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

'The Praetorium? You live there?"

"It is my house."

"Aye, I suppose it is. You are the king."

I examined the Praetorium as we approached it, but could see little to indicate that it was a king's house now rather than a Roman commander's. High walls surrounded it, pierced by one large, central double portal, the doors of which stood open but were cloaked in shadow. I could see no guards anywhere and reflected that this king must have no need of such.

We cut diagonally across the main road in front of the king's house and he led me into the building flanking it, the former Principia , or garrison headquarters block. This had changed greatly since the legions left. It had been built originally around an open quadrangle containing a fountain, with the main entrance facing the cross-street. The principal part of the building, at the rear, occupied more than a third of the total area of the block and had once housed the garrison's most precious properties: the regimental chapel where the standards, colours and battle honours were stored, the regimental .paymaster's vaults and the personnel records office of the regimental clerk. This part of the headquarters block also contained the tribunal briefing room, where the officer commanding, down through the centuries, traditionally received his staff at formal meetings, addressing the assembly from the rostrum of the tribunal at the far right of the long room.

The building's open quadrangle had once been the off- duty domain of the garrison's officers. Wide, colonnaded walkways on both sides and on either side of the main entrance gave access to a series of lesser offices around the building's exterior. Sometime within the past three decades, after the departure of the Romans, the open space of the quadrangle had been roofed, leaving only a large rectangular hole in the centre to vent the smoke from the enormous firepit that had replaced the obligatory ornamental fountain in the open yard. Great beams of hand- hewn oak now spanned the space, supporting a second framework, less massive, that reared above them to hold a peaked and gabled roof of heavy thatch, open around the overhanging eaves to permit the passage of air among the rafters. This roof was intricately built, evidently engineered and erected by a master carpenter, but I thought it a pity that it should shut out much of the light along with most of the bad weather. Gazing up at it, it struck me as the local equivalent of King Athol's Great Hall in Eire.

All of this I saw as I strode at Derek's heels, for he made no attempt to play the guide for me. Matching him step for step, I followed him as he swung right, up to the colonnaded walk, and proceeded to the first door on his left. The bottom half of this door was closed, a hinged flap on its back raised to form a broad counter behind which stood a man evidently on duty of some kind. As Derek spoke with him, exchanging muttered greetings, I edged forward curiously to peer into the dim room at his back. It was a spartan place, bare of furnishings, with high, deep shelves lining every wall.

"Weapons," Derek grunted. I stared at him blankly. "Your weapons, take them off. They stay here until you leave."

"What, all of them? Am I to go unarmed among strangers?"

"Aye, along with everyone else, so you won't be lonely. That's the law in Ravenglass—no weapons. This room is for your people. Condran's crowd left theirs in a room on the other side. If someone else arrives while you are here, there's place for their things, too."

I had already loosened my swordbelt, catching it up and wrapping the loose ends around the scabbards of my long sword and my dagger. "How long has that law been in place?"

"Ever since this port was opened up to passing ships after the Romans left. It saves a lot of strife and bloodshed."

"I'm sure it does, but don't you find enforcing it to be a little ... hazardous?"

His teeth flashed in a tiny, swift grin. "No, not at all. You don't want to comply, you leave, assisted or otherwise, and you don't come back. "

I could only shake my head as I passed my bundled weapons over the counter to the custodian. "Different, " I muttered.

"Healthy, " the king responded. "Come on, then. "

He led me once more through the courtyard to the main entrance, where he turned sharply and made his way between the walls bordering his own house on our left and the headquarters building on our right. We emerged on the other cross-street, the old Via Quintana, which we crossed to continue moving towards the eastern gate now visible ahead of us. In this portion of the fort, too, most of the buildings had been converted into living quarters, although I could smell fresh-baked bread and other delicious aromas which spoke of the enterprises being pursued here. I noticed another stone building, close by the rear wall.

"Is that a hospital over there?"

"It was, but there's no need of it now, and no surgeons to use it. it's more living quarters. "

"What about the stables? What happened to them?"

"Outside the walls, now. We needed the living space. "

We were close to the rear wall now, and I looked up to the empty parapet walk between the turrets. "You don't post guards up there?"

"Against what? My people are farmers. They have their fields to tend, beyond the walls, and the only threat to us would come from the sea. " He nodded towards the distant mountain peaks that reared up inland. "We have the Fells, there, at our back, and only one road through them, impassable in winter and easily held, if need be, in the summer.

We have no need of guards. I told you, I have not had a sword in my hand since I came home, seven years ago."

"Seven? It was eight years ago we parted, and you were homeward bound then."

"Aye, I was, and it took me the better part of a year to walk from there to here. I lost my horse soon after you and I parted company."

We passed through the double gates in the eastern tower, and I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What's wrong?" Derek had stopped, too, and was staring questioningly at me over his shoulder, shouting above the noise that had suddenly engulfed us.

I shook my head. "Nothing," I cried. "I'm surprised, that's all. I did not expect this ... It's bigger, far bigger than I would have thought."

He looked around him. "It may be," he shouted back, "but it's still too small. We have no room to build, and no good stone to build with."

Somehow, arriving from the sea and entering the bustling confines of the high-walled fort, my mind had formed the notion that the fort was all there was. I had expected to emerge into open farmland beyond the walls. Instead, I found myself at the edge of a thriving vicus, the township that had grown around the fort for hundreds of years until it stretched farther than the eye could see, in the shape of a large funnel, its narrow spout blocked by the eastern wall of the fort itself and its swelling shape defined by the steep, tree-clad hillsides stretching up and away on either side.

We were standing at the edge of a congested marketplace, the tables of the closest vendors 'placed against the walls flanking the gates at our back, and chaos swirled about us. The air was filled with the sounds and smells of animals and poultry, the voices of the crowd that thronged around and between the stalls and the cries of the vendors whose wares were everywhere in evidence, in an enviable display of prosperity and wealth. There was fresh produce of all descriptions, from onions and fat leeks to green- leafed clumps of growth that I had never seen before. The smell of fresh-baked bread came from my left now to mingle with the odour of fish from somewhere ahead of me. I smelled the heavy musk of frying garlic, and saw a stall with deep, metal dishes and a stone-framed fire on which a woman fried fresh shrimp, stirring the mass of them with a large, heavy wooden ladle. Saliva spurted from beneath my tongue, reminding me that I had not eaten since the previous night.