Free Timepiece by Heather Albano Page A

instructed the sentries to keep watch for his return, and settled in to hold the line until his superiors could send him more men and more guns.
     
    The copyboys at Whitehall had shuffled their feet and twiddled their thumbs and finally declared themselves unwilling to recall any of the special force regiments stationed abroad, for fear their members might join rather than oppose their fellows. Instead they retrieved the much sparser regiments of human soldiers and dispatched them north to aid Brown in returning the monsters to their cages. By then, of course, it was far too late.
     
    The monsters had access to the finest light weaponry in Britain. They were skilled at Spanish-style guerilla warfare and had been given time to entrench themselves in the Highlands, an ideal ground for employing such tactics. No one at Whitehall had apparently considered the possibility that they could do more than follow the orders they were given, but it transpired that at least some of their number were capable of formulating strategies and commanding others in their execution. Before the end of the first year, they held Fort William. Before the end of the second, they held most of Scotland in a grip no one had managed since the Jacobite rebels of 1745.
     
    And Brown wondered sometimes—if he had listened to the man in gray, could he have actually nipped it all in the bud in 1852? If he had tried and been annihilated doing it, might the news have galvanized London into action? Might it have galvanized Wellington into action? Might purpose have extended Wellington’s life? Brown was irritably aware that Russell’s precious Times daily compared him to Boney’s late vanquisher and daily found him wanting. He’d like to see any of those paper-pushing nancy-boys do better.
     
    “Right this way, sir,” he heard his aide’s voice pipe, and he straightened in the chair, glaring at the tent flap and the government busybody who would step through it. 
     
    “Thank’ee, lad,” the busybody’s voice answered. It was a vaguely familiar voice. Brown frowned, trying to place it—and nearly choked when its owner appeared. It was the man in gray.
     
     
     
    He had not changed. He was wearing gray again, the same oddly styled tweed he had worn the last time, splattered with mud as it had been the last time. His thick white hair fell untidily over his brow exactly as it had that night three years ago, and—and surely it must be a trick of the light, but it seemed as though the bruise on the left cheekbone was likewise unchanged—
     
    The Brown family did not run to madness. It was therefore not possible that the long Scottish campaign had unmanned George Brown and prompted him to see what was not there. Nevertheless, he stared for a moment gape-mouthed at this vision, until the vision smiled crookedly and said, “Ah, good. You remember me. That saves us some time. Do you remember what I said?”
     
    “How in the bloody hell did you get through the picquets?” Brown demanded.
     
    “I said,” the man went on as though he had not spoken, “that they would drive you out of Scotland if you did not subdue them that night. Do you remember what you said?”
     
    “And how did you get away three years ago? Where did you go? I had them scour the hills looking for you—”
     
    “You said that once the first flare of rebellion had burnt itself out, it would be a trivial matter to take back the training center. You said that the monsters might win a brief contest of strength, but without British officers to lead them, their force would degenerate into chaos. You said that once you had reinforcements, it would be simplicity itself for disciplined British troops to take control of them. And that even if they dispersed a little through the countryside before that point, no matter—it was not as though they had the sense to take the high ground, nor the ability to use artillery to defend it.” The man in gray made eye contact. “Do you