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

by Jack Whyte

  Later that night, long after everyone was well abed, Ambrose, who had spread his bedroll on the floor of my quarters for the night, woke me up to go with him to inspect the guard, since this was the first night of the new order in Mediobogdum and I ought to make myself familiar with the routine right from the outset. It was a beautiful summer night with a cloudless, starry sky, and I sucked the night air deep into my chest with great enjoyment as we walked the full length of the parapets of Mediobogdum, talking to each guard we met and finding all of them alert and watchful. Then, from the fort itself, we made our way out onto the parade ground, which had been transformed in the space of one afternoon into another heavily guarded armed camp.

  The young officer of the guard there was a man unknown to me and barely out of his boyhood. I found out that his name was Decius Falvo and that his father had been one of my companions on my expedition to Eire. Ambrose regarded young Decius as one of his most promising infantry commanders and I was unsurprised, because his father, whom I had always known simply as Falvo, was one of the finest and most thoroughly dedicated soldiers I had ever had the privilege of knowing. Decius told us that he had mounted an outlying guard high above us, on the peak above the pass, and that there was a wide and well-worn path up to the place, attesting to the fact that the Romans had used it as a lookout point long centuries before.

  Ambrose turned and looked at me. "Feel like a climb? We can't inspect the inner guard and leave the outlying ones neglected."

  We were challenged and identified ourselves long before we reached the top of the steep path up to the peak. There a cluster of four men stood on duty, peering out and down from the heights into the blackness of utter night, unrelieved by a single spark of light. Above our heads, in brilliant contrast, the sky was a mass of twinkling stars and a crescent, newborn moon hung just above the topmost peak of the high fells to the north-east.

  Ambrose and I stood side by side, gazing outward, neither of us feeling the need to speak. The experience of simply being there made me feel powerful and privileged. I turned to look down to where the fort lay hidden in the darkness of the plateau beneath us, and it seemed strange to me that, apart from the dull glow of several sunken fires, I saw no sign of life or movement where I knew large numbers of people slept. The corollary—that there might be an army on the other side of us, similarly shrouded—seemed too commonplace to mention. A short time later, having had a few words to pass the time of night with each of the sentinels, we were on our way back down to the camp beneath.

  When we arrived back at the front of the fort itself, in plain sight of the guard stationed at the main gates, Ambrose stopped by the smouldering remains of a fire and began to stir it back to life, feeding it with kindling until the first flames sprang up, then piling heavier fuel on top. Avoiding the heaviest drift of the smoke, I seated myself on a nearby log, and presently he pulled another log close to mine. We had had little opportunity to speak on our inspection tour, since all our attention had been given to negotiating narrow, rock-strewn pathways in the darkness.

  We talked for a time then about Tressa, and about my relationship with her, and I was absolutely open with my brother. He was curious, of course, and evidently did not want to pry, but I was so happy in my life with Tress that I told him everything in my mind, and he listened and was glad for me. I spoke at length about Arthur and Tress and the relationship—not really surprising, given a modicum of thought and consideration—that had sprung into life between them, based upon mutual trust and liking and their shared human need: his for a mother and hers for a child. The three of us had, in the short space of several months, created a family for ourselves, strange though it might have appeared to be in the eyes of others. Lovers though we were, openly and unashamedly, Tress and I continued to live apart. Similarly, Arthur continued to sleep in the home of his friends Gwin and Ghilleadh, as he had always done, being cared for by his former nurse Turga and deferring to Shelagh in all things as his adoptive mother. And yet somehow, Arthur and Tress and I had become a solid, tightly interdependent familial unit, sharing our lives, our strengths and weaknesses, our beliefs and our ideas, without stinting, and blessed in being able to do so without the internal jealousies and strife that seemed to mar so many other people's family lives.

  When I had finished talking of my love, we sat in companionable silence for a little while, and then Ambrose turned our conversation again to young Arthur.

  "The boy looks well," he said. "He's growing tall, as we expected he would, and he shows signs of having shoulders as broad as yours and mine. He's skinny, though, don't you think?"

  "He's a growing boy, Ambrose, and that's normal. I was that way at his age, weren't you? All the food he ingests—and he eats like a horse—is used to push him up to his full height. Once he's achieved that, he'll grow in breadth and weight."

  Ambrose glanced at me, his eyes twinkling. "You sound like Lucanus."

  "And so I should. Those were Luke's very words to me, when I said the same foolish thing to him, bare months ago. The boy will grow upward, first, and then fill out. In the meantime, our task is to make sure he stays as strong as he can be."

  "And how do we do that?"

  "He's almost ten, now, as I said, and in the past year his education has undergone a shift in direction—less book study, less indoor theorizing, more practical training in weaponry and soldiery. He and his friends have been working with the new training swords, ever since you left for Camulod last time with Connor—" I broke off as his eyes crinkled into a broad smile. "What is it?"

  "Nothing, really. I remember the weight of those things, that's all. Are you still making them from solid oak? Those boys should hardly be able to lift them, let alone swing them."

  I nodded. "Aye, well, that's true. For the time being, they're using lighter shafts suited to their strength, and using them two-handed, treating them most of the time as spear shafts. But that is changing, and the boys are growing stronger every day as they build up the muscles in their arms and shoulders. Dedalus and Rufio are sharing responsibility for training them, and as our two most able experts on the new weapons, they are hard taskmasters. Wait you, till you see. I promise you, you'll be surprised."

  My brother nodded and changed the subject. "There's one more thing I wanted to discuss with you. It's for your ears alone, I think, although what you choose to do with the information is your concern."

  I turned to face him squarely, alerted by something in his tone. "What is it?"

  "Arthur may have a brother in Cornwall."

  "What?" I sat blinking at him, unable to accept the import of what I had heard him say. He shrugged, holding my gaze, content to allow me to think through what he had said. "That's not possible," I said finally. "Uther and Ygraine are both dead since his birth."

  "Cay, your mother has been dead since your birth and yet you and I are brothers."

  "We had different mothers."

  "Precisely so."

  I sat staring at him as the full import of what he had said began to sink home to me. "Sweet, gentle Jesus! Are you telling me that Uther sired a child on another woman before he died?"

  "No, I'm telling you that I have heard a report—a rumour, and no more than that—that Uther lay, initially, with one of Ygraine's women, before he entered into his liaison with the Queen herself. I have no knowledge of the truth of it, the story simply came to me by chance, overheard as a soldiers' legend, like the tale of your magic in the empty room, that Uther had rutted wondrously amidst Queen Ygraine's women. You know how soldiers are. They give their heroes, and dead heroes in particular, attributes and personalities that would defy the gods. The word is, among some of the men, that Uther plowed a broad furrow in Cornwall and fathered bastards by the score."

  "Well, that's not difficult to believe. Uther's appetites were legendary in that respect, and most of his men almost destroyed themselves seeking to outdo him. Rape and venery are part of war and part of the payments soldiers take for risking their lives.
Given how long that war dragged on, Cornwall must be full of bastards sired by Uther's men. and I've no doubt my cousin did his share of repopulating the countryside after his armies emptied it."

  "Aye, no doubt." Ambrose leaned forward" and pushed at a burning log with his foot, thrusting it closer to the heart of the fire. "But one of those bastards he sired may be of noble blood on both sides of the tryst, and that could breed a challenge to young Arthur, in time to come. The rumour says that the woman involved was one of the Queen's ladies, sent to Lot's court by her brother, a king called Crandal."

  The name surprised me, for in the space of a single day, never having heard it before, I had now heard it twice. Ambrose told me that this man was a king among the Painted People north of the Great Wall and that his name had spread far and wide in recent years because of his conquests. Apparently the man was no mere warrior but a champion and a hero to his people. He had never been beaten in battle and had conquered all the lands that lay around his own, so that his domain now extended the length and breadth of eastern Caledonia, from the Wall to the edge of the high mountains in the north and west.

  I sat listening in silence, aware only of Ambrose's voice and the crackling of the fire, until he had finished. When his voice tailed off, though, I was still dissatisfied.

  "So why did you bring up his name now?"

  He looked at me in surprise. "Why? Because now, it appears, he is preparing to strike southward, into Britain below the Wall. But this matter of his sister makes the business more immediate to us. I didn't want to mention the woman's involvement today, when we were speaking earlier, because the boy was present."

  "Hmm." It was my turn now to stare into the fire, thinking deeply. "So where is this woman now?"

  Ambrose shook his head. "I know nothing of her. In the tale I heard, she left to have her child elsewhere, once it was known that the Queen had taken up with Uther."

  "She was banished?"

  "No, apparently not. From what I heard, she had lain with Uther at the Queen's instigation, as a ploy to win favours for her mistress. That she was quickened was ... unfortunate—unplanned but not disastrous. It was only later that the Queen herself became involved with Uther."

  "Damnation! So this story could be true? There could be another heir to Uther's kingdom?"

  "Aye, and a firstborn one, at that. Bastard though he be, he's no more so than Arthur."

  "So where is he?"

  Ambrose shook his head slowly. ."Who knows? He could be anywhere, concealed like our own boy for his own safety. But bear in mind, Caius, I heard only a rumour. It may be total fabrication."

  "Aye, and it may equally be true." We sat quiet thereafter, each of us with his own thoughts, until I said, "What if it is true?"

  Now Ambrose roused himself and stretched. "What if it is? All that would change in our design is that Arthur might conceivably lose the Pendragon mountain kingdom in Cambria. True, it's his patrimony, but its loss would not be totally unbearable. He'd still have Camulod and all its strength, and the kinship of the Eirish Scots, and his claim to Cornwall. Sufficient there to keep a lad of Arthur's mettle on his toes for fifty years or so. Anyway, there's little profit to be had from fretting over it. If this boy is out there, somewhere, he will come forward, sooner or later, to declare himself—and when he does, he won't have Uther's Seal to wear on his right hand, nor Uther's armour on his back, nor Uther's Camulodian cousins on his side. Have you spoken to Derek yet about regaining Uther's armour?"

  "Aye, several times. I believe he'll give it to the boy when the right time comes, but he'll do it through me. He has no wish for the child to know or even to be curious about who killed his father. He keeps the armour well maintained, though. I've seen it. It's free of rust and the leather harness is supple and well oiled ... " I sat gazing into the fire for a while, then expelled my breath loudly and stood up.

  "You're right, Brother, there's little to be gained by agonizing over a child who might never have been sired or, if he was, might well have died in infancy. If he's still alive, and dangerous to us, we'll find out soon enough. But we won't discover anything tonight. Let's go to bed."

  Ambrose remained with us in Mediobogdum for only two weeks on that occasion, at the end of which he returned to Camulod by the same route. But from the first day of that visit, young Arthur threw himself more wholeheartedly than ever into his training, working ceaselessly with the wooden practice swords and driving his companions to equal his own efforts. Remembering the sight of his Uncle Ambrose riding down from the high pass at the head of his troops, Arthur would take no rest from that time on until he had ensured that he, too, would one day make such a commanding appearance at the head of his own men. I was well content with that, and drove him the harder because of it, deriving pleasure from the speed with which he absorbed everything to which I set him, and from the satisfying way his lean, narrow frame soon began to fill out and grow visibly stronger.

  I find it strange that I seem to have lacunae in my memories of that brief, happy time. Few coherent images linger in my consciousness of the passage of time in the period of years that followed; the summers and the winters, springs and autumns blended into a timeless, almost unheeding idyll during which we were unthreatened By the world outside and utterly uncaring of its affairs. To some extent, my inattention was attributable to the luxurious novelty of my life with Tressa. Perhaps the truth might be served better by phrasing that last observation as "the luxurious novelty of having Tress in my life," for I have no wish to suggest that we two settled in together to enjoy a life of conjugal bliss; that would be far from the truth. We did, however, grow quickly into a close friendship that was cemented by the sexual intimacy we enjoyed openly and without subterfuge.

  Of course, there were events that took place during those years that do stand out, but all of those were self- contained, brief ruptures in the fabric of our daily lives— many of them pleasant, others less so. Marriages were made among our folk and Derek's, and children were born, and some of those—very few, thanks to our good Lucanus—died in infancy. One of our number, a newcomer from Ravenglass, ventured outside the north gate late one night, far gone in drink, and fell over the abyss to his death, taking with him the companion who had walked with him hoping to lead him safely home.

  Ambrose himself returned as often as he could, at least once a year, as did Connor from Eire. I recall quite clearly that on his third visit, or it might even have been his fourth, Ambrose astonished us all by telling us that Camulod had garrisoned the abandoned town of Lindinis, or Ilchester as it was being called nowadays, the closest settlement to our Colony on the great road south to Isca. His announcement created a furore of questioning and debate upon die wisdom of such a thing.

  Ambrose sat back throughout the entire chorus, smiling to himself and simply allowing us to vent our outrage and disbelief, his eyes ranging from face to face as he listened. Ilchester, he was informed, as if he did not know, had degenerated quickly after the legions left, becoming a dreary, squalid, dreadful place of ruins and desolation. It was entirely unsuited as a garrison station for Camulod's troopers. It was too far away from Camulod itself and would be practically indefensible in the event of attack from north or south. The road itself offered an enemy direct access to the walls. What was the Council thinking of, initiating such a thing, and had they no concern at all for the morale of the troopers stationed there in such a place?

  I had noted the smile on my brother's face from the outset, and so had contributed nothing to the general storm of disapproval, preferring to wait and hear what he would say when it had blown itself out. Dedalus, too, I noticed, sat in silence, and it amazed me that none of the others seemed aware of that. His was the voice that should have roared above all the rest, and yet its silence went unheeded. Eventually, however, the noise subsided and the few individual voices that still muttered tailed self-consciously away into a lengthy silence that no one seemed inclined to break. I caught my brother's eye and leaned forward.
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  "Aren't you sorry you mentioned that?"

  "No," he replied, his smile growing wider. "I expected it and I enjoyed it."

  "Then you have a response?"

  Ambrose looked about him. "Of course, and I'll give it gladly, although I may not be able to address every point that was raised here." He paused. "First, let me say that Lindinis, or Ilchester, whichever you prefer, is a vastly altered place from the desolate slum you knew. The ruins are all gone, leaving a wide, cleared space all around the fort. The walls stand high and strong, far higher than they were before, three earth-filled tiers of them, faced with new palisades of logs. Inside the walls, the houses are all rebuilt and full of people—the garrison and their families. We have new earthen walls reaching to new heights, new parapets and towers housing artillery, and a broad, deep, triple ditch surrounding all, crossed by three separate bridges that are raised and lowered from gate-towers by the garrison. The town is virtually impregnable today, even from the open road, and morale there is very high. In the space of a year, incredible as it might seem to you who knew it years ago, Ilchester has become a sought-after post." He stopped, and looked around from face to face.

  "Now, why did we do it? Why did we go to such great lengths to redeem a lost town, thirty and more miles from our home base?"