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

Dried kindling and wood shavings were piled carefully in the brazier. The room was cool, almost dark, the slanting light from the mid-day sun pooling on the floor directly beneath the open windows. I stood up again and moved to light a taper from the single lamp burning on my writing table, taking the flame to the brazier. When l was satisfied with the blaze, I straightened up again and moved back to my chair, my feet stretched out towards the leaping flames. Arthur sat staring into the fire.

"So," I began. "What was it that drove you from your friends so early in the day?"

The boy sniffed and his frown deepened, and then he turned to face me, his eyes wide and puzzled. "What gives Droc the right to think he can take Ghilleadh's sword, Merlyn?"

"His size, I should think." I knew the words were ill chosen as they issued from my mouth and immediately wished them unsaid. Here, I knew, was neither the time nor the place for flippancy. To my surprise, though, Arthur did not react to my facetiousness.

"No, that's not enough," he said. "His size gives him the ability to take the sword, but what is it that permits him to think, to believe, completely, that he may take it, as his right?"

I blinked with surprise, and I chose my next words with care.

"Forgive me, Arthur, but I'm not sure I understand you. What are you asking me, exactly?"

"I don't know, not really, but I do know the answer is important. Ghilly found the sword, in the spot where it had lain for years and years. Whoever threw it there has been dead and gone for ages, so it became Ghilly's when he found it. And then Droc saw it and took it away from him. It was an old, dirty thing, all rust, and it was useless, but Droc took it and kept it. Why? Why would he do that?"

I shrugged, mystified. "For the reason I mentioned before, most probably. Because he could. Because he wanted to."

"But why?" The question was almost a shout, the boy's frustration boiling out of him. "Droc has a sword, one of his father's old ones. He has no need of another, especially that old, useless thing of Ghilly's. And yet he took it because he believed he had the right to take it—not because he needed it or wanted it, but because he believed it was his to take. That is wrong, Merlyn. No one should have the right to do that kind of thing. It's ... it's unjust!"

"Well, I can't see that it's worth getting so worked up about. By your own admission, it's nothing more than an ugly of piece of useless, rusted metal of value to no one."

"Ghilly valued it! It was his. He was the one that found it." The scorn and anger in those flashing young Pendragon eyes almost made me flinch, and I suddenly understood that what I, as a man, could accept as being natural, if deplorable, was a source of deep outrage to the boy's sense of justice. I coughed to cover my confusion.

"Well, what did Droc do with the sword, once he had taken it?"

"I don't know. He took it away with him."

"After you and he had fought ... "

"Yes."

"And why did you decide to fight him?"

"I didn't decide. I was fighting him before I knew what I was doing. He bent Ghilly over and beat him with the flat of the old sword. Ghilly was crying, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground and Droc was kicking me."

"I see. Did you blood him?"

A tiny smile flickered on the boy's lips. "I must have, his nose was bleeding."

"What about the others, Bedwyr and Gwin? Didn't they help you?"

"They couldn't. Landroc kept them out of it. So Droc thrashed me and then the two of them walked away, laughing. He did it because he could, and that is all there is to understand, I suppose."

"What, that he's a bully?"

The look he threw me was one of pure pity. "No, that he is the king's son."

I was astounded, unwilling to believe what I had heard.

"What does that have to do with anything? Do you believe King Derek would condone his son's behaviour in this?"

"It has to do with everything, Merlyn, and it began last week." Ignoring the expression on my face, he spoke to me as if I were the boy and he the teacher, and I sat, fascinated by his words and his passion. "Last week, the day after Uncle Ambrose came, I found something, too—something much more valuable than Ghilly's old sword. I found a brooch, in the deep woods outside the town walls, a big, old brooch with a jewelled stone in it like a large piece of yellow glass. It was of silver, I think, but all tarnished green and black with age. Foolishly, I showed it to Kesler when I returned to Ravenglass that day, and he tried to snatch it from me. We fought over it."

Kesler was yet another of Derek's many sons, but he was of an age with Arthur, and smaller in stature.

"Well? You fought, and then what?"

"One of King Derek's captains stopped us and wanted to know what we were fighting about."

"Who was it, do you know? And what did you tell him?"

"It was Longinus, the catapult engineer, and we told him the truth."

"And what happened then ?"

"He made me give the brooch to Kesler, because Kesler was the king's son and the brooch was therefore his, found on the king's land."

"I see. And how did you feel about that?"

The boy gnawed on the inside of his cheek, considering his answer.

"I was angry at first, and then I was not ... or not as much."

"How so?"

"Because I did not really believe the brooch was mine. It never had been mine and had belonged to someone else. Someone had lost it, sometime in the past. And it had value—even beneath all the dirt you could see that. The size and colour of the stone, and the scribing on the metal ... it was the kind of thing not worn by ordinary folk, so it must have belonged to someone of rank, someone from Ravenglass, perhaps the king himself or one of his family ... "

"But?"

He grimaced. "But if that were so, I think Longinus should have taken it to give to the king himself, he should not merely have permitted one of the king's sons to take it. That did not become clear to me at the time. I only thought about it afterwards. Was I right to think so?"

I let that one pass, for the moment. "Hmm. And then Droc took the sword today. I see now what concerns you."

"Do you?" The lad's face brightened.

"Of course I do. The injustice of what you witnessed today brought out the anger you've been feeling since the first occasion."

"No!" His voice was suddenly loud again, echoing the lightning change that had swept over his face as I spoke. He caught himself, moderating his tone. "No, it's much more than that, Merlyn. Can't you see what happened? Droc had plainly heard about my finding the brooch and what had happened over that, and when he saw the sword that Ghilly had found, he simply decided it was his, by right, since it had been found in his father's territories. So he puffed up his chest, displayed his muscles and took it, despite the fact that it was worthless to him. That is the injustice."

Abruptly, we had come to the nub of the matter. Now it was clearly evident. This nine-year-old boy had come up against an injustice, clearly delineated in his uncorrupted view, and now he was wrestling with the abstractions of justice and its uneasy relationship to physical power; with the philosophical intangibles of force and power and their influence on morality! I drew a long, deep breath, holding up my hand to give him pause, and tried to marshal my chaotic thoughts. Here, I knew, was a seminal moment in the relationship between my ward and me, a moment I could neither ignore nor defer to another time. But how was I to respond? Watching me closely, waiting for me to speak, he leaned backward in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

"Look you," I began, then subsided again, rubbing the side of one finger against the stubble on my chin. The boy made no attempt to hurry me but sat watching me, unblinking. I dropped my hand from my face and sat straighter in my chair.