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

When we emerged from the woods, we saw that Dedalus and Rufio were the two swordsmen, as I had known they would be, simply from the rattling rhythm of their "blades." Behind them, almost beyond our sight, I could see Mark, our master carpenter, whose skills and knowledge placed him in command of this work group. A team of four harnessed horses was pulling and straining on his right under the urging of one of Derek's men, while the burden with which they were struggling lay somewhere beyond my sight. The man handling the horses turned slightly towards us, and I was surprised to recognize him as Longinus, Derek's artillery commander, who evidently worked as a teamster when not called upon to practise his skills with heavy weaponry.

Off to my left, along the bottom of the slope on which we sat, I could see Joseph and Hector, smith and farmer, working together as a team, driving their axe heads with perfect, flawless rhythm into the solid heartwood of a great oak tree. Lars and Jonathan would be somewhere close by, I knew, working in or around the saw-pit, with a handful of other men, some of them new arrivals, others brought in this morning from Ravenglass to aid with this task of felling and dressing enough trees to keep us supplied with strong, well-seasoned lumber for the next few years.

Dedalus and Rufio had not seen us arrive, so total was their concentration on what they were doing. A moment's carelessness in their pastime could bring great pain. The thick ash dowels from which the wooden practice swords were made were as heavy and unyielding as iron, and both men were wearing only light leather armour. A rap with a hard-swung dowel on an exposed arm could break a bone, so both men were rapt in what they were about. Ambrose sat staring at them in amazement, for there was something here he had never seen before, something completely new that had emerged during the winter past. Neither Dedalus nor Rufio held a shield; instead, each held an ash practice sword in either hand. The swinging, swaying play of the "blades," underlined by the brilliant, rhythmical clattering as they glanced off each other—four sounds instead of two—turned what the two men were doing into an elaborate, bedazzling ritual-like dance.

Dedalus had begun this thing, two summers earlier. He had always been equally gifted with both hands, to the confusion, envy and disgust of his friends, enemies and competitors. After seeing and admiring the dazzling skills of an itinerant juggler in Camulod several years before, Dedalus had developed a game he played by himself, revelling in his mastery of the skills of hand and eye coordination it required. He would control a third sword with the blades of two others, holding it between them and juggling it astoundingly, sending it into great leaps and spinning bounds, throwing it high in the air, spinning end over end, to fall back and be recaptured by the other blades.

Rufio had been impressed, at first, then cynical. But then, never one to lie back and allow another to win all the laurels, he had eventually begun to practise the same game on his own, in secret, until he had become almost as adept at it as was Dedalus. At that point he stepped forward and issued a challenge to Ded. No one could guess how long or how hard Rufio had been working to acquire his skills, but his progress had been astounding. The contest between the two men for championship status was long, close, hard fought and never settled. Many wagers had been won and lost by the time the contest had moved on to its next stage.

Asked about it afterward, neither man could pinpoint the occasion when the next degree of challenge actually emerged. It simply turned out that one day, instead of spinning their third blades, the two men had begun matching their twin blades against each other, testing each other's defensive and offensive skills. From that time on, they never played three blades again; they pitted their skills against each other, and those skills became formidable. No other would have dreamed of standing against either of them.

Sitting beside Ambrose, I told him how the contest had evolved. "That's what gave me the idea for the new sticks." Ambrose merely glanced at me, wide eyed. "The forward leap," I continued, knowing that he had not understood me. "The leap from one sword to two, then to a third, and then to this. For more than a thousand years, men learned to use those wooden swords to perfection. Their weight—twice that of their real, iron swords—meant that the men's arm muscles were huge and agile. Their real swords felt like feathers in their hands, and with them, they conquered the entire world. Gladium and scutum—short-sword and shield. Nothing in the world withstood them for a thousand years. With your gladium in your right hand, your scutum in your left, defending your squad-mate on your right while the man on your left defended you, you were invincible— a Roman legionary. That lasted for longer than a millennium. And now they're obsolete, within the space of our lifetime. The legions are all gone. Their troops are scattered, their techniques abandoned, and their short-swords useless without that man defending on your left, without the legion's hierarchy, traditions and discipline.

"Now men use longer swords, but they don't use them well, because there is no discipline for using them. There's no way of training to fight consistently with them, because there's no consistency in the swords themselves. They're long, but they're all of different lengths and weights, and even shapes. The old techniques of training—one man facing a wooden post, practising cut, thrust and stab—won't work with these long swords. The longer blades demand a wider swing, and therefore they deliver less precision in attack. There is no organized technique for them, no ritual defence, no skilled, detailed procedure of attack.

"And then one day I saw Ded and Rufio using two swords each, two hands, flashing and displaying skills the like of which had never been seen before, by me or anyone. Two hands, two blades—twice the speed, twice the weight and twice the skill. And in my mind I saw, all at once and without warning, a longer stick—a staff—twice as heavy as Excalibur, requiring twice the effort to control its arc and thrust and stab."

Ambrose was staring at me now, paying no heed to the men below, who had stopped fighting and were laughing now together, bent over and wheezing for breath, still unaware of our presence above them. "And?" he prodded.

"And I spoke of it to Dedalus and Rufio." I shrugged. "We made some practice pieces, from some unseasoned wood, then dried some others in a kiln, experimented with the length and weight, trial and error, and evolved the prototypes you saw and used today."

A shout of raucous greeting from beneath told us our presence had been discovered. Ambrose glanced down and waved, smiling, but then turned back to me. "But you used two hands on the stick. You would not do that with a keen- edged sword, not without losing your fingers."

"No, I would not, but a stick is not a sword. These staves of ours are weapons in their own right, as well as practice swords. And as weapons, they have advantages that swords don't have—weight, heft and bluntness. They are clubs, bludgeons as well as swords. Let's go down. We can talk more of this later, with Ded and Rufio. I promise you, you will find great pleasure and great usefulness in this. The simple fact of working consistently with these new things—we have no name for them, we call them simply staves— improves everything in which a fighting man might seek improvement, afoot or mounted: balance, dexterity, weight distribution, strength of arm and leg and wind."

Much good did come of what Ambrose would learn that day, but that day itself was not the time best suited for the learning of it. Ambrose and I ended up, stripped to our loincloths and "assisted" by a highly jocular quartet of sawyers from Ravenglass, working in the saw-pit, occasioning great merriment to all who came to watch, as everyone made sure to do. The saw-pit, as we princes of Camulod discovered, was a humbling place, constituting a rite of passage all on its own.