Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

Now I shall go outside, one last, cold time, and gather wood for my fire, and I shall eat the last of some good rabbit stew I made but yesterday and after that I will lie down on my old cot and sleep the sleep I have long wished for. Farewell, Hastatus! May your lance fly straight and true forever, and may God grant you the power to tell of what we both knew here in Britain. Your friend,

Caius Merlyn Britannicus—how long since I have used, or seen, that name!

Excalibur! No shred of doubt existed in my mind that this was what lay in the third treasure set aside for me. He had been careful not to name it in bald words, but Merlyn had known that there had been no need. I was the only one besides himself who knew about the hiding place, the cave that I had helped him excavate behind the hanging slab of rock at the back of the hut, at the lake’s farthest end. He had found it by accident one day, more of a recess than a cave, in truth: a natural space left between the hillside and the enormous broken slab that was the farthest end of the long stone cliff face that formed the rear of the little lake. A steady sheet of water flowed silently down that rock face from a source hidden on the steep, densely overgrown hillside above, and gave the tiny vale much of its magical, almost supernatural beauty.

Naturally, being Merlyn, he had seen the little hollow, screened by hanging roots and a huge clump of bramble bushes, as an asset that might be useful someday, and had labored long and hard thereafter to widen and deepen it, digging out the soft shale hillside behind the slab until he had formed a dry, enclosed space in which two men could stand upright; a space that might someday be used to conceal anything valuable, including his own life, from unwelcome eyes. I had helped him, on my first visit to this valley, to carry two iron-bound wooden chests there. He had told me at the time that they were filled with the poisonous leavings of two Egyptian warlocks called Caspar and Memnon, who had once served the villainous Lot of Cornwall and had died in Camulod for the murder of Merlyn’s own father, Picus Britannicus. But he had made no move to open them to show me what they held, and I had not asked him to. And there, too, he had concealed Excalibur, years later.

I had often wondered what had become of the sword after Arthur’s death. Now I knew, and I felt no surprise. Indeed, I should have known that Merlyn would have found a way to keep it safe, aware that its legendary brightness might have been put to evil purposes in the wrong hands. And thinking thus, I wondered, too, if there could be any right hands to own it, once its true possessor was dead. But now it was mine, by Merlyn’s decree, passed on in trust to me and mine, albeit with a warning not to reveal its name or its true provenance. In Gaul, far removed from Britain and its memories, that might be possible, providing I contained my knowledge safe inside myself.

“Father?” I had not heard the door opening behind me. “I have found the place, I think. Would you like to come and look before we start digging?”

I folded up the sheets in my hand and went outside, where Clovis led me to the grave site on the little knoll overlooking the placid surface of the tiny lake. The rest of our party stood about there, silently watching me, their faces showing curiosity. I nodded in approval, then raised my hand.

“I knew this place, long years ago,” I said, moving my eyes from face to face, “and it holds many happy memories for me. It also holds possessions I had never hoped to see again; things that I had thought and hoped were safe here, in its hidden isolation. Treasures,” I added, seeing the sudden stirring of interest that the word evoked. I paused, watching them closely. “But treasures that have no worth to anyone but me. I’ll show them to you, and ask you to carry them for me. I will even share them with you, should you so desire. How many here can read?”

All of their faces twisted into scowls and only one besides Clovis raised his hand. “Lars? I had no idea. Where did you learn?”

Lars, a heavyset warrior, immense across the chest and shoulders, shrugged and dipped his head as though suddenly shy. “In boyhood,” he growled in his great, rambling voice. “My father had a crippled scribe whose task it was to teach me. But that was long ago.”

“And do you still read, today?”

He looked me in the eye, defiantly, as though I might challenge him to prove his next words. “I could … had I the time or the will.”

“Then you might like to read the treasure we will take from here, for it is all in words, written on fine parchment. Piles and piles of it, covered in fine script over a period of several lifetimes by men long dead. Would you wish to read what it has to say?”

Lars laughed suddenly, a harsh, deep bark. “Nay, Lord, I would not. But if there be as much as you describe, it will make a heavy burden. I’ll gladly help you carry it, but I would rather die beneath the lash than have to read it.” The others joined in his laughter, and I waited, smiling still.

“You’re right, it will be heavy, three large bundles. So I suggest you and another make a litter of poles, the easier to carry it between four men. Four more of you to dig this grave, working in pairs.”

“Who was he, Lord? The man we are to bury?” The questioner was Origen, the youngest of our group but already famed among his peers for his coolheaded courage and a wisdom beyond his years.

I shook my head. “As easy for you to say as for me, Origen. A vagrant, perhaps, who stumbled on this place and remained here to die.”

“Then why the labor of a burial, Lord? Why not just leave him where he is?”

That stopped me short, because I recognized the danger hidden in the simple question. Why, indeed, go to the trouble of burying a long-dead pile of unknown bones? But my tongue had already gone ahead of me so that my answer was as glib as any long considered, and my smooth response evoked another burst of laughter from my listeners. “Because he’s in my bed, my friend.”

As the laughter died away I looked up at the rapidly darkening sky above our heads. “Laugh as you will, but I mean it. We will stay here tonight and return to the coast in the morning. This is as safe a place as we could find in all this land, for no one knows it exists. The rain seems to have passed, but should it return we can all sleep beneath the old roof, there, packed in like grapes on a stem, but warm and dry. But there is only one small bed, and I lay claim to it, as senior here. Our bony friend will not feel the dampness of cold earth atop his bones, but I would find his dusty presence irksome, sharing the bed with him.” That drew another chuckle, and as it died I spoke into it.

“So, the three of you who are left idle for the moment will have a task as well: two of you to gather up the bones of our dead friend and wrap them carefully for burial in the blanket that covered him, while the other shakes out the remaining bedding and the sleeping furs. Clovis, I leave it to you to do the shaking out. Take pains to shake out all the dust here in the open, if you will, but do so with respect. We may not know who this man was, but we know he died here alone and friendless, probably unmourned. And looking about the place in which he died, we found no weapons … not a sword, an ax, a knife, or even a club. No means of self-defense at all, which tells me that this dead man was a man of peace.”

“Either that or a base-born, gutless fugitive.” The whispered comment had not been meant for me to hear, but it reached my ears nonetheless. The speaker, Armis, known as Blusher to his companions, knew I had heard his comment, and a deep red flush swept up his face.