The sway of the train and the steady clacking of wheels across joints in the track might have lulled Stirling to sleep, if the dull throb of pain from wrist and knee hadn't kept up a steady counterpoint to the rhythm of the rails. He'd sat stiffly upright and correct in his seat for the first quarter of an hour out of the station, before giving up all pretense of appearances and simply eased himself into the least uncomfortable position he could manage. The newspaper he'd picked up in London lay in untidy folds on the seat, unable to hold his interest despite articles on Northern Ireland's continuing Troubles and some archaeologist's claim that a major volcanic eruption on Krakatoa in the middle of the sixth century a.d. had disrupted worldwide weather patterns for more than a decade, triggering the worldwide failure of agriculture, the mass migration of various peoples and a spread of plague throughout Britain, all across Europe, even creating population upheavals in Ireland. The bloke quoted in the article even blamed the eruption for the Dark Age's collapse of European civilization—including the defeat of King Arthur's Britons by Saxon invaders.

Somehow, he couldn't work up much enthusiasm about events from the year 538 a.d. when his body ached from still-mending injuries sustained in a firefight he should never have been involved in, in the first bloody place. He had, at least, come a long way since his initial discharge from hospital. Belfast to Blackpool by military airlift, down through Manchester and Derbyshire by rail to London and a battery of surgical specialists to repair his knee, then from London to York and points north by rail, on his way to a new posting he didn't particularly want. In fact, the only good thing he could find in the assignment Ogilvie had handed him, his first day out of rehab in London hospital, was the location.