by Jack Whyte
"They can't work out their own salvation! Well, that's not true, I suppose they can—they're going to have to. But Merlyn's still not himself, and that's what frightens me most of all. He's the only one with balls enough to do what needs to be done. Titus and Flavius are good, but they're old now, both of them, and too set in their ways, having relied on Merlyn and his father, Picus, all their lives for strong leadership. Besides, they're cavalry officers above all else, Roman-trained and Roman-minded, and this fight that's looming has nothing Roman about it.
"Camulod will be relying heavily on us, and we won't be able to give them too much support, even if we slaughter the invaders at Carmarthen. By the time we march from there to Camulod, it could all be over. So I'm going to have to come up with some solution quickly. And what you say is right: knowing the terrain gives us no advantage at all in this instance. None at all . . ." He fell silent, staring into the brazier.
"The worst of it is, these two commanders, Issa and Loholt, are the best Lot has. They're probably among the best in Britain, because not only are they both Roman-trained, they're trained as independent mercenaries—guerrilla fighters accustomed to operating on their own without having to answer to a chain of command.
These fellows are fighters to reckon with. They were Rome's mercenaries long before they became Lot's. They hate each other's guts, too, from what I've heard, which means they won't be operating jointly, so I can't see any way of dealing with them as a single enemy force. Each of them will move in separately for the kill, with Camulod's wealth as the prize, and that means neither of them will waste any time in anything they do. And as you heard for yourself in the letter, each of their armies is the size of a full legion."
Uther looked from one to the other of his two listeners. "Two armies, each at legion strength . . . Even allowing for a huge exaggeration, that's at least three and perhaps four thousand men apiece. Greedy men, lusting for a prize, and all of them afraid they'll lose it if their allies reach it first. That could mean as many as eight thousand mercenaries, all of them unpredictable and all of them hungry, marching into Camulod from two different directions." He snorted, a bitter, self-deprecating sound. "The only clear idea in my mind is that we need a scourge, a sickness, like the one that hit us here recently, but far more fatal—and we need it now. It need not be a widespread pestilence, just a gods-sent little one that would kill Issa and his cohort Loholt. With those two gone, Lot's armies would not even march, because there's no one else who's capable of leading them."
"What about the other two we spoke of months ago, what were their names?"
"Cuneglas and Ralla, Lot's Cornishmen? They're incompetents. The German mercenaries probably wouldn't even march with them. But it would be a waste of time, I think, even to wish for anything like that. The gods have never taken the time to smile on me before, so the odds against one of them sending us a plague now, when I need one, are daunting. Issa and Loholt are healthy and itching to be on the road. They'll be massing for departure in six weeks. Which reminds me, is everything ready for our journey to Carmarthen tomorrow?"
Garreth nodded. "Aye, everything is in order. We'll be off at first light."
"Good. I want to be back here within ten days, and after that I'm going to ride down to Camulod for a brief visit just to see how things are progressing there. I'll be back here within the week after that, and by then it will be almost time to gird on our battle armour. So, Owain, where have you been? I haven't set eyes on you in months."
Owain of the Caves began telling Uther all that he had been up to since last they met, and as he listened, Uther's attention kept being distracted by a recurrent vision of Ygraine of Cornwall, sitting on a high-backed chair with a laughing child on her knee. It was a vision that was to remain with him constantly from that time onward, one that would catch him unawares at the most unexpected times and one that he quickly grew to love. On this occasion, however, all thoughts of Ygraine were suddenly banished when he realized that Owain of the Caves was asking an important question.
He had enjoyed working with Uther, Owain said, and he was grateful for the new life accorded to him here in Cambria among the Pendragon warriors, who had adopted him as one of their own. The fact that they had tutored him in the use and care of their magnificent longbow was more significant to him than any other recognition he had received from anyone in his entire life. Now, however, having learned that there was a life to be lived out there in the world that had no resemblance to the miserable existence he had known before joining Uther, something deep inside him was telling him to go and seize it before it became too late for him. He would fight in the coming war, he promised, but after that he would like to return to his place of origin, in the north of the country, simply to see if there was a life of any description up there that he might salvage.
Uther listened without comment until the big man was done, and then smiled, hiding the consternation he felt and putting the best face he could on what he was being asked to do. The taciturn Northerner had served him well, doing the few things required of him without demur or complaint, and Uther had come to depend upon the silent big man. He knew well that there was nothing to be gained in saying anything other than yes, but he felt it was important that he should not only accede to Owain's request, which was far from unreasonable, but also encourage the man to follow the demands of his heart. He finally stood and embraced Owain of the Caves, giving him his blessing and even urging the man to go as soon as he felt the need to go, knowing that a welcome awaited him back in Tir Manha should life in the north lands not turn out to be as he hoped.
Owain stood speechless after that, his eyes shining with what Uther assumed must be gratitude, and then he stooped and kissed Uther's hand before turning and striding quickly from the room. Uther glanced inquiringly at Garreth Whistler, who merely raised an eyebrow and shrugged before following Owain.
Alone again, Uther sat back down by the brazier and stared into the glowing coals for a long time, until the candles on the nearby table had burned down and begun to flicker and the fire itself was buried in glowing ash. Then, coming to awareness again, he rose to his feet and went to bed.
He slept very badly, plagued by formless dreams and imaginings, and when he got up the next morning, feeling as though he had not slept at all, Owain of the Caves was no longer in Tir Manha. He had left the previous night and had told no one where he was going. Uther said nothing when Garreth told him the news, but he felt abandoned, and he saw Owain's departure as an evil omen.
It was closer to fourteen days than to ten by the time Uther returned from his journey to Carmarthen, but he was well satisfied with what he had achieved there. The young Chief Dergyll ap Griffyd, whose home base Carmarthen was, had been made paramount Chief of all the Griffyd clans a year earlier and was quickly proving himself to be a superb warrior and leader. A handsome, broad-shouldered young man—Uther estimated his age at no more than twenty-three or twenty-four—of moderate height, strongly muscled and of slim, supple build, he was supremely confident in his own abilities, yet still blessed with an appealing sense of fun. His people looked up to him and admired everything about him, and from what Uther could gather, the man had no visible flaws and no discernible weaknesses. Uther and he had known and liked each other briefly in boyhood, but many years elapsed before each set eyes upon the other again, this time at the funeral of the veteran Chief Cativelaunus of Carmarthen. Uther had known that the old Chief had had a protégé called Dergyll, but it had never occurred to him that it might be the same Dergyll who had been his companion during one of the long summers of boyhood. He knew three other men called Dergyll, and had anyone asked him, he might have admitted to being prepared to dislike a fourth, simply for bearing the name of the three he knew.
As a fighter, Dergyll ap Griffyd had built himself a fearsome reputation, and he had the skills of a commander to match those of a warrior. Uther had left him in charge of the preparations on the ground above and surrounding the invasion beaches that C
erdic and Tewdric would use. He had left Huw Strongarm there, too, attached to Dergyll's command to back him up with a four hundred-strong contingent of Pendragon bowmen who, properly positioned exactly where Uther had ordained, would be able to decimate the invading troops who escaped Dergyll's first reception and might be foolish enough to seek to attack Carmarthen anyway. The position held by the Pendragon force, less than one-third of the way along the only route that led to Carmarthen from the landing beach, could not be avoided or evaded; any troops destined for Carmarthen would have to pass through the valley that Uther's bowmen had claimed as their killing ground.
Uther knew that the western invasion was well in hand. The enemy, anticipating no opposition, would land suspecting nothing, and no move would be made against them until they were all ashore. Only then, once they were disembarked and preparing to march eastwards to Carmarthen, would Dergyll's trap be sprung. They would be hit hard and continuously by a powerful army that had materialized, it would appear to them, from nowhere, and whose existence they could not have dreamed of. With Dergyll's Griffyds, Huw's Pendragon bowmen and the Llewellyn warriors who would be sent to reinforce them, the Federation's waiting army would number close to six thousand men, all of whom would be defending their homeland against an enemy taken by surprise and caught flat-footed with their backs to the sea.
Uther was far more worried about what would happen with the two armies destined to fall upon Camulod, one from the south and the other from the east. He felt consumed by the need to reach Camulod quickly to check on their defensive plans and progress there, for the war that Camulod would fight would be a demanding one. They would be lacking their natural leader, Caius Merlyn, and be sorely in need of greater assistance than Uther could offer them. Before he could leave for Camulod, however, he had affairs to tend to within his own Pendragon Federation.
He had summoned the Llewellyn Chiefs to join him in Tir Manha to discuss the final arrangements for their participation in the spring invasion, including the number and disposition of the warriors they would send to Carmarthen. The Chiefs were Cunbelyn and Hod the Strong, both of whom had voted in the Choosing of Uther as King of the Federation, and a younger man. Brochvael, who had succeeded the dead Meradoc as Chief of the largest Llewellyn clan after the Choosing ceremony. There was no love lost between Uther and any of the three Llewellyn Chiefs, thanks to the confrontation he had had with Meradoc, but neither was there any overt hostility between them. The Llewellyns had done whatever had been required of them since Uther had become King and had behaved themselves appropriately, and with that Uther could have no complaint.
In due time the Llewellyn Chiefs arrived, and Uther talked with them for a full day, outlining the exact dimensions of the threat the Federation faced and detailing the requirements he would have of their combined clansmen. There were a few questions raised in the opening stages, primarily by Hod the Strong, concerning the source of Uther's information and the reliability of his informants, but Hod was that kind of man, bluntly asking the questions that came into his mind and uncaring of the subtleties involved. He was prepared to accept that there were things Uther could not tell him, for fear of endangering his friends in Cornwall, and he professed to have no need of anything other than to be convinced that he could believe what he was being asked to believe. Apart from that, however, he wanted to be assured that he was not being asked to endanger his people needlessly. Uther addressed each of his questions openly, refusing to name names or to say anything that could be hazardous to his friends, but stating his reasons forthrightly each time he had to do so and otherwise concealing nothing.
In the end, they agreed that the combined Llewellyn clans would field a force of two thousand men to reinforce Dergyll ap Griffyd's four thousand and Huw Strongarm's four hundred-man force of Pendragon bowmen in Carmarthen. Brochvael, the young Chief, about whom Uther knew little, was displeased over what he perceived as the apparent lack of Pendragon commitment in the Carmarthen campaign, a mere four hundred bows as opposed to the Llewellyn thousands, but it was Hod himself who surprised Uther and laid those concerns to rest by pointing out that one Pendragon bowman, given a strong position with a decent field of fire and sufficient arrows for his longbow, was worth any ten, perhaps twenty warriors that he himself could put into the field. Four hundred such, he pointed out, strategically placed as Uther had described to them, would have the power to win an entire battle on their own without help from anyone else, providing a supporting force at the enemy's back could keep the enemy from running away from the long and deadly Pendragon arrows.
Brochvael seemed unconvinced, and Uther was on the point of showing his displeasure when it dawned on him that, astonishing as it might seem, Brochvael had never seen Pendragon longbows used in war. As soon as he realized that, he nullified the problem quickly by arranging a demonstration for the following day.
The weather was fine, cold and crisp, and the Pendragon bowmen treated the event as a celebration of their skills, taking delight in showing off for their visitors. Apart from individual displays of marksmanship that sometimes appeared magical and left the mouths of all three Chiefs hanging agape, the finale of the afternoon's demonstration was a display of massed archery, with four evenly spaced formations, each of a hundred men, loosing rapid-fire volleys at an array of one hundred standing logs, their sharpened ends thrust into the ground. Each squadron stood in two ranks of fifty men, the second line two paces behind the other, and the rank of bowmen closest to the standing logs was one hundred and fifty paces from the target. A space of twenty paces separated each squadron from the one behind it, so that the farthest rank stood some two hundred and twenty paces from the target stakes. On a given signal, the bowmen began to shoot, and at no time were there fewer than two volleys in the air, one rising to its zenith and the other falling on the target, each volley consisting of one hundred arrows. The entire exercise was completed in less time than a man in the front rank could have walked half the distance to the target area. Each man fired ten arrows, and on the shouted signal to cease fire, the target area was blanketed with four thousand arrows. Not one target log had been completely missed in the onslaught, and fewer than a hundred arrows had fallen short.
Uther watched his guests closely throughout the exercise and was amused to see that Hod the Strong stood grinning throughout, nudging his neighbours with delight, for he had seen the sight before, but Cunbelyn and Brochvael were stunned and speechless. Even then, however, Uther had no need to speak, for Hod was crowing with delight, jostling the still blank-faced Brochvael and demanding if he had ever seen the like before. Plainly, Uther could see, young Chief Brochvael had not even imagined such a thing, let alone seen it. He would raise no more objections, Uther knew, either then or in the time to come.
Four days after the departure of the Llewellyns in the pale, wintry sunlight of late afternoon, Uther was riding by one of Camulod's outlying boundary garrisons, and it was plain to see that the entire post had been greatly enlarged and strongly fortified very recently -the pointed wooden stakes topping the earth walls were still fresh from the axe blades that had formed them. Encouraged to see that some of his suggestions had been implemented, he approached and identified himself to the post commander and quickly inspected the installation.
Formerly little more than an outlying farmstead, the place was now a substantial stronghold, completely surrounded by a deep, sloping ditch, the sides and bottoms of which had been planted with angled, lethally pointed stakes. The earth removed in digging the ditch had been used to form a high defensive breastwork, backed with palisades of the heavy, sharp-ended logs he had first seen, and behind that was a defensive parapet from which the defenders could fight back. The place looked as though it could easily accommodate a garrison of several hundred men, and it had two entrances, each consisting of a narrow passageway, with gates at both ends, that pierced the breastwork. These were overlooked by bridges from which the defenders could attack anyone trying to pass through. A drawbridge of
stout logs that could be raised by pulleys allowed passage from the fort across the ditch for offensive purposes, but denied incoming attacks. Uther was highly impressed, not merely by the obvious strength of the fortification but also by the speed with which it had been erected.
He was even more impressed, riding up to Camulod at the head of the First Squadron of his Dragons, by what he found on the huge plain that formed the drilling ground at the bottom of the hill. Popilius Cirro had once built a temporary fort down there, at the time of Lot's first treacherous attack on Camulod. It had served its purpose well, but it had been disassembled afterwards to permit the cavalry to use the training ground again. Now it was back in place and garrisoned again.
As always, news travelled with seemingly miraculous swiftness in Camulod, and long before he reached the huge gates at the top of the fortress hill, Uther could see that a reception party had turned out to welcome him. His heart leaped as he recognized his Cousin Merlyn among them, unmistakable by his size and the colour of his long, golden hair. Even from far away, Uther could see the white gleam of teeth that showed him his cousin was grinning, and he felt his stomach churn, hoping that Caius Merlyn might be himself again.
