Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

My old friend Dedalus, who had some training in the art of engineering, once told me a fundamental truth he said was known to every engineer. The occasion, I believe, was a discussion we were having about the way in which the army engineers had drained the mountain lake in which Publius Varrus had hoped to find his skystone. The lake had lain at the end of a mountain glen, formed by a dam of rock blasted from the mountainside itself in a cataclysm; they had examined the exposed side of the dam and then undermined it, cracking it open like a broken bowl. Using the example of the keystone found in every bridge's arch, Ded told me then that every construction, natural or man made, contained a central, focal point on which all its energies depended. Remove that point—that beam, or rock, or log— destroy it or dislodge it, and the entire construction would come crashing down in chaos and ruin.

The construction that I thought of as my life came crashing down after that second conversation, splintering in ruin and chaos on the hard floor of reality, and the disruptive force that brought it down was a human voice, speaking an alien tongue.

Briefly, we encountered a large force of Outlanders the day after I had talked so long with Germanus. Benedict brought the news of their arrival. He had been scouting with his forward force on our right flank, and one of his foremost outriders, riding beyond the limits of his own appointed sweep, had seen the enemy approaching. Had he been obedient to his orders and performing as commanded, he would have been elsewhere and would have missed them. As it was, he reported back to Benedict immediately.

From his concealed position, two miles ahead of us, Benedict watched and counted more than a thousand men, all of them afoot, moving in five divisions each perhaps two hundred strong. They had emerged from the forest in the east and crossed the valley bottom, headed directly towards us, moving steadily and in good order. Benedict waited to see no more, convinced that they knew where we were and were moving directly against us. He withdrew his scouts and rode back at full speed to report his findings. Between the enemy and us lay two wide valleys. The hillsides of the farther of these two were thick with trees; those of the nearer valley, atop which we now sat, were grass covered, with not a tree in sight.

I made my dispositions quickly, I recall, thinking clearly and logically. A thousand strong force must have been organized long since, and the odds were great that they had marched to intercept Germanus and his party and were unaware of our cavalry. A plan came fully formed into my mind, drawn from my memories of my grandfather's notes on the tactics of Alexander of Macedon. I quickly ordered a hundred of my men to dismount and present themselves as infantry, and sent the remainder of our forces out of sight on the far side of the hill. I then briefed Germanus quickly on how he should proceed.

He would descend into the valley at the head of a small, mounted party, riding towards the enemy in company with three wagons filled with another twenty of my men, all of them dressed as clerics. When confronted, my hundred would form a line and hold their position, waiting until the enemy attacked. The wagons and the riders would turn and flee, my "clerics" leaping out of their slow moving vehicles, abandoning both them and their defending foot soldiers and tempting the enemy to attack. Then, at the first sign of an enemy advance, my hundred would fall back uphill, in formation, to break and run only when the hostile force was committed to a charge across the valley bottom and up the opposing hillside. At that point, with the enemy charging uphill, I would loose my cavalry to sweep around and down on either side.

Germanus listened as I outlined my strategy, and then smilingly asked if his men might shout Alleluia! I smiled in return, and then withdrew beyond the hilltop.

It was quickly over, and hardly worth the mention, save for the carnage that took place. The enemy fought bravely and showed more discipline than I had seen in any of our recent enemies in Cambria, holding their individual formations well, and even constructing defensive walls with their shields to stave off our attacks. The sheer weight and numbers of our horses were too much for them, however, and the shield walls buckled, then disintegrated. From that point on, they were in defeat and few of them escaped alive.

I moved among the banks and rows of their dead and wounded, and I noted that they were, as Dedalus had said they might be, very poorly armed. Few possessed swords; their most common weapon was the battle axe, and some of them had heavy spears. Most of them, however, were armed only with thick staves and daggers, and many had no more than heavy, crudely carved wooden clubs.

Many of the wounded might survive, I thought, could they but gain some medical attention, but that was not my concern. I had neither the time nor the desire to care for aliens. Germanus, however, refused to abandon them to death and set his bishops to go in among them, offering aid. Shamed by the sight, some of my own troopers, especially the medical personnel, began to lend assistance, too, and thus we passed the remainder of that fruitless day catering to our foes and spent the night uncomfortably in a makeshift camp high in the hills.

Two days later, close to Londinium, which Enos told me had lain abandoned now for nigh upon ten years, and less than two days' travel from our destination in Verulamium, the talk about the evening campfires was still of the cavalry charge and how we had mown down the Outlanders, whom someone had identified as Jutes. I was distempered and out of sorts, for I had slept but little for the previous two nights, disturbed by terrifying but ill remembered dreams that startled me awake, time and again, drenched in clammy sweat and gasping in horror. My inability to recall what it was that had brought me screaming into wakefulness infuriated me because it frightened me deeply. I had spent a lifetime dreading dreams that eluded my recall, but I had dared to hope myself all done with that in recent years.

It was frustration born of those fears that made me impatient with such silly talk of victory that night, and I said something snappish about how fortunate we were that these had been mere Jutes and not Horsa's Danes. We had consumed our evening meal by then and were grouped around a fire. I was sitting beside Germanus with Tress on my left. Cuthric sat on the bishop's right, and on his right sat Cayena. Then came Dedalus, and Benedict, and I knew not who else, for the fire was high and fierce and concealed those people sitting across the circle from us.

I saw Cuthric raise his eyebrows at my words and then lean close to talk to Germanus, who answered him, listened again, then shrugged and turned to me.

"Cuthric heard you speak of Horsa and his Danes, and wondered how you know of him."

"I know he's there, and that's enough to know. Only now am I beginning to breathe freely, knowing that he and his horde lie far behind us. For the first few days, and in particular when we were headed directly east, I thought we might penetrate their new territory and encounter them at any time. We have women with us, and that thought did not appeal to me."

Germanus translated this for Cuthric and the big Anglian grunted in surprise and spoke again, looking this time at me. I waited for Germanus's translation.

"He says he is surprised that you should know of Horsa's presence in the Weald, but that the Danes are no longer there and your concerns were groundless. They remained there for a time, many boatloads of them, settling temporarily in several of the ancient Roman forts along the shore while they explored the land, looking for holdings they could seize. But then they left again, all of them, in a great fleet, nigh on a month ago."