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

"Er ... I'm not sure. Both ways, I think. Didn't have time to think about it."

"Hmm. Where is it now?"

"Outside, on my saddle."

"Fetch it, then, and come with me. I have my wagon outside."

He harnessed his mount to the tail of the wagon and climbed up onto the bench beside me. I slapped the reins and sat silent as we plodded through the fort to the eastern gate, heading towards the drilling ground beyond. When we reached the stone hut by the gate-tower, where we kept our leather practice armour, I motioned to him to jump off and put some on. I was already wearing heavy, toughened bullhide armour, including the arm-protectors that we had made to protect us from shoulder to wrist. He leaped down and disappeared into the tower, and I carried on through the gate without waiting for him.

I stopped the wagon close by the ramp leading up to the parade ground on the flattened knoll overlooking the fort and jumped down, swinging my heavy weapon and loosening my arm and shoulder muscles as I made my way up the ramp. A short time later I heard him running to catch up to me, but I reached the top of the ramp ahead of him and turned to point my weapon two-handed at him.

"Exercises first."

He stopped, facing me, not even out of breath, then held his weapon horizontally towards me, both hands gripping the ornately carved hilt end, and closed his eyes, concentrating. Then he drew a deep, steady breath and launched into the exercise program we had devised, first to loosen, and then to strengthen our arm and wrist movements.

I simply stood and watched him, saying nothing and missing nothing of his performance. I was uncomfortably aware that I had last watched him do this a full six months before and that I had been lax since then in looking to my charge, lulled by the placid sameness of our day-to-day life. I had known he was training hard, and I had known he was doing well, thanks to Dedalus and Rufio, who worked with him daily and kept me informed of his progress, but I had had ho concept of how much the boy had learned and improved. Six months earlier his performance had been impressive, but now it was spectacular.

His eyes remained closed in concentration, and the stick-club weapon in his hand whirled faster and faster until its movements became a sustained blur, impossible to follow as he spun it two-handed, then one-handed, then from left grip to right, over and beneath and down and up and around until the final snap, when he spun on one leg, stepped forward with the other and brought the shaft flashing down to stop abruptly where it had begun, parallel to the ground, in a blow that, had the weapon been edged, would have split an enemy in two. When he opened his eyes again to look at me, his face expressionless, I had to collect myself.

"Impressive," I said, tonelessly. "Dedalus and Rufio told me you had improved. Now, apart from exercises and attacks on unarmed boys, can you use the thing effectively when someone else is pitted against you?"

His teeth flashed in a brilliant smile and I found myself surprised once again, in spite of their familiarity, by his radiant, wholesome good looks. "Shall I try?"

Well, he tried, and I had my hands full trying to beat him. His strength and resilience took me completely by surprise, and the fury of his attack made me forget within moments that I was pitted against a boy, "a mere child" as I had called him the previous day. He backed me up soon after we began by deflecting one of my blows and stepping inside it, forcing me to leap backward to safeguard my ribs. Once he had me on the retreat, he kept me there, reacting to his whirlwind attacks from every direction, so that I had no time to develop attacks of my own. Finally I gulled him by leaping back from one of his blows and allowing the impetus of his missed swing to take him sideways, opening his right flank to my attack. I threw myself back towards him, and I pressed home my advantage as though I were fighting Ded or Rufio, no thought in my mind of decreasing my drive because of his youth or lesser strength. I forced him to take one pace backward, then another, and then a third, which brought him to the steep edge of the slope beyond the drill ground. There I caught his whirling blade high on my own, stepped in close and smashed him with my chest, pushing him over the edge to where he slipped and fell to one knee.

I grounded my weapon immediately, deeply grateful for the opportunity to do so, and held out my hand to help him back to the level field, where he stood watching me, clearly prepared to continue. I had to force myself to breath evenly, when I wanted to pant and puff like the old man I felt myself to be. Eventually, when I was sure I could control my voice, I spoke.

"Good. Now I think you're ready for the next stage."

He simply stared at me expectantly, knowing that this was an important moment but with no idea of how it was or what it might involve.

We had had the two new Camulodian swords by then for several years, and in all that time none but myself, Dedalus, Rufio, Lucanus, Shelagh and Donuil had seen them; Shelagh and Luke only because they had been there when the swords arrived. It had seemed safer to all of us, from the beginning, to keep their existence secret, and we had been extremely conscious of the need for care in how we handled and transported the weapons, and in where and how we actually used them. In use, as we had discovered that first day, they rang with a clarion sound that was unique and astonishing and audible from great distances, and so we had been at pains to find a practice spot that was unlikely to be discovered by curiosity-seekers, such as inquisitive young boys, attracted by the ringing of the pure iron blades.

That we had found the place very quickly was due more to sheer, blind fortune than to any form of scientific questing: Dedalus had almost fallen headlong into it on the morning of the day the swords arrived. It was little more than a deep cleft in the rock face below the escarpment on which the fort was built, but it had high, vertical walls that contained the noise we made and a level, grassy floor that was both wide enough and long enough to suit our purposes perfectly. To reach it, however, involved almost an hour of travel from the fort itself, first down the road to the valley below, then along the accumulated scree at the bottom of the cliff face to where a dense clump of hawthorn concealed the narrow entrance to the cleft.

We kept the swords there, in situ, most of the time. When they had to be transported to and from the fort, we moved them in plain sight, wrapped in cloth in the bottom of the wagon, which was normally full of tools and pieces of equipment. No one had ever paid the slightest attention to them.

Now I led Arthur back to the wagon and hauled the long, cloth-wrapped bundle from the wagon bed, unwrapping the swords and handing one of them to him, hilt first. He was speechless, entranced by the lethal beauty of the weapon in his hands. It was far from being the first sword he had ever held, but it was the most fearsome. For almost two full years now, he and Gwin, Bedwyr and Ghilly had been working with Roman short-swords, traditional gladia made decades earlier by Publius Varrus. All four boys were adept in their use, having learned the basic disciplines of cut, stab and thrust in the traditional manner, "fighting" a solid practice post sunk in the ground and working from behind the shelter of a heavy infantry shield. That training was the practical reason for the daily use of the wooden staff Arthur now used so effectively: the heavy ash or oak staves were designed to be twice the weight of the swords they represented, so that when a warrior held a real sword in a real conflict, the weight of the weapon would seem negligible compared to what he was accustomed to.

As I stood watching him, Arthur raised his eyes from the sword he held, looking first at me, then turning his eyes to where the four practice posts were sunk into the earth at one end of the parade ground.