Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (61 page)

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 towards 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 towards the edge of the tower. "Look over there."

I looked down towards 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 behaviour 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 designated 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 towards the enemy delegation. 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 already have."

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, contained a small box of wood.

"Best take them this, then, because they'll no more take my word than you would."

It was all I could do to resist the temptation to open the bag right in front of him. Instead, keeping my face rigidly blank, I 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 quickly 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 towards the others.

"I believed him when he told me Gunthar is dead," I told them. "But here'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 took the box and shook his brother's severed finger with its heavy, ornate seal out into his palm. 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. 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 a single man from natural causes, but it had caused as much carnage and grief and misery as any other war during its brief existence.

7

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 behaviour, 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 upwards, 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 towards 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 towards 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 an unexpected 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.

King Ban had promised me that, when I was grown, he, or the son who ruled by then in his place, would assist me in traveling to confront Clodas. At that time, the son indicated in the promise had been Gunthar, and I had never been under any illusions about how likely I was to find assistance from that source. But now all that had changed. Brach was King of Benwick and I had proved my loyalty to him, time and again. Now 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 Brach filled with enthusiasm for the task I had defined for myself. 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 sat silent, musing and nodding his head. Impatient as I was to gain his 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.