The Singing Sword cc-2

by Jack Whyte

  I nodded to her. "Take your time. I have things to talk about with Victorex, but if we finish before you do, I'll wait for you and we'll walk home together."

  Victorex and I watched her lead the pony away, and I found myself admiring the lithe grace of her and marvelling at how quickly she was growing.

  "Bucephalus...beautiful pony," I said, finally, when she had disappeared inside the stables.

  Victorex sniffed. I was not included among his elite, obviously. "You remember the stallion I went off to buy for Terra, the time we rode into Aquae together?" he said.

  I turned to face him. "Yes."

  "Well, I found it and bought it, but I found another horse, too — same place, same time. A brood mare, beautiful. She was for sale, so I bought her. With my own money. First horse I ever bought. But I fell in love with her."

  It did not seem at all strange to me that he would phrase things that way.

  "Where is she now?"

  He nodded towards the stables. "In there, with the others." He cleared his throat. "Now, you take that li'l Bucephalus. That horse is perfect. Perfect shape, perfect colouring, perfect proportions, perfect temperament. That's a beautiful li'l horse. In fact, that li'l horse is perfect for anything you want it to do, 'cept work, or breeding. It's too damn small. An' yet it's perfect. An' it's perfectly useless, too, unless you happen to know a ten-year-old li'l girl who's perfectly suited to it." He sniffed again and I felt myself squirm inside. I knew what was coming now, and I felt small and mean-spirited as he continued.

  "Now, thing is, I've been given a job to do, and I've been told to be ruthless. No room in this operation for extra passengers. If a horse can't work, an' can't be bred, I have to get rid of it, you follow me? That means kill it." He hawked and spat.

  "I don't like killing horses. People I generally don't care about, but horses matter to me. Most of 'em are worth more'n most people. And I object most particularly to killing beautiful horses. The li'l horse wasn't mine, but Magpie had already fallen in love with it. How was I going to kill it now? So I traded my mare for the li'l fellow, and now he is mine, and nobody can tell me what to do with him, and I'm giving him to Magpie."

  It was my turn now to clear my throat. I felt foolish and ungracious. "Forgive me, Victorex," I said. "I wronged you. I should have known better."

  He laughed. "How? You don't know me at all, Master Varrus. In your place, I'd have thought the same thing. I just didn't want you upsetting Magpie."

  "Magpie." I savoured the name; it was perfect, like the "li'l" horse — perfectly suited to my lovely daughter. "Where did that name come from?"

  "Not me. That's what her friends call her, didn't you know? It's just about — "

  "Perfect."

  We both laughed. "Look," I said then, "at least let me reimburse you for your mare. It's not fair that you should lose your purchase price."

  He looked at me with an expression of pure pleasure and his next words made him a third friend in the Villa Britannicus.

  "Lose my price? Are you blind, Master Varrus? The happiness in that li'l girl's face has paid me ten times over already, an' I haven't even given her the horse yet! I don't want money, and what need do I have of a horse? I've got a hundred of them and I'm breeding more." He shook his head. "No, Master Varrus. You keep your money and just let me do what I want to do, the way I do it best. You love that li'l girl, I know you do, but I'm inclined to think of her as something very special too. And she's not afraid of me. That's worth a lot. You'd be amazed how many people think I'm mad, or dangerous."

  I held out my hand. "Well, here's one who doesn't. Thank you. From now on, you run your stables as you see fit, and I'll be content if you simply keep me informed. My job is to train the men to ride your horses so together we can build something new in this country — the best men, mounted on the best horses anyone has ever seen. I know you won't tell me how to do my part, so I promise not to interfere with the way you do yours. Do we have a bargain?"

  We had a bargain.

  Some time later, walking back to the villa with Veronica, I asked her about her new name. It shamed me slightly that I had not been aware until now that she possessed one. I had been thinking of her all these years as my daughter, too blinded by my fatherly love to see that she was also a wholly formed little person with her own identity.

  "So, young lady," I asked her, "how long have you been Magpie?"

  "Oh, forever, Daddy. It used to be The Magpie, but it was shortened to simply Magpie a long time ago."

  "And why The Magpie?"

  "Because I'm all black and white and I like to wear green and my eyes are green and shiny, of course! And I was a terrible thief when I was little."

  "A thief? What did you steal?"

  "Oh, everything... at least, everything that was bright, or shiny and pretty, just like a real magpie. But I always gave the things back... most of the time because I had to."

  "I see. I had no idea we had a thief in the family."

  She smiled up at me and my heart swelled. "Well, not a real thief. I mean, not a robber or a brigand. I wouldn't steal money, and the things I stole were only mostly borrowed. You see, everybody knew when something pretty went missing just where it had gone. I could never really get away with anything."

  "Did you try?"

  "Try what? To get away with anything?" She paused, her brows wrinkled. "You mean did I ever really, really try to steal something?" She shook her head, dismissing the thought. "I don't think so, not really. I might have, when I was really tiny, I can't remember. But one day Mama came and took away one of my very favourite treasures — my most beautiful comb, with coloured glass in the handle. She just took it. She said she wanted it and she was keeping it. I was very angry, and later I was very sad. I really missed it..." Her voice died away, and she took my hand and pulled me to a stop, then made me squat down so that she could talk directly into my face. "And then, the next day, Mama gave me back my comb and told me that whenever I took something that belonged to someone else, I made them feel just as hurt and just as sad as she had made me." Her expression was very solemn and serious. "I never stole anything again, after that, and for the longest time I wouldn't even borrow anything from any of my friends, even with their permission."

  She tugged my hand then, indicating that we should continue walking, and as we went she concluded, "They stopped calling me The Magpie, after that. But Magpie never went away, and I'm glad, because I like it. Of course, only my special friends call me that. Other people still call me Veronica."

  I felt almost jealous — excluded. "I've never heard it before today," I said. "I suppose that means I'm not really a special friend..."

  "Oh, Daddy!" She stopped again and looked at me with what I defined instantly as loving exasperation. "You're my father, for goodness' sake! You're my specialest friend, more than even Victorex. You can call me Magpie any time you like."

  "Thank you, Magpie," I answered. "I will." I felt absolutely euphoric.

  By the time Victorex had spent two years in his new position, he was heading up a self-sufficient operation with the sole purpose of breeding horses. He had five very happy stallions and upwards of seventy mares in various stages of pregnancy, plus a fair number of foals. He had already started weeding out his future breeding stock. Only two of the foals from that first crop, one of each sex, were judged by him to be worth keeping. The others were all marked as workhorses as soon as they were able to walk. Victorex estimated that by the end of ten years he would be starting to produce big, strong horses. In twenty years, he would be producing large numbers of them.

  He knew what he was doing. We did not, so we left him to do it.

  In the meantime, with those animals Victorex would allow me to use, I began working on new techniques of training and deploying mounted men. It sounded easy when we were talking about it, but making it work was another matter altogether.

  I already had a central body of men trained to operate on horseback, the nucleus of my new for
ce. Every trainee was an expert at vaulting onto a horse's back, fully equipped. This should have been an advantage, and it was, but only to a clearly delineated degree. Now all I had to do was to untrain these men, completely and absolutely. I had to make them forget everything they had been taught, except how to stay on a horse once they were mounted — and even that, I found, was easier to think about than to achieve.

  The men I had to start retraining were bowmen, archers, light skirmishing troops. J was trying to change them into heavy cavalry. That meant that the light, leather armour they wore was no longer strong enough to do the job they would have to do. So, remove the light, leather armour and replace it with regulation iron or bronze helmet, breastplate and a heavy kilt of iron-studded leather. They were going to be in close combat with an enemy on foot; their most vulnerable parts, therefore, were their legs. So, replace bare legs and light sandals with metal greaves and armoured boots strong enough to withstand a sword thrust or the swing of an axe. I had now increased the weight of each man by about thirty pounds, overall.

  In addition to all that extra weight, I also had to consider that the shields all horsemen then carried were small, flimsy affairs of toughened leather, suitable for deflecting a spent arrow or a thrown stone but of no value in stopping a heartily swung axe or a close-hurled arrow or spear. So, change the light shield for a heavy-duty, utilitarian shield suited specifically to a mounted man rather than a standing legionary.

  Added to all of this, I had also to bear in mind the fact that we were breeding bigger horses. Not simply taller horses, but bigger horses.

  In its simplest terms, the problem I was faced with came to this: I had to take ordinary men, used to performing the ordinary task of mounting a horse in a vaulting spring, load them down with an additional forty to fifty pounds of dead weight and ask them to hoist that up on to horses that were bigger, and wider, than any they had ever ridden before.

  And that was just the start of it. I was also asking them to forget about all the advantages they had learned were associated with being mounted on a fast, high-strung animal who could respond to the sway of a body or the pressure of a knee and swing its rider out of danger immediately. Instead, I was asking each of them to make himself consciously, individually, an immobile brick, an unmanoeuvrable unit in a solid wall of living horseflesh. I was asking each of them to advance, revolve, change direction and generally perform as one inanimate part of a single, solid mechanism. A living unit. Not men, but a wall of horsemen. That meant that, in the last analysis, if Caius Britannicus or Publius Varrus were killed by a well-aimed or lucky arrow, he would be dead and gone, but his horse would continue to function as part of the striking force, held in position by its neighbours on both sides. Many of my men found that a chilling and unnatural thought. All of a sudden, in their eyes, riders had become expendable. The horse had become all-important.

  That, of course, was nonsense. But in the beginning, at least, that is how they saw it, and that is the perception I found myself having to contend with.

  I persevered with it, however, and soon found that there were some of my men who began to show clear leadership capabilities in the new techniques early in the process. Whenever I found one of these, I promoted him on the spot, thereby instituting, although I did not realize it at first, a whole new hierarchy of leaders — cavalry officers.

  Nothing that changes the order of things as radically as we did happens overnight. The process I am describing here in a few words took years to achieve. Life in our little Colony meandered very quietly during those years, for the most part, with only an occasional reminder of the strife in the outside world penetrating to shadow our peace, in the form of reports by Alaric or one of his visiting priests on what was happening abroad. In this way we learned of the death of Valentinian, and of the rebellion of Eugenius, another would-be emperor thrown up from the ranks of the armies to challenge Theodosius. Theodosius, however, had Stilicho — ably assisted by our own Picus Britannicus — to take his part, and Eugenius was crushed by a mighty army assembled in the west.

  Then, two years later, came the news that stunned us all, and, fittingly, we heard of it from Picus, whose letters were now arriving regularly.

  Father, greetings,

  This letter will reach you, I hope, ahead of the news it contains. I have been involved in what has been described by some people as a civil war between two of the strongest, most able men in the Empire, and the information I have to impart to you in this letter will, I have no doubt, amaze and trouble you. Theodosius is dead. He died tonight, less than an hour ago, and his death has plunged the Empire into a schism that will rock the world.

  I have not mentioned this previously in any of my letters, but the meteoric career of Flavius Stilicho has been influenced, constrained and strangely paralleled, although to a far lesser extent in my judgment, by another Flavius

  —

  one Flavius Rufinus, of whom I doubt you have ever heard. Flavius Stilicho and Flavius Rufinus have been rivals since the day young Stilicho made his first step towards prominence. Until then, Flavius Rufinus had enjoyed the full warmth of the Emperor's favour, unchallenged by anyone. Rufinus defined Stilicho as a rival immediately, and has since done everything in his power, short of declaring overt hostility, to thwart his progress. Recently, however, mere months ago, all of that changed. The rivalry between the two flared into open animosity and outright enmity, and Theodosius, astute and deft manipulator that he is, has been using this situation to his own unique advantage. This culminated in an imperial proclamation

  —

  six days ago, as I write this

  —

  that has exploded in the courtly Roman world like a thunderbolt.

  As I am your son, I know you will forgive me, despite your interest and impatience, for playing the orator and deferring my announcement of the content of this proclamation until later. It is more important, I believe, that you first understand the background to the antipathy between the two Flavians.

  The two are diametrically opposed in almost every aspect of their personalities, and there are some who argue that Flavius Rufinus is the better man. l am not an adherent to that belief, nor could I be, even were I to know Stilicho only by repute. Where Stilicho will grasp a new or alien concept almost before it is uttered, and be prepared to act upon it, Rufinus will labour hard and long to define and assimilate it. That exercise completed, however, Rufinus will act every bit as firmly and decisively as Stilicho... he will merely have allowed more time to elapse. Both men are natural leaders of immense ability, and each is idolized by the troops he commands; but where Stilicho is shrewd, deliberate, logical and painstaking in his dealings with everyone, regardless of rank, Rufinus is emotional, precipitate, illogical and impulsive. All other differences fall into insignificance, however, beside the fact that Flavius Stilicho possesses a deep and abiding sense of justice, and an innate humaneness

  —

  attributes that simply do not exist in Flavius Rufinus.

  It was this last, major difference that caused the open rift between the two, and although the details of the spark that caused the conflagration vary widely according to the source, there is enough of commonality among the stories to make eminent and acceptable sense.

  Flavius Stilicho, as you know, is a Vandal by birth, his father a captain of Vandal mercenaries and his mother a Roman lady of impeccable ancestry. Flavius Rufinus is a Gaul, from the ancient territory known as Cisalpine Gaul. Stilicho absorbed his military knowledge from his father, originally, and began his career, for a very brief time, as a military tribune. Rufinus joined the Praetorians as a boy, while Stilicho was still a baby, and worked his way inexorably upward until he became the Praetorian prefect of Illyricum, on the northern Adriatic. The outstanding abilities of both men brought them early to the attention of Theodosius... in the case of Rufinus, long before Theodosius became Emperor.

  The story goes that word reached Rufinus, about a year ago, that one garrison
of mercenaries, ostensibly within his territorial jurisdiction, had mutinied and was holding the town it garrisoned, in open revolt against the Empire. The same story came to the attention of Flavius Stilicho more than a month later, but Stilicho's version

  —

  which I read

  —

  contained significant differences to the version reported by Rufinus. In the dispatch sent to Stilicho, by the personal hand of the district paymaster (this happened, by the way, on the Illyrican borderlands, an area plagued by infestations of bandits) he was informed that a local garrison, seconded from one of Stilicho's own legions, had been on duty without pay for almost two years. On three separate occasions, paymaster's trains, each one more heavily guarded than the one before, had been waylaid and destroyed before they could reach the garrison. The mercenaries had finally announced to the local authorities that, until they were paid in full, they would do no more soldiering, perform no military duties and permit no trade goods to leave the region. Stilicho reacted quickly, ordering the paymaster, no matter what the cost, to set this situation to rights and pay the garrison. Alas, he was too late.

  The garrison, mercenaries as I have said, were Vandals, and the significance was not lost on Flavius Rufinus. He besieged the town, took possession of it and promptly slaughtered the entire garrison and populace, after which he razed the town, as an example, he said, to all potential mutineers and those who would abet them. Apparently unable to let pass the opportunity to humiliate his rival, he himself brought the word to Constantinople several months ago.

  I was present in the audience chamber with Stilicho when Rufinus reported his actions to the Emperor, and it was the first word any of us had heard on the subject. Father, you could not imagine Stilicho's fury. I would never have believed him capable of such headlong, damn-the-consequences intensity of feeling, and I thought I knew him well. He had to be physically restrained from attacking Rufinus, in the presence of the Emperor himself! And even thus restrained, facing Theodosius's temper and his long-standing championship of Flavius Rufinus, and knowing his life to be hanging in the balance, Stilicho told Rufinus he was unfit to live and call himself a soldier, warning him moreover that when Rufinus died, it would be at Flavius Stilicho's hands, no matter who or what the instrument might be.