“Be not afraid,” the German called. “We’d fain deal with you.”

  Heidhin reddened too. “An Alvaring knows no fear,” he shouted. As his voice cracked he grew redder yet.

  The Romans rowed in. The two ashore waited, blood loud in their heads. The boat grounded. A man jumped forth and made fast. The one with the cloak led them up the strand. He smiled and smiled.

  Heidhin clasped hard his spear. “Edh,” he said, “I like not the look of them. I think we’d be wisest if we kept out of reach—”

  He was too late. The leader yelled an order. His followers dashed forward. Before Heidhin could raise his weapon, new hands grabbed it. A man stepped behind him and caught his arms in a wrestler’s lock. He struggled, screeching. A short stick, to which he had paid no heed—the gang was unarmed save for knives—struck his nape. That was a skillful blow, to stun without real harm. He sagged, and they bound him.

  Edh had whirled to run. A sailor caught her hair. Two more closed in. They flung her down on the grass. She screamed and kicked. Another pair grabbed her ankles. The leader knelt between her spraddled legs. He grinned. Spit ran from a corner of his mouth. He hiked up her skirt.

  “You trolls, you dog turds, I’ll kill you,” Heidhin raged weakly, out of the pain that stabbed through his skull. “I swear by every god of war, no peace shall your breed ever have with me. Your Romaburh shall burn—” Nobody listened. Where Edh lay pinned, the thing went on and on.

  14

  A.D. 43.

  Tracing Vagnio’s voyage back to his departure from Öland was easy. With skill and persistence, it was possible to find that a boy and a girl had walked to his home from a village about twenty miles south. But what happened earlier? Some cautious inquiries on the ground were in order. First, though, Everard and Floris planned an aerial survey over the previous several months. The more clues they collected in advance, the better. Vagnio would not necessarily hear of an event such as a murder; perhaps the family could hush it up. Or he and his men might keep silent about it before a stranger. Or Everard might simply get no chance to ask before circumstances forced him from the camp on the beach.

  Leaving behind their van and horses, the agents flitted off together on separate hoppers. Their search pattern was a set of leaps from point to point of a precalculated space-time grid. If they spied anything unusual, they would take as close a look through as long a duration as needful. The procedure wasn’t guaranteed to pay off, but it was better than nothing and they didn’t have infinite lifespan to spend here.

  A mile above the village, they flashed from midsummer balefires to a couple of weeks later and hung in an enormous blue. Wind whittered thin and cold. The view wheeled over a sunlit Baltic Sea, Sweden’s hills and forests to the west, Öland a straitness mottled with heather, grass, woods, rock, sand—names no dweller would speak for unchronicled centuries to come.

  Everard swept his scanner around. Abruptly he stiffened. “Yonder!” he exclaimed into the transmitter at his neck. “About seven o’clock—see?”

  Floris whistled. “Yes. A Roman ship, is it not, anchored offshore?” Thoughtfully: “Gallo-Roman, most likely, out of some such port as Bordeaux or Boulogne, rather than the Mediterranean. They never had a regular trade directly with Scandinavia, you know, but records mention a few official visits, and occasional entrepreneurs sail to Denmark and beyond, bypassing the long chain of middlemen. Amber, especially.”

  “This might be significant for us. Let’s check.” Everard increased magnification.

  Floris had already done it. She screamed.

  “Oh, my God,” Everard choked.

  Floris swooped downward. Cloven air boomed behind her.

  “Stop, you fool!” Everard yelled. “Come back!”

  Floris ignored him, her popping ears, everything but that which was ahead of her dive. Still her shriek trailed after. So might a plunging hawk scream, or a wrathful Valkyrie. Everard struck fist on control console, cursed, and grimly, all but helplessly, trailed at a slower pace. He halted a few hundred feet aloft, keeping the sun at his back.

  The men, clustered to watch the show or wait their turns, heard. They looked up and saw the death-horse bound for them. They wailed and scrambled in every direction. The one on the girl pulled from her, got to his knees, yanked out his knife. Maybe he meant to kill her, maybe it was only defensive reflex. No matter. A sapphire-blue energy bolt smote him through the mouth. He crumpled at her feet. From a hole in the back of his skull curled the smoke off his brain.

  Floris whipped her cycle about. A man’s height above ground, she fired at the next nearest. Gut-shot, he yammered and threshed on the grass, to Everard like an overturned beetle. Floris chased a third and dropped him cleanly. She ceased then, motionless in the saddle for a minute. Sweat mingled with tears on her face, as cold as her hands.

  Breath shuddered into her. She holstered her pistol and leaf-gentle descended by Edh.

  Done is done, tolled through Everard. Swiftly he considered his options. In blind panic, surviving sailors spurted along the shore or toward the woods. Two had kept some wits, had waded out and were swimming for the ship, where horror boiled. The Patrolman bit his lip till blood ran. “Okay,” he said aloud, tonelessly. With jumps around space and precise aim, he killed each of those who had landed. Finally he put the wounded man out of his misery. I don’t suppose Janne left him on purpose. She just forgot. Everard rode back to a fifty-foot altitude and poised. By scanner and amplifier he observed what went on below him.

  Edh sat up. Her stare was blank, but she plucked at her skirt and got it down over the red-streaked thighs. Hog-tied, Heidhin writhed toward her. “Edh, Edh,” he groaned. He stopped when the timecycle settled between. “Oh, goddess, avenger—”

  Floris dismounted and knelt beside Edh. She laid her arms about the girl. “It is over, dear,” she sobbed. “It will be well with you. Nothing like this, ever again. You are free now.”

  “Niaerdh,” she heard. “All-Mother, you came.”

  “No use denying your divinity,” Everard snarled in Floris’s receiver. “Get the hell out before you make matters worse.”

  “No,” the woman answered. “You don’t understand. I have to give her what little comfort I am able.”

  Everard sat mute. The crewmen in the channel heaved frantic on halyard and anchor rode. “Loose me,” Heidhin pleaded. “Let me to her.”

  “Maybe I do understand,” Everard said. “Be as quick as possible, can you?”

  The daze was lifting from Edh, but unearthliness brimmed the hazel eyes. “What do you want of me, Niaerdh?” she whispered. “I am yours. As I always was?”

  “Slay the Romans, all the Romans!” Heidhin bawled. “I’ll pay you for it with my life if you will.”

  Poor muchacho, Everard thought, your life is already ours to take, anytime we might choose. But I could hardly expect you to act sensible right off the bat, could I?

  Or ever, by my lights. You are not a scientifically educated post-Christian Western European. To you, the gods are real and your highest duty is avenging a wrong.

  Floris stroked the matted hair. Her free arm drew the reeking, shivering, slight body close. “I want only your well-being, only your gladness,” she said. “I love you.”

  “You saved me,” Edh stammered, “because . . . because I must—what?”

  “Listen to me, Floris, for everything’s sake,” Everard called between his teeth. “The time is out of joint and you can’t set it right today. You can’t. Meddle any more, and I swear there’ll never be a Tacitus One book, maybe never a Tacitus Two. We don’t belong in these events, and that’s why the future is in danger. Leave them be!”

  His partner fell altogether still.

  “Are you troubled, Niaerdh?” Edh asked as a child might. “What can trouble you, the goddess? That the Romans befoul your world?”

  Floris closed her eyes, opened them, and let go of the girl. “It . . . is . . . your woe, my dear,” she said. Rising: “Fare you well. Fare you bravely, free from fear and sorrow. We shall meet again.” To Everard: “Shall I release Heidhin?”

  “No, Edh can take a knife and cut the rope. He can help her back to the village.”

  “True. And that should do both of them good, shouldn’t it? A pitiful tiny bit of good.”

  Floris mounted her timecycle. “I suppose we’d best ascend, instead of winking out of sight,” Everard said. “Come on.”

  He threw a last glance down. It was as if he felt the two there looking and looking. Out on the water, sail filled, the ship bore west. Lacking several hands and, no doubt, at least a couple of officers, she might or might not make it home. If she did, the crew might or might not relate what they had seen. It would scarcely win credence. They’d be smarter to invent something more plausible. Of course, any tale could well be taken for a fabrication, an attempt to cover up a mutiny. In that case, they had an unpleasant death in store. Maybe they’d try their luck among the Germans instead, slim though the prospects be. Knowing their fate would not affect history, Everard didn’t give a damn what it was.

  15

  A.D. 70.

  The sun was newly down, clouds lay red and gold in the west, eastward the sky deepened while night rose in a tide over the wilderness. Light lingered on a treeless hilltop in central Germany, but already the grass there was full of shadows and warmth draining from the quiet air.

  Having seen to the horses, Janne Floris squatted at the blackened spot in front of the twin shelters and began assembling wood for a fire. Some remained, split and stacked, from the last time the Patrol agents had used the site, a few days ago if you counted by the turning of the planet. A gust and thump brought her to her feet. Everard swung off his vehicle.

  “Why are you—I expected you back sooner,” she said half timidly.

  He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I figured you might as well do the camp chores while I did mine,” he replied. “And nightfall is a logical return point. I don’t want more than a bite to eat, but then a clock dial’s worth of sleep. I’m wrung out. Aren’t you?”

  She looked away. “Not yet. Too tense.” With a gulp, she made herself confront him. “Where did you go? You just told me to wait, immediately after we got here, and left.”

  “I guess I did. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. It seemed obvious.”

  “I thought I was being punished.”

  He shook his head more vigorously than his words would have suggested. “Good Lord, no. In fact, I’d a vague notion of sparing you a discussion. What I did was skip back to Öland, after dark on . . . that day. The kids were gone and nobody else was around, as I’d hoped. I lifted the corpses one after another, took them well out to sea, and dumped them. Not a fun job. No reason for you to be in on it.”

  She stared. “Why?”

  “Isn’t that obvious either?” he snapped. “Think. Same reason I shot the swine that you didn’t get around to. Minimize impact on local people, because we’ve got too flinking many variables as is. I daresay they’ll believe Edh and Heidhin, more or less, but they live in a world of gods and trolls and magic anyway. Material evidence or independent witnesses would hit them a lot harder than a doubtless incoherent story.”

  “I see.” She twisted her hands together. “I am being quite stupid and unprofessional, am I not? I wasn’t trained for this kind of mission, but that is no excuse. I am very sorry.”

  “Well, you caught me by surprise,” he growled. “When you skited off into action, I was dumbfounded for a second. And then what could I do? Not mess around with causality anymore, for certain, nor risk Heidhin seeing my face, to recognize it in Colonia this year. Duck back uptime, get a different disguise from the one I used on the beach, and return to the same minute? No, it wouldn’t do for mortals to see the gods quarreling; that’d confuse things worse yet. I could only play along with you.”

  “I am sorry,” she said desperately. “I couldn’t help myself. There was Edh, Veleda whom I saw among the Langobardi—no woman ever impressed me more—I knew her—but this was a young girl, and those animals—”

  “Yeah. Berserk rage, followed by overwhelming sympathy.”

  Floris straightened. Fists doubled, she gazed squarely at Everard and said, “I am explaining, not making excuses. I will take whatever penalty the Patrol gives me, without complaint.”

  He stood a few heartbeats unspeaking before he made a crooked smile and answered, “There won’t be any if you carry on honestly and competently. Which I’m sure you will. As an Unattached agent on this case, I can make summary judgments. You are hereby pardoned.”

  She blinked hard, rubbed wrist over eyes, and said unevenly, “Sir, you are too kind. Because we have worked together—”

  “Hey, give me credit,” he protested. “Yes, you’ve been a grand companion, but I wouldn’t let that influence me . . . much. What counts is that you’ve proved yourself a crack operative, which the outfit is always short of. More important still, this hasn’t actually been your fault.”

  Bemusement: “What? I allowed my emotions to take me over—”

  “Under the circumstances, that isn’t exactly to your discredit. I’m not at all sure what I’d’ve done myself, though maybe sneakier; and I’m not a woman. It didn’t bother me killing those vermin. I didn’t enjoy it, mind you, especially since they hadn’t a chance against me, but as long as it had to be done, I’ll sleep okay.” Everard paused. “You know, in my salad days, before I joined the Patrol, I favored the death penalty for forcible rape, till a lady pointed out to me that then the bastard would have an incentive to murder his victim and no motive not to. My feelings stayed the same. If I remember right, you twentieth-century Dutch, in your civilized, clinical fashion, treat the problem with castration.”

  “Nevertheless, I—”

  “Get off that guilt trip. What are you, some kind of a liberal or something? Let’s put sentiment on the shelf and think about the matter from a Patrol point of view. Listen. It seems fairly clear—do you agree?—those were merchant seamen who’d finished whatever business they’d done on Öland, if any, and were bound elsewhere, probably home. They happened to see Edh and Heidhin on that lonely shore and seized an opportunity. That sort of thing is common throughout the ancient world. Maybe they didn’t intend to come back, or maybe it’d be to a different tribe—from the air, I got an impression the island’s divided—or maybe they figured nobody would know. Whichever, they trapped the kids. If we hadn’t interfered, they’d have taken Heidhin off to sell for a slave. Edh too, unless they injured her so badly it was only worthwhile slitting her throat for one last bit of sport. That’s what would have happened. An incident like thousands of others, important to nobody but those who suffer, and they soon dead, forgotten, lost forever.”

  Floris crossed fists over breasts. The waning light glimmered in her eyes. “Instead—”

  Everard nodded. “Yeah. Instead, we appeared. We’ll want to seek out her home town, a few years after she left it, settle down for a while as visitors, ask discreet questions, get to know her people. Then maybe we’ll have some idea of how poor little Edh became terrible Veleda.”

  Floris grimaced. “I think I do. In a, a general way. I can imagine myself into her. I think she was more intelligent and sensitive than most, yes, devout, if we can say that of a heathen. This dreadful thing came upon her, fear, shame, despair, not simply her body but her spirit crushed under those heaving, thrusting weights; and suddenly the veritable goddess arrived, to slay them and embrace her. From the bottom of hell, up to glory . . . But afterward, afterward! The defilement, the sense of having been made worthless, it will not ever quite leave a woman, Manse. Worse for her, because in Iron Age Germany the blood, the womb, is sacred to the clan and a wife’s adultery is punished by the most brutal death. They would not blame her for what she could not help, I suppose, but she would be contaminated and—and the element of the supernatural would rouse fear, I think, more than reverence. Pagan gods are tricky, often cruel. I wonder if Edh and Heidhin dared say much. Perhaps they said nothing; and that would itself make a tearing conflict in them.”

  Everard wished for his pipe but didn’t believe he should go to his hopper’s carrier box for it. Floris had become too vulnerable. She never called me by my first name before, as careful as we’ve been to avoid entanglements. I doubt she’s aware she did. “You’re probably right,” he agreed. “At the same time, there the supernatural occurrence was. It had left them alive and free. If her body was degraded, her soul couldn’t really be. Somehow, she was worthy of the goddess. It must be because she had a destiny, she was chosen for something enormous. Only what? Well, with Heidhin talking to her, over and over, full of male revengefulness—In terms of her culture, it would make sense. She was appointed to bring about the destruction of Rome.”

  “She could accomplish nothing on her backwater island,” Floris finished. “Nor could she any longer fit into its life. She would wander west, confident of the goddess’s protection. Heidhin went with her. Between them they scraped together enough goods to buy passage across the sea. What they saw and heard of Roman doings as they traveled fueled their hatred, their sense of her mission. But I think, in spite of everything, and rare though it is in their society, I think he loved her.”

  “I suspect he does yet. Remarkable, when it’s pretty plain she never let him into her bed.”

  “Understandable.” Floris sighed. “For her, after that experience—and he, if nothing else, he would not force himself on a vessel of the goddess. I heard he has a wife and children among the Bructeri.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, what we’ve found is the irony that our investigation of a disturbance to the plenum is what brought it about. To be quite frank, that sort of nexus is by no means unprecedented. Another reason for not condemning you, Janne. Often a causal loop has a powerful and subtle force to it. What we’ve got to do is prevent it from developing into a causal vortex. We have to forestall the events that would lead to Tacitus Two, while not unduly perturbing those that are described in Tacitus One.”