For King & Country by Robert Asprin, Linda Evans, James Baen Page A

very need to search her out. And if the natives grew too suspicious, they might well either confine or kill someone who had apparently gone mad or turned traitor.
Nobody ever said the SAS was an easy job.
When he got his hands on McEgan, or rather on her host...
    What if she inhabited someone he couldn't safely kill?
    For that matter, could he safely kill
anyone
without risking the whole future?
    "Any last-minute instructions?" Stirling asked. "What's this transfer going to feel like? How do I get home again? What happens if my host's body is killed before I complete this mission?"
    Marc Blundell, who sat at a computer console beside Dr. Mylonas, said over one shoulder, "Terrance Beckett said it was like being kicked in the head by a mule. As for the other, you'll return home when the timer begins shutting the transfer equipment's power down, a year from now."
    "What if the power goes off?"
    Blundell tried to smile. "We're operating on our own generators, Captain. Snap generators."
    Nuclear power in a compact package. Bloody wonderful. At least a simple thunderstorm shouldn't be able to disrupt power to the equipment.
    "We don't know what will happen if your host body is killed," Blundell added unhappily. "You might die from the mental shock. It could disrupt your own energy pattern of consciousness, when the host's pattern is disrupted. You might find yourself floating about, like a ghost, possibly a permanent state, or perhaps only until someone comes close enough for you to transfer into another host. We just don't know."
    "But I wouldn't, say, return here?"
    "No." Blundell hesitated. "What the shock might do to your body here, we don't know either. Dr. Beckett's heart was badly strained by the entire transfer process."
    "But he wasn't young," Blair put in grimly. "Bloody lousy candidate for the procedure, but it was his project, his decision.
He
wanted to be the first to make history. Dr. McEgan and I barely got his heart restarted, when the timer brought him back." The savage tone implied,
And she killed him, afterwards, in cold blood.
    "How close will I arrive on their heels?" Stirling wanted to know, wiping sweat onto his trousers from damp hands.
    "The method isn't precise," Blundell said quietly, adjusting his equipment. "You should arrive after them, as they've been gone for more than an hour now, but it may be weeks or even months afterward. It might conceivably be
prior
to their arrival."
    I've let these people strap me into a time-traveling shotgun and they can't even bloody well aim it!
    Eventually, there was nothing anyone could add that wasn't sheer speculation. Dr. Mylonas detached himself from his computer long enough to say, "We're ready for the transfer, Captain. I've pinpointed it as closely as I can."
    Trevor Stirling swallowed very hard. Tried to brace himself. "Right. Do it, then."
    The last thing he heard was a chorus of good-luck wishes from the scientists.
    Then a very large mule kicked him between the eyes.
    * * *
    Lailoken the minstrel, a dark man full of dark ambitions and angers, bitter from professional failures and personal losses, strode down the verge of the ancient Roman road which angled westward out of Gododdin, singing to an audience of bracken, cracked stones, and rainclouds. His harp and flute lay nestled at the bottom of the rucksack hitched over his shoulder, wrapped in waterproof sealskin bags which were, along with the instruments themselves, the most valuable things he owned. Without them, he would've been utterly penniless. But poverty didn't matter to him this morning, any more than his tattered and patched cloak mattered, or his worn boots, or his much-mended tunic and trousers, their plaids faded nearly to grey. None of it mattered, because he was the most blessed man in Britain.
    Between sunset the previous night and dawn this morning, Lailoken had been chosen by the gods of old, the gods of thunder and blood sacrifice and revenge. They had singled him out as a worthy vessel