by Whyte, Jack
"You're right," I said belatedly. "Once that bridge is up, there's no way across. The place is impregnable."
"Aye. So what will you do if your brother Gunthar's seized it?"
"He is my cousin, not my brother."
"Cousin, brother, makes no difference to my question. What if he has taken the place?"
"He hasn't." I pointed to where a military standard was visible on the highest peak of the battlements above the main gate. "That's still King Ban's standard."
He squinted at it. "How can you tell? It's a length of soaked, bedraggled fabric beneath a Roman eagle standard on a staff. That's all I can see, through this rain. It could be anyone's."
"No, because it's pale blue and gold. Even wet and dirty, those colors are recognizable. And they're Ban's colors. He was always most particular about visible insignia, and he issued personal colors to each of his four sons with much ceremony as they attained manhood. Gunthar's is pale green with a wide yellow border; Samson's is two broad lateral bars, scarlet and white; Theuderic's is bright yellow with a broad diagonal band of black, from right to left, and Brach's is blue and white vertical stripes. Had Gunthar moved to usurp the kingship, his green-and-yellow banner would be hanging up there now."
"Perhaps he forgot to change it. Could he do that, forget such a thing?"
I glanced at him, wondering if he was being facetious, but then I shrugged. "Gunthar is not the kind of man who forgets details of that kind. Appearances are everything to him, which is part of his particular . . . charm. You'll understand when you meet him. What Gunthar chooses to show you and what you actually see are seldom the same thing." I turned again to look at the rain-drenched blue- and-gold standard on the walls and shook my head, this time more decisively. "No, had Gunthar taken over already, he would want everyone to know it—immediately—and one of the most obvious ways to achieve that would be to hoist his standard, his colors, above his fortress for all to see."
"He sounds like a wonderful fellow," my companion drawled. "But speaking of things that are there for all to see, there's not much to see here at all, is there? Were it not for that cluster of guards above the main gate there, I would have thought this place was deserted."
I looked again, at the walls this time rather than at the bridge. There were some guards above the main gate, as he had said, but there was no one else in sight, and the so-called guards had not yet seen us, although we had been there long enough to examine their new defenses in detail. I felt a kick of sudden misgivings stir in my gut and sat straighter in the saddle, taking up the slack in my reins.
"You're right. They're too few, and negligent. They have not even looked in this direction since we arrived. We had better get down there." I kicked my horse into motion and heard, rather than saw, Ursus's mount fall into line behind me, and all the way from there to the final approach to the bridge I kept my eyes fastened on the men above the main gates.
They finally noticed us when less than sixty paces separated us from the end of the bridge, and then there was a startled flurry of movement, accompanied by a high-pitched challenge. I ignored it completely and kept moving, headed for the bridge deck, and the challenge was repeated. I called to Ursus to follow me and put my horse to the gallop, covering the intervening space in what seemed like a mere instant before I was listening to the thundering of our hooves on the wooden deck. A solitary arrow zipped past me, missing me by several paces before it disappeared in the muddy bottom of the ditch. As soon as we were across the bridge and safe in the shadow of the castle walls, concealed from further Fire by the curtain wall in front of us and the overhang of the battlements on our left, I pulled my horse to a halt and we waited for the arrival of the defenders of the castle. Moments later we heard the main gates behind the curtain wall creak open and then came a rush of feet as the "guard" came running to confront us.
They spilled around the edge of the curtain wall and swept back towards us, surrounding us and brandishing swords and spears, all of them shouting at once so that no word of what they were saying could be heard. I sat motionless, my weapons clearly sheathed and untouched, my arms folded across my chest. Ursus, I knew, was doing the same, watching me sidelong and following my lead in everything.
I knew we were in very real danger, particularly since it now appeared that there was no one really in charge here. Any one of these people might decide at any moment to end this situation and make a hero of himself by cutting us down to annul the insult we had offered them by penetrating their defenses so easily. I did not dare to move, for fear of provoking a murderous response. But then came a bellowing roar from another voice behind the curtain wall, and around the corner lurched a man I recognized, albeit with great difficulty and only after scrutinizing him for some time.
It was my old childhood friend Clodio, who, for as long as I could remember, had been in charge of the standing guard at the castle gates. Ever an outwardly bad-tempered, loudmouthed blusterer, Clodio had always been more bark than bite, and he had taken a liking to me when I was a mere toddler staggering about the courtyard with a bare bottom. Throughout my childhood he had treated me with respect and a special consideration due, I now knew, to the fact that he was one of the few who knew the secret of my true parentage. King Ban and he had been boyhood friends and comrades in arms for many years, saving each other's lives on several occasions, and in consequence he had always enjoyed the King's special favour in times of peace, although, for some reason no one had ever defined or even divined, he had steadfastly refused to accept advancement beyond what he himself had decided was his natural station. Clodio, if ever I met one, was a man who had always been content and well pleased with his life, confident in himself and in the friendship, loyalty and high regard of his king. It once amused me to think of the King as being loyal to Clodio, but it was simple truth, and Clodio's loyalty to the King was so much a part of him that no one would ever have seriously thought to question it.
Some gross misfortune had befallen him since I had last seen him, however, for his entire body was twisted upon itself, gnarled and malformed. Whatever injuries he had sustained, they had left him incapable of walking as other men walked. Both legs were misshapen, cruelly skewed, his right hand was clawed, useless, at his breast, and he propelled himself in a lurching, ungainly stagger, dragging his left leg. His mouth was as loud and profane as it had ever been, however, for as he drew near he berated everyone in sight, and his status evidently remained secure enough that they paid heed to him and drew back slightly to allow him to approach us.
He peered up at Ursus, selecting him over me as the elder, bearded man. "Down, whoreson," he snarled. "Off that horse now or you die. Who in—?"
"Shame, Clodio," I said, interrupting his tirade. "Is that the way guests are welcomed to Benwick nowadays?"
He stopped dead, keeping his eyes on Ursus and refusing to look at me, but then he answered me in a snarling voice I had never heard him use before. "Aye, these days, it is." He turned slowly then to glower up at me. "Who are you, that you know my name and speak to me direct? I don't know you."
"Yes you do, Clodio. You've told me many tales and shared your rations with me more than once, when I was small. It's me, Clothar."
"Clothar?" He stiffened and blinked his eyes several times, as though attempting to adjust to some profound revelation. "Clothar? But—How come you here? You should be in the north somewhere, with Germanus."
"I was, but my time there is done now and they sent me home, bearing letters from Germanus to King Ban." I swung down from my horse and walked to where he stood, and no one moved to hinder me. When I reached him he stretched out his left hand and touched my face, peering at me in that strange way common to people who see things poorly at a distance.
"Clothar. It is you. You've become a man. I never thought to see that, you've been gone so long."
I smiled at him. "I've been trying to become one, Clodio, learning to be a soldier, among other things. But more important, old friend, what happened to y
ou?"
He glanced down at himself, and I noticed that he looked first at the clawed right hand that was drawn up beside his right breast. "Ah," he said, as if noticing it for the first time. "This." He looked back at me then, gazing straight into my eyes. "Runaway wagon. Five years ago. I jumped off, but one foot was tangled in the reins, so I got dragged. Thrown around, run over by the wheel a few times. It was downhill. Steep grade. Killed two horses."
The expression "Well, at least you're alive" was on the lip of my tongue, but I managed to bite it back because it was very obvious that Clodio was not altogether pleased with that situation. I nodded my head instead. "Forgive me, Clodio, I did not know."
"Forgive? Hah! How could you know? You weren't here, were you?" He suddenly became aware that we were at the center of a ring of curious onlookers and he rounded on them, cursing them for a lazy batch of layabouts and then telling them my name, pretending as always that I was the King's own youngest son and making sure they knew exactly who they had been poised to attack and kill when he arrived. He conveniently forgot, in doing so, that he himself had been prepared to flay the skin from us before I spoke to him, but that was typical of the Clodio I remembered so fondly. The men he was haranguing stared at me in something approaching awe, and I acknowledged them with a courteous nod before Clodio sent them scuttling back to their duties.
We watched them until the last of them had rounded the edge of the curtain wall, and as soon as we were alone, I introduced Clodio to Ursus. The two men nodded to each other cautiously, neither one quite prepared yet to accept the other without suspicion.
"Where is everyone, Clodio, and why is the guard so lax?"
He glowered. "What do you mean?"
I thrust up my hand to cut his protestations short before they could be uttered. "Come, man, look at where we are. We're across the bridge, Clodio, on this side—the wrong side. We came across at the gallop, two of us, unopposed. We might as easily have been half a score. Had we been enemies, we could have cut the ropes and destroyed or damaged the windlasses, making the bridge unraisable before anyone reached us. There were guards up there, above the gate, but they were not even looking out over the battlements. I don't know what they were doing, but they were not keeping watch. We sat on the brow of the hill over there, less than two hundred paces away, for nigh on a quarter hour in broad daylight and no one even glanced in our direction."
"But—"
"No, no buts, my friend. There's no excuse for dereliction of duty. Who is in command here?"
Clodio sniffed, a loud, long, disdainful snort. "I am, I suppose, so I'm the one you'll have to hang or flog, if you think that's called for. Lord Gunthar rode out yesterday to bring home your mother, the Lady Vivienne, from Vervenna. She has a young friend there . . . well, the young wife of an old friend, in truth. Lord Ingomer. He was newly wed a year ago to a young wife, Lady Anne. She was brought to childbed there a sevennight ago. Lady Vivienne went there before that to assist with the birthing, so she has been gone for ten days now, since the day after the King rode out to the west against the Alamanni. Lord Brach accompanied his mother with a score of men."
Lord Ingomer, our closest neighbor, had always been one of Ban's staunchest allies and supporters, and Vervenna was the name he had given to his lands, which bordered on Ban's own. Ingomer's house, a small, heavily fortified castle, was no more than five miles from where we stood. Nevertheless I found myself frowning.
"Why would Gunthar ride out to bring my mother home when she already has an escort? Brach is with her, isn't that what you said?"
"Aye, but yesterday, when the word came that King Ban had been wounded—" Clodio cut himself short, appalled that he might have committed a gaffe. "Did you know that? The King was shot down by an assassin's arrow . . ."
"Aye, we know that, but you say the word arrived only yesterday?"
"Aye, about the middle of the afternoon. I was up on the walls and saw the messenger come over the hill there."
"Sweet Jesu, he took his time in getting here! Four days, to cover a distance we consumed in one?" I was speaking to Ursus, but he frowned and jerked his head in a clear negative, and so I turned back to Clodio, wondering what I had said that Ursus did not like. "Go on, Clodio, what happened when the word arrived?"
"Lord Gunthar grew massy concerned about his mother's health when once she heard the news, and so he rode to pass the tidings on to her himself, for fear she heard them unexpectedly from some other source."
"What other source? There is no other source. Are you saying Gunthar rode off alone?"
"No, he took a strong party with him—his own mounted guards. Three score of them in two thirty-man squadrons."
"And he simply left you alone in charge of the fortress?"
"Nay, not he. Gunthar accords nothing to lesser men than he . . . men below his station, I should say, since he believes all men arc lesser than he is. He left the fortress in the charge of your brother Theuderic."
"So where is Theuderic?"
"With the others now, wherever they are—Vervenna or elsewhere by now. I know not. He was away when word of the King arrived, patrolling the eastern boundaries against Alamanni raiding parties, so he knew nothing of it until he returned, about midway through the afternoon. Mind you, he was expected. Gunthar knew he was coming in person to pick up supplies, hoping the King might have returned from his patrol of the west side and would be able to spare him some more men for the eastern patrol."
"So this was after Gunthar had left for Vervenna?"
"Aye. They missed each other by less than an hour."
"What happened then? Come on, tell me, Clodio, don't make me squeeze every word out of you."
"I'm telling you, damnation! I just can't talk as fast as you can think. When Theuderic heard about the King and then found out that Gunthar had gone a-hunting for Queen Vivienne, he was angry—wild angry. Next thing I knew he had reassembled all his men—they were already dismissed and scattered by then, you understand, not expecting to be riding out again that day—plus every other able-bodied soldier in the place, and went thundering off to Vervenna at the head of a mixed force, forty horsemen and the last half century of infantry. As he rode off across the bridge he shouted to me that I was to be in charge until he returned. That was the last I saw of him."
"And you have heard nothing from any of them since? That was yesterday."
"Not a word. And I know well when it was."
I looked about me, seething with frustration. "I cannot believe they left you here with no more than a holding crew. Even so, why is the bridge down? Doesn't that strike you as being unwise?"
Clodio Hushed, and his deformed torso writhed in what amounted to a shrug. "Aye, but I didn't know how to raise it."
I blinked at him in astonishment. "You didn't know how to raise it? You pull it up and lock it in place, Clodio. It is not difficult to raise a bridge."
"Mayhap not." Clodio was beginning to sound resentful now. "I'm not a fool, Clothar. But that bridge is new and it's Gunthar's pride and joy. He was there, hovering over it like a crow over a dead rat at every stage of its building and he was very jealous about protecting the secrets of its construction and its operation. No one has been allowed to touch it or operate it other than his men since it was built. From what they told us, it has all kinds of new and wondrous bits and parts to it and only people trained to handle it arc allowed close to the workings. I've never seen the machinery being used and neither has anyone else who is left here in the castle, so I didn't want to take the risk of breaking or damaging something and earning Gunthar's wrath for my troubles. That's too easy to do at the best of times. And so I decided to leave the whoreson as it was. Besides, I was expecting everyone to return at any moment. They're only supposed to be five miles away."
I bit down hard on the angry response that was filling my mouth and forced myself to count silently from one to ten, aware that from Clodio's viewpoint he had done nothing wrong and reminding myself that we had had no rea
l indication, thus far, that anything was wrong in any way. Finally I sighed.
"Damnation, Clodio, there is no great difficulty in turning a windlass, no matter how newly built it is. All it requires is brute strength, shoulders on a cross-bar and muscled legs to push the thing around. Call back eight of those people you just dismissed and we'll raise the bridge right now. Then we'll go inside and see what remains to be done there."
Almost before I finished speaking, Clodio was waving to the wall-top guards, who were now all watching us very closely, and I heard voices raised up there as someone relayed the orders Clodio had shouted up to them. As soon as he turned back to me, I laid my hand on his shoulder to soften the impact of my next words, should he decide to object to them.
"As of this moment, Clodio, I am relieving you of duty and responsibility for the safety of the fortress."
He grunted and nodded his head, once. "Good. I wish you joy of it. Leave me in peace to do what I must do, that's all I ask. I'll die protecting people in my care if I have to, but I have no love for bidding others die at my orders. Apart from the women and children—and God knows we have more than enough of those—there are less than forty men left in the entire place and none of them are fit to fight. Not a man of them. They're all like me, cripples and old men. All the fighting men are out, most of them with the King and Chulderic and Samson. Another group, almost as big, is on the eastern borders, under Theuderic and Ingomer. Then there's a score more with Brach and the Lady Vivienne, the remaining cavalry squadrons with Gunthar, and the last of the garrison with Theuderic."
"So what does the full garrison strength stand at nowadays?"
Again I recognized Clodio's malformed version of a shrug. "Couldn't tell you," he said. "Not off the top of my head. Not my responsibility to know things like that. But let's see. The King and Chulderic took nigh on five hundred with them on the western sweep, and Theuderic took almost as many to the east, although his men were joined by Lord Ingomer's people and by another contingent, mainly infantry, raised from among the chiefs of the eastern marches. So Theuderic would have more than a thousand at his beck in the east, for it's a bigger territory with fewer people but more ground to cover than the western borders . . . but of that thousand, say he had between four and five hundred from here in Genava. Then Gunthar had his guards—three score of them here, another three score out with Theuderic but under the command of Chlodomer, Gunthar's right-hand man. The people Theuderic brought back with him are already counted, but then he took away the remaining foot soldiers from the garrison, say forty of those. So what does that give us? Nigh on eleven hundred . . . more than a thousand men, give or take a score or two. That's about the right of it."
