Jack Whyte - The Lance Thrower

“But—”

“No, no buts, my friend. There’s no excuse for dereliction of duty. Who is in command here?”

Clodio sniffed, a loud, long, disdainful snort. “I am, I suppose, so I’m the one you’ll have to hang or flog, if you think that’s called for. Lord Gunthar rode out yesterday to bring home your mother, the Lady Vivienne, from Vervenna. She has a young friend there … well, the young wife of an old friend, in truth, Lord Ingomer. He was newly wed a year ago to a young wife, Lady Anne. She was brought to childbed there a sevennight ago. Lady Vivienne went there before that to assist with the birthing, so she has been gone for ten days now, since the day after the King rode out to the west against the Alamanni. Lord Brach accompanied his mother with a score of men.”

Lord Ingomer, our closest neighbor, had always been one of Ban’s staunchest allies and supporters, and Vervenna was the name he had given to his lands, which bordered on Ban’s own. Ingomer’s house, a small, heavily fortified castle, was no more than five miles from where we stood. Nevertheless I found myself frowning.

“Why would Gunthar ride out to bring my mother home when she already has an escort? Brach is with her, isn’t that what you said?”

“Aye, but yesterday, when the word came that King Ban had been wounded—” Clodio cut himself short, appalled that he might have committed a gaffe. “Did you know that? The King was shot down by an assassin’s arrow … .”

“Aye, we know that, but you say the word arrived only yesterday?”

“Aye, about the middle of the afternoon. I was up on the walls and saw the messenger come over the hill there.”

“Sweet Jesu, he took his time in getting here! Four days, to cover a distance we consumed in one?” I was speaking to Ursus, but he frowned and jerked his head in a clear negative, and so I turned back to Clodio, wondering what I had said that Ursus did not like. “Go on, Clodio, what happened when the word arrived?”

“Lord Gunthar grew massy concerned about his mother’s health when once she heard the news, and so he rode to pass the tidings on to her himself, for fear she heard them unexpectedly from some other source.”

“What other source? There is no other source. Are you saying Gunthar rode off alone?”

“No, he took a strong party with him—his own mounted guards. Three score of them in two thirty-man squadrons.”

“And he simply left you alone in charge of the fortress?”

“Nay, not he. Gunthar accords nothing to lesser men than he … men below his station, I should say, since he believes all men are lesser than he is. He left the fortress in the charge of your brother Theuderic.”

“So where is Theuderic?”

“With the others now, wherever they are—Vervenna or elsewhere by now. I know not. He was away when word of the King arrived, patrolling the eastern boundaries against Alamanni raiding parties, so he knew nothing of it until he returned, about midway through the afternoon. Mind you, he was expected. Gunthar knew he was coming in person to pick up supplies, hoping the King might have returned from his patrol of the west side and would be able to spare him some more men for the eastern patrol.”

“So this was after Gunthar had left for Vervenna?”

“Aye. They missed each other by less than an hour.”

“What happened then? Come on, tell me, Clodio, don’t make me squeeze every word out of you.”

“I’m telling you, damnation! I just can’t talk as fast as you can think. When Theuderic heard about the King and then found out that Gunthar had gone a-hunting for Queen Vivienne, he was angry—wild angry. Next thing I knew he had reassembled all his men—they were already dismissed and scattered by then, you understand, not expecting to be riding out again that day—plus every other able-bodied soldier in the place, and went thundering off to Vervenna at the head of a mixed force, forty horsemen and the last half century of infantry. As he rode off across the bridge he shouted to me that I was to be in charge until he returned. That was the last I saw of him.”

“And you have heard nothing from any of them since? That was yesterday.”

“Not a word. And I know well when it was.”

I looked about me, seething with frustration. “I cannot believe they left you here with no more than a holding crew. Even so, why is the bridge down? Doesn’t that strike you as being unwise?”

Clodio flushed, and his deformed torso writhed in what amounted to a shrug. “Aye, but I didn’t know how to raise it.”

I blinked at him in astonishment. “You didn’t know how to raise it? You pull it up and lock it in place, Clodio. It is not difficult to raise a bridge.”

“Mayhap not.” Clodio was beginning to sound resentful now. “I’m not a fool, Clothar. But that bridge is new and it’s Gunthar’s pride and joy. He was there, hovering over it like a crow over a dead rat at every stage of its building and he was very jealous about protecting the secrets of its construction and its operation. No one has been allowed to touch it or operate it other than his men since it was built. From what they told us, it has all kinds of new and wondrous bits and parts to it and only people trained to handle it are allowed close to the workings. I’ve never seen the machinery being used and neither has anyone else who is left here in the castle, so I didn’t want to take the risk of breaking or damaging something and earning Gunthar’s wrath for my troubles. That’s too easy to do at the best of times. And so I decided to leave the whoreson as it was. Besides, I was expecting everyone to return at any moment. They’re only supposed to be five miles away.”

I bit down hard on the angry response that was filling my mouth and forced myself to count silently from one to ten, aware that from Clodio’s viewpoint he had done nothing wrong and reminding myself that we had had no real indication, thus far, that anything was wrong in any way. Finally I sighed.

“Damnation, Clodio, there is no great difficulty in turning a windlass, no matter how newly built it is. All it requires is brute strength, shoulders on a crossbar, and muscled legs to push the thing around. Call back eight of those people you just dismissed and we’ll raise the bridge right now. Then we’ll go inside and see what remains to be done there.”

Almost before I finished speaking, Clodio was waving to the wall-top guards, who were now all watching us very closely, and I heard voices raised up there as someone relayed the orders Clodio had shouted up to them. As soon as he turned back to me, I laid my hand on his shoulder to soften the impact of my next words, should he decide to object to them.

“As of this moment, Clodio, I am relieving you of duty and responsibility for the safety of the fortress.”

He grunted and nodded his head, once. “Good. I wish you joy of it. Leave me in peace to do what I must do, that’s all I ask. I’ll die protecting people in my care if I have to, but I have no love for bidding others die at my orders. Apart from the women and children—and God knows we have more than enough of those—there are less than forty men left in the entire place and none of them are fit to fight. Not a man of them. They’re all like me, cripples and old men. All the fighting men are out, most of them with the King and Chulderic and Samson. Another group, almost as big, is on the eastern borders, under Theuderic and Ingomer. Then there’s a score more with Brach and the Lady Vivienne, the remaining cavalry squadrons with Gunthar, and the last of the garrison with Theuderic.”

“So what does the full garrison strength stand at nowadays?”

Again I recognized Clodio’s malformed version of a shrug. “Couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Not off the top of my head. Not my responsibility to know things like that. But let’s see. The King and Chulderic took nigh on five hundred with them on the western sweep, and Theuderic took almost as many to the east, although his men were joined by Lord Ingomer’s people and by another contingent, mainly infantry, raised from among the chiefs of the eastern marches. So Theuderic would have more than a thousand at his beck in the east, for it’s a bigger territory with fewer people but more ground to cover than the western borders … but of that thousand, say he had between four and five hundreds from here in Genava. Then Gunthar had his guards—three score of them here, another three score out with Theuderic but under the command of Chlodomer, Gunthar’s right-hand man. The people Theuderic brought back with him are already counted, but then he took away the remaining foot soldiers from the garrison, say forty of those. So what does that give us? Nigh on eleven hundred … more than a thousand men, give or take a score or two. That’s about the right of it.” I nodded, smiling. “An impressive estimate, my friend, for one whose responsibilities have no connection with such things.”