Saturday 15 March 2014

Time War Recruits

Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968).

Who can the Wardens recruit for the time war in the England of Henry VIII? Summoned by voices emanating from their medallions of the Virgin but audible only to themselves, then flown by gravity beams from Dover, Land's End, the Cheviot Hills, London alleys and places between, a hundred men descend on the Warden base and time corridor gate in the Lincolnshire Fens:

discharged soldiers;
semi-buccaneer sailors;
fortune-hunting younger sons;
highwaymen;
tinkers;
Welsh rebels;
Lowland cattle rustlers -

- recruited for religion, money or refuge from hanging.

They will be led along the time corridor to fight Aryan invaders in Denmark, 1827 BC, although what they are told is that they are helping Catholic white magicians against paynim and heretics. Thus it is that the two world powers of the fortieth century wage war in the past.

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