The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend cc-5 Read online

  The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend

  ( Camulod Chronicles - 5 )

  Jack Whyte

  The Fort at River's Bend is a novel published by Jack Whyte, a Canadian novelist in 1999. Originally part of a single book, The Sorcerer, it was split for publishing purposes. The book encompasses the beginning of Arthur's education at a long abandoned Roman fort, where he is taught most of the skills needed to rule, and fight for, the people of Britain. The novel is part of The Comulud Chronicles, a series of books which devise the context in which the Arthurian legend could have been placed had it been historically founded.

  From Publishers Weekly

  Fearing for the life of his nephew, eight-year-old Arthur Pendragon, after an assassination attempt in their beloved Camulod, Caius Merlyn Brittanicus uproots the boy and sails with an intimate group of friends and warriors to Ravenglass, seeking sanctuary from King Derek. Though Ravenglass is supposed to be a peaceful port, danger continues to threaten and it is only through the quick thinking of the sharp-tongued, knife-wielding sorceress Shelagh that catastrophe and slaughter are averted. Derek, who now realizes the value of the allegiances Merlyn's party bring to his land, offers the Camulodians the use of an abandoned Roman fort that is easily defensible. The bulk of the novel involves the growth of Arthur from boyhood to adolescence at the fort. There he is taught the arts of being a soldier and a ruler, and magnificent training swords are forged in Excalibur's pattern from the metals of the Skystone. While danger still lurks around every corner, this is a peaceful time for Britain, so this installment of the saga (The Saxon Shore, etc.) focuses primarily on the military skills Arthur masters, as well as on the building and refurbishing of an old Roman fort. Whyte has again written a historical fiction filled with vibrant detail. Young Arthur is less absorbing a character than many of the others presented (being seemingly too saintly and prescient for his or any other world), but readers will revel in the impressively researched facts and in how Whyte makes the period come alive.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  the sorcerer:

  the fort at river's bend

  Jack Whyte was born in Scotland and came to Canada in 1967. An actor, orator, singer and poet, his narrative poetry earned him two gold medals at the prestigious New York International Film Festival in 1991 for Best Writing and Best Narration. Jack Whyte's critically acclaimed A Dream of Eagles cycle includes the titles The Skystone, The Singing Sword, The Eagles' Brood, The Saxon Shore, and The Sorcerer Books I and II:The Fort at River's Bend and Metamorphosis.

  a dream of eagles

  The Skystone

  The Singing Sword

  The Eagles' Brood

  The Saxon Shore

  The Sorcerer: Book I The Fort at River's Bend

  The Sorcerer: Book II Metamorphosis

  To my wife Beverley

  and to my grandson,

  David Michael Johns,

  who finally got old enough to read his Grandpa's books

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  The task of acknowledging contributions to my work and to my research has always been a daunting one. I am grateful to so many people for encouragement and assistance that it would be impossible to name all of them. On this occasion, however, three contributions tower above all others in my recollection, since, lacking any of them, this story would not have emerged as it has.

  The diagram of a pattern-welded sword that appears on page 319 was developed by John Anstee of Great Britain, who actually made such a sword, using ancient materials and techniques that he had researched over the course of decades. I found the diagram, and a vast range of other equally useful information, in Hilda Ellis Davidson's excellent book The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England. Although first printed in 1962 by the Boy dell Press of Woodbridge, Suffolk, I did not discover it until 1995. Had I made the discovery even a decade earlier, my life would have been much simpler and less racked by doubts. I spent years struggling with my own conception of Excalibur, knowing approximately what I envisioned, yet uncertain of the practicality of the ideas I had so crudely developed from my peripatetic research. Between them, these two people provided both enlightenment and gratifying confirmation.

  It was my brother Michael who first introduced me to the setting for The Fort at River's Bend. In May 1993 he was on holiday in the Lake District with his wife Kate when Beverley and I, on a visit to Britain, joined them for a few days in the middle of a glorious early heatwave When Mike learned that I was fundamentally unhappy with the east-coast location I had chosen for this stage in Arthur's education, he drove me up into the Fells for about ten minutes, along the wildest and most frighteningly narrow, precipitous road I had ever seen, and showed me the site I have since come to know so well.

  The Fort at River's Bend is still there today and has become one of the most famous surviving Roman auxiliary forts, thanks to its magnificent and isolated setting, high in Britain's beautiful Lake District. Today's visitors know it as the Fort at Hardknott Pass, but Hardknott Pass is a modern name. The fort's original name—something of a jawbreaker to non-Latin speakers—was Mediobogdum, which translates into English as "situated in the curve (of the river)." The name itself was probably pronounced "Media-BOG- d'm," with the emphasis on the third syllable.

  The fort lies nine miles north-east of Ravenglass, an ancient coastal town whose name (Yr-afon-[g]las) predates the Romans and means "the blue harbour" in the Celtic tongue of the local inhabitants the Romans called the Brigantes, a fiercely independent people who never were successfully Romanized. The Roman name for Ravenglass was Glannaventa. The Romans built a supply road from there to the inland town of Ambleside on Lake Windermere, threading it through the two bleak passes of Hardknott and Wrynose. The road was a mere thirty miles long, but it was the only route of its kind from the northwest coast south of Carlyle into the hinterland, its importance underscored by the three forts built to guard it: Glannaventa on the coast, Mediobogdum at the highest point and Galava (Ambleside) at the inland terminus. Towns grew up around Glannaventa and Galava, and survived. No such growth occurred in the magnificent but inhospitable and infertile Hardknott Pass. The garrison there was on its own.

  The most astonishing thing about the Hardknott Pass fort is that it sat abandoned, undisturbed and unvandalized for almost fifteen hundred years. Only in the seventeenth century, when the oak forests of Eskdale were plundered to build ships for the Royal Navy's wars, did the fort come to light. Land clearance followed the destruction of the forests, bringing in more and more farmers, who began to strip the sandstone blocks from the great gateways to build houses for their families. In the early nineteenth century, William Wordsworth alluded to the fort, in one of his Duddon Sonnets, as "that lone Camp on Hardknott's heights / Whose guardians bent the knee to Jove and Mars. " /

  Since then, in the past century, hordes of souvenir- hunting visitors have stripped away all the magnificent red tiles that decorated the underground hypocausts, or central heating pillars, that served the bathhouse outside the walls of the fort, and there is no way of knowing how much else has vanished into the same abyss.

  The site, maintained now by a local society dedicated to its preservation, is a fascinating place, where history reaches out and grabs you by the throat. I returned to spend a period of weeks there in 1995, living in the delightful Bridge Inn at Santon Bridge, Wasdale, and passed many hours each day absorbing the atmosphere of the fort and the countryside around it, grateful for the support and encouragement of local residents, many of whom were highly knowledgeable about the fort and its environs. The original garrison who built and occupied the fort were Dalmatians—from the region that today is Croatia
and Serbia—and I wanted to acquire some impressions of how they must have felt in their isolated post up among the misty, rain-soaked peaks so many hundreds of years ago, with no welcoming little inn awaiting them on the valley floor. All of those impressions, and most of what I discovered about Mediobogdum and its history, will be found in this story. The descriptions of the fort and the details of its construction are accurate. The road it guarded—identified only recently as the famous Tenth Iter of the Antonine Itinerary—climbs from the valley floor to the summit of Hardknott Pass at a gradient of 1 in 3 and presents astonishing challenges even to modern vehicles. The river in whose bend the fort nestles—although far below— is the Esk.

  Some aspects of my description may raise quizzical eyebrows among my readers, but even the most surprising of these details are factual. The Romans used concrete, and the domed roofs of the fort's warehouses were made of that material, so that each lateral wall had five buttresses to support the weight of the concrete. Those roofs endured for centuries, perhaps even for a millennium. The barrack- houses were floored with mortar, The garrison also boasted a sophisticated, running-water latrine exactly as described herein. The inscribed plaque above the main gate has been recovered and restored. The bathhouse was as described and was sixty-six feet long and twenty feet wide, its waters tapped from the nearby stream known today as the Campsike. Since the place sat intact for fifteen hundred years after its abandonment, it seems reasonable to postulate that it would have been refurbishable and habitable when Merlyn had need of it a mere two hundred years after the garrison had departed.

  Jack Whyte Kelowna, British Columbia, June 1997

  MAP LEGEND

  Glannaventa (Ravenglass)

  Mediobogdum (The Fort)

  Galava (Ambleside)

  Manx (Isle of Man)

  Brocavum (Brougham)

  Mamucium (Manchester)

  Deva (Chester)

  Lindum (Lincoln)

  Londinium (London)

  Verulamium (St Albans)

  Corinium (Cirencester)

  Glevum (Gloucester)

  Aquae Sulis (Bath)

  Lindinis (Ilchester)

  Camulod (Camelot)

  Venta Silurum (Caerwent)

  Isca Silurum (Caerleon)

  (Cardiff)

  Nidum (Neath)

  Moridunum (Carmarthen)

  Cicutio (Y Gaer)

  (Castel Collen)

  Key: Roman place names (English/Welsh in brackets)

  The Legend of the Sky Stone *

  Out of the night sky there will fall a stone

  That hides a maiden born of murky deeps,

  A maid whose fire-fed, female mysteries

  Shall give life to a lambent, gleaming blade,

  A blazing, shining sword whose potency

  Breeds warriors. More than that,

  This weapon will contain a woman's wiles

  And draw dire deeds of men; shall name an age;

  Shall crown a king, called of a mountain clan

  Who dream of being drawn from dragon's seed;

  Fell, forceful men, heroic, proud and strong,

  With greatness in their souls.

  This king, this monarch, mighty beyond ken,

  Fashioned of glory, singing a song of swords,

  Misting with magic madness mortal men,

  Shall sire a legend, yet leave none to lead

  His host to triumph after he be lost.

  But death shall ne'er demean his destiny who,

  Dying not, shall ever live and wait to be recalled.

  I can remember the first time Arthur Pendragon ever called me by my name. He was not yet two years old and he could not pronounce it properly, but neither he nor I was displeased by the result. "Mellin," he called me, crowing with delight at his achievement, and "Mellin" I remained until sufficient time had passed for him to master the new sound my proper name required, the letter "r."

  I can also remember the last time he called me by my name, starting up from the pallet where he lay and clutching at my arm. his startled eyes filled with dismay at the wrenching finality of the sudden internal rupture that tore away his life. "Merlyn—?" he gasped, and he died there, with my name upon his lips.

  Years have passed since that raw day, and I am still here, the sole survivor of the place men knew as Camulod, the sole repository, in all this land of Britain, of the knowledge that once flourished here and of the dreams a people dreamed of being free.

  PROROGUE

  Solitude, of its essence, is a curse, for man was never meant to live alone, forced to shout out aloud from time to time merely to hear a human voice. I have been thinking about that for two days now, recalling conversations,

  arguments, debates and songs sung loud and sweet, and all my memories have shrunk to one word and two occasions: the first and last times that the King uttered my name.

  Today, I believe, my name is unknown to men and women in this land. In other lands, I hope and pray, some few might yet live who think of me with fondness, in Eire and in Gaul, the land now of the Burgundians and the incoming hordes men call the Franks. Here in Britain, however, if any recall my name, it must be with fear and awe, for I was Merlyn, Sorcerer and Warlock, familiar of dark gods and darker mysteries. None lives today in all of this sad land who might think otherwise. They are all dead, those few who knew me well enough to see beyond the fear, all of my friends, all whom I loved.

  And yet, self-pity set aside as being impotent and more of an indulgence than a vice in my life nowadays, I feel much gratitude that I am left alone and free to tend my task without hindrance. I have my tale to tell, and it is not yet done. And my tale has much to do with my name, for in the changes to my name have run the chapters of my life, and those of the King, Arthur.

  When one is always alone, what else is there to study, save oneself? I thought to have long since abandoned the self-analysis that claimed so many of my younger years as vanity of the most egregious kind. One's past deeds cannot be undone—their consequences are unalterable.

  Throughout my life I sought to be decisive. Better a decision firmly made in error than an opportunity lost forever through vacillation, my father said, and I believed him. He taught me to weigh the evidence, to align it with hard, cold circumstance, and then to base a firm decision on the weight of probability. That I have always done, or tried to do.

  Even now, in recording my tale, I have asked myself how I could have been so blind, so callow, so at fault or so unquestioning at times. Yet in all the things I did, I was young, still learning, still full of hope and the vigour of youth. I knew what I desired and what this world required of me, for Arthur and for Camulod and for my own self. I saw the end, I firmly believed, and though I lacked the full means of achieving it I trusted yet in God, in life and in the Tightness of my task to grant me time and trust and guidance in bringing our Dream to completion. At times, I erred, but seldom grievously.

  My goals were simple, their realization complex: I had to bring a boy to manhood, teaching him to perform a task the like of which had never been set for any man before. I had to breed a kingdom from a single colony; I had to lead a people into a new age of hope and wonder. And I had to guard my life close-held to make all these things possible.

  I knew none of this consciously while it was happening. I sought merely to offer counsel, to lead from one thing to another. I had no true awareness then of what I was about. I sought to do my duty, and my duty ruled my life. Overall I was successful. I blundered and I hesitated, but I learned with every step. In the end I saw my great success, then watched it vanish, wiped away by the heedless hand of God, and that of man. And I survived it all. For what? To write my tale for eyes that may never read my words? I will shun such despair and continue my chronicle.

  On the day when this chapter of my story began—a day approached in trepidation and uncertainty—Merlyn the Sorcerer did not exist. The man who bore my name in those times was yet young, barely approaching his rich, middle
years. I was Caius Merlyn Britannicus, Councillor and Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod; Merlyn to all, and Cay or Caius to my intimate friends and family. My family had almost disappeared by then, reduced with the death of my aged aunt Luceiia Britannicus to one young child, both nephew and cousin, and one half-brother, Ambrose, the son of my father by another woman and a bare six months my junior. I had cousins, in Cambria, but they were distant, in all senses of the term. My friends and intimates were few, as most men's are, but all of them were close by me that day...

  PART ONE

  Ravenglass

  ONE

  We stood together on the forward deck of a galley that moved slowly forward through a bright, still September morning, mere months after the murderous incident that had prompted our departure from Camulod. The large, square sail sagged limp in the languid, early-morning breeze that wafted the fog softly from the surface of the bay into which we drew, dispersing its drifting wreaths into nothingness. The oarsmen who propelled the vessel did so cautiously, their eyes intent upon the boatmaster, Tearlach, who directed them with arm and hand movements, his own eyes fixed on the wharf that stretched to meet us.

  I stood on the stern deck with the galley's captain, Connor Mac Athol—Connor, Son of Athol, Son of Iain. Connor's father was the King of the Scots of Eire, the people whom the Romans had called the Scotii of Hibernia, and Connor of the Wooden Leg, as his men called him, was the king's admiral in the Southern Seas. I followed his gaze now to where two other galleys, one of them dwarfing its consort, lay already moored at the long wooden pier, on the side farther from us. They were unmistakable—warships like the one in which we rode, sleek and deadly in their aggressive lines—and I could tell from Connor's face that they were not his. They seemed to be