“You must fetch the strumpet and bring her to us,” a second German voice said. “So that we might end the enchantment, and free our dear brother from her unholy plans.”
“I am really getting tired of everyone in the eighteenth century believing I’m some sort of satanic slut,” I grumbled softly to Nikola’s unconscious body, wiping my hands on his jacket before gently pulling him toward me. “Nikola, wake up, we have to go.”
“I suppose that would be all right,” the man named Ted (assumedly the stable dude’s son who was supposed to be out seeing his girlfriend) said slowly. “But I think I should ask me da about it first.”
“We have no time, my friend. You see how the moon is high in the sky? We must act now to take the enchantment off the baron. Quickly, you will return to the castle and fetch the whore, and return here as soon as you may. We will perform the sacrifice then, and save our brother.”
Sacrifice?
I clasped Nikola’s head in my hands and shook it gently. “Nikola! Wake up! They’re going to sacrifice something, and I have a horrible feeling it’s going to be me. Oh, for heaven’s sake, now what do I do?”
I didn’t have time to come up with a suitably MacGyver-esque plan; it was obvious that as soon as Nikola’s evil brothers got rid of the groom’s son, they would come back to check on Nikola, which meant I had to get him out of there pronto.
“OK, let’s get you onto the horse, and maybe I can hide you in the forest until you come to.” Thor, who was busily snuffling Nikola’s feet, looked on with interest as I half dragged, half carried Nikola the few steps to his side. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between dragging a full-grown, solidly built man a few feet and lifting him up onto the back of a horse, and it quickly became apparent that I’d have to find another way to move him.
Sounds of voices speaking in German, growing louder along with the snapping of branches, spurred me into instant action.
“Sorry about this, but it’s the only option,” I whispered to Nikola as I wrestled his coat off his torso, and wrapped it around his head, tying the sleeves around it to provide a buffering cocoon. I ripped off his neckcloth, a thick swath of linen about eight inches wide and a yard long, and tied it around one of his ankles, tying the other end to the stirrup. With another murmured apology, I grabbed Thor’s bridle and turned him so Nikola lay behind him. Light flashed in the trees, the golden light of a lantern as it shone through the branches.
I flinched as I hauled the resisting horse forward, aware that the thumping sounds of the first couple of hesitant steps forward were made by Nikola’s body being dragged across lumps of sod, wood, and rocks, but after the horse shied in protest of the awkward burden he hauled, he walked forward docilely enough.
We’d just made it past a couple of fir trees that seemed to have twined around each other as they grew when there was an angry shout behind us.
“Crap!” I swore, and, grabbing the bridle firmly, bolted forward, praying that I had wrapped Nikola’s head well enough to keep it from being damaged any further.
The yelling was now accompanied by the sound of men running after us. I dodged around another big fir, trying frantically to think of a way to lose them. I couldn’t drag Nikola much farther without risking harming him, and, without help, couldn’t get him onto the horse. As I rounded the tree, moonlight spilled onto the ground in front of me. My heart leaped at the sight of the faintly visible swirling mass of light that seemed to hang in the air in the center of the clearing. “My swirly thing!”
“You! Trollop! Stop!”
I glanced over my shoulder to see the thinner of Nikola’s brothers dashing around trees, a sword in his hand. He was about thirty feet behind us, and I could see, even in the flickering shadow of the trees, the man’s lips pulled back to reveal a horrible grimace of sheer evil.
I ran for the swirly thing, stopping just at the edge of it, and threw myself down at Nikola’s feet, desperately trying to wrench free the cloth I’d tied around his ankle. The weight of his body had tightened the knot, however, making it impossible for me to undo.
“I hope to god our lizard overlords understand why I had to do this,” I told Nikola as I leaped back to my feet and, grabbing the horse by his bridle, ran straight into the middle of the swirling light.
July 15
The noise was what woke me up. It was a horrible, strangled sort of noise, one that suddenly became very loud and annoying, and disrupted my happy little sleep.
I frowned when the noise increased to a volume that irritated my nerves, frowning even more when the lovely warmth that surrounded me suddenly darkened. I opened one eye and looked up into the disheveled face of a man.
A very handsome man with black hair, and the most gorgeous eyes the color of a pale blue topaz.
A man who looked familiar.
“I bloody well should look familiar, since you were riding me just a few hours ago. Why the devil did you try to asphyxiate me with my own coat? Is it because I insisted that you be the one to seduce me? Or was that your way of starting some very curious form of lovemaking? If it is the latter, I must inform you that I will not have it. I am a fair man, a generous man, a man who is willing to let his woman seduce him if that is her desire, but I do not find having my vision and breathing obstructed in any manner titillating. Henceforth, you will leave off the rough lovemaking, and return to the sort where you apply your naked flesh to mine in a more congenial manner.”
“Nikola?” I asked, as slowly the shadowed recesses of my brain brightened with dawning enlightenment. I opened the other eye and for a few seconds wondered what the hell had happened. I went ahead and asked him. “Why do you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward? Why is your face all red?”“Why did you bind my head and tie me to Thor?” he countered.
“Huh?” I sat up, and immediately the world spun around me. Nikola grabbed my arms and held me for the few seconds it took for everything to resume its proper place. “Oh, man, what was I drinking last night? I have the hangover to end all hangovers.”
“You have not been hung, although I believe I would be within my rights to throttle you. Are you well?”
This last was said with much more concern than the former, and after a minute of letting my brain get back to the business of running my body, I nodded. “Just a bit woozy, although I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about.”
“This,” he said, gesturing toward his boot. The remnants of a piece of white cloth fluttered from his ankle. “And that.”
I looked at where he pointed, and saw a big horse happily grazing a few yards from us, another white cloth dangling from one stirrup.
“That’s…that’s…” I closed my eyes for a moment to try to remember the horse’s name.
“Thor.”
“Thor! That’s right. Oh, holy Jesus!” With the mention of the name, the full memory of the terrifying flight through the woods returned to me. I got to my knees, holding on to Nikola’s arm as I quickly looked around us, half expecting to see one of his horrible brothers lurking in the shadows of the trees.
Although we were in the shade of the trees, the sun was high in the sky, casting its rays down on earth and human and horse alike…and the swirly thing that crested the slight hill about twenty feet away. “The swirly thing is still there, although”—I bit my lower lip as I got to my feet—“it looks different. It looks dimmer, if that makes sense.”
Nikola nodded, winced at the gesture, and put his hand to the back of his head before saying, “It would look different, given its use. I take it that is the object you mentioned seeing before you were transported to me?”
“Yes, and what do you mean—oh, your head! How does it feel?” Gently, I touched his head, finding a small bump where a larger one had been earlier.
“Sore. Someone hit me on the back of it. Yes, that’s the spot. It’s healing now, but when I woke up, I felt as if Alexander had marched his entire army over it.”
My hands dropped, and my gaze skittered away for a few seconds while I fought the guilty thought that I’d made it worse. I cleared my throat. “I’m pretty sure it was one of your brothers who knocked you out. Um. How does the rest of you feel?”
“A bit battered, but improving with every passing minute. I appear to have some ability that allows me to heal at an accelerated rate. I made a few notes about that before you woke up.” He shook out his jacket, and put it on before pulling a small knife from his boot to cut the cloth from first his ankle and then the stirrup. “Why did you tie me to a horse and drag me here?”
“That’s going to take some explaining. The super-short version is that once I saw the swirly thing, I knew I’d have to risk it.”
“Risk what?” he asked, frowning as he bent to put away the knife.
“Bring you through it to my time.”
He stood up and gave me a long look. “You did what?”
“Welcome to 2012,” I said with a smile, spreading my hands. “I think you’re going to like it.”
“I may well like it, but that’s not something we’re bound to find out. We did not travel through time, Io. You simply stumbled over a root or rock and became insensible.”
“You don’t think we came through the swirly thing?” I looked around the clearing, but there was nothing there to offer a clue as to the year. “Why not? You know I came through it to your time.”
“It is impossible because that”—he gestured toward the object in question—“is clearly a portal, and you said yourself it has diminished.”
“Yeah, it does look a lot fainter, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“You drew upon its energy to arrive here. It faded in response. There is not enough energy left in it to transport two people and a horse.”
“Or it sent us back, and what you see is what it looks like after it did so.”