The Gordon Effect - a House Aba mini-AAR (County of Zemplén, 1066)

[Revan86]

PROLOGUE
Fragrance of Yew
24 September 1066, Prime

The first thing I noticed when I awoke was the smell. Wherever I was, it smelled of candles—beeswax candles, but whole, not burning. There was no tang of smoke; the air behind them was fresh. My nose reached further out. I could tell that there was an open window somewhere, and the clean moist smell of early autumn trees as the leaves were just beginning to turn hue. The air was cool but not yet chilly, as I heard and felt the gentle breeze waft in across my face and neck—that was how I first grew aware of my sense of feeling. I was still lying on my back… on a mattress. But it was soft, far softer than my own mattress at home. And the fabric of the bedsheets was strangely coarse under my arms. So was the blanket.

What first caused me alarm was the knowledge that I wasn’t in my own comfy pyjamas. I was in something that felt like a hospital gown, except it was made of a stiffer, coarser material. I started and stirred. I became aware that my legs and hips were entirely bare. And then at my shoulder I felt the fabric of my unfamiliar gown tremble warmly with someone’s breath on it. I was in bed with someone! I snapped my eyelids open and I rolled my head to the side, furious with my eyes as they took too long swimming into focus, to tell me who I’d been sleeping next to!

My recalcitrant orbs fixed themselves on a young woman, probably just out of college, to judge by the smooth, bright, pale skin of her dozing face. Falling all about her fair head in great waves were copious tresses of sable-brown hair. Her head was narrow and long, as was her nose, and her lips seemed like they were fashioned too long for both. Her chin and jaw were straight and deep, giving her a severe look even in sleep. Yet those same strong features looked like they would belong to a practical, unruffled, sensible and tolerant woman. Such was the woman I’d been sleeping next to.

Make that sleeping with, I corrected myself as I lifted up my hospital gown and found the telltale traces. No sign of a condom anywhere. And I didn’t even know this chick’s name. Great.

My mind raced, and my throat and heart began catching with panic. True, she looked a lot like a nurse, and we were wearing what looked and felt like hospital gowns, but this place didn’t look like any hospital I’d ever seen. The walls weren’t bare white plaster with fluorescent bulbs. Rather, they were made of grey stone. And there weren’t any light bulbs around the place… only the beeswax candles whose smell I’d awoken to. They were on a stand. I looked at the stand and spread my hands across it, but I couldn’t find anything that belonged to her… no wallet, no lanyard, no ID card, nothing that might tell me who she was, or where we were!

I hoisted myself onto my elbows and swung my feet over the edge of the bed, and looked around at the rest of the room. Apart from the bedstand there was a basin, a chamber-pot, a chest of drawers. I went over to the chest, which looked kind of old-timey, a wooden thing with brass findings—and opened it. The clothes inside were not mine. In fact, they didn’t belong to anyone I know—they were all tunics and leggings and cloth bandages. They looked like stuff from the college drama club, or from a Ren fair or the SCA types. I couldn’t even find my own clothes, let alone hers!

I must have made too much noise, because I heard a voice, young-womanish from behind me drawl sleepily: ‘Michîl? Waz beküemet dich? Waz suochist dû hie?’

There were several things wrong with this. First: she was clearly talking in German. But I took only a year of German in high school; there’s no way I could pick a good-looking girl like that up with my high school German. Second: the German she was using was clearly some kind of dialect. Third: my name isn’t Michîl, Michael, Mikhail or anything like that; it’s Walter Brooks. I must have been drunk off my gourd last night, to wake up like this! But, no—I didn’t have a single trace of a hangover.

I turned around to face the girl, who was staring straight at me with a pair of dazzling, bright smaragdine eyes. However severe the rest of her face looked, those arresting green stars gleamed lively and inquisitive out of it, making her look still younger than she was. I tried to brush off what I knew of my high school German. ‘Entschuldigung… Ich… heiße nicht Michîl. Ich heiße Walter.’

‘Ist daz ein witz?’ the brown-haired beauty asked me, a slow smile creeping up one side of her long mouth, and her emerald eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Na guot, “Walther”. Bist dû roubære, wegelæger, ehtlôser? Unde… wër bin ich? Wirt ich dîn gîsel? Wirdest dû zuo mia entsezzliche sachen tuon, wanne mîn vatar das dû woltest niwiht tuon?’

I didn’t catch all of that. But the general gist came through. She didn’t make any audible sound of it, but she was clearly laughing, thinking this was a game, a kind of bedroom role-play. I was in no mood for games—still less with a total stranger. I felt the anger rising in my throat. My… throat…

In a panic, I put my hands to my face. And that was when I noticed that they weren’t my hands, and the face that I was touching wasn’t my face. My hands, my wrists… they were slender! My hands were never slender. And the face that I was touching had a beard. I’d never grown a beard like this before! What was going on?!

I stood up suddenly and stumbled to the basin, hoping there was some water inside. There wasn’t much, but even in this morning light there was enough water down there for me to tell that the face that was reflecting back up at me wasn’t mine. Not only did I have a beard—a full chinstrap, in fact, with a moustache to match—but it was blond. I was never blond! And my eyes! Whose were those? Where I should have seen irises of a light hazel, instead two lamps of the iciest pale blue were rounding with horror back at me.

If I’d remained calm, it would have been easier for me to appreciate that the young fellow I’d been transmuted into was a rather handsome devil. He had a regular, smooth face—though a bit ruddy, perhaps, in the cheeks. And if I had been observant, I would have seen features in that face that I might be able to recognise for my own. His nose, for example, was much like mine: straight, cogitative, and bulbous at the tip. His eyebrows, also, full and straight, equally capable of dourness or delight, were the eyebrows that I’d inherited from my father. But the body I was in wasn’t mine, and the terror of that knowledge overclouded anything else I might otherwise have felt or observed.

The impish smile melted from the face of the young woman on the bed I’d woken up on, and she stood worriedly and padded over to me on bare feet, wearing what I could now recognise as the kind of nightgown worn on medieval historical dramas and such. Yet though her clothing had become less ‘nursely’, her face had grown more so. This handsome young woman was in full competence and command of herself, yet her green eyes were all compassion, all caretakerly concern for me—concern, but not pity. I felt my heart stir warmly, even in the midst of my panic. I’d always been attracted to cool, level-headed competence in women. Having mistaken her in her (un)dress for a nurse at first, I found her continued attitudinal resemblance to one deeply attractive.

‘Waz ist unwille?’ she asked me gently, with one hand on my shoulder. ‘Hât iht dich gegrætzt?’

I looked at her a long moment. Her concern disarmed me. ‘Ich bin nicht… ich selbst,’ I told her.

She clasped my hand to hers. ‘Ich ferstâ. Ich habeta ouch angest vor unzer hôchgezît. Ich habeta ouch sich gevraget, obe ich sich verendern sol. Aver bin ich doch dîne brût: dîne Gerbirg.’

She held up her other hand, and showed me the braided band of gold on it—then held up the hand of mine she was holding, to show the matching band on my ring-finger.

​

True, she had solved for me the puzzle of her name. That was kind of her. But even if I hadn’t known the word ‘Hochzeit’ from my German class, there was no escaping the import of our matching rings on matching, significant fingers. We were married. Or rather, she had married the blond, slender, bearded fellow whose face I’d seen in the bottom of the basin instead of my own.

Shaking myself free of my ‘wife’ Gerbirg for the moment, I strode over to the open window. Looking out into the clear early-autumn air, in the distance all I could see was hillsides thick with deciduous trees: I knew them for oaks and maples, but they weren’t the sort that grew in Pittsburgh! Likewise, there was no skyline—no Cathedral of Learning, no US Steel Tower, no Fifth Avenue Place, no Fort Pitt Bridge. In fact, there was nothing out there higher than the steeple of an old stone church—and its four long rectangular faces beneath the steeple shone white: there was no anthracite patina on any of it. And there were no apartments, no streetlights, no pavement. Out beyond the hillock our room overlooked, all the houses were two-storey and had gabled roofs of highcap or red brick tile. There was something slightly Asian-looking about the courtyards and covered gates, but they led out to narrow roads of dirt or cobblestone. And rather than exhaust fumes, the edge of the air carried the close reek of animal waste.

Either someone had gone through incredible trouble to give me full-body reconstructive surgery and construct an elaborate central European medieval-themed Truman Show set around me… or else I really had just travelled back through time, and had inhabited the life of a medieval man.

I tried to say the words: ‘Oh, boy.’

But instead the single word that tumbled out of my mouth was: ‘Hű!’

~~~​

Gerbirg left me to myself for a bit after that, did on a more proper gown for the day, and sat at a stool to brush out her hair, making herself ready to be seen by others outside. She occasionally turned a pitying head to look back at me. I’d sat down heavily on the bed. My thoughts were a mess.

Forget Quantum Leap—this was a Star Trek episode. Had I been abducted by Q? Had a rogue alien satellite hit me with a hypnosis beam, forcing me to live out the entire lifespan of some medieval nobleman in my head? Maybe I ought to take up playing the gemshorn or something. Beam me the fuck up already, Chief. But, nope: unless the Enterprise was hiding behind that church steeple out there, I was stuck.

I tried to remember the last thing that happened, before waking up here beside this (admittedly luscious!) total stranger who clearly thought I was her husband.

I’d been late for class. That, I remembered clearly. Tuesdays were always busy because I had to hoof it from the Old Engineering building down Bouquet to Posvar Hall. That day though… for some reason, I couldn’t quite remember… I’d gone a street too far from Old Engineering and wound up turning down Desoto instead and coming out right in front of the Medical Arts building on Fifth. After that… I couldn’t really remember anything at all. Maybe that had been when this happened?

‘When’ this happened. My mind reeled at its own stupidity in thinking in such terms. ‘When’ this happened might well be an ocean away and a thousand years from now.

There had been a lecture at Old Engineering, the week ‘before’—some bioengineering postdocs studying something called the Gordon effect. They claimed three protesters near a felled sequoia had experienced literal time distortions—like living a week in their ancestors’ memories. Lab tests on rats showed a 1.8-day age gap between generations under particle bombardment. Epigenetic memory, they called it. DNA as a time machine. But only germ-cell DNA: somatic DNA was too degraded to activate the effect. Only direct ancestry could trigger it.​

​

The sequoia was just the strongest local conduit, they said, but latent memory encoded in cellular structures in all living organisms could possibly produce the same effect… though only along an uninterrupted line of biological descent from the same gene sequence as the source.​

​

‘Are you saying it’s possible,’ guffawed one sceptical junior, ‘for someone to live a day in the shoes of their great-grandpa?’​

​

One of the postdocs had gone very still before answering. ‘A day. A lifetime, maybe. It could depend on the strength of the conduit.’ He’d paused. ‘Haven’t you ever touched an old tree, and thought you’d… seen back into what it had seen?’​

​

The rest was all technical. The study design was way over my head. Quantum clocks, particle accelerators—since when did Pitt have those? I remembered thinking (politely) that it was an ambitious study. But then, I was just an econ grad. What the hell did I know?​

​

A couple further flashes of memory came back to me. I was already late for class. I was out of breath from my panicked downhill pelt. I heaved myself down on a big old wooden bench in front of Medical Arts. It wasn’t sequoia wood—the grain was a pale yellow, not red. But I felt a tingling numbness in my fingers as I ran a hand over it, as though they were falling asleep. I’d smelled a kind of sweet, waxy fragrance, like a mix of pine and coconut.​

​

There had been a panicked voice in my ear. A phrase that sounded like: ‘Isten segítsen!’​

​

I’d looked around, but there was no one around to be talking—not even a homeless guy. ​

I didn’t remember anything after that.

I thought I smelled the same fragrance, though, as on the bench, when I turned around. Gerbirg was dabbing a liquid perfume from a small phial to her neck and collarbone.

‘Was ist das?’ I asked, a bit too eagerly. ‘Das… Flüssigkeit?’

Gerbirg’s long lips curved into a smile as she answered me. ‘’S ist ein tuft nâch îwe. Gefallit iz dîr? Ich mag iz ofto tragen, obe dû iz gern hast.’

I smiled back, but made no verbal reply. How was I to explain it? What were the odds?

Gerbirg gave me a thoughtful look. ‘Wanne unde wâ hast dû tiutsch gelêrt? Dîn sprâche ist… fremdes mâles. Als ein mönch der ûz fernem lande kumet!’

Actually, that was a good question. When I was speaking German, I was speaking my German. I could hear it, and I could hear the difference from how Gerbirg spoke it. But… just to be certain I wasn’t imagining things, I started talking at her in English. And this is what came flooding out of my mouth:

‘Lásd, nem értek, honnan jövék, hogymód kerülék ide, sőt azt sem, ki légyek én. Te arany szívű vagy, de tudom, nem én vérém hozzád nejül!’

Gerbirg shook her head uncomprehendingly at that. Small wonder. I was just as shocked as she was. I didn’t even know what language I was supposed to be speaking! My lips and tongue formed the strange vowels with their umlauts and varying lengths and sing-song tonality with ease, as though through a lifetime of use. But even though my mind was thinking what I wanted to say in English, my ears had to take my brain’s own word for it… because what I was saying certainly wasn’t that. But I might as well have been rattling away at her in Chinese for all she knew. Whatever language I clearly spoke but didn’t know, she didn’t speak… and also didn’t know. So between us, we were stuck with what little Herr Tollefsen had managed to drill into my head in my high school sophomore year.

Gerbirg’s cheeks suddenly flushed a deep, becoming rose. ‘Daz tuot mih leida,’ came her diffident murmur. ‘Iz ist unfriuntlich, mih über dîn tiutsch lustec zuo machen. Ich weiz, daz dû mîna sprâche lêrnen wellest. Unde daz vröuet mih sêr.’ Gerbirg reached over the bed and touched my wrist softly. ‘Belîbest dû hie? Sol ich hie warten?’

‘Geh’ schon vor.’ I patted her on the hand a bit awkwardly. ‘Ich hole dich ein.’

Slowly—a tad reluctantly, I thought—the sable-haired, rosy-cheeked, handsome Gerbirg turned and left, lowering with a soft clack the black iron latch of the door to our bedroom. No. Her Michîl’s bedroom. I stripped off my—no, not my, his—linen nightgown and reached again for the bronze-shod footlocker by the wall in search of something more fit to wear.

But my eyes caught again the basin, and my reflection within. Or rather, the blond bearded face of the man who belonged here instead of me. Those two large, handsome icy-blue irises stared back. Michîl’s face.

Did I get whammied by the Gordon effect? Did that mean that Michîl was my distant direct ancestor?

And how was he faring now?

I felt that his best hope was to be caught in some limbo in his own mind, watching me over his own shoulder living his life for him. God only knew how he’d react to being thrust rudely into 21st-century Oakland! Would he wander around Fifth Avenue, lost and dazed? Would he find a corner to cower in? Would my body be wandering around campus with his consciousness inside it, maybe arguing with the Pitt Police in medieval anachronisms? Would he be checked into the UPMC, subject to all sorts of psychiatric tests… or worse? It might have been a funny thought… but Michîl’s mouth and bearded throat under my rule refused—correctly—to laugh at it.

Turning back to the wooden chest, the tips of Michîl’s slender fingers traced, almost as though by muscle memory, over something carved into the rim of the lid, as though with a whittling-knife. The letters… they were letters… shouldn’t have been anything I recognised. In his language—whatever that was—the single word that was carved there in angular, rune-like glyphs, read:

P O R O Sz K A​

It was a name. Michîl knew how to read the name; the letters were known to him. But for me—Walter Brooks—that name signified nothing. With a tingle of fear that I was going mad, I suddenly knew that Walter didn’t know, and couldn’t know, what it was. But Michîl knew. Michîl remembered.

And a premonition that wasn’t mine rose up inside my chest, constricting my throat, quickening my heartbeat, that this name was somehow the key to restoring us to our rightful lives.

 

[Sirdramaticus]

This is a really interesting beginning to your story. I like the Quantum Leap elements of it. I also like that you taught me a new word (smaragdine). It doesn’t happen often.

I also hope that the characters start communicating better. My German is limited to the vocabulary I picked up from Lieder that I have sung and it’s not enough to know what is happening. I look forward to the next chapter.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Oh, this is fun. Has a very Doomsday Book vibe.

 

[Revan86]

REVAN 86 PRESENTS:

Dendrochronological quantum entanglement (DQE).

First observed in the forested area around Brookings, Oregon, when three environmental protesters against a logging project reported experiencing the memories of their distant ancestors, of the Taa-laa-waa Dee-ni' people, just before a large redwood tree was cut down. The research lab associated with Dr Chapman in the Medical Arts building at the University of Pittsburgh followed up on these reports and began running experiments on this time-displacement effect, using cross-sections of sequoia trees and lab rats of the same direct genetic lineage in clinical trials.

They called it 'The Gordon Effect'.

However, an accident occurred.

Walter Brooks, a master's candidate in economics at the University of Pittsburgh, is now living out the memories of his distant ancestor, having been accidentally exposed to the Gordon Effect as he was sitting on a bench outside the Medical Arts building. The only hint at unravelling the effect is a single inscription in ancient Hungarian runes. Together, Walter and his ancestor must figure out how to undo the Gordon Effect, and send Walter back to his normal life.
​

Table of Contents.
Prologue. Fragrance of Yew
Chapter 1. Scions of Sámuel
Chapter 2. The Pool
Chapter 3. Fortnight's Acquaintance
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.


Thank you, @Sirdramaticus and @Cora Giantkiller, for the encouragement and comments! (Always glad when I get to use a neglected English word, and to promote their use!) Very glad to have you both aboard.

 

[filcat]

Oh yes, finally back to the kingdom of ck, wonderful. Let there be words of tales from dreams of infinite worlds.
<taking a comfortable seat, beginning to read while scheduling available time for future re-readings>

 

[Chac1]

Definitely signing on to this one. Completely different style from The Leading Spirits, and glad to see from your signature that your mega-campaign will continue.

Like others, I like your science fiction meets CK3 mash-up idea.

Always good when one of the top writers in AARland turns their attention to something new.

 

[Revan86]

CHAPTER ONE​

Scions of Sámuel
24 September 1066 – Terce to Vespers

Eventually—I take this to my credit—I did manage to dress myself in the garb I found in the wooden footlocker with the carved lid. Despite my ancestor’s preferred attire being heavily weighted with silver emblems and buttons embroidered into the fabric, the linen shirt was surprisingly comfortable, as was the fur-lined mantle that plainly went on over that. I slid a long-pinned silver brooch like a dagger, with its head in the shape of a wolf’s, through a slit in the wool—as though my hands had done this very thing a thousand times. A tooled belt with an ornate knotted pattern laid into the leather, a linen hose and felt wrappings for my feet made me decent and finished the picture. I did manage to wash my face in the basin and make myself look fairly presentable. The cylindrical, studded leathern cap with which I finished my attire, sat heavy but cosy on my head—an item worn of habit, clearly, when Michîl was up and about.

As I left the bedroom, it became clear to me at once that I was inside an actual medieval castle. If I still harboured any suspicions that this was an elaborate practical joke or a Truman Show-style setup, those suspicions were quickly evaporating. The stonework was real. The hall tapestries, scented of woodsmoke and woolfat, were real. The torches—now not lit, for the dagger-thin strips of sunlight admitted by the arrow-slits in the walls were enough to see by—were real. On the other hand, I could very easily get lost in this place, unless I kept my bearings. Knowing that ‘my’ bedroom was facing the outside and the town below the hill, I made an educated guess that moving down the stairs and keeping my face away from the door would eventually lead me to the courtyard, if not to the bailey. My guess wasn’t far wrong. Soon I found myself on the ground level and in the angular shadows of the walled courtyard.

I heard a loud clucking near my feet, and dodged out of the way of a cluster of chickens who were crossing my path in search of peckings. Horses and oxen too were crossing the courtyard by that time, as were ostlers who were caring for them. I was a bit caught up, I admit, in the unfamiliarity of the whole situation, when a young man crossed my path.

‘Hey, brother—God bless you!’

What my ears actually heard was ‘Hé, bátya! Adjon Isten minden jót!’ But it was as if there was a little interpreter in my ear, or an instant translator, that rendered the phrasing at once intelligible to my English-speaking consciousness.

Something crossed my mind. Was it the case that, being ensconced in Michîl’s body, I had also somehow been given his bodily skills, abilities, know-how? Somehow, for example, I’d known how to put on the embroidered shirt, jacket, hose and wrappings without trouble or need of assistance, despite never having worn medieval garb before. And the tongue being spoken to me, I could hear, understand, and apparently also speak—all without knowing what it was or what people or nation it belonged to.

‘Hey! You awake, Misi?’

‘Oh. Sorry,’ I said. ‘God bless you, brother.’

Addressing me was another slender fellow of wiry build and yellow hair—who was very much indeed brother to the man I’d seen reflected in the basin. His brows, though, were thinner than ‘mine’, his beard was carefully sculpted into fine moustaches and a goatee coming to a point, and his round, open face had a livelier animation and vigour and humour to it than ‘mine’ did. He stood arms akimbo, grinning broadly, shaking his head at me and clicking his tongue in mock disapproval.

‘By the Saints, Misi,’ chuckled my younger brother, ‘your fourth night with the blushing Bavarian bride and you’re already sleepwalking! Fair warning: Father’s been prowling the grounds since Matins with that look. You’ll need your wits about you today.’

‘What “look”?’ I asked.

My younger brother shrugged eloquently. ‘Could be anything. Could be the Kunok. Could be the Rusz. Could be the ploughman or the miller. Could be the price of eggs.’ At that, I thought: the more things change… ‘Ask me, though: I think he’s the whole succession issue has got to him. Things are getting tense in Fehérvár. What I hear, Lampert and Géza are circling like wildcats for the pounce. Or maybe wise King Salamon looked up from his counting-table long enough to take notice that it’s one of our Hungarian families’ fletching sticking out the back of his throne.’

‘We’re Hungarians?!’

The startled words escaped me with the force of a trumpet blast. Chickens squawked and flapped their wings several yards away from me. A nearby stableboy turned, dropping the harness of the beast he was tending. And my brother looked at me like I’d sprouted antlers.

He gripped my arm with talon strength and hauled me aside further into the shadows of the inner castle wall. ‘Are you mad, Misi? By the Virgin’s veil!’ he hissed. His eyes darted toward the far wall where the chapel could clearly be seen. ‘What are you about, bellowing like a táltos in earshot of Bishop Ábel? Do you want him saying you have a demon, to give him an excuse to lock you away? We’re all on the Church’s sufferance as it is!’

‘I—I’m fine. Really.’ I didn’t sound convincing even to myself. But what else was I to say?

‘“Fine”,’ my brother echoed me in a derisive whisper. ‘Baby János does a lot of work that goes into heir-and-darling Mihály’s “fine”. And your new wife, too—she’s too good for you. She came down wringing her hands, but she’s fully mistress of her face and tongue. She’s been covering for you today. If you’re wise, you’ll thank her and God for it.’

He let me go and patted down my arms with a sudden sunny smile. Over his shoulder I could see why. A couple of archers from the garrison were going by. János cheerily belted aloud: ‘Better than “fine”, Misi! You’re spruce! Go give greetings to Father. And… just remember what I said, eh?’

I watched János go, still a bit shaken. At Pitt I never needed to worry about being locked away for demonic possession, but here—! Clearly I needed to tread with care. Not acting like I belonged here would have consequences. I found my feet, stepped away from the wall, and continued across the courtyard in what I hoped was, for my host, a natural step. But then:

‘Misi!’ cried a woman’s voice.

The voice belonged to a brisk and energetic lady of perhaps forty years, striding across the courtyard with all the purpose and dignity of a field-marshal. She was clad in a pristine white linen smock and folded robe with an impressive array of silver bangles and coins, drawn at the waist with a slender silk sash. A woman of worth, who was happy to let others know of it. Her dark hair was drawn back severely into a pair of buns, and her eagle-gold eyes flashed with an uncompromising keenness.

‘Er… hello?’ I answered her.

‘I beg your pardon, Mihály,’ the woman said, affronted. ‘Just a “hello”, like we’re strangers? Is that any right-minded way to greet your poor, unappreciated anya in the morning? Where’s my kiss, you wretched ingrate?’

I stood shocked for a moment. She seemed too young to be my mother. And yet, I supposed, in this era women did marry and give birth quite young. But I gathered myself together admirably and planted a kiss on one of the woman’s round cheeks. I worried that it was too perfunctory a gesture when I retreated, but I saw that it had mollified her greatly.

‘That’s more like it, Misi,’ said this woman who claimed to be my mother, with a brisk and contented smile. ‘Now, I want your counsel—alone, before your father shows up. He’s been stalking about all over the place today—reviewing the garrison, securing the bailey, checking the weapon and food stores. Don’t tell your father I asked you. What do you think of these? He just had them sent to me.’

The short, round woman held up the bundle of clothes. I took the top one. It was the same kind of medieval garb I’d seen others wear. The felt-feeling cloth was heavy and durable. The hems were masterful indeed: tiny, even whip-stitches in waxed linen, spaced about the length of a fingernail from the edge. No sewing machine made this. Rather, the eyes and hands of an expert seamstress had laboured over this with perhaps weeks of fine and careful attention. No doubt that the gown I was holding would fit the woman in front of me to perfection. But at the same time, the colour… there was no getting around it—the colour was vile. It was a garish, slightly greenish shade of yellow, that clashed horribly with the golden hue of her eyes. As though a colour-blind man had selected a bolt of the softest, highest-quality material his fingers could identify… but had absolutely no knowledge of how it would look on his wife!

The realisation hit me with a sudden pang. My father—Dr. DeRoe Brooks, that is—was also deutanopic. It wasn’t proof, but it was further indication to me that I was actually suffering from the Gordon effect. I opted for honesty in my answer to my ‘mother’.

‘It was a masterly hand that sewed this gown, mother,’ I told her, in words that were not quite mine. ‘Father did you a high honour with the craftsmanship. But the colour! What was this thing dyed in, purgation?’

My ‘mother’ smiled again, leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially as she took back the eyesore of a gown: ‘I agree. It’s a sweet gesture from your father, and I will say it’s nice to be noticed again, after… Oh well. But don’t think I shall wear this often—and certainly not in company. I praise God that He blessed my womb with such an honest pair of boys: you and János. Now, go—you’d best seek out Péter where he is; I think he’s still up in the embrasures drilling the German hirelings.’ She reached up and adjusted the brooch on my chest, her hand lingering on my ribcage just over my heart. ‘Keep your wits about you. Your father will be depending on your stratagems. Igitur qui desiderat pacem, præparet bellum, yes?’

Correction, I thought numbly as she shooed me off toward the ramparts. Mihály studied military strategy. The closest I ever got to that was cheesing Zerg rushes at LAN parties in my neighbour’s basement back in middle school. By chance, I perused once more at the backs of Mihály’s slender hands and arms. Mihály was considerably shorter than Walter Brooks would one day be, but the iron sinews and wiry muscles underneath the skin showed the former to be a fighter in despite of his size.

Back when I was changing in the bedroom, I’d noticed one long, thin, pale raised scar running along the outside of his right elbow. Had that been done by a blade of some kind? A diamond-shaped bald patch on his left thigh, where the skin of the cicatrix wrinkled in telltale translucence. Had a spear struck him, or a splinter from a broken shield? There were raised ridges on the backs of his hands and fleshy scar-pads on his knuckles. From bare-knuckle boxing, maybe? His right wrist, also, had a slightly crooked shape—as though he had broken it once, and it had set and healed, but not entirely correctly. Had he been kicked or trampled there by a warhorse? Had he been grappling an opponent who’d done him this injury fighting back? And had that been in training or in earnest?

Each of those scars was a battle that Mihály had fought. And each one now hinted to me of tests to come, for which I wasn’t prepared.

I gulped and mounted the scaffolded wooden stairs to the battlements. I’d met Mihály’s kindhearted newlywed wife Gerbirg, his diligent (and firm-gripping!) little brother János, and his formidable mother already this morning. Now his father Péter waited at the top of them.

As I mounted the top, I felt the cool autumn wind whipping about me through the crenellations on the allure, took a deep breath of the fresh high air into my lungs and held it there—savouring both the cleanness of the outdoor scent (so far removed from Pittsburgh’s particulate matter!) and the yellow fields of harvested stubble as they stretched and rolled away to the west into gently-sloping mountains, covered with deciduous greenery that was only just beginning to turn, and darker evergreen that promised to last through the cold months with its freshness. Only then did I turn to the north. That was where I saw a small knot of men in helmets and armour waiting, leaning on their spears whose business ends spangled agleam in the air above them, like scales on a fish swimming upstream.

I approached them along the allure, my soft leather boots thudding atop the stones. I saw two men standing together slightly apart from the knot of spear-bearers, looking out over the crenellations. One of them was intent—his hands gripped the stones of the wall. The other stood slightly back, his hands in front of him, his feet spaced slightly apart. He wore a fur mantle and a folded capuchon.

Somehow, I knew the latter was Péter. It might have been deduction—the attitude of cool, accustomed authority he exuded was a strong clue. Or perhaps it was something in the carriage of his body, which despite their difference in physical size was so like my own father’s. Or perhaps it was because Mihály knew.

When Péter sighted me, he waved me over with a look of satisfaction.

‘Just the man I was looking for. God bless you, Mihály!’

‘God bless you, Father,’ I greeted him back with a bow. But Péter opened his arms wide and beckoned me into them, like Mother expecting the kiss on the cheek due between kin, and planting one of his own on mine. I examined him as he stood off from me.

János and Mihály’s mother—and Mihály himself, from what I could tell from inside his boots—were all forthright and earnest people, capable of hiding neither their affections nor their grievances, even when they urged me to caution. Péter was none such. Despite his open show of warmth and affection, behind those dark, shrewd eyes, ten different hares were making thirty different burrows, each one determined to outwit, outrun, outlive and outlast every fox in Hungary.

Looking at him, I was reminded of historical lithographs I’d seen in the Hillman Library, in their attempts to portray Attila. Despite his meagreness of form, that steely, calculating shrewdness hinted at a hard-fought endurance both physical and political—a youth shaped by surprise storms and harsh steppe winds. Péter was, very clearly so, a survivor. And he would have very few scruples over ways and means to stay that way.

‘Your uncle and I,’ Péter informed me, ‘were having a difference of opinion just now. You see, he thinks we only need two squadrons of Germans to defend the walls on the north and south sides. Answer me honestly: do you agree with his assessment, or no?’

I looked around and tried to picture the unfamiliar landscape. I tried to remember my childhood visits to Fort Blue Mounds in Wisconsin, and my more recent one to Fort Pitt near the University… where the Monongahela flowed into the Allegheny. Two rivers…

I traipsed to the inside of the allure, standing among the German watchmen. I bent my gaze from there back around to the east side of the castle, and down the gentle hillslope past the curtain wall on the other side down to where a gleaming silver band gently ambled in a slow curve in its valley—flowing south, then bending westward after it cleared the castle and the town. So we were seated in the elbow of one river, not at the confluence of two. And we were on a little bit of a hill overlooking that river’s valley. And those green-but-yellowing autumn mountains whose beauty I had been admiring were off to our west. To our north, the field was clear and stretched to the horizon.

I returned to Péter’s side, and addressed both him and his more energetic brother. ‘I think, rather,’ I told them, a bit hesitantly at first, ‘we need three squadrons. Set two on the north side and one in the west. The river works a natural barrier to the east and south, stopping any armies that might want to attack us long enough for the normal garrison to take notice. In that time, the squadrons can be moved. But I agree with Uncle that the north has to be more heavily defended. We might need to fend off a broad staged siege force from that direction.’

Péter nodded slowly. My uncle seemed to be caught between annoyance at my having differed with him over the southward deployment, and appreciation that I’d noticed the need for stronger defences on the north wall. ‘And the west, boy?’ asked Péter. ‘Why do we need Germans over here?’

‘On account of the mountains,’ I ventured. ‘It’s got plenty of forest cover. An enemy force can hide up there, disguising its true numbers until the first stages of a siege are put in place. We would do well to have a matching force to thwart them before they can get that far.’

Péter’s grin emerged, a cold curved blade sliding from its sheath. His tough-sinewed hand gripped Mihály’s right forearm—the same one that hadn’t knit clean—and gripped it. He didn’t grip hard enough to do injury or to draw out pain… only to show me that he knew where and how to do so if he wanted. He then turned to his brother and tapped the side of his cogitative nose. ‘There, you see, Domaszló? The Hegyalja hides more than just deer. An army can slip in and out of there easier than your mother-in-law’s bed. Even this child can see that!’

Domaszló hawked and spat over the crenellations. I distinctly heard him mutter: ‘Kun tactics.’ But when he turned back to us, his sour expression had smoothed a bit, and he folded his arms thoughtfully. ‘Have it your way, brother. But if we’re baring our arse to the south, at least get riders down to Szerdahely by dusk.’ He jabbed a finger at the tree line to the west. ‘And burn the charcoal-stacks down that way! Last year the bastards used them as butts for their bowmen.’

As my uncle stalked away, I turned back to Péter. ‘Are we expecting attack, Father?’ I asked.

I watched as Péter’s jaw worked. He turned away from me and looked out over the crenellations himself, out to the west. The morning sun gleamed on the hills, glinting off the turning maples like a sprinkling of gold-dust.

‘Not yet,’ he murmured. ‘But when the wolves fight over a carcass, the jackal grows bold.’ One hand of his reached to the dagger at his belt, his palm caressing the silver wolf’s-head pommel. ‘Your grandfather Sámuel taught me that. The same one the Árpáds handed to Fekete Henrik and his butchers at Ménfő.’

An illumination of the Battle of Ménfő from the Chronicon Pictum. That's my ancestor Aba Sámuel getting merced in the bottom left. - Walter.​

I gulped, staring at him. Suddenly he was at my neck, his gauntleted grip clawing into my shoulder like a falcon’s talons. I could smell the fermented mare’s milk on his breath.

‘I’ve smiled at my father’s killers,’ he growled under his breath at me. ‘I’ve armed their kinsmen. I’ve even let you bed that Bavarian wench. I have learned patience, Mihály. But I have never forgotten, not even once. And nor should you. Domaszló, me, you, János… we all bear the same Aba blood, all called to the same task.’

So Mihály had a surname. And a grandfather. And a kindred. And now I knew their name: Aba.

But for a moment it seemed like Péter had seen past my eyes to the mind behind them. It was as if he was telling me—Walter—that these were my kindred too.

~~~​

The rest of my day was spent reviewing the mercenary squadrons, inspecting their weapons and gear, taking reports from scouting groups, and patrolling the castle. Through this course of tasks, I managed to absorb a good bit of the toponymy of my surroundings. The castle I’d woken up in this morning, and the town above which it was perched, were both called Zemplén. The forested hills to the west were the Hegyalja. The river to the east was the Borsod. The villages surrounding Aba Péter’s castle were called: Imreg, Szinyér, Szent-Mária, Szomotor, Ladamóc, Céke and Bári.

I also found that I had quite a bit of help in my tasks for that day, from a rather unexpected source. The one who knew the most about deployments and fortifications and battles was actually a guest in the castle. He was big, brown-bearded young man a couple of years my—I should say Mihály’s—elder, Szomotori Lukács. I got the sense that Lukács knew more about the nitty-gritty of caring for gear and arms, of drawing lists, of mustering and keeping a camp (or a castle) stocked with feed and water, than Mihály himself did. And he generously went around with me and gently corrected me when I made a mistake or an oversight in my inspections. When I asked him about how he came to know so much, he told me:

‘Oh, I’m a camp-follower’s brat. I never knew my father, only that he was Magyar. But it was shriving chaplains taught me to say my Pater noster; it was men-at-arms taught me to work with my hands; and it was Magyar riders taught me after a fight to spare the dying and aid the living.’

I found I quite liked Lukács. After the smouldering indignation, suppressed violence and smell of subterfuge around my father, Lukács’s genuine helpfulness and disinterested kindness were a true breath of fresh air. Another person I found myself growing in affection for was my aunt, Domaszló’s wife Apafi Skolasztika. In my rounds of the castle, I found that it was her handwriting (which, thankfully for me, Mihály knew how to read) that had drawn up the most up-to-date lists of men-at-arms and castle supplies.

It was very late by the time I returned to my and Gerbirg’s bedroom in the castle. When she saw me come in, her deep-jawed face broadened into a dazzling smile. She sat up, stood from the bed and sauntered to me. Her linen shift whispered against her thighs as she drew near. I could still smell the fragrance of her yew oil on face as she pressed it close to mine, her lips brushing my beard. If desire and desirability combined to make a colour, it would be the emerald of her eyes as she flashed them up at me. ‘Ich hân dich dën ganzen tag niwiht gesehen,’ she sighed. ‘Ich hân dich vermisset.’

I stiffened. Now, every logical thread led to the same unspeakable conclusion.

I really had been subjected to the Gordon effect. My own DNA had been entangled with my direct ancestor’s, Aba Mihály. And the inferential corollary to that: Gerbirg was my direct ancestress. Her womb was… my origin point. Genetically speaking.

The paradox was burning, hotter than her insistent touch. Rebuff her, and I might unravel the thread of time that held together my whole existence. Respond, and—

Damn. Those fumbling Med Arts postdocs had turned me into Marty McFly.

‘Ich bin… müde,’ I stammered. I patted her head, a bit like one might soothe a restless hound. But her fingers slid achingly along mine, twined them, and drew them down along the unfurling map of her body… along her cheek, then down her neck… from her collarbone to her sternum, to—

‘Morgen früh!’ I blurted, twisting away.

I angled around her and sat down heavily on my side of the bed, causing the ropes to creak. I lay myself out, still fully-dressed and belted. Several thudding, desperately-confused heartbeats went by. Then the mattress dipped from a shifting weight. I felt a smooth arm slide its way up my back and around my shoulder. Two deep pools of soft flesh pressed through their thin barrier of linen against my back. The slender, tapering form of one pale, bare shin rose and wrapped around the outside of my left knee… and then a thigh over my left hip.

There came a teasing whisper close behind my ear. ‘Dîn herze rennt hiute mit dën wölfsrudel… aver morgen gehœrest dû mia.’

I gulped. Hard.

Who knew where Aba Mihály was now? A confused Magyar warlord running amok on 21st-century Fifth Avenue… probably getting tasered by the Pitt Police.

In the meantime, I was failing spectacularly at preserving the space-time continuum.

 

[Revan86]

Oh yes, finally back to the kingdom of ck, wonderful. Let there be words of tales from dreams of infinite worlds.
<taking a comfortable seat, beginning to read while scheduling available time for future re-readings>

And @filcat is onboard! Squeal of delight.

Most welcome indeed!

Definitely signing on to this one. Completely different style from The Leading Spirits, and glad to see from your signature that your mega-campaign will continue.

Like others, I like your science fiction meets CK3 mash-up idea.

Always good when one of the top writers in AARland turns their attention to something new.

Cheers, @Chac1! Glad to see you over here, too!

And no, TLS is still alive and kicking and will be for a good few months yet. I've been busy with a few other projects IRL, but this AAR actually stands a fair chance of putting my hand to the lever on TLS again sometime soon.

 

[StrategyGameEnthusiast]

Who knew where Aba Mihály was now? A confused Magyar warlord running amok on 21st-century Fifth Avenue… probably getting tasered by the Pitt Police.

The Pitt Police would probably be confused as to why there's just some random man running amok speaking Hungarian... (and thinking about calling ICE...)

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

I really had been subjected to the Gordon effect. My own DNA had been entangled with my direct ancestor’s, Aba Mihály. And the inferential corollary to that: Gerbirg was my direct ancestress. Her womb was… my origin point. Genetically speaking.

The rule is that it's no longer weird to hook up with your ancestress if you go back more than 900 years. At that point, half of Europe is probably an ancestor in some fashion.

 

[Revan86]

The rule is that it's no longer weird to hook up with your ancestress if you go back more than 900 years. At that point, half of Europe is probably an ancestor in some fashion.

I get what you're saying, and I agree with the gist of it, but it may be a bit more complicated than that.

That is to say, the vast majority of humans living today, even if they're not closely related to each other, are all cousins and share common descent if you go back far enough. A distance of 30 generations (roughly 900 years) would make most modern-day white European-descended people very close relatives.

But the reverse isn't necessarily true: it isn't necessarily the case that most medieval Europeans would be related to modern people. There have been population bottlenecking events (the Black Death, for example) that have wiped entire lineages from the human gene pool. A lot of plague victims didn't have any descent, and wouldn't be directly related to modern-day people. Also, a lot of endogamy occurred (though probably it didn't happen as egregiously as in CK3 gameplay), causing pedigree collapse to an extreme degree in some communities (like Ashkenazi Jews). So there are probably vast swathes of people living today that sprang from the same few strands of tangled ancestry. At least, that's the way I've been given to understand it.

As to the rule: yeah, totally agreed. It's the Aragorn/Arwen effect. Sure, they may be technically first cousins however many times removed, but with that number of Númenórean generations in between them, clearly nobody in-universe cares, and nobody except for a handful of geeky Tolkien nerds would bother to care.

 

[Idhrendur]

I'm not good at keeping with AARs these days, but this looks to be one worth the effort.

 

[Sirdramaticus]

deutanopic

Ah! Another new word. How exciting. I guess our main character’s father would have no appreciation for anything smaragdine. Although when I looked it up, I got the word deuteranopic.

cheesing Zerg rushes at LAN parties in my neighbour’s basement back in middle school.

I don’t know what Walter’s problem is. It’s not any harder than it is to bulls eye wamprats back home.

cicatrix

Another new word. I thought I knew most of the English language, but apparently my understanding of all the colors a big vocabulary offers is more deuteranopic than I thought.

toponymy

ANOTHER new word??!! Seriously. The adult brain cannot sustain this level of vocabulary growth. I’m smaragdine with envy of your knowledge and only hope that my deuteranopic vision will improve. Wounded as my pride may be, I shall hope that the shame will leave a cicatrix of knowledge that will remind me how much more there is to learn.

I enjoyed the way you introduce the characters and appreciate that you include game images with their stats and traits, too.

 

[Revan86]

CHAPTER TWO​

The Pool
24 September 1066 – about an hour past Compline

​

‘Any questions? … Yes? … Ah—good one. The complexity, density and longevity of lignin molecular matrices appears to be exactly what makes them able to establish quantum resonance effects between two identical genetic segments. Our hypothesis is that the age of the tree used is directly correlated to the strength of the time-displacement effect…’

The half-heard, half-remembered voices were coming to me muffled, from a distance high above me. I wasn’t quite sure where I was. It felt like I was floating—immersed in warm water. Actually, it was quite pleasant, almost like being in a Jacuzzi. Until the shock hit me, and fear froze my heart, that I was completely submerged and that my whole head was underwater as well.

I held my breath and kicked frantically up, but all I could see that way was blackness. A sick hopelessness came over me. I was going to drown. There was no way out. I hung my head dejectedly… but then saw, curiously, a disc of light floating in the midst of the water below me, shedding a cool white beam outward into the black depths. It resembled nothing so much as the porthole of a submarine. I arched my body and kicked, paddling my arms and scooping the warm water to delve deeper towards the source of the light.

As I approached the porthole, I saw that the light was coming out of it at a slant, as though the light source were off to the side, around its corner, somewhere out of view. I could see nothing through the porthole but a wall of stone—curious! Or rather, it would be curious if I wasn’t drowning!

I tried to hammer on the porthole, to attract the attention of whoever or whatever might be behind it. My fist, though, didn’t hit glass. It was more like trying to punch a wet blanket hung up from a clothesline. The surface bent, yielded, bobbed and rippled—but wouldn’t break or, indeed, make a sound for anyone on the other side to hear. I had just made up my mind to slam my whole shoulder against the ‘porthole’, when someone’s face hove into view above me. It was dark, and mostly silhouette save for the sliver of silvery light from one side. But I knew whose face it was.

‘You!’ I burbled. Yet to my shock, no air bubbles escaped my lips, and no actual water rushed in to replace it. Strangely, whatever this medium was I was immersed in… it was breatheable. My panic subsided quickly—but not my shock and anger at the recognition.

‘Me,’ said Aba Mihály levelly, without fear or rage. ‘Who the hell are you? Are you a devil?’

‘I’m not a devil,’ I answered. ‘I’m a human being!’

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what a devil would say. I charge you,’ Mihály told me sternly, fetching out and dangling a little silver cross pendant over the barrier between us, on a cord he wore over his chest, ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ our God, our Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the Saints. What is your name?’

‘My name is Walter Brooks,’ I told him. ‘I’m a student. I’m twenty-four years old.’

‘H’m,’ Mihály stroked his beard and regarded me with interest. ‘So you didn’t run off hissing when I invoked the holy names… very well. Suppose I believe you… “Walter”. My second question is: if you’re not an unclean spirit, how did your lélek come to throw me off my mount?’

‘In an age to come, there will be… scholars,’ I began, not sure as to how much my ancestor’s medieval mind would be able to comprehend it, ‘who study the flow of time, as of a river. They imagine that they can use very ancient trees to divert the river of time and return some of the water to a point upstream, but only along a certain channel. Only along direct bloodlines, father to son or mother to daughter. I believe they have thus… er… transported me.’

Mihály fixed me with a stern, unwavering, slow regard. He was in no hurry, but it seemed to me that he was trying to make up his mind, to be sure of something. Then he turned away from me, toward where I knew the footlocker was within his bedroom.

‘We shall soon behold the truth of that.’

He took the silver wolf’s-head brooch from atop the footlocker and brought the sharp pin stem of it—resembling the business end of a dagger more than anything else—up to his palm. His face was utterly impassive as the silver fang bit down into it, hard.

A searing-hot jab of pain penetrated my own hand and shot its way up my arm. I let out a cry. Through the breatheable ‘water’ I was in, I floated my hand up to my face and held it up in the silvery light of the porthole. Already a long plume, black in this light, was curling out of it like a billow of smoke, trailing away and dissolving into the gloom. Mihály saw it as well, and knew its importance. He returned his grave gaze to my face. As our eyes met, I knew that the blood that was spilling out of my hand, was tied to his with indelible bonds of heredity.

Mihály winced slightly as he flexed his fingers over his own palm, itself streaming blood. His icy blue eyes glimmered their understanding, even a hint of compassion and pity, as he drew the wound on his hand up to his lips.

‘There’s no spirit, clean or unclean, that bleeds,’ he mused. ‘So you are my blood… or, rather, you will be. Thirty generations of it, you say… from far past tomorrow, that have never yet lived.’

We regarded each other silently, for a long moment, from either side of the yielding-but-impenetrable barrier. Then he went on:

‘In my grandfather’s time, the táltosok knew how to wield wands from the égig érő fa to cross from that world—’ he indicated my side of the barrier, ‘—to this one. But this is some witchcraft I’ve never heard of. If you are who you say you are, az unokám, then you are the flame that hasn’t been lit yet, coming to rest on my candle.’

It was clear that Mihály was already hot on the scent that had been laid before him. ‘My kindred do know of such trees. It may yet be that someone here in Zemplén can find some way to undo this knot which ties us to each other. But it won’t be easy. If Bishop Ábel comes to hear of it…’ he shook his head. The dire implications were clear, even to me. He turned his hyperboreal stare back onto my face. ‘In the meantime, you are to do all in my place, exactly as I would do.’

‘Umm…’ I hesitated, before cocking a head in the direction of the bridal bed I knew was there beyond, on his side. ‘You really mean… everything?’

Mihály bristled, his eyes widening in sudden jealous rage, but then looked worriedly to his side. His features softened, became tender. He considered a long while, before turning back to me. ‘Let’s leave that question lie awhile,’ he advised, ‘after I’ve had time to ponder it. In the meantime, tell me this: what’s the last thing you remember? I mean, before you… unhorsed me?’

I told him about my run from one end of the hill to the other, for fear of being late to lessons. I told him about being out of breath in front of the building that the scholars had been in, who had told me of this method of channelling the flow of time. I told him about sitting down, and then remembering nothing after that. All the while in my mind I kept pondering how a medieval Hungarian ear might hear what I was saying. The best I could, I left out all mention of things which would baffle or frustrate him.

‘Where you sat down,’ said the Hungarian lordling, ‘was there an ancient tree anywhere?’

‘No. The bench was made of wood, though.’

‘Describe it,’ Mihály demanded.

‘Well, it was wood,’ I told him. ‘Or mostly wood—it had an iron frame.’

Mihály scoffed. ‘No way to treat good timber, caging it that way. No wonder you stumbled amiss. Was there anything in particular that you remember about it?’

‘The grain was kind of a light yellowish-tan. And there was a fragrance… fresh, sweet, light. It was like… well, like Gerbirg’s perfume.’

‘Essence of yew,’ Mihály mused, smiling slightly under his blond beard. Perhaps he was remembering his first whiff of it on his beloved. ‘Carefully distilled and blended with other oils, of course, to be used as a fragrance. By itself, in too great a quantity, the oil of yew can be deadly, so my father says. And the táltosok have their own uses for it… You don’t remember else, about that bench?’

I shook my head glumly. Mihály let out a sigh, then set a hand to the rippling lifted barrier that divided us from each other.

‘It’s not much to go on. But keep it in your heart. Or ours—since you’re borrowing mine. I’ll be glad to be myself again, and have you back where you belong.’

‘As will I.’

~~~​

I was awoken by a shaking of my shoulder. My eyes opened more easily than I thought they would, and saw clear. Perhaps Mihály was used to waking up at this time—but the stone walls were still dark, save for a flicker of yellowish light. The source became immediately clear. Gerbirg, her dark hair atousle, and her eyes gleaming with worry, was kneeling over me, a lit candle in hand.

‘Dû hâst getrûmet,’ she murmured, stroking my face with her free hand. ‘Iezû stille. Dir gêt’z guot, gêt’z guot, schatz, êne angest…’

I had never really remembered any of my dreams before. But this one—it was like every word, every gesture, was echoing in my mind. As though it had just happened. My waking glance fell to my left hand, and I snapped it back up. Too late. Gerbirg’s eyes had followed where mine had gone.

‘Dîn hant!’ she gasped. ‘Waz ist darumbe geworht?!’

She had seen, just as I had done, the black-encrusted shallow furrow of sundered skin and flesh, sliced by the brooch’s pin-stem. So I really had stabbed it. Or rather, Mihály had: proof of my reality, and his, by blood. So that… talk… we’d had in my dream—that had really been him in there? Was he buried whole in my subconscious? No—that wasn’t the right way to put it. Perhaps his way truly was the right one. My waking mind had overthrown his, and his whole mind had been flung into the turf as I’d galloped away.

While I was musing about the metaphysics of the thing, Mihály’s bride was very practically standing and taking a scrap of clean linen from somewhere, and bringing it back to the bed to bind up my hand and stanch the bleeding. Lucky Mihály: despite she knowing no Hungarian, and he no German, Gerbirg really was well-matched to him. Warm, caring, unstinting, sweet—but also reliable and equable even in the face of injury. Even if she did gripe a bit over it, as she was clearly doing now.

‘Immer ein nûwer schade, snit oder bluotergôz. Und’ dû erzellest mir nie darumbe. Waz hân ich mir niuwan dâbî gedacht, einen rôs-hêrren ze hîrâten?’

As she set the candle to and wrapped the linen around my bloodied palm, I briefly reflected that being stuck here might not be so bad. But only briefly. I had nothing truly against my Hungarian ancestor—and this was his world, not mine.

 

[Revan86]

The Pitt Police would probably be confused as to why there's just some random man running amok speaking Hungarian... (and thinking about calling ICE...)

Fun as that image is to think about (and don't think it didn't occur to me to do exactly that to Mihály!), I decided against it in the end for a couple of reasons. First, I needed to have Mihály and Walter in communication with each other somehow; that worked better if I could have them inhabiting the same body. And second, from a narrative standpoint, I feared it would get a bit strained to make an A-plot, B-plot AAR with two fish-out-of-water narratives. I'll keep it in mind for the future, though. No pun intended! Always glad to have you onboard, @StrategyGameEnthusiast!

I'm not good at keeping with AARs these days, but this looks to be one worth the effort.

Cheers, @Idhrendur! Welcome aboard!

Ah! Another new word. How exciting. I guess our main character’s father would have no appreciation for anything smaragdine. Although when I looked it up, I got the word deuteranopic.


I don’t know what Walter’s problem is. It’s not any harder than it is to bulls eye wamprats back home.

Another new word. I thought I knew most of the English language, but apparently my understanding of all the colors a big vocabulary offers is more deuteranopic than I thought.

ANOTHER new word??!! Seriously. The adult brain cannot sustain this level of vocabulary growth. I’m smaragdine with envy of your knowledge and only hope that my deuteranopic vision will improve. Wounded as my pride may be, I shall hope that the shame will leave a cicatrix of knowledge that will remind me how much more there is to learn.

I enjoyed the way you introduce the characters and appreciate that you include game images with their stats and traits, too.

Thank you indeed, @Sirdramaticus! It was @filcat who told me never to compromise with language, and never to substitute an ordinary word where an extraordinary one has lain and left its mark. And I take @filcat's advice to heart.

 

[StrategyGameEnthusiast]

‘I’m not a devil,’ I answered. ‘I’m a human being!’

‘Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what a devil would say.

He has a point...

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Very interesting chapter. I like seeing the two men trying to communicate across generations.

I will say, on the question of Girbirg, the relevant question to me is not ancestral linkages or whether or not Mihály will be jealous--IMO, our hero would be taking advantage of her if he slept with her without her knowing everything that was going on.

 

[Sirdramaticus]

Thank you indeed, @Sirdramaticus! It was @filcat who told me never to compromise with language, and never to substitute an ordinary word where an extraordinary one has lain and left its mark. And I take @filcat's advice to heart.

True enough, although I must say that “smaragdine” feels a bit misplaced. For something as beautiful as “emerald colored,” it sounds more like something I would gargle or a substance involved in snail reproduction. That being said, it’s an interesting word.

I also appreciated knowing that Girbirg speaks a different language from her husband. It’s an interesting challenge as a reader and writer.
those lines, it’s interesting that your main character is different from the player character. I suspect it will give us the opportunity to be surprised by things that the player would know.

 

[Revan86]

CHAPTER THREE​

Fortnight’s Acquaintance
25 September 1066 – Prime to Vespers​

I dimly remembered a lecture from my sophomore history professor Dr Barclay, about how medieval people woke up at midnight for prayers or quiet hours. Gerbirg had taken it all in stride. She was neither disturbed nor annoyed, getting up in the middle of the night to rouse me from my fitful dream. Indeed, after bandaging up Mihály’s hand, she knelt at her statuary and recited her psalms in Latin. Beyond our bedroom door the world of the castle was as awake as we were: abuzz with footsteps, voices, the bustle and movement of chores. I stayed in bed. Walter Brooks’s circadian rhythm was not used to such disturbances. It wasn’t an hour later that she clambered back into bed and fell asleep beside me, cuddling up close and snuggling into my shoulder. It took me a little longer to sleep again at her side.

We awoke again together at the tolling of the bell from the Church, marking the first daylight hour. I became at once aware of numerous things as I was stirred from sleep. The first thing that captivated my notice was the teasing of several long, fine strands of hair over my face. Clearly not my own. The second and third were a nose and a pair of lips brushing warm and affectionate against my neck. The fourth—was that I had some absolutely raging morning wood—and a hand was already on it, stroking it with aching want.

When I opened my eyes, it was into Gerbirg’s keen and rapturous face, framed in a cascade of loose, fine sable strands.

I fought monumentally to resist her unrelenting, urging caresses. No wild boar ever fought so hard to free himself from the hunter’s net, than I did to extricate myself gracefully from her embrace. Gerbirg was warm, she was hale, she was young, she was beautiful. Particularly in her present attitude, with the neckline of her nightgown hanging free, the cleavage of her deep snowy-fair breasts framed a perfect, swooping high archway, opening onto a vista down the length of her bare torso, her ribcage rolling apart onto a perfect little round watchtower of a navel, overlooking a splendid, sprawling forest of dark curls behind it, as thick as the Hegyalja, between the horizon of her straddling thighs!

But even if lust had nothing to do with it (and it most certainly did!), the worse snare was that Gerbirg’s hunger was perfectly pure. There was not a drop of subterfuge or shame in her. And that guilelessness was somehow even more bewitching than her body! She had her own husband beneath her, a man she cared for, a man to whose flesh she was in the eyes of God and man faultlessly and openly entitled. She had embraced her husband like a little girl approaching the Chalice at Mass.

But however attractive her innocence was, the bare fact of it made my position unbearable. As much as I wanted to embrace her, being in that bed under her, and unknown to her, made me feel sullied. Yet, there I was, being kissed and stroked by her, with every touch welcome to my senses. But her innocence made me feel every bit the filthy unwanted peeping-Tom this situation had made me.

It was almost too late. She was already holding my member upright, and rearing her torso in order to sink her hips down on top of it. Her straddling bare legs having trapped me, there was no way to extricate myself without doing her an offence. But it had to be done. Gerbirg had a strong, healthy, robust Bavarian build—and for a man, unfortunately, Mihály was meagre and thin, even scrawny. I had to knock her left knee aside and quickly roll out from under her before the last of my will was spent, and before I started doing something to her in Mihály’s place that I knew I would regret. In three rough moves, I was free of her with my feet on the floor.

‘Aver Michîl!!’ Gerberg wailed in frustration as I stood to my feet and heaved a breath.

I made the mistake of turning to face her as she knelt, now alone, on the bed. I had hurt her, badly. She had the look, I hate to say it, of a dog scolded and punished by her master, who doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve it. Forlorn tears were swimming in her eyes.

Pity was the last, the worst hurdle. I very nearly gave in and went back to the bed from it. Mihály was still pitching a formidable tent beneath his nightgown (all the more imposing in light of his scrawny build!), that she couldn’t have failed to notice. Instead, I knelt beside her on the bed and fathomed her—not entirely chastely—around the shoulders, and planted a kiss in her hair. The scent was still on her: fresh like a pine forest after rain, but also like old church timber—and a hint of something like the piña coladas that my undergrad ex-girlfriend liked to drink. That had ended in tears, too.

‘Tut mir leid,’ I told her, a bit awkwardly. ‘Ich habe einfach zu viel Sorgen.’ … which was true.

‘Aver zuo wênic sorge umbe mich,’ Gerbirg complained, hugging me back tightly. I could feel the heat and salt from her eyes through the linen at my shoulder.

~~~​

‘They’re moving off,’ Mihály’s uncle Domaszló grimaced as he saw me that morning on the allure, about an hour after the Prime bell. ‘Those Kun hellspawn, that is. Turns out we didn’t need those extra spears on the north and west walls after all.’

‘So why the long face?’ I asked.

‘Because Géza and László have cut their devil’s bargain,’ Domaszló growled, his black brow furrowing in a threatening storm, ‘to let the heathen bleed us by inches while they make to carve up the whole of their öccsük Lampert’s loaf. They’re already on the move. Come over here; see for yourself.’

He hauled me down the west wall of the allure to the sunlit side of the castle, where I could already see along the far bank of the Bodrog, the plumes of dust kicked into the air by hundreds of armoured mounts, the bright hues of distant banners, and the gleam of helmets.

‘The Árpádok spilled Sámuel’s blood on the crown,’ Domaszló glowered, ‘and their thirst still isn’t slaked. Now they’re coming for the bones of our house.’

Domaszló took Mihály’s slender shoulders between his hands—not Péter’s falcon-grip, more a stablemaster calming a spooked colt. ‘Listen, unokaöcsém. I’d never say this in front of your father, but… you were right about the Kunok. Now the situation’s changed. Those Swabian silver-suckers need to be on the south wall. If Péter asks your counsel again—stand with me, or we’ll all pay sore.’

I nodded dumbly. This wasn’t my world, it was Mihály’s—but I’d have to have been a dolt not to see what Domaszló was showing me.

When the master of Zemplén mounted the castle walls to observe the situation for himself, he made no demurral. Indeed, the calm poise of a body I knew to be tense with a long-suffering grudge against the Árpádok, showed me that he not only expected this turn of events, but in a way even cherished it, revelled in it. I added my voice to Uncle Domaszló’s about the deployments, but it was hardly necessary. Peter simply nodded to us curtly to carry on our preparations. We gave the Swabians their orders set out their positions along the southern wall of Zemplén, and joined in the work for most of that morning.

~~~​

I was busy hauling vats of oil up to the south watchtowers when the self-described camp-follower’s brat who’d been so helpful yesterday, Szomotori Lukács, came up to me. He was scrubbing his beard with one callused hand. His face was ashen.

‘What’s the matter, Lukács?’ I asked.

‘Bishop’s men came asking for you,’ he frowned darkly. ‘You’d best not keep them waiting, or else they’ll be back with irons to haul you down.’

My heart rose uncomfortably into my throat with a sickness of dread. Bishop Ábel’s name, so far, I’d only heard spoken—in waking life by János, and in my dream-communion with Mihály—in notes of apprehension or fear. The way the two Aba brothers spoke of him, it was as though he’d been born with two keen edges to his zeal: a hook-bristling knout for the devils, and a knife for the old ways. If, as it seemed, Aba Sámuel had kept one foot in the táltos world, as the Árpádok had not… well, that would easily explain why the man’s crozier had come to rest here in Zemplén.

Yet by the time I’d descended the walk flanked by the bishop’s men, and crossed the courtyard to the castle chapel, I was greeted at the doorway not by the wild-eyed fanatic or the grey, grim-jowled, hooded inquisitor I’d conjured up in my imagination. In terms of stature, Bishop Ábel veritably loomed over the spare, slender Mihály. But the Bishop of Zemplén was a sparsely-bearded man with stringy hair of a decidedly indifferent shade of dishwater-blond, a pair of placid pebble-grey eyes. He did have jowls, but they were the florid-fleshed ones of a middle-aged man used to a life of ease. Indeed, he seemed quite fair-tempered, almost easygoing. He met me with a liberal smile that bordered on complacency and lifted a broad, meaty hand for Aba Mihály to kiss. Adorned with ornate rings of gilt silver set with raw sapphires, that hand smelled faintly of both myrrh and rust.

‘Good morning, Bish—’ the words leapt out. Habit, from St. Stephen’s Episcopal in Wilkinsburg—a church which wouldn’t be founded yet for over eight hundred years, on a continent as yet undreamt of. Ábel’s eyebrows rose slightly in surprise at this breach of decorum.

‘Dominus tecum,’ Bishop Ábel patiently offered the face-saving greeting.

‘Et cum spiritu tuo,’ I self-corrected, kicking myself inwardly. Another slip-up like that and I might well be locked up for insubordination!

‘God bless you, my child,’ Bishop Ábel traced a lazy cross in the air over me. ‘How are you faring?’

‘We’ve had some work these days,’ I told the bishop honestly. ‘The Kunok were threatening, but they’ve moved off. Now it’s Árpád Béla’s older sons who are moving against us.’

‘Then I shall pray for your success, and for the safety of our lands,’ Ábel nodded gravely. ‘The evil of war is always with us; remember only that our eternal struggle is not against flesh and blood. Remember your duties to both God and man. And how goes it between you and our daughter in Christ? Your new bride?’

‘Well enough,’ I lied, shortly and gruffly. There really wasn’t anything else I could say to this man, that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

Ábel’s pebble-grey eyes frosted over at once. Suddenly I could feel the Aba brothers’ fear of the man. ‘Bear in mind,’ he told me, drawing his thumb and forefinger over the crucifix around his neck, ‘your proper duties and loyalties. In wedding Gerbirg von Erdingen, you proved a loyal son of the Church. Having bridled yourself to blessedness, see to it that you do not bite the bit and stray from the narrow path. Colts that grow restive are not spared the lash.’

I gulped. Bishop Ábel dressed me down with several other questions, but it was his line of questioning concerning Gerbirg that chilled me. Had she come to him with complaint, that I hadn’t done my marital duty by her that morning? It seemed far too probable, and his veiled threat against me ‘biting the bit’ struck very near that mark… though it might also have something to do with the Abas’ lingering connexion to the táltos. It seemed our family was only yet tolerated by the Church, not trusted. When the bishop finally waved me off with what was more a grim dismissal on sufferance rather than a benediction, I was well relieved to go.

As it turned out, the presence of Géza’s men at the southern bank of the Bodrog had been a feint to scope out our capabilities. They’d moved out without incident once taking account of Zemplén’s defences. A bit after midday, though, there came a rider from the east, over the Bodrog from that direction. He carried the device of my father’s nominal liege, Árpád Lampert, and was admitted to the castle courtyard. He came forward to address my father, though Domaszló, János and I were all there with him—all the male members of our beleaguered clan gathered together to hear the tidings from Béla’s youngest son. Dear Lord. They were ‘our clan’ to me now. The very thought disturbed me: all these men were dust long before Columbus sailed. But it was Mihály’s blood surging in the flesh I was clothed in now. Was I losing my grip on myself?

‘László fejedelem’s forces are attacking from the south,’ said the herald grimly. ‘Seventeen hundred men at arms, riding hard against the eastern holdings. Lampert herceg musters his force near Mándok, but unless he dips into his wife’s coffers, he’ll field only about half László’s number.’

Péter’s eyes were guarded, and he stood impassive at attention. He sensed the demand which was coming. ‘And what would Lampert bácsi want with his poor vassals in Zemplén?’

‘For now, watch your north and west,’ said the herald. ‘No sense your sending good men south with Géza still on the loose, unaccounted for, and having yet made no move.’

Domaszló let his pleasant surprise show on his brow. My opinion of my uncle was changing, after he’d shown me the scout force from the south and asked me openly for my support with his brother. Domaszló was a war-axe: obvious, simple, rustic—but quite deadly when aimed the right way. My father, though? I’d learned to regard him as a bodkin dipped in honey.

Péter lay a hand on his heart with the gentleness of a caress. ‘Bear this word back to your master: Aba timber guards his western flank, and Aba blood holds it fast for him.’

‘And if Géza makes his move,’ the herald insisted, ‘you will send word at once.’

‘Isten forbid,’ Péter answered heartily, ‘that we should ever keep from Lampert a day longer than needful, anything he ought by rights to know.’

The herald was satisfied. He reined his horse, spurred its flanks, and sped back out of the courtyard back to his lord, who doubtless needed him back urgently.

Domaszló let out a derisive bark of a laugh as soon as he was out of earshot. ‘Guarded? Salted for roasting, more like.’

Péter’s reply was a ripple on a still pond. ‘He’ll choke on László’s spear-ends long before then.’

~~~​

I checked in on my mother before turning in to bed. She was humming happily to herself, laying out and folding a szalag. It was embroidered on the edges with black and gold thread in the repeating pattern of an eight-edged knot-of-eternity. It wasn’t the Abas’ device—perhaps it was that of my mother’s kin.

‘Another gift?’ I asked her.

‘Your father’s been very attentive lately,’ my mother—named Emese, as I’d learned—noted with a certain quiet satisfaction. Her eyes had softened, and there was a deeper trace of colour in her round cheeks.

‘Isten aldja álmodat,’ I heard myself bidding her, and kissed her on one of those blush-warmed cheeks, smelling of cured marjoram. She returned the kin-embrace happily.

‘Saint Stephen watch over your sleep, son. You’ve earned it.’

When I finally did retire to my room, I found Gerbirg was already laid out asleep. She had taken up her space on her side of the bed, and her back was turned toward me—a fortress wall. An unmistakeable gesture even in repose like this, which I recognised from my ex-girlfriend’s attitude just before the end. She was still upset with me from this morning. I lay down on the near side and snuffed out the candle.

The pool returned in my dreams, as did the porthole. Little wonder. His whole mind was trapped in my subconscious—REM would be the only time he would be allowed to take the reins.

‘By Isten’s bones, you’re either a confessor or a fool,’ Mihály clicked his tongue and shook his head in mingled respect and disbelief as soon as he saw my face in the depths. ‘I felt it all—from the grind of your teeth to the stiffness of your spine. Truly, if I was walking the second mile of Matthew’s Gospel in your boots, I’d have ridden her to ground like a spring hind.’

I replied grimly, ‘Don’t thank me yet. She’s still mad at you.’

Mihály looked away from me—across the bed at his sleeping Bavarian bride. He blew out a frustrated snort. ‘I’m none too happy with her myself. She was at Ábel’s door ere the Terce bell. I’d hoped for more from her troth than a couple of Lenten suppers.’

I eyed the Hungarian lord steadily. ‘Why did you marry her?’ I asked. ‘It seemed to me that Péter was reluctant to the make the match. Was it to placate the bishop?’

Mihály sighed wistfully as he recalled it. ‘We met when I was bearing my father’s seal to the Markgraf Berengar in Nordgau last year. I got into a scuffle there—probably planned. She loosed me from the trap, so Berengar’s wrath didn’t fall on my head. She was gentle—kind. Easy on the eyes. And she seemed to like me well enough. I asked Father to let me have her. That said, I don’t think he’d have agreed to, unless it figured into his plans somehow.’

I fixed Mihály with a regard. ‘We must let her know. That’s the only way to unravel this knot.’

Mihály crossed his arms. ‘I see two major problems with that. One: how? The only reason I believe you even now, is because you didn’t flee Christ’s Cross in agony when I bade you in His name—and because you bled when I pricked my own hand. How do you propose to show her what only I can see in your dreams? Two: even if you could, who’s to say she won’t betray us both by running straight to Ábel again with what she knows? For me? It’s death. But you? A soul unshriven, adrift between worlds? You think the devils wouldn’t flay you like a grape?’

‘Do you trust her?’ I asked. ‘You know her better than I do.’

Mihály considered the frustrated woman sleeping at his side with a long, uncertain blue stare. ‘I know her face. I know her hips. I know her Psalms. But her heart? Fourteen days is enough to have a girl’s honour, but to have her measure…?’

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

I'm really enjoying how the story is shaping up. The family is coming into focus nicely, and the bishop--seems like a fellow that's worth keeping an eye on.