cleared. He found himself looking down a slanted mountainside. Far, far below him spread a wide, flat valley plain that looked green and fertile along a narrow river. Across it to the east, the sun was only a short distance above the horizon, still fiery orange. The sky blazed with pink and silver, and the crisp cool air he sucked into his lungs might have been champagne, so invigorating was it. He felt strength seeping back into his limbs. Twisting his head, he gazed up the rest of the mountain through the blooming branches of a tiny almond tree growing nearby. The peak towered above him, as remote as Olympus. Snow could be seen up there, although from the green tint of the coarse grass and the blooming plant life, he guessed it was spring.
Beautiful, no, breathtaking… if you didn’t look at the twisted, bloody corpses littering the hillside between where he sat and the road above him.
Noel averted his eyes, although his instinct for survival urged him to look quick and closely, study clothing, determine when he was.
Ravens, or possibly buzzards, circled above him in the sky.
He swallowed, making no assessments yet, and looked to the north. Another, lesser hill shaped like a cone shouldered against the flank of the mountain range, with a narrow road scaling its terraced sides to a fortress built of stone. He could see tiled rooftops among the trees and the walls of a town perched precariously upon every available bit of ground on the hill’s slopes.
Noel frowned at the narrow archways and pointed windows. He recognized the architecture as distinctly medieval. The man lying next to him wore a long surcoat split between the legs for riding, and mail armor beneath it.
He turned on the dwarfs. “Where am I?” he demanded. “Quickly. Tell me where I am.”
The dwarfs exchanged troubled glances. Thaddeus, his long face twisted into a grimace, tapped his temple. “Woodly,” he whispered. “Plumb queer in his reason. Let’s kill him and be gone. She’ll be wondering why we’re not back.”
George said to Noel, “This be Mt. Taygetus-”
‘Taygetus!“ Noel rubbed his aching head. ”Impossible. I can’t be that far off the mark.“
Mt. Taygetus was located in Greece, above the plain of Sparta. Constantinople-his intended destination-was probably a good five hundred miles to the east by land, and not much closer by sea. It might as well be a million, for he definitely had landed in the wrong century.
Glancing down at himself, he took a swift inventory. His clothes were torn and muddy, still half-damp. He’d lost one of his sandals, but the rest of his belongings seemed intact. On his left wrist, his LOC had taken on the appearance of a hammered copper bracelet, very broad and heavy. His left arm still ached, with a faint, dull throbbing, reminding him of his nightmarish journey through the time stream.
He shivered. Travel wasn’t supposed to be like that. Even now, just thinking about it made a cold sweat break out across him. He was grateful to be anywhere right now, anywhere but still trapped.
He hesitated, considering the dwarfs, but it had to be asked. “What year?”
Thaddeus stepped back. “Aye, see? He’s mad! Come away, George, and leave him to the wolves.”
George, however, stood his ground. His weathered face turned sly and calculating. “Ye’ve got a heavy purse at yer belt, good sir,” he said. Holding his pointed stick like a spear, he said, “Hand it over with no trouble, and we’ll let ye go. We don’t like Latins here, but we’ve no quarrel with a pilgrim either.”
“George!” growled Thaddeus.
George frowned, but his gaze never left Noel, who turned cold with the realization of danger, real and immediate, right here in his lap.
“Hand it over now,” George said. ‘
The purse hanging at Noel’s belt was the salt Trojan had given him. His money was concealed within his clothing. Noel’s gaze watched both dwarfs while he considered his chances. Although he had his dagger in his hand, to throw it at one of them was to disarm himself and still leave him with a remaining opponent. These men were small and grotesque, but they had the cold, watchful eyes of fighters. Thaddeus held his own dagger in his small hand, and George had the crude spear as well as a knife. Only twenty feet away, a mace lay upon the ground, its sharp steel spikes clotted with dried blood and brain bits. Noel swallowed. If he could create a diversion and break around the dwarfs, he could easily outrun them and reach the weapon. They’d leave him alone then.
Slowly, being careful to make no move that might be misconstrued, Noel unknotted the pouch strings and pulled the salt from his belt. He hefted it a moment in his hand, aware that as soon as he handed it over they would guess the trick. Salt was heavy enough, but it didn’t sit in the hand like money.
“Now, no tricks from ye,” warned George. “Hand it over easy.”
With a quick motion, Noel tossed the salt between them. Both swung involuntarily toward it, and he took advantage of the moment to scramble to his feet and run for the mace, his dagger held ready just in case.
Just as he reached it and crouched down to grasp the handle, an arrow whizzed from nowhere and struck deep into the ground between his hand and the mace. George and Thaddeus howled like jackals behind him, shouting something too fast to comprehend. Noel whirled around with his heart pounding, aware that his knife was no defense against a bowman.
A figure stood on a rocky outcropping some distance away, silhouetted against the sun. Its bow was drawn in readiness, a second arrow nocked and aimed. Noel had the feeling the first shot had been a warning, not a miss. He swallowed, his mouth very dry, and stepped reluctantly away from the mace.
“Don’t stand there gawping, you two dunderheads,” shouted an angry voice in French. A woman’s voice. “Come away!”
Thaddeus ducked his big head and ran obediently. George hesitated, glancing at Noel, then followed. The archer lowered her weapon and slung it across slim shoulders. Jumping down from the outcropping, she met the dwarfs halfway. Her scolding voice carried upon the thin air.
“Out all night like a pair of tomcats. And with what to show for it? A half-dozen money bags, and how many of them full? Demetrius said you were to be back by dawn. Wasn’t it made clear to you?”
“Yes, Elena,” said the dwarfs meekly.
“It were the dark,” said Thaddeus, rolling his eyes soulfully and putting a whine into his voice. “What if their souls had still been lurking about? It be poor luck to rob dead men in the dark, Elena. What if they’d took our spirits with them to hell?”
“Hell is where you belong, all right,” said Elena without softening her tone. “I might have known you would sit about and scare yourselves without someone to watch you. And what about this one? Did I not tell you to make sure they were dead before you searched-”
“We poked him!” said Thaddeus indignantly.
George wasn’t making excuses. His gaze remained on Noel, who was keeping a wary distance and wondering how he could edge away without being noticed.
“He be slippin‘ off,” said George.
Elena’s head came up alertly. She stepped toward Noel with the grace of a gazelle and jumped atop a small boulder to give herself an advantage over him. Pointing an arrow at Noel, she said, “Hold your place, you shivering Byzantine dog, until we give you leave otherwise.”
At least his translator implant was working perfectly. It deciphered every word of her medieval French, despite the Greek accent with which she spoke.
Automatically he rubbed his ringer across a small depression on his bracelet to make sure it was recording everything.
His strongest impression of her was… legs. Slender, firm, curvaceous legs encased in dark green hose went up and up. She stood with them braced apart, boylike, her hands upon her hips. Her shoes were made of cloth, also green, and the tops flared from her slim ankles in a decidedly sexy style. A wide-sleeved shirt of linen belted at the waist and coming down to midthigh covered the rest of her. The drape of it over her breasts, which were as round and firm as apples, left him in no doubt that she wore nothing beneath it. Her low-slung belt supported a knife and a quiver full of arrows. She had hair that was a rich, lustrous auburn, curly and wild, flowing down her back in an uncombed, unbound mane to her waist. Her face looked like something from an old Byzantine portrait, oval with flat cheekbones and a narrow nose. Her lips were full, voluptuous, ripe with promise. Her eyes had a faint slant, like a cat’s. At this distance he could not tell their color, but her skin had the delicate ivory tint of an old cameo.
Gazing at her, Noel almost forgot to breathe. She was gorgeous, feline, untamed. Confused, he cast his mind through dim, preconceived ideas of medieval women: cloistered, draped in narrow gowns to their ankles, locked
