Dance With Time

CHAPTER ONE

Leòmhann de dhe Monadh, the lion of the mountain, twisted away from the fire, his eyes stinging with the swirling smoke. Gusts pulled at the flaps covering his knees. He rubbed the fingers protruding from his gloves, then buried them in his armpits as he crouched closer again, mindless to the coiling sparks.

You ask about strange things, he said, without looking up.

Céile clutched a heavy shawl to her throat, intent upon the old one across from her. Her knuckles glinting like bleached bone. Her face was lined with strain, though she appeared to be half his age.

I have come far, she stated, slowly, I have a right to know.

Aye, you have that, Aquitania is more than mere miles away.

A dog howled in the distance, its cry trailing into the shrill

of the night wind. The woman shivered involuntarily, not from the cold.

God’s mercy! I hope he makes it this time, she said, hoarsely, her lips drawn tight against her teeth.

The man looked up sharply, the steel in his eyes dancing with the flaring embers. His eyebrows were bushy, heavy with gray, matching his beard and long, blending mustache, which ends he often pulled when musing. He knew the others were closing in on him. The dogs had told him so. The pack was never far behind, it seemed. One could trick them for a while, but they always caught the scent sooner or later, baying as if out of a graveyard, mourning perpetually. Always there.

Was it worth it? she hissed, bringing him back to the moment.

Leòmhann regarded her askance, half smiling, yet a haunted look about him too. Then his expression changed to that of sadness. There was no accusation in him, nothing to counter her. It was not so much that she did not understand as it was the likelihood that she never would. There was, he knew, no explanation for such things. And, yet, it embodied the one question that was ever asked. Why, indeed! he added, inwardly, scratching through the slate shards and pine needles for the end of his stick. His gnarled hands caressed the markings on the staff as he drew it across his knees, about to rise.

You will not leave this place without answering me!

Startled, Leòmhann looked up from the stick, his focus on a pin-point of light reflecting from the tip of an iron barb. The dart, mounted in something like a miniature ballista, once released, could go right through a man, leather armor and all, at least at such close range. My, he thought, how beautiful she is, so defiant, so enraged. Now, finally, the grin that tempted him became an unblemished smile.

You bastard! Céile’s hands were shaking, the tip quivering, the metal shaft but a hairsbreadth away from release. The wind tore at her shawl, revealing a slender neck of ivory, encircled by a double braid of horsehair bearing an ancient amulet, the pendulum dripping blood red in the firelight. She lifted the deadly instrument, as if to aim into the heart of him. Yet, from that short distance, scarcely could she miss, and, if perchance it was so, he would knowingly have closed the space between them once more. One little dart and one furious night fire being insufficient to prevent it.

The distant howling became a lament, the braying fused with aerie gusts. Abruptly, Leòmhann sensed the air, the coming storm, and he wondered if Ambicatos, his son, would push on in spite of it. It was his way, so desperate was he to overtake them.

In the respite of the night hours, by the time the moon crested the crags, Céile was close to Leòmhann, leaning into him for warmth. All about, the broken spires stood sentinel-like, chained by stars. Beside them, the fire crackled with pine knots, the pitch laden knuckles blistering with heat. They found solace there, huddled under his cape, his arm around her waist as she caressed his wrist, absently tracing the outline of a livid hourglass scar, reliving his pain. The scar was vivid and several shades lighter than the surrounding skin.

The fire became a blur, the crackling and sparks like recurrent memories, momentarily illuminated then sucked into blackness. There was too much to think about, but only now mattered.

Leò, she murmured.

Hmm?

Ambic is only a day’s ride behind me. You knew that, and yet you waited for me. Why?

The old man grunted. What could one say? he thought. No one except the endlessly pursued could know the sense of relief at finally being caught. But, the inevitable was hardly so. Always, the outcome must be different. There was no other way, though men defied it, denied it, and then chastened themselves afterward. It was the law. The only way to be captured was to fear it. Anything else brinked freedom, ah, but at what price! As if in reply, he hugged Céile tighter, reveling not so much in the fire as the closeness of her, and the burning she aroused in him. Always, there was that.

In the old days – he smiled in the dark – one could have said they were fated to be together, their incongruency complimenting one another. In a word, they were opposites, not merely different, but diametric. He was everything she wasn’t, while she embodied everything he yearned to feel. Only in each other was there completeness, a kind of bliss not easily typified. Their love was borne of the necessity for each other, where life is extracted in droplets as if from an ocean. They were linked like stars in effervescent constellations, one rotating about the other, dancing through time.

So, why did you? she persisted. Why are you so determined to return to Hakincùirt? There’s nothing there anymore, nothing for any of us. That life is over now. Everything is in ruins. Even the dolmans are awry, leaning this way and that, like bodies on a battle plain. Céile shuddered.

It was true, Leòmhann thought. All of it. When he left, Hakincùirt was devastated. The old ways had ended there; which reason, were it said, was not only why they had scattered from the place, but why they were destined to return to it as well. Even if in ruin, Hakincùirt was a touchstone, a place from which time and distance were measured, no matter how far or forgotten. It would always be a part of them.

Once, Leòmhann strode the battlements, confident of its defenses. Hakincùirt had withstood hundreds of years of sieges and would, he surmised, serve the Celts for centuries more. But he had not reckoned on the helmeted ranks of Caesar’s legions.

Its origins lost to time, Hakincùirt existed as a Druid sanctuary where, following the 334 BC defeat of the Persians, Alexander the Great and his retiring troops visited the mineral baths and hot springs there. At peace, ever so briefly, the sanctuary at Hakincùirt seemed destined to last forever. It was built around a mineral spring that emptied into a public caldarium, a hot bath over 80 feet long, in a natural depression in the rock, surrounded by statuary, intricate mosaics and oak trees laboriously hauled up the mountain and tended by devoted priests, the drui. Then, in 133 BC, the Romans under Perganum annexed that part of Gaul between Cevennes and the Alps to create a corridor to Spain, calling it Gallia Transalpina – Gaul across the Alps. Had the Romans merely wanted their services and comfort, the Druid priests would have acquiesced, having lived under a succession of masters. But the Romans wanted their minds too, their oral traditions and mysticism, to be supplanted by enforced Latin dogma with the emphasis on emperor worship. In the Gallic Wars that followed, lasting a brutal seven years until 51 BC, Hakincùirt became a shrine of misery, the few survivors, like Leòmhann de dhe Monadh, driven into the mountains to preserve the forbidden rites and rituals of the ancients.

But not all left. To maintain the peace, Emperor Claudius I, allowed certain Gallic noblemen into the Roman Senate. If he could not rule from without, then he would rule from within. Among those admitted was the fierce Ambicatos de dhe Monadh, Leòmhann’s only remaining son. The trade off was simple: all Ambicatos had to do to prove his fealty was to bring the last of the outcasts to heel, namely his father.

* * *

The village of Hakincùirt was thirty miles away when Ambicatos de dhe Monadh dismounted, his horse blowing hard, the pennants on his rider’s lances snapping like whips. We’ll night here, he commanded. Mohlnar says the trees break an hour higher, and we’ll not be wanting to camp in the rocks. Daybreak will come soon enough.

Only one of the riders failed to dismount, his horse pawing the broken slate, its withers mottled with foam. The climb had been hard and they had come too far, too fast. It wasn’t prudence that brought them to a halt, but necessity. He kneed his mount forward.

Sire, listen.

Ambicatos cocked his ear to the wind, frowning.

Could it be the dogs? he frowned. No, he argued, aloud, It’s the wind, Trosdan, just the wind. Join the men. We’ll camp now and break early.

Trosdan rotated in his saddle, searching the gloom for the one called Mohlnar, but the swirling mists had claimed him. The swarthy one was always like that, an enigma of sorts, appearing and disappearing when least expected.

So be it. Trosdan yanked hard on the rein, the mare half changing direction before her forefoot caught up. Trosdan was like that, seemingly impatient to those who didn’t understand him, but a man with a personal mission otherwise. He was master of the hounds and a part of him was always elsewhere, foraying and bounding, tongue lolling, heart bursting, feet bleeding.

* * *

CHAPTER TWO

Captain’s Field, 50 miles northwest of Richmond, was not a brilliant place to be. Although the meadows shone and the Wilderness, a tangle of distant pine forests, shimmered, the morning sun was wane, pale upon the backs of the Union soldiers who waited at the end of that long spring in 1864.

Jeromy Heep checked his primers yet once again, his fist sweaty with the minié ball that he’d shove into his mouth when the time came, the faster to reload. He sleeved his brow, trying to maintain his focus, knowing that he had to be ready the instant the enemy charged. The Army of Northern Virginia, or what was left of it, would rise en mass then fall away, crumpled under the withering fire of three rounds to the minute per man. Nothing else mattered.

The feeble sun gleaned down the barrel of his Springfield musket, the distant barricade undulating in the flat light, seemingly close yet far away at the same time. It was from there they would come, any moment now, and in his mind he saw the ranks of gray jerking to the death dance, defiled even before they fell in the hail of volley fire. Pity them, he thought, shaking his head at the waste of it all. In another day, or a forenoon, it would be his turn again, to rise over the bulwarks, strange sounds emitting from his throat as he charged into – into what? he wondered. Oblivion? Glory? What?

What else was there?

Jeromy was too young to know another life, to bold to seek any other, too foolish to recognize the difference. So, there he was, one of the many, one of the few, a dreamer still. But that would change. War is unique in that aspect. It has a way of making a person see the other side of things: the impact when ball ground through bone; when valiant chests heaved their last and when faces – all beautiful – were shattered ear bone from jaw, eyes glistening dimly in the ashen aftermath. In his mind he saw the bodies rising, when began the futile charge that never ended, the stumbling and the pathetic muse as one after another dove into the endless melee, dying a thousand deaths in one. They would not quit, once aroused – even, as they would not die. They just kept coming.

Such were the visions of Jeromy Heep. The trouble was, he could no longer differentiate between his dreams and what was real. It was all the same now, the battles raging endlessly and there were too many of them. Once, he had challenged it all by rushing alone, screaming things he knew nothing of, only to discover himself standing apart, his chest as if run over, his tongue like bark, his vacant gaze arrested by the soiled uniforms and the fuzzy beards of the young dead all around him. He was a hero, they said, one of the valiant, but it was overshadowed by a blond carrier of the colors, a mere boy who, at the end, had yanked the musket from Jeromy’s hands, so impaled was he upon the bayonet.

It was a strange notion, being a hero. Jeromy knew he was not more brave, nor stronger. Quicker, maybe. What was he then? he wondered. Just luckier? But it didn’t fit somehow. There was more to it than that. What was it that gave him his inexplicable defiance? What drove him on, even when there was no reason for it? Is that what a hero does? Not hardly. He was too rational for that. Then why? he asked himself. What made him do it? Try as he might, the answer eluded him. What he had done was simply unreasonable. Was that what they applauded? Unreasonableness? Was it only nonsense that made sense? In fact, why kill at all? Was life of so little value? Did the keeper of souls even care? It tormented him. Jeromy did not consider himself a deep thinker, yet he was, having no measure by which to gauge his sentiments. Still, there were some things that men, even soldiers, neglected to talk about. The prize of being, surely, was the reason for it all. Yet, he was here and they were there, and at the end of the day only one of them would write letters to escape it all. Beyond that, reality was as if in shadow, murky and undefined, and to ask too many questions only weakened a man. It was, perhaps, better not to know.

With that thought Jeromy checked his primer caps once again, making sure the pouch cover was tucked back under his belt, the cap on the powder horn loosened. The lead shot in his fist felt slippery now, somehow heavier, their portent as if pages torn from a book of unwritten diaries, lives to the lost, words to the unlettered, victims all.

In the faint times, prior to the rushing – oh, there seemed so many of them now – Jeromy recalled the straightness of his furrows, the sharp smell of mule sweat and the dusky scent of shimmering pastures that a hundred baths could not disperse. It was a part of him: the meadowlarks screaming over broken eggs; the foxes with sweated manes, their homes plowed under, and the criss-cross of fences that stood out like ragged stitches on a blanket. Jeromy felt himself a part of it all, a revelment of sorts. But, now, everything was different. Even if he survived, there was a part of him that had already died. In that sense, no one left the battlefield unscathed.

It was bizarre how things had worked out. Jeromy was good at making things grow; but, as it turned out, he was good at killing things too. It was as if he was tearing the very shears from willing hands and pissing on their seed. The only difference was a glitch in time – a kind of dance. The act was the same. For, truly, none did rise from those fallow fields, and no women ever came to thresh the windrows of bodies. There could never be that. Not now, and, he reflected, perhaps not in any lifetime to come, since, at the end of it all, no one would be left alive anyway. That was how it would all end, he surmised: the last man killing off the last man, who, then in despair, would turn the muzzle against himself rather than face such aloneness. Then it would finally be over, and the beasts would emerge from their burrows, and the raven would again call to his cousins, and bugs would squirm and the bees buzz – all without man. And, there would be peace.

So, Jeromy mused, let it end. And, if this is to be my last battle, let me die like a man. Let honor be my monument, for I, to whom no marker or shrine shall ever be, am wasted and will never pass this way again. Like stalks of grass in a prairie fire, war will char us all, our bloated remains soaking into the earth, our pestilence dissipating in favor of something new.

Such were the thoughts of Jeromy Heep as he sought to reconcile the horror. But, try as he might, the resignation he sought would not come. A part of him remained defiant and determined not to die. In that light, Jeromy himself would be that last man. Maybe that would be peace enough.

* * *

From the Wilderness Campaign through to Cold Harbor, General Lee’s Virginians acquitted themselves admirably, taking down 45,000 of Grant’s Bluecoats – 7,000 in one eight minute action alone. Some, curiously, were found holding hands, even though a shoulder was mangled or a leg blown away. What, one wonders, were they reaching for?

Finally, attrition brought the South to a shuddering halt. My, but how they loved to die. There was no quit in them. Without reinforcements, such as was available to the Union forces, at the end of it there was no one left to kill. Ah, but what a victory it was, with bunting and multi-colored banners, marching bands and grandiose speeches – such as was the day, now, two years later in 1867, when the Iowa frontier town of Fort Dodge celebrated the anniversary of Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House.

The town was buzzing, with caramel corn and Three Toed Monte being offered on every second corner. Even the hurdy-gurdy man made a day of it, grinding away, his monkey tethered to another kind of reality, as was Jeromy Heep.

Jeromy chawed, neither disconsolate nor involved, idly pulling at his overgrown beard, thinking deeply. The bark of an oak tree ground into his back. He was partial to oak trees. He liked their strength and their breadth and something more, curiously undefined. Absently, Jeromy scratched the odd-shaped burn on his wrist, caused by a delayed flash of wet powder, leaving a vivid hourglass scar as a reminder, several shades lighter than the surrounding skin.

An empty birdhouse was swinging awry in the gentle breeze, nothing but life and the absence of it to concern him. What did they know? he thought, as they paraded past, making much of nothing they knew anything about. Phgh! The assholes! Let them celebrate.

He spat darkly on the grass and pulled his knees up, absently cradling a .44 caliber revolving carbine. It was a new Navy model 1865, a 6 shot repeating rifle that weighed only 5 pounds. With an 18" barrel, a buckhorn rear sight and an adjustable front blade, it was state of the art – if that’s what efficient killing is called. Either way, it fulfilled the promise Jeromy made to himself that he would never touch another single shot musket as long as he lived – which, they way things were working out, just might be forever.

* * *

CHAPTER THREE

The fingers of false dawn clawed at the mountain crags, the valleys still in dank shadow. When Ambicatos awoke, his first thoughts were of Leòmhann, his father. How far ahead was he? Would this be the day of reckoning?

Mohlnar, at his side, proffered a small cup of tea, overly sweet, laced with mare’s milk.

Ambic came to one elbow, now at eye level with his tiny, squatting, Zoroastrian servant. He sipped noisily, closing his eyes to the rich, steamy vapors.

The camp was still quiet, except for the nibbling at the sparse grass by the hobbled horses. With his eyes still closed, Ambicatos set the tea aside and smelled the wind.

Yes, master, Mohlnar confirmed, the storm comes. We did well to outrun it this far.

Ambicatos frowned, knowing full well that the dogs would be nearly useless when the downpour began, which was all but upon them. The clouds were already bunching against the peaks, dragging their black underbellies through the clefts.

We’d better get moving. Call the men to. They can eat in the saddle. We’re taking the south slope.

Mohlnar’s head spun around, mouth agape. He might have protested, but he dared not. The omens were against it; they had been warned.

Ambicatos laughed. Fear not little one, I know these cliffs from when I was a child.

So, the day of the hunter began, their mantles fluttering as the men hunched over their mounts, winding through the thinning forest in single file. There was no cheer among them. No one spoke, their passage being almost silent except for the fall of unshod hooves and the occasional nickering. The horses, too, knew the storm was coming, and perhaps they, more than the men, sensed the fury that was about to be unleashed upon them. In saner times they would have bivouacked in the forest, hunkering down under a fan of skins and boughs. This day, however, they would leave all shelter behind, being fully exposed upon glacial-like sheets of black, metamorphic rock.