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

Later that night, long after everyone was well abed, Ambrose, who had spread his bedroll on the floor of my quarters for the night, woke me up to go with him to inspect the guard, since this was the first night of the new order in Mediobogdum and I ought to make myself familiar with the routine right from the outset. It was a beautiful summer night with a cloudless, starry sky, and I sucked the night air deep into my chest with great enjoyment as we walked the full length of the parapets of Mediobogdum, talking to each guard we met and finding all of them alert and watchful. Then, from the fort itself, we made our way out onto the parade ground, which had been transformed in the space of one afternoon into another heavily guarded armed camp.

The young officer of the guard there was a man unknown to me and barely out of his boyhood. I found out that his name was Decius Falvo and that his father had been one of my companions on my expedition to Eire. Ambrose regarded young Decius as one of his most promising infantry commanders and I was unsurprised, because his father, whom I had always known simply as Falvo, was one of the finest and most thoroughly dedicated soldiers I had ever had the privilege of knowing. Decius told us that he had mounted an outlying guard high above us, on the peak above the pass, and that there was a wide and well-worn path up to the place, attesting to the fact that the Romans had used it as a lookout point long centuries before.

Ambrose turned and looked at me. "Feel like a climb? We can't inspect the inner guard and leave the outlying ones neglected."

We were challenged and identified ourselves long before we reached the top of the steep path up to the peak. There a cluster of four men stood on duty, peering out and down from the heights into the blackness of utter night, unrelieved by a single spark of light. Above our heads, in brilliant contrast, the sky was a mass of twinkling stars and a crescent, newborn moon hung just above the topmost peak of the high fells to the north-east.

Ambrose and I stood side by side, gazing outward, neither of us feeling the need to speak. The experience of simply being there made me feel powerful and privileged. I turned to look down to where the fort lay hidden in the darkness of the plateau beneath us, and it seemed strange to me that, apart from the dull glow of several sunken fires, I saw no sign of life or movement where I knew large numbers of people slept. The corollary—that there might be an army on the other side of us, similarly shrouded—seemed too commonplace to mention. A short time later, having had a few words to pass the time of night with each of the sentinels, we were on our way back down to the camp beneath.

When we arrived back at the front of the fort itself, in plain sight of the guard stationed at the main gates, Ambrose stopped by the smouldering remains of a fire and began to stir it back to life, feeding it with kindling until the first flames sprang up, then piling heavier fuel on top. Avoiding the heaviest drift of the smoke, I seated myself on a nearby log, and presently he pulled another log close to mine. We had had little opportunity to speak on our inspection tour, since all our attention had been given to negotiating narrow, rock-strewn pathways in the darkness.

We talked for a time then about Tressa, and about my relationship with her, and I was absolutely open with my brother. He was curious, of course, and evidently did not want to pry, but I was so happy in my life with Tress that I told him everything in my mind, and he listened and was glad for me. I spoke at length about Arthur and Tress and the relationship—not really surprising, given a modicum of thought and consideration—that had sprung into life between them, based upon mutual trust and liking and their shared human need: his for a mother and hers for a child. The three of us had, in the short space of several months, created a family for ourselves, strange though it might have appeared to be in the eyes of others. Lovers though we were, openly and unashamedly, Tress and I continued to live apart. Similarly, Arthur continued to sleep in the home of his friends Gwin and Ghilleadh, as he had always done, being cared for by his former nurse Turga and deferring to Shelagh in all things as his adoptive mother. And yet somehow, Arthur and Tress and I had become a solid, tightly interdependent familial unit, sharing our lives, our strengths and weaknesses, our beliefs and our ideas, without stinting, and blessed in being able to do so without the internal jealousies and strife that seemed to mar so many other people's family lives.

When I had finished talking of my love, we sat in companionable silence for a little while, and then Ambrose turned our conversation again to young Arthur.

"The boy looks well," he said. "He's growing tall, as we expected he would, and he shows signs of having shoulders as broad as yours and mine. He's skinny, though, don't you think?"

"He's a growing boy, Ambrose, and that's normal. I was that way at his age, weren't you? All the food he ingests—and he eats like a horse—is used to push him up to his full height. Once he's achieved that, he'll grow in breadth and weight."

Ambrose glanced at me, his eyes twinkling. "You sound like Lucanus."

"And so I should. Those were Luke's very words to me, when I said the same foolish thing to him, bare months ago. The boy will grow upward, first, and then fill out. In the meantime, our task is to make sure he stays as strong as he can be."

"And how do we do that?"

"He's almost ten, now, as I said, and in the past year his education has undergone a shift in direction—less book study, less indoor theorizing, more practical training in weaponry and soldiery. He and his friends have been working with the new training swords, ever since you left for Camulod last time with Connor—" I broke off as his eyes crinkled into a broad smile. "What is it?"

"Nothing, really. I remember the weight of those things, that's all. Are you still making them from solid oak? Those boys should hardly be able to lift them, let alone swing them."

I nodded. "Aye, well, that's true. For the time being, they're using lighter shafts suited to their strength, and using them two-handed, treating them most of the time as spear shafts. But that is changing, and the boys are growing stronger every day as they build up the muscles in their arms and shoulders. Dedalus and Rufio are sharing responsibility for training them, and as our two most able experts on the new weapons, they are hard taskmasters. Wait you, till you see. I promise you, you'll be surprised."

My brother nodded and changed the subject. "There's one more thing I wanted to discuss with you. It's for your ears alone, I think, although what you choose to do with the information is your concern."

I turned to face him squarely, alerted by something in his tone. "What is it?"

"Arthur may have a brother in Cornwall."

"What?" I sat blinking at him, unable to accept the import of what I had heard him say. He shrugged, holding my gaze, content to allow me to think through what he had said. "That's not possible," I said finally. "Uther and Ygraine are both dead since his birth."

"Cay, your mother has been dead since your birth and yet you and I are brothers."

"We had different mothers."

"Precisely so."

I sat staring at him as the full import of what he had said began to sink home to me. "Sweet, gentle Jesus! Are you telling me that Uther sired a child on another woman before he died?"

"No, I'm telling you that I have heard a report—a rumour, and no more than that—that Uther lay, initially, with one of Ygraine's women, before he entered into his liaison with the Queen herself. I have no knowledge of the truth of it, the story simply came to me by chance, overheard as a soldiers' legend, like the tale of your magic in the empty room, that Uther had rutted wondrously amidst Queen Ygraine's women. You know how soldiers are. They give their heroes, and dead heroes in particular, attributes and personalities that would defy the gods. The word is, among some of the men, that Uther plowed a broad furrow in Cornwall and fathered bastards by the score."