Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (17 page)

Since David had arrived at
Rhuddlan with his
teulu,
relations between the two sets of soldiers had
been good. Better, in fact, than they historically would have.
Prejudice against the Welsh hadn’t exactly disappeared in the few
years since David had become the King of England, but victory and
prosperity had gone a long way towards fostering peaceful relations
between the two countries. It wasn’t only American presidents whose
popularity ratings plummeted when the economy went bad.

David didn’t know how many of his men
trusted Dad; he hoped the majority of Dad’s trusted him. But they
all trusted Ieuan, which was the most important thing. Ieuan
mounted just behind David, flanked by the captains of the two
companies.

“
Where do you think they
are now?” Dad said by way of a greeting.

David knew without his father saying their
names that he was referring to Mom and Anna, not Madog’s army.

“
You were there almost as
recently as I,” David said. “I don’t know where they ended up. If
they’re in modern Wales, it’s a small country, and I assume their
first step would be to come to Cardiff to find Callum and Cassie.
If they ended up in the United States …” He shook his head. The
soldiers were forming up behind them, and the shouted orders and
stamping hooves were loud enough to prevent anyone else from
overhearing.

“
I wish I could have
visited it,” Dad said.

“
It’s a big country,” David
said. “From Pennsylvania to Oregon where I grew up is the same
distance as from here past the Caspian Sea. Of course, if they have
far to travel, they’ll be able to fly the distance.”

Dad made a rueful face. “Your mother,
Goronwy, and I drove in a vehicle from Aberystwyth to Chepstow
overnight. That’s eighty miles as the crow flies, almost double the
distance to Harlech. How much easier it would be to put down this
rebellion if we could travel more quickly.”

“
I would take communicating
more quickly first,” David said. “I want to talk to Evan. I want to
know what is happening at Harlech.”

“
At least our enemies can’t
communicate any better than we can,” Dad said.

“
I’ve sent the pigeons to
Tudur and Clare, and the rider should have reached Bevyn by now,”
David said. “At the very least, the castles we hold should be
prepared for attack or treachery.”

Bevyn, who’d been posted to Anglesey since
David became King of England, was the castellan of Llanfaes Castle,
one of the new fortresses Dad had built in Gwynedd. In David’s old
world, after Dad’s death, King Edward had destroyed the village to
build his castle of Beaumaris. He had been intent on squashing the
fiery independence of Anglesey and the rest of Gwynedd after Dad
was killed.

In this world, rather than a means to
control the populace, Llanfaes and the rebuilt Aberffraw had become
centers of power and havens in times of attack on Anglesey. That
had been the purpose of Harlech too. Obviously, Madog and Rhys,
Dad’s wayward Welsh lords, wanted Harlech for that very reason.
They couldn’t be allowed to take it, or Dad might end up burning
down his own castle to get it back.

Dad’s estimation of the distance to Harlech
was as the crow flies. By road, it was a bit longer: fifteen miles
from Rhuddlan to Caerhun, another ten to Aber, fifteen more to
Caernarfon, and then roughly thirty south to Harlech. Even pressing
hard, that would be a lot of miles in a day, but that wasn’t the
plan. Five miles an hour was a perfectly comfortable speed to ride
and would allow the company to reach Aber well before morning.
Everyone would sleep through the dawn and then leave again by
noon.

If Father continued to follow his overall
plan, he could reach Maentwrog, ten miles short of Harlech, and
David could reach Criccieth, by early tomorrow evening. From there,
each would have to decide whether to set out for Harlech
immediately, or wait until another night had passed. This time of
year, the sun went down around four in the afternoon, so they had
only eight hours of daylight. If a man needed to see well to do his
work, he needed to work fast.

The road from Aber was well-maintained, and
the men around David carried torches, so nobody had to pay much
attention to where they were going. Besides, horses saw better in
the dark than humans. Ieuan and Carew were speculating about what
the army might face when it reached Harlech. Dad didn’t join in and
remained deep in thought. David kept looking at him carefully.
Finally, after they’d passed Caerhun, he interrupted Dad’s
reverie.

“
If you’re having second
thoughts about any of this, now would be a good time to
speak.”

Dad blinked and looked over at David. “I’m
not having second thoughts.”

“
Then what is
it?”

He didn’t answer for a few seconds, and then
he moved his horse closer to David’s so the words he spoke would be
for his ears alone. David sensed the others fall back slightly to
give them space. “What if they don’t come back?”

He meant Anna and Mom. “Dad,” David said.
“They’ll come back.”

“
How can you be certain?”
he said. “Anna hasn’t been to your world since she came to this one
nine years ago. And your mother had a life there. She may not have
one much longer with me …” His voice trailed off.

David’s father had outlived the average
medieval man by fifteen years. It shouldn’t have been surprising to
learn that he was feeling his age and his own mortality, but David
didn’t want to hear it or think about it.

David tried to figure out how to say what he
believed to be true in a way that would make his father believe it
too. “Anna’s children—and Math—are her life. Mom feels the same
about her children and you. She spent fifteen years trying to get
back to you. Of all the things you might be worried about right
now, that should not be one of them.”

Dad was silent.

“
What’s this really
about?”

“
I have been thinking of
late how much living in this world has cost your mother, your
sister, and you.” He reached out and grabbed David’s shoulder. “If
something should happen to you, if you should fall in battle, it
would be my fault. You could have stayed in your world and lived
until you were eighty.”

David stared at him, not
actually saying,
what the hell?
though he was thinking it. “Dad, you are not
responsible for my decisions. We’re long past the point where
anything I do is or is not your fault. Yes, you and Mom are my
parents, but I am a twenty-three-year-old man. I make my own
choices, and while they may be rooted in decisions you or Mom made,
they are my own. Don’t deny me the right to own them.”

“
My brother, Dafydd—” Dad
paused. He really was feeling his regrets.

David picked up the thread. “Uncle Dafydd
made his own choices—bad ones, mostly. I don’t believe there is
anything you could have done that would have kept him at your side.
You didn’t give him the land he demanded. Too bad. He tried to
murder you, he betrayed you three times—”

“
Four.”

“
Okay, four.
Whatever.
He
did
that. He would be loving it right now if he knew you blamed
yourself for his actions. Even in death, don’t give him that
satisfaction.” David was pretty worked up by now, but Dad was still
looking downcast. David leaned closer. “Are you ill?”

He sat straighter in his seat. “No. Of
course not. Just tired.”

“
We’ll be at Aber within
the hour.” David clicked his tongue at his horse and picked up the
pace slightly. He didn’t want to wear his horse out, but it was
better to wear him out than Dad. David was worried now. For all
Dad’s optimism earlier about how this war could be the first shot
across the bow, telling the world that they were serious about
forming a united Britain, it was already looking like a lot more
trouble than it was worth.

Chapter Ten

November 2019

Callum

C
allum didn’t like their situation one bit. Cassie, Meg, and
Anna had an affinity for Oregon, but he felt stranded here, bereft
of the resources he’d grown used to having at his command. Worse,
the women were counting on him to get them home safely, and he was
worried about what it might take to accomplish that.

Then Meg put a hand on
Callum’s arm and spoke to him like nobody had since his mother
died. “This isn’t
your
problem, Callum. It’s our problem. You have capabilities we
might not have, but this isn’t all on your shoulders. We’re in this
together.”

Callum glared down at her. “Do you read
minds?”

“
I have spent years
watching my son doing exactly what you’re doing,” she said. “I know
the look.”

Cassie felt for Callum’s hand. “He can’t
help it.”

“
I know,” Meg said, “and I
appreciate everything he has done and will do for us. I’m not
asking for him not to do it. But the situation is difficult enough
without him feeling like he’s responsible for all of
us.”

“
She isn’t saying that we
can take care of ourselves,” Anna said, glancing at Meg. “We all
need to take care of each other.”

Callum rolled his shoulders to ease the
tension in them and to clear his thoughts. The Wal-Mart was crowded
and inherently insecure, but there was safety in numbers. Even with
the snow and rain, the darkness, the ridiculous amount of traffic
on the road for a Thanksgiving night, and everybody going the same
direction, sometimes for hours at a time, Callum had kept track of
individual vehicles on the dual carriageway. He was very confident
that they hadn’t been followed to Portland from Art’s house.

Once past Portland and as the hours of
driving to Eugene had worn on, however, he’d had to acknowledge his
growing feeling of insecurity. It hadn’t dissipated in the three
quarters of an hour they’d been in Wal-Mart and, in fact, had
turned into a rock of tension in his stomach. If they’d picked up a
tail once Cassie turned south, following them wouldn’t have been as
difficult, and it wasn’t like they’d done anything to make tailing
them hard. They’d forsaken subterfuge for speed. Now that it was
nearly two in the morning, there should be fewer cars on the road.
The rain that had started to fall wasn’t going to make driving any
easier either.

“
We should get going.”
Callum tipped his head towards the door. They’d been standing off
to the side, just inside the front lobby of the Wal-Mart. The rush
of people that had come in at midnight had dwindled to a handful
every few minutes. Callum was strangely pleased with the bargain on
mobile phones the shop had given him. That feeling must be why so
many people had charged into the shop at this hour in the first
place.

They left the lobby, pulling up their hoods
against the rain. Before they’d stepped off the pavement, however,
Callum put out a hand to the women. “Bloody hell.”

“
What is it��” Cassie didn’t
continue. She too saw the panda car pulled up right behind Art’s
truck, it’s blue and red lights whirling. The officer had left it
running and was standing at the back of the truck, entering
something into his tablet.

Anna tapped Callum on the arm to draw his
attention towards another row of parked cars. “There’s a second
cop.”

“
They got to my
grandfather,” Cassie said. “It’s the only way they would be chasing
his truck.”

“
They could have gotten the
description and license from the DMV,” Meg said.

But her words were of little comfort, and a
quick glance at Meg showed Callum that she knew it too.

He put an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and
turned her back towards the entrance to the shop. Wal-Mart was one
of half a dozen large stores in the outdoor shopping center. They
started walking, just a little bit quickly, which Callum thought
would appear normal given the weather. “He’ll be okay.”

“
It depends on who’s doing
the questioning,” Cassie said. “He wouldn’t have given us up, not
for anything.”

“
They could have talked to
him and noted that his truck was missing,” Callum said. “That’s
all. They wouldn’t have had to do anything more than start looking
at the camera feeds along the motorway.”

“
Were there cameras at
Mission Market?” Meg tucked her arm through Anna’s, and the pair
hurried after Cassie and Callum.

Cassie looked back at Meg. “Of course.” She
laughed in relief. “That’s it. Whoever is tracking us, if they
noted the flash of your entry into this world, they would have
accessed whatever cameras were in the area.”

Meg gave a snort of laughter. “You mean the
one camera within fifty miles?”

“
You can be sure there
aren’t a lot of cameras on the rez,” Cassie said, “but with the
casino, we do have them.”

“
And we’d be on the ones
both at the travel plaza and the market,” Callum said. “Your
grandfather was there too, and we were in his truck. One plus one
equals two.”

Cassie nodded, and Callum could tell she
felt a bit better.

“
By the way, who’s
they
?” Anna
said.

“
That was a real copper by
the truck.” A vision of an army of panda cars blanketing Eugene
rose before Callum’s eyes. “That means official channels, so either
your government, or an entity with a hand in the government, is
behind this.”