The Lance Thrower

V

GUNTHAR AND THEUDERIC

GUNTHAR’S WAR. I have no idea why I still think of that squalid episode in those terms. It was Gunthar’s, certainly; he brought it about and he was the dominant participant, but it was not a war. It never came close to being a war.

Wars have at least an illusion of grandeur and respectability attached to them; there is always the notion involved that, in a just war, some of the participants are motivated by high ideals and honorable intentions and that they fight to defend and protect something of value. Gunthar’s War stirred no such thoughts. There was nothing noble or inspiring within its entire duration to stir the minds or imaginations of adventurous boys. The people ranged against Gunthar and his depravity, myself included, fought out of sheer terror and desperation, knowing that to do less, to refuse to fight, was to surrender their lives and their entire world to the dementia of a murderous degenerate. Gunthar’s War was a morass of filth and wretchedness from beginning to end. Nothing good came out of it. It was a bloodbath of mindless slaughter and godless atrocities too foul for the ordinary mind to accommodate, and merely being involved in it was a disgusting experience, easily the bleakest and blackest part of my early manhood.

Even so, I came of age in the course of it, and I learned much about the ways of men, because it presented me a study in treachery and an object lesson in how one evil man can spawn corruption and perdition and thrust it on to other, better men. Gunthar’s “War” was no more and no less than a vicious internecine squabble. It was born of greed, betrayal, duplicity, and the lust for power, and it demeaned and came nigh to destroying everyone caught up in it.

We rode into it, literally, the morning following our night in the shepherd’s hut.

I had been dreaming for years of the first view I would have of King Ban’s castle after my lengthy absence, and I had seen every detail of the place clearly outlined in my memory, so that even in the pouring rain, which had not abated in the slightest overnight, I found myself almost laughably anxious as Ursus and I approached the brow of the last rise in the road that concealed the castle from our view. And then we were level with the top and I was gazing hungrily at the sight that awaited me, only to find that it was vastly different from what I remembered leaving behind me six years earlier.

An enormous ditch had been dug around the entire castle, and the excavated earth had been used to build a steeply sloping rampart on the far side, in front of the castle walls, which thus became a secondary line of defense rather than the primary one. The work had been done very recently, too. I could see that by the rawness of the logs that had been used to stabilize the slope of the earthen wall. It was a classical Roman fortification of vallum et fossam: an unscalable, ramped wall of earth and clay excavated from, and used to back, a deep and dangerous protective ditch. The defenders were all but invulnerable, at the top of the sloping wall, where they could overlook and annihilate their attackers, who had to cross the exposed ditch and then fight their way up the steep clay face. In this instance, however, the effect of the fortification was doubly enhanced by the towering height of the castle walls that loomed behind the earthen one, for the stone battlements were more than twice as high again as the new ramparts at their foot, and the defenders up there could shoot down easily and without fear of counterattack into the mass of any attackers who might dare to attempt a crossing.

Ban’s castle, I saw at a glance, was now invulnerable behind its new defenses, accessible only by an imposing and weighty drawbridge, which for the time being lay open, bridging the chasm of the ditch. Perhaps the assembled might of the Empire would be able to bring Ban’s castle down now, but even that was questionable. The fortress beside the lake had its own deep wells, ensuring an ample and permanent supply of fresh water for the garrison, and any successful attack against it must entail a prolonged land siege and a simultaneous naval blockade to prevent reprovisioning of the garrison from the lake side of the defenses. Anyone with any awareness of the logistics involved in such a venture knew too that the Empire no longer had such naval power at its ready disposal.

I was aware of Ursus sitting tall beside me, taking everything in.

“All that looks new,” he said. “Must be for the Burgundians.”

“Alamanni. Chulderic said the Alamanni were on the march.”

“Aye, but didn’t he say at the same time that the Burgundians were causing him more trouble than the Alamanni ever had? Whichever’s right, he’s gone to a power of trouble to deter one or both of them. I wouldn’t like to be the attacking commander responsible for capturing that place now. Once that bridge goes up, there’s no way of getting it down again if the defenders don’t want you to.”

I had been staring at the bridge as he spoke, having recognized it as a masterpiece of defensive engineering from earlier times, one of the great Roman drawbridges. I had heard of such devices from my tutors at the Bishop’s School and had examined ancient drawings and plans for building them, but I had never seen a real one, and now I wondered who had designed and built this one.

Even from where we sat on the hill’s crest gazing at it, and even through the drifting curtains of heavy rain, I could see that it was solid and massive, the bridge deck itself roughly thirty paces in length and fashioned of long, straight logs carefully selected for their uniform size and thickness. They had then been hand sawn, lengthwise, and squared so their sides would fit together, after which they had been covered with a layer of thick, heavy planking set crosswise and secured in place with heavy metal spikes. But that was merely the smallest and least important part of the construction. A drawbridge, no matter how soundly built the bridge deck might be, was completely useless if it could not be raised and lowered, and therein lay the challenge of construction. The end of the bridge on our side of the great ditch overlapped the edge of the excavation by several paces and fitted into a deep channel that had been carefully dug to accommodate its thickness and to bring its surface level with the ground. The far end, however, on the castle side, was very different.

The bridge deck there terminated a good ten paces, perhaps even fifteen paces, beyond the edge of the ditch in what appeared to be a high, blank wall of stone, so that traffic crossing the ditch had to turn sharply right at that point, immediately veering again to enter the protection of the curtain wall that shielded the approach to the main gates. Halfway between the edge of the ditch and the wall at the end of the bridge deck, however, a huge log, two long paces in diameter, had been carefully sunk across the approach and firmly anchored into the ground above the narrow edge of a long, deep pit, the high, vertical sides of which had been lined with logs to guard against subsidence. The pit had originally been dug as a sawpit for the dressing and shaping of the enormous matched logs that formed the foundation of the bridge deck, but it had been sited in that specific spot to serve another, more enduring purpose: the log across the end of the pit, between it and the ditch, was the fulcrum of the bridge, and the blank wall at the bridge end was merely the front surface of a massive counterweight that made it possible for the drawbridge to be raised and lowered with the help of an intricate system of windlasses and pulley hoists. The counterweight itself comprised several thick sheets of iron, hand riveted and bolted to the thick beams of the bridge deck’s end and then surmounted with great squared blocks of solid granite that were secured to the metal plates in turn by welded straps of iron a handspan wide and a thumb’s width thick. When the bridge was raised, the counterweighted end sank into the pit. Twin towers of massive logs flanked the pit right and left and contained the system of giant windlasses and torsion brakes that enabled crews of men to raise and lower the bridge by means of pulleys and enormous chains of iron links.

“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 toward 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 favor 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 turn and 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 you?”

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 tip 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 are 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 flushed, 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 are 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 real 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 crossbar, 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 hundreds 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.” I nodded, smiling. “An impressive estimate, my friend, for one whose responsibilities have no connection with such things.”

“Aye, right.” He inclined his head, acknowledging my praise. “But where does that leave us?”

I glanced at Ursus. “It leaves us with a bridge down that ought to be up. Let’s change that, for a start.”

Clodio began shouting orders to the men he had ordered down from the battlements above, and while he was instructing them, Ursus turned to me, nodding toward the bridge. “That is excellent,” he said, “and all very well. Raise the bridge and keep the wicked ones out. Excellent precaution. But it has flaws. What about Beddoc?”

“What about him?”

“He’ll be here soon, probably within the hour.” He saw from my expression that I had no notion of what he was suggesting, and so he continued. “You want to keep him outside the gates and away from Gunthar? That’s understandable, except that Gunthar is out there as well, on the far side of the bridge.”

I stared at him, hearing his words and understanding what he was saying, but completely incapable of responding. He spoke on, ignoring my open-mouthed silence. “So, will you keep Beddoc outside the gates to wait for Gunthar’s arrival, or let him inside, knowing that he is Gunthar’s man and therefore your enemy?”

“And knowing, too, that once he is inside we have no one here to withstand him or to influence his behavior,” I added, finally finding my voice.

“Exactly.” Ursus looked at me, one eyebrow raised, and almost, but not quite smiling. “You catch up quickly, no matter how far you lag behind at the outset. I think you’ve grasped the gist of the problem.”

I nodded, slowly. “Aye, but not the solution.”

“There may not be one.” He turned around in a wide arc, gazing at the layout of the castle’s defenses. “Certes, if you raise the bridge no one comes in, but we shut out our friends as well as our enemies. We’ll hold Gunthar and his ambitions at bay, safe outside the walls, but Queen Vivienne will be out there with him, as will your two other brothers and the men who ride with them. And then will come the arrival of Samson and Chulderic. An entire carnival, with good and evil ranged on opposing sides, and all on the lands outside your gates. Do you enjoy the thought of that?”

“No, Ursus, I do not—most particularly since these are not my gates. They are the Queen’s gates, now, for she is Ban’s legal regent until Samson can assume the kingship.”

“Think not on that, lad. As long as you control the bridge the gates are yours. All we can do is hope to have the time and opportunity to open them to the Queen and her men.”

“Aye, but there are too many unknown factors here and I do not enjoy having that responsibility, Ursus.”

“No more do I, but there must be an answer for us somewhere, even though I cannot see it yet … . Was your uncle Ban a drinking man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he drink beer, or wine? Would he keep any of such things available for his use?”

“Aye,” I concurred, remembering. “He always had beer to hand.”

“Good, then let’s raise this whoreson bridge and find some of his beer. In the drinking of fine beer, many weighty problems are easily solved and frequently come to naught.”

Half an hour later, secure behind a raised drawbridge, Ursus and I sat with Clodio, holding foaming tankards and discussing our situation. Clodio said nothing, content to leave, at least outwardly, the thinking to Ursus and myself.

For my part, I disliked the taste of the beer but I was willing to think, to make the effort of thinking. Unfortunately, I lacked both the capacity and the experience to be aware of what I should be thinking about at such a time, and so I, too, said nothing.

Ursus sat silently and sipped his beer with grave deliberation, gazing with tranquil, uncreased brow into the middle distance.

“So,” I asked him when I could bear his apparent equanimity no longer, “what think you, Ursus?”

He turned to gaze at me and raised his upper lip to bare his teeth, not in a snarl but in the approximation of a smile. “About where we sit?” he asked. “What would you like to know first?”

“Anything,” was my immediate response. “Anything you care to share.”

It turned out to be the correct answer, for he began speaking immediately and I listened to him closely, finding no need, and no desire, to interrupt the flow of his thoughts.

“We’re on a pronged twig, over a fire,” he began, “skewered two ways and secured among the flames. We’ll be thoroughly cooked, at best. At worst, the skewer we’re hoisted on will burn right through and drop us into the fire’s heart.” He looked at me, one eyebrow cocked, and grinned ruefully.

“If we let Beddoc and his crew come inside when they arrive, we might as well surrender to Gunthar right away, no matter what he does or what he might be guilty of, because we have no forces, nothing, no strength with which to withstand Beddoc’s strength, and no means of denying him anything he wishes—including access to the drawbridge controls.

“So. What can we do? Nothing, is the correct answer to that question, because there are other things happening out there beyond these walls, on the far side of that bridge, that are beyond our control, although their outcome is crucial to us and to our well-being. The Lady Vivienne is out there, at the mercy of whatever might develop from all this, and as well as Samson you have three cousins—brothers—out there, too, Gunthar, Theuderic, and Brach.” Ursus was unaware that Clodio knew who I really was, and so he kept on talking through his momentary slip, hoping that Clodio might not have noticed it. Clodio, for his part, gave no sign of having heard anything amiss as Ursus continued.

“Among them, they have some two hundred men, but the problems we are facing here all stem from the basic fact that we don’t know what’s happening among the three of them. They might, for all our fretting, have all joined forces and be on their way back here in perfect amity. We simply have no way of knowing. But if that’s so, why are they not already here? It’s but five miles, you said, from Ingomer’s castle to here.” He turned to look directly at me, his narrowed eyes leaving me in no doubt that I was being called upon for a contribution to this discussion, and perhaps for a solution or a decision. “So, Lord Clothar, what are we to do?”

“Get out of here.” The words came unbidden to my tongue and were out before I knew I would say them.

Ursus raised his eyebrows high, wrinkling his brows. “Now that is an answer I had not expected. Abandon the castle, you mean?”

“Yes, and no. At this very moment I am not sure what I mean, not exactly. I know it’s illogical, but that feels like the right thing to do, here inside me.” I tapped my breast.

“You propose to leave the fortress to the enemy?”

“What enemy, Ursus? We don’t know yet if there is an enemy … . Isn’t that what you have just been saying? We are yet talking about family matters, and to this point no demonstrable treachery has been offered or committed, and no one has been harmed.”

“As far as we know.”

“Yes, that’s the right of it: as far as we know. But there’s too much we don’t know. You said it yourself, we’ll serve no useful purpose penned up in here with no supporting strength while all the other people with a part to play in this are free to move about outside.” I glanced again at Clodio, who sat watching and listening, as mute as an old stag. “Clodio, you have not said a word since we came in here. What think you of all this?”

He made a wry face. “Not my place to think about it, is it? I’m only an old soldier.”

“Oh, please, Clodio! Don’t hand me that ‘old soldier’ claptrap. I won’t wear it because it never has fitted. You’re one of Ban of Benwick’s lifelong friends. And besides, if you’re qualified to be left in trust of the entire fortress, you’re qualified to express an opinion. So speak up and spit out whatever might be in your craw.”

He sat and stared at me for several moments, nibbling on the inside of his lip, then nodded his head, indicating Ursus. “Does he know the truth about who you are?”

“Aye, he does.”

“Right. So be it. Here’s what I think. Ban has four sons: Gunthar, Samson, Theuderic, and Brach. Gunthar is poisonous—a demon in human form. All his brothers know it and fear him for it, because they know there’s nothing he would not do on his own behalf.

“That fear is why Theuderic reacted as he did when he heard the word of Ban’s being wounded and Gunthar’s riding off to find their mother. His first fear was that Gunthar might seize power and might even seize the Queen, his own mother, to make sure that none of his brothers would dare to challenge him. Theuderic’s a clever young man and I have a gold piece under the leg of my bed that says he’s right in this.”

“But why would Gunthar think to usurp power? He is the King’s named heir.” I knew that was no longer true, but I wanted to see Clodio’s reaction to hearing me say it.

“Aye, that’s true, but it’s the common word around here that the Queen has no trust or faith in him. She fears his nature. There are some who would even tell you she has been coaxing at the King for years to change his decree and give the name of king to Samson, his second-born.”

I was staring hard at Clodio as all this came out, knowing exactly whence he had gained his insight and wondering admiringly at the extent and depth of his evident friendship for and intimacy with the King, and probably with the Queen, too. I was sure that such talk could not be common knowledge, as he claimed. Had it been so, Gunthar would have learned of it long since and, being Gunthar, would have taken steps to guard against it. Or would he? I found myself hesitating there, acknowledging that there was but one man for whom Gunthar had always shown genuine respect and fear. King Ban, his father, had always overawed Gunthar, and now that I thought of it, it seemed inconceivable to me that Gunthar would make any move to fulfill his own ambitions while there was any chance that Ban yet lived and might come home to knock him down and put him firmly in his place. But yesterday the word had come that Ban was gravely injured. How grave the wound might be could be something that was open to interpretation, depending upon the sympathies and loyalties of the reporting messenger.

If that was so, and if the messenger were friend to Gunthar, or if he had an eye to his own enrichment, then the tidings rendered might well have tempted Gunthar to trust his fortunes to the gods of chance.

“The messenger, Clodio, the one who came yesterday from Chulderic. Who was he?”

“His name is Grimwald. Why, is it important?”

“It might be. Is he a friend to Gunthar?”

“No one is a friend to Gunthar. But Grimwald would like to be one of his cronies, there’s little doubt of that. He sidles after Gunthar like a lovesick pup after a bitch in heat, sniffing at the great man’s arse and falling over his own feet.”

I knew then that what I had been supposing was right: the messenger had made his choice and weighted his message, and Gunthar had seen his opportunity to seize the power he lusted to possess.

“Hmm. Tell me, is the old postern gate still in use?”

“What, you mean the old gate in the back wall by the lakeside, above the rocks at the high-water mark? Nah, it’s been sealed up these five years now, ever since a boatload of Alamanni almost succeeded in using it to steal into the castle. Ban ordered the door torn out and then he filled the entranceway with mortared stones. No one will ever enter or leave that way again. Why do you ask about that? You look as though you’ve bitten into something with a nasty taste.”

“I have, old friend. What I was thinking was that if we left here now, today, Ursus and I, and some division of the enemy—and I mean Gunthar’s forces—were later to take over control of the castle and deny entry to our friends, you might be able to open up the postern gate during the night and let us back in under cover of darkness. But that’s not going to be possible, so mayhap we have to stay here, useless as we are in such a case.” I looked at Ursus, who sat watching me with pursed lips, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? Ban’s dead. That’s why you’re here.”

I turned back to Clodio. “Aye, Clodio, he is. It grieves me to have to be the one to tell you of it, but he died two days ago.” I described the seriousness of the wound. “Even Sakander the surgeon could do nothing for him.”

I told him, then, how Beddoc’s men had slipped away in the night to bring the tidings to Gunthar, and how Ursus and I had taken off after them, passing them and leaving them behind by nightfall.

As I spoke, Clodio’s eyes did not waver from mine. “But the most important thing in all of this is not known yet,” I continued, speaking to him directly and quietly. “Not to anyone here, at least. You were right in what you said about the Queen and how she had been working on King Ban. Before he died, the King assembled all his men and decreed in their presence that he was disinheriting Gunthar and naming Samson to rule in his place. Knowing that, there can be no doubting that Beddoc was on his way to warn Gunthar. Beddoc’s people will yet be several hours behind us, but we’ve already been here for more than an hour, so they can’t be that far away. That’s why it was so important for me to arrange to use the postern door.” I swung back to Ursus. “We have to decide … I have to decide, I know. We can’t simply continue to sit here doing nothing.”

“You could come through the caverns.” Clodio’s voice was so quiet that I barely heard it, and the meaning of his words took some time to penetrate my consciousness, so deeply was I concentrating on what I must do next. I sat up straighter, suddenly alert.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said you could come in through the caverns.” His voice was still barely audible.

“What caverns?”

“The King’s Caverns, below us, in the rock.”

I leaned closer to him, watching the tiny half smile on his face blossom into a wide grin as he decided that he had done the right thing in telling me of this.

“Which king’s caverns, Clodio? King Ban’s?”

“Aye.” He was grinning hugely now. “But King Ban the Bald, the old man, your grandfather. And he told his son, our King Ban, that he had been shown the caverns by his father, who had learned of them from his, and so on, back until the days before the fortress was built.”

“Wait!” I held up my hand. “I don’t understand this. Why have I never heard of this before? I grew up here, and never once in all my boyhood did I hear a whisper about any caverns.”

“I know you didn’t, nor did anyone else, because no one knows they’re there. Only myself and the King ever knew of it, and I only found out by accident. And then Ban swore me to secrecy. You never heard mention of it because you were never meant to, along with everyone else. It’s the biggest and best-kept secret in all of Benwick.”

“But there must be an entrance somewhere … .” I was thinking furiously. “If they’re right under our feet, as you say, then there must be an entrance nearby, somewhere along the beach, above the high-water mark. But if that’s so, then why has it not been found by others, long before now?”

“Because it isn’t there.” There was no trace of a smile on Clodio’s face now. “It’s nowhere near the lakeside. There is only one entrance and it’s far from here, inland.”

When he told us where it was, I remembered the place, recalling that I once had known it very well indeed, having spent a fair-sized period of my boyhood playing there. But I had covered every bit of space in the caves that were there—I would never have called them caverns—and had found no hidden entrances or exits. One small tunnel I remembered, leading from one chamber to another, but that was all. I said as much to Clodio and he agreed with me. He, too, had played there as a boy, he told me, and had never seen anything unusual. But then one day he had seen the old King and his son emerge from the caves without ever having gone in. He had been playing there all day with half a score of friends and none of them had seen any sign of either the King or his son in all the time they had been there, until both of them had come out.

Everyone had thought it was magic, and they had hidden lest the old King see them and decide they had been spying on his sorcery, but as soon as the two Bans were gone, everyone had descended in a rush upon the caves, searching them from top to bottom in a hunt for some indication of whence the old King and his son had sprung.

A few years later, sheltering from a sudden summer storm with his friend Ban in the same place, Clodio had recalled the event and mentioned to Ban what they had seen that day. No one had ever been able to make more sense of what had occurred that afternoon, he said, and the incident had gradually been forgotten. Now he mentioned it only as a curious memory. Ban showed no reaction. A short time later, however, Ban vanished completely after uttering an unearthly, terrified howl that echoed eerily through the emptiness of the caves.

Clodio scoured the caves and found no trace of his friend, the King’s son, and so, badly shaken, he made his way back as fast as he could to the castle, intending to summon help. And there he found Ban, sitting placidly against the wall waiting for him.

For months after that he wondered what had happened, for, of course, Ban offered no explanation. He merely smiled mysteriously, and thereafter he would appear and disappear from time to time, just to keep the mystery alive. It was not until another three years had passed that Ban had shown Clodio the secret doorway set into a blank rock wall at the back of the cave. By that time, however, they were fully grown and fast friends, having already saved each other’s lives in battle, and their trust in each other was absolute. And Clodio had kept the secret until now.

“I know the place, the caves, I mean,” I said. “But how will I find the secret entrance?”

“You won’t. Even knowing it’s there you’ll never find it, not if you search for it for a hundred years. You won’t find it until I show it to you. King Ban knew nothing of it until his father showed it to him, and Ban the Bald told the same tale of being shown by his father. The secret goes from generation to generation.”

An appalling thought hit me then. “So Gunthar knows of it.”

“No.” Clodio’s response was whiplash-quick and sharp. “Never. Empty your mind of that thought. Gunthar has no idea the caverns exist. When he turned twelve and should have learned of it, the King, by sheer good fortune, was involved in quelling a revolt by the Alamanni on our northern borders. When he returned from his campaign, he found his son absent, vanished no one knew where, hunting with his cronies. Even as a twelve-year-old, Gunthar was a law unto himself. Anyway, for whatever reason, Ban never did find a convenient time to show Gunthar the secret. The boy’s fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays came and went, and still he had been told nothing, and by the time he had turned sixteen and attained manhood, his father had decided, for reasons of his own, to tell him nothing. It has turned out to be a wise decision. I am glad to have been able to play a small part in it.”

“You played a part in it? How so?”

He almost smiled at me, but at the last moment all that transpired was a quirking of one corner of his mouth. “Through friendship, and through shared responsibility. You forget that I, too, knew the secret.”

“But—forgive me for being blunt, my friend—why would the King entrust you with the secret and yet deny it to his son?”

“You just said it yourself: trust. Ban trusted me. He could not bring himself to trust Gunthar. And I urged him, quietly, to trust that judgment that bade him remain silent despite the unease he felt over what he saw as a duty to his firstborn. I reminded him that he had sired four sons and that the secret of the castle’s strength or weakness need only be passed to one of them to endure.”

“I see. So have you told any of the other three?”

“No. You are the only one who knows, and even you know nothing yet.”

“But I am not the King’s son.”

“No more am I. But you will be worthy of the trust, Clothar, and when you—should you—choose to pass the knowledge on, you will divulge it wisely, I have no doubt.”

“Does Queen Vivienne know about it?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” I glanced sidelong at Ursus, wondering how he was perceiving all of this, but he was staring down at the ground between his feet and I had no means of knowing if he was even listening. I looked back to Clodio. “Tell me about the entrance. I find it difficult to imagine any well-used entrance being as completely concealed as you describe.”

“I did not ever say it is often used. Ban’s tomfoolery aside, it is opened only once every ten years or so. The doorway was built by a master stonemason a hundred years ago and more, but it is a doorway the like of which you have never seen.”

“So how will I find it, alone?”

“You won’t. You will find me. If you leave now, and should there be treachery so that the castle falls into Gunthar’s hands, I will make my way out and through the caverns each day at noon. I will wait in the caves there for an hour, then return here if you have not come to find me. I will do this every day for ten days, and after that I will assume you have been found and killed, and so will stop going. But if you do come that way, bring no more than a score of your best men, and make sure you bring sufficient cloth to bind their eyes, for none of them must see the entrance or the exit on this end. Now you had best leave, before Beddoc and his people reach us. Where will you go, once you are out of here?”

I looked at Ursus and shrugged my shoulders. “Vervenna first, I think. That seems to be the most obvious place to start. But we’ll approach it carefully, for only the gods can know what we’ll find there. And if there’s no one there, that too will tell us something.” I stepped quickly toward Clodio and laid one hand upon his shoulder. “Thank you, old friend. I will not forget. Let’s hope our expectations are ill founded and we’ll have no cause to call for your assistance. But if we’re proven right and the madness we fear does break out, we’ll be there by the caves one day, waiting for you. Go with God, Clodio.”

“I will, young Clothar, but I would far rather have gone with my King. Be careful.”

We rode into it. Rode unsuspecting into the chaos and destruction that marked the beginning of Gunthar’s War and were engulfed by its madness within the space of two heartbeats. One moment we were forging ahead determinedly through the still unceasing downpour, our horses plodding side by side along a broad and muddy woodland path, and the next we had rounded a bend in the path and found ourselves at the top of a steep defile leading down into a tiny vale that was choked with corpses. It was still not yet noon and the noise of the lashing rain was loud enough to drown any noise from the flies that were beginning to swarm here in uncountable numbers.

At first glance, I could not tell what I was looking at, but beyond that first uncomprehending look there was nothing that could disguise the atrocity of what we had found. My first conscious impression was of a score of bodies. The number sprang into my mind as though it had been spoken aloud, and I recall it clearly. A score of bodies. No sooner had I acknowledged it, however, than I saw that it was woefully inadequate, for another score and more lay sprawled and half concealed by bushes. And at that moment, as though it had been preordained, the rain stopped falling, for the first time in days, to leave us sitting stunned in a silence that seemed enormous, gazing in stupefaction at the carnage before us.

Ursus, as usual, was first to collect himself. “Well,” he said, his voice sounding louder than ever now that he had no need to shout over the noise of the rain, “at least we know now that they have not all joined forces. Whose men were these, do you know?”

“Ban’s,” I said, still too stupefied by the unexpectedness of what we had found to have thought beyond the fact of it to the implications it entailed. “They’re garrison troops, wearing Ban’s emblem, see? The blue boar’s head.” And then, as the import of what we were seeing began to sink home to me, my voice shrank to a mere whisper and I felt my bowels twist themselves into spasms of knotting cramps. “These must be the men Theuderic took with him when he left yesterday.”

Ursus nudged his horse forward until he was sitting knee to knee with me. I glanced at him, wondering if he felt as I did, but he was scanning the entire scene ahead of us, his eyes moving ceaselessly over the ranks of slaughtered men.

“Took them on the march,” he said. “Must have lain in wait for them, knowing they’d be coming.” He tilted his head back slightly, pointing with his chin. “Look at them. Poor whoresons didn’t even have time to draw their weapons. Not a strung bow or an unsheathed sword among them. Probably ambushed from over there.” He pointed to the hillside facing us on the other side of the narrow valley. “See, on the top of the hill there, those bushes? See how dense they are? You could hide horses in there, and that’s exactly what they did. Perfect spot to lie in wait for anyone coming along this path, because once they’re on the slope down, there’s nowhere else for them to run to … .” His voice faded away for a moment, then resumed. “Can you see Theuderic here?”

“Theuderic?” The question snapped me out of the trance I had been sinking into, making me look around in expectant horror. It was one thing to see my cousin’s men shot down and slaughtered, but quite another to think that Theuderic himself might lie among the dead.

“No, I didn’t think so,” Ursus continued, speaking quietly as though musing to himself. “There’s no dead horses here at all, which suggests that whoever set this trap let all the horsemen pass by first—they would have been ahead of the infantry in any case—and then sat tight and waited for the foot soldiers. And they, knowing that their own cavalry was just ahead of them, would have marched right into death, suspecting nothing. Probably hadn’t even sent scouts out ahead of them, although it would have made no difference. Poor catamites walked right into it. Look at those arrows. I haven’t seen that many spent arrows since I fought on the coast of Arabia, against the Berbers there. I’ve seen hedgehogs with fewer bristles than that. And yet there’s hundreds missing. Look, you can see where they’ve cut the retrievable ones out of the bodies.” He indicated the body lying closest to us, and I saw immediately what he meant. The man had taken an arrow in the thigh, which dropped him in his tracks, severing the leg’s main blood vessel and causing him to bleed to death very quickly. The entire area around him was black with his lifeblood and it had gouted far enough to stain several of the bodies lying ahead of him, as well. The wound that had been added afterward had not bled at all; its edges were clean and deep, and the hole left by the missing arrowhead was big. I turned my head away before the gagging in my throat could overwhelm me, but Ursus was still looking.

“Look over there! That fellow there was still alive before they came down. They slit his throat when they came back, either to silence him or to make sure he’d tell no one what he had seen.” He shook his head in disbelief and blew out his breath explosively through puffed cheeks, looking up again to where the bushes that had concealed the killers stretched across the top of the hillside on the far side of the little valley.

“This is cousin Gunthar’s work.” I said it quietly, and Ursus looked again at the surrounding scene and expelled another whoosh of breath.

“May God Himself be my witness, I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself, but those whoresons actually came back down here after the slaughter and collected their spent arrows to use them again.” He shook his head again, still looking about him as he continued in the same musing tone. “It takes a special kind of attitude to let a man do things like that—especially to people he has known. These were garrison mates … . That’s a close relationship, young Clothar, brothers in arms. But their brothers, like some of your own relatives, were less than loving. Your cousin picks his guardsmen carefully, it would appear, with more than half an eye to temperament … . I wonder if they are all mounted archers. They must be, to account for the numbers of arrows and the rate of fire … the short amount of time involved.” He waved a pointing finger, indicating the feathered missiles projecting from the bodies. “These are mounted bowmen’s arrows, much smaller than the ones you and I have in our quivers. When we come face-to-face with Gunthar’s men I think I would rather have my bow to pull than theirs.” He sucked air between his teeth, still looking thoughtful as his eyes moved ceaselessly over the killing ground. “Before we do anything else, though, we ought to take a closer look at what we have here. Come on.”

He swung down from his saddle, and I joined him very reluctantly, my gorge rising anew at the stench that had begun to rise now that the rain had stopped. My entire mouth seemed coated with the brassy, almost granular stink-taste of blood. I tried to ignore the feel of the blood-soaked ground beneath my feet, telling myself it was no more than mud, then stood reeling with nausea, clinging to my horse’s halter. Ursus, however, paid me no attention. He was already quartering the scene around us with his eyes.

“Go you and look down there, Clothar, among the bushes at the bottom of the slope. See if you can find anyone still alive. And see if you can find any different crests from the boar’s head, something that might give us proof of who’s responsible for this. I’ll search on this side of the slope. If you find anything at all, shout.”

A long time passed before I found anything to shout about, and when I did, I almost missed it.

I had lost track of time, walking among the dead for so long that I had grown inured to the horrors I was seeing, and my revulsion and nausea had passed. It was plain to see that Ursus was right. The killers had come down after the slaughter and retrieved as many of their arrows as they could cut out of the corpses, and the number of cut throats showed that many of their victims had still been alive when they came down. Now, all of them were dead, every man and boy, and there had been more than a few very young boys, evidently trainees, among the garrison troops. My guess was that no one had survived this massacre, that even those who had sought to surrender or flee had been shot down without mercy or compunction.

The rain started falling again at some point, and the renewed chill of it reminded me how far removed we were from any kind of warmth or shelter that day, and I had turned in disgust to rejoin Ursus when I glimpsed something from the corner of my eye that seemed out of place. I immediately looked for it again, but this time saw nothing, and I felt impatience flaring up in me. I forced it down, however, and disciplined myself to move slowly and look again, meticulously this time. And then I saw it: a flash of gray and green among the long, yellowed grass at the base of a thorn bush to my right, a long way from where the nearest dead man lay. Whatever it might be, it had not been left there by any of Theuderic’s dead foot soldiers.

Ursus came running at my shout, to where I was tugging my prize out of the rank, thorn-filled grass among which it lay. He was leading our two horses as he came and I noticed that in one hand he was carrying an arrow that he had obviously taken out of a dead man. I glanced at it but said nothing, contenting myself with merely raising one eyebrow. He saw my reaction and hefted the ugly thing, its barbs clogged and clotted with gore.

“It’s not a memento, and I don’t intend to shoot it at anyone. It’s evidence of murder and it will be identifiable because it’s identical to all the others. Whoever made all these arrows is a master fletcher, and if we find him, we’ll find the people for whom he makes his arrows. What have you found?”

“It’s a saddle roll. Must have been snagged in the brambles there and pulled off without anyone noticing it. Couldn’t have been too well secured in the first place.”

I crouched on the narrow path and untied the knots binding the bundle, then rolled it out with a flip of my arms.

Ursus whistled, a long, drawn-out sound of approbation. The main binding of the roll was a standard brown woolen blanket, Roman army issue, heavy and densely woven from untreated wool so that it retained its natural water-repellent attributes. It had been thinly layered with beeswax on one side, too, to increase its resistance to rainwater, and then it had been folded and wrapped into a tight cylinder. Within its folds, however, it contained a change of clothing for its owner, including a plain gray, quilted tunic, the left shoulder of which was emblazoned with a sewn-on patch of brightly colored yellow cloth, edged in dark green and cut in the shape of a bull’s head.

“Gunthar’s bull,” I said.

Ursus nodded and held out his hand. “I had a thought it might be. Let me look at it.”

I passed the tunic over to him and he peered closely at it, then wadded it up roughly and handed it back to me along with the arrow he had collected. “Good. It’s not exactly proof of who did the killing here, but it would convince ninety-nine out of every hundred men I know. Wrap it in the blanket with this and bring it with you.

“Now let’s move on and see what lies ahead of us on the remainder of the trail, but brace yourself, lad. You might not like what we find.”

I was too enervated by then to show surprise. “Why?” was all I asked him.

“Because there’s worse to come, I fear. What would have happened when your cousin Theuderic realized his infantry were slow in catching up?”

“He would have come back to find them.”

“Right. And he’s not here, is he? My guess is that he made the attempt and rode into the same kind of trap, set elsewhere for him.”

“Which means he’s dead. Is that what you are saying?”

“He could be, aye.” Ursus nodded, sober-faced. “Probably is, to tell the truth, for otherwise he would have been here before now, to find out what happened to these people. I think you had better prepare yourself for finding him and his men dead between here and Vervenna.”

We rode on, neither of us saying another word, both of us expecting to find another scene of murderous destruction beyond every turn in the road and over the crest of every hill until, about a mile beyond the scene of the massacre, we emerged from the edge of a screen of small trees and saw a wide, smooth, grassy slope stretching up and away from us to the crest of a ridge that stretched all the way across our front. As soon as I saw it I drew rein.

Ursus, seeing my sudden reaction from the corner of his eye, turned toward me. “What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I know this place. I remember it”

Ursus sat looking at me patiently, holding his mount tightly reined so that its neck arched tautly and it stamped its forefeet, trying to sidle away from the curbing bit. He said nothing, controlling his restless mount, content to wait for what I had to say, and after a while I continued.

“We used to play here, as young boys. We would run up to the crest there and throw ourselves over the top, then roll downhill on the other side. It’s all grassy and soft over there, no trees and not even any stones. The hillside slopes down from the crest on that side for about two hundred paces, perhaps slightly more. It’s a gentle slope. At the bottom of it, though, it butts right into another hill and the terrain changes. That whole hillside on the other side is covered with trees … hardy old things, stunted and twisted and not very big. There’s a narrow stream cutting through the line where the two hills meet—it’s very fast, very powerful, fed by an enormous spring that bubbles up out of the solid rock, higher up the far hillside on the left, close to the top. The channel it has cut over the years is deep but not wide. It levels out only in one narrow spot, where the ford is. That’s the only way across the gully, and no more than two horsemen can cross it at a time, side by side. And then to the right of that, the slope falls away dangerously until it drops into a ravine that’s choked lower down with moss-covered old trees—ancient old thorn trees and stunted oaks. It’s a wonderful place for boys to play, but you wouldn’t want to ride a horse down there.” I stopped, reluctant to say any more but unwilling to kick my horse into motion again.

“So why did you stop here?” Ursus asked. “If that’s all you had to tell me, you could have done it as we rode.”

“It’s a natural place for an ambush.” I had been reluctant to voice my sudden conviction lest somehow, by naming it, I made it come true. “It’s a perfect trap. Beyond the ford the slope climbs steeply up to another high crest, but that slope’s grassy, too, and soft like this one, so in the heavy rain it’ll be a quagmire. There are trees on that hillside, too, on either side, pointing away from you, up toward the crest, and they act like a funnel, pushing people inward to the center. So you’re going uphill more and more steeply, and there’s less and less room on either side. And up ahead of you, there’s ample cover to screen an attacking force, while behind you, on the far side of the stream at the bottom, there’s that beautiful slope for anyone charging at you from the rear to smash whatever troops you have remaining there, waiting to cross two at a time. It’s a nasty, nasty place.”

I looked Ursus in the eye. “So … if your theory holds true and we’re to find that Theuderic has been ambushed, this is where we’re most likely to find him—on the other side of that crest up there.”

He nodded, mute, and then his eyes drifted away from mine and focused on something behind me, in the distance. Before I could begin to turn around to see what he was looking at, he had loosened his reins and nudged his horse forward and past me. I spun my mount around and moved to join him where he sat gazing at a dark scar in the grass less than fifty paces from where we sat.

“It looks as though you might be right,” he said quietly. What he had found was the darkened path worn into the muddy ground by a large number of horses as they emerged from a trail through the woodlands at our back and spilled out onto the soaked grass of the slope ahead. They had been riding in columns of four when they came out of the trees, but then they peeled off, right and left, to fan out and form a single line abreast as they made their way uphill toward the crest of the ridge, and we had no difficulty following them or seeing the moves of individual horsemen. There was a broad and much-trampled quagmire of muddied grass forming a lateral line less than twenty paces from the crest, where the advance had halted and stayed for a time, presumably safe beneath the skyline of the ridge while the leaders rode forward to look beyond and wait for their signal to attack.

Ursus glanced at me again, a wry expression on his face. “Well,” he said quietly, “we can’t very well ride away without looking, can we?”

“No, we can’t, but I wish we hadn’t come this way.”

He nodded in agreement and dug in his spurs, sending his horse bounding forward, and I followed him, roweling my own horse hard, driving him forward and uphill until I was riding knee to knee with Ursus. As we approached the crest of the ridge the ground beneath us showed all the scars born of the passage of three score of heavy horses digging their hooves in hard to gain purchase in the mud of the slippery, rising ground. Then we were on the crest itself and the scene below us opened up and spread out at our feet.

At first glance there appeared to be nothing unusual in view. The ground sloped gently down in front of us for more than two hundred paces, exactly as I had described to Ursus, and the deep gully that marked the bed of the fast-flowing stream at the bottom was a brown and black gash slanting downward from left to right, its line obscured from our view by treetops and the natural fall of the land. I looked beyond that, however, knowing that anything there was to see would be lying on the sloping hillside on the far side of the gully. Even so, there was nothing unusual to be seen from the distance at which we sat peering, and so, feeling slightly more hopeful, I kicked my horse again and put him to the downhill slope, hearing Ursus following close behind me.

By the time we were halfway down the slope, we had begun to see what we had feared we might. There were bodies among the long grass down there, but we were still a hundred and more paces away and so the only forms we could recognize were the swollen bellies of horses that had begun to bloat and now rose above the top of the grass. We increased our pace, knowing what we would find, and closed the distance quickly, and as we did so the bodies littering the upper slope ahead of us came into prominence.

It was almost exactly as I had described the probability to Ursus. Deep scars gouged by hooves scrabbling urgently in the rain-soaked ground showed where Theuderic’s party had made their crossing and started up toward the top of the distant hill. They had bunched together more and more as they penetrated farther into the funnel formed by the encroaching trees until—and even from the bottom by the ford, looking up the hill, it was plain to see where—at the very steepest part of the climb just short of the summit, they had been confronted by an enemy force. It must have been a heavy concentration of bowmen who had lain concealed until then among the trees. Perhaps a half score of bodies, men and horses, showed how far the advance had gone before that first attack. They had been in the front rank of the advancing party and had taken the brunt of the first volley of arrows. When we arrived there later to look at them we saw how, like their infantry counterparts in the first trap, they lay where they had fallen, without a drawn weapon among them.

It was evident, too, from the deeply scored muddy scars on the steep slope, that the advance had turned immediately to head back down to the bottom of the hill and safety. Save that there had been no safety, for where there had been a pleasantly sloping, empty meadow at their back, Theuderic’s force now found themselves confronted by a waiting formation of cavalry that sat safely ensconced on a slight upslope beyond a deep gully with only one narrow ford.

The slaughter that had ensued had been much like the earlier massacre of the foot soldiers, save that this time there were horses among the dead. From the arrows that were stuck in the ground on our side of the ford it was evident that Theuderic had made a stand at the bottom of the hill and deployed his own bowmen against the cavalry facing him, but he had very few of those and their arrows were soon used up. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered on two fronts, Theuderic had then led a charge against the narrow ford, on a two-horse front, in a desperate attempt to win through and establish a foothold on the far bank and thereby give some protection to the troopers following behind him.

We found him quickly, in the mud, pressed against the stream’s bank at the bottom of the ford, sitting almost upright with his lower body crushed beneath the weight of two dead horses. The steep-sided streambed on both sides of him was so full of dead men and horses that the water had piled up above the obstruction they formed and found a new path down the hillside. Two broken arrows projected from Theuderic’s body, one that had pierced the layered leather of his cuirass and another that had found its way between the rear and front plates of his armor, under his right arm. A third arrow, however, had transfixed his neck just below the Adam’s apple and would most certainly have killed him, no matter what harm he might or might not have taken from the other two.

I climbed down from my horse to remove his helmet, for although I believed the dead man was Theuderic, having judged so from the size of him and the richness of his armor and clothing, I had not set eyes on him for six years and so could not trust myself to recognize him properly without seeing the face beneath the closed metal flaps of his helmet’s mask. I recognized him quickly, for all that, even before I cut the leather strap beneath his chin and tugged the helmet from his head. Theuderic had always been the most comely of the four brothers, with large, bright, wide-set eyes of dark, sparkling blue and a clean-shaven face that emphasized the squareness of his dimpled chin and the regularity of his strong white teeth. Now those eyes, open in death, were dull and clouded, unutterably vacant, showing none of the laughing, amiable attributes of the cousin I remembered so clearly. He had not been a vain man, my cousin Theuderic, at least as far as I could remember, save in that one matter of keeping his face cleanly shaved at all times, and as I gazed on his dead face now it occurred to me that I could not recall ever having seen him with a trace of stubble marring the perfect smoothness of his face. Kneeling there above his cold, rain-soaked corpse, unable to move him in the slightest way because the mountain of flesh towering beside me was the rump of one dead horse lying on the carcass of another that was lying on his legs, I felt a welling sadness in my chest and then, for the first time since finding Chulderic and the King, a stirring of cold, clear anger. This was fratricide, the curse of Cain; the shameless and inexcusable murder of one brother by another, over the matter of pride and worldly possessions.

The anger grew brighter until I could feel it blazing deep inside me. Unable to kneel still any longer, I rose to my feet and made my way up out of the streambed to my horse, where I tied my cousin’s helmet to one of the straps hanging from my saddle. It would constitute proof of his death, should anyone require it later. That thought angered me even more and I walked away, stiff-legged and fighting to put down the flaring rage that now threatened to consume me. I was not accustomed to such anger. In fact, I could not remember ever having felt even remotely as I did then, and that made me walk faster than ever, trying to run away from the sensations bubbling inside me until I slipped suddenly on the treacherously sloping ground and wound up teetering at the top of the precipitous drop into the tree-choked ravine down which the stream cascaded. I regained my balance easily enough, but found myself gazing down to where a horse and its rider had fallen and died while attempting to escape from the trap. The horse had impaled itself on a broken stump some twenty paces below me, and its rider lay close beside it, broken and twisted into an unnatural shape. Not far from where they lay, the earth and moss had been torn up by other hooves.

I shouted for Ursus, and he came to me at once, rubbing his palms together briskly, trying to rub off the mud that had caked them. When he reached my side I pointed down.

“Someone got out. Look down there, and over there to the right, beyond the dead horse. It’s hard to tell from up here, but it looks as though there could have been three, perhaps four of them got away. You can see where at least one horse went almost straight down here, on this side, see? And another over there on the right. Look at those marks! It doesn’t seem possible that anyone could have survived that descent, but there’s only one dead horse and rider down there, so someone made the leap.”

Mere moments later we were at the bottom of the ravine, having made our way carefully down the precipitous slope by clinging to moss-encrusted trees and lunging with care from one to the next, making sure to lodge our feet behind tree trunks whenever we could, which was most of the time. Now, at the bottom, we made our way quickly toward the marks we had seen from above and were quickly able to es-. tablish that a respectable number of mounted men—six at least and perhaps twice as many—had managed to escape the trap. Whether or not they had been pursued was moot, and some of the tracks we found might conceivably have been made by others riding in pursuit of a few escapees, but we were heartened to know that the slaughter in this second entrapment had not been as complete as in the other.

In the exhilaration of knowing some men had escaped, we decided to follow them and try to find them and join up with them if we could, and Ursus turned his back on me, his hands on his hips, to stare back up at the slope we had descended.

“Well,” he said, “we should have brought the horses down and picked an easier route. No one was chasing us, after all. Now we have to climb back up that whoreson.”

Mounted again, we took one last look around the killing ground and then made our way slowly down the swooping slope by a more circuitous route until we could enter the wooded ravine, but we left it again almost immediately to make our way downhill more easily in the open, following the path of the stream and watching for the signs that would indicate where the survivors had left the protection of the deep gully. We did not find any until the hillside had faded gently into a wooded valley where the stream joined a wider brook, but when we found the spot where the horses had finally clambered out of the riverbed to head across the valley bottom toward a denser growth of forest on the far side, the tracks were clean and easy to identify as belonging to fourteen riders, which was a far larger number than either of us had expected. I looked at Ursus immediately, but before I could make any comment he shrugged his shoulders.

“Makes no sense to me, either, so don’t even ask me. Some of them must have made their way down the same way we did. Either that or they cut around behind somehow and managed to keep out of the way of the bowmen coming down from above until they found another way to reach the bottom of the slope. It’s not important how they did it. What’s important is that they escaped and now they’re out there, somewhere ahead of us.”

It took us until late in the afternoon to track them down, even though we knew they must be close by in one large, wooded area because we had found their tracks, then lost them again on stony ground, but could find no trace of them anywhere beyond that, once the ground softened again and the soil was deep enough to show tracks. We made a complete circuit of the tract of woodland, large as it was, and by the end of it, when we arrived back at the point where we had started, we knew beyond any doubt that our quarry must still be within the tract somewhere, because the only way they could have traveled on without us finding their trail would have been to sprout wings and fly out.

As it transpired, we must have ridden by the entrance to their hiding place three or four times without even suspecting it was there, because it lay in the densest part of the forest, shrouded by ancient clumps of gnarled, moss-covered trees covering the base of a hill that was crowned with a solid mass of thick, seemingly impenetrable brush. Behind that screen of growth, however, and not easily found unless you knew it was there, lay the single narrow, twisting entrance to a small, steep-sided valley—a rift, little more than a wide vertical split in the hillside—that had no exit. The men hiding in there were being very unobtrusive, knowing that they were deep in hostile territory, hostages to treachery, and evidently expecting, for the best of reasons, that they might be the object of a massive hunt.

We found them on what might have been our fifth pass by the entrance to their hiding place, but it is far more accurate to say that they showed themselves to us. They had seen us pass by once before, and not recognizing us but knowing that we had not seen them, they had allowed us to pass unmolested. The next time we returned, however, they took notice of us.

There was a wide, grassy expanse—a natural meadow with isolated copses of beech and chestnut trees—fronting the mass of older, smaller trees that veiled their hiding place from us, and Ursus and I were searching it thoroughly when we returned that time, quartering it slowly with our eyes to the ground, looking for signs that someone—anyone—had passed that way recently. Ursus was on my left, a good hundred paces from me at the farthest reach of my sweep, which took me within a very short distance of the edge of the clearing. At the opposite end of one sweep, however, when I was farthest away from the forest’s edge and closest to Ursus, I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye and looked up to see a horseman emerge from the woods on my right and come toward me. He was heavily armored, his face hidden by the closed flaps of a heavy, crested helmet, and he carried a spear and a brightly colored shield, blazoned in yellow and crossed by the black diagonal bar that marked him clearly as one of Theuderic’s men.

And then, being almost sixteen, I committed the error of a sixteen-year-old for the first and only time. I whooped in welcome and kicked my horse forward to meet him as I saw two more mounted spearmen come out of the trees at his back. I heard Ursus shout something from behind me, but I assumed it was a shout of welcome like my own and paid it no attention, bent on exchanging greetings with the newcomers.

Only as I began to draw close to the man ahead of me did I begin to suspect that all was not as it should be, because instead of approaching me directly and slowing down, the fellow I was riding to meet angled his horse away, to my right side, and increased his speed, drawing back his spear arm as if to make a cast. I sat up straighter in the saddle, thinking some foolish thought about allowing him to recognize me and with no thought in my mind that, after what they had been through, these people might expect to encounter only enemies in such a place. Again I heard Ursus shout, his voice closer this time, but by then my own foolishness had begun to dawn on me. I heard the thunder of the oncoming horseman’s hooves and saw his arm thrust forward, launching the long spear directly at me, and I leaned hard and far to my left, almost throwing myself out of the saddle and trying to pull my horse bodily out of the line of the weapon’s flight. The point of the spear took me in the side, beneath my upraised arm and fortunately on the metal of my cuirass, rather than in the join between the plates. It hit solidly before it glanced off and away, but the force of its impact threw me effortlessly over my horse’s rump, so that I saw my own feet fly up in front of my eyes. I had an instantaneous vision of my horse’s rear hooves flying up, too, and hitting me in the head as I fell, and I tried desperately to extend the movement of my fall, tucking my head in and kicking my legs back farther over my head. I landed awkwardly, with my weight on one knee and elbow, but I felt no flaring pain and I rolled immediately, clutching for my dagger, the only weapon left to me.

My assailant had ridden around behind me and was now driving in for the kill, a long spatha raised above his head as he leaned toward me, concentrating on the angle of the cut that would kill me. The drumming of his horse’s hooves was loud and concussive, and I threw myself down, rolling head over heels and managing somehow to avoid the hissing arc of his swing. As he charged past the spot where I had been a moment earlier I was already rising to my feet, pulling the helmet hastily from my head and looking about me for my horse, wondering what chance I had of laying hold of the long spatha that hung in its sheath by my saddle.

Again the visored horseman came at me, and this time, freed from the restricted vision caused by my heavy helmet, I shouted as I threw myself forward and angled my roll so that I passed directly beneath his horse’s belly. It was a dangerous thing to do, since I might have been caught by one of the beast’s great hooves, but it was less dangerous than risking a deadly thrust from its rider’s sword, and my hope was that the beast might be startled enough by my move to rear, and even unseat its rider.

My ruse worked, after a fashion. The rider aborted his blow and the horse snorted in surprise as I passed under its belly, the top of my head brushing the bottom of its barrel. Came a moment of confusion as I scrambled to regain my feet, and then I saw the huge horse standing erect on its hind legs, its front hooves waving in the air and the rider on its back straining forward, his visored face close to his mount’s neck and his free hand clutching white-knuckled at the pommel of his saddle as he fought to stay on the animal’s back. I caught a glimpse of his two companions, still motionless at the forest’s edge, and then there came a whistling hiss and a solid, meaty thump as an arrow smacked into the rearing beast’s throat, taking it beneath its upraised chin and toppling the animal over backward so that its rider had to fling himself free, scrambling to avoid being crushed as the creature fell.

He managed, somehow, to retain his balance and stay on his feet, but a mere moment later he was sent flying as Ursus drove his horse right into him, smashing him with its shoulder. I watched Ursus wrest his mount to a sliding halt and then spring off, dagger in hand, to roll the downed man over onto his stomach, plant one knee in his back, then grasp the crest of the fellow’s helmet and pull it back as hard and as far as he could, placing the edge of his blade against the stretched skin of the exposed throat.

“Now, whoreson,” he hissed, hefting the dagger again and placing it more firmly where he wanted it, “all you have to hope for is that your friends there place more value on your life than I do.” He looked up at the other two riders, who were still coming, but showing signs of hesitancy in the face of such a sudden reversal.

“Stay away,” he roared, “unless you want to see your friend here lose his head.”

The two riders stopped, glancing at each other for guidance that neither would provide.

Ursus spoke to me then. “Get your bow. No, get mine. It’s strung. Don’t aim at them but be ready to let fly if they don’t listen to me. Try to take one of them down, but if you can’t, then aim for the horses and we’ll take them on foot. But move slowly now, as you go. Don’t panic them into putting up a fight.”

As I moved toward his horse he pulled back again on his prisoner’s helmet and shouted again to the others.

“We are friends here, not enemies. Can’t you see that? Had we not been, this one here would already be dead. As it was, I took his horse instead of him. Look at the boy there. Don’t you know him? He’s Clothar, youngest son to Ban and brother to Theuderic and Brach. Brother to Gunthar, too, but that’s not his fault. He’s been up north and just came home, to this. But his fight is not with you. He now wants vengeance for his brother, Theuderic.”

One of the two men facing us hefted his spear slowly and threw it down into the ground, where it stood swaying as he reached up and undid the strap securing his helmet. He pulled it off and I recognized him immediately, although I could not recall his name. He was staring at me, narrow eyed, and then he waved one hand in a gesture to his companion to lower his weapon.

“It’s true,” he said. “I recognize the lad. It’s young Clothar, right enough.” He looked then at Ursus and nodded. “So be it. Let Charibert go. No more harm between us. Why are you here and whence came you?”

Ursus stood up, freeing the man called Charibert, who rose to his feet without a word or a look at his captor, fingering the skin of his neck and grimacing as he moved his head cautiously from side to side. I had not even had time to collect the bow Ursus had sent me for, and so I left it hanging by his saddle and went instead toward the man who had recognized me, trying to remember his name and recalling it as soon as I reached his side and his eyes turned to meet mine.

“Corbus,” I said. “Corbus of Renna. Well met. I’m flattered that you should remember me, for the last time we two met was the day I left here with Germanus, to attend his school, and that was six years ago.”

“Aye,” Corbus said quietly, smiling. “And you have changed much since then, grown up and put on some meat, but those eyes of yours are unmistakable. That color struck me the first time I ever saw you and I’ve never forgotten it.” He turned to his two companions. “Look at those eyes. Have you ever seen the like? They’re violet, my wife said when she saw them first; the color of the flowers. The only other eyes I’ve seen like them were Theuderic’s, but his were bluer. These things are purplish … unmistakable.” His face hardened then. “But you still have not told me where you came from and why you’re here. You know what’s been going on?”

I shrugged and glanced at Ursus, who stood watching, saying nothing, his face thunderous.

“Aye,” I said. “We have a fair idea. My friend here is called Ursus, and he comes from a place south of here, a town called Carcasso. He was separated from his military unit, which was supposed to be escorting me. He and I have been together ever since.” I paused, collecting my thoughts, then spoke again directly to Corbus. “We found the King and Chulderic encamped on our way here, and the King was wounded, as you probably know by now.” Corbus nodded. “Aye, well the wound was fatal. King Ban is dead.” I paused again, waiting for their reaction, but there was none, and I realized they had been expecting to hear of the King’s death. “Before he died, and while we were there, the King issued a decree.” I went on and told them about everything that had happened since then, up to the point of our meeting.

“Aye, well you have the right of it,” Corbus said. “Gunthar heard the word and made the choice to gamble. He must have been afraid that Ban would do what he did, giving the succession to Samson at the last. God knows what he was thinking, for he has damned himself to a course no man in his right mind could ever choose to follow. Anyway, he set out to find his mother the Queen a bare hour before we arrived back at the castle, and when Lord Theuderic heard of it he set out after him immediately. We thought we had a chance of catching him before he could do anything foolish. But he knew when he left that we were due to arrive at any moment, and he knew, too, that we would be bound to follow him because Theuderic was already deeply suspicious of Gunthar.

“He must have had it plotted in advance because I have never seen a better-marshaled operation or a trap so cunningly set. Gunthar planned his brother’s death, very carefully … and that, in turn, means inescapably that he has also planned the elimination of his other brothers, Samson and Brach. He’ll add your name to those, Clothar, once he knows you are here. All of you will have to die, and quickly, if he is to sit in safety on the King’s seat.”

The fear that flared up in me at that almost took my breath away. “I have to find my mother. Now, instantly, before it’s too late, because he must mean her death, too. He cannot leave her to live.”

“Breathe easy, lad. We have the Queen.”

“You have—?”

“Aye, she is safe with us, right here, concealed from all the world.” He saw the question in my eyes and answered it before I could ask. “We met her on the road, between here and where your brother fell, and purely by accident. The Lord Brach rode with her, accompanied by his original escort. They had concluded their business at Vervenna and were on their way homeward, bringing the Lady of Vervenna and her newborn child with them to await Lord Ingomer’s return from patrol. It was an unbelievable stroke of fortune. They turned around and came with us.”

“Where are they now, then?”

“Behind us, almost within bowshot, save that there are rock walls between us and them. One of my scouts was born close by here and knows these woods better than his own wife’s rump, and so in your mother’s hour of need he brought us to the refuge he and his family have used in times of danger for a hundred years and more. His brother still lives nearby and has made us welcome.”

“He has made the Queen welcome? In her own domain?”

Corbus inclined his head respectfully enough, but his words implied a hint of censure. “The Queen is aware that some of her people have lived here since before this was a kingdom. In their time, they were kings of their own lands.”

“I see. How is the Queen?”

“Mourning a new-lost son. Apart from that, she’s well.”

“And now I have to tell her of her husband.”

Corbus nodded, his face solemn. “Aye, you do, and that will not be a pleasant task. But my lady the Queen already knows her life has changed beyond redemption. She is so deeply steeped in grief that increasing her burden is a mere matter of degree.” He sighed. “Still, we should go to her directly. She will be happy to see you, after such a long absence.”

“Aye, mayhap … until I tell her what she wishes least to hear. Take me to her, if you please.”

“I will, as soon as you are ready.”

As I turned toward my own horse, I saw the third man extend his arm to the horseless man called Charibert and pull him up to ride double with him. Ursus’s horse and mine stood side by side, not far from where we were, and as we walked toward them Ursus finally spat out his last word on the subject of my enthusiastic error.

“It was a stupid thing to do.”

I stopped. “I know, Ursus, and I almost died of it. I know that, believe me, I know. I can but promise you that I will never again take the appearance of a stranger at face value.”

“Fine, then.” He made one last harrumphing sound in his throat and swung himself up into the saddle, and we made our way over to where Corbus and his two companions sat waiting for us. As soon as we reached them, Ursus nodded to the man Charibert and apologized for killing his horse. Charibert, now mounted behind the third man, nodded in acknowledgment, his face unreadable, and then murmured that he would rather be looking at his horse lying dead than have others looking at him lying dead. They turned their mounts around and accompanied us, but no sooner had we left the large meadow and entered the woods from which they had first appeared than the horses were fetlock deep in standing water.

“I knew it had rained a lot,” Ursus said, looking down at it. The long grass through which we were riding was almost completely submerged and the lower branches of the trees and shrubbery ahead of us were barely above water. “But I didn’t think it was this bad.”

“It’s not,” Corbus replied. “It’s always like this here. It gets better, too, wait and see.”

Sure enough, as we progressed into the woods, the water rapidly grew deeper until it was knee deep on the animals and the last vestiges of grass had disappeared beneath the surface. And yet we were still within the woods. Trees towered all around us, although we could now see that many of them were dead or dying, and the dead growth increased as the distance increased, so that the trees farthest from us were uniformly gray and lifeless, drowned by the lake in which they stood.

Corbus tugged on his reins and brought his horse to a halt. “This is as far as we can go in safety.” He lifted his hand to his mouth and blew a low, piercing whistle that was answered instantly from deeper among the trees, then went on speaking as though we were in the middle of a common grazing ground. “Something broke, underground, about two lifetimes ago, according to the man you are about to meet, and what had always been a small, healthy spring became a raging torrent.” He glanced over at Ursus. “You saw the gully carved by the stream where we were attacked, did you not? That is spring-fed, too. There’s something about the terrain here that causes water to come up to the surface from beneath the ground with great force—force that does not abate and is impossible to withstand.” He waved a hand toward the figure who was approaching us, wading through water that rose almost as high as his crotch. “This is Elmo. He’ll tell you about it better than I can.”

We sat silent, watching the man called Elmo approach, and eventually he came to a stop just in front of us, still ankle deep in water and clad from head to foot in a single robe of blackish brown wool that was completely drenched. There he stood, staring up at Ursus first, taking in every detail of my friend’s appearance before turning his eyes on me and scanning me so carefully that I felt as though there could be no flaw, no blemish on or about my appearance that escaped his scrutiny. Only when he had finished cataloguing me did he glance at Corbus, who told him immediately who we were, naming me first as Ban’s youngest son. Corbus continued, “They know nothing of you or why you are here, Elmo. I was about to tell them the history of this place when you came, but decided to wait and let you tell them. Will you?”

Elmo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me. “I live hereabouts, and my family has been here more than six full generations. My brother Theo rides with Corbus. My grandsire’s grandsire name was Elmo, too, and he lived here before your grandfather, Ban the Bald, was even born, before there was a king of Benwick, and when what is now called Benwick had no name at all. When my ancestor Elmo lived here, though, this place was like that other place at your back, green sward and scattered trees, and we grazed our kine on it—oxen, sheep, and goats. It was sheltered, and close to where we lived, yet far enough removed to keep our beasts free from being plundered. It was boggy in places and it could be dangerous, but it was well watered with sweet, clear-running springs, half a score and more of them.

“But then one day, during my ancestor Elmo’s sixteenth summer, something happened here—a great shifting, somewhere in the earth, beneath the ground. Elmo was here tending his kine when it occurred and he told people the earth shook and threw him on his back and he could not stand up again while it lasted. And after that the springs all dried up and ran no more. People were afraid, thinking some god had grown angered at them and they offered sacrifices of all kinds to every god they knew and some even to gods they didn’t know but thought might be there, watching.

“Even the Romans heard of it and sent some soldiers—engineers, they called themselves—to look at what had happened. But nothing came of it for nigh on another year. The springs were all dried up, but nothing else had changed, and the ground was still a bog in some places, although different places than before.” He paused to scratch his nose, and I found myself wondering, although not yet impatiently, what the import of all this could be. Why were we sitting our mounts knee deep in water listening to a tale from a stranger, when we should be on our way to deliver our tidings to the Queen? Elmo heaved a deep sigh at that point, reclaiming my attention, and turned with lowered head to look at the surrounding water.

“In the spring of the following year, less than a year after the upheavals, my ancestor heard a great cracking noise in the middle of the night and awoke to the terrified screaming of all his cattle and a great hissing, splashing noise of roaring, rushing water. It was the dead of night and there was no moon, so it was black as charcoal here under the trees, and all he could tell was that in the midst of the unseen but frightening chaos around him he felt, and seemed to be, safe against the bole of the tree under which he had been sleeping. He crouched there all night long, waiting for the sun to rise, and when it did he could not believe the sight that awaited him.” Elmo paused again and glanced up at us to see if he had all our attention, knowing full well that he had. We all sat rapt, even the three who had heard the story before.

“He found himself sitting on what would turn out to be a spine of stone running most of the way across the meadow. It had not looked anything like that the day before, but something had ruptured in the ground and released a terrifying scourge of solid water that had scoured away all the soil in its path and bared the rocky sides of the spine. There was another outcrop of rock behind the place where he now sat, and it was crowned with dirt and grass, but the face of it was the clean, bright gray of new-split rock and it was out of a fissure there, lower down than my ancestor’s perch, that the water was spewing.

“His cattle had all vanished, scattered in terror of what was happening, and so my ancestor’s main task that first morning was to escape from the spine of rock on which he had found himself. The great scoured channel swept down to his left and the ground there was collapsing and disappearing even as he watched it, undercut by the ferocious strength of the newborn stream that was causing great lumps and chunks of solid earth and clay to rip free from above and fall into the waters to be churned into mud and swept away.

“The ground on his right-hand side appeared to be sound and solid, however, so my ancestor set out in that direction to remove himself as far as he could from what was happening on his left. But at his first step he sank to his knees and fell forward into what was no more than a sea of thick mud covered with bright, clean growing grass and wild flowers. He almost drowned there, in that mud, but his gods were on his side that day, he swore, and he was able to scramble back to the rocky spine. Once there and safe again, he walked all the way to the farthest end of it, looking for a way to jump off it and on to solid ground, but he could find no place that tempted him to put any trust in what he could not feel solidly under his feet. The gully that yawned on his left was several long paces wide in places by that time, and growing wider and deeper with every moment that passed. At the endmost tip of the spine there was another gap, he said, less than two paces wide and out of the worst of the current on his left, but just far enough away to prevent him from jumping. So he turned around and went all the way back to his starting point, following the twists and turns of the spine as it wound aimlessly back and forth.

“Back at his starting point, he looked again at the rock across from him, from the base of which the water was still hissing and roaring with no lessening of its fury. That rock offered a solid landing place, for he could see the handspan’s depth of soil and grass that lined its broken top. But its surface was above the level on which he stood, which meant he would have to jump up and across, and if he fell short, he would fall directly into the roaring deathtrap beneath him and be smashed to a bloody froth.

“He made the jump safely and for the next month and more he watched the gradual destruction of what had been a safe and pleasant grazing spot. And he discovered many things about what was happening. The ground on the right of the spine that had been bog and then became mud simply sank into the earth and disappeared, slowly and steadily, washed and sucked and sifted away by the waters until that side of the spine lay as bare and exposed as the left side.

“But then my ancestor began to grow aware that something other was occurring here. This place is bowl-shaped, it transpired, and he watched and paid close attention as the waters rose and rose until the bowl was full.”

“So how long did that take?” It was the first time I had spoken since Elmo arrived, and he looked up at me.

“When my grandsire was the age his grandsire Elmo had been at the start of it all. Our family has paid great attention to the happenings in the place now for nigh on a hundred years, and few things happen here that we are unaware of.

“No one can tell why the waters ceased to rise. They simply stopped one day and rose no farther. A balance of some kind was reached … a leveling. The waters are still sweet and fresh, so the torrent is still flowing strongly enough to keep the currents stirring and to avert stagnation, and there is sufficient drainage, obviously, to maintain the level of the waters without loss.”

“So how are we to cross it? I presume we are to cross it? I see no boats, but you must have some close by.”

“None large enough for horses.” The man smiled at me and his entire face was transformed. “We will walk.” His smile widened at the look on my face. “The spine, Lord Clothar. The spine I’ve been talking about is still there, below the surface. We will follow it. That is why I am here—to guide you. You will have to dismount, though, and lead your horses, for the way is narrow in some places. Follow the man ahead of you precisely and feel your way with caution, making sure each foot is firmly set before placing your weight on it. The water on either side of the spine is deep, but we’ll be close enough together that, if one of you does fall in, we’ll be able to pull you out again. But I am sure I do not have to explain the folly of trying at any time to make your way across the spine without my guidance.” He avoided looking at any of us as he said that, but there was no mistaking the tenor of the warning. “Now, Lord Clothar, if you will follow me with your friend Ursus behind you, the others have crossed before and know the procedure.”

Having said that, he turned away and waited to hear me splashing into the water at his back before he moved off into the waters ahead of us. I glanced once at Ursus, and followed my guide, preparing to concentrate completely on where he was leading me and to trust utterly in his own knowledge of the pathway across the open waters.

As I walked close behind my guide, fighting the urge to throw my arms around him and hang on from time to time, I found myself thinking about where we were and what was happening, and my thoughts were whirling as I made my cautious way across the mere. There was water all around us, but we were already more than halfway across and I could see where the trees turned green again up ahead of us, marking the start of dry land again. I stopped and turned to look back the way we had come, and in front of me Elmo stopped moving immediately.

“What is it?” he asked me.

“Nothing, I’m merely looking back. There’s absolutely no sign of the route we’ve followed to get here, and no indication of how we’ll progress from here to reach the end of the crossing.”

I turned back to find him looking at me and smiling slightly. “Does that surprise you, Lord Clothar? Or do the people in the north leave marks in the water when they pass through it?”

I took the jibe in the spirit in which I thought it was intended and smiled, letting the thought of being insulted glide away from me. “No. Forgive me, Elmo, I was but thinking aloud, about our circumstances. My—the Queen of Benwick lies ahead of us, under your care, and this may be the only spot within her own lands where she is safe. She would not be safe in her own house today, not with her firstborn son behaving like a mad dog as he is. But here she is beyond reach of all who might seek to harm her. And you alone hold the key to her safety, because of your knowledge of this pathway through the waters.”

“Well, not alone. My brother Theo knows the way across as well as I do. But then Theo is seldom here, whereas I live close by.” He looked over my shoulder to the men at my back. “We should keep moving. Our friends back there are at our mercy when we stop thus, for they cannot simply go around us and continue on their own.” He began walking again, speaking back over his shoulder. “You were talking about the Queen’s safety but you sounded as though you harbor some doubt. In what regard?”

“Accessibility. It’s obvious no one can come in here without knowing the way, but is that surmountable? Is there any other way a determined man—or army, for that matter—might penetrate the refuge where you have the Queen?”

Elmo shook his head. “Not without growing wings like a bird, to let him fly …” He paused for a few moments and thought about what he had just said, then held up a hand and wiggled it back and forth. “Well, that may not be completely true. If a man is determined enough, he can usually find a way to get what he wants. It is conceivable, I suppose, that die-hard assault could reach us in the valley by coming over the top of the hills, but I really believe it would hardly be possible. These hills are high and rugged, and when God made them, He built them upright out of huge, flat, sometimes knife-edge-thin slabs of stone, then tilted them all sideways and fixed them in place just before they fell over of their own weight. Our little valley lies at the center of that piece of His creation, and the hills all around it slant steeply away from it in all directions, so that anyone approaching from the outside has to struggle constantly to climb unscalable, sharp-edged cliffs that are all tilted toward him and overhang each other in endless ridges, each with its own dangers and threats. I have been there in those hills, Lord Clothar, and it is not a pleasant place to be. I went there of my own free will, as an act of penance, and it is no exaggeration to say that I was truly penitent when I emerged, and that there were times when I genuinely thought I would never emerge at all, but would die in there, in some hidden spot unknown to man.”

I was staring at the back of his head, marveling at his fluent ease with words, but his reference to penance took me by surprise.

“Why would you do an act of penance?”

He did not even bother to turn around. “Because I am a sinner. Sinners are required to do penance.”

“You sound like a bishop.”

“Aye, well I’m not, but I am a priest, and my bishop’s name is Erigon. He is my teacher.”

“Erigon? My teacher’s name is Germanus. He is a bishop, too.”

That stopped him dead in his tracks, and he turned slowly to face me, his eyes wide. “Germanus? Of Auxerre?”

“Aye, that’s him.”

His eyes grew even wider. “You know the blessed Germanus?”

“I know Bishop Germanus of Auxerre.” I was careful to keep my voice neutral. I had heard others speak of Germanus as “the Blessed” but I had never known any of the school’s staff or residents speak of him that way, and I had certainly never seen or heard the bishop himself make any reference to such a thing, so the sentiment, as much as the tone of voice in which it was uttered, made me feel slightly ill at ease. “He is my mentor. I meet with him regularly, at least once every week or two. He knew my parents when he was young, before he became a bishop, and he is still a close friend of King Ban and Queen Vivienne. I have attended his school in Auxerre for almost six years now.”

“Have you, now? You are a very fortunate young man.” Elmo shook his head in apparent wonder and turned again to resume walking. By the time we reached the other shore he had told me everything he knew and admired about Germanus, and listening to him this time I did not feel the slightest discomfort.

Soon we were at the edge of the water with solid ground ahead of us, and I could see people moving among the trees in the distance. Towering rock walls swept up on either side of us here, and gazing up at them, I was awestruck to realize that they had been invisible from the big meadow on the other side of the water, completely concealed by the topography and the cloaking effect of distance and the density of trees on the hillsides. I turned to say something about that to one of the others but as I did so I heard a shout of welcome, and suddenly we were surrounded by the men who now occupied what I had already begun to think of as the secret valley.