Clothar The Frank (aka The Lance Thrower) by Jack Whyte

Author:Jack Whyte [Whyte, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780140286489
Publisher: Penguin Canada; Penguin Group
Published: 2003-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

BOOK TWO

Brothers and Cousins

GUNTHAR AND THEUDERIC

1

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

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

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

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

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

An enormous ditch had been dug around the entire castle, and the excavated earth had been used to build a steeply sloping rampart on the far side, in front of the castle walls, which thus became a secondary line of defense rather than the primary one. The work had been done very recently, too. I could see that by the rawness of the logs that had been used to stabilize the slope of the earthen wall.

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