Chapter 13

If I thought the road to the castle had been dark the other night, it was nothing compared to this. O’Greer and I crouched in the woods about a hundred yards from where San Martin’s men set up camp.

There was a lot of loud conversation going on over there. The kind you get when you have a lot of bored, drunk men hanging out together. Seems like discipline wasn’t one of San Martin’s worries.

There was something else though. Something I couldn’t quite hear. I indicated to O’Greer I was going to go back deeper into the woods, away from the camp. He followed quietly. I have to give it to him, for his size, O’Greer is one stealthy fellow.

As soon as we got about another hundred yards away, I could hear it distinctly. An electronic hum. Well, that’s not right, is it? No matter how far advanced in his thinking Cayden and his father might have been, I’m thinking electronic surveillance just didn’t enter the picture.

I followed the sound to a tree about fifty yards closer to the camp, slightly north of our position. A very small vidcam, up in a tree about twenty five feet overhead. There was this little part of me that so wanted to climb the tree and scare the shit out of San Martin by sticking my face in front of the camera and going “boo”, but I held back. O’Greer looked at the camera and then looked questioningly at me.

Now just how do you go about explaining video surveillance to a man who hasn’t even heard of a printing press?

Afraid that the camera might be fitted with a mic as well, I moved both of us to a position further away from the camp and sufficiently away from the camera.

“It’s the way he watches his men.”

“The small box in the tree?”

“Yes. It’s…ummmm…it’s kind of a machine that acts like a sentry.”

There was genuine fright and confusion in his eyes. I shouldn’t even have started.

“He’s put a guard’s soul in the box?”

“No, no, it’s just a machine. Just a very sophisticated machine. It comes from my…country. You’ve got to trust me, it’s nothing to be afraid of, but we have to avoid being around it. If we pass too close, San Martin might see us coming.”

“This explains how he knows where we will approach from.”

“Huh?”

O’Greer explained that they’d been unsuccessful at reclaiming the castle because every time they approached, it was as if San Martin’s men knew their whole plan of attack. All of his forces would be gathered at just the right place to hold them off. They would know when and where every attack was coming from.

“So there must be a few more vidcams around the perimeter. We’ve got to be really careful.”

I’d amped up my hearing to catch the electronic hum the cameras gave off. I’d have to be our eyes and ears as we headed closer. O’Greer would be the guide. I explained to him that I needed him to lead the way in, but don’t get too far ahead of me in case I spotted another of the “guard boxes”.

We moved forward but I was thinking furiously. How on earth could anyone have transported an entire surveillance system back through a TALIS? The TALIS are government operated and even if an individual had managed to slip thought unidentified, surely the inventory of vidcams and monitors would have set off some bells. And why wouldn’t the discovery of this type of technology been raising all sorts of claxons with The History? I guess it was possible it was buried at some point and never rediscovered, but that’s quite a feat considering I knew the castle had been demolished in the 18th century. The idea of blind luck never sat well with me. Every instinct told me something funky was going on. But I’d deal with that when I got back.

O’Greer guided us to the edge of the castle grounds. I’d spotted a few vidcams on the way and led O’Greer out of their path. I was pretty sure there would have been a larger greeting party if I’d missed any of them. Instead, I could count only three guards between us and the smallish back door that led into the castle. I watched the patrol patterns for about thirty minutes till I thought I had it down pretty well.

The night was extremely quiet, so I used hand signals with O’Greer to let him know I wanted him to stay put while I went into the castle. Didn’t surprise me one bit when he emphatically shook his head no and that we were staying together.

With absolutely no way to argue and with knocking him out being one of less attractive options, I indicated that we’d go on my count. He nodded. Peachy.

Once all three guards had passed by where we were crouched, I started out of the woods and toward the castle, moving at a really fast clip. O’Greer kept up, bless him. We made it to the back door of the castle and entered quietly.

Cold, persistently damp stone walls led out in three directions from the door. I put my head down and listened carefully. Coming from the hallway ahead of me that seemed to lead further into the castle, I heard lots of talking and the banging of pots and pans. Kitchen, I guess.

To my left, there were lots of men’s voices. I couldn’t quite make out everything they were saying, but the bits and pieces I did catch seemed quite social and familiar. Barracks, maybe?

The last corridor, on my right, was silent. I decided to play the odds and head down the path of least resistance. I pulled out a small bottle from my nice new sack that O’Greer had provided. The bottle contained oil with a very faint, but extremely distinctive odor. I opened it and dropped a little bit on my finger. A normal human probably wouldn’t be able to smell it, but I had a nose like a bloodhound. Except that it wasn’t black and wet.

I lightly touched the door we’d just come in and then headed down the hall to my right, touching the wall with the oil every few feet. O’Greer followed me, every bit as silent as I was. Good man.

The hall led us around the outer edge of the castle, but eventually it turned inward and we found ourselves on a balcony overlooking the great hall. Big, ostentatious place, animal heads hanging all over the place, two huge candle filled chandeliers giving off massive amounts of tallow smoke, a fireplace that was bigger than my hydro and, in the center of the room, a rectangular wooden table that must have seated thirty.

I crouched down below the balcony’s wall and indicated O’Greer should do the same. I listened carefully, but I couldn’t hear any electronic humming, but I still didn’t feel safe assuming there were no cameras in the room. I lifted my head so my eyes were just above the wall and looked down into the room below. There were some guys carry swords, to be expected. There were also a few women who appeared to be servants. And in the center of it all, seated at one end of the table, was a mousy little guy, balding, maybe in his 40’s and, this was the tell, wearing glasses. Not a whole lot of optometrists back then, you know. This was a clue. Yay, me!

“That must be San Martin?” I whispered to O’Greer.

He frowned and shook his head. “No, that is his wizard, Goldberg.”

Wow. Really not the answer I expected. A wizard named Goldberg? Seriously?

“You forgot to tell me about him.”

“You didn’t ask about him.”

Fair enough.

Goldberg got up and walked out of the room. I had a sneaking suspicion I might find him a bit more interesting than the brawny warriors left in the great hall.

I indicated O’Greer should stay put. He started to object but I gave him a look that shut him up.

I found a staircase that led down to the hallway where Goldberg had just passed by. I slipped down quietly, sniffed a bit to make sure no one else was on their way, and followed the good wizard down the hall.

A couple of hundred feet along the passage, a huge wooden door stood open. And there, inside, stood The Wizard Goldberg.

Poor little guy looked like he was about to wet his pants. He had a government issued chip reader in his hands and it was beeping madly. I have a special chip embedded in my arm that is issued to law enforcement officers so that we are easily identifiable to anyone who needs to read our chip. It sends out a loud clear signal that tells anyone who needs to know its ok to let us run through security in high alert places like airports, police barricades, etc. And it was currently telling The Wizard Goldberg that he was toast.

I smiled. And not the comforting kind.

“Someone’s been a bad boy.”

“You’re a Chaser”.

“You’re quick”.

Goldberg started putting distance between us. Didn’t worry me. I was standing in front of the door and I didn’t see any other escapes.

“Now, let’s stay calm here.” The weasel was actually reaching for something, and I guessed it wasn’t a bouquet of flowers to welcome me to the castle.

“I’m completely calm, Mr. Goldberg. I’m just here to send you back to your timeline so you can get the thrashing you deserve for mucking up history. Did you know what you’re doing here resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people over the course of history?”

Guess he didn’t know. The shock and pain on his face told me he really didn’t have any idea that what he was doing now would have such huge consequences. He stopped reaching for whatever.

“What??”

“The of and settled their differences in the 20th century, remember? Well, now they don’t. Whatever you end up doing here, it results in the war going on for decades longer than it should have and thousands more are killed than should have been.”

His head bent, he started muttering to himself, “No, no, no, that’s not right. Nothing was supposed to change. Just a little real estate in the backwaters of , that’s all.” He then turned and started opening up books. Huh?? He was searching frantically through books.

“Ummm, Goldberg? I’m not in a hurry or anything, but what the fuck are you doing?”

“You don’t understand, we’re just here to change the ownership so the Duer fortune becomes part of Martin’s family inher-“

“Wait a minute! There are two of you? San Martin is from the future, too?”

But Goldberg was in his own world. He was throwing around what appeared to be history books and shuffling through papers like a mad man. As if that was going to change something. I walked over to see what the hell he was looking at. Yeah, I’m a dope.

Goldberg got me right in the gut with the Taser. Yeah, I can take a lot of pain and keep standing, but a Taser set to its highest level would take down an elephant. And I’m not quite that big. The guy was ready for me and I walked right into it. I dropped to the ground, quickly losing consciousness. It was his turn to smile cruelly. The poor little geek I’d pitied dropped the act and became a hard ass evil genius. The guards coming in the door at that moment just added to my humiliation. It was then that I decided I’m getting too old for this shit.