by Jack Whyte
"Aye, Liam said something of the same, although he didn't know the workings of the things as you do. Where did you learn all this?"
"From books. I read it all. The Roman navy ruled the seas for hundreds of years, and their genius lay in taking infantry to sea. Their warships were built as floating platforms for their soldiery—"
He held up his hand to prevent me from saying any more. "I'm as sane as you are, good-brother. I've no intention of sailing to my death and hearing the noise of my own galleys being destroyed."
"Then what?"
"I shall wait. They must put into land at some time or another, these mighty beasts. They sail like other vessels, and they're being used to supply the armies on the mainland. The Pendragon Cambrians have no naval force, so these great ships can have no opposition. They'll be like shepherds to the smaller galleys in their fleet, plying between whatever southern port they use and their base in Cambria, and when they arrive, they'll put into shore, to be unloaded. That's when I'll take them."
I laughed aloud in simple disbelief. "You intend to walk on board and take over a ship like that? Don't you think they'll be guarded?"
"Of course they'll be guarded, dear good-brother, but how well? Think about that. These things are without equal on the sea, requiring special skills and seamanship to operate them properly, and when they come to shore, they'll be among their own. They will be guarded, certainly, but who among their crews would dream that anyone would ever be mad enough to think to steal one from its base ashore?"
"How will you get close to them?"
"Mercenaries, Merlyn. We'll be among their own, in their own camp. Why should they suspect us of anything? We're not their enemies. In fact, they won't know who we are or whence we came. We'll be but mercenaries like the rest of them."
"By the sweet Christus! What happens then if you succeed and get aboard, past the guards? How will you get the thing away?"
"We'll row it out of there! If we can be mercenaries on the land, why shouldn't some of us be afloat, too?" I realized only then that Connor was extemporizing, improvising even as he spoke. "Who will know we are not theirs? They have no enemies afloat, they think—or I believe they think that." His brow was creased now with the speed and concentration of his thoughts. "A small number of galleys, extra crewed, their arrival timed to coincide with our attack... But returning galleys... galleys that left the same harbour the day before... no one will think to question their arrival, if they think it's their return. And When the moment's right, we strike. We take the ship and board a crew from the galleys, on the water side. It will work, Merlyn, it will work"
He slapped his hands on his knees and stood up, suddenly alight with resolve.
"When will you leave?" I half expected him to rush off then and there.
"A week or so, no more." He clumped his way across to the window, his false leg sweeping aside the rushes on the floor with each step, and opened wide the shutters, twisting his neck to lean out and look up at the sky. I was surprised to the see the sun was still shining brightly. I felt as though we had been cloistered here for hours.
"Have you any food around here?" he asked. "I'm famished."
I had to smile. "We'll find something cold in the kitchens, but there won't be anything hot until the evening meal."
"Then cold it is, so long as it be soon."
As we walked towards the kitchens in the refectory block, my head was spinning with all we had discussed, and I had the feeling that much of the ensuing week would be dedicated to the Admiral's new developed stratagem for enlarging his fleet.
TWO
By the end of that week, the days had warmed up almost to summertime heat and the skies remained cloudless. New grass shot up everywhere and the first mountain flowers, Which would not normally have begun to grow for at least Mother month, matured swiftly and broke into bloom, so that the hillsides outside our walls were soon dotted with tiny clusters of brilliant yellows, blues and whites. By the roadside, beneath the trees along the forest fringes, thick clusters of dark-green growth sprang up and blanketed the ground, promising that within the next few weeks the entire hillside, seen from the fort beneath, would be misted with a purplish haze of bluebells to perfume the air.
In the fort itself, life progressed with a high spirited urgency made the greater by the beauty of the weather. Connor's estimated week before departure lengthened to two as he enlarged and refined his plans to voyage south. He spent most of that time working closely with Feargus and big Logan, his most trusted captains, their counsel strengthened and abetted by contributions from Brander, whose enthusiasm for the task ahead was greater, if anything, than Connor's own. Brander might be King of Scots today, tied to the land henceforth, but he was still very much Brander the Admiral, and his eyes glistened at the thought of having a Roman bireme, or perhaps even two of them, added to his fleet.
I sat among them frequently, listening to their conversations, and often I had to force myself to keep silent, stifling my criticism by reminding myself that they knew exactly how dependent this entire venture would be upon the disposition of the enemy ships when Connor arrived in the waters off Cambria. They accepted the hazards, the high degree of random chance they faced and the seeming
impossibility of outmanoeuvring the gods of war and fate;
and in that acceptance, they attempted to foresee all the
variations of opportunity that might present themselves and
bent their combined abilities to create the simplest, most intrinsically flexible strategic outline they could devise.
I had my own tasks to perform while the mariners were planning their great quest. We had committed ourselves to return to Camulod in the spring, and that withdrawal could no longer be deferred. Spring was here now, and early, and despite long months of systematic preparation, we were not yet ready to leave. I worked all day, most days, and long into the nights, bullying everyone time and again into checking and reviewing all the thousand and one things that had already been reviewed and checked, packed and loaded and made ready for transportation.
In all of this, Rufio was one of my greatest strengths. He worked even harder than me. His recovery from the awful wounds the bear had inflicted on him had been more complete and more rapid than any of us would have dared to hope. But Rufio would never fight again. The deep gouges on his shoulder and upper arm from the beast's claws had turned toxic, and while Lucanus had been successful in keeping the killing poisons in the wounds from spreading, the damage to the muscles of Rufio's left aim had been irreversible, so that the limb now resembled a withered stick rather than a human appendage. His spirit, though, remained indomitable, and within two months his legs were sound enough that he could walk almost without a limp.
Rufio's first request was to be given a task that he could organize alone, without assistance. That was when I came up with the idea of wiping out all visible traces of our occupation of the fort. Mediobogdum had sat unoccupied for two hundred years, we believed. Were we to leave it looking as though it had not been occupied since then, that might encourage others to avoid it. If we were successful in that, and if we then decided to return at some future date, we could simply move in again without obstruction.
Rufio thought this was an excellent idea, and he took the task I had set him very seriously. At one time or another over the ensuing weeks and months, everyone in the fort worked to his orders, stripping the place of every sign we could find of human habitation. We shut the bathhouse down, for instance, and boarded up the doors as we had found them, then blocked the entry to the furnaces with care, protecting them from damage and decay as best we could.
Then came the day I knew we were ready, and we could appoint a day for our departure. Our guests were still hip deep in their planning sessions, however, and that presented me with a dilemma: should I or should I not inform them that we were now fully prepared to leave Mediobogdum and ought to leave immediately? The laws of hospitality demanded that I give no sign that they might inte
rpret as an invitation to be gone, and yet I was acutely aware of the urgencies in Camulod, where Ambrose was awaiting our arrival. Fortunately, neither Connor nor his brother was as blind to what was happening as I had begun to fear. That same afternoon, when I joined them both in Brander's quarters, they were ready for me, and they informed me that they would leave for Ravenglass the moment I decided on the day of our own departure. I told them we would leave in three days' time, thereby giving them another full day to conclude their own affairs in Mediobogdum.
Later that afternoon, while I sat alone in my quarters conducting one more check of all that had been done, working with the long lists compiled by Hector and his clerks, I called Donuil in and asked him if he would find Arthur and send him to me. He left at once and I went back to work, losing myself in my lists again and making notations, until I realized that the room had grown quite dark and Arthur had not arrived. It had been late afternoon when I sent Donuil to find him, the light from my window still bright enough to read by, and now it was dusk. Frowning, I left my table and made my way outside in time to meet Donuil coming back. He had searched the entire fort without finding Arthur, he informed me, so he had sent Gwin, Bedwyr and Ghilly outside to look for him and to send him here immediately. Better that they, who knew all the boy's favourite haunts, should look for him directly, he had reasoned. But that had been an hour earlier. He had heard nothing since then.
That he should have had to send the boys was, in itself, a worrisome revelation, and it set me fretting. For years, all four boys had been inseparable. Where one was found, the others were close by, and that had always been a simple fact of life. Until today. What, in the name of the sweet Christus,
I wondered now, could Arthur be about? Where would he have gone, without his friends? And then my mind leaped to consider unpleasant possibilities. Had he been harmed? Was he perhaps in danger, lost or injured somewhere out in the rough country beyond the walls? A sudden vision of Rufio, lying bleeding after his encounter with the bear in the forest, chilled me to the bone. But even as these thoughts teemed in my head, I saw Arthur running towards me, rounding the corner from the central road that divided the fort. He was red faced and out of breath, and I merely stood and looked at him, disapprovingly, as he came to a halt before us, panting as though he had run for miles.
"I'm sorry, Cay," he gasped. "I would not have kept you waiting had I known. I came as soon as Bedwyr found me." I said nothing, and his face grew redder. "I was out on the hillside, beneath the walls. I had no thought you might have need of me."
"You had no thought at all, that's plain." I was aware how very unusual such behaviour was for him, and yet I could not let the occasion pass without a reprimand. "You know better, Arthur, than to disappear without informing someone of your whereabouts. Have you forgotten Rufio's misfortune so soon, and the upheaval it provoked?" He hung his head now, shamefaced and making no attempt to defend himself. "Have you nothing more to say, then?"
He sucked in a deep breath, then shook his head, his eyes still cast down. "No, nothing more, except to say I'm sorry."
There was little more for me to say. The lad had committed no crime. He had not even misbehaved, other than to slip away on his own. No point, then, in punishing him further, for I was under no illusions; his red face and his general air of guilt declared that he considered this questioning a form of punishment. I thanked Donuil, who had been standing beside me, and allowed him to leave before I led the boy into my quarters. He stood meekly in the middle of the floor until I waved him to a chair and seated myself across from him.
"I know I seldom send for you at this time of the day, so there's no reason why you should have kept yourself available to me, none at all. I was concerned when I discovered that you had gone off alone and could not be found immediately, that is all. If you think about it, you'll agree that that is most unusual, as well as simply dangerous and foolish, when the woods and hills about us are full of savage animals who see us as the interlopers on their mountains. What were you doing?" I waved him to silence as soon as I had asked the question, seeing the alarm that flared in his wide, gold flecked eyes. "You needn't answer that. It's really none of my concern, mere curiosity."
He answered anyway. "I was close by, Cay, close beneath the walls. I was merely... in an unusual place, that is all. Bed found me, by accident, on his way to rejoin Gwin and Ghilly. As soon as he told me you were looking for me, I ran all the way here. But I was never in any danger and never beyond shouting distance of the guards on the wall."
"Hmm," I grunted. "Well, that's some relief, at any rate. Now listen, I have decided that we'll leave in three days' time to return to Camulod. We'll travel by road, with the returning garrison, because Connor has other affairs to be about and he believes the sea route may be much too perilous to risk at this time, with Ironhair's armies invading Cambria by sea and therefore plying to and fro across our only path." I paused, to see that I had his full attention. His eyes were fixed on my lips, waiting for me to speak again. "So," I continued, "everything is ready now, at last, although I had begun to doubt it ever would be! I want you to ride to Ravenglass, to take that word from me to Derek. You will leave in the morning, as soon as you have broken your night fast. You may take the others with you if you wish, but there will be no time for play along the way. I need you to go there, as quickly as you may, to find Derek, and give him word from me in confidence, for his ears alone. Is that clear?"
"Aye. What must I tell him?"
"Straightforward tidings, for the most part. You will inform him that Connor and his party will leave here tomorrow, later in the day, to return to Ravenglass. We Ourselves will leave Mediobogdum to return to Camulod on the second day after that— What's wrong with you? Are you not well?"
His face suddenly looked ashen, but when I questioned him he sat up straight and shook his head, the muscles of his jaw outlined, so tightly were they clenched.
"No! I'm..." He blinked then, widening his eyes and fluttering his eyelids and shaking his head like someone waking from a dream. "I'll be fine, Cay." His voice, very slightly slurred, made him sound dazed. I stood up, alarmed, but he stopped me with an upraised hand, shaking his head. "It was... a sudden vertigo, that's all." He shuddered and then sat straight, evidently attempting to pull himself together. "Perhaps from running," he continued in a more normal tone.
I watched him silently for several moments more, then thought to offer him something to drink. He cut my offer short, however, albeit not rudely, and his voice sounded normal again. I was thankful to see, too, that the colour was beginning to return to his cheeks. "No, Cay. I thank you, but I'm well enough now. It was a momentary thing and now it's gone. You were telling me about the message to Derek. Please go on. Why must it be so secret? Nothing you have said indicates a need for that."
Reassured by the calmness of his tone; I nodded. "That's correct, on the surface, but I believe there is a need at least for circumspection. When I first spoke to Derek of our decision to leave here and return home, he spoke of coming with us and leaving his kingdom to his eldest son, Owen. He was adamant about it at the time, but he has not mentioned it since. I don't know whether he has changed his mind and decided to stay here in Ravenglass, or whether he is simply waiting for the word from me to join us. You will carry that word to him tomorrow, simple and unadorned, but you must deliver it to him alone, in private, for whether he still intends to come with us or not, he is king of Ravenglass. The announcement of his departure must be his to make. Similarly, if he has changed his mind, he might not wish it to be known, for reasons of policy, that he had considered leaving. Do you understand?" The boy nodded. "Good. How are you feeling now?"
He nodded again, frowning slightly. "I'm perfect. Nothing wrong with me at all. May I go now?"
"Aye, of course. You'll leave in the morning, as soon as the sun is up, and I'll expect you back before nightfall." He stood up and started to leave, but I stopped him as he reached the door. "Will you take Bedwyr and the ot
hers with you?"
"I don't know." He hesitated, his hand on the latch. "Could I remain in Ravenglass tomorrow night, and come home the following morning?"
"No, Arthur, not this time. That's the day before we leave. You'll be needed here. Everyone will be needed that day, every pair of hands will work at packing and lading. We'
must be away from here and across the pass long before noon on the morning after that, and beyond Galava, on the Great Mere, before nightfall."
His frown grew more pronounced, suggesting a hint of defiance, which perplexed me. It was unmistakable in his next words. "But what about King Derek? If he is to come with us, he'll come the following day. Could I not ride back here with him?"
I turned slowly to look directly at him, feeling, for the first time ever with the boy, a real need to assert discipline. "What?" I said, keeping my tone cool and level yet with a hint of asperity. "And leave your work here to be done by others who will have their own hands full while you amuse yourself in Ravenglass? I'm surprised you would even think to ask such a thing. No, you will return tomorrow afternoon, obeying my instructions and arriving before nightfall. Is that clear enough?" He nodded, but his face was set in lines of displeasure, almost a scowl, and I hardened my voice. "Good, then we understand each other perfectly. Besides, you will find that if King Derek has decided to come with us, he will be ready and will doubtless ride back with you tomorrow. He has known for months that we are leaving as soon as we may. If he has decided to remain, on the other hand, he will come back with you tomorrow anyway, to say goodbye. So the true answer to your ill considered question is both no and yes. No, you may not stay in Ravenglass, and yes, you may ride back with Derek. Clear? Good. That's all, young man. You may go now."