Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

I cast my eyes over my assembled force one last time, then nodded to Dedalus to take command and made my way down towards the shore, where a crowd had already assembled to welcome the bishop's party. Behind me came Donuil, Philip, Falvo, Benedict and a dozen other troop commanders and, of course, Tress and Shelagh. I rode at the head, holding my own reins in my right hand and those of a riderless, pure white gelding in my left. I did not know if Germanus still rode or not, but I hoped he would and had selected this mount especially for him.

Enos and his people had made their preparations thoroughly, for we had found that, all along the route east, following the Roman roads from Camulod to Sorviodunum and thence to Venta Belgarum, our arrival had been expected by the local people. From Venta, proceeding directly south-eastwards across country towards the coast some sixty miles away, our experience was quite remarkably similar. We were accompanied by an escort of brown clad clerics, carrying staves and crosses, who were at pains to impress upon us that, despite our impressions to the contrary, we were moving now among God's own Christian flock, who bore us no ill will. And to our vast surprise, in apparent confirmation of that, we encountered no panic and no fear, either of our numbers or our presence, in the lands we crossed, despite the fact that most of the people we encountered were alien to us. This was the Saxon Shore we were traversing, and all its folk were Saxons.

Of course, we did encounter some hostility upon occasion as we progressed southward, but none of it was directed towards us. One particular event made a lasting impression upon me, and it was Dedalus who brought it home to me. He had been riding with the advance guard, and they had happened upon a raid in progress on a solitary farm far from any other signs of habitation. They had driven the raiders off in short order and without casualties among our men, and Ded had come straight to report to me on his return, finding me in my usual position at the head of our advance, in conversation with Benedict. Blunt as ever, Ded interrupted us.

"Here, " he grunted, holding some form of weapon out to me. "What d'you make o' that?"

I examined it perfunctorily. "Looks like the poor cousin to mine, " I said, hoisting the thing in my left hand and reaching with my right to lift the iron flail made by Uther Pendragon from its hook on the front of my saddle. Uther's flail, now mine, was an iron ball on a short, heavy chain, attached to a thick wooden handle. The weapon I now held in my left hand was similar, but differently made. Instead of an iron ball, its head was a heavy, almost spherical stone, wrapped in a network of hempen rope, each strand of it as thick as my little finger. The longitudinal strands, four of them, were plaited together then from the head of the thing to where they joined the handle, and the handle itself was completely encased in the plaiting, which had been cleverly and painstakingly wound back upon itself and interlaced, the ends of each strand bidden, with no sign of a knot anywhere. The entire weapon had then been steeped in some kind of hardening liquid or wax, to stiffen it and protect the fibre of the ropes. It was a deadly thing, flexible and lethal.

"That thing's no poor cousin to anything. " Ded's response to my comment was scornful. "That's a work of art. "

I looked at it again and could not find it in me to disagree with him. "I suppose it is, but it's a weapon of stone and rope, Ded, whereas mine is good, solid iron. "

"Precisely, " he said. That's why I brought it back. You remember the time we talked about how things had changed since the Romans left? You were bemoaning the fact that swords had become hard to find, because when the armies left, they took their armourers with them."

"Yes, I remember that."

"Well, then, here's the proof of it. Look at the work that's gone into that thing, simply to house a stone. That's a flail, Merlyn, made by someone who had seen the real thing, the iron flail, but couldn't find the means to make one for himself. That thing would smash your skull as thoroughly and quickly as an iron one would. Now look at this."

He reached into his saddlebag and produced another weapon, this one far more crude. It was, or had been, a makeshift spear, a rusty dagger lashed with hardened rawhide to the end of a wooden pole. It had been broken off half an arm's length below the lashed dagger hilt. Once I had seen it, Ded tossed it contemptuously aside, where it disappeared among the long grass through which we were riding. "That's the kind of weaponry those whoresons had." Seeing my raised eyebrow, he hurried on. "We found a band of savages attacking a farm, about three miles ahead of where we are now. They might have been Saxons, but I doubt it. Plain bandits, is my guess. Thieves and killers. Killed four of them, drove the others off, about ten of them. But not one of them had a decent sword. Most only had knives and wooden clubs. That thing you're holding there was the best weapon in the bunch."

"Hmm. So what's your point?"

"My point? My point is that we may be the only force around today with any real weapons."

I grinned at him then, and Benedict joined in. "You could be right, Ded," I said. "But we won't throw all our swords away for a while, for fear you might, might be mistaken."

That scene recurred to me as I sat watching the crowd of more than a hundred waiting on the beach. They were mostly Saxons, too, though sprinkled here and there with the brown robes of clerics, and I could scarcely see a weapon of any size among them. They were Christians, of course, and recently converted, most of them, but that should not have robbed them of the will or of the capacity to defend themselves away from the safety of their homes. They had looked askance at us when we arrived the previous afternoon, but mildly, with more curiosity than hostility.

Now I looked more closely and confirmed my initial impression: I could see no weapons. I pulled my mount to a halt on the grass strip above the pebbly expanse that stretched down to the water's edge, smiling in wonder at the way these people craned their necks and strained to see, hoping to catch a glimpse of three small ships approaching, when simply by coming up to where we sat they could have seen everything with ease and then walked down to meet the incoming travellers when they stepped ashore.

There was not a single Celt among the assembly, and I noticed that simply because of their dress, which appeared drab and colourless to my eyes after years of living among the weltering colours of my volatile Celtic countrymen. All of the people there beneath me wore rough, homespun, monochrome garments, dull browns and lustreless greys. Nowhere was there a hint or a dash of colour, not even solid black or white, and I could see no pattern woven into their plain clothing.

Now, watching Germanus's little craft draw closer, I was glad I had been so insistent upon changing the place of his landing. He had planned to land at the old fort of Dubris, some fifty miles along the coast, where the high white cliffs of Britain's southern shore came closest to the mainland of Gaul across the Narrow Sea. I had demurred at that, claiming that too much danger lay in such a landfall, both for his party and for my own. He would be landing on an alien shore, trusting himself to strangers who professed to be Christian; I would be riding through an alien land to meet him, entrusting the safety of my men similarly to other men's assurances of goodwill. Furthermore, Dubris lay on the southern edge of the Weald, and any journeying to or from there must now entail crossing through Horsa's territories.

We agreed that his ship should veer westwards at Dubris, hugging the coastline until it reached the ruined fort at Anderita, the most westerly of the ancient forts of the Saxon Shore. He would then round the headland that thrust southward beyond Anderita and continue to cling to the coastline, this time heading north-westerly until the shoreline; again pointed due west. Directly south of Londinium, and of Verulamium, which lay some eighty miles inland, we would be awaiting his arrival and would signal him to safety with the smoke from three large fires, two on the westerly side of his landing point and the third to the east of it. \