I rose to my feet and turned to the east as the spell book instructed.
“What is she doing?”
Lars’s voice. What was he doing here?
I chanted the words from the book in my hand, silently, beneath my
breath. Then I chanted them once more, louder and with confidence. My voice
became richer, louder, resonating in my ears.
Whoosh. The ground trembled. The air in front of us seemed
to swirl, clouding my view of the field ahead. A grey mist rose from the
ground, thick with dust or soot, obliterating all vision.
I
stood rock still, hardly able to breathe.
The mist swirled. I heard men yelling—coarse shouts
over the ring of steel on steel, then an eerie silence. It put chills up my
spine. Lars muttered something at my side. Gareth stood stock still. Loki moved
up against me. We waited.
Men’s voices again, echoing like souls lost in a
fog. The mist lifted in one swift movement to disappear into nothingness. In
its place, were at least a hundred men.
Bugger. I messed up.
“Houston, we have a problem,” I said out loud. This
wasn’t supposed to happen. I must have pronounced one of the spell words wrong.
“Who is Houston?” Lars said.
“Romans!” Gareth hissed. He drew his sword.
“Romans?” I stared at the battle-scarred men before
us. They looked exhausted. They also looked bloody, dirty and rather short. Not
to mention confused.
How the heck could they be Romans?
Someone yelled “Form Square!” in—yup—that was
Latin.
“What the hell?” I stared. The men came to life
moving with purpose into a square. Within seconds we were facing a shield wall
bristling with spears.
Gareth and Lars already had their swords drawn.
They tried to move in front of me but I spread my arms to hold them back.
“Sheath your weapons,” I commanded.
They hesitated, eyeing the wall of men and knives.
“For crissake,” I insisted, “what do you expect to
do against that, besides get us all killed?”
With reluctance the swords slid back into their
scabbards.
The man on the horse wore a breastplate the sort of
armor that you only saw in museums back home. Or movies. I was reminded of
Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor. Richard Burton playing the part of Marc
Antony.
Hoo boy.
The man on horseback stared at me. No stirrups on
his saddle. A helmet that was in history books. Definitely Roman. I stared back
at him.
Romans? In this time? What the poop had I done?
“It’s a freaking temporal rift!” My laugh was
strident. “Where the hell is Spock when you need him?”
FREE TODAY AND TOMORROW!
ROWENA AND THE DARK LORD
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