And the Rest Is History(101)

Satisfied, the Crusader sheathed his own sword and turned away. They let him take three, maybe four paces before someone shouted. He wheeled around and the big man stabbed him in the face. He fell to the ground. He was probably dead already, but two men leaped on him, and while the leader stabbed him repeatedly, the others men fell on the screaming civilians.

Within half a minute, everyone was dead. The bench had been overturned, the pretty pots smashed, and the little square was running with blood. I watched it twist across the paving, seeping through gaps in the stones, mixing with the dirt, shit, straw and scummy water, and turning everything a bright, brilliant red. It was hard to imagine that anyone would ever again sit in this little square, feeling the sun on their face or smelling the herbs.

I stared at the dead Crusader, lying in his own blood. At some point his helmet had come off. His face was gone. A good man who had tried to do a good thing on this very bad day.

I dragged my eyes away. I wasn’t here for this. I was here for my boys.

Ellis motioned us back the way we had come.

Bearing in mind my own advice about not interfering in any way, I stayed at his shoulder and concentrated on keeping my feet as we picked our way through rubble-strewn streets.

In my ear, a female voice said, ‘Two minutes. Estimated landing site one hundred yards to your right. Remain where you are. Maintain safe distance.’

‘Copy that,’ said Ellis.

We stood in our teams, backs against a solid wall for protection. I was looking all around me. Where were they? Where would they appear?

I had forgotten to count down the seconds in my head and the two minutes seemed a very long time. Were their calculations wrong? Had we missed them somehow? I took a pace forwards to see what was happening around me and Ellis pulled me back against the wall. Something dropped from above, missing us by inches and shattering on the ground at our feet, but he still wouldn’t let me move.

I was turning my head, trying to see everything at once, worried I wouldn’t be looking in the right direction when the pod materialised. Straining my eyes for a familiar tiny flicker in all this noise and movement.

It wasn’t like that at all. I don’t know why I worried I would miss them. You would have had to have been dead to have missed them.

From nowhere, there came a great rushing wind. A roaring wind that picked up thatch, wool, dust, splinters of wood, and left them all whirling in its wake. Something blurred past like an express train, destroying the wall opposite, bringing down the house behind it and the one behind that and so on, shattering everything in its path, right across the city. Like a runaway express train. New fires bloomed in its wake.

Everyone else did the sensible thing. They screamed and ran away. Everyone ran. Crusaders, mercenaries, the local inhabitants. Rubble, timbers, thatch, stonework were all exploding into the air and, then, as is usual in the scheme of things, dropping heavily back to earth again.

We did the unsensible thing. We ran towards. We followed the trail of destruction. We scrambled through unsafe buildings, clambered over smoking debris, fought our way through people so terrified that nothing we could do could possibly make things any worse. We followed – for want of a better expression – the skidmarks.

I thought we’d find the pod at the end of the burning trail. Like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But there was nothing. No pod anywhere. But I couldn’t see any sort of crater either, so it hadn’t exploded on impact. It just wasn’t here.

I stared around, bewildered. Pods are designed to put up with a lot. Fire, explosions, impact – they’re supposed to be almost indestructible. Dieter and I dropped one off a cliff once, and we survived. Professor Penrose and I found ourselves in a place so far away that time didn’t even exist, and apart from minor melting of the casing, we survived that as well. On the other hand, they’re not designed to be blasted out of existence at one end of the jump and crash land into an entire city at the other. Because no, it hadn’t exploded. Worse – it had disintegrated. It had just fallen apart. Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed, I could see a piece of the console. And a bent and twisted locker door. And over there was part of the toilet door hanging from a hinge.

And there was the main part of the pod – what was left of it – lying on its side, half buried under a demolished building and with black smoke pouring from the remains of the console. But there was no fire.

‘Spread out,’ said Ellis. ‘Search pattern alpha. Activate your tag readers. One security team with one medical team. You all know what to do. Eyes open everyone.’

At least we didn’t have to worry about the locals. They’d long since gone and even the Crusaders had sensibly decided this was a good time to rape and pillage somewhere else.

I stayed with Ellis as the teams scattered, tag readers bleeping.

They found Markham first.

A shout went up and I could see a group of them bending over something I couldn’t see.

I scrambled over ruined buildings and kicked aside burning timbers, hearing my own heart thump inside my head, terrified of what I might see.

He lay, face down, half buried under a pile of rubble. Not moving. Broken and covered in blood. He was burned in places. He hadn’t been wearing armour and most of his clothing had been torn away. I could see white bone.

A medical team shouldered everyone out of the way and began unpacking their kit. Their security people formed a protective ring around them.