The Eagles' Brood

XX

I was in the stables when the messenger found me.

"Your pardon, Commander Merlyn, but Commander Uther requests that you join him in his quarters for a few moments."

I looked at the trooper in surprise. "He's supposed to be here already. I'm almost ready to leave."

"The Commander is ready, sir. His horses are tethered by the main gate."

I told him to tell Uther I would be along directly and continued tightening the girth on my saddle. My pack- horse, which was really an extra charger, was already loaded up with the few supplies I needed. It was still only the third hour of the morning. I guessed that Uther had gone to bed early and been up for hours.

I found him in his rooms, leaning against the whitewashed wall, putting an edge on a dagger with a small stone by the light of a couple of oil lamps.

"Good morning, Uther. All ready? What's up?"

"Good morning, Cousin." He grinned at me and nodded towards his bunk. Curious, I stepped to his bed and looked down at the device that lay there on top of the blanket.

"What is it?"

"Pick it up, then you tell me what it is."

I looked at it more closely before touching it: a weapon of some kind. A short, thick handle, covered in leather with a strong-looking leather loop at one end. The other end was sheathed in iron and attached to a short length of heavy chain links and on the other end of the chain, a ball about as big as a clenched fist.

"Is that iron?"

"Pick it up."

I did, and the ball, which was iron, remained on the bed as the chain extended with a series of clinks. I pulled it towards me and the ball fell from the bed, hitting the floor with a solid thud. The overall length of the thing was slightly shorter than my arm. I hoisted the ball clear of the floor. It was heavy.

"Very well, Uther. What is it?"

"Oh, come on, Merlyn! How many times have I had to listen to the tale of how you discovered the use of the saddle and stirrups? Can't you imagine what that thing would do to a man on foot if you swung it round your head?"

I hefted it tentatively, and suddenly I had no trouble in seeing what it was. "It would impress him."

"It would indeed—helmet, skull and all."

"Where did you get the idea?"

"You remember Vegetius Sulla's whistling stone? Partly from that. Partly from Grandfather Varrus's old story of you and the club. It's been lying around in my head for a long time now. I decided to have one made last time I was home. It worked, but the chain was too long, so was the handle, so we cut the length of the handle and reduced the chain to fourteen links, and there you are. I had one made for each of us. Yours is black, mine is red, see?" He bent and scooped another one from the floor by his feet. "Wrap the loop around your wrist and you can't lose it, even if you let go the handle."

"Very impressive! But why did you make me come all the way here to get it? Couldn't you have brought it to me?"

"Are you mad, man? Those things are heavy! I would not even try to lug two of them all the way to the stables! I'd look like Vulcan himself, dragging those things across the courtyard."

I laughed in spite of myself and hoisted the ball up, catching it in my left hand. It was heavy. "Come on," I said, "We'd better be moving; Thank you for this. I promise not to hit you with mine if you don't hit me with yours."

"Done! Now let's get out of here. We have about two hours of darkness left."

By the time the first pale hints of dawn began to appear in the sky, we were far to the north-east and making good time, each of us leading an extra horse. We had ridden in silence, our ears straining to pick up alien sounds in the darkness around us, for it was in both our minds that Lot's bowmen with their poisoned arrows could be anywhere, but we met no one and heard nothing to alarm us, and soon the darkness had leached away sufficiently for us to discern the swelling bulk of the Mendip Hills on our right. We rode on into one of those magical mornings whose beauty remains in the mind long after the day it gives birth to has been forgotten. The entire landscape was veiled in a grey, low-lying mist that swirled around our horses' hooves, and every leaf, every blade of grass, hung heavy with dew, so that as the warmth of the sun dispersed the mist it seemed that we rode through a land encrusted with glittering, multi-coloured jewels. Single trees stood out from their neighbours as though burnished in pale greenish gold, and the world was filled with the singing of uncountable birds.

We were riding side by side, our knees almost touching, when we breasted a low rise and saw the strange markings on the valley floor in front of us. For my part, although I saw the thing in front of us immediately, I was slow in recognizing it. Not so Uther, who drew in his breath with an abrupt, hissing sound.

"You were right, Cay. They're on the move."

It was the trail left in long, wet grass by a large party of men who had crossed our path very recently. Their passage had flattened a broad swath of grass, dislodging the dew, so that the rays of the morning sun showed their tracks as a broad highway of darkened grass, black-green against the sea of sparkling dewdrops to either side.

"Where did they come from, Uther? Which way?"

"From the east, heading west. You can see that from the way the light hits the flattened grass. They must have been riding north, like us, hugging the flank of the hills, then swung left to get to the hills on the other side."

I glanced along the broad path stretching to our left. "You think they might be your poisonous bowmen?"

"Not a question of might be.. .I'd wager on it. Lucky we weren't here ten minutes ago."

"You think they passed that recently?"

"Not much more than that. The birds are singing, so they're not close by, but the dew only fell in the last hour or so arid they went through after that."

"So what do we do now?"

"Exactly what we are doing, Cousin, but faster. There's nothing we can do about these people. We are only two against God knows how many of them. Let's head on, collect our own people, get back to Camulod as quickly as we can, and hope for the opportunity to provide a very nasty surprise for our visitors."

He kicked his horse forward and I followed him across the pathway of Lot's assassins, breaking into a canter as we traversed the open meadow between us and the unbroken line of trees ahead. As we reached the forest's edge, we both turned to look behind us at the unmistakable path our own horses had created in crossing the grass. It was now broad daylight and the sun was visible. Uther kneed his horse around towards the trees. "An hour at the most and the tracks will be gone. Let's just hope none of them head back this way too soon."

"Why should they? They're heading west and they have a long way to go."

"So do we, Cousin, and this forest doesn't look hospitable. Let's go."

Uther was right. Far from being hospitable, the stretch of forest we now faced was almost impenetrable, and there were times when we had to dismount and lead our horses through narrow gaps between thickets of ferocious undergrowth that simply refused to yield a passage. We struggled for well over an hour before the growth began to thin, but it seemed we had successfully negotiated the worst part of our journey, and we were able to mount again and ride through the remainder of the forest.

Finally, when the sun was almost directly overhead, we came into a meadowed clearing dominated by one massive old oak tree that stood on the bank of a clear, fast-flowing brook, and by tacit consent we dismounted and unsaddled our horses. Sometime later, the comfort of our mounts attended to, we sat on the bank of the stream, chewing on some of the cold venison and fresh bread we had brought with us from Ludo's kitchen.

"How far do we have to go, do you think?" I asked.

Uther shrugged and bent over to scoop up some water from the stream. "Should be there by nightfall, if we can make better time for the rest of the day." He drew himself erect again, wiping drops of water from his chin. "You know, Cousin, I never have remembered to congratulate you on your new rank.. .Supreme Commander of Camulod."

I was instantly on edge and distinctly uncomfortable, although not from his tone. I glanced at him quickly, but there was nothing to see in his eyes. His face was almost expressionless, with merely the hint of an ironic smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. I bent to the water and drank, too, more to conceal my sudden insecurity than anything else, then straightened up and waited, but he said nothing more.

"Thank you," I said eventually, moving back to sit beside him, then waited again. Uther, however, merely sighed and lay down, making himself comfortable on the grassy bank, leaving it for me to continue the conversation. "When did you find out?"

"What? About your promotion? When I returned last time. I meant to say something, but by then it was old tidings, and I forgot. But I'm glad for you. You earned it."

"You don't mind?"

"Mind?" He laughed aloud, and raised his head from the ground to gaze at me in surprise. "Why should I mind? Did you think I would be envious?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Not really, although I must admit the possibility had come into my mind."

He propped himself up on one elbow and shook his head, as though in wonder at my silliness. "Tell me, Cay, will you be envious of me when I am King of Pendragon?"

I felt my eyes grow wide. "Of course not."

"Then why ask such a question of me?"

"I don't know, Uther. Forgive me." I felt foolish and petty, but he had already changed the subject.

"But there's one other thing I never did ask you. The girl, Cassandra...how did you get her out of that guarded room?"

Coming as it did, this question, too, caught me off guard. I felt a wave of resentment wash over me and all of my doubt and distrust came flooding back. I bit back the hostile response that sprang to my tongue and turned my face away to mask my feelings, hiding my agitation by answering his question with one of my own. "What makes you think I had anything to do with it?"

He barked his short, ferocious laugh. "Come on, Cay, this is me! Uther! Either you spirited her away, or I have to start believing in magic. Of course it was you! But how in the name of your Druid mystics did you do it? And why did you do it?"

"She was in danger."

"From whom?"

"From whoever it was who tried to kill her in the first place."

He sat erect now and looked at me in surprise, an expression of genuine puzzlement that made me wonder if he truly was a remarkable actor. "Why would anyone try to kill her?" he asked. "She was raped and beaten, from what I understand. Badly it seems, but why would anyone try to kill her? And if they had, why wouldn't they have done the job properly in the first place? She was no better than a slave girl. No one would have paid much heed.'"

My anger boiled over. "To murder? In Camulod? My father makes no secret of the fact that the price for rape and murder in his command is death! You seem to take it very

lightly, Cousin, but that's the way it is! Death. My hope was that she might identify her attacker, or attackers, if there were more than one of them, which I doubt!"

His eyebrow had gone up at the strength of my outburst and now when he spoke, his voice was low. "Why would you doubt it?"

"I have my reasons."

"I'm sure you do." His voice was much quieter now. "Do you mind my asking what they are?"

"Ask yourself, Uther!"

"Ask myself?" He frowned slightly and shook his head abruptly. "So why would it be so important to you— because it very obviously is—that this girl should be able to identify her attacker? That is what I'm asking myself, Cay. Why? You went to a great deal of trouble to protect her. Why? She was a stranger."

"Not to everyone! She was no stranger to you!"

"To me? What does that mean? I wasn't even in Camulod!"

"Oh yes you were, Uther!"

Now his frown was deep and angry. "Are you suggesting..." His voice tailed away to silence and I watched the muscles in his face as they reflected the thoughts going through his mind. If he was dissembling, he was performing masterfully. "It was that night, wasn't "it? The night I left?"

"Yes. The night you left in a rage, swearing to teach her a lesson she would not soon forget. They found her in the stables next morning. She had been beaten almost to death. And you were gone. No one had seen you go. No one knew where you had gone."

"I see." He was not looking at me. His eyes Were fixed on a rock in the stream bed and on the water that spumed around it. "So you, quite naturally, assumed that I had done this thing." His eyes flicked up to hold my gaze. "It was a very brutal beating, wasn't it?" I did not respond. "And you thought me capable of that kind of bestiality?" I simply stared at him. "You still think so?"

"I don't know, Uther."

"You wanted her to recover and identify me?"

That, and the way he said it, made me pause. "No, I wanted her to recover and identify her attacker. I did not want it to be you." He was looking directly at me. "I was afraid it might be, but I was hoping she would prove me wrong."

"So why did you arrange for her to disappear? You could have kept her there until I came back."

"I could have, but by keeping her there I was putting her life in danger."

"How, in God's name? I was nowhere near!"

"Are you admitting guilt?"

"No, of course not, but you suspected me."

I got to my feet and looked down at him. "That's trust, in a strange way, I suppose. I suspected you, but I had no proof and I could have been wrong. I wanted desperately to believe I was wrong. And if I were wrong, then her true attacker could have been any man in Camulod. It could have been one or even more of the men guarding her—any of them. And any of them could have killed her. That would have proved you innocent, but she would have died in the proving of it."

He considered that for some time, then jerked his head in a brief gesture of acceptance. "So how did you get her out?"

"By trickery. She was gone before I ever mounted a guard over her."

"No. Her guards saw her."

"They saw a boy who took her place. He ran out of the building while the guards were waiting for someone to try to get in."

Uther shook his head, a slow smile of wonder stealing over his face. "You are quite a man, Cousin. Where did you take her to?"

"A safe place. Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity."

I shrugged again. "She is...safe."

"Good. Then I hope I'll have the pleasure of meeting her again some day and putting your mind at rest, one way or the other."

I had to ask my question. "Was it you, Uther? Did you do it?"

He was silent for a long time, holding my gaze, a strange look on his face that I had not seen before. "You saw me as I left, that night. You obviously thought I was angry enough to do it. Then I disappeared, which could be taken as an indication of guilt." He paused, evidently remembering. "The four wenches we had that night. They must have said something. What happened to them?"

"They never knew. I sent them away early the next morning, before they had a chance to hear about it. They went under close escort—some trusted men of Titus's— ostensibly to set up a house for us in Glevum. The news had not yet spread, and they knew nothing of what happened."

He thought about that for a short time. "My thanks, Cousin, for that. You evidently had at least some doubts in your head about my guilt."

"Some." I nodded. "Enough to convince me to take steps to protect you from gossip. I was angry and confused, but I wanted to conduct my own inquiries uninfluenced by hearsay."

He stood up. "Well, Cousin Cay, I'm in a bad situation here. I could claim innocence, but it wouldn't put your doubts to rest. I know the truth of it, but you are going to have to live with your doubts, I'm afraid—for a while, at least. Can you continue to do that?"

"Why not? I've been doing it for months."

"And you can still ride with me?"

"Aye, Uther, and fight with you, and hope I've been mistaken. I have strong doubts about your guilt and your innocence, both, and I have no proof of either. On the other hand, I've known you all my life and no man is dearer to me.

There was a half smile on his lips. "So you would forgive me for one lapse?"

I shook my head, seeing Cassandra's battered body in my mind. "No, Uther, I would not, not for that one. That was inhuman, unforgivable. I simply hope it wasn't you who did it, and until the day when I know for certain, one way or the other, I will treat you as Uther Pendragon, cousin and friend untarnished."

He was no longer smiling. "Caius," he said, "I tell you truthfully that I can see your reasons for doubting me. .Were I in your shoes, thinking these doubts of you, I do not know if I could hold myself to be as magnanimous as you are now. Thank you for that." And then the devil flickered in his eyes again, and he added, "But do try to remember that most human men, being only men, cannot stand too much magnanimity in others. It smacks of sanctimoniousness." He rose to his feet before I could frame a response. "Come, we had better be on our way. Time is not waiting for us and our troopers are."

We made good time for the remainder of the day, but it was after sunset before we arrived at the abandoned farm where our forces awaited us. Uther spoke for both of us, issuing orders that we would break camp at dawn and march back immediately. We would encamp the following night and finish our return journey by sunrise, so that, providing the enemy was in place, we would arrive at his back before noon.

We held a short council of war for the benefit of our junior officers and then Uther and I retired to our leather campaign tents, exhausted by the day's journey, and hoping against hope that we had built our campaign around the correct supposition: that Lot could not know our true strength, since we ourselves did not know it, having had no opportunity to conduct our census. If we were wrong somehow, if Lot had assessed our true strength accurately, then we would be riding back to Camulod without the advantage of surprise.'

We headed back towards Camulod the following morning by a longer, more circuitous route than the one Uther and I had taken on the way out, making no attempt to hurry. It was essential that we arrive no sooner than Lot, and our best estimates indicated that he would strike against the fort either the following day, the third of our schedule, or the one after that. Uther wanted to have our forces within striking distance of the Colony by dawn on the fourth day. I would have preferred to wait one day longer, to allow Lot the time to assess his position and commit himself to a course of action that we could then disrupt.

As it turned out, however, neither of us had a choice. We had miscalculated by one entire day in Lot's favour, for he had arrived with his army on the plains of Camulod midway through the afternoon of the day we left, and as we made our leisurely way southward, his forces were battering brutally at the fort itself.

His unexpected arrival took my father and his defenders totally by surprise. A large number of infantry, almost a full cohort, were busily at work throwing up a defensive breastwork and ditch at the bottom of the hill. Popilius himself, our senior warrant officer, was commanding them, and faced with a decision either to abandon the incomplete breastworks or remain there to defend them, he chose the latter. Approximately a mile to the north of his position, to his left, another large party of troops was involved in removing everything useful from the buildings of the villa farm. The officer in charge of this operation was a young man, but a wise one. By the time he was apprised of the rapid approach of Lot's advance parties, it was already too late for him to retire to the fort in safety with his men, so he took immediate steps to strengthen the main building of the villa to the best of his ability. By overturning the wagons they had been loading and using them as barricades, he and his men were able to construct a defensible perimeter, and there they remained, a potential thorn in the side of Lot's advancing army.

The fighting on that first afternoon was savage. Lot's army was largely undisciplined, each unit paying heed only to the most basic orders of its local commanders. His soldiers, if they could be called such, were all unruly individuals, and their first assault on the villa's defenders turned into a disorganized brawl, quickly and effectively won by the defenders, who fought as a unit and drove their attackers off to lick their wounds as darkness began to fall. Instead of allowing his men time to relax after beating off their assailants, however, the young officer in charge took advantage of the weakness he had perceived in the enemy's lack of discipline and led his men through the darkness, in a hard and bitter fight, to join Popilius's cohort a mile away. Hearing the noise of the fighting, and guessing what was happening, the veteran Popilius flung out his men on his left flank along the hillside, until they made contact with the fighters from the villa and enabled them to gain the comparative safety of the unfinished breastworks.

In the meantime, under cover of the darkness, the opportunity arose for Popilius to withdraw his men completely from their unfinished camp and get them up the hill in safety to the fort. Instead, he sent a courier up the hill to inform my father that he intended to hold his position and defend it against Lot's rabble. His major problem, he pointed out, would be the danger of being outflanked and infiltrated by Lot's people, who might attempt to climb the hillside on either side of his position, and start shooting arrows into his men from above and behind. My father sent out two squadrons of bowmen to guard his flanks, and at the same time he sent out three of his best riders to break through Lot's cordon and find us, warning us to get back sooner than we had planned.

These messengers were to tell us that Picus himself would be holding back his own cavalry. The brunt of the initial defence would fall on the shoulders of Popilius and his infantry. As soon as we put in an appearance, my father would loose his own seven hundred cavalry in a frontal attack, down the road and into the centre of the enemy.

One of these three messengers found us just after noon the following day and we immediately began a forced march, cursing the caution that had sent us so far north needlessly. My father had estimated the strength of Lot's army at around four thousand, a number that surprised me and added greatly to my sense of having erred badly. The urgency of a quick return had become immediately and devastatingly obvious.

Late in the afternoon, heavy grey clouds began piling up in the west, and we could see lightning flickering among them. The heat grew more and more oppressive as the storm drew closer, so that I found myself anticipating the chill of the rain that was sweeping towards us. My pleasure was short-lived. The downpour was awful, blowing against us in torrents, soaking everyone and everything completely and almost instantly, and turning the soft earth under the hooves of our thousand horses into a bog, so that headway was almost impossible. I had never seen such heavy rain, and it showed no signs of abating. The clouds were so thick that they blocked the sun completely, so it seemed we rode at night, although we knew there were still several hours of daylight left. We had no option of resting to wait it out, however; we had to keep moving as quickly as possible, and what had started as a leisurely march quickly degenerated into a nightmare ride, with horses slipping and falling everywhere, terrified by the savagery of the storm, the glare of the lightning and the chaotic noise of thunder, wind, rain and battering hailstones.

The freak storm lasted for almost three hours, and by the time the clouds finally began to break, our force was totally demoralized. It had been impossible even to shout to each other during that time, and every man had been immured in his own private hell, suffering the agony of cold, wet clothing and armour, exhausted by the relentless struggle to keep his horse upright, moving and sane. The first break in the clouds showed us the pink and purple high sky of the setting sun, which took with it our only opportunity of finding warmth and dryness that night, for all the wood in the land lay soaked. We settled our minds to the prospect of a long, miserable night.

Uther made his way to my side. "What do you think?"

"About what? I don't think I'm capable of thought. It's a mess."

"We all know that, Caius." There was a measure of asperity in his voice. "I didn't come to you to hear you crying! I want your opinion as an officer. Is it better to stop here and rest or to ride on? We've still got a long way to go and it's getting dark."

I made myself think, and it turned out to be easier than I expected, for a memory of Uncle Varrus sprang into my mind unbidden. I took a long look around me, as far as I could see. We were in the bottom of a shallow valley and as the land rose to my right it flattened out slightly before rising again to a heavily treed hillside. A picture emerged in my mind of a boat burning.

"Who's our quartermaster?" I asked Uther.

"We have three. Why?"

"Send them to me. We'll stay here tonight. The rain's gone. We'll move up to the high ground there and see what we can do about getting dry. Pass the word for one man in every two to start gathering wood. Enough for four large fires, big enough to dry us all off."

"Are you mad?" Uther's voice sounded shocked. "Fires? Everything's soaked! How in the name of Hephaestus are you going to light them?"

"Publius Varrus's way. That's why I want our quartermasters."

He looked at me in silence for a while, then shrugged his shoulders and rode away, signalling to a centurion. Very soon thereafter, everyone was out of the valley and up on the high ground. Within half an hour four large piles of wet wood had begun to take shape and I had spoken with the quartermasters in charge of our commissary supplies. They, too, thought I was mad, or at least profligate, but they produced the oil from our rations, poured it over the sodden wood and set it alight, and in what seemed like no time at all, our entire force was clustered around four massive conflagrations. I had no fears at all that these fires might be seen by unfriendly eyes. We were still a long, long way from home. The effect on our men was magical as the chill slowly thawed from their bones and their clothes began to steam. After a while, smaller fires began to appear apart from the larger ones, and the commissary staff began doling out food. The night was warm, too, and most of the men were almost naked as they waited for their wet clothing to dry. Leather legionary tents sprang up like mushrooms and out of chaos and demoralization came order, new resolve and comfortable rest. I was determined to make the most of this mood of renewed optimism, and I kept the men moving in relays to gather fresh supplies of wood, giving the roaring bonfires no chance to die down.

It must have been close to midnight when Uther approached me again, an excited look on his face. I was surprised to see him still awake and told him so, but he just shook his head briefly in that characteristic way of his, managing to convey the triviality of my thought in one gesture. "We're blind, Cay. Stone blind and foolish."

"Why? And how?"

"I've been racking my brain trying to think of the quickest back to Camulod come daylight. I imagine you have too?" I nodded and he went on, "Well, it suddenly hit me! Where are we and why are we here?"

"You mean here and now?"

"Yes, I mean right here and right now, and don't even bother trying to think about the answer, because I'm going to tell you. We are in the middle of nowhere, travelling a confused route from the camp to Camulod because we have to remain hidden, correct?"

"Correct. So? What's your point?"

"My point, Cousin, is that we are behaving like idiots. There is no need for secrecy now. Lot is at Camulod and all we have to do is get there as quickly as possible...And there's a road less than seven miles to the east of us that will take us within five miles of Camulod! We can mount a forced march down an open road now. No need to go on blundering through this damned forest."

I had jumped to my feet as he was speaking. "By the Christ! You're right, Uther! I am a fool!"

"Well, you're hardly lacking for company."

"Seven miles to the road, you say?"

"At the most. Perhaps half that far. I don't know. I've never been so far off the road in these parts. I know the last villa the Atribatus brothers bought is somewhere to the south-west of us—that was the last new property the Colony acquired—but exactly how far away it is—again, I don't know, perhaps ten miles. But from there, it's only eight miles to the road. We've been swinging in an arc. We must be close to the road right now."

I headed for my horse. "I'm going to find it right now."

"In the dark?"

"You're fire Mind. It's a clear, moonlit night."

"Wait then. I'm coming with you."

So we rode together and once away from the firelight it was easy to find our way between the clumps of trees that dotted the landscape. The road was less than two miles from our starting point, stretching black and straight and open from north to south. We rode straight up onto the roadway and sat there laughing at each other, until Uther spoke.

"Well, what do you think?"

"No need to think. I know. If we roust out our column now, we can be within a few miles of Camulod by dawn."

"My thoughts exactly. What are we waiting for?"

We galloped back to our camp like a pair of excited boys and roused everyone. The fires and the heat of the summer night had undone the damage of the storm and all of the men had managed to obtain some rest. There was some alarm and panic when we clattered in, but soon every man in the place was gathered around us as we sat there on our horses. Uther held up his hands for silence, and when he had it he looked at me in inquiry.

"Go ahead," I told him. "It's your show."

He grinned and raised his voice. "Hear me!" The silence grew more attentive. "You all heard the news today. Lot is at the gates of Camulod. The storm last night delayed us badly, and we will be hard put to come to Camulod before tomorrow night, taking this route. And if we do not come, our friends and families will die." Nobody moved or spoke. Uther looked at me again and then continued. "We have been blind, soldiers of Camulod. The road the Romans built is less than two miles from where we stand. If we go now, we can be close to Camulod by dawn. What say you?" The roar of surprised approval raised goose-flesh on my body. "So be it. Leave your supplies and tents here and mount up. Bring only what you need for fighting. The commissary wagons will stay here and follow later. We have a lesson to teach the usurper from Cornwall. We leave within the quarter-hour!"