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

Longinus, Derek's captain of artillery, was also there, but he was out in the roadway, sheltering from the elements for the time being beneath the leather canopy of the wagon that would transport Ludmilla and her belongings. His task in the forest completed, he was returning home to his normal duties and his family today and would ride beneath the driver's canopy on the wagon bench with Lars, Ludmilla's driver for the day.

The remainder of the party consisted of Arthur and Bedwyr, who had been permitted to accompany Arthur's uncle and aunt to bid them farewell. All four boys had sought permission to make the journey, days earlier, but in the interim the brothers Gwin and Ghilleadh had both come down with some form of sniffly sickness that had them, as Donuil aptly described it, flowing from both ends. They would now remain behind, despite their pleas to the contrary. The foulness of the weather would have kept the other two behind as well, had not Lucanus decided they would be better off out in the storm than stuck at home with their wretchedly sick companions.

As I watched the boys, admiring the confidence with which they sat their ponies, swathed in cloaks like ours but made to fit their smaller size, I noticed Dedalus coming towards me. His head was muffled in the cowl of his cape and his helmet made a bulky shape at his waist where he had fastened it to his sword belt by the chin strap.

"Cay, I'm going to go and fetch some coils of heavy rope to take with us. I'll throw them in the back of the. wagon. There's ample room. And I think we should take an extra pair of horses along, too." He glanced up at the roof above out heads as though he could see the leaden sky beyond it. "I think we might need them. There will be trees blown down everywhere, and the open roadway might have acted like a tunnel since this storm broke, channelling the wind. The road could be blocked, in places. If it is, we'll need to clear a passage for the wagon."

I glanced at Ambrose. "Ded's right. It could be a nasty journey, but the decision is yours, Brother, and now's the time to make it. Do we go, or stay and wait for the storm to blow itself out?"

Ambrose sighed and drew his cowl further over his head. His helmet, like my own, hung from his saddle bow. My horse Germanicus lifted his tail and made dung, and the warm odour of the fresh droppings mingled with the smells of wet earth and straw and horse sweat all around us.

"We go. Everything is ready, even Ludmilla. I promised Connor we would be there today, waiting for him. Neither of us considered the weather at the time, but a promise is a promise. I'll fetch the women. Tell the others to be ready."

I nodded to Dedalus, who left immediately on his own errand, and then, alerting everyone else to be ready for departure, I pulled myself up into the saddle as Ambrose disappeared through the rain in the direction of the quarters he and Ludmilla had been sharing with Donuil and Shelagh. He returned moments later, accompanied by both Women, and a very short time later we were beyond the gates of the fort, filing downward through the gusting rain to where the road led steeply down towards the valley of the Esk and Ravenglass, twelve miles away.

Four times we had to stop between our starting point and Ravenglass, to clear the road of toppled trees or massive, fallen limbs before we could proceed farther. On each occasion the effort of harnessing the extra horses and dragging the dead weight of the shattered wood aside caused us to look at each other and wonder what we were about, subjecting ourselves to such unnecessary punishment on such a day. For some reason, however, attributed much later to some communal form of madness occasioned by the storm, the complaints and wonderings remained unspoken.

We encountered the first and worst of the blockages halfway down the steepest slope from the plateau, in a spot that lay exposed to the worst of the onrushing winds. No mere fallen tree barred our way there, waiting to be dragged aside by newly harnessed, yet-fresh horses. Instead, we found a tangled snarl of interlocked branches and massive boles covering the entire roadway, an insurmountable barrier that made a mockery of our determination and should have driven us back up the hill to safety and shelter in the fort. As we sat cursing the obstruction, however, watching Dedalus explore the tangle for signs of weakness and ways of tearing the mass apart into smaller, more manageable clusters, young Arthur went exploring away from the road and discovered a route by which he thought we might be able to bypass the snarl, at the cost of only a modicum of work in cutting down a number of saplings to permit our single wagon to pass.

I went back with him to look at what he had found and discovered that he was right. There was a passage of sorts, a narrow, twisting, open way between the bare rock of the hillside and the overgrown, artificial bank of broken stone created by the debris displaced by the Roman engineers who had first built the road. It was a short bypass, adequate to our purpose, but it was a narrow, dangerous and steep descent—more of a rocky chute than a passage—cluttered in places with stunted, gnarled and ancient trees that would have to be individually removed. I assessed it carefully, then sent Arthur to bring Dedalus to look.

More than two hours later, close to noon, we re- emerged on the road beneath the blockage, soaked through and chilled, despite our celebrated foul-weather cloaks. It had taken all of us to negotiate the narrow descent; even the two women were called upon to leave their shelter and add their weight to that of the men holding the ropes, trying to keep the wagon from breaking away and smashing itself on the rocks all around. We wasted no time in self- congratulation but remounted and continued on our way, nursing our individual miseries. Compared to that episode, the struggles with the three remaining deadfalls were barely worthy of note. Nevertheless, it was approaching dusk on a grey, lowering afternoon before we drew within sight of the fields flanking the last three miles of the eastern approach to Ravenglass, to see the last thing any of us had expected to see.

Arthur and Bedwyr brought the tidings, because they were ranging far ahead of us as usual. They came thundering back through the driving rain, their ponies' ears flattened against their skulls, the boys themselves standing erect in their stirrups and shouting, waving wildly to gain our attention.

"Men! Raiders!"

My mind accepted and absorbed the information instantly, without pause for wonder or curiosity. I sank my spurs into Germanicus's flanks and I was aware, as the big black horse's muscles bunched and uncoiled beneath me, his shod hooves striking sparks from the cobbled road, that my brother and at least two of the others were close behind me. And then I was reining in, dragging Germanicus back, almost to his haunches, as I looked and sought to make sense of what I was seeing through the misty curtain of rain that hampered my vision. Ambrose was beside me now, Donuil, Dedalus and Rufio slightly ahead of me and to my right. Arthur and Bedwyr were behind me, keeping out of my line of sight, I knew, lest I should notice them and send them back to safety with the wagon.

In the distance, barely visible through the driving rain and further obscured from view by the mud that coated them, a score or so of men were making their way in a straggling line across the fields, travelling southward; from our right to our left. Even from where we watched we could see that all of them were too tired for running. Dedalus turned and shouted to me over the noise of the wind.

"They're Eirish, but what are they doing out here?"

Ambrose shouted back, asking the question that was in my mind. "How do you know they are from Eire?"

"Their shields. Donuil, am I right?"