos: its roots stretch back into the Past, its great trunk forms the Present, its branches unfold into the Future. So life is, and we … we are but leaves upon that Tree.

  I have travelled the length and breadth of Time, and I have seen more than mortal man ought, yet only here do I find myself truly at peace, body and soul at one. Here, yes, and in one other place.

  But I shall speak of that another time.

  I stand, and as I do, I realise that Hecht is there, just behind me, his back to the door.

  ‘Forgive me, Otto. I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  ‘It’s okay. I was just—’

  Hecht smiles. ‘I know. I come here every day.’

  I nod, understanding the feelings that we share about this place. Even so, I feel embarrassed, as if I have been caught doing something illicit, something very … personal. Sensing this, Hecht steps back a little.

  ‘If you’d rather I came back …’

  ‘No … come and worship with me.’

  And, turning back, I kneel once more, bowing my head before the holy ash, even as Hecht kneels beside me and, bowing his head, takes up the litany.

  Part Two

  In the Footsteps of Napoleon

  “One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil”

  – Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888)

  16

  ‘Otto … we need to talk.’

  Freisler stands before me, blocking my way. If I asked him to move, he would; he’s not an impolite man, but there’s something about his manner that gives me pause for thought.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Not here,’ he says, and places his hand on my upper arm. I look at it pointedly, and he removes it without comment. He knows I don’t really like him – that I instinctively don’t like him – but it doesn’t seem to worry him. Nothing does.

  He turns and, tapping in the code, makes the door open on to his rooms. As it hisses apart, he looks round at me and gestures for me to enter.

  I step inside. Books line the walls. In one corner is a chair. Otherwise there’s nothing. No bed, no table, and no sign in the room I glimpse through the archway that he has any of these things. It makes me wonder where he sleeps, or even if he sleeps. Fanciful, I know, but Freisler attracts speculation like that.

  ‘Well?’ I ask. ‘What did you want to say?’

  Freisler is a strange fish. He’s a good twenty years older than me, and people say he was Hecht’s favourite, once upon a time. Until I came along. Not that he’s ever made any comment on it – not in my earshot, anyway – only I guess it might irk him, that he might see me somehow as his usurper.

  He looks at me now with that cold, supercilious stare of his, eyes half-closed under those heavy lids, his long face almost nodding. They call him Hecht’s Jagdhund – his ‘bloodhound’ – and there is a certain dog-like quality to him, only he’s far too intelligent to deserve that sobriquet. Freisler is very much his own man, however loyal he is to Hecht.

  ‘I thought you should know what happened back there,’ he says, his voice clipped, businesslike.

  ‘I thought I did. Someone spotted me as I went in. They changed agents and—’

  I stop, because Freisler is shaking his head. ‘I meant what really happened.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It wasn’t you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, it was those two … idiotisch.’

  I blink, shocked. It’s not like Freisler to offer any form of criticism. ‘What do you
mean?’

  ‘Hecht’s played it down. He had to. Barbarossa had been green-lit. Any criticism of Seydlitz …’

  Would have meant the cancellation of his project …

  I nod my understanding. ‘So?’

  ‘So it endangers us all. That level of incompetence, I mean. It undermines what we’ve been doing.’

  ‘But surely …?’

  ‘When they killed those Russians, they tripped all kind of alarm wires. The Russians sent in quite a few of their agents to have a really close look to see what was going on. It got quite hairy back there for a time. And you know what they were looking at?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seydlitz. They paid him a lot of attention. You know how they do. One of their men will be sitting at a nearby table in a bar, listening in, while another one will be standing outside in the street as he comes out. It’s how they work. They get to know our men really well.’ Freisler smiles; a cold, wintry smile. ‘Luckily we have me. And the Russians don’t have a clue who I am.’

  But you know who they are …

  ‘So why are you telling me? Why not Hecht?’

  ‘Hecht’s busy. Very busy. Besides, I wanted to alert you.’

  ‘Alert me?’

  ‘About Seydlitz. I’ve an instinct for these things.’

  It’s almost ironic. ‘You think him unsound?’

  ‘No. Seydlitz is immensely sound. He would do anything for the Volk. He’s clever and resourceful and his project – Barbarossa – is a good one. It had a good chance of succeeding. Only the Russians know now who he is, and he can be headstrong. The killings … I can’t help thinking that we’ll pay for them. How, I don’t know, only—’

  ‘Did they bring them back?’

  ‘The two that were killed? Of course they did. They may have three times as many agents out there, but they don’t waste men for nothing. Besides, it was easy for them. Just a minor change in Time. Why, that very evening I was drinking with them like they were old friends.’