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

by Whyte, Jack

  As we emerged from the forest into cultivated fields, the skies grew wide above our heads and the trees fell back and away behind us, so that the spectrum of colours surrounding us changed from the deep greens and tranquil browns of the mossy, silent, light-dappled oak forest to the vibrant new green shoots of young, healthy crops against bright, black earth. The branches of the willow trees along the river's edge to the right of us were limned with the yellowish hint of bursting buds, teasing the eye with the faintest, wordlessly suggested promise of new leaves. And then, as we drew closer to the town, we began to encounter people, in ones and twos, most of them working in the fields that bordered the road. Many waved a greeting on seeing us, and occasionally one would approach us to talk, as hungry as we were ourselves for the sight of familiar but long-unseen faces and agog with curiosity about our winter up on the hills.

  Derek, by that form of magical foreknowledge that always seems to accompany arrivals such as ours, came out to meet us before we had even entered the town about the fort. He was in fine fettle that day, boisterous and loud, and he made us noisily welcome, sending some of his people running ahead again to prepare quarters for all of us within the fort. Donuil and Shelagh, and Hector and I would stay with Derek, in his own house. The others would be spread among the other buildings. Arthur and the other three boys, along with Turga, their custodian and self- appointed supervisor, would stay with a family who had ten children, among whom four extra faces would be barely noticeable. Dedalus, Rufio and die others would fend for themselves. Before we broke up to go our separate ways, however, Derek insisted on escorting us personally to see to the arrangements for lodging our horses and storing our wagons with his own horse-keeper, the taciturn little man called Ulf.

  Ulf's reaction to seeing our big, southern mounts again was as truculent as it had been the very first time. His own beasts were all considerably smaller than ours, and he had dragged our horses away to the back of his enclosures, where they would not be seen by anyone who did not already know them to be there. I would have sworn that first day that he was angry and disgusted with having to accept our horses, but as long as they remained in his care, all of them, including my Germanicus, the biggest of them all, shone like burnished things, their coats groomed to perfection.

  I greeted Ulf affectionately, calling him by name, and smiled as he huffed and grunted in disgust, refusing even to acknowledge my presence as he took Germanicus's reins from my hand. Only with the four boys was he less than surly, allowing them to lead their own ponies by their halters as they walked behind him to the rear picket lines where he had decided our horses would be kept.

  Late that evening, tired and feeling lazy after a pleasant hour spent listening to the songs of an exceptionally gifted visiting Druid—the man's talent was superb, surpassing excellence—I passed an open doorway and saw Shelagh sitting inside with Donuil and Derek around a glowing brazier. I stopped in the doorway and leaned inside to wish them all a good night's rest, and from the looks on all their faces, I knew they had been discussing me when I chanced by. I said nothing, however, and left immediately, carrying away with me memories of the speculative look in Shelagh's eyes when she turned to me, and the way the fabric of her dress clung to her breasts. I slept heavily that night and did not dream.

  EIGHT

  Connor's galleys came in with the dawn and were already moored to the wharf by the time I arrived, wiping the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes as I emerged onto the waterfront through the western gate. His arrival, like ours, corresponded with the end of wintry weather and a greater freedom to travel. Though his arrival was thus not entirely surprising, it provided, nevertheless, an unlooked-for and welcome addition to our celebrations. I heard Connor's voice bellowing my name and squinted upwards to where he swung through the air in his unique way of disembarking, his foot anchored in a loop slung from the lading hoist, his wooden leg pointing directly towards me, one hand clinging to the rope as his men lowered him swiftly to the timbered wharf. I reached him as he alit, swaying slightly, gauging his balance before releasing his firm grip on the taut rope, and we threw our arms about each other. He thrust me away and held me at arm's length, then, his hands gripping my upper arms as his eyes swept me from head to foot. I watched his face tighten in mock-horror as he allowed himself to examine my face and hair.

  "Yellow Head! You're bearded like a Celt! And what happened to your hair? I'm going to have to call you Brownhair, now. Have you been ill?" He was laughing as he spoke, however, and I knew that he was unsurprised to see the changes in me. Before I could answer him he pivoted on his false leg, using his arm about my shoulders to turn me with him, and pointed up towards the stern deck of his galley. "Look you, up there! I bring you guests."

  I was completely astonished to see both Ambrose and Ludmilla looking down at me and waving, their faces wreathed in smiles, and I felt my heart leap with pleasure as I waved back, calling a wordless welcome up to them. They moved back from my sight and I knew they would appear in moments on the gangplank, so I swung back to Connor.

  "What is Ambrose doing here? How did he manage to get away from Camulod?"

  Connor laughed and made an elaborate display of cautioning me, finger to his lips. "Shh! There is no Ambrose here, Brownhair. The man you waved to is Merlyn Britannicus, Commander of the Military Forces of Camulod. Don't you know anything? He has come here to visit with King Derek of Ravenglass. They are allies of old, you know."

  I could only shake my head, accepting Connor's foolery. "Aye, I know. I've heard tell of their great comradeship from Derek himself. And I can't wait to meet this Merlyn Britannicus. But is it true that he comes all the way here in person solely to greet an old friend?"

  "Why not?" Connor was still grinning, but his eyes were moving constantly, checking the activity aboard his galley, which was disgorging nets filled with cargo. "When Ambrose received and read your last letter—the one in which you outlined your plans to drop from sight, he approved completely. So excited was he by the thought of what you proposed to do, as a matter of fact, that he read your letter to me—a task not to be lightly undertaken, as my father would say. Your brother has but little skill with the Erse tongue. We had great fun, though, he and I, guessing and translating from the Latin, which is gibberish to my ears, into the Erse, which is gibberish to his. Thank the gods we can both speak the coastal tongue. Anyway, we did it, and we discussed the entire matter in great detail, agreeing that it made a certitude of the boy's safety.

  "A short time after that, I left Camulod again and returned to spend what I thought might be the last winter any of us spends beneath my father's roof in Eire. While I was travelling, it occurred to me that if you were successful in your deception, disappearing completely without going away, then Ambrose himself might be able to further and to strengthen your designs by making an appearance here, as you yourself. No one has ever seen him in this part of the world, or even knows of his existence, but everyone saw you and your yellow head, before you 'sailed away' with the boy, aboard my galley. Now they'll see you again, in Ambrose. The gods know the two of you are as alike as two peas in a pod! They'll see Merlyn Britannicus arrive this morning, and they'll see him leave again within ten days, once more aboard my galley. None will doubt that, but what is even more, much more important, is that no one here, among Derek's people, will ever again think to look at you and see Merlyn Britannicus ... unless you choose to reveal yourself again at some future date. Here comes your brother now."

  I reached the bottom of the gangplank before Ambrose and Ludmilla had negotiated its springy length, and I embraced both of them, suddenly overwhelmed by emotions that left me incapable of speech. Ludmilla was as beautiful as ever, although plumper, more matronly than I had ever seen her; she asked immediately about Shelagh, and then about Lucanus, Turga and the four boys. I answered her as well as I could, but having taken in her appearance of happy prosperity and contentment, I was now preoccupied in examining my brother. He looked magnificent—an obvi
ous leader in every aspect and in every sense of the word—and I wondered what he was thinking about me, since I knew he was scrutinizing me every bit as closely. The crowds thronging the dockside swirled about us in every direction and we stood there, oblivious to them, the three of us content for the moment to share our own company in friendly, intimate, familial silence.

  Still smiling, but assuming a more critical demeanour, Ambrose passed judgment at last on my outward appearance.

  'The brown hair is ... nondescript, Brother. I preferred it when you looked much more like me."

  "Hah!" I grinned at him and gripped his wife more tightly around her supple waist. "That's merely your opinion, Yellow Head, born of a lifetime of narcissism. Ask a woman who has had a surfeit of blond beauty how she feels about brown-haired and comely men, and I'll warrant you'll receive another answer. Is that not so, Ludmilla?"

  She leaned away from me sideways, smiling, and peered back at me down the length of her nose "We-ell, Caius, I would have to say, speaking advisedly and as your sister in marriage, that had you looked this different, this unlike yourself, when you were younger, I might have taken more notice of you ... But then again, I might not. As a brother, however, I will confess that you are unequalled and quite surpassing any other such in all your attributes."

  I blinked at her, wide-eyed and solemn, schooling my features into blankness before turning back to my brother. "Did your wife say what I think she said, that I am unique?"

  "She may have, Brother, since you are the only brother that she has. I don't know. Then again, I seldom do. Being married to a goddess is a taxing task for ordinary mortals. It places demands upon men they are seldom fit to meet. Like comprehension of their spouses' wondrous wondrousness ... things like that ... "

  "Yes ... " I reached out to intercept Ludmilla's fist before she could injure it against his breastplate. "But I think we had best bestir ourselves and go and find the others. Shelagh will be ecstatic to see the two of you. We had no idea you would be coming—" I broke off, my eyes moving from one of them to the other. "Why have you come? Is all well in Camulod?"

  Ambrose cut me off again with a smile. "Hush, Cay, think you we would be here if anything were wrong? We came because we could, and for that reason alone. Everything is well, and better than well, at home. We had a rich and bountiful harvest followed by a short, mild winter, and my wife and I have not travelled together beyond Camulod since we were wed. Connor was coming here and had the space, and the time, to bring us with him, and I had messages for you and for Lucanus. So, we came. We will remain until Connor returns to collect us again, which will be, he estimates, within two weeks. Can you bear our company till then?"

  "Aye, gladly, and for much longer." I turned to look again at Connor. "But only two weeks, you say? That is not much time, for a double crossing."

  He shrugged, frowning. "Why not? It's more than enough ... Particularly since we'll be returning empty."

  "Empty? From Eire?"

  "Eire? No, we're not going to Eire. I told you, we wintered there, then returned to our holdings near Camulod.

  Now I am bound for Alba, for our new holdings in the islands of the north-west, with twelve galleys full of Liam Twistback's cattle." He saw my look and laughed, waving towards the sea. "They're out there, safe out of sight where I left them, behind the island! No point in bringing them inshore to cause confusion, was there? Derek would have had an apoplexy to see them coming around the bank, thinking the Condranson fleet about his ears again. Logan and Feargus are riding with them, playing the sheep- herders to both flock and fleet. I must have speech with Derek—the work of an hour or so—and then I'm away again, before the tide turns. Everything I have to off-load here will be on the wharf within the half hour."

  He glanced up towards his vessel again, checking the level of activity, and then reached out to shake with Ambrose.

  "Farewell, Ambrose, and may the gods smile pityingly on you, stuck here as you'll be with these savages until I can return." He bowed over Ludmilla's hand. "My lady Ludmilla, I hope you will pass on my best wishes to my good-sister Shelagh, and I'll see you again soon."

  He turned and clapped me a mighty blow on the upper arm with his open hand and then swept me into his embrace before stepping back to look at me with a grin.

  "Look after these fine folk, Cay Brownhair, and take care they meet no ill, lest you bring the wrath of Camulod about your colourless head."

  Then he was gone, leaving us alone on the wharf, listening to the receding thump of his wooden leg.

  Knowing that Connor's men would bring their belongings after us, I led my guests towards the gate in the wall and beyond, into the fort and towards our temporary quarters. There, a squeal of delight from Shelagh told us we had finally been seen. From that moment on, everything degenerated into a chaos that endured through Connor's departure on the evening tide and then on into dinner. I had to resign myself to waiting until all the excitement had died down before I heard a single word of news from the south. Even then, I found I had to delve deeply for it, winkling each separate piece of information individually from my brother, who believed, and rightly so as I felt in the end, that there was nothing of real significance in any of it.

  By the time we did manage to achieve sufficient privacy to speak with any kind of leisure about events in Camulod, it had grown late, and most of the household had retired. Lucanus had disappeared even before the evening meal, clutching the precious scrolls that Ambrose had brought for him, among them the one particular text that might shed light upon my condition. I was consciously willing myself not to dwell on that. Shelagh and the other women had gone off somewhere with Derek's chief wife, Jessica, after dinner, and had not returned. We men who remained—some score of us—had been left alone in one of Derek's private rooms, well-lit with lamps, tapers and tallow wicks and brightened and warmed in addition by fires in great, open braziers in chimneyed firepits against the walls.

  Now the night had advanced, the general talk had been exhausted, most of the others had gone off to bed—some on their own feet, others assisted by friends—and Ambrose and I were the only two left awake, lounging on Roman couches before the one fire that still burned brightly. We were speaking in Latin, the tongue in which we both were most at ease. The talk earlier had all been in the coastal tongue, a language I thought of as being the Britannic vulgate, a seething broth of varying Celtic dialects and tribal intonations that came close, from time to time, to being indecipherable. The local variants, in particular, had left my brother gaping in bewilderment on several occasions. Derek's people had a way of chewing vowel sounds that was unique in my experience. One of the local men had pronounced, on his departure, that he was "g'yaun 'ame." The expression on my brother's face on hearing that phrase had made me laugh aloud, to my own embarrassment when the speaker turned to gaze at me in curiosity, wishing to share the jest.

  Behind me, I knew, young Arthur had slipped in a short time earlier to sit quietly against the far wall, evidently hoping to remain unnoticed. He was sleeping in my chamber this night, permitted, as a special privilege, to remain here in Derek's house with the adults on the first evening of his aunt and uncle's visit. I knew he had been abed for more than four hours already; his excitement had evidently prevented him from sleeping with his usual soundness. He had clung like a shadow to his Uncle Ambrose since the moment that morning when his eyes had first blazed with delight at the unexpected apparition of his hero. Remembering my own boyhood, the excitement of returning expeditions and the stories that were told, I decided not to send him away again, but now motioned him forward instead, waving him into a chair close by the fire. As the boy passed in front of him, smiling shyly, Ambrose reached out and grasped him gently by the upper arm, pulling him close and holding him in the crook of one elbow while pretending to pummel his ribs with his other hand before releasing him to pass on, reluctantly, to the seat I had indicated. Then, once the boy was settled, Ambrose began to answer my questions about Camulod.
r />   Life in the Colony continued to progress smoothly, he told us, existence unfolding from day to day in growing peace and prosperity. As a final benison upon what had been a fruitful year in every sense, including the birth of large numbers of babies to our Colonists, the harvest had been huge the previous year, greater even than the three preceding years, each of which had, in turn, surpassed the years preceding it, so that the Colony's granaries, including six large new ones built to hold the year's surplus, were now filled to overflowing. No raids had occurred, even in the Colony's outlying areas, since our departure. I was glad to hear that, since that extended the period of lasting peace from interference to six years. It was always tempting at such times to believe that peace would be everlasting, but that was a foolish presumption. It was miraculous, I knew, that we had managed to avoid molestation in Camulod for as long as we had. True, the presence of our armed strength—and the awareness of it in the eyes of potential enemies—gave us an advantage, since only a heavily armed force would be able to dismiss the prohibitive cost of meddling with our Colony. But there were such forces out there, and their numbers were increasing as strong men—ambitious, successful warlords—grasped at power and gathered loyal men around them.

  As for matters originating beyond Camulod, Ambrose said, inactivity and lack of urgency were the prevailing trends in all endeavours. There had been nothing of moment out of the south-west, he told me, with obvious satisfaction, and all of Cornwall lay silent and apparently at peace, despite Peter Ironhair's reputed presence there. From that quarter, he told me, silence was the greatest gift that could be hoped and prayed for. In Cambria, on the other hand, all seemed to be progressing well. Dergyll ap Gryffyd had been made king there, his rule ratified and consolidated now, and he was busily restoring order and prosperity to his Pendragon people. Pendragon longbows were being made again, in greater numbers than ever before, and the territories to the north and west of Camulod were full of groups of young Pendragon, learning the art of bowmanship.