The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  At the start of the first race—a point-to-point affair in which each contestant had to ride three miles, collecting three flags along the way and bringing them back to the starting point within the time it took for a sand glass to drain twice—all of us were drenched in a brief but spectacular cloudburst. This was quickly forgotten by everyone but me, because it would cost me the race. I was riding a big bay gelding that I had ridden often before that afternoon, and we were first through the gate leading from the stable yards and along the short, wide lane that led into the open country beyond the town. I gave the bay his head and let him stretch his muscles while I enjoyed the rush of the wind through my hair and the feeling of his enormous body flexing and uncoiling beneath me.

  I leaped down from his back at the first pickup point and snatched up one of the red flags that lay there, and I had remounted and was kicking him forward again when the closest of my rivals, Balbus once again, came thundering down toward us.

  The run to the second pickup point, with the yellow flags, was uneventful despite a couple of obligatory jumps, one of them a downhill leap over a log at the edge of a deep pool of water. I was confident I was outstripping the field easily until I discovered—unpleasantly and most surprisingly—that Balbus was hard on my heels, far closer than he had been at the red flag pickup. I looked closely at his mount this time as we passed each other—Balbus leaping down to snatch up his flag as I kicked my heels into my mount’s ribs. He was riding a huge gray, and it was sweating visibly, but not inordinately so. I crouched lower on the bay’s back and drummed my heels against his sides, coaxing him to higher speed on our way to pick up the last, green flag, but I was distracted now, wondering how Balbus could have gained so much ground on me so quickly.

  It did not occur to me, then or later, that he might have cheated, for that was simply not a possibility. There were no rules to contravene in this race, other than the rule stating that each rider must pick up all three flags before heading for home and the finish line. There were degrees of difficulty in routing, and each rider had the option of deciding whether or not to deviate from the standard course, which wound through valleys between hills, for it was possible, theoretically, to shorten distances dramatically by riding up and over any hill crest, rather than going around it. But we were all familiar with the dangers that lay in wait there; the slopes were steep and treacherous with loose stones and boulders, and in some places they were simply unscalable. Besides, the normal risks of attempting to go up and over were increased and emphasized by the fact of the race and the consequent need, if the attempt were made, to get up one side and down the other quickly with no failed attempts, no hesitation, and no loss of time.

  On the last dash for home I decided to leave the flat valley bottom and cut off some distance by riding higher, taking a straighter route along the gently sloping shoulder of the hillside that stretched above me on the right. But just as my mount breasted the last angled line of hillside that lay between me and the finishing line, I suddenly saw Balbus coming down at me from above, on my right. He, too, had chosen to climb, but had gone even higher than I had, gambling that he would be able to cut my lead and beat me on the downhill dash into the last turn. I saw him just in time and kneed my mount to the left, sending him downhill, not steeply but sufficiently to stay ahead of Balbus. My horse, a surefooted animal that I had ridden many times, lost his footing somehow on the slick, rain-wet shale of the hillside and went sprawling, hurling me over his head like a living boulder. Neither my horse nor I was seriously injured, but we were nonetheless effectively out of the race. By the time I had collected myself and clambered back up onto the bay’s back after checking him for injuries, five riders had galloped past us and we were unable to catch any of them thereafter.

  I arrived back in the stable yards glowering blackly and biting down on my self-disgust, but I could not even have the satisfaction of being angry at Balbus. He had done nothing wrong, apart from inducing me to make an error of judgment and then going on to win the race.

  Less than an hour later, my earlier disappointment forgotten, I was in the middle of what we called the battle, the most chaotic but also the most enjoyable part of the competition. It was a remnant of the truly ancient gladiatorial contests in which, as the climax of a set of games, there would be a general fight in which it was every man for himself and the last man left standing could win his freedom. Our version of the event was nowhere near so bloodthirsty, but it was our tradition that the last man standing would be declared the day’s victor, which meant that even an underdog who had fared badly in the individual contests of strength and skill had a theoretical chance to emerge victorious over all others. There were almost as many umpires on our battlefield as there were combatants, too, their object being to identify and remove participants who were clearly beaten before they could suffer any real physical damage. The combatants all wore heavily padded protective leather helmets and fought in armor built of boiled and hammered layered leather; solid metal was too cumbersome and heavy for most boys. The weapons were standard shields and wooden practice swords of heavy ash or oaken dowel.

  The combat began with every contestant mounted on horseback, and the theory was that the man who remained mounted for the longest time ought to emerge as the easy victor. Theory, however, seldom survives for any length of time against reality and human ingenuity. It had quickly become standard activity in our school battles for those who were first unhorsed to join forces on the ground and unseat everyone who remained on horseback. Then, when the last man had been unhorsed, the battle began on foot and in earnest.

  The ground-level battlefield was not a pleasant spot for those who took no joy in passages of arms, because the danger of serious injury was very real. There were always students—usually the younger, smaller boys—who would take part gleefully in the early portion of the battle, milling around in the crush until they were unhorsed and then joining forces to bring down their elders and betters. They would then defect soon thereafter, citing self-declared and self-determined wounds during the confusion of the first few moments of the main fighting. The majority of the larger boys, particularly at the outset of each battle, had high hopes of winning the contest by themselves, and laid about them enthusiastically, slashing at everyone who came within reach. Reality asserted itself quickly, however, as arms and wind began to tire after but a few moments of savage, energy-sapping swings that missed their targets but nonetheless took their toll on the swingers.

  In the end, the contest invariably boiled down to a struggle between the same eight or ten boys who had been predicted as final-stage fighters long before the event began, and this occasion proved no exception. By the time the initial frenzy began to dissipate and I had an opportunity to take a wary step back and look quickly about me while I snatched a breath of air, I found I was now sharing the arena with five opponents. Even as I counted them, however, one of them, a classmate called Serdec, took a thrust in the gut that dropped him to his knees. His shield fell away, leaving him open to a crushing blow that might have cracked his skull had it not been struck aside by a vigilant umpire.

  Serdec was out, leaving five of us, and even then, as I counted, the number shrank to four as another fighter, Balbus this time, was hit savagely between the shoulders and then again on the back of the helmet as he went to his knees, head down. I didn’t wait to see him fall forward but swung away, my own shield up in anticipation of being attacked simply because I had stopped moving to look, but there was no one near me and I was in no danger. I was alone in that part of the field and I took immediate advantage of the respite, dropping the tip of my wooden sword to earth to rest my arm muscles as I looked about me for the best spot from which to defend myself against whoever would eventually come against me.

  For hundreds of years the legions of Rome had trained with practice swords that were double the weight of the real swords they would use in battle, and the reasons for that were simple, admirable, and perfectly understandable: after hav
ing trained for years with heavy practice weapons of oak or ash doweling, a real sword, wielded in battle, felt practically weightless to the soldier using it. For our battle we were similarly encumbered with the brutally heavy practice swords. These often became too heavy even to hold after a period of prolonged use, and so I stood there gratefully, my arms dangling, feeling the deadweight of the weapons I was holding but enjoying the sensation of exhilaration as new strength came flooding back into my tired muscles.

  The fighter who had finished off Balbus was a large boy from Germania whose real name had been unpronounceable to anyone when he first came to the school. Because of that, he had quickly been nicknamed Lupus, because someone had said he looked just like a big German wolf, and nowadays no one in the school knew what his real name was. This fellow was now moving quickly toward Lorco, his gait a combination of trotting and sidling as he maneuvered to come in behind Lorco’s opponent, another Spartan called Borus. Borus saw him coming, however, and shifted his stance warily, circling away from Lupus and trying to assess whether the newcomer would tackle him or join him in attacking Lorco. Apparently none of them had noticed me, still on my feet and armed, less than thirty paces from them. Borus had done his own calculations, however, and with a wave of the hand he invited Lorco to join him in a combined assault on Ursus, the largest of the three. They closed on him together, from right and left, and he did not last long at all against their combined assault. He lost his wooden sword to a smashing blow from Lorco so that he had only his shield for defense and no offensive weapon at all. The umpires declared him dead immediately, and he slumped and lowered his shield, hanging his head dejectedly as his two erstwhile opponents turned their heads to look at me.

  I had taken advantage of the time accorded me to choose my own fighting ground and prepare myself to meet them, and I stood crouched on the only spot in the entire arena that might be described as high ground, a tiny knoll that afforded me a very slight advantage over them in height. I was half convinced that Lorco would take sides with me against Borus if I invited him to join me, but the other half of me argued that even if he did join me, I would then be forced to abandon my position on the little knoll, and then I would have to fight Lorco on equal terms, once we had beaten Borus. I held my ground, facing them both blank-faced and keeping my wrist cocked threateningly, my sword’s point up and ready to swing in any direction. They shuffled their feet, hesitating, doubtless reviewing their own plans should the next few moments bring them both against me. The next move, and the decision that would precipitate it, would be momentous, and at the instant when the die was cast, all three of us knew, the one of us left to fight alone against the other two would be out of the contest, which would then be settled between the pair who remained.

  It was one of those moments when everything seems to slow down and stop, as though the entire world were being arrested in its progress. The sun was at my back, a choice I had deliberately made, and I could see both Borus and Lorco squinting against its brightness as they tried to read my expression. But then, unexpectedly, I found myself looking beyond them, to where Duke Phillipus Lorco sat tensely on the high reviewing stand beside Bishop Germanus, gazing intently down at the tableau in the arena almost at his feet and at the picture his son made, crouched and determined, his attention totally focused on the task at hand here in the final stages of the afternoon’s competition. And as I saw the Duke, I also became aware for the first time of the cacophony of screams and shouts that surrounded the three of us who were left standing in the arena, only because it faded quickly into silence, in one of those strange and inexplicable occurrences that sometimes happen among the largest crowds. Now there was utter stillness, and into it came the thought, as clearly heard in my mind as though it had been spoken aloud, of how proud my friend Lorco would be to win this contest in the presence of his father, and how equally proud the Duke would be to witness his son’s triumph in front of the entire assembly of the Bishop’s School.

  The thought was unexpected and unwelcome, and I thrust it away almost as soon as it occurred to me. But it would not go away, and then I found myself stepping down from my little knoll and nodding to Lorco. He nodded back and we both turned on Borus, whose face had already begun to sag with disappointment. He knew he could not possibly win against me and Lorco; he could not have won against any pair, by that stage, but Lorco and I were the primary favorites, and to fight us both would be folly.

  “Yield.” Lorco spoke the word, and for the space of half a heartbeat I thought Borus might do as he was bidden, but then he showed us his true mettle and roared some kind of challenge in his own tongue, swinging his sword high and throwing away his shield at the same time to grip the weapon’s hilt with both hands as he sprang hard and to his left, directly at me. He almost caught me unprepared, too, for I had really expected him to yield and had already been planning my opening moves against Lorco.

  The tip of his hard-swung weapon whistled by the tip of my chin so closely that I felt the wind of its passing, but I was leaping backward at the time. I landed awkwardly, unbalanced and unsteady, and most of my attention went perforce to leveling myself, but Borus was still pursuing me, almost on top of me, and a second heavy blow was already on its way toward my head. There was no time to think, but I knew I could not remain on my feet and avoid the descending sword, and so I simply gave way at the knees and rolled away as soon as I hit the ground.

  The blow missed. I heard the sound of its passing and the grunt of effort with which Borus stopped the missed swing and tried to reverse it, but then I heard, too, the solid whack of what I knew could only be Lorco’s sword against Borus’s armor.

  Came another grunt and a muttered curse and Borus sprawled on top of me, thrown down by the weight of Lorco’s attack so that his cheek came to rest against mine. For the briefest moment I felt the softness of his face and the warmth of his expelled breath in my ear, and I wanted to giggle like a girl. But I was already scrambling away from him, frantically grappling and sliding to where I could regain my feet and defend myself against Lorco, who was now as much my enemy as was Borus.

  I was almost successful, too, but as I braced myself solidly on my sword, using it as a staff to push myself up to my feet, Lorco smashed it sideways with his own, knocking it out of my grasp and dropping me straight down again to bang my chin against the ground and drive my teeth into the edge of my tongue. I managed to lurch into an ungainly forward roll and spun around, regaining my feet in time to see Borus’s last stand. He had evidently hit Lorco as Lorco smashed my sword away, and now he had his sword above his head, still in a two-handed grip, ready to deliver the final blow. Lorco spun around and swung his sword, backhandedly, up into Borus’s groin.

  Borus fell like a stone and curled himself into a ball, clutching at his injured parts. Lorco raised his head and slowly pushed himself up onto all fours, looking around for me. I was standing, but barely, spitting blood from my swollen mouth and gasping for air like a winded ox, telling myself disbelievingly that I had never, ever felt so tired. The sword in my hand felt like the heaviest burden I had ever carried, but I knew that I had one more thing to do. I had to finish Lorco before he could stand up again, and he was already rising unsteadily.

  I hoisted my weapon and moved forward to claim my victory, and as I did so I saw Duke Lorco again, gazing down wide-eyed at his son, and my knees gave way and I found myself kneeling in the dirt, blinking up at my friend Stephan Lorco as he stood above me. I knew I did not have the strength to stand quickly enough and so I swung again, low and wide and as hard as I could, a hacking, horizontal slash at Lorco’s knees. His blade sliced down in an opposing blow and stopped my swing almost effortlessly, and I did not see the following stroke that hit my thickly padded leather helm and sent me flying sideways into darkness.

  “Is he that good a friend?”

  The question caught me unprepared, but Tiberias Cato was not the only one who would ask it of me in the time that followed. I had just picked myself u
p off the ground and begun to limp toward the medical pavilion and I had not even had time yet to realize that I needed to ask myself the same thing: was Lorco that good a friend that I would willingly sacrifice my chances of capturing all the triumph of the moment and winning a valuable prize simply to ensure that he might look as good as possible for his visiting father? Or was I deluding myself? Had I, in fact, sacrificed anything? Had I hung back and allowed Lorco to beat me, or would he have beaten me anyway? Apparently I had done something, and done it overtly, for Cato growled his question at me out of the corner of his mouth as he swept by me on his way to present the victor’s prize to my friend Lorco, and for a short space of time I was too taken aback to realize the import of his words.

  I blinked blearily and swung around to peer after Cato as he strode to where the victor of the day stood spread-legged with exhaustion now that the battle was over. I could hear Lorco panting heavily from where I stood, twenty paces away, and I watched his chest heaving beneath his leather cuirass as he fought to regain his breath, his head dangling and his arms hanging straight from his shoulders. He was swaying on his feet, and he looked as though he might topple forward at any moment to measure his own length on the dirt of the arena, but Tiberias Cato marched right up to him and grasped him by the upper arm, then turned him firmly toward the spot where his father and Bishop Germanus sat watching from the reviewing stand.

  I had seen that Cato was carrying a sheathed sword tucked beneath his arm, a long-bladed cavalry spatha, and as I watched him present it to Lorco, I began to appreciate what I had lost and felt the first tug of regret. The spatha was Tiberias Cato’s own sword, a superb weapon, probably one of the finest of its kind ever made. It had been bought for him many years earlier by Germanus himself, in Constantinople, shortly after Cato had signed up with the legatus as an Assistant Master of Horse, charged with teaching the garrison’s troopers some of the hew techniques and skills that he had brought back with him from the lands of the Smoke People, where he was raised. This was a distant eastern land, far beyond the boundaries of the Empire, a place where all people had straight black hair, skin of yellowish brown and strangely slanted eyes. Tiberias Cato’s father had traveled there as a merchant, taking his wife and young son with him in his unending search for new and exotic goods to trade, and when he and his wife died there of a fever, their orphaned son was brought up by the local tribesmen and lived among them until he achieved manhood and was able to go in search of his own birthplace and his surviving kinsmen.