The Lance Thrower cc-8

by Jack Whyte

  Bors had leaned my two quivers of throwing spears upright, as he always did, against the wall in one of the back corners of our quarters, and the long, needle-pointed metal heads gleamed dully in the afternoon light that filtered into the room. I caught sight of them as I moved to leave the room, and I hesitated there in the doorway for several moments, looking back at them and thinking that it had been far too long since I last practiced with them. The last time I had thrown one of them, in fact, had been that day at Saint Alban’s Shrine, when I watched the child Gwinnifer cast so surprisingly. The reminder of how quickly time had passed came as a shock, and shortly after that I found myself striding toward the stables, a small bundle of four spears tied with thongs and dangling behind my right shoulder.

  I paid no visible heed to anyone, but I was aware of people noticing me and staring at the spears hanging from my shoulder as I passed by, for the weapons were extremely unusual and most of the people crowding the open spaces and narrow walkways I traversed were soldiers and warriors, trained and conditioned to notice and examine other people’s weaponry. No one made any comment, however, and I collected my horse and saddled it in silence, then mounted and made my way out of the gates.

  Below me at the foot of Camulod’s hill, as was normal at this time of the year, the enormous drilling ground was almost completely obscured by the clouds of dust stirred up by the ceaseless movement of the riders training there. I avoided the place, purely because there were too many people there, and steered my horse well clear of the swirling dust clouds, angling it to my right, toward the woods that lined the outer edge of the approach road to the fortress. Once there, in the green-hued shade among the trees, I swung right again and began to ride around the base of Camulod’s hill, following a route I recalled from my first visit. About a mile back there, I knew, behind and below the hilltop fort, there was a gently sloping meadow, bisected by a wide, deep brook that was bridged by a trio of well-matched logs supporting a deck of heavy planking, and slightly downstream from the bridge there was a hole that was full of fine trout and was also deep enough to swim in. My intention, when I first set out from my quarters, was to go directly to the meadow, spend some time there practicing my throwing, both from horseback and afoot, and then perhaps to spear a fat trout and cook and eat it alone, since I had no idea what had happened to occupy my friends. To that end, I had gone first to the cookhouse, where I procured a loaf of fresh bread and a twist of salt before heading for the stables. But I was destined to fulfill none of my plans that afternoon.

  The entire countryside was swarming with men—Arthur Pendragon’s victorious armies, freshly returned from their victory over Horsa’s Danes—and there was no avoiding them. I hoped at first to simply ride out the mass of them, passing beyond their presence into something at least approaching solitude, but it was not to be. There were simply too many of them, spread out too far, to permit anything close to privacy, and I realized that there was nothing I could do to change that.

  As I penetrated deeper and deeper into the woodlands and drew farther and farther away from the fortress on the hilltop, my impatience continued to grow despite my awareness of the truth of things, and against all logic I found myself becoming increasingly resentful of the persistent presence of others around me. Most of them were men, but no army in history has ever failed to attract its share of women. There were enough camp followers scattered throughout these teeming throngs to keep everyone at a high pitch of excitement, for one reason and another. On three separate occasions I made my way toward spots that appeared to be deserted, only to find them occupied by lovers and even small groups of revelers in varying stages of undress and coupling.

  There were other activities going on, too. In one spot, some enterprising soul had set up a game in which men threw horseshoes at a pair of iron spikes hammered into the ground some twenty paces apart from each other. They threw their horseshoes from one end of the playing space to the other and the object of the game appeared to be to land each one as close as was possible to the spike at the far end. I was unsurprised to see that, as usual among armies of any kind, large amounts of money were changing hands among the onlookers, based upon the play. Four men, playing in teams of two, each threw two shoes and when all eight had been thrown, the distances from the spike to those shoes that had landed closest to it were measured with extreme care and the closest throw was declared the winner and awarded points. Higher points were scored by anyone whose horseshoe ended up physically touching the spike, and even more were awarded for a shoe that was propped up and leaning against the spike, while the highest points of all were given to anyone who actually dropped a shoe cleanly over the spike, encircling it. Intrigued in spite of my foul humor, I watched the play for nigh on half an hour and saw only one man achieve that feat, to the uproarious delight of those who had bet on him.

  In another spot, a clearing in the woods, a number of men were throwing knives and axes at a range of targets and from varying distances, and as I rode through, several of these fellows glowered at me with open suspicion, turning completely around to follow me with hostile, watchful eyes until I disappeared from their view. There was no gambling taking place there, that I could see, and it seemed to me that everyone involved was taking the entire exercise very seriously. I stared directly at one of the participants in passing, a tall, dark-haired fellow who looked as though he would be happy to fight any casual foe that life might throw at him, but he ignored my truculence completely, merely turning slowly to follow me with an unblinking gaze as sullen as my own.

  As soon as I realized he would not fight me merely for looking at him, I ignored him and kept moving, for I knew exactly who and what he represented: that brotherhood of veterans in every army who have survived everything they encountered and have learned to trust and rely upon their own close comrades only, and no one else. I had shared that same comradeship of veterans during Gunthar’s War and thus knew at first hand how powerful a bond it was. But somehow, foolishly, I had not expected to find its like in Britain.

  Now that I had become aware of this phenomenon among Pendragon’s armies, however, I found myself watching for similar instances as I rode on, and I found no lack of them. But what surprised me most, as I paid closer attention to the men I passed, was that I began to fancy I could gauge a man’s war experience merely from the way he reacted to my presence. The more I saw, the more I became convinced that I was right and that the true veterans, the hardened core of this army that was all around me, were a highly distinctive group, easily identifiable despite the countless human differences between each man and his neighbors.

  Completely engrossed in this new and intriguing train of thought, I eventually lost all awareness of where I truly was and what I was about. I rode by one group of veteran spearmen, all of them wearing what came nigh to being a uniform of drab green tunics with bright yellow blazons at their left shoulders, and I put my theory to the test by approaching very close to them, almost to within touching distance.

  The silence that fell over them at my approach was profound. I counted a score and a half of them before one of them finally looked up and saw that I was bearing directly down on them. He frowned and cleared his throat but no words emerged from his mouth. The expression on his face, however, made words unnecessary and heads began to turn toward me more and more quickly, until thirty pairs of eyes were glaring at me in outrage, their owners shocked into silence by the suddenness and effrontery of my approach.

  I had identified the group leaders some time earlier, and now I nodded gravely in acknowledgment and greeting to the one I deemed to be the senior of three. Showing no sign of curiosity and making no eye contact with anyone lest it spark a challenge, I rode steadily through their midst and they moved grudgingly but wordlessly to grant me passage.

  When I had passed safely through and beyond them I made no attempt to look back, for I could feel the glare of their collective gaze in the center of my back. I did, however, permit myself to smile then, knowing
that it was only my appearance that had saved me from being dragged off my horse and thrashed for my presumption. The fact that I was in this place at all, riding among them, meant that I must be an ally of some stripe, but that would have mattered not a whit had any of those men decided that I needed to be taught a lesson in good manners and decorum. Had that been the case, they would have had me off my horse in the blinking of an eye and I knew I must have come very close to having that happen.

  There was sufficient foreignness about my appearance, however, to have given them pause; not only was I mounted, but I was superbly mounted, on a magnificent and richly caparisoned horse, and although I wore none of the wondrous armor given me by Germanus, the clothing I wore, I knew, spoke loudly of wealth and privilege—loudly enough to suggest unmistakably that I might be someone with a great deal of power, or at least influence, whom it were better not to offend or accost.

  I rode then for a short time through a lightly wooded area where I encountered no one. It was the first time I had been free of the sight and sounds of people since leaving my own quarters in the fort, and for some time I was not even aware of the change. But eventually I relaxed so that I nearly slouched in the saddle, allowing my horse to pick his way forward at his own speed. When he carried me to the edge of a pleasant and fast-flowing brook, I considered dismounting and simply lying on the grassy bank for a while, listening to the sounds of the swift-moving stream, but as I reined in, preparing to swing my leg over his back and slide to the ground, I heard the sudden, familiar, rhythmic clacking of heavy, hard-swung wooden dowels spring up nearby, very close to where I sat listening. Someone was practicing swordplay, just beyond the thick screen of hawthorn trees to my right, and the rapid, stuttering tempo of the blows told me that the people involved were experts. Instead of dismounting, I pulled my horse around and walked him through the hawthorn thicket toward the sounds.

  I saw seven of them, at first glance, as I emerged from the trees surrounding the meadow where they were, and at the same moment recognized the place as my original destination. I had reached it almost by accident, but I saw at a glance that my memory of it had been accurate. There lay the bridge of logs covered with crosswise planking, and on the far side of the stream the gently sloping sward was dotted with copses and clumps of low trees and bushes, mainly hawthorn and elder. I turned my gaze back to the seven men and saw now that they were all young, strong, and vigorous warriors whose clothing, like my own, declared them to be well-born and privileged. Two of them were fighting skillfully with training swords of heavy wooden dowel, similar to those I had used since my earliest days at the Bishop’s School. I saw immediately, however, that these swords were longer and heavier than those we had used in Gaul, and I wondered briefly why that should be, but set the question aside as irrelevant once I saw that neither of the two opponents seemed the slightest bit inconvenienced or put out by the extra length and weight.

  They were well matched, the fighting pair, neither one possessing any apparent physical advantage over the other. Both were of medium height, wide shouldered and heavily muscled, their bare forearms taut and tight with the tension and strain of controlling their whirling weapons. They circled each other as they fought, leaning forward on the balls of their feet and grinning ferally, their friendship as apparent in their faces as was the iron determination in each of them to win this bout. The man facing me as I emerged from the trees was the first one to. see me, and as soon as he did he took a backward leap and grounded his weapon, shouting something I failed to understand. And at that point, as is only natural, every eye in the place was turned toward me as I brought my mount to a halt, eyeing the group carefully.

  There were nine of them, I could see now. Two had been lounging on the bank of the stream, my view of them obscured by a low-lying clump of heather or gorse, but now they had raised themselves on their elbows to look over at me. I ignored them after that first glance, avoiding eye contact with any of the group as I looked around again. Something white flashed from a dark place on the far side of the stream, and as I squinted in that direction my eyes adjusted to the light and the distance and I made out the shapes of several horses—nine of them, I presumed—hobbled in the shade of a clump of hawthorns. All of them were saddled, indicating that their owners were on their way to some other destination and had merely stopped here to rest for a time.

  I nudged my horse gently with my spurs to start him moving again and then rode forward slowly, angling him toward the bridge. But I knew I would not pass unchallenged this time, for none of these people’s clothes were shabbier than mine. No one man among them made any overtly threatening move or betrayed any kind of hostility toward me, but suddenly they were all moving, perhaps in response to some signal unseen by me, and so fluid was their motion, so precise and instinctual, that I quickly found myself facing an unbroken line of them, seven men shoulder to shoulder across the front of the bridge.

  I kept moving, guiding my mount with my knees until a mere ten paces separated me from the line of warriors, all of whom stood facing me. Three of them were smiling. I took note of that but drew little pleasure from it, since the likeliest reason for their smiles was anticipation of the pleasure they were about to take in thrashing me. Of the four who were not smiling, two were frowning and the other two had blank, expressionless faces from which wary eyes watched me intently. It was one of the latter two who spoke to me first, his tone of voice as expressionless as his face.

  “Come now, fellow, how offensive need you be? Who are you and where have you come from?”

  I saw two of his companions move their heads to look at him. The others kept their eyes on me. I merely shrugged my shoulders, answering him calmly but ignoring the matter of my name.

  “I had no thought of being offensive. I am merely passing through.”

  “Well, pass through at some other place, you inconsiderate lout. Can you not see that you are disturbing our leisure, trespassing upon our goodwill?”

  Listening to his words I felt all apprehension drain away from me, to be replaced by the familiar tingling of prefight tension. I had been waiting for one of them to speak to me, to say something that would allow me to form a judgment, and this man’s words, offensive as his tone might be, had the double effect of removing my uncertainty and committing me to a course of action. I had been looking for a fight since the moment I left Merlyn’s quarters, but I had no intention of getting myself killed and thus had been looking for a safe fight, an outlet for my frustration. I knew now that I had found what I was seeking.

  None of these people facing me bore me genuine ill will. Had it been otherwise they would not have spoken at all, outnumbering me as heavily as they did. They would simply have acted, and I would be dead or unconscious. But now I knew that what I was facing here was a modified form of the same kind of pride in belonging that I had been watching among the common soldiers. These young men were all officers, all leaders, sharing and enjoying one another’s strength and companionship in a place of safety. My presence among them, as an unexpected newcomer of their own stature, afforded them an opportunity for sport, at no cost, and I was sure they would not consider swarming me. The test of strength that was shaping up here would be single combat, one against one.

  I glanced over to where discarded armor was piled neatly on a patch of close-cropped turf on the riverbank. Heavy spears had been arranged in two pyramids, and pieces of armor and weaponry—helmets, cuirasses, greaves, and a number of swords and axes—had been propped against them when their owners had stripped down to their tunics to rest and enjoy the sun. Now I looked back to my challenger, staring at him with one eyebrow raised in wry amusement that I hoped would provoke him.

  “Goodwill, say you? You lay claim to goodwill, behaving this way, accosting and harrying passing strangers? You and I obviously come from different places, with different definitions of goodwill.”

  His eyes widened in surprise and then he drew himself up, nodding his head in agreement. “Aye, we do. D
ifferent places indeed, and I can hear the country clodhopper in your voice. Where, in God’s name, did you learn to speak Latin like that?”

  Again I shrugged, refusing to rise to his baiting. “In a place far removed from here, a place where anyone as surly and ungracious as you appear to be would be tied and left outside on a cold night, to feed the wolves.”

  He blinked, clearly not having expected that, but he rallied quickly enough. “You are in Camulod now, fellow. We mislike foul-tongued Outlanders here. You should be praying to whatever gods you own to help you out of here in one whole piece.”

  “I have a God, Master Mouth—the one, true God, as much yours as mine—and I had been thanking Him for leading me to this fair Camulod, until this place and this meeting. Now, having found that you are here, too, the awareness of your presence kills my appetite for the place.”

  I saw his face flush at that and knew that I had penetrated his defenses, and when he spoke again his voice was heavy with truculence. “Ride away, little man. I’ve told you once already and will not do so again. Ride back to where you came from, or find another path across the stream, it matters naught to me. But you will not cross here, and if you move to try it, we’ll have you down off that pretty horse before you can put spurs to him. I asked you who you are and you have not yet answered me.”

  I sat my horse, staring down at him and nibbling at my upper lip, and he and all his companions stood gazing up at me in silence, awaiting my response. The fellow who had spoken was, I guessed, close to me in age, perhaps a year or two my senior but no more that that. He was tall, too, but no taller than I was, and he lacked my breadth of shoulders. Had I been offered my pick of them to fight, he was the one I would have chosen instinctively, perhaps because he was so fair of face that I suspected he might take care to avoid disfigurement in any fight that was less than deadly serious. In making that judgment, I confess freely, I based my assessment purely upon a suspected vanity for which I had no evidence other than what my own senses told me. This man, I felt, would not be inclined to endanger his comely face in a casual bout of arms, and yet I had no doubt at all that he would be formidable and completely unaware of physical risks to his beauty when the die was cast and real fighting broke out.