Jack Whyte: The Skystone

Until the fifth century, and the aftermath of the Battle of Adrianople, it would seem that almost no attempt had been made to study the heavy cavalry techniques used in the second century BC by Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. It was that renaissance, allied with the arrival of stirrups in Europe somewhere in the first half of the fifth century, that changed warfare forever. In terms of military impact, the significance of the saddle with stirrups was probably greater than the invention of the tank.

Proper and place names

Most of the names used for characters in this novel would have been common in Roman times. The following is a guide to phonetic pronunciation:

Caesarius

[Cee-zary-us]

Caius

[Kay-us]

Claudius

[Klawdy-us]

Flavius

[Flavey-us]

Gaius

[Guy-us]

Luceiia

[Loo-chee-ya]

Plautus

[Plough-tus]

Quinctilius

[Kwink-tillyus]

Quintus

[Kwin-tus]

Seneca

[Sen-nic-a]

Tertius

[Tershy-us]

Theodosius

[Theo-dozy-us]

Valentinian

[Valen-tinny-an]

Vegetius

[Ve-jeeshy-us]

The land the Romans called Britain was only the land we know today as England. Scotland, Ireland and Wales were separate and known respectively as Caledonia, Hibernia and Cambria. They were not recognized as part of the province of Britain.

The ancient towns of Roman Britain are still there, but they all have English names now. What follows is a guide to phonetic pronunciation of Roman place names, with their modern equivalents. They are numbered to correspond to the map provided.

1

Londinium

[Lon-dinny-um]

London

2

Verulamium

[Verr-you-lame-eeyum]

St. Albans

3

Alchester

4

Glevum

[Glev-vum]

Gloucester

5

Aquae Sulis

[Ack-way Soo-liss]

Bath

6

Lindinis

[Linn-dinnis]

Ilchester

7

Sorviodunum

[Sorr-vee-yode-inum]

OldSarum

8

Venta Belgarum

[Venta Bell-gah-rum]

Winchester

9

Noviomagus

[Nowy-oh-maggus]

Chichester

10

Durnovaria

[Durr-no-varr-eya]

Dorchester

11

Isca Dumnoniorum

[Isska Dumb-nonny-orum]

Exeter

12

The Colony

13

Camulodunum

[Ca-moo-loadin-um]

Colchester

14

Lindum

[Lin-dum]

Lincoln

15

Eboracum

[Eh-borra-cum]

York

16

Mamucium

[Mah-moochy-um]

Manchester

17

Dolocauthi

[Dolla-cow-thee]

Welsh Gold Mines

18

Durovernum

[Doo-rove-err-num]

Canterbury

19

Regulbium

[Re-goolby-um]

Reculver

20

Rutupiae

[Roo-too-pee-ay]

Richborough

21

Dubris

[Doo-briss]

Dover

22

Lemanis

[Leh-mann-iss]

Lympne

23

Anderita

[An-der-reeta]

Pevensey

The Legend of the Skystone

Out of the night sky there will fall a stone

That hides a maiden born of murky deeps,

A maid whose fire-fed, female mysteries

Shall give life to a lambent, gleaming blade,

A blazing, shining sword whose potency

Breeds warriors. More than that,

This weapon will contain a woman's wiles

And draw dire deeds of men; shall name an age;

Shall crown a king, called of a mountain clan

Who dream of being spawned from dragon's seed;

Fell, forceful men, heroic, proud and strong,

With greatness in their souls.

This king, this monarch, mighty beyond ken,

Fashioned of glory, singing a song of swords,

Misting with magic madness mortal men,

Shall sire a legend, yet leave none to lead

His host to triumph after he be lost.

But death shall ne'er demean his destiny who,

Dying not, shall ever live and wait to be recalled.

BOOK ONE - Invasion

I

Today is my sixty-seventh birthday, a hot day in the summer of 410 in the year of our Lord, according to the new Christian system of dating the passage of time. I am old, I know, in years. My bones are old, after sixty-seven summers. But my mind has not aged with my body. My name is Gaius Publius Varrus, and I am probably the last man alive in Britain who can claim to have marched beneath the Eagles of the Roman army of occupation in this country. The others who marched with me are not merely dead; they are long dead. Yet I can still recall my days with the legions clearly.

I have known men who refused to admit ever having marched with the armies. Whatever their reasons, I regard their refusal as their loss. I remember my legion days frequently, with affection and gratitude, because most of my lifetime friends came to me from the legions and so, indirectly, did my wife, the mother of my children and sharer of my dreams.

There are times, too, when I think of my army days with an echo of incredulous laughter in my heart. I remember the foul-ups and the chaos and all the petty, human frailties and fallibilities that surface in army life, and my options are clear: laugh at them, or weep.

I remember, for instance, how I spent the afternoon of another summer day, more than forty years ago, back in '69. That day was my last as a Roman soldier, and I spent it leading my men, and my commanding general, up a mountain and into an ambush.

Traps are never pleasant spots to be in, God knows, but the one we sprung that day was the worst I ever encountered in all my years of soldiering. The heathens who caught us seemed to materialize out of the living rock. Savage, terrifying creatures, half-man, half-mountain goat, they took us completely by surprise in a high, rocky defile in the very centre of the rugged spine of mountains that runs the length of Britain. We had been climbing for two days, picking our way carefully and, we thought, in secrecy through valleys and passes away from the major crossing routes. We wanted to arrive unannounced on the western side. The few officers with horses, myself included, had been on foot most of that time, leading the animals. We had just entered this defile and mounted up, thankful for the reasonably level floor it offered, when we were crushed by a torrent of massive rocks from above.

The three men I had been talking to were smashed to a bloody pulp before my eyes by a boulder that fell on top of them out of nowhere. They never even saw it. I doubt if any of the men killed in that first apocalyptic minute saw death approach them. I know I was stunned by the suddenness of it. It did not even occur to me at first that we were being attacked, for we had sighted no hostiles in more than a week and expected to find none there, so high in the mountains.