Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

I laughed aloud in simple disbelief. "You intend to walk on board and take over a ship like that? Don't you think they'll be guarded?"

"Of course they'll be guarded, dear good-brother, but how well? Think about that. These things are without equal on the sea, requiring special skills and seamanship to operate them properly, and when they come to shore, they'll be among their own. They will be guarded, certainly, but who among their crews would dream that anyone would ever be mad enough to think to steal one from its base ashore?"

"How will you get close to them?"

"Mercenaries, Merlyn. We'll be among their own, in their own camp. Why should they suspect us of anything? We're not their enemies. In fact, they won't know who we are or whence we came. We'll be but mercenaries like the rest of them."

"By the sweet Christus! What happens then if you succeed and get aboard, past the guards? How will you get the thing away?"

"We'll row it out of there! If we can be mercenaries on the land, why shouldn't some of us be afloat, too?" I realized only then that Connor was extemporizing, improvising even as he spoke. "Who will know we are not theirs? They have no enemies afloat, they think—or I believe they think that." His brow was creased now with the speed and concentration of his thoughts. "A small number of galleys, extra crewed, their arrival timed to coincide with our attack... But returning galleys... galleys that left the same harbour the day before... no one will think to question their arrival, if they think it's their return. And When the moment's right, we strike. We take the ship and board a crew from the galleys, on the water side. It will work, Merlyn, it will work"

He slapped his hands on his knees and stood up, suddenly alight with resolve.

"When will you leave?" I half expected him to rush off then and there.

"A week or so, no more." He clumped his way across to the window, his false leg sweeping aside the rushes on the floor with each step, and opened wide the shutters, twisting his neck to lean out and look up at the sky. I was surprised to the see the sun was still shining brightly. I felt as though we had been cloistered here for hours.

"Have you any food around here?" he asked. "I'm famished."

I had to smile. "We'll find something cold in the kitchens, but there won't be anything hot until the evening meal."

"Then cold it is, so long as it be soon."

As we walked towards the kitchens in the refectory block, my head was spinning with all we had discussed, and I had the feeling that much of the ensuing week would be dedicated to the Admiral's new developed stratagem for enlarging his fleet.

TWO

By the end of that week, the days had warmed up almost to summertime heat and the skies remained cloudless. New grass shot up everywhere and the first mountain flowers, Which would not normally have begun to grow for at least Mother month, matured swiftly and broke into bloom, so that the hillsides outside our walls were soon dotted with tiny clusters of brilliant yellows, blues and whites. By the roadside, beneath the trees along the forest fringes, thick clusters of dark-green growth sprang up and blanketed the ground, promising that within the next few weeks the entire hillside, seen from the fort beneath, would be misted with a purplish haze of bluebells to perfume the air.

In the fort itself, life progressed with a high spirited urgency made the greater by the beauty of the weather. Connor's estimated week before departure lengthened to two as he enlarged and refined his plans to voyage south. He spent most of that time working closely with Feargus and big Logan, his most trusted captains, their counsel strengthened and abetted by contributions from Brander, whose enthusiasm for the task ahead was greater, if anything, than Connor's own. Brander might be King of Scots today, tied to the land henceforth, but he was still very much Brander the Admiral, and his eyes glistened at the thought of having a Roman bireme, or perhaps even two of them, added to his fleet.

I sat among them frequently, listening to their conversations, and often I had to force myself to keep silent, stifling my criticism by reminding myself that they knew exactly how dependent this entire venture would be upon the disposition of the enemy ships when Connor arrived in the waters off Cambria. They accepted the hazards, the high degree of random chance they faced and the seeming

impossibility of outmanoeuvring the gods of war and fate;

and in that acceptance, they attempted to foresee all the

variations of opportunity that might present themselves and

bent their combined abilities to create the simplest, most intrinsically flexible strategic outline they could devise.

I had my own tasks to perform while the mariners were planning their great quest. We had committed ourselves to return to Camulod in the spring, and that withdrawal could no longer be deferred. Spring was here now, and early, and despite long months of systematic preparation, we were not yet ready to leave. I worked all day, most days, and long into the nights, bullying everyone time and again into checking and reviewing all the thousand and one things that had already been reviewed and checked, packed and loaded and made ready for transportation.

In all of this, Rufio was one of my greatest strengths. He worked even harder than me. His recovery from the awful wounds the bear had inflicted on him had been more complete and more rapid than any of us would have dared to hope. But Rufio would never fight again. The deep gouges on his shoulder and upper arm from the beast's claws had turned toxic, and while Lucanus had been successful in keeping the killing poisons in the wounds from spreading, the damage to the muscles of Rufio's left aim had been irreversible, so that the limb now resembled a withered stick rather than a human appendage. His spirit, though, remained indomitable, and within two months his legs were sound enough that he could walk almost without a limp.

Rufio's first request was to be given a task that he could organize alone, without assistance. That was when I came up with the idea of wiping out all visible traces of our occupation of the fort. Mediobogdum had sat unoccupied for two hundred years, we believed. Were we to leave it looking as though it had not been occupied since then, that might encourage others to avoid it. If we were successful in that, and if we then decided to return at some future date, we could simply move in again without obstruction.

Rufio thought this was an excellent idea, and he took the task I had set him very seriously. At one time or another over the ensuing weeks and months, everyone in the fort worked to his orders, stripping the place of every sign we could find of human habitation. We shut the bathhouse down, for instance, and boarded up the doors as we had found them, then blocked the entry to the furnaces with care, protecting them from damage and decay as best we could.

Then came the day I knew we were ready, and we could appoint a day for our departure. Our guests were still hip deep in their planning sessions, however, and that presented me with a dilemma: should I or should I not inform them that we were now fully prepared to leave Mediobogdum and ought to leave immediately? The laws of hospitality demanded that I give no sign that they might interpret as an invitation to be gone, and yet I was acutely aware of the urgencies in Camulod, where Ambrose was awaiting our arrival. Fortunately, neither Connor nor his brother was as blind to what was happening as I had begun to fear. That same afternoon, when I joined them both in Brander's quarters, they were ready for me, and they informed me that they would leave for Ravenglass the moment I decided on the day of our own departure. I told them we would leave in three days' time, thereby giving them another full day to conclude their own affairs in Mediobogdum.