Baltov Eldra rose from behind her desk as Danar Sirna entered her office.
"Welcome back," the professor said. "How was Greffa?"
"I'd expected more impressive ruins; after all, when the Iron Route was open, Ult-Greffa, or Old Greffa, had a population of half a million. Now it has about half that many. I suppose the Grefftscharrers were thrifty and used the abandoned temples and merchants' palaces for building stone. As far as the 'new' Greffa is concerned, it looks like any other Great Kingdom capital."
"Exactly. Would you like a drink? Don't be ashamed to ask for something civilized, either."
Sirna blushed, remembering the Eldra's lecture the day she'd let a remark slip about "her last chance for a civilized drink for quite a while." That sort of remark, Eldra had said eloquently and at some length, could put her or indeed the whole University Study Team in danger. At best it could force the Paratime Police to kill, or at least alter the memories of some innocent outtimer.
"It will be even worse on Kalvan's Time-Line," she concluded. "There a remark like that could reach Kalvan's own ears. He already knows too damn much about the Paratime Secret for everybody's comfort. If he's given a clue that Paratemporal travelers are in Hostigos watching him—well, it will be an open-and-shut case for making him dead.
"Colonel—I mean Chief Verkan will do his duty, but he won't thank the people who made it necessary. The University Team will be shut down regardless of what happens after Kalvan's death, and as for the person responsible—if she ever goes outtime again, it will be over a lot of people's dead bodies. Mine included. Remember that," she added with a jab of her pipe stem that made Sirna feel a pistol was being pointed at her.
"Ale, thank you," Sirna said, bringing her mind back to the present.
"Ahh, a proper lady's drink," Eldra said as she punched in the order on her desk keyboard. "However, if you want to be sure of being taken for a proper lady, I'd suggest leaving that gown behind."
"Oh. Is it dressing—above my station?"
"Not really. It's just too revealing, particularly with your height and figure. It doesn't quite suggest the degree of propriety I think you want to maintain, unless you can persuade one of the Team to play a legitimate male protector role."
"I thought Zarthani laws and customs didn't absolutely require that I have one."
"The laws and customs don't. The University does, for the time being. Kalvan's Time-Line is in the middle of a war, and there are lots of rough types running around who might try to get away with more than they normally would with an unprotected woman. Also, there are bound to be ordinarily quite decent men who believe that tomorrow they may die: 'so why not have a little fun tonight?' We don't want to have to kill too many of either kind. It offends comrades and kin and generally attracts the sort of notice we'd rather avoid."
"Suppose I dealt with the man myself?"
"You could; as a free trader's daughter, they'd expect you to be handy with firearms. I don't recommend it. You're not a noble woman, and even if you didn't start a feud you could end up on the wrong end of a wrongful-death suit. We don't want the Study Team dragged into court, either, if we can avoid it."
"So I should keep my head bowed, my mouth shut, my neckline high and my skirts low?"
"Until you have a feel of the time-line, that's the safest course. Once the war is over Hostigos may be a better place for women than the rest of Kalvan's Time-Line, but that won't be for at least another year."
"Is that from Rylla's example?"
Eldra nodded.
"How could have Ptosphes have raised her any other way, if she was going to be heiress of Hostigos?"
"Very easily, my dear. Or do you still have a touching faith in male decency at your age?"
The tone was light but Sirna detected bitterness and disappointment underlying it. She remembered the stock University phrase for Professor Baltov's four noisy companionate marriages: "the victory of optimism over experience."
"No, I suppose another Ptosphes could have re-married and had more children, or even adopted a male heir and then married Rylla off to him as soon as she was of age."
"Yes. One we know of on another time-line did just that—Styphon take him! Rylla was about fourteen and the adopted heir combined the worst features of the late Gormoth of Nostor and Balthar of Beshta. Our Rylla was allowed to do what she wanted, and landed herself a first-class husband on top of it. Oh well, if we start moaning about how unequally the luck of the universe is divided up, we'll never get anything done."
A robot rolled in with Sirna's ale and winter wine for the Professor, and the conversation took a backseat for a moment. While they drank, Sirna picked out a list of equipment she'd selected from the terminal's surprisingly well-stocked storerooms. She'd known that the Fifth Level Kalvan Project terminal had been expanding as the project grew, but she hadn't expected storerooms that looked big enough to supply all the needs of a small belt. She deleted the questionable gown, replaced it with another she knew had a neckline up somewhere around her chin, then skimmed the rest of the list and handed it back to Eldra.
The History Professor's eyebrows rose. "That's a pretty big medkit you're taking, isn't it?"
"Yes, I was surprised to find some of the things in stock."
"We've been unloading new shipments every couple of days while you were in Grefftscharr. Things are about to get very lively in Kalvan's Time-Line and we don't want to have to spend time sending requisitions all the way back to First Level where the clerks can lose them. The Kalvan Project has a Grade Two priority, but you know how much that means. Our request for a hundred needler chargers will still be kicked down below some bureaucrat's request for a new rug."
Sirna knew that; she also knew that the stockpile of equipment here on Fifth Level would be out of sight of the Executive Council, newsies or the people who were waiting for her reports. They would not be out of reach of the University people—or the Paratime Police, starting with Verkan Vall.
To turn the conversation away from this potentially dangerous territory, Sirna shifted into Zarthani and told the story of how her father, the Free Trader Sharthar of Greffa, had been gifted by the gods with some skill as a healer, had learned healing arts wherever he went and practiced them when trade was poor and finally taught much of what he knew to his daughter before he died.
Eldra was smiling by the time Sirna finished. "I'm impressed. You have the Grefftscharri accent better than any of us except Verkan Vall."
"Thank you. I practiced it a lot while visiting Ult-Greffa, the start of the old Iron Trail, and the other Grefftscharrer princedoms. Grefftscharr is larger than any of the Northern Great Kingdoms, yet Theovacar is only considered a king."
Eldra smiled. "And not very happy about it. Four power blocs dominate Grefftscharrer politics: the king, the Greffan nobility, the Grefftscharrer Princes and the merchant magnates. No one of the four is strong enough to enforce its will on the other three, and as a result Grefftscharrer politics has been shaped by constantly shifting alliances among the power blocs. This is typical of most of the Upper Middle Kingdoms' princedoms and city-states, like Volthus, Morthron, Ragnor, Karphya or the Nythros City States. It hasn't helped Theovacar that the Grefftscharri kingship has been diluted by three weak kings in the last century. He's bucking the tide and not very popular at the moment, which has helped Verkan in his role of Trader Verkan since he represents a powerful new ally for the king to court. Of course, little is predictable about Theovacar; paranoia is common in the royal Greffan line and he appears to have inherited more than his share. He could use a ten-day with the Bureau of Psych-Hygiene!"
They both laughed.
Sirna winced when Eldra took out her pipe; she was allergic to tobacco smoke, which reminded her to take an anti-allergy implant before she left for Kalvan's Time-Line, where everybody but the household cat smoked. "I was surprised at how large Grefftscharr really is."
"Yes, it's the dominant kingdom of the Upper Middle Kingdoms. The early Zarthani and Urgothi—most of the Middle Kingdoms were settled by the Second Wave Urgothi migration—followed the navigable waterways and settled along them. Around the Great Lakes, as they're called on Kalvan's home time-line, are a number of rivers and large tributaries, which attracted settlers like a lodestone. They stopped at the eastern border of what is now Glarth in Hos-Agrys. At its peak half a millennium ago, Grefftscharr ruled over most of the Upper Middle Kingdoms with a heavy hand. Some of the Princedoms, like Thagnor, are now Grefftscharri possessions in name only. Theovacar has his work cut out for him if he truly intends to re-create the Glory that was Greffa at the height of the iron trade."
Eldra paused to light her pipe, which was self-igniting.
She would have to leave her pipe on Fifth Level when she went outtime, thought Sirna, and exchange it for a tinderbox and a corncob pipe.
"Next to Hos-Hostigos," Eldra continued, "Greffa is the most exciting Study Team post on Kalvan's Time-Line."
"How about Balph, Styphon's House's Holy City?" Sirna asked.
"It's both more dangerous and boring—who wants to listen to a bunch of priests chatter about a religion even they don't believe in? Plus, there are too many cabals; Kalvan's really stirred up a hornet's nest. We only have a small observation group stationed there. The odds are, as soon as he deals with Hos-Harphax, Kalvan will clean out the entire clutch."
"I hope so," Sirna added. "Is there anything in the kit I should have left out, or anything missing I could have safely put in? I was thinking of antiseptics—"
Eldra shook her head. "Kalvan doesn't have much faith in the local midwives and was drumming antiseptics into Brother Mytron's ear five minutes after he learned Rylla was pregnant. That we know. The knowledge hasn't spread generally, yet. That there's no distilling to produce high-proof ethanol in most of Aryan-Transpacific doesn't help either, although their winter wine would make a pretty good antiseptic if anyone there understood the germ theory of disease.
"Also, we have to reckon with the possibility of Styphon's House declaring any of Kalvan's non-military innovations to be of demonic origin. They won't dare outlaw his fireseed formula because they'd lose too many allies, but something that doesn't kill people—"
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"It makes sense to the people of Kalvan's Time-Line, and their opinion is the one that will matter once you're out there among them. Remember that, and face the fact that one day you may have to let an outtimer you've come to care about die of blood poisoning because you can't use outlawed or contaminated medical knowledge to save him. You'll find such an outtimer, too. Maybe not on Kalvan's Time-Line, but much sooner than you expect."
Sirna wanted to express grave doubts that she would ever care for someone so barbaric as to fight and die for a religion, but something in Eldra's face and voice stopped her. There was a story there that even the most scurrilous University gossip had never hinted at but which had obviously left something sunk very deep in the professor.
"I'll remember," Sirna said and covered her uneasiness with another drink.
Eldra sat looking into space or maybe into the past for a moment, then keyed the big visiscreen on the wall behind her desk to life. A map of the current theatre of action in Kalvan's Time-line sprang into sight.
"As you can see, things are building up rather quickly to as nice a pair of pitched battles as you ever want to be a long way from. Ptosphes has moved down into what Kalvan would call Chambersburg, Pennsylvania—Tenabra in Kalvan's Time-Line. The vanguard of the Knights and the Ktemnoi is up to Tarr-Corria—Hagerstown, Maryland. Ptosphes may be about to decide to give battle, because as far as he can see the enemy only has about seventeen thousand men assembled at Tarr-Corria. He knows the rest have to be catching up sooner or later but he doesn't think they've done so."
"Do we know differently?"
"We suspect Soton either knows something we don't or is just confident that he can fight and win against three-to-two odds. We don't have anybody on the ground with Soton, and we've done all the air reconnaissance we can do without giving any portents. We don't want that, not when we don't know to whom we'll be giving them!"
Sirna looked up at the map again. "Wasn't there a battle in the American Civil War on the Europo-American Subsector fought near Tarr-Corria?"
"Yes. Antietam—I think. That was the Northern victory that ended the War and made General McClellan President after Lincoln. No, wait a minute—that was another Europo-American Subsector, not Kalvan's. Have you been studying up on his home time-line?"
Sirna nodded. "Mostly American history, but some European, too. Genghis Khan is fascinating in a horrid sort of way. Hitler is just plain horrid."
"Wait until you've talked to a few people who've been out on timelines where the Third Reich won." Eldra made a face and took a long pull at her drink. "Some of them make Aryan Transpacific, Styphon's House Subsector look pleasant."
"So Kalvan and the Army of Hos-Harphax will probably be going at it within the next few days?" Sirna asked.
"It looks that way. Kalvan's Mobile Force has moved down to within three days' march of Harphax City itself without meeting any serious opposition."
"Does he plan to besiege Harphax City?"
"I don't think so. According Aranth Saln, our Study Team military expert, it appears that Kalvan is baiting a trap with the Mobile Force—using the smaller force to taunt the Harphaxi to come to battle. He's slowed his advance now to give Prince Philesteus and Duke Aesthes a chance to come out of their tarrs and meet Kalvan on the battlefield. Either that or face a prolonged siege that the Harphaxi are ill prepared to suffer, since they have less than two weeks provisions—if that!—in their storehouses in Harphax City and Tarr-Harphax.
"Aesthes isn't much of a general, according to Records. They show he's only fought in four minor campaigns, usually princely rebellions or peasant uprisings, and in each engagement he dragged his heels; usually, the Harphaxi won because they had the bigger army and more supplies. There hasn't been a war this big in Hos-Harphax in over a century. Aesthes' tactics—if you can call them that—are not going to work against a large, very mobile army like Kalvan's Army of the Harph.
"Saln's theory is that, beside being a family friend, King Kaiphranos appointed Duke Aesthes to head the Harphaxi Army as a counterpoint to young—that's only relative to Aesthes advanced age, since the Prince is some thirty-six winters old as the Zarthani count years—Philesteus, who is known to be hot-headed and rash."
Eldra went on to explain how Kalvan did not want to engage in a siege as the opening move of the battle. "No siege guns and too few men to blockade the City. Also, Kalvan would run into supply problems, since the country between where he is now and the City will be foraged bare in another ten-day. It would also see him far removed from his storage depots in Sask and Beshta. In which case, he would have to depend on supply trains vulnerable to smaller Harphaxi units and local bandits. Protecting the supply trains, would tie up too much of his cavalry.
"Nor, does Saln suspect, that Kalvan wants to spend the time and men it would take to pacify the territory between Beshta and Harphax City, which might take four or five ten-days and tie down much of his infantry guarding prisoners and pacified villages and towns. If Kalvan can 'convince' the Harphaxi to chase the Mobile Force to near Beshta, where he has the majority of his forces, it will be the Harphaxi who have stretched supply lines and re-supply problems. The Hostigi will be rested and able to maneuver the Harphaxi into a picked battlefield."
"So what are the Harphaxi waiting for?" Sirna asked.
"Philesteus and Aesthes are waiting for another shipment of Styphon's muskets and fireseed to re-arm the City Militia Bands and re-equip some of the worse-off mercenaries. If they march now, almost a quarter of the Harphaxi Army would be Styphon's House troops, the Temple Guardsmen and the Order of Zarthani Knights. Prince Philesteus doesn't know whether he'd rather be called a coward or give Styphon's forces the chance to claim credit for the victory."
"He sounds like a fool," Sirna said.
"He isn't really. Philesteus is an acceptable cavalry commander, but high-level politics and grand strategy are over his head. He's also caught up in a chivalrous code that was obsolete in the Five Kingdoms a hundred years ago. The same goes for most of the other Harphaxi nobility, which is why Kalvan is going to stamp them into the mud of the Harph, like the dinosaurs they are, when the shooting starts." There was no mistaking the positively bloodthirsty note of anticipation in Eldra's voice.
"Anyway, the shooing is going to start within a ten-day at most. I want to take you to Kalvan's Time-Line in time to at least catch the aftermath."
"Isn't that going to cut short our field orientation on Kalvan Control One?"
Sirna was annoyed. She'd been looking forward to a month or so in the similar time-line the University used for orientating the Kalvan's Time-Line Team members to what Styphon's House Subsector, Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific looked, sounded and smelled like."
"There isn't any more Kalvan Control One," Eldra said grimly. "That's why we're leaving sooner than I'd planned."
"But—I thought that was the safe one, where Gormoth of Nostor fell off his horse at Marrox Ford—"
"—and dashed out his brains that none of us thought he had?"
"Right!"
"Unfortunately, somebody with even fewer brains forgot to check out the other changes between Kalvan's Time-Line and Kalvan Control One. One of them was a very good mercenary captain named Sthrathos. The other was Sarrask of Sask, a much abler and more thoroughly vicious Sarrask than the one on Kalvan's Time-Line. Hostigos had a one-year reprieve, then Sarrask and Sthrathos led twenty thousand men against it. Green shifted to show blue and red arrows writing all over the map of what was now Hostigos. The screen shifted over to show a night aerial view of a burning town.
"That was Hostigos Town from the local sky-eye after we got all but two of our people out."
Another shift. "Afterwards we were able to send in a few people disguised as traveling harness makers. Men only."
Sirna recognized Bear Creek Bridge on the west side of Hostigos Town, or at least where the bridge had been. Now its stone abutments stood smoke-blackened on either side of a stream fouled with ashes, burned timbers and some floating...things?...Sirna was very glad she didn't have to smell.
Shift. The Street of Coopers, formerly hard packed earth lined with the kind of solid wood and plaster houses skilled craftsmen could afford under the peaceful rule of a good prince. Now the street was churned into mud and littered with dead bodies and horse droppings. A few scavenger dogs gnawed at the corpses and from the ashes of houses, chimneys poked skyward like monuments to the dead.
Shift. The road up to Hos-Hostigos lined with gallows with a corpse dangling from each one. Carrion birds were pecking at some of the bodies. Others had decomposed to the point where not even a bird would approach them.
Shift. The gateway of Tarr-Hostigos, the gates themselves gone, the hinges pried loose by looters, smoke-blackened stones, dark blood stains on the flagstones of the courtyard, and over the gateway a row of spikes—
"No! No!"
Sirna's stomach twitched, then rolled. She closed her eyes briefly, swallowed and decided that she could live with the sight of the heads decorating those spikes. Harmakros, she noted, had his skull split from the forehead to the left ear. They must have taken his head when they picked up his body on the battlefield. Some of the others—Ptosphes and Chartiphon—must have suffered the same fate. There was also one empty spike.
"What happened to—Rylla?"
Eldra swallowed. "You don't want to know the details. As to what happened to her body—someone lifted it off the spike one night. Probably took it away for a decent funeral pyre, at least that's what Sarrask thought. He retaliated by herding two hundred Hostigi hostages into the local temple of Dralm, setting it on fire and having musketeers shoot down anybody who tried to get out."
Eldra silently punched in an order for more drinks, then made an elaborate business of re-filling her pipe. When it was lighted again, she chuffed on it for a minute until there was a thick veil of smoke over her head. "So Kalvan Control One is gone and we haven't really staffed the other Control Lines for full scale orientation. You could learn something on one of them, but not enough in time to go out with me to Kalvan's Time-Line this season.
"You could also go out with me to Kalvan's Time-Line with nothing but Hypno-mech orientation. You already have the language down very well, and your Greffan accent has at least some of the right flavor, so you wouldn't be completely a lost lamb. Normally I'm as strict about the 'No field orientation, no go' rule as anyone, but a time always comes when you have to bend the rules. If you're willing, I'll make this one of the times."
If Sirna had thought any of the Zarthani gods existed to hear a prayer of thanks, she would have sent one that she hadn't lost control of her stomach. Those pictures of the sacked and ruined Kalvan Control One must have been a test, one she'd apparently passed—at least to the point of being given another test.
Spend a safe summer of orientation in an unmolested but badly equipped Control Time-Line, or plunge headfirst into Kalvan's Time-Line in the middle of a major war with nothing but her hypnotic learning and experience in Greffa to arm her against all the deprivations and horrors of a Pre-Industrial Society at war.
She knew she should analyze the situation before making her decision, as both a proper student and First Level Citizen. She also knew that only one factor really made a difference, and that was the knowledge that if she didn't go to Kalvan's Time-Line with Eldra, she would never be sure of her own courage again.
Her ex-husband would doubtlessly have called that attitude a relic of barbarism, along with physical courage itself. He might even have called it a sign of reverting to her prole ancestry; that had been something he'd flung at her often enough when they were alone and he didn't have to be concerned about his image as an enlightened man utterly opposed to all class, sex or race considerations.
"I'll go," Sirna said. Her ex-husband didn't matter. All that mattered suddenly was Baltov Eldra's triumphant grin as she raised her glass to toast Kalvan's victory. Sirna felt slightly guilty at that grin—after all, she was taking advantage of Eldra's kindness to spy on her—but not guilty enough to change her mind. Besides, her ex-husband would have called her guilt a reversion to pre-enlightened hygienic socialization.
For once, Sirna agreed with him; raising her cup, she made her own toast: "To ex-husbands—and may they stay that way, with Dralm's Blessing!"
Eldra enthusiastically joined her and clanked their glasses together hard enough to slosh out a good mouthful of ale.