Perilous Siege Read online

  “Of course. A big tourist attraction. Or used to be before jihadi terrorists blew it up. I’ve only seen pictures.”

  “Stonehenge is but one example of stones of great power mentioned in legends. The Stone of Scone was used for the coronation of the kings of Scotland, and later England, for centuries. The same was true for the Lia Fáil, where the High Kings of Ireland were crowned.

  “But the most powerful was the Siege Perilous, whose ancient home was Cornwall before Merlin took it to Camelot. It was returned to Cornwall upon the death of Arthur and the dispersal of his knights, and it remained in the care of my family down through the centuries. However, as I said, its power is not to destroy the unworthy as Merlin thought. Rather, it has the power, bestowed by God, to judge a man, determine his worth, and then deliver him to his fate.”

  McDunn was grateful to the strange man who had dragged him away from the abattoir outside the cave, but the guy was clearly not playing with a full deck of cards.

  But what did it matter, after all? He wasn’t going to live, not with a shitload of shrapnel in his belly, no aid station, no surgeon, and no antibiotics to prevent peritonitis. When the first dose of morphine started to wear off, he had three more syringes.

  That ought to make death painless, at least, rather than lingering for some unknown time in terrible agony—and possibly falling into the hands of the barb bastards.

  “I see the doubt in your eyes, friend McDunn,” Kaswallon said with a crooked smile. “That is understandable, for you have not lived as I have. I have seen men and women sit in the Siege and disappear. My family was careful who they allowed to be judged by the stone, but there were those who heard the old tales and sought our services—and would pay handsomely. There were those fleeing enemies they could not fight or who were being sought for crimes, real and imagined.”

  Kaswallon smiled again, but it had no humor in it. “There was a rather urgent demand for our services after the great war of the last century—what you would call World War Two. Many were fleeing the justice of the Allies, and they found an escape by means of the Siege Perilous. But remember, I said the Siege judged the worth of a man and then consigned him to his fate. I think most of those men were not pleased with the world in which they found themselves.”

  This is getting loonier and loonier, McDunn thought, but the big man seems harmless enough, despite his ravings.

  But again, it seemed as though Kaswallon was reading his mind since he beamed happily at McDunn and said, “Have you heard of alternate worlds, friend McDunn? The idea of different outcomes flowing from great decisions or events, leading to two different and parallel worlds?”

  “I’ve read stories, but it’s just an idea, a fictional device.”

  “Much like the tales of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Siege Perilous? But never mind. You have heard of the concept. For example, suppose you had not come with your fellow marines to Cornwall. There would be a different world resulting from that decision, and you and your fellow marines would not have fought the butchers today. Thus, you and I would not be in this cave at this moment. Does this make sense?”

  “Sure,” McDunn said savagely. “Of course, I’d have disappeared in the same nuclear explosion that consumed my parents and my sisters. Some alternative!”

  “Not all alternatives lead to good outcomes as both of us know from the catastrophe consuming my country.”

  “In that case, I would think you would wish to make use of your Siege Perilous yourself to escape this catastrophe. Why haven’t you?”

  “I will in good time. I have dispatched all in my family and all of our close friends. I, myself, was loath to leave until I saw whether all hope had indeed fled. Remember, the journey through the Siege portal is one-way. Only a few of my family who have been Guardians have used the Siege themselves, and most of them did so because of grief they could not bear in this world—the death of a beloved wife, for example, or even the death of all his family in a fire in the case of my great-great-grandfather.”

  “Britain’s gone, believe me,” McDunn said savagely, jerked into alertness by the sudden rage flooding through him. “Their military went down months ago. They waited too long to rebuild, and they were handicapped by all the enemies of civilization inside this country. My country didn’t do much better. Our homegrown fanatics tried to remake our country into their vision of Utopia but really only succeeded in destroying everything they touched. We may have started recovering sooner than you Brits, but we both ran out of time. It was probably some of those fanatics who nuked our government and commercial centers—who left me and my guys stranded over here.”

  McDunn’s lips thinned, and the grimness of his expression made him look momentarily as lethal and dangerous as he likely had been before he was wounded.

  “A good man for a friend,” Kaswallon whispered under his breath. “A bad man for an enemy.”

  McDunn knew his mind had started to wander, and he looked up at the tall man, blinking. “Sorry about running off at the mouth. Morphine’s good stuff, but it starts to fuzz you up after a while.”

  “Do not worry. Now, we have a little time before your Gate opens and you go into the world in which your mind and soul will be at home. It is the world for which you unconsciously yearned even if you knew it not. You may then seek your fortune there.”

  “Yeah, and bleed to death with a belly wound,” McDunn said, the doubt clear in his words even if they were starting to slur.

  “I think not, friend McDunn. If the lore is correct, the Siege Perilous sends a man to a new existence, and the ills and ailments of this world do not make the transition with him. Did I not say the Siege is an artifact of the Lord, associated with the search for Christ’s cup at the Last Supper?”

  “Whatever you say.” McDunn had no desire to argue religion at a time like this though he was a faithful attendee at Sunday chapel back in the States. Perhaps he wanted to believe the ravings of this madman, or perhaps his strength to offer any objections was fading.

  “Now, as I said, we have to wait until the moon rises before your Gate opens.”

  “Why wait? Why not now? You said this Siege of yours would make me whole, and I’m bleeding to death as I sit here.”

  “You shall go when the moon rises, for that is when your Gate will open. The right one for you. Then you will believe!”

  Kaswallon smiled at him beatifically, and McDunn desperately wanted to trust his smile.

  “So, there is a bit of time, and you may take a few things with you—but only what is on your body or which you hold in your hands. Is there something I might find for you outside? But I must be quick. There may still be savages left alive.”

  “Rifle,” McDunn said with difficulty. His mind was becoming clouded from the morphine, and he could feel he was on the verge of unconsciousness. “Working rifle. And some ammo if you can find it.” Then the dizziness swept over him, and he felt himself falling into welcome unconsciousness.

  He had wanted to ask for his pack, which had been in his fighting hole, because of the valuables in it. His computer tablets, pictures of his parents and his sisters, Jill, Teresa, and Megan. His grandfather in his dress blues when he was sergeant major of the whole blessed Marine Corps. His grandmother, who so loved Pride and Prejudice. His graduation picture and one of his high school football team. All he had left of his world. The world that was gone.

  But he was the one that was gone. Gone into unconsciousness and into relief from the pain.

  When McDunn’s head dropped to his chest, Kaswallon was alarmed and feared the wounded man had died unexpectedly. But his concern ebbed as he saw the easy rise and fall of the man’s breathing.

  He seemed stable sitting on the Siege, with his arms holding him up, so mumbling a quick prayer for this stalwart warrior’s welfare, Kaswallon left the cave.

  ***

&nb
sp; McDunn came partially out of his stupor when he felt hands on him, pulling his arms to the side before a heavy weight settled on his shoulders. Another weight went over one shoulder, and other items were tucked up against his belly. He felt his hands being thrust under straps, which were wrapped around his forearms.

  He was grateful when the hands stopped jostling him since every movement caused his belly to hurt again. It appeared the morphine was wearing off. Dimly, he thought he heard voices speaking to each other, but that couldn’t be. No one was left but him and this strange guy, Kaswallon, the Guardian of the Siege Perilous he had called himself though McDunn was starting to think of him as the Druid.

  Then Kaswallon’s voice boomed off the walls of the cave, chanting strange words McDunn couldn’t understand in a language he’d never heard. Finally, the words were ended, and a sharp Craaaacckk resounded through the cave as though a hammer had hit stone.

  “Now!” Kaswallon said, his voice thundering through the cave.

  There was an indescribable moment in which the whole universe twisted into a pretzel, coupled with one of wrenching, nauseating fire in his gut. But the pain somehow thinned out, and then it disappeared completely. McDunn felt himself thrust into a weightless, timeless nothingness.

  In that moment during which time had no meaning, McDunn was finally overwhelmed by everything he had lost: his family, all his friends from school and the Corps, and most of all, the one whose loss hurt the most because she was the love that might have been. He felt himself falling through nothingness…

  “Dancer,” he groaned, the pain in his heart worse than the pain in his belly.

  Then he hit hard, and blackness closed in.

  Chapter 1

  If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.

  — Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

  Tuesday, October 10, 1809

  Pemberley, Derbyshire

  “Sir! Sir! Mr. Darcy!”

  Fitzwilliam Darcy had been half-dozing as his coach rumbled along on this still-warm autumn day. He was on the final leg of a journey to his Pemberley estate when, startled from his comfortable doze, he sat bolt upright at the call of his driver and the subsequent hard braking of the coach.

  “Yes, Wainwright?” he called, looking over at his sister, Georgiana, and his cousin Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam as the vehicle lurched to a stop. “What is it?”

  “Over there, sir! A man!”

  “A man? Where?”

  “In the grass, sir! To your right! A-lyin’ in the grass!”

  Darcy felt the coach shake as one of the footmen scrambled down from the back of the coach, and he was not surprised when Brown appeared suddenly at the door.

  “I will see what it is, sir,” he said in a gravelly voice and started to turn away.

  “Wait!” When Brown turned around with a surprised look, Darcy continued. “I want to have a look myself.”

  He opened the door and jumped lightly to the ground without bothering to lower the entry step. Behind him, he heard his cousin descend in the same manner.

  “Stay inside the coach, Georgiana,” he called without turning his head. He did not have to look to know she had intended to jump to the ground. Her natural curiosity grew by the day.

  “But William!” Georgiana said, beginning to protest. It was clear from her expression that past experience told her the uselessness of doing so when her brother spoke in such a tone of voice. “Oh, very well,” she said, settling back on her seat.

  “Now, where is this man, Wainwright?” Darcy asked. “I cannot see anyone.”

  “Over there, sir,” his driver said, pointing. “He is just there. Maybe dead. I canna tell.”

  “I should do this, Mr. Darcy,” repeated Brown.

  “Or I,” Fitzwilliam said, stepping up beside Darcy with his hand on his cavalry saber.

  “I want to see for myself,” Darcy said. Then, seeing the look of distress on his footman’s face, he relented. Brown, after all, did have a secondary duty as an armed guard against the possibility of highwaymen on the road. The threat was admittedly rare in recent years, but it remained.

  “Very well, then. We shall all investigate.”

  “Yes, sir,” his footman said reluctantly, touching the pistol he had stuck in his waistband. Darcy was careful to conceal his smile at Brown’s protectiveness. The man had never had occasion even to withdraw his firearm from under his coat, but he took his duty seriously.

  As he and Fitzwilliam walked in the direction his driver had pointed, Brown followed slightly behind and off to the side. Something was clearly pressing down the long grass of the field.

  As they got closer, Darcy realized his driver had been right. There was indeed a man lying in the grass, curled up almost into a ball, but he was attired in a most baffling fashion, which added to the mystery of his presence.

  His clothing resembled a military uniform since the trousers and jacket were similar in appearance, but the material itself was like no uniform Darcy had ever seen. It had no constant color, being composed of a mottled conglomeration of browns and tans, but the sharp demarcation of the mottling showed it was intentional and not accidental. The man wore a pack of the same material except its mottling was different in pattern.

  In addition, the man’s clothing and pack were incredibly dirty and deeply stained with mud. This was puzzling since the roads and fields were dry. There had been no recent rains, yet the man’s boots, unlike any Darcy had ever seen, were also covered in the same type of mud.

  As the men moved closer, Darcy was shocked to realize many of the stains on what he was increasingly certain was a kind of uniform looked more like blood than dirt or mud. Dried blood. A lot of blood.

  The reddish-brown stains were down the entire front of his uniform. Adding to the mystery was an unfamiliar helmet on the stranger’s head, covered in the same brown and tan cloth as his clothing.

  Darcy heard a rustle of cloth and a snapping sound behind him, and he knew Brown had just withdrawn his pistol from his waistband, cocked the hammer, and was no doubt turning the pistol sideways slightly to get a few grains of powder into the priming pan. Darcy felt no inclination to reprove him. The unconscious man’s presence was enough to justify a degree of caution, especially when coupled with his complete unfamiliarity and the strangeness of his clothing.

  A sense of alarm struck Darcy as he saw the item his footman had seen, and he understood why Brown had drawn his pistol. Under the stranger’s left armpit was some kind of leather holster, and protruding from it was what appeared to be the butt of a pistol. The butt was significantly smaller than the pistol in Brown’s hands, as well as being quite oddly shaped. Regardless, there was a sleek deadliness about the weapon that convinced him of its danger.

  A second shock ran through him when he saw a long object lying in the grass just beyond the stranger’s out-flung hand. From its length and similar appearance of precision as the pistol, Darcy was certain the long object was also a weapon of some kind. It bore a superficial resemblance to the muskets and shotguns with which he was familiar, but this musket was too short, had strange protrusions in various places, and did not appear to be made of metal. Everything, including the barrel, was colored the same as the man’s pack. Perhaps those colors were paint, but he wondered why a musket would be painted.

  Darcy stopped about ten feet away and regarded the stranger. He was deeply tanned but unshaven with several weeks of dark beard. He could see the man’s clothing was not only dirty and bloody but also badly worn with numerous tears, especially about the knees and elbows. Some type of bulky vest or harness was strapped about his torso, supporting numerous pouches bulging with unknowable
contents. There were also pockets everywhere about his clothing—on the sleeves and down his baggy trousers—all of them bulging like those on his vest. He lay quietly on his side, breathing slowly and deeply, and the large pack strapped to his back looked vaguely like the packs worn by soldiers illustrated in the London newspapers. For the first time, Darcy noticed several canvas bags nearby, and he realized the mottled coloring of the bags had made them almost blend in with the vegetation.

  He looked over at Fitzwilliam, but his cousin only shrugged his thick shoulders. His military experience apparently did not provide any more answers than Darcy’s civilian knowledge.

  But caution seemed advisable. The man might look rough and bedraggled, but he was also large and muscular with broad shoulders and large hands, somewhat resembling Fitzwilliam who was a colonel of dragoons and a rather formidable man in his own right. The two shared the same weathered features acquired by a life spent mostly outdoors.

  Unable to bear the mystery any longer, Darcy ignored the voice of caution sounding a warning in his mind and stepped forward to nudge the sole of one of the stranger’s boots with his cane. It was only a slight touch, but the results were both startling and violent!

  With a rapidity that caused the three men to recoil backward in complete surprise, the stranger seemed to explode up from the ground. With astonishing speed, he rolled abruptly to the side while simultaneously whirling about and half-rising. His head whipped about in a blur, quickly scanning the surroundings before fixing on the group of men in front of him. A click sounded as he came to a halt on one knee, and Darcy realized that a strange-looking pistol had somehow appeared in his hands. It must be the pistol from beneath the man’s armpit, and it was held in a completely unfamiliar manner, supported by both his hands.