by Jack Whyte
We listened, but there was nothing to be heard above the whisper of the leaves in the wind. Orvic was frozen in place, a picture of absolute concentration.
"What—?"
He cut my question short with a savage gesture and I held my breath, straining to hear whatever it was he seemed to have heard. Again, however, I heard only the wind. After a few more moments he relaxed, his body losing the angular tension that had briefly intimidated the three of us who watched him.
He turned to face me. "What were you going to say, Caius Merlyn?"
I shrugged with one shoulder, slinging my bow across my back. "No more than the obvious. We might as well move on. Those three deer are far gone and we won't find them again. What did you hear?"
"I don't know. May have been nothing, but I thought I heard shouting." It did not cross my mind to doubt him. Orvic's powers of sight and hearing were legendary. He continued speaking, almost to himself, frowning at his own thoughts, his eyes narrowed. "Something set them off." His eyes widened, aware of me again. "Go you and collect your horses. I'm going over there to the crest." He moved to the edge of the gully and looked down. "It's not bad here, I'll be able to get down and up easily, but you won't, not with horses." He looked off to his right, to where the gully petered out about half a mile away. "Best bring your horses round that way, then follow me down into the valley on the other side. If there's nothing there, we'll keep hunting. May be pigs or bear down in the valley there. Be quick." He stepped to the edge of the drop, still holding his big bow in his left hand, and let himself drop over, vanishing as quickly as had the stag.
I had taken no ill at his assumption of command. In a situation like this, Orvic was far more capable than I.I turned to my two companions. "Let's go."
Half an hour later, out of breath from running to Orvic's summons, I reached out and laid my hand on the bark of a tree that leaned drunkenly out and away from me. Beneath me was a sheer precipice, falling almost straight down for what must have been at least fifty paces to a great pile of rubble and scree containing the skeletons of other trees that had obviously fallen from the edge where we stood. It took no great imagination to see that the face of the cliff had been flaking away since time began. Beyond the rubble at its foot, the ground was grassy and fell more gradually, but still steeply, for almost half a mile further before it began to level out towards the valley bottom. I was on the very edge of a long, forest-crowned escarpment, which rose higher to my right as the ground sloped steeply upwards, and from somewhere up there a stream swept outward over the edge and fell, glittering and splendid in the strong sunshine, to dash itself to foam on the rocks below before swirling on down to join the river in the valley bottom.
We had no eyes for any of the beauty surrounding us. We were aware only of the fight in progress directly below where we stood, less than a mile from us.
"Foreigners. They're all Outlanders." The words were little more than a growl in Orvic's throat. I glanced at him, taking in the fierceness of his scowl and the heavy displeasure in his eyes.
"The attackers are, anyway," I agreed. "They look like Saxons."
"Aye, they are, of some kind. But the others are Outlanders, too. They're not from Britain, least not any region I've been in."
"Can you be that sure from up here?" I squinted against the sunlight that was beating on us from almost directly in front, trying vainly to see details that Orvic had obviously seen. "I can't see them well enough to notice a damn thing odd about them. What do you think, Curwin?"
"No use asking me. I'm as blind as you are, but if Orvic says they're Outlanders, then they are. He's the one with the hawk's eyes."
I glanced behind me to where Donuil, the fourth member of our party, stood looking out over my shoulder.
"What about you? Can you tell who they are?"
Donuil shrugged, shaking his head. "No," he said, "but they're well dressed and well organized. They know what they're doing, but they're too badly outnumbered to survive much longer."
His final words had echoed my own thoughts. I looked back down, cursing the distance and the impossibility of getting closet There seemed to be about eighty to a hundred in the attacking party, who were easy to identify as Saxons by their large, round shields. The group opposing them looked to be between twenty and thirty strong, and had occupied a ruined farmstead in the valley bottom, making use of the tumbled walls and outhouses to defend themselves.
"Must be bowmen." This was Orvic again. "Look, you I can see how the other whoresons are hanging back, hiding. And there's a few of them lying out there in the grass, see? Some dead, some alive. Have to be bowmen down there, keeping them pinned. Otherwise there'd be nothing to stop them from just running in and killing the lot, three to one..." He grunted to himself again, sounding surprised. "You know, I think them others are Romans."
"What?" His words surprised me. "What d'you mean?"
He looked at me as if I were soft in the head. "Romans, you know? From Rome. They're wearing white, most of 'em. Whiter white than I've seen in many a day."
"By God, you're right, they are." My mind was racing. "How well do you know this part of the country, Orvic?"
His answer was gruff. "Not very well, but enough. Why?"
"How far are we from our camp?"
He looked around him, seeming to sniff at the windless air. "Less than a mile, if we could fly. Closer to three by the path. We've been moving in a great circle. What's in your mind?"
My half-formed idea had evaporated before he finished speaking. I shrugged my shoulders and nodded downward, feeling oppressed and helpless. "Oh, not much of use. If those are Romans, and now I think you're right, then they are here for the same purpose we are. They're headed for Verulamium. I was trying to think of some way to help them. My first thought was to bring our cavalry, but there's no time, and anyway, I was grasping at straws. I forgot about this cliff for a moment."
He grinned and nodded towards our left. "No, your horses couldn't jump down that, not here they couldn't. But they might, if they was to come round to the north over there, about a mile further down."
"What? How?"
"By the road. It comes down on the far side of the old farm, there." He turned his head, looking up along the cliff to the south. "You see that waterfall? That's the same stream you're camped beside. It runs under the road, through a culvert. You remember?" I nodded, waiting. "If you was to send your man Donuil up there, to run along the stream bed, he could be at the camp in no time, being the runner he is. Then he could bring your horsemen round by the road and have 'em in place almost by the time we get there."
"Get where?"
Orvic turned back towards the valley and pointed. "Down there, boyo. That's as nice a place as I've seen for a bit of target shootin'."
As I looked at the spot he was indicating, Curwin stepped to my side, handed Orvic his bow, then unslung his quiver from around his shoulders and handed that over, too. Then he turned without a word and began striding off into the forest behind us.
"Where are you going, Curwin?"
"Arrows. I'll catch up."
I turned back to Orvic, who was shrugging the second quiver over his shoulders to lie alongside his own, but before I could speak he nodded to Donuil.
"Can you do it, boyo? Run along the stream up there to your camp and fetch the others?" Donuil glanced at me, then nodded. "Then go, fast as you can! We'll be down there when you get there, and there's trouble we may have, so waste no time on the road. Get you gone."
As soon as we were alone, Orvic drew two short pieces of leather thong from the scrip at his side and began binding his own bow and Curwin's together. I watched as he finished by slinging the double bow across his shoulders, the staves to the front and the strings across his broad back. Then he leaned outwards, scanning the cliff face below.
"Where did Curwin go?"
Orvic looked back at me, a tiny frown of impatience on his face.
"He told you. To get arrows."
"But he had arrows. He gave
them to you. Where will he get more?"
"Saddlebags. Didn't you see 'em?"
I shook my head. He knelt on one knee, placed his hands on the rim of the precipice, and leaned over further before looking up at me again. I drew a deep breath and squinted towards the spot he had pointed out earlier, then moved forward and looked down from the edge. "You think we can get down there?"
He hawked and spat out into space. "Oh aye, no trick to that. Trick is to do it alive, and at our pace."
I filled my lungs, held the air, then released it through pursed lips. "Fine then. You go first, and I'll follow. But what about Curwin?"
Orvic was already on his belly, his legs over the edge. "What about him? He'll come after us. We'll wait for 'im at the bottom, then he can lower the extra arrows down to us." He lowered himself gradually until his head disappeared below the edge, and as his fingers followed, his voice came back up to me. "It's not as bad as it looks, once you've your face to the rocks. Just come slow now. I'll guide your feet the first few steps until you get the hang of it."
He was right. It wasn't as bad as it looked—not quite. But it took us almost half an hour to climb down the fifty or so paces to the rock-strewn ground beneath the cliff's face. Orvic could have made the descent far more quickly had I not been there, and as it was, Curwin had almost caught up to us by the time we got down, and he had travelled a mile in each direction, to and from the clearing where we had left our horses, since I had lowered myself over the rim. But both of them were mountain reared and used to playing around on vertical surfaces. I was more accustomed to horizontal movement.
Safe at the bottom, I regained my breath while we waited for Curwin to slide down the last few yards to join us. He was not even panting. He threw me a look that was eloquent without words, sniffed audibly and turned to Orvic.
"Sent the boy back to camp wi' the horses. Told 'im to bring 'em on down with the others." He shrugged off the burden he had been carrying: two very large, densely packed quivers of arrows, one over each shoulder, with the straps crossed in front of him.
"Good." Orvic had already separated the two bows he had brought down the cliff and had shrugged off Curwin's quiver, placing it beside his bow on the ground. He and Curwin immediately began sharing the arrows from the extra quivers, cramming them into their own and handing a large double handful to me to stuff my own quiver until it was packed to capacity. As I set about the task, my curiosity was uncontainable.
"You had these on your horse, Curwin?"
"Aye."
I could not hide my amazement. "You always carry so many arrows?"
"Aye. Best get moving, Orvic."
"But why, Curwin?"
He did not even glance at me. We started moving downhill and I fell into place behind him.
"Ask my brother." His voice came back to me over his shoulder.
"What brother? I didn't know you had one." I was watching the ground at my feet, stepping carefully.
"I don't, not any longer. He ran out of arrows, hunting one day, arguing with some others over who had killed a deer. They had more arrows than him. Used them to kill him." He paused in mid step and looked back at me as though expecting me to be smiling. "I'd rather be laughed at and well armed than be shot at and not be able to shoot back."
That was the last word on the topic.
Orvic began leading us diagonally across the steep hillside, angling downward towards the promontory he had pointed out from the clifftop. As we went, Curwin rolled up the quiver that had been emptied and tucked it securely beneath his belt. The second, still a good two-thirds full, he slung over his shoulder again. Orvic pointed to the gully ahead of us that had been cut by the stream falling from the cliff above.
"Once we get down in there, we should be able to move all the way down without being seen." He began to trot and Curwin and I followed him, leaning into the hillside for balance, until we jumped down between the banks of the stream.
"Right," Orvic grunted. "Nobody saw us. Now, here's what I see. There's some bushes further down there along the bank, and they'll get thicker and bigger as we go downhill. By the time we get to where we're going, they'll be trees. The stream bed there falls east until it's close to the valley bottom, then veers away to the north, and that's where we climb out and head uphill—south. Another two, three hundred paces, but we'll be well hidden. There's a point there, ending in another cliff, but it's not as high as the one we just came down. Ground falls away on both sides. We'll still be 'bout half a mile, maybe a bit less, from the farm where the Romans are, but we'll be in easy bow shot of the Saxons. Should be able to shoot 'em like rabbits. They won't be able to get to us, not without running uphill towards us and trying to get around us to the sides. We've got enough arrows. By the time we run out of shafts, most of the whoresons should .be dead." He paused. "Course, if they come too thick and we let any of them around the sides to get behind us too soon, we'll be the dead ones. You ready?"
A short time later, the three of us stood side by side on the second clifftop, about ten paces above the ground that fell away again beneath us. The space where we had emerged from the clustered hawthorn trees was large enough to allow us all to stand and move comfortably. The Saxons were spread out beneath us, the closest of them less than a hundred paces distant, the mass of them closer to two hundred. Another two hundred paces or so beyond the furthest of them lay the ruined walls of the farm that sheltered the defenders. No one had seen us.
Curwin drew an arrow from his quiver and smoothed the flights between a spit-wet thumb and fingertip, watching Orvic from the corner of his eye. "Well?" he grunted, "You've got the best eye. Want to take the first one?"
Orvic nodded. He already had an arrow nocked, as did I.
"Range finder. Aye." He raised his bow slowly and took his time sighting, but Curwin interrupted him before he could loose his shot.
"Where're you aiming?"
"There!"
We watched as his arrow flew straight and true towards a cluster of half a score of men some hundred and fifty paces directly ahead of us, but the angle was deceiving from our height and the missile shot into the ground just short of the group and disappeared without being noticed.
"Shit! There's nonsense!"
He aimed more judiciously next time and his second arrow took one of the group in the side of the head, somewhere in the region of the point of the jaw, and jerked him clean off his feet, hurling him sideways away from his companions who scattered in confusion, looking around in vain for the source of the sudden death. None of them thought to look upward to where we stood on our cliff so far away. They had never met the Pendragon Longbow before.
"Lovely shot," said Curwin. "They don't know where to start lookin'. Now, watch this...The big whoreson over there on the left, with the red beard and the green tunic."
He raised his bow quickly, angling his arm in front of me so that the flight of his arrow bore no comparison to Orvic's line, and as my eyes sought and found the man he had described, so did Curwin's shaft. The Saxon had been standing upright behind a tree, his back to the bole, waving his arms wildly as he urged his companions to the attack. Curwin's arrow nailed him there, upright, piercing him completely and penetrating the tree behind him. Orvic fired again before I could launch my own first shot, and then we settled into a lethal routine, selecting our individual targets at random, but keeping each far removed from those that had directly preceded it, and bringing them down one after another until our combined efforts had slaughtered fourteen men. As I took down the fifteenth, someone detected our shooting platform high on the hillside above them, and once we had been seen, the Saxons came boiling towards us in a screaming tide of rage.
From that point on, all three of us drew and fired as quickly as we were able, and my arm and fingers had begun to ache by the time the charging men had halved the distance to us. From the edge of my vision I saw one bareheaded giant running in great strides, ahead of his companions, and I traversed my bow quickly, sighting on
his huge chest, but then, as I released my arrow, he fell to his knees and disappeared. I thought at first that one of my companions had killed him, but their bows were bent, arrows unlaunched as their eyes widened. And all along the line of attack, the Saxons vanished, leaving only their large number of dead and wounded in sight.
Orvic cursed. "Gone to ground. There's a bank there that we can't see from up here. Now it gets nasty. They'll be looking for ways to come around us, so keep your eyes wide."
We waited. Somewhere out in front of us a man was screaming. Above us the song of birds filled the skies. The screaming man's voice rose to a shriek and then died away to a gurgling, agonized moaning, and then to silence. Nothing moved. My arm muscles were cramping with the tension of keeping my bow drawn. I released it slowly, keeping my arrow nocked.
"Orvic, should we be thinking of getting out of here?"
"Aye, but there's nowhere to go, boyo. 'Cept back up there where we came from. We try that, they'll run us down. How many did we get?"
I scanned the killing ground in front of us. "Thirty-four, by my count."
"Aye, that's what I see. Not bad for three men, eh?"
It was a phenomenal amount, but I didn't respond. Thirty-four from eighty left forty-six—more than enough to make short work of us, now that our bows were almost useless, and less than forty paces separated us from where they had gone to ground.
"Look yonder." Curwin's voice was close to my shoulder. "We gave them a breathin' space, anyway."
I looked towards the farm wall that had sheltered the besieged party. There were men moving about rapidly, out in front of the defences, bent over, their eyes on the ground.
"Never mind them, Caius Merlyn, keep your eyes on these whoresons close to us!" Orvic's harsh voice jerked my eyes back to the ground below us, but still nothing appeared to be moving. Orvic continued to speak, his eyes sweeping the terrain then flicking a glance towards the farm. "Whoever's in charge over there's no fool. But then the Romans never were, were they? They're collecting spent arrows while the Saxons are involved with us. Now what I'm wondering is whether they'll come out to help us, or whether they'll leave us here to die and take their own chances again when we're done for." He nodded downwards to our left, pointing to where the stream bed we had followed from the ridge above fell steeply away to the north. "You watch that side, I'll take the other, and Curwin, you watch the front here. That ridge they're hiding behind can't be no more than twenty to thirty running steps from the stream bed down there, so be ready for them. First sign of movement, let fly, and don't miss! If they get into yon stream bed, under the bank where we can't see them, or around our flank on the other side, we're dead men."
