Jack Whyte: The Lance Thrower

“Perhaps so, Armis. You may be right. But we will never know, will we? And thus, we’ll look at it my way. Do you agree?”

Armis said nothing at all, the red tide in his cheeks growing even deeper, and I turned back to the others, none of whom had yet laughed as they normally would at Armis’s discomfiture.

“We will tend him as though he were one of us, treat his remains with dignity, and see him to a decent burial at last. After all, but for the seas between this land and ours, he might have been grandsire to any of you, who can tell?”

This last produced no laughter from my suddenly sober-faced audience, and I nodded. “Let’s be about it, then, before it starts to rain again or grows too dark to see. Clovis, come you with me for a moment. There is much of your father here in this small valley, and since you are my youngest son, I want to share it with you.”

I felt no qualms about the subterfuge as I led him away, leaving the others to dispose of the tasks I had set them. As soon as we were out of their sight, however, I changed direction, circling around behind the hut until we reached the hanging screen of roots, briars, and creepers that concealed the entrance to Merlyn’s hiding place. It took me mere moments to work my way around the hanging mass and rip away the living curtain to expose the narrow entrance, and I used my body as a brace to hold back their weight as Clovis eased his way past me into the interior. It was dry inside, and dark, but there was light enough to show us what lay therein: two massive chests and a long, straight-edged package that obviously contained a box, tightly bound in some kind of uncured hide that had been soaked, then stretched tightly around its contents before being bound with narrow leather thongs and left to dry in place, forming a hard, stiff casing. Clovis turned to me, his eyebrows raised in query.

I pointed at the long, narrow package. “This one is mine, from Merlyn. Bring it when we leave here and place it with the other two bundles in the hut.”

He pointed a thumb toward the chests. “What about those?”

“Those we destroy. They contain sorcery— real sorcery. Merlyn took them from two warlocks, many years ago. I helped him bring them here. He always intended to destroy them, but he was curious about the things they held and could not bring himself to dispose of them before he knew their secrets. I suspect he eventually forgot that they were here and only found them when he brought—” I stopped short, on the point of saying “Excalibur.” “When he brought this other box to leave safely for me. By that time, he was too old and weak, too tired, to destroy them effectively. And so, in the letter that he left, he asked me to complete the task for him. We’ll burn them when we leave, tomorrow. Right now, we have to empty them and scatter their contents on the floor here. But he warned me that they are more than simply dangerous: they all contain death, in one form or another, and in some cases, he insists, mere contact with the skin can bring about a painful end. So be careful not to touch anything that lies inside either of them.”

I opened the larger chest, then stood gazing in surprise at what I saw. The interior seemed to be a narrow, shallow tray, filled with leather thongs and surrounded on all four sides by wide, ribbed borders. It took me several moments before I saw that the “ribs” along each edge were the edges of a nested series of trays, each deeper than the one above, and that the leather thongs were handles, one pair attached to each of the trays in series. I folded back the thongs, draping them over the edges of the chest, then found those for the first tray, the shallowest, which had contained nothing other than the layered thongs. I lifted it out and laid it aside, revealing the tray below. It was twice as deep as the first one, its interior divided into rectangular boxes, some of them empty but many filled to varying degrees with what I took to be seeds and dried berries of many colors. All of them would be poisonous, I told myself, lifting out the tray and resting it on one corner of the chest. I gripped it by the sides and turned it over carefully at arm’s length, scattering the contents on the floor of the cave before setting the empty tray aside and reaching for the third set of handles. This tray was deeper and heavier, with fewer compartments, containing jars and vials. Those, too, I tipped out onto the floor, using my boots to free the lids and tip the containers so their contents ran or oozed out into the dirt. I looked up then and nodded to Clovis, bidding him open the other chest and follow my example. Three trays remained in my chest, the topmost filled with oblong boxes of green glazed clay filled with some kind of greenish paste. I dumped them out onto the floor, too, kicking their lids away and turning the boxes over with my booted toes, so that their contents lay facedown on the dirt.

The next tray contained what I took to be hanks of dried grasses and small tied bundles of twigs and dried herbs. I didn’t know what those were, but they would serve as kindling for the fire I would light the following day. I piled them in the center of the floor. The bottom of the chest, the deepest compartment, was empty, save for a fat, squat wooden box containing what looked like a handful of granular black powder, which I shook out onto the pile of grass. The array of trays on my left would burn well.

“Look at this, Father.” Clovis was holding something out to me. “It looks like a man’s hair and face, peeled off the bone.”

“It’s a mask. A mummer’s trickery. Throw it with the rest.”

In less time than it has taken me to describe, we had emptied both chests, and their contents lay piled on the floor, surrounded by the half score of trays and the empty chests themselves.

“Those are wondrous chests, Father, well made. It seems a pity to destroy such things.”

“We need them to burn, to destroy what they contained. Merlyn was quite clear about that. But there’s not enough fuel in here to do that properly, so tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, I want you to start gathering wood and bringing it in here. Have your friends help you. There’ll be little dry wood, but no matter. Find what you can and chop it up into pieces small enough to bring through the entrance. Pack this place to the ceiling, if you can. The hotter the fire we make, the more completely we’ll destroy what’s here. But if your friends pay any attention to what’s scattered on the floor, discourage them. Don’t let them touch anything on the floor with their bare hands. If they ask you what we’ve done here, or why we did it, tell them it is my wish—that these are useless things too heavy to take home to Gaul. Tell them I have decided I have no wish to see them again, because of memories they stir in me. They will believe you. This is a day for memories, they have seen that. But on no account will you allow any of them to touch anything, unless you want to see them shrivel up and die before your eyes. Is that clear?”

His eyes were wide and full of conviction. “Yes, Father. I’ll watch them closely. They won’t touch anything.”

“Good. I’ll trust you to see to it. Now pick up my box, if you will, and let’s get out of here. It’s almost too dark to see, so it must be near nightfall.”

The rain held off that night and we slept well, and at dawn we were up and about. Clovis and his friends made short work of filling the cave with wood, and if any of them even noticed the spillage on the cave floor they made no mention of it. I spent that time alone, sitting on the cot and reading over Merlyn’s letter several times, resisting the temptation to open any of the three parcels. When I smelled the tang of smoke from green wood, I went outside where I could see thick white smoke drifting from the trees fronting the vent that formed the entrance to the cave. My escort, their work over, were standing around, idly watching the increasing clouds of smoke. I called them together and brought them to order, and they stood grouped around the open grave as we lowered the tiny bundle containing the brittle bones of Merlyn Britannicus to rest.