Camulod Chronicles Book 8 - Clothar the Frank (53 page)

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

BRACH AND SAMSON

1

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 camp site, 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 towards 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 towards 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 favour of Samson.

Brach stood in silence until he had absorbed what I had said, then he 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 thought 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 rumours. 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
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. 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."