by Jack Whyte
Nemo was gazing at the walls by the rear gate behind Uther's shoulder. She shrugged, her face still expressionless. "I like it here. We should come back and live here one day. It should be a Pendragon place."
Uther was surprised. Nemo seldom ventured an opinion on anything. He looked closely into the dull eyes that had been a part of his life for so many years, and there, under the customary stolid, vaguely sullen look, he thought he discerned, for the first time in as long as he could recall, the features of the lost child he and Garreth had saved rather than the hard-nosed, truculent Nemo. Inexplicably, he felt a lump come into his throat, and he coughed to hide his sudden embarrassment, turning to look at whatever she was gazing at so fixedly. He could see nothing but the high rear walls of the fort.
"Well," he said, turning back and speaking for her ears alone, "if the gods are good to us in this coming war, perhaps we will come back and live here some day, you and I." Then he stepped forward, seized the reins of his horse and swung himself up into his high saddle.
Chapter THIRTY-FIVE
Their journey back to Tir Manha was fast and uneventful, and they arrived less than three days after leaving Camulod, Uther having pushed the pace of their advance relentlessly. Tir Manha showed none of the building activity that had been evident around Camulod, but there were definite signs of preparation for war everywhere as they drew close to home. It seemed to Uther that every Pendragon warrior in the clans had come to Tir Manha, and there were groups and squadrons of bowmen practising everywhere he looked.
He dismounted quickly, throwing his reins to Nemo, and went looking for his mother, knowing that she would be wondering about her own mother and if he had brought an answer to her long and detailed letter. He had not, because there had been no time for his grandmother to compose a response, but he was able to tell her everything that he and Luceiia had discussed, and to tell her of Luceiia's promise to write back immediately and send the letter on to Tir Manha with one of her priests. Veronica insisted on feeding him while he was there, and he humoured her by sitting down to the quick meal of fresh bread and cold, salted meat with homemade beer that she laid out for him.
When he finally reached his own private quarters, which were attached to the King's Hall and separate from his mother's, he told the guard outside that he was not to be disturbed. One of the first things he had seen on entering the gates was a young woman, sitting on a low wall and suckling a hungry baby from a milk- swollen breast. The sight had hit him hard, filling his mind with Ygraine and her expected child, and he had had no time since then to sit alone and allow the thoughts that teemed in his mind to settle down.
The afternoon was wearing on towards evening, and the small room in which he sat, dark on the brightest days, was filled with shadows that seemed almost solid. Kindling lay ready in the iron basket that filled the crude chimney in the far wall, and he used a twig to carry a flame from the open lamp on his table to the fireplace, cupping his hand to guard the flame and realizing that it would have been wiser to carry the lamp across the room and light the twig there. He stayed crouched in front of the basket until the flames were well established, then straightened up and went back to his table, where he lit three thick, stubby tallow candles from the smoky lamp. Then, enjoying the brightness of the growing, flickering light, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, letting the saddle-weariness seep out of his bones.
He was dozing when he heard a footstep, and he jerked his head up as a looming shadow blocked the light from the doorway. Uther was surprised to see Owain of the Caves.
"Well," he said, "I'd wager you never expected to be told you're a pleasure to behold, but you are. I thought you had gone north. Sit down, man. What are you doing here?"
The big man shook his head. "Your guard didn't want to let me come in, but I convinced him. I didn't go north. I told you I'd fight this war with you."
"Then where have you been? It's been a month since you disappeared."
"I went to find this." Owain pulled something from his scrip and tossed it casually onto the table in front of Uther, where it landed with a soft thump.
Uther stared at it, a small, grimy bag of rough, poorly tanned leather, closed by a drawstring. Suspecting a hoax, he looked up at his visitor beneath raised eyebrows.
"What is it?"
"Open it and see. It's a gift."
Uther picked the bag up cautiously and tested the contents with his fingers. It was something flat, but not completely so, for there were bumps and irregularities that he could not define. Curious, he raised it to sniff at it.
"Don't put it to your nose, man! I want you to enjoy it, and you won't if you do that. It's a plague, but a tame one."
Utterly mystified now, and more than a little disconcerted, Uther inserted two fingers into the drawstring noose and gently pried the bag open, then shook its contents out onto the table. Two objects fell almost noiselessly onto the wood, and the sight of them sent Uther rearing back in shock, sucking in his breath with a startled hiss. He heard Owain's bark of laughter, but he could not withdraw his eyes to look at him yet. Lying on the table in front of him was a pair of human ears—a matched pair, judging by the tufts of black hair adorning each of them.
"Well, you like them?"
It took some time before Uther was able to respond. "Whose are they—were they?"
"Issa's."
"Who is Issa?"
"Issa, man! The one you wanted to get sick."
"You mean Issa, the . . . ?"
"Aye, Lot's general. They're his. Proof that he's gone. You'll have to take my word on the other whoreson, Loholt. I couldn't get close enough to him to take his ears, too many of his people around him. But I dropped the whoreson from two hundred paces with an arrow through the centre of his head, right above the ear. Best shot I ever made in my life. No one even saw me. They didn't know where the thing came from, because the force of it hitting him swung him around and threw him over backwards like a bird hit in mid-flight. By the time they thought to look farther than they thought could be possible, I was well clear. But I thought you might forgive me for not hanging around there to collect his ears."
The significance of this was slow to penetrate Uther's mind. The greatest threat to all that he held dear had apparently, and against all likelihood, been removed by this one man, this strange, solitary, friendless, enigmatic killer who had sought to take his life when they first met, and whom Uther had befriended almost without thought, on an unguided impulse. Uther sat staring at him, open- mouthed, unable to speak or to move.
"Alone," he managed to say, finally. "You killed them both, alone?"
"No other way. A man alone can go anywhere he wants, so be he doesn't act the fool. I had more trouble hiding my bow, coming and going, than I had with anything else."
Uther sat blinking at him, struggling to overcome his awe. "So how did you hide it?" he managed to ask eventually. He was finding it easier to speak by the moment, although his mind was in a turmoil with conflicting facts and possible consequences.
"Hid it in plain view. I used a trick the medics use in Camulod. Wrapped it lengthwise with twigs, the way they splint a broken leg, and then wrapped the ends in thin strips of plaited leather. Time I finished with it, it was nothing like a bow—just a long walking staff. No one even glanced at it. You should have seen the shot I made on that Loholt fellow, though. Two hundred paces if it was one. The other one was easy—Issa—I saw him head off hunting and followed him. Waited until he was alone, stalking a boar, then dropped him with one between the shoulder blades. He didn't even know he was dead. So, do you feel better now?"
Uther, finally in control of himself, rose to his feet and stared into Owain's eyes. "Aye, my friend, I think you have made me very well. I will never be able to repay you for this service, but I want you to know that anything I have is yours, and anything I can ever do for you will be as good as done the moment that you ask it. You may have saved ten thousand lives with just two arrows."
The Cave Man flushe
d a deep red, uncomfortable faced with praise, but Uther could see that he was pleased, nevertheless. He nodded once and then again, and then made a "harrumphing" noise in his throat.
"Aye, well, I'm glad. I'll go now and sleep a bit, I think." His eyes returned to the ears that still lay on the table. "D'you want me to take those away?"
Uther glanced back at them. "No," he murmured. "No . . . I don't think so, not yet. I may have a use for them. Again, Owain, my thanks."
Many things happened very quickly after that, and time itself seemed to accelerate in the frenetic activity of the following months. Late on the evening of Owain's stunning revelation after hours of deep deliberation, Uther sat down and, with great difficulty and much muttering beneath his breath, wrote an important letter to his grandmother in Camulod. Luceiia, he knew, would grasp the situation immediately in its entirety and would see to it that things were done properly thereafter.
The unexpected deaths of his two senior minions would be a crippling blow to Lot's plans, he wrote, far more than any such disaster could ever be to Camulod, or even to himself in Cambria. Camulod had a disciplined army and well-trained deputies in place to step into the gap created by any single person's death, no matter how crippling that death might be. And even here in Cambria, were he struck low, his people were one people, and one or another of his own chieftains would soon step up to take his place in time of need. Not so with Lot. His own Cornish people lived in distrustful fear of him, and his only strength lay in his huge mercenary armies. Therein his major weakness also lay, however, for those mercenary armies had no underlying loyalty to Lot himself, other than that which he had already bought and paid for, and his control of them lay in the hands of powerful leaders like Issa and Loholt. who ruled their men by strength of will and personality, by the power bred from guts and strength and sheer experience, leading their armies to victory, plunder and conquest. Now, with those leaders gone, Lot had two armies of leaderless savages in his domain, and he would be hard put to deal with them. Cuneglas and Ralla, weak straws that they were, would be forever useless, and that left Lot now with no leaders of any stripe.
Based upon all of that and upon the chaos that seemed bound to follow in its wake, it seemed reasonable, he told his friends in Camulod, that there would be no springtime attack against them. But they could not depend on that completely. Lot had the armies, and he might still, by some chance, replace his fallen leaders with new blood. It was a possibility for which they must allow.
His recommendation was that Camulod not relax its vigilance. If, in the coming spring, no attack ensued, the governors of the Colony should be prepared to split their forces, keeping their garrisons in place, although at reduced strength, and dedicating the strongest army they could spare—mixed infantry and cavalry in far greater strength than the raiding force he had led the previous summer—to making a pre-emptive strike, as Balin called it, into the heart of Cornwall, where they might be joined and reinforced by Lot's own Cornish enemies. Uther himself would handle the attack in the west, which he was sure would come as planned, as swiftly and effectively as could be, and then he would bring the finest of his forces, including at least a thousand bows and twice that number of Cambrian clansmen from the Federation, to join the Camulod contingent. By striking swiftly and surely into the turmoil of Lot's anarchic chaos—those words were Balin's, too, but Uther endorsed them completely once he understood what they meant—they might finally be able to unseat the Cornish King and put an end to his rule of terror. He would await the Council's acceptance of his suggestion, he wrote, or their suggested alternatives to what he had proposed.
It was long after midnight by the time the letter was written to his satisfaction, for there was much important detail to be packed into it, and he was determined that nothing would be omitted that might be crucial at a later date. When it was done, he sealed it carefully before he went to sleep.
The following morning, he summoned Nemo to him before dawn and instructed her carefully in what he wanted her to do, then sent her off immediately to retrace his journey to Camulod and Luceiia Varrus.
Then, towards noon, an exhausted messenger arrived with a short letter from Lagan Longhead in Cornwall.
In haste: the country here is plunged in chaos. This may be no surprise to you. Issa and Loholt are both dead. Slain within three days, ten leagues apart. Issa first, Loholt after.
Killers escaped. Two single arm-long arrows used. Word reached us in Tir Gwyn two days after the second death. Uther, father said, as soon as he heard the news. He has cut the heads off the snakes. No attack on Camulod now. No one else to lead the armies. And then he said, Unless—
That was three days ago. G is insane with anger, turning the countryside upside down, searching for the killers, but they should be home by now. Father and I are set to disappear for a time as soon as this is done. At least until the uproar dies away. Well done. Nothing likely to happen now in your southeastern area, but the other attack, we think, will go as planned. More word to come when anything changes.
That was all: no names attached, nothing hazarded beyond reason, although Uther knew instantly that G was Gulrhys Lot. He showed the letter to Garreth, and then he went off by himself again to try to reason out what he must do next in the face of such developments. By the end of the day, he had decided that his initial reactions had been correct and all that remained was to maintain a close liaison with Camulod while bringing his own clansmen to the peak of readiness for the invasion of Cambria in April. It crossed his mind then to be grateful for once that his mountain-bred people set no great store by farming, for they would have no worries about fighting when they should be planting crops.
Mid-April passed with no sign of the invaders, but in the meantime Uther had received a message from Ygraine in Cornwall, written from her dictation by the same trusted priest who delivered it—the first indication Uther had received that Queen Ygraine was a Christian. She was well, she told him, and in good health, her baby due in early June, but the country was in dire condition and the people lived in fear not just for their lives but for their children's future. The murder of his generals had plunged Lot's kingdom into disorder of a magnitude too great to describe. Bereft of their leaders—and it appeared that Issa and Loholt had been revered by their fierce followers—the two armies had revolted and for a space of more than a month had remained beyond Lot's control, burning the countryside and creating havoc among the local clans whose food and provisions they had plundered without hindrance.
Only thanks to the exerted strengths of Cerdic and Tewdric, his last two remaining generals, and by granting the mutineers great tracts of land of their own had Lot been able to establish order again and regain some semblance of authority. And even that had been greatly weakened by the fact that the land he gave to them had been land owned by his own people, so that he was dispossessing his clansmen of their own ancestral homelands to appease the greed of Outlanders whom he himself had brought into those lands. Lot would never recover from that treachery, she wrote, but for the time being he had the strength to override his people's anger and hatred.
There was talk now among the Outlanders of reorganizing their plans and carrying out their invasion of Camulod, but it was yet only talk, she said. New leaders were emerging among their warriors, but none of them had yet won undisputed leadership, and that was not likely to change in the near future. In the meantime, Lot roared and rampaged, black with suspicion and seeing treachery and disloyalty everywhere he looked. He was right in that, but for all the wrong reasons. Somehow, she wrote, in his demented logic, he yet perceived himself as being wronged and believed that all the world was conspiring to bring him down when all he tried to do was for the betterment of those he ruled. His suspicions extended even to her, she said, although she had done nothing, fearing for the child she bore, to incur either his displeasure or distrust, other than write this letter through a trusted friend. She begged Uther to make no attempt to contact her, since she was watched closely
at all times and could not leave the walls of Lot's enclosure at Golant. Even her visiting priest had been stripped and searched before being allowed to see her.
She ended by telling him that the seaborne invasion, under Tewdric and Cerdic, was still planned, but that it had been enlarged by more than thirty galleys full of men. Herliss and Lagan had vanished into the hinterlands, she said, and Lot was raving about what he called their treachery and desertion. She had no idea how that would be resolved, nor did she know if either man had been in touch with Uther, but she was grateful that Lagan, at least, had taken his wife and son with him this time.
So, although the invaders were late, Uther knew they were coming, and in greater strength than previously planned. He worked his clansmen hard, going to extreme lengths of invention to keep them keen and on their toes, and prepared for a vicious, bitter tight.
Then, on a wind-wracked day close to the end of the month, out of a violent April gale, the ships were sighted. The invasion fleet sailed into the welcome shelter of the bay and spilled its cargo of men—hundreds of them wretchedly seasick—into Cambria.
The enemy loitered on the beach after landing, glad to be ashore. Perfectly confident that they had reached safety unobserved and unsuspected, their leaders took the time to form them up in regular divisions before they made any attempt to strike inland. The galleys that had brought the army, riding high in the water now that they were no longer laden, were in no hurry to strike out to the open, gale- swept seas again, and so they, too, loitered long after they should have dispersed and made away, clustered together in dangerous proximity to each other in the tranquil waters of the narrow bay.
Virtually unseen before they hit their first targets, volleys of flaming arrows began to rain down with deadly accuracy from the high, flanking cliffs onto the closely packed and tinder-dry ships below, each missile wrapped in burning cloths soaked in oily pitch. Within moments of the first attack, fire had broken out on a score of vessels, and as the rising screams of the panicked crewmen trapped out on the water began to reach the ears of the men assembling on the shore, the hissing cascade of accurately aimed destruction continued, and towering fires began to leap from ship to ship among the close-packed throng.
