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

Now I squeezed Germanicus between my spurred heels and brought him backing around to face the road ahead of us. Shelagh and Lucanus were already in motion, riding together slowly, side by side, towards the distant eastern gate. Ahead of them I could see Dedalus and Rufio riding on either side of Ambrose. Ludmilla sat in comfort on the driver's bench of our largest wagon, beside Turga and Hector, who held the reins, and the four boys on their piebald ponies were lost to view, beyond the gate already. I waved a last farewell to Derek, who stood watching from the forecourt of his massive house, then raised my arm above my head and gave the signal to move out. Twelve miles ahead of us and far above our heads lay Mediobogdum.

NINE

"Very well, I am going to admit defeat before you even challenge me. I confess you have me beaten, outmanoeuvred and outfoxed. I have no hope of guessing what it might be and so I must ask you, what is it?"

I had stopped moving as soon as I heard Ambrose begin to speak from behind me, and now I continued to stand, bent forward slightly, my arms outstretched, my hands loosely cradling the upper end of the length of wood I had been swinging, still breathing heavily from my exertions. I felt my face creasing into a smile as I visualized my brother's possible reactions to what I would tell him. Then I drew a deep breath and straightened up slowly, turning to face him and throwing the object in question to him, underhand. He caught it easily and held it upright at arm's length in front of him.

"You tell me," I said. "What does it look like?"

"It looks like a heavy stick, a branch torn from some old tree, stripped of its bark and dried, possibly in a kiln, then covered with carving. I am tempted to call it a long, purposeless stick, but then I know my earnest, conscientious brother Merlyn would never waste his time with anything as simple as a stick. So I must ask again—what is it?"

"It's a stick, as you said."

"Aha!" He nodded sagely. "But a solid stick, a formidable stick, would you not agree? A stick of substance, long and heavy."

"Yes, I would agree, on both counts, which is why I was using it."

"I see." He nodded again, his face grave, for all the world as though he knew what I was speaking about and we were having a perfectly rational conversation. "Yes, I can see why a rational man might wish to have such an excellent stick, so solid and substantial, of such evident, straightforward purpose. A man could lean on a stick like that, to aid him as he walked, if he were infirm, or older than you are."

"Aye, and if the thing were longer than it is, but it's too short. It is a stick, after all, not a staff. But then, I had no thought of walking with it."

"Hmm. Yes, I could see that. You were ... swinging it about your head, were you not?"

"I was."

"Aye, I thought you were ... Would it vex you if I asked you why?"

"No, it would not. I was exercising my arms—my shoulders, in fact."

My brother stared at me, allowing no hint of raillery to show upon his face. He was seeking a way to lead this strange conversation further, in the hope, I knew, of discovering what I was up to without having to ask me bluntly again. He was holding the stick awkwardly now, uncertain of how to proceed, and I decided to help him out. I bent quickly, flexing my knees, and retrieved another length of wood, almost identical, from the grass at my feet.

"I have two of them, see? Would you like to learn their use?"

His face cleared immediately and his teeth flashed in a broad smile. "I would," he said.

"Good, then I'll show you, but you'll have to remove that cloak, at least until you learn the knack of what we'll be about."

As he fumbled with the fastening of his cloak, holding the stick beneath his arm to free his hands, I removed my helmet, indicating that he should do the same. Moments later, we stood facing each other, each of us wearing a leather cuirass, front and back, over our pleated, knee- length Roman tunics.

"Now, do as I do. This is very simple." I held my arms outstretched towards him, my stick grasped easily in both hands at its ends. He did the same, and I beckoned him towards me until our fists were touching, knuckle to knuckle. Then I raised my arms vertically over my head, feeling my stomach flatten and the flexor muscles of my shoulders stretch, and I watched Ambrose closely as he copied my movements exactly. This was a flexing movement I found easier now than I had a few months earlier, when I first began these exercises. In the beginning, I had cramped quickly, my muscles unused to the contortions to which I was suddenly subjecting them. Now, after months of practice, I was more supple, much more flexible, and I knew Ambrose would already be feeling the strain in his shoulders.

"Comfortable?"

He nodded, the slightest hint of perplexity in his eyes, and while his head was yet dipping I released my left hand, whipping my long, heavy stick around to the right and down from above my head to whack loudly against the thickened hide of his heavy cuirass, sending him reeling but unhurt, releasing his own left hand from its grip on his stick so that his right waved aimlessly, still clutching his "weapon." Before he could recover, I leaped in close and whacked him again, this time with an upsweeping, backhanded blow from left to right that took him viciously beneath the right shoulder, rattling against the covering over his ribs and once again forcing him to fall back. Even as he went I was on the move again, gripping my stick firmly now in both hands and driving the end of it forward, hard and fast, my weight solidly behind it, to strike him clean above the breastbone so that his balance was undone at last and he fell on his rump. As soon as he was down, I leaped back and crouched, facing him, holding my stick firmly in a two-fisted grip, one end pointed unwaveringly at his head.

He sat sprawling backwards, his hands out-thrust behind him. His stick lay on the ground beside him. After a long, silent time, he pursed his lips and began to rise to his feet, his look one of quiet determination as he sought and found the stick he had dropped. Then, holding his weapon like me, in a two-fisted grip, he began to circle me warily, his eyes on mine, waiting for an opportunity to strike a blow of his own.

I moved with him, fading backwards, balanced easily on the balls of my feet, and then I feinted rapidly forward and to my left before snapping back to where I had been. But Ambrose, my wily brother, was not gulled and did not react; he was content to wait. He and I had fought before and he knew many of my patterns, as I knew many of his. In this contest, however, I was confident of winning, for I had been practising this new technique for months, whereas he had never seen it before now. Ambrose was no man's fool, however, and least of all mine ... we were much too alike. I soon saw that we might circle here all day, but that he was not going to commit himself to any attack without having had some opportunity to study the proper moves. Finally I made a throat-clearing noise and nodded to him, coming to a stop.

"Very well, go ahead. I won't move. Hit me."

He looked at me quizzically, his expression sceptical, eyes twinkling. "You won't move at all?"

"I won't move while you're deciding where to hit me. After that, I'll move. You won't hit me."

"Huh." He straightened up and spun his weapon inward, one-handed, so that the end of it came to rest beneath his armpit, and I knew immediately, instinctively, what his next move would be.

Ambrose routinely wore a long, slender sword, modelled on the Roman cavalry spatha, designed purely for stabbing men on foot from the back of a light horse. The spatha was admirable in its originally intended use, but as a fighting sword, for brutal, toe-to-toe conflicts, it was worse than useless. Its blade was overlong and too slight, so that it would bend and even break when used against a better-tempered weapon. In the earliest days of Camulod's conversion to cavalry, Publius Varrus, the Colony's master armourer and my own great-uncle, had designed longer swords than the spatha, with broader, stronger, better- tempered blades. This was the sword Ambrose preferred. Its length and construction almost dictated its use, in terms of technique for a man on foot—hence my foreknowledge of what Ambrose would do next.