Jack Whyte: The Lance Thrower

Their expressions were thoughtful, their eyes flickering back and forth from me to one another and sometimes to the drab landscape surrounding us. I nodded and spoke on.

“Such a time might never come to Gaul, lads, for in Gaul we love our comforts far too much. We have grown too somnolent for such things, too lazy, basking in the warm sun of our provinces. It takes a place like this island, Britain, where the sun is frequently a stranger and cold is more familiar than warmth, to keep men moving and to spur them on to pure ideals, great deeds, and high activity. And on that point of high activity, you are about to discover what I mean. You will walk today as you have never walked before … fast and far and over rough country.” I saw a few smiles break out and nodded in acknowledgment. “You find that amusing, some of you. Well, that pleases me. But save your smiles and guard them close, and bring them to me fresh when we camp tonight. I warn you, there are no horses out there waiting to be taken and bridled, not today—or if there are, I shall be much surprised. By the time the sun goes down today, before we are halfway to where we are going, you will all be footsore and weary, with aches and pains in places you don’t even know exist at this moment. And then, once we reach our destination tomorrow or the day after, depending upon what we find, we will turn around and retrace our path.” I looked at each of them, one after the other, moving from left to right, and they stared back at me with ten different expressions, ranging from tolerant amusement to shining eagerness, and even to truculent suspicion. I reached down to fondle the ears of the beast beneath me.

“None of you is used to, or prepared for, what I will demand of you within these next few days—” I threw up my hand to cut short the mutterings of protest as they began. “And I know, too, that your military training has been long and thorough.” That sounded better to them and they shrugged, appeased and slightly mollified, preening themselves and flexing their muscles gently. “But you are trained as horsemen. Mounted warriors. Knights, if you will. Not infantry. Not foot soldiers. And foot soldiers is what you are become, here and now, today and tomorrow, and you will find the effort overwhelming. And so I wish to make it clear immediately that if any one of you—anyone at all—finds the effort too much for him within the next few days, he must say so, and we will leave him safe, with a companion, to await our eventual return. There will be no disgrace attached to that. Some efforts are too much for men not trained in the discipline required, no matter their proficiency in other things. We all have limitations, and none of you has been faced with this hardship before. You may find, any one among you, that your limitations lie in this … and if so, you must make that clear to me. Do you understand me?” There came a rumbled chorus of assent, and I nodded again. “Good, so be it. Now we must move quickly and quietly—not in silence, but it would be best to make no noise that might be heard from afar. We have no friends in this land. Bear that in mind until we are safe afloat again, and let’s be on our way.”

We moved on immediately, having established among ourselves that the march would be endured by all without complaint of any kind, no matter how grave the nuisance of blistered feet or the pain of cramped and aching muscles.

We camped that night in a quiet woodland glade between two low hills, having seen not a sign of human habitation since we left the settlement at Glastonbury, and sometime before dawn a gentle, steady rain began to fall. We rose up in the predawn darkness and broke our fast as we moved on, huddled against the weather and chewing on roasted grain and chopped dried fruit and nuts from our ration scrips. Sometime after noon the rain dried up, although the clouds grew ever more threatening and sullen, and toward midafternoon I began to recognize landmarks: hill formations and a single grove of enormous trees, sheltered among the hills, that was achingly familiar. I stopped there, signaling a halt, and as my escort spread themselves out to rest, vainly trying to find dry spots beneath the towering trees, I sat on my garron, gazing northeastward toward the mist-shrouded brow of one particular hill that, had it not been there, would have permitted me to see beyond it one of the dearest sights of my young manhood. I was glad the hill was there, however, for I had no desire to see beyond it and I felt not the slightest temptation to approach closer to it.

From its crest, I knew, I would have been able to look out across a stretch of forested plain to another distant, solitary hill that stood like a sentinel among the rich lands surrounding it, its crest crowned by a strong-walled fortification that had once housed the first true High King of all Britain, Arthur Pendragon, with all his family and friends, his armed might, and his great and lofty and ultimately impossible ideals. I had no doubt it would be inhabited still, but it was no longer Camulod, and I had no wish to know who ruled there now. I climbed down from my horse and ate and rested with my young men, and then I marshaled them again and struck onward, south by east on the last leg of my journey, just as the clouds above us pressed even lower and the rain began to fall in earnest.

For three more hours we made our way through trackless, sodden countryside, our wax-smeared, woolen foul-weather cloaks rendered almost useless by the hissing, incessant downpour and the sheer volume of water that cascaded upon us from every tree and bush and blade of grass we touched in passing. I rode following the contours of the land, half blinded by the downpour, remembering clearly that once there had been pathways here; little used now, they had disappeared in all but a few barren or sheltered places. I pressed on in silence, saying nothing because there was nothing I could have said to comfort my hapless companions, who must have been grieving, no doubt, for the open, sunny June skies of their homeland far to the south, beyond the seas.

And then we arrived at the point I had been seeking, a point invisible to everyone but me. I slid down from my mount’s back, mindful of the steep and treacherously muddy slopes that lay ahead, and guided the garron carefully down the narrow, winding path that led beneath the crown of trees that obscured all evidence of the small, hidden valley below. Clovis and his friends followed me, muttering quietly among themselves and treading with great caution as they wondered where we were going and why I had brought them to this desolate and forsaken place. They fell silent, however, as I led them out of the dark tunnel of the descent into the open, grass-floored glade that lay beside the tiny lake at the bottom of the hill. A small building of gray stone at the far end of the glade betrayed no signs that anyone lived there, although its roof appeared to be intact and the door looked to be solid and tight-shut. I told my companions to wait where they were, handed the reins of my horse to Clovis, and walked alone toward the small house.

I have no idea how long I stood in the semidarkness of the single small room within the four stone walls, but it was long enough for my son to grow concerned and come looking for me. The sound of his voice calling me brought me back to awareness, but even so I made no response until he pulled the door open and stood there, peering in at me.

“Father? Are you well?”

I sighed then, I remember, surprised by the effort it required, and turned to gaze at him, hovering there on the threshold, unsure whether he should enter. Looking out at him from the dimness of the interior, it seemed to me that he shone with a peculiar brilliance, his sodden cape glittering strangely in the pale light cast by the watery late-afternoon sun that had emerged from a break in the clouds. Two of his friends stood a few paces behind him, still closely wrapped in their foul-weather cloaks, watching tensely.