Uther cc-7

by Jack Whyte

  Sticking on post like stones in mud was how they described it. No forays into the wild woods for them, they muttered. That was reserved for the cavalry, the clean-faced, do-no-wrong boys who had everything served up to them in luxury. The poor old infantry was expected to stay close to home, to stand guard duty night and day in all kinds of weather, then do the chores, maintain the buildings and fortifications and keep the stables clean for the cavalry horses.

  The garrison troops had no love for the pampered cavalry. That much quickly became clear even to Uther and Cay, and each of them made a mental note to talk about it with the other as soon as they were allowed the time to relax.

  Dedalus, however, gave them no rest. The man was everywhere, indefatigable in his all-embracing mistrust of his two charges. He assigned them duties every morning and inspected them closely as they worked, sniffing and poking and carping and prying to ensure that all was done as it should be, according to his criteria of excellence. And when he saw them approaching completion of the projects he had set them, he would have replacement duties ready, announced in advance, instructions readied and presented in sufficient time to disallow the possibility of either boy stealing any rest between assignments. He kept them in the saddle all day long, ceaselessly moving in a never-ending spiral of motion that lasted throughout the normal marching breaks enjoyed by their companions, so that, to the disgust of both boys, who had believed themselves to be expert riders, when the order came to dismount at the end of each day's patrol, they both went reeling, barely able to walk upright. Only when they were in the final stages of discomfort over their natural functions each day did he allow them to dismount for long enough to relieve themselves, but even then he stayed beside them, affording them no privacy, denying them any opportunity to calm themselves or stretch their limbs. Within the space of the first four days of the patrol, both boys had learned to loathe the sight of him and to detest the sound of his carping, hectoring voice.

  Eventually, however, as all things must, the patrol came to an end. Their first ordeal was over and neither of them had disgraced himself. They had taken every piece of spiteful pettiness that Dedalus could throw at them and they had chewed it up and swallowed it without overt complaint or covert whining—the latter only because Dedalus had given them no private opportunity for it. They arrived back in sight of the hill of Camulod before noon on the ninth day following their departure. As the towers of the fort came into view, Dedalus wheeled his horse around and trotted back to where they rode in formation, and then, signalling to each of them to follow him, he wheeled about again and rode to the head of the column. Uther and Cay followed him, but hung back from overtaking him, unsure of what was expected of them, until Dedalus, without looking back, raised one hand and waved them up to join him, then used both hands to indicate that they should come one on either side of him.

  When they were side by side with him, he rode for a while in silence, then glanced from one to the other of them. "You smell, cocks. A few hours in the baths will do neither of you any harm. Ride half a pace behind me now, as you are, and spare my sensibilities." They fell back half a length, glancing mutely at each other, wondering what this new position signified, but Dedalus gave them no indication of anything, either by word or gesture.

  As they crossed the training ground on the plain below the hill of Camulod, approaching the start of the road up to the hilltop fort, Uther began to take notice of the off-duty troopers, who seemed to be swarming everywhere. It seemed to him that he had never before seen so many of the garrison troops out of uniform, but the most amazing thing he could see was that most of them were bareheaded, and every man who was bareheaded was also completely bald, their skulls shaved clean of any hair. Uther gaped at Cay in amazement, although he dared not speak riding so close to Dedalus, and Cay nodded back to him, although he did not look in the least surprised. Dedalus turned his head slightly and saw the wonder and lack of understanding on Uther's face.

  "Delousing," he said, his face hidden behind the large cheek- flaps of his helmet. "Head lice. Every once in a while we have an infestation, and when we do, we have to delouse everyone. It's not enough to simply bathe the men and make them wash their hair; that doesn't help. They have to be shaved clean bald, as well, to get rid of the nits—the louse eggs in their hair. There was talk of this for a while before we left. Be glad we missed it." He turned away again, leaving Uther agape over the civility he had been shown, and twisted around in his saddle to look over his other shoulder at Cay, noting the equanimity on the other boy's face. "You've seen this before, haven't you?" Cay made no move to reply, and Dedalus added. "You can speak now, the patrol's over. I asked you a question."

  "Yes, Centurion."

  "Hmm." Dedalus looked forward again, and Cay turned to look at Uther, who was gazing back at him, mystified and round- eyed. Cay simply shook his head, warning Uther not to be gulled into speaking out of turn, but the warning was needless. The impression Dedalus had made on both boys in eight days would prove to be indelible.

  The noise from the mass of soldiers milling about them was indescribable, but from the lack of attention paid to it by Dedalus, Uther could only surmise that at such times of mass delousing, the normally stringent rules governing soldierly deportment and behaviour were relaxed to the point of non-existence. Suddenly, off to their left and no more than ten paces from where they were riding by, a scuffle broke out, and the disruption it caused spread quickly, as such things always do. Uther drew rein, turning in his saddle to see what was happening, but it was only the usual soldiers' brawl, with some men holding others back, restraining them from throwing themselves into the fray, and others wrestling violently, some on the ground, some yet on their feet. In the act of turning his eyes away again, however, Uther recognized Nemo Hard-Nose in the middle of everything, wrestling with a fellow twice her size. As his startled gaze settled on her. Nemo reared back, pushing herself with both arms, then grasped her opponent by the shoulders and snapped her head forward, butting him brutally on the bridge of the nose, the contact so solid that the meaty sound of the impact came clearly to Uther's ears across the intervening space and noise. The man dropped immediately, his knees instantly giving way beneath the hammer blow, and the weight of him dragged Nemo off balance and down with him before she could let go.

  Not wishing to see any more, Uther turned his head quickly and made to kick his horse into motion again, only to find Dedalus right in front of him, watching his face. Beside them, the eighty members of their double-squadron patrol had almost passed them by.

  "Wasn't that one of yours? The Hard-Nose?"

  "Yes, Centurion."

  "I thought so. Well named, it seems, unlike the other fellow." He tugged at his reins and swung his horse about again, then kicked it into a trot to regain the head of the column. Uther followed him, idly aware of the dexterity of the foot soldiers around them, who seemed to melt out of their way by magic. Once again, he was thinking, Nemo had managed to appall him and repel him with her mannishness, and he would have sworn that Dedalus had no idea she was a woman.

  When they finally reached the main courtyard of the fortress. Dedalus reported their return formally to his fellow centurion Nellis, the guard officer of the day, and then dismissed the troopers, still under the command of their decurions, on a well-earned one-day furlough, although ordering them first to attend the bathhouse on the plain below the hill for scrubbing, delousing and shaving with all their fellows as soon as they had finished tending to their mounts and gear.

  No one hearing the dismissal was under any illusion that they had really been dismissed. The last few items of which Dedalus had reminded them would amount to several further hours of work and would take the majority of the troopers well towards the end of this working day, since every man had to see to the cleaning, grooming, feeding and watering of his own horse before doing anything for himself, and then undertake whatever might be necessary for the care and maintenance of his saddlery and armour, removing the ev
idence of all the miles and all the wear and tear accumulated since the last thorough in-camp inspection they had undergone. Although it was yet barely noon, for some of the troopers, the unfortunate minority who had suffered some kind of damage to their equipment or trappings, it would be after dark by the time they finished all they had to do. The day that followed would be one of rest for all of them, absolutely free of responsibilities, but on the morning after that at first light, they would be on parade, going through a complete and painstaking inspection of their individual mounts and their gear.

  Dedalus remained mounted, facing forward until everyone except Cay and Uther had gone, and then he turned finally to them. "As officers, you two are permitted to use the baths here in the fort or to avail yourselves of the facilities down in the Villa Britannicus. That's where I'll be headed after I've made my patrol report to the Legate. By that time, of course, you two should be long departed and asleep. Use your day of rest well, cocks. Day after tomorrow, be outside my tent at dawn. Dismiss."

  The two cousins saluted, then swung down from their mounts and led them away towards the stables, holding themselves rigidly upright until they were completely sure they were out of Dedalus's sight. As soon as they knew they were safe, Uther threw his arm around Cay's neck, pulling him down into a headlock, and swung him around in circles until both of them fell down at their horses' feet. The animals merely stood and blinked at them, offering no criticism, and for some reason both boys thought that was extremely humorous, so they laughed until their sides ached. Then when they had sobered slightly, they threw their arms around each other's shoulders and made their way to the stables, where contrary to all the rules of Camulod, they bribed one of the stableboys to feed and groom their mounts while they sneaked off to the bathhouse.

  Chapter TWELVE

  Exactly one year later, two days before the kalends, the first day of August in what Christians would call 419 Anno Domini, Uther Pendragon and Caius Merlyn Britannicus had almost completed their first and last jointly commanded patrol. By that stage of their training, they had successfully completed several perimeter patrols of the Colony lands and had then gone on to complete three far more extensive and demanding territorial patrols, which were expeditions undertaken by an entire cavalry division, a two-hundred-man grouping of five squadrons acting as one army unit. These territorial patrols swept out from Camulod every second month, alternating to cover all the lands to the north on one occasion in a twenty-mile- wide area extending as far as Aquae Sulis and Glevum, and all the territories to the south on the next, covering the same width of land and descending as far as the old legionary fortress of Isca. Uther and Cay had been twice to Isca in the south and once to Aquae Sulis and Glevum in the north within the previous eight months, on each occasion under the command of Dedalus, who had turned out—to their immense surprise—to be an excellent and supportive commander, an inspiring tutor with a keen sense of humour and a good friend, once they had convinced him that they were worth knowing. The two cousins were now on the last probationary phase of their training, in joint command this time of their fourth patrol in division strength, and only nominally under the supervision of Centurion Dedalus, who rode with them purely as an observer on this final occasion.

  The patrol arrived at the northern end of their excursion in the town of Glevum. This was a river port built only a few miles upriver from the throat of the estuary that separated Cambria to the north from Cornwall to the south, spilling out into the western sea between Britain and the island of Eire, which the Romans had called Hibernia, the Winter Place, because of its seemingly permanent cloud cover and its rainy, blustery, damp-cold climate.

  Glevum was greatly favoured by coastal traders because of its sheltered inland harbour and its close proximity to the sea. Because of that popularity, the town had grown immensely wealthy over the previous decades and centuries of Roman occupation, so that it boasted numerous public and civic buildings with fine marble pillars, ornate pediments and entire walls clad in sheets of the finest marble imported from across the seas. The town had also been the regional administrative centre with a permanently assigned garrison to reinforce the edicts of the governing bureaucrats, and for many years its population had flourished and expanded, been nurtured and nourished by the wealth of trading activities and been protected by the military strength of the resident garrison and the nearby military base at Corinium.

  Since the departure of the Roman garrisons, however, less than two decades earlier, Glevum had degenerated rapidly, and its dissolution was plain to see in the dilapidated condition of the streets, where weeds grew between the cobblestones on the main thoroughfares and entire sections of the sophisticated system of stone-carved water conduits that had once served the residential needs of the citizens had been broken and left unrepaired.

  The civic government established by the Romans continued for some time after the military withdrawals. But when the army left Glevum and every other town in Britain, the power to enforce the law went with it, and the entire country began to fall, ipso facto, into a condition of anarchy. It took some time after that, however, for the truth of the situation to be fully understood, because although the force behind the law had departed, the reputation of the law remained. For hundreds of years in Britain, the ordinary people had been conditioned to behave lawfully, respecting the traditions and the proscriptions set in place by the legal, military-backed authorities, and so they continued to do so for months, and in some instances for years, after the fact of law had broken down and ceased to exist. Only very gradually did it become clear that the government had become a toothless guard dog and that people could now behave with abandon and break long-standing laws with impunity because there was no organized force in existence to stop them or to punish them for their actions.

  Many of the former Roman towns took steps to safeguard their own welfare by organizing their citizens into quasi-military defensive units, while those that had the wherewithal undertook to hire mercenaries, who then functioned as private armies, policing the towns that paid their way and nominally protecting them against incursions by organized bands of brigands and raiders. Inevitably, however, even in the most successful of those arrangements, the seeds of failure and dissolution had already been sown. Hiring mercenaries to protect wealthy communities was akin to hiring wolves to protect sheep, and so within the space of ten or fifteen years, the towns of Britain, with very few exceptions, began to be abandoned by their citizenry, even though most of those citizens had nowhere better to go. It would be less hazardous, most of them thought, to take their chances of survival in the open countryside or in the forests than to remain, like sacrificial cattle, in once- wealthy towns that were natural targets for thieves and raiders.

  Somehow, against great odds, Glevum had contrived to be one of the few towns in the west to retain a few shreds of its original dignity and stability, and Dedalus had told Uther and Cay on their first visit that he suspected its continuing survival had much to do with the ongoing need for its port, docking facilities and warehouses. As long as there were trading ships still plying the sea routes and merchants waiting in places such as Glevum and elsewhere for those ships' cargoes, then an incentive would exist for men of wealth and strength to fortify and defend the ports that served their needs, even if that entailed supporting them from afar and at great cost. That belief was reinforced by the presence of a strong force of mercenaries in Glevum, a force that Dedalus said had been in residence there for more than eight years. These people worked most of the time as stevedores, loading and unloading the ships and barges that came into the harbour. They guarded the docks and warehouses and otherwise kept to themselves, by and large, living a self-contained existence with their own women and everything else they needed in a few of the large dockside warehouses that they had converted into living spaces. They seldom mixed with the citizens of Glevum, but they allowed the town's populace to go on about its business without interference from them.

  Whenever a for
ce of any size approached the town, however, the stevedores put down their burdens, took up their weapons and were transformed into mercenaries until they had either discounted the threat or thrown the would-be raiders back to limp away with their tails between their legs. The Camulodians had been challenged thus on their first patrol through Glevum, and although no hostilities took place at any time between the two forces, the Camulodian commander, the Legate Picus himself, negotiated the terms of an ongoing accommodation with the town's defenders. The Camulodian patrols could find safe refuge in Glevum but were to leave the governance of the town and its affairs to the occupying mercenaries. Picus had ascertained that these people were not the common run of mercenaries, little advanced from bandits, but were well-disciplined Germanic troops of exceptionally high quality, all of them veterans of the legions and transported here to Glevum from beyond the sea for the specific purpose of guarding the dock facilities and keeping the harbour open and safe for shipping. Because of the tight-lipped discipline of the individual mercenaries, however, and the infallible discretion of their leaders, Picus had been unable to find out anything about the men's employers. Because of the enormous expense represented by their presence, he suspected that they were being kept in place in Britain by one of the surviving great trading houses of the Empire and that the investment in their presence, whoever was supporting it, was still proving to be worthwhile. To date, Dedalus had told the boys the year before, all potential disruptions of the town's trading routines had been prevented, and the thrice-yearly arrival of the cavalry column from Camulod had become a commonplace occurrence, causing no concern.