by Jack Whyte
"Within the week, I'll ride with Popilius to raid the southern coast, as we had planned. By that time, your arrangements should be made. All of your dealings in this matter will be with my men alone, my Cambrian Dragons. While we are gone, leaving only a small holding force here, you and your people will make your escape and head northwestward, avoiding Lagan completely. Popilius will hear nothing of escape or flight, and if he asks where our female prisoners have gone, I'll tell him that I sent them home. I do not wage war on women. Popilius knows that."
My lord does not wage war on women. Ygraine remembered the scorn with which she had greeted Huw Strongarm's utterance of those words and was swept by a shudder.
Uther glanced sideways at her. "Are you cold. Lady Ygraine? You're shivering."
"No." She straightened up and shook her head vigorously, denying the possibility.
"Good. Well, are we done here?" Uther turned directly back to Herliss. "You know what to do from this point onward?" Herliss growled in affirmation, and Uther continued. "Excellent. I'll take you back to your own quarters now, and I'll talk to my people this afternoon. Nemo will be the one with whom you will have all your dealings—the most loyal and trustworthy trooper I have. Been with me for years, Nemo, ever since we were brats together. So be it. I've things to think about. I'll have Nemo assign two guards to look after you day and night. Their names will be Cadwyn and Lohal, and one of them will be with you at all times from now on. But think of them as hand-picked messengers, not guards. They are completely trustworthy. They'll carry word to you and from you, acting as go- betweens for myself and the Queen . . . and you, of course. To everyone but us, it will seem that you've been placed under heavy guard for some transgression or other, so you'd better come up with a good reason for it, because you're sure to be asked why you've been so suddenly upgraded . . ."
Shortly after the two men left, Dyllis returned from her long walk, almost breathless with excitement over the number of men now in the camp. Ygraine had heard Uther himself say that Popilius Cirro had brought a thousand men with him. but she had never seen a thousand men assembled in one place and could not begin to visualize what such a gathering would look like. Her own father, Athol Mac Iain, she had often been told, could assemble a thousand warriors from his own clansmen and put them into the field within three days, but Ygraine had never known him do so. And her husband, Lot, who dealt, she knew, in thousands of men, assembling armies of mercenaries time after time, had never dared to have that large a host, potentially hostile and uncontrollable, assemble anywhere close to him at any time.
Dyllis told her that behind their tent and facing down into the river valley, row upon row of infantry tents, each of them large enough to accommodate four men sleeping side by side, were laid out in grids and blocks, covering the hillside entirely on the south side of the river and filling up the valley. These tents had been rigorously paced out so that no tent was closer to or farther away from its neighbours than any other, and between these regular blocks of tents were much wider divisions that served as streets, broad enough to accommodate columns of men marching ten abreast or mounted troopers riding four abreast.
The two regular day guards had accompanied Dyllis, Cavan and the older Derek Split-Eye, named for the spectacular scar that bisected the left side of his face, a knife slash that had opened him from above the eyebrow down to the edge of his mouth. Somehow, savage as the blow had been, it had been shallow enough to miss the eyeball, merely slicing through the lid above and below the eye itself. It had deadened that side of Derek's face, however, paralysing the cheek and leaving patches of grey hair in his eyebrow and moustache. Derek Split-Eye was a veteran, one of Uther's original Dragons. Cavan, on the other hand, was much younger and far more comely, smooth-faced and bright-eyed, with teeth that were still white and sound. His shoulders were broad, his hands and arms almost hairless and strongly muscled. Cavan had never spoken to Dyllis before that day, but both women had known that he was strongly attracted to her, barely able from the first day of his assignment to keep his eyes off her as she went about her business. She and Ygraine had even laughed about it. Now it became plain to Ygraine that Dyllis had hardly been impervious to his charms, either.
Ygraine stood erect in the corner by the wash table, her back to Dyllis, who continued to chatter, oblivious to the fact that her mistress was no longer listening. Instead, the Queen was thinking of Uther Pendragon, bare-headed and smiling with that upward- curling lip that came so close to sneering yet did nothing of the kind.
"Lady?" she heard him say, smiling with his voice, and a rush of gooseflesh swept across her skin. She remembered how he had reached out one hand to her, saw the long, strong fingers with their square, blunt nails and the tiny black hairs that curled over the knuckles. She shuddered deliciously, feeling the now familiar sensation of breathlessness swelling in her chest. And then she inhaled sharply and deeply, willing herself to think of other things. Uther, she knew, harboured no such thoughts of her. She had long since learned to detect the slightest signs of attraction in the men around her, and how to ignore and discourage them. In Uther Pendragon's case, she had seen and felt nothing, not the slightest intimation of interest in her as a woman.
"Ygraine, my lady?"
She returned to her senses quickly, aware that Dyllis had been speaking to her, and swung back to face the other woman, banishing her dangerous thoughts. But she could not listen to Dyllis's rhapsodies about young Cavan—not if she wanted to keep her wits about her. The air suddenly seemed hot and humid, and Ygraine felt constrained and confined in the command tent. She wanted to be outside walking in the fresh air. Uncaring whether she might be bruising her friends' feelings, she sent the younger woman to her sleeping quarters with orders to mend a shawl that Ygraine had torn earlier, and then she crossed to the entrance of the tent, where she called to Cavan and asked him to take her to Uther.
Uther was not in his tent when she arrived there, and no guards stood outside it, but she knew he would not be far away, and so she decided to wait for him. She dismissed Cavan and sent him back to his post, although it was plain to see that he was not happy about leaving her there outside the King's Tent, unguarded. She smiled and asked him what he thought she might steal if left alone, or whether he thought, with so many troopers about, that she was planning to escape in broad daylight. Cavan nodded and left, flushed and flustered by her humour.
Left alone, Ygraine crossed her arms on her breast and looked about her. There was no place to sit down, but the air was cooler here outside the tent, for the site was pleasantly sheltered by the thick leaves of the surrounding trees, and so she lingered, looking up to the western sky. A heavy thundercloud had rolled in and now towered upwards for miles, flickering with lightning, an ominous tower of dark blue, black and purple, shot with malevolent highlights of yellowish brown. She stared up at it for a long time, trying to discern the direction of its drift, wondering if it would blow by or sweep closer to them and unleash its burden on their heads. She was still standing there with her head raised and her eyes closed, breathing deeply and slowly, when Uther arrived. She heard his approaching footsteps and opened her eyes just in time to experience one of those moments that are remembered forever by those who witness them. He was less than four paces from her by then, his surprised pleasure evident in his eyes, and seeing her look at him, he began to raise his hand to greet her or to question her, but then the world turned white in a blinding flash that seemed to explode directly between them with a solid, yet somehow silent concussion, like the mute crack of a mighty whip. They both felt the force of the explosion physically, and it left them stunned and badly frightened, their nostrils filled with a strange, almost salty smell, as though the very air had been singed. And then, before either of them could even begin to recover, a solid deluge of ice-cold rain hit them, soaking them instantly and depriving them of what little breath had been left to them.
Uther was the first to recover. He stepped towards her, scooped her up into
his arms as though she were weightless and carried her into his tent in three long strides. He lowered her feet to the ground as soon as they were safely inside the tent and made to step back, but Ygraine clung to him, whimpering in her throat and quivering with what he took to be terror. In fact, she was shaking with an instantaneous resurgence of the same raging lust that had assailed her earlier, and it had consumed her so thoroughly that she shuddered with the strength of it.
Uther held her awkwardly in his arms, peering over her head into the dimness of the tent, highly aware of the soft pliancy of her body beneath the thin stuff of her gown and of the way her thighs pressed against his own, and debating foolishly with himself on what he ought to do. His eyes had still not recovered from the blinding white flash of the thunderbolt that had struck so close to them, and what remained of his hearing was overwhelmed by the drumming roar of the heavy rain on the leather roof panels above their heads. Ygraine moved again, almost writhing against him, and he distinctly felt the changing shape of the soft flesh of her thighs. He coughed, clearing his throat with embarrassment, and tried a second time to push himself away from her, but she clung more tightly to him than before, and he stopped, wishing that he had had the foresight to wear his armour, or at least a leather cuirass and studded loin guard that would have stopped the shape and softness of the woman from impressing itself against his body. For the first time since capturing her, he had become acutely conscious of her femaleness, and he raised one arm, cupping the back of her head in his open palm and holding her face gently against his shoulder. As he did so, however, she pulled her head back and looked up at him, her eyes enormous and her mouth open as though to speak. He dipped his head towards her and waited to hear what she would say, but she said nothing and simply continued to stare at him with those huge eyes. And as he gazed back at her, he felt her lean back further against his encircling arm, the movement, deliberate and unmistakable, pushing the lower half of her body against him, enflaming and engorging him, and he knew he had to get away from her. He reached up with his free hand to disengage her arms from about his neck, but as he did so, she rose upon the tips of her toes and grasped his head in both hands, pulling him down to where she could kiss him, her mouth closing over his and her tongue thrusting against his lips.
His surprise was a fleeting thing, real and startling and huge, but vanquished instantly by the urgency and reality of what was happening. He was lost within heartbeats, all his resolve and all his fine, noble intentions swept into nothingness by the unexpectedness of what had occurred and by the moist, living heat of her lips and mouth. Ygraine, for her part, had passed beyond any possibility of self-restraint the moment Uther had swept her up into his arms out in the rain, and in the searing, starving beauty of that first kiss she had, for a single evanescent moment, consciously sneered at herself for ever having thought that she could live without what she was feeling. Giving herself up completely to the storm inside her, she wrapped both arms around his neck and let herself go limp, her dead weight pulling him forward and off balance. On the point of falling, however, Uther rallied himself and looked around the tent, and then he half pulled, half carried her to the sturdy table that held the wash basin and ewer. He swept the tabletop clear and leaned her back against the edge of it, his hands on her waist and his mouth seeking hers again, and within moments her clothing seemed to have dissolved and her legs closed around his waist as he took her to him.
Their coupling was short and furious, to the accompaniment of drumming rain and heralded at the climax by a continuous chorus of thunderclaps, and when he had finished he remained standing in front of her, quivering all over, his body bent forward from the waist, his forehead between her breasts, while she lay back beneath him. her head dangling from the end of the table as she stroked the damp hair at the back of his neck and kneaded his hips gently and rhythmically between her knees.
Finally he sighed and braced himself up on one arm, reaching out with the other hand to cradle the back of her head.
"Lady," he said, his breathing still uneven, "I did not know that was going to happen."
"I know you didn't. I didn't either, until today."
He cocked his head on one side. "Today? When?"
"Earlier, when you gripped my arm."
"When I . . . I don't remember gripping your arm. Oh, yes, I do now. What was so special about that?"
She smiled at him. "It was . . . significant, and I'll say no more. Ah—!" The last sound was a tiny bleat of complaint at the unheralded withdrawal of his flaccid phallus. He grunted and moved his pelvis closer as though to reinsert himself despite the immediate impossibility of doing so, and she stirred against him.
"More," she murmured. "I want more of that."
He nodded, pretending to be serious. "That should be possible in a little while."
"And then I'll want more again after that."
He smiled and shook his head. "But I have things to do, lady, concerning your own plans. You charged me with certain duties, and I've not had time to do them yet. I still have not spoken to Popilius Cirro . . ." He paused, reflecting. "Still, I could talk to him tonight in the refectory when we go to eat. . ."
"No." She heaved her body lasciviously beneath him. "Go now, talk quickly and briefly, do whatever else you must do, and then come back here to me."
He cocked his head again, grinning down at her. "I thought you wanted to be alone tonight?"
"I did and I still do, you blind man. I want to be alone with you."
"Do you, indeed? That is wonderful. It's almost incredible, in truth, but I'm delighted to hear you say it. Now one more kiss, and I'll go and put old Cirro's mind to rest. After that, there's nothing else for me to do other than to tell Nemo that I mustn't be disturbed, and as soon as I've done that, I'll be back here."
"Good, then kiss me and go. Wait! What's that down there? Oh, that was quick . . ."
"Aye it was, wasn't it? Should I take it with me, or shall I leave it here?"
"Hmm. Leave it here with me, but swear me an oath that you'll come back for it."
"Oh, lady, I'll come back, I swear to you. Within the hour. Should I bring some food from the commissary wagons? Will you be hungry later?"
"No, you need bring no food. I might be hungry later, but only for you and the . . . gifts you bring to me . . . Now go, and come back soon. I shall go to bed and wait for you."
"No need for that, I'll carry you to bed. Here, hold me around the neck."
She interlaced her lingers behind his neck and moaned very gently as he entered her, and then he hooked one elbow behind each of her knees and lifted her effortlessly from the table. He hitched her slightly higher then, stretching the length of his arms along her thighs, and carried her, impaled, to his narrow cot, where he left her eventually to await his return.
Chapter THIRTY
That night with Ygraine, long and intensely pleasurable as it was, beginning and ending in full daylight, was the first of only four occasions on which the two of them would be able to lie together, and the last of those four times would not occur until after the birth of their son, Arthur.
In the morning, Uther left her alone and unguarded very briefly, as he had arranged to meet again with Popilius Cirro, and he knew that if he did not appear, Popilius would seek him out. And so he swallowed his resentment at having to get up and leave her alone in bed, acknowledging, as he always did, that his duty took precedence over all other things. When he stepped into Cirro's tent a short time later, he was the embodiment of a Camulodian cavalry commander, clad in gleaming, polished armour from head to foot.
He confirmed to Popilius Cirro that there was nothing at all to prevent them from setting out within thirty-six hours to execute the deep penetration raid that they had planned more than a month earlier in Camulod. His party had been camped here in this valley for more than a week, ever since capturing the Queen and her party, and yet his mounted scouts had seen no sign in all that time of any activity from Lot's people anywhere wit
hin a day's journey on horseback, which was the equivalent of almost two days' marching.
Popilius was surprised but well pleased to hear that and made no effort to conceal his relief. His thousand men created an enormous presence, almost impossibly difficult to conceal, and he had been greatly concerned by the need to insert them deeply into this hostile territory without being detected. For that reason, he had led them overland in night marches ever since quitting the great road west of Isca, and those harsh, punitive exercises were pleasurable to no one, particularly on moonless nights when the darkness was unrelieved and every minor dip in the ground could result in painful accidents and injuries to feet and ankles. He had brought his men through without being detected, however, and to reward them he had relieved them all of duty for the entire day. warning them that they would be back at the daily grind on the following morning, parading at dawn and drilling hard in preparation for the expedition they would undertake on the day after.
By the time Uther left him, they had agreed not only upon the drills and exercises their combined forces would undertake the following day, with Uther's cavalry and bowmen combining forces in an assault upon Cirro's two cohorts, but also upon the order of march for the day after that. Half of Uther's Dragons would form an advance guard and ride ahead of the main body of the infantry. The other half would ride as a rear guard, and Uther's Pendragon bowmen would range on either side of the main marching column, so that their line of march would be direct and no less than two hundred paces wide at any point.
