Alex raced forward, as if he’d had the same thought. The old, whiskery soldier whose turning head had first led to Chip and Alex raced alongside them, like a guardian fending off attacks. Jonah wondered if the man was a particular friend of theirs—a relative, a servant?—but there wasn’t time to ask.
Chip was fighting furiously now, whipping his sword this way and that, countering his opponent’s every blow. Katherine stood behind him, ducking when he ducked, dodging every parry and thrust.
“Look out!” she shrieked. “On your right!”
But Chip was already reacting, pulling his sword back to block another opponent’s swing of a battle-ax.
“That one’s mine!” the whiskery soldier shouted, spinning his sword forward so Chip could go back to focusing on the first opponent.
It would be impossible to capture Chip’s attention while he was engaged in battle. Jonah took a risk: He leaped off Alex’s back and landed on top of the swordsman who was attacking Chip. This worked better than Jonah had hoped, as the swordsman crumpled to the ground.
Bafflement spread over Chip’s face; it seemed to be a mixture of the tracer not understanding why his opponent had suddenly fallen down, and Chip not understanding how Jonah had appeared out of nowhere.
“Jonah?” Chip whispered.
“We’ve—got—to—leave—now!” Jonah screamed.
The swordsman was squirming out from underneath him. Any minute now he’d spring back into action.
“I’m king again,” Chip said. “I’m getting my crown back.”
“It’s not going to work that way,” Jonah argued. “If you don’t leave, you’re going to die!”
Chip’s face seemed to bubble back and forth, tragic medieval king one moment, uncertain twenty-first-century teen the next. It was like Chip was having trouble making up his mind. And then his face hardened with the strong jawline, the mustache, the wise-beyond-his-years eyes. He was the medieval king.
“Sometimes you have to fight for what you want,” Chip said, his expression set. “Sometimes the fight is all you get.”
“Is this really what you want?” Jonah asked. “Death on a battlefield?”
The swordsman sprang up from behind Jonah, swinging his weapon at Chip. Jonah ducked down out of the way; Chip’s sword rang out against his opponent’s.
“My crown!” Chip cried. “My throne! My glory!”
Jonah jumped up, too angry now for caution.
“You’re just like your father,” he snarled. “Back home. Remember? Remember how selfish he was, how he never thought about anyone but himself? Katherine just told you she wanted you to be her boyfriend, and you don’t even care. You don’t care that we came all the way back here, risking our own lives to save you. When you die—for so-called glory, but for no reason really, accomplishing absolutely nothing—when that happens, Katherine’s going to spend the next five hundred years crying over you.”
Chip stopped in the middle of a sword thrust, though his tracer’s arms continued forward. At the last possible second the whiskery soldier blocked Chip’s opponent, swinging for him again.
Chip turned to face Katherine, his body twisted almost completely backward from his tracer’s. Jonah saw Chip’s opponent blink in astonishment, a burst of tracer light in his face—as far as Jonah could tell, the opponent probably thought Chip had disappeared entirely.
“Would you really cry for five hundred years if I die?” Chip asked Katherine.
Katherine peered up at him.
“I’d rather not,” she said. “I’d rather save your life instead.”
Chip looked around wonderingly, as if he were only now really seeing the battle around him, only now hearing the clash of swords and the zing of arrows and the cries of dying men. Fear and awe battled in his face.
“Let’s get out of here, then,” he whispered.
“Get Alex!” Jonah screamed.
Chip stepped back toward his brother, and Jonah thought it would be good for him to get completely away from his tracer. But the tracer was striding back toward Alex too, practically running.
Alex was in danger: A soldier stood over him, a battle-ax raised high.
“Get him now!” Katherine screamed.
Chip scooped up Alex’s shoulders and yanked him backward. As soon as he was away from his tracer, Alex turned invisible again, like Chip and Jonah and Katherine.
Behind them, Chip’s and Alex’s tracers gleamed with a ghostly light. The soldier with the battle-ax hesitated, confused, separating from a tracer of his own.
“JB!” Jonah hollered. “We’re ready!”
“I’ve got you covered,” the whiskery soldier said, taking something that resembled a plain, flat rock out of his pocket and pushing a button on its surface.
He has an Elucidator, Jonah thought. He’s on our side. He’s from the future too. How come he’s allowed to have an Elucidator and we’re not?
And then Jonah and the others were spinning through time, away from the fifteenth century.
The last thing Jonah saw, before everything disappeared, was a ghostly tracer battle-ax slamming down on two ghostly tracer boys.
THIRTY-SIX
They landed on their backs on solid rock, with a view of a solid rock ceiling arcing above them.
They were back in the cave.
Jonah could hear screaming and wailing, and for a moment he thought they’d brought the battle with them. But these screams were high pitched, like at a middle school pep rally: the voices of teenage girls and boys who could still sing in the treble clef if they needed to.
Dizzily Jonah sat up. He checked to see that Katherine and Chip and Alex—and the whiskery soldier—were all on the floor beside him. Then he faced forward, looking for the source of all those screams. A group of kids were clustered nearby: all the other kids who were missing children plucked from history. He recognized Andrea Crowell, with her long braids; Ming Reynolds, though she was missing her name tag; Emily Quinn, who’d been so calm before (and in fact, she was one of the few kids not screaming now). And behind them, Anthony Solbers and Sarah Puchini and Josh Hart and Denton Price …
A statuesque African-American woman rushed forward—it was their friend Angela, the only adult from the twenty-first century who knew about time travel.