Trudging closer, he noted other unique features. For one thing, the boots were almost new; for another, stitched to the outside of each calf was a holster and each holster contained a miniature wheellock horsepistol—light, beautiful, and richly decorated they were, with bores looking to be about .50 caliber, smallbore for this time and place. Furthermore, the boots appeared to be about Foster’s own size.
Deciding to take boots and pistols as well—the stripping of useful equipment or valuables from enemy slain was here commonplace and, indeed, part of a soldier’s reward for winning battles—he had knelt to unbuckle the high straps when the gilded sword hilt attracted him. He drew the weapon and hefted it, then whistled soundlessly. The long, bluish blade bore blood streaks, so it certainly had been in use during these hellish three days, yet it still retained a racor edge and a sharp point. It looked about as long and as wide as any average broadsword, but it was so finely balanced as to feel feather-light even to his tired, aching muscles. On impulse, he worked the baldric of Kelly-green leather off the stiff corpse, slid the exceptional sword into its case, set it aside, and started to turn back to his original purpose.
But something drew his eyes back to the Irishman’s torso. The dagger? He pulled it far enough out to see that it was of the same steel as the sword; he added it and its belt to his trophies. No, not the dagger, the hand. The cold, gray hand, its callused fingers splayed upon the hacked and dented breastplate. No, not the hand, either, the ring. Something about the ring.
At first, Foster involuntarily recoiled at the feel of the cold, clammy, dead flesh, but he set himself to the task. At last he managed to wrench off the gold ring.
So poor was the light and so worn down the lettering t at first it seemed indecipherable. Then he painfully pit out the words MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF Tl NOLOGY CLASS OF 1998!
Foster sank back onto his haunches, stunned, his awhirl of inchoate, half-formed thoughts. How? Wh Where? Who? Impossible, yet the proof of possibility clenched in his hand.
“But how can I call anything impossible,” he mused, “after all that happened last spring? I was born fifth of January, 1930, which makes me almost forty-tl years old. This man is … was … at least my age, that tallies with the wear and tear of the ring; hell, it’s smooth, in places.
“But 1998? Did I read it wrong? No, that’s a nine, right, one, nine, nine, eight. Most guys finish college twenty-two, twenty-three. Christalmightydamn! This guy is . . . wasn’t . . . hasn’t been even born yet
“I wonder . .. could he have had anything to do with happened to me, to us, all of us? Alive, God, think of the answers he might have given me. But, hell, all he does dead! just complicate the problem.”
The aurochs horn bellowed its summons yet again, clc this time. He shook his head, rose again to his knees, and i ished unbuckling the dead man’s boot tops, worked them < the rigid legs, rose, and fastened them together. When were shing over Prideful’s withers, he added his sword baldric, replacing them with the mysterious man’s richer equipage. Attached to the dagger belt were a powder flask and a lacquered-leather box fitted for and taining a wad of greased-cloth patches, a dozen bullets, a br mold for casting them, and the spanner for winding the tols’ mechanisms, as well as a small flask of fine pr powder. Once two loaded and primed pistols were thrust der his belt and a keen, finely balanced sword hung at side, he felt a good deal more confident that he could with whatever might lie ahead. Among the pile of dead men, he found two almost waterbottles. Jerking out the cork, he raised one of th greedily gulped down about half of it. The cold water liberally laced with strong whiskey, and soon the warmth his belly was spreading out into his chilled limbs, soothing i multitudinous pains, replacing his almost-sapped stores of < ergy, dispelling a measure of his mental fogginess.