The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend cc-5

by Jack Whyte

  What followed next was an object lesson in defiance and sheer courage that I have never forgotten. One man, wearing a long blue cloak and a horned helmet, which led me to presume him the commander of the craft, moved purposefully along the central spine of the vessel, blatantly disdaining us and our missiles as he harangued the remaining members of his crew. At his urging, they organized themselves into some semblance of a unit again, bending to their oars in unison as he banged a short-sword against his shield, beating a cadence they could follow. I was not the only one who noted his behaviour, and as awareness of his actions spread along the wall, so, too, did silence, until no sound at all came from our battlements. All men, I think, revere the brave, and the spectacle being played out in front of us was one of extreme bravery. After the silence fell, only one shot was fired towards the Erse captain, and the bowman was shouted down and reviled by his own comrades, so that he stood shamefaced.

  Five, six, seven strokes the oarsmen made, and then their captain called for them to stop. A knot of swimming men lay just abreast of them, and we watched as the men in the galley threw ropes to the swimmers. When they were safe aboard, the captain strode to the stern and stared up at us, then shouted more orders. The galley turned and moved slowly towards another group of swimmers, hauling them aboard as well. All of this occurred while they were still within easy range of our catapults, but we made no move to threaten them further, until another vessel from the stationary lines behind them sought to move forward.

  Longinus leaped to his catapult, shouting orders, and his men began immediately to elevate the device, aiming it skyward. Longinus sighted and calculated, making swift adjustments until he was satisfied, then jumped back and threw the lever, launching the bolt. We watched it as it soared upward, shortening then lengthening as it began its downward curve. It sliced into the sea mere paces ahead of the oncoming galley, making barely a splash. The message was plain. The vessel sheared away. The rescuers continued with their work throughout, ignoring or unaware of the event. Somehow, without a word being said, the captain of the Erse craft below knew he could complete his task in peace.

  At one point, a small boat of some kind was lowered from the galley and three men climbed into it. While one worked the sculls, the other two retrieved a lifeless body. Its clothing was colourless, waterlogged, but I knew they had recovered their admiral. That done, and now fully crewed again, the galley swung away and joined the rest of the fleet, after which all sixteen vessels turned and made their way beyond the island.

  The men lining the parapet began to turn away, all strangely subdued, despite the totality of the victory. As they began to file by us, headed towards the stairs and talking quietly among themselves, Longinus turned to me.

  "Brave whoreson, that. I wonder who he was."

  I shook my head. "I don't know, but Connor might. You think they'll come back?"

  He looked me in the eye and pursed his lips, then shook his head. "I doubt it. Would you? My guess is, they'll go home and raise a bigger fleet, then they'll come back, looking for blood." He glanced away, to where Connor's men were pouring rapidly, in disciplined files, down the stairs from their positions on the wall. "Where are those fellows going in such a hurry?"

  I noted the serious expressions on the faces of the passing men, and returned a nod to Sean as he hurried by. Wherever they were going, they clearly had a purpose. "I don't know," I responded, "but they might be on their way to Liam's galleys, to take them out, down to the spot where they concealed their own vessels yesterday. Connor will not feel comfortable until he has his own deck back beneath his feet again, and as long as there remains the slightest chance that Condran's fleet might stay around, looking for vengeance for their admiral, Connor won't lie easy on land."

  'The Ersemen will be back, with others, looking for revenge," Longinus said darkly, "and this time they'll know what to expect."

  I watched the last of Connor's men disappear from view, then turned back to face him. "Not quite, my friend," I said, smiling. "They'll have respect for your weapons, I've no doubt of that, but by the time they decide to return, Connor Mac Athol will have gone home too. Remember, they don't know he's here. When they come back, they might find their passage contested by a fleet to match their own."

  His eyes widened, and then he grinned and nodded. "Aye, I'd forgotten that. Let's find something to drink. By all the gods, man, we just defeated an entire fleet of Ersemen." He turned away, roaring for Derek, and we were suddenly surrounded by a throng whose noisy enthusiasm waxed rapidly with the growing realization of what they had achieved.

  Connor and his men were noticeably absent from the celebrations that began immediately following the victory. They had, as I had suspected, gone to collect their galleys. Donuil confirmed it when he came looking for me some time later. In spite of the general euphoria of the gathering, however, I found myself vaguely depressed, unable to stop thinking of the sight of Liam's whirling corpse soaring up and outward from the wall to crash down on the galley beneath. It was a common topic of conversation that morning, laughed over and discussed again and again as people mingled and moved about in the thronged space beneath the walls, but I could find nothing humorous in it. The hanging of the Erse dead I could stomach as a gruesome, even necessary warning of the violence that awaited any who might treacherously challenge us. But the deliberate defilement of a corpse—even the corpse of a creature like Liam—offended everything I had been taught concerning the dignity of the dead. Eventually I removed myself and stood apart from the celebrations, ignoring everyone and thinking my own thoughts.

  Lucanus materialized by my side after a while but read my mood and remained silent, content to sip at his drink beside me, A short time later Donuil and Hector drifted over to us, talking quietly, and soon after that Rufio and Dedalus emerged from the crowd and joined us as well. Rufio huddled immediately with Donuil and the others and Ded came towards me. I was surprised to notice that he clutched an ale pot, for Ded never drank intoxicants. He noticed my glance and grinned, toasting me silently before taking a deep gulp that left a white ring around his lips.

  "Buttermilk," he said. "Cold. You don't look happy, my friend and commander. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing is wrong, Ded. We've just won a bloodless victory. How could anything be wrong?"

  "I don't know, but you, from the look of you, evidently do." His eyes hardened. "Should we be concerned?"

  "No, not at all." I realized that I was being obscure and shook my head. "I was thinking of Liam Condranson, that's all—about shooting him like that, from the ballista."

  Ded's eyes widened now in surprise. "You don't approve of that? I thought it was inspired, the only disappointment being that the whoreson was already dead. It was Connor's idea—brilliant, I thought."

  "Brilliant? Why brilliant? I thought—I still think—it was barbarous."

  "Barbarous?" He blinked at me, as though wondering if I had lost my wits. "Of course it was barbarous, Merlyn, but so was Liam. And so, for all of his polished charm, is Connor. These people are Ersemen, not Roman-trained aesthetes from Camulod! They fight among themselves constantly and they have different rules from ours. We would never shoot our enemies off castle walls like that, but, by God, perhaps we should! It might make us less vulnerable.

  ·

  Seeing Liam tumbling through the sky towards them like that, his people saw an eloquent statement of Connor's assessment of their best, and of the treacherous whoreson's methods. As I said, too bad he was already dead."

  I had no adequate response to that, and so I merely nodded and handed him my empty cup. "Take care of that for me. I'm going for a walk. I've matters on my mind and I must think a while."

  Sometime later, I found myself beyond the walls, on the outer fringe of the common marketplace. I was walking towards Shelagh, who sat on a low wall beside Turga with her back to me, both of them watching Arthur and the other three boys at play. A knot of local children stood close by, watching our four but making no
attempt to join their game, which was, in fact, a training exercise devised by Rufio to sharpen their slinging skills.

  The boys stood roughly twenty paces apart on the four corners of an imaginary square, and their game consisted of hurling a fist-sized pebble from one to the other, the object being for the receiver to catch the flying stone and hurl it to the next. The rules were complex, and accuracy figured highly in the scoring. The stone was almost perfectly spherical, bound in strips of leather that were braided to form a handle two handspans long, and it was thrown with a round-arm sweep, much like a slung stone. One point was won by catching the stone itself, but three points could be scored by catching it by the handle, which permitted the ongoing throw to be carried out without changing grip. The boys could play the game for hours.

  The two women heard me approach and turned to greet me, but I motioned to them to stay where they were. I sat on the wall beside Shelagh, and we continued to watch in silence for a while. None of the boys had yet noticed my arrival, so complete was their concentration.

  "Who's winning?' I asked, eventually.

  Shelagh responded without looking at me. "Bedwyr's in the lead, for the moment, by twelve points. Arthur's not happy. He missed three consecutive catches and threw two fouls, one to the ground and one too far away for Gwin to reach. Those cost him dearly. He had been ahead before that." She paused. "You had quite a successful morning."

  "Aye, it went as expected. The surprise was against them. They sailed in and were driven off without casualties to us. Where were you while it was going on?"

  "In our quarters. I kept the boys inside until it was all over."

  "That must have been difficult."

  She turned to look at me. "They were not exactly happy, but they knew there was nothing to be done, so they made the best of it. You sank two galleys?"

  "Aye." I told her then about the bravery of the captain of the central galley, and she listened closely.

  "A blue cloak, you say, and a horned helmet? Was the cloak bright blue?"

  "Aye, it was brighter than any other. Do you know the man? Who was he?"

  She shook her head. "There's a captain among them called Modrin, famed as a warrior. It might have been him. He is said to wear a bright blue cloak and a helmet crowned with the tined horns of a stag. Did you see that? Were they antlered?"

  "I don't know. I didn't notice. He was quite far away."

  Shelagh stood up, saying something I could not hear to Turga, and then turned to me, hitching a large and spacious leather satchel over her shoulder by its carrying strap.

  "Come, Merlyn, walk with me. I want to talk to you, and if the boys notice you here, they'll be all over us."

  We turned our backs on the boys and their game and began to stroll along the path towards the forest where I had been ambushed. Shelagh moved to walk ahead of me as we reached a short length of pathway that was almost overgrown and hemmed in oh both sides by high, rank grasses. As we went, I heard my name called urgently in a high, boyish voice and knew we had been discovered.

  Shelagh glanced sidelong at me. "Don't look back. Pretend you didn't hear. I told Turga to tell them we may not be disturbed, and to stop them if they try to follow us."

  I shrugged and proceeded as though I were a deaf man. Though I was looking down at my feet, I was aware that I was highly conscious of Shelagh's body today, more so than I had been in a long time, and the awareness disconcerted me. She wore a long, full-skirted gown made of a soft, green material that clung revealingly to hips and breasts. As she threaded her way through the narrow passage, she gathered her skirts casually in one hand to protect them from thorns and snags., unconsciously bringing her swaying hips and buttocks into prominence with the tightening of the soft cloth. Fortunately, the narrowest length of the path was short, and we were able to walk side by side thereafter, where the most prominent thing I had to worry over was the soft upper sweep of her breasts. I solved that problem, temporarily at least, by concentrating on the path ahead of us.

  Neither of us felt the need to speak, and we walked in comfortable silence broken only by the liquid song of a blackbird. I helped her across the ditch at the edge of the woods, then led the way as we descended the slope.

  "This is where I was attacked, the other day."

  She glanced around, eyeing the thick briars that had ripped my hands and face so badly. "Hmm," she murmured. "You should give thanks that Donuil noticed you passing and came after you. You might as well be miles from anywhere, out here. What's up there?"

  I looked up along the pathway that mounted the hill beyond the little clearing. "No idea," I said. "I didn't go beyond this point."

  "Then let's go and see. Your man in the yellow tunic must have gone up there."

  The path led us upward, steepening rapidly, until it became difficult to walk upright and we found ourselves proceeding almost on all fours at several points, leaning forward to obtain purchase as we climbed. The first time that happened, I found myself distracted again by the sight of Shelagh's buttocks ahead of me and the occasional flash of white leg as she pulled herself ahead. We reached a level spot and stood upright, both of us panting.

  "Is this worth the effort?" I asked.

  She glanced at me, blowing an errant curl from in front of her eyes then looking up and ahead again. "I think so. Look, we're almost at the top."

  She was right, and moments later we stood among the few trees that crowned the almost bare hilltop. Looking back, we could see the top of Derek's eastern wall beneath us, surprisingly close beyond a fringe of small trees, the clutter of the town laid out behind it. No one stirred on the wall, and in the distance, on the western parapet, one of Longinus's great catapults still raised its arm vertically above the harbour. The streets of the town were jammed with people.

  "It's like looking down on an ant hill," Shelagh said, then she turned to look in the opposite direction. "Look at the mountains!"

  The ranks of rising hills stretched into the far, eastern distance to become peaks and ramparts against the sky. 'They're called the Fells," I said, admiring the peaceful beauty of them. "Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

  She turned and inspected the tiny hilltop, looking for some place to sit. There was one small, dead tree, tipped over on its side, die bark stripped and worn away and its upper surface polished by the rumps and feet of visitors. She perched on its narrow seat, and I moved to lean against another tree close by. She drew her top lip back from startlingly white teeth and tapped a fingernail against them, clearly unconcerned that I might find the gesture unattractive.

  "I've been thinking about the future," she said, and then she lapsed into silence.

  I nodded. "So have I. What have you been thinking about?"

  "Your name."

  I blinked at her, absorbing that and finding it meaningless. "What about my name?"

  "What is it?" She grimaced and shook her head impatiently, dismissing my blank-faced bewilderment. "Oh, never mind, I'll tell you. You have four names."

  "No, I have three: Caius, Merlyn and Britannicus."

  She graced me with an exaggerated, dimpled smile and tucked her skirts beneath her thighs, limning them clearly and drawing my eyes as targets draw arrows. "No, you have four, and it was hearing the fourth of them last night, during our meeting, that made me think."

  "Shelagh," I sighed, "I have no idea what you are talking about." '

  "Lucanus called you Cay last night."

  "Of course, he often does. So do you, from time to time. All my close friends and family call me Cay."

  "Exactly!" she crowed, as though she had distinctly won the point. "The fellow in the yellow tunic, do you think he came up here?"

  "What?"

  "What? Would you think, man? Dia! This thing's too narrow and lumpy to sit on for long." She moved quickly, half rising to her feet to free her skirts, then swung one leg demurely over the tree trunk to sit astride it like a horse, rearranging her lap impatiently before swinging her head around t
o face me again. "Look, the man ran away from you because he knew you and he obviously thought you would know him. He knew you were Merlyn of Camulod, and he ran away because he knew that knowledge made him dangerous. To you. Why? It's as plain as your great Roman beak! Because he intended to sell the information that you were here, to someone who would pay well for it.

  "Derek knew you, too, when we arrived. Merlyn of Camulod, he called you, and he lost no time in telling you we couldn't stay, because the word that Merlyn was here in Ravenglass would bring destruction swarming about his head from Cornwall and from Cambria and every other place where Merlyn's name is known, because Merlyn of Camulod is guardian of the Pendragon brat! Have you met many others since you've been here? Others who know your name?"

  I nodded. "Aye, a few."

  "And what do they call you? Merlyn?" I nodded again. "And would King Derek ever call you Caius?"

  "No."

  "Or Cay?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "Good! Then that's settled. When are you going to look at this new place, the fort? Tomorrow, still?"

  "Yes, tomorrow morning—but I still can't see what's settled, as you say."

  She shook her head slowly, half smiling, widening her eyes as she gazed at me. "Oh, Merlyn, Merlyn ... Here am I talking to you as an equal, and you respond like an ordinary, stupid, sightless man ... " Her smile broadened to a grin. "Ah well, I'll be an Erse enchantress, then, and speak mystic secrets to you."