Deus Le Volt

  Title Page

  TIME HUNTER

  DEUS LE VOLT

  by

  Jon de Burgh Miller

  Publisher Information

  First published in England in 2005 by

  Telos Publishing Ltd

  17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

  www.telos.co.uk

  Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: feedback@telos.co.uk

  Deus Le Volt © 2005 Jon de Burgh Miller.

  Cover artwork by Matthew Laznika

  Time Hunter format © 2003 Telos Publishing Ltd

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish created by Daniel O’Mahony

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the Gesta Francorum, Anna Comnena, Fulcher of Chartres and the University College London library. Additional thanks to Mark Clapham, Ed Greenall, Jim Smith, the writers of the other Time Hunter books and extra special thanks to my family, especially my parents, John and Mary, for endless love, support and encouragement.

  Dedication

  To my Grandad, Robert Clubley.

  The Time Hunter

  Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish... Honoré is a black American ex-GI, now living in London, 1950, working sometimes as a private detective, sometimes as a ‘fixer’, or spiv. Now life has a new purpose for him as he has discovered that he is a time sensitive. In theory, this attribute, as well as affording him a low-level perception of the fabric of time itself, gives him the ability to sense the whole timeline of any person with whom he comes into contact. He just has to learn how to master it.

  Emily is a strange young woman whom Honoré has taken under his wing. She is suffering from amnesia, and so knows little of her own background. She comes from a time in Earth’s far future, one of a small minority of people known as time channellers, who have developed the ability to make jumps through time using mental powers so highly evolved that they could almost be mistaken for magic. They cannot do this alone, however. In order to achieve a time-jump, a time channeller must connect with a time sensitive.

  When Honoré and Emily connect, the adventures begin.

  1

  It was a hot summer’s night in London, the sort of night when it’s physically impossible to sleep. The sort of night when it can feel as if something primal inside you is doing everything it can to stop you falling into a dream, to stop you facing the twilight world between the conscious and unconscious.

  Honoré Lechasseur knew he wouldn’t be sleeping much that night, but the heat would have little to do with it. Being a spiv was a trade he had perfected years ago, after his wartime injuries had healed, but change was in the air.

  The end of rationing was the cause of celebration for most of London, but the life of a spiv became far less lucrative. Gone were the days when bars of chocolate and boxes of bananas could be traded for a very healthy profit. It was getting to the stage where the only real money was in drugs or weapons, something Honoré really didn’t want to get wrapped up in. He knew it wouldn’t be long before he faced the choice between stepping over the line between legal and illegal once and for all, or finding a new trade to pay his rent and fill his days. Still, that was in the future. For now, there was just enough work around to keep him out of trouble; but it was getting harder and harder, so he had to be careful. The worry was playing on his mind more than usual that night.

  He finished up the deal with his supplier and handed the cash over in exchange for a few anonymous boxes wrapped in brown paper. Twelve cartons of cigarettes, the extra strong kind from Eastern Europe, smuggled through in the hold of a ferry and whisked away before customs guards could get a look in. Honoré loaded the boxes into his backpack and shook hands with his client. He gave a tip of the hat and a nod of the head, the standard way to acknowledge a successful transaction. The two men walked away in deliberately opposite directions. It always paid to be cautious, although there was rarely anyone around at this time of night. It would soon be morning, however. A few eager birds were already warming their lungs up for the dawn chorus.

  Honoré looked at his watch. Emily should be there by now. She’d been running an errand in Aldwych, after which she was supposed to meet him on the corner of Marchmont and Bernard Street. He was in the right place, but there was no sign of his friend.

  Honoré sighed to himself. What kind of life was this? Even Emily was getting dragged into it now, and that wasn’t fair on her. Perhaps it was time to find a new career? They had talked about setting up some kind of legitimate business together, but neither had much of an idea what trade or service they could offer that would make enough money to justify the effort. Honoré had toyed with the idea of using his special gift, the ability to see glimpses of a person’s past and future just by concentrating, to become a fortune teller, but the idea of wearing a headscarf, makeup and large earrings while spending his days staring at crystal balls held little appeal.

  Honoré’s train of thought was broken by a loud retort that echoed around the empty streets. At first he thought it might be an explosion, and pressed himself against a wall. Above him, a ball of light and electrical energy was suspended several storeys high above the ground, filling the street with jumping shadows. Before he could figure out what the phenomenon was, he heard an agonised cry and saw a figure fall from the ball of energy and land on the ground with a crunching thud. There was a moment’s silence, and the energy ball vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Honoré looked at the body in the street, and started when it moaned gently and tried to move. He threw down his backpack and ran over to see if he could help. The figure was an elderly man with pale skin, a long, white beard and thin, wispy hair. His chest was covered by a polished metal sheet, and Honoré suddenly realised that he was wearing a medieval suit of armour. He was still breathing and murmuring, but seemed on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness.

  ‘Hold on,’ Honoré said. ‘I’ll get help.’

  ‘Get me out,’ the man moaned. ‘Get me out of here!’

  ‘Take it easy, you’ll be safe soon. We’ll get you to a hospital.’

  Honoré expected that his words would reassure the man, but they seemed to have the opposite effect. The man opened his eyes and stared at Honoré with a shocked look. ‘You should not be here! Leave me alone, infidel!’

  Honoré shook his head. The man was delirious, but the fiery intensity of his eyes and the clear look of recognition on his face were chilling.

  ‘I will kill you this time!’ the man growled as Honoré stood up.

  Fighting the extreme pain he must have been suffering, the man managed to sit up, then reached out and grabbed Honoré’s leg, before slowly falling back to the ground.

  A wave of imagery assailed Honoré, his mind touching the injured man’s soul and tearing out memory after memory from his life.

  Honoré saw a vast desert, a shining row of castle battlements standing firm through a sandstorm. He saw vast armies of soldiers on horseback, some in medieval suits of armour and others in filthy smocks. He saw terrified women running through blood-filled streets
carrying their babies, and he saw a chapel, a bright light, and a Pope preaching for all of Europe to go on a glorious crusade. An expedition to rid the Holy Land of the heathen forces of the Turks and Saracens who were using the holy places of Christendom for debauchery and devil-worship. Honoré saw the crowd respond excitedly to the Pope’s words, fired up and inspired by what they’d heard. And in that crowd, Honoré saw a young man fall to his knees, weeping as he came to understand his destiny. And then his vision changed, and he saw nothing but darkness. He felt a sense of loneliness, of torment, and of death. Honoré snapped away fast, fearful of what he would see next.

  He turned away from the man, breathing heavily, his heart thumping. The suit of armour was genuine. The man was some kind of knight from the past.

  Emily came running round the corner of the street, clearly in a hurry. Honoré was thrilled to see her. He knew that her interest would be more than a little piqued by the discovery.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. Then she saw the body. ‘Oh my God. What happened?’

  Honoré pointed heavenwards. ‘This guy just fell out of the sky.’

  Emily looked up at him, not understanding. ‘What? We need to get him some help!’

  ‘I saw his past. He’s some sort of knight from hundreds of years ago.’

  Emily laughed; then, as she realised he was being serious, her look turned to one of incredulity. She turned her attention back to the man and reached down to feel his armour. ‘Either that or the circus is in town.’

  The man gasped for air, then closed his eyes.

  ‘I think he’s like you, Emily. Somehow he’s managed to travel through time. And the strange thing is, he seemed to recognise me, and seemed determined to kill me.’

  Emily stood up and took a couple of paces back, her eyes wide as the implications of her friend’s words sank in.

  ‘We have to get him to a hospital,’ continued Honoré. ‘Otherwise, he could well die.’

  Emily’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I don’t think it’s wise to hand him over to the authorities. If he is a time traveller, we should find out who he is and how he came to be here. If we go back to wherever he came from, then we may get a better idea what it is we’re dealing with.’

  Honoré nodded as he thought this through. ‘Come on then,’ he said eventually. ‘Let’s do it.’

  He knelt down and touched one hand to the knight’s shoulder, feeling his soul reach nine hundred and fifty years into the past. He reached his other hand up and clasped it tightly into Emily’s palm. Emily closed her eyes, and a spark of energy fizzed between the two. Honoré could feel Emily channelling the temporal winds through her body, pulling herself across time and taking him with her. He felt the knight’s time snake rippling back, and while most of what he saw was a blur, he was instinctively aware of the point he needed to visualise, an image he hoped was no more than a few weeks before the knight had travelled through time.

  And then the maelstrom of colour faded, to be replaced with a bright wash of light as reality coalesced to reveal a stark, rugged landscape. Laid out before them was a vast fortressed city, and around it a large encampment of tents and huts of all shapes and sizes. Honoré looked at Emily as the heat from the sun beat down on them.

  Where exactly had they arrived this time...?

  2

  Deep within the heart of the city lay a Christian church. Rarely used, and desecrated many years earlier, it now played host to a man who stood in luxurious robes, addressing a ragtag group of mongrel pilgrims.

  ‘For too long we have been made to wait,’ he declared. ‘For too long we have been made to suffer while our leaders argue amongst themselves, unable to make a single decision.’

  He looked skyward, his eyes wide with fervour. ‘Those times are over. The time for us to act is now. My family is blessed with a special gift, a Holy Spirit of power that man was not meant to possess, a power passed down from the time of King David, through followers of Christ throughout the ages who knew that their way was the true way forward, the true Holy Spirit. I have been chosen as the one who will herald the return of a beast of unimaginable power, from the Book of Revelation itself.’

  ‘Master,’ one of the pilgrims said, concern evident on his face. ‘I have heard stories of this creature. Few survive its presence.’

  The robed man nodded. ‘None of us will survive this. Not in this life. But in the next, we will do more than live. We will live for eternity in paradise. We will rule over the firmament, seated at the right hand of the new ruler of Heaven. My ancestors were told by Christ himself that they were his brothers, and now we know what he meant by that.’

  The man held out a scrap of velvet cloth, on which sat a large fragment of bone. His eyes burned passionately, and his mouth twitched into a yellowing grin. ‘Soon the whole world will tremble before the might of my master!’

  As the scorching rays of sunlight beat down on her back, Emily Blandish cursed the fact that she’d been wearing such a thick dress when they’d made the jump back in time. She looked at Honoré with envy. He hadn’t had any more time to plan for this trip than she had, yet in his regular clothes – white shirt and light grey trousers under a leather coat and hat – he was dressed much more appropriately for the conditions. He had quickly taken his hat and coat off, despite the hat’s useful sun shading properties, and was carrying them under his arm. If this was as far back in time as they suspected, the last thing they wanted was to look too anachronistic.

  They’d found themselves standing on a rough desert hillock. Crimson sand dominated the landscape, punctuated by clumps of brownish green plant life. The area was strewn with rocks, many of which looked like the ruins of what had once been defence structures.

  ‘You could have put us down in a better spot than this,’ chided Emily.

  ‘I didn’t manage to stop the jump where I wanted,’ Honoré admitted, ‘so we may end up having to search for a bit before we find our man.’

  Emily could think of better news to receive at that point. ‘Well then,’ she said, putting on a brave face, ‘the sooner we make friends with the locals, the better.’

  In the distance ahead of them was an imposing mountain range, lined with structures that were presumably defensive forts of some kind, while at the base of the range was the vast city, which even from this distance, approximately half a mile away, Emily could tell contained a rich variety of architectural styles and influences.

  The collection of dwellings around the city reminded Emily of a refugee camp she’d seen when she and Honoré had gone travelling in Africa recently. It was made up of rows of dilapidated tents of every conceivable shape and size, with thoroughfares in between them that bustled with people. Emily estimated that it would take at least twenty minutes to walk from one end of the camp to the other.

  ‘I could do with getting out of this heat,’ Lechasseur said, as they set off toward the dwellings.

  Emily agreed. ‘I’ll roast like a Sunday dinner if I don’t find something more suitable to change into soon. And we’ll stick out like a sore thumb if we stay in these clothes.’

  They soon reached the outskirts of the camp, and Lechasseur shot Emily a look that told her to be on her guard. As they moved forward, Emily could see that the place was a hive of activity. Women and children were busy digging through the barren ground in search of scraps of food, while rows of washed smocks were being hung out to dry in the stark desert air. Groups of men dressed in dirty red tunics and wearing knee-length boots were clustered around the entrances to their tents, presumably discussing their plans for the day, whilst a great many malnourished horses, donkeys, dogs and camels wandered aimlessly around the camp, looking for a purpose, trying to understand why their masters had subjected them to such hardship.

  Adding to the unpleasantness was the foulest stench Emily had ever had the misfortune to be exposed to, which became stronger the furth
er they moved into the camp. Many-weeks-stale human sweat mixed with a concoction of several different types of animal faeces and rotten vegetables created an atmosphere that must have been an absolute dream for the clouds of flies and mosquitoes that hovered all around. ‘Why are we doing this?’ Lechasseur asked, gagging at the stench. ‘We could just go back and try some other time.’

  Emily smiled and shook her head. ‘Come on, be strong,’ she urged. ‘We’ll get used to it, I’m sure! When in Rome...’

  ‘... things smell a whole lot nicer than they do here!’ Lechasseur finished. ‘You don’t fool anyone, Emily. And one thing’s for sure. I’ll never complain about the smell of London again.’

  The locals were starting to give them some suspicious looks, so the two travellers ducked out of sight round the side of a large tent. There they found a small dry ditch, into which Lechasseur bundled his coat and hat, along with his watch. Emily took off her blouse, which she had been wearing beneath her dress, but realised she would have to keep the dress itself until she found more suitable clothes. Lechasseur kicked some earth down onto the bundle, concealing it from sight.

  Once they had hidden their clothes, they moved round to the front of the tent again, where a boy of about twelve stood next to a horse. Although he was covered in grime, his skin betrayed the lobster red of someone pale who had not adjusted well to an existence in the sun. The boy was grooming the horse with a metal comb, vainly attempting to remove a tick that had decided to take up residence in the animal’s fur.

  ‘Hello,’ Emily said gently as she walked up to the boy, closely followed by Lechasseur. ‘I wonder if you could help us.’