The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  It was my turn to talk then, and I did so at length, relating everything I knew and had learned about my friend Ursus. When I was finished, Germanus sat staring narrow-eyed at me for several moments, absorbing what I had last said, and then he nodded and stood up, pushing himself out of his chair with both arms.

  “Now, come and look at this.” He crossed to the large box on the floor, and I followed, eager to know what was to be revealed to me, but I could have guessed at that all night long and never have imagined what he was about to show me. The sides of the box, I could see now that we were close to it, were hinged and secured by a simple metal hasp. Germanus undid the hasp and swung the sides of the box apart, and I gasped.

  My first impressions were of rich golden, burnished browns, metal and leather, reinforced by the smell that came crowding into my nostrils, richly scented polish of the kind used to burnish and buff the finest leathers. The box contained an armor tree, a simple frame of crossed pieces of wood designed to store the various pieces of a soldier’s gear. I had seen a hundred of them, here and there, but I had never seen one installed in a box, for transportation or, as it turned out to be in this instance, for long-term storage. Furthermore, the armor growing on this particular tree was unlike any I had ever set eyes upon.

  Several of my relatives had magnificent armor. King Ban’s had been made for him personally, as had my cousin Brach’s, and the results were impressive and spectacular, even intimidating. What I was gazing at here, however—and I knew it beyond certainty, for it could be nothing else—was Germanus’s own armor, the armor of an imperial Roman legatus, in all its opulent magnificence. Germanus reached out and rubbed the ball of his thumb gently across the deeply ingrained texture of an ancient and much-polished scratch over the left breast of the cuirass.

  “Never could get that mark out,” he murmured, “but I never really wanted to, not badly enough. It served to keep me aware of my mortality. That was done by a heavy boar spear, thrown by. the biggest man I have ever seen. It hit me square and threw me bodily backward, over my horse’s rump. Lucky for me I didn’t land on my head and break my neck; but God was with me and the only damage I sustained was this one scratch.”

  I was astounded, because the cuirass was leather, not metal, and a spear such as he described should have skewered him, cuirass and all. I said so, wondering all the while if he might be exaggerating, as soldiers always seem to do, but he merely smiled and shook his head.

  “I cannot speak with any certainty about the harness worn by emperors, because I have never known an emperor who was a true warrior and actually fought and thus wore real armor, as opposed to ceremonial display armor, but I suspect that this suit here may be the finest single suit of armor ever made.” Once again he extended a hand and rubbed it gently over the glossy surface of the leather breastplate before plucking the helmet from the wooden ball that supported it atop the tree and holding it up close to his eyes with both hands. “It has been many years since I last wore this,” he breathed, “and looking at it now, I could regret never wearing it again were I to permit the self-indulgence.” A cloth bag hung from the “neck” of the tree, and he set the helmet atop the box and rummaged in it, extracting a plumed crest made from alternating tufts of pure white and crimson-dyed horsehair. With the ease born of years of practice, he clicked the crest into place on the helmet, transforming it in a moment from a magnificent helm to a thing of startling and imperious beauty.

  “Here, try this on. Stand still.” I stood motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as he fitted the head covering over my brows. It felt heavy, and solid, but it fitted as though it had been made for me. “Impressive,” the bishop murmured. “When one wears such a thing oneself, there is seldom opportunity to admire it. Looking at it now, though, it has a certain splendor, I must admit.” He turned back to the tree, leaving the helmet on my head. “But look at the workmanship in this device.” He was referring to the cuirass, and I removed the helmet, tucking it beneath my arm before I stooped to look more closely at the cuirass.

  It really was superb, an intricate and awe-inspiring creation of boiled, dried, hammered, and burnished leather, painstakingly fashioned in the shape of a stylized male torso. The planes of the pectoral musculature were utterly smooth and polished to a mirrorlike perfection that reminded me—I smiled at the thought—of my first sight of my cousin Brach emerging from the lake. Elsewhere on the piece, though, there was no expanse of surface larger than a tiny fingernail that was not covered with embossed carvings and workmanship of breathtaking, elegant perfection: rosettes and chevrons and thorny briarwork scrolls chased and embraced each other in apparent abandon yet flawless symmetry across and around the surface of the armor. Germanus stepped back from it, to admire it from farther off.

  “Hand it to me, would you?”

  Obediently I placed the helmet at my feet, then prepared to lift the cuirass from the wooden frame. I grasped it securely, lifted it—and almost dropped it in my surprise, whipping my head around in consternation to see that Germanus had expected this and was grinning at me again.

  “Aye,” he said. “Bear in mind I said it’s the finest armor ever made. You have almost discovered why. Bring it to the table.”

  I carried the unbelievably light cuirass, full front and back plates together, to where he was already waiting for me, peering into the second box. As I balanced the cuirass, allowing it to stand on its own upon the table, the bishop held something out to me. It was a flat, rectangular object wrapped in black cloth.

  “That’s the secret of the armor,” he said as I unwrapped the package and then held it up in front of me, staring at it. Whatever the device was, I knew I had never seen one before, and yet it looked familiar. It was made of metal, a gridlike form square in shape and feather light and flexible where I would have expected much more weight and rigidity. And then I realized what it reminded me of. Once, when I was a child, we had had a summer of ferocious heat, and in the course of it my nurse had taken to weaving shades of thumb-wide bulrush fronds to hang in our doorways and window embrasures to keep out the sun while allowing the air to move into the darkened house. The simple square over-and-under weave of the leaves had entranced me, I remembered, because it looked so fragile yet was paradoxically strong. And now I was looking at the same kind of weave, fundamentally simple and straightforward save that instead of rushes, the smith had used slats of metal, extremely thin and a deep, dark blue in color, forming a slender woven plate of steel that I could flex between my hands. Germanus held out his hand for the piece, and I passed it to him. He pressed his cupped hand, containing the blue mesh, hard against the left pectoral panel of the cuirass.

  “There is a layer of straps of this woven steel underlying the leather. In fact it lies between two layers, with the edges of the straps overlapping very slightly, and the edges of the leather are sewn together around the outer rims of the cuirass, front and back, very artistically. If you look very closely, you may see where the two layers meet, but it is not easy to find.” I bent forward and peered closely, but I could see nothing.

  “It is a wonder,” I confessed. “I have never heard of such a thing. Where was it made, Father?”

  “In Constantinople, where else? The smiths there can do magical things with metal, but the man who made this armor was the finest, most skillful armorer I ever knew. I was able to do him a service when I was in law, and he made this for me specially when I left the profession and joined the armies at the behest of the Emperor. There are arm guards and greaves and an armored kirtle in the box to complete the suit, as you can see, and even the leather dome of the helmet conceals a metal cap. It has served me well, in all my travels and campaigns. I have worn it throughout the Empire.” He made a sucking sound through his teeth. “But no more. Never again.”

  “What will you do with it, Father?”

  He tilted his head to one side and looked at me from beneath raised eyebrows. “I shall pass it to my son, my son.”

  “Your son? I
had no …” My voice tailed away in embarrassment, but he pretended not to have noticed.

  “Of course I cannot give him all of it. The crimson-and-white helm crest is that of a legionary legatus—the legatus of Gaul—and the martial cloak and gauntlets that go with it also bear both my personal and my official insignia as legatus of Gaul. All of those pieces are instantly recognizable to anyone who knows about such matters and so would draw unwelcome attention were someone else to be seen wearing them. But with a plain crest of brown horsehair, the helmet’s effect would be much the same, and a plain, functional military cloak of waxed brown wool will go splendidly with all the rest.” He glanced sideways at my chest. “You’re a big lad, but you still have growth to complete. Nonetheless, the cuirass should fit you well enough even now, over a heavy, quilted tunic, and you’ll grow into it soon enough. The helmet’s headband is adjustable, so even if your head grows larger, which is unlikely now, the casque will fit you and serve you well.”

  I was staring at him openmouthed, unable to believe what I had heard, but finally I found my tongue. “You’re giving this to me? To me?”

  “Aye, but not all of it. As I said, I’ll keep the helmet crest, the cloak, and the embroidered gauntlets—those are purely decorative in any case, heavy and cumbersome and virtually useless. But the rest is yours to wear from this time on.”

  He smiled, deciding to take pity on me. “Clothar, Clothar, think about it this way: I have no son of my own and you are the son of one of my dearest friends, and you have given me as much joy and pleasure with your simple honesty and strengths as your father did. I am an old man now, and soon I will die, and when I do, if this armor is still in my possession, venal people will squabble over it and it may end up being worn by someone whose possession of it would make me lie uncomfortably in my grave. Better by far that you should have it, with my blessings. You are going as my envoy into foreign parts, to deal with powerful people and take part in great events. It is fitting that you should be dressed appropriately for the part you may be called upon to play, whatever its nature. So, will you accept this, and my blessings?”

  I felt tears standing in my eyes and could only shake my head in acceptance, incapable of speech. Again he affected not to notice.

  “Excellent, then come over here, for there is something else I have for you, something that you can use at all times. But it came from far beyond Constantinople.”

  He went to the table, opened the larger of the two boxes that lay there and lifted out a carefully wrapped bundle, which he laid reverently on the tabletop. He reached into the box again and pulled out what I immediately recognized as a set of supple, well-used, and carefully tended black leather saddlebags. He tossed them gently toward me, and as I caught them I noticed that instead of the two normal bags to be thrown across a horse’s shoulders, this device had four deep bags, a pair on each side, one superimposed above the other, and a long strap to buckle beneath the horse’s chest and hold the assembly secure. I noticed, too, that each bag closed with a strap and buckle.

  “Large bags, capacious and useful. I designed them myself, on campaign many years ago. I found that I could never have enough carrying capacity when I was on the move. You’ll enjoy those. But this is what I want to show you.” He had been working to undo the wrappings around the bundle he had first drawn from the box and now he held up the garment it had contained. It was a surcoat of some kind, a plain rectangle of some strange material, folded halfway so that it hung down front and back in equal lengths. A hemmed, square-cut hole had been provided for the wearer’s head to go through, and there were transverse slits, also hemmed and no more than a handsbreadth wide, beneath the shoulders, permitting the shoulder surfaces to project straight out without being pulled downward. Other than that, the sides were open, and it was plain to see that they were intended to be held in place by a belt or girdle and probably a sword belt. It was a plain, dusty-looking shade of the untreated light brown wool called fustian, pale enough to be sandy or earthen.

  Germanus tossed it to me, and again I reacted with surprise. This thing, too, was metallic. I held it close and peered at it, then squeezed it in my hands. It contained countless thousands of tiny, almost insubstantial metal rings, all sewn into place in overlapping layers so that the garment itself was flexible and probably more comfortable than anything comparable that one might find in Gaul, although I doubted that there would be anything truly comparable.

  “That tunic will deflect a hard-shot arrow fired from close quarters,” Germanus said. “I have no idea where it came from or who made it, but it, too, was given to me as a gift many years ago by a visiting king from some far-flung part of the Eastern Empire, and he himself had no idea where it came from. The main thing about it, though, is that it works, and it is light enough and comfortable enough to wear in most situations where you anticipate that there might be danger and yet you do not wish to wear full armor. And it doesn’t clink. It rustles a little, but that’s all. If you wear it traveling, beneath your new armor, it will fill up the extra room in there. How goes the time?”

  “I know not, Father. I have lost track completely.”

  Germanus called again for Armand, and the large young man reappeared from the anteroom, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. In response to Germanus’s question, he informed us that it was the fourth hour of the night. He glanced at the fireplace as he spoke and crossed immediately to blow on the embers, coaxing them until he had a flame going again. When he stood up to leave, the bishop thanked him and gave him permission to retire to bed.

  “Time, time, time,” he said as soon as the man was gone. “There is never enough of it. Now, to work. We have to get you from here to the coast, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Tomorrow morning, after I have gone, I want you to report to Tiberias and have him select his finest horses for your use. Each of your traveling companions should have two mounts.”

  “There are only two of us, Father. Ursus and myself.”

  “Aye, for the time being, but I would like to change that. You will require an assistant, an escort to look after your equipment and your weapons and your horses. I have one for you, if you will consent to take him. His name is Bors and you may remember him. He was in the student intake below yours and he began this year as the informal leader of the Spartans—a brilliant and gifted student, but troubled during these past few months. His parents died in an outbreak of plague late last summer, although we did not hear word of it until after you had left us. But it transpires that it was not only his parents who died. His entire family was wiped out, leaving no one alive. The boy needs something now to rekindle his interest in living. He has been morose and depressed and his studies have suffered for it, but he is still far and away the best and brightest in the school this year. I want you to consider taking him with you. He will benefit by it and so will you, I am convinced. Talk with him tomorrow and watch him for a day or two. If you feel that such an arrangement would work, invite him to go with you. I have spoken to Tiberias Cato and he knows my feelings on the matter, so there will be no difficulties in freeing the lad to accompany you. Similarly, should you feel uncomfortable about this, then Cato will attend to it and no harm will have been done. The boy himself knows nothing of this, so his feelings will not suffer if you reject him.

  “So! Horses are looked after. Cato has his instructions. Now, I am assuming that you do not speak the Coastal Tongue, but does your friend, Ursus?”

  “I am sorry, Father, I don’t know.”

  “No matter, we will find out tomorrow morning, but it is important that you have someone with you who understands the language. Latin may serve you most of the time, but there are a multitude of tongues spoken in the world of mariners and the Coastal Tongue serves all of them.

  “When you reach the seacoast, you will proceed to the town called Gesoriacum, which is the port closest to Britain, and ask there for one of three sea captains, all of whom know me and all of whom I trust. Find one of those three, it does not m
atter which one, but trust no others. Heed me in this, Clothar, for it is vital to your success. You may have to wait for several days, perhaps several weeks, but one of the three will arrive in the port sooner or later. It is home to all of them. You will give the one you meet a token from me, to prove you are who you claim to be. I have the three tokens, and the names of the three men and which token goes to whom. Put them in your saddlebags.”

  He now opened the citrus wood chest and withdrew from it a small, slender handmade box of sandalwood that he opened to show three compartments. In each compartment was a small lozenge of leather with a man’s name burned into it, and a piece of jewelry. The first, named for Joachim, held a ring with a stone of lapis lazuli; the second, named for Sivio, contained a small silver pendant, looped to accept a chain; while the third, dedicated to Scapius, held a plain silver cross. Germanus read the names aloud, touched each of the tokens, and then closed the box carefully and handed it tome.

  “Each of those men has an identical piece in his possession, given him by me. By giving him this one, you will have the absolute loyalty he would give to me. On the other hand, however, these men work hard to stay alive, so we cannot rely on their goodwill alone. That would be unjust. So …” He reached into the chest again, with both hands this time, and came out with both hands filled. “Here, open this up.”

  I unrolled a long, supple money belt of soft black leather. It was slightly more than a handsbreadth deep and fastened with triple buckled straps, and the back of it was lined with finely woven wool so that it would not stick to the bare skin against which it would be worn. The main part—the back of the belt, assuming the buckles would be worn in front—was composed of three long lateral leather strips, each of them covering a narrow pocket the depth of the first joint of my thumb, and there were two rectangular areas at the sides, also containing pockets, although these were vertical and only half the width of the others. Germanus was pulling strips of black from a leather wallet.