The Lance Thrower

VI

BRACH AND SAMSON

WHEN WE ARRIVED in the tiny encampment within the cleft in the rocks, we made our way directly to find my aunt Vivienne, but there were two guards posted outside the tent she and her women occupied, and they waved us away as we approached, their demeanor indicating unmistakably that they took their responsibility for their Queen’s peace and safety very seriously. One of the two told us the Queen was asleep and that her physician had ordered that she was not to be disturbed.

I was relieved to be able to accept the decree without demur, because I was deeply reluctant to awaken her with tidings she did not need to hear immediately, and so I sought out my cousin Brach, knowing we needed to discuss the situation now in force.

No one seemed to know where he was, but the place was very small and eventually I found him beyond the campsite, bathing in the water of one of three deep, spring-fed pools in the middle of the small valley. The mere sight of him astonished me. The youngest of Ban’s four sons by Vivienne, Brach was the one who had changed most to my eyes in the years that had elapsed since last we saw each other.

When I left for Auxerre as a ten-year-old, Brach had been fifteen and, everyone agreed, a big lad for his age. As I gazed at him now as he strode naked from the water and began to towel himself dry, it was more than plain to see that in the years since then he had not stopped growing. Always thickly padded with muscle and heavily set on long, strong, clean-lined legs, he had expanded enormously until now, at the age of one and twenty, he was gigantic, composed of layer upon layer of corded muscle with nary a trace of fat to be seen on any part of him. His arms and thighs were immense, and his chest was so sculpted, his pectoral and abdominal muscles so distinctly pronounced and perfectly shaped, that it looked as if he wore an officer’s dress-uniform cuirass of richly worked leather, ornately carved and tanned to resemble human skin.

I saw him frown when he first noticed me walking toward him. He would have no doubt that I was a friend, since only friends could find their way into this place, but I knew he was trying to place me, wondering who I was and where I had come from. I wondered how long it would take him to know me, or if I would have to tell him who I was. But as I drew within ten paces of him I saw recognition dawn in his eyes and his entire face broke into a great smile of welcome as he threw open his arms and leaped toward me, forgetting the fact that he was completely naked. He hugged me to his bare chest with the strength of a bear and practically crushed my ribs before letting me go. When I stepped back from him, he nodded his head, still smiling, and I realized he had not said a single word, and only then did I remember that that single attribute, his taciturnity, was the thing I had admired most about him when I was a child. I reached out, still grinning, and poked the massive biceps of his left arm with one fingertip.

“You’ve grown big, Brach. How did you do that?”

His laughter was immense, a deep, booming roll of pleasure, but still he said nothing. Instead, he picked up the towel he had dropped and began to dry himself thoroughly. Then, when he felt comfortable again, he wrapped himself in the folds of the towel and dragged his fingers through the tangles of his long, brown hair.

“I’m happy to see you well, Cousin Clothar,” he said. “And big. You grew, too. Why are you here and not in school?”

The last time he and I had spoken, Brach had addressed me as Brother. Now, six years later, everything had changed. I shrugged. “School is over, Cousin, and Bishop Germanus sent me home with letters for the King.”

His face darkened. “You’ve heard?”

“Aye, more than you.”

“What does that mean, more than me?” He glanced about him. “Come, walk with me back to my tent and tell me.”

“No.” I held up a hand to stop him. “Better I should tell you now, with no one close by to hear. The King is dead, Brach.” I saw the sudden pain that flared in his eyes and again I raised my hand to him as though to silence him, although I knew he would not speak. He kept his eyes square on mine then, remaining motionless as I went on to tell him how Ursus and I had been brought to Ban’s encampment, and how Ban had made his pronouncement in favor of Samson.

Brach stood in silence until he had absorbed what I had said, then he nodded his head and walked three paces to the nearest tree, where he seated himself on the grass and leaned back against the trunk before wiggling his fingers to indicate that I should keep talking. He listened intently until I finished the story of how we had set off in pursuit of Beddoc and ended up here in this hidden valley, and when I had finally done and had nothing more to say he remained thoughtful. At length, however, he sucked air noisily between his teeth—a trait he shared with at least one of his elder brothers—and swayed effortlessly to his feet.

“Gunthar should have been killed long ere now,” he said. “I had thoughts about doing it myself, several times, but then I told myself he was my brother and my thoughts were unworthy. I was a fool to listen to myself. He’s a mad dog and I knew it a long time ago. I was right to think of killing him.”

“No, Brach. You could not have killed him and lived with yourself thereafter.”

He looked me straight in the eye, and every vestige of warmth had gone from his voice when he replied, “I should have accepted the burden gladly. Now Theuderic is dead at his hands and he was ten times the man Gunthar could ever be, even were he not crazed. Now he threatens not only me and Samson, he threatens our mother!” He stopped, evidently with an exercise of will. “Now, what of you? What will you do? You can’t stay here or he’ll kill you, too, if he can. I swear on my mother’s eyes, he’s a rabid animal. Will you return to Auxerre?”

“No, I’m staying here to fight with you. I’ve been well trained in warfare these past six years, as both a cavalryman and an officer, so if you will have me, I’ll attach myself to your troops and you can judge me for yourself and use me as you see fit. Does that sound fair? And I have Ursus with me, too, who is worth five men—hunter, warrior, fighter, mercenary, and loyal and true as the day is long. Someone in the family has to bring about Gunthar’s end, and since it is already too late for that person to be Theuderic, I will make a perfectly acceptable substitute.”

“Fine. Accepted. But what do we do now? When will Chulderic and Samson reach home?”

“Today, perhaps tomorrow. But what happens when they arrive depends on Gunthar. I left ahead of them to overtake Beddoc and bring word of the King’s death to the castle, to you and Theuderic and your mother at the same time as to Gunthar, but none of us foresaw the possibility of finding the castle all but abandoned. Chulderic and Samson would have made their way homeward, expecting me to have carried out my task and informed everyone of the King’s death at the same time, permitting no advantage to Gunthar. By now, however, Gunthar might well have returned to the castle and taken possession of it. If he has, then he has already met Beddoc and knows that the King is dead and that he dispossessed Gunthar before he died. And if that is the case, Gunthar will throw any remaining caution to the winds. He will be prepared to go down to his death fighting.

“Now, if he already holds the castle, then Chulderic and Samson are stuck outside, with nowhere near sufficient men to lay siege to the place. The truth is that there are not enough men in all of Benwick to lay siege to Ban’s castle. Our friends then will have no place to go, and there are too many of them to come here. This place is formidable but it couldn’t accommodate a hundred people, let alone five hundred. How many are here now, two score?”

“Aye, somewhere in that region. Chulderic and Samson have five hundred between them, and then there are another four hundred in the east, the remains of Theuderic’s force.”

“How many men can Gunthar muster?”

“Probably about the same as us, according to the last information I received. About a thousand. But that was a month ago, perhaps longer, so the numbers may have changed by now. He had a thousand then only because there were no more available for hire, according to my sources among his people. He may have added others since that time. I simply don’t know. However, we have the edge on him in horsemen. The largest part of his force is made up of foot soldiers—infantry and all mercenaries, mainly Alamanni, with a few contingents of Burgundians.”

“Alamanni and Burgundians … ?” I had been on the point of asking if Gunthar had gone mad, but of course he had. In his need to secure his own kingship, he would care nothing for where his fighting men came from or who they were. He would hire mercenaries from anywhere that he could find them. And that made me think on something else.

“Where is his money springing from? How can he afford to pay mercenaries?”

Brach twisted his face into what might have been a smile, but was utterly lacking in amusement. “Nobody knows. There are rumors. They seem unbelievable, but I’m inclined to think they could be true. Tales of theft on an enormous scale. One tells of a coterie of pederasts who lived together in a villa near Lugdunum about six years ago, just when you were going off to school. All elderly, all wealthy and all depraved … what else would you expect of pederasts? Anyway, they could afford to indulge themselves in their degeneracy, bringing in traveling entertainers from all over the empire. One night, they were all killed in their beds, fifteen to twenty of them plus all their servants, and the entire villa was emptied of its treasures. People spoke of tracks a handspan deep, left in bone-dry ground by the wheels of heavily laden wagons.

“Then there was the incident of the talents of gold. Two entire talents of gold bullion, in bars, all stamped with the head of the Emperor Honorius and escorted by an entire cohort of Imperial Household Guards on its way from Carcasso to Massilia, to await shipment to the imperial treasury in Constantinople. Three years ago. They had barely traveled thirty miles, two days into a five-day journey, when they were attacked at night and wiped out … all of them … and the gold vanished, never to be found again.”

“You think Gunthar was responsible for those things?”

Brach shrugged his massive shoulders. “Someone arranged those robberies and carried them out successfully, and whoever it was, he had access to enormous resources in men and logistics. Think for a moment about what would be involved not merely in attacking but in overwhelming and annihilating a full cohort of Imperial Household Guards engaged upon the personal affairs of the Emperor … and then add the additional difficulties of stealing and transporting two entire talents of solid gold—box upon box upon box of gold bars—and making them simply vanish without trace, permanently.

“But those are only two instances—admittedly the most spectacular two, but over the past five years there have been others, at least half a score of them, similar crimes equally bold and impressive, involving vast sums of money, usually in gold. Now, there is one additional fact here that is worthy of consideration—very few people use money nowadays. Silver and copper coins are mere curiosities, save in the largest cities, where the merchants can still operate, but absolutely no one outside of the portals of power uses gold for mere purchases. Gold is used only for major acquisitions and most of those occur within the Empire, for imperial purposes. Whoever they are, these thieves, they are bold and aggressive in their greed. Gunthar was always the boldest and most brilliant of all of us. And he is an astoundingly gifted strategist. The kinds of operations we are discussing here would be simple for him.”

I was stunned, bereft of words by the dimensions of what he had suggested. It was one thing to acknowledge that my own cousin Gunthar, whom I had never liked and had never really known, besides being the firstborn son of King Ban of Benwick was also homicidally insane and a fratricide. It was something altogether different, however, to acknowledge that he might also be a criminal genius of long standing.

“I know how to get inside the castle.” I had not known I was going to say it, but suddenly I heard myself speaking the words aloud.

Brach stopped short and looked at me. “What did you say?”

“I said I know how to get inside the castle … without anyone being able to prevent us, I mean.”

“That’s impossible. Even before my father built the drawbridge, there was no way into the castle once the gates were closed.”

“No, not true. Far from true, in fact. There is a very simple way into the castle, penetrating all of its defenses, and the knowledge of it has been a secret in your family for generations.”

Brach was frowning at me now. “A secret in our family for generations? According to whom? I’ve never heard of that before. How come you to know of it, when I do not?”

“It was King Ban’s secret, to be entrusted only to one of his sons.”

“You are no son of his at all, despite what most of the people think. So how come you to know of it?” I was about to answer when he said, “So Gunthar knows of this?”

“No, he does not. Your father never told him. He never was able to bring himself to divulge the secret to Gunthar.”

“Well, thank the gods for that. And yet he told it to you?”

“No, to his oldest, closest, and most trusted friend, and that friend told me.”

“Clodio! The tight-lipped old whoreson.”

“Aye, Clodio knows the secret, and it’s safe with him. He has held it for forty years and more and holds it safely still. He told me of it—that a secret entrance to the castle exists—only because he knew that King Ban would have wanted the castle held safely against Gunthar, but he told me neither where the entrance is nor how it works. He simply offered to lead me in through it, to bring me into the castle secretly should Gunthar take over. That was before we knew of Theuderic’s death.”

“So, then, what think you, should we take him up on his offer?”

“We have to. There’s no other choice. As long as Gunthar holds the castle undisputed, none of our lives will be worth living. We would have to post a permanent guard in front of the castle to bar him exit, and even then there’s no guarantee that he would not find some means of coming and going on the lake. We can’t surround the entire castle.”

Brach held up an imperious hand, cutting me short. “Wait you, Clothar. I am beginning to feel too naked to be discussing such things. Let me put on some clothing before we discuss this further. I’ll be thinking of it as I dress, and I’ll be back directly. I promise not to waste any time.”

We walked together, this time without speaking, until we reached his tent and he ducked inside, leaving me alone to really look about me for the first time since I arrived.

The camp was not large, yet it seemed large because of the number of people crammed into the small space it occupied, and the space seemed even smaller because of the high, steeply slanted walls of rock that hemmed the valley in on three sides. The valley itself was long and narrow, in the shape of a ragged S, and the camp lay in the rear portion of the shape, farthest from the waters of the mere that guarded the entrance.

I looked at the bustle going on all around me and reflected that, had I not known we were in a time of war, the condition of this camp would have left me in no doubt. There was not a woman to be seen, although I knew my aunt and her three ladies were here, and every man in the place was involved in something that related in some way to fighting: many were polishing and sharpening their weapons and tending to their armor, scraping and hammering at dents and rust stains; many more were tending to their saddles and riding gear—I had counted almost fifty horses in the front part of the valley and had been surprised that people had gone to so much trouble leading the animals across the causeway under the water when they might have left them safely on the other side. But then I had realized, in the thinking of it, that there could be no safety on the other side, since anyone riding casually by would immediately see horses grazing there and would investigate to find out who and where the owners of the animals might be.

None of the people around me paid me the slightest attention. I was there, and therefore one of them. There was no discussion of that and no question of its being untrue, and so it mattered not that they did not know me … they assumed that some other person did and that I had a purpose in being there, all of which was true. In the meantime, they had duties of their own, and they pursued them single-mindedly.

I was thinking about that, and watching two men struggling with some kind of sawhorse, when Brach spoke from behind me.

“So you think we should go back to the castle quickly? Soon, I mean?”

I was disconcerted yet again by the sheer size and bulk of him. Naked and wrapped only in a towel he had been formidable. Fully dressed, he seemed even larger, and I knew that when completely encased in armor fashioned to his own frame, he would seem leviathan. I looked at the breadth of him and was aware that I had to move my head to look from one of his shoulders to the other.

“Sweet Jesus, you’re huge!” I could not help myself, and Brach twisted his mouth wryly.

“Aye,” he said, wistfully, I thought. “So I have been told. It has advantages attached in time of war, I suppose—the extra strength and superior reach—but it also makes a bigger target out of me, more difficult to miss for the bowmen and the spearmen and the slingers who can stay out of range of a superior reach. Believe me, Cousin, being as large as I am has its drawbacks, even with the ladies. Now, should we go back soon?”

“Aye, we should.” I was intrigued by his mention of the ladies, but I knew this was no time to discuss it. “And the quicker the better. The odds are acceptable that Gunthar might not have returned yet to take the castle. And even if he has taken the place, he could not yet have had time to gather all his thousand men. Some of them are on patrol in the east, with Lord Ingomer, are they not?”

“Aye, but not many. Two or three score riders, no more. Gunthar’s own guards.”

“No matter. What’s important is that he has not yet had time to marshal all his forces. Once he’s in the castle, he can hold it easily and admit them later, as they arrive. But if we move quickly now we can oust him in the middle of the night, from inside the castle itself, where he will least expect us and will not be equipped to handle such a surprise reversal. So I believe we should leave immediately with as many men as can be spared.”

“Spared by whom? And what about my mother?”

“She should remain here for the time being with all the other women and the Lady Anne’s infant. She is safer here than she could be anywhere else in Benwick, and knowing she is here we’ll have no cause to worry about her. We will be able to concentrate on what needs to be done, and to get the task finished. After that, we can send back for her, and she will be safe inside the castle for the duration of this war, if it is a war.”

“Oh, it’s a war, Cousin. It is war to the death, and our enemy has nothing in common with us, though we are blood kin and siblings.” He paused, thinking, then nodded. “So, we should leave immediately, but realistically that means tomorrow at first light. After all, I have a brother lying dead out there and I need to bury him. What then?”

Brach noticed my hesitation, and his brow wrinkled slightly. “You think the timing is too important, that we do not have sufficient time to bury Theuderic and reach Genava as quickly as we should?”

I nodded, grimacing my regret but unable to dissemble. “Aye, I do.”

“No matter. We’ll do both. I’ll find my brother and see to his burial because I cannot stomach the thought of leaving him out there for the crows to pick at. You and Ursus and a few of my men can ride ahead and discover what the situation is. I’ll follow you with the rest of my men as soon as we’ve done what we set out to do.”

“That makes sense. A few hours won’t make too much of a difference as long as the preliminary moves are set in place, and I can look after those. By the time you arrive I’ll have everything arranged.”

“What will you have to do?”

I shrugged. “I won’t know that until we reach Genava and find out who is there—who’s in the castle and who’s still outside. If Gunthar is in possession, much will depend on how many of his people are in there with him, but Clodio will tell us that when he comes out to meet us. Once we know that, we will know how many men we need to take into the castle.”

“We’ll take them all.”

“No, Cousin, that’s a bad idea. The more men we take with us, the greater the chance we have of being detected. Ideally, we should go in with a score of men—the best men we have. We’ll overcome the guard and lower the bridge, let our own people in. Given the surprise of our being inside the gates when it doesn’t appear possible, we should be able to achieve great things in little time.”

“What if Gunthar’s not there? The castle might be in his hands but under the control of one of his men. What then?”

“Nothing changes, except that we lose the chance to capture Gunthar. No matter. We kill or capture those inside and close the gates against the others. Let Gunthar wander about outside in the open where he thought to scatter us.”

Brach sucked on his upper lip and nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense. Now we should visit Mother. She ought to be awake by now. I warn you, though, Cousin, she has taken Theuderic’s death very badly. And she has had much to bear, these past few days.”

“Aye, and I’m about to add to her burden.”

“There’s no need for you to do that, Cousin, not if it’s that upsetting to you, and I can plainly see it is. I’ll be the one to bring her the tidings of my father’s death—it’s my duty, anyway, as her son. She has to learn of it somehow, but it’s not necessary for you to be the one bringing the tidings on your return after so long away.”

I stood gaping at him. I had been so caught up in my role of messenger that I had been agonizing over how I would ever find words to tell my aunt my grievous news without endangering her regard for me and making her see me forever after as the bringer of doom and grief. Purely selfish, I admit, and not at all admirable, but I was sixteen years old and terrified of causing unbearable grief to the woman I loved most in all the world.

Brach, whom few people would ever describe as being an intuitive man, despite his self-possession, seemed to understand the thoughts teeming in my mind, for he reached out with one enormous hand and gripped me by the nape of the neck, squeezing me gently and lending me some of his great strength.

“Hold yourself still, Cousin, and leave the breaking of the news to me. I won’t even mention to Mother that you’re here, not yet. Mayhap the sight of you tonight, just after sunset, will lift her spirits, even if only for a moment. Sweet Jesu knows she will be in need of comforting, and the sight of you newly arrived might well be joyous enough to distract her from her grief, for a little while at least, and that will be a blessing. So go and find your friend Ursus and get yourselves something to eat at one of the cooking fires. I’ll break the news to Mother and comfort her as best I may, and I’ll come looking for you later, when she is asleep again.”

“Think you she will be able to sleep again today, after she hears what you have to say?”

“She will have no choice. Her physician is very wise and very learned. He gave her a potion today to make her sleep, and when its effects have worn off completely, he will administer another. She will sleep, I promise you, and it is the best thing she could do. I will come looking for you later. Now go—eat something.”

It took far longer to strike out onto the road than anyone expected. We could not start to leave before sunrise, because our horses each had to be led individually along the spine of the underwater causeway—an impossible task in darkness. As it was, Elmo and his brother Theo were chilled to the bone by the icy water and completely exhausted after leading only half of the horses and riders across, so that they had to rest and recapture some body heat before they could continue. The morning was already more than two hours old by the time the last of our thirty horses and their riders made it safely across, but fortunately it was a pleasant, sunny morning and warm enough for our soaked men to ride on wet, and they dried out gradually in the sunlight without too much discomfort.

We traveled hard and fast from that point on and within the hour had reached the steep hillside path leading up to the place where Gunthar had ambushed Theuderic’s force. A quarter of a mile away I reined in and pointed up toward the spot to show Brach where it was, but he was familiar with the place and knew already where the assault had taken place. He merely nodded to me, his face expressionless.

“You should stay down here, on the plain,” he said to Ursus, and then to me, “and you, too. The quickest route from here to the castle is to go that way”—he pointed southeast—“around the flank of that hill and keeping to the open fields, avoiding the wooded hillsides. It’s about two miles from here, give or take a quarter mile. You’ll see a pair of big old poplars as you approach the castle. You can’t miss them. You’ll turn a corner around the hillside and there they are in front of you in the far distance, standing in an open space with no other trees around them. They’re important, because once you pass them, you can be seen from the castle’s battlements.” He looked at me again, one eyebrow raised. “Of course, you can be seen by anyone from anywhere, if they happen to be looking when you show yourself, so don’t be tempted to do anything careless on the way there.

“Half a mile or so beyond where you first see the two big trees, you’ll find a shepherd’s hut made of stone. Ursus, if you are still of a mind to return home, you can turn directly to your left there and follow the only path there is in that direction—it’s a cow track, no more. It will take you back northeastward for another mile to where you’ll see the main road running east and west. Westward will take you back to Lugdunum.

“Now the two of you had better be on your way. Clothar, I’ve detailed one of my sergeants to ride with you, with five other men to serve as scouts, just in case you should ride into unwelcome company. I’m taking my main party up now to the forge. We’ll dig a grave for Theuderic and another, larger one for his men. Not much we can do about the dead horses, I’m afraid, other than leave them to stink until they disappear.”

He jerked his head in a terse nod. “So, I’ll wish you well, Ursus, and hope to see you again someday on some field more acceptable than this one. Cousin Clothar, I should be in a position to start my men digging and collecting bodies just about the time you’ll be arriving in the region of the castle. We can hope that you’ll find Chulderic and Samson in possession when you arrive, but be careful how you approach the place. Take no chances.” He paused.

“Say Gunthar has the castle. What will Chulderic and Samson have done already if they arrived to find it in Gunthar’s hands? Think you they’ll sit calmly in the shadow of his walls? They won’t attack … at least I hope they won’t. Samson would not be that hotheaded, would he? No, even if he were, Chulderic would not permit such foolishness. So where are they likely to be?”

I was shaking my head before he finished. “If Chulderic and Samson have not yet come, I’ll withdraw to the red-wall caves, where we all played as boys. Clodio will be waiting for me there, to take me in by his secret entrance. You remember the place?”

Brach nodded. “Good, that’s a good place to go, far enough from the castle to allow you to breathe in comfort without being watched. If you’re not in front of the walls with Chulderic and Samson when I arrive, I’ll come and find you at the caves. I should be no more than three hours behind you, four at the most. So, farewell, both of you.”

He pulled his horse into a turn and rode away with a loud and piercing whistle that was obviously familiar to his men, for they all put spurs to their mounts at the same time and swung into place behind him, with the exception of the sergeant and the five men detailed to ride with me. They broke out of the ranks and rode toward me.

“I’m Clothar, cousin to Lord Brach,” I said to the sergeant. “He forgot to tell me your name.”

The sergeant dipped his head. “I’m Shonni. I’m to ride with you.”

“Aye, I know. Well then, let’s ride, because I want to be at Castle Genava before noon.”

It was only after we had kicked our mounts to a gallop that I realized I had openly named my real relationship to Brach, and with that came the additional awareness that I could do so openly from this time on without fear of betrayal by anyone. King Ban was dead and I was a warrior now, my childhood long since lost behind me. My name was Clothar and no one with whom I rode really cared who my relatives might be. The only credentials I required now were my fighting skills.

A very short time later, it seemed to me, we rode around the shoulder of a hillside and saw, as Brach had predicted, two towering trees in the distance, their upswept branches giving them the slender, delicate-seeming gracefulness that marked them unmistakably as poplars. A few moments later, we came in sight of the shepherd’s hut where Ursus’s path would finally diverge from mine. We drew rein, he and I, when we reached the tiny building, and I offered him my hand, bidding him farewell. When I tried to release him, however, he clung to my hand, looking at me in a way I had never seen before.

“Perceval,” he said.

“What?”

“Perceval. It’s my name, my real name. I never use it nowadays.” He let go of my hand.

“Why not? It’s a fine name.”

“I know it is, and it’s well known in the country I came from. Too well known. It was my father’s name—might still be, for all I know. Dead or alive, my father’s condition matters nothing to me. He was a wealthy man, and powerful, my father Perceval … chief of all his people.”

“But …” I hesitated, suddenly confused. “You said your grandfather was a shepherd. How could his son be a chief?”

Ursus laughed aloud. “No, that was my mother’s father. And he was a landowner who raised sheep, not a mere shepherd. He built the hut you saw, but only for his own satisfaction, not because he had to. Most people have two grandfathers, Clothar, don’t you? My other grandfather—my father’s father—was far more powerful and far less pleasant, and he was chief of his people. Some even called him King. And when he died, they called his son Perceval, my father, King in his place. I never did, though. My father and I did not see things from the same viewpoint, ever. Where I saw white, he saw black. Even to our names … . I was Perceval and so was he, but he pronounced his name as Parsifal … to differentiate himself from me, you see. We did not love each other. So much did we not love each other in fact that when I left home I changed my name, not wanting others to know, or even guess that I might be the Perceval who was my father’s son. I killed a bear one day, a big and bad old bear that had turned man-eater and was terrorizing a village where I had stopped for a time. I went hunting for it with my bow and managed to kill it. The villagers were awestruck and gave me the name of Bear-killer. I shortened it to Bear—Ursus—and decided it suited me well. It’s what I’ve called myself ever since, and that’s been nigh on a score of years.”

I felt myself smiling, slightly bemused. “So why do you tell me this now? Am I supposed to stop thinking of you as Ursus now that you’re leaving?”

“No, not at all.” He glanced down at himself, checking the few possessions that hung on either side of his saddle, then took a firm grip on his reins, preparing to ride off. On the point of digging in his spurs, however, he looked at me again and pursed his lips, allowing his chin to sink down onto his chest. “You’re a good man, Clothar,” he said. “Better than many another twice your age that I’ve met in my travels. I have enjoyed riding with you and I regret having to leave, but we’ve discussed that. One thing, however, I would like you to recall and understand when I am gone.” He paused, and I sat watching him, waiting. “There is no Ursus,” he resumed eventually. “Ursus is but a mask behind which my true face, my true identity, lies hidden. I go through life meeting people in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and of all who have known me as Ursus, I have only made myself known as Perceval to two.

“One of those was a woman, and I was to be wed to her some years ago … ten years ago, in truth. She lived in a small town along the southern coast, where people made their living catching fish. I met her when I was stationed for a while in Massilia, which was close by—I was a regular legionary in those days. She was beautiful, and we loved each other from the start, right from the first time we met. But before we could be wed she was violated in a pirate raid one afternoon and it later turned out that she had become pregnant.”

He fell silent, and for a time I thought he would say no more, but then he continued. “There was no question of the babe’s being mine. She and I had never known each other and she had been virgin. I was hurt by what had been done to her, but I was never angry at her for it. How can you blame the ground for being in the way when the rain falls? So, we decided, we would proceed and be married and we would raise the child whose father could have been any one of five or six men. I went campaigning soon after that, against the same pirates, and you can be sure I was anticipating catching up to them. They had been raiding all along the coast and had finally succeeded in drawing down the wrath of the military governor of Massilia. We were to be wed at the end of the campaign, but winter came late that year and the campaign dragged on, so that by the time I made my way back to Massilia and to her, she had run her term and died giving birth to the pirate’s child. Her name was Maria, and to her, I was Perceval.”

He sniffed, but it was not a tearful sniff, more a snort of determination. “You are the second one I’ve told my name to. Remember me as Ursus if you wish—that’s all you’ve ever known me as. But think of me, too, from time to time, as your friend Perceval. Farewell.”

We embraced once again, awkwardly, mounted as we were, and then he rode away and I watched him until he vanished over a distant rise in the road. Only then, when I was sure he had gone, .did I turn myself back toward my own route, where I could see Shonni the sergeant sitting his mount waiting for me halfway between me and the two big trees. I touched my spurs to my mount’s flanks, bringing him up into an easy lope that devoured the distance to where Shonni had already kicked his own horse into motion again, and we rode in silence, side by side, our ears and eyes attuned constantly to whatever might come to us from the five scouts who rode ahead of us and on our flanks. I have no idea what Shonni was thinking of as we rode briskly along the road to Genava’s shores, but my own thoughts were full of my friend Perceval.

We took Castle Genava at the start of things without great difficulty, losing only one man in the process. I had arrived back before the walls alone, leaving my six-man escort concealed among the trees at my back, and I was challenged immediately by a vigilant guard on the walls who was most evidently not one of Clodio’s group of aged veterans. I waved up at the fellow without urgency, merely acknowledging his challenge and slowing my mount from a canter to a walk as I did so. On the tall staff above the man’s head, where Ban’s banner had hung when I was last there, Gunthar’s colors now flaunted his defiance to the world. Looking about me as I allowed my horse to approach the walls at a walk, I could see no signs to indicate that Chulderic and Samson had been there, and when I was convinced of that I raked my mount’s flanks with my spurs and sent him into a dead run, swerving him tightly around and back toward the safety of the trees. Surprisingly, no one made any attempt to shoot at me as I rode off.

From there I made my way directly to the red-wall caves with my six companions, and this time we were challenged and stopped before we could approach within two hundred paces of the entrance. Chulderic and Samson, it turned out, had elected to set up their camp in the woodlands surrounding the caves while they mulled over what they would do next. Both leaders were surprised but pleased to see me and glad to know, finally, what had happened when I arrived back ahead of Beddoc. They listened in stunned silence as I told them about Theuderic’s death at the hands of his brother and about Brach’s suspicions that Gunthar had intended to abduct the Queen. There was little discussion of my report, however, for there really was nothing to discuss. What had been done was done and no amount of discussion could undo any of it. I told them that Brach had taken a party of his horsemen to bury his brother’s body and that he would be following behind me in a matter of hours.

Then I asked casually if either of them had seen Clodio, and Chulderic told me that he had, the previous day when they had first arrived and were setting up camp. When I asked them where the old man had come from, Chulderic merely shrugged his shoulders before rising to his feet and walking away from the fire.

Samson, however, was more observant and asked me why I was curious about Clodio. He, too, had noticed the old man the previous day, simply because Clodio was as distinctive as he was, but like Chulderic, he had paid no attention to, nor had any interest in, how Clodio had arrived there. I gave him a noncommittal answer, and shortly thereafter I excused myself. I made my way around the camp, drifting aimlessly for the benefit of anyone who might be watching me, until I could wander eventually into the red-wall caves themselves.

It was never quite dark in the caves during daylight—except in the deepest recesses at the rear—because the outer wall of the red sandstone formation that gave them their name was pierced and honeycombed with weirdly shaped and fluted holes that served as windows and provided illumination enough for the purposes of most of the people who used the caves—mainly the local boys, who had come to the caves for generations to escape from adult supervision for a while. I stopped just over the threshold to ensure that no one else was there, and when I was confident that I was alone I moved swiftly across the sandy floor and into the darkness around the corner at the deepest point of the main cave. It was close to noon, I knew, and I was hoping I might be there when Clodio’s secret door swung open, but he spoke to me before my eyes had even adjusted to the darkness, and I could have sworn I heard a smile in his voice and that he knew what I had been up to.

We moved back together to where I could see out into the main body of the caves and be sure no one was approaching, but to be absolutely certain that we were alone I signaled him to remain where he was while I stepped out into the light and searched the caves once again, swiftly. Only then did we talk, and I began by rattling off a number of questions, telling him to think about them for the time being and be prepared to answer them when I had finished. I then told him what was in my mind about recapturing the castle, and that I had discussed it with Brach but had said nothing yet to Chulderic or Samson either about my plan or about the existence of the caverns. I assured him that I would tell them, however, as soon as Brach arrived, adding that since we had no time to waste I would have an assault force ready to go into the castle that same night at whatever hour he chose to come and guide us in.

When it was his turn to speak, Clodio was to the point Beddoc had arrived outside the walls less than an hour after my own departure the previous day, he told me, and Clodio had refused him entry, leaving him and his men to cool their heels outside while Clodio waited to see what else might develop. Some two hours after that, Gunthar had returned at the head of a party numbering in the hundreds. Four hundred was Clodio’s best estimate, plus the better part of another hundred brought by Beddoc. This time Clodio had thought it best to lower the bridge and permit Gunthar and his men to enter, because he knew he had planted the seed of a night attack from within in my mind and he knew, too, that it was better and safer to have Gunthar and his men inside, behind the walls, while waiting for Chulderic and Samson to arrive.

Gunthar had by this time met up with Beddoc and learned that his suppositions were correct. He had swept in and occupied the castle as though he intended to use it to full advantage this time, and he had begun his new tenure by doubling the standing guard. Watching him, admittedly from a distance, Clodio had gauged that the usurper was in fine form, bubbling with confidence and determination. No mention had been made of Theuderic by anyone, and Clodio had known nothing of his death until I told him about it, but even in the darkness of the passage wherein we stood I could see the sudden stiffness that came over him as he drew himself erect with a hiss of breath.

In response to my question on the strength of the garrison, he added a hundred to his original estimate. Five score more had shown up shortly after dawn today, he said, from the south, commanded by a Burgundian warrior whose name was hated and feared by the people of this entire region. This fellow had a reputation as a fearsome and indomitable fighter, but he was also reputed to be an enthusiastic torturer who killed for pleasure. I took note of that, but my sole concern at that time was the vulnerability of the castle’s garrison.

Eventually, when Clodio and I were satisfied that each knew the other’s mind on the matters at hand, I left him to return to the castle through the caverns while I went outside again to meet with Chulderic and Samson. Clodio would come back to the caves an hour after nightfall, and when he did we would be waiting for him with our assault party. I had thought a score of men would be sufficient for our needs, but Clodio disagreed. He concurred with my judgment that fewer was better, but he knew what we would face once inside the walls, and his estimate was that half a score again—thirty men in all—was the least we would need.

Brach arrived midway through the afternoon, and as soon as the greetings and commiserations over Theuderic’s death and burial were done with, I called for attention and asked Chulderic to post guards outside the caves to protect our privacy while we held a command council inside, away from curious ears. Chulderic, clearly astonished at my presumption, glanced wide-eyed at Samson and the other senior commanders present, but before he could question my authority, Brach stepped to my side and added his voice to mine, telling the others that there were matters to discuss that they knew nothing about yet, and that I was the one who had access to, and command over, the secrets involved. Still visibly reluctant and even skeptical, Chulderic chewed on his opinion and made quite a show of deciding, with evident reluctance, to say nothing of what he truly thought at the time, but it was clear to me as he issued his orders to post the guards that he would have little patience with anything I might have to say unless it proved to be startlingly original.

Well, it was that, and Chulderic’s attitude changed quickly once I began to speak. My first mention of the King’s Caverns and the secret entrance to the castle that lay concealed in them brought snorts of derision from my listeners. They had all spent their lifetimes on the shores of Lake Genava and in Ban’s castle and none of them had ever heard as much as a hint of a secret entranceway to the castle. Such things were in the realm of sorcery and magic, or were a boy’s fantasy. The muffled snorts grew louder as men began to vent their scorn for me and my idiot ideas, but I settled everything by simply raising my hand and stepping forward to face Chulderic, almost nose to nose with him in a fashion that few would dare employ toward the veteran commander, whose lack of patience and shortness of temper were both proverbial. People took note of my stance and paid attention, nudging each other and directing their eyes to the confrontation between us, but it took long moments before the noise began to abate to any degree and even so, it would not have died away completely had Chulderic not asked me what I had to add to what I had already said.

As soon as he spoke, silence fell over the assembly, which numbered eleven men besides myself: Chulderic, Samson, Brach, and eight other senior commanders, all of whom had been promoted to the posts they now held by King Ban himself. I took my eyes off Chulderic’s and looked about me, making eye contact with every person there, including Brach, before looking back at the senior commander.

“I have not been in these caves for-more than six years, Chulderic,” I said. “But today when I arrived I asked you a question … a very particular question about someone else. Do you recall?”

Chulderic was frowning now as he glanced at Samson and then back to me. “You asked me about Clodio—about whether or not I’d seen him. And I told you he was here yesterday. What’s the import of that?”

“The import is that Clodio is in Castle Genava, behind the walls. Brach, do I lie?”

“No, on my mother’s honor.” He addressed the others. “Clothar told me when he joined us yesterday that Theuderic had left the castle in the care of Clodio when he rode out after Gunthar, and that Clodio had told Clothar of a secret entrance, through a chain of underground chambers stretching from here into the castle and known as the King’s Caverns. Clodio claimed it had been shown to him more than a score of years ago by my father, King Ban.”

Before anyone could react, I raised my voice again. “Now ask yourself this, Chulderic: if Clodio is in Gunthar’s castle now, how came he here yesterday? You and Samson both saw him. He did not come with your party, because he’s too crippled and infirm to ride anywhere, so where did he come from, and where did he vanish to thereafter? Because he’s not here. He’s not in your camp. I swear to you, he is back in Castle Genava with Gunthar, but he will return here tonight, after dark, to lead us back into the castle in the dead of night with a party of thirty men.” Brach was grinning at me and at the effect I had produced, and then I folded my arms and sat on a block of stone, where I waited for the furor to die down.

That night, Clodio selected a score of men from the sixty best Samson and Brach could provide for his consideration, then blindfolded all of them and led them into the castle under the command of two of Samson’s captains who had also been blindfolded until they were within the caverns’ entrance. I am sure I was not the only person watching the selection process who noticed that Clodio picked only the smallest men from among those recommended. Even the two officers appeared to have been chosen by him precisely because of their small stature.

Before they set out, Clodio told the men that he would lead them through a secret doorway into the first of a chain of caverns that stretched for more than a mile to the King’s castle. Once they were through the secret entranceway, ther blindfolds would be removed. There were places in the caverns where the passage was both difficult and dangerous, he warned, and none of it was easy, since several of the caverns were enormous and as black as Hades. Clodio would lead them through all the perils, he said, to the deepest level of the castle, far below where they were standing now. It would be damp down there, so far beneath their feet, and dark. No one ever went down there, he said, but even if they did, they would find nothing, for the entrance there was as magically hidden as the one through which their party was about to enter.

The men chosen for the raid wore no armor and carried only the lightest of weaponry—daggers, swords, and bows. Their strongest armor would be the surprise and fear they generated by their sudden appearance in the middle of the enemy stronghold. Their task was to move swiftly and silently to silence and dispose of the guards, most of whom would be looking outward, expecting no attack from behind.

I did not join the raiding party, although it had been my hope to go in with my two cousins using the secret approach. Yet Clodio brought us word that Gunthar had a ploy in motion. Even as he spoke, he told us, Gunthar was leading a force of three hundred men, horse and foot, out of the castle under cover of darkness to seek out and destroy Brach and his small party and capture the Lady Vivienne. Brach and I exchanged glances when we heard that. We knew the Queen was safe, and we knew, too, that Gunthar was not going to find and destroy Brach by riding away to search for him on this night of all nights, when Brach was encamped within a mile of Gunthar’s gates, under his very nose.

I immediately wondered, nevertheless, if this might be some cunning trap set up to entice our forces out into the open, because Gunthar must suspect that Chulderic and Samson were close by. Perhaps he hoped that by leaving the safety of the walls with three hundred men he might encourage Chulderic to commit to some kind of move against him, at which point he could swing about and return to catch Chulderic’s force between his own and the castle. Of course, thinking along such lines tends to resemble searching for the center of an onion … layer upon layer of possibility come to light and are then rejected, only to be replaced by another, identical layer.

In any event, I decided that it made more sense for me to use my cavalry training and skills that night than to go trudging through the blackness of the caverns carrying a flickering torch and hoping eventually to grapple hand to hand with some faceless mercenary in the darkness of the castle. Brach suggested to Chulderic that he and Samson and I should all ride with the force designated to storm the castle once the bridge had been lowered. Chulderic agreed, and the three of us transferred ourselves to ride as ordinary troopers with the veteran cavalry commander Sigobert, whose normal rank was second in command to Samson himself. Thus my entry to the castle that night would be, God willing, by way of the hurriedly lowered drawbridge, at the head of a fast-moving column of riders charged with the task of penetrating the curtain-wall defenses as quickly and savagely as we could and then making sure that Gunthar’s people—three hundred of them were expected to remain in the castle, as opposed to our assault party’s thirty—could not rally strongly enough to take back command of the main gates.

It was hot and heavy work and we were outnumbered from the start, but the enemy had been demoralized on several counts, and so we were able to do greater damage than we might have expected to do otherwise. First and foremost, the garrison had been appalled by what must have seemed like the magical apparition of our warriors pouring out of the strongest building in their castle—the central tower with its massive defenses. Few of the defenders actually saw the arrival of our raiders, however. Our men were at their backs and moving stealthily and with determination. Familiar with the layout of the castle and the disposition of the guards, they attacked in silence, using their lethal daggers efficiently, and most of the guards died silently without ever knowing what had happened. Our raiding party slew them efficiently and without compunction because all of their targets were Outlanders—mercenaries whose deaths bore no personal significance for any of our men.

Despite all our caution and efficiency and speed, however, a few men did manage to cry out before they died, and after that the alarm spread quickly, swelling with the clash of steel on steel until the off-guard watch spilled from their beds to see what all the clamor was about. By then, the first wave of attackers had overcome the guards at the main gates behind the curtain wall and flung open the gates, leaving a few men to hold them safe while the rest swept out along the curtain-wall passage and around to attack the towers flanking the drawbridge. There they paused while the bowmen among them shot down the soldiers guarding the bridge works—all the defenses had been constructed to guard against attack from the far side, not from inside—and as soon as all the guards were dead they went to work immediately to lower the bridge.

I was waiting with Sigobert and his attack group of horsemen, sixty strong, just behind the first fringe of trees across from the bridge, less than a hundred paces from the edge of the ditch. As the youngest there, I had better night vision than anyone else, and as soon as I saw the top of the bridge begin to move I warned Sigobert, who gave the signal to advance. Our whole group surged forward on a single broad front and was already reshaping itself into something resembling an arrowhead formation as we moved. By the time the bridge end came to rest on the ground we were less than thirty paces distant and advancing at full gallop in a column of horsemen three abreast. The thunder of our hooves on the timbers of the bridge would have awakened the entire garrison at that point, had they not already been fighting for their lives.

We charged across the bridge and wheeled hard to the right, into the passageway behind the curtain wall that led to the main gates, and we were not a moment too soon in getting there. Gunthar had evidently hired some exceptionally skilled people with his levies of mercenaries, and under their leadership the garrison troops had rallied strongly and mounted a concerted attack on the few of our men who had been left holding the gates against our arrival. Our fighters were heavily outnumbered and faring poorly when we reached them, but the sudden arrival of a charge of heavy horsemen was more than our enemies were prepared to stomach and they turned and fled back into the castle, leaving the gates in our possession. Mere moments later, it seemed, we heard the roar as our own infantry followed us through the gateway, under the leadership of Chulderic, and shortly after that the enemy surrendered and the castle was ours. My hand, I discovered, was sore from gripping the hilt of my sword too tightly, but I had not swung a single blow at anyone from start to finish of the fight.

The total cost to us in storming the castle had been one man killed and twenty wounded, and none of the wounded men was expected to die. This would normally have been cause for celebration, but our situation was not one in which to rejoice. Samson, concerned about the Lady Vivienne and her companions, immediately dispatched a trio of messengers by different routes to assure his mother that all was well, that the castle was in our hands and that she and her company would be brought back in safety as soon as it was practicable. What that really meant was that the Queen and her ladies must resign themselves to remaining in the small valley behind its impassable mere for several more days until the tactical situation became less fluid and the dangers of their being abducted along the way had lessened to the point of being acceptable.

Samson, as a loving and dutiful son, originally wanted to take the tidings to his mother in person, but Brach had objected, claiming that duty for himself, and their clash of wills might have escalated had not Clodio announced bluntly that neither one of them should go on that mission unless they were prepared to be stranded outside the walls for a long time, in the event that Gunthar’s forces returned to the attack. Both of them were too big, he said, to reenter the castle through the caverns, and he reminded them of the small stature of the men he had picked earlier for the raid. There were places in the caverns, he said, that were simply too narrow for anyone as big as Samson to get through, even without armor, and Brach was half again as large as Samson.

Their compromise was to send three of the smaller men to carry news to the Queen, with a promise to return and rescue her later, along with her people. Should Gunthar move against us in the meantime, the messengers were instructed to return to the red-wall caves to await Clodio, who would lead them back through the caverns.

That task attended to, the princely brothers sought a place to sleep, while I, in acknowledgment of my lowly status as both a junior and a newcomer, took over the post of commander of the guard for the remainder of that night.

Within the week that followed we had settled into a routine of boredom that was reinforced by the swift realization that our success in capturing the castle had effectively placed us under siege. Gunthar’s forces had begun moving into position outside our wall by dawn on the morning following our attack, and a permanent detachment remained there afterward, a large body of men whose primary purpose was to prevent us from lowering the drawbridge and leaving the castle. Most of them were bowmen, and by and large they remained out of our sight, safe behind the screen of trees that began about a hundred paces from the approach to the drawbridge … which raised the question of whether or not they were there, or whether they had merely convinced us that they were there, while in fact they were elsewhere and we had been tricked into imprisoning ourselves.

We put that notion to the test twice, sending out mounted parties to test the enemy’s responses, and on each occasion, Gunthar’s bowmen simply moved out of the trees into the open as soon as they heard the bridge being lowered and then stood there, picking their targets and launching arrows, as quickly as they could pull and aim, reveling in their own lethal accuracy and in the knowledge that no living soul could reach them.

The dilemma that next arose to perplex me was founded in the fact that I considered myself even then to be a horse-warrior ahead of everything else. The original attacking party had come in on foot through the caverns, arriving on the lowest levels of the central fortifications and making their way up by very dark and narrow stairways from floor to floor until they were able to emerge into the courtyard. That, in my mind, precluded any possibility of even considering the route as an exit for cavalry. An extraordinary horse may climb up stairs, blindfolded or blinkered and led by a trusted groom or rider, perhaps, if the conditions are right and the stairs are shallow enough, but no horse will descend a steep and narrow stairwell into darkness. I had to wonder, then, could we not enter the caverns with our horses from the other side, through the red-wall caves?

I went directly to find Clodio, never doubting that I could enlist his help.

Later that night, after a long and sometimes impassioned discussion in which he and I came to know each other far better than we had before, Clodio took me into the caverns for the first time and showed me the route to the red-wall caves. I had not seen what he did to cause the door to open, but when it did, it opened silently, swinging backward away from us and up with only the barest whisper of stone caressing stone as it rose. As soon as we stepped through into the space beyond, he grasped me by the arm and pulled me to one side, out of the way of the door, and told me to stand absolutely still. I stood motionless in the dark, listening to the silence and hearing the faint sound of the door closing again, and only then did I begin, very gradually, to grow aware that it was nowhere near as silent down there as I had first thought. I could hear water dripping, from many places, and the sounds the drops made as they landed varied from flat, dead-sounding slaps to musical, echoing and rotund plops where the drops were obviously falling into pools of standing water.

There were other sounds, too, that I could hear but not identify, mainly because they were obscured by the noises my companions was making. Listening, I could tell that he was moving about, and it sounded as though he was rearranging his clothing. But then there came a glow, the merest hint of light that spread quickly, and then I saw the shape of Clodio’s face as he bent low toward a clay firebox enclosed in a small cage of wood that he must have carried beneath his robe. He was kneeling on the ground close by my right side, and the glow had been revealed when he removed the lid of the box. He began to blow gently on the glowing embers and to feed them with small, teased bunches of fine, dried grass. Within moments a small flame sprang into being and he fed it more fuel. In the growing light I saw a store of twigs and small kindling set against the wall, and beside them an iron brazier and what looked like a small barrel filled with heavy sticks.

Clodio eventually lit the fire in the brazier with a twig from his firebox, and as he waited for the flames to catch and take hold he moved to the barrel, selected a stick and pulled it out, then thrust it under my nose for me to smell it. It stank—a rank, sulphurous stench that made me catch my breath. It was a kind of pitch, he told me, but thinner than the kind the shipwrights used to seal the seams of their vessels. This substance was called naphtha, he said. He thrust the end I had sniffed into the flames of the brazier and the thing exploded with a roar and instantly became a brightly flaming torch, burning hard and fiercely enough to sustain the roar of sound that had accompanied its birth. It was brighter. than any other torch I had ever seen, illuminating the entire space within which we stood.

Now I could easily see that this cavern, at least, had a roof, uneven and stained with moisture, arching over my head at about twice my own height. And against the wall, securely fastened into the rock, was a pair of angled brackets clearly designed to hold torches. There was one torch in place, and I looked at it curiously. The top end of it was encased in a cage of rusted wire, inside of which there appeared to be tightly wrapped rags of cloth, stiff and dry and brittle looking. Clodio reached up to it with the torch in his hand and it ignited with another ferocious whoosh of leaping flames.

“The brackets were built possibly hundreds of years ago and probably at the same time as the doors. They’re all made of lead, not iron, so they don’t rust—it’s very wet down here. There’s a line of them all along the path to the other side. Most are on the walls, but there are a few in places where there are no walls. Those ones are mounted on poles. Two brackets to a station, post or wall, makes no difference. Look how far apart the holders are. That’s so you can be sure that either one will burn without igniting the other. Going across, you light the one that’s waiting for you and put a fresh one in the empty holder. See?” He kicked at the ground, where I saw the charred remnants of several old torches, burned right down to the butts.

“Once these things are lit, you can’t put them out, so you just leave them to burn themselves out. But that’s why you bring a bucket of ten or twelve fresh ones with you each time you cross. Burn the dry one, leave a wet one. The pitch comes from two places—two pools of the stuff that never dry up. You just throw in a bucket and bring it out full, then lug it back here and pour it into the barrel there. No trouble finding the pools, even in the dark. You can smell them from half a mile away. Fall into one, though, you’ll never come out again. Stuff kills you. King Ban knew someone who fell in, when he was a boy. They pulled him out, but he had already breathed in some of the stuff and he died right there.

“So, those are the rules. The brackets are about sixty paces apart, and there’s a fresh barrel of soaking torches every tenth station. There’s three ten-station stretches from here to the other end, so it’s just slightly under two miles.”

“Is it all flat?”

“None of it’s flat, lad. You’ll see that as soon as we start to move. From here, it’s all slightly downhill for about a mile, then it levels out for a very short distance and begins to climb again. ’Course, it’s all irregular, and the path we’ll be following isn’t very wide in places, and there are some very nasty drops on either side from time to time. But that shouldn’t bother you as long as you don’t look down into any of them. Just keep your eyes fixed on the ground you can see ahead of you by the light of your torch.

“There’s a couple of tiny passages, too—wrigglers, I call them. Those are the places I warned Samson and Brach about. Narrow spots—tight places where you have to squeeze through, and it’s best not to think too hard about where you are, but just remember to breathe out and keep moving until you’re through and out on the other side. There’s seventeen caverns down here. Some of them are tiny, others are enormous. This one here is smaller than some of the rooms in the castle upstairs, but it opens out into another that’s ten times as big. Some of them are beautiful, too, even at night. There is daylight down here, in places—holes in the roof, high above your head, and the light falls down from them like beams of solid gold. Then there are places even more strange and filled with wonders that you’ll have to see for yourself … you wouldn’t believe me if I just told you about them. Now, fill up that bucket over there with twelve of those torches and let’s get started.” He set out immediately, leaving me to scramble to obey him and then catch up, my hands and arms filled with the means of bringing light to the darkness.

“How do you make the torches?”

Clodio was lowering himself carefully down a sloping rock face and he took the time to regain a solid footing before he answered me.

“I cut handles, good solid ones that offer a fair, firm grip. Willow and hazel sticks are best, I’ve found, because they grow more or less straight. I cut them to length and then jam the narrower end into the space made for them in the metal cages I have made specially for them. The cages are made from heavy iron wire and the same smith has been making them for me now for fifteen years, so he makes me a batch of them in a single day. Then I stuff the cages with old rags, anything I can scrounge. Old army blankets are best, though, if you roll them tightly enough they burn for hours and hours. Then all that’s left to do is leave them to soak in the barrel of naphtha until you’re ready to take them out and mount them in the brackets. Given enough time up there without being used, they’ll dry out completely and you’d never know they’d ever been wet. But one spark’s enough to set them off, even when they’re bone dry.” He made a choking sound, and it took me a moment to realize that he was laughing to himself.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking. I make a batch of new torches two times each year, usually around the solstice because that’s a good, solid time to remember to do certain things, and each year I might have to change three, perhaps more, of the wire cages.” He giggled again. “Old Marcy the smith’s been making them for me, as I said, for fifteen years and he still doesn’t know what they’re for. He’s tried following me, asking people about them, he’s tried everything to find out, but I never say a word. It’s driving him mad. Come on now, we’d best be moving.”

It took us nigh on an hour to traverse the caverns, lighting beacons as we went to guide us back, and only in two places did I have difficulty squeezing through the narrow wrigglers he had warned me about. The second time, I came so close to being unable to get through that I found myself on the verge of absolute panic at one point, beginning to believe that I would die there, wedged in an impossibly tiny hole in the center of the earth. When I regained sufficient presence of mind to remember what Clodio had said about breathing out, however, I forced myself to exhale each breath all the way and relax my body, and I was able to win through, but I had to stop and catch my breath then and there, to collect myself and master the fear that still leapt in my chest like a flickering fire.

“If that’s the only way through there,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level, “then you were right. Brach will never see this place. He’s far too big even to fit into the entrance there, let alone crawl through the wrigglers. We would lose him, and Samson, too, because neither of them would ever give in and they’d never back away. Brach would keep trying to squeeze through until it killed him.”

“Aye, and it would, without mercy. Almost got you, there, didn’t it, until you remembered what I said about breathing out. Are you ready now to move on?”

A short time after that he held up his hand and stopped. “Here we are. This is the end of the road, and I think it’s also the place you were asking me about. Low ceiling, close to the outside, easy to supply and big enough to feed and shelter fifty horses. Mind you, it’s going to be the end of the secret entrance as a secret.”

I nodded. “That is true—but if the secrecy was intended in the beginning as a means of saving the castle and its occupants from disaster and defeat someday in the distant future, then it has already served its purpose, for it can’t ever be used and then continue to be a secret, can it? Now we will use it to excellent purpose, and we will maintain at least a semblance of secrecy for as long as we can. If we continue to enjoy good fortune, Gunthar and his people may never find out about it. I’ll grant you, that may be wishful thinking, but any period of time we can grasp and maintain in this matter will serve us in good stead. Let me have a look at the place.”

We were in the first chamber into which the secret doorway opened from the back of the red-wall caves—and in the light of my flickering torch, held at arm’s length above my head, I could see that it was perfect for our needs. Foremost, it was spacious, and the ground was solid stone, dry and almost perfectly flat, save for a few bumps and extrusions that would bother no one—and no horse. The smoke from our two torches was whipped away to some vent high above our heads, and a cool current of air blew gently and steadily around us. I could see where and how we could halter horses in lines of six or eight on both sides of a small central ridge of stone that bisected the floor, and there was plenty of dry, open space in which to pile and store bales of hay and other fodder.

The best feature of all, however, was a spring of pure water that welled from a hole in the stone wall at approximately the height of a tall man and flowed down into a large natural basin before spilling over again to form a narrow stream that ran along the cave wall until it was lost in darkness and distance. Not even in Tiberias Cato’s stables in Auxerre had there been such a wonderful source of fresh water.

I told Clodio the place was perfect and thanked him for his trust, and he grimaced and stepped away from me, toward the wall of the cave. I watched him go, wondering how I had offended him, but he stopped short of the wall beside a spine of rock that thrust up from the floor and beckoned to me. I stepped to his side and looked where he was pointing, but I could see nothing except the rock spine surmounted by a projecting knob of stone. When I turned back to him, my eyebrows raised, he nodded, and closed his hand over the stone knob, pulling it back toward him. It swung open, hinged in some way, and beneath it was a hollow space. Clodio reached into the space and I saw him twist something to his left. Immediately, a wide section of the solid stone wall at least six paces to the right of where we were standing began to swing silently in toward us and tilt upward from the base of the wall. It looked wide enough to permit entry to two horses side by side, and, holding my torch high above my head, I stepped forward to look at what was happening and saw the system of levers that were operating the mechanism.

“That is impressive,” I said.

Clodio came up beside me, his strange gait appearing sinuous and natural in the flickering torchlight. “Aye, it is, I know, but the opening device is mummery. There’s no need for secrecy on this side of the door. Anyone in here already knows why he’s here and what’s going on. It’s only the other side of the wall that needs masking, and that works perfectly. Mind you, the door is a long way from the controlling device over there, and if I hadn’t shown you that, you’d have thought this thing opened by magic, would you not?” I nodded, and he led me through the door and showed me the corresponding trigger on the other side.

The following day I made the final arrangements for what would become the biggest thorn in Gunthar’s side in the time to come, and I began by convening a meeting of my elders and superiors and telling them what I envisioned. They listened closely and, to their credit, made no demur. I did not flatter myself, however, that, they had all suddenly become impressed by my bravery and my impressive cavalry skills; to them I was a mere boy, untested and untried, who had taken part in one skirmish without being blooded and before that had been absent in foreign parts for many years, and the truth was that they had nothing at all to lose by humoring me and acceding to my wishes. The horses we currently had inside the castle were useless there, and the cumbersome preparations to raising and lowering the drawbridge ensured that there was no possibility of employing surprise in bringing them out from the castle. The enemy bowmen waiting beyond the walls would have ample time to aim and shoot them down before the animals could even clear the end of the bridge. It was the single biggest flaw in the design of the drawbridge; and there was nothing we could do to change it now, in the middle of hostilities.

Nonetheless, we also had a huge logistical problem that offered us, paradoxically, a means of achieving what we wanted.

We had taken more than two hundred prisoners in our capture of the castle, and now we were faced with the double task of feeding them and guarding them. More than half of the prisoners had willingly thrown in their lot with us when they were captured, switching their allegiance from Gunthar as easily as a horse switches its tail at a fly, in return for their immediate freedom and an ongoing source of comfortable bedding and regular, well-prepared meals that were vastly preferable to what they could expect to receive as prisoners. The hundred or so that remained in our custody, however, were both a nuisance and a massive inconvenience.

I therefore proposed to Chulderic and the others that we set these people free again, but that we do so in a way that would work to our advantage. I explained my thinking and they listened, nodding occasionally in acknowledgment of the common sense involved in what I had to say. When I had finished, all eyes turned to Chulderic, who sat glowering at me from beneath heavy brows. His frown grew even darker as he began firing short, blunt questions at me, and I answered them as tersely and concisely as he phrased them. Finally, when I answered what had been the last of his questions, he surprised me by uttering a single sharp bark of laughter and slapping his hand on the arm of his chair.

“Do it, boy! If it works, it will be the making of you as a man. If it doesn’t work, it will provide all of us older men with something to laugh over on a winter’s night when we are too old to fight.”

Just after the evening meal, when the smoke of the cooking fires still hung in the air and the men in both camps, Gunthar’s and ours, were feeling well fed and lazy with an uneventful day behind them and their bellies full, the guards on duty herded all our prisoners from the enclosure in the inner defenses where they had been kept since their capture, tied their hands behind their backs and shackled their feet with pieces of rope that were long enough to allow them to walk comfortably but not to run. With longer ropes they tied the prisoners to each other in chains of a score of men each, making five chains in all. With those preparations completed, they then led the roped and hobbled prisoners out through the main gates and along the curtain-wall passage and lined them up against the castle wall, facing out toward their former comrades on the far side of the broad ditch.

With a shrill squeak of windlasses and rattling of chains, the bridge began to descend. That brought the enemy forward through their masking fringe of trees to see what we were about, but when they saw the prisoners all lined up and facing them, they hesitate There was a period of confusion among their ranks; with people coming and going, and then there was a stirring at their rear as a small party of mounted men emerged from the trees and made their way toward the head of the drawbridge, obviously to discover for themselves what was happening. A trumpet blast from the battlements above us stopped them short, too, just beyond arrow range, as a line of our bowmen, in response to the signal, positioned themselves in the embrasures along the top of the wall above us, showing their weapons plainly. Moments later, at another blast of the trumpet, a trio of riders emerged from behind our curtain wall and rode out under the white banner that symbolized a call to meet to discuss terms.

Chulderic’s spokesman, a junior cavalry officer whose name I did not yet know, rode forward to the enemy party and told them bluntly that we were releasing the prisoners because they were eating food that we needed ourselves. He demanded that the enemy commander withdraw his forces as a sign of good faith while the release was carried out, and pointed up to where our bowmen watched vigilantly, the height of their positioning giving them an enormous advantage over their opposite numbers.

As I had anticipated, the enemy commander could scarcely believe what he was hearing, because our message implied plainly that our concerns over our ability to feed ourselves were strong enough to make us release strong, healthy prisoners who would immediately rearm themselves to fight against us again. He complied without further discussion and ordered his men to withdraw. As the enemy fell back, vacating the field in front of the bridge, our soldiers began to shepherd their prisoners across in front of them.

As soon as they crossed the bridge, they spread the prisoners as far apart as the ropes joining them would permit and then held them in place, arranging the five extended rows of men so that they overlapped and formed a wide human screen between the bridge end and the enemy position. Only when they were satisfied with their positioning did the commander of the guard nod his permission and a single drummer began to rap out the cadence of a march that would take the prisoners forward in lockstep, without tripping in their hobbles and falling down. The first few steps were tentative and hesitant, but the rhythm caught quickly and the bound men began to march quite smartly toward their freedom.

At that precise moment, in response to a prearranged signal, the lead riders of a column of horsemen swung around the end of the curtain wall and spurred their mounts hard toward the drawbridge. Sixty riders, gathering speed and impetus with every stride, in a single column three abreast and twenty deep, were across the bridge and veering away to the right before the enemy could react. And when they did react, Gunthar’s people were impeded by the strings of helpless, hobbled men spread out between them and the fleeing riders, for flee we did, as hard and as fast as we could, intent only upon riding out of arrow range as quickly as possible and making a clean escape thereafter. We knew they would follow us, but we knew, too, that where we were going they would never find us.

We reached the red-wall caves to find Clodio waiting for us and the secret entrance at the back of the caves already open, and we led our mounts inside, into the darkness of the first cavern. Once there, with the high, blazing fires burning brightly, the horses assumed it was night and settled drown immediately, behaving normally as they were secured with the standard horse lines they submitted to every night.

Over the course of the next six days, with the horses safely quartered, we busied ourselves making a temporary home for men and animals in the King’s Caverns, widening and digging out the few narrow wrigglers easily now that there was no need for secrecy and we could assign as many men as needed to the task of chipping and digging away the rock walls and widening the gaps in the worst places. There was no observable evidence of time passing down there in the depths of the caverns; it was permanent night, and so we set six consecutive watches of men to work at the mining task, each watch laboring for four hours a day so that the work went on without pause until it was completed. Even so, it took four solid days and nights of hard labor to achieve what we wanted.

That done, and the way open for easy access from one end of the caverns to the other, it was a simple task to bring down bales of straw and hay from the stables in the castle through the open door at the far end and to transport them to the red-wall caves at the other. It was deeply satisfying to know, too, that while we were consolidating our new resources in the caverns, Gunthar’s people were turning the countryside upside down in their attempts to discover how sixty men and horses could simply vanish into nowhere.

By the time seven days had elapsed we were confident that the mystery of our escape would have faded from the forefront of the enemy’s awareness. From their point of view, our disappearance had been complete and completely mystifying. They could only assume that we had ridden out and away, beyond our own borders, perhaps to gather help or buy the support of mercenaries. In all that time, we made no moves against them from the castle and they had made no attempt to attack us.

As soon as the widening of the wrigglers had been completed, an armed party was dispatched by night, leading a light wagon pulled by a two-horse team, to bring back the Queen, the women in her party, and the physician Clement. They returned the following morning, arriving outside the red-wall caves just after sunrise, and the Queen’s party was escorted on foot through the caverns and into the safety of the castle without incident. Seven days had passed since Vivienne had learned of King Ban’s death.

I had ridden out earlier that morning with two companions, just before dawn, one of four three-man teams dispatched to explore the surrounding countryside and glean any information we could about the activities and disposition of Gunthar’s forces within a radius of five miles. Our hunt was to the northeast, covering the ground on both sides of the northeast line, left to the line due north of the caves as far as the edge of Lake Genava, and then right to the line due east of them, so that we covered a full quarter of a circular area, riding back and forth in steadily increasing arcs as we moved farther out from our starting point on each sweep and leaving one scout behind in the cleared area of every third arc to keep an eye to our rear in case of any unforeseen developments at our back. It took us two full days to cover the entire area, and we knew that our other three teams were doing the same in the remaining three quadrants, which meant that by the time we returned to our starting point and assembled all the information that each of the four search teams had discovered, we would know everything we needed to know about what was happening within an area approaching ninety to a hundred square miles around the castle, and we would be able to draw up comprehensive plans for dealing with Gunthar’s men—their holdings and their dispositions—throughout that area.

Two days after that, I rode out through the red-wall caves for the first time with Samson and our two cavalry squadrons—sixty mounted men. We swung far to the south this time, to where team number three had identified a heavy concentration of enemy forces they presumed to be Burgundians, billeted in the strongly made and recently fortified buildings of what had once been a prosperous farm. I counted upward of a full hundred men in the place, and we spent a long time working our way down a hillside at their backs, through difficult and heavily overgrown terrain, to hit them from behind, from where they had least expected an attack—especially a mounted one—to materialize.

We hit hard and fast, giving them no time to rally themselves against us. Apart from our own mounts, there was not a horse in the entire place, and so we had no solid opposition. A few hardy souls formed isolated pockets of resistance, knowing that they were in desperate straits, but they went down quickly under the weight of our horseflesh, and we left few of them alive. In what was always known as “the butcher’s accounting,” we counted fifty-two enemy dead, and another thirty-eight wounded, all of whom we gathered together and left behind us under guard, having first relieved them of their weapons. A number of others managed to flee the slaughter nevertheless, and we let them go, content to have them carry the tale of the attack and its outcome back to whoever might have the responsibility for listening to them. We were happy to have Gunthar know that there was a potent and highly mobile cavalry force out there in his territories, raiding his raiders. However, by the time his exploratory force came seeking us, thirsting for revenge, we had disappeared back into the safety of our secret caverns.

Two days later, while Gunthar’s cavalry guards were scouring the southern territories looking for us, we wiped out two similar but smaller posts in the northwest quadrant of our range, attacking both simultaneously with thirty riders. This time, too, we were fortunate enough to find a score of horses stabled in one of the farms, and when we left, having set fire to the buildings and piled the dead in the middle of the farmyard, we took the horses with us, a welcome addition to our own stables.

Those raids marked the formal start of our campaign, and for the next two months we remained neck deep in conflict with what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of fresh troops spilling out of Gunthar’s territories, for territories—his and ours—had been established soon after the beginning of hostilities. Gunthar’s forces had possession of a series of four minor but strongly fortified castles that were clustered near to each other in the south and eastern area of what had been Ban’s kingdom, and the close linkage of those four strongholds, coupled with the hilly yet densely wooded terrain they occupied, enabled Gunthar to set up a solid and virtually self-sufficient province there that he could hold without great difficulty against any and all comers. There was little arable land within the region he controlled, so he had few convenient sources of supply of freshly grown food-stuffs, but since he and his followers were essentially brigands and Outlanders, they stole what they needed from wherever they could find it.

That brief time removed me forever from the status of boyhood, although because of it, I was never able to undergo the formal rites of passage into manhood. Informal rites there were aplenty to replace them, however, and I never heard anyone complain that my sword was being wielded by someone who lacked a man’s credentials. I rode out of the red-wall caves on the morning of that first raid as a complete tyro—a green recruit who had absorbed many of the rudiments of basic training but had yet to distinguish himself in any way in the matter of combat or military conduct or manly prowess. It was true that I had killed more than one man, but none of the people who rode with me that day knew that. In their eyes, I was a mere boy, several years junior to the youngest of them.

Within the week, however, on a raid in which we had divided our force into two squadrons of thirty men each, the group I rode in was trapped by a detachment of Gunthar’s mounted guards, who diverted us into a steep-sided valley that had no other way out. They outnumbered us by close on two to one and we had a sore time fighting our way clear, for before we realized what was happening they had herded us into a narrow chute at the extreme end of the valley, where we were so tightly jammed together that we had no room to fight. Caught on the outside of the crush at the rear of our squadron, far from the nearest of our attackers and angry at my own inability to move closer to the fighting, I unslung the bow that hung by my saddle and had been given to me by King Ban. I threw the quiver of war arrows across my shoulders, jumped down from my horse, and scrambled up the steep hillside that reared above me. It was hard going, for the ground was soft and sandy, and I found it difficult to gain a purchase on the slope with my feet, but eventually I came to a level spot where I could look down at the scene below me. It was chaotic, but I could see everything clearly, and so I began to aim and shoot.

The arrows I was using were the very ones that had killed Ban of Benwick, the arrows given to me by King Ban himself, upon his deathbed. These large, heavy war arrows, with their flared and wickedly barbed heads, could pierce armor from a distance as short as the one from which I was shooting, and the enemy below me were all too close for me to miss. My assault broke the fury of their attack within moments, for it was sustained and deadly, with never a missed target on my part. I drew and aimed and fired as quickly as my hands could move, and I had been well trained in making those movements. I dropped five men with my first five arrows, and by that time even those who had not noticed me before were aware of my presence above them.

The first move by an enemy rider to disengage and ride away caught my eye, and I drove him out of the saddle with a hard shot that skewered his cuirass between his shoulder blades. I heard the noise as he crashed to the ground. Then it became difficult to select a target, because so many men were suddenly in retreat, and naturally, our men were thundering after them, intent now on revenge. As it was impossible to tell friend from foe when they were galloping away from me, I slid quickly back down the hill and salvaged as many of my spent arrows as I could before I remounted my horse and spurred after my companions.

I was feasted that night, the tale of my “counterattack” being the talk around our campfires. We had lost seven men in the encounter, but it might have been far worse and it certainly would have been far more disastrous had I not had my bow and arrows with me. Of all the sixty men riding in Samson’s two squadrons, I was the only bowman.

I had good fortune in the next raid, too, managing to quickly spot a weakness in the force that was facing us. It was the kind of occurrence that takes place in the blinking of an eye, when you identify an opportunity, and the decision to exploit it or to let it pass by is instantaneous. In this instance, leading a diversionary thrust across the enemy’s front to distract them from advancing directly against our main position, I saw an opening between two sections of the enemy where no space should have been, and I swung aside and charged straight into it. Fortunately, the men directly behind me followed without thought and we were able to act as a wedge, splitting the enemy into two groups that were more easily surrounded and dealt with.

From being the greenest tyro in the group, I had progressed to being known by everyone and acquiring a growing reputation as a man of luck and good judgment, which was extremely flattering but precisely the kind of conceit that Germanus and Tiberias Cato had warned me against more times than I could remember. A short time after that, however, Sigobert, the veteran cavalry commander who had been Samson’s second in command for years, was killed in a skirmish with some displaced Burgundian bowmen. His command was taken over by another veteran, Rigunth, but then Rigunth rode into an ambush at the head of a small group three days later and was killed with all his men.

When the word of Rigunth’s death arrived, Samson came looking for me and appointed me, temporarily, to the position of squadron commander. I accepted without a blink, having heard only the word temporary and fully anticipating that someone would quickly be promoted from the cadre of junior officers to fill the spot. By the time two weeks had passed, however, I was sufficiently perturbed to seek out Samson. I found him sitting at a makeshift table by one of the fires, studying a map that had been drawn by one of our clerks who had a talent for such things, and cleared my throat to announce myself and let him know I wished to speak with him.

He put down the map and the pen he had been holding and looked at me strangely, his mouth twisted sideways in a half smile. I told him briefly what was bothering me and asked him when I could expect to be relieved of my temporary duties, and he leaned backward, clutching the edge of the table and wiggling his shoulders to loosen them from the strain of having sat still for so long.

“Why are you asking me that?” he responded. “We’re in the middle of a war, Cousin. Are you telling me you are not enjoying your command?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, Samson. I’m enjoying it thoroughly, but it has been more than two weeks now and for the past few days I’ve been worrying that I might be enjoying it too much.”

“How so?”

I stared at him, surprised that he could not see my meaning, for to me it was as obvious as the nose on my face. “Because I’m beginning to be afraid that when someone is appointed to fill the post, I’ll resent him for taking over.”

His expression did not change by as much as a twitch. “Why would you resent someone for obeying instructions and accepting a promotion? That’s what soldiers do, is it not?”

“Aye, but—”

“But what? Are you afraid he might do the job better than you?”

“No, how could I be? I don’t even know who we are talking about.”

“But whoever he may be, he might still do the job better than you can?”

“I doubt it.”

Samson raised an eyebrow, perhaps aware that he had dealt a blow to my vanity.

There was a long pause after that, and then my cousin looked down at the map he had discarded to listen to me. When he spoke his voice sounded distant, and carried a distinct chill. “Think about this, Cousin Clothar, and consider your answer well. You are what—sixteen? Sixteen, aye. Now, are you asking me to believe that you can handle this post—the leadership of an entire squadron—better than anyone else I might appoint?”

That put a curb on my tongue. I hesitated, then decided to be truthful, no matter the cost. I ought to be able to speak the truth to my cousin with impunity, and I could see no acceptable reason for pretending that I did not believe in myself.

“Yes, Cousin,” I said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

He looked up at me, and his face crinkled in a wide grin. “Excellent,” he said. “I think so, too. Get on with it, then.”

I felt myself gaping at him.

“I said get on with it, Clothar. You are now officially in full command of Beta squadron, so may I return to my map? It really is quite important.”

I walked away in a daze, attempting to come to terms with the realization that I was now Commander Clothar in fact as well as in name.

Nine days after my assumption of command over my thirty-man squadron, Gunthar launched an all-out campaign to obliterate us, and I began to regret the hubris that had driven me to assume such an enormous responsibility. I lost three men in one afternoon, right at the outset of that campaign, all of them shot out of the saddle by bowmen who had managed to infiltrate our defenses and set themselves up in a blind where there was only one trail that passed by. They knew we would have to use it sooner or later. Their chance came sooner than they had expected, judging from the lack of debris we found afterward around their hiding place and from the fact that they took their first three targets efficiently. But they died themselves very quickly thereafter, because they had neglected to provide themselves with an escape route.

Three men lost might not seem like many to some observers, but that was one full tenth of my force, and the old Roman word for killing one in ten of one’s troops was decimation. We had been decimated by a trio of nameless bowmen. We would replace our men when we returned to our base in the castle, but our pool of available replacements was growing no larger and every diminution of that resource was a permanent one.

Gunthar, on the other hand, seemed to suffer from no such constraints. In any encounter between our forces and his, we were more than likely to emerge victorious. No one knew the reasons for that, but there could be no doubt that it was true, because the casualty count at the end of each fight and skirmish was unequivocal. Face-to-face, hand to hand, and nose to nose, the number of casualties demonstrated that we outfought them regularly by a count of at least three casualties for them against every two for us. But there was no parity in the situation. If Gunthar lost a hundred men, he would field two hundred fresh ones in the coming days. Every single man we lost, on the contrary, increased our cumulative weakness, and as each day passed we grew more and more aware of just how weak we were becoming.

We had one turn of good fortune that came when our fortunes seemed at their lowest and we most needed something in the way of a ray of light in the darkness that was hemming us in. Ingomer, lord of the neighboring property of Vervenna, returned from the eastern patrol as soon as he received the word we sent him of Theuderic’s death at Gunthar’s hands.

Understandably enough, he rode directly to his home at the head of six hundred men to rescue his wife before doing anything else or reporting his presence to anyone, but he found its buildings burned and walls toppled. Distraught, and believing his wife and newborn child dead, he immediately went looking for Gunthar, bent on vengeance. Fortunately, before he could encounter any of Gunthar’s mercenaries, he met Samson, who told him his wife and child were safe in Genava. Enormously relieved, Ingomer returned directly to Castle Genava to greet his beautiful young wife and to meet his newborn son, and he and his six hundred men had remained in the castle after that.

Most beneficially for our beleaguered garrison, however, Ingomer rode right up to the drawbridge with his six hundred horsemen, defying Gunthar’s watchdogs to challenge them. At the last moment, just as the drawbridge was descending, Ingomer rapped out an order, and two full wings of his riders, a hundred horsemen to a wing, turned their horses smartly and split apart into two groups, then swung into a pincer formation and swept into the woodlands beyond the lea from left and right, routing the hidden enemy there, who, being mainly bowmen, were unable to use their weapons defensively to any great extent among the trees. While the first two wings of cavalry scoured through the woods in opposing arcs and finally spilled back out into the open, Ingomer turned the remainder of his force about and led all four hundred of them slowly and inexorably into the trees, mopping up the last remaining vestiges of resistance among Gunthar’s occupying force.

Inside the castle we had never known exactly how many enemy warriors were ranged against us out there, and the wide-ranging estimates that were bandied about were based mainly upon random observations when there was little to observe. Ingomer and his men, however, had left upward of a hundred of the enemy dead among the trees. Those who remained alive were stripped of their armor, clothing, and weapons and set free to make their own way through the surrounding forest to wherever they might wish to go. We had no interest in taking prisoners, and we knew that once disarmed and naked, Gunthar’s mercenaries would not find it easy to rearm themselves quickly. Stripped bare, they would be fortunate to make it back through the bogs and forest that lay between them and their nearest support bases, and doubly fortunate to do so without stumbling across any of the local people who lived out there among the trees and had no reason to be hospitable toward any of Gunthar’s mercenaries.

That was one of the brighter moments in the campaign, but over and above everything else I can recall about that time is the feeling of hopelessness that grew upon us daily as we suffered continual and irreplaceable losses of men and horses while simultaneously watching Gunthar’s numbers swell.

Brach and Chulderic held joint command of the castle and its garrison, although Chulderic was nominally commander in chief of all the forces of Benwick, and Brach merely commanded the infantry, a position more or less forced upon him by his immense size. He simply could not find a horse large enough to bear him when he was armed and armored, so any yearnings that he might ever have had to be a cavalryman had long since been abandoned as unrealistic. After Ingomer’s rout of the watchdog guards beyond the bridge, we fully expected Gunthar to mount an expedition of some kind to replace them and we quickly brought out our foot soldiers to prepare defensive positions within the woods before new enemy forces could be moved in. The expected attack never occurred, however, and we were left to wonder why Gunthar would simply allow such a strategic position to be abandoned. We wasted no time while we were wondering such things, however, and we quickly put our newly freed infantry to use against the Burgundian mercenaries, enjoying the fact that, for a brief time, the difference they made was wonderful. At every clash of arms, Gunthar’s creatures were sent scampering for their lives and the morale of our troopers swelled for several weeks. But then the same reality that governed our cavalry asserted itself over the infantry, too. Their losses were simply too consistent to be sustainable.

Chulderic had sent out messengers to neighboring kings and governors, requesting assistance, but little was forthcoming. The news of Ban’s death was out now and it was believed that the fighting going on in Benwick was among his sons, squabbling for the wealth of the kingdom. Although that was untrue, kings and rulers who had been friends and allies to Ban were reluctant to commit their own resources to what they saw as a family squabble blown out of all proportion. There were too many other real enemies and invading Outlanders abroad in the land to permit anyone who was not directly involved in the Benwick wars to dilute his own forces.

One afternoon, in the second month of the struggle, when things were at their bleakest, we had been pursuing a band of Gunthar’s horsemen—Germanic mercenaries who had been celebrated as Roman auxiliary cavalry and magnificent horsemen for hundreds of years—and we had finally brought them to battle. It was an even match, too, all things considered. The Germans were mounted on their heavy, forest-bred horses, and there appeared to be two thirty-man squadrons in their party, which matched our own size. They had been riding far abroad on this occasion, raiding deep inside our holdings and penetrating right to the lakeside about ten miles north of the castle, where they had burned at least one village and hanged large numbers of helpless farmers, simply to encourage their neighbors to offer no help to us. We had received word of their presence two days earlier and had ridden to intercept them and put an end to their depredations, and it had taken us an entire day to find them and cut them off so that they had no choice but to fight us.

We came together head-on, in a wild, charging melee that seemed to have developed of its own accord. I had had some thought of splitting my squadron into two groups and spearing into the middle of the enemy formation, but before I could even begin to issue orders I saw them charging right toward us at the full gallop. We had no option other than to fight or run, and so we fought. I led my men directly toward the oncoming enemy, and by the time the two lines met, both sides were advancing at the full gallop.

I was unhorsed on the first pass because my mount went down, smitten in the neck by a hand ax, and I flew right over its head. I should have been killed then and there, for I was winded for a long time, but in the heat of the fighting no one paid me any attention and I was able to collect myself and find a riderless horse. It was a stallion, and it had no wish to be ridden any farther that day. Unfortunately, in a battle of wills between him and me, he was destined to lose. As I was trying to catch hold of his bridle, a rider came galloping by on his other side. He knew I was not one of his, but he was galloping hard and could not reach me from where he was, so he slashed at the horse, trying to disable it. His slash was ill timed, however, and poorly aimed because of his speed, so that instead of wounding or crippling the horse, the flat of his blade smacked against the beast’s rump, and the animal, already terrified out of its wits, erupted into a run. I went with it, for there was nothing else I could think to do. I twisted my fingers into its mane and ran alongside it in great, bounding strides until I grew confident enough to take my weight on my arms and raise both feet, then drop them back to earth and thrust myself up and back into a vaulting swing that landed me astride the horse’s back. Once there, and free of the press for a moment, since we had run far beyond the fighting, I brought him to a stop and gathered up the reins, and as I turned to ride back toward my command, I saw my cousin Samson.

He, too, had evidently managed to swing out of the scrabble of the fight, flanked as always by his two most faithful followers, Jan and Gurrit, a pair of loyal stalwarts who might have been twins, so similar did they appear to be at a casual glance, and who had appointed themselves as Samson’s personal bodyguards. I first saw him because his trio of riders were the only people moving in that area and my eye went to them automatically, assessing the potential danger there and recognizing Samson and his escorts immediately. They were angling back toward the crush of the main fight, riding close together in a tight arrowhead with Samson in the lead and Jan and Gurrit pressing hard on his flanks. It was clear to me in my first, sweeping glance along the line of their attack to their intended target that they were aiming to use the concerted weight of their horses to drive a wedge into the exposed right flank of the enemy formation, but it was equally clear that someone in the enemy ranks had already anticipated what they would do and was moving quickly to counter them, dispatching a group of five riders to interpose themselves between Samson and their own force and give their comrades time to close the weakness in their formation.

I was more than a hundred paces from where the two small groups would meet, but I put my spurs to my new horse and drove him hard toward the convergence point, knowing that I would be too late to take part in the clash of the meeting and feeling the dread of foreknowledge swelling in my chest and threatening to choke me. Three against five was not particularly great odds, but my store of optimism had been sadly depleted during the previous few weeks and I no longer held high expectations of anything other than defeat and disappointment.

Sure enough, while the two groups were yet separated by a gap of twenty paces or more, I saw one of the enemy swinging what appeared to be a slingshot of some kind over his head, and moments later one of Samson’s companions, I could not tell which, threw up his arms violently and toppled backward, the helmet sent flying from his head by the force of the enemy projectile. He had barely hit the ground when the two groups closed with a meaty collision of horseflesh and the clang of hard-swung weapons. Samson’s other man, the one on my side of the action, went down, hard, his arms outflung as he fell or was knocked sprawling from his mount. I was fifty paces distant now, galloping flat out, and I saw the blood spraying from the open slash in the falling man’s neck, spreading like a red fog as he went down.

Samson’s horse was rearing, turning on its hind legs as he hacked at the men surrounding him, making no visible impression on any of them. I howled in protest as I saw one of them, and then a second one, dance their horses clear of the tussle, leaving the uneven fight to their three companions while they distanced themselves slightly and took careful aim with short, heavy, wide-bladed spears. They threw together, and both missiles hit squarely, penetrating my cousin’s armor and piercing his back, their blades less than a handsbreadth apart. The two impacts, occurring almost simultaneously, knocked Samson forward at first, threatening to tip him over his horse’s ears, but he stopped himself from falling somehow, and then the combined weight of the two dragging spear shafts pulled him backward and unseated him. He fell in such a way that the butts of the spear shafts hit the ground first, the points driving forward through Samson’s chest. For a space of several heartbeats he hung suspended on the upright spears before they fell over backward.

I was screaming by that point, and almost among the men who had killed him. I saw them turning to face me, their faces registering surprise because until hearing my screams, they had not known I was coming at them. I aimed my horse directly at the two spear throwers, who were sitting side by side and had not yet had any opportunity to arm themselves in any other way. My horse hit the closest man’s mount with his shoulder and sent horse and rider flying, and I aimed a short, chopping stab of my spatha at the second man as I passed him, driving the point of my blade cleanly into the soft flesh under his chin. I felt the steel tip lodge against what could only have been his spine, killing him instantly as I swept by and turned in my saddle to allow the momentum of my passage to pull the tip of my sword free.

Another of the remaining three riders tugged frantically at his reins, trying to pull his horse around to face me, but he had reined his horse in so that he could watch Samson as he fell and, in consequence, he had no momentum. He was heavily bearded, but I saw every line on his face above the growth clearly as I killed him, too, driving the point of my spatha through his right eye. I pulled the point free again immediately and swung back-handed at someone who was trying to reach me from behind my right shoulder, and as I did so I saw the unhorsed spearman moving toward me on the ground, carrying the bloodstained spear that he had recovered from Samson’s body. Something hit me heavily across the shoulders, once and then again, and I felt my horse collapsing beneath me. I glanced down and saw that the spearman had butchered it, and I threw myself from the saddle before I could be pinned beneath its body. I rolled and came up on my knees beside the body of my cousin, watching the last three of his killers preparing to kill me, too. The spearman on foot had his weapon pointing at me again and the other two were moving apart to come at me from two sides. Then came a sound of charging hoofbeats and a babble of voices shouting my name as a squad of my own troopers charged past me and my three adversaries were cut down.

Shaken by the swiftness of events and my unexpected rescue, I tried to rise to my feet but found that I was incapable of raising either of my knees from the ground. I turned instead to the ruined body of my cousin Samson and bent forward to close his eyes, which, by some strange mischance, appeared to be staring directly into mine, although they were already glazed with that peculiar emptiness that differentiates a dead body from a living one. I remained there, kneeling over him for some time as I tried to find words to pray for his soul. But that was one of the few times in my entire life that I found myself unable to utter a single word of prayer.

The battle had been a complete disaster for us. We had won again, according to the butcher’s accounting, but I knew we could never hope to recover from such losses and we were finished as a cohesive fighting force. The enemy had left thirteen dead men on the field and more than half again as many horses—we had no way of knowing how many of the survivors had been wounded or how serious those wounds were. We, however, had lost eight men dead and a full score more bore wounds of one kind or another, although, miraculously, none of those were serious enough to be life-threatening. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the injured horses. Few horses injured in battle could ever be healed, and although only five of our horses—two of them mine—had been killed outright during the fighting, we had to kill seven more wounded animals. We had not been at full strength at the start of the battle, fielding only half a hundred fighting men instead of our normal three score, but when the activities were all over and the dead all buried—with the sole exception of Samson, whose body we would take with us—we assembled to make our way homeward and we presented a sorry sight, even to ourselves. We numbered thirty-two whole men out of our original strength of sixty.

Weary and discouraged, I gave the signal to proceed, and we headed home with our dead King at our center, laid out on a makeshift bier on the bed of the light two-horse supply wagon that always accompanied us on our extended raids. He lay on his back on a thick bed of fresh-cut reeds, his hands crossed upon his chest beneath the expanse of his war cloak, which, arranged in careful folds, served to conceal his body from profane eyes and the indignities of weather.

My first thoughts at the start of that journey were all to do with my cousin Brach, who had now become King of Benwick with Samson’s death. He would be beside himself, I knew, over both the loss of his beloved brother and the unsought, unwished-for accession to the status of kingship. Brach, despite his visual splendor and apparent suitability to play the King’s role, was not a man who would ever enjoy the pomp and ceremonies that went with being a monarch. Spectacular as were his exploits in war, he was nonetheless too genuinely humble and too self-effacing ever to be comfortable in such a highly visible capacity as that of King of Benwick. But then, I thought, life seldom asks for our approval in advance of what it decrees for us. Brach’s fate was to be a king. He could not control that, any more than I could control what my destiny might be.

I spent the remainder of the journey, then, deliberating about what I would say to Chulderic when we arrived at the castle, but he was waiting for us when we reached the red-wall caves, and I went into conference with him immediately, drawing him aside to where we could speak without being overheard.

With Samson’s death, I told him, we had reached the limits of our cavalry’s usefulness as a striking force. We were dangerously, almost fatally, vulnerable in terms of renewable numbers—of both men and horses. We were still able, barely, to continue replacing the troopers who were killed or left unable to ride and fight on, but we had exhausted our supply of able veterans and were now reduced to using untrained riders—foot soldiers and young boys who dreamed of glory in riding out to war but barely knew one end of a horse from the other, with some of them believing that horses had tails purely to indicate that feeding the animal should be performed from the other end. The time had come, I told Chulderic, for us to cut our losses and consolidate the strengths remaining to us by keeping our surviving riders in the castle, acting as defensive garrison troops,, and their horses inside the caves where they would be held in reserve pending an emergency.

Chulderic had sat staring at Samson’s covered bier on the wagon bed as he listened to me, and now he nodded his head and agreed with my assessment of the situation. We would take Samson in and bury him within the castle walls, he said, and then we would prepare for a siege. But while we were doing that, we would also work to reopen the postern gate, the old, walled-up doorway above the lakeside rocks at the rear of the castle. Thus, he opined, we would have two means of exit should the need for escape ever arise.

Hearing him say those words demonstrated to me, more than anything else could have, just how bad our situation was. At the outset of the war, Chulderic would never have voiced such a possibility. Within the space of a short couple of months, however, his entire outlook on life had changed, and every facet of the changes involved reflected in some way upon the perfidy and evil of the man against whom he was fighting.

Gunthar had never been a lovable person, even as a boy, and my own memories of him from my childhood days were of a sullen, melancholy young man with a foul temper and an unpleasant disposition. He was lavish with incessant insults, utterly uncaring whom he offended. His reputation had grown less and less wholesome and his behavior more and more violent as he aged, too, and most people came to prefer simply to stay out of his way.

The most frightening thing about Gunthar, however, was his unpredictability. Of all his many attributes, that one alone was utterly predictable, and it frightened everyone, including his closest allies. And in the very recent past, we had heard persistent rumors that his behavior was growing ever more and more outrageous, erratic, and capricious, and that even his closest associates were increasingly apprehensive of being too long around him at any one time, fearful for their own lives. We had dismissed most of what we heard, however, principally because of the way it came to us. Rumors without some kind of solid ratification were seldom reliable.

Three days after that conversation with Chulderic, on the day following Samson’s interment in one of the castle’s interior courtyards, I was summoned to join Brach shortly after dawn. I had been up late, serving as captain of the night watch, and so had been asleep for little more than an hour when I was roughly shaken awake. Annoyed, but knowing that Brach would not disturb my sleep without good cause, I splashed water over my head, my face, and the back of my neck and toweled myself into wakefulness before going to join him.

He was waiting for me on top of the main tower supporting the curtain wall across the front of the main gates, and as I strode toward him he stood watching me, one hand cupping his chin while the other supported his elbow. I tried to read his expression as I approached him, but his face betrayed nothing.

“What is it?” I asked.

He jerked his thumb toward the edge of the tower. “Look over there.”

I looked down toward the drawbridge, to where a party of three men sat gazing back up at me from horseback. One of the three carried a white banner.

“They want to talk? Who are they?”

Brach sauntered over to stand beside me. “Don’t you recognize the one in the middle?”

I stared, trying to place the man’s face, but as far as I could tell I had never seen him before. I shook my head, and Brach’s mouth quirked wryly.

“That’s Tulach, Cousin, Gunthar’s senior commander.”

“Tulach the Butcher? Are you sure? What would he be doing here, looking to talk to us?” If Brach was correct, the man below was an inhuman creature, whose depravity and debauched behavior had become the stuff of legend within mere months of his arrival here in Benwick.

My cousin sniffed. “I am absolutely sure of who he is, because I have seen him before and spoken to him on several occasions. As to why he is here, I would be prepared to wager that he has come, as Gunthar’s official representative, to offer us safe conduct out of here if we will simply consent to leave without further hostilities and surrender the castle and its kingdom to Gunthar.”

“And will you accept his offer?”

Brach merely glanced at me sidewise. “Would you?”

“Hmm. Where’s Chulderic?”

“I sent for him, but he’s not as young as you are. Moves more slowly. He should be here soon.”

“So what do you intend to do?”

“Talk to him, I suppose. Listen to what he has to say, then tell him what I wish him to say to my fratricidal brother. Here comes Chulderic now.”

The upshot of the ensuing conversation was that I was delegated to ride out and talk to Tulach, thereby delivering a tacit message that Chulderic and Brach both considered it beneath their dignity and station to tattle with the enemy. I took two of my own troopers with me, and. as the men at the controls lowered the great drawbridge, we rode out toward the enemy party. Above us as we went I could hear the tramp of running feet as bowmen hurried to line the walkway along the top of the wall, and as their sergeants shouted orders I could visualize them setting themselves up, nocking their arrows, and standing prepared to draw and shoot upon command.

Tulach watched me coming, his face stern and unreadable. I paid no attention at all to the two men he had with him, just as he betrayed no interest in the two men escorting me. He was a bigger man than I had expected, and his face was hard and cruel, with high, flat cheekbones and deep lines graven on each side of his mouth. I was expecting him to state his business without waste of time, and he did, but what he said was the very last thing I would have hoped or expected to hear.

“I want safe conduct,” he said, “for me and my men. No more fighting. You allow us to ride out along the main road to Lugdunum without bothering us or pursuing us and we will leave your lands immediately and never come back.”

“How many men do you have?” I asked the question for no other purpose than to gain time and cover my own stupefaction.

“Nigh on five hundred, altogether.”

“All horsemen?”

“Aye. We have no truck with Gunthar’s infantry.”

“And how far do you intend to go from here?”

“That’s no concern of yours. We can fight our way out, if need be, but I thought we might both prefer—your friends and mine—to sacrifice no more men than we have already lost.”

I nodded my head judiciously, as if I knew exactly what I was doing and talking about, but I was still as completely in the dark as I had been when he first told me what he wanted, and the predominant thought in my mind was that the man obviously thought we were far stronger and had more resources at our disposal than was the case. And if that were true, I thought, I would have to be careful not to disillusion him.

“You have come up with the only viable reason I could imagine for gaining our agreement in this … the need to squander no more lives. But how can I be sure that, given my promise, on behalf of my people, that you will not be pursued or harassed, you won’t take that as a license to murder and plunder your way from here to Lugdunum? I can hardly take you at your given word, can I? Your reputation for trustworthy honesty and open dealings leaves much to be desired, from where we watch. Your name reeks of atrocity throughout Benwick. Tulach the Butcher, they call you, and you have earned all the hatred that goes with such a name.”

His face betrayed no emotion. “Aye, that may be. But now everything has changed and I’ll butcher no more. Our days here are done.”

“Really, say you so? And what does Gunthar the brother-killer say to that?”

“No single word. Gunthar is dead. He died yesterday, late in the evening, in a fit of rage. His eyes filled up with blood and his face turned black and he staggered and fell dead, clutching his head. I was there at the time.”

I was struck speechless, but fortunately Tulach felt the need to say more and kept on talking. “With him gone, our cause is gone and so is our livelihood, so we need to move on and find further employment. Knowing that, I decided to come here and speak with you people. Particularly with Chulderic and Brach, the sole remaining brother.”

“Your information is surprisingly up-to-date. We buried Samson only last night.”

Tulach shrugged. “I didn’t know that, but I knew he had been killed. Will Chulderic speak with me?”

“No, he will not. Had he wished to speak with you he would have come out here instead of sending me. You have not endeared yourself to anyone here over the past few months.”

The big man shrugged. “So be it. Are you authorized to grant acceptance of my suggestion, or do you have to discuss it with the others?”

“They are here. I’ll consult with them on this and return soon.” I made to turn my mount around, but he forestalled me, reaching into the scrip that hung at his waist and tossing me a cloth bag that, from the way it felt when I caught it, evidently contained a small box of wood.

“Best take them this, then, because they’ll no more take my word on this than you would.”

My curiosity was instantly aroused and it was all I could do to resist the temptation to sit there and open the bag and its contents right in front of him. Instead, keeping my face rigidly blank, I nodded and tucked the bag into my own scrip. “Wait here,” I said, and swung my horse around, leaving him sitting there.

Brach and Chulderic were waiting for me in the courtyard and they were as amazed as I had been to hear the tidings of Gunthar’s death, but their wonder and gratitude immediately gave way to suspicion and fear of entrapment. This was precisely the kind of duplicity we could expect Gunthar to use to disarm us, Chulderic swore, but while they were debating I withdrew Tulach’s bag and opened the box it contained. My stomach heaved immediately, but I quickly conquered my revulsion and held the open box out toward the others.

“I believed him when he told me Gunthar is dead,” I told them. “But there’s the proof. Gunthar would never part willingly with his personal seal, especially when it was yet attached to his finger. Tulach must have cut the finger off, knowing we would never believe his unsupported word.”

Brach reached out and took the box, shaking his brother’s severed finger with its heavy, ornate seal out into his palm, where he pulled the ring free and dropped the finger into the dirt at his feet.

“I’m convinced,” he said. “The war is over. Let them go home, so be it they go quickly. We have a land to resurrect here.”

I returned to Tulach within the half hour, my features carefully schooled to give this man no inkling of the reaction his tidings had caused within the castle walls. Once again, he spoke out as soon as I came within hearing range.

“Well? Are we to fight?”

“You have a full day to withdraw,” I told him, “until this time tomorrow, at which point we will send cavalry to look for you, but not to pursue you. If they find you, then they will attack. That is our offer. Accept it or leave it, as you will, but do so now.”

He pursed his lips quickly as I spoke, showing quick-flaring anger, but as soon as I had finished speaking, he said, “So be it. My men are ready. We will be far beyond Benwick’s borders by this time tomorrow.” He nodded to his two escorts, and as he made to swing away I stopped him.

“One more question: where is Gunthar?”

Tulach turned his head slowly and looked back at me, and for a moment I thought he was not going to answer me at all, but then he hawked and spat. “He’s in Chabliss,” he said, naming the smallest of the four forts clustered in the southeast quadrant of our territories. “He lies where he fell, in front of the fire, steeped in his own excrescences. I wish you joy of finding him.”

He pulled his horse into a rearing turn and sank his spurs into its flanks, and as he and his two fellows disappeared beyond the fringe of trees in the distance I realized for the first time that Gunthar’s War was over. It had happened very suddenly and very tamely, with the death of single man from natural causes, but it had caused as much carnage and grief and misery as any other war during its brief existence.

I stood there for what felt like a long time after Tulach’s departure, staring toward the point where he had entered the distant trees and been lost to my sight. Gunthar was dead and the war was over. The knowledge was there in my mind, as was my acceptance of it, but I had yet to feel the impact of its meaning. Gunthar was dead. There was something outrageous about that, something obscene in the casual, matter-of-fact banality of it. One of Bishop Germanus’s favorite sayings came into my mind, and I heard his voice repeating it sonorously: In the midst of life we are in death. I knew what it meant, knew that it was a warning to humankind of how tenuous their hold on life really is, but I knew too that it was a ludicrous commentary in this case, because we here in Benwick had been living for months in the midst of death. And now Gunthar was dead, casually gone, snuffed out like a flame in a draft. Vanished.

And as my thoughts moved on to all the other deaths he had occasioned in his brief, demented passion, I grew angrier than I had ever been before—angry at Gunthar for having died so selfishly and dismally, depriving me of the pleasure of killing him with my own hands and avoiding the vengeance of the many thousands he had wronged and betrayed. I found that I was angry at God, too, for permitting such a grossly indecent fiasco to take place … so many lives lost and squandered so needlessly when the executioner was fated to collapse and die in his own blood and effluent and at the intervention of no one.

Another of the Bishop’s sayings came to my mind. Sic transit gloria mundi … the glories of this world pass quickly … Gunthar, the arch-enemy, sprawled, befouled by his own wastes, in front of a dead fire, his blood-filled eyes glaring from a blackened face. Seeing him there, in my mind’s eye, I began eventually to think that perhaps, perhaps, there was a justice and a kind of vengeance implicit in the manner of his being struck down while in a fit of rage. But I had no impulse to forgive God for the wasted, blighted lives he had permitted the madman to effect.

Later, I know not how much later, I hawked and spat and turned to walk back across the drawbridge and into the castle. No one had sought to disturb my solitary vigil and no one made any attempt now to intercept or interrupt me as I made my way back to my bed and my interrupted sleep.

The suddenness of the war’s end threw me completely off balance, changing my life instantly from one filled with chaotic urgencies and burgeoning despair into one in which I had nothing substantial to do, and all the time in the world to dedicate to not doing it. We were aware that there had been Burgundian invasions to the north of our lands, but no evidence of any threat to us in Benwick had materialized, and so we paid no attention to anything outside our own boundaries and were content to wallow in the lethargy that settled suddenly upon those of us who had been most heavily involved in the fighting. The experience could have been a damaging one—I can see that clearly now with the assistance of hindsight—but before I had the opportunity to drift into any set pattern of idle behavior, I recalled a comment that Ursus had made months earlier, during our long journey to the south, on a day when we had been forced to go out of our way and make a wide and difficult detour to avoid a large bear with three cubs.

The sow had settled herself, with her trio of charges, by the side of a mountain river that swept in close at one point—a matter of several paces—to the edge of the narrow path we had been following through difficult, hilly terrain for two days. We saw her fishing in the white water of the rushing stream just as the last stretch of the downhill pathway swooped down from where we were to the riverside where her cubs tussled with each other by the water’s edge, still too small and too young to brave the current. It would have been folly to attempt to pass them by unseen, and we had no desire to kill the creatures, so we had muffled our curses and cursed our misfortune and scrambled painfully upward, leading our horses slowly and with great difficulty, high and hard, scaling the steep hillside with much muttering and grumbling until we reached the summit and were faced with the even greater task of making our way back down again in safety toward the narrow, well-trodden path that was our sole way out of the hills in the direction we were heading.

We had made the ascent in something more than an hour, but it took us three times that long to go back down again, because of our horses and the need to find a route they would accept. In the late afternoon, however, looking down from high above the path we had left that morning, we saw it choked with Burgundian warriors heading directly toward the sow and her cubs, and we knew beyond doubt that, had it not been for the animals, we would have blundered directly into these people and probably died there.

That experience had seduced Ursus into a philosophical frame of mind for the remainder of that day, and he had said something to the effect that God sometimes throws us valuable gifts disguised as uncommon and annoying nuisances. The memory of that occasion, coming when it did, made me look at my sudden idleness as a gift of time in which to take stock of my life. After ten consecutive days, however, during which I did nothing at all, other than to think deeply about who I was becoming and what I had achieved, I found myself not only unable to arrive at any clear decisions about my life, but not even able to define any new perspectives on which to base decisions. And this despite the fact that I knew there were decisions I must make.

Discouraged by the entire exercise and feeling both foolish and inadequate, I went to Brach and apologized for what I was sure he must see as my laziness and lack of attention to duty in the days that had passed. When I told him I had been thinking, however, instead of being as angry at me as I had expected him to be, Brach laughed and asked me if I knew what I had been searching for. When I merely blinked at him and told him I had no idea, he laughed even more and told me to go away somewhere and think further, and at greater length, this time in isolation and free of all distraction. Once I had arrived at some kind of conclusion about what I wanted, I was to come back and tell him.

I took him at his word and did as he suggested, and this time, as he had indicated I might, I came to terms with something that had been troubling me without my being really aware of it. I would be seventeen years old on my next birthday, which meant that Clodas of Ganis-had been ruling in my father’s stead, unchallenged, for that length of time, and my parents were still unavenged.

I was a man now, I realized, fully grown and very different from the boy who had traveled south from Auxerre mere months earlier, and all the impediments to my ability to seek my vengeance had been removed by the simple passing of time. Now Brach was King of Benwick and I had proved my loyalty to him, time and again. I had little doubt that he would demonstrate his loyalty to me by rewarding me with an escort of warriors to help me to reclaim my own throne in Ganis.

I returned to seek Brach out, filled with enthusiasm, and to his credit, he made me welcome and honored his promise to listen to whatever might have emerged from all my thinking. That evening, after the main meal, he dismissed all his attendants so that the two of us could be alone while he listened closely to everything I had to say. When I had finished speaking, however, instead of leaping to his feet and wishing me well as I had anticipated he would, my cousin, in his new role as King Brach, sat silent, musing and nodding his head. Impatient as I was to gain his consent and blessing for the expedition I was planning, I nonetheless saw that he had more on his mind than I knew about and so I disciplined myself to sit in silence and wait for the cousin who was now my King to arrive at a decision.

Brach did not keep me waiting long. He rose quickly to his feet and began to pace back and forth in front of me, talking more volubly and fluently than I had ever heard him speak in all the time I had known him.

He knew my intentions concerning Clodas of Ganis, he told me, and he remembered and acknowledged his father’s promise to assist me in bringing the usurper to justice for the slaughter of my family. That would happen, he told me, and he promised that I would be well supported by warriors from Benwick when the time came for me to march against Clodas. Now, however—and he asked me very graciously to try to see this situation from his viewpoint—was not the time.

Were I to strike out northward now as was my right, he told me, Benwick would not be able to offer me any assistance in my quest. As King of Benwick, he was now constrained by the same concerns that had beset his father, Ban, years earlier, in that he had a domain to govern and a people to serve and sustain and feed, and both kingdom and people were ravaged, weakened, and depleted by war. The hostilities were ended, certainly, but now the entire kingdom had to be rebuilt and returned to its former condition of wealth and strength. He looked me straight in the eye at that point and told me there was a task for me here in Benwick, and that if I would accept it, he would undertake to equip me, once it was completed, with the men and resources I would need to press my campaign against Clodas in the north.

I found no difficulty in seeing things from his newly acquired viewpoint and agreeing that his suggestions were both sensible and worthwhile. Clodas had spent seventeen years in ignorance of the fact that he would die at my hand, and I saw no great hindrance to my plans in permitting him to live a little longer while I attended to other duties. And so I threw myself into rebuilding the affairs and the welfare of our little kingdom—although it seemed anything but little to me at that time—as wholeheartedly as I had committed myself to the war that had ravaged it. Rebuilding, however, meant in this instance exactly what it said, and it involved the physical labor of working side by side with the ordinary people of Benwick, most of them farmers, reerecting the buildings—and sometimes that meant entire villages—that had been destroyed or damaged during the conflict. It was brutal and difficult work, but greatly satisfying in that the results achieved were plainly visible, and somehow another three months slipped by while I sweated and strained and labored with my hands just as painfully and exhaustingly as any farmer who ever cleared a patch of land by cutting and uprooting trees.

I had seen my Aunt Vivienne several times since my uncle’s death, but not often and not with any kind of regularity, and although she invariably treated me with great kindness on those occasions when we did meet, it was plain for me to see that the special relationship I had enjoyed with her during my childhood had faded and been forgotten by her. She had become an old woman in the meantime, as Brach had warned me, and the traumatic events of the brief war between her sons had greatly affected her.

It was Aunt Vivienne, nevertheless, who first reminded me, after Gunthar’s War, that I had promised Germanus I would return to Auxerre, and on that single occasion there was nothing at all about her, either in appearance or demeanor, to suggest that she was in any way less in command of herself and her emotions than she had ever been. On the contrary, she struck me as being very much in command of herself and completely recovered in every way from the outrages perpetrated upon her well-being by her husband’s firstborn son. I had met her by accident that day, passing through an open area within the castle walls on my way to meet Brach. The sun was shining and the air was balmy, and my aunt was sitting alone in a sunny area in one corner of the enclosed yard, near to where I was passing. I had not. seen her at all before she called my name, because I was distracted by my own thoughts, my mind full of the things I had to tell Brach in the course of the brief meeting I had been able to arrange with him, and when I heard her voice, close to me and completely unexpected, it brought me up short, so that I had to grapple with my surprise before I could say anything sensible.

“Aunt Vivienne! What are you doing here?” That wondrous question popped out before I could contain it, and it betrayed the depth of my momentary confusion.

My aunt smiled at me warmly, disconcerting me even further. “I live here, Clothar. This is my home. What else need I be doing, other than being here?”

Her gentle irony brought me to my senses and I felt the blood flushing my cheeks. “Forgive me, Aunt Vivienne,” I muttered, embarrassed without reason. “I simply had not—”

“—expected to find me here,” she completed my thought, smiling again. “Well, I felt no surprise, because I was sitting here thinking about you when you walked through the gateway over there.”

“You were thinking about me? But—” She gave me no reason to embarrass myself further, however, for with both hands she was already holding up an unrolled papyrus. “This is a letter from Germanus, from Auxerre. It was delivered to me yesterday by a traveling priest who carried it from Lugdunum. It was written some time ago, I fear, and he had only then heard of … of the death of the King.” I had noticed, as we all had, that since her husband’s death, Queen Vivienne—she bore the honorific still, at the specific wish of her son Brach—had not spoken Ban’s name, referring to him only as the King. Now I merely noted her use of the term but otherwise ignored it completely, along with the hesitation that had preceded it, and she continued. “The purpose of his letter was of course to express his sympathy and condolences on our loss, and he described for me some of his oldest and fondest memories of the times he and … the King spent together. He is a wonderful writer, you know. But before he finished his letter he wrote at some length about you, and about the plans he has for you.” At that point, very much the Queen I remembered, she paused and tilted her head to one side, as though reconsidering me from some new viewpoint.

“I read all the correspondence you brought from Germanus when you first arrived, you know.” I raised my eyebrows politely but said nothing and she went on. “Chulderic took charge of it, of course, when the King died, but he brought it directly to me before allowing anyone else to read it, and I read it all and even absorbed it … . I suppose God in His mercy had buffered me at that point from the full realization of what had happened, but He nonetheless permitted me to read and understand what the Bishop had to say. And then I, in my turn, passed the information on to Samson, who had become king by then, and now Brach has it all.”

Again she paused, and pursed her lips, and this time her head tilted in the other direction. “You must have done very well in school, because the Bishop speaks very highly of you, both in this letter and in the first missives you brought down to us, and it appeared to me in reading all he had to say that he has great things and high-flown tasks in mind for you. But he mentioned most particularly in this letter that you had promised him, before you left Auxerre, that you would return once your errand to the King was complete. Do you recall that promise?”

As she asked the question, she released her grip on one side of the letter and the papyrus snapped shut, curling itself into the rolled shape it had been in for the duration of its long journey from Auxerre to here. I nodded in response, feeling my breast fill up with dismay, for I had been working assiduously to avoid remembering that promise, made first to Germanus and then reiterated to King Ban before he died, and I had almost been able to convince myself that Ban’s death had changed everything and absolved me of the need to be true to what I promised. Almost, however, is an indeterminate and unconvincing word and in the meantime the Queen was watching me closely, waiting for me to answer. I cleared my throat and answered her quietly. “Yes, Aunt,” I said. “I remember making the promise, but—”

“I am glad of that,” she interjected, giving me no opportunity to add to my admission, almost as though she wished to run no risk of hearing me attempt to renege on anything. “Because the Bishop was most emphatic that I should remind you of it. He is aware of how much must have changed in your life, he says, with the death of the King … your uncle … . But it is even more important now, he believes, more important than ever, that you return to Auxerre. He entreated me most specifically to tell you that, and to add my voice to his own in urging you to return north.”

She stopped short, eyeing me resolutely as though defying me to disagree. “You will return there, will you not?”

I had no other option than to nod my head in agreement. “Yes, Aunt Vivienne, I will. But not until my tasks here are complete. I promised Brach that I would not head northward until I had completed the assignment he set me.” I saw no need to add that in heading northward I had been talking of marching against Clodas and Ganis.

“What assignment was that?”

I had half expected her to ask me that and I was ready. “The task of rebuilding Benwick.”

“Rebuilding Benwick?” The beginnings of her old smile flickered at her lips and I felt a rush of love for her and for the Lady Vivienne I remembered. “A Herculean labor, surely, for a man as young as you? I have heard that you are a born leader and a mighty warrior, but a kingdom rebuilder? Are you to rebuild all of it?”

“Well, no,” I answered, feeling, foolish, knowing she was twitting me. “Not all of it. I am not doing it alone. But I did promise, and I am not quite done.”

“And when you are? Done, I mean?”

“Then I shall return to the north, my Lady, to Auxerre and the Bishop.”

She inclined her head graciously. “Then thank you, Nephew Clothar, for that. Now help me to my feet, if it please you.” She reached out imperiously and I stepped forward to take her hand and help her to her feet, where she continued to clutch my fingers as she leaned forward to peer into my face. “You look much like your father,” she murmured. “But you still have your mother’s hair and brows. Now, if you would, you may walk me to my chambers.” I was honored, and walking with my back straight and my shoulders squared, very conscious of her hand resting lightly on my forearm, I led my aunt, the former Queen of Benwick, slowly into the castle and eventually up the long, sweeping staircase to the suite of rooms she had shared for so many years with her husband the King. And yet, walking proudly as I did, I nonetheless felt a tiny squirming of guilt in my gut over the reasons I had given for not returning to Auxerre immediately. I had told my aunt no lies, but I had greatly exaggerated the extent of the few responsibilities I still owed to Brach, because the simple truth was that I had no desire at all to leave Genava. I had fallen in love for the first time in my life and was completely enthralled.

The young woman’s name was Rosalyn, and she was the most beautiful proof of the existence of God that I had ever seen, because logic dictated beyond dispute that perfection such as hers could not exist had God not shaped it personally with His own hands. She was tall and lithe and lissome and lovely, with a wide, laughing mouth and a neck like a swan’s. Our love was pure, for two simple reasons: we never had any opportunity to make it otherwise; and I never found the courage to profess my love to her.

So abjectly did I fail in finding that courage, in fact, that I could barely summon up sufficient nerve to sit in the same room with her and listen to her laughing and talking with her friends. It would have been impossible for me to sit at her feet and talk to her the way I saw other young men doing so effortlessly, making her laugh and singing to her. I could never have found the courage to do that. And yet I know she was aware of me, and she always had a warm and friendly smile for me, and frequently she spoke to me, although only for a short time after we first met. Whenever she did speak to me or ask me a question, I would be overcome with shyness and would stutter and stammer and blush with shame and confusion and frustration. And so, out of kindness, I believe, she stopped addressing me directly.

She was a new arrival to Benwick, I learned within moments of having seen her for the first time. Her father was a merchant of some description and traveled widely. I heard that, and I knew it, and yet I failed somehow to understand that she was likely to move on again as quickly as she had arrived. And so she did, after a month-long stay, and I was devastated. One morning she was simply gone, with her entire family, and no one could tell me where they had gone to, or even which branch of the crossroads they might have taken. Inconsolable, I took to riding off alone and spending days on end in the woods, living on birds and small animals that I had shot or snared.

I had been out for three days on one such occasion and had spent an entire morning fishing bare-handed for trout basking in deep holes beneath river stones before I caught a truly magnificent specimen, scooping it out of the water and throwing it high onto the bank behind me. As I turned to go and collect my prize, the sun struck me square in the face, dazzling me sufficiently to allow me to see only the shape of a tall man suddenly looming above me, his shoulder blocking part of the sun’s orb so that he was thrown into silhouette. Cursing, I scrabbled to one side, clutching for the dagger in my belt, but as I unsheathed it and surged to my feet I was aware of my assailant moving, and then an arm closed around my neck from behind, a strong hand clamped tightly over my wrist, and a familiar voice spoke into my ear.

“Hey, be still! My only thought in coming here was that you might have food enough for both of us.”

It was Ursus and I almost fainted with relief, but instead I kicked backward, hooking one foot behind his ankle, and pulled him down with me as I fell.

Afterward, when we had stopped wrestling and laughing in our enjoyment of meeting again, I went in search of the enormous trout I had thrown up onto the bank behind me. I found it twitching in the last stages of expiry, its skin covered with leaves and dry grass, and turned back to brandish it at Ursus, finding him brushing the crushed grass and leaves from his clothing.

“Food enough for both, as you requested. Why don’t you start a fire while I clean this, and then you can tell me what brings you here.”

It was another half hour before he set aside the bowl from which he had been eating and pulled himself to sit upright, facing the fire.

“What brings me here. Isn’t that what you asked? Well, I suppose you did. I came to visit you, since I knew you were nearby.”

“But you’re supposed to be in Carcasso.”

“I was, and now I am not. I’ve had enough of Carcasso.”

“Was Duke Lorco there when you got home?”

“No, he wasn’t. And not a word’s been heard about him. You and I may be the last two living people to have seen him alive. Because he’s dead now. Not a doubt of that in my mind. He’s dead, long since. Probably since the day he vanished ahead of us.”

“He wasn’t very good, was he?”

Ursus glanced at me quickly, tilting his head. “What d’you mean, good? As a soldier? Is that what you mean?” He made a face that managed to be noncommittal. “He wasn’t any worse than a number I’ve served under. He was a fair man, Lorco, reasoned in his judgments and quite likable for a military commander. But he was sloppy. Lax. And that was reflected in his command. That’s the reason we got jumped, in our little hunting party. Duke Lorco never worried too much about sending out scouts or outriders, so neither did his people. Mind you, he never really needed to, until the very end when he did need to, and by then it was too late to change old habits. It cost him dearly. Us, too.”

Ursus snorted and spat. “I made my report to the appropriate authorities when I got back and everybody listened very carefully and made appreciative noises, but I could tell nobody really cared, one way or the other. Lorco had been gone for six months and more by then and his replacement was well settled in and quite happy with his situation.

“Still, appearances had to be preserved, and so they sent me out again, at the head of a search party of a hundred troopers, to retrace our route one more time and make every effort to discover what had happened to the Duke and his party … .

“Of course it was futile, but I knew that going in and so I didn’t exactly rupture myself searching under every stone. The invading troops, whoever they might have been, were long vanished by the time we got back, and so we were able to travel quickly, but we stopped and asked questions at every stage along the way and we learned absolutely nothing. Didn’t even find a single soul who remembered seeing them south of the point where we lost them. We found a few who could remember the party heading north, but nobody, anywhere, saw them coming back until we reached the points north of where the Duke and his people vanished. The people up there remembered seeing him coming and going, but that was when we were still with him.

“It took us a month, but by the end of that time we had established that the Duke had vanished and would not be coming home again.”

“So what did you do then, once you were sure of that?”

Ursus picked up his bowl again and scooped some wood ash into it, after which he began to scour it with a cloth from his belt. “We moved on, up to Treves and the military headquarters there. Lorco had been expected to return there some time earlier, I had to tell them what had happened and that the Duke would not be coming back. We stayed in Treves for a time, but no more than a few weeks, since we didn’t belong to any unit there, and then we headed back south for Carcasso, where we disbanded. None of us felt very uplifted by what we had failed to achieve, I can tell you, but I was the only one of us after that without an employer. With Lorco officially dead, I had no real paymaster and I detested the pipsqueak who had taken over Lorco’s position.

“I hired myself out eventually to another commander, since a man has to eat, but I was bored with the life and bored with the work, policing taverns and throwing drunks who might have been me into the cells beneath the civic center. That’s no fit work for a soldier.”

He looked at me and grinned his white-toothed, wolfish grin. “So I decided to move on, in search of greener pastures, and here I am. I was mere miles away, heading north again, and decided on the merest whim to veer west and see what you’ve been up to, so now it’s your turn.” He leaned back and made himself more comfortable, crossing his ankles and clasping his hands behind his head, his smile still in place. “Speak to me, boy!”

Overjoyed to see him sitting across from me again, for I had honestly believed his friendship gone from my life forever, I told him all about the momentous things that had happened since he and I had parted months earlier. He had heard nothing about Gunthar’s War since leaving Benwick, and I found that close to unbelievable at first, although when I thought about it afterward, in the context of the times in which we were then living, it became less so. From a distance of surprisingly few miles away, the upheaval of Gunthar’s War appeared to be little more than a messy family squabble.

That he had heard nothing about our little war, however, also meant that Ursus had heard nothing of the death of my cousin Samson or of the ascension of Brach to the King’s chair. I told him about those things first, and then went on to describe as much as I could remember of the conduct of the war, surprising myself more than him by the paucity of detail I was able to recall. Only after that, and having answered all his questions, did I permit myself to move on to talk about my own thoughts and deliberations since the war had ended. Once launched on that topic, however, I went into great detail about all that I had considered and about my decision to avenge the murder of my parents and my grandfather, and to reclaim my father’s kingdom from the usurper Clodas.

When I finally ran out of words, Ursus sat silent, staring into the distance. I wanted to speak his name, to ask him what he thought and if he would come with me to help me claim my birthright, but I had sufficient wit to know that he would speak when he was ready and not until then, and that if I spoke to him too soon I might interrupt his train of thought and defeat my own wishes. And so I held myself in peace, with great effort.

“All this thinking you’ve been doing,” he said eventually. “Where does Germanus enter into it?”

I blinked at him. “Germanus?”

“Aye, Germanus. You remember him, don’t you? He’s a bishop, up in Auxerre, to the north.”

I felt my face reddening, not merely at his sarcastic tone but in instant recognition of my own stupidity. But Ursus had not finished.

“Auxerre is far closer to where you wish to be than Benwick is. It’s almost within spitting distance of Ganis. It is certainly within attack range. So Germanus will probably be more able to help you gain your ends than Brach. Brach has promised to lend you men to help you win back your kingdom, and I don’t doubt he will, but how many men can he afford to send out now, in view of the losses he has sustained? Germanus has the reputation of a warrior, even though he is a saintly bishop nowadays. His blessing upon your expedition would bring out followers in their hundreds. I would be prepared to wager on that. So, if Germanus blesses you with his support, then he will probably also be willing to make arrangements that would enable Brach to reinforce you by sea, say from Massilia to Lutetia, navigating upriver from the western coast. I’d venture to say that would be a more attractive prospect to Brach than sending his horsemen off on an overland expedition that could weaken his home defenses for months on end. Don’t forget, Brach knows how easily Duke Lorco disappeared with all his men.”

I nodded, albeit unwillingly, and mulled over his words for a while before looking at him again. “What should I do, then?”

He shrugged. “Decide on nothing until you’ve met with Germanus. He’ll know what you should do and he’ll have no difficulty explaining it to you. Leave word with Brach that you’ll send word to him with one of Germanus’s priests about your future plans. You’re almost seventeen, Clothar, not forty-seven, so you should have plenty of time to plan correctly and plan carefully. No need to go charging off to meet your destiny before you catch your breath.”

And so it was that I bade farewell to my family and friends easily and in good faith, and once again set out to travel north to the ancient town of Auxerre and the Bishop’s School that waited there.