Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“But once Merlyn’s response is brought back here to me it would be well, I think, were you here to witness it and my reaction to it … including whatever decisions might necessarily be attached to that. Thereafter, once you are apprised of all that is happening and aware of what remains to be done by the various parties involved, you may return to Camulod with all speed, carrying that information and knowing that you have saved time by removing the need for someone to come from there to here and back for the same purpose. And in the meantime, knowing you have borne the tidings ahead of us, my fellow bishops and I will be able to follow at a pace more suited to our age and dignitas. Do you agree?”

Listening to the old man’s logic as he explained his thoughts, I could find no grounds for disagreeing with him, but since he was talking in terms of months of waiting, I immediately began to feel guilt over the prospect of keeping Cyrus and his thirty troopers here, and consequently absent from their duties in time of war, for such an extended period. I spoke with Perceval and Tristan about my concerns on that and they agreed with me, so I immediately sent for Cyrus and thanked him for his company on our outward journey. As soon as he heard me say those words, he raised an inquiring eyebrow and began to fidget with his helmet, which he had been holding in the crook of one arm, its rim against his hipbone. He and I had become good friends over time, and now he looked at me as a friend.

“Can I sit down?”

“Of course. Sit by the brazier there, and I’ll join you. Throw me your helmet.” He tossed it to me and I laid it on the table at my back, then moved to sit across the brazier from him. “You have something to say, so say it.”

He slouched in the chair, his feet outstretched toward the brazier’s heat, and crossed his arms, resting his chin in the crotch of his right thumb and forefinger. “You’re sending me back to Camulod.”

“Yes.”

“Why? And what are you going to do once my men and I are gone?” .

“We’ll be staying here, probably for a few months, until word arrives from Merlyn. Then we’ll return to Camulod with messages from Enos.”

“Hmm. You believe that is the best thing you can do at this stage?”

“At this stage, yes.”

“Good, then my men and I will stay with you, because you’ll need us on your way back to Camulod.”

“No, that’s going to be too long for you to be absent from your duties in Camulod. There’s a war going on there, is there not?”

“No, that’s over. My duty is to see to your safety. That’s what I was ordered to do. That is what I will do.”

I shook my head. “I cannot allow you to do that, Cyrus. Your place and your primary duty is in Camulod. You and your men are wasted here and it’s easy to see the effect this idleness is having on them. They have nothing to do here, and there’s nothing worse for any soldier than being stuck in a boring place with nothing to do. You need to get them back on the road and back into shape, as quickly as you can. We really don’t need you now. We are perfectly safe here in Verulamium and we will be equally safe on the route home, now that we’ve traveled it once. We’re aware of the dangers we might face, and we will be on guard against them when the time comes. We are no longer the four green tyros who landed here from Gaul.”

Cyrus sat silent, staring at me through narrowed eyes for what seemed to me like a very long time, and then he nodded and snorted loudly. “Right. You obviously mean what you have said.”

“I do.”

“Aye, well, I’d best start making ready for the road. You’re right, my men are growing fat and lazy and fractious. But I’ll have them whipped back into condition within five days of leaving here.” He stood up and went to collect his helmet, running his fingers around the surface of the leather headband before settling the casque firmly on his head. “We’ll probably leave the day after tomorrow. It will take a full day, I expect, to provision ourselves and make our gear ready for use again. I’ll see you before I go, and then I’ll look forward to seeing you again when you reach Camulod.”

I stood up and nodded to him and he snapped me a perfect salute before whirling and marching from my quarters.

We settled down to pass the winter peacefully in Verulamium.

It snowed heavily toward the middle of the month, and that snowfall turned out to be merely the first of many as the temperature plummeted to depths that everyone swore were unprecedented. The snowstorms were accompanied by strong winds that whipped the snow into strange and wondrous drifts that served to isolate the countryside, so that travel became impossible and supplies of food and fuel were used up in those places where people were stranded. We were bored beyond belief, although our boredom was alleviated by the need to seek out new supplies of fuel and food.

Neither I nor my three companions had experienced a winter to compare to this before. It snowed only infrequently in central Gaul, even in the deepest winter, and when snow did occasionally fall, it seldom remained on the ground for longer than a day or two. It never fell and froze and remained for weeks and months as it had this year in Britain. Consequently none of us had ever hunted in the snow before, and we discovered it to be an entirely different kind of science, calling for skills that we had never learned. Fortunately, however, we found excellent teachers among the group surrounding Symmachus, the tall, distinguished-looking man we had noticed when we first rode into Verulamium.

Symmachus was a Roman name, but the man who bore it, although he carried it proudly enough, was a Briton through and through. He claimed direct descent from the ancient Cornovii, the warrior people of northern Cambria whose indomitable strength and refusal to succumb to the Roman invaders in the time of the Emperor Claudius had necessitated the building of the giant legionary fortress of Deva that had housed the ten-thousand-strong complement of the Twentieth Legion, the Valeria Victrix, for upward of three hundred years. Sometime in the course of that three hundred years, Symmachus maintained, a Roman officer had managed to bypass the disapproving frowns and scowling menace of the Cornovii elders and wed himself to one of their daughters, adding his bloodlines and his Roman name to the annals of the clan. The Valeria Victrix was gone now, with all the other legions, Symmachus told us on the first night we spent in his company, but their enormous fortress was still there in Deva—it was Deva, he declared—and so were the Cornovii, although they had fallen out of the habit of calling themselves by any special name and simply called themselves the People of the Hills in their own dialect and Cambrians in the common Coastal Tongue. Symmachus was their king, and he and his people, numbering in the region of five thousand men, women, and children, now made their home in the ancient fortress, which they called Chester.

He was a strange man, Symmachus, and for reasons of his own he never liked me and never acknowledged me as the leader of my small group. Instead, he addressed himself to Perceval, as the eldest of our group, at all times, thereby steadfastly refusing me the legitimacy of place that would have been accorded by his addressing me in person. Tristan in particular was highly offended by Symmachus’s attitude toward me, but I went out of my way to make light of the situation because I knew what it was about me that the king resented most of all.

Symmachus was accompanied by his wife and two daughters. The wife, a lady called Demea, was still young and exceptionally beautiful, a radiant, laughing creature with bright yellow hair and wondrous green eyes. All the men in the town were at least half in love with her, and the recognition of that truth afforded the king much amusement and enjoyment. After all, he was a strong and well set up man in the prime of life, and his young wife was most obviously besotted with him. And indeed, as we had quickly discovered, his wife’s love for Symmachus was the reason he was here in Verulamium, so many miles from home. They had been married now for eight years and were without children of their own, the two daughters being the progeny of Symmachus’s first marriage.