After the Flood, Chapter Four

“The Burghermeister,” Joe said at once. “What of the Burghermeister, and the lies he told Nottingham of how these events were somehow divinely ordained?”

“They’re just getting to that now,” Gala replied, as the chief pointed out to sea. “Apparently, when the present adults of this tribe were still children, scouts in their canoes reported that a mighty ship had come to the part of the ocean where the star fell. They spoke of a plague-stricken crew, under the command of an infected young man who answered to the Burghermeister’s description – ‘fat leaf-headed youth’ was their exact phrase. The scouts had watched him send men down over the side of his galleon, weighted with great stones, and they came up again carrying strange rocks that glowed like no mineral the natives had ever seen.”

“Samples from the meteor?” Joe asked.

“Precisely,” said Gala. “The Burghermeister had read the same tidal-charts I did, and he reached the same conclusion well ahead of me. His so-called high priests, you see, were in reality nothing more than chemists and potion-makers. They used the meteor samples to formulate a cure, then circulated it throughout Nottingham in secret…by dropping it in the water supply, of all things, as I later learned. All it took then was a clever fiction spun by the Burghermeister to deceive the people, and absolute power was in his hands. Those subjects he needed to slave for him and keep him in luxury were forced into servitude in Nottingham, where they’d never rebel for fear of having their health taken away from them. The others, his diseased citizens, who he was able to cure and who he should have been endeavouring to help and resettle, were instead conveniently shipped away to die at the age of twenty-five from the plague.”

Joe turned to her. “And what did you do,” he began slowly, “once you had learned all this?”

A smile was starting to steal across Gala’s lips.

“Do you really have to ask?” said she.

In a twinkling of the Time-Shifter the travellers were speeding through a day when the black sky raged overhead and the planetwide ocean below thrashed in a tumult of white-capped waves as if competing with the heavens’ fury. Across the stormy surf the young Gala sped, standing at the prow of a one-man skiff with a full sail, her black coat and long hair streaming out behind her. Joe brought the F.P. Lightspeed alongside and matched her pace, as the plague-ship dropped steadily below the horizon and the rugged coastline of Nottingham loomed ahead.

Bursts of fire and smoke blossomed out one after the other from cannons mounted on the rocks, as the Burghermeister’s troops sighted the invader. Gala’s younger self gripped the ropes of her sail and drove the skiff onward, jumping and veering across the turbulent deep without once checking her speed, skimming safely past the barrages of foam and spray that erupted as each cannonball struck. Finally, there hurtled at her a projectile too well-targeted to avoid in time. Gala dropped the rope and watched motionless as the spinning black orb descended, then a second before their paths collided her cutlass flew from its scabbard in an arc of white light. The iron sang aloud as the shining blade sliced through it, and two massy hemispheres splashed into the skiff’s wake on either side.

With a crunching splintering din Gala ran her boat aground on Nottingham’s periphery, but she had already left her station and was somersaulting above the shore towards the city streets. The soles of her sea-boots touched solid pavement and she was off again like a dark bolt, racing along the narrow alleyways, passing huts and hovels in a blur. Her glowing sword in her hand trailed light as she charged, and on the many occasions a soldier tried to obstruct her it shot forward and felled the man without preamble. Her older counterpart and Joe, gripping the rim of their flying platform as they gave chase, reached the castle courtyard moments after Gala burst onto the scene and ran at once to the very centre of the paved expanse. It was the middle of morning devotions, and the ragged townsfolk of Nottingham gazed dumbstruck at the unfamiliar sixteen-year-old who was as untouched by the plague as they were. As for the Burghermeister, surveying the spectacle from the balcony where he and his high priests had been presiding, mere astonishment was not enough. After spluttering his outrage and incredulity for a few moments, he shrieked a command:

“Seize her!”

Into the courtyard thundered the four hulking soldiers of the elite guard, bedecked from head to toe in the leather and steel of their armour, clutching twelve-foot spears in their massive fists, and elbowing or striking away from them the citizens who did not retreat to the sidelines in time. The quartet of helmeted giants surrounded Gala and she coolly observed them, holding her cutlass ready, taking these new enemies in. But when one of them gave a dull bellow, thrust out his spearhead and advanced, Gala exploded into action and battle was joined.

Joe, watching these events for the first time, could not contain his admiration. The younger Gala was like a whirlwind, lithely bounding and careening across the field and fearlessly meeting the challenge of her four huge opponents. Summarily her cutlass chopped their spear-shafts in two, closing the distance and forcing them to draw swords and daggers, whereat the courtyard rang with the sound of blade on blade as they duelled on. One guardsman was already down, and Gala showed no signs of tiring. No matter how troubling her older self often appeared to Joe, it nevertheless could not fail to move him to see her fighting with such valour in the name of what was right. Indeed, not just her heroism, but also her magnificence, stirred something in a deep part of him.

The young Gala’s cutlass, which had seen much use that day, finally shattered on an enemy breastplate. The jagged stump continued to shine with the same white light as before as Gala warred on with it, dispatching the second of the squad. Joe looked quizzically at the identical weapon resting against his companion’s thigh.

“Oh, I’m always doing it,” she explained. “I’ve got through hundreds since that first one.”

The two remaining guardsmen had forced Gala to the castle steps, and she was steadily backing up them while locking her broken cutlass with the broadswords of both fighting-mad men. Meanwhile, the Burghermeister’s archers had climbed to the pavilion roof opposite and were fitting gunpowder-tipped arrows to their bows. As they took aim at Gala and drew back the strings their blubbery liege leaned greedily forward over the balcony, peering at the conflict directly beneath his feet that was surely to end in mere moments…

Gala knocked away the shield of one of the guards using the butt of her weapon, then kicked him in the middle with such force as to propel him down the stairs into defeat. This left her open to attack from his one surviving mate, who stabbed his dagger down towards her slender frame at once, but Gala leapt from the stairs into space, grasped in her free hand a colourful banner hanging from the pavilion, and swung the length of the courtyard. The explosive arrows flew and the castle steps were swallowed in fire and noise, laying low the final guard and bringing the balcony, the Burghermeister and all the high priests tumbling to Earth in a landslide. As Gala swooped into a landing her truncated blade clove through the struts of the pavilion, toppling the archers likewise, while she released the bunting and took her place centre-stage. The crewmen of her plague-ship surged onto the scene, rounding up the last of the soldiers and training their confiscated swords on them and their masters. Gala turned to look at the Burghermeister as he tried, without much success, to heave his corpulent body out of the pile of rubble on which he and the high priests sprawled. His toga was charred almost to nothing, and his laurels lay askew on his fat brow.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR