Camulod Chronicles Book 5 - The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend

by Whyte, Jack

That will give everyone a day to think about what lies ahead. Then some of you can ride out the following day and look at this fort."

  "That makes sense. Does anyone have an objection?" No one did, and Donuil spoke up for the first time.

  "Does this fort have a name, Commander?"

  "Aye, it does. Mediobogdum."

  He pursed his lips and nodded. '"In the bend of the river.' Well, at least that means there must be water there."

  "A plenitude, I'm told." I straightened up. "Well, it's late. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use some sleep."

  The gathering disbanded shortly after that, with general good wishes for the following day's activities. No doubt, though, that this would be a purely defensive action with no risk of a pitched battle. Secure behind the walls of Ravenglass, covering the only access from the sea, we believed we would have no great difficulty in repelling Condran's unsuspecting fleet.

  I was unable to sleep that night. I lay awake, reviewing the numbers and skills of the small group of people in my party, thinking of the personalities involved and of the ways in which each of them might contribute to our new, small colony. Dedalus, Rufio, Donuil and myself were warriors, first and foremost, but apart from that I was at a loss as to what other, more practical skills we possessed. I knew I could turn my hand to iron-smithing, thanks to the lessons of my Uncle Varrus, but decades had elapsed since I had last tried to apply any of the skills he had taught me, and even then my memories had been faulty. I might be able to assist in a forge, but I knew I would never be a skillful smith. Donuil, I knew, possessed no skills in any kind of work other than the administrative tasks he had performed for me in Camulod. Dedalus and Rufio were soldiers, trained since boyhood in their craft. I doubted deeply whether they could have other more valuable, less warlike gifts apart from the ability to hunt and to carry burdens too heavy for weaker men.

  Lucanus would earn his keep, his worth was indisputable. And Hector was a farmer before all else, so his skills would be a major contribution to our future well- being. Shelagh was simply Shelagh, to be valued for her pragmatism and common sense and womanly skills, as well as for her mead-making ability. I remember smiling, thinking that while the ability to make mead might not be definable as a necessity of life, its possession might yet allay much of the tedium that would spring from more genuine necessities. Shelagh would be castellan of any household that we formed, and Turga, Arthur's nurse, had womanly skills of her own, not the least of which was in the tanning of leather to make supple, comfortable clothing. That total, increased by the four boys Arthur, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilleadh, came to twelve, two-thirds of our total complement.

  I had greater confidence in the remaining six members of our party, who possessed abilities in plenty. They included Lars and Joseph, two of the three surviving sons of Equus, the old friend and partner of Publius Varrus. Joseph had been the senior smith and armourer of Camulod when he chose to accompany us, leaving his duties in the capable hands of his younger brother Carolus, or Carol, as he preferred to be known. His skills would be invaluable to us.

  His elder brother, Lars, a former legionary whom I had found keeping a roadhouse north of Isca when I rode off to the wars in Cornwall, had long been believed dead by his brothers, and his arrival in Camulod thereafter had been hailed by them as a miracle. Lars and Joseph had become very close since then, and when Lars had decided to accompany me—or more accurately to accompany Arthur and Bedwyr, in whom he had found substitutes for his own two sons, hanged years before by Uther's army—Joseph had decided to come along, too, seeking adventure for the first time in his life.

  Both men had brought their wives, Esmeralda and Brunna. Esmeralda's skills as a weaver were the equal of her husband Joseph's as a smith, and I was glad to have her as part of our group. Brunna's skills outshone her husband's altogether, for although Lars was a magical cook and baker, so, too, was Brunna, and in addition she possessed an astonishing ability in shoe- and boot-making. Lars and Brunna, I knew, would function as our quartermasters.

  Two other members of our group each combined the skills of artisans and artists, and both were single men, their names Jonathan and Mark, both bosom friends of Joseph since their boyhood. Jonathan was a stonemason, bred of generations of stonemasons, and the youngest of five brothers, four of whom yet lived in Camulod. Mark was a carpenter, although to say such a thing baldly was like saying Homer was a poet. Mark's genius extended far beyond the simple uses of tools on wood. He could fashion exquisite furnishings as quickly and as easily as he could hew a beam from a log, and his work had been the finest in Camulod, gracing the Colony's best rooms and buildings.

  Among these six, I knew, we were blessed with skills, but there was only one of each of them, and life atop a distant mountain might be hard in winter. It would be difficult enough, I thought, in summer. Eighteen souls. Enough, I hoped, perhaps* with God's blessing, to survive for a while under even the bleakest circumstances. And thinking such thoughts I finally drifted into sleep.

  FIVE

  I was shaken awake, it seemed, almost as soon as my eyelids had closed that night. It was an hour short of first light, and I was expected up on the walls, where preparations for the morning's business were already long since under way. I hesitated over donning my armour—I had travelled wearing only leather armour aboard ship and my metal harness was still packed with the rest of our belongings—and finally decided to wear only my toughened hide cuirass and go bare-headed. There would be little danger, I thought, high on the walls, and I could see no benefit in betraying my presence in a Roman helmet.

  I noticed the yellow glare of torchlight reflected in mist as I mounted the stairs to the parapet. Before searching fen- Derek and Longinus, I stopped and gazed out to sea. There was nothing to be seen out there in the bay, nor in the sky above. The entire top of the wall was completely enshrouded in a bank of fog, thick enough to swirl eerily in places as people passed through it. I could barely make out the shapes of the ballistae and the great catapult that lay less than twenty-five paces on either side of me. If Condran's fleet was out there, I thought, we had no way of knowing how close they might have approached. I knew, however, even as I formed the thought, that no single vessel, let alone a fleet, would dare to move through fog so close to shore, and I was comforted by the thought that, if they were masked from us, so were we masked equally from them. The signs of our activities upon the walls would go unseen, and the heavy fog had the effect of dampening and muffling the sounds of our preparations.

  I found Derek and Longinus among a small knot of men clustered around the larger of the two ballistae, where they were supervising the attachment of a small-meshed, heavy metal grid over the large wooden pan on the end of the machine's long throwing arm. A gin-pole hoist with a pulley attached stood close by, its cable descending to the courtyard below. I leaned over carefully and looked down into the sullen, angry glare of a brick furnace. Longinus had seen me arrive and now nodded to me.

  "Live coals?" I asked him.

  "Aye. Won't be the first time they've been used up here, but it'll be the first time they've been used in earnest since the Romans left. Those ovens haven't been lit for years. Nothing better to throw at ships than burning coals, though, once you've got the whoresons within range. Dry timbers, pitch-lined seams and weathered sailcloth. Burn like die fires in Hades. They won't even come close, once they see the first load hiss into the sea in front of them."

  I returned Derek's nod of greeting and continued to speak to Longinus. "What then? You can only throw fire for a limited range."

  "Aye, but we have no shortage of heavy stones. Those will fly far enough to quell the ardour of invading Ersemen."

  "And what about the catapults? You have enough spears?"

  "More than enough. Don't expect to fire more than a dozen, for die same reasons. If a man stands up and throws a spear at a galley, the crew keeps rowing. When the spear is a tree trunk as thick as a man's thigh, sharpened to an iron-clad spike on one
end and thrown by a machine that's stronger than a thousand men and ten times more accurate, the crew's reaction tends to change, rapidly. First six bolts I shoot will do the damage. They're fixed and pie-aimed, as you know. After that, we'll have to re-sight, but once I find the range, I'll cause real damage. I've a score of the iron bolts, but as I said, I don't expect to have to use them all."

  "What if you do?"

  "Then we'll go to plain wooden stakes. The people they skewer won't notice the lack of iron cladding." -

  I turned to Derek. "What about your men and ours?"

  "Connor's keeping them below, out of sight, until the sun comes up. No point in having them up here too soon, getting in each other's way. They're all down there, and our captains know what to do and what the signals are. When we bring them up, they'll come bowmen first, spears afterwards. They'll present a pretty picture—far more than whoever's in command out there will expect to see."

  Longinus snorted. "Aye, and they'll be over the heads of Liam and his dead cattle. That'll take the wind out of their Erse sails."

  "It ought to." I glanced up at the sky again, noticing that the fog seemed paler. "How long till daybreak?"

  Derek was looking upward too. "It's coming now. The fog won't last long, once the breeze begins to blow. Better start bringing the men up now. We want them all to be in place when the fog lifts." He stepped away and began issuing orders to the small group of men who had been standing close by, awaiting his word.

  Longinus looked at me and grinned, picking delicately at his nose. "Where will you watch from?"

  "Your station, if you don't mind." "Come, then. We'd best get into place. I'm aiming the catapult myself."

  Less than half an hour had passed when the wind sprang up, and within moments, it seemed, the fog had been swept aside like a curtain. The sea was still empty, not a sail in sight. I stood side by side with Longinus, peering out at the tranquil waters, and Derek stood some ten paces apart from us, to my left. Apart from we three, only four others stood visible on the top of the walls. The others, almost four hundred of them, crouched beneath the line of the parapet, out of sight from the front. The word spread quickly from the men on guard, and I heard a loud muttering arise along the length of the wall from the concealed men.

  Derek's voice held them in silence. "Stay down and stay alert!" he shouted. "What did you expect? Of course there's nothing there! They couldn't come in close when the fog was down, and they'll have someone on the island over there looking to see if Liam's craft are here by the wharf where they ought to be. That will take time, and their ships are lying behind the island. They'll be here presently."

  Almost as he said the words, the prow of the first galley appeared beyond the low bank of the island facing us. It moved swiftly, propelled by hard-pulled oars. Others followed, until eighteen craft were fanning out into the bay— an impressive sight—less than a mile from the walls. The men were tense with expectation, but everyone remained hidden behind the parapet wall. Long moments passed and the fleet drew closer quickly. Then came a moment when we heard the swelling roar of voices as they discerned the bodies hanging from our battlements. I spoke to Longinus. "They think those are our bodies."

  "Hmm. They must. They're still approaching."

  "Only eighteen of them. Connor had expected more, closer to thirty. You think they're holding others in reserve, behind the island?"

  "They might be. Makes no difference. They won't be using them."

  On they came, deliberate and menacing, manoeuvring skillfully as they progressed. Soon they formed two lines abreast, the rearward slowing down to float almost stationary within a quarter mile of where we watched, while the foremost line came forward, shifting its shape again to permit the three central vessels of the line to forge ahead. But even watching and listening as carefully as I was, concentrating fiercely on their advance, I missed the point at which they came to see that something was amiss. I saw a flurry of signalling break out and heard some distant shouts, and then all oars were hoisted from the water, held horizontally so that the forward motion of the craft died suddenly away.

  Beside me, Longinus was leaning forward, his body tense as he willed the leading vessels to approach closer. "Come on," he hissed. "Are you all gutless? You can't see who it is from there, and no one's threatening you. Those corpses should be ours. Come in!"

  As though in response to his urgings, the oars of the leading galley dipped again and it moved forward, cautiously now, followed shortly afterward by the other two. Careful to betray no haste, Longinus backed away from the parapet wall, and I moved with him as he bent low and hurried to his aiming point by the catapult on the far right.

  "They're waiting for a signal of some kind to tell them it's safe to approach. Probably wondering why it hasn't come. Ready, lads," he called to his other crews. He had personally sighted Ms three catapults the previous afternoon, carefully aiming each of them at some abstract point determinable only to his own eyes and gambling, he had admitted to me privately, that the Erse fleet would approach exactly as they were doing, three vessels in the lead, forming an arrowhead. I found myself admiring his professional focus as I watched him lean forward, straining like a leashed hound. Beyond him I could see brazier baskets of bright-burning coals being hoisted from below, the air about them shimmering with the fierce, smokeless heat of them, willing hands waiting to tip them into the baskets of the two tightly wound ballistae that quivered on either side of the central catapult, trembling visibly under the torsion of the mighty ropes that held them in restraint. As I glanced back to Longinus, his hands moved to the lever that controlled the locked windlass restraining the mighty bowstring of the catapult, its massive bolt aimed like a colossal arrow four strides in length, wickedly pointed and barbed with solid iron.

  "Now, Derek!" he roared, and Derek's hand flew up in a signal. At the sight of it, four men who had been waiting in the courtyard at our back, holding the end of a long rope, ran behind us for four strides and stopped again. As they did so, Liam's corpse, which dangled at the other end of the long rope, jerked upward, rising almost to the top of the outer wall to dangle, stark and unmistakable, before the eyes of his astounded countrymen below. The oars flew up again as confusion struck among the galleys' crews, and in the momentary chaos Longinus gave his own signal, jerking the lever out of the windlass.

  The concussion of the massive catapult's release thrummed in my breast as my eyes followed its huge bolt's swift and awesome flight out and downwards towards the ship on the right. Even before it landed, I heard a similar release on my left and glimpsed the second missile flash outward. Then the first struck home, crashing into the packed mass of oarsmen, destroying men and oars instantly before smashing down to the galley's bottom. Screams floated upwards immediately, and I swung my eyes in time to see the second bolt hit home on the lead ship, striking die central mast with sufficient force to gouge an enormous splinter from its side, and then slewing with vicious, eye- deceiving speed in a murderous pivoting motion, anchored by its barbed point, until it burst asunder with the stress and showered lethal splinters in every direction, so that sprays and gouts of sudden, brilliant blood appeared as if by magic among the mangled crew beneath.

  I did not see the impact of the third missile on the remaining ship, for my attention was seized immediately by the amazing spread of arcing plumes of smoke as the two ballistae released their loads of blazing coals. Much of it splashed, hissing, into the water, and as far as I could see none touched the first ship that Longinus's bolt had pierced. The others were less fortunate, and the galley farthest from me must have been sorely hit, for now the bulk of screaming seemed to be coming from it, and already I could see smoke beginning to drift over the central spine of its decking.

  I had been aware of Longinus's crew working frantically to my right, swarming about their catapult as they readied it to shoot again, some of them manhandling another heavy, lethal bolt into its place as the sounds of windlasses and straining cables creaked ev
er higher on the weapon's great bow frame. The target ship had not yet been able to move, other than spinning in a wild circle, since the oars on one side now far outnumbered those left working on the other.

  Suddenly all movement ceased at the catapult, indicating that it was ready. Longinus scuttled into position, cast a glance along the shaft, then leaped back and released the lever. Again the tree-trunk shaft flew straight and true, striking like a thunderbolt into the churning chaos of the galley's centre and disappearing downward. And then I saw a sight that took me by surprise and left me gaping. A human body flew into the air from atop our wall, arms and legs spread, whirling like a child's toy as it arced up and then down to land among the men swarming in the waist of the farthest of the three galleys as they scrambled to douse the fires that had sprung up. Even as the shape spun high to the zenith of its arc, I recognized the green and yellow tunic worn by Liam Condranson.

  This macabre finale had been prearranged, but I had not been told. The sight of the soaring corpse was the signal that brought our men erect, lining the walls and roaring their defiance as the bowmen among them sent their shafts seeking the enemy. Stunned, and feeling slightly sickened, I stepped away from the parapet and looked about me. The roaring intensified as I moved away, and I heard shouts of "Sinking!" and "Going down!" amid the tumult.

  I stepped back to the edge and looked downward again to see that Longinus had done well with his two bolts. The galley he had struck was low in the water; its crew was leaping overboard, abandoning the craft, which canted sideways even as I looked, its mast waving wildly. It righted itself again, but sluggishly, and then simply settled in the water, slipping beneath the surface to rest on the shallow bottom, its mast projecting high above the waves. Men swam from it in all directions, but others, unable to swim, simply drowned, their limbs churning in panic as they rose and sank in the agitated waters.

  On the far left, the burning galley was fully ablaze now, and it, too, was being quickly abandoned; its warriors- swimmers and non-swimmers alike—evidently preferred the risk of drowning to death by fire. The central, remaining boat was under way again, but very slowly. Though its crew had been decimated, the survivors were struggling to bring it about quickly, as far from the threatening wall as possible. Before they could win clear, however, two more blows shook them: a basket full of blazing coals landed full on top of the furled sail, followed almost immediately by a slashing bolt from the central catapult that struck at a shallow angle among the rowers on the right side of the mast, splintering oars and men and lodging in the vessel's side timbers, a full third of its length projecting through the shattered planking above the surface of the water. Seeing the deadly missile strike home, and recalling the angle at which Longinus's two bolts had disappeared, I found it small wonder that the first craft had sunk so swiftly. The impact of the metal-clad tree trunks must have smashed its hull beneath the water-line like an eggshell.