Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“I’m on my way home,” I said as the ropes fell away from my wrists and before the pain of returning circulation had time to strike. “To King Ban, with messages from Bishop Germanus. My friend here is Ursus, who has been guarding me along the way. Cut him loose, please.”

“Urs—?” Chulderic glanced from me to my unconscious companion and then back to me again. “This is a friend of yours? The bowman? Is he a Roman? Can you vouch for him?”

Now I spoke through gritted teeth as I tried to deny the agony in my wrists and ankles, and I had little patience with what I saw as Chulderic’s obtuseness. “For what? Of course I can vouch for him, but I don’t know what you want. Nor do I know if he’s a Roman. All I do know is that he’s a good man.”

“Ah, so you don’t know him that well … . Has he been with you all day long?”

“Aye, he has, and all day yesterday, too, since we left the garrison at Lugdunum. He has not been out of my sight for nigh on three weeks. Why are you asking me these questions? What do you think he has done?”

“He has nigh murdered King Ban, boy. That is what he’s done.”

“Balls!” The expletive came naturally to my lips and Chulderic did not even blink at it. “Ursus has been riding by my side since we left Lugdunum yesterday at dawn. I told you that. We have not even stopped to hunt since then. We camped at the twenty-fourth mile marker last night and traveled on today until the storm began to build, late in the afternoon. We made camp, right here, to wait out the storm.” I stopped then, realizing what the old man had said about King Ban. “Is the King dead?”

“No. I said he was nigh murdered, not killed dead. He lies about five miles from here, in an armed camp. Someone shot him yesterday, from afar—a sneaking, cowardly attack that almost succeeded but fell short.”

“You mean the arrow fell short?”

“No, boy, the attempt fell short, of complete success. The arrow struck the King beneath his upraised arm as he stood up in his stirrups to rally his men, and it struck deep and high into his chest, its point deflected upward by the armpit rim of his cuirass. The wound is grievous, but it might not yet be fatal. The next few days will tell, and he is surrounded by physicians and the surgeon Sakander, the best there is. If anyone can save him, Sakander will.”

“And you think Ursus did this thing, in my company?”

“We have a description of him, Clothar. He was seen. A tall man, dressed in black and well armored, carrying a bow.”

“And riding a high black horse?”

“What? No. We heard no tale of any horse. The killer was afoot.”

“Well someone has mistaken Ursus for someone else. He is tall, and he wears black and has good armor and a bow, but he also rides a magnificent horse, the twin to mine. Both are close by here, hobbled in good pasture with a third animal, a packhorse, about a hundred paces along the riverbank there. Did you not check them?”

The old man frowned. “Not in the dark, no. We came up on your tent under cover of the storm because one of our scouts had seen you late in the evening, before the storm broke. But he said nothing of horses.” He turned again to his companion and indicated Ursus. “Do as he says, Jonas. Cut him free. We’ve obviously made an error here. Master Clothar, as you’ve heard, is King Ban’s nephew.”

I felt myself frowning so hard that my face was starting to ache. The vision of my uncle as I had last seen him hovered in front of my eyes.

“What is the King doing here, Chulderic, so far from Genava?”

The old man looked at me in surprise, astonished that I should even have to ask such a foolish question. “He is being the King, fighting for his people and their safety. The entire countryside is crawling with two-legged vermin—Alamanni and the accursed Burgundians—all seeking what they call ‘room to live.’ We’ve been killing them as quickly as we can, and in the biggest numbers we can find, for nigh on three months now. They must breed like rats, the whoresons, because the more of them we kill, it seems, the more of them spill out of sewers and noisome craters in the earth. And they are outraged, crying to Rome for help against our ravages! Can you believe such shit? They want us to hold up our hands and step aside and let them take over our homes without a word of protest. Oh, it’s been going on for a hundred years now, especially with the Alamanni, you know that. But now the whoreson Burgundians are causing us more grief than the damned Alamanni ever have.”

He paused, and for a moment I thought he was finished, but he was merely rallying his forces, gathering his strength, and nurturing his outrage and disgust.

“And they have imperial backing, it appears, whoreson supporters at some rarified level of government who maintain that Empire—and tell me, pray, what Empire that might be? Tell me that!—Empire, they say, could not survive without their wondrous aid. Burgundian aid! They are being given title to lands around Genava—other people’s lands—as a reward for what is described as ‘faithful and unstinting service in Imperial Wars’! Have you ever heard such rabid filth? What about us, who live here and have fought and died for the whoreson Empire forever, without thought of asking for special privilege or dispensation? Would it ever have occurred to us to ask Rome’s blessing upon our actions had we decided we have a right to usurp and dispossess our neighbors? Sweet Jesus crucified!”

I had been waiting for a pause in his tirade and I leaped in before he could begin again. “I need to see King Ban, Chulderic. Will you take us there?”

He nodded, but his eyes still lingered suspiciously on Ursus, who had not moved since being cut free and showed no sign of returning to consciousness. “Aye,” he growled. “I will. But we had best see to your friend here. He should have come to his senses ere now.”

He was right, and I knelt quickly by Ursus, shaking his shoulder and calling him by name. Fortunately, he heard me on my first attempt and came awake slowly, groaning as he reached up to cradle his head, but then he remembered what had been happening before he fell and he snapped awake, pushing himself up until he was sitting, staring up at Chulderic. I offered him my arm and pulled him up to his feet, and then I made the introductions and told him what had happened.

When I had finished, Ursus stood looking at Chulderic, stooping forward slightly and fingering the swelling behind his ear. “Was it you who hit me?”

Chulderic smiled. “No, sir. That would have been one of our younger men. Strong warriors they are.”

“Aye, so it seems, especially when hitting a man from behind his back.” He squinted at me. “So now what do we do?”

“We go and visit the King and hope we find him well.”

Chulderic cleared his throat, a deep, harrumphing sound that contained all his skepticism. “Little chance of that. If you’re the praying kind now, from your bishop’s school, pray you then that we find him alive. He was struck down by a freakish chance, but the blow went deep. He might already be dead. Damnation, but I wanted to haul the man who shot him in to his judgment.

“Come then. Let’s away.”

Even from afar there was an air of dejection hanging over the King’s camp as dawn broke that day. I became aware of it as soon as we emerged from the surrounding forest and began making our way toward the distant tents. The few guards I could see stood slumped, rather than bristling at attention in the usual way of perimeter sentinels, and the normal bustle of a military camp was subdued, with no one moving at speed anywhere and no upraised voices where normally there would be a babble of sounds and shouts. Even the smoke from the cooking fires seemed to hang listless and inert, settling in flattened layers of varying density above the fires rather than dissipating in the early-morning air. I glanced at Ursus and saw immediately that he, too, had sensed the hopelessness here.