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

Arthur had always been smitten by the heroic aspects of Uncle Ambrose, as he called him. On this occasion the boy was actually struck dumb by the splendour of the Camulodian approach. I have no doubt the reasons for his reaction were many and mixed. It might have been occasioned by the fact that we ourselves had been away from Camulod for more than a year by then. It might also have been augmented by the fact that we seldom wore armour nowadays in Mediobogdum, and were more akin to farmers and artisans—in appearance and dress at least—than to soldiers and warriors. Then again, it might have been due to the simple apparition of a large, disciplined force of regimented, heavily armed men and horses in a place where we had grown accustomed to seeing the native warriors going about on foot, or on shaggy ponies, individually.

Whatever the reasons, when the vanguard of the Camulodian troops arrived and Ambrose himself sat smiling down at us, immense in his high-crested Roman helmet and heavy, shimmering and highly polished plate armour, flanked by his three senior troop commanders, young Arthur walked forward alone, wordlessly, his eyes shining, his hands held out to relieve Ambrose of his heavy shield. My brother grunted, looking down at the boy, and then swung easily down from his high saddle, passing the shield to him with one hand and reaching out to ruffle his hair with the other; he paused, then, the gesture incomplete, and changed his mind, contenting himself with gripping Arthur cordially by one shoulder before moving directly to embrace me.

"He's too big to be greeted as a child now," he whispered as we hugged each other. I said nothing, stepping back to clear the way for the others at my back to move forward.

When all the introductions had been completed, Ambrose released his three troop commanders to supervise the settling of their men and horses on the flat parade area outside the eastern gate, where the infantry that had accompanied them were already laying out their tents and gear in the traditional Roman style. A group of us moved into the fort and up onto the eastern wall, where we could see what was going on. From that viewpoint, it was Lucanus who observed that this old fort had never seen such a gathering of military might before. At its most active time, shortly after it was built, it might have held five or six hundred men, although we had strong grounds to doubt that it had ever been so fully garrisoned, but it had never seen more than a hundred heavy cavalry mounts at once. As Lucanus pointed this out, Derek, who had been staying with us for a week at that time, stood silent, his arms folded on his chest, his bearded chin resting on the gorget of his leather breastplate as he stared at the horse camp that now filled the parade ground. This was, I knew, the first time he had actually seen the kind of peacetime force that Camulod could field, and he was impressed, aware that this was merely a patrol dispatched several months earlier and barely missed in Camulod.

When I had told him, at the time of Ambrose's departure months earlier, that we would be having visitors by land from Camulod, the king had been perturbed, fearing that such an open use of the rear road to Ravenglass might point the way for others afterwards, but he had been mollified when I pointed out that the reason for the visit was to leave a defensive garrison of cavalry behind, and that it would be relieved and replaced by newcomers on a regular, twice-yearly basis. The reality of having a solid, well- trained garrison to guard his back had made light of his fears of invasion from that direction.

Finally, once Ambrose had satisfied himself that all was well in hand and that the troops would have no difficulties settling in, I managed to take him aside and sequester him in the steam room of our bathhouse, having first made sure that we would not be disturbed. There, after he had enjoyed the first flush of pleasure at being able to relax and cleanse himself of the soil of his long journey, I was able to question him about his passage from the south, developments in Camulod and most particularly about the matter foremost in my mind: the new sword that was to be forged from the Lady of the Lake.

He set my mind at ease on the latter question immediately. My concerns about the sufficiency of metal in the statue had been unfounded, he said, because it had quickly become apparent, upon a cursory examination of the rough-sculpted form, that Publius Varrus could only have used about one-third of the total mass of the Lady for the making of Excalibur. Joseph and Carol together had developed the formula that led to this conclusion: Excalibur, when finished, would have weighed approximately half as much as it did on first being forged. The difference in weight would have been shed in filing, trimming and chiselling the metal into its final shape and size. The surprising and welcome news, then, was that there ought to be enough metal remaining in the statue of the Lady to fashion two identical swords, if such was my wish.

That gave me pause. Was it my wish to have two duplicate Excaliburs?

The question was no sooner asked than answered. These swords were representations, not duplicates; they would be practice swords and, as such, would be subjected to much overuse and great indignities. Better to have two of them, therefore—particularly since Excalibur could then remain concealed. That resolved, my next question concerned the length of time it would take to make both. Ambrose's response was an eloquent shrug of his shoulders. He would not return to Camulod until the start of winter, he pointed out, and until he did, Carol would make no start upon the second piece. The first might well be complete by then, but even so, it would remain in Camulod until the following spring.

I had to content myself with that, and for a long time · we spoke little more of things political, since all Ambrose now wanted to do was bathe and steam and close his eyes and mind to everything except the pleasure of the moist heat as it leached away his tired and aching stiffness. That process, however, had no deleterious effect on his ability to talk about his own home life and his family in Camulod. Ludmilla had borne him beautiful twin daughters, one radiant blonde and the other raven-haired, late in the summer of the previous year, and their father was enraptured with them, entirely unimpressed by the prevalent opinion that daughters were a burden to a man. He had named them Luceiia and Octavia, in honour of the Britannican ancestors whom he had discovered only after meeting me in Verulamium years earlier, and I believe he could have talked of them happily in his sleep.

Ludmilla was thriving, he reported, and had sent her love to all of us, but most especially to her beloved mentor Lucanus. She had assumed overall responsibility for the medical welfare of the Colony on Luke's departure, at his insistence, and under her supervision all matters of health and hygiene in Camulod were carefully policed and well- maintained. Her staff had grown with the arrival of a young surgeon who had been trained by die military in Antioch, and who had made his way to Camulod purely on the strength of stories about Luke that he had heard in his travels in south Britain. There, having met Ludmilla and no doubt tested her abilities in his own way, he'd decided to settle and practise his skills in Luke's superbly built Infirmary.

From there, our conversation drifted pleasantly to other topics, all of them quite trivial and all of them making me slightly nostalgic for the life and folk of Camulod. By the time Ambrose began to bestir himself and show any inclination to talk seriously again of "important" matters, I had already decided it would be selfish of me to keep his tidings from the others, and equally inconsiderate to keep the pleasures of the baths from my brother's troopers. And so we dressed and left the bathhouse to those who were no less in need of its seductive joys than he had been.