The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  The only person I ever knew who showed a natural skill with my throwing spears from the very outset was, astonishingly, Cynthia’s younger sister. The child would often come to watch me as I practiced, and so unobtrusive was she that I quickly grew accustomed to her presence and eventually lost all awareness of it. She never spoke to me and never interrupted me in any way, but simply sat watching me out of wide, bright blue eyes beneath the thick, black fringe of hair that framed her forehead. Her cheekbones were magnificent, high and slanted, and combined with her long, slender neck they gave her a swanlike, regal look. I had only ever seen her smile on two occasions, neither of them inspired by me, and in consequence I always thought of her as a solemn, humorless child who took little pleasure in anything, although I was quite aware that there was precious little in her twelve-year-old life to give her pleasure. There were few children of her own age in Verulamium but even so she was forbidden to mingle with them. She spent her entire life surrounded by her elders, and her sole sources of enjoyment were the things they deemed enjoyable.

  One morning toward the end of that long winter, when I had chosen to work indoors, Bishop Enos summoned me while I was in the middle of my practicing, and when I returned from speaking to him I found the tall, almost painfully thin child standing alone in the hall, hefting one of my spears speculatively in her right hand and eyeing the target closest to her, which I estimated at a glance to be somewhere in the region of twenty paces from where she stood. I had stopped short in the doorway and she was unaware of my presence, and I remained silent, waiting to see what she would do next.

  Then I realized she already held the weapon in the throwing grip, the thong wrapped around her fist. She whipped up her arm, glided forward effortlessly and fluidly onto the ball of her left foot, and executed what appeared to me to be a perfect cast. The weapon hurtled out of her grasp, the tip of its tail spinning only slightly out of true, and shot toward the target, where it passed so close to the edge of the board that its whirling tail clipped the wood. Knocked off its true flight then, the spear clattered to the ground and slid across the floor to come to rest against the great fireplace. I muttered an involuntary exclamation of amazement.

  At the sound, the girl spun to face me, her hands flying up to her mouth and her eyes flaring wide in panic. And then, before I could do anything to stop her or reassure her, she fled, throwing the great doors open and dashing out into the courtyard. I ran after her, calling to her to wait, but she paid me no attention and only ran the harder until she vanished from view around the corner of one of the outer buildings.

  Annoyed and more than slightly exasperated, I returned to the long hall and picked up the spear. I was interested in my memory of how the child had thrown the thing. Admittedly the weapon was extremely light, and the probability was high that only by a fluke had she managed to combine the angle of her throw with the speed and pressure necessary to whip the spear forward with anything resembling accuracy, but nonetheless it had been an astonishing performance. None of the grown men who had attempted to throw these weapons over the previous months had even come close to doing what the Brat had done at first attempt.

  In the ten days that followed I never once set eyes on her again. No doubt afraid that I must be enraged at her, she took the greatest of pains to stay well beyond the reach of my displeasure. Early in that period, I had thought of asking her father where I might find her, but, remembering that Symmachus had shown almost as much apparently ingrained disapproval of the child as he had of me, I thought better of it and sought out his wife, Demea, instead.

  Demea greeted me courteously when I approached her that evening before dinner, making my way through the throng of her admirers and waiting patiently until she found the time to turn to me. The child, being a child, was not among the diners. She ate all her meals in the kitchens with the junior servants and the children of the serving staff, which was the custom. Children seldom ate with the adults at the main meal of the day, and most particularly so when the evening gathering was large and could become unruly and boisterous. Gaining a seat at the household table was one of the distinguishing rites of passage from childhood to adult status for people of both sexes.

  Demea turned to me eventually with a gracious smile and asked after my health, plainly wondering what could have brought me to seek her out on this occasion, since in the normal way of things I would have contented myself to acknowledge her from a distance with a courteous nod of greeting and a pleasant smile. I cleared my throat uncertainly, suddenly uncomfortable and almost embarrassed by the remembrance of what this woman’s husband believed to be my motivation concerning his elder daughter. Demea cocked her head slightly, waiting for me to speak, a vaguely uncertain smile hovering about her lips. I cleared my throat again, then begged her pardon for imposing upon her in this way and asked her what her younger daughter’s name was.

  The lady’s face almost froze in puzzlement, mixed with the slightest hint of consternation, and it was plain to see that she had expected me to say something about her other daughter, Cynthia. Fortunately, that realization alone permitted me to overcome my own uncertainty and speak more easily. Managing to smile without a hint of strain, I told her that I had encountered the child a few days earlier and had realized only after she left to go on her way that I had forgotten her name, if I had ever known it at all.

  She stared at me, her eyes wide and troubled. “Is it important that you should remember the name of a child so young, Master Clothar?”

  I grinned at her then, suddenly enjoying this situation. “No, Lady Demea, I doubt that anyone could think such a thing important. I merely found it unfortunate because, after I had seen the child and passed her by, I suddenly remembered being ten years old myself, and I recalled clearly how convinced I had been on my tenth birthday, of my own importance in this world. It was a short-lived feeling, because almost as soon as it had occurred to me, I was crushed to discover that a close friend of my father’s, whom I had known most of my life, had absolutely no idea of who I was or what my name was.”

  Demea sat blinking at me, a tiny, vertical frown visible between her brows, and I found myself growing aware that, beautiful as she might be, Symmachus’s young wife was not a creature of great intellect.

  “I was greatly hurt by that,” I told her, saving her the pain of wondering about what I really meant. “So hurt, in fact, that I promised myself I would never hurt any child that cruelly when I became a man. And until now, I never have … although I fear I may have caused your daughter to suffer exactly as I did myself, and that has made me bold enough to come and ask for your assistance.”

  The lady’s face blossomed suddenly into a wide smile as understanding dawned upon her.

  “Her name is Maia. She was born in the month of May, and although she is not my own daughter, her father and I first met in the month of May.”

  I bowed deeply, thanking the lady for the information, then excused myself and made my way to my own table, planning how I would seek out young Maia the following day and settle our imagined differences. I wanted to see how she would handle a spear on a second attempt.

  The next day, the weather changed again for the better, and I decided to ride out hunting with Perceval and Tristan. Young Bors would carry our tents and hunting paraphernalia in the body of a light, high-wheeled, single-axle cart drawn by two horses. There was still a deal of snow on the ground in many places, and the combined strength of the animals together with the high, narrow wheels of the cart would allow us to take the vehicle almost anywhere we wished to go.

  Unfortunately, it enabled us to take the cart to where we had no wish to go. Tristan shot a large hind in a dark, barely accessible spot at the base of a cliff late that afternoon, and after we had gutted and cleaned the carcass we experienced some difficulty in getting the meat to where we could transport it easily.

  Perceval took the measure of the cliff above us. It was perhaps as high as the height of five tall men standing on one another’s sho
ulders, and he estimated—accurately, as it turned out—that we could save ourselves a great deal of grief by pulling the wagon to the edge of the cliff up there and lowering ropes by which we could haul up the meat.

  Everything proceeded smoothly until we were raising the last hindquarter of meat, when something startled one of the horses. The beast shied and its harness mate reacted in equal panic, leaping away from its companion as far as it could and causing the wheels of the cart to shift slightly. It was enough to cause Perceval to overbalance. He fell out of the cart and over the edge of the cliff, where he crashed solidly to the ground as all of us watched in horror, too stunned to move.

  He was alive and conscious, we knew, as we made our way down to him, because we could hear him cursing savagely, using language that one seldom heard coming from his lips. But his left leg was twisted violently up behind him so that it lay beneath his back.

  Fortunately, Tristan’s days of service as a mercenary had exposed him to the harsh realities of military life, and now it appeared that he had learned how to deal with such things in the field. As soon as he reached his brother he knelt behind Perceval, ostensibly to support his back but in reality to conceal his hand as he unclipped his large dagger from his belt and grasped it by the sheathed blade before bringing the heavy metal handle down solidly across the back of his brother’s neck, knocking him unconscious on the instant.

  He wasted no time after that. Perceval’s body slumped to the ground as Tristan shifted rapidly around toward his brother’s legs. He grasped him about the waist, then squatted there above him, gulping in great breaths of air.

  “Right,” he grunted. “I’m going to lift him as high as I can. You two take hold of his leg and pull it around to where it should lie naturally. Then pull it straight. Quickly now, and be careful but don’t be timid. Haul back on that leg with all your strength and straighten it until the ends of the bone are back together, or as close as you can get them. If you don’t do it properly the first time, he won’t thank you later for attempting to be gentle! I don’t know how long he’ll stay unconscious, but he’ll never be able to stand the pain of trying to straighten that leg out if he’s awake, so on the count of three, I’ll lift and you pull. Ready? Now, one, two, three!”

  Tristan thrust upward with all the strength of his thighs and legs and managed to hoist his larger brother clear of the ground while Bors and I, not daring to look at each other or reflect upon what we were doing, seized the broken leg and pulled it around into its normal position, or as close to it as we could manage. The break appeared to be high on the thigh, and Perceval’s breeches were doused with thick, fresh blood. The ends of his splintered bones grated audibly as I pulled on the leg, which was amazingly heavy, and my stormach lurched as nausea swept over me. Remembering what Tristan had told us to do, however, I gritted my teeth, fought down my revulsion, and threw all of my weight backward, pulling with all my strength until I felt the leg I was gripping flex and almost seem to stretch.

  “Do you have it?” Tristan’s voice was close to breaking with the strain of holding up his brother’s body, and as soon as he heard my affirmative shout he allowed Perceval to drop heavily. He spun around to look at what I had managed to achieve.

  “Good,” he hissed. “That looks excellent. Bors! Quick as you can, break me two long boards from the tailgate of the cart—I need them to splint his leg. Be quick, and bring rope, too, the thinnest rope we have, to tie the boards in place. Move, now!”

  As Bors scuttled away to do his bidding, Tristan was already turning back to me, looking at my legs. “Yours are longer than mine. That’s good, because I need to be doing other things. Sit here, and take his leg between your own. Lodge your left foot securely in his crotch, making sure his balls are on the outside of it.” I wriggled myself into position. “Right, now wrap your right elbow around his foot—the left one—and lock it in place with your other hand. Get as strong a grip as possible. Good, that’s good. Now here’s what we’re going to do. When I give you the word you’re going to lean back, pulling against his leg as hard as you can and bracing yourself with that straight left leg of yours. You understand? What we’re trying to do is stretch his leg … farther than it ought to be stretched.” He scrambled away as he was speaking and took up a kneeling position ahead of me and on my right, facing his brother’s broken leg. “What’s happened is that the bone is splintered, like a tree struck by lightning, and the ends are too jagged to come together again on their own.”

  He pulled out his dagger and slit his brother’s woolen breeches lengthwise, peeling back the cut cloth to expose the flesh beneath it. The skin there, where it was not slick with blood, was white and pallid, and the flesh bulged out in an ugly swelling just below the point where jagged ends of bone protruded through the shredded flesh of the awful wound, which oozed blood sluggishly. Tristan kept talking to me, his eyes moving ceaselessly over the damages beneath his hands, and in a vain effort to keep my mind from dwelling on what I was looking at, I fought to concentrate upon the swirling, drifting snowflakes that filled the air around us, falling in utter silence, those of them that landed on Perceval’s bared leg changing from white to crimson in an instant. Tristan was oblivious to the weather and the cold.

  “Well at least he hasn’t severed any major bleeders. So, young Clothar, you are going to use every iota of your strength to pull that leg straight out until it’s so long that the jagged bone ends pull apart from each other. Once you’ve done that, I’ll guide the ends of the bones back into where they should be, and then we’ll splint everything up and it’ll be in the hands of God.” He bellowed up to Bors, whom we could hear banging on the cart above our heads. “There’s an ax in the toolbox by the driver’s bench. Use it.” He turned back to me. “Right, Perceval might be coming back to life at any moment, so let’s get this over and done with, if we can. Are you ready?” I nodded that I was. “Good. Do it, then. Pull, and don’t stop until I tell you to stop. Go!”

  I threw myself backward, my eyes screwed tightly shut against all distractions as I concentrated upon keeping my body at full stretch, pulling at Perceval’s leg, which felt heavy and lifeless. Once, twice, I felt as though something shifted and then I felt a lateral movement and heard Tristan grunt.

  “Right,” he said. “That’s it. You can stop pulling now. I can’t do any more. That’s as close as I can bring it to being where it was before.”

  I relaxed and immediately felt myself on the verge of total collapse, exhausted by the effort I had been sustaining. Above our heads, Bors was now chopping hard, but even as I grew aware of that the noises stopped, and moments later we heard the sounds of him scrambling down to join us again. He brought four long, narrow boards with him, and a long coil of thin hempen rope.

  “I brought some water, too.”

  “Good lad,” Tristan said. “Do you have any clean cloth? I’ll need one piece to wash his wound and another to use as a bandage.”

  “I’ve got cloth,” I said, remembering that I was wearing an extra tunic of plain white cloth beneath my quilted one, for additional warmth. I quickly stripped it off and shrugged back into my outer clothes before the cold could even penetrate. Tristan ripped it into two pieces, one much larger than the other, and used the smaller piece to wash away the blood that was now crusting on his brother’s thigh. He used a corner of the larger piece to dry the skin, after which he folded the remainder into a pad that he placed directly over the wound, binding it in place with strips of the wet cloth. I had noticed that the bleeding had lessened perceptibly since Tristan’s ministrations, and apparently that was a good thing, because Tristan mentioned it, too, in an approving murmur.

  He then splinted the leg, cutting the rope into lengths before calling on Bors and me to hold the boards in place along the limb while he tied them into place. He worked swiftly and with great confidence, and I was much impressed with his self-possession and the competence with which he had managed the entire affair, from the first moment of his lookin
g at his brother, assessing the situation and what had to be done.

  “Where did you learn to do all that?” I asked when the last ties were in place and he sighed and slouched back against the bole of a tree.

  “Hmm. I didn’t learn. I saw it done once, though, after an action against the Burgundians, not far south of Lutetia. One of our senior centurions, an old sweat called Lucius, fell into a ravine, from horseback. The situation was quite similar to this one, in fact, except that Lucius had an arrow in him, too. That’s what caused him to fall in the first place. Anyway, an old friend of his, who had been a medic decades earlier, before becoming a centurion, knew what to do. I was in the situation you were in today, so I wasn’t nearly as sure about what I needed me to do. But I remembered the old medic talking about how we needed to stretch the leg and bring the broken bone ends back together.”

  “You’ve never done that before, ever?”

  Tristan heard the wonder in my voice and frowned slightly. “No, and I’d feel a lot better about it if my beloved brother there would just wake up, or grunt, or puke or something.” He stooped forward and placed the flat of his hand against Perceval’s brow. “Well, he’s still breathing, at any rate, so I suppose there’s nothing more for us to do but wait.” He glanced up at the cliff above us and shook his head in rueful wonder. “I have absolutely no idea how we’re ever going to get him out of here.”

  “I have, sir.”

  Both of us turned to look at Bors. He shrugged and held up both hands in a curiously helpless gesture.