The Portal
Author: adelacroixhotmail.com
Chapter 33
Lex ran his fingers through his short, stubbly hair as he watched Clark make his way down the hill to the Roman marching camp. Running his fingers through his hair was still a novel experience. When Chloe introduced her 'bots into his body to save his life in the arena twelve days earlier, he never imagined as a side effect they would cure his meteor rock induced baldness. The mirrors available in this time period were significantly inferior to modern glass ones, but were good enough to show him that his new hair was a dark, rich auburn much like he remembered his mother's, rather than the bright reddish-orange it had been before that long ago day in a Smallville cornfield. Would his hair have naturally darkened to this shade if he hadn't lost it in the meteor shower, or was this color more of Chloe's doing? With all of her research at The Torch, she had doubtlessly come across photos of Lex and his mom in younger, happier days. After conversations he had had with her about his relationship with his mom, he wouldn't be surprised if she somehow arranged for his hair to be this shade as a tribute to his mother. Perhaps he would have to ask Chloe or Laura.
It was hard to believe twelve days had passed since the momentous events in Rome: the revelation of Clark's secrets, the loss of the girls by execution in the arena, the experience of the healing powers of Chloe's nanobots, and the discovery Lana's mind had been overwhelmed by Chloe's memories and effectively it was now Chloe's mind which inhabited Lana's body. Lex was having the hardest time dealing with this final event. Lex had known Lana for almost a year, but had recognized his love for her a mere six days before the events in Rome tore everything apart. Now he had already reached the point where he had spent twice as long in close proximity with Laura, the new Lana/Chloe hybrid, than he had spent with Lana. It scared Lex a little that he was already starting to unconsciously think of her as Laura when he saw her. How much longer would it be before his Lana started to feel like nothing more than a dream?
It had been eight days from their arrival in Tolosa to the events in the Roman arena and now another twelve days from Rome to their current position on a hilltop twelve miles south of Caesarodinum, which would in the distant twenty-first century be known as Tours in northwestern France. Twenty days, almost three weeks, since they had been stranded back here in the ancient Roman Empire. To Lex it suddenly felt more like three years than three weeks. If it wasn't for availing himself of Laura's offer to spend a few minutes each day in a virtual reality version of his office back at his castle, he thought he would go crazy. He wasn't sure how Clark was able to hold up without that link to home, but then Clark's girlfriend's mind hadn't been ripped out of her body, so that had to help.
When they had set out from Rome, Chloe had been so confident they would be able to quickly located the Rhine army, which was suppose to be headed south to help with Venta's scheme to overthrow the Roman emperor. Then it was just a matter of grabbing the commanding general, and, if they got lucky, the Professor himself. Between her knowledge of these times, her 'gifts', and Clark's 'gifts', she thought they could turn back the Rhine legions without too much difficulty.
However, as everything back here seemed to turn out, nothing was as fast and easy as they hoped. They spent days loitering south of the Alps waiting for word of the army's route. Eventually, Clark searched north for several hundred miles along each of the three main routes through the mountains. He didn't find a trace of the army or any other large troop movements. They had just decided something must have changed since Chloe had overheard Venta and the General's plans nine months earlier and they were going to have to come up with some other method of locating the Professor and his meteor rocks when word reached them of a large Roman army marching west through northern Gaul.
Since this unexplained movement by a Roman army was the only unusual news they had received and since this army had to have originated in the Rhine area, they decided it was worthy of investigation. Four hard days in the saddle had been necessary to reach this hilltop from their starting point in Verona near both the Adriatic Sea and the future site of Venice. Four long days which made their original dash from Tolosa to Narbo seem like a stroll around Central Park in comparison. Fortunately, Lex and Lana, who had suffered the most from the earlier ride, were now physically better prepared for the long ordeal in the saddle with the addition of Chloe's 'bots. Laura with her active 'bot system had no problems with the trip. Lex with his more passive system found a brief touch by one of the girls every hour was sufficient to crank his body back up to one hundred percent and make the trip tolerable, if not quite enjoyable.
With Clark scouting ahead in his almost magical 'speed' mode, they had arrived unnoticed on this hilltop overlooking the Roman encampment thirty minutes earlier. It was just past noon when they arrived and Chloe had been surprised to see the tents still standing.
After looking over the camp for several minutes, she remarked. "I don't understand it, but they have been camped here for several days."
"How can you tell?" asked Clark.
"Roman armies create a new fortified camp every evening when they are on the move. It slows their daily progress, but it provides a more restful evening for the soldiers when they know they will have a warning and some protection from any surprise night-time attack."
"Like the attack Spartacus led against the first Roman army that tried to quell his slave rebellion?" interjected Lex remembering another arcane bit of trivia, or was it just a made-up scene from the old Kirk Douglas movie?
"Yeah, they never should have let a non-military senator lead an army in the field. His men paid dearly for his mistake. Anyway, as I was saying a Roman army on the march stops about four in the afternoon to erect fortifications and then set up camp. During the march each soldier carries two sharpened ten-foot poles used to create the wall around camp. With three legions like you have here that amounts to fifteen thousand soldiers or about thirty thousand poles for the wall. With a five hundred foot by five hundred foot camp, that works out to eight poles per foot of wall, which together with a quickly dug trench forms a respectable barrier with only a couple of hours work."
"Chloe, how do you know there are three legions down there?" asked Lex.
"The arrangement of the command tents around the central square is the giveaway. See the large green tent on the north side and the slightly smaller brown tents on the other three sides? That is the commanding general's tent and the tents of the commanders of the three individual legions. Each legion has its own tall golden eagle standard erected in front of its commander's tent, but we would have to be a lot closer for me to read it and tell you which specific legions these are."
"You said they have been camped here for several days?"
Chloe looked over at Clark and then pointed towards the nearest wall of the fort. "The poles the soldiers carry are only two to three inches in diameter to not overburden them in addition to their forty pound packs. Oh, that size pole, if you point it outward at a thirty degree angle, is very effective against a cavalry charge, but a stouter wall is always preferred. The poles on this more exposed, nearer wall of the fort have been replaced with timbers cut from the forest. It would take several days to have that much of the wall rebuilt. So either they expected to be here for a few days and the commanders didn't want idle hands creating mischief, or they are expecting trouble."
Clark stood up from where they had all been crouching under the cover of some bushes. "I think trouble is what they are about to get. So the big green tent is where I am most likely to find the general and hopefully the professor?"
Chloe nodded.
"Okay, wait here. I will be back in a few minutes."
Clark's tone said he wasn't going to risk letting any of the others tag along into an enemy camp filled with fifteen thousand soldiers, nanobot enhanced bodies or not. Chloe watched him head off down the hill glad to see the tell-tale bulge under his robe indicating he had at least retrieved her special lead box just in case the professor and his meteor rocks were down there. To the best of her knowledge, Clark had not mentioned to Lex the effect the meteor rocks had on him. If Clark had decided not to tell, she wouldn't say anything either. Since Laura had all of Chloe's memories up to the events in the arena, she also knew about the effect the rocks had on Clark, but Chloe assumed Laura had also respected Clark's wishes.
Clark walked steadily down the hill for a couple hundred feet as though to give the others time for any final objections before shifting into speed mode. He covered the sloping half mile to the bottom of the hill in a couple of seconds before slowing back to a walk. As he cleared the trees at the bottom of the hill and started across the two hundred yard open field leading to the Roman position, he came back into view of the others waiting back at the top.
From their position they watched his steady progress until he paused just short of the shallow eight foot wide trench dug in front of the wall of timbers. They couldn't hear if the Roman soldiers had challenged him or were even aware of him yet. But if the Romans weren't aware of his presence, they soon would be as the others watched the timber wall near Clark start to go down. Starting fifty feet to Clark's left, the timbers fell one after another as if they were being cut off at their bases by some giant invisible weedwacker. Within seconds a hundred feet of the wall was down and the steady thuds of the heavy logs hitting the ground was even audible at the top of the hill.
Lex glanced briefly at Chloe before turning his attention back towards the camp. "It looks like Clark has his heat vision under control. After those first two days out of Rome when I saw massive plumes of smoke from over the hills where you were helping him, I thought he would burn down the whole Italian peninsula before he was done."
"Yeah, I thought so too, for awhile. And it wasn't just the first couple of days. No after that we just moved a couple of ranges of hills further away before starting to practice. It wasn't until the sixth day that he was starting to get the hang of it. The past couple of days his control has been getting pretty good. By yesterday he could light a candle sitting in a bed of dry grass from a distance of two miles without singeing a single blade."
Lex just shook his head. He didn't think he could even see a candle from two miles, let alone dream of lighting it.
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Clark watched as the final timber crashed to the ground; its lower end charred black from his heat vision, but no hint of an open flame as a result of his activities. As he had approached the wall, several guards had shouted challenges, but the noise of the wall coming down should have gotten the attention of everyone at this end of the camp.
The eight foot wide trench which blocked Clark's path was set about ten feet out from where the wall had stood, its primary purpose to break up a massed charge by either cavalry or foot soldiers. However it did little to hinder Clark, as a simple forty foot standing jump, which would have won a medal at the Olympics but barely qualified as a jump by Clark's standards, quickly got him past both the trench and the fallen wall.
As Clark made his way to the center of the camp and the general's tent, several individuals and then small groups of men tried to stop him. But it was like a group of fleas trying to stop a large dog on his way to his dinner bowl. They were an annoying distraction, but nothing more. By the time Clark had easily stopped the sixth group of eight men by ripping away their swords and then tossing the bodies an impossibly long seventy or eighty feet, the large crowd he had attracted started to just follow along at a respectful distance. Not wanting to risk getting out of control, Clark had not been unnecessarily rough with any of his attackers. Though he might have tossed them a long distance, he was always careful to see that they would land on something, like a tent, which would cushion the fall. Not that any of the men following him noticed this; all they saw was how easily he waded through their numbers.
After passing what seemed like countless rows of neatly aligned tents, Clark finally reached the center of the camp with its own scale version of a forum surrounded on four sides by the grand tents of the legion commanders and the general. The large forum could easily hold a thousand men and it was quickly filling to capacity as men jostled to see what was going on.
Clark proceeded across the forum to the general's tent. As he neared it, a man, wearing a breastplate worked with the most brilliant gold leaf Clark had yet seen on this journey, stepped out of the tent flanked by four of the biggest, toughest looking Roman soldiers this side of good, old, dead Venta himself. For a moment Clark thought their long search for the general had finally come to an end, but then realized this leader didn't in the slightest match Chloe's description of Domicius. She had said General Domicius was in his early fifties with steel gray hair and beginnings of the large gut of a man who enjoyed the pleasures of life more than the field of combat. The man now facing Clark was no more than thirty, thirty five tops, and in the peak condition of someone who trained daily with his men.
"Who are you and what do you want?" demanded the man in a tone suggesting he had long experience in command.
Clark thought for a moment about using his real name, but decided to continue the Greek God ploy. His own name would give him no particular advantage, however if rumors of the events in Rome had reached here, perhaps this situation could be handled with the minimum of pain and bloodshed.
With his most powerful tone, Clark responded. "I am Aries. Who are you?"
Clark thought he saw a momentary flicker of recognition on the other man's face before he answered. "I am Pontus Regnum Sinus, commander of the Twelfth Legion. What do you want?"
"Well, Ponty, I have business with General Domicius and, if he is here, Antonius Octavius Carius. Please bring them to me. Now!"
Sinus had heard the rumors of the events in Rome. The wild stories where the God Aries single-handedly destroyed the Praetorian Camp and the Statilus Taurus Stadium. But what were the odds of that God, if he truly had been in Rome, showing up less than two weeks later here, in northern Gaul? This man spoke thickly accented Latin. Not having seen Clark destroy the camp's perimeter wall or witnessed how easily he had handled the soldiers who had tried to stop him, Sinus assumed he was potentially a Druid assassin merely using the convenient story to get close to the General.
"Seize this man," shouted Sinus to the on-looking troops.
Immediately the inner ring of men from the encircling mass drew their swords. At least forty men with swords in hand were arrayed at Clark's back and sides no more than twenty feet away.
Clark merely shook his head and then briefly accelerated up into 'speed' mode. At what felt to him to be a slow leisurely pace, he pivoted around and turned a concentrated beam of his heat vision near the root of each exposed blade burning through the soft iron just above the hilt. After burning through all forty three swords, he turned back to Sinus and dropped back to 'normal' mode.
From Sinus' perspective Clark just appeared to stand there when moments after the swords were drawn, all of the blades glowed white-hot, separated from the handles and clunked to the ground. Shortly after that about a third of the men left with just the handles in their hands let out yelps of pain and dropped the remnants of their swords, the melted roots of the blades slowly fading from orange to red.
Clark glanced over his shoulder and then said to Sinus. "On a beautiful, warm day like this your men should all learn to wrap the hilts in leather to keep from burning their hands."
As the remaining men dropped their now useless sword handles, Clark started to say, "Now if this silliness is over. . .", when suddenly an arrow slammed into his chest. The head of the arrow snagged in his robe holding it in place until Clark reached up and pulled it clear.
Sinus stared at the arrow surprised to see no blood on either it or the robe. As Clark released the arrow, Sinus' eyes tracked it to the ground noticing in his peripheral vision that 'Ares' seemed to blur for a moment. When his eyes tracked back up to his upper body, Sinus realized Ares was holding aloft with his right hand a man holding a bow.
Clark shook the man lightly and then said. "What were you thinking shooting into a crowded area like this? What if you had missed me, you could have hurt or killed one of your own people, even the commander." Then Clark, still with one hand, tossed the archer fifty feet through the air to land on top of the legion commander's tent to his right.
While he had made his dash to grab the archer as a further demonstration of his 'powers' he had taken a quick detour through the general's tent. No general. No professor. However he could feel the lingering traces from meteor rocks; the professor had been in this tent in the past few days. So when he turned back to Sinus, he changed his question.
"Where have Domicius and Carius gone?"
For a moment Sinus was too shocked to speak. This man must be the god Aries. "They have gone . . ." he began before pausing. This man may be a god, but Sinus had served Domicius loyally for five years and Domicius had always looked after him well, even raising him from centurion to commander of the legion after the death of Macrinus. No, Domicius had earned his continuing loyalty. Restarting, he said. "I am sorry; I have sworn not to divulge that information."
Clark looked at the man with respect, but felt disappointment inside. Why couldn't things ever be easy? This man had information he needed, but Clark was not comfortable going beyond a demonstration of his abilities. Deciding Chloe had a lot more experience in this area than he; Clark grabbed up Sinus in his arms and raced out of the camp in 'speed' mode. To the soldiers left standing in the forum, the two men seemed to instantly vanish.
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Laura, Chloe, and Lex had remained crouched on the hilltop. Unfortunately this left them far enough from the camp to make it difficult to determine what was happening. They could see Clark and the surrounding men make their way to the center of the camp, but beyond that nothing specific.
Suddenly, Clark was behind them, below the ridge line, out of sight of the camp. As he lowered Sinus to his feet, he spoke up to get their attention. "Ahh, guys. . ."
The three turned as one to see Clark standing there maintaining a tight grip on the arm of a Roman officer. "This is Pontus Sinus, commander of the Twelfth Legion. Neither the general or Carius are in the camp, but I think Ponty here knows where they have gone." Clark paused to look at Chloe. "I thought you might be able to persuade him to tell us what he knows."
Chloe looked him over from his sandal encased feet to his curly brown hair. If he had a helmet, it had been lost somewhere along the way. Putting her most evil grin on her face, she walked up to the pair and said to Clark, "Hold him."
In a flash Clark was standing behind him holding both of Sinus' arms twisted behind his back.
Chloe stepped up to Sinus and then drew his own knife from its sheath at his right hip. Holding it up between their faces, she waved the blade back and forth a couple of times before asking, "Where have Domicius and Carius gone?"
Sinus got a twinge in his gut from the expression on this woman's face. He could see in her eyes she had been in this position before and could do what was necessary to get the information she desired. Still, he had given Domicius his oath of loyalty.
"I am sorry. I can not say."
"Perhaps you will be more ready to talk, if I use your own knife to cut off your balls and turn you into a fucking eunuch."
Laura shared a glance with Lex and then spoke up with a grin. "Ahh, Chloe?"
Chloe looked at Laura with a slight hint of annoyance at the interruption. "What?"
"Wouldn't that technically make him a non-fucking eunuch?"
Chloe stared at her for a moment before breaking out into a gut-wrenching laugh. Non-fucking eunuch was too hysterical.
Soon Lex and Laura had joined in the laughter and even Clark had broken into a grin.
Suddenly, before the laughter had completely died away, Chloe slashed out with the knife and tore a deep gash in Sinus' upper arm.
Before the shock of pain had even reached his brain, Sinus watched as the woman used the knife to open a deep cut in her own palm and then quickly slap her bleeding appendage against his own wound.
Chloe stood there for ten seconds with her hand pressed against his arm. Finally, after wiping most of the blood from her healed hand on the side of Sinus' robe, she stepped back.
"Clark go tie him onto your horse, we need to leave now and I want to take him with us for the moment. We'll meet you at the horses as fast as we can get there."
Clark nodded then he and Sinus vanished. Chloe set off down the backside of the hill at a dead run. Laura and Lex had no idea what Chloe had learned that had set her into such a panic, but also followed her at a run.
It took the three of them four minutes to reach the small sheltered clearing where they had hidden the horses. By the time they arrived, Clark had all of the horses saddled and Sinus was securely tied to his mount.
"What is it?" asked Clark as the others raced to a halt.
"Sinus doesn't know why, but the general and the professor were leading their army to Tolosa."
"Tolosa?" asked Lex as he got his breathing under control. "I thought they were going to Rome."
Chloe shrugged. "I can only speculate, but I am guessing they were planning to lead them through the portal to some other time."
"If so, why has the army been sitting here for the past few days?" asked Clark.
"Just over two days ago word of the events, our events, in Rome reached them. The professor and the general must have guessed some of what was going on. The general issued orders for the army to wait here for instructions and then the general, the professor, and a small detachment of cavalry headed south at a gallop."
"South? As in south to Tolosa?" asked Lex.
"That's my hunch. They are cutting their losses and running." Chloe turned more directly towards Clark. "Clark, if the professor beats us back to the portal, we may be stranded here. You need to get there as fast as you can. If the professor hasn't arrived yet, block the entrance to keep him out and then come back for us. If you find him along the way . . . well, I am sure you will figure out what to do."
As she spoke, Chloe had walked over and started digging through her saddlebag. From near the bottom she extracted a roll of parchment and proceeded to unroll it as she turned back to Clark.
Pointing to the map revealed on the inner surface of the scroll, she said. "We are here about ten miles south of Caesarodinum. Stick to the main road until you reach Burdigala. It is about one hundred forty miles and the first 'Tolosa' size city you'll reach. Take the south east road out of Burdigala and it is about another eighty miles to Tolosa." As she handed Clark the map, she continued. "We'll head south along the main road also. I want to put some distance between us and the camp."
As Clark took the map from her, he pulled her into a tight embrace. After a quick kiss on the lips, he looked into her eyes and said, "I'll be back as fast as I can." Then Clark was gone.
"Come on, guys," Chloe said as she quickly turned and grabbed the reins for Sinus' horse before mounting her own.
Laura and Lex followed her in mounting their own horses. Laura pulled up along side Lex as they headed out of the clearing in pursuit of Chloe. "Lex, stick close to me. If we run into trouble, grab my hand."
Lex nodded his agreement then turned his attention to the ride. They were cutting through heavy forest to reach the main road well south of the camp. It would be stupid at this moment to get knocked from his horse by not watching where he was going.
It only took a couple of minutes to reach the spot where Chloe chose to rejoin the main road. Gaining clear, even footing for the horses, Chloe picked up the pace to a full gallop.
The terrain through which the road was passing was getting increasingly rough as it climbed into the hill country. The heavy forest, which would be almost completely cut down for timber during the Middle Ages, loomed gloomily over the road. Off to the right they could hear the roar of the Vienne River as it passed through a section of rapids.
As they raced along the road, as usual for this trip, their luck turned bad. Just as they were passing a spot where a small side trail entered the main road, a large party of Roman cavalry from the encamped army, out on a recon/training exercise, came around a bend in the side trail and caught sight of them. If it had just been the three of them, even at a gallop, there wouldn't have been a problem. But finding the legion's commander bound and in their custody quickly resulted in the cavalry following them in hot pursuit.
They had barely a twenty yard lead when the Romans turned onto the main road, well within the range of the archers among the cavalrymen. As the rain of arrows began, Laura took one in the back. But more critically, Lex's horse also took a hit. As his horse stumbled, Laura swerved hers up next to him. Reaching out, she quickly grabbed Lex's arm.
Suddenly, for a few seconds, it seemed like Lex's mind was disconnected from his body and he was floating in darkness. Then he was back and found himself behind Laura astride her horse, his right hand was gripping her bare upper arm and in his left hand was the bloody arrow he had obviously wrenched free.
'Sorry, Lex,' began Laura through their mind-link. 'I hate to take control of your body without your permission, but at the moment there just wasn't time. Please accept my apology. And . . . if you don't mind, it would best if you let me take control for a little longer to keep us from taking anymore arrow hits. We are going to have enough trouble getting clear riding double, but if we lose this horse, too . . .'
Lex hated to give up control, but knew with her seventeen thousand years of experience and nanobot enhanced reflexes she could probably be a lot more effective than he. 'Okay, but can you let me see what is going on? It is very disconcerting to go into sensory deprivation in the middle of a battle.'
Before he had finished his thought his body started moving without his volition. His body was pivoting around until he found himself facing aft, looking at the charging Roman cavalry. Romans who almost looked close enough to reach out and touch, not that Lex had any control over his hand, arm, or body.
Lex's left hand was gripping the edge of the saddle while Laura's left hand was restraining his right hip. His tenacious grip on the speeding horse should have been the most disconcerting thing he felt, but it wasn't. No, the lack of control of his eyes was the most uncomfortable thing at the moment. He wanted to dart his attention all over the place but his eyes stubbornly looked upward so the horsemen were only visible in his peripheral vision.
Suddenly, one of the arrows came plummeting out of the sky directly towards them. At the last moment he watched as his hand rose up into his field of view and snatched the arrow out of the air. 'Wow,' thought Lex, as he watched his hand catch or deflect three more arrows in rapid succession, 'Catching arrows really is possible and not just a gimmick on the old Kung Fu TV show.'
Lex for the moment had forgotten Laura could hear his thoughts. 'What? You thought I made up that part of my story? Lex, when I was Chloe and now since I have been Laura, I have never lied to you. Okay, sometimes I have not told the whole story, but I have never exaggerated my abilities.'
'Oh, Laura, I understood in my head the arrow catching ability was real. However seeing it done, particularly seeing my own body do it, is much more convincing than simply hearing about it.'
Lex was about to ask about any other abilities she had, which she hadn't yet mentioned, when he heard her mentally say 'Shit' to herself. Obviously, their position must have gotten worse.
'What is it?' he thought to her, as nothing in his field of view had changed. Twenty seven horsemen were still on their tail, but he was still successfully stopping all arrows coming their way.
Without any warning the visual signal reaching his brain abruptly changed. One moment he was seeing out of his eyes and the next he was looking forward along the direction of their travel. He quickly realized he was seeing out of Laura's eyes instead. And what he saw was not good. Definitely not good. The road was turning onto a high arched bridge, crossing the Vienne River where it passed through a deep gorge. Lex could see down at least eighty feet, but couldn't see the bottom. However he could hear the roaring of the water indicating at least severe rapids and maybe even a waterfall.
However, as scary as being on top of a tall narrow bridge riding backwards on a horse at a full gallop was, the horrifying part was seeing Chloe. Whether the cause was an extremely unlucky arrow hit, or simply a small rock or hole in the roadway, one of her horse's front legs had collapsed causing it to pitch forward in a head-over-heels tumble. Chloe had been thrown to ground in front of the horse, and then before she could get herself clear, the eleven hundred pound horse rolled right over the top of her. By the time they had rolled to a stop the horse was just beyond her limp body. Chloe had just started to lift her head when the thrashing, panicking horse delivered several solid kicks to the much smaller one hundred twenty pound girl.
As her head slumped back to the ground Lex knew it was going to take a few seconds for even her nanobot enhanced body to recover from the pummeling she had experienced. A few seconds they didn't have, as Laura reigned in their horse with the Romans only a few yards behind. As one, Laura and Lex slide to the ground on the side of the horse nearest Chloe, and positioned the horse to provide at least a moments shelter.
As time seemed to speed back up to normal, Lex realized he was once again seeing through his own eyes as, with hardly a pause, Laura led him around the side of the horse towards the still mounted Romans. Somehow in the process of dismounting from the horse they had retrieved two swords from scabbards attached to the pommel of the saddle. Now Lex found himself with a sword in his left hand and his right hand firmly grasping Laura's left hand.
Through his mind-link to Laura he could feel the wicked little smile that was gracing her face. 'We need to buy Chloe a few seconds to recover. Shall we show these Romans how to dance?' And with those words Lex felt himself enveloped with music as though a thousand piece orchestra had started to play some frenetic version of 'Swan Lake'. Lex felt the beat of the music penetrate into his soul as they began their dance like a prima ballerina and her companion. Spinning, pivoting, and whirling, Laura was the speed and agility of their team while Lex was the anchor providing the power and the punch.
Unfortunately, this ballet was a true dance of death played with swords and shields rather than ribbons and streamers. At least that's what Lex thought at first until he noticed Laura was not using any 'kill' blows with her or Lex's swords. No, the sharp edges of the blades were only used to block other swords. Once inside the opponent's defensives only the hilt of the sword, the flat side of the blade, or a blow from the foot or knee were used to incapacitate the soldiers.
However the Romans were not limited by the same self-imposed restrictions. They were using every technique at their disposal to win this contest. And against anyone else they would have quickly won with odds of twenty seven against two, and those two forced to always be touching. Even Laura's near perfect reflexes and abilities to predict the opponent's most probable moves in advance couldn't stop all blows from getting through. Several times Lex or Laura received slashing blows to the body or an arm and once Lex even took a solid penetrating stab through his lower back. Each time they continued to fight on and the 'bots healed the damage, but slowly the cumulative damage was taking its toll and it seemed to take the 'bots more and more seconds to return them to one hundred percent.
After sixty seconds, which felt more like twenty minutes, fourteen of the Romans were down on the ground out of the fight when Chloe appeared from behind the shadow of the horse. She had a sword in each hand and let out a war-cry that would have made 'Xena' proud. For an instant everyone seemed frozen by the shout and then by the spectacular way Chloe spun and wove the swords about her body in moves only seen in Chinese martial arts movies through the benefits of under driven cameras and other photographic tricks. However with Chloe it was no trick, but rather the result of her 'bot enhancements and century upon century of practice and practical experience. No hundred men combined had ever been in as many swordfights as she.
Chloe waded into the remaining Romans with an aggressive style no one else could dare match, for who else could take a killing blow and keep right on fighting? As Laura paused for a moment to watch Chloe in action and give their bodies a chance to recover from the latest damage, Lex remarked. 'Wow, she could really teach the martial arts experts a thing or two.'
'I, ahh she, ahh we, oh you know what I mean, we already did. Back during the Hsia dynasty, wow, almost four thousand years ago, I spent a long time in China and accidentally started the whole 'kung fu' tradition. Anyway, time for us to give her a hand and see if we can finish this.'
Working as a team with Chloe, in another thirty seconds only three Romans remained standing. Then as victory seemed to be within their grasp, fresh arrows started raining down on their position. Before Lex was even conscious of what was going on, all four of their swords were up and deflecting the incoming barrage.
Where had all of these archers come from, wondered Lex as he estimated at least two hundred men were arrayed with bows back in the cleared area just before the road entered the bridge. Even if one of the riders had gone back to the main camp for reinforcements, no way would they have arrived this soon. But whether this was another group from the camp out on a recon mission, or something else didn't matter at the moment. No, all that mattered was that two hundred archers were overwhelming their defenses. Even with the perfecting timing the 'bots bestowed on their movements, they weren't fast enough to stop all of the arrows as the bowmen poured in volley after volley.
The immediate area of the bridge where they were standing was being deluged with projectiles. The Roman soldiers they had been so careful not to kill were quickly festooned with hits. Looking more like porcupines than once human bodies, the archers either thought these men were already dead or didn't care and would just chalk up their deaths to 'casualties of war'.
Even with Laura controlling his body and blocking his pain receptors, Lex could still tell when his body staggered from the impact of an arrow to the torso. Within seconds at least five arrows had gotten through the defense Laura was putting up with the sword and hit his body. Chloe moved over and touched one of her legs to his other side so the 'bot system in all of their bodies could network together to maximize the efficiency of their efforts. But he knew the girls were also taking hits.
'Laura,' Lex thought. 'How many more hits can we take and still be functional?'
'Not many,' answered Chloe instead of Laura.
'So, do we surrender?' asked Lex.
'No, if we get separated before you heal from these wounds, you will die. And even if you are healed in time, something might still happen to you. And there's no guarantee how soon Clark will return. We got lucky with Lana and the 'five minute window'. We might not be so lucky again.'
'Then what do we do?' inquired Lex.
At that moment Chloe dropped the sword in her right hand and grabbed Lex's upper arm while Laura pivoted her and his bodies toward the stone railing of the bridge. They each quickly bound one of their arms to Lex's arms with their belts. Then, before Lex could think to react, not that it would have made any difference as he wasn't in control of his body, the three of them launched themselves over the side of the railing.
'Better to die from a fall then risk dying at the hands of the Romans,' thought Laura.
'Hey,' exclaimed Chloe with a mental laugh, as she pulled the arrows from her body before swinging around into a position like a parachutist in freefall. 'It's not the fall that kills you, it is the sudden stop.'
Speaking of sudden stops, Lex watched in horror as the bottom of the canyon seemed to race up towards them. The river at the bottom was a raging torrent, but from their trajectory he knew they were going to hit the hard rock wall at least twenty feet short of the water.
'Ahh, remember when I said I didn't want to go through the battle in sensory deprivation?' began Lex with a panicky tone to his thoughts. 'I think I have changed my mind.'
"No problem, Lex," he heard Laura say as he suddenly found the three of them sitting in their favorite booth at the Talon. On the table were three steaming mugs of coffee. As Lex picked up his cup he was a little dismayed to see how badly his hands were shaking.
After taking a quick shallow of the burning liquid, he carefully set the cup back down. "I don't suppose I could get something a little stronger?"
Laura put her hand on top of his. "Lex, everything is going to be okay. The first fifty times you die are the hardest. Well, hundred times. Anyway, the current will sweep our bodies downstream. We'll stay in the water for a few miles until we are well clear of these Romans and then we'll get back on our way towards Tolosa."
Lex took a deep breathe to calm himself. Laura was right. She, or rather Chloe, had been through situations like this before. He remembered a brief fragment of one of her memories he had received back at the arena in Rome, a memory of her diving off of the top of the battlements of some castle. A dive from a height at least three or four times greater than the one they were currently experiencing. And he remembered how within a minute she was up and swimming away.
Lex turned to Chloe and gave her a hint of a smile indicating he was back in control. "I recall this memory from you of a time you were in a similar situation."
Chloe read his surface thoughts and smiled. "Ahh, the good old days with the crusaders in Acre. After I escaped that night I ended up doing an extended stay in a harem at . . ."
Abruptly, Chloe not only stopped talking, but completely vanished from view. As Lex rapidly swung his head around, he noticed the whole Talon briefly became almost translucent before firming back up. His gaze quickly settled on Laura.
"What just happened? Where is Chloe?" Lex hated to hear the slight hint of shrillness creeping back into his voice.
"Lex," Laura said speaking quickly. "I have never tried to shoot rapids before while trying to maintain three people in a link. Chloe's binding to your arm got shredded back a ways and when she hit a large rock in the stream; she finally lost her grip on your hand. Lex, my binding is also gone. I have my arms wrapped around you, but if something goes wrong, you better be prepared to take back control of your body at a moment's notice."
"Maybe you should just give me control back now," suggested Lex.
"No, it's best we wait as long as possible. At the moment we have been trapped underwater by the current for four minutes and twenty three seconds. I doubt you could have held your breath this long, but with the nanobots active, we can stay under almost indefinitely. Well, my personal record is a little over two hours, so close enough."
Lex was trying to image being able to hold his breath for two hours when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted.
"Shit," exclaimed Laura. "Ahh, Lex, we are about to go over a waterfall and it is almost certain when we hit the bottom I am going to lose my grip. All of your wounds from the arrows, the swordfight, and the fall are healed and you are physically as close to one hundred percent as I can make you. If we get separated, I will try to get back to you as soon as possible."
Lex nodded. He had barely gotten over the shock of falling off of the bridge and readjusted to finding himself in the Talon. Now he tried to mentally prepare himself for suddenly being under water.
Laura reached out and clasped his hand. "Here we go. Get ready. Three. Two. One."
Bang. Lex was alone and in the water. What he hadn't thought about on this warm late spring day was how cold the water would be. Fed by the spring melt, the water was incredibly, unbelievably cold.
Fortunately, Lex was holding his breath and he was able to take a moment to try and orient himself. He quickly cradled his head in his arms as he realized this waterfall didn't end in a calm, tranquil pool. No, it dumped directly into the next section of rapids and he was madly careening off giant boulders and the hard bottom of the channel, as any sand would have long since been swept away by the speeding current.
After a long thirty seconds, when his lungs were seriously beginning to scream, he final broke the surface long enough to get some air and his bearings. Ten yards further downstream he had a quick glimpse of a white robe, but he couldn't tell if it was Laura or Chloe. At the moment, being buffeted around by the intense current, ten yards might as well be a mile. He could only hope whoever it was would be caught briefly in an eddy so he might catch up.
For the next couple of minutes he kept getting glimpses of the white robe, until finally the current twisted them just right so he could make out the dark hair. Laura even briefly managed to raise her hand for a moment so he would know she was alright.
Intellectually, he knew she must be alright, but it warmed his heart to have concrete proof. And at the moment he needed any extra warmth he could get as his teeth were chattering violently. Now it was urgent to get out of the water as, in five more minutes, he was going to be in serious trouble.
After a couple more minutes of pounding rapids, they found what they needed: a short section where the river widened significantly which dramatically slowed the current. They were still at the bottom of a deep gorge, but one side of the canyon wall opened up with a twenty foot long by fifteen foot deep shelf located a couple feet above the waterline. The randomness of the rapids had dumped Lex into the slow section much closer to the shelf than it had Laura. Lex was tempted to swim over and help her, but between the battering from the rocks and the intense cold he was very near the end of his endurance. With her active 'bots, Laura would certainly be in better shape at this moment than he was, so Lex turned and swam for the shore.
It was an extreme struggle for him to get up and over the vertical two foot lip of the ledge as one of his calf muscles cramped up hard just as he reached the edge. He had barely flopped down on his stomach when Laura reached the edge. He reached his hand over the side with no real hope to pull her up, but merely to use his deadweight to give her better leverage for her own climb out.
Within two seconds of Laura's grabbing his forearm and before she had even pulled herself out, Lex's cramp was gone and some of his strength was returning. In the end, he was able to help from his prone position to pull her out of the water. As she crawled up on the ledge, Lex rolled to his back and Laura ended up lying on his chest with his arms wrapped around her.
"God," murmured Lex as he tightened his grip and turned it into a hug. "I am so glad you are okay."
Laura's long dark hair hung down around his face. The water dripping on his face suddenly didn't feel as cold. Slowly, Laura lowered her head until her lips brushed against his. "Silly boy, it takes more than rapids and a little cold water to hurt me."
Lex raised his head just enough to turn the brushing of their lips into a light, tender kiss. "I know, but I still can't help worrying about you."
As he spoke, Laura was running the fingers of one hand through his new found hair.
"Mmm, that feels nice," Lex whispered before he was silenced by Laura's mouth once more covering his own.
After a few short seconds, Laura pulled back and then started to rise. "We have about twenty minutes before this little cove goes into shadow. Let's get out of these wet clothes so they can dry and we can warm up."
As Laura stripped out of her soaking tunic and then languidly stretched for a moment, Lex hesitated. Laura looked at him and then cocked her head in a very Chloe-like manner. "What's the problem, Lex? You didn't seem to have any problem getting naked that first day by the pool in the Professor's canyon."
Lex shrugged as he started to remove his own robe. He knew he would feel a lot warmer once the damp, frigid garment was off. "I didn't know you girls very well back then and getting naked just seemed like a lark. But knowing you now, it is somehow different."
"Lex, look at me," Laura said in a tone which fell only a little short of a command. When he raised his gaze from where he had been half-heartily pretending to look for Chloe, she continued. "It's really about Lana, isn't it?"
Lex stared into her eyes for a couple of seconds before returning his attention to the river. "Yeah, in some ways I miss her so much. But more and more when I look at you my first thought is not 'Lana', but 'Laura'. It is still the same body standing there, but at the moment it is you I feel an attraction to and in a strange way it almost feels like I am cheating on her. This situation is so unique, it is difficult to understand, let alone describe what I am feeling."
Laura sat down beside him and intertwined her fingers with his. "Lex, would it be okay if I use the mind-link? Perhaps it will clarify things for both of us."
Lex was silent for a few seconds and then he quietly said, "Okay."
For ten seconds they sat there soaking up the warmth of the sun looking to the outside world like a pair of living statues as feeling and emotions were shared.
Abruptly, Laura stood and started waving. "There's Chloe," she needlessly added.
Lex stood and joined her in waving and shouting. After a few seconds Chloe waved to acknowledge she had seen them and started to stroke in their direction.
Chloe was only about fifteen feet from the bank when Lex heard a shout from above. Standing at the top of the vertical cliff almost one hundred feet above the cove, someone was shouting. With the sun at his back it was difficult to tell who it was until the person leaped over the side. It could only be Clark.
As Lex watched, it somehow seemed like Clark was descending at a slightly slower rate than was right for someone in freefall. But Lex shrugged it off as a trick of the lighting or the angle of the cliff walls as Clark landed beside him as easily as if he had merely stepped down from a chair rather than having jumped down a hundred feet.
Clark arrived just in time to pull Chloe from the water as she reached the edge. With one quick smooth motion of his right hand he propelled her out of the water and swung her around to land lightly beside him. He quickly pulled her into a hug.
"I am so glad I found you, all of you. When I got back and found all of these soldiers peering down into the river and the top of the bridge covered with arrows and dead bodies, I knew something bad had happened. I had to dangle four men over the side of the bridge before I found one who would explain what had happened."
As Clark finished speaking, Chloe pulled away for a minute to strip off her own sodden tunic. She quickly flowed back into his arms to use his body heat to warm up a little. As a shiver ran through her, the fact she and the others were freezing finally penetrated through the despair which had partial numbed Clark's mind and senses. He quickly used his heat vision to warm the nearby rock walls and then superheated enough river water to fill the cove with steam like some exotic Swedish sauna.
Chloe was just starting to enjoy this unexpected luxury when she finally caught the expression on Clark's face. Wrapping her fingers about his and squeezing tightly, she asked, "Clark, what is it? What's wrong?"
When Clark realized Lex and Laura had also turned and were watching him, he grimaced. "I was too late. The professor had already gone through the portal."
"Did he leave the meteor rocks behind?" asked Lex quickly.
"Yeah, but they are not going to do us much good. After he was gone, several of his followers worked over the equipment with the equivalent of sledgehammers."
Lex had known since the minute they were certain they were really back in ancient Rome it was a strong possibility they would be trapped here forever, but he wasn't ready to admit to it quite yet. "You mean we're stuck here? No, there must be something we can do. Perhaps if we all work on it we can get the Professor's equipment working again. We have to try."
Clark shook his head and when he responded they could all hear the finality and despair in his voice. "Lex, all of the circuit boards are shattered into a million pieces. Even if the world's best stocked Radio Shack were to magically appear, I don't think we would ever get that equipment working again."
A chill ran through them which the steam Clark had provided could suddenly no longer alleviate. For the next couple of minutes they all stood there lost in their own thoughts.
Finally, as the steam evaporated and their chill started to change from mental to real, Chloe spoke up with an unexpected quiver in her voice and a glistening in her eyes like she was about to cry. "Lex, a portal can still be open from the other end, even if the equipment at this end is destroyed, right?"
Lex shrugged. "Sure, or the Professor wouldn't have been able to get here to set up his equipment in the first place. But we could wait for years in that room without a portal opening. I mean no one except the Professor knows where to look for us."
Abruptly, the implication of what Chloe had said and the hitch in her voice sunk home for Lex. "No, Chloe. There has to be another way."
Clark looked at her and saw the steady stream of tears running down her face. He hadn't yet figured out what Lex and she were talking about, but he knew immediately in his heart she had already made some life altering decision.
"Lex, you know it is the only way."
Clark looked from Lex to Chloe and back. Finally dreading the answer before the question was even asked, he said, "Lex, what are you guys talking about?"
Lex just stood there blinking rapidly, as though he was fighting to hold back his own tears. In the end it was Chloe who answered.
"Clark, the only person who knows where we are to open a portal home is me." Trying to put a brave face on, she gave him a weak smile. "I have to go back the long way to get the rest of you home."
"The long way?" Clark echoed, as her meaning felt like it was on the tip of his tongue, but needed one more small nudge to sink in and become real.
"I have to live through the next two thousand years all over again so I can be in the Professor's lab sometime after we go through to use the machine to open another portal to here."
Clark stood there staring at her as his mind raced in circles. If only he had been faster, he could have caught the Professor before he escaped through the Portal and destroyed the machine. If only he hadn't played the 'Greek God' game, the Professor might not have been scared off and they could have found him. Also, if he hadn't played the 'Greek God' game, perhaps the girls wouldn't have ended up at the arena and Lana would still be in possession of her body. Hell, if only he and his accursed meteor rocks had never shown up on earth, his friends would never have been stuck back here period. As always, Clark tried to shoulder all of the blame himself.
"Clark, Clark. It is going to be okay," said Chloe as she pulled him into a hug.
Clark hugged her back for a minute before stepping back and wiping at his own eyes. "At least we have a few days until we get back to Tolosa."
Chloe looked at him with a sad expression on her face and then shook her head. "No. If we put it off until then, we will just keep finding excuses to keep putting it off until years will end up going by. No, if I am successful at getting back to our time and getting use of the machine, this time and place is locked into my nanobot memory just as well as the Professor's secret facility in Tolosa." She paused and looked around the small cove. Then pointing at the back wall, she said. "A portal should open back there right about now."
As she said 'Now', she snapped her fingers. At that exact moment they all saw the meteor rock green colored doorway waver into existence.
Looking at the portal as it solidified and knowing home for the others was a mere five steps away, Chloe tried to make light of her situation. "I always did have the flair for the dramatic."
Laura, who had been silent ever since her mind-link with Lex about his feelings for Lana and her, spoke up. "Chloe, I could keep you company on your trip the long way."
Chloe looked at her with a grateful expression on her face for the offer, but after a few seconds shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but it has only been twelve days since you got your 'bots. There is no way of knowing yet if your exposure to the meteor rocks will permanently leave the 'bots active. I would hate to have you waste twenty or thirty years of your life back here before finding out. No, I am going to have to do this one alone."
Laura nodded and then ran over pulling Chloe into a hug. For several seconds their faces went blank which usually meant they were using the mind- link to communicate. As they separated, Chloe squeezed Laura's hand and gave her a cryptic nod of the head.
Laura walked over towards the portal and called out to Lex. "Come on, let's go on through and give them a moment alone."
Lex looked from Laura to Chloe. Something had just passed between the girls and he had a strong feeling it was related to him. Ever since their mind-link, he had noticed Laura had been unusually quiet. What had she seen in his soul and what things had she set in motion?
Stepping over to Chloe, Lex pulled her into a quick hug. Quietly, he whispered 'Thank you' into her ear, but he wasn't certain if it was just for the way home or also something else.
Chloe hugged him back. Releasing him, she watched him walk over to Laura. Lex was about to step through the portal when he seemed to realize for the first time in minutes that their robes were still stretched out on the rocks to dry and three of the four of them were still nude. With a sheepish expression, he quickly grabbed two of the damp robes. After they were dressed, Lex followed Laura through the portal.
Alone with Clark, Chloe stepped back up to him and snuggled into the warm embrace of his powerful arms. After a couple of seconds she lifted her head from his chest and tilted it back. In an instant their lips met in a final slow kiss. The tears she had managed to suppress for the past couple of minutes welled up again. God, how she was going to miss him.
After a minute of indelibly imprinting the moment in her memory with special quadruple redundancy, she slowly pulled back. Taking Clark's hand, she led him over to the entrance to the portal.
"Clark, when you step through the portal it will only be a few seconds until you see me again. For me, it is going to be almost two thousand years. At sixteen, you can't possible imagine how long that is. Please try and keep it in mind, if I seem a little shy or hesitant at first."
Clark tried to imagine two thousand years and realized she was right, it was beyond his comprehension. It had only been three weeks since he had seen his parents or Pete and it had been almost more than he could bear. Even a year or two was almost more than he could imagine. And more than just this separation being two thousand years in the past for Chloe, how would two thousand more years of life change her?
"Chloe, couldn't you just step through the portal with me?"
"You know I can't. We have no idea what a time paradox like that might do. Maybe the whole universe would end. I just don't know, but the consequences seem too big to risk."
Clark nodded. After running his fingers briefly through the tangles in her hair from the time in the river, he leaned down for one last quick kiss.
Pulling away, Clark stepped up to the portal. Before walking through, he turned back one last time. "Remember, when I step through the other side, it will only be eight days until the spring formal. I expect you to be ready."
Chloe gave him the faintest hint of a smile and a small wave. She saw the tears glistening in his eyes as he turned and stepped through the portal.
She stood there for thirty seconds watching the green light gradually fade before slowly backing away until her back hit the far granite wall of the cove. With this support against her back, all of the strength seemed to leave her legs and she abruptly sagged to the ground. Then the dam broke and all the tears she had been doing her best to hold back came flooding forth.
Why was she always destined to be alone? After seventeen thousand years she had finally found the one person who seemed like her equal, someone to share all the joys and heartaches of being different than everyone else. And then mere weeks after finally connecting with him, they were torn apart for thousands of years. Life just wasn't fair. Was this the price she would always be forced to pay for living hundreds of times her allotted three score and ten?
For a long time Chloe sat that rocking and crying. Eventually, the tears ran out and she merely sat there and rocked. After thirty minutes she finally became aware enough of her surroundings to notice the whole cove was in shade and she was getting cold sitting there naked. Slowly she worked up the energy to stand up and walk over to where her robe still lay. Slipping it on, a sharp shock passed through her as the cold damp material touched her skin. The shock was what she needed to break up the world of self-pity she had fallen into.
Squaring her shoulders, she started working on the list of tasks she needed to accomplish. So much to do and only one thousand nine hundred sixty four years, eleven months, and seventeen days to get it all done. Time to get moving.
With the proper mindset in place, she determined the easiest route out of the cove and started the long climb back to the heights.
To be continued.
Author: adelacroixhotmail.com
Chapter 33
Lex ran his fingers through his short, stubbly hair as he watched Clark make his way down the hill to the Roman marching camp. Running his fingers through his hair was still a novel experience. When Chloe introduced her 'bots into his body to save his life in the arena twelve days earlier, he never imagined as a side effect they would cure his meteor rock induced baldness. The mirrors available in this time period were significantly inferior to modern glass ones, but were good enough to show him that his new hair was a dark, rich auburn much like he remembered his mother's, rather than the bright reddish-orange it had been before that long ago day in a Smallville cornfield. Would his hair have naturally darkened to this shade if he hadn't lost it in the meteor shower, or was this color more of Chloe's doing? With all of her research at The Torch, she had doubtlessly come across photos of Lex and his mom in younger, happier days. After conversations he had had with her about his relationship with his mom, he wouldn't be surprised if she somehow arranged for his hair to be this shade as a tribute to his mother. Perhaps he would have to ask Chloe or Laura.
It was hard to believe twelve days had passed since the momentous events in Rome: the revelation of Clark's secrets, the loss of the girls by execution in the arena, the experience of the healing powers of Chloe's nanobots, and the discovery Lana's mind had been overwhelmed by Chloe's memories and effectively it was now Chloe's mind which inhabited Lana's body. Lex was having the hardest time dealing with this final event. Lex had known Lana for almost a year, but had recognized his love for her a mere six days before the events in Rome tore everything apart. Now he had already reached the point where he had spent twice as long in close proximity with Laura, the new Lana/Chloe hybrid, than he had spent with Lana. It scared Lex a little that he was already starting to unconsciously think of her as Laura when he saw her. How much longer would it be before his Lana started to feel like nothing more than a dream?
It had been eight days from their arrival in Tolosa to the events in the Roman arena and now another twelve days from Rome to their current position on a hilltop twelve miles south of Caesarodinum, which would in the distant twenty-first century be known as Tours in northwestern France. Twenty days, almost three weeks, since they had been stranded back here in the ancient Roman Empire. To Lex it suddenly felt more like three years than three weeks. If it wasn't for availing himself of Laura's offer to spend a few minutes each day in a virtual reality version of his office back at his castle, he thought he would go crazy. He wasn't sure how Clark was able to hold up without that link to home, but then Clark's girlfriend's mind hadn't been ripped out of her body, so that had to help.
When they had set out from Rome, Chloe had been so confident they would be able to quickly located the Rhine army, which was suppose to be headed south to help with Venta's scheme to overthrow the Roman emperor. Then it was just a matter of grabbing the commanding general, and, if they got lucky, the Professor himself. Between her knowledge of these times, her 'gifts', and Clark's 'gifts', she thought they could turn back the Rhine legions without too much difficulty.
However, as everything back here seemed to turn out, nothing was as fast and easy as they hoped. They spent days loitering south of the Alps waiting for word of the army's route. Eventually, Clark searched north for several hundred miles along each of the three main routes through the mountains. He didn't find a trace of the army or any other large troop movements. They had just decided something must have changed since Chloe had overheard Venta and the General's plans nine months earlier and they were going to have to come up with some other method of locating the Professor and his meteor rocks when word reached them of a large Roman army marching west through northern Gaul.
Since this unexplained movement by a Roman army was the only unusual news they had received and since this army had to have originated in the Rhine area, they decided it was worthy of investigation. Four hard days in the saddle had been necessary to reach this hilltop from their starting point in Verona near both the Adriatic Sea and the future site of Venice. Four long days which made their original dash from Tolosa to Narbo seem like a stroll around Central Park in comparison. Fortunately, Lex and Lana, who had suffered the most from the earlier ride, were now physically better prepared for the long ordeal in the saddle with the addition of Chloe's 'bots. Laura with her active 'bot system had no problems with the trip. Lex with his more passive system found a brief touch by one of the girls every hour was sufficient to crank his body back up to one hundred percent and make the trip tolerable, if not quite enjoyable.
With Clark scouting ahead in his almost magical 'speed' mode, they had arrived unnoticed on this hilltop overlooking the Roman encampment thirty minutes earlier. It was just past noon when they arrived and Chloe had been surprised to see the tents still standing.
After looking over the camp for several minutes, she remarked. "I don't understand it, but they have been camped here for several days."
"How can you tell?" asked Clark.
"Roman armies create a new fortified camp every evening when they are on the move. It slows their daily progress, but it provides a more restful evening for the soldiers when they know they will have a warning and some protection from any surprise night-time attack."
"Like the attack Spartacus led against the first Roman army that tried to quell his slave rebellion?" interjected Lex remembering another arcane bit of trivia, or was it just a made-up scene from the old Kirk Douglas movie?
"Yeah, they never should have let a non-military senator lead an army in the field. His men paid dearly for his mistake. Anyway, as I was saying a Roman army on the march stops about four in the afternoon to erect fortifications and then set up camp. During the march each soldier carries two sharpened ten-foot poles used to create the wall around camp. With three legions like you have here that amounts to fifteen thousand soldiers or about thirty thousand poles for the wall. With a five hundred foot by five hundred foot camp, that works out to eight poles per foot of wall, which together with a quickly dug trench forms a respectable barrier with only a couple of hours work."
"Chloe, how do you know there are three legions down there?" asked Lex.
"The arrangement of the command tents around the central square is the giveaway. See the large green tent on the north side and the slightly smaller brown tents on the other three sides? That is the commanding general's tent and the tents of the commanders of the three individual legions. Each legion has its own tall golden eagle standard erected in front of its commander's tent, but we would have to be a lot closer for me to read it and tell you which specific legions these are."
"You said they have been camped here for several days?"
Chloe looked over at Clark and then pointed towards the nearest wall of the fort. "The poles the soldiers carry are only two to three inches in diameter to not overburden them in addition to their forty pound packs. Oh, that size pole, if you point it outward at a thirty degree angle, is very effective against a cavalry charge, but a stouter wall is always preferred. The poles on this more exposed, nearer wall of the fort have been replaced with timbers cut from the forest. It would take several days to have that much of the wall rebuilt. So either they expected to be here for a few days and the commanders didn't want idle hands creating mischief, or they are expecting trouble."
Clark stood up from where they had all been crouching under the cover of some bushes. "I think trouble is what they are about to get. So the big green tent is where I am most likely to find the general and hopefully the professor?"
Chloe nodded.
"Okay, wait here. I will be back in a few minutes."
Clark's tone said he wasn't going to risk letting any of the others tag along into an enemy camp filled with fifteen thousand soldiers, nanobot enhanced bodies or not. Chloe watched him head off down the hill glad to see the tell-tale bulge under his robe indicating he had at least retrieved her special lead box just in case the professor and his meteor rocks were down there. To the best of her knowledge, Clark had not mentioned to Lex the effect the meteor rocks had on him. If Clark had decided not to tell, she wouldn't say anything either. Since Laura had all of Chloe's memories up to the events in the arena, she also knew about the effect the rocks had on Clark, but Chloe assumed Laura had also respected Clark's wishes.
Clark walked steadily down the hill for a couple hundred feet as though to give the others time for any final objections before shifting into speed mode. He covered the sloping half mile to the bottom of the hill in a couple of seconds before slowing back to a walk. As he cleared the trees at the bottom of the hill and started across the two hundred yard open field leading to the Roman position, he came back into view of the others waiting back at the top.
From their position they watched his steady progress until he paused just short of the shallow eight foot wide trench dug in front of the wall of timbers. They couldn't hear if the Roman soldiers had challenged him or were even aware of him yet. But if the Romans weren't aware of his presence, they soon would be as the others watched the timber wall near Clark start to go down. Starting fifty feet to Clark's left, the timbers fell one after another as if they were being cut off at their bases by some giant invisible weedwacker. Within seconds a hundred feet of the wall was down and the steady thuds of the heavy logs hitting the ground was even audible at the top of the hill.
Lex glanced briefly at Chloe before turning his attention back towards the camp. "It looks like Clark has his heat vision under control. After those first two days out of Rome when I saw massive plumes of smoke from over the hills where you were helping him, I thought he would burn down the whole Italian peninsula before he was done."
"Yeah, I thought so too, for awhile. And it wasn't just the first couple of days. No after that we just moved a couple of ranges of hills further away before starting to practice. It wasn't until the sixth day that he was starting to get the hang of it. The past couple of days his control has been getting pretty good. By yesterday he could light a candle sitting in a bed of dry grass from a distance of two miles without singeing a single blade."
Lex just shook his head. He didn't think he could even see a candle from two miles, let alone dream of lighting it.
----------------
Clark watched as the final timber crashed to the ground; its lower end charred black from his heat vision, but no hint of an open flame as a result of his activities. As he had approached the wall, several guards had shouted challenges, but the noise of the wall coming down should have gotten the attention of everyone at this end of the camp.
The eight foot wide trench which blocked Clark's path was set about ten feet out from where the wall had stood, its primary purpose to break up a massed charge by either cavalry or foot soldiers. However it did little to hinder Clark, as a simple forty foot standing jump, which would have won a medal at the Olympics but barely qualified as a jump by Clark's standards, quickly got him past both the trench and the fallen wall.
As Clark made his way to the center of the camp and the general's tent, several individuals and then small groups of men tried to stop him. But it was like a group of fleas trying to stop a large dog on his way to his dinner bowl. They were an annoying distraction, but nothing more. By the time Clark had easily stopped the sixth group of eight men by ripping away their swords and then tossing the bodies an impossibly long seventy or eighty feet, the large crowd he had attracted started to just follow along at a respectful distance. Not wanting to risk getting out of control, Clark had not been unnecessarily rough with any of his attackers. Though he might have tossed them a long distance, he was always careful to see that they would land on something, like a tent, which would cushion the fall. Not that any of the men following him noticed this; all they saw was how easily he waded through their numbers.
After passing what seemed like countless rows of neatly aligned tents, Clark finally reached the center of the camp with its own scale version of a forum surrounded on four sides by the grand tents of the legion commanders and the general. The large forum could easily hold a thousand men and it was quickly filling to capacity as men jostled to see what was going on.
Clark proceeded across the forum to the general's tent. As he neared it, a man, wearing a breastplate worked with the most brilliant gold leaf Clark had yet seen on this journey, stepped out of the tent flanked by four of the biggest, toughest looking Roman soldiers this side of good, old, dead Venta himself. For a moment Clark thought their long search for the general had finally come to an end, but then realized this leader didn't in the slightest match Chloe's description of Domicius. She had said General Domicius was in his early fifties with steel gray hair and beginnings of the large gut of a man who enjoyed the pleasures of life more than the field of combat. The man now facing Clark was no more than thirty, thirty five tops, and in the peak condition of someone who trained daily with his men.
"Who are you and what do you want?" demanded the man in a tone suggesting he had long experience in command.
Clark thought for a moment about using his real name, but decided to continue the Greek God ploy. His own name would give him no particular advantage, however if rumors of the events in Rome had reached here, perhaps this situation could be handled with the minimum of pain and bloodshed.
With his most powerful tone, Clark responded. "I am Aries. Who are you?"
Clark thought he saw a momentary flicker of recognition on the other man's face before he answered. "I am Pontus Regnum Sinus, commander of the Twelfth Legion. What do you want?"
"Well, Ponty, I have business with General Domicius and, if he is here, Antonius Octavius Carius. Please bring them to me. Now!"
Sinus had heard the rumors of the events in Rome. The wild stories where the God Aries single-handedly destroyed the Praetorian Camp and the Statilus Taurus Stadium. But what were the odds of that God, if he truly had been in Rome, showing up less than two weeks later here, in northern Gaul? This man spoke thickly accented Latin. Not having seen Clark destroy the camp's perimeter wall or witnessed how easily he had handled the soldiers who had tried to stop him, Sinus assumed he was potentially a Druid assassin merely using the convenient story to get close to the General.
"Seize this man," shouted Sinus to the on-looking troops.
Immediately the inner ring of men from the encircling mass drew their swords. At least forty men with swords in hand were arrayed at Clark's back and sides no more than twenty feet away.
Clark merely shook his head and then briefly accelerated up into 'speed' mode. At what felt to him to be a slow leisurely pace, he pivoted around and turned a concentrated beam of his heat vision near the root of each exposed blade burning through the soft iron just above the hilt. After burning through all forty three swords, he turned back to Sinus and dropped back to 'normal' mode.
From Sinus' perspective Clark just appeared to stand there when moments after the swords were drawn, all of the blades glowed white-hot, separated from the handles and clunked to the ground. Shortly after that about a third of the men left with just the handles in their hands let out yelps of pain and dropped the remnants of their swords, the melted roots of the blades slowly fading from orange to red.
Clark glanced over his shoulder and then said to Sinus. "On a beautiful, warm day like this your men should all learn to wrap the hilts in leather to keep from burning their hands."
As the remaining men dropped their now useless sword handles, Clark started to say, "Now if this silliness is over. . .", when suddenly an arrow slammed into his chest. The head of the arrow snagged in his robe holding it in place until Clark reached up and pulled it clear.
Sinus stared at the arrow surprised to see no blood on either it or the robe. As Clark released the arrow, Sinus' eyes tracked it to the ground noticing in his peripheral vision that 'Ares' seemed to blur for a moment. When his eyes tracked back up to his upper body, Sinus realized Ares was holding aloft with his right hand a man holding a bow.
Clark shook the man lightly and then said. "What were you thinking shooting into a crowded area like this? What if you had missed me, you could have hurt or killed one of your own people, even the commander." Then Clark, still with one hand, tossed the archer fifty feet through the air to land on top of the legion commander's tent to his right.
While he had made his dash to grab the archer as a further demonstration of his 'powers' he had taken a quick detour through the general's tent. No general. No professor. However he could feel the lingering traces from meteor rocks; the professor had been in this tent in the past few days. So when he turned back to Sinus, he changed his question.
"Where have Domicius and Carius gone?"
For a moment Sinus was too shocked to speak. This man must be the god Aries. "They have gone . . ." he began before pausing. This man may be a god, but Sinus had served Domicius loyally for five years and Domicius had always looked after him well, even raising him from centurion to commander of the legion after the death of Macrinus. No, Domicius had earned his continuing loyalty. Restarting, he said. "I am sorry; I have sworn not to divulge that information."
Clark looked at the man with respect, but felt disappointment inside. Why couldn't things ever be easy? This man had information he needed, but Clark was not comfortable going beyond a demonstration of his abilities. Deciding Chloe had a lot more experience in this area than he; Clark grabbed up Sinus in his arms and raced out of the camp in 'speed' mode. To the soldiers left standing in the forum, the two men seemed to instantly vanish.
-----------------
Laura, Chloe, and Lex had remained crouched on the hilltop. Unfortunately this left them far enough from the camp to make it difficult to determine what was happening. They could see Clark and the surrounding men make their way to the center of the camp, but beyond that nothing specific.
Suddenly, Clark was behind them, below the ridge line, out of sight of the camp. As he lowered Sinus to his feet, he spoke up to get their attention. "Ahh, guys. . ."
The three turned as one to see Clark standing there maintaining a tight grip on the arm of a Roman officer. "This is Pontus Sinus, commander of the Twelfth Legion. Neither the general or Carius are in the camp, but I think Ponty here knows where they have gone." Clark paused to look at Chloe. "I thought you might be able to persuade him to tell us what he knows."
Chloe looked him over from his sandal encased feet to his curly brown hair. If he had a helmet, it had been lost somewhere along the way. Putting her most evil grin on her face, she walked up to the pair and said to Clark, "Hold him."
In a flash Clark was standing behind him holding both of Sinus' arms twisted behind his back.
Chloe stepped up to Sinus and then drew his own knife from its sheath at his right hip. Holding it up between their faces, she waved the blade back and forth a couple of times before asking, "Where have Domicius and Carius gone?"
Sinus got a twinge in his gut from the expression on this woman's face. He could see in her eyes she had been in this position before and could do what was necessary to get the information she desired. Still, he had given Domicius his oath of loyalty.
"I am sorry. I can not say."
"Perhaps you will be more ready to talk, if I use your own knife to cut off your balls and turn you into a fucking eunuch."
Laura shared a glance with Lex and then spoke up with a grin. "Ahh, Chloe?"
Chloe looked at Laura with a slight hint of annoyance at the interruption. "What?"
"Wouldn't that technically make him a non-fucking eunuch?"
Chloe stared at her for a moment before breaking out into a gut-wrenching laugh. Non-fucking eunuch was too hysterical.
Soon Lex and Laura had joined in the laughter and even Clark had broken into a grin.
Suddenly, before the laughter had completely died away, Chloe slashed out with the knife and tore a deep gash in Sinus' upper arm.
Before the shock of pain had even reached his brain, Sinus watched as the woman used the knife to open a deep cut in her own palm and then quickly slap her bleeding appendage against his own wound.
Chloe stood there for ten seconds with her hand pressed against his arm. Finally, after wiping most of the blood from her healed hand on the side of Sinus' robe, she stepped back.
"Clark go tie him onto your horse, we need to leave now and I want to take him with us for the moment. We'll meet you at the horses as fast as we can get there."
Clark nodded then he and Sinus vanished. Chloe set off down the backside of the hill at a dead run. Laura and Lex had no idea what Chloe had learned that had set her into such a panic, but also followed her at a run.
It took the three of them four minutes to reach the small sheltered clearing where they had hidden the horses. By the time they arrived, Clark had all of the horses saddled and Sinus was securely tied to his mount.
"What is it?" asked Clark as the others raced to a halt.
"Sinus doesn't know why, but the general and the professor were leading their army to Tolosa."
"Tolosa?" asked Lex as he got his breathing under control. "I thought they were going to Rome."
Chloe shrugged. "I can only speculate, but I am guessing they were planning to lead them through the portal to some other time."
"If so, why has the army been sitting here for the past few days?" asked Clark.
"Just over two days ago word of the events, our events, in Rome reached them. The professor and the general must have guessed some of what was going on. The general issued orders for the army to wait here for instructions and then the general, the professor, and a small detachment of cavalry headed south at a gallop."
"South? As in south to Tolosa?" asked Lex.
"That's my hunch. They are cutting their losses and running." Chloe turned more directly towards Clark. "Clark, if the professor beats us back to the portal, we may be stranded here. You need to get there as fast as you can. If the professor hasn't arrived yet, block the entrance to keep him out and then come back for us. If you find him along the way . . . well, I am sure you will figure out what to do."
As she spoke, Chloe had walked over and started digging through her saddlebag. From near the bottom she extracted a roll of parchment and proceeded to unroll it as she turned back to Clark.
Pointing to the map revealed on the inner surface of the scroll, she said. "We are here about ten miles south of Caesarodinum. Stick to the main road until you reach Burdigala. It is about one hundred forty miles and the first 'Tolosa' size city you'll reach. Take the south east road out of Burdigala and it is about another eighty miles to Tolosa." As she handed Clark the map, she continued. "We'll head south along the main road also. I want to put some distance between us and the camp."
As Clark took the map from her, he pulled her into a tight embrace. After a quick kiss on the lips, he looked into her eyes and said, "I'll be back as fast as I can." Then Clark was gone.
"Come on, guys," Chloe said as she quickly turned and grabbed the reins for Sinus' horse before mounting her own.
Laura and Lex followed her in mounting their own horses. Laura pulled up along side Lex as they headed out of the clearing in pursuit of Chloe. "Lex, stick close to me. If we run into trouble, grab my hand."
Lex nodded his agreement then turned his attention to the ride. They were cutting through heavy forest to reach the main road well south of the camp. It would be stupid at this moment to get knocked from his horse by not watching where he was going.
It only took a couple of minutes to reach the spot where Chloe chose to rejoin the main road. Gaining clear, even footing for the horses, Chloe picked up the pace to a full gallop.
The terrain through which the road was passing was getting increasingly rough as it climbed into the hill country. The heavy forest, which would be almost completely cut down for timber during the Middle Ages, loomed gloomily over the road. Off to the right they could hear the roar of the Vienne River as it passed through a section of rapids.
As they raced along the road, as usual for this trip, their luck turned bad. Just as they were passing a spot where a small side trail entered the main road, a large party of Roman cavalry from the encamped army, out on a recon/training exercise, came around a bend in the side trail and caught sight of them. If it had just been the three of them, even at a gallop, there wouldn't have been a problem. But finding the legion's commander bound and in their custody quickly resulted in the cavalry following them in hot pursuit.
They had barely a twenty yard lead when the Romans turned onto the main road, well within the range of the archers among the cavalrymen. As the rain of arrows began, Laura took one in the back. But more critically, Lex's horse also took a hit. As his horse stumbled, Laura swerved hers up next to him. Reaching out, she quickly grabbed Lex's arm.
Suddenly, for a few seconds, it seemed like Lex's mind was disconnected from his body and he was floating in darkness. Then he was back and found himself behind Laura astride her horse, his right hand was gripping her bare upper arm and in his left hand was the bloody arrow he had obviously wrenched free.
'Sorry, Lex,' began Laura through their mind-link. 'I hate to take control of your body without your permission, but at the moment there just wasn't time. Please accept my apology. And . . . if you don't mind, it would best if you let me take control for a little longer to keep us from taking anymore arrow hits. We are going to have enough trouble getting clear riding double, but if we lose this horse, too . . .'
Lex hated to give up control, but knew with her seventeen thousand years of experience and nanobot enhanced reflexes she could probably be a lot more effective than he. 'Okay, but can you let me see what is going on? It is very disconcerting to go into sensory deprivation in the middle of a battle.'
Before he had finished his thought his body started moving without his volition. His body was pivoting around until he found himself facing aft, looking at the charging Roman cavalry. Romans who almost looked close enough to reach out and touch, not that Lex had any control over his hand, arm, or body.
Lex's left hand was gripping the edge of the saddle while Laura's left hand was restraining his right hip. His tenacious grip on the speeding horse should have been the most disconcerting thing he felt, but it wasn't. No, the lack of control of his eyes was the most uncomfortable thing at the moment. He wanted to dart his attention all over the place but his eyes stubbornly looked upward so the horsemen were only visible in his peripheral vision.
Suddenly, one of the arrows came plummeting out of the sky directly towards them. At the last moment he watched as his hand rose up into his field of view and snatched the arrow out of the air. 'Wow,' thought Lex, as he watched his hand catch or deflect three more arrows in rapid succession, 'Catching arrows really is possible and not just a gimmick on the old Kung Fu TV show.'
Lex for the moment had forgotten Laura could hear his thoughts. 'What? You thought I made up that part of my story? Lex, when I was Chloe and now since I have been Laura, I have never lied to you. Okay, sometimes I have not told the whole story, but I have never exaggerated my abilities.'
'Oh, Laura, I understood in my head the arrow catching ability was real. However seeing it done, particularly seeing my own body do it, is much more convincing than simply hearing about it.'
Lex was about to ask about any other abilities she had, which she hadn't yet mentioned, when he heard her mentally say 'Shit' to herself. Obviously, their position must have gotten worse.
'What is it?' he thought to her, as nothing in his field of view had changed. Twenty seven horsemen were still on their tail, but he was still successfully stopping all arrows coming their way.
Without any warning the visual signal reaching his brain abruptly changed. One moment he was seeing out of his eyes and the next he was looking forward along the direction of their travel. He quickly realized he was seeing out of Laura's eyes instead. And what he saw was not good. Definitely not good. The road was turning onto a high arched bridge, crossing the Vienne River where it passed through a deep gorge. Lex could see down at least eighty feet, but couldn't see the bottom. However he could hear the roaring of the water indicating at least severe rapids and maybe even a waterfall.
However, as scary as being on top of a tall narrow bridge riding backwards on a horse at a full gallop was, the horrifying part was seeing Chloe. Whether the cause was an extremely unlucky arrow hit, or simply a small rock or hole in the roadway, one of her horse's front legs had collapsed causing it to pitch forward in a head-over-heels tumble. Chloe had been thrown to ground in front of the horse, and then before she could get herself clear, the eleven hundred pound horse rolled right over the top of her. By the time they had rolled to a stop the horse was just beyond her limp body. Chloe had just started to lift her head when the thrashing, panicking horse delivered several solid kicks to the much smaller one hundred twenty pound girl.
As her head slumped back to the ground Lex knew it was going to take a few seconds for even her nanobot enhanced body to recover from the pummeling she had experienced. A few seconds they didn't have, as Laura reigned in their horse with the Romans only a few yards behind. As one, Laura and Lex slide to the ground on the side of the horse nearest Chloe, and positioned the horse to provide at least a moments shelter.
As time seemed to speed back up to normal, Lex realized he was once again seeing through his own eyes as, with hardly a pause, Laura led him around the side of the horse towards the still mounted Romans. Somehow in the process of dismounting from the horse they had retrieved two swords from scabbards attached to the pommel of the saddle. Now Lex found himself with a sword in his left hand and his right hand firmly grasping Laura's left hand.
Through his mind-link to Laura he could feel the wicked little smile that was gracing her face. 'We need to buy Chloe a few seconds to recover. Shall we show these Romans how to dance?' And with those words Lex felt himself enveloped with music as though a thousand piece orchestra had started to play some frenetic version of 'Swan Lake'. Lex felt the beat of the music penetrate into his soul as they began their dance like a prima ballerina and her companion. Spinning, pivoting, and whirling, Laura was the speed and agility of their team while Lex was the anchor providing the power and the punch.
Unfortunately, this ballet was a true dance of death played with swords and shields rather than ribbons and streamers. At least that's what Lex thought at first until he noticed Laura was not using any 'kill' blows with her or Lex's swords. No, the sharp edges of the blades were only used to block other swords. Once inside the opponent's defensives only the hilt of the sword, the flat side of the blade, or a blow from the foot or knee were used to incapacitate the soldiers.
However the Romans were not limited by the same self-imposed restrictions. They were using every technique at their disposal to win this contest. And against anyone else they would have quickly won with odds of twenty seven against two, and those two forced to always be touching. Even Laura's near perfect reflexes and abilities to predict the opponent's most probable moves in advance couldn't stop all blows from getting through. Several times Lex or Laura received slashing blows to the body or an arm and once Lex even took a solid penetrating stab through his lower back. Each time they continued to fight on and the 'bots healed the damage, but slowly the cumulative damage was taking its toll and it seemed to take the 'bots more and more seconds to return them to one hundred percent.
After sixty seconds, which felt more like twenty minutes, fourteen of the Romans were down on the ground out of the fight when Chloe appeared from behind the shadow of the horse. She had a sword in each hand and let out a war-cry that would have made 'Xena' proud. For an instant everyone seemed frozen by the shout and then by the spectacular way Chloe spun and wove the swords about her body in moves only seen in Chinese martial arts movies through the benefits of under driven cameras and other photographic tricks. However with Chloe it was no trick, but rather the result of her 'bot enhancements and century upon century of practice and practical experience. No hundred men combined had ever been in as many swordfights as she.
Chloe waded into the remaining Romans with an aggressive style no one else could dare match, for who else could take a killing blow and keep right on fighting? As Laura paused for a moment to watch Chloe in action and give their bodies a chance to recover from the latest damage, Lex remarked. 'Wow, she could really teach the martial arts experts a thing or two.'
'I, ahh she, ahh we, oh you know what I mean, we already did. Back during the Hsia dynasty, wow, almost four thousand years ago, I spent a long time in China and accidentally started the whole 'kung fu' tradition. Anyway, time for us to give her a hand and see if we can finish this.'
Working as a team with Chloe, in another thirty seconds only three Romans remained standing. Then as victory seemed to be within their grasp, fresh arrows started raining down on their position. Before Lex was even conscious of what was going on, all four of their swords were up and deflecting the incoming barrage.
Where had all of these archers come from, wondered Lex as he estimated at least two hundred men were arrayed with bows back in the cleared area just before the road entered the bridge. Even if one of the riders had gone back to the main camp for reinforcements, no way would they have arrived this soon. But whether this was another group from the camp out on a recon mission, or something else didn't matter at the moment. No, all that mattered was that two hundred archers were overwhelming their defenses. Even with the perfecting timing the 'bots bestowed on their movements, they weren't fast enough to stop all of the arrows as the bowmen poured in volley after volley.
The immediate area of the bridge where they were standing was being deluged with projectiles. The Roman soldiers they had been so careful not to kill were quickly festooned with hits. Looking more like porcupines than once human bodies, the archers either thought these men were already dead or didn't care and would just chalk up their deaths to 'casualties of war'.
Even with Laura controlling his body and blocking his pain receptors, Lex could still tell when his body staggered from the impact of an arrow to the torso. Within seconds at least five arrows had gotten through the defense Laura was putting up with the sword and hit his body. Chloe moved over and touched one of her legs to his other side so the 'bot system in all of their bodies could network together to maximize the efficiency of their efforts. But he knew the girls were also taking hits.
'Laura,' Lex thought. 'How many more hits can we take and still be functional?'
'Not many,' answered Chloe instead of Laura.
'So, do we surrender?' asked Lex.
'No, if we get separated before you heal from these wounds, you will die. And even if you are healed in time, something might still happen to you. And there's no guarantee how soon Clark will return. We got lucky with Lana and the 'five minute window'. We might not be so lucky again.'
'Then what do we do?' inquired Lex.
At that moment Chloe dropped the sword in her right hand and grabbed Lex's upper arm while Laura pivoted her and his bodies toward the stone railing of the bridge. They each quickly bound one of their arms to Lex's arms with their belts. Then, before Lex could think to react, not that it would have made any difference as he wasn't in control of his body, the three of them launched themselves over the side of the railing.
'Better to die from a fall then risk dying at the hands of the Romans,' thought Laura.
'Hey,' exclaimed Chloe with a mental laugh, as she pulled the arrows from her body before swinging around into a position like a parachutist in freefall. 'It's not the fall that kills you, it is the sudden stop.'
Speaking of sudden stops, Lex watched in horror as the bottom of the canyon seemed to race up towards them. The river at the bottom was a raging torrent, but from their trajectory he knew they were going to hit the hard rock wall at least twenty feet short of the water.
'Ahh, remember when I said I didn't want to go through the battle in sensory deprivation?' began Lex with a panicky tone to his thoughts. 'I think I have changed my mind.'
"No problem, Lex," he heard Laura say as he suddenly found the three of them sitting in their favorite booth at the Talon. On the table were three steaming mugs of coffee. As Lex picked up his cup he was a little dismayed to see how badly his hands were shaking.
After taking a quick shallow of the burning liquid, he carefully set the cup back down. "I don't suppose I could get something a little stronger?"
Laura put her hand on top of his. "Lex, everything is going to be okay. The first fifty times you die are the hardest. Well, hundred times. Anyway, the current will sweep our bodies downstream. We'll stay in the water for a few miles until we are well clear of these Romans and then we'll get back on our way towards Tolosa."
Lex took a deep breathe to calm himself. Laura was right. She, or rather Chloe, had been through situations like this before. He remembered a brief fragment of one of her memories he had received back at the arena in Rome, a memory of her diving off of the top of the battlements of some castle. A dive from a height at least three or four times greater than the one they were currently experiencing. And he remembered how within a minute she was up and swimming away.
Lex turned to Chloe and gave her a hint of a smile indicating he was back in control. "I recall this memory from you of a time you were in a similar situation."
Chloe read his surface thoughts and smiled. "Ahh, the good old days with the crusaders in Acre. After I escaped that night I ended up doing an extended stay in a harem at . . ."
Abruptly, Chloe not only stopped talking, but completely vanished from view. As Lex rapidly swung his head around, he noticed the whole Talon briefly became almost translucent before firming back up. His gaze quickly settled on Laura.
"What just happened? Where is Chloe?" Lex hated to hear the slight hint of shrillness creeping back into his voice.
"Lex," Laura said speaking quickly. "I have never tried to shoot rapids before while trying to maintain three people in a link. Chloe's binding to your arm got shredded back a ways and when she hit a large rock in the stream; she finally lost her grip on your hand. Lex, my binding is also gone. I have my arms wrapped around you, but if something goes wrong, you better be prepared to take back control of your body at a moment's notice."
"Maybe you should just give me control back now," suggested Lex.
"No, it's best we wait as long as possible. At the moment we have been trapped underwater by the current for four minutes and twenty three seconds. I doubt you could have held your breath this long, but with the nanobots active, we can stay under almost indefinitely. Well, my personal record is a little over two hours, so close enough."
Lex was trying to image being able to hold his breath for two hours when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted.
"Shit," exclaimed Laura. "Ahh, Lex, we are about to go over a waterfall and it is almost certain when we hit the bottom I am going to lose my grip. All of your wounds from the arrows, the swordfight, and the fall are healed and you are physically as close to one hundred percent as I can make you. If we get separated, I will try to get back to you as soon as possible."
Lex nodded. He had barely gotten over the shock of falling off of the bridge and readjusted to finding himself in the Talon. Now he tried to mentally prepare himself for suddenly being under water.
Laura reached out and clasped his hand. "Here we go. Get ready. Three. Two. One."
Bang. Lex was alone and in the water. What he hadn't thought about on this warm late spring day was how cold the water would be. Fed by the spring melt, the water was incredibly, unbelievably cold.
Fortunately, Lex was holding his breath and he was able to take a moment to try and orient himself. He quickly cradled his head in his arms as he realized this waterfall didn't end in a calm, tranquil pool. No, it dumped directly into the next section of rapids and he was madly careening off giant boulders and the hard bottom of the channel, as any sand would have long since been swept away by the speeding current.
After a long thirty seconds, when his lungs were seriously beginning to scream, he final broke the surface long enough to get some air and his bearings. Ten yards further downstream he had a quick glimpse of a white robe, but he couldn't tell if it was Laura or Chloe. At the moment, being buffeted around by the intense current, ten yards might as well be a mile. He could only hope whoever it was would be caught briefly in an eddy so he might catch up.
For the next couple of minutes he kept getting glimpses of the white robe, until finally the current twisted them just right so he could make out the dark hair. Laura even briefly managed to raise her hand for a moment so he would know she was alright.
Intellectually, he knew she must be alright, but it warmed his heart to have concrete proof. And at the moment he needed any extra warmth he could get as his teeth were chattering violently. Now it was urgent to get out of the water as, in five more minutes, he was going to be in serious trouble.
After a couple more minutes of pounding rapids, they found what they needed: a short section where the river widened significantly which dramatically slowed the current. They were still at the bottom of a deep gorge, but one side of the canyon wall opened up with a twenty foot long by fifteen foot deep shelf located a couple feet above the waterline. The randomness of the rapids had dumped Lex into the slow section much closer to the shelf than it had Laura. Lex was tempted to swim over and help her, but between the battering from the rocks and the intense cold he was very near the end of his endurance. With her active 'bots, Laura would certainly be in better shape at this moment than he was, so Lex turned and swam for the shore.
It was an extreme struggle for him to get up and over the vertical two foot lip of the ledge as one of his calf muscles cramped up hard just as he reached the edge. He had barely flopped down on his stomach when Laura reached the edge. He reached his hand over the side with no real hope to pull her up, but merely to use his deadweight to give her better leverage for her own climb out.
Within two seconds of Laura's grabbing his forearm and before she had even pulled herself out, Lex's cramp was gone and some of his strength was returning. In the end, he was able to help from his prone position to pull her out of the water. As she crawled up on the ledge, Lex rolled to his back and Laura ended up lying on his chest with his arms wrapped around her.
"God," murmured Lex as he tightened his grip and turned it into a hug. "I am so glad you are okay."
Laura's long dark hair hung down around his face. The water dripping on his face suddenly didn't feel as cold. Slowly, Laura lowered her head until her lips brushed against his. "Silly boy, it takes more than rapids and a little cold water to hurt me."
Lex raised his head just enough to turn the brushing of their lips into a light, tender kiss. "I know, but I still can't help worrying about you."
As he spoke, Laura was running the fingers of one hand through his new found hair.
"Mmm, that feels nice," Lex whispered before he was silenced by Laura's mouth once more covering his own.
After a few short seconds, Laura pulled back and then started to rise. "We have about twenty minutes before this little cove goes into shadow. Let's get out of these wet clothes so they can dry and we can warm up."
As Laura stripped out of her soaking tunic and then languidly stretched for a moment, Lex hesitated. Laura looked at him and then cocked her head in a very Chloe-like manner. "What's the problem, Lex? You didn't seem to have any problem getting naked that first day by the pool in the Professor's canyon."
Lex shrugged as he started to remove his own robe. He knew he would feel a lot warmer once the damp, frigid garment was off. "I didn't know you girls very well back then and getting naked just seemed like a lark. But knowing you now, it is somehow different."
"Lex, look at me," Laura said in a tone which fell only a little short of a command. When he raised his gaze from where he had been half-heartily pretending to look for Chloe, she continued. "It's really about Lana, isn't it?"
Lex stared into her eyes for a couple of seconds before returning his attention to the river. "Yeah, in some ways I miss her so much. But more and more when I look at you my first thought is not 'Lana', but 'Laura'. It is still the same body standing there, but at the moment it is you I feel an attraction to and in a strange way it almost feels like I am cheating on her. This situation is so unique, it is difficult to understand, let alone describe what I am feeling."
Laura sat down beside him and intertwined her fingers with his. "Lex, would it be okay if I use the mind-link? Perhaps it will clarify things for both of us."
Lex was silent for a few seconds and then he quietly said, "Okay."
For ten seconds they sat there soaking up the warmth of the sun looking to the outside world like a pair of living statues as feeling and emotions were shared.
Abruptly, Laura stood and started waving. "There's Chloe," she needlessly added.
Lex stood and joined her in waving and shouting. After a few seconds Chloe waved to acknowledge she had seen them and started to stroke in their direction.
Chloe was only about fifteen feet from the bank when Lex heard a shout from above. Standing at the top of the vertical cliff almost one hundred feet above the cove, someone was shouting. With the sun at his back it was difficult to tell who it was until the person leaped over the side. It could only be Clark.
As Lex watched, it somehow seemed like Clark was descending at a slightly slower rate than was right for someone in freefall. But Lex shrugged it off as a trick of the lighting or the angle of the cliff walls as Clark landed beside him as easily as if he had merely stepped down from a chair rather than having jumped down a hundred feet.
Clark arrived just in time to pull Chloe from the water as she reached the edge. With one quick smooth motion of his right hand he propelled her out of the water and swung her around to land lightly beside him. He quickly pulled her into a hug.
"I am so glad I found you, all of you. When I got back and found all of these soldiers peering down into the river and the top of the bridge covered with arrows and dead bodies, I knew something bad had happened. I had to dangle four men over the side of the bridge before I found one who would explain what had happened."
As Clark finished speaking, Chloe pulled away for a minute to strip off her own sodden tunic. She quickly flowed back into his arms to use his body heat to warm up a little. As a shiver ran through her, the fact she and the others were freezing finally penetrated through the despair which had partial numbed Clark's mind and senses. He quickly used his heat vision to warm the nearby rock walls and then superheated enough river water to fill the cove with steam like some exotic Swedish sauna.
Chloe was just starting to enjoy this unexpected luxury when she finally caught the expression on Clark's face. Wrapping her fingers about his and squeezing tightly, she asked, "Clark, what is it? What's wrong?"
When Clark realized Lex and Laura had also turned and were watching him, he grimaced. "I was too late. The professor had already gone through the portal."
"Did he leave the meteor rocks behind?" asked Lex quickly.
"Yeah, but they are not going to do us much good. After he was gone, several of his followers worked over the equipment with the equivalent of sledgehammers."
Lex had known since the minute they were certain they were really back in ancient Rome it was a strong possibility they would be trapped here forever, but he wasn't ready to admit to it quite yet. "You mean we're stuck here? No, there must be something we can do. Perhaps if we all work on it we can get the Professor's equipment working again. We have to try."
Clark shook his head and when he responded they could all hear the finality and despair in his voice. "Lex, all of the circuit boards are shattered into a million pieces. Even if the world's best stocked Radio Shack were to magically appear, I don't think we would ever get that equipment working again."
A chill ran through them which the steam Clark had provided could suddenly no longer alleviate. For the next couple of minutes they all stood there lost in their own thoughts.
Finally, as the steam evaporated and their chill started to change from mental to real, Chloe spoke up with an unexpected quiver in her voice and a glistening in her eyes like she was about to cry. "Lex, a portal can still be open from the other end, even if the equipment at this end is destroyed, right?"
Lex shrugged. "Sure, or the Professor wouldn't have been able to get here to set up his equipment in the first place. But we could wait for years in that room without a portal opening. I mean no one except the Professor knows where to look for us."
Abruptly, the implication of what Chloe had said and the hitch in her voice sunk home for Lex. "No, Chloe. There has to be another way."
Clark looked at her and saw the steady stream of tears running down her face. He hadn't yet figured out what Lex and she were talking about, but he knew immediately in his heart she had already made some life altering decision.
"Lex, you know it is the only way."
Clark looked from Lex to Chloe and back. Finally dreading the answer before the question was even asked, he said, "Lex, what are you guys talking about?"
Lex just stood there blinking rapidly, as though he was fighting to hold back his own tears. In the end it was Chloe who answered.
"Clark, the only person who knows where we are to open a portal home is me." Trying to put a brave face on, she gave him a weak smile. "I have to go back the long way to get the rest of you home."
"The long way?" Clark echoed, as her meaning felt like it was on the tip of his tongue, but needed one more small nudge to sink in and become real.
"I have to live through the next two thousand years all over again so I can be in the Professor's lab sometime after we go through to use the machine to open another portal to here."
Clark stood there staring at her as his mind raced in circles. If only he had been faster, he could have caught the Professor before he escaped through the Portal and destroyed the machine. If only he hadn't played the 'Greek God' game, the Professor might not have been scared off and they could have found him. Also, if he hadn't played the 'Greek God' game, perhaps the girls wouldn't have ended up at the arena and Lana would still be in possession of her body. Hell, if only he and his accursed meteor rocks had never shown up on earth, his friends would never have been stuck back here period. As always, Clark tried to shoulder all of the blame himself.
"Clark, Clark. It is going to be okay," said Chloe as she pulled him into a hug.
Clark hugged her back for a minute before stepping back and wiping at his own eyes. "At least we have a few days until we get back to Tolosa."
Chloe looked at him with a sad expression on her face and then shook her head. "No. If we put it off until then, we will just keep finding excuses to keep putting it off until years will end up going by. No, if I am successful at getting back to our time and getting use of the machine, this time and place is locked into my nanobot memory just as well as the Professor's secret facility in Tolosa." She paused and looked around the small cove. Then pointing at the back wall, she said. "A portal should open back there right about now."
As she said 'Now', she snapped her fingers. At that exact moment they all saw the meteor rock green colored doorway waver into existence.
Looking at the portal as it solidified and knowing home for the others was a mere five steps away, Chloe tried to make light of her situation. "I always did have the flair for the dramatic."
Laura, who had been silent ever since her mind-link with Lex about his feelings for Lana and her, spoke up. "Chloe, I could keep you company on your trip the long way."
Chloe looked at her with a grateful expression on her face for the offer, but after a few seconds shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but it has only been twelve days since you got your 'bots. There is no way of knowing yet if your exposure to the meteor rocks will permanently leave the 'bots active. I would hate to have you waste twenty or thirty years of your life back here before finding out. No, I am going to have to do this one alone."
Laura nodded and then ran over pulling Chloe into a hug. For several seconds their faces went blank which usually meant they were using the mind- link to communicate. As they separated, Chloe squeezed Laura's hand and gave her a cryptic nod of the head.
Laura walked over towards the portal and called out to Lex. "Come on, let's go on through and give them a moment alone."
Lex looked from Laura to Chloe. Something had just passed between the girls and he had a strong feeling it was related to him. Ever since their mind-link, he had noticed Laura had been unusually quiet. What had she seen in his soul and what things had she set in motion?
Stepping over to Chloe, Lex pulled her into a quick hug. Quietly, he whispered 'Thank you' into her ear, but he wasn't certain if it was just for the way home or also something else.
Chloe hugged him back. Releasing him, she watched him walk over to Laura. Lex was about to step through the portal when he seemed to realize for the first time in minutes that their robes were still stretched out on the rocks to dry and three of the four of them were still nude. With a sheepish expression, he quickly grabbed two of the damp robes. After they were dressed, Lex followed Laura through the portal.
Alone with Clark, Chloe stepped back up to him and snuggled into the warm embrace of his powerful arms. After a couple of seconds she lifted her head from his chest and tilted it back. In an instant their lips met in a final slow kiss. The tears she had managed to suppress for the past couple of minutes welled up again. God, how she was going to miss him.
After a minute of indelibly imprinting the moment in her memory with special quadruple redundancy, she slowly pulled back. Taking Clark's hand, she led him over to the entrance to the portal.
"Clark, when you step through the portal it will only be a few seconds until you see me again. For me, it is going to be almost two thousand years. At sixteen, you can't possible imagine how long that is. Please try and keep it in mind, if I seem a little shy or hesitant at first."
Clark tried to imagine two thousand years and realized she was right, it was beyond his comprehension. It had only been three weeks since he had seen his parents or Pete and it had been almost more than he could bear. Even a year or two was almost more than he could imagine. And more than just this separation being two thousand years in the past for Chloe, how would two thousand more years of life change her?
"Chloe, couldn't you just step through the portal with me?"
"You know I can't. We have no idea what a time paradox like that might do. Maybe the whole universe would end. I just don't know, but the consequences seem too big to risk."
Clark nodded. After running his fingers briefly through the tangles in her hair from the time in the river, he leaned down for one last quick kiss.
Pulling away, Clark stepped up to the portal. Before walking through, he turned back one last time. "Remember, when I step through the other side, it will only be eight days until the spring formal. I expect you to be ready."
Chloe gave him the faintest hint of a smile and a small wave. She saw the tears glistening in his eyes as he turned and stepped through the portal.
She stood there for thirty seconds watching the green light gradually fade before slowly backing away until her back hit the far granite wall of the cove. With this support against her back, all of the strength seemed to leave her legs and she abruptly sagged to the ground. Then the dam broke and all the tears she had been doing her best to hold back came flooding forth.
Why was she always destined to be alone? After seventeen thousand years she had finally found the one person who seemed like her equal, someone to share all the joys and heartaches of being different than everyone else. And then mere weeks after finally connecting with him, they were torn apart for thousands of years. Life just wasn't fair. Was this the price she would always be forced to pay for living hundreds of times her allotted three score and ten?
For a long time Chloe sat that rocking and crying. Eventually, the tears ran out and she merely sat there and rocked. After thirty minutes she finally became aware enough of her surroundings to notice the whole cove was in shade and she was getting cold sitting there naked. Slowly she worked up the energy to stand up and walk over to where her robe still lay. Slipping it on, a sharp shock passed through her as the cold damp material touched her skin. The shock was what she needed to break up the world of self-pity she had fallen into.
Squaring her shoulders, she started working on the list of tasks she needed to accomplish. So much to do and only one thousand nine hundred sixty four years, eleven months, and seventeen days to get it all done. Time to get moving.
With the proper mindset in place, she determined the easiest route out of the cove and started the long climb back to the heights.
To be continued.