The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  You may be dead by now, even as I write these words. Or perhaps you are grown too old to journey here to find the things I leave for you. I do not know, so I can only write and hope it is not so. I know that I am very old—older than I had ever thought to be. The sight of my hand, writing, shrunk to a claw and covered with thin, shiny blemished, sagging skin that shows the bones beneath, tells me that I am ancient. (My other hand is fingerless today but without pain. It serves to keep the parchment steady as l write.) Yet it surprises me to think that I know not how old you are today. Young enough to remain alive, and strong enough to come and find my bones and these my words? I know not.

  No matter. I must place my trust in God and in His wish to have my tale made known. He has sustained me for long enough to finish my task, so I must believe that He has His reasons for keeping me alive to complete it. The fruits of that labor lie before you now, if you are reading this. Two of three bundles, as well protected against time and weather as my one-handed efforts can achieve.

  The largest of these three contains the written words of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus, as well as my own tale of my young life. The smaller bundle holds my thoughts on what happened here in Arthur’s final days, and in the days before you and we met. I have not sought to write of the time when you were here with us, since you yourself can achieve that more fully than I.

  The third, most precious bundle I have hidden where only you will know to seek it, in the spot you helped me to prepare on the summer afternoon when first you found my valley here among the hills. You will know what it contains as soon as you see the shape and feel the weight of it. Do what you will with it, for it now belongs to you. Its destiny achieved, it is become a mere tool, albeit the very finest of its kind that ever was. But with his death, whatever magic it contained was spent, vanished with his lustrous soul into another time and place.

  And yet be wary. Call it not by name. It will attract attention of itself, even in Gaul. Name its name aloud, and you will be inviting grief and strife and misery from covetous creatures who would stop at nothing to possess the thing.

  You will also find the two items that you helped me place in the spot of which I write. Destroy them for me now, if you will, for they are packed with evil tools—poisons and vehicles of death in many guises. I have used some of them myself, at times, and know their potency but I spent years in learning how to know and use them, and with my death they now pose lethal danger to any finding them, including you yourself. Be highly cautious. Handle none of them. I would burn them myself, but I have waited and deferred too long and now I have too little strength to deal with them. Should you not arrive, they will molder and rot, eventually, unfound. But if you come, burn them and complete the task for me.

  My blessings upon you and on your sons, if a sorcerous old leper may bestow such gifts. I trust your wife is well, and that she is the wife whose husband fell to set you both at liberty

  And now, at last, this is complete and I am free. I am so very tired. It is winter again, and a harsh one. The snow lies thick outside and my little lake is frozen hard, its backing wall thick with sheets and ropes of ice. It only remains for me now to bind this missive and lay it with the others. Should someone else than you find it, it may remain unread, since none here, save me, can read today But should they pull apart the other bundles, they will find more to read—far more—and they might well destroy what lies here, burning or scattering it all. So be it. They will not find the third gift I leave for you.

  Now I shall go outside, one last, cold time, and gather wood for my fire, and I shall eat the last of some good rabbit stew I made but yesterday and after that I will lie down on my old cot and sleep the sleep I have long wished for. Farewell, Hastatus! May your lance fly straight and true forever, and may God grant you the power to tell of what we both knew here in Britain. Your friend,

  Caius Merlyn Britannicus—how long since I have used, or seen, that name!

  Excalibur! No shred of doubt existed in my mind that this was what lay in the third treasure set aside for me. He had been careful not to name it in bald words, but Merlyn had known that there had been no need. I was the only one besides himself who knew about the hiding place, the cave that I had helped him excavate behind the hanging slab of rock at the back of the hut, at the lake’s farthest end. He had found it by accident one day, more of a recess than a cave, in truth: a natural space left between the hillside and the enormous broken slab that was the farthest end of the long stone cliff face that formed the rear of the little lake. A steady sheet of water flowed silently down that rock face from a source hidden on the steep, densely overgrown hillside above, and gave the tiny vale much of its magical, almost supernatural beauty.

  Naturally, being Merlyn, he had seen the little hollow, screened by hanging roots and a huge clump of bramble bushes, as an asset that might be useful someday, and had labored long and hard thereafter to widen and deepen it, digging out the soft shale hillside behind the slab until he had formed a dry, enclosed space in which two men could stand upright; a space that might someday be used to conceal anything valuable, including his own life, from unwelcome eyes. I had helped him, on my first visit to this valley, to carry two iron-bound wooden chests there. He had told me at the time that they were filled with the poisonous leavings of two Egyptian warlocks called Caspar and Memnon, who had once served the villainous Lot of Cornwall and had died in Camulod for the murder of Merlyn’s own father, Picus Britannicus. But he had made no move to open them to show me what they held, and I had not asked him to. And there, too, he had concealed Excalibur, years later.

  I had often wondered what had become of the sword after Arthur’s death. Now I knew, and I felt no surprise. Indeed, I should have known that Merlyn would have found a way to keep it safe, aware that its legendary brightness might have been put to evil purposes in the wrong hands. And thinking thus, I wondered, too, if there could be any right hands to own it, once its true possessor was dead. But now it was mine, by Merlyn’s decree, passed on in trust to me and mine, albeit with a warning not to reveal its name or its true provenance. In Gaul, far removed from Britain and its memories, that might be possible, providing I contained my knowledge safe inside myself.

  “Father?” I had not heard the door opening behind me. “I have found the place, I think. Would you like to come and look before we start digging?”

  I folded up the sheets in my hand and went outside, where Clovis led me to the grave site on the little knoll overlooking the placid surface of the tiny lake. The rest of our party stood about there, silently watching me, their faces showing curiosity. I nodded in approval, then raised my hand.

  “I knew this place, long years ago,” I said, moving my eyes from face to face, “and it holds many happy memories for me. It also holds possessions I had never hoped to see again; things that I had thought and hoped were safe here, in its hidden isolation. Treasures,” I added, seeing the sudden stirring of interest that the word evoked. I paused, watching them closely. “But treasures that have no worth to anyone but me. I’ll show them to you, and ask you to carry them for me. I will even share them with you, should you so desire. How many here can read?”

  All of their faces twisted into scowls and only one besides Clovis raised his hand. “Lars? I had no idea. Where did you learn?”

  Lars, a heavyset warrior, immense across the chest and shoulders, shrugged and dipped his head as though suddenly shy. “In boyhood,” he growled in his great, rambling voice. “My father had a crippled scribe whose task it was to teach me. But that was long ago.”

  “And do you still read, today?”

  He looked me in the eye, defiantly, as though I might challenge him to prove his next words. “I could … had I the time or the will.”

  “Then you might like to read the treasure we will take from here, for it is all in words, written on fine parchment. Piles and piles of it, covered in fine script over a period of several lifetimes by men long dead. Would you wish to read what it h
as to say?”

  Lars laughed suddenly, a harsh, deep bark. “Nay, Lord, I would not. But if there be as much as you describe, it will make a heavy burden. I’ll gladly help you carry it, but I would rather die beneath the lash than have to read it.” The others joined in his laughter, and I waited, smiling still.

  “You’re right, it will be heavy, three large bundles. So I suggest you and another make a litter of poles, the easier to carry it between four men. Four more of you to dig this grave, working in pairs.”

  “Who was he, Lord? The man we are to bury?” The questioner was Origen, the youngest of our group but already famed among his peers for his coolheaded courage and a wisdom beyond his years.

  I shook my head. “As easy for you to say as for me, Origen. A vagrant, perhaps, who stumbled on this place and remained here to die.”

  “Then why the labor of a burial, Lord? Why not just leave him where he is?”

  That stopped me short, because I recognized the danger hidden in the simple question. Why, indeed, go to the trouble of burying a long-dead pile of unknown bones? But my tongue had already gone ahead of me so that my answer was as glib as any long considered, and my smooth response evoked another burst of laughter from my listeners. “Because he’s in my bed, my friend.”

  As the laughter died away I looked up at the rapidly darkening sky above our heads. “Laugh as you will, but I mean it. We will stay here tonight and return to the coast in the morning. This is as safe a place as we could find in all this land, for no one knows it exists. The rain seems to have passed, but should it return we can all sleep beneath the old roof, there, packed in like grapes on a stem, but warm and dry. But there is only one small bed, and I lay claim to it, as senior here. Our bony friend will not feel the dampness of cold earth atop his bones, but I would find his dusty presence irksome, sharing the bed with him.” That drew another chuckle, and as it died I spoke into it.

  “So, the three of you who are left idle for the moment will have a task as well: two of you to gather up the bones of our dead friend and wrap them carefully for burial in the blanket that covered him, while the other shakes out the remaining bedding and the sleeping furs. Clovis, I leave it to you to do the shaking out. Take pains to shake out all the dust here in the open, if you will, but do so with respect. We may not know who this man was, but we know he died here alone and friendless, probably unmourned. And looking about the place in which he died, we found no weapons … not a sword, an ax, a knife, or even a club. No means of self-defense at all, which tells me that this dead man was a man of peace.”

  “Either that or a base-born, gutless fugitive.” The whispered comment had not been meant for me to hear, but it reached my ears nonetheless. The speaker, Armis, known as Blusher to his companions, knew I had heard his comment, and a deep red flush swept up his face.

  “Perhaps so, Armis. You may be right. But we will never know, will we? And thus, we’ll look at it my way. Do you agree?”

  Armis said nothing at all, the red tide in his cheeks growing even deeper, and I turned back to the others, none of whom had yet laughed as they normally would at Armis’s discomfiture.

  “We will tend him as though he were one of us, treat his remains with dignity, and see him to a decent burial at last. After all, but for the seas between this land and ours, he might have been grandsire to any of you, who can tell?”

  This last produced no laughter from my suddenly sober-faced audience, and I nodded. “Let’s be about it, then, before it starts to rain again or grows too dark to see. Clovis, come you with me for a moment. There is much of your father here in this small valley, and since you are my youngest son, I want to share it with you.”

  I felt no qualms about the subterfuge as I led him away, leaving the others to dispose of the tasks I had set them. As soon as we were out of their sight, however, I changed direction, circling around behind the hut until we reached the hanging screen of roots, briars, and creepers that concealed the entrance to Merlyn’s hiding place. It took me mere moments to work my way around the hanging mass and rip away the living curtain to expose the narrow entrance, and I used my body as a brace to hold back their weight as Clovis eased his way past me into the interior. It was dry inside, and dark, but there was light enough to show us what lay therein: two massive chests and a long, straight-edged package that obviously contained a box, tightly bound in some kind of uncured hide that had been soaked, then stretched tightly around its contents before being bound with narrow leather thongs and left to dry in place, forming a hard, stiff casing. Clovis turned to me, his eyebrows raised in query.

  I pointed at the long, narrow package. “This one is mine, from Merlyn. Bring it when we leave here and place it with the other two bundles in the hut.”

  He pointed a thumb toward the chests. “What about those?”

  “Those we destroy. They contain sorcery—real sorcery. Merlyn took them from two warlocks, many years ago. I helped him bring them here. He always intended to destroy them, but he was curious about the things they held and could not bring himself to dispose of them before he knew their secrets. I suspect he eventually forgot that they were here and only found them when he brought—” I stopped short, on the point of saying “Excalibur.” “When he brought this other box to leave safely for me. By that time, he was too old and weak, too tired, to destroy them effectively. And so, in the letter that he left, he asked me to complete the task for him. We’ll burn them when we leave, tomorrow. Right now, we have to empty them and scatter their contents on the floor here. But he warned me that they are more than simply dangerous: they all contain death, in one form or another, and in some cases, he insists, mere contact with the skin can bring about a painful end. So be careful not to touch anything that lies inside either of them.”

  I opened the larger chest, then stood gazing in surprise at what I saw. The interior seemed to be a narrow, shallow tray, filled with leather thongs and surrounded on all four sides by wide, ribbed borders. It took me several moments before I saw that the “ribs” along each edge were the edges of a nested series of trays, each deeper than the one above, and that the leather thongs were handles, one pair attached to each of the trays in series. I folded back the thongs, draping them over the edges of the chest, then found those for the first tray, the shallowest, which had contained nothing other than the layered thongs. I lifted it out and laid it aside, revealing the tray below. It was twice as deep as the first one, its interior divided into rectangular boxes, some of them empty but many filled to varying degrees with what I took to be seeds and dried berries of many colors. All of them would be poisonous, I told myself, lifting out the tray and resting it on one corner of the chest. I gripped it by the sides and turned it over carefully at arm’s length, scattering the contents on the floor of the cave before setting the empty tray aside and reaching for the third set of handles. This tray was deeper and heavier, with fewer compartments, containing jars and vials. Those, too, I tipped out onto the floor, using my boots to free the lids and tip the containers so their contents ran or oozed out into the dirt. I looked up then and nodded to Clovis, bidding him open the other chest and follow my example. Three trays remained in my chest, the topmost filled with oblong boxes of green glazed clay filled with some kind of greenish paste. I dumped them out onto the floor, too, kicking their lids away and turning the boxes over with my booted toes, so that their contents lay facedown on the dirt.

  The next tray contained what I took to be hanks of dried grasses and small tied bundles of twigs and dried herbs. I didn’t know what those were, but they would serve as kindling for the fire I would light the following day. I piled them in the center of the floor. The bottom of the chest, the deepest compartment, was empty, save for a fat, squat wooden box containing what looked like a handful of granular black powder, which I shook out onto the pile of grass. The array of trays on my left would burn well.

  “Look at this, Father.” Clovis was holding something out to me. “It looks like a man’s hair and face,
peeled off the bone.”

  “It’s a mask. A mummer’s trickery. Throw it with the rest.”

  In less time than it has taken me to describe, we had emptied both chests, and their contents lay piled on the floor, surrounded by the half score of trays and the empty chests themselves.

  “Those are wondrous chests, Father, well made. It seems a pity to destroy such things.”

  “We need them to burn, to destroy what they contained. Merlyn was quite clear about that. But there’s not enough fuel in here to do that properly, so tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, I want you to start gathering wood and bringing it in here. Have your friends help you. There’ll be little dry wood, but no matter. Find what you can and chop it up into pieces small enough to bring through the entrance. Pack this place to the ceiling, if you can. The hotter the fire we make, the more completely we’ll destroy what’s here. But if your friends pay any attention to what’s scattered on the floor, discourage them. Don’t let them touch anything on the floor with their bare hands. If they ask you what we’ve done here, or why we did it, tell them it is my wish—that these are useless things too heavy to take home to Gaul. Tell them I have decided I have no wish to see them again, because of memories they stir in me. They will believe you. This is a day for memories, they have seen that. But on no account will you allow any of them to touch anything, unless you want to see them shrivel up and die before your eyes. Is that clear?”

  His eyes were wide and full of conviction. “Yes, Father. I’ll watch them closely. They won’t touch anything.”

  “Good. I’ll trust you to see to it. Now pick up my box, if you will, and let’s get out of here. It’s almost too dark to see, so it must be near nightfall.”

  The rain held off that night and we slept well, and at dawn we were up and about. Clovis and his friends made short work of filling the cave with wood, and if any of them even noticed the spillage on the cave floor they made no mention of it. I spent that time alone, sitting on the cot and reading over Merlyn’s letter several times, resisting the temptation to open any of the three parcels. When I smelled the tang of smoke from green wood, I went outside where I could see thick white smoke drifting from the trees fronting the vent that formed the entrance to the cave. My escort, their work over, were standing around, idly watching the increasing clouds of smoke. I called them together and brought them to order, and they stood grouped around the open grave as we lowered the tiny bundle containing the brittle bones of Merlyn Britannicus to rest.