Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

I frowned. “Why is that? Are the people hostile there?”

“No, they’re not. But that’s Wight, over there. It’s an island. If I land you there, then sail back to Gaul, you might not be able to get your people off again. There’s four of you, remember, and eight horses. I doubt if you’d find a boat on the whole island big enough to carry off all of you at one time, and even although it may not look like a great distance from there to the mainland, this stretch of water is miles wide, so you couldn’t swim.”

I felt my face flush at my own obvious stupidity, but Joachim laughed. “Hey,” he said, sweeping his hand across the horizon in front of us, “you’re a landsman. How could you be expected to know about the shortage of ships on Wight? There’s no way to tell from here that it’s deserted, but it’s true. Most of the people who once lived there now live ashore, on the mainland. But the only reason I know that is because I’ve sailed this way before, more times than I can recall. My livelihood depends on knowing things like that when I go to sea. I dare say, were we among your woods in Gaul, you’d be leading me by the hand, because I can’t stand being hemmed in. I like to feel empty distances around me … nothing but me, my ship, and my crew between the water below me and the sky above.”

“But you could have dropped us ashore there anyway and made your way directly home, and had anyone asked, you could have said that I requested to be set down there.”

He looked at me sideways and smiled more broadly now, although still with an element of ruefulness, as though he were wondering about my lack of wits. “Think you so? Really?” He shook his head. “I have your gold in my chest, that’s true, but there’s also the fact that you have come to me from Germanus, and that’s worth more to me than gold. If I did anything as stupid as you suggest, I would lose his friendship, and I don’t care to do that.”

I nodded slowly, acknowledging the wisdom of what he had said. “Then what should we do?”

“Exactly what we are doing. We stay here in reasonable safety, riding at anchor, and we watch for wind shifts while we wait out the storm.”

We remained in the shelter of the island for the rest of that day and the night that followed, and by dawn the following day the weather had become calm and the skies clear. The storm had blown itself out.

We struck out once more to the westward immediately, and for the space of several hours we had blue skies and only scattered clouds overhead, although the waves pounding the beaches had scarcely lessened in their fury. Once again, however, by the middle of the afternoon the clouds were blowing in from the northwest in marshaled ranks. Hoping to evade this new storm, we swung in sharply toward the coast, but we could see from a long way out that the coastline here was one of high, unbroken cliffs fronted by ragged lines of rocks against which angry breakers smashed themselves into towers of spuming whiteness. There might have been inlets there where we could shelter, Joachim said, but he was unfamiliar with the coastline here and by the time we approached close enough to search for suitable havens, we would be too late to make our way back out to safety against the incoming storm if we found none. So once again we remained far out at sea, at the mercy of the winds and the waves, and our misery deepened.

The hardened mariners had regained their seagoing constitutions by that time and they ate contentedly despite the motion of the seas, chewing dried meat and hard bread and washing that down with beer or watered wine. The mere sight of them eating and drinking made the four of us landsmen sicker than we had been before.

In due time, we rounded the point of Cornwall, gazing despairingly at the towering cliffs that offered us nothing in the way of moorage, and made our way forlornly back to the northeast, the wind now blowing directly toward us so that our passage became even slower and more difficult than it had been until then. Glastonbury was our destination now, Joachim told us, although if a safe harbor appeared between now and our arrival there, we would take advantage of it.

We clawed our way slowly and with enormous effort up along the coastline, rowing into the teeth of the wind, with all four of us passengers contributing our efforts for the common good until we were barely able to keep ourselves from collapsing into unconsciousness. And as we went, having lost all awareness of day fading into night on several occasions, the storms continued to fall upon us in an apparently endless succession, each new one following closely after the passing of its predecessor. Eventually, however, we entered the estuary of a large river, and the waters quickly began to grow calmer. I had begun to regain control of my bodily functions two days before that and had been improving steadily if slowly, so that I noticed the lessening of the turmoil under our keel immediately and lost no time in asking Joachim for an explanation. He pointed with his thumb toward the distant shoreline that was barely discernible through the curtains of rain on our left.

“We’re heading directly eastward now, entering the river channel the local people call the Severn. That shoreline over there, that’s Cambria. Never been there but I’ve heard much about it. Hostile to everyone, the people there, although nobody seems to know why they should be. They have nothing much to be jealous of. Country’s mountainous and mostly impenetrable, once you strike inland from the sea. Romans never really made much of an attempt to conquer it, although they say the biggest gold mine in the Empire’s in there somewhere … some place called Dolaucothi, or something like that.”

He pointed again, this time to the closer, low-lying land on our right. “That’s your destination, over there. It’s mainly flat inland, but boggy and treacherous close to the sea. Glastonbury lies farther down the coast. We passed by it early this morning. Didn’t wake you because there was nothing to see and we didn’t even approach it—no hope of landing there in weather like this. It’s too flat. Too shallow and muddy. And the approaches—there’s only a few navigable channels that let you get in there—have probably been destroyed by now, churned up and fouled by these storms. I wasn’t prepared to sail into a bog to put that to the test.

“I decided to keep moving up to the estuary here. There’s an old river port about thirty miles upstream. Romans called it Glevum. It’s deserted now. Or it was last time I came this way, about three years ago. But the wharves were still serviceable then, and if no one’s been along to tear them down or burn them up, they should still be usable. Good enough for us to land you on, certainly.

“From there you should be able to make your way easily. There’s a main road goes close by there, and once you’re on that, you can go anywhere. The road network connects all parts of Britain. At least, I’ve been told it does. Never was interested enough to go and find out for myself. Roads make me nervous. Too narrow and predictable and too many people use them. Nowhere to escape to, on a road. Give me the sea any day, even in weather like this. A man who knows what he’s doing can escape from anyone, anytime, at sea, providing he’s got a fast ship and an able crew.

“Anyway, if nothing else we’re off the open sea and out of the storms, with calm water under our keel from now on. Pass on my felicitations to your friends on surviving the crossing.”

He grinned and left me standing watching him as he returned to the business of captaining his vessel, and within a matter of hours we were drifting slowly into the river port at Glevum, gazing at the spectacle of a ruined and uninhabited town as we glided slowly toward an abandoned wharf that was lined with warehouses and appeared to be in perfect condition. For the first time in days, not a breath of wind stirred from any direction, and beneath us the surface of the river would have been mirror calm had it not been for the slashing rain.