The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  FOURTEEN

  The test this time was practical; no questions asked. Liam told him to sit down on a stool by a workbench, then went to a metal rack of heavy wooden shelves along one wall, where he selected a two-foot-long rectangular piece of iron a thumb’s length wide on all four sides. He brought it back and dropped it on the bench. “Show me your sword,” he said.

  Varrus unclipped the weapon from his belt and handed it across, and the smith bared the blade and set the sheath aside. He laid the sword down next to the iron bar. “You have one week to turn this, into one of these,” he said, touching the iron bar first and then the sword. “And even I would find that a difficult task to complete in time, though it is possible. You had best get started.” He walked away without another word.

  Varrus looked wryly at young Shamus, who was watching with his mouth hanging open. “Close your mouth before it fills with flies, Shay,” he said, then stood up and crossed to the forge. He dropped the iron bar on the brick apron and reached for the rope that controlled the bellows.

  And that was the start of what he would think of for the remainder of his life as his real life, because from that moment on he barely had time to think about the life he had lived before he arrived in Colcaster and first inhaled the atmosphere of Liam Mcuil’s sooty, smoky smithy. From the moment he picked up that bar of iron, his whole existence became centred upon the art of working with glowing, fire-hot metals and the craft of learning how to use them and make them obey his will. He frequently forgot to eat that week, so deeply immersed in what he was doing that he might not have eaten anything at all had Shanna not brought him food and stood over him, silent and menacing, to make sure he took the time to eat it. But he made his first sword that week, and he was proud of it, despite his awareness of its every flaw. It was the first blade he had ever made entirely with his own hands, beginning with a piece of crude, barely refined iron and transforming it into a serviceable weapon entirely with his own skills, working on it alone and asking for neither help nor guidance.

  Time and again, though, during that first, agonizing week, he took time to remember his friend Rhys Twohands and to thank him silently for all the lessons he had taught a small boy who had been hungry for knowledge of an adult craft. Where the majority of busy men would quickly have lost patience and shooed the child away, Twohands had welcomed young Quintus and praised his curiosity, encouraging the boy to seek out and discover the truth in metal. And so young Quintus Varrus had learned to handle and shape hot, softened metal while most other boys his age were playing at being soldiers. He was not jealous of their play, for he had learned early, and with finality, that he could never be a soldier, and so had set himself to mastering those things he could control. And as a child, watching his hero Rhys Twohands at the forge, he had learned that iron, the hardest metal known, could be controlled, could be shaped into things of worth and enduring beauty by men who were sufficiently strong-willed and determined to master its secrets.

  On the day ordained for the sword to be finished, there was a full finger’s depth of snow on the ground and the wind was bitterly cold. Familiar people on the streets were rendered unrecognizable, their shapes and features hidden under mountains of protective clothing. Liam was waiting outside the smithy when Varrus arrived, and the two men exchanged nods before Varrus pushed open the doors and hung his heavy cloak and scarf from a wooden peg.

  He went directly to the hearth and stirred up the banked embers from the previous night, raking them thoroughly before blowing them into life again with a hand bellows and adding fresh fuel. Only when the coals were glowing healthily again did he cross to the quenching trough and pick up the weapon that lay on the ledge beside it. It had a hilt of sorts, no more than two simple shaped blocks of wood strapped on either side of the tang, since it was the blade’s quality that was being judged, not a sword’s appearance. He hefted the piece and swung it sharply, in a truncated chop, then flipped it lengthwise and extended it, hilt first, to his adjudicator, who took it and walked away to scrutinize it in the light from the open doors.

  Once again Varrus was aware of Shamus lurking in the shadows at the rear of the smithy, but he paid the young smith no attention as he walked to the edge of the forge and leaned against the brickwork, fighting to keep his face expressionless while he waited for Liam’s judgment. The younger man had been a constant presence, hovering at the edges of Varrus’s vision ever since he had started working on the sword. To the young Eirishman’s credit, he had kept himself well out of the way and had taken care not to interfere or interrupt. In fact he had barely spoken a word to Varrus in all that time, and Quintus had soon grown used to having his silent presence nearby.

  At first, he had suspected that Shamus might be resentful of him, having taken umbrage at the way Varrus was welcomed by his uncle’s family, but he quickly came to see that was untrue, that what he had taken to be resentment was nothing more than wonderment. The young smith, he realized eventually, was simply in awe of him, for reasons Varrus could not begin to fathom.

  A flicker of movement snapped him out of his reverie, and he saw that Liam was coming back to him, gazing down at the sword, and when he arrived he looked up and met Varrus’s eye, nodding. “Good,” he said. “No more doubting questions from me. It’s not perfect, but you know that already. There’s a few small bits and bumps, and the finish could be smoother in places, but I know older, more experienced men than you—working smiths, some of them—who could not have done this as well as you have managed to, in the short time I gave you. Here, hold this.”

  He handed the sword back and reached beneath his arm to pull a length of red cloth from a pocket inside his tunic. He spread the cloth on the bricks beside Varrus. “I didn’t expect you to finish. I was prepared to judge you on the progress you had managed to make in the time you had.” He reached out and wiggled his fingers, and Varrus passed the sword back to him, then watched as he wrapped it neatly and with great care in the folds of the cloth. “There,” he said, and tucked the red-wrapped package beneath his arm. “Now come with me.”

  “Where to?”

  “You’ll see when we get there.” He turned then to his nephew. “Shamus, Quintus and I are going out, on a matter of business. I want you to stay here and finish what you have to do today—it’s not much, so you should be finished easily by the middle of the afternoon—then bank the fire really well and close up. You can take the remainder of the day off. And tell Shanna, if you will, that we’ll see you all at dinner.”

  It looked colder than ever outside, especially when seen from the warmth and comfort of the smithy, but both men were wearing trousers—the heavy woollen braccae worn by the legions serving in cold climates—and thick, knitted woollen socks under heavy boots, and they took the time to wrap themselves up warmly, arranging their cloaks and scarves comfortably to muffle them before they ventured out into the snow and the biting wind.

  As for where they were going, it turned out to resemble a victory tour of Liam’s best customers. In each case, Liam behaved precisely the same way, introducing Varrus as his new assistant and producing the new sword, telling the tale of its creation out of a single bar of iron in a matter of mere days, and generally giving each customer the impression that their affairs would be in good hands whenever Quintus Varrus worked on their behalf. From its beginnings in the premises of the smallest customer, a well-fed barrel maker who ordered all his iron hoops from Liam, the presentation that day grew into a ritual and then matured into a ceremony as the smith grew more familiar with which words worked best and generated the most goodwill, and Varrus played to perfection the part of the obliging apprentice.

  The last call of the afternoon was the most important and, for Varrus, the most significant, for it led to something more defining and more lasting than either he or Liam could have anticipated. He came close to missing it completely, though, for towards late afternoon they turned a corner and Varrus found himself directly in front of the main entrance to the fort tha
t housed the Camulodunum garrison. The sight of the guarded gates stopped him dead in his tracks and he felt his throat close up with panic. Then Liam stopped, too. He looked back at Varrus in surprise, then looked towards the gates.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve turned pale.”

  No, Varrus thought. I need not run. I am Fingael Mcuil and I no longer have golden hair. And no one knows me.

  He smiled and shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong. I remembered something I meant to do today, that’s all. It’s nothing important. I’ll do it tomorrow. Who do we have to see here?”

  “A mad bastard called Ajax. Ignatius Ajax. A wild man. You’ll like him.” Liam walked up to the decanus in charge of the guard and told him who he was and that he was there to visit the garrison’s master-at-arms. Without a word, a legionary ushered them into Ajax’s cubiculum, waved them towards a pair of chairs fronting a writing table that was covered with weighted-down piles of documents, and left them there.

  The armourer’s office was comfortably furnished but not excessively so, with the handsome, finely made table taking up much of the floor space. A pair of sloping iron racks against the wall behind the chair held ten candles apiece, and the two chairs that Quintus and Liam now occupied were placed directly in front of the desk, with a small table between them that held a broad, circular lamp with multiple wicks. None of the lights were burning now, because the office was bright with sunlight that spilled in through the high windows in the room’s eastern and southern walls.

  It was what hung on the walls in the crosshatched afternoon light that took Varrus’s breath away, because it was clear at a glance that the armourer collected swords. Varrus had never seen so many of them in a single room. They were hung in definite patterns, vertically and horizontally and in circular arrangements, on every available wall surface. From what Varrus could see, the collection comprised every type of sword, from old, battered legionary short swords that demonstrated the uniformity of most Roman weapons, of different ages but identical in detail, mass-produced for more than a millennium by slaves in state factories to feed the insatiable need of the empire’s legions, to blades that showed individuality and even personality. There were few of the early Roman legionary swords, he noted, for those had all been produced in bulk and were largely unremarkable. But he saw many different versions of the cavalry sword known as the spatha, a stabbing weapon with a thirty-inch blade. Varrus had never used a spatha, even in training, because Rhys Twohands had distrusted the reliability of the long blade. He was convinced, from some experience in his life with the legions, that a spatha would bend under extreme pressure.

  The majority of the swords in this collection were swords like Varrus’s own, the Hispanic gladius. They varied in shape and length and texture, and even in weight and balance, rarely radically but unmistakably, and the fact of so many of them being here in this one place, each of them carefully hung outside and in front of its sheath, told Varrus that their collector was a man of infinite patience and exhaustive knowledge of the art of making blades.

  One particular example drew his attention, seeming to shine like silver where the afternoon light touched it. It hung low on the wall by the door, and he stood up and went closer to it. As he crouched to examine it, the door swung open and a man strode in. He stopped abruptly and glared down at Varrus with a thunderous frown.

  “What—?” he demanded. “Who in Hades are you? And what are you doing scuttling around on my floor?”

  “He’s with me, Ajax,” Liam said hurriedly, rising to his feet. “A cousin from Eire. I brought him here for you to meet him.”

  Ajax made no move to acknowledge the smith, and Varrus gazed up at him, frozen. “You’d better teach him some manners, then, hadn’t you?” He was speaking to Liam, but he kept his eyes on Varrus. “Or don’t you believe in decorum or deportment?”

  “You’re a collector,” Varrus said.

  “That’s observant of you,” the armourer said back. “Should I be impressed? Stand up and look at me!”

  Varrus rose slowly to his feet. “I’m an admirer.”

  “Are you, by all the gods at once? An admirer of what, boy? Fine women, other pretty boys, or men in armour?”

  “An admirer of fine blades.”

  Ajax hesitated, the very briefest of pauses, before stabbing a finger sideways at Liam. “Sit down,” he said, then looked back at Varrus. “You, too. I’m going to go out and tell myself this didn’t happen. When I come back, I want to find two supplicants here, waiting to enlist my support for something they want to do.”

  As the door closed behind the armourer, Liam shook his head ruefully. “You startled him. Never a good thing to do with soldiers. I told you he was a mad bastard, did I not?”

  “You did. But you also said I would like him.”

  “You will. I promise.”

  FIFTEEN

  The two smiths did not have long to wait before the door swung open again and Ignatius Ajax stopped on the threshold, looking from one to the other of the two men. “Liam,” he said cordially, without a glimmer of acknowledgment that he had seen them moments earlier. “What brings you here on such a bitter day?”

  He reached up and removed his ornate parade helmet, a magnificent thing with a high, gilded crown beneath a shoulder-wide centurion’s crest of soft-looking rich brown horsehair, and set it carefully down on the work table. He had not been wearing it when he first entered.

  Liam stood up and held out his hand, and they greeted each other and exchanged pleasantries, but Varrus paid little attention to what was being said. He was too busy looking critically at Ajax this time, now that he had the opportunity to examine him.

  The man was imposing, even intimidating, in his size and bulk, an impression heightened by the solid, heavy substance of his ornately gilded parade armour with its exaggerated, segmented shoulder plates and the profusion of medallions and awards that covered his breastplate and proclaimed his prowess and distinction in the legionary hierarchy. Ignatius Ajax, in the splendour of his brown and gold regalia, looked every man’s vision of the perfectly endowed, upper-echelon legionary centurion. His arms and legs were strong and solid, the layered muscles in them visible each time he moved. His hair was cut in a military crop, and his face was broad and impassive, making him appear resolute, with a square, stubborn-looking jaw and eyes that were wide and intelligent. He wore the off-white woollen tunic of the Sixth Legion, and it was hemmed to two fingers’ width above his knees. On his feet he wore elaborately sandalled, highly polished boots over heavy knitted socks that were the same colour as his tunic and were folded down below his knees. His loins were guarded by an elaborate baltea, the traditional armoured kirtle of metal-embellished straps suspended from the waist belt. Embossed leather braces on his forearms and matching greaves on his legs completed the picture.

  “You look very official for a midweek afternoon,” Liam said, and Ajax looked down at himself.

  “Aye. Once every sixth week these days. Full parade and inspection.”

  “Is that new? I’ve never been aware of midweek inspections before.”

  “Sub-legate’s orders. Not everyone likes it, but I, for one, think it’s a good thing. We’ve been at peace for too long and things have grown too lax around here. Everyone is growing more and more sloppy and careless, from month to month. Not just the grunts—some of the officers are almost as bad as the malcontents. That affects discipline and morale. So now there’s a Legate’s Parade every six weeks, and may the gods have mercy on anyone who doesn’t measure up to expectations.”

  “What kind of expectations?”

  Ajax grinned at him. “Any kind we decide to adopt at the time,” he said. “Cleanliness, to start with—both personal and in weaponry and equipment. And general discipline, concentrating on obedience to orders and instructions, reaction times, visible attitudes to authority and responsibilities. There are no limits.”

  “That sounds…harsh,” Liam said.

  “Aye, you might ca
ll it that, I suppose. Some bleeding hearts do. But they’re the kind of idiots who have never seen a wild man running at them waving a sword or an axe. You stop thinking that kind of shit very quickly once you realize your life depends on how well the men around you respond under unexpected attack. When the shit starts flying around your head, you either react instantly and instinctively, or you die. So if your aim is to run a successful army—and ask yourself why would anyone want to run an unsuccessful one—you had better keep your standards high all the time, and your expectations higher.” He turned his head slightly to include Varrus in his summation. “So we dress up in our finest finery and preen ourselves in public, making great show of punishing sloth, sloppiness, shoddiness, and lack of unit pride. Our aim with these new inspection parades is to re-establish proper values. All in the name of building up morale, which is really what an army needs in order to function well.” He broke off and looked around him. “I think it’s time now for a cup of wine.”

  He went to the corner and opened a small wooden cupboard mounted at waist level on the wall. He spoke over his shoulder as he reached inside. “We haven’t even started yet. At the next parade, we’ll announce a four-week schedule, and within the year we’ll hold these things every second week.” He came back to the table clutching three horn cups in the fingers of his left hand and a long-necked ewer in the other. “And by that time we’ll be having inter-unit contests to tie in with the events, involving the presentation of awards.” He set down his burden carefully on the edge of the table.

  “Well,” he said, “we’re here, so let’s drink. Parading is thirsty work. Which means you’ll get no sympathy from me if you think it’s piss. So drink with me, and then you can show me what you brought, Liam—apart from your young friend here.”

  They raised their cups and drank, and then Liam laid the wrapped sword silently on the table, pushing it gently in Ajax’s direction with his fingertips. The armourer put down his cup and picked up the bundle, hefting it in his hand before unwrapping the sword and raising it to where he could examine it closely. He turned it over several times, tilting it one way and then another, brushing his fingers lightly over the blade’s surface all the while. Then he pushed his chair back from the table, laid the weapon across his knee, and bent forward at the waist, pushing down hard on each end of it. The blade yielded visibly, then snapped back with a hum when he removed his hand from the end of the blade. Varrus was watching him closely, but Ajax’s expression was unreadable as he raised the blade back close to his face again, then pursed his lips and tested the cutting edge with his thumb.