Shouts behind them growing closer. Footfalls sounded behind them, sandals cracking through the undergrowth and coming nearer. Jimbo went to stand and the pain in his side from the spear point sent an almost electric thrill of pain through his chest. He went to one knee. Byrus grabbed the bigger man’s elbow to haul him up. Jimbo clenched his teeth and manned up to get through the agony that threatened to take his breath away. That fucker cracked some ribs, the Ranger thought, and went to spit at the now-inert corpse lying at the head of a stream of blood. His mouth was too dry.
The little Macedonian shoved Jimbo against a tree and left him. He struggled to stay on his feet, dizzy with pain, his back to the stout cedar trunk. He saw Byrus leaping toward a gang of Romans exploding from the forest shadows for them. The surfer dude that time forgot was slashing with his short sword like some wild thing, growling and snapping as he burst in among the attackers. Men screamed and howled. A soldier jabbed with a pilum, and Byrus cut the wooden shaft from the long spear point with a single stroke and booted the man in the nuts. He then turned to a swordsman, batted the man’s blade aside and pulled the man onto his steel until the gladius’s blade exploded from between the man’s back ribs.
Jimbo raised his rifle to help Byrus out. He aimed at a sweating swordsman and depressed the trigger with no result. He looked down at the M-4 to see that the sword strike from that first legionnaire had dented the receiver on the weapon. The rifle was eighty-sixed. The dude with the broken pilum had gotten past Byrus and was racing with the severed end of the wooden shaft held in his fist like a club. Jimbo clawed for the Colt 1911 he had holstered on his sword belt.
He cleared the holster and was raising the weapon when his arm went dead and the pistol dropped from his numb fingers. The spearman had brought the hard wooden haft down on his forearm and was swinging it back for a blow to Jimbo’s head.
That was the last the Pima saw before the sky and all around him turned a starless black and he was adrift in the Big Fuck-all.
46
When Are You?
Dwayne took her in his arms. Mindful of the baby, he pressed her to him gently.
His coat was gritty against her cheek and stank of wood smoke. She didn’t care. Stephen wriggled in protest between them. Dwayne took her shoulders and stepped back, eyes on the child. There were equal parts of joy and regret in those eyes.
“Dwayne,” she began.
“I want to hold him,” Dwayne said and scooped the baby from her and held him close.
She studied his face in the hazed moonlight. Black soil highlighted the lines Dwayne’s face. There were more there than she recalled. What she thought was weariness in his expression she now recognized as age. Cold spiked up her spine with the realization. This man was older than the man she said goodbye to in Berne, considerably older. The gray at the temples was not discoloration from ash. The hard lines about the mouth and eyes, the sag of the lids. Twenty years had passed since their last meeting. She touched his sleeve, and he lifted his gaze from the cooing infant.
“Dwayne,” she began again.
“I wish I could explain, Caroline. There was no other way. You need to leave here now. Tonight.”
“For where? For when?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, his expression softening. “No time will have passed for you. Or for me. You’ll see me again just like you left me.”
She was speechless, not something she could ever recall being.
“I can’t tell you anything else. Don’t ask me, Caroline. Samuel would be here, but it didn’t work out that way. One thing I’ve learned is that you can make almost any mistake right if you try hard enough. But you can never make up lost time.”
He handed the baby back into her arms and embraced her once again.
“We’re in no rush. Harnesh’s people can’t open a window until sometime tomorrow local time. Still, it’s a good idea you two leave now.”
“Aren’t you leaving too? I mean. With us?” she said, swallowing tears. She wanted to cry like a child and could not focus on one single cause for it.
“I’m good. I’m safe here for now. Invisible to them.” He pulled back a ragged sleeve and showed her a gleaming steel wristlet like Samuel wore. He smiled that wolfish grin of his. “Besides, I’m kind of looking forward to seeing their faces.”
She smiled back. Her mind was swirling with questions that he forbade her to ask. The questions themselves terrified her. This was a man who shared a life with her that she had yet to live. His memories were her future—hers and Stephen’s. She fought down her anxiety and a crushing sadness that would overwhelm her if she gave it a second’s consideration.
“Then we’d better move along. There’s still a curfew in effect,” she said and was surprised when he picked up the carpetbag and took her arm in his.
“We always said we’d do a real tour of Paris someday,” he said casually.
“Not like this,” she said, and they moved through the gloom, the city silent but for the ring of tramping boots moving away along the cobbles of an adjacent street. After a bit, she recognized the route they were on.
“You’re taking me back to the place where Samuel and I came through the field,” she said.
“It’s still in place and programmed to open. We have some wiggle room. Like I said, no crazy need to rush, but we’re still on a timetable.” He gripped her arm closer. She looked up at
