Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

It seemed to me that he had set himself an impossible task, as I visualized it in the course of the days that followed, and I wondered if the future, yet-uncrowned Riothamus himself had ever stopped to think consciously about what he had undertaken to achieve. I doubted that he could have, but of course I could not be sure. His seat of Camulod, and the numbers of his troopers who swarmed there so confidently, betrayed no hint or slightest sign of doubt or insecurity. And thinking such thoughts, I applied myself increasingly to taking careful note of all that was going on beyond the boundaries of Arthur’s realm of Camulod.

We were less than ten miles beyond the outer boundaries of Merlyn’s colony, guarded as it was by vigilant horse troopers and infantry manning an outer ring of defenses day and night, when we saw the first evidence of the lawlessness that would be all around us from then on: a sullen, heavy column of black smoke twisting upon itself and rising straight up into the afternoon sky. We veered off the road to investigate at my insistence, for the Camulodian troopers who escorted us would have ridden on by, too inured to what they would find even to bother looking for a cause, and soon we came to a clearing that had contained a squalid, rudimentary farm.

The burning buildings were already falling in upon themselves, their walls made of bare sapling trunks, rather than clay and wattle, and their roofs unthatched, mere racks of crossed poles layered with filthy straw that burned greasily. The farmer still spun slowly at the end of a rope and had been disemboweled after hanging. The naked, broken body of his wife lay under his dangling feet, partially covered by his trailing intestines. Two dead children lay nearby, one of them killed by an ax or sword stroke that had split the tiny skull asunder, and the other had been thrown into the inferno of the burning hut, leaving only a thin pair of legs and feet protruding into the farmyard.

I swung down from my saddle, expecting to do I know not what, but as the visual impressions swarmed upon me in quick succession, each of them worse than what had gone before, I was unable to contain the violent retching that swept over me. I staggered to one side, clutching for something to hold on to and finding nothing as I fell to my knees and vomited.

I was not alone, I saw as I straightened up. Young Bors had offered his sacrifice along with mine, and Tristan, although he had apparently retained his morning meal, sat stone-faced and ashen, staring into the trees and obviously unwilling to look at the carnage around us. Perceval was the only one of our four who appeared unmoved, although I knew him well enough by now to be able to see that he was deeply angry. Beside him, the young tribune whom Donuil had assigned to head our escort sat gazing at me, his expression unreadable. I spat to clear my mouth of the sour taste of vomit, and Perceval wordlessly tossed me the water bottle that he always kept hanging on his saddle. I rinsed my mouth thoroughly before crossing to the young tribune.

“Who would have done this, Cyrus?”

The young man shrugged, his mouth twisting downward. “Anyone,” he said. “Bandits, thieves, envious neighbors, perhaps even Saxon raiders.”

“Envious neighbors? How can you find humor in a thing like this? And Saxons, this close to Camulod? Are you sure?”

He shook his head. “I see no humor here and I am sure of nothing, Lord Clothar, although I doubt this would be the work of Saxons. It’s too small a thing—despite its immensity for those who died here. If there were Saxons in this region, there would have to be large numbers of them and we would soon find out.” He was looking about him as he spoke, his eyes on the ground. “There were no large numbers here, no swarming footprints that I can see. This was probably done by a small group of bandits. There could have been nothing here worth stealing, save for a few skinny animals.” He waved toward an empty sty and a trampled pile of filthy straw. “A pig, perhaps a cow.”

“And they killed for that? A pig and a cow?”

Cyrus looked at me strangely. “That could be a rich haul for starving men, Lord Clothar. Well worth killing for, nowadays.”

“Sweet Jesus! What kind of a place is this Britain?”

Cyrus sniffed loudly, managing to sound disdainful and condescending at once, and his choice of honorific when he named me again conveyed something of the depths of his contempt for me as an Outlander who knew nothing yet disparaged everything.

“It is a place without leadership, Master Clothar. A land without law, where the only right to life that a man has is the one he holds in his hand to defend himself and to enable him to take what he needs in order to keep himself and his family alive. There is no state-run civitas in Britain now, no government granaries, no public relief in time of famine. No bread and circuses to keep the mob happy and fed. There is no food here at all, other than what a man may hunt or grow and defend for himself. That ensures a harsh, cruel existence for those who cannot fight or claw their way to the top of the ruck of despair. This is only the first sight you have had of it, but you will see more, believe me. Of course, things are different in Camulod. Camulod has law. But Camulod is no more than one small colony. It is not large enough for its laws to cover all men. And by that I mean our army is not large enough. You cannot uphold or support the rule of law unless you have the means to enforce that rule. Someday, and soon, we will expand from Camulod and govern more widely, but not yet. We are close to the time, but it is not yet right.”

That was the first real indication I had had that I needed to think deeply about all the things, concerning the law and justice and retribution for crimes, that I had taken for granted prior to that point, and listening to his words, I found myself looking now with dawning respect at this young officer, seeing beyond his outward condescension to the mettle of the man underneath. I had only been in his company since dawn that day and other than a casual nod of greeting when we were first introduced to each other I had paid him little heed. I had noticed that he kept to himself, content to ride alone at the head of his men, followed by his two decurions, and that he seemed completely comfortable with himself and with his relationship to the thirty men in his charge. This young man Cyrus, I had thought, was a typical young squadron commander of Camulod where thirty-man squadrons, each with two decurions and a squadron commander, were the norm according to Donuil, and the term turma, normally used in Gaul to denote a sixty-man squadron, was unknown, not used at all.

Now, however, it appeared that I had been in error yet again and that there was more to young Cyrus than first met the eye. Either that, or the typical young squadron commanders being trained in Camulod were several orders of magnitude ahead of their counterparts in Roman Gaul, for over there no encouragement or incentive was ever offered to young officers to develop either philosophical opinions or moral platforms, both of which this young man appeared to possess and value. Cyrus the tribune might have been three, or perhaps four years older than I was, but I accepted after having listened to him for mere moments that he might be twice my age in terms of self-possession and analytical prowess. I decided then and there to say nothing about either his tone of voice or his offhand treatment of me. I could see plainly that, in his eyes, I had laid solid claim to deserving both.

I gazed up at him now, noting the way he stared back at me clear-eyed, his face devoid of expression, and then I turned to look again at the hanged farmer and the ruins of his little family.

“This happens often, then.” I did not intend it to be a question, and Cyrus made no response. I glanced back at him. “The people who did this can’t be far away. They haven’t had time to travel far, encumbered by cattle.”