by Whyte, Jack
"Did you leave them behind?"
He glanced at me sharply. "Our men? No, we did not. We don't do that. We rode clear of the area and waited until the storm broke and the raiders moved on, the following day. Then we went back and buried our two men, and after that we followed the raiding party at a distance until they emerged from the forest. As soon as they were out in the open where we could fight to our own advantage as cavalry, we attacked and destroyed them."
"But you said they outnumbered you five to one."
"Aye, but one cavalryman is more than equal to five men on foot, unless they're Roman infantry."
"How many of them were there?"
He wrinkled his nose. "Close to two hundred, perhaps a score or so more."
"And you were forty? Two squadrons?"
"No, only one squadron, a full turma. There was myself, the squadron commander and his two decurions, and forty troopers, one of whom was your father—minus the two killed in the first encounter. That's why we were drinking the night your father had his nose broken. We were bidding farewell to our dead comrades."
"Then why were you fighting one another? Would your two dead comrades have enjoyed that?"
The King's eyes went wide with surprise and then he smiled, shaking his head. "Aye, they would, could they have seen it. But we weren't fighting among ourselves, Clothar. There were other soldiers there that night, from an infantry detachment. They thought we were being too noisy and we thought they were being insulting. One word led to another, and eventually someone swung a fist or threw a drink, and it was all of us against all of them. Someone hit me with something—probably a pitcher or a table bowl—and I went down and your father jumped across to protect me, straddling me and fighting off all comers until I could regain my senses. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough and someone got him, too."
"Why didn't you straighten his nose properly?"
"We couldn't. We could barely see it, let alone straighten it. By the time we started, his face had swollen up like a cow's udder. His eyes were puffed into slits and turning black already and his cheeks looked as though he had apples stuffed in them. Even without all the blood, he was a disastrous sight. It took him more than two weeks to look normal again. Besides, his nose looked better afterwards, bent as it was. It simply added character to his face. He'd been almost too pretty before that, a boy wearing soldier's clothing. The broken nose made him look more like a man and . . . dangerous. That was how your mother described him to her sister when she first met him. She said he looked dangerous. Evidently not sufficiently dangerous, however, to frighten her."
"Had you and he not been friends before then?"
"No. I barely knew him before that night. He had been with us for less than a year—a recruit, and an outsider, at that. Most of the men in my command at that time were my own—my father's men, I mean, from here in Genava—and we had been together from the start. We were part of a cavalry division based on the Rhine River, which is too heavily forested to be good cavalry country at the best of times. It was a mobile force, never less than four hundred strong, never more than five hundred, and it was constantly being split and reformed, elements distributed as needed at any time among the serving legions in the region. I was one of five senior commanders, all of us under the overall command of the legate Suetonius Marcellus, who we used to say must have been born astride a horse. He was a fine man—killed in a silly little skirmish a few years after that, shot out of his saddle by an arrow that deflected up off his cuirass, went between the guard flaps of his helmet and caught him under the chin. Germanus gave me the division after that, but while Suetonius was alive he and I worked well together, which means he trusted me well enough not to interfere in the way I ran my own command. I had three squadrons of forty, and a full hundred of those were Genavans from Benwick. I was not yet their King at the time, but I was my father's firstborn son and therefore his heir, and that meant that my men were mine ahead of Rome's, so be it that we did as Rome required of us. Suetonius respected that and never tried to split us up.
"Your father was the youngest of our officer trainees. And he was also the best looking, which might have been unfortunate. In soldiering, a comely face can be a disadvantage. Some of my veterans thought that anyone who looked so young and pretty could not possibly be taken seriously. Fortunately for him, however, he was a fine horseman, a natural rider even among our Franks, who consider themselves the Empire's best. That saved him much grief, because it won him the respect his physical appearance might otherwise have cost him, and over the months since he had joined us a few of my younger officers had grown to like him and befriended him.
"By the time the fight was over that night, he was one of us. Things began to change between him and me. I had been impressed by the way he had fought above me, straddling me while I was down—it's difficult not to like someone who will fight and fall for you—and so I began paying more attention to him.
"He was six years younger than I was, seventeen to my twenty- three, a man in years and yet not fully grown, but big and strong, with every sign of becoming formidable. And as I watched him, I recognized him as a natural leader. The men assigned to him behaved well for him, always, and he was never at a loss in the training exercises we set for him. According to all the reports I had heard, read and evaluated, Childebertus was resourceful, intelligent, adaptable and above all flexible in his thinking. Without exception, all his supervisors had the same thing to say about him, although their words may have varied: "The more difficult the problem we set him, whether in logistics, tactics or strategy, the more easily he seems to solve it."
Somewhere beyond the heavy shutters a cock crowed and the sound startled both of us, bringing the King's head up sharply. He crossed quickly to the window, where he opened both sets of shutters and peered out and upwards, into the darkness, waiting for the sound to be repeated. Some time later, when he was satisfied that it would not be, he secured the shutters again and came back to the fire.
"Sky's clear. Clear enough to confuse that stupid bird into thinking it was dawn. For a moment there I thought we had lost the entire night and we still have much to talk about. Are you tired?"
"No! No, Father, not at all. I'm wide-awake."
He squinted sideways at me, pursing his lips, and then evidently decided I was being truthful. "Good. You can sleep late tomorrow. I'll tell Chulderic." He busied himself replenishing the fire, then set the poker among the embers to heat again. I could tell from the way he kept his eyes on his task that he was thinking deeply about what he would say next, but I dared to interrupt him anyway.
"Father?"
"What?"
"Will you tell me about how my father died?"
He was bent over the brazier, keeping his eyes on the fire, and he twisted the iron poker in its bed before straightening up. "No, because Chulderic can do that much better than I could, so you should hear that tale from him. He was there at the time, and he had been your father's loyal man for years. I'll tell him you need to know what happened, and he'll tell it to you as he saw it." He read the expression on my face accurately. "Don't fret yourself, I'll make sure he wastes no time before telling you. But in the meantime, you and I have something else to talk about."
I gazed at him, wondering what he meant.
"Germanus," he said, as though that should have been obvious to me. "We need to talk about Germanus, you and I. He will be here within the month. I told you that. What I did not tell you is why that is important, for you." He cleared his throat loudly and spat into the brazier, then wiped his lips with the sleeve of his tunic before he continued. "He is to be your teacher."
I heard the words, but they went winging over my head like passing geese, observed but insignificant, their meaning lacking any import to me. And then I heard them again, this time in my mind. He is to be your teacher. I was aware of the King's watching me closely, and I shifted nervously in my chair, wriggling in discomfort as though I could avoid the awareness that was growing in m
e. He is to be your teacher.
"Wha— What do you mean, Father?"
"Simply what I said. Germanus will be your teacher from now on. When he returns to his home in Auxerre, you will go with him."
"But . . . but this is where I live."
"Aye, for now, and perhaps sometime again in the future, but for the next few years you will be living and studying with Germanus. The years between ten and sixteen are the most important of your life, and Germanus is the finest teacher you could have in living them."
"But he's a bishop . . . a holy man . . ."
"Aye, he is, but he is also a famed and powerful lawyer and a victorious and unconquered battle commander—a soldier's soldier. He has always been a teacher, too, no matter what his calling was at any time, and that has not changed. In fact it is more true than ever. Since he became a bishop, Germanus has established a school for boys in Auxerre, and he tells me he plans to create many others. You will be one of the first students in that school, and it will be the making of you."
"I don't want to go."
My stepfather shrugged his broad shoulders. "That is unfortunate, Clothar, but you will change your mind once you are there and settled, for you are going, whether you wish it or not. This is not a passing whim of mine. It has always been intended, decided upon many years ago, soon after the death of your parents, when Germanus and I met to talk about your future. We decided then that since I was married and Germanus had no wife to care for you, you would spend your childhood here under my protection, living a normal boy's life among children your own age. Later, when you were grown enough to be aware of who and what you are, your education would pass into the care of Germanus, who would be responsible for teaching you all the things you would need to know—the things I could never teach you, since they are unknown to me: logic and debate; Latin and other languages; history, both civil and military; theology and the study of religion and a whole host of other things I could not even begin to guess at. But you'll also continue your existing studies there, your riding and military training, weapons craft and warfare, strategy and tactics. Bear in mind, Germanus was a legate; you could have no finer teacher in such things.
"When you came here to my quarters yesterday, in the afternoon, I was reading a letter. Do you remember that?" I nodded. "Well, that letter was from Germanus and it concerned this very matter. That is the real reason for his visit."
I knew, listening to the finality in his tone, that there was no hope of a reprieve from this decree, and my initial reaction was one of sadness at the thought of leaving this place that had been my home for most of my life—for all of it that I could remember. But I found, to my surprise, that I was not nearly as dejected as I might have expected to be as recently as the previous day, because I had learned this night from King Ban that I was the son of a heroic warrior called Childebertus, who had been befriended by a king and by an imperial legate, and that the same legate would now become my teacher, merely because I was the orphan son of his friend. There was a promise of adventure there, and of fulfillment. Besides I had always known that at some point I would have to leave home to continue my military training, earning my manhood in the service of some other leader. All of my older brothers had already done so and were now scattered among the territories of King Ban's allies. Gunthar had only recently returned home, a fully grown man and warrior, after four years spent in the service of Merovech, another Frankish king far to the northwest.
I suddenly became aware that King Ban was staring at me, obviously waiting for me to say something, and I realized that he must have asked me a question that I had not heard. I felt my face grow red.
"Forgive me, Sire, I didn't hear what you asked me. I was dreaming."
"I asked you if there was anything else you wanted to ask me, about all of this."
I thought about that for a few moments, then shook my head. "No, Sire. I can't think of anything."
"Excellent!" He rose to his feet, stretching up onto tiptoe and raising his arms high above his head. "Perhaps now we can get some sleep before the dawn breaks. Come, bed for both of us, for an hour at least."
CHULDERIC
1
Even though I had gone to sleep filled with excitement and wonder mere hours earlier and had slept right through until mid-morning, I awoke feeling angry, confused and resentful, my mind reeling with half-remembered statements and hazy, maddeningly elusive images of some of the things King Ban had described to me. My old nurse, Ludda, had been waiting for me to wake up—the Lady Vivienne had told her of my late night and of the King's decision that I should be allowed to sleep late—and as soon as she heard me moving about she brought me a breakfast of ground oats, savory seeds and crushed nuts, all roasted dry and bound together with honey from the King's beehives.
I was in no mood to eat, however—nor, for that matter, to be courteous or civil—and so I finished dressing and stormed out without acknowledging either her or the food she had prepared for me. I had a momentary twinge of guilt over my ill manners as I ran down the stairs from my quarters, but I thrust it aside easily, consoling myself with the thought that I had every right to be self-concerned today, since no one else appeared to have been truly concerned for me prior to the day before. Had anyone really cared about my welfare, I told myself, they would have told me the truth about myself much earlier and not left me to go blithely on my way, filled with foolish thoughts of belonging here.
By the time I reached the outer yard, having scowled my displeasure at everyone I met between my sleeping chamber and there, I had worked myself into a truly unpleasant frame of mind filled with self-pity, bafflement, hurt feelings and shapeless, threatening fears—all of them completely without justification. I reached the gates to the outer bastion, but then I broke into a run and swung directly to my left to head towards the stables, although I had no idea what I might do there, and as I reached the dark entryway, I almost ran full tilt into a figure emerging from the darkness.
It was Clodio, the strange but loyal man who had been Ban's lifelong friend and had consistently refused all advancement except his current and permanent post as Commander of the Castle Guard. He reached out and grasped me by the right shoulder, digging his fingers in hard and bringing me up short almost in mid-step.
"Ah, there you are! I've been looking for you. Where are you running to, so fast? Is someone chasing you?"
He sounded quite pleasant and not at all put out by our near collision, but I was in no frame of mind to tolerate pleasantness, especially from one of the group who had conspired to keep me in ignorance of my real identity. I pulled myself loose from his grasp and thrust his arm away from me.
"Leave me alone. And stand out of my way."
Clodio's head jerked in shock and his eyebrows rose high on his forehead. "Stand out of your way?" His face quirked in what almost became a smile. "Since when did you start ordering your father's officers around?"
"Since I found out he's not my father and he has been deceiving me—and you're no better than he is, because you knew, too. My father was a real king, and you know it, and I'm his son. So stand aside and let me pass."
I knew that what I had said went beyond insolence and far beyond ingratitude to King Ban, but even as I spoke the words I took a malicious satisfaction in mouthing such things. Clodio, however, merely stood looking at me, his eyes narrowed in concentration, and then, after what seemed like a long time to me, he nodded, once, abruptly.
"I heard you. But are you really sure you want me to step aside?"
"Yes, I—" But he had already held up a warning palm.
"Before you answer, consider this, my young kingling. If I step aside, at your command, it will only be to give myself purchase to swing my boot properly at your kingly little arse as you pass by me, and I'll kick it so far up towards your shoulders that you'll be a hunchback for the rest of your life . . . Now, I'll ask you again. Are you sure you want me to step aside?"
There was not a trace of humor in his eyes or in hi
s voice, and so I knew I had to draw his fangs. I pulled myself up to my full height and put all the disdain I could muster into my tone.
"You will stand aside, and you will not dare to lay hands on me. I am the son—the firstborn son—of a king."
Clodio turned his back on me, his hands on his hips, and slowly completed a full turn, his head tilted back to look at the sky and his feet taking high but tiny steps, almost marching in place but turning very slowly and incrementally until he faced me again, and as he did so I heard him blow air loudly and rhythmically from his lips, in time with his footsteps. As he came back face to face with me, however, he grasped my tunic in both hands, on either side of my chest, and hoisted me effortlessly into the air, to where he could look directly at me, eye to eye, from a distance of less than a handspan, and when he spoke next, even though he spoke very quietly, I felt the flutter of his breath against my face.
"You are the orphaned son of a dead and landless king who was once a fine man and much loved by everyone who knew him. But he is gone now, long since dead, and the lands he ruled are hundreds of miles from here, governed now by the man who killed him and usurped his title and his holdings. You are still a boy—a mere child, ten years old—and you have nothing . . . no prospects, no wealth, no hopes at all, other than those for which you are beholden to King Ban. Do you hear what I am saying, boy? I knew your father, and I was proud to know him. I knew your mother, too, although no more than by sight, but she was the most beautiful lady I ever saw, more beautiful even than her sister, the Lady Vivienne." He shook me gently, tilting me from side to side and never taking his eyes off me. "I thought to have known you now, for years, but what I'm hearing spilling from your lips today is unlike anything I would ever have believed you capable of saying."
