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

by Jack Whyte

  "Hadrian's Wall? Was that his?"

  "Aye. It was built during his reign."

  "It says his father and his grandfather were divine. Were they truly gods?"

  I grinned at him and tousled his hair. "No, but they were emperors. The Romans have always liked to turn their emperors into gods, to show that they were greater than ordinary men."

  "Were they?"

  "No, they were much like the rest of us, and many of them were lesser men. But as emperors they held so much more power than we could ever dream of that it appeared that they must be gods."

  He thought about that for several moments then turned away, looking along the wall that stretched away to our right; its uneven top climbed upward with the rise of the land to a corner turret, some hundred paces from where we stood. Then he looked back, over his right shoulder to the huddle of low, arch-roofed buildings that housed the garrison baths.

  "Are we really going to live here?"

  "Perhaps. We have to find some place to live, and this might suit our needs. What do you think?"

  Arthur Pendragon took some time to look about him more carefully before answering, I watched him, aware of his height, the breadth of his young shoulders and the way he held his head high as he examined the steep, rocky escarpments that reared above this site to the east and south. He then turned completely around, ignoring the watching, waiting group behind us, to gaze out over the tree-filled valley that fell steeply away, beginning some hundred paces from where we stood, to the west, back towards Ravenglass and the distant coast. Above us, on the southern cliff face, the shadow of a cloud swept along the broken, ragged stone.

  "It will be cold up here in winter." I could hear from his tone that he had offered an opinion, not asked a question, so I waited as he completed his inspection, watching his eyes move deliberately along the left-hand section of the wall again and back to the central gateway.

  "Can we go inside?"

  "Of course, but I don't know what we'll find in there. This place has lain empty for a long time."

  "Hundreds of years, Lucanus said."

  "That's right. Shall we go in now?"

  "In a moment. Is there another gate like this in the northern wall?"

  I shrugged. "There must be. It's a Roman fort, so it should have four exits. They might not all be as big as this one."

  "Why not?"

  "Look about you. This is the main gate, facing the enemy. Up here, there's only one way for enemies to approach, and that's along the road, either from the pass, up there, or from the valley below. If they come from the west, below, they would have to leave the road and climb a steep hill over rough ground to attack the western gate—difficult and dangerous. The only alternative, the same open to anyone attacking from the east across the pass there, would be to come around by the road and attack the eastern gate, from above, where there's a parade-ground campus, much like the one below Camulod. I imagine die garrison, when it was here, would have kept the heights above that, on this side of the road, well occupied, posing a threat to the rear of anyone attempting that. On the far side from here, the northern wall runs along the edge of the escarpment. No army could climb that." I paused, gauging the attention with which he had been listening. "So, having heard that, what would you expect to find by way of gates in the walls?"

  The boy hesitated, thinking deeply, and then turned to glance towards where the others in our party still sat their horses, waiting for us to finish.

  "Never mind them, lad. They'll wait for us, just as I am waiting for you."

  He looked back towards me and then down, focusing for a short while on a spot somewhere between him and the ground. Then he raised those startling, golden eyes again to mine.

  "The east wall will have double gates, as big as these, because of the parade ground beyond. And they'll be well fortified against attack from that direction. The western wall will have double gates, too, but smaller, for sorties against minor attacks from beneath. The rear wall, to the north along the cliff, requires no gate, unless it be a small one to allow refuse to be tipped over the edge."

  "Good lad," I said, feeling an absurd lump swelling in. my throat from pride. "That's the exact answer I had formed to my own question, for I've never been here either, you'll recall. Let's go and see if we're right."

  "May I ask another question?"

  "Of course."

  He pointed to the tower ahead of us. "Why are the walls that surround the doors of a different stone from the tower?"

  I grinned at him again. "I'm learning many things today, am I not? You teach well, young Arthur. Now look about you again and tell me why. Take your time, the answer's there in front of you."

  Once again, the boy required little time to reach his answer. He looked about him, beginning with the dressed sandstone pillar between the heavy doors, then running his eyes around the gate's framework and from there to the turreted walls on either side of the central tower. I watched closely as his eyes, empty at first, grew suddenly acute, and I saw awareness grow in them as he turned to gaze up at the cliffs to the south and east. Then he stepped away and bent to wrestle something from the grass-grown ground: a long, flat slab of local stone, in thickness perhaps the width of his boy's palm. He hefted it, testing its weight, then dropped it flat on the cobbles of the causeway beneath our feet, where it shattered into four pieces.

  "It's too soft, and too narrow in its depth. Excellent for building defensive walls, but the other kind of stone was necessary to hold the gates." He was still looking about him, up at the cliffs. "There's none of it here. Where did it come from?" When he realized that I would not respond, he went on again. "They must have brought it in, from some other place. Every single block of it must have been dug up and shaped and then brought here ... No wonder there's not more of it." He looked back at me now, smiling again. "Am I right?"

  "You are. Full credit, and full lauds." As I turned to wave the others forward I congratulated myself on the impulse that had led me to have them wait behind while the boy and I rode forward alone. We had been travelling eastward on the Tenth Iter, an intact, strongly built road eight paces wide, the latter part of our journey a long climb up a staggeringly inclined hill to the high pass the fort had been built to guard, which now lay above us. There, reaching a small plateau beneath the summit, we had emerged from the dense forest, for the first time since leaving Ravenglass, to see the top of the gate-tower of Mediobogdum on our left, partly concealed from view by a steep crest in the short entrance road. Reaching the crest—no more than a hard- won twenty paces from the road—we had enjoyed our first clear view of the empty, silent fort. It looked impressive, from the distance of a hundred or so paces, as grim and invulnerable as the day it had been built, perched on the edge of an abyss beyond which the slopes of the opposing valley's sides were hazed in distance.

  Confronting the view, without forethought and purely on the spur of a momentary urge, I had turned to Lucanus, riding by my left knee.

  "Keep the others here for a while, Luke. I want to take the boy forward with me for his first look. He's the one to whom this place is most important, though he doesn't know it yet. I want to share his first reactions to the place. "

  Lucanus had merely stared at me, raising his eyebrows slightly, then nodded, and I had ridden forward alone, calling the boy to accompany me.

  Now, as the others joined us, dismounting and stretching limbs, I moved forward and pulled on the entrance gate, hoping to be able to open it far enough to allow me to put my shoulder to the task. To my great surprise, it swung* towards me with much more ease than I had expected, the massive, thickly rusted metal hinge pins that held it in place squealing loudly, almost unbearably, as they turned, grinding in the holes that had been chiselled in the sandstone above and below to house them, the weight of the gate itself swinging it fully open to rest against the wall. I turned back to my companions, holding up my arms.

  "My friends ... " All of them stopped moving to watch me, their faces showin
g a broad range of interested, curious expressions. "When we step through this gate, we will be doing more than crossing a mere threshold. We'll be approaching a watershed in our lives. Beyond these gates could lie a new future for all of us. I am moved to make this request of you, and you may think it a strange one.

  "We are here because, we know we could live here, in this place, for the next space of years, if we so choose. But should we choose, that choice should be born out of deep reflection and consideration. These walls above us are sound, but they are ancient. Within the walls, I do not know, nor do you, what we may find, save that whatever we do find will have lain long untouched by man. And so I would like us to proceed from this point on, each one in solitude, uninfluenced by the comments of others. That will be difficult, I know, because the temptation to look at each other and share your initial reactions will be immense and purely natural. Your first reactions might differ, one from another, from disgust to excitement; I have no idea. But I want us to consider them together, later, not in the first, raw moments of speculation. Do you understand what I mean?"

  They did, nodding and muttering in their various ways until Dedalus, as usual, moved matters along.

  "So you want us to walk in silence?"

  "Aye, Ded, I do. But more than that, I want each of us to walk apart. Go as you wish, where you wish, once inside, but try to stay away from the others. Look and absorb and examine and reflect and be honest With yourself, each one of you, but bear in mind what we seek to achieve here. Ask yourself if you can see this place as a temporary home, a place where you could live for several years if need be, and whether it can be adapted and suited to your own purposes and those we share in common."

  Dedalus looked around at his companions and then grinned. "And when may we speak to each other again?"

  "As soon as we are done. When you have seen enough, come back outside. We'll build a fire out here and eat together, and then we'll talk. There is no need to hurry. Let each take all the time he needs. You too, Shelagh. Are we agreed?" ,

  Lucanus spoke for everyone. "You first, Merlyn. We'll follow."

  I stepped from the shadowed passageway through the portals and into the fort with feelings of trepidation and excitement stirring palpably in my breast, aware "of the boy's head at the edge of my vision as he moved to stand beside me just inside the threshold. I wanted him with me, so that I might prompt his thoughts, and perhaps even see things through his eyes. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of my friends following closely, and I stepped away to clear the way, my eyes rapidly scanning the open spaces and the buildings in front of me—seeking, evaluating, assessing and cataloguing. Someone nudged me from behind, and I moved forward, accompanied by young Arthur. Together we walked to where the Via Praetoria, the main central street on which we stood, reached the first of the long, low barracks buildings that stood on either side of it. I was aware of their construction—heavy logs, dry- mossed, green with age and, I suspected, rot—but even as I began to examine them, I was aware that this was not where I wished to begin my inspection of this place.

  Arthur had already passed me and reached the first entrance to the building on the left, leaning his head forward into the darkness beyond the empty space where the door had once hung. I moved to touch him on the shoulder, bringing him back to look up at me.

  "Not here, not yet. Let's go the other way."

  "The floor's concrete, Merlyn. It's dirty, but it's flat and dry and doesn't look cracked or broken."

  "Aye, well, we'll look more closely at that later. Let's head up this way, for now. We'll walk around the intervallum." I led him to the right and together we climbed the short flight of steps that led us onto the narrow perimeter road that hugged the interior, uneven base of the fort's walls.

  "Well," I asked him, as soon as we were up there, "what do you think of this for a Roman road?"

  He glanced up at the wall that reached above our heads at that point, and then followed the line of it with his eyes for approximately twenty paces, to where it dipped out of sight before beginning to rear up again, to climb steadily towards the tower in the south-east corner. That done, he turned and gazed back to where the others were beginning to spread throughout the grounds of the fort. The ground beneath our feet at this point was a hump of solid rock, bare even of moss, and from where we stood, the plan of the fort, classic as it was, was clearly discernible, with the high, arched concrete roof of the granaries marking the central administrative area unmistakably.

  "It's different," he said eventually, his tone speculative.

  "Aye, but how is it different? You'll have to be clearer than that, to pass this test"

  He grinned at me. "The whole fort is different, and it had to be." I said nothing, waiting for him to expound on that, and after a pause he did, looking all around him as he spoke.

  "This fort is built to accommodate itself to the terrain, isn't it? There has been no effort made to level it, as there would be with any ordinary fort. This road goes up and down with the walls and the lie of the land. Bowmen could shoot from down there, beneath the walls on the other side, and pick us off up here, but—" He looked up at the wall again. "But the parapet walk up there is wider at this point, probably to hold more defenders to guard against that. This isn't a road we're on as much as pathway, smoothed out. Not really built."

  "A pathway? For whose convenience?" God, but I was proud of this boy! His eight-year-old mind was fertile and intuitive, showing an awareness and astuteness I would not have looked for in a recruit twice his age. At sixteen, most boys knew nothing militarily useful. He was already answering me.

  "The garrison's, of course, to allow them to move to wherever they were needed."

  "Why? Wouldn't they do just as well using the parapet walk?"

  He looked at me wryly. "In an attack? They'd be falling all over each other, pushing one another off the walls. There's only room for one or two men at a time up there."

  "Of course. You're right. Silly of me."

  He smiled at me again. "You knew that. You simply wanted to find out if I knew it."

  "I did." I ruffled his hair and stepped out again, and we walked in silence until we reached the south-east corner with its square angle-tower. Arthur stopped by the narrow steps leading up to the parapet walk.

  "There's no door in the tower. What's in there?"

  "Nothing, probably. It would have been used for storage."

  "Then how did they get in?"

  "From above, by a ladder through a hole in the floor up there."

  "Can we go up?"

  "Certainly, but be careful of the steps."

  He was already halfway up, scampering almost on all fours, and I had to call to him as I followed more slowly while he ran the few steps to the tower's entrance.

  "Careful, Arthur, don't go in there! That floor is old and probably unsafe. Fall through it and we'd have a hard time digging you out."

  Sure enough, when I caught up with him, he was leaning against the doorway, gazing at where the few remnants of the ancient wooden floor sagged dustily towards the black depths of the lower level. He was making hooting noises like an owl through his cupped hands, his head cocked slightly to one side listening for an echo answering him from the depths beneath. Across the gulf that had been the floor of the room, another entrance, as naked of a door as this one was, offered a glimpse of the eastern parapet walk and the land beyond the wall on the eastern side. The jut of the tower walls on either side, however, prevented us from seeing anything of scope or value.

  "D'you think they were ever attacked up here, Merlyn?" His wide, golden eyes were straining to see into the blackness beneath the remnants of the floor.

  "They might have been, on occasion, but I doubt the attacks were ever strong or victorious. This place is too well fortified to tempt attackers. So I doubt, too, that there are any human bones down there, if that's what you're looking for."

  His eyes swung to meet mine. 'Then what happened to the floor?"


  "It collapsed, that's all. This fort has been here since the days of the Emperor Hadrian, remember? That was hundreds of years ago ... hundreds of years before even your Great-grandfather Varrus was born. A wooden floor will last for a long time, if it's cared for and maintained, but it will rot and decay quickly, like anything else, if it's left to the mercy of the weather, as this one was. A tree will fall and rot away to almost nothing in one man's lifetime. A flat, solid wooden floor will dry out and rot in much less time than that, if it's not-looked after. The doors would have gone first, fallen off their rusted hinges, and once they were gone, the wind and rain and damp were free to do their damage."

  "Oh." His eyes had moved away and he was looking over my shoulder now, to where the southern shoulder of the Fell behind me seemed to scrape against the sky. "Would enemies attack from up there?"

  I turned to look where he was pointing. "Why don't you tell me? Would they?"

  His brow clouded and he moved to the wall, where he suddenly became a small boy again, lodging a toe awkwardly between two stones and straining to pull himself up to peer over the top of the parapet that barely reached my shoulder. He made the ascent on his second try and hung there, arms duelling the top, his toes pinched inward side by side in a narrow crack in the stonework, his head moving from side to side on its impossibly slender neck as he scanned the ground beyond. The mountain top he had been looking at was half a mile away from us on the other side of a steep gully, on the far side of the road from Ravenglass. He remained there for a long time, looking out silently, the wind ruffling his dark brown hair with its golden streaks. Finally he grunted and released his hold, dropping backwards to the parapet walk.

  "No, they wouldn't. Can we go down now?"

  "Lead the way. Why wouldn't they?"

  "It's too far away, and too difficult. Anyone stupid enough to come down from there to attack would deserve to be defeated." He was skipping nimbly down the steep, narrow stone steps to the ground; I was following much more carefully. When I reached the bottom, he walked beside me, his eyes on the ground now, looking for anything that might be there waiting to be found.