by Whyte, Jack
Chulderic and I had talked as we rode about the dispatches I bore for the King from Germanus. I had been carrying them belted about my waist, beneath my armour, and I had already passed them over to the old man, as Ban's senior and most trusted counselor. I knew I could trust him to read and absorb the tidings I bore and, provided the King were fit to hear them, to pass their content on cogently and succinctly enough for the King to understand them and make any decisions that might be necessary. Now Chulderic rode beside me, knee to knee, and his face was wrinkled with concern. I could see his white-knuckled grip on the reins and knew it was only by a great effort of will that he was suppressing his urge to go galloping forward at top speed to be by his King's side. Of course it was much too late for that now and nothing would be served by his making an undignified spectacle of himself in the last few moments of our approach. And so we rode sedately forward and dismounted decorously in front of the King's tent.
As we did so the flaps to the tent were pushed apart and a tall figure emerged, stooping to keep his head clear of the peak of the entranceway. It was my cousin Samson, Ban's second son and my favorite kinsman among his offspring. I was delighted to see him there, because Chulderic had made no mention of his presence with the King's party, but I realized immediately that his attendance upon the King, along with that of his brothers, would be commonplace enough to merit no particular attention. At twenty-three, as I reckoned his age, Samson's natural place as a warrior was by his father's side. Samson ignored me completely in passing, going straight to take Chulderic's reins from the groom who had been holding them. Chulderic gave him no chance to speak.
"How is he?"
Samson shrugged and dipped his head, twisting his mouth in a wry acknowledgment. "Not good. The surgeons say the arrowhead is lodged against his spine, deep beneath his shoulder blade. They can't probe for it, and they can't cut in to it because both the shoulder blade and the collarbone above it are directly in the path of the knife."
"And so they do nothing?"
"Sakander tells me there is nothing they can do without killing him, and I believe him. If they break the collarbone in front to gain access to the arrowhead, they might have to sever it completely, and Sakander says the chances of its knitting again are slight, given my father's age . . . and besides that, he says, even if they could reach the arrowhead, there is still no guarantee that he would be able to remove it—it's a war arrow, remember, heavily barbed—without killing my father."
Chulderic spat an obscenity and then headed towards the tent's entrance, but he stopped and looked again at Samson. "Is he awake?"
"No. He was, until a short time ago, but Sakander fed him a potion and he fell into a deep sleep just before you arrived. Now he should sleep for several hours." Samson looked at me then, and from me to Ursus, a small frown ticking between his brows. "Who are these people?"
Chulderic saw where Samson's eyes were directed and spoke first to that. "That one is Ursus, a mercenary and a bowman. We thought for a time he might have been the one who shot your father."
Samson shook his head again, a short, sharp negative. "No, we found that one. He died before we could question him, but the arrows in his quiver were identical to the one that shot my father, so we know it was him." He glanced next at me, his eyes sweeping me from crown to toe. "And this one?"
"That's your brother. Clothar."
Samson's eyebrows shot up towards his hairline, but then his face broke into a grin of recognition. "By the Christus! Clothar? It is you! Welcome, brother." He threw his arms about me, and I recognized the well-remembered scent that always hung about his person, a clean, vigorous smell of light, fresh sweat mixed with something else, a fragrance reminiscent somehow of wild strawberries. He held me at arm's length while he gauged my height and width. "By all the old gods, Chulderic, he has grown up, our little tad, has he not?"
Chulderic grunted, and Samson's expression sobered. "I could wish you had come at a better time, brother, for our father is sorely hurt and like to die." I saw Chulderic stiffen from the corner of my eye, and Samson released me and stepped away, speaking now to the old man, his words blunt. "What, Chulderic? What would you have me say? That the King is but slightly scratched and will be sound tomorrow? Our leader the King has been struck down by a war arrow—an iron-headed arrow with fluted, extended barbs designed to do maximum damage to anything it strikes. I do not like the sound of that, or the reality of it, any more than you do, but it would be folly to deny it or make light of it. He is my father, a man, not a god. We must accept that and plan accordingly."
Chulderic nodded. "Aye, we must, of course. Has word been sent to your mother?"
"Aye, it has, and to Gunthar and the others."
Hearing Samson say those words, I had a sudden image of Gunthar's face, wearing its habitual sneering look of condescension, and I wondered whether time had improved his disposition.
Samson had already moved away to hold back the tent flaps and permit Chulderic and me to enter. He himself remained outside, and I noticed, too, that Ursus made no move to join us, probably aware that he would be denied entry. I caught his eye and nodded slightly to him before I stooped to follow Chulderic into King Ban's tent.
It was dark in there, the strengthening daylight failing yet to penetrate the thick leather panels of the tent, and what light there was came from the flickering flames of a quartet of lamps suspended from poles around the King's bed. The bed itself was heaped surprisingly high with coverings, but then I realized that they were draped over a construction of some kind that covered the King's upper body and had been built to retain warmth while protecting his injuries from the weight of the coverings. A tall, austere-looking man whom I assumed to be the surgeon Sakander sat erect at the head of the bed, close by the King's side, radiating an aura of intent watchfulness. His eyes were already fastened on Chulderic by the time I entered behind the old warrior and he paid me no attention at all. There were other people in the spacious tent, three that I counted among the shadows as my eyes began adjusting to the darkness, but as we approached the King's bed Sakander waved one hand and they all left immediately.
"How is he?" This was Chulderic, growling at Sakander.
"How would you be, given the same affliction?" The surgeon's voice was deep and level in tone, his diction precise and utterly lacking in the pompous affectation assumed by so many of his colleagues. He spoke to Chulderic as to an equal, and I had little doubt that the two of them were friends of long standing. "He is near death and I am powerless to help him. This was a freakish wound, the like of which I've never seen before, but the unlikelihood of it does nothing to lessen its gravity."
"Hmm." Chulderic gazed down to where his friend the King lay sleeping. As though he knew Chulderic would say no more, the surgeon continued speaking.
"Whoever the bowman was, he must have had the strength of a demon, for the arrowhead struck hard and sank deep, dislodging solid bone. It pierced the hollow of the shoulder socket beneath his upraised arm, deflected off the ball of the bone, I suspect, and then again, sideways and inward from the angled plate of his shoulder blade. From there it sliced through flesh and muscle, turning all the time because of the curvature of the arrowhead blades, until it struck his spine, lodging solidly this time, perhaps between two of the vertebrae."
He paused, then cleared his throat before going on. 'That is what I suspect, but I have no way of proving or disproving it, short of killing him by cutting into him and mutilating him further, digging for the arrowhead. But we have other arrowheads that illustrate the problem facing us. See for yourself."
He indicated a table opposite him, where lay four war arrows, all identical to each other. "Those came from the same quiver as the one that shot down the King. They are identical in the fletching, as you can see, and in the shaping and weight of the warheads. No reason to suspect that the one in the King's wound should be any different."
I looked carefully at the four arrows, seeing the bright yellow feathers
with which they had been fletched, and as I did so Chulderic picked one up, holding it close to his eyes to examine the heavy iron head. I leaned closer to him to share his appraisal. The thing was a work of art, made by a master craftsman and comprising three razor-sharp, wedge-shaped blades of thin tempered metal cunningly welded into a lethal tapering triple-edged point. At the broadest end of each blade the metal had been flared and twisted out of true to form wickedly curving barbs that, once set in a wound, would be impossible to remove without destroying all the flesh surrounding the entry channel. The very sight of the curved barbs made me wince and grind my teeth, imagining the bite of their entry.
"By the balls of Mithras," Chulderic growled, "the man who made these things knows his craft." He wrapped his fingers firmly around the center of the shaft he held, then moved it around behind his back as he bent towards the unconscious form of the King, peering closely at the sleeping face.
"How long will he sleep?"
"Two hours, I hope, perhaps longer. But it could be less. It depends upon how well his mind blocks out the pain."
"That's what you gave him the potion for?"
"Aye. The substance is strong. It induces sleep and stifles pain."
"What is it called, this substance?"
"It has no name of its own. It is one of a range of marvelous powders, all of them white, that are miscible in water and produce wondrously beneficent effects. We call them opiates, and although I know not where they come from, they are supposedly distilled from the essence of white poppy flowers in a distant land to the east, beyond the Empire's bounds."
"The Kingdom," I whispered, remembering something Tiberias Cato had told me about his days as a boy there.
Sakander turned his keen gaze on me immediately. "What did you say?"
He did not call me "boy" but I felt the rebuke nonetheless and I felt myself flushing. "I said, the Kingdom. It is what the Smoke People call the ancient land far to the east, beyond this Empire."
"The Smoke People. And who are they?"
I shrugged, feeling foolish to be talking of such irrelevant and inconsequential things over the unconscious body of the King. "A tribe of nomads, horsemen, thousands of miles from here. A friend of mine, one of my teachers, once lived among them for a while and learned from them about the Kingdom, an ancient place of great wisdom and learning, peopled by men with yellow skin, black eyes and straight black hair."
I was conscious of both men staring at me, and then Chulderic, his voice inflectionless and unreadable, said, "Sakander, this is the King's youngest son, Clothar. He has been away, in the north, attending Bishop Germanus's school in Auxerre since before you came to us. Apparently they have taught him some novel notions." He looked back to the King. "When will we be able to move him?"
Sakander began speaking without removing his eyes from mine. "He should not be moved at all, but since it is clearly both dangerous and foolish for us to remain here, separated from the army, then we may as well move him immediately and hope to achieve the worst of it while he is still in the grasp of the opiate." He turned back to the King then, dismissing me for more important matters. "I have him lying on a board, beneath those covers, for ease of carrying, because I did not know how soon we might want to move him.
Four strong men should be able to bear him easily from here to the largest of the commissary wagons. It is well sprung—as well as any wagon can be—and I have it already stripped of all its contents and layered thick with straw to guard him as well as may from bumps and bruises." The surgeon shook his head. "I don't know whether it is better to move quickly or slowly in such cases, but whichever way we go, Lord Ban will be badly jarred in transit. Fortunately we are but four miles from the main encampment, so if we leave within the hour we can be there before noon."
"Aye, four miles from the army's camp, but we're fifty miles from home."
Sakander nodded, his face expressionless. "True. Will you give orders to break camp?"
"Aye." Chulderic called to Samson, who came in immediately. The old warrior explained what he and Sakander had decided, then instructed the younger man to choose four men to move the King, and then to make the necessary traveling arrangements to rejoin the main body of the army.
Ban of Benwick remained unconscious while he was gently moved, and he slept through the entire four-mile journey to the main camp. Sakander sat beside the King the whole time and his face was somber and unreadable, but I suspected that he was not entirely grateful for the King's lack of awareness. It seemed to me, watching him as he bent forward time after time to wipe the King's face with a moist cloth, that the surgeon might have been happier had he discerned even a hint of discomfort in the King's demeanor. But that was purely a personal conjecture and I had nothing at all on which to base my suspicion, beyond an insistent prompting from somewhere in my own head. It simply seemed to mc that the King slept too profoundly.
Ban slept that entire day away, and the night as well, opening his eyes only at mid-morning on the following day. I had ridden out of camp by that time, accompanied by Ursus, unable to remain waiting passively for something to happen and even less able to sit quietly by while my father—this title in defiance of the fact that I knew him to be my uncle—fought for his very life. Chulderic told me later that the King was very weak, but free of pain and lucid when he awoke, and that he remained that way for nigh on two hours, during which time Chulderic had been able to pass on to him the gist of the messages I had brought from Germanus. The King had listened and understood, and had made several pronouncements, in addition to which he had had Chulderic summon the cadre of his senior officers, both to witness and thereafter attest to his lucidity, his soundness of mind and his self-possession, and also to bear witness to his issuance of several specific instructions concerning the immediate future of his lands and his people.
Astonishingly, Ban had then, and thus publicly, rescinded his acknowledgment of his firstborn son, Gunthar, as his legal heir and follower, denying him the right to claim the crown of Benwick. His second son, the twenty-three-year-old Samson, Ban had declared in front of everyone assembled, would be his heir henceforth and would assume the crown on Ban's death. It was a momentous announcement and apparently a spontaneous one, in the eyes of those who were present for the occasion, notwithstanding the King's claim that he had been considering it for years, believing he yet had years ahead of him to resolve such matters.
My own belief is that the King's claim, disregarded and generally discounted as it was, was no less than the truth. I knew from comments made by Samson and Brach that Ban had been having serious misgivings for years about Gunthar's fitness to succeed him, but I also accepted that Ban truly had believed there was no shortage of time ahead of him and that he was under no urgency to make such a grave decision. As soon as his circumstances changed, however, Ban the King, who had always been a pragmatist adapting constantly to the real world in which he lived and ruled, made a final and irrevocable decision and announced it bluntly, in the presence of witnesses.
So now my cousin Samson would be king of Benwick. And my cousin Gunthar would not. And wrack, ruin and chaos lay between those two statements.
In the meantime, however, King Ban grew increasingly drowsy and more weakened from day to day, sleeping for longer and longer periods until eventually, four days after his fateful pronouncement, he slipped backwards into a deep slumber from which he was never to awaken.
He asked for me, however, on the day following my arrival while he was yet in fair condition, given the serious nature of his injuries, and when I went into his presence he knew me immediately and made me feel very welcome. He was lying strangely, propped up carefully and off-center on a mountain of soft skins because of the seriousness of his wound, and he still had that curious protective construction about his chest and shoulder. His face was gaunt and haggard, deeply lined and gray with pain, and his voice was whispery, his breathing shallow and careful.
Nevertheless, despite all his discomfort and my own
discomfiture, he made it possible for me to gain great pleasure from his company. According me the status of manhood by speaking to me as an equal, he asked me all about my school and my various tutors, all of whom he knew by name thanks to the dutiful correspondence of the bishop's chief scribe and secretary, Ludovic. He asked me, too, about his old friend Germanus, but I had the distinct feeling— why, I could not have explained—that he already knew more about the bishop and his affairs than I could tell him. Then, too, he praised me for my prowess in arms and asked me about the adventures I had shared with Ursus on our way here, eliciting the information from me, almost without my volition, that I had killed my first enemies along the way.
I was aware of Sakander the surgeon sitting at the rear of the tent throughout all this, but the man never stirred and offered no interruption at any time. He merely sat watching, alert to the condition of his charge.
Finally, and in a papery whisper, speaking words that I have never forgotten, King Ban commended me to my duty above all things else and bade me hold myself true to God, Who, he assured me, had great things in store for me and would demand great things of me in return. I must return to Auxerre, he told me, and made me swear that I would permit nothing to deter me from so doing. I swore the oath at his request, but even as I did so it was halfhearted, diluted by a reluctance that was born of a silent, sneaking belief that the King was not altogether strong in mind. In all the years that I had known him I had never heard him talk so fervently about God and God's expectations of real, living people. Truth to tell, I had never heard him speak of God at all, under any circumstances, and had not even believed him to be a Christian. That he should so evidently and avidly be instructing me now concerning my Christian duty and obligations was, I feared, an indication of just how weakened he had become.
He saw my reluctance, and reacted strongly to it, stiffening his voice and speaking with more authority. Unable to move from where he lay, he nevertheless gave me to understand that he wanted to stand up more than anything else, to stand beside me with his hand upon my shoulder as I swore the oath. He bade me be quiet then and to summon the guard outside his tent, and then he sent the man to fetch the bishop who was chaplain to the Christian troopers. We continued talking then of other things until the bishop entered, some time later, and then the King asked him for the pectoral Cross that hung about his neck. He handed the ornate Cross to me and asked the bishop to wait outside the tent. When we were alone again, ignoring the surgeon at the rear of the tent as he seemed to ignore us. Ban repeated what he had said to me about God's expectations for me, and this time, strange as it might seem, I believed him absolutely, so that I swore the oath with passion and conviction, promising solemnly that I would return to Germanus in Auxerre within the year and that I would permit nothing to hinder me or dissuade me.