The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  “Eventually, however, after only twenty years, from 396 until 398, when Stilicho was Regent to the infant emperor Honorius, he brought the central corps of his new cavalry forces to train them here in Britain, in secrecy, against seaborne invasions of Picts, Saxons, and Hibernian Scots. They were extremely successful.” I paused, purely to emphasize the effect of my next words.

  “Barely three years after that, however, when Stilicho had to summon the legions home in haste from Britain to defend Italia and Rome itself against invasion by Alaric and his Visigoths, they had to leave those cavalry mounts behind, simply because they couldn’t take them with them. It’s impossible to ship hundreds of large animals by sea unless you spend months and even years planning how to achieve it, and unless you have specialized ships in which to carry them. Stilicho had no time to do either one of those things. He was faced with an emergency situation … the first threat in a thousand years from foreigners against the City of Rome, and he needed his armies home immediately. And so he had to make arrangements to have his horses cared for until his armies returned to Britain.

  “A man called Caius Britannicus, grandsire to Merlyn and the founder of the place now called Camulod, had become a friend to Flavius Stilicho during the Regent’s campaign here. The Regent named this man Legatus emeritus and granted him temporary ownership of all the abandoned Roman cavalry mounts, charging him with keeping them safe and secure pending the return of the legions to Britain. But the legions never returned, and those Roman horses became the foundation of the cavalry of Camulod and triggered the ascendancy of Merlyn’s colony.”

  I fell silent then, and it felt as though I had been talking for a very long time, but neither of my companions made any comment on anything I had said. We proceeded for almost a mile before Tristan broke the silence.

  “It has not stopped raining in seven days,” he said. “Not once. I forget what the sky looks like without clouds. I can barely remember sunshine. I think we may die here in Britain, drowned in rainwater. Most of all, though, I’m longing for the warmth and dryness of that filthy old warehouse in Glevum. I think God must have forgotten we’re here.”

  I sat gazing at him for long moments, slightly stunned by the obliqueness of what he had said. And then it occurred to me that he had offered an apt, valid, and pertinent comment on the importance of my impromptu history lesson and its relevance here and now. I nodded my head, accepting that I had been talking about something that was of absolutely no value today, and glanced up at the sky.

  “Sweet Jesus!” As the others swung to face me I pointed upward. “Look!”

  To the east, a golden beam of sunlight had sprung blazing, clean edged and brilliant from a narrow, bright blue gap in the clouds.

  From that moment when I saw the first ray of sunshine breaking through the rain clouds, Britain seemed to change its mind and welcome us, showing us warmth and beauty and hospitality where before we had know only dankness, gloom, and despondency.

  The memory of my first sight of the distant fortress of Camulod, sitting high on its wooded hill overlooking the rich and fertile plain beneath, has remained with me ever since. Strangely enough, looking back upon it across the distance of years, I realize now that I did not think of the place as a fortress at all when I first saw it. I saw Camulod from afar as a place of great and exciting beauty, rather than as a defensive bastion. I saw and accepted immediately that the place had none of the grandeur or magnificence of the great, castellated fortresses of Gaul, and in the years to come I would see many finer and stronger buildings and fortifications along the southeast coastline of Britain itself, the so-called Forts of the Saxon Shore, built by the Roman occupying forces hundreds of years earlier and abandoned when the legions left.

  What I saw in the distance that first day, for reasons I have never known or sought to understand, was a symbol of hope and, most surprisingly in retrospect, of peace, because it had become obvious by the time we came within sight of Camulod that day that, despite what Philip had told us about Britain being at peace, we were in a land fully prepared for war. There were parties of soldiers moving everywhere we looked, mainly cavalry but with a substantial leavening of infantry, and we were challenged constantly by people demanding to know who we were and what we were about. Fortunately, the fact that we were all well-dressed and well-mounted worked in our favor, for it quickly became apparent to us that the enemy, whoever they might be, went largely afoot and owned little of the sophisticated weaponry carried by the troopers of Camulod. That word, troopers, was a new word to me, but one that was easy enough to understand, and I added it to my vocabulary instinctively. Close to the hilltop fort itself, at the bottom of the winding road that swept up to the main gates concealed behind the curtain wall, a vast training ground, of hard-packed earth that showed no single blade of grass, was filled to apparent capacity with constantly moving groups of training troopers.

  That close to the castle walls, no one paid us any attention and we mounted all the way to the main gates before we were challenged again, this time by the senior member of a vigilant band of guards who stood before the gates, eyeing everyone who came and went, and from time to time questioning anyone who excited their curiosity or caution. I remained mounted and stated our business, saying that I knew Merlyn Britannicus was not available, but asking to meet with someone who could speak on his behalf.

  That someone turned out to be a giant of a man, perhaps twice my own age, who strode out from the gates sometime later and stood looking down at us without speaking for several moments, his arms crossed upon his enormously broad chest as he examined each of us from head to foot. The guards had told us to dismount while we were waiting for this fellow to be summoned, and now that he had come I found myself wishing I had remained on horseback. Even unarmored and wearing only a simple tunic, the fellow was hugely tall and intimidating, even larger and stronger looking than my cousin Brach, the biggest, most muscular and imposing man I had ever known.

  The giant made no effort to speak to us at first, more concerned with assessing any threat that we might represent to him or to his people. His eyes moved over each of us meticulously, missing nothing and even examining the harness and trappings of our horses. Finally, however, he seemed satisfied and nodded very slightly, the set of shoulders relaxing visibly. He introduced himself, in a voice that was pleasantly deep and surprisingly gentle, as Donuil Mac Athol, adjutant to Merlyn Britannicus. I heard the name at first as Donnel, and it was only months later, once I had come to know him and his speech, that I was able to identify the soft “oo” vowel that changed the pronunciation of his name from “Donnel” to “Donul.” He spoke in Latin, as did we all, but with an intonation I had never heard before. Knowing him to be a local of some description merely from his name—Mac Athol meant “son of Athol” in the Gallic tongue—I assumed he was a northerner, from the mountains, perhaps a Cambrian. It transpired that I was wrong. He was a Scot, from the island of Hibernia across the western sea. He called his homeland Eire, disdaining Hibernia as a Roman name, but that, too, I would only learn later.

  I had said nothing to him until then and had no way of knowing whether or not he had been told who we were or what we wanted with Merlyn, but he addressed me first, ignoring my two older companions.

  “You come from Auxerre? From Germanus?” I nodded, and he continued before I could say anything. “Well, I hope there’s no great urgency to your mission. Merlyn is gone, where and for how long no one knows, not even my wife, and that’s a wonder, for she knows everything. Tell me your names.”

  I introduced myself first, and then Perceval, Tristan, and Bors. Donuil stood silently as I did so, his eyes moving to each person as I said their names, and when I had finished he nodded again. “Good, then. I have them. Perceval, Tristan, and Bors. Be welcome in Camulod. Come inside now and we’ll find someone to look after your things for you, your gear, and your horses … although I imagine you, young fellow, will want to stay with your beasts and make sure no one touches
anything without your say-so, am I right?” When Bors nodded, Donuil grinned in response. “Aye, I’d have been disappointed had you said otherwise. So be it. We’ll come back and find you in a while. But you three, are you thirsty? We have some fine brewers of beer here in Camulod. Come you and let’s see if we can find some of their best.”

  After dinner that night, on what was merely the first of many long, pleasant evenings by the fire in the quarters belonging to Donuil and his lustrous and beautiful wife, Shelagh, we received our first lessons in the intimate, family tale of the development of Camulod and the two families, Britannicus and Varrus, that had brought it into being and shaped it into the self-contained and practically self-sufficient society it had become.

  We talked about Bishop Enos, too, and about the mission I had been charged with regarding him, because I now believed that I must talk to Enos without delay. No one in Camulod knew how or where to find Merlyn, or even where to start searching, but my own experiences at the Bishop’s School in Auxerre had taught me that few organizations were more adept and well-qualified at communicating among themselves and finding people than was the Church itself. Bishop Enos had work to do, both with and for Merlyn, on behalf of his friend and colleague, Germanus of Auxerre, and I, too, had information to communicate to Merlyn. It seemed to me there was a far better chance of reaching him through Verulamium and the ecclesiastical contacts of Bishop Enos than there was of finding him through the offices of anyone in Camulod.

  Donuil listened to all this, impatiently I thought, and would have demurred had not his wife, Shelagh, forestalled him, agreeing with my viewpoint. After that—and it was plain that the giant Donuil had not the slightest desire to challenge Shelagh’s judgment—the only objection he could think to raise was that Enos might not be in Verulamium when we arrived there.

  That was a risk I was willing to incur, I responded. The odds as I saw them were better than acceptable that even if Enos were absent on our arrival he would soon return, since Verulamium was not merely his home but the center of his Episcopal duties and responsibilities, and therefore it made sense that he would not remain absent for too long at any one time. Even the constantly traveling Germanus, I pointed out, was very seldom absent from his own jurisdiction for as long as a month at a time.

  It was arranged then that my friends and I should continue our journey without delay, heading north and west, following the route Merlyn himself had taken with his party at various times on the way to, and back from, Verulamium. Donuil would provide us with all the instructions we would need to find the town itself, and he generously offered us an escort of Camulodian troopers. We would have declined that, at first, believing rightly or wrongly that we would be less conspicuous traveling as a small group, but Donuil and Shelagh were both adamantly opposed to our going unescorted. We had no notions of the dangers we might have to face, they told us, repeating and reiterating their warnings until we threw up our hands and complied with their wishes.

  I asked them then about the assistance we had been assured we would find provided by Cuthric and Cayena, influential leaders of the Anglian community. Germanus had told me much about these two and the power and respect they commanded among their own people, many of whom were practicing Christians despite the fact that the traditional residents of Britain regarded them as invaders and barbarians. Husband and wife, Cuthric and Cayena were Christians of long standing and had established themselves and their people widely in the lands surrounding and to the south and west of Enos’s seat of Verulamium. Cuthric was what Germanus . termed both a sage and a Mage—a wise man and a devout Christian by nature and education, but also a man learned in the mysteries and esoterica of his people’s ancient beliefs and rituals. Cuthric was held in great honor by his people, and his wife, Cayena, was the perfect consort to his presence. Even Merlyn and his party, Germanus had told me, had accepted the couple’s beneficent influence on the Anglian community, and the fact that Merlyn and the forces of Camulod would recognize such people as a community rather than a nest of invading Outlanders went a long way toward explaining the kind of people these newcomers must be.

  Donuil and Shelagh, however, could offer us no realistic hope of finding support among the Anglians, simply because they had no evidence to suggest that the Anglians were even out there anymore. No word had been heard from Cuthric and Cayena since Germanus had left to return to Gaul, and that entire eastern half of Britain had been sinking into a quagmire of escalating warfare and invasions. Beyond the boundaries of Camulod itself, which was not large, they told us, the entire land was in the grip of anarchy, a condition which they swore we could not begin to understand, having lived our entire lives under the benign influence—no matter how weak or tawdry that might now be—of the Pax Romana, the rule of Roman Law.

  They were correct; we were to discover that very quickly and be forever grateful that they had made us heed them and accept their judgment, for had we ridden out of Camulod as we had first intended, four of us with eight horses, secure in the hubris of knowing our own prowess as fighters and warriors, we would not have survived the first five days of travel. Until we experienced the lawless condition of the country for ourselves, assessing and evaluating it with our own eyes against the standards we had been taught to apply to life in all its aspects, we could not possibly have anticipated the immense and frightening differences that now existed between life at its worst in Roman Gaul and what passed as “normal” life in Britain. And all of those differences that we were to discover in such a short time, the utter lawlessness, the disregard for human life and dignity, and the rampant hostility, violence, and brutality that we found everywhere, had all sprung into existence in the mere two score of years that had elapsed since the legions left, taking with them the power of the State to sustain and enforce justice.

  That was a consideration that had never occurred to me or to any of my companions, because even in the worst of situations at home in Gaul—in the midst of Gunthar’s War, for example—all of us, combatants on both sides of the struggle, had known that were we to take our domestic disputes beyond our own boundaries of Benwick and into the realm of Gaul, the full weight of Rome’s remaining military might in Gaul would have been mobilized against us, and both sides would have borne the brunt of imperial displeasure, for weakened . though the Empire might be today, it could still be formidable and frighteningly potent when angered and aroused.

  Here in Britain, however, that was emphatically not the case. Rome and its armies had had no presence here in decades, and a score of years had passed since the Emperor Honorius had sent word that Britain should look after its own affairs and expect no assistance or cooperation from Rome. That dictate had plunged Britain into anarchy and chaos, because it killed the last, lingering hope that Rome, with its armies and its guarantees of peace and prosperity, might return. And with the dying hope, it also killed any fear of punishment for transgression against one’s neighbors.

  The results of that, we were about to discover, would be plainly evident everywhere around us, and although at first we found it hard to credit the atrocious things we saw being enacted on all sides, we very soon became resigned to the truth that armed might and the strength to withstand attack could be used to justify anything and everything. The sole arbiter of whether or not an outrage could be perpetrated with impunity was the array of strength that might be brought against the transgressor by an opponent. Because there was no state, and no state-backed army to enforce its will and its laws, miscreants had nothing to fear and they could, and did, behave as they wished.

  Arthur Pendragon—and the truth of this would very soon be brought home to me as we moved through the blighted landscape of Britain—had already begun, even before his coronation as Riothamus, to challenge that situation boldly and to work to change it. He was already launched on a sweeping circuit of Britain, riding at the head of a heavy concentration of his victorious troopers and making himself known to his peers, proclaiming himself as Camulod’s Commander
and introducing his name and his armed strength to the regional kingdoms and the clan territories that together made up Britain. When he returned to the southwest, having established his presence in the land beyond question, if not beyond dispute, his self-appointed task would be to bring back the rule of law, at least as he and the governing Council of Camulod envisioned the law. And in order to do all of that, to be successful, he faced the task of having to confront, and thereafter win over or defeat, every local warlord, every jealous tribal king, and every petty, self-serving war chief in the land of Britain.

  It seemed to me that he had set himself an impossible task, as I visualized it in the course of the days that followed, and I wondered if the future, yet-uncrowned Riothamus himself had ever stopped to think consciously about what he had undertaken to achieve. I doubted that he could have, but of course I could not be sure. His seat of Camulod, and the numbers of his troopers who swarmed there so confidently, betrayed no hint or slightest sign of doubt or insecurity. And thinking such thoughts, I applied myself increasingly to taking careful note of all that was going on beyond the boundaries of Arthur’s realm of Camulod.

  We were less than ten miles beyond the outer boundaries of Merlyn’s colony, guarded as it was by vigilant horse troopers and infantry manning an outer ring of defenses day and night, when we saw the first evidence of the lawlessness that would be all around us from then on: a sullen, heavy column of black smoke twisting upon itself and rising straight up into the afternoon sky. We veered off the road to investigate at my insistence, for the Camulodian troopers who escorted us would have ridden on by, too inured to what they would find even to bother looking for a cause, and soon we came to a clearing that had contained a squalid, rudimentary farm.