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

by Jack Whyte

  "Well, your consolation may lie in the fact that, a month from now, there will be no sign of this. For the next few days, however, your face is going to be a sight to behold. I hope you won?"

  His headshake and the way his eyes moved off to gaze into the distance told me he had not.

  "Who was it? Gwin? Bedwyr?"

  "No." He still would not look at me, even though I held him by the chin. I released my grip and stepped back.

  "Who, then?" Even as I asked the question I could see it would go unanswered. There was a stubborn cast to his countenance that was highly uncharacteristic of this normally sunny youngster. I shrugged, to show him I was really unconcerned. "I have no intention of pursuing the matter, Arthur. I merely asked out of curiosity. The damage is already done. It's boys' business and no concern of mine—men have no place in such affairs."

  "And yet they take an interest, sometimes." The boy's words came out as a truculent mumble, causing me to narrow my eyes at once.

  "What was that? Who takes what? What are you talking about?"

  "Men. They sometimes take an interest in the wars of boys."

  "Arthur, what are you talking about? You're not making sense." He continued to glower, his young face dark with anger. "Are you saying a man hit you, not a boy?"

  "No. I fought with Droc and he beat me."

  "I'm sure he did." Droc was one of Derek's eldest sons, at least three years older than Arthur and big for his age, so close to being identical to his own elder brother Landroc that the pair were often mistaken for twins and were inseparable. Arthur was a big lad for his age, too, but his bigness was yet but a promise, and his present frame was long and gangling. I estimated, now that I had reason to think of it, that Droc must be at least half again Arthur's weight. I waited, but it was clear no reaction would be forthcoming.

  "What in God's name possessed you to fight with Droc? He's almost as big as I am." The boy made no response at all. "Not going to tell me? Well, then, I'll have to believe it was insanity, although I've never seen the slightest hint of that in you before today. But you said something about men interfering in boys' affairs. Did someone stop the fight?"

  "No."

  "Well, someone should have. Come on, I'll ride down with you to the fort. Where are the others, Bedwyr and Gwin and Ghilleadh?"

  Arthur shook his head. "I don't know. I left them behind, after the fight. I didn't want them with me."

  "I see. Were they involved at all?"

  Another silent headshake was all I received in answer to that question, and I straightened up, all at once impatient with the boy's unusual reticence.

  "Very well, let's be away. Bring your pony, but there's no point in trying to ride down, for the first stretch at least. We'll have to walk."

  He collected his pony and we began to wind our way downward in silence, concentrating on where we placed our feet, since the iron nails that studded the soles and heels of our sandalled boots could find no purchase on the hard cobblestones that made up the surface of the road, making every step a matter of careful balance and the threat of a painful fall.

  We remounted eventually, once we had achieved the gentler slopes at the bottom of the ridge below the crest, and rode on without speaking, hunched against the battering of the wind. We had almost reached the junction of the roadway and the approach to the fort before either of us spoke again. It was Arthur who broke the silence.

  "Ghilleadh found a Roman short-sword—a gladium."

  I glanced at him in surprise. "Did he indeed? Where? And how do you know it was Roman?"

  "It was lying in the long grass on the hillside beneath the western gate, and it had been there for a long, long time.

  Almost rusted away completely, but it was Roman. The hilt was bronze. I've seen dozens just like it in the Armoury at Camulod. Some soldier must have either dropped it or thrown it away, a long time ago. It was probably thrown there, because it was a long way down from the gate and far from any pathway."

  "Hmm, I'd like to see that. Will you ask Ghilleadh to show it to me?"

  "He can't. Droc took it away from him."

  I immediately began to ask myself why a big lad like Droc would be interested in the rusted remnant of an old Roman sword, but then all at once I knew, alerted by the tension radiating from my young companion. Droc had taken it to prove a point of some kind. He had played the bully.

  "So that's why you fought Droc. He took the sword away from Ghilleadh."

  "Mmm ... "

  This time the silence lasted until we were almost inside the fort again. When I drew rein he stopped, too, looking up at me expectantly. I sat thinking for long moments before I spoke.

  "Arthur," I said, finally, "I don't want you to think that I am prying, poking my snout into private affairs that -are none of my concern ... " He nodded, a slight crease between his brows as I hesitated. "Having said that, however, I will admit to you that I am more than merely curious. You made a reference, back up there on the hilltop, and from it I suspect that some man, somewhere, has interfered in something that concerns you. I think there is more to this whole affair than you are admitting."

  Yet again I paused, deliberately, leaving him ample time to say whatever might have been in his mind, but he guarded his silence, his mouth held now in the semblance of a pout, although no other sign of distemper showed itself upon his open face. I sucked in a deep breath and finished what I had to say.

  "There are times when I feel that you and I are more than simply master and student, more than mere cousins, man and boy. At such times, I like to think that we are friends, in the true sense of the word—equal creatures of like mind and temperament, with mutual tastes and complementary opinions and the ability to discuss things openly between ourselves without acrimony or evasion. Do you ever feel that way?"

  I felt scorn at myself for my shameless manipulation of the boy, who now sat gazing at me, nodding his head slowly in agreement, his face clouded with the naked need to discuss the matters that were troubling him. He coughed, and then glanced about him, his eyes flitting up to look at the top of the gate-tower ahead of us, and then down again to scan the empty pathway on either side.

  "Yes," he said, in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. "I'd like to tell you what happened, but ... not here."

  "Of course not. We'll go to my quarters. I have some cold apple juice there, crushed this morning in the kitchens, and some fresh bread. Meet me there as soon as you have unsaddled your pony and rubbed him down. He would benefit from a good grooming."

  I stabled Germanicus, unsaddling him without haste and rubbing him down thoroughly with a rough towel, even though he had not even broken a sweat on our short outing. Arthur, I knew, would have a much more difficult task with his own mount, and I knew it was one he would not shirk, for the discipline of caring for their ponies was one that had been painstakingly drilled into each of the boys. Any evidence of carelessness in tending their animals would immediately ensure the dire punishment of forfeiture of riding privileges for anything from a single day to an entire week. When I had finished, ensuring that my horse had both food and drink within reach, I made my way slowly back to my quarters, whistling an old marching tune under my breath and wondering what could possibly have upset the boy so profoundly.

  I was still wondering about that, and still struggling against the temptation to think instead of young Tressa and her breasts, when Arthur knocked and entered. About half an hour had passed since we parted, and I saw immediately from his expression that whatever had been troubling him was still paramount in his mind. He accepted the cup of unfermented apple juice I offered him and then sank wordlessly into one of the two large armchairs that flanked the open, stone fireplace against the long wall at the rear of the room. I watched him closely, noting his frowning concentration as I poured myself some wine and went to sit across from him.

  Dried kindling and wood shavings were piled carefully in the brazier. The room was cool, almost dark, the slanting light from the m
id-day sun pooling on the floor directly beneath the open windows. I stood up again and moved to light a taper from the single lamp burning on my writing table, taking the flame to the brazier. When l was satisfied with the blaze, I straightened up again and moved back to my chair, my feet stretched out towards the leaping flames. Arthur sat staring into the fire.

  "So," I began. "What was it that drove you from your friends so early in the day?"

  The boy sniffed and his frown deepened, and then he turned to face me, his eyes wide and puzzled. "What gives Droc the right to think he can take Ghilleadh's sword, Merlyn?"

  "His size, I should think." I knew the words were ill chosen as they issued from my mouth and immediately wished them unsaid. Here, I knew, was neither the time nor the place for flippancy. To my surprise, though, Arthur did not react to my facetiousness.

  "No, that's not enough," he said. "His size gives him the ability to take the sword, but what is it that permits him to think, to believe, completely, that he may take it, as his right?"

  I blinked with surprise, and I chose my next words with care.

  "Forgive me, Arthur, but I'm not sure I understand you. What are you asking me, exactly?"

  "I don't know, not really, but I do know the answer is important. Ghilly found the sword, in the spot where it had lain for years and years. Whoever threw it there has been dead and gone for ages, so it became Ghilly's when he found it. And then Droc saw it and took it away from him. It was an old, dirty thing, all rust, and it was useless, but Droc took it and kept it. Why? Why would he do that?"

  I shrugged, mystified. "For the reason I mentioned before, most probably. Because he could. Because he wanted to."

  "But why?" The question was almost a shout, the boy's frustration boiling out of him. "Droc has a sword, one of his father's old ones. He has no need of another, especially that old, useless thing of Ghilly's. And yet he took it because he believed he had the right to take it—not because he needed it or wanted it, but because he believed it was his to take. That is wrong, Merlyn. No one should have the right to do that kind of thing. It's ... it's unjust!"

  "Well, I can't see that it's worth getting so worked up about. By your own admission, it's nothing more than an ugly of piece of useless, rusted metal of value to no one."

  "Ghilly valued it! It was his. He was the one that found it." The scorn and anger in those flashing young Pendragon eyes almost made me flinch, and I suddenly understood that what I, as a man, could accept as being natural, if deplorable, was a source of deep outrage to the boy's sense of justice. I coughed to cover my confusion.

  "Well, what did Droc do with the sword, once he had taken it?"

  "I don't know. He took it away with him."

  "After you and he had fought ... "

  "Yes."

  "And why did you decide to fight him?"

  "I didn't decide. I was fighting him before I knew what I was doing. He bent Ghilly over and beat him with the flat of the old sword. Ghilly was crying, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground and Droc was kicking me."

  "I see. Did you blood him?"

  A tiny smile flickered on the boy's lips. "I must have, his nose was bleeding."

  "What about the others, Bedwyr and Gwin? Didn't they help you?"

  "They couldn't. Landroc kept them out of it. So Droc thrashed me and then the two of them walked away, laughing. He did it because he could, and that is all there is to understand, I suppose."

  "What, that he's a bully?"

  The look he threw me was one of pure pity. "No, that he is the king's son."

  I was astounded, unwilling to believe what I had heard.

  "What does that have to do with anything? Do you believe King Derek would condone his son's behaviour in this?"

  "It has to do with everything, Merlyn, and it began last week." Ignoring the expression on my face, he spoke to me as if I were the boy and he the teacher, and I sat, fascinated by his words and his passion. "Last week, the day after Uncle Ambrose came, I found something, too—something much more valuable than Ghilly's old sword. I found a brooch, in the deep woods outside the town walls, a big, old brooch with a jewelled stone in it like a large piece of yellow glass. It was of silver, I think, but all tarnished green and black with age. Foolishly, I showed it to Kesler when I returned to Ravenglass that day, and he tried to snatch it from me. We fought over it."

  Kesler was yet another of Derek's many sons, but he was of an age with Arthur, and smaller in stature.

  "Well? You fought, and then what?"

  "One of King Derek's captains stopped us and wanted to know what we were fighting about."

  "Who was it, do you know? And what did you tell him?"

  "It was Longinus, the catapult engineer, and we told him the truth."

  "And what happened then ?"

  "He made me give the brooch to Kesler, because Kesler was the king's son and the brooch was therefore his, found on the king's land."

  "I see. And how did you feel about that?"

  The boy gnawed on the inside of his cheek, considering his answer.

  "I was angry at first, and then I was not ... or not as much."

  "How so?"

  "Because I did not really believe the brooch was mine. It never had been mine and had belonged to someone else. Someone had lost it, sometime in the past. And it had value—even beneath all the dirt you could see that. The size and colour of the stone, and the scribing on the metal ... it was the kind of thing not worn by ordinary folk, so it must have belonged to someone of rank, someone from Ravenglass, perhaps the king himself or one of his family ... "

  "But?"

  He grimaced. "But if that were so, I think Longinus should have taken it to give to the king himself, he should not merely have permitted one of the king's sons to take it. That did not become clear to me at the time. I only thought about it afterwards. Was I right to think so?"

  I let that one pass, for the moment. "Hmm. And then Droc took the sword today. I see now what concerns you."

  "Do you?" The lad's face brightened.

  "Of course I do. The injustice of what you witnessed today brought out the anger you've been feeling since the first occasion."

  "No!" His voice was suddenly loud again, echoing the lightning change that had swept over his face as I spoke. He caught himself, moderating his tone. "No, it's much more than that, Merlyn. Can't you see what happened? Droc had plainly heard about my finding the brooch and what had happened over that, and when he saw the sword that Ghilly had found, he simply decided it was his, by right, since it had been found in his father's territories. So he puffed up his chest, displayed his muscles and took it, despite the fact that it was worthless to him. That is the injustice."

  Abruptly, we had come to the nub of the matter. Now it was clearly evident. This nine-year-old boy had come up against an injustice, clearly delineated in his uncorrupted view, and now he was wrestling with the abstractions of justice and its uneasy relationship to physical power; with the philosophical intangibles of force and power and their influence on morality! I drew a long, deep breath, holding up my hand to give him pause, and tried to marshal my chaotic thoughts. Here, I knew, was a seminal moment in the relationship between my ward and me, a moment I could neither ignore nor defer to another time. But how was I to respond? Watching me closely, waiting for me to speak, he leaned backward in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

  "Look you," I began, then subsided again, rubbing the side of one finger against the stubble on my chin. The boy made no attempt to hurry me but sat watching me, unblinking. I dropped my hand from my face and sat straighter in my chair.

  "Arthur, there are some things ... some aspects of life ... that appear to change as boys grow into men. They did for me, and they do for all boys. I think you have just come face to face with one of them. In a boy's world, I think, colours are easy to identify—black is black and white is white." I saw his eyes cloud with incomprehension and hurried on to explain myself. "All that means is
that, when you're a boy, good is good and bad is bad and there's no difficulty in telling the two apart and then behaving in accordance with your findings. For instance, I believe most boys see men in one of three ways. There are men they like and admire, and they try to stay close to such men, emulating them. Then there are the ruck—the unknown strangers, the common mass of men—to whom they are indifferent, and they go on about their lives as boys always have, ignoring them as insignificant. The third kind of men are those they dislike—the bullies, the misanthropes— unpleasant men. These men wise boys avoid and take great pains to stay away from them. Would you agree?"

  Arthur nodded, slowly and deliberately, and I found myself speaking with much solemnity as I continued.

  "Good. Well, that ability to avoid such men is one of the things that changes as a boy grows older. While he is still a boy, his avoidance of them is unimportant and unnoticed. He may run and hide from them and spend his days avoiding them and suffer nothing by his flight, because he is a mere boy and hence beneath the notice of grown men. That is his great good fortune, though he is ignorant of all of it.

  "When he grows up to man's estate, however, all of that changes. He is still the same boy in his heart, but his body has become a man's body, and his cares a man's concerns. He may no longer run and hide when his old enemies and their kind approach. Flight without dishonour has become impossible with the arrival of manhood. Do you understand what I am saying?"

  "I think so. You are saying a man must stand and fight such men, or forfeit his honour."

  "No, Arthur, I am not saying that, not exactly. What I am saying is that a man must learn to live among such men, to make allowance for their imperfections, and to strive to live a decent, honourable life in spite of them. He need not—indeed he cannot—-always fight them."

  "Why not?"

  "Because ... because there are so many of them, if the truth be told."

  "So many? D'you mean there are more of them than there are honourable men?"