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

"You mean a working bathhouse?"

"You think I'd offer you a broken one?" The big man was glaring at me from beneath lowered brows, but I saw the glint of humour in his eyes. "Should I be thinking now you are surprised to find we might be clean, or clever enough to maintain a furnace, even though its Roman owners are long gone?"

"No, by all the old gods," I demurred, straight-faced. "Such thoughts would never have occurred to me."

"Hmm. Well, bring your people off."

I beckoned to my party on the galley and they gathered together immediately, moving towards the landing planks, already prepared to disembark. Connor cupped his hands and called to Tearlach, bidding him summon Feargus and Logan inshore. As men began moving about, preparing the signal to the waiting galleys, the first of my group, Dedalus and Lucanus, stepped onto the wharf together and made their way to us, followed by the others.

"Lucanus," I greeted him. "Derek remembers you from the road to Aquae."

"As I do him," Luke answered, smiling slightly. "You look well, Derek, little changed in twelve years. Who would have thought you and I would ever meet again?"

"Not I, but you are welcome here, Physician. Merlyn tells me you brought all your people home, that time, even without my help." His eyes moved from Lucanus to Dedalus. "Derek of Ravenglass," he said, nodding.

"Dedalus," the other answered, nodding in return. "I am a friend of Merlyn's."

"Aye, from Camulod. I can see that. You're no physician."

Ded's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "No, I'm a centurion, but not from Rome."

The others had joined us by that time and I introduced each of them, including the boys, to the king, their host at least for the night, and told them that arrangements would be made for all of us. Derek had been joined by a man whom he introduced to us as Blundyl before instructing him on the housing and distribution of our group. When he had finished, Derek took me by the arm.

"Come. You and me. Blundyl will see to the others for now. I want to talk to you."

He walked away immediately and I followed him, exchanging expressionless looks with Lucanus and Shelagh as I went. We walked the full length of the wharf, apparently ignored by all, except that I was conscious of a curiosity in many of the people, who took pains to show no awareness of our passing.

Once through the portals in the central gate-tower of the western wall, I found myself in a Roman fort the like of which I had never before seen. It was a standard cohortal fort, built to house and maintain a garrison of five to six hundred men. I had been in several similar places over the years, all of which had been in varying stages of ruin and decay. Most of them had been abandoned and deserted many years before the start of the legions' withdrawals from Britain, during my father's boyhood. Compelled by harsh economies, thanks to a total lack of reinforcements from beyond their shores, the central garrisons of the province were being remanned and reinforced at the expense of lesser, more outlying forts. Such had not been the case, though, with Glannaventa, as this fort had been called. A garrison had occupied this place right up until the final days of the withdrawals, during my own boyhood, and because of the importance of the natural harbour, the place .had been reoccupied by the local folk the moment the legionary garrison abandoned it. It was like stepping backwards into the time when, in forts like this all over Britain, the life of the country was maintained and closely governed in good order.

All of the barracks buildings that had housed the garrison were still in use and still in good repair, their log walls tightly mortared and their tiled roofs free of moss, betraying no sign of rot or sagging. A number of new doors in the long walls indicated that they were occupied today by families, rather than by military squads. These buildings, six of them, each constructed to accommodate close to a hundred men plus their centurions, were laid out laterally in two blocks of three. Behind each block, looking very similar to the barracks buildings but serving another purpose altogether, were two more long, low buildings, dedicated to the service of the troops and housing smithies, tanneries and a variety of other manufactories. One block of four of these buildings lay on each side of the wide central road that joined the main gate behind us to the east gate in the opposite wall more than three hundred paces distant, and the eight of them completely filled the front half of the fort, the Praetentura, the section that lay closest to the main source of enemy attack. In the case of Glannaventa, that source had been the western sea.

Now, as we walked swiftly along the straight, wide avenue towards the stone-built central buildings that had once housed the garrison's administrative centre, I stared about me avidly, curious to learn all that I could about the life Derek's people lived here in this ordered place. Derek himself was striding ahead of me, immersed in his own thoughts. As he drew abreast of the end of the last barracks block, I lengthened my stride to catch up to him.

"I'm impressed," I said. "You modified the barracks into family units."

He looked at me and then beyond me to the building on my right. "Aye," he growled. "That was a nuisance at first, until it became clear we had to do it properly. At first it was a haphazard thing, people doing what they wanted to do, whether they were capable or not. Then others started carping because some people had more space than they had, and that was true, but it seemed there was nothing to be done by then. And then one fool ripped out a wall and brought down an entire building—killed four people. That's when I decided something had to change, and the changes had to be according to a plan."

He stopped, abruptly, and turned to look back the way we had come. "That one there," he said, indicating the second building on our right. "That's the one that collapsed. Never know it now, would you?" He did not wait for an answer. "After that, I put every builder in the place to work, systematically. Some of them, most of them in fact, had worked for the Romans, so they knew what was required and how to do what needed to be done. We gutted the interiors, divided them equally with new walls, cut doors in the outside walls and turned each building into housing units for twelve families. No more problems after that."

"All the units are the same size? What about the centurions' quarters, on the ends here? They look larger."

"They are. What of that?"

I shrugged. "You said you had no problems. How did people decide who lived where?"

He spat into the road. 'They didn't. I decided, and no one argued. I'm king here." He turned on his heel and began to walk again. "Most of the people who live in these buildings are our best artisans and their families. Their workshops are here, too, in these last two buildings, courtesy of Roman efficiency—smithy and foundry, cobblery, barrel-maker's cooperage, carpenter's yard, pottery and tilemaker, stonemason's yard. All in one location, everything the garrison needed. Clever whoresons, the Romans. I could see no point in not using these places for ourselves."

We had now arrived at the central rectangular space containing the three main buildings of this and every other Roman military installation: the commandant's house, the headquarters building, and the central granaries and storage warehouses known as the Horrea. These stone buildings sat apart from all others, isolated by the main lateral roadway, the Via Principalis, which crossed in front of them, and the second-largest street, the Via Quintana, at the rear. Since time immemorial, these two lateral streets had divided the interior of every Roman military camp, regardless of size, into the front half, the Praetentura, and the rear half, the Retentura. "That where I live." Derek pointed his thumb towards the massive commandant's house.