by Whyte, Jack
He pursed his lips quickly as I spoke, showing quick-flaring anger, but as soon as I had finished speaking, he said, "So be it. My men are ready. We will be far beyond Benwick's borders by this time tomorrow." He nodded to his two escorts, and as he made to swing away I stopped him.
"One more question: where is Gunthar?"
Tulach turned his head slowly and looked back at me, and for a moment I thought he was not going to answer me at all, but then he hawked and spat. "He's in Chabliss," he said, naming the smallest of the four forts clustered in the southeast quadrant of our territories. "He lies where he fell, in front of the fire. I wish you joy of finding him."
He pulled his horse into a rearing turn and sank his spurs into its flanks, and as he and his two fellows disappeared beyond the fringe of trees in the distance I realized for the first time that Gunthar's War was over. It had happened very suddenly and very tamely, with the death of a single man from natural causes, but it had caused as much carnage and grief and misery as any other war during its brief existence.
7
The suddenness of the war's end threw me completely off balance, changing my life instantly from one filled with chaotic urgencies and burgeoning despair, into one in which I had nothing substantial to do, and all the time in the world to dedicate to not doing it. We were aware that there had been Burgundian invasions to the north of our lands, but no evidence of any threat to us in Benwick had materialized, and so we paid no attention to anything outside our own boundaries and were content to wallow in the lethargy that settled suddenly upon those of us who had been most heavily involved in the fighting. The experience could have been a damaging one—I can see that clearly now with the assistance of hindsight—but before I had the opportunity to drift into any set pattern of idle behaviour, I recalled a comment that Ursus had made months earlier, during our long journey to the south, on a day when we had been forced to go out of our way and make a wide and difficult detour to avoid a large bear with three cubs.
The sow had settled herself, with her trio of charges, by the side of a mountain river that swept in close at one point—a matter of several paces—to the edge of the narrow path we had been following through difficult, hilly terrain for two days. We saw her fishing in the white water of the rushing stream just as the last stretch of the downhill pathway swooped down from where we were to the riverside where her cubs tussled with each other by the water's edge, still too small and too young to brave the current. It would have been folly to attempt to pass them by unseen, and we had no desire to kill the creatures, so we had muffled our curses and cursed our misfortune and scrambled painfully upwards, leading our horses slowly and with great difficulty, high and hard, scaling the steep hillside with much muttering and grumbling until we reached the summit and were faced with the even greater task of making our way back down again in safety towards the narrow, well-trodden path that was our sole way out of the hills in the direction we were heading.
We had made the ascent in something more than an hour, but it took us three times that long to go back down again, because of our horses and the need to find a route they would accept. In the late afternoon, however, looking down from high above the path we had left that morning, we saw it choked with Burgundian warriors heading directly towards the sow and her cubs, and we knew beyond doubt that, had it not been for the animals, we would have blundered directly into these people and probably died there.
That experience had seduced Ursus into a philosophical frame of mind for the remainder of that day, and he had said something to the effect that God sometimes throws us valuable gifts disguised as uncommon and annoying nuisances. The memory of that occasion, coming when it did, made me look at my sudden idleness as an unexpected gift of time in which to take stock of my life. After ten consecutive days, however, during which I did nothing at all, other than to think deeply about who I was becoming and what I had achieved, I found myself not only unable to arrive at any clear decisions about my life, but not even able to define any new perspectives on which to base decisions. And this despite the fact that I knew there were decisions I must make.
Discouraged by the entire exercise and feeling both foolish and inadequate, I went to Brach and apologized for what I was sure he must see as my laziness and lack of attention to duty in the days that had passed. When I told him I had been thinking, however, instead of being as angry at me as I had expected him to be, Brach laughed and asked me if I knew what I had been searching for. When I merely blinked at him and told him I had no idea, he laughed even more and told me to go away somewhere and think further, and at greater length, this time in isolation and free of all distraction. Once I had arrived at some kind of conclusion about what I wanted, I was to come back and tell him.
I took him at his word and did as he suggested, and this time, as he had indicated I might, I came to terms with something that had been troubling me without my being really aware of it. I would be seventeen years old on my next birthday, which meant that Clodas of Ganis had been ruling in my father's stead, unchallenged, for that length of time, and my parents were still unavenged.
King Ban had promised me that, when I was grown, he, or the son who ruled by then in his place, would assist me in traveling to confront Clodas. At that time, the son indicated in the promise had been Gunthar, and I had never been under any illusions about how likely I was to find assistance from that source. But now all that had changed. Brach was King of Benwick and I had proved my loyalty to him, time and again. Now I had little doubt that he would demonstrate his loyalty to me by rewarding me with an escort of warriors to help me to reclaim my own throne in Ganis.
I returned to Brach filled with enthusiasm for the task I had defined for myself. That evening, after the main meal, he dismissed all his attendants so that the two of us could be alone while he listened closely to everything I had to say. When I had finished speaking, however, instead of leaping to his feet and wishing me well as I had anticipated he would, my cousin sat silent, musing and nodding his head. Impatient as I was to gain his blessing for the expedition I was planning, I nonetheless saw that he had more on his mind than I knew about and so I disciplined myself to sit in silence and wait for the cousin who was now my King to arrive at a decision.
Brach did not keep me waiting long. He rose quickly to his feet and began to pace back and forth in front of me, talking more volubly and fluently than I had ever heard him speak in all the time I had known him.
He knew my intentions concerning Clodas of Ganis, he told me, and he remembered and acknowledged his father's promise to assist me in bringing the usurper to justice for the slaughter of my family. That would happen, he told me, and he promised that I would be well supported by warriors from Benwick when the time came for me to march against Clodas. Now, however—and he asked me very graciously to try to see this situation from his viewpoint—was not the time.
Were I to strike out northwards now as was my right, he told me, Benwick would not be able to offer me any assistance in my quest. As King of Benwick, Brach was now constrained by the same concerns that had beset his father, Ban, years earlier, in that he had a domain to govern and a people to serve and sustain and feed, and both kingdom and people were ravaged, weakened and depleted by war. The hostilities were ended, but now the entire kingdom had to be rebuilt and returned to its former condition of wealth and strength. He looked me straight in the eye at that point and told me there was a task for me here in Benwick, and that if I would accept it, he would undertake to equip me, once it was completed, with the men and resources I would need to press my campaign against Clodas in the north.
I found no difficulty in seeing things from his newly acquired viewpoint and agreeing that his suggestions were both sensible and worthwhile. Clodas had spent seventeen years in ignorance of the fact that he would die at my hand, and I saw no great impediment to my plans in permitting him to live a little longer while I attended to other duties. And so I threw myself into rebuilding the affairs and the welfare of
our little kingdom—although it seemed anything but little to me at that time—as wholeheartedly as I had committed myself to the war that had ravaged it. Rebuilding, however, meant in this instance exactly what it said, and it involved the physical labour of working side by side with the ordinary people of Benwick, most of them farmers, re-erecting the buildings—and sometimes that meant entire villages—that had been destroyed or damaged during the conflict. It was brutal and difficult work, but greatly satisfying in that the results achieved were plainly visible, and somehow another three months slipped by while I sweated and strained and labored with my hands just as painfully and exhaustingly as any farmer who ever cleared a patch of land by cutting and uprooting trees.
I had seen my aunt Vivienne several times since the deaths of my uncle Ban and her three sons, but not with any kind of regularity, and although she treated me with great kindness, it was plain for me to see that the special relationship I had enjoyed with her during my childhood had been forgotten by her in the bludgeoning she had undergone with the losses in her own immediate family. She had become an old woman, as Brach had warned me, and the trauma of the brief war between her sons had changed her radically and forever, eclipsing the light of her former love of life behind the dark shadow of her bereavement.
It was she, nevertheless, who first reminded me, after Gunthar's War, that I had promised Bishop Germanus I would return to Auxerre. I recall being extremely surprised that she should even know about that, but she showed me a letter from the bishop that had been brought to her some weeks earlier by a traveling priest. In it, knowing nothing at the time of the conflict between the King's sons, Germanus offered his condolences and prayers for the soul of King Ban, but had gone on to mention me and to refer to several tasks that he had in hand for me, awaiting my promised return.
She then told me that she had read all of the correspondence I had brought with me from Auxerre to deliver to Ban. Chulderic had taken possession of it after the King's death and had duly passed it on to Queen Vivienne. She had read it in turn, absorbed it thoroughly, and then passed it on to King Brach as his father's sole surviving successor, and Brach was now in complete agreement with her, and with Chulderic and Germanus, that I should return to Auxerre and to the service of Bishop Germanus as quickly as possible.
I nodded deeply and promised her that I had not forgotten— although in truth I had—and that I would return to the north and to the bishop's service as soon as my current responsibilities to King Brach had been fulfilled. I told no lies in this but I did, however, greatly exaggerate the extent of those few responsibilities I still owed to Brach, because the truth was that I was in no rush to leave Genava and hurry back to Auxerre. I had found love for the first time in my life and was completely enthralled.
The young woman's name was Rosalyn, and she was the most beautiful proof of the existence of God that I had ever seen, because logic dictated beyond dispute that perfection such as hers could not exist had God not shaped it personally with His own hands. She was tall and lithe and lissome and lovely, with a wide, laughing mouth and a neck like a swan's. Our love was pure, for two simple reasons: we never had any opportunity to make it otherwise; and I never found the courage to profess my love to her.
So abjectly did I fail in finding that courage, in fact, that I could barely summon up sufficient nerve to sit in the same room with her and listen to her laughing and talking with her friends. It would have been impossible for me to sit at her feet and talk to her the way I saw other young men doing so effortlessly, making her laugh and singing to her. I could never have found the courage to do that. And yet I know she was aware of me, and she always had a warm and friendly smile for me, and frequently she spoke to me, although only for a short time after we first met. Whenever she did speak to me or ask me a question, I would be overcome with shyness and would stutter and stammer and blush with shame and confusion and frustration. And so, out of kindness I believe, she stopped addressing me directly.
She was a new arrival to Benwick, I learned within moments of having seen her for the first time. Her father was a merchant of some description and traveled widely. I heard that, and I knew it, and yet I failed somehow to understand that she was likely to move on again as quickly as she had arrived. And so she did, after a month-long stay, and I was devastated. One morning she was simply gone, with her entire family, and no one could tell me where they had gone to, or even which branch of the crossroads they might have taken. Inconsolable, I took to riding off alone and spending days on end in the woods, living on birds and small animals that I had shot or snared.
I had been out for three days on one such occasion and had spent an entire morning fishing bare handed for trout basking in deep holes beneath river stones before I caught a truly magnificent specimen, scooping it out of the water and throwing it high onto the bank behind me. As I turned to go and collect my prize, the sun struck me square in the face, dazzling me sufficiently to allow me to see only the shape of a tall man suddenly looming above me, his shoulder blocking part of the sun's orb so that he was thrown into silhouette. Cursing, I scrabbled to one side, clutching for the dagger in my belt, but as I unsheathed it and surged to my feet I was aware of my assailant moving, and then an arm closed around my neck from behind, a strong hand clamped tightly over my wrist, and a familiar voice spoke into my ear.
"Hey, be still! My only thought in coming here was that you might have food enough for both of us."
It was Ursus, and I almost fainted with relief, but instead I kicked backwards, hooking one foot behind his ankle, and pulled him down with me as I fell.
Afterwards, when we had stopped wrestling and laughing in our enjoyment of meeting again, I went in search of the trout I had thrown up onto the bank behind me. I found it twitching in the last stages of expiry, its skin covered with leaves and dry grass, and turned back to brandish it at Ursus, finding him brushing the crushed grass and leaves from his clothing.
"Food enough for both, as you requested. Why don't you start a fire while I clean this, and then you can tell me what brings you here."
It was another half hour before he set aside the bowl from which he had been eating and pulled himself to sit upright, facing the fire.
"What brings me here, you asked. Well, I suppose you do. I came to visit you, since I knew you were nearby."
"But you're supposed to be in Carcasso."
"I was, and now I am not. I've had enough of Carcasso."
"Was Duke Lorco there when you got home?"
"No, he wasn't. And not a word's been heard about him. You and I may be the last two living people to have seen him alive. Because he's dead now. Not a doubt of that in my mind. He's dead, long since. Probably since the day he vanished ahead of us."
"He wasn't very good, was he?"
Ursus tilted his head. "What d'you mean, good? As a soldier?" He made a face that managed to be noncommittal. "He wasn't any worse than a number I've served under. He was a fair man, Lorco, reasoned in his judgments and quite likeable for a military commander. But he was sloppy. Lax. And that was reflected in his command. That's the reason we got jumped in our little hunting party. Duke Lorco never worried too much about sending out scouts or outriders, so neither did his people. Mind you, he never really needed to, until the very end when he did need to, and by then it was too late to change old habits. It cost him dearly. Us, too."
Ursus snorted and spat. "I made my report to the appropriate authorities when I got back and everybody listened very carefully and made appreciative noises, but I could tell nobody really cared, one way or the other. Lorco had been gone for six months and more by then and his replacement was well settled in and quite happy with his situation.
"Still, appearances had to be preserved, and so they sent me out again, at the head of a search party of a hundred troopers, to retrace our route one more time and make every effort to discover what had happened to the Duke and his party.
"Of course it was futile, but I knew that going in and so I di
dn't exactly rupture myself searching under every stone. The invading troops, whoever they might have been, were long vanished by the time we got back, and so we were able to travel quickly, but we asked questions at every stage along the way and we learned absolutely nothing. Didn't even find a single soul who remembered seeing them south of the point where we lost them. We found a few who could remember the party heading north, but nobody, anywhere, saw them coming back until we reached the points north of where the Duke and his people vanished. The people up there remembered seeing him coming and going, but that was when we were still with him.
"It took us a month, but by the end of that time we had established that the Duke had vanished and would not be coming home again."
"So what did you do then, once you were sure of that?"
Ursus picked up his bowl again and scooped some wood ash into it, after which he began to scour it with a cloth from his belt. "We moved on, up to Treves and the military headquarters there. Lorco had been expected to return there some time earlier. I had to tell them what had happened and that the Duke would not be coming back. We stayed in Treves for a time, but no more than a few weeks, since we didn't belong to any unit there, and then we headed back south for Carcasso, where we disbanded. None of us felt very uplifted by what we had failed to achieve, I can tell you, but I was the only one of us after that without an employer. With Lorco officially dead, I had no real paymaster and I detested the pipsqueak who had taken over Lorco's position.
"I hired myself out eventually to another commander, since a man has to eat, but I was bored with the life and bored with the work, policing taverns and throwing drunks who might have been me into the cells beneath the civic center. That's no fit work for a soldier."