by Jack Whyte
"Consciously, you mean."
He stared at me. "Aye. That is what I mean. But the bandages Oppius used in his studies were clean and washed."
"Some boiled, but some not?"
"Yes, and I see what you are implying, but we have only the words of Oppius, written a hundred years ago and more, from which we can infer any difference between the two. And let me be explicit: his findings in this case, and his proposal that the application of heat, in the boiling process, may make a material difference to the dressings, seem outlandish to me."
"I accept that, but ... " I was perplexed, and totally aware that I was beyond my depth in discussing such matters, and yet a point had occurred to me and I wanted to present it.
"We know, Luke, those of us who have any knowledge of the art of smithing championed by Publius Varrus, that the application of heat—extreme heat—invariably has the most salutary effect on iron, the hardest metal known to man. Cold iron is practically impossible to work. Heat it red-hot, however, and you may work your will on it. Heat it white-hot, and you may tie it in knots ... " I paused, considering my own words. "I know that cloth bandages, dressings, have nothing akin to metal in their make-up, but heat applied to them is heat in either instance. Is it not, then, conceivable that the link, if there is a link, may lie in the heat, the temperature itself, rather than in the material being heated?"
Lucanus stood up at that point, smiling broadly and tightening his belt. "I have no idea," he answered. "You may be right, my friend, and you may be completely wrong. Neither of us has the means of gauging the truth, in either direction. Nonetheless, I like the way you think. It has a clarity that is all too uncommon among those around us. I promise you that I will think on this, and try to see if I can find some way to investigate this matter further without endangering the health of anyone. In the meantime, I have promised Shelagh that I will wait on her before first light, before she leaves her rooms to join the excursion. I will talk more of this with you later. In the meantime, try to remember that there is nothing wrong with you. You are completely healthy, without flaw, apart from one small blemish that the sun will obliterate. Farewell." He left me then, allowing me to dwell on my reprieve and on my sudden, swift return to health.
Mere moments later, Ded had stormed into the kitchens looking for Rufio, and I had been up and out into the predawn freshness, joining the bustle already long under way in the crowded street in front of the old Praesidium, so that as the sun arose, it shone directly into my new, unblemished outlook on life.
Now I squeezed Germanicus between my spurred heels and brought him backing around to face the road ahead of us. Shelagh and Lucanus were already in motion, riding together slowly, side by side, towards the distant eastern gate. Ahead of them I could see Dedalus and Rufio riding on either side of Ambrose. Ludmilla sat in comfort on the driver's bench of our largest wagon, beside Turga and Hector, who held the reins, and the four boys on their piebald ponies were lost to view, beyond the gate already. I waved a last farewell to Derek, who stood watching from the forecourt of his massive house, then raised my arm above my head and gave the signal to move out. Twelve miles ahead of us and far above our heads lay Mediobogdum.
NINE
"Very well, I am going to admit defeat before you even challenge me. I confess you have me beaten, outmanoeuvred and outfoxed. I have no hope of guessing what it might be and so I must ask you, what is it?"
I had stopped moving as soon as I heard Ambrose begin to speak from behind me, and now I continued to stand, bent forward slightly, my arms outstretched, my hands loosely cradling the upper end of the length of wood I had been swinging, still breathing heavily from my exertions. I felt my face creasing into a smile as I visualized my brother's possible reactions to what I would tell him. Then I drew a deep breath and straightened up slowly, turning to face him and throwing the object in question to him, underhand. He caught it easily and held it upright at arm's length in front of him.
"You tell me," I said. "What does it look like?"
"It looks like a heavy stick, a branch torn from some old tree, stripped of its bark and dried, possibly in a kiln, then covered with carving. I am tempted to call it a long, purposeless stick, but then I know my earnest, conscientious brother Merlyn would never waste his time with anything as simple as a stick. So I must ask again—what is it?"
"It's a stick, as you said."
"Aha!" He nodded sagely. "But a solid stick, a formidable stick, would you not agree? A stick of substance, long and heavy."
"Yes, I would agree, on both counts, which is why I was using it."
"I see." He nodded again, his face grave, for all the world as though he knew what I was speaking about and we were having a perfectly rational conversation. "Yes, I can see why a rational man might wish to have such an excellent stick, so solid and substantial, of such evident, straightforward purpose. A man could lean on a stick like that, to aid him as he walked, if he were infirm, or older than you are."
"Aye, and if the thing were longer than it is, but it's too short. It is a stick, after all, not a staff. But then, I had no thought of walking with it."
"Hmm. Yes, I could see that. You were ... swinging it about your head, were you not?"
"I was."
"Aye, I thought you were ... Would it vex you if I asked you why?"
"No, it would not. I was exercising my arms—my shoulders, in fact."
My brother stared at me, allowing no hint of raillery to show upon his face. He was seeking a way to lead this strange conversation further, in the hope, I knew, of discovering what I was up to without having to ask me bluntly again. He was holding the stick awkwardly now, uncertain of how to proceed, and I decided to help him out. I bent quickly, flexing my knees, and retrieved another length of wood, almost identical, from the grass at my feet.
"I have two of them, see? Would you like to learn their use?"
His face cleared immediately and his teeth flashed in a broad smile. "I would," he said.
"Good, then I'll show you, but you'll have to remove that cloak, at least until you learn the knack of what we'll be about."
As he fumbled with the fastening of his cloak, holding the stick beneath his arm to free his hands, I removed my helmet, indicating that he should do the same. Moments later, we stood facing each other, each of us wearing a leather cuirass, front and back, over our pleated, knee- length Roman tunics.
"Now, do as I do. This is very simple." I held my arms outstretched towards him, my stick grasped easily in both hands at its ends. He did the same, and I beckoned him towards me until our fists were touching, knuckle to knuckle. Then I raised my arms vertically over my head, feeling my stomach flatten and the flexor muscles of my shoulders stretch, and I watched Ambrose closely as he copied my movements exactly. This was a flexing movement I found easier now than I had a few months earlier, when I first began these exercises. In the beginning, I had cramped quickly, my muscles unused to the contortions to which I was suddenly subjecting them. Now, after months of practice, I was more supple, much more flexible, and I knew Ambrose would already be feeling the strain in his shoulders.
"Comfortable?"
He nodded, the slightest hint of perplexity in his eyes, and while his head was yet dipping I released my left hand, whipping my long, heavy stick around to the right and down from above my head to whack loudly against the thickened hide of his heavy cuirass, sending him reeling but unhurt, releasing his own left hand from its grip on his stick so that his right waved aimlessly, still clutching his "weapon." Before he could recover, I leaped in close and whacked him again, this time with an upsweeping, backhanded blow from left to right that took him viciously beneath the right shoulder, rattling against the covering over his ribs and once again forcing him to fall back. Even as he went I was on the move again, gripping my stick firmly now in both hands and driving the end of it forward, hard and fast, my weight solidly behind it, to strike him clean above the breastbone so that his balance was undone at last and he
fell on his rump. As soon as he was down, I leaped back and crouched, facing him, holding my stick firmly in a two-fisted grip, one end pointed unwaveringly at his head.
He sat sprawling backwards, his hands out-thrust behind him. His stick lay on the ground beside him. After a long, silent time, he pursed his lips and began to rise to his feet, his look one of quiet determination as he sought and found the stick he had dropped. Then, holding his weapon like me, in a two-fisted grip, he began to circle me warily, his eyes on mine, waiting for an opportunity to strike a blow of his own.
I moved with him, fading backwards, balanced easily on the balls of my feet, and then I feinted rapidly forward and to my left before snapping back to where I had been. But Ambrose, my wily brother, was not gulled and did not react; he was content to wait. He and I had fought before and he knew many of my patterns, as I knew many of his. In this contest, however, I was confident of winning, for I had been practising this new technique for months, whereas he had never seen it before now. Ambrose was no man's fool, however, and least of all mine ... we were much too alike. I soon saw that we might circle here all day, but that he was not going to commit himself to any attack without having had some opportunity to study the proper moves. Finally I made a throat-clearing noise and nodded to him, coming to a stop.
"Very well, go ahead. I won't move. Hit me."
He looked at me quizzically, his expression sceptical, eyes twinkling. "You won't move at all?"
"I won't move while you're deciding where to hit me. After that, I'll move. You won't hit me."
"Huh." He straightened up and spun his weapon inward, one-handed, so that the end of it came to rest beneath his armpit, and I knew immediately, instinctively, what his next move would be.
Ambrose routinely wore a long, slender sword, modelled on the Roman cavalry spatha, designed purely for stabbing men on foot from the back of a light horse. The spatha was admirable in its originally intended use, but as a fighting sword, for brutal, toe-to-toe conflicts, it was worse than useless. Its blade was overlong and too slight, so that it would bend and even break when used against a better-tempered weapon. In the earliest days of Camulod's conversion to cavalry, Publius Varrus, the Colony's master armourer and my own great-uncle, had designed longer swords than the spatha, with broader, stronger, better- tempered blades. This was the sword Ambrose preferred. Its length and construction almost dictated its use, in terms of technique for a man on foot—hence my foreknowledge of what Ambrose would do next.
Sure enough, Ambrose renewed his stance and his two- handed grip, his knees bent, right foot slightly ahead of the left, his "blade" pointed at my sternum. He froze, his eyes locked in total concentration before he grunted and whipped into a blur of action, his weapon sweeping up and then around above my head and down again in a backhanded slash designed to cut the legs from me. I knew the arc of his sweep, I knew the point at which it would change course and be converted to a stabbing, jabbing lunge before being whipped upward again into an overhand, vertically dropping chop.
Without removing my eyes from his I dropped my "point," sweeping my blade strongly, backhanded, to block his downward slash. Then, before he could reverse into his stab, I grasped my stick in both hands, leaving a space the width of my chest between them, and pushed into his stab, sweeping my hands high and forcing his thrust upward, to graze my face and shoot above my head while I reversed the grip of my right hand, dropped my arms and shoulder and rammed the thick end of my weapon solidly against his ribs, knocking him sprawling for the second time. This time, however, before he stopped rolling, I was above him on one knee, the end of my stick pressed against his neck.
He made no effort to move, content to lie there panting until his breathing had returned to normal, by which time the silence had stretched long. "Shit," he said, eventually, and made to sit up. I heaved myself backwards onto my feet and helped him up, then stood watching him as he dusted himself off and rubbed ruefully at his buttocks.
"Now you know."
"Aye." He looked at me askance. "Practice swords, just like the old Roman ones, but new, and better. When did the idea occur to you, and what occasioned it?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."
I led the way back up the steep hillside towards the west gate of the fort, a distance of little more than thirty paces, and from there we went directly to my quarters. Shelagh and Ludmilla were leaving as we arrived, having delivered, according to Ludmilla, a box of new-made papyrus sent to me from my supplier in Camulod. I politely invited them to stay, but was secretly pleased when they declined. I moved, immediately on their departure, to open a large packing crate that lay against the rear wall, and from it I pulled the smaller case that held Excalibur. I opened the case, withdrew the sword itself and passed it, hilt first, to Ambrose.
"Here. Now I need your help, so swing it a few times. Get used to the weight and the feel of it again, because I'm going to want you to use it in a moment, to demonstrate a point."
As he began to swing the massive weapon, making the light flicker along its long, gleaming blade, I turned again to the larger crate, this time pulling out a long spatha-style sword. It had a boss between the hilt and the blade, in the style of the Roman gladium short-sword; there was no hint of a cross-guard of any kind. Beneath a light coating of reddish-brown discoloration too fine to be called rust, it looked like a fine weapon, very slightly curved, the tip of its blade broadened, flared and slightly elongated, keen- edged and almost leaf-like. Ambrose stopped what he was doing, holding Excalibur's blade vertically as he stared at me and the sword I now held. I reversed my grip and extended the new sword to him and held my other hand out at the same time for Excalibur. We exchanged weapons and he immediately brought the blade of the new sword up close to his eyes, scanning it minutely, pressing the ball of his thumb against the edge of the blade.
"I've never seen this before. Where did it come from?"
"From the Armoury in Camulod. It's a Varrus sword, one of the original prototypes he made with Equus when he was redesigning the old spatha. Before I was born, and years before they discovered the secret of the stirrups,
Caius Britannicus wanted a new weapon, much stronger than the spatha, a cross between a spear and an axe, to be used by a man on horseback against men on foot. A chopping weapon, but he insisted it had to function like a sword."
"This is fine," Ambrose said softly, hefting the thing in his hand and moving his arm slowly through a gliding pass. "A fine weapon."
"I made a discovery about it, later—or, more accurately, about one of its fellows—and now I want you to help me discover if what I suspect is true. If it is, and I do believe it is, then there is something else we must do, you and I, in secrecy."
Ambrose was gazing at me in amusement, a half-smile upon his lips, and now he shook his head. "I do not even wish to ask. I know you'll tell me when the time arrives. In the meantime, how may I help you discover this truth?"
"Take this and give me that." We exchanged swords again, and now I began waving my long, curved blade through the air. I ended up holding it out to my right, inclined slightly upward from the horizontal, clenching the hilt firmly in both fists. Ambrose merely watched, awaiting his instructions.
"This is one of Varrus's best blades, Ambrose. He smelted the metal himself, and tempered it. It's quite superb. But of course, the one you are holding is quite probably the greatest blade ever made by any man, anywhere. Now, I want you to swing your blade as hard as you can and try to knock this one from my grasp. Don't be tempted to use the flat of the blade. It is essential that you use the edge. I have no tricks in mind, I promise you. But strike away from me, because there's no cross-hilt on this sword and Excalibur could take off my arm more cleanly than you could imagine. I will not move, nor will I try to deflect your blade in any way. I am simply going to stand here and hold out this sword, and I'll try to hold onto it when your blow falls. You understand?"
He nodded, stepped back and fell into his fighter's crouch again,
concentrating on what he was about to do. When he unfolded again into swooping, powerful motion it was beautiful to behold, and I caught my breath as Excalibur's shining blade painted great, hissing swaths of brightness and glittering colours in the drabness of my quarters. Then Ambrose transferred all of his weight and momentum onto the ball of his left foot and brought that deadly scythe sweeping around to clash against the blade I held extended to my right. I had been awaiting the concussion and was set for it, my muscles braced against the shock that I knew would hammer them, but the thing was dashed from my grip as though I had no hold on it at all. The force of the wrenching impact sent me whirling away backwards and I fell to my knees against one wall as the sword I had held clanged hard against another and clattered to the floor.
Ambrose stood, astonished, as though paralyzed, his face blank with surprise, his eyes shifting between the blade in his hand and the sight of me, sprawling against the wall off to his side. As I moved to regain my footing, bracing myself against the wall with my outstretched left hand and shaking my right arm to banish the numbness, he finally rallied and moved towards me, lowering his sword's point to the floor.
"Merlyn, are you hurt? What was that? What happened here?"
I cradled my tingling right arm in my left, holding myself above the elbow, which felt numbed and dead. "I'm well enough, Brother, an A unsurprised. What happened here is exactly what I had surmised might happen." I nodded towards the long sword lying on the floor against the other wall. "Look at that."
He glanced downward, and I heard the hiss of his indrawn breath. The long Varrus sword lay bent and broken, its finely wrought blade twisted and misshapen. Before he could say anything, I spoke again.
"Check your blade. Is it damaged?"
He whipped Excalibur up, close to his face, and examined the blade closely, but I knew he would find no blemish. "No," he said, eventually. "It's not even dented."