The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  Sure enough, soon after we left the cookhouse with our bellies full, a soldier came looking for me. Merlyn had emerged from his conference and invited me to join him in his private quarters. I went with the messenger immediately, my mind swarming with thoughts of finally meeting with the man I had come so far to see.

  I had heard many things about Merlyn Britannicus in my travels across Britain and some of them were simply incredible, defying both logic and belief but titillating and terrifying the very folk who whispered of them. Merlyn Britannicus was a sorcerer, these people said, perhaps the blackest sorcerer ever to live in Britain. Even his clothing proclaimed the fact that he was a practitioner of the black arts, a familiar of the gods of darkness. He dressed in loose, long-flowing robes of deepest black, and no man or woman was permitted to look upon his face. But then, the person speaking always added, who would want to? This was Merlyn Britannicus, of Camulod, a man whose death at the hands of his archenemy hundreds had witnessed. And then, after his death, they had continued to watch in horror as the head was struck from his corpse with his own sword.

  Carthac, the monster who had killed him, carried Merlyn’s head back to his camp, swinging it by its long, golden hair as he went. The camp was enclosed and virtually unassailable, high in the mountains and miles from the scene of the fight where the rest of Merlyn’s corpse had been left lying. Carthac had shown Merlyn’s severed head to his whole army, swinging it high around his own head before casting it into a bonfire, where it exploded in a fireball the likes of which no one had ever seen, filling the air with billowing, choking smoke and whirling sparks. And from that cloud of smoke, to the consternation and awestricken terror of everyone who saw it, Merlyn Britannicus had leaped into view, miraculously reborn, to kill and strike the head off Carthac in his turn and send all his followers screaming out into the open air, where they found Pendragon bowmen waiting to shoot them down from the mountain slopes above their camp.

  From that day forth, these storytellers said, Merlyn had walked in silence, shrouded in robes of deepest black, and all men shunned him.

  That was the people’s version, the tale told in hushed voices throughout the land on dark nights when the wind howled in the distant emptiness beyond the firelight.

  The version I had learned from Merlyn’s. friends was very different. The man Carthac had beheaded was actually Ambrose Ambrosianus, Merlyn’s half brother, close enough to Merlyn in appearance to be virtually identical. The two brothers had worked hard to turn that close resemblance into a tactical weapon, cultivating it in such a way that they wore identical clothes and armor and were never seen together. Because they were frequently seen fighting on the same days, but at great distances from each other, the story spread that Merlyn the Sorcerer could win simultaneous victories and be seen triumphant on the same morning or afternoon on two battlefields twenty or thirty miles apart.

  On the day when Merlyn was “reborn,” he had penetrated Carthac’s camp disguised as a sick messenger, and he was sitting by the fire pit, nursing a pouch full of some mysterious fire powder. It had been his intention to use the fire powder to create a diversion that would allow him an opportunity to kill Carthac, taking him by surprise in his own camp, by his own fireside, where he least expected any threat. Unaware that Carthac had even met Ambrose, let alone captured him, Merlyn was therefore taken completely by surprise himself by what transpired, and he had barely begun to assimilate what he was seeing when Carthac threw Ambrose’s head into the fire. Then, intent upon recovering his brother’s head before it could take further harm, Merlyn had dashed into the flames, forgetting that he was carrying the bag of his magical fire powder. The powder spilled into the open fire with a terrifying explosion of flames and smoke, and from that cloud Merlyn had emerged in front of Carthac, stunning everyone and stabbing the enemy leader. to the heart before he could react.

  Carthac, however, was not to be easily killed. Panicked perhaps by the miraculous reincarnation of a man he had just beheaded, and ignoring the wound in his chest, he scooped Merlyn up and threw him bodily back into the heart of the bonfire from which he had sprung. Merlyn landed flat among the coals and sustained grave injuries, but fortunately—although he himself would come to question that good fortune in the long, exhausting months of rehabilitation that stretched ahead of him—the explosion of fire powder had blown the blaze apart and scattered the fierce-burning branches and bright embers that would otherwise have consumed him completely. As it was, he emerged only slightly disfigured and incapacitated, although his burnt legs ensured that he would never ride a horse again with any ease and would forever afterward walk with a pronounced limp. His left arm and hand, too, were badly damaged, his fingers reduced to little more than claws, and his face, particularly the left side of his mouth, bore scars of what could have been a far more hideous burn. Whenever Merlyn smiled, his mouth was pulled awry on that one side, twisted downward artificially to expose his lower teeth. But then, whenever Merlyn Britannicus smiled, everyone who noticed—and there were very few of those—was invariably glad, because his natural self shone through. The eyes of the people who made up the rest of the world never penetrated the darkness beyond the long, black outer robes he wore, or the hood that overshadowed his face and kept even his eyes concealed from unwanted scrutiny.

  This was the man who sat across from me now, the hood of his outer robe pushed back to expose the yellow hair—now showing broad streaks of silver gray—that swept back from a wide, high forehead and keen, deep-set and piercing eyes beneath straight, golden brows.

  It was hard not to stare at him, because this man had become a legend and much of the legend had to do with his unseen face, so I was signally aware of the honor he was doing me by allowing me to look upon his face. It was a strong face, but strangely coarse looking, almost as though the skin had undergone some kind of abrasion that had almost broken it. I was dissatisfied with that explanation even as it occurred to me, but I could find no better way to describe it.

  The first, ridiculous idea that sprang into my mind upon seeing him was that here was some kind of lion man. I had seen two caged lions, in a traveling entertainment that had visited the Bishop’s School in my second year there, and they had impressed me greatly with their quiet dignity, their strength, and their coloring. Stretched out in the dusty afternoon sunlight on the floor of his cage, and surrounded by chattering, gesticulating boys, the old male, dusky, dusty, and stoic, had crouched motionless, ignoring everyone and everything, his eyes closed in disdain as he contemplated some other reality far removed from where he lay.

  Something about Merlyn Britannicus had immediately reminded me of that old lion—perhaps the coloring, I thought at first, but then it struck me that it was the man’s face that had prompted the memory. Merlyn Britannicus’s face was leonine, and that had to do with the curiously roughened quality of his features. His nose was broad and spatulate, beginning between his brows, where it appeared to have thickened and grown flatter, and that general impression of additional and recent thickening persisted all the way down to his mouth, where even his upper lip showed signs of thickening, rather than swelling.

  All of these thoughts and impressions flashed through my mind in the space of a moment, but I turned my eyes away quickly when I became aware that my host was watching me watching him. What I did not know, and would not learn for many more years, was that this leonine appearance, caused by a thickening and coarsening of the facial skin, is a primary mark of midstage leprosy.

  I was thinking hard about what I hoped to gain from this meeting, but it was plain to me, even as I prepared to ask my own questions of him, that he would tell me little or nothing of what I wanted to know until he had heard all he wanted to hear from me. He sat watching me gravely from the opposite side of the fireplace in his personal quarters behind the Great Hall of Camulod, and the fire in the iron basket had died down to embers, wisps of smoke wafting up between us. There was not much light in the room, though the sun was shining brightly
outside, and he sat between me and the only window, effectively placing himself in silhouette. Merlyn Britannicus of Camulod, soldier and warrior, philosopher and leader and, most recently by all accounts, sorcerer and warlock, sat waiting patiently for me to tell him all about something that mattered greatly to him but which barely signified with me at all. I had absolutely no interest in visiting the subject he was most curious about, because I had been living with the outcome of it for months past. I did recognize, however, that I had no option but to get on with it.

  “Very well, Master Merlyn,” I said, successfully stifling a sigh, “let me start from the beginning.

  “We set out to find you last year and it was already late autumn by the time we left Auxerre. Bishop Germanus had set out for Italia before that, to meet with the Pope and the other bishops, but before he left he gave me lengthy and explicit instructions about coming here and finding you, and he made it very clear to me that there was an urgency governing my mission to bring you his word.”

  From that point I went on to tell him about our entire voyage: our landing at Glevum, our arrival in Camulod, and finding Bishop Enos in Veralamium.

  “Bishop Enos had his men out looking for you,” I said in conclusion, “but it took a long, long time to locate you, since you apparently had no slightest wish to be found.”

  Now Merlyn shrugged. “Why should I? The wars were ended and our home was safe again for the first time in years. I had been deeply involved in much of what had happened and had lost too many close friends and loved ones during the conflict without ever having time to grieve over any of their deaths. I felt then that it was time for me to withdraw, as far away as possible from everything, and be by myself for a while.

  “Besides, in addition to my mourning, I had other matters to think about and decisions of some import to conclude, none of which would have been made easier by having other people around me. Had I expected or anticipated your arrival I would, of course, have returned earlier than I did, but Germanus had assured me that he would be coming in person this year and I took him absolutely at his word, never imagining that he might have superior orders that would preclude his coming here.”

  I nodded, accepting the truth of that. “Well, it seems it was our fate to remain in Verulamium to endure what everyone has assured me was the longest, harshest, and most brutal winter anyone can remember.”

  “That is true. I have never witnessed anything comparable to it. We had one like it many years ago, when I was young, and it killed many of the oldest and least healthful of our people here in Camulod, including my great-aunt Luceiia Britannicus. But even that winter, brutal as it was, was shorter and less savage than this one just past. Coming from Gaul, it must have been an unpleasant surprise for you.”

  I nodded. “My young assistant, Bors, had never seen snow before. He comes from Iberia, to the southeast of Gaul on the shores of the Middle Sea, where he was born and bred to an unvarying climate of high heat and desert sunshine. He was thrilled by the first snow here, the newness of it, but that wore off quickly and left only the fact of a winter such as he had never imagined. The first two months of snow and ice and chill almost killed him. He wore more clothing during that time than any other three men in our group, and it required great effort at any time of day to prize him away from the fireside to do his daily tasks. He may never overcome his distaste for Britain’s climate now.”

  Merlyn smiled. “Some of our own people feel the same way, and they were born here. A single trip to Africa, or to any of the warmer climes to the southward, can spoil a person forever afterward in their expectations of Britain. And after the winter had passed, you had to wait for your friend to heal?”

  “We did, and were frustrated by the knowledge of time wasted. And then one night, in the blackest hours of the middle watch, Bishop Germanus came and sat on the edge of my cot. I knew he was there and I could see him clearly despite the darkness. I even felt his weight pulling my cot to one side as he sat down, and yet I could see myself as well, asleep on my cot and completely unaware of him. He reached down and shook me by the shoulder, but I was deeply asleep and merely sought to turn away from his grasp. He shook me again, and then a third time, whispering my name urgently, as though he wished not to be overheard by anyone else. It seemed to me I was standing apart, by the top of the bed, looking down at both of them—Germanus growing impatient with my unconsciousness and me, refusing to awaken. I remember wondering how the sleeping figure that was me could possibly be so unaware of what was going on, and then it came to me that I had been astir before dawn the previous day and had worked in the stables with Bors, almost without stopping, from then until I fell into bed late that night.

  “Eventually, however, Germanus took my left hand and dug the point of his thumbnail into the very base of mine. That woke me up, quickly. I came up out of darkness snarling, aware of the pain in my hand and preparing to defend myself, only to find Germanus’s hand flat against my chest, pushing me down as he called my name again, bidding me wake up. Then, when he was satisfied I was awake and aware of him, but before I could even think to question him about his being there, he spoke to me.

  “‘Clothar,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Listen closely, for I have but little time. You must find Merlyn Britannicus, quickly. That is the only reason now for you to be in Britain. Find Merlyn. Give him the information that you carry from me. Go, now, and do as I bid you.’ And then he placed his outstretched hand over my eyes and sent me back to sleep, and the part of me that stood as witness watched him rise and walk out of the tent. And even although he had carried no light, the tent darkened into blackness as he passed out through the flaps. In the blackness that remained then I grew dizzy and fell into I know not what. But I awoke the next morning with every detail of the dream brilliantly clear in my mind and went searching for Bishop Enos immediately.”

  The man across from me, whom I still could not regard as the Merlyn Britannicus I had envisioned, nodded his head slowly, sucking his upper lip down into his mouth to where he could grasp and nibble it between his teeth. “Hmm,” he mused, “that is what Enos told me in his letter, although he lacked the details you have just supplied. Tell me.” He fixed me with a sharp gaze. “Do you believe the visitation really happened? You have already said that it was no more than a dream, and yet you acted upon it.You left Verulamium and came west. What do you really believe?”

  I answered cautiously but firmly, choosing my words with great care. “I believed it at the time. I believed it was, as you say, a visitation, a vision of some kind. I had no understanding of what I had seen, or dreamed, or imagined, or of how it came to pass, and all the logic of my training told me that such things are quite impossible. And yet our faith teaches us to believe in miracles, and I have no difficulty in believing in those things when they involve holy and devout people in extraordinary circumstances.” I stopped and searched for words to express what I wanted to say next. “There are many stories told in Gaul of miracles performed by Germanus. Were you aware of that?”

  “No,” he said. “I did not know that, but it hardly surprises me. Is it true?”

  I shrugged. “It’s true that there are stories told of it. Whether or not there is truth in the stories is beyond me. But people over there speak of him as being saintly, and I truly believe he is. He himself, however, will have nothing to do with such tales. He has sworn to me in person that there is no substance to any of those reports. He says that people merely perceive what they wish to perceive and will bend truth and facts to suit their own requirements. I asked him once, when he was in full flight over this, if he was denying the existence of miracles, and of course he was not. He corrected me immediately and with great passion on that. But what he was denying—and he was adamant on this—was his personal ability to perform miracles or to contribute to anything that might ever be described in any way as being miraculous.

  “I continued to believe, throughout the months that followed my dream, that contrary to logic and to al
l the laws of probability and possibility, Bishop Germanus came into my tent that night and spoke to me. I believed it happened. And I believed he had come there to tell me I had to come here, seeking you. And thus, I suppose I believed I had experienced a miracle. It was a wonderful sensation, although almost frightening, for as long as it lasted.”

  “And do you no longer believe it was a miracle?” Merlyn was looking at me now through narrowed eyes, and I shrugged dismissively in response.

  “How can I, now that I know the truth? Miracles are miraculous, Master Merlyn. They are supernatural occurrences originated and performed by God Himself, often through human intermediaries. They are ungovernable and inexplicable under the laws or the expectations of mankind—Bishop Germanus’s own words. That says to me, by extension, that they must therefore be incapable of error. If that visitation had been truly miraculous—had Germanus somehow found, or been divinely granted, the ability to travel mentally and incorporeally to Britain for the sole purpose of visiting me in my sleep—then how could he not have known that the coronation ceremony, which was his primary concern, would take place in Verulamium and not in Camulod?

  “My dream of Germanus sent me off across Britain seeking you after you had already made extensive preparations to have everything take place in Verulamium, for all the best and most logical and obvious of reasons. Your letter to Enos, outlining your wishes in what was to take place within his jurisdiction, as well as describing all the arrangements that you had already set in motion long before then, must have arrived in Verulamium within mere days of my departure. In other words, your letter had been written and sent off to Enos, and all your arrangements had been decided upon and their organization delegated to those responsible for them, long before I had my miraculous dream. Ergo et igitur, as my old teacher Cato would have said, there can be no talk of miracles in this, because a Germanus possessed of miraculous powers would have known what you proposed to do, and would have been aware of everything you had arranged. He would not have dispatched me on such a worthless chase as the one I have been pursuing ever since then.”