The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis cc-6

by Jack Whyte

  "Good, then take half as many again, as a reserve. You can't replace a cavalry mount in the field unless you have one with you. "

  I had a sudden image of my expedition travelling overland: more than twelve hundred horses! "My God, " I said. "The logistics of that are frightening!"

  "Then delegate, Brother. We've no lack of logistics personnel. You'll need either wagons or pack animals to carry grain and other supplies. Wagons would be better, but they'll tie you to the roads again. Your spare animals can carry packs and your Scouts will all care for their own animals, so you won't need an army of camp followers to tend your needs. "

  "We'll be moving slowly, then. "

  He looked at me from beneath raised eyebrows. "What does that mean? Your' slowly' will yet be faster than heavy troopers or infantry could move. You won't be galloping all the way, but you'll move easily enough. So, are we agreed on this? Me for Cambria with the two legions and you for the far northeast with five hundred Scouts?"

  I nodded my head. "We are. When do we begin?"

  "We've begun, Brother. Now all we have to do is put our agreement into effect/Within the week, we'll both be gone from here, and Camulod will be safe in the able hands of Dedalus. Have you given any thought to your route? And how long would you expect to be away?"

  "Two questions, one affecting the other. " I paused considering both of diem. "I think my best route would be the one you and I took last time. At least I'm familiar with it. We'll head east from here until we reach the Saxon occupied territories, and then abandon the roads and strike out northward, overland, probably sooner than we did before, since the occupied area has probably grown bigger. What are you smiling at?"

  His smile grew broader. "Remembering our magic feat, the day we made ourselves identical and terrified those raiders by shooting at them alternately from places we could not possibly have been as one man alone, and yet all they could see was one man. What was that big Anglian's name, the farmer whose life we saved, do you recall?"

  I thought for a moment, remembering the occasion from eight, could it have been nine years earlier? "Something ungodly, almost unpronounceable. Guth? Guth-something or other. "

  "Guthilrod, wasn't it? There was a strange 'thlr' not a Celtic one—in there somewhere."

  "Gethelrud! That was it, Gethelrud. "

  "Will you visit him, think you?''

  "Visit him? D' you think me mad, with five hundred men and three times that many horses? I can imagine his face, seeing me there in his yard! We couldn't even speak to each other last time, when I was alone. "

  My brother was still smiling. "He may have learned our tongue since then. "

  "Latin? Oh yes, I'm sure he must have, almost certainly. He probably writes regularly to the Emperor nowadays, in Constantinople. No, Brother, I'll be doing no visiting. I'll be moving as quickly as I can. As for how long it may take me to come back, how long do you expect to be in Cambria? I'll come back when I can, but not before I've done what must be done. Three months would be the shortest time, I'd guess."

  "Aye, that's what I thought. You might then have to come and rescue me from Cambria."

  I smiled at that. "I will, if I have to, and I'll bring the Third Legion with me, since the threat from the northeast will be resolved by then." I looked at my brother, taking great strength from his confidence and his ardour for the crucial task at hand. "Have I ever told you how glad I am you're here?" He looked at me in surprise and I grinned at him. "No, I mean it. I shudder to think of what my life would be, had you and I not met. I would have missed the better half of myself and would have had to live with half a brain. I thank God, frequently, for your existence, for the fact that we are kin, and for the miracle of meeting you."

  "Kin? Man, we are practically twins."

  "I know, and that calls for a drink." I glanced around me. "I suppose everyone else is long abed. We've been talking here for long enough to outlive the lamps, and the fire's almost dead."

  Ambrose sat up straight and grunted. "Aye, well I'll replenish the fire and see to some of the lamps, if you'll find us some mead. There should be some left on the shelves in the triclinium."

  By the time I returned, clutching a flask and two stemmed glass cups, he had remade the fire and was pouring oil carefully into one of the failing lamps. I sat down and poured mead for both of us, then waited until he returned to his seat and picked up his cup.

  "You know, while I was looking for the mead, one thing occurred to me—a flaw. It's the only one I can see in what we've planned, but it's enormous."

  He sipped at his drink, and I watched the expressions flow across his face as he tried to guess what I was talking about. "Very well, you must be more perceptive than I am, because I can't see it. What is it?"

  'The whole thing is backwards."

  He frowned, trying to make sense of that. "I don't follow you. What's backwards?"

  "Our plan. I should be the one going to Cambria and you the one headed for Northumbria, because I don't speak the languages they use up there and you do."

  Now he scowled. "That's nonsense, on three counts. First, Vortigern speaks Latin—"

  "Granted, but Vortigern and all his people might be dead, and you speak the tongue of the Outlanders, the Danes."

  "Aye, but only poorly, and I've no knowledge of the other tongues at all—Anglian, and the gibbering of the Jutes."

  "But it's Horsa's Danes who worry us. Theirs is the tongue we need, even for listening. It doesn't matter if we ever talk to them, as long as we can listen to them speak among themselves, hear them and know what they are saying. I'm useless there. You should be the one to go."

  "No, I disagree. And here's my second objection. If I go there and find Vortigern alive, I might have difficulty leaving again."

  That caught me unprepared. "What d'you mean? You would prefer to stay there?"

  "Of course not! It's simply that..." He hesitated, seeking the right words. "If Vortigern's alive, and I turn up there in his lands with half a thousand horsemen, he might be inclined to... seek to restrain me from leaving again. My force would give him an enormous advantage."

  "You think he might use force?"

  "No, not at all. Discourage me from leaving would be more accurate. Don't forget, I was once among his senior and most trusted captains. Until I met you and decided to come south to meet my own people, he had all my loyalty. In any event, he would try to find some way to persuade me to use my troops in his support. "

  "It would be no different if I were leading them. "

  "Ah, but it would. You would leave when the time came, and he would be quite powerless to stop you, whereas he might convince himself that I yet owe him loyalty. He might make it very... difficult for me. I would defy him, if I had to, but I would not enjoy that, and the thought of having to lead my men against his—against him—makes me cold with loathing. "

  That made me pause. I had almost forgotten the extent of Ambrose's former ties to Vortigern. But then, evaluating what he had said, I accepted it and moved on. "You said my suggestion made no sense on three counts. You've given me two—what is the other?"

  "Ah! You're not familiar with my campaign plan for Cambria, or with the strategy I've devised. "

  "We can change that in a matter of days. How well do you know Cambria?"

  "I don't, not well at all. "

  "And do you speak the tongue fluently? Or that of Cornwall?'

  He shook his head.

  "And I do. I speak the tongues, and I know the land and the terrain. You explain your strategy to me, and I'll carry it out. On the matter of Vortigern's being tempted to coerce you into staying, I doubt that's likely. I don't think Vortigern would dare to make an enemy of you and your force. He has too many real enemies already. So I'll act as you intended to, and you will act as I would have, had I gone to Northumbria. Remember, we are almost identical, so no one seeing either of us from afar will be able to tell which of us he is seeing anyway. It only makes sense, then, that each of us should do w
hat he does best. Don't you agree?'

  "Partially. " He was still far from convinced. "I'm an infantry commander, Cay, not a cavalryman. "

  "Horse turds. The Scouts are yours. You created diem. They'd follow you into Hades. " I stopped, then spoke more quietly. "Look, Ambrose, it's too important to decide right now, tonight, in haste. Why don't you think about it overnight. Then, in the morning, if you're still reluctant, we'll proceed as planned. Either one of us can go to either place. It simply seems more sensible to me that we should make the most of what we have, and that means using your skills in the northeast and mine in the west, where we are both familiar with the surroundings. Will you think about it?'

  He smiled. "No need to think On it. You are obviously right, and what you have said makes sense in every detail. We'll do as you suggest. But there's a price to pay, for convincing me so easily to accept your plan over my own. "

  "And what is that?"

  "I want to take young Arthur with me, make the next stage of his training my responsibility. You've had the shaping of him exclusively for six years and more. I think it might be good for him to have a change of teacher, at this stage, and it might be safer for him, too. You will be riding into certain war in Cambria, with all its risks. I might encounter no hostility at all in the northeast. What say you?"

  I did not even have to hesitate. "I think young Arthur will be delighted, and you're right about the risk. Good. I'll pay your price, and I'll take on young Bedwyr. But you've reminded me of another thing I wanted to ask you about. I saw a school on the plain, today, did I not? Is it a school?'

  "Yes, it is. One of Ludmilla's female Councillors suggested it, about four years ago, and it started the year before last, in the late summer. What about it?"

  'Tell me about the priests I saw there. "

  He looked surprised. "What do you want to know?"

  "Who are they and where did they come from? Were they invited here, and if so, why? They looked to me to be monastics. "

  The corner of my brother's mouth flickered upwards, but he did not quite smile. "Monastics? There are few monastics in Britain, Cay, to the best of my knowledge. " He paused. "That is a fashion of worship and a way of life that has not yet come to our shores. The men you ask about live in seclusion, communally, cut off from the world... but they are not monastics in the sense I believe you mean, the monastics from beyond the seas. "

  "Brother, you are making no sense at all. "

  He sipped at his mead and swilled it around in his mouth before swallowing. "I am making perfect sense, Cay, and you'll agree, once you understand what I'm talking about. The men you saw today, although they are not priests, are from the ancient Christian community at Glastonbury, not twenty miles from here. They are followers of your good friend Germanus, who, as you may recall, decreed at Verulamium that schools should be set up to teach the ways and the word of God to the youth of this country. "

  That gave me pause. Glastonbury was the oldest seat of Christianity in Britain, and there had been a community of anchorites in residence there almost since the days of the Christ himself. Some said, indeed, that the Christ himself had visited the place. I had heard the tale told several times, but I gave it no credence. The thought of the carpenter of Galilee travelling to the wilds of western Britain had always struck me, as it had most people, as being ludicrous. Nevertheless, there had always been a religious community in residence there, living in a collection of stone walled hovels high on the shelving beach above the surrounding marshes, huddled at the base of the high tor that gave the place its name, and barely subsisting on the charity of local residents. I saw immediately what Ambrose had meant by calling diem monastics. The new fashion among the religious overseas was to gather in closed communities, living in filth and poverty and in contemplation of God's works, eschewing the temptations of Devil, World and Flesh. The anchorites of Glastonbury had been living that way for hundreds of years, quietly and without notice.

  "I've never been there," I said. "I've heard tell of it, but never in any way that might have attracted me. How did the priests come here?"

  Ambrose smiled. "I invited them. I have been there, you see."

  I looked at him in amazement. "You have? Why would you go there? There's nothing there but the tor."

  "And the community. We had a visitor, in the summer, four years ago, a churchman named Ludovic who had come from Gaul, from Germanus, and was on his way to Glastonbury. His ship had been blown off course and wrecked on the north Cornish coast, and he had been washed ashore, clinging to a piece of wreckage. From there he'd made his way towards us on foot. Our guards found him on our perimeter and brought him here to me. He spent a week with us, and then I escorted him to Glastonbury. That's where I met my namesake, Ambrose, who is the leader of the congregation there. Ludovic had brought Ambrose word from Germanus, bidding him send his people out to set up schools. That was coincidence, because we had just heard from our Women's Council that they wished us to establish a school of some description here in Camulod. There was a fatefulness to it that I could not ignore, and so Ambrose's people came down here the following year, once we had built our school, and began teaching. "

  "Teaching what?"

  "Christianity, mainly, its principles and tenets. Not all of them are literate themselves—very few are, in fact. Ambrose teaches writing and reading, and so does Thomas. Baloric, the eldest of them, knows computation and Euclid's geometry, so he teaches those subjects to a small number of our brightest. These men refer to themselves as the Fraternity of Joseph, and their lives consist of work and prayer. They spend the autumn and winter months with us, once the harvest is gathered in, but they return to their community in spring and remain there through the summer, while our children are working with their parents in the fields. "

  "Hmm. And you are satisfied their presence here is a benefit to the Colony?"

  "Completely satisfied. "

  "Good, then I'll say no more about them. Just don't expect me to ride to Glastonbury with them, though. My Christianity does not extend that far. "

  "We demonstrate our own beliefs in our own ways. " He smiled again.

  "What does that mean?"

  "Whatever you wish it to mean. Some of us live our beliefs in our hearts, others show them more openly. That's all. "

  "Aye, well... " I looked at the fire, and it had burned low again, mere embers glowing in the bottom of the iron basket. "It's late, but we still have to talk about young Arthur. "

  "Arthur's grown tall. No doubting he is one of us. And he's filling out hugely. "

  "Aye, and he's fallen in love, too."

  I told him briefly about Arthur's thunderboltng, and we laughed gently together before Ambrose asked, "You think it's time he learned to go to war?"

  "I do, and I've promised him he can ride out with us, he and his friends, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilly. They're of the age for it. But we'll have to separate them. They'll learn best in isolation from each other. You will take Arthur with you into the northeast, on this first foray. When you return, we two will be his teachers. He knows he must start out as a mere slave, a servant and a messenger. He'll tend our weapons, polish our armour, bed down our animals, run errands for us and learn to stand on his own feet and trust his own judgment. Meanwhile, I'll take young Bedwyr with me into Cambria, and perhaps Ghilly, too, though he's a year younger. He might serve well with Philip, on campaign, for I know he was impressed with Philip when he commanded our garrison."

  "I see no objection to that. What about the other lad, Gwin?"

  "I'll leave him here in Camulod, as servant to Dedalus. He won't like that, at first. He'll be bitterly disappointed at not riding out with the others, but he couldn't have a better mentor than Ded will be. Then, when we return, the boys will all change masters, and Gwin will have his turn on the campaign trail. You think that will work?"

  "I think there are only three things more certain, at this point."

  "And what are those?"

  "It's very
late, my mead is gone, and I am going to bed. Sleep well, Brother, because tomorrow will be a long day. It may all be celebrations of one kind or another, but by the end of it you'll be whimpering for sleep. Blow out the lamps when you leave, and don't be mean enough to waken Tress when you slip into bed. "

  I yawned and followed him out towards the stairway to the upper floor, blowing out the last two lamps as I went.

  The day that followed was as long as Ambrose had predicted, but paradoxically it flew by, from the early morning trumpet calls that turned out the garrison to prepare the campus for the coming celebrations, to the late night gatherings around bonfires where the sounds of singing and stringed instruments spread outward from the various assemblies and mingled at times into a cacophonous welter in the ears of the people moving from group to group.

  I have only two lasting impressions of that day. One was the realization, shortly after daybreak, that we did, in fact, have thousands of soldiers in Camulod. The day had been decreed a festival and the entire garrison excused from formal duty, save only for a skeletal force selected by lot to form the guard for the day. The troopers still had lesser responsibilities governing them; however, the task of setting up the venue for the afternoon's gathering was theirs, and their freedom to make merry afterwards was strictly curtailed by a ban on drinking during daylight hours.

  I watched them from above, from a bend in the hill road, as they swarmed upon the broad campus below, transforming it in a few short hours from a dirt grey, barren space to a sprawling tent town dotted with massive, unlit tires in shallow depressions around which heavy, wooden tables with attached benches, all made from raw lumber, had been arranged in concentric rings. In the centre of all, they left a rectangular space, some sixty paces long by forty wide, which would accommodate the major spectacles later in the day. Some of them had dug pits for the cooking fires the night before, off to the side of the main campus, close to the fringe of trees on the south side.

  The spit roast cooking of the largest animals had begun long before dawn, under the watchful eyes of Marco and his staff of cooks. That entire southern area, on the grassy, lightly treed meadows flanking the great drilling ground, had been fenced off, and guards had been posted there to keep the curious outside and away from the preparation of the food. Within the fence was a bustling chaos of activity. My primary impression, however, was that the number of men working on the drilling ground itself seemed beyond credence. I had never seen so many soldiers in one place before.