ALEX WOULD HAVE BEEN happy to stay lying against Rafe except that the world they had just left outside the door would soon come knocking. As a physician, he was in demand, especially now.
“I should go and check on the wounded,” he told Rafe, stirring himself. He got to his feet and started dressing. “You can stay here as long as you want. I will tell anyone who asks that you are still recovering.”
Rafe rolled over onto his side and watched Alex dress. “That won’t hold for long.”
“Could I take you as a lover?” Alex asked. “I don’t know these times or this place. Would they accept that?”
“Not if it’s out in the open,” Rafe said. “Powys is highly Christian. Although some of the old ways still linger in the darker corners of the kingdom.”
“Discretion as always, then,” Alex concluded. “Very well.” He leaned down and kissed Rafe soundly. “I will kick you to your own bed tomorrow morning. In the meantime, patients first—especially the king.” He sorted through the medicine chest, and topped up his supplies, moving quickly.
“I heard them say you were tending the king. He will live, of course.”
Alex glanced at him. “Why do you say that with such conviction?”
“I could tell you that I have that much faith in your medical skills,” Rafe replied.
“My skills are not what they could be without modern medicine and sterile environments,” Alex told him. “So why are you so certain that the king will survive? It is a very deep cut.”
“Because he did,” Rafe said simply.
Alex looked up at him again. His heart squeezed. “That is what you remember of these times? That Llewelyn lived?”
“To lay siege to Chirbury, yes.” Rafe sat up. “He dies when the Northmen sweep right across Mercia and through to Essex and kill Edward, the high king.”
Edward must live.
Alex pressed his lips together.
“What have you done?” Rafe said softly. “I know that look of yours. You’re feeling guilty about something.”
Alex shook his head. He dropped the last pot of salve into the chest and closed it. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Alex knew he would not be able to hide this from Rafe. He hated lying to him or Sydney in any degree and this was more important than a secret birthday present. “Llewelyn and I spoke about finding a way to sue for peace between Powys and Mercia.”
Rafe’s mouth opened. Then he shut it, frowning heavily. “That’s not what happened…” he said slowly.
Alex nodded. “I know.”
“You can’t talk to the king about peace!” Rafe said. “You can’t give him ideas. How many times have Veris and Brody said that? No whispering in the ears of kings and statesmen. You run a real risk of fucking up the future!”
“Well, I did talk to him,” Alex said. He made himself say the rest. “I will continue to talk to him about peace. Emptying out Powys to continue this stupid argument with Mercia will leave the whole country wide open. The Vikings will march into Mercia unopposed.”
Rafe jumped to his feet. “They’re supposed sweep through, Alex! For heaven’s sake!” He lifted his hands in a gesture of anger and futility. “You’re not even meant to be here and now you’re trying to change established history? Did you learn nothing from what Veris and Brody and Taylor have been saying all these years?”
Alex rested his hand on the medicine chest. It hid the trembling. “I heard,” he said flatly. “And I was there in Jerusalem. I saw the outcomes.”
“Then what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rafe cried.
“Finding peace, any way I can.”
“No! Powys lays siege to Chirbury, the Vikings raid while our backs are turned. I die. The king dies. So does Aethelfreda and her army. And so does the King of England! That’s what happened. That’s how Gronoya was established. That’s why the Herskers get to lob ballistic missiles at Iraq in the twenty-first century! You have to take it back, Alex. You have to encourage Llewelyn to go pick his fight with Aethelfreda. You have to stop this before it’s too late.”
Alex picked up the medicine chest, feeling the heavy weight of it against his belly, the corners digging into his arms. Right now, this was real. The ‘history’ that they knew was a future concept. This was the only moment that counted. Except he knew what the future moments would be. “What if this isn’t the way things were supposed to go?” he asked Rafe.
Alex could see the fear in Rafe’s eyes. This was something even the Council itself was afraid of—that vampires with their long lives could arrange history to suit themselves and by their self-centeredness, destroy the future for everyone because no one knew all the consequences of change.
“You don’t know how it’s supposed to go!” Rafe’s voice was hoarse. “We only know what did happen. You can’t, you must not change that!”
“What if we’re supposed to change it?”
Rafe swiped his hand to one side in a sharp cutting-off motion. “No. I will not go down this path of reasoning. Reasoning!” He laughed hollowly. “You’re playing with forces you don’t understand, Alex. I beg you, drop this. Let history take its course.”
Alex shook his head. “I can’t.”
Rafe crossed his arms. Even though he was naked, he had drawn the invisible aura of power around him that he habitually wore as a judge and as one of the official representatives of the Council. “Don’t make me make it an order,” he said softly.
Alex unlatched the door. “You can make it an order if you want.”
“Will it stop you?”
Alex looked at him. “No.” The word tasted like ash in his mouth.
* * * * *
Two days later, despite Alex’s best efforts, the entire fighting force of Powys was mustered at Mathrafel, to march upon Mercia. Every man capable of holding a sword or a knife was ordered to the fortress to take arms, including the king’s newly recovered scribe.
Alex was also ordered to pack his things and attend the marching army…and the king, for he had arranged to lie upon a straw bed in a cart. “I will ride like a woman if that is what it takes!” he had bellowed at Alex and the room full of captains. “Mercia will not go unpunished for the abduction of our ally’s queen!”
That had earned the approval of the entire army, who had cheered as Llewelyn was carried out to the cart that stood waiting for him.
Alex’s horse was brought for him, a snowy white stallion that reminded him sharply of the horse his father had given him as a gift on his sixteenth birthday. Among the piebald mares and stocky hill horses Powys rode, Atiya stood out like glowing neon.
Even though no one told him directly, the knowledge was there that he had brought Atiya with him on his travels from the Caliphate of Cordoba, on the Iberian Peninsula. He had been travelling for years, selling his services as a superior physician, and writing his journals and books about the lands and people he saw.
Alex patted Atiya’s nose as the stallion pushed it against his shoulder with affection. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” he murmured. Atiya nickered quietly in agreement. Alex remembered the rest of the Shakespearean quote with irony.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger. . . .
“I must become a tiger, it seems,” he told Atiya and lifted himself up onto the broad back.
The main body of the army passed through the gates of the hill fortress of Mathrafel as the sun passed behind thick banks of clouds and shadow fell over the land.
Alex was too busy looking along the sinuous line of cavalry and only peripherally noticed the pall that had fallen. He was trying to see where Rafe might be. Rafe had not spoken to him since their argument. He wondered what he might say if he were here right now. Rafe was not one to crow about victory yet in this instance, he would be justified.
Turning history in its tracks was harder than Alex had suspected it would be. It seemed as though the whole world was hell bent on rushing to its doom.