Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

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The Fort at River's Bend is a novel published by Jack Whyte, a Canadian novelist in 1999. Originally part of a single book, The Sorcerer, it was split for publishing purposes. The book encompasses the beginning of Arthur's education at a long abandoned Roman fort, where he is taught most of the skills needed to rule, and fight for, the people of Britain. The novel is part of The Comulud Chronicles, a series of books which devise the context in which the Arthurian legend could have been placed had it been historically founded.
From Publishers Weekly
Fearing for the life of his nephew, eight-year-old Arthur Pendragon, after an assassination attempt in their beloved Camulod, Caius Merlyn Brittanicus uproots the boy and sails with an intimate group of friends and warriors to Ravenglass, seeking sanctuary from King Derek. Though Ravenglass is supposed to be a peaceful port, danger continues to threaten and it is only through the quick thinking of the sharp-tongued, knife-wielding sorceress Shelagh that catastrophe and slaughter are averted. Derek, who now realizes the value of the allegiances Merlyn's party bring to his land, offers the Camulodians the use of an abandoned Roman fort that is easily defensible. The bulk of the novel involves the growth of Arthur from boyhood to adolescence at the fort. There he is taught the arts of being a soldier and a ruler, and magnificent training swords are forged in Excalibur's pattern from the metals of the Skystone. While danger still lurks around every corner, this is a peaceful time for Britain, so this installment of the saga (The Saxon Shore, etc.) focuses primarily on the military skills Arthur masters, as well as on the building and refurbishing of an old Roman fort. Whyte has again written a historical fiction filled with vibrant detail. Young Arthur is less absorbing a character than many of the others presented (being seemingly too saintly and prescient for his or any other world), but readers will revel in the impressively researched facts and in how Whyte makes the period come alive.

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"Ah, there you are. I was looking for you earlier."

I explained what I had been doing, all the while examining the great torsion-driven throwing device on its solid base. "This thing looks excellent," I said, when I had finished. "It looks as though it could really work." As I said the words, another man straightened up from behind the other side of the machine's base, looking at me as though wondering which pit of Hades I had sprung from and what I could possibly know of artillery.

"Hah!" Derek's laugh was a bark of delight. "You hear that, Longinus? Merlyn of Camulod thinks your ballista might really work."

Longinus had drawn himself to his full height, and now he moved around the base of the machine to where I stood, pulling a tiny splinter from the side of one callused finger as he came. When it was out, he held it up to his eyes and then flicked it away before acknowledging me. He looked me up and down, his eyes moving very slowly, then nodded. "Gaius Longinus," he said. "You know siege machines?"

I shrugged. "I know enough to know this one's been well tended."

He nodded. "They all have."

I looked about me. I could see other installations on the walls, but this seemed to be the only one that was complete. "You have others?" I asked.

"Aye, dismantled. They'll be back in place today."

"How many have you?"

"Five." Longinus was evidently a man of few words.

"All on this wall?" I had seen signs of five installations.

He nodded. "Two overheads like this, three catapults."

"All in working order?" He nodded again. "Windlasses, too?"

Now his eyebrows flicked in annoyance. "You ever see a catapult that would work with a broken windlass?"

"Of course not. Forgive me, I'm simply excited. I didn't expect to find someone here with experience in the use and care of war machines. Where did you learn?"

"Right here."

"How, exactly? Or perhaps I should ask who taught you? The legions have been gone for thirty years and more."

"My father taught me, when I was a boy."

"And how did he know about it?"

"From the army artificers. Then, after the garrison left, he took over the defences for the king. Trained me. I've been doing it since he died, twenty years ago."

"Your father was with the legions?"

"Twentieth Valeria. Thirty years."

"In artillery?"

'The last twenty on artillery."

"My grandfather commanded the Valeria."

"Did he, by God? What name?"

"Britannicus, but that was more than forty years ago, probably before your father's time:"

"No, he was serving them But I don't know the name. Before my time."

I glanced at Derek. He was grinning like a split turnip. I ignored him and spoke again to Longinus, resigned now to this business of specific questions provoking taciturn answers. "You have assistants trained?"

"Two crews for each, one in training."

This was like catching fish by hand without bait. "You mean one crew? Or five crews in training?"

"Five. Six men to a crew."

"I see, so how many men altogether?"

He blinked, computing quickly. "Four and a half score. Ninety."

"Good God! Who trains them?"

"I do."

"All of them? You have no one to help you?"

"Five. Head man on each first crew." He looked away, down into the fort beneath the wall, and I heard someone shouting up to him. Then, without another word, he strode away towards the steps and disappeared down them.

I turned back to Derek. "He's not too talkative, is he?"

"No, but I'd choose him over any other man I know, either for company or competence. Wait till you see his people in action tomorrow. You'll be impressed, I promise you. So will the Ersemen, both on shore and afloat. They've all forgotten the Romans and their heavy catapults. When they see how much damage one well-used machine like this can do, and from how far away it can destroy a ship, they'll spin about like tops and they won't stop rowing till they run their keels up onto their own beaches ... " He paused. "The dead men. You still want them hung from the walls?"

"Absolutely, every one of them. I promise you, the sight of them in their armour—with Liam and his chieftains in the middle—will be even more effective than your catapults."

"Aye, it might, but it seems gruesome. There's more than a hundred of them."

"Close to a hundred and fifty. I agree with you, but Connor knows what he is doing. To these Ersemen, that much death, so flagrantly displayed, will scream of punishment and consequences not to be ignored. If we beat them off, in addition, they'll think long and hard before they come back this way again."

Derek deliberated in silence for no more than a few moments before nodding his head in agreement.

"So be it. I'll start Blundyl on the arrangements now. He'll need at least a hundred men, I'd guess. Those chains are heavy. They can start bringing them in immediately and fastening the lengths together. They'll string them as soon as Longinus and his people are finished setting up their machines. The bodies can be hung tonight, after the sun goes down." He hesitated, looking along the parapet from right to left. "I'm glad I won't have to do any of the hanging, it's going to be an unpleasant whoreson of a task."

"The hanging" was, as Derek had predicted, a whoreson of a task, but every able-bodied man in the settlement took part in it and it was completed before midnight, by the light of multiple bonfires kindled on the tops of the walls, in the enclosure beneath and on the earthen wharf outside the gates. Stringing the lengths of chain from the battlements had been the most time-consuming part of the exercise. The chains were heavy and cumbersome and had to be joined, then strung in long, pendant scallops anchored by shorter pieces—each about the length of a tall man— secured to the top of the wall above, so that the chain formed a kind of frieze running the entire length of the western wall facing the sea.

By the time that had been done, arrangements were in hand to display the corpses effectively—a grisly enterprise made even less pleasant by the fact that the bodies had now been dead for more than a day and had begun to decompose. They hung in pairs, each pair slung by a loop of rope secured beneath the shoulders of the two corpses and then draped across the chain by men who also worked in pairs, suspended in seafarers' rope cradles from the walls above. The sole exception to the paired arrangement was the body of Liam Condranson himself, which hung in the centre of the wall by a single rope depending from the walkway above. He hung below the chain, as did his dead companions, but he was not attached to it in any way.

When the array of death was spread out in all its stark and gruesome panoply in preparation for the coming of the dawn and Liam's fleet, I passed the word among my own party to assemble in the central hall beneath Derek's thatch. I had several things to say to them before they went to sleep that night, for I had decided I owed them the right to think about my intentions overnight before committing any of them to the course of action I envisaged. By the time I arrived at the appointed gathering place, having had to stop and talk to Derek and Longinus about some last- moment arrangements, they were all waiting for me, sitting informally on a scattering of seats, benches and table tops, and all appeared to be as weary as I felt.

"I won't keep you long," I began. "Dawn will come quickly and none of us knows what it will bring us." I looked around at their faces, all watching me intently, none showing anything other than curiosity. I moved closer, positioning myself among them where all could hear without my having to raise my voice.

"We came to Ravenglass seeking sanctuary, a safe place to raise the boy. You all know that. What some of you do not know is that Derek, the king, refused our request shortly after we arrived. Fundamentally, what he said was that our continuing presence here—he meant mine, personally, and young Arthur's—would constitute a threat to the safety and welfare of his own people, since we represent a future threat to powerful factions in several places."

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