Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

I indicated the club. "With this?"

"Of course."

"But I'll break it."

"It's only a vase, and I want you to break it. Stand up in those pedal things and smash it, hard as you can. Go ahead."

I missed it with my first and second swings because I was not trying hard enough and I saw displeasure in his face, so my third try was a real one. I settled my rump in my seat, gripped my "reins" tightly, rocked myself slightly to get the required motion of a horse, and then swung myself up and onto the balls of my feet and swung at the vase with every ounce of strength I had, pulling the reins tight in my left hand for leverage. Shards of the shattered vase flew in every direction and the water exploded in a great, splattered puddle across the polished wood of the floor.

"Great Jupiter!" Uncle Varrus's voice was hushed in awe and I was afraid I had done too well. He went to another table and brought a second vase to the same spot, throwing the flowers carelessly on the floor. This was his sacred Armoury! I had never seen an item out of place in here and I really began to think that he was beginning to lose his mind, but he spoke to me again. "Just like that, Cay. When your father arrives, I want you to shatter this vase just the way you did the first one. Even harder, if you can. Use all the force you can muster. Here he comes now." We heard my father's hurried stride in the passageway outside and then he strode into the room, almost skidding to a halt as his eyes took in the carnage on the normally spotless floor.

"What in the name of...?" He saw me then with the club and his face flared in anger. "What have you done, boy?" His voice was terrible and I quailed before the fury that had sprung into his eyes.

"Quiet, Picus!" My uncle's voice was impatient. "The boy has done no harm. This was my doing. Now, just be quiet and watch, and learn. Learn about the chair saddles of the Frankish horsemen that we dismissed as useless. The boy is on a horse, enemies all around him. The vase on the floor is the head of an enemy grasping his foot. Show him, Cay."

Knowing somehow that this was a very important moment, although still having no idea of how or why, I drew myself together, collected my energies and then swung the club once around my head, tensed my legs, pulled hard on my reins, lifted myself to my full height, my backside clear of the seat and smashed the vase into a thousand pieces, splashing water clear across the room to splatter against the walls. As the sounds of the falling fragments died away, I looked at my father. His jaw had fallen open and his eyes were stunned and I still did not know what was happening here.

"Well, Picus?" My uncle's voice held a smiling note of pride.

"Do it again," my father rasped. We did it again, and by this time I was really enjoying the sensation I was causing. The entire Armoury was a littered shambles.

After the third vase, my father groped his way to a chair and sat, never taking his eyes from me. My uncle spoke again. "A twelve-year-old boy, Picus! Think what that thing could do for a mounted man."

"His whole body," my father said, his voice hushed as my uncle's had been earlier. "Used his whole body! All his force and strength. From the back of a horse! Standing up, braced, on the back of a horse!"

"Exactly, Picus! And we dismissed it. I have had this thing—this.. .seat—here in this room for fourteen years and I never saw it!"

Listening to them, I was still half afraid and totally mystified. Something momentous had happened, but what it was remained unknown to me.

"It's the leg braces," my uncle said. "They are exactly the right length for his feet to reach comfortably, now. They never were before—he literally grew into them. And every man's legs are a different length."

My father continued from there, his voice a deep rumble as though he were talking to himself. "Adjust each man's equipment to suit his own leg length...and we have a squadron of riders who can stand up and smite from a horse's back! A new cavalry force like nothing that has ever been seen before!"

"The Franks have seen it, Picus. This is theirs."

My father barked his sharp, unique laugh, "Aye, Varrus, but the Franks have no long swords like ours. And no discipline, no training. This could make us invincible."

"It will make us invincible, Picus. But, once again, it will mean teaching everyone to ride in a new and different way."

"So?" My father's tone of voice said that was a mere technicality. "The Franks can do it. It can't be all that difficult. How fast can you make these things? What are they called, anyway?"

My uncle shrugged his shoulders. "Saddles, I suppose. There's no other word for them in any tongue I know of. To make them? I don't know. I threw the large ones out."

I cleared my throat and spoke out. "I know where they are." Both men looked at me.

"Where?" asked Uncle Varrus.

"Uther and I use them as chairs in our secret place."

"Good," said my uncle. "Bring them back here. We'll take them apart and see exactly how they are put together and then we'll make our own."

The servant who had been sent for wine had returned and now stood staring in stupefaction at the condition of the room. My uncle finally noticed him and rounded on him. "What are you gaping at? Have you never seen water spilt before? Bring young master Caius's chair there and follow us, and then come back here and clean this place up." Cay, you come with us to the stables. Let's see how it feels for you to sit on your chair on your pony's back."

I was the first person in Camulod to ride a horse with what eventually came to be known as a saddle with stirrups. Uther was mad with jealousy at first, but I taught him first how to relax and master this strange new chair and before the first man in Camulod knew how to ride in one, we two were experts, and it fell to us to be instructors general.

I have already mentioned my belief that' the number three has a mystical power. I spoke of deaths occurring in threes, but the potency of the triune conjunction is not confined to death alone; the triad appears to hold equal prominence in the grouping of the signal events of life. The great dramatists all wrote in the belief that a tripartite relationship between people is the essential element of heroic human conflict. Confined between two people, conflict, no matter how violent, is the mere pettiness of rivals; it requires the interaction of a third person to expand the conflict into tragedy. In retrospect it is now clear to me that my own life, and the fate of our Colony, was influenced at that time by a triad of events, which, combined, changed the lives of all of us forever. The discovery of the secret of the saddle and the adoption of the bracings we called stirrups was the first of these; my discovery of the Sword, the second.

The third fateful event was very different in nature from the two that went before it. Camulod had a visitor from the land in the far south-west, that place our people call Cornwall because it sticks out far into the sea like a great cornua, or horn. Emrys, the king of the people there, called himself Duke of Cornwall, after the old Roman title of Dux, or Leader. He had heard tales of Camulod and had come north to gauge the truth of them for himself. He was a loudmouthed, far from amiable man who did nothing to endear himself to Uncle Varrus, and he had a hulking, loudmouthed, even less amiable son called Lot, Gulrhys Lot, who did still less to endear himself to me or to Uther. Our relationship was based on hatred almost at first sight.

Lot was two years our senior and big for his age, and from the moment when Uncle Varrus told us to look after him, he set out to let us know who was the master and who the servants among us three. We led him from the Council Hall out into the courtyard where, mindful of my uncle's strict laws of hospitality, I offered to show him around the fort. He ignored me and stopped, wide legged, clenched fists on his hips, and looked around at everything with a wide sneer upon his face.