CHAPTER 1
The chill dawn mists of Medieval Yorkshire seeped into Alexander’s chain mail hauberk, turning it into a clinging steel succubus which drew the warmth from his very marrow. He shivered against his will, succumbing to the gnawing doubt in his mind as well as the cold. For a moment his brow furrowed. What was it that could cause him consternation, he who warred and raided from Kiev to Alexandria, and all the known world throughout? This was England, his second home. The damp mornings, the lush interior, the white coasts; all were as familiar to him as the forms and faces of the two sons who slumbered at his feet. What then was this strange and troubling brew that was this voyage? Why had Julienna, his wife of Russia and many years, borne that haunted visage at their parting? Thanking him for their times she kissed him tenderly, asking only that he send her sons home to her, alive and whole if that may be. Then she crossed herself and blessed him.
The latter was an act wholly unique in Alexander’s experience with that strong and noble woman. He’d never embraced her faith, comfortable rather with the vibrancy and mysticism of his old gods. That his sons were won over to his mother’s religion never troubled him, for in the core of his belief’s was the concept that each man or woman must find their own path. “Ah, my dear wife what troubles you?” He asked her kindly, a scarred hand on her cheek. “This is not the first trek you’ve sent me off on. I am not ignorant of your far seeing eyes, but even if you see my doom ahead what is there to worry of? The knowing of it would not change my course. Fearlessness is the best attribute for the man who pokes his nose out of doors, and worrying over it amounts to nothing. The day of my birth and the day of my death were written long ago.”
“Are you then so ready to leave this life you lead with me, dear husband?”
“I would sooner lose my arm than sacrifice a single day with you, dear wife,” he smiled, “but I have lived my life by my word and by my actions, and I can no sooner change than I can dream of another woman’s face. Should I stay by your side every moment to wither with age and apathy, until the only vestige which remains of the man you’ve loved these thirty years is the dull flicker in his eye? Shall Hel lead me to her dying table so that against my will I one day set sail against my patron Thor? Ah, I know that which you hold for my mummery; you and many like you. I am an obsolete man from an age now nearly gone by it seems. Yet I am what I am, and the thought of such is as foreign to me as are the mountains of the moon. Can you not understand that much?”
“I have understood that much of my husband for all these years, and I’ve never sought to change it,” she told him firmly, drawing the bearskin cape closer about his neck. “That my soul seeks other answers lessens not my love for you, nor my thought of you. May your Thor watch over you then, my husband, and may he lend you his strength when you meet your enemies. If you should fall then I shall know it, husband and I shall know that you shall pass nobly. May your god then offer you a drink from his own horn. Drink to me then, husband, and remember our lives together!”
“This life and those that follow, Julienna,” he told her firmly. “By Mjolnir’s shaft one life with you is not enough!”
He smiled at the thought, though his heart was heavy at the parting. He glanced down at his sons, an almost fatherly glance; seen through a rough beard and a scarred face. Finally he shook his head and growled, “Bah! Your fears are ill founded, dear wife, and ill timed. What is left here but to vanquish poor Harold and establish once again the Danelaw to these isles? There is little enough to do that is not already done!” Alexander threw the corner of his bearskin over his shoulder and turned to the South, anticipating the coming march, and victory. The grey orb of the Sun was hinting at an early appearance, and the marching downs of Yorkshire near the village of Stamford began to separate themselves out of the glooms. The morning was heavy with dew, with a dull rumble to it, almost felt rather than heard. Alexander grimaced at the tremor, and his hand sought his beard, entwining his fingers in its grey streaked rust with habitual doubt. The act, as natural as breathing to the Viking in this life struck Alexander with a sudden awareness of the very strangeness of his situation. The question of his very being rose in his breast, but it went no further. The exterior sensations of the world overwhelmed the inner perturbation. The rumbling grew into a measured tramping, unmistakable to the veteran’s ears, and the mists disgorged the peaked helmets and dull mail of thousands of Englishmen.
Alexander had no need to raise the alarm for at that instant the strident calls and shouts of his fellow Norwegians ran about him. He rushed back to his sons, rousing them with haste, and shoving axes in their waking hands. Only so much time did he have to grasp his own axe, faithful “Ragnarok,” a blade named after the ending of the world, and sling his shield over his muscled arm. He turned and the English were upon them. A ragged line of half naked Norse absorbed the English onslaught. For a moment they held. “Ragnarok” flew singing in his hand to shear through the stout links of English mail and crunch into a man’s chest. Warm blood showered his face, and he tasted the salty nectar of battle upon his lips. His battle rage awakened and his voice rang out. To and fro wove Alexander’s axe cleaving limbs and heads, showering his foes with their own blood, but for naught. The inexorable flood of Englishmen caught the Norwegians by surprise, without a shieldwall, and for the most part without armor. They were driven back pell mell upon the tiny stone bridge of Stamford, and the retreat turned into a route. Alexander and his sons formed a resolute knot of Vikings denying the English the full measure of victory, but steadily they fell back. The fatalism of Alexander’s religion and the wisdom of Julienna’s prescience seeped into his thoughts as he fought. The doom of the day sprang with renewed fury when his boots rang upon the wood beams of the bridge. Alexander reached the summit of the span, Norwegians falling all about he and his sons, when his mind congealed upon a single thought. He turned to his sons, as much as could be done, and roared to them, “Flee now upon your mother’s life, and stand not with me! For I shall take not one more step from this spot, nor return to our home! Flee now with your lives, my love and my pride!”
“Father!” They said as one.
“Begone!” He thundered. “Obey my wishes if love you still bear me!” Alexander was back in the midst of the mêlée, completely absorbed in the necessity of the moment. With his ears, however, he listened for any further recanting of his sons, but there was none. He risked a hasty look behind. They were gone. Then Alexander laughed, and all remorse, hope and humanity left him. As the last of his comrades fell beside and beneath him he raged and fought with no regard for life or the future. The battle before him slowed in his eyes, and the English moved as if in water. He sheared their heads from their shoulders, their arms from their elbows, their shins from their knees. He reveled in the hot gore that bathed him, and guffawed at the scratches of their spears and swords. When finally he realized he was alone amongst the Norwegians on the bridge and that a host stood against him, the rising Sun glinting redly on their steel breasts; then he knew it was time to die. But he did not die. The sea of English swept up to him but not over him. He cursed them time and again, questioned their manhood, taunted their ancestors, but still they advanced and he hewed them down. His limbs felt as lead, and his blood was so hot that he feared it would spurt forth as a fountain from his temple, but he did not fall.
Alexander watched the Sun rise amidst the rising mound of dead, and as the star burned away the mists the grey steel clad Englishmen changed. Now as they advanced upon him they were of every strange and terrible form imaginable. Some were tall and pale with glowing orbs for eyes; some small and frail with large skulls and dark bottomless pits as eyes; some were reptilian; some indescribably strange. None were human, however, and Alexander fought now with a sense of wonder. The rise and fall of the battle took him across the span of the bridge, and below he could spy the grisly mounds of dead beings, bleeding strange blood, spilling strange organs and brains. The sight distracted him, and the motion of the battle regained its speed so that he could hardly keep up with it. Spears pricked at him and, swords cut him even as his notched blade wreaked its fell harvest amongst his weird foes. Then a sharp burning shot up through his loins from below. Alexander glanced down to see a tall flaxen haired being thrusting upwards from the bloody river with a long spear. The weapon found its way beneath Alexander’s hauberk and transfixed his bowels. Alexander’s blood turned cold, and he saw the being grin maliciously at him. A final spasm of rage filled Alexander with a remnant of strength and he heaved a foe over the side of the bridge and upon his tormentor. The gleeful expression of the alien turned to surprise as he was crushed by his comrade. Alexander staggered back, attempting to remove the biting spear from his body with one hand while keeping his foes at bay with “Ragnarok” in the other. It was to no avail. His foes rushed upon him and he was born, torn and pummeled, over the edge of the bridge and into the grisly concoction of water, mud, corpses and gore. Alexander closed his eyes, feeling the life breath of his body leaving through gaping wounds. He waited for the sleep of death to envelope him, but it did not come. When finally he opened his eyes again the bridge at Stamford framed a vibrant blue sky. Julienna leaned over him. It was Julienna, but she was different. She wore the skins he’d caught for her, the jewelry he’d plundered for her, but her flesh was now dark, her eyes were without pupils and they glowed blue. It mattered not a bit; he recognized her without hesitation. “My dear wife,” he whispered. He had breath for no more, and he could not move from the carrion mound.
She looked at him questioningly, and he wondered. Was she not proud? Had he not died well? Did his sons, perhaps, not return? Did she think he’d broken his word? She shook her beautiful head and answered his thoughts, ‘This is not necessary, but redundant. Your sacrifice will not help Terra this time. You must live, Alexander. The answers to all are in your brain. Terra and the Galactics need you alive this lifetime. Do you understand?”
Alexander screwed up his face, or tried to. There was no feeling in it. He tried to raise his hand to wipe the blood from his eyes, but nothing happened. His eyelids fluttered with the effort, and his attention wandered against his will. Words brought him back to the blue sky and the red streaked stone of the bridge. Julienna was no longer there. In her place were ten strange people, including the flaxen haired spearman who had brought him down. Alexander tried to speak, but as before he’d no breath for it. He hoped his eyes expressed his disgust at such a cowardly attack. Apparently they did, as the flaxen haired one’s long face effused laughter.
“However your fall may be accomplished is to our advantage,” the flaxen haired one told him. “Through your own pride shall we defeat you. The legend of your fall will be reflected in our telling, and no glory shall come to you for it. In the end you shall fade from memory. Terra shall live only for the glory of Golkos.”
Then the next figure repeated the litany, “Terra shall live only for the glory of Seer’koh.”
So it went on until all ten strange people repeated their curse. Then, finally, Alexander awoke. The beautiful face and figure of Nazeera again stood over him, but she was dressed in her usual flattering suit of ceremonial armor. Beyond her were the steel bulkheads of their stateroom on the Iowa.
“Well are you going to sleep the morning away?” Her voice was energetic and impatient. “The shuttle is waiting to take you to Terra this moment. What’s the matter, you said you could hardly sleep for waiting to play this golf game of yours in this special place, this “Saint Andrews.” I thought you’d be up hours ago. Is anything the matter? By my mind you look half dead!”
“Then I look better than I felt a moment ago, my dear,” Alexander told her.
“Really, whatever are you talking about?” Nazeera asked, almost concerned.
Instead of answering Alexander looked at her and asked, “Nazeera, did you ever give thought to the possibility that some of your past lives might have been spent as a Terran?”
“What a strange question,” she mused, crossing her arms at the mystery in her man. “You really don’t know much about the universe, do you my husband? It is entirely possible, of course, but it is difficult to identify specifics. Beings do tend to spend most of their life experiences in one, perhaps two worlds. More than two is extremely rare. But looking at the surface memories is no help. You see the one consistency in past life memory between all races is the homogeneity of the memory. All of mine, were I to look at them, would seem to me to originate from Chem, just as all of yours, I know for a fact, are Terran in setting. There seems to be an innate need of identification to a single environment, even in the past life experiences which as a rule do not operate above the subconscious level. Yet if you study these memories you will find that certain ones, like dreams for instance, never make any sense. It is because of placement, not memory. In other worlds and other times they make perfect sense. It is these memories, when correlated to specific historical events on other worlds, which are quite persuasive in estimating the depth and breadth of extra world experience a being might have.”
“There’s a mouthful for my brain this morning,” Alexander groaned. He dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. The hot water brought him slowly back to life. When he emerged Nazeera asked him what spurred his curiosity. He told her his dream, and she frowned. When he asked her why she disliked the answer she crossed her arms and gave him a thoughtful look.
“You have had what the Chem call “Neh Pah,” Alexander: the premonition. Life, as the Universe, moves in cycles and often we ourselves repeat certain cycles of behavior. Your subconscious is warning you that your past behavior may no longer be applicable to your present situation.”
Alexander knew where she was getting at and even, to a certain extent agreed with it. He should distance himself from risk, as had all modern generals and leaders. It was a simple and obvious observation, but it was no longer that easy. The old Alexander could have accepted the necessity, but that Alexander had, for all intents and purposes, died on a Scythian experimentation vessel. The Alexander who was reborn in the face of galactic and personal peril was so utterly driven with honor that such a practical necessity had no real meaning. Alexander knew that honor demanded no regard for personal safety, only steadfast courage. Therefore, though he knew the meaning of his dream he could not accept it, openly at least. His answer was caustic, “My subconscious betrays me then if it desires me to place my own safety above that of Terra. I had not known I had such weakness within me.”
“Wisdom is not weakness, Alexander,” Nazeera told him, as he expected and hoped she would. “Often the most difficult choice is that which follows the wise action over that of glorious disaster. Many an honorable defeat is remembered over the cautious calculated victory. Yet who triumphs in the end?”
Alexander smiled thinly at her, “It seems that my brain and my wife are telling me the battle for Terra has grown beyond the requirement of my personal combat. Can this unfortunate evolution of galactic ambition be true?”
Nazeera pursed her lips, “It is as true as you know it to be, Alexander. Though I flatter myself that you thought my acceptance was important enough to wheedle from me. Let me ask you, how many schemes do you pull upon your wife? Was this dream of yours true, or have you simply been using your knowledge of your past lives to expose my thoughts?”
Alexander laughed, pouring himself some coffee. “No, I’ve never really tried to pull anything over you, my dear,” he told her honestly. “You are far too crafty for me to outwit. The dream was nothing but the truth, and I was concerned with how you’d interpret it. I came to the same conclusions myself and found them biased. I wanted another opinion; one I could trust more than my own. Therefore, I confided in you. That, my dear, is the extent of my scheming.”
“Very well, the explanation is satisfactory,” she told him. Taking a proffered cup of coffee from her husband, she’d developed an affinity for the brew, Nazeera asked, “Why do you have doubt over your present course Alexander? You have, after all, made the decision already. Your strike forces are almost two decants enroute to the Syraptose and Quotterim Homeworlds. How you pried yourself from their helms I do not know. I expected that you would most want to be on the bridge when your forces enter the orbits of your adversaries Homeworlds. Such would be the most glorious moment for a conqueror.”
“If I am a conqueror then I am a reluctant one, my dear,” Alexander told her. “The fact that the Alliance planned to invade Terran space upon the outcome of the Chem Ascension spurred this action, not my desire for conquest. The space we have opened to us now is as large as we need for the time being. From what I know so far the Scythians were hardly interested in the worlds within their space, other than those habitable planets along their trade routes. Even then their scientific studies of those systems are minimal. We have much to do in the next century or two, and the administration of additional worlds or empires for that matter is purely impractical. I cannot get anyone in the Alliance to listen to that skein of philosophy, though. They have an image of Alexander ingrained in their minds, and nothing I can do will change that. It is that image which causes them to mass at my borders, ready for invasion and war. I cannot beat back their invasion. Therefore, I must attack, and attack as Alexander. It seems to me, my dear, that the only way I can protect Terra is to make the fears of the galaxy come true, and conquer it. So be it! If that is what they demand, that is what Alexander will provide!”
“I wonder, my dear Alexander, when the galaxy lies at your feet, as it no doubt will, if your appetite will be quite satisfied. Can Chem remain free and sovereign in Alexander’s galaxy?” That old glint of fear tainted Nazeera’s blue eyes, a memory, perhaps, of her first encounter with Alexander and the threat of Terra.
Alexander smiled, and all her fears melted, “My dear Nazeera, I have conquered all of Chem that matters to me: your heart.” With that said he approached her with obvious intent.
“There will be none of that, Alexander, Overlord of the Terran Empire!” Nazeera ordered, stopping his amorous advance. She pointed him to the dresser where he’d laid out his clothes the night before. “Get dressed. You have a golf game to play!”