Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

It was Ursus and I almost fainted with relief, but instead I kicked backward, hooking one foot behind his ankle, and pulled him down with me as I fell.

Afterward, when we had stopped wrestling and laughing in our enjoyment of meeting again, I went in search of the enormous 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. Isn’t that what you asked? Well, I suppose you did. 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 glanced at me quickly, tilting his head. “What d’you mean, good? As a soldier? Is that what you mean?” 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 likable 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 didn’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 stopped and 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.”

He looked at me and grinned his white-toothed, wolfish grin. “So I decided to move on, in search of greener pastures, and here I am. I was mere miles away, heading north again, and decided on the merest whim to veer west and see what you’ve been up to, so now it’s your turn.” He leaned back and made himself more comfortable, crossing his ankles and clasping his hands behind his head, his smile still in place. “Speak to me, boy!”

Overjoyed to see him sitting across from me again, for I had honestly believed his friendship gone from my life forever, I told him all about the momentous things that had happened since he and I had parted months earlier. He had heard nothing about Gunthar’s War since leaving Benwick, and I found that close to unbelievable at first, although when I thought about it afterward, in the context of the times in which we were then living, it became less so. From a distance of surprisingly few miles away, the upheaval of Gunthar’s War appeared to be little more than a messy family squabble.

That he had heard nothing about our little war, however, also meant that Ursus had heard nothing of the death of my cousin Samson or of the ascension of Brach to the King’s chair. I told him about those things first, and then went on to describe as much as I could remember of the conduct of the war, surprising myself more than him by the paucity of detail I was able to recall. Only after that, and having answered all his questions, did I permit myself to move on to talk about my own thoughts and deliberations since the war had ended. Once launched on that topic, however, I went into great detail about all that I had considered and about my decision to avenge the murder of my parents and my grandfather, and to reclaim my father’s kingdom from the usurper Clodas.

When I finally ran out of words, Ursus sat silent, staring into the distance. I wanted to speak his name, to ask him what he thought and if he would come with me to help me claim my birthright, but I had sufficient wit to know that he would speak when he was ready and not until then, and that if I spoke to him too soon I might interrupt his train of thought and defeat my own wishes. And so I held myself in peace, with great effort.

“All this thinking you’ve been doing,” he said eventually. “Where does Germanus enter into it?”

I blinked at him. “Germanus?”

“Aye, Germanus. You remember him, don’t you? He’s a bishop, up in Auxerre, to the north.”

I felt my face reddening, not merely at his sarcastic tone but in instant recognition of my own stupidity. But Ursus had not finished.

“Auxerre is far closer to where you wish to be than Benwick is. It’s almost within spitting distance of Ganis. It is certainly within attack range. So Germanus will probably be more able to help you gain your ends than Brach. Brach has promised to lend you men to help you win back your kingdom, and I don’t doubt he will, but how many men can he afford to send out now, in view of the losses he has sustained? Germanus has the reputation of a warrior, even though he is a saintly bishop nowadays. His blessing upon your expedition would bring out followers in their hundreds. I would be prepared to wager on that. So, if Germanus blesses you with his support, then he will probably also be willing to make arrangements that would enable Brach to reinforce you by sea, say from Massilia to Lutetia, navigating upriver from the western coast. I’d venture to say that would be a more attractive prospect to Brach than sending his horsemen off on an overland expedition that could weaken his home defenses for months on end. Don’t forget, Brach knows how easily Duke Lorco disappeared with all his men.”