King Arthur
(The Real Story)
467 AD
Britannia, The Roman Empire
Hadrian's Wall
Samhain (31st October)
Lucius Artorius Castus, his six remaining knights at his side, sat his horse on the hill overlooking the small settlement that had been their home far away from home for the past fifteen years.
Bors' horse Thagimasadas pawed at the ground with one of his hooves as his rider sighed happily. "Now that we're free men, I'm going to drink till I can't piss straight."
Gawain, beside him, shook his head. "You do that every night," he said dryly.
"Never could piss straight," Bors acknowledged magnanimously. "Too much of myself to handle,"
Gawain's horse Tabiti snorted and leaned forward to scratch her nose on one of her forelegs. This sentiment was reflected amongst the whole group of knights.
"No, really, it's a problem," Bors said, looking around at them all. "It's like a-"
"Baby's arm holding an apple," the others finished for him, having heard the story many times before.
Then Galahad laughed and they all wheeled their horses to ride down into the town.
The sun was bright on their backs for once, but even if it had been pouring down rain they would have enjoyed it; today was their last day of service with the Roman army, and they would endure much worse than the foul weather of Britannia just to get home again.
As they rode in, Tristan whistled, and his eagle Goetosyrus came spiraling down out of the sky to perch gracefully on his shoulder. "Where you been, eh?" Tristan asked him affectionately as the eagle bolted down some of the meat he fed it.
Ahead of Tristan, Gawain, Galahad and Bors rode three abreast across the path behind Arthur, shaking their heads at the Roman caravan they were following in the wake of.
"Romans," Galahad said disgustedly. "If he's here to discharge us, why doesn't he just give us our papers and then go?"
Gawain laughed and looked at him across Bors. "Is this your happy face?"
Galahad shook his head, but couldn't help grinning with the excitement of the prospect of going home. After a moment, the three of them all laughed with anticipation and unbelieving gratitude that they had survived to see it through.
"Galahad, do you still not know the Romans?" Gawain said, still laughing. "They won't scratch their arses without holding a ceremony,"
Bors grinned at him. "Why don't you just kill him, and then discharge yourself?"
Galahad shook his head. "I don't kill for pleasure," he said, and then looked over his shoulder at Tristan. "Unlike some," he said, louder this time, knowing that Tristan had heard the conversation.
Tristan shrugged. "Maybe you should try it some time. You might get a taste for it."
Galahad laughed. "You Scythians are all the same,"
Bors laughed at him. "It's part of you. It's in your blood, the killing is."
Galahad, sobered now, shook his head again. "No. As of tomorrow, this is all just a bad memory."
With that he spurred his horse, Papaeus, onwards ahead of Arthur and the Roman caravan.
Gawain shrugged good-naturedly. "Home is not so clear in my memory. It's different for Galahad, but I've been in this life longer than the other."
Bors nodded. "It's cold there, too, and everyone I knew is dead and buried. And I have – I think – a dozen children here."
Gawain grinned at him slyly. "Eleven,"
Bors glared at him. "Listen, you, when the Romans leave we'll have the run of this place. I'll be lord of a town somewhere. And Dagonet will be my bodyguard and royal arse-kisser, won't you, Dag?"
Dagonet, who was riding behind them, exchanged an amused glance with Lancelot and Tristan, who both shook their heads.
Gawain grinned. "I tell you what, though, the first thing I'm going to do when I get out of here is find myself a beautiful Sarmatian woman to wed."
I've got one in mind, too, he thought to himself. All I have to do now is get the courage to ask her.
Bors snorted. "Beautiful Sarmatian woman? Why do you think we left in the first place?"
They all laughed as Bors did a very convincing impersonation of a cow, and Lancelot, chuckling, drew level with him and Gawain.
"What about you, Lancelot?" Bors asked him. "What are your plans for going home?"
Lancelot shrugged. "If this woman of Gawain's is as beautiful as he claims, I expect to be spending a lot of time at Gawain's house. His wife will welcome the company."
"Oh yes, and what will I be doing?" Gawain asked, and they could both tell by the hint of belligerence in his voice that Lancelot had touched a nerve there.
"Wondering at your good fortune that all your children look like me," Lancelot said, grinning.
"Is that before or after I hit you with my axe?" Gawain asked, unsheathing the said weapon, and Lancelot, laughing, moved forward to ride next to Arthur.
"And what will you do, Arthur, when you return to your beloved Rome?" Lancelot asked idly, drawing level.
Arthur grinned at him. "Give thanks to God that I lived to see it again."
Lancelot shook his head. "You and your God. You disturb me, you know."
Bickering good-naturedly, the knights rode into the town, not knowing that their dreams were about to be destroyed forever.
Far to the north, the Saxons landed on the coast of Britannia. Burning villages surrounded the plain where they were now assembling, and their chief, Cerdic, watched with professional interest as one of his men attempted to rape one of the women from the village they had just conquered. After a moment, though, he went to look at her more closely, gave a snort of disgust and then pushed his warrior off the woman with a casual foot.
"Don't touch their women," he said, moving away, evidently expecting that to be an end on it. "What sort of offspring do you think that would yield? Weak people. Half people. I'll not have our Saxon blood watered down by mixing with their women."
The warrior, smarting, stood up. "According to our laws, no man may deny me the spoils of our conquest."
Cerdic turned back to face him with one eyebrow raised.
"He speaks the truth, father," a voice said from the far side of the courtyard.
Cynric, son of the Saxon chief, stood looking in sadness at the burning buildings, fields and people that surrounded them. He looked at his father, who looked back at him and raised the eyebrow even further. Meeting defiance from his son, he nodded, seemingly in acquiescence, and then in one casual move unsheathed his sword and killed the warrior who was challenging him.
He was about to walk away when the woman came up to him on her knees.
"Thank you. Oh, thank you, my lord. God's thanks upon you."
Cynric closed his eyes and turned away. Stop that, you stupid woman, he thought. You'll get yourself killed if you keep that up!
Cerdic reached down and took the woman's chin in his hands, examining her profile. He shrugged and turned to two warriors that were standing behind her. "Kill her,"
She screamed as the soldiers pulled her away, and Cynric sighed. Then his father appeared behind him.
"Are you challenging me?" he asked quietly.
Cynric said nothing.
"If you want to challenge me, you have to have a sword in your hand," his father continued. "As long as my heart beats, I rule, and you hold your tongue."
He started to move away, but couldn't resist a parting shot. "Or I'll cut it out."
Once upon a time, in the year of 2007 AD, in the city of Toowoomba, in the state of Queensland, in the country of Australia, there was a girl. At this particular point in time, the girl was trying with much frustration to get her American-spelling computer to acknowledge the existence as a word of civilization with an s1.
You see, her computer was broken. In fact, pretty much all it could do was play DVD's, and this wasn't much use to the girl, seeing as she had an English assignment and an Ancient History assignment – both oral presentations – due the following day, and she had come home to discover that, after actually doing her assignments for the first time in her life, her stupid, broken computer had deleted them, and she didn't have a print-out of the finished copies of either.
The girl's name was Jessamine Turner.
She was a boarder at a high-class and incredibly expensive boarding school called Fairholme College, but she came originally from Caboolture (which is a city about 30 minutes north of Brisbane, if you aren't aware).
Both of her parents were dead.
Four years ago, when Jessamine was in Year Seven, her father had been killed in peacekeeping services in Afghanistan, with the army. Three months later, her mother had killed herself, and then Jessamine's little brother, Sam, had run away from the orphanage where they had been placed. She hadn't heard from him since.
Her aunt and uncle in Caboolture, her closest living relations, had taken her in for two years, but they were quite old, and when they passed away they left Jessamine all of their assets, including their horse stud (which she sadly sold), their property (which she also sold to the council for an amazing price for subdivision because of the natural spring in their back paddock) and all of their money (some of which she was now using to pay her school fees).
Thankfully, she had been offered by her school an exclusive Music Scholarship that paid for 99 of her school and boarding fees as well as all of her music lessons and the school's music camps and tours (by the way, Jessamine played the clarinet, the bass clarinet and the 'cello), so she still had a chance at a future.
Anyway, at this particular point in time, it was the 31st of October – a Wednesday – and Jessamine regretfully concluded that she would just show the laptop to her teachers – Mr Davis and Mrs Anderson – and they would congratulate her on not having flattened it and give her time to type it out on one of the school computers.
Sarah Campbell, one of the girls in Jessamine's dorm, walked in and sat on the bed beside her. "Any luck?"
Jess grunted. "Nothing. Bloody laptop,"
Sarah nodded sympathetically. "Hey, Pascoe got a DVD for her birthday so we were thinking of watching it on your laptop tonight. Is that okay?"
Jess laughed. "Thankfully, that it can do."
Sarah laughed too. "What's wrong with it, exactly?"
Jess shrugged. "It's probably just a case of terminal stupidity."
At that moment, the intercom beeped and their Head of Boarding, Mrs Scott, spoke in her highly polished, very-elongated-vowel-sounds accent. "Jessamine Turner to the front office, please. Jessamine Turner to the front office."
Jess sighed and levered herself off her bed, and began the epic journey all the way from the Upper Black dorms to the Boarding Office at the opposite end of the Boarding House.
She didn't know who it would be that was visiting her, since all the rest of her family pretty much lived overseas in Ireland and she was fairly sure that Sam wasn't going to turn up at her boarding school. When she finally made it to the office, she was surprised to discover her music teacher, Mr Davison.
He was fairly young, still at university, and they had picked him because he was the only music teacher in the entire of southeast Queensland who actually played the clarinet and the 'cello and at least knew someone who played the bass clarinet. Among other things, he was also teaching her how to play the French Horn, how to deal with university assignments and how not to write music.
"Hey," he said, leaning against the counter of the front desk.
She grunted a greeting and motioned that they should go for a walk outside, away from the boarding house's intently listening ears.
"Where are we going?" he asked, as they walked through the garden, which, for some strange reason, was lined by pomegranate trees.
She shrugged. "The nearest seat, I guess."
They sat on the green, slightly lopsided bench in between a bushy native plant and a huge potted lavender plant that filled the above criteria.
"Was there anything in particular you wanted to talk about?" she asked idly, watching the bees buzz towards the native plant.
He sighed. "I'm going to England next year,"
She raised her eyebrows. "Wow. Like, on holiday?"
He shook his head. "I'm moving there."
"No kidding," she said softly, her throat suddenly dry. She felt as if the floor had rather suddenly fallen out of her world; apart from her friends, Mr Davison was one of the only things that had kept her going the past year.
He looked at her carefully.
"You should have told us when Concert Band was still on, and then we could have thrown you a big going away party," she said conversationally, while on the inside her mental carpenters were desperately trying to construct a scaffold that could support them while they rebuilt the floor.
He looked slightly guilty for a second, and this look was replaced by one of relief, and she realised that he hadn't wanted the Concert Band to throw him a party. She looked at him exasperatedly and then shook her head.
"What are you going to do in England?"
He shrugged. "Playing music mostly. No teaching, I don't think."
She laughed sardonically. "That's a very well thought-out plan, Steve. Almost as if you're running away from something."
He looked down at his feet.
She shook her head and stood up.
"Jess…" he said as she walked away.
She sighed and turned to face him. "Are we still on for tomorrow night?"
He hesitated for a second, but then nodded, his eyes hooded. "Yes,"
She sat on her bed that night, listening to the three other people in her dorm, Sarah Campbell, Sarah Pascoe and Emily Fulwood, reciting French verbs at each other in a vain attempt to get them learnt before their test the next day.
"Ich hasse Französich,"2 she said with a sigh, and flopped back onto her pillows.
The three of them paused for a second, all shook their heads at her, and then resumed.
She rolled over onto her side. "When are we going to watch this movie, anyway?"
The other three looked at Pascoe, whose birthday it had been that weekend. She shrugged. "Can we just get to the end of this vocab sheet?"
Jess sighed and started getting her computer ready. "Wenn du müsst,"3
After listening to them recite ten or so more completely unintelligible words, she was immensely relieved when Pascoe went and dug through her pile of birthday presents that sat next to her bed, emerging with a DVD entitled King Arthur. The DVD duly placed in her computer's CD drive, and, after having duly positioned themselves in order to be able to see, they started the movie.
Unbeknownst to them, the pendulous clouds in the sky finally became too heavy and it started to rain, lightning forking across to earth in the ground some way away from Fairholme.
Outside, far, far above, the satellite that directed Telstra's phone calls and messages was being subjected to the kind of solar winds they had in Fantastic Four4, you know, the ones that gave them powers and stuff.
It was at this moment that Steve decided to call Jess. Incidentally, they are both with Telstra.5
When Jess's phone rang, the thunderstorm was well under way outside and the movie had just reached the point where the bloody Romans had told Arthur about the knights' "final assignment". She answered it without looking at who was calling and then wished afterwards that she had.
"Yeah?"
"It's me, Jess,"
"Oh… hi, Steve,"
"Look, I just called to say-"
Whatever it was he had been going to say, it was cut off by a massive thunder crack and the creak of a falling tree limb outside, followed by a torrent of rain.
Emily looked worriedly at the rest of them. "Maybe we should watch the movie some other time,"
They all nodded, and as Jess reached forward to turn the computer off she asked Steve to repeat what he had just said.
"Fzghwe? Asdfhjasd askdu bdshaf?" the voice at the end of the phone said.6
She frowned. Not only could she not understand a word of what he was staying, there seemed to be some kind of hollow, echoey sound coming out of her phone. Shrugging, she held it to her ear with her shoulder and used both hands to try and stop her non-responsive computer. "Steve?"
At that moment, a bolt of lightning hit the electrical wires that fed the boarding house with electricity, and all of the lights went out. The beam of electricity coursed into Jess's computer and was drawn through her to whatever was making her phone react so badly to the thunderstorm.
After a few moments of intense pain, she lost consciousness.
When Emily, Campbell and Pascoe dared open their eyes, all that was left in the room of Jessamine was the charred remains of her mobile phone and her computer, its monitor stuck on the title screen of the menu. Clive Owen stared back at them – in an attempt to convey stoic regality but sadly failing – from behind the words King Arthur.
Lucius Artorius Castus, known to his men as Arthur, gazed out over the damp plains of the southern half of England, lightning playing across the sky. As he listened to the rowdy carousing of his knights on their supposed last night of service – from the other side of the encampment – he wondered vaguely what life would be like once they left to go home to Sarmatia. He wondered, as he heard Vanora's brood laughing and Goetosyrus screech in indignation at a sudden outburst of rowdy laughter from Galahad and Gawain, and Lancelot's amused suggestion of "Best of three," what he would do without them when they went home.
If they ever survive to see it, the vicious, rebellious part of his brain said, but he forcefully brushed this thought aside. They would reach home. They had to.
When Jess came to, she was lying on the ground underneath a large, spreading tree, thunder and lightning brightening the sky in flashes across the horizon, rain breaking occasionally through the tree's thick leaf-cover to fall on her face or arms. She sat up stiffly and looked in horror at her surroundings. Not only was she mildly alarmed by the presence of so much green in such close proximity (coming from Australia), but also, the absence of the boarding house – and indeed, any buildings – was puzzling.
Her fingers still had pins and needles from where she had been touching the computer and her shoulder ached dully from contact with the phone. Wincing slightly, she stood up, using some low-hanging branches as a lever to pull herself upright. The blood rushed to her head and she had to stand bent over for a while as she waited for the blood pressure to recede. When she stood back up, she noticed the huge wall in front of her that stretched for what looked like kilometres in each direction. She also noticed the man standing on top of the battlements.
She sat back down. So far as she knew, there were no huge, stone walls anywhere in Australia – and certainly not with men wearing tunic and hose standing on top of them. This had her confused. There had never been any walls such as this, or white occupancy during the Dark Ages, so therefore she was not necessarily back in time. Her mind reeled at that thought, but all of the rest of her (aside from the part that was still desperately insisting that there was a logical explanation for everything) was pretty prepared to take anything on the chin after having survived an electrical shock such as the one she had experienced.
As she was watching, she saw a man furtively sneak up to a point on the battlements some metres away from the first man and tie something around one of the peaks of the battlements. He then cautiously let a long piece of rope slide down the length of the wall. After he had reached the bottom, climbing at a snail's pace towards the soft, loamy ground, he sneaked a look around at his surroundings and crept off to her right, following along the wall.
Jess took a long look at the thick gates and the man standing above them, and then another long look at the rope that the second man had left hanging. She knew that she was definitely not fit enough to be able to climb up the whole rope, especially not fast, but the stones in the wall looked rough, and she guessed that she might be able to use some of them as foot-holds. She also knew that the possibility was she wasn't exactly in a time and place that could be defined as friendly, and any man standing atop battlements at night hearing a voice from below requesting entry would be likely to refuse. Hell, they mightn't even speak the same language, and anything she said might be construed as some kind of garbled female battle cry.
She chose the rope. However, about a metre into the climb she began to regret it. Sure enough, the stones made more than adequate footholds, but the climb depended on her putting almost all of her weight onto her arms – one of which had had more electricity flowing through it than a television station. She hauled and winced her way up the wall, feeling slightly ridiculous, and then heaved herself up over the battlements and collapsed on the stone ledge beneath them, rubbing her sore shoulder.
She stumbled down the stairs that led to the ground and then sat on the bottom-most one, thinking about what to do. Firstly, she would look fairly conspicuous seeing as she was wearing a pair of jeans and a boob tube, both of which items of clothing weren't due to be invented for a few thousand years yet. Secondly, what if they didn't speak the same language? What was she going to do? Try them in German? Thirdly, and most importantly, how the bloody hell was she going to get home again?
Her mind reeling, she sat on the stairs, until a vaguely familiar voice broke through her slightly hysteric reverie.
"If you're so eager to die, you can do it right here! I have got something to live for!"
Well, she thought in relief, at least they speak English.
But she was intrigued by the familiarity of the voice. So she crept, trying to avoid being seen, up to the corner, to try and get a look at what was going on.
All thoughts of inconspicuosity forgotten, she stood at the end of one courtyard, staring at what was either the re-filming of the movie King Arthur without cameras or a very convincing period re-enactment. She could have sworn she was looking directly at Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Hugh Dancy, Joel Edgerton and the rest of them. As she stood there, mouth agape, staring at them, Lancelot – or Ioan, whoever he was – looked straight at her and frowned slightly in confusion, before she had the sense to duck behind one of the stalls that were set up around the centre courtyard.
She sat behind the stall for a while, ten minutes at least, until a pair of Roman soldiers walked past her, grinning and talking in a language she assumed was Latin. She concluded from her place of concealment that she had slipped into some kind of parallel dimension involving the movie King Arthur. At least now she had a vague grip on what the events of the next few weeks were likely to be, and she also had a handle on a vague code of behaviour that would have probably been in effect at that time, having done an Ancient History assignment on the Sarmatians some time ago.
All of her knowledge of the characters of King Arthur, combined with her knowledge of Sarmatians in general, was telling her that she pretty urgently needed to find some different clothes, even if just to cover a bit of skin that her boob tube left uncovered.
As she was wondering how to go about this, she heard another distinctly familiar voice behind her. "Hello. What have we here?"
She turned, transfixed, to behold Gawain, his arm around a young Sarmatian woman. He motioned at Galahad, who was searching for more alcohol among the Romans. "Here, Galahad. I think I've found you a friend for tonight."
The way Galahad grinned at her told her better than words ever could have exactly what 'friend' equated to in modern-day English. She sighed wearily. Men were the same in any dimension.
She reflected later, trying to find a bit of Galahad's bedroll that he wasn't lying on to occupy, that she would have expected the knights, not being prone to bathing and other hygienic practices, to smell worse, but Galahad mostly just smelt like horses. She smiled to herself. There were only a few smells the rain couldn't wash away. She also concluded that alcohol in the Dark Ages was a lot stronger than in her time; the koumiss she had ended up drinking was making her feel slightly sick7, and she wished for the first time in her life that she had chosen not to drink.
Gawain and his unfortunate girlfriend were lying not far away, and Jess had realised from the adoration on the poor girl's face as she watched Gawain that she was besotted with him. Unfortunately for her, Gawain had either not noticed or didn't care8, because he treated her like some kind of royal concubine; her job was to agree with whatever he said and apart from that keep quiet and look beautiful on his arm.
Amazingly enough, none of them had even commented on her outlandish dress, nor asked her where she was from. She then had a horrifying and very disturbing flashback to her research during the days of her Scytho-Sarmatian Ancient History assignment. It was in the library of their school, affectionately called the TLC9 by the students.
She had been reading a book called The Royal Hordes – Nomad Peoples of the Steppes10, and although it sounds obscure, it was actually about the Sarmatians.
She tapped Fulwood on the shoulder to distract her from her book (The Celts11) and read her a passage from the book.
"The Sarmatian men were all fierce warriors, and about once every generation in each clan, the Chief would choose a young girl supposedly selected by their war god to become one of his priestesses, what was known as a gildatore, the Latin translation of which was gladiatrix. These gildatorae were trained to be as dangerous on the battlefield as any man; more so, for the momentary hesitation an opponent would feel before attacking a woman would often be sufficient time for her to have gained the upper hand in the battle. There are many paintings depicting these fierce female warriors, and their battle dress and armour was very different to that of the Amazons, to whom they have been compared. The gildatorae would go into battle wearing close-fitting leather trousers and chaps not unlike those worn by their male counterparts, as well as extremely long gauntlets – covering the whole forearm – and scale-armour over a leather top that left much of their upper torso bare, in order to make it extremely clear to the enemy that they were fighting against a woman."
Fulwood had grunted and gone back to doing her own assignment, but Jess had gone and scanned the picture – a painting of a tall female sitting astride a huge black horse wearing a leather and chain mail top that looked exactly like her boob tube, albeit made of different materials.
Back in the present – or the past – or wherever she was – Jess rolled over onto her side and put her head in her hands as much as was possible due to the space shortage. No wonder they hadn't asked her where she was from! They thought she was a Sarmatian! She just hoped they didn't ask her how their war god was, or anything, or to demonstrate her sword-fighting abilities. Horse riding she could do, but she'd never held a sword before in her life12.
She waited until she was fairly sure that Galahad was asleep and then slipped out of the bedroll and hurriedly scrambled into her clothes. She looked at Gawain's girlfriend's dress and considered stealing that, but decided against it. She'd have to find some new clothes later. It was at this point that she realised she didn't even think she had the slightest chance of getting home again, and she blinked ferociously a couple of times to stop herself from crying in helplessness.
She suddenly knew how the Sarmatian knights felt. Longing for home but not physically being able to get there was a terrible feeling, like a hole in the pit of your stomach. Boarding wasn't even this bad; you knew that all you had to do was go and sit on a bus for a few hours and you would be there. The knights had to brave the entire Roman army to reach their home, and Jess had to find a way to slip between dimensions to get back to hers.
She slipped quietly out into the main courtyard again, to see if there was anyone she could possibly ask what time they thought it was, and came across Lancelot sitting by himself at a table which before had held many Roman soldiers, and she hoped briefly that he hadn't killed any of them. There was, to her alarm, a rather disturbing reddish stain on one of the benches, but as she got closer she realised it was wine falling from an overturned jug on the side of the table.
She stopped in front of him and he looked up at her. "Gildatore," he said politely, as a greeting.
"What time do you make it, gildoryae?" she asked hesitantly, thanking the Gods for her Ancient History assignment.
He shrugged and looked up at the stars. "No more than four hours before dawn,"
She nodded. "Thank you,"
He shrugged again and sighed, and then tipped his head on the side in curiosity. "It's not often we see one of the gildatorae so far east,"
She opened her mouth for a second and then desperately made up a story that she hoped sounded plausible. "A Roman officer travelling near our clan heard that we had a gildatore and ordered me to present myself to Commander Artorius in Britannia."
Lancelot nodded morosely. "Trust the Romans to invade every single aspect of our culture. If you're looking for Arthur he'll be up on the battlements on the wall."
"Thank you again," she said, and inclined her head.
Shaking slightly, she walked off towards the battlements, cursing herself inwardly. Now she actually had to go and tell Arthur that she was a warrior, somehow explain to him the reason she had no weapons, armour or horse, and then stay alive long enough in the ensuing battles to convince them that she could actually fight so that they didn't kill her for lying to them.
Lancelot, behind her, cursed the missed opportunity at not having to spend the night alone and picked up the overturned jug, drinking the rest of its contents. "Romans,"
Back in the boarding house in Toowoomba, 2007, Fulwood, Pascoe and Campbell were panicking.
"She just disappeared!" Campbell said hysterically, sobbing on Pascoe's shoulder, who was staring at the still-Clive-Owen-showing laptop in paralysed horror.
Fulwood was pacing nervously around the room, but eventually she sat down on Jess's bed and leaned her chin in her hands, thinking. "She's not necessarily dead," she said, comfortingly.
The others looked at her. "Well, I mean, when you get electrocuted your body doesn't just disappear," she said defensively. "It's a fair assumption that she might not be dead."
"So where is she?" Pascoe asked in a horrified voice.
Fulwood shook her head. "That one's got me stumped, too."
Campbell, oblivious to their conversation, wailed and began crying even louder. "She was so young!"
The other two looked at her and shook their heads.
Arthur stood on the battlements again, trying to work up a few shreds of patriotism and failing rather dismally. To his credit, he did try for a while, and it also wasn't as if the Romans actually made it easy for him.13 He sighed and looked up at the stars, wondering what life among them would be like.
"Commander Artorius?" a quiet voice asked from behind him.
He turned reluctantly, expecting to find some messenger girl sent to summon him to another council, but instead seeing something infinitely more comforting. She was tall for a woman14 and delicately built, but she wore the garb of a Sarmatian gildatore, so he knew that her looks were probably fairly deceptive. Her blonde hair was pulled back into some kind of slide, but strands of it had escaped to frame her face in the moonlight.
"Gildatore?" he asked politely.
She took a deep breath. "Commander Artorius, I was commanded by a Roman officer in Caucasus to report to you in light of the Saxon incursion in the north and the belief that you could use all the help you can get."
He sighed. "Does all of Rome know of the Saxon invasion?"
She nodded. "The confirmation of Roman withdrawal from Britannia has been common news for several weeks, Commander."
He sighed again. "Just call me Arthur,"
She inclined her head. "As you wish, Arthur,"
He stepped away from the battlements and looked her up and down. "I trust you are ready to ride out tomorrow?"
She looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Unfortunately Comm… Arthur, the ship that brought me to Britannia went down in a raging storm on the rocks near the harbour where we landed. Most of the crewmen escaped but our horses, stores and weapons were all on board the ship."
He nodded sympathetically. "There are fierce summer storms around Britannia's shores the year round." He thought for a moment. "You may be in luck, gildatore. The previous Artorius – my father – was lucky enough to have a gildatore serve with him as well, and her armour and arms have been kept in the church since then. She was around the same size as you, I think."
"You kept her armour and weapons?" the female warrior asked, curiously.
He shrugged. "Female fighters are something of a novelty here in the Roman Empire."
She laughed. "And a horse?"
He grinned at her. "Oh, we have plenty of those."
She nodded. "I am most grateful,"
He turned back to his contemplation of the wide, rolling green British plains. "What's your name?"
"Jessamine," she said, moving to stand beside him, looking up at the stars.
"What do you think life is like out there among the stars, Jessamine?" he asked, watching the clouds flit across the moon.
She sighed. "A lot like here, Arthur, but with one small difference."
He looked at her. "And what's that?"
She grinned at him. "No Romans,"
He laughed. "Come with me. I'll find you somewhere to stay for the night, and then in the morning before we ride out we'll fit you out in that armour." His eyes twinkled at her in the dim, silvery light of the moon. "That is, unless there's somewhere else you'd rather sleep tonight,"
She laughed and shook her head. "A bed of my own sounds good to me, Arthur,"
Jess sat on the bed in the room that Arthur had allocated her and wondered at the spectacular nature of her lying ability. Either people in the Dark Ages were a lot more gullible than in the 21st Century, or she was actually telling stories that sounded plausible. She offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to any gods who might be listening for the idea to do the Scytho-Sarmatians in her assignment and wondered how much more of it she would need to remember.
She sat, staring at the moon, and wondered what she was going to do. Also, on a less conscious level, she wondered where she actually was and how it was that she had got there, but mostly she was wondering what she was going to do.
Elsewhere, Lancelot was gazing up at the same moon, wondering if he would ever live to see the rolling green plains of Sarmatia again. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to Gilioneron, their war god, for sending them one of his gildatorae in their time of need.
If I ever make it home, Lancelot thought morosely to himself, I'll gladly make the pilgrimage to Gerrhi and give my blood in thanks for his protection. And if I don't, by the Gods, I'll come back as a massive war-horse and charge down any Romans I see.
Somehow, though, knowing that Gilioneron cared enough about them to send one of his priestesses to protect them made Lancelot feel a lot better about the future than he had before she had arrived.
Jessamine sat on her bed and watched the sun rise. She hadn't been able to sleep, unfortunately, even though she knew that they were due for three day's extremely hard riding north of the wall – in Wode territory – as well as an altercation with the Wodes, the meeting of Guinevere, a battle involving a frozen river and the Saxons, three day's hard riding back to the wall and then a huge and ultimately disastrous battle also involving the Saxons in the process of all of which they would lose Dagonet, Tristan and Lancelot.
She thought about it. She knew what was going to happen. She knew how they were going to die. She also knew that none of them deserved to die (except maybe Guinevere, whose pout annoyed her enormously). She began to formulate a vague plan as she watched the sun raise its head over the horizon and then, sometime later, Hadrian's Wall.
Someone knocked on her door and she turned as it opened to behold Arthur, wearing the same tunic and hose as he had been last night. "Good morning,"
She nodded. "Morning,"
He stepped aside so that she could get out the door and then led her down a long corridor. "Once you have your armour and weapons, we'll go and talk briefly with my knights before we move out,"
She nodded again. "Where exactly are we going?"
His face darkened. "I'll tell you at the same time as I tell my knights," he said, and then turned away, leaving her to follow him.
They walked out into the courtyard and past a long row of horse stables. "You can pick one of these when we're about to leave," Arthur said dismissively, waving rather uninterestedly at about twenty different incredibly muscled, dangerous-looking warhorses.
One, a tall black horse with beautiful confirmation – he was so finely boned he looked like an Arab but he was as tall as a thoroughbred15 – caught her eye as they walked past, and Arthur saw her looking at him. "Beautiful, isn't he? Unfortunately, though, we've managed to break him in but he's never let anybody ride him."
The horse turned his head and looked at her with a beautiful liquid-brown eye, and she knew that she would try and ride him, even if it was probable that she would get dumped in front of Arthur and his knights.
They walked into a small, Gothic-looking building that Jess assumed was the church, and came face to face with a Roman that Jess recognised as being Bishop Gaius Germanius. He stared in wide-eyed incredulity at Jessamine, his gaze starting at her face, going down to her jeans and then coming back up. She tried to look stony and aloof, and Arthur gave her an uncomfortable, apologetic look as the Bishop turned to him.
"What is this?"
Jess resisted the urge to laugh. Arthur cleared his throat. "A female warrior from Sarmatia. She was ordered to present herself by a Roman officer in Caucasus because he thought we could use all the help we could get."
"A female what?" the Bishop asked, his voice rising about an octave.
"A warrior," she answered, tiring of his histrionics almost immediately.
He laughed at her, and so she rolled her eyes at Arthur and walked past the Bishop and into the room Arthur had been leading her towards before they were accosted. Behind her, she heard Germanius' laughter stop straight away.
"You dare insult a messenger of God?" he asked incredulously, appearing in the doorway behind her.
She walked along the row of weapons, looking speculatively at probably more than thirty pointy things commonly used for killing people. "Why? You don't seem to mind insulting me,"
His face thunderous, he began to walk towards her, and as he did so she took a long, sharp Scytho-Median sword out of its scabbard and held it up to the light to see the gleam of the metal. Germanius stopped, looking hesitant suddenly, and Arthur grinned at her from behind him.
Not exactly knowing why, she unsheathed another sword, this time a long Sarmatian one, and placed one blade over each shoulder in the same way that she had seen Lancelot do later in the movie. "You're in the territory of a different God, now, Bishop," she said, in a voice that didn't quite sound like hers.
He left soon after that.
Arthur shook his head at her and gestured at the wall full of weapons and armour. "Take your pick,"
She looked in horror at the various swords, daggers, spears, throwing daggers and axes that lined the wall, and decided that she would choose her armour first.
The pieces were beautiful. One of the tops was leather, with one shoulder and covered in what looked like scale-armour made of iron, sewn in tiny detail in a swirl pattern across the chest and back, with a gap the size of a scale between each and with the gaps in alternating places in the different rows. It also had electrum metalwork all over, in swirling, Animal Style16 designs, including a crouching stag, his antlers tucked down against his back, and a winged panther attacking a goat. She chose to forgo this piece, however, because of the fact that it would have left one of her breasts bare.
She eventually found a top that actually covered most of her chest, still in leather but this time black instead of tan, with no sleeves but two electrum (again, engraved) shoulder pieces and the same pattern of scale armour. She pulled the top off its stand, loosened the corset-like string fastenings at the back, cast a brief, wary glance at Arthur and then pulled off her top. She left her bra on, however, and hastily pulled the armour over her head. Being leather, it was rather hard to maneuver into, but she managed it, and as soon as she had it in the right place she reached around to try and do up the fastenings.
"Let me," Arthur said quietly behind her, as she realised that the top was, in fact, cleverly engineered so that you had to get someone else to do it up for you.
She stood obediently as he deftly threaded the strings through the loops and then pulled them tight. She turned around to thank him and he leaned forward and kissed her.
She reflected afterwards, as she chose a tight-fitting pair of black leather pants to go with her top, that he could have saved himself having to do up, undo and then do her top up again if he had just kept it in his pants. She shrugged and pulled a pair of long, leather boots off their stands and put them on as well, feeling slightly self-conscious wearing so much leather. She also picked up a wide leather belt with gold plating on it, noticing that the metalwork was this time a charging horse on the buckle, followed along the length of the belt by many other different kinds of animal, and a long, black cloak with patterns woven into it with silver thread, which she hung off the convenient hooks on her shoulder plates.
She then took the cloak off for a while as she realised she was going to have to sling whatever swords she chose across her back underneath the cloak. She walked along the row of weapons and was drawn to the two swords she had unsheathed on the Bishop. At least she knew basically how much they weighed, she thought logically, and they had proved to be not too heavy for her non-existent muscles – although what she was going to do with them still puzzled her.
She picked them up in their scabbards and fastened them one at a time across her back with two of the straps that were sitting close by – one tan leather embroidered with gold designs and the other leather of the same colour but with a large silver buckle. It took her a while to figure out how to attach everything, but she got it eventually. She then experimentally pulled the swords out of their sheaths and realised to her horror that the long, curved Scytho-Median sword was the one she held with her left hand, her bad one. She cautiously put both of them back in their scabbards, trying not to stab herself, and contemplatively eyed the rest of the previous gildatore's armoury.
She attached two long, heavy daggers to her belt, one on each side, and slung a quiver of black-feathered arrows over her shoulder. She then looked over the assembled bows and chose a slender, bendy-looking one carved out of some dark wood, and put it to one side on the table, wondering if there was anything she had missed. She declined an axe, on the reasoning that it was slightly too barbaric, declined a throwing dagger on the reasoning that she wouldn't have the slightest chance in the world of being able to get it to do what she wanted, and then declined a spear for the same reason.
A pair of long gauntlets hanging on the wall caught her eye and she took them down. They were exquisitely crafted, made of electrum but with leather lining, and two separate plates for where they covered the palms of the wearer's hands. She slid one onto her arm and discovered to her surprise that she still had full mobility of the wrist with it on, the plates were so well engineered. She slid the other one on, put the cloak back on and looked at the overall effect in the reflection of the gildatore's polished bronze shield, which she had left on the reasoning that it looked so heavy she wouldn't even have been able to lift it.
She looked… well, if not a little bit menacing then at least slightly scary. To a two-year-old, anyway. If she snuck up on them and shouted, "Boo!"
She admitted to herself that she did look quite good. She didn't look strange, and thankfully she had the figure for leather pants thanks to years of ballet and horse riding. The only thing that didn't work was her hair, so she reached up and took the clip out of it, running her gauntleted hands through it a few times to make it look not so wavy. The gold in her hair contrasted well with the black of her armour, so, taking one last look at herself, she took a deep breath, picked the bow she had chosen up off the table, slid it into her quiver and walked out of the room. She came back in a second later to pick up another sword to hang off her saddle, just for the sake of looks, and picked another Sarmatian one in a long silver scabbard.
The sword under her arm, she walked out of the room again and this time down the corridor to where she remembered the stables being and came face to face with the Bishop again, who looked at the armour and weapons and walked away.
"Jessamine," Arthur said, from not far away, and she turned in the direction of his voice, to find him now wearing his armour.
"I'm meeting with my knights over breakfast. I assume you'll want food?"
She nodded, albeit unenthusiastically. If it was anything like the drink, she may have had to re-invent fire to teach them about the art of cooking things.
She followed him again, this time back across the central courtyard and into the big building that had Romans stationed all around it. They passed Vanora and all of her children, and she looked up and smiled at Jess before going back to work. They walked past a table where Roman soldiers were sitting and carousing – just after dawn – and one of them felt the need to put his hand on the back of her thigh as she passed.
Something inside of her snapped, and she turned quickly, resting the Sarmatian sword she was carrying against the table and taking both of the long daggers out of their sheaths at her sides. She put one at the soldier's neck and one on the offending hand where it was lying on the table.
"Hand or throat?" she snarled at him, upping the pressure on both points.
"H-hand," he stammered. "Please,"
"Good choice," she said, and scraped the blade across the top of his wrist as she walked away.
When she caught up with Arthur and he turned to lead the way again she had to restrain herself from shaking. She had actually cut someone with a knife. It was so horrifying she almost considered running away. She then realised that she had no idea where she would be going and chances were she would run into the Saxon army if she did try and go anywhere. While she was thinking this, Arthur led her into the big building surrounded by Roman soldiers who all looked a bit wild-eyed at the sight of her and than into a circular room lit by torches that contained the fabled round table.
Lancelot, Dagonet and Tristan were the only ones there, and when Arthur asked where the others were Lancelot replied that they were yet to arrive.
Arthur shrugged and turned to her. "Sit where you like,"
She chose the nearest chair and creaked into it, putting the third sword she was holding on the table beside her.
Arthur sighed and leaned on the table, looking at a map that she assumed showed the location of Marius Honorius' estate.
Tristan came over to where she was sitting and half-unsheathed the sword that was lying on the table. "This is a good blade,"
She inclined her head at him. "I didn't know that the Romans were recruiting Scythians for their army as well as Sarmatians,"
He laughed roughly. "Romans. They see a man on a horse and automatically assume he is a Sarmatian. They couldn't tell a Celt from a Hun if they were both sitting on horses."
She nodded. "It's because they're so short. Anything above shoulder level on a normal man is too high for them."
He laughed again and then sheathed her sword, laying it back on the table where it had been before. "You know the Romans well, I see." He held out a hand for her to shake. "Tristan,"
She took it. "Jessamine,"
He nodded, and pointed and Lancelot and Dagonet. "The tall one is Dagonet, and that's Lancelot. They're both Sarmatians."
She laughed. "I noticed."
He grinned at her. "No tattoos,"
She nodded. "That and they're both carrying Sarmatian swords and axes. Your blade gives you away more than the carvings on your cheeks,"
Tristan grinned at her and offered her the jug he was holding which, from the smell of it, was full of koumiss. Not wanting to be rude, but inwardly cringing, she took it and pretended to take a large mouthful when in reality she was only drinking a tiny bit (she had just remembered what it was actually made from).
At that moment, Gawain, Galahad and Bors walked in, and Arthur sighed in relief. "Finally," he said exasperatedly.
Galahad raised an eyebrow at him, but Gawain placed a restraining hand on his arm. "It's not his fault, Galahad. He didn't choose to be born a Roman,"
Arthur sighed. "There is an estate three days hard riding north of the wall. The family that the Pope has requested we rescue lives there. We ride in, we collect the family, we ride back, you get your discharge papers, we go home."
Lancelot snorted derisively and Arthur sighed again. "This is Jessamine. She was ordered by a Roman officer in Caucasus to present herself here to help with our quest, so she'll be coming with us."
"We've met," Galahad said, smirking.
She sighed.
Arthur turned to Lancelot. "Can you go and saddle a horse for her, please, Lancelot?"
He raised a cool eyebrow. "Certainly, your Imperial Majesty."
Arthur shook his head, rolled up the map and turned to the rest of them as Lancelot left the room in icy silence.
"Lancelot may have told you…"
"The massive Saxon army?" Bors said, helpfully. "Yeah, he told us. Don't worry, Arthur, he'll cool off. Given a bit of time in the rain, anyway."
Tristan nodded, looking out the window. "It is going to rain later today."
Gawain sighed, sitting down in the chair next to her. "It's always raining on this bloody island,"
She leaned back in her chair, thinking of Australia. "Man is never happy. It can rain too much, or it doesn't rain enough; but it is never the right amount."
Gawain laughed. "Right bloody philosopher you are, gildatore. You and Lancelot will get on like a house on fire."
Arthur sighed again and motioned for them to move out. "We should probably get moving."
They all walked towards the main gate to go to the north, the huge thick gates that Jess had landed outside of on the previous night. They stopped in the stables outside there to mount up and gather their stores, their storemaster – Arthur's squire – and Bishop Germanius' attendant, who the Bishop insisted would be going with them.
They walked out into the central courtyard and all stopped. Arthur bunched his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. "Lancelot, I'm about this close to-"
Jessamine placed a restraining hand on his arm. "Leave it,"
She could see from the look in Lancelot's eyes that this was a challenge for her, not Arthur.
And boy, did she hope she could take it.
She walked towards the magnificent black stallion that Arthur said had never let anyone ride him and it skittered nervously away on the cobbles, and as she took the reins Lancelot smirked at her.
"Easy, boy," she murmured as the horse pranced away again, stroking his neck soothingly.
She passed the reins slowly over his head, slipped her third sword into the loop on the saddle, glared at Lancelot, took a deep breath and put her foot in the stirrup.
"His name's Bartatua," Lancelot said helpfully as she stood there, watching the horse prance nervously.
Oh, great, she thought to herself. He's so bad they named him 'Black Demon.'
She put her weight into the stirrup and swung her leg over his back in one smooth, fluid motion, using the same tactic her aunt and uncle had taught her to use on highly-strung racehorses. Immediately, the horse tried to back out from underneath her and she saw Lancelot back away to stand with the other knights on the far side of the courtyard. She glared at them briefly before the horse tried turning around in circles to see what was sitting on his back, and when she leaned forward and put a comforting hand on his neck he realised where the weight was coming from and turned his neck so that he could see her.
He sniffed at her boot a few times, chewed on his bit and then stood still. She sighed in relief and then raised her eyebrows at Lancelot, who inclined his head and grinned at her. She took the horse for an experimental walk and then trot around the courtyard, pulling the horse to a halt in front of Arthur and his stunned knights.
"Shall we?" she asked, indicating the gate.
They stood in silence for a while, before Gawain began to laugh and then swung into Tabiti's saddle. "Women,"
Dagonet grinned ruefully. "Would that you had arrived three months earlier, gildatore, and then my hip might not ache so in cold weather."
She laughed. "You pull on a horse, he'll pull back. Objective muscle mass. One of the only animals in the world to have one. So, if you attack him to get him to do what you want, he'll attack you back. If you're nice to him, he'll be nice to you."
Galahad shook his head. "Can we leave now, please?"
Arthur laughed and swung into his horse's saddle. "Move out, men. And women," he added hastily at the end, looking guiltily at Jess, but she just laughed.
On the north gate, the Roman soldiers that were the gatekeepers were hurriedly fixing the yokes onto the backs of the two gatehorses.
"Open the gates!" their foreman shouted urgently. "Here they come now!"
Sure enough, the soldiers could hear the thunder of hooves coming down through the city towards them. The gatehorses, spurred on by the excitement the hoofbeats stirred in their blood, reared and plunged and lunged forward to reach their galloping comrades. The hinges on the gate creaked as the massive horses heaved on them and the gates swung open pendulously to the accompaniment of a chorus of horses whinnying and braying at the sky.
The knights cantered through the massive gates and turned to the west, but Jess stopped Bartatua at the end of the street with a two hundred metre run down to the gate. He looked at her over his shoulder and snorted, pawing at the ground with his foreleg. She grinned at him.
The two gatehorses raised themselves up onto their hind legs in a uniform salute as Bartatua, whinnying in triumph, galloped at full-speed out of the gates, changed stride in a smooth effortless motion and followed after his Sarmatian friends.
Lancelot looked up as Jessamine passed him, laughing, in a blurred streak of black and gold and silver, and shook his head. She was going to kill that horse before it even got going.
At around midday it began to rain, and they stopped in a copse of trees to check their horses' legs for splints. They ate a rudimentary lunch involving bread and koumiss – to Jessamine's dismay – while Gawain and Dagonet wrapped damp cloths around their horses' knees. She offered some of the bread to Bartatua, but he just nudged her on the shoulder and went back to grazing. She didn't bother offering him any koumiss.
All of the knights were looking at her with some degree of awe as they stopped to eat. Even Tristan's horse Argimpasa – a horse that was used to being worked for days on end at a fast pace – was beginning to tire under the strain of riding so hard for so long and on such rough terrain, but Bartatua – a horse that had never been worked for any time at all – was as fresh and energetic as if he had just had two day's rest at pasture.
This was causing Jess some confusion as well. She certainly didn't think it had anything to do with her, but it wasn't possible for any horse to be that naturally fit, either. She looked suspiciously at him and he raised his head and looked her in the eye, adopting that patented Puss In Boots™ innocent look and pricking his ears forward in an attempt to be endearing. This only made Jess glare harder, however, and after a while he snorted and nudged her again, and she got the distinct impression that he was laughing at her.
She caught Lancelot looking at her strangely and resisted the urge to laugh, thinking that it must have looked like she and Bartatua were having some kind of telepathic conversation. She smiled at Lancelot and wiped the rain out of her face, and he inclined his head at her and gestured at her bow.
"Are you any good?"
She shrugged, hoping desperately that he wasn't going to call her bluff. "Not bad,"
He laughed. "And here I was expecting you to be a world champion. Hand me your bow,"
She pulled it out of her quiver, hoping that it wasn't going to take any arrows with it, because that would look really dumb, and handed it to him. He took it and bent it experimentally, and then looked at her in shock. "You can bend this?"
Oh, God, she thought desperately. There goes my cover.
He handed it back and she – expecting total failure and embarrassment – lifted and bent the bow in one smooth movement. She was so surprised she nearly dropped the bow, although thankfully she didn't. After holding it there for a moment, to let Lancelot's awe sink in, she lowered it and slid it back into her quiver.
He looked at her. "What are you?"
She shrugged, and when she looked at him next he could have sworn her eyes turned green. "I am what I am, Lancelot,"
Thunder crashed over head and the sky was lit with a huge fork of lightning, and for a moment her hair looked black, but when she looked up at him again, her eyes were blue again and her hair its normal gold.
"Let's mount up," Arthur said, from the other side of the clearing and, after one last look at her, Lancelot did so, and they rode out towards the Roman estate.
324 AD
Crimea, Sarmatia
Euxines
Imperial Prince Claudius of Rome sat on his bed in his tent, his head in his hands, watching Sarmatia pace back and forth in front of the tent's door. He wondered briefly what the Sarmatians had called themselves before this slender young girl had become their figurehead. He shrugged. From now until the end of time, to the Romans they would always be the Sarmatians.
She came and sat on the bed beside him. "What will you do if your father tells you to continue the campaign?"
He shook his head and put his arm around her shoulders. "We'll figure that out when the time comes,"
She sighed. "I'm so glad things were coming to a head anyway. If I'd found out that we were about to conclude a peace treaty or something and then I ruined it, I'd have been devastated."
"That's poor consolation for the families of all the men who died," he pointed out gently, and she nodded again.
"At the moment I'm taking comfort in the fact that it's my father's fault,"
He was silent for a while. "We could declare the treaty void,"
She looked up at him. "Would you?"
He leaned forward and kissed her. "This whole thing is my fault, anyway. They shouldn't have to suffer for that."
She sighed again. "Somehow I just get the feeling that this is all going to work out badly,"
He looked at her. "Don't say that,"
Outside, the Roman centurion unsheathed his sword stealthily and waved his men with their torches forward into the sleeping Sarmatian camp.
Fulwood stayed behind after Chemistry17 to ask her teacher, Mr Turner18, about the front-page article in the newspaper that day.
SOLAR WINDS RAVAGE TELSTRA SATELLITE the title read. Fulwood spread the newspaper on Mr Turner's desk.
"What sort of power would these winds have had, Mr Turner?"
He shrugged. "Why do you ask?"
She sighed, took a deep breath and then decided to tell him. Let them send her to a mental hospital! It was better than believing that Jess was just dead. "During the thunderstorm last night, we were watching a movie and the electrical interference stuffed up the computer. While she was turning her computer off, Jess got a phone call. She was holding the phone at the same time as the computer and she sort of gave off sparks for a second and then disappeared. Oh, yeah, and she's with Telstra."
Mr Turner looked at her carefully. "I thought Mrs Scott said that Jess had run away,"
Fulwood snorted. "Well, we couldn't tell her about this, could we? We'd be sitting in padded rooms within two hours."
Mr Turner sighed. "The solar winds are extremely powerful. The connection between the energy from the winds and the lightning through Jess's computer – using her as a catalyst – could theoretically have created a large enough magnetic field to transplant the nature of causality into a different time, or place."
Fulwood stared at him for a second and then nodded, pretending she could understand what he'd just said. "That's Physics stuff, right?"
He raised an eyebrow at her. "I meant that she could theoretically have slipped between dimensions."
"You keep using that word," Fulwood noted.
"Which word?"
"Theoretically,"
Mr Turner shrugged. "Nothing like this has ever been proven before, Emily. That's just the way it is."
Gilioneron, his arms crossed, paced backwards and forwards in front of what could for want of a better word be called a portal that he used to travel between the world of the mortals and his world. He could also use it to see things going on in any part of the world, and now his gaze was focused on Jess.
"Where did she come from?" he asked out loud, shaking his head in confusion.
Sarmatia, beside him, looked at Claudius and shrugged. "Has she been sent by the Scythians?"
The war god shook his head. "No. I already asked them. She's not Greek either, or Roman."
Claudius looked at her carefully. "Is she a Saxon?"
Gilioneron shook his head again. "She hasn't been sent by any Gods on this earth."
Sarmatia frowned. "Is she… a demon?"
He sighed. "No. If she were a demon I would be able to feel the hatred emanating off her. Mostly, she's just… scared."
Claudius leaned forward, trying to get closer to the portal. "There is something about her… it's strange. Did you see that, before? It's coming out in little bursts. She's definitely not a gildatore?"
Gilioneron grunted. "If she is she hasn't been initiated."
Claudius nodded speculatively. "She shouldn't have been able to bend that bow. Lancelot could only just do it, and he's a fully trained gildoryae."
Sarmatia walked up to the portal and waved her hand over the surface. The picture changed into a freeze of the moment of the lightning strike when she had changed.
Claudius swore and stood up slowly, and Gilioneron unfolded his arms and looked at the picture in amazement. "Why didn't she tell me she was going back to earth?"
Sarmatia laughed. "There's more," she said, and waved her hand over the picture again. The picture began to move again, albeit slowly, and Sarmatia let it play until all three of them could see when Kelermes, greatest of the gildatorae, kept looking at Lancelot but Jessamine turned her head to look at the ground.
"She's sharing that girl's body," Claudius said incredulously.
Gilioneron raised his eyebrows. "Poor girl. No wonder she's scared. That gildatore's got dark places in her soul I haven't even seen."
Sarmatia was staring, horrified at the screen. "She wouldn't steal that girl's body, would she?"
"What do you mean?" Claudius asked, looking at her.
"Look at that picture. Already, there, Kelermes is the solid one, while the girl's face as she turns it away is the spirit."
Gilioneron sighed. "I suppose I'd better go have a word with her."
Kelermes, smirking, sat passively inside Jess's body as they rode on through the day, reflecting on how lucky she had been to catch Jess just as she fell through that convenient gap in the space-time continuum. She was the perfect disguise; a young girl, relatively innocent, relatively good-looking. Nobody in the world would ever suspect that it was her, Kelermes, greatest and most terrible of the gildatorae, come back to wreak her vengeance upon what remaining knights dared pay tribute to Rome still.
They sat around their small campfire trying to get warm in the miserable weather, their horses huddled under a tree nearby.
"It doesn't even rain this much back home," Bors said morosely, looking out from under the hood of his cloak.
Jess laughed to herself. Especially not when 'back home' meant Australia.
Gawain, sitting on her left, passed her a wineskin, which she sniffed. Thankfully, it actually seemed to be full of wine, instead of koumiss. She drank some, hoping vaguely that she wasn't going to catch some terrible 4th century disease, and then passed it to Lancelot, who was sitting on her right. She then stifled a laugh as Germanius' attendant, who was sitting beside Lancelot, sniffed the wine, gagged, and then handed it to Arthur.
She looked away, trying hard not to laugh. But then she noticed Lancelot doing the same thing, and after their eyes met they both just couldn't hold it in any longer. He managed to keep his laughter down to a brief snigger, but she had to stifle hers in a coughing fit, after which she nearly landed head first on the ground from Gawain pounding her on the back.
"Must be something in the wine," Lancelot said, grinning, and she only just managed to keep herself from doing it again.
The attendant looked at the rest of their stores and said rather stuffily that he was going for a walk.
As soon as he was out of earshot, they both collapsed, laughing so hard they were crying, on the ground, while the others looked at them in a puzzled manner.
"Did you see his face?"
"And then you made me laugh…"
"And Gawain actually thought you were coughing…"
"Must be something in the wine!"
She stopped laughing to try and get some breath back into her lungs and leaned back against the rock she was sitting in front of, and reflected sadly that the last time she had ever laughed so much was with Fulwood. Just thinking about her best friend made her feel lonely, but the sad fact was that she felt more accepted here, among these knights, than she ever had at her private girls' school. She did miss Fulwood, though, and Pascoe, and even Campbell a little bit.
But then she looked at Arthur's expression and she and Lancelot both started off again, he looked so confused.
"Will you two shut it?" Bors said, swigging from the wineskin. "You'll have the Saxons on to us, let alone the Wodes, if you're not careful."
Tristan came trotting into the clearing on Argimpasa, holding a pheasant with an arrow through it. "The rain has scared all the game underground."
Jess raised an eyebrow at the underfed, scrawny bird as Tristan chucked it onto the ground near the fire. Then something occurred to her. "There's a river down there, right? Well, with it running so fast from the rain the fish will all be out swimming. Why don't we catch some fish to eat?"
They all looked at her. "Why didn't we think of that?" Galahad asked incredulously, looking at the others.
Tristan shrugged. "How many fish do you think we'll need?"
"Half of one each," Dagonet said, thinking, "so five."
"Get six, just in case," Arthur's squire said. "Do you want me to go with you?"
Tristan nodded briefly and dismounted, searching through his things for something he could use as fishing line.
Jess looked at the pheasant. Its dead eyes stared back at her in a horrifying manner. "Since I thought of the fishing idea, I don't have to cook."
"Me neither," all of the knights said hurriedly, and then looked at Arthur, who hadn't said anything.
He sighed. "Why is it always me that does the cooking?"
Jess shrugged and leaned back against the rock again. "It's a Sarmatian thing,"
They all had to avert their eyes to stop themselves from laughing again, but she felt Lancelot's eyes on her and she looked up to see him smiling at her. Her legs felt weak, her stomach turned over and her cheeks burned, looking at that smile, and she just hoped she wasn't blushing.
Arthur's squire came back to pluck a few feathers off the dead pheasant and looked at a despondent Arthur and the rest of them grinning. "Will you be cooking again tonight, my lord?"
Arthur nodded. "Unfortunately so, Jols."
"Ah," Jols said knowledgeably. "Then I'm probably going to need some more of this," and then took a long swig from the wineskin.
Arthur glared at him. "Hey, if you're going to make me do it, don't complain."
Jols grinned and took the feathers back to Tristan to use as bait.
Lancelot grinned and took the wineskin as Arthur passed it to him. "Now that we've established what we're eating and who will be cooking it, there remains only one question that needs answering." He turned to Jess and she sighed. "Where will you be spending the night, gildatore?"
She shook her head at him. "That depends on how drunk I end up getting, Lancelot."
He inclined his head and passed her the wineskin. "It's all yours,"
1 Which is, in fact, the original spelling of civilisation. America is the only English-speaking nation that spells it that way, too; Australia, Canada, New Zealand and England use an 's'.
2 I hate French, in German. Jessamine, who has a natural talent for languages, chose to do the subject that actually has less spitting and coughing and swallowing involved. Oh, yes, and they nearly use all the consonants in the alphabet, too, whereas the French have only discovered three – l, s and q.
3 If you must, again in German. Wenn may look like it means 'when,' but it really doesn't.
4 Yes, I know this is a different Ioan Gruffudd movie, but still.
5 1-cent text, in fact.
6 "Jess? Can you hear me?"
7 This may be because koumiss is actually a mixture of mare's milk, undiluted wine and blood. Apparently the Sarmatians thought it helped them connect with their Gods.
8 In fact, it isn't either. See the beginning of the story if you doubt me.
9 The Learning Centre, not tender loving care. And we didn't choose the name, either.
10 Phillips, E. D., 1965, The Royal Hordes – Nomad Peoples of the Steppes, Jarrold & Sons, Norwich, England (They can't jail me for plagiarism now!)
11 You'll have to find the bibliographical details for that one somewhere else.
12 This particular statement would apply to a lot of people in our day and age.
13 The Romans don't have a very impressive record at making things easy for anyone. It's one of their special talents, making other peoples' lives hell. It may even possibly be a part of their religion.
14 This is, of course, remembering that the human race has grown a lot as a whole since the Dark Ages; Jess is, in fact, quite short in 2007, medium-height at best.
15 Although neither of these horse breeds have actually been bred into existence yet.
16 The art style used by the Scythians and Sarmatians, so called because of its frequent incorporation of animals.
17 Yes, I know. She's crazy, isn't she?
18 Completely unrelated to Jess, by the way.