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

by Jack Whyte

  "He's masked in blood, unmoving ... no telling whether he's alive or dead ... Helmet's missing ... Blood everywhere—on the grass, on the stones ... He's lodged between two trees ... moss on the trunks, and blood on the moss. I can see where his fingers have clawed the moss from the bark ... " As I described it, the image shifted, as though my eyes had adjusted, and I saw something else, half-hidden in the shadows among the surrounding trees. My mind rebelled in disbelief, and the scene faded back into mist, leaving me staring wide-eyed at the dark ceiling. I held my breath for a long time, struggling with my thoughts, and then expelled the air from my lungs, allowing myself to relax. "That's all. It's gone. That's all I saw."

  "Hmm ... " She released me and swung away, out of the bed. I watched her naked form as she moved across to the door into my main room. "Come, Cay, I'll rekindle the fire. Get dressed, and hurry."

  "What? Why? What good will it do to sit up by the fire? We don't know where he is, Tress."

  "We might. Or we will. Put on your clothes."

  I rolled out of bed and went to the bowl on the night- stand, where I threw cold water on my face before beginning to dress myself, fumbling in the darkness for the clothes I had shed with abandon when I realized that Tress would not leave that night. By the time I had shrugged into them and crossed into the other room, Tress had candles lit and the fire was alive again, flames licking hungrily at the new fuel she had piled on the freshly stirred coals.

  She herself was still naked, crouched over the fire with her arms out to the heat. I crossed directly to her side and caressed the smooth, warm bareness of her, loving the firm softness beneath my hands. There was no thought of such matters in Tress's head, however, and she pushed me away, motioning me towards one of the two chairs flanking the fire as she ran lightly back into the bedchamber and emerged moments later wrapping a woollen blanket about her. She sat then in the chair opposite me and stared at me, wide-eyed and expectant.

  "What?" I asked her. "What is it? You obviously expect me to say something significant." She made no reply. "Well, I have nothing to say, that I'm aware of. You'll have to prompt me."

  "Rufio. We know where he is."

  "No, we do not, Tress. It was dream, and I saw no signposts."

  "Of course you did, you silly man. We don't know exactly where he is, that's true enough, but we know more than we did earlier today."

  "How so?"

  "Because you saw him lying in a hollow, in a clearing on a hillside. Is that not so? And he was lodged against two trees, with moss on their trunks, that he had scraped away."

  "So?"

  "Ach! Cay, that tells us much, or it tells me much. There was a rock face by him, too. That tells us more."

  "I don't follow you, Tress."

  She shook her head sharply, to silence me.

  "He was lodged between two trees, you said, with a rock face behind him. How did you know he was on a hillside? And how was he positioned between these trees?"

  I blinked, thinking back. "The ground sloped down, sharply. He was on his back, his head hanging backward, down the hill. The trees were close together, almost touching—perhaps a fork, two trunks of the same tree. His spine was arched over them. He had tried to push himself outward. That's when he clawed at the moss."

  "So the moss was towards his head."

  "Yes."

  "And the rock face you saw. Where was it? You said behind him, but was it to his right or left?"

  Again I sought the memory of my vision. "On his left, running parallel to where he lay."

  "Aha! You looked in the wrong places."

  I looked at her with a measure of scorn. "That makes as much sense as my dream."

  "I know it does, even though you do not. Think about it, Cay! Moss grows mainly on the northern side of trees— every child learns that on first entering the woods—and it grows thickest on the very northern side. You saw Rufio lying with his feet pointing south between two northern- facing trees, his head hanging downhill to the north, with a cliff face on his left, his east side, facing west. That means he's on the hillside, below the pass, where you didn't search, low down, in the river valley."

  "How do you know he is low down?" I was convinced she was right.

  "Because the moss was thick on the tree trunks. There's no thick moss on the trees on the high slopes."

  I nodded, acknowledging my own short-sightedness, then shrugged.

  "What," she asked immediately. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing, Tress, nothing really. I admire the way you make sense of my vision, but it was only a dream, and it was incomplete."

  "How incomplete? I don't understand."

  "I didn't tell you all of it, and the part I withheld makes nonsense of die whole thing."

  She sat up straight, the blanket falling away from her shoulders, waiting for me to continue.

  "I saw a man called Peter Ironhair just beyond the clearing, watching me."

  "Peter Ironhair?" She was frowning. "You mean the ironsmith who tried to kill Arthur in Camulod, and then ran off to Cambria and thence to Cornwall?"

  I sat staring at her. "You know," I said, eventually, "I find myself amazed by how much you know of things I've never told you."

  "Shelagh has told me everything about you. I know everything there is to know." She stood up and crossed to where I sat, then settled into my lap, placing her right arm around my shoulders and wriggling until she was comfortable. The fire in the brazier snapped and spat sparks onto the stone flagging of the fireplace. When she was settled, she pulled my head down towards her breast and spoke into my ear.

  "You know, Caius Merlyn Britannicus—" She paused, then leaned forward, blowing the warmth of her breath against my ear. "You know I love you, do you not?" She waited for an answer and I nodded, mutely. "Well," she continued, "know this, too. I believe in you, and in your gifts, which you think are some kind of curse. I believe that you have the gift of prophecy. What was it Master Lucanus called it? Foreknowledge. Is that the word?" She waited for an answer, and I nodded, again. "Well then, I believe in your power of foreknowledge, and I believe you have seen Rufio, lying hurt, perhaps dead—the gods forbid—in a place unsearched till now. Tomorrow, therefore, you must go down into the valley and along the cliffs until you reach the downfall of the fell behind us here, to the east."

  "And what if he's not there? Not only will I appear to be a fool, but I might well have destroyed any chance of finding the real place where he is lying, at least in time to save his life."

  "He will be there." She took my right hand in her left and slipped it between the folds of her blanket to lie between her breasts. "You feel that? My heart beating? My knowledge that you're right is as sure as the beating of my heart." She released my hand, but left it where it was, to behave as it would while she continued talking.

  "As for the face of Master Ironhair, that is as far beyond me as it is beyond you. Shelagh told me you sometimes fail to understand all that you see. Is that true?"

  "Aye, too frequently."

  "Then this is one of those times. But remember what you saw—Ironhair's face where simple reason tells us it could never be. The meaning will come clear to you one of these days, and when it does, you'll know what to do. In the meantime, however, you have to find Rufio."

  She paused, leaning out and away from me to squint at my reflection in the light of the fire. "You're still not sure, * are you?" I shook my head slowly and she continued. "Very well, here's what to do. Send out the search parties tomorrow, exactly as you had planned to do, to cover the territories you selected earlier tonight, but go by yourself, with several of the men you trust most and who know you best, and search the area you dreamed about."

  "Dedalus," I said. "And Donuil. Luke's too old for the kind of terrain we'll be covering, and Philip. Falvo and Benedict should remain with their troops. But they're Rufio's closest friends."

  'Then take them with you. They have officers beneath them they can trust, and the troops will all be split up, anyw
ay. Take Rufio's friends with you. Shelagh won't stay behind, either, when one of the men she thinks of as her own is lost. Take her and the four boys. One of you will find him."

  "So be it." I pulled her to me and kissed her long and deeply, overflowing with relief and determination, and soon we returned to bed, as impatient for each other as we were for the night to recede.

  It was, in fact, Shelagh who found Rufio, in precisely the circumstances I had dreamed, at the farthest end of the valley beneath our escarpment, in an area that I would never have thought even to penetrate, let alone search. And, as Fortune would have it, Shelagh was accompanied by Lucanus, who had refused to remain behind in Mediobogdum, claiming that Rufio would have great need of his skills if he was still alive. I was far beneath them with Arthur and Bedwyr, almost on the valley floor, when they made their discovery, but their cries reached the ears of Dedalus on the slope between them and us, and young Bedwyr's keen ears picked up Ded's bellowing in the distance above our heads.

  I knew the clearing, immediately, as the site of my dream. Shelagh and Luke were on their knees beside Rufio, working quickly and with great concentration. Dedalus stood over them, his face a picture of anguish and anger, and beside him Gwin and young Ghilly gazed in pop-eyed horror at the ministrations being performed nearby.

  "How is he?" I called, dismounting hurriedly.

  "He's alive, but barely," Ded answered.

  I turned towards Arthur and Bedwyr, both of whom were preparing to dismount, and ordered them to stay where they were, then I made my way forward to where I could see Rufio. Black and white, I thought immediately, my memory taking me back to the day when I rode into the carnage of the scene at my cousin Uther's last battle. Then, as now, the White had been the pallor of dead flesh and the black the ugliness of dried and crusted blood. Rufio appeared dead, despite Ded's statement to the contrary.

  Luke had already removed Rufio's armour, slicing through the leather straps that held it in place with a sharp knife, then cutting away the clothing beneath to lay bare the awful wounds that marred our friend's shockingly pale flesh. I had suspected an accident of some kind, perhaps even an attack, but nothing had prepared me for the sight of Rufio's wounds. He had been savaged, not merely wounded; his flesh lay open at the left shoulder, scored in great, parallel gashes, two of which extended all along his upper arm, and his face was invisible beneath a mask of dried blood that plastered his hair flat against his head so that it seemed to be a polished black skull.

  "What in the name of God—"

  "It was a bear. Look at that." Ded nodded towards something on the ground almost by my feet and I looked down to see an enormous black paw, tipped with claws longer than my fingers. It had been severed cleanly at what would have been the wrist on a human limb. Mute with disbelief, I looked from it to Rufio. Dedalus read my mind.

  "Rufe must have brought one of the two new swords with him. I know of nothing else that could have taken off a thing like that."

  I looked all around, but saw nothing. "Where is it now, then?"

  "Stuck in the beast, I'd think. Nothing else would explain why it left him here without eating him."

  I sucked in a great breath, to settle both my stomach and my mind. Dedalus was right. Lacking a paw, the beast should have been sufficiently enraged to destroy Rufio utterly. Only a greater wound, and greater pain, could have driven it off before it killed him.

  I was aware of Lucanus issuing orders to the others who had arrived, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that he was telling them to build a litter in which to carry Rufio back to the fort, or at least out of the woods to where Luke could have space to do what must be done to cleanse and bind those dreadful wounds. My thoughts, however, were bound up in what lay before me.

  "We have to find it," I said.

  "What, the sword or the bear?"

  "Both. The one we need, the other we need dead."

  "Aye, granted. But I'm not going up against that thing, wounded as it is, without a score of spears around me."

  "It should be dead by this time."

  "Aye, and so should Rufe, but he's alive."

  "You're right." I turned towards the boys. "Arthur, take young Ghilly with you and Bedwyr and find the nearest search party. Tell them we've found Rufio, but that we need assistance to track and kill a wounded bear—a very large bear. We need men with spears, as many as you can find and not less than a score. Tell whoever you find in charge to send someone back to the fort with word to call off the other searchers in the hills above the fort, and to have the Infirmary prepared with fresh bedding and bandages and boiling water. Lucanus always requires large quantities of boiled water. Go now, quickly, then lead the others hack to join us here. We'll be waiting for you. And be careful! We don't know where that bear might be. If you hear it, or see it, stay well clear of it. Go!"

  The boys were gone in a matter of moments, and shortly thereafter Luke and Shelagh left, too, walking one on either side of the litter and each holding one of the ends of a leather strap, Rufio's swordbelt, which they had passed beneath the centre of the bier, ready to take up the strain should any of the four bearers, Donuil, Philip, Falvo and Benedict, slip or lose their balance on the treacherous hillside.

  Ded and I watched them leave, then turned our attention to the blood-soaked ground around us, looking for the trail of blood left by the departing bear. It was not hard to find, and from the wide swath of blood-smeared destruction leading off downhill into the woods it soon became obvious that the animal had charged away, blinded with pain and fury and bafflement, into the heart of the forest. We went no farther than ten paces along the trail before we turned back to wait for the others, and for the next hour we stood close together, seldom speaking and staring tensely into the silent forest all around us. I found myself looking for the tree that had concealed Ironhair in my dream, but I failed to find it.

  "What about him?"

  "Who?"

  "Ironhair. You said his name."

  I wasn't aware that I had spoken. "I dreamed of him last night, that he was here."

  Ded turned slowly to look at me. "Ironhair was here, in your dream, with Rufe? D'you mean that?"

  I shrugged. "No, not with Rufe—farther back, among the trees. It was but part of the dream, a nonsensical part."

  "Hmm." For a long time I thought he would say no more than that solitary grunt, but then he continued. "I don't know anything much about this power of yours, Merlyn, but it seems to me that no part of it can be nonsense when so much of it is potent. If you dreamed of Ironhair being here, then in some way he must have been here."

  'Tress thinks the same. She believes the meaning of it will become clear to me, eventually."

  "What was that?"

  I cocked my head, wishing for the hundredth time in my life that I had the sharp hearing of my brother Ambrose. "I didn't hear anything."

  "I did. There it is again. It's the others, finally."

  Sure enough, moments later, I heard the first sounds of our approaching reinforcements making their way up the hillside to where we waited.

  As soon as they arrived—Philip and some forty of his infantry, with Arthur and Bedwyr in the lead on horseback—we split them up into groups of six and led them into the forest, following the clear-marked blood trail of the wounded beast. Those of us who had been mounted left our mounts tethered in the clearing, safely distanced from the bloodied area where we had found Rufio. Philip walked by my side at the point of the hunt. The others, seven groups of six, spread out behind us, each successive pair of groups farther out on the flanks of those ahead, so that we formed a sweep that would have been a hundred paces wide, had we been able to proceed in order. The steeply pitched hillside, however, densely treed as it was, made any kind of orderly progress impossible.

  "What's that?" Philip had seen something, and I turned immediately to see where he pointed. I saw the gleam of metal in a thicket that our quarry had charged through, arid we had found our missing sword. From the st
reaks of blood on the blade and the increased profusion of blood on the grass all around, it was clear that the cross- hilt had snagged in the bushes and been wrenched free as the bear passed on.

  "It has to be dead," Philip muttered. "It must be. This blood's been here since yesterday and there's too much of it around for the thing to have survived. And look, when the sword came out of the wound, it must have split it wide open. Look how the blood is so much thicker here, beyond the point where we found the sword." He glanced at me. "Don't you agree?"

  I nodded, and he raised his voice, shouting to his men. "Stay sharp! The animal's close by. Logic says it must be dead, but until we've skinned the carcass, take nothing for granted."

  We found it less than fifty paces farther up the hill, and it had been dead for a long time. It was enormous, humpbacked—fully as large as the behemoth I had faced outside the walls of Athol's fort in Eire—and it was ancient. One of its eyes had been lost in some long-ago battle, and its thick, matted old coat, where we could see it beneath the blood that clotted it, was criss-crossed with long-healed scars and battle wounds. Its coat was hoary, almost silver with age; only its three remaining paws were still black as night.

  I stood there, gazing at it as the others crowded around, exclaiming with awe. Where they saw size and incredible strength, however, I saw only mystery and enigma. I saw Ironhair, plainly, in the colour of the great beast's coat, and yet I wondered, still, at my own translation. Had I seen the bear, early in my dream, and its colour made me think of Ironhair? Or was there some other, supernatural connection? Did this bear, somehow, represent Ironhair, or the threat of Ironhair? I had no way of knowing. I had never been a believer in the supernatural, and I was loath to begin to give any credence to the matter then, at that stage of my life.