Uther

"So, Lot has his hounds out coursing for my downfall."

Herliss was sitting close to the roaring fire in the main hall of the fortified hamlet known as the Crag Fort, and above his head the sloping roof of the building rose up into smoke-filled blackness. Ygraine, Queen of Cornwall, sat on the other side of the stone fireplace, flanked by two of her ladies. Uther sat on Herliss's right, so that Herliss was between him and the fire, and Lagan stood beside him. Behind Lagan's back the huge room was dark, save for an arrangement of iron candelabra that illuminated a table against the wall farthest from the fire.

"That's what it looked like to Lagan," Uther responded. "He assumed immediately that they were on their way to your White Fort, although he could not understand why they would need to be so secretive—"

"Not until I had thought about it for at least half a heartbeat," Lagan interjected. "Then it became clear. They are our King's men, going about his lawful affairs." His voice was heavy with irony, but it provoked only a half-smile from Uther.

"Anyway," Uther continued, "I could not tell where they were going or why. All I knew was that they weren't my men. That left me to assume that they were Lot's. . . Cornish in name and allegiance. And so I kept my head down." He glanced at Lagan to see if he had anything to add, but the Cornishman stood slightly hunched, staring into the flames and oblivious to what was being said for the time being. His arms were crossed on his chest, and in one hand he held a pot of ale.

Uther then looked directly at Herliss, taking care to avoid Ygraine's eyes. He was highly aware that she was staring at him, and he was afraid of looking back at her lest his face betray his thoughts and feelings to the others in the room. One of the two women sitting slightly behind the Queen was the Lady Dyllis, but the other was a stranger.

He and Lagan had arrived in the Crag Fort an hour earlier, and Uther was impressed by the way they had been received. The fort was strongly guarded, encircled by two separate lines of vigilant sentinels, the farthest of these about a hundred paces out from the walls and made up of pairs of guards, each pair posted some twenty paces from its neighbours on either side. The walled fort itself was small, its rectangular enclosure no greater than seventy-live, perhaps eighty paces to a side, but it was a strongly built affair, made from local stone, and Uther had identified it at first glance as a military installation, built hundreds of years earlier by the Romans to house regular patrols, or perhaps even a permanent garrison of approximately one hundred and twenty men and officers, that being the number of men in a maniple, the tactical lighting unit of a cohort. A tight cluster of guards had been on duty by the heavy, wooden main gates, and it had been evident from the outset that Lagan was expected, because no one had sought to question either him or his companion as they unsaddled their horses and left them to Herliss's stablehands before crossing the guard lines and entering the main fort. Uther had felt, going in, that no one even glanced at his face, but he had not permitted himself to believe it. He had simply accepted that Herliss's people, at least, were alert and knew what they were about, well prepared to safeguard their own part of Cornwall.

Once safely within the walls, Lagan had led Uther directly to the main building, a log structure that had once served as the headquarters building of the Roman garrison. It was the largest building in the enclosure and was surrounded by some half a score of smaller buildings, all built of logs around four or six supporting posts. About half of these, long and low, were evidently barracks, and others were plainly used for storage and maintenance and other utilitarian purposes. Several of the remaining buildings looked like substantial dwellings, and Uther had seen three, at least, that were connected to each other by enclosed walkways.

They found Herliss waiting for them in the main hall, and as they greeted each other Uther's eyes went immediately to the far wall, where a few household servants were loading food onto a table that already groaned beneath the profusion of dishes—hot, cold, flesh, fowl, fish, fruit, vegetable and bread—that lay piled upon it. Herliss explained that the Queen and her women would join them soon and had already been informed of their arrival. None of them had yet eaten, he added, the Queen having decided to await the arrival of their expected guests, and in consequence, everyone was hungry and impatient.

Herliss summoned one of his guards, who had been waiting to lead Uther to the quarters that had been assigned to him. There, Herliss explained, he would find a hoi brazier and a selection of clean, dry clothing. Uther had begun to thank the old man when, without warning, Ygraine walked into the hall.

He managed to greet the Queen somehow and pay his respects to her women without betraying his absolute confusion, and then excused himself, dripping rainwater, to scurry away with his head down, following the guard who had been waiting for him. Once there, however, safely ensconced and alone, Uther felt under no constraint to hurry and change his clothes before rushing back to the hall where the others awaited him. Instead, he changed slowly, drying himself at leisure and luxuriating in the glow of the brazier as he dressed himself again in the clean, warm clothing that had been laid out for his use. And while he was doing so, he permitted himself for the first time since the arrival of Lagan Longhead in his camp to consider all the chaotic thoughts that had been going through his mind.

His first thoughts upon hearing Lagan's unexpected invitation had been of ambush and treachery, but those had been short-lived. Lagan had been wearing Uther's own ring, as arranged between Uther himself and Ygraine. and Uther could think of no circumstances that might have induced Ygraine to give up that secret to anyone else. Not even Herliss had been privy to that arrangement. And so he had accepted Lagan's invitation at face value. From the moment of that decision, however, he had been forced to reflect upon the feelings that he held for Ygraine. It had been many months since he had last seen the Cornish Queen, and the bare truth was that it had been an equally long time since he had thought of her to any degree.

Only now, in the privacy of this strange chamber with its welcome brazier, did he admit to himself that he had been intrigued by the thought of seeing her again—and to be truthful, a voice in his mind said, of bedding her again. As the thought occurred to him, he turned his head and looked at the bed, a substantial affair that was raised high off the floor on solid legs and covered with a wealth of rich bedding. It was a sturdy, solid bed, made for everything a man could require of it, and he smiled to himself.

The simple sight of her, her welcoming smile, had blinded him. Her radiance and beauty had almost rocked him physically with the force of its impact. Stunned by the instantaneous awareness that he had been able to forget how beautiful she was, he had hesitated momentarily in mid-step as he mewed to greet her, feeling his eyes go wide and knowing that he was betraying far more than was wise. He had been consumed instantly and utterly by the red, fire-lit glory of her hair seen from fifteen paces distant and by the forgotten brilliance of her great green eyes in the startling whiteness of her flawless face. And then the memory of her smooth, bare hip beneath his hand had caused an explosion in his chest, bringing his heart up into his throat and snatching the breath away from him. He remembered the weight of her, defenceless and abandoned in his arms, pulling him down as he lowered his head to kiss that generous, laughing mouth with its wide, full, soft lips.

When he had found himself face to face with her, gazing into her smiling eyes, he had thought he might never be able to find words with which to greet her properly, but words came to him and he had muttered something that aroused neither comment nor surprise from her or from anyone else. He had felt her fingers close warmly over his own and had known beyond doubt that she was even happier to see him than he was to see her, but he could think of nothing to say or do other than to bend forward, slip one arm around her pliant waist and sink his face into the silken warmth of her soft neck. And even as that thought filled his mind, he had imagined the gentle breeze of her warm breath in his ear, and his throat had closed completely with lust and embarrassment. Ygraine, however, had seemed to notice nothing amiss and looked away from him, still smiling, to say something to Herliss. Awkward and fumbling and tongue-tied, he had been grateful for the excuse to flee to his quarters, where he might find time and opportunity to overcome this unaccustomed panic. He had managed to be pleasant, he knew, to the Lady Dyllis and to her companion, whose name was Roman, Lydia, and he knew, too, that he had eventually managed to escape without making an utter fool of himself.

He recalled now hearing his Uncle Publius speaking years before about being thunderstruck—the awestruck love of an adolescent boy for a beautiful woman whom he has seen for the first time. But he was no adolescent youth, and this was no first-time encounter: he was Uther Pendragon, King of the Pendragon Federation of south Cambria, and he had lain with this woman months earlier. How, then, could he have been so dumbfounded at the sight of her? The truth was disconcerting and confusing, and by the time he had returned to the main hall he was still less than fully prepared to meet the Cornish Queen with equanimity, face to face, eye to eye.

Lagan was already there, and when Uther arrived they gathered around the dining table. There was no formality in the sealing arrangements, save that the Queen's two women sat together at one end of the table and Ygraine herself sat at the head. Uther approached the table as eagerly as anyone, for he had eaten very little since the previous night and was sharp set with hunger.

Only when the edges had been chewed from their appetites did conversation begin, and then it was desultory, confined to mundane things, until Uther asked Herliss to tell him about how the Queen's party had managed their "escape" and their eventual homecoming.

It had been a simple matter, Herliss began. After Uther's departure with Popilius Cirro and the main body of the raiding party, the skeletal force left behind to guard the camp and look after the remaining prisoners had remained at high alert for twenty-four hours and had then relaxed. The night after that, the escape plan had been put into effect. Once the remaining guards had been "overcome" by Nemo's crew, the escapees had made their way out of the valley without difficulty and had managed to win safely back to Lot's main base at Golant within a matter of days. Nemo's group had remained with them for two days and had then left them close by the sea coast, in the professed hope of finding a ship that would carry them to Gaul. None of the Queen's party had thought the fleeing group would survive to reach foreign shores, but they had made no move to interfere with Nemo's intentions. What was far more important was that none of the Queen's bodyguard, including their leader, Alasdair Mac lain, had thought to question any aspect of the affair, and all of them were convinced that they owed their safety and their lives to Herliss and his loyalty and ingenuity. They truly believed, the old man told Uther, that their captors would have killed them sooner or later rather than set them free. All of them had seen the other Cornish prisoners being marched away under guard, never to return.

Uther sniffed when he heard that. "Did any of the others ever return here?"

Herliss grunted. "Aye, well, the false Queen, Morgas, and the rest of the Queen's women were brought back quickly enough once your messengers had delivered your instructions to Camulod to set them free and return them to their homeland. They were here within a matter of two weeks, I would say. Some of your people from Camulod rode with them as escorts and then sent word to Lot that they could be collected from the edges of his land. By the time Lot's people arrived to meet the women, the Camulod troops had gone."

Uther nodded. "Good, that was as I instructed. But I was not speaking of the women. I was wondering about those other warriors of yours . . . the people we set free up on the moors?"

Old Herliss turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "You loosed nigh on a hundred and twenty men—six score, all of them mine. None of them was ever reported seen again."

Uther's forehead was creased in perplexity. "Are you saying they all vanished?"

"Apparently so. Lot pronounced them dead, telling the world they had been foully murdered by you while you held them prisoner, their deaths attested to by the members of the Queen's own bodyguard. None of the missing men had any names, you see . . . at least none that were known and reported to Lot's people. Tragic loss . . . it could have created havoc among my own people here in the south, had not the gap they left been quickly filled. Six score newcomers came wandering into my lands about that time, can you believe that? They even set up house among my folk, adopting and consoling the widows and families of the men who had been killed in captivity."

"That was most amazingly fortunate."

"It was . . . Miraculous, if you really think about it. . ."

Uther glanced around the table and found that everyone was smiling, including the young woman Lydia. He found himself able to look straight at Ygraine now and direct his next question to her. "So tell me, lady, if you will, about your King's reception of the news that you yet lived and had escaped?"

Still smiling, Ygraine looked at Herliss, motioning for him to continue, and he spoke up immediately.

"He took it very well, considering all that he had done to prevent it. As I said at the outset, we went directly from your encampment to his stronghold at Golant, which was, in fact, much closer to where we were than was my own fort of Tir Gwyn, and when we arrived there we found Lot was expected to arrive the following day. That was surprising, for I had anticipated that he might be up on the northern coast, supervising the building of his new fortress at Rosnant."

"Rosnant?" Uther sat up straight. "Lot has a new fortress? When did this come into being?"

Herliss scratched at his beard. "Well, it didn't come into being— the place has always been there. Perhaps you've heard of it as Tintagel? The local people call it that." Seeing Uther's head shake, he glanced wide-eyed at his son, who said nothing. "Well," Herliss continued, "it's a natural, impregnable fortress, completely safe from attack—sits on a spur of land attached to the mainland by only a tiny, impassable causeway that would give a goat trouble and could be defended by a single blind man. Can't be captured by a frontal attack, 'cause it can't be reached. Can't be invested and can't be starved out, because it's surrounded on all sides by the sea. And it can't be attacked from the sea, either, because the cliffs are too high. Supplies can be landed there and carried up the cliffs to feed the defenders, but no attacking force could ever climb up there. Impossible."

Lagan leaned forward and spoke for the first time. "I don't think you need to worry about Rosnant, Uther. It's a defensive place, a place for a last stand. Lot can't be touched there, true, but he can't touch you from there, either. And if he should try to escape by sea, he'll have to keep going until he reaches Gaul or some other land, for there will be no place for him to land here again. The people will back you against him. There is a sickness in our land and its name is Gulrhys Lot. People will go to any lengths to be cured of it, believe me."

"But what about the mercenaries? Seems to me there are more of those in Cornwall than there are Cornishmen."

Herliss spoke up again. "You might be right there, but they are Outlanders, and in the fight for our own lands, our folk will win. Of course, you will assist us."

"I will? When?"

"Wherever and whenever it is possible, I presume, since we both seek the same end."

Uther decided that he did not yet want to pursue that. "Tell me about this other place, his stronghold, Golant. It's north of here, is it not?"

"Well, more east than north, but aye, it lies above us some thirty miles along the coast. What do you want to know about it?"

"What kind of place it is . . . how strong. Is it takeable?"

"By siege, you mean? I doubt it. It's one of the old circular enclosures built before the Romans came. Two earth ramparts, one inside the other with a ditch between. Main entrance in the east. There the inner rampart remains circular, with a simple gate leading to the central enclosure, but the outer ring extends eastward and becomes more pointed, like an egg-shape, making a space, entirely surrounded by high ramparts, that can be used to amass forces for a raid outside the gates, or to contain and slaughter any enemies who might get by the first, outer gates."

"This outer gate, is it hinged?"

Herliss blinked for a moment in confusion, but then he realized what Uther was asking him and his face cleared. "You mean like a door might have hinges? No, it's not a gate in that sense. It has no doors. In order to understand that, you have to begin with the rampart, the outer wall. D'you know the Roman measurement they call a pes?"

"Aye, it's supposed to be the length of a tall man's foot. We don't use it but I know what it means."

Herliss grinned. "We use it all the time now. The old Duke started using it first. He said it made more sense than trying to describe every distance in terms of paces, and since I've become used to using it myself, I agree with him. A hundred paces for a man's a lot farther than the same hundred paces for a boy, but a foot's an understandable unit to both of them. Anyway, the outer rampart measures thirty-five to forty feet thick. It stands about six feet high, too, with a twelve-foot-deep ditch in front of it that measures another twenty-two feet from edge to edge. The gate, then, is a narrow passageway, walled with wood and no more than six feet across at its widest point. It runs the full width of the rampart wall—that makes it thirty-live to forty feet long—and the ramparts on both sides are built up like flanking towers, with bridges stretching over the passageway from side to side. Anyone entering the place has to come in through that passage, and for anyone unwelcome, it's a long way." He paused. "The only other possibility is to light your way across the outer ditch and up the incline to the lop of the rampart. II' you get across that, you've another ditch and another rampart to go before you reach the enclosure, and may the gods of war and fortune be on your side, because you'll need them."

"Is the other ring, the inner one, the same size as the first?"

"Not quite. It's completely circular but slightly narrower—say, twenty-two feet thick. The same kind of passageway, however, lined with wood and overlooked by defenders on both sides and on bridges above. The inner circle, the living space inside the walls, is about two hundred and fifty feet from side to side, a good hundred paces no matter how you count it." He sat quietly then, gazing at Uther and continuing to scratch at his beard with one fingertip. "Why are you so interested in Lot's defences? Are you thinking of attacking them?"

Uther laughed and shook his head. "No, not at all, but I like to know what I'm up against at all times. If we drive the man into hiding, I'd like to know the odds against keeping him there or winkling him out again." He looked back to where Lagan sat listening. "I ought to have asked you sooner . . . your wife and son are well?"

Lagan nodded, "Aye, they are, and safe at home again."

Uther was unable to hide his surprise. "You leave them at home? I would have thought you'd keep them within sight of you at all times now." He knew before the words had left his mouth that they were tactless, but it was too late to recall them. Lagan, however, took no offence, but merely shook his head.

"Here in Cornwall, things are not always what they seem. In fact it is safer for me to leave my family unprotected than to keep them close by me."

"What my son means," Herliss growled, "is that Lot's madness grows more and more extreme from day to day. But as long as Lagan can willingly leave his wife and child open to the threat of Lot's displeasure, then Lot will believe that Lagan cannot possibly be plotting against his King. The truth, of course, concealed in openness from Lot's blind eyes, is that Lydda and Cardoc are better protected at any time of the day or night than is Lot himself. At the first sign of a threat to either of them. Lot's world will come crashing down onto his shoulders and his cursed head will spin on the ground between his feet. In the meantime, however. Lagan is left free to do as he wills: to go and find you, for example, and bring you here to meet with us, because Lot could never dream that anyone might be sufficiently courageous or foolish to plot against him while his loved ones are vulnerable to his venom."

"Good," Uther grunted. "How then do we destroy this pestilence, and when?"

"We have a plan for that." This was Ygraine. "That is why I decided to send for you. Herliss, will you explain our strategy to King Uther?"

Uther held up his hand. "Wait!" He looked directly at the woman sitting beside Dyllis, the one called Lydia, and then turned his gaze back to the Queen. "Lady Ygraine," he said, "I trust that no one will be grossly offended here, but I enforce a policy among my own people that I have found to be sound. We never speak of future plans or secret things when there are ears around belonging to people we do not know well enough to trust." He pointed at the woman Lydia. "I do not know this young woman here, and until I feel far more at ease here in Lot's country, I will take no other person's word, not even yours or Lord Herliss's here, on her behalf or on behalf of any other stranger." He half turned towards the astounded Lydia and nodded to her. "Forgive me, lady, but every word I say might well win back to Gulrhys Lot."

The young woman rose to her feet, pale-faced, and bowed formally to the Queen and then to the rest of the group before turning and gliding from the hall. As she did so, Dyllis did the same, after asking the Queen's permission to retire and pointing out that there was no real need for her to remain. Ygraine nodded and watched as Dyllis hurried after her companion, and as soon as she was out of sight, the Queen turned to Uther.

"That seemed excessive, King Uther."

Herliss saved him the trouble of replying. "Nonsense, child, Uther's absolutely right." The old man's voice was the rumble of an aged bear newly wakened from his winter sleep. "When that whoreson can force my own son to come against his father in fear for his son's life, then nobody can trust a soul. The girl might weep because her feelings are hurt, but she'll get over it. If that's the greatest pain she ever has to suffer through, she'll live to see her grandchildren through several generations."

Uther was looking about him again. "How can you safeguard against betrayal here? There must be half a hundred people, counting all your guards. I assumed the place would be empty and abandoned. but you marched me into this place in plain view of all your men, and we have been surrounded by people ever since I first arrived. Any or all of them could be in Lot's pay."

Herliss had sat nodding as Uther spoke and now he smiled and shrugged.

"I am not so stupid as you would think me, nor am I as foolishly trustful." He waved one hand around, indicating their surroundings. "Everyone here, each living soul, has been betrayed and savaged by Lot's treachery. Some have lost loved ones, family and friends; others have been dispossessed and banished; many have been tortured and mutilated; while others have been merely robbed and beaten. But I will swear to you, there is not a person here who would ever consider betraying us, or anything heard or seen here, to Gulrhys Lot. I have staked all our lives on that."

Uther gazed at the older man for several moments and then nodded in acquiescence. "Very well, then, tell me about this plan of yours."

The plan, as dreamed up by Ygraine and laid out by Herliss, was simple and straightforward, and it was predicated upon the likelihood of Lot's continuing to import mercenaries from beyond the seas. There were thousands of mercenaries currently in Cornwall. Herliss could not name the number, but he said it was enormous, and he was insistent, calling on Lagan to agree with him, that there would be thousands more by the following year. Lot had no shortage of armed men, the veteran commander pointed out, and that meant that he had no real need to concern himself with the loyalty or the disposition of his native Cornish troops. He believed that the superior numbers of his imported minions nullified any threat that might arrive from his own people, and so he grew increasingly arrogant, offending all his own noblemen and warriors. But he seemed amazingly unaware that he sorely lacked good leaders, generals and strategists to employ all his imported mercenaries to advantage.

Lagan interjected at this point to explain that the reason for the lack of leaders was not hard to find, since Lot had routinely cut down and isolated any and every leader among his own Cornish people whom he had seen as a potential threat to his own rule.

He had a few able leaders in his camp, nonetheless, Herliss pointed out, and he named Cerdic and Tewdric, the two Germanic leaders with whom Uther had come face to face the day of the great storm, along with a pair of others called Issa and Loholt, who preferred to fight alone, commanding their own armies and beholden to no one other than their nominal commander, Gulrhys Lot. Apart from those four, there was no one else, unless one wished to include two Cornish generals called Cuneglas and Ralla, who were sufficiently useless to have avoided the King's jealousy and sufficiently spineless for him to believe that he could still rely upon their loyalty. Lot had no other able generals, and that was a truth that cried out to be exploited, because the jealousy among the six tied Lot's hands most of the time. All of them saw themselves as supreme commanders, and none was willing to be seen as subservient to any other.

Uther was frowning as he listened to that. How, he asked, did that benefit him or any of them in any practical way? Herliss's response was flat and brusque.

"Lot is planning to invade your territories early in the spring by sea and by land at the same time, in the hope of catching you before you can strike south and keeping you tied down where you are. The sea invasion will hit your lands in Cambria, and it will hit hard, beginning at Carmarthen, where there are beaches for landing men and wharves for landing supplies and provisions. From Carmarthen they'll strike eastward, following the main Roman road along the coast towards Caerdyff. They intend to use the road itself as a base line and to use the existing ruins of the old Roman marching forts, consolidating their advances as they go and then launching co-ordinated raids unto your northern territories as they progress eastward. This will be a large army . . . probably the biggest invading force ever to hit your shores. The generals Cerdic and Tewdric, the two co-operators, will lead that host and hold responsibility for Cambria."

Uther made no response to this. It was evident to him that he was listening to truth and he knew it would have been pointless to interrupt. Instead, he listened, absorbing every nuance of what Herliss was saying.

The old man paused, obviously considering the words he would say next. "About Lot's mercenary Outlanders . . . the countryside is crawling with the foreign filth, as you saw last night on your way in. They are everywhere, and no one's life is safe, since Lot believes no one in his beloved Cornwall really loves him, although I can't imagine where he would find grounds for believing that. . .

"The thing is, they believe they are invincible, these Outlanders, because they have never been challenged in Cornwall." He stopped and reconsidered that. "Well, they have been challenged by your people on several occasions, but never in real strength, and they have never been really thrashed . . . If you are interested, I could provide you with an opportunity to thrash them within the next few days."

Uther frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means I'm offering you the opportunity to destroy an army immediately, at little risk to yourself. A large contingent of mercenaries, almost a thousand strong, will be leaving the far northwest to come down this way in three days' time, four at the very latest. Nominally, they will be under the command of Cuneglas, which means they'll be under no control at all and therefore easy to deal with. Their line of march will bring them very close to where your raiding force sits now, and it transpires that the place where you could meet them is perfectly fashioned for an entrapment using those long, lethal bows of yours. It's a killing ground. Interested?"

"Of course, but you want me to burn down your fort here within the next few days . . . I can't do both."

"No matter." The old man smiled. "I'll burn it myself and lay the blame on you. As long as you are interested, we will talk later, and by the time you leave tomorrow you'll know everything there is to know about the Outlanders. the route they'll take and the place where you can set your trap." Herliss paused then, frowning, and asked the next question in his mind. "What of your Cousin Merlyn? How is he?"

Uther fought to keep his face expressionless and his voice casual. "Merlyn? He is well enough. He was badly wounded last summer, and it left him incapacitated for long months, but he improves daily now and will be himself come the new year. Why do you ask?"

"Because that's not what Lot's spies have been telling him. They have brought word that Merlyn of Camulod has lost his mind . . . that he was struck down last year by a metal ball swung on a chain and has not been right in the head since then. They say his skull was broken and his memory dashed from his mind so that now he does not even know his own name. They say he'll never lead the armies of Camulod again, and that in fact he never leaves the fortress nowadays . . . and they say he cannot even remember the name of his own wife. How much of that is true, Uther?"

Uther sat straighter, looking from Herliss to Lagan and finally to Ygraine. Then he nodded his head, once, acknowledging the truth. "All of it," he said. "It's all true. But it is not as bad as it sounds. He could regain his memory at any time, and there's nothing wrong with him physically. He's as strong and as skilled as he ever was."

"Aye, but he is not himself, is that not so? And so who has taken his place as Commander of Camulod?"

"No one . . . or no one in particular. We have several excellent senior officers, any one of whom is capable of commanding all our forces at any time."

"Good. Are any of them as good as Merlyn was?"

Uther hesitated, unwilling to lie and mentally reviewing the list of candidates for the supreme leadership in Merlyn's place. Before he could respond, Herliss was speaking again.

"Aye . . . that's what I thought. Well, they're going to have to be, because those other two whoresons, Issa and Loholt, have convinced Lot to allow them to carry out a two-pronged attack on Camulod. from the south and the east. Now understand me clearly here. I'm not talking about a two-pronged attack by a split force, I am talking about two separate attack campaigns by two separate armies. Issa and Loholt are as jealous of each other as a pair of spitting whores, and each of them knows that the first army to enter Camulod will have not just the pick of the booty but all of it, so the competition to sack Camulod is going to be fierce. The only compromise those two have made to each other at this stage is to agree to spin a coin in order to decide which of them will have the southern attack and which the east. The southern route to Camulod is shorter, but the other army will leave a week ahead of the southern attackers. We'll see what happens."

"What happens if the earlier army steals the southern route? What then?"

"What then indeed? I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen, particularly if Issa wins the toss. There's not much to choose between those two, but I think I might take Loholt's word before I'd trust Issa's. Anyway, that is enough from me on that topic. You must have some questions."

Uther rose from his chair and began pacing the floor. "Aye, a hundred of them. You said you had a plan of some description, but all you've done is tell me that I won't be here at all next year, because I'll be too busy staving off catastrophe in Cambria and Camulod. I must be missing something."

"You're missing nothing except, as you said, the connections. You know now that these invasions are planned, and you know where they'll be coming from, particularly in your own lands in Cambria, so you have the entire winter to prepare some surprises for the invaders. Will that be long enough for you? Can you be ready in time, think you?"

"To defeat them in Cambria, aye. The terrain there is mine, and the advantage will be mine, but—" An image Hashed into Uther's mind of Camulod and the huge, barren drilling plain that lay at the foot of its hill. He saw Herliss's expression sharpen as the old man noticed the expression on his face, and then he nodded. "Aye," he grunted, "and in Camulod, too, now that I think of it. I have an idea that might work well . . . and as you say, we have six months at least, perhaps seven, in which to make ready. We'll be prepared to welcome them with more than milk and honey when they come . . . So what are the connections that I'm missing?"

"Numbers, Uther. We spoke of four of Lot's good generals going into your lands. He has six, you may remember."

"Four good ones and two others, the two incompetents you mentioned earlier. . . Ralla, and I forget the name of the other one."

"Cuneglas. Neither of them is fit to be allowed to go to the latrine alone, but they will remain behind in Cornwall to organize the remaining holding army. Theirs will be the honour of keeping Cornwall safe for Gulrhys Lot."

"And?"

"And by the time you have drawn first blood from those invading you, and they begin to learn that all might not be quite as simple as they had foreseen, we—myself and my son here, with the able help of the decent men left in this country—will have taken control of the forces of Cornwall . . . the real forces of Cornwall. Most of the mercenaries will be in Cambria and Camulod, because none of them will want to stay behind when there's booty and plunder to be had. The forces that remain behind will be Cornish, with perhaps a strengthening core of Outlanders. We'll soon be rid of those, and of Ralla and Cuneglas. And if, with the blessings of the gods. Lot has remained in Cornwall, we'll rid ourselves of him at the same time, and most of our troubles will be over. I doubt, though, that our noble King will run the risk of staying here at home when all his mercenary allies are away. That might be too much to hope for.

"Then, my friend . . . then everything will depend on you, because if you do your part properly and break your attackers' teeth in the first charge, you should be able to have your forces ready to combine as soon as you've thrown back the invaders—in both places, Cambria and Camulod. If you've hit them hard enough, if you've taken enough advantage of your advance warning, you should have taken the wind out of their sails to a great extent, and when you finally send them limping home, they'll find their strongholds there are held by a determined enemy. You must follow hard on their heels then, harassing them with the biggest army you can muster. With us holding Lot's forts and denying them entry, and you and your cavalry and those wild bowmen of yours hacking and shooting at their backs, we should be able to smash them finally, and get rid of Gulrhys Lot. What say you?"

"What say I? I say I'd be a fool to say anything before thinking all of this through. Where does your information come from?"

Herliss shrugged slightly and shifted in his seat, opening one hand, palm upward, and then gesturing towards the Queen. Uther sat blinking, not having expected that, and Ygraine turned her eyes to meet his gaze directly, the slightest tinge of colour beginning to stain her cheeks.

Finally, after what seemed to him like an unconscionably long time, he was able to clear his throat and speak to her. "I, ah . . . Ph'hmmm . . . Are you so far. . .?" He stopped short, feeling a great, threatening panic begin to well up deep inside him, and then he charged ahead, blurting out what was in his mind. "Are you then so far restored into your husband's favour, lady, that you enjoy his confidence again?"

Ygraine stared back at him without expression, her face filled with utter calm. "No, Sir King, not again. I never knew his confidence in times past. I have come to know it now since my return from your captivity. I do not enjoy it. But was that not the reason for my return in the first place?"

"What?" Uther caught himself frowning and knew he was treading upon dangerous ground, although he would have been hard put to say why that should be so. He coughed again, desperately trying to gain time, then decided openness might be the best policy here. "Your pardon. Lady Ygraine, but I fail to understand you. Was what not the reason for your return in the first place?"

"My husband's confidence. Did I not return in order that I might make myself privy to his secrets, and did not that entail that I must work to gain his confidence? For if it did not, sir, then I have sorely misunderstood my reasons for being here these past few months and I will not be happy, knowing that I need not have been here."

"Yes, lady, yes! I ask your pardon, I misunderstood . . . but—"

"But—what, sir?"

"I—" He raised a hand in surrender, shaking his head ruefully. "Now I really do ask that you pardon me, my lady, for only now have I begun to see what we have asked of you since your return to Cornwall. My own stupidity in failing to see the truth of it appalls me now and I—"

"King Uther!" Ygraine's voice, crackling like heaving ice, cut him short. "I knew what was involved from the beginning, and I did not think it worthy of mention then . . . I find it even less worthy now."

Uther fell into an abashed silence, chastened as he had seldom been, and for a space of moments no one spoke. But then, surprisingly Herliss heaved himself to his feet and gestured with his head for his son to join him.

"Come, you," he growled, "we need to talk, we two."

Uther sat gaping as the two Cornish warriors left the hall, and then he turned to the Queen, surprised to find her smiling at him. He knew his mouth was hanging open, but he could only wave one pointing finger towards the far door through which Herliss and Lagan had vanished.

"He knows? Herliss knows?"

"About you and me?" Ygraine's smile grew wider. "I think not, but I cannot be sure. Herliss is no fool, and he is older than you and I combined, so he outstrips us in experience. Besides, he knows I have no love for Lot, despite the matter of sharing his bed. Herliss is highly aware of my pretences there."

"But he . . . approves."

"No, he does not approve, Uther. He resents the need for it. Herliss is a noble and honourable man, and it angers him deeply that I should be forced to stoop to such measures. But he is unable to do anything other than accept the need for what I do, as do I myself. If what I endure leads to a quick end to Lot's rule in Cornwall and to all the evil that walks hand in hand with him, then I will do all that I can and more."

"May I ask you a question that might anger you?"

"Yes."

"Do you wish Lot dead?"

Ygraine sucked in her cheeks, tilting her head slightly to one side as she considered her response. "No," she said eventually, drawing the word out to far beyond its normal length, "I have no wish to see him dead. I believe he will die before all this is over, because he will cling tooth and nail lo everything we seek to take from him, but I have no personal wish to deprive him of his life. My wish is to remove him from the King's place he abuses, to strip him of his power and wealth; without the one he will forfeit the other. I want to see Cornwall emptied of foreign mercenaries and ruled by men who understand honour and justice, so that its people can sleep quiet and safe in their beds night after night until they forget that there was a time when they could not. That is what I want and what I wish, and it involves removing Lot, deposing him. After that, I care not what he does or where he goes.

"He can be charming when it suits him." Her voice dripped with bitterness and quiet anger. "When Gulrhys Lot wishes to be pleasant, he is unmatchable . . . and he has been that way with me since my return. Invariably. Since the day I arrived back, he has been unfailingly gracious, concerned and attentive to my every need, even admitting me nightly to his bed as though I were his beloved wife and the crowning pride of his life . . .

"I discovered the reason for that change soon after my arrival. My brother Connor had come to visit Lot, asking after me, while I was your prisoner . . . shortly before I came back here, in fact. Lot has no wish to offend Connor, or my other brother, Brander." She was smiling very slightly as she said this. "My father's people live upon the seacoast, in large part. They are boat-builders, renowned throughout all Eire for the quality of their galleys. My father commands galleys—fleets of galleys. My brothers, Connor and Brander, are his admirals. Lot prides himself on being a commander of pirates, but he knows my brothers could sweep the sea clean of every craft he owns if he offended them.

"Before I returned from my captivity, my adventure with you, Connor came seeking me at Rosnant. I was not there, of course, but I know that what frightened Lot—and it really frightened him, for some reason—was the fact that he could not tell Connor where I was. He could not even lie about it, lest Connor insist on travelling to find me. I have no idea what was said between the two of them, but I know it must have made a deep impression upon Lot, for since the moment I appeared again, he has been lavishing me with attention, catering to my every wish and generally trying to be the most adoring and attentive of husbands."

"So you are sleeping with him . . ."

"Aye, I am." Her head came up high, her eyes flashing. "And even rutting with him, but not often . . . I told him I would kill him as he slept if he ever dared use me again the way he did when we two first were wed."

"What?" Uther sat straighten "What did he do?"

"Nothing that you need know about, and he would never dare try it again. But here is something you should know about. I went into his bed without protest when I returned because I thought I might be with child by you. I was not. but I thought I might have been."

"But it was but two nights!"

"One time is enough, Uther Pendragon, if it is the destined time. Surely you are old enough to know the truth of that?"

"And . . ." He cleared his throat and tried again. "Were you . . . would you have been unhappy to find yourself with child?"

"I don't know, because I never really had to dwell upon the thought. My courses came in their due time and life went on. But in the meantime, Lot had been close enough to me to guarantee that if my belly did begin to swell, he could call himself the sire, and that suited me well. Little point in dying for something so fleeting as the time we two had together, don't you think?"

Uther frowned, unsure of how he ought to answer that, and as he wondered, he heard the sounds of Herliss and Lagan returning. Ygraine spoke quickly into the silence between them, lowering her voice.

"I've placed you in a room apart from everyone, but close enough to mine to be reachable. Does that please you?"

His heart leaped in his chest. "Yes, it does. I low will I find your room, and when?"

"Be content. I'll come to you. I know the way and none will see or hear me. Now let's talk of other things."

Uther turned his head slightly and saw that Herliss and Lagan were bringing another person with them, this one a tall, robed figure carrying a harp of some description beneath one arm, a harp, Uther thought, that was smaller than any he had seen before.

"Look what we found," Herliss shouted. "Anrac is here! It's been more than six years since last he came and sang his songs for us, and here he is, appeared from nowhere, when we have dire need of a bard's songs and music."

In the bustle of greeting the tall Druid, the entire tenor of the gathering changed, and as the man was tuning his harp and preparing to play for them, Ygraine sent a messenger to summon Dyllis and Lydia to join them again and share in the entertainment. The fire was stoked up, the candles and lamps renewed and replenished, the servants were invited to come in and listen, and for the following few hours, the hall rang with music.

Chapter THIRTY-THREE

Some time in the middle of the night, they woke each other up and made love for a fourth, or perhaps a fifth time. They were in no rush now, voluptuous in their enjoyment of each other, delighting mutually in the gradual and deliberate buildup of pleasure that would eventually become intolerable, but in the building was indescribable. They luxuriated in the warmth and softness of the bed and in the intimacy of their coupling, and when it was over, Ygraine moaned softly with contentment and rolled onto her back, snuggling her bottom into Uther's lap, the back of one thigh draped comfortably over his waist. He adjusted himself to her movement, rolling inwards voluptuously with a slow thrust of his pelvis towards her centre, scissoring one knee up along her left leg and bringing an arm around to hook his elbow behind her upraised right knee, clasping her thigh's heavy firmness tightly and pulling her knee up to his shoulder, unwilling to risk falling away from her embrace, and they lay together in companionable silence, each aware that the other was awake. Neither felt any urge to speak.

They had spoken for hours, earlier, first in the public forum of the discussions around the dinner table, around the fire alter that, and then in private, face to face and mouth to mouth when she had first come to his bed some time far in advance of midnight. Now, lying together, they each had their own thoughts, and neither felt any compulsion to share them with the other, or to communicate in any way apart from the physical sensations that still joined them.

It was Uther who spoke first, running an open hand along her thigh. "I'm glad you sent for me, lady."

"Hmm, so am I . . ."

"But why did you? Send for me, I mean . . . If you had gone so far as to trust Lagan with this task, then you could easily have entrusted him with your tidings, too."

"I could have, but I wanted to tell them to you in person." She stirred slightly, then paused before asking, "Do you mean you had no thought that I might simply want to see you for yourself? For my own benefit?"

"No . . . I suppose I didn't think you would take such a risk for purely selfish reasons."

"What better reason could a woman have in summoning a man? In very truth, though, since you are so forthright in stating your opinions, I sent for you because . . ."

The silence was so long that he had to prompt her, impatient with waiting, not knowing whether he was being teased or not. "Because what?"

"Because I could. I was on my way, and it had taken me months to arrange to come here to the only place in this entire land where I could meet with you in safety without being afraid that we would be taken and you slaughtered."

"You would have been slaughtered too."

"I would have made the trade willingly enough." She hesitated, then resumed in a more sombre tone. "No, that's not true. Lot would not dare to kill me now, not after that last confrontation with my brother. It would mean an end to him, were I to disappear for any reason, and he's far too careful of himself to risk that."

"I see, but still you would gladly have taken the risk of dying, would you? Am I that wondrous?"

"Come here." She twisted her body backwards and down somehow, and he rose up to meet her and she kissed him deeply, the scent of her hair filling his awareness, overwhelming everything else. When she would have pulled away again, however, he held her to him and whispered into her ear, "So, what will you do now if we have made a child this time?"

"I'll cherish it and love it and raise it as a son of mine and yours."

"But you would not tell Lot."

"No, d'you take me for a complete fool? That kind of vengeance would be self-destructive. He would simply kill the child and be amply revenged on both of us, me and you . . . not because of jealousy, but simply because he does not want to hear such things."

She felt him stiffen slightly in the bed beside her. "Yes, well, no man would want to hear such things."

"Of course not, but in Lot's case, it is more than doubly true. I believe my husband is not capable of siring children, and I am glad of it from the bottom of my being. It makes me suspect that the Christians might be right, and that there is a wise, just and all- knowing God who looks out for all people."

It was pitch-black where they lay, unrelieved by any speck of light, but she knew he had turned his head and was looking at her. "What do you mean when you say he cannot sire children? Didn't you say you lay with him to lull his suspicions in the first place?"

"Aye, I did. He is more than capable of rutting—goes at it like a stallion. But that does not mean that he's capable of getting sons."

"Oh, come, Ygraine, of course it does!"

"No, it does not!"

"Yes, it does! If he were unable to do it. . . if he could not. . . stand or perform, I might agree with you, but by your own admission he can do the deed."

"But that means nothing, Uther, nothing at all." He could hear the bewilderment in her voice as she continued. "Or is it—? Do you think—? Surely you do not believe that only women can be barren. Is that it? What about his other wives, then, the ones before me? I le had three of them, you know, and they're all still alive. Do you believe that all three of them were barren? Do you?"

Uther lay silent, offering no contribution.

"Well, if you do think that, then you must also believe in strange coincidences, for the one begets the other, if you but stop to think on it. Two of those barren women have had children since leaving him."

Still Uther remained quiet, making no attempt to speak or to criticize.

"I have lain with him for months, and I was sick with fear, throughout much of that time, of getting with child by him. But it has not happened, and it has not been for lack of effort on his part. I think my brother must have convinced him that a son and heir would be looked upon with great favour in my father's lands in Eire. Be that as it may, however, he has achieved nothing in the way of quickening my womb, and so I have been speaking to the mothers of his six so-called sons. And what think you I have found?"

Uther's only response was to raise an eyebrow, but she was already answering her own question.

"Lot sired none of the brats, not one. And all the men who did sire them were killed, in one fashion or another, before their sons were born. Lot had no connection with the death of any of them, it seemed, and none of the men knew him personally, but he adopted all of their children, knowing that he could not have fathered them. He made sure, however, that in return for their continuing welfare and existence, the boys' mothers would remain silent about the true paternity of their children." She allowed that thought to hang between them for several moments before she spoke again.

"It is disgusting and pitiable, but Lot adopted those boys—and all their mothers agree with me in this—solely because he wants the world to think he sired them. And that can only mean that he himself suspects his own incapability of breeding sons. And yet he would never admit such a failing even to himself—particularly to himself, in fact. That is where the sanity of what he does breaks down and falls apart. He cannot bear to think of himself as being unable to breed an heir of his own, and he refuses to believe the evidence of his own experiences.

"He has no idea I know any of this, needless to say, and I would go to almost any lengths to stop him from suspecting that I do. But since I do know, I have been able to ask him some questions and to raise some points—all in seeming innocence—in conversation with him, and I have found the results to be most interesting. It galls him—no, it infuriates him, to be forced to consider, even indirectly, any suggestion that he might be, could be, incapable of getting himself an heir. He grows inflamed at the merest suggestion of such a thought and flies into the most frightening rages."

Uther hitched himself closer to her and increased the movement of his hands on her body, and soon a minor resurrection was achieved between the spread forks of their legs. He penetrated her almost without assistance and then lay lodged there, stirring only minutely.

"Did you really think you might be with child by me?"

They were lying almost at right angles to each other because of the way they were joined, their legs intertwined, and she reached out in the darkness and twined her fingers in his hair at arm's length. He reached up and clasped her wrist, running his fingers along her arm to her locked elbow, then dropped his hand straight down to her breasts, cupping and kneading the fullness of one of them, pinching the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She stiffened against him and snorted with pleasure, pushing herself down onto the flesh that impaled her, and then twisted her fingers in his hair and wrenched his head sideways gently.

"The thought occurred to me. King Cambria, because I am a normal, healthy woman of child-bearing age, and I had been thoroughly serviced by a virile man during the space of two long, active and intensely satisfying nights. Have you fathered any children yet?"

He lay thinking for a moment and then shook his head in the darkness. "I don't think so . . . None that I know of, anyway."

"I would not be too sure of that, were I you. Do you remember Morgas?"

"Of course I remember Morgas. What about her?"

"She is no longer with me. Soon after her return from her captivity in Camulod, she left my household and returned to her home country to be wed, but I heard from another of my women that her monthly courses were already late by the lime she left to return home."

Uther rose up to rest on one elbow. "Do you think there is any truth to it?"

"I have no idea, but it would not be impossible, would it? Would it concern you greatly, were it true?"

"No, I don't suppose it would—" his tone was reflective,"—but it would be nice to know."

"To what end? If Morgas is now wed, her husband will assume the child is his, so it were best you let it be."

"Aye, I suppose so."

"Now," she said, "empty your mind of thoughts of Morgas and her beauty." Ygraine lay smiling in the darkness.

"I confess," he said slowly, pushing his pelvis against her again, "that I am jealous, knowing that now you'll have to lie with Lot again, simply to stay ahead of his suspicions."

"Jealous? That would make you jealous?" He could hear the amusement in her voice.

"Yes, that would make me jealous."

"Well, then, you need not be, for what he claims of me is his by right of marriage, but what I choose to withhold from him is mine by right of possession. Besides, I'll have no need of going to him this time. I have been with him recently enough to render him incapable of suspicion. You, on the other hand, I simply wish to render incapable, eventually." She moved against him lasciviously, drawing him further into her, and all need or desire for conversation faded immediately.

They were all astir just after dawn, Uther and Ygraine managing, somehow, to appear as well rested and refreshed as any of the others. Over the course of a short breakfast of eggs, mixed on a hot skillet with chunks of smoked meat and served on thick slabs of bread fried in animal fat, Uther discussed ways and means of remaining in touch with Herliss and Lagan over the course of the coming winter. The device of using his ring had worked well, and none of them could see any need to change the procedure, and so Ygraine kept the ring in her possession for future use.

Now that he and Lagan had formed an amicable relationship based on mutual trust, however, Uther conceded that it should be easier for the two of them to meet in future, providing that they kept their actual meetings hidden from curious eyes and used a go- between in the final stages to set up the times and venues. Since either one might have to call such a meeting, Uther acquired a token from Lagan similar to the one he had given to Ygraine. Lagan's token was a thumb-tip-small, distinctive granite pebble. It appeared to have been painted in alternating stripes of black and orange, but the colours were natural layers in the stone, and the granite itself had been polished to a glass-smooth finish and drilled with a hole that permitted a leather thong to be looped through it. Uther took it and slipped the leather thong over his head, allowing the pebble to rest against his chest under his tunic.

Herliss had been sitting watching and listening to the two younger men, and now he leaned forward, swallowing the last mouthful of his breakfast. "So," he grunted, "the season is almost over, and Lot's people are already preparing for winter. They'll be launching no campaigns this late in the year, nor will you, I presume. When do you think you will be returning to Camulod?"

"To Camulod? I don't know. Popilius Cirro and his infantry will return there directly, once our work here in Cornwall is done, and that should be in a few weeks—a month at the very most, if winter holds off that long. But I have to return to my own place in Cambria and set my house in order there before I head for Camulod. Camulod has no shortage of able leaders and Roman-style administrators to keep things in order from year to year, but in Tir Manila we have no such luxuries. I alone am King, and I have been away from home for nigh on seven months. The gods alone can tell what I'll find waiting for my attention when I reach home again."

"So if we have to send for you or to you, it were best to seek you first in Cambria?"

"Aye, it would be wisest to do that. . . And when I do decide to go to Camulod, I'll send you word and let you know, too, how long I intend to remain there. What would be the best way to do that? With no direct meeting involved, there will be no need to use the stone for such an errand, will there?"

"No," Herliss grunted, shaking his head. "When the time comes, all you need do is send a messenger to me at Tir Gwyn. My White Fort's famous throughout Cornwall, so he will have no difficulty finding it. Tell him to ask for me and to present . . ." He broke off and thought quietly for a moment, then nodded. ". . . to present a wax seal imprinted with a cross of some description. That will identify him, since the Christian symbol is seldom used down here, and I have never known it used on a wax seal that sealed nothing. Can you remember that?"

"Aye, I will. A wax seal, marked with a cross and sealing nothing. Can you read or write Latin, Herliss?"

"Very badly, and I have not tried these thirty years, so I think the true answer is no. But Lagan can."

"Can you, by the gods?" Uther made no attempt to hide his surprise as he turned to Lagan Longhead. "Where did you learn that?"

Lagan smiled. "As a very young boy, I was a close friend to Lot when his father, Duke Emrys, decided that it would do his son no harm to be able to use the Roman tongue. Lot was headstrong even then, and he insisted that if he had to undergo the learning of Latin, then he should have company in his suffering. We had a wonderful teacher who imparted her own love of Latin to me. You know her as Mairidh, the wife of my Uncle Balin. She lived in your lands for a while."

"Aye, she did . . . right in Tir Manha, in fact. So were I to write to you, you would be able to read the letter and write back to me?"

"I would."

"Excellent. So be it."

Herliss coughed, clearing his throat. "Now, about your leaving today. Your helmet's plain enough and undistinguished, but roll up that black cloak you are wearing and cover it with a plain blanket, then tie it behind your saddle. It's too easy to see, too noticeable. We have nothing like it in Cornwall; all our cloaks are either brown or grey. We will lend you one of ours, in my colours, for riding out. You came in during darkness, but you're going out in daylight, and the countryside is swarming with Lot's people. Lagan will go with you, riding your horse—he is known for his love of large horses— and you'll go along as one of his escort, a hunting party of twelve men all riding plain garrons. You'll stop in the forest, to hunt, of course, and they'll ride back without you, later tonight. By that time, in the darkness, no one should notice that Lagan comes back riding a different horse from the one he rode away on." The old man stood up and stretched his arm across the table to Uther. "And to that end, may the gods ride with you, and may we, between us, be able to topple our enemy within the coming year. Farewell." He turned to bow briefly to the Queen, offered the same bend of the waist to Uther, and then left.

Uther was grinning as he watched Herliss depart, but when he turned to Ygraine, the grin faded swiftly. "Lady," he said, "I must thank you for your hospitality." He heard the sound of feet behind him and turned his head to see Lagan leaving the room, heading for the main entrance and according them, he presumed, a moment of privacy.

Ygraine moved to approach him, but Uther waved her back with a tiny, tight gesture of the hand at his belt. "No, lady," he murmured, pitching his voice so that none but she could possibly hear what he was saying. "Come no closer. I thank you again for your hospitality . . . all of it. . . and I shall carry the memory of your smile, your kiss, the scent of your hair and the touch of your skin with me until we meet again. Farewell." He bowed deeply to her, straightened himself to his full height, then spun on his heel and strode out of the hall, heading directly towards the main doors where he knew Lagan would be waiting for him.

The Cornishman was there and clasped hands with him briefly before giving him a few final instructions, pointing him towards the main gates and telling him about the group that would ride out with him. They were his own best men. Lagan said, chosen for this task because of their loyalty and their often demonstrated ability to follow his commands without question or debate. He had told them only that Uther was an important personal ally to his father and to him, and he assured Uther that none of them would speak to him or even pay him much attention. However, should any outsider seek to approach the party or to interfere with them in any way, including an outright attack, they would fight for him as they would fight for Lagan. He himself would follow them alone within the hour. He would catch up with Uther sometime later that morning, a safe distance from the Crag Fort and from prying eyes belonging to any of Lot's spies who might be prowling about.

Moments later, Uther was outside the main gates and approaching the group of horsemen who sat there, already mounted, awaiting his arrival, holding the sturdy and unremarkable garron he would ride. They were an ill-matched group of varying sizes, and their weaponry was as diverse as their appearance. The only element they had in common was that they all wore long, grey cloaks like the one Uther himself had been given by Lagan.

One man sat slightly apart from the others, tall and upright on his garron's back, and his helmet, more ornate than any of his companions', marked him as the leader of the party. Uther ignored him and went directly to the main body of the group, nodding to them briefly in a general greeting and being careful to catch no one's eye. He took the reins of the extra horse from the man who held them out to him and vaulted cleanly onto the animal's low, broad back, holding the reins easily and gripping the stocky beast tightly with his knees, reflecting with some amusement that it had been many years since he had straddled a similar mount and thanking the gods that the Camulodian horses were all far bigger than the Celtic garrons, for his long legs almost touched the ground on either side. The garron raised its head, and its ears swivelled from side to side as it assessed the presence of the stranger on its back. It snorted and shook its head, preparing to question his authority further, but found itself quickly curbed and mastered, its head dragged downward and held there by the strength of the arm controlling the bit in its mouth. Uther glanced towards the man in command and nodded almost imperceptibly. The fellow nodded briefly and swung his mount around, kicking its barrel with his heels.

Their outward ride was uneventful and, as far as Uther could tell, unnoticed by anyone. As Lagan had promised, none of his companions made any attempt to speak to him, and in fact none of them seemed to pay him any attention at all, so that he was aware of only three of them who had glanced in his direction since they had moved away from the Crag Fort. Their route led them northwards at first, until they had crossed the humpback spine of the narrow peninsula that was little more than a score of miles wide at that point, the sea lying slightly more than ten miles ahead of them, northwest of the Crag Fort. As soon as they were beyond the ridge of high land, they headed downward into a tree-filled valley and waited there for Lagan to catch up to them. It took a little over an hour, and Uther spent the time making up for some of the sleep he had forfeited the previous night.

Once Lagan had arrived, however, they wasted no time on civilities. He dismounted and adjusted Uther's stirrups back to their proper length, which was clearly indicated by the deep-grooved buckle marks on the leather straps. Uther watched him, smiling but saying nothing, then swung himself up into his saddle and leaned down to clasp the other's hand one last time. A brief word of thanks and a wish to meet again soon, and he turned his horse around and headed northward, taking care to remain well below the skyline of the high land on his right, since on the other side of it, some score of miles again northeast of the Crag Fort and close to the seacoast, lay Gulrhys Lot's home stronghold of Golant.

Almost four hours later, two of which had been spent cursing uselessly at the bitter, gale-force wind that had sprung up from nowhere and had several times battered him with gusts strong enough to threaten to blow him off his horse, Uther caught sight of the long, transverse ridge that swept inland and upward from the estuary of the western river the local people called the Cam. The ridge concealed his own encampment from the southward, but nothing could have concealed the enormous, wind-torn clouds of black, heavy smoke that swept along the horizon. Fighting against the alarm that flared in his breast, he put the spurs to his horse and drove forward in a flat-out gallop, wondering what had gone wrong this time.

What had gone wrong was soon clear. A raiding party of seagoing marauders, Ersemen or perhaps Franks—Uther had no way of knowing what they were, other than Outlanders—had sailed up the small river estuary and landed looking for plunder. They had seen the cavalry encampment with a single double squadron in residence, and estimating their own strength against the party they could see, they had guessed that the wind blowing from their backs would give them a fine advantage and decrease the odds they would be fighting against. And so they had fired the long grass, thinking that the grazing horses would scatter in fright and be lost, and that they themselves could then charge right into the enemy encampment under cover of the smoke that would be blowing ahead of them. What they had failed to see was the second double squadron of Dragons riding back towards them from a patrol to the northwest, over their shoulders, and the camp of Popilius Cirro's thousand men in the bottom of a well-watered but narrow valley just beyond the cavalry encampment.

The fight had been short and sharp, and Uther, who was still some distance away and approaching rapidly, watched with approval as Garreth Whistler, in command of the returning cavalry, called off the chase that would have put an end to all of the surviving raiders. Uther doubted that they had enough men left to man their craft, and Garreth plainly had more urgent matters on his mind. The raging grass fire that the Outlanders had started was burning out of control, sparks and whirling embers blown everywhere by the wind so that the conflagration was spreading faster than a man could run. It had already crossed the Hat plain of the ridge's top and swept down into the narrow valley behind, where the wind funnelled it and led it directly to the rows of infantry tents that lined the hillsides.

The fire lasted only moments, but the damage it did in that time was appalling. More than half of the infantry's leather tents, all ranged in perfect formation and clean lines, were destroyed, along with everything in them. And two of their four remaining commissary wagons had been badly burned, the bone-dry wooden bodies and wheel spokes catching fire instantly and blazing fiercely before the vehicles could be run out into the bed of the stream that wound through the valley bottom. Everything that they contained, all the provisions and supplies, was either destroyed completely or rendered unfit to eat.

It was one more example of Uther's Luck, and the only grounds Uther had for gratitude lay in the fact that their hospital tents and wagons had been laid out and drawn up on the flat, gravelly bottomland of the bend on the far, north-facing bank of the stream. Four more large commissary wagons, long since emptied of provisions, had been turned over to hospital duties, and these were completely unharmed. There was little growth of any kind on the inhospitable ground there on the other side of the stream, for it was the flood lands of the little river, so although the storm of flying sparks and embers had swirled across the stream bed easily, the sparse grass that was there had been trodden down too thoroughly to burn fiercely.

Looking at the scene and visualizing the carnage that might have taken place had his wounded been trapped on the side of the stream nearest the fire, with its thick, dry grass, Uther sucked air sibilantly between tight lips and reminded himself that they were at the end of the campaigning season and due to go home soon anyway. Masking his disgust, he met with Popilius Cirro, Garreth Whistler, Huw Strongarm and the other officers and issued orders to break camp and form a column for one final march, to stamp out a crawling enemy column in passing, and then to head homeward to Camulod and a winter season of well-earned rest.

The march homeward was straightforward and presented them with no difficulties, despite the shortage of supplies caused by the fire. Even the enemy column, almost a thousand heavily armed men, caused them little trouble, for Herliss had been specific in his instructions, and his intelligence regarding the mercenary expedition was flawless. All of that, combined with the veteran Cornish- man's comprehensive knowledge of the terrain over which the enemy would be moving, virtually guaranteed a victory for the Camulodians.

Uther set his trap in a long, narrow, steep-sided defile that provided the only easy route between two neighbouring valleys. The place was an obvious setting for an ambush, of course, and the enemy commander scouted it thoroughly before committing his troops to advance, but Uther had anticipated that and planned for it. His own scouts lay in slight depressions on the open ground above the defile on both sides, covered by nets woven with grass torn from neighbouring clumps. From more than twenty paces, they were invisible to the enemy scouts, who were looking only for large parties of warriors. They were invisible, too, to Uther's own advance guard on both sides of the defile, until they stood up and signalled that the enemy scouts had withdrawn, satisfied that the way was safe.

Uther's Pendragon bowmen then launched themselves at the run, quickly covering the half mile from where they had lain concealed while the scouting progressed. As they approached the lip of the defile on both sides, they dropped to their bellies and remained there, concealed from everyone in the narrow passageway below until the signal came to bring them to their feet. As the bowmen sprang into view of the enemy, Uther's cavalry charged both ends of the passageway, blocking advance and retreat, and the hapless mercenaries, most of whom were on foot, rapidly fell into a confused piled of maimed men and corpses under the hissing, deadly accurate rain of long Pendragon arrows, against which they had no defence.

When it was over, Uther was well satisfied. His men had ended the campaign on a high note, with a victory that would soon resonate from one end to the other of Lot's domain. He sent men to collect the enemy baggage-and-supply train—a rich and valuable haul—and to count the slain, and he was unsurprised that they brought back a tally in excess of seven hundred dead, not one of whom was Camulodian or Cambrian. Not all of the slain had died of arrow wounds, and many had been slaughtered out of hand upon surrendering. Uther knew that well, but he made no attempt to question the report. The hundreds of wounded now left alive, he knew, would be sorely injured and would provide no further threat to him or his. The less badly wounded, who might have been inspired to fight again someday, had all been inspired instead, by their captors, to succumb to their injuries. That was the way wars were fought. Neither side had time nor resources to handle large numbers of prisoners. Local warriors, native to the land in which they fought, might reasonably expect that they would be spared to return to their own homes. Not so mercenaries. Mercenaries understood their own risks when they hired themselves out.

After leaving the scene of the ambush, they encountered no other hostile activity along the way. They were able to keep hunting parties ranging ahead of them at all times, and to everyone's surprise and pleasure, the hunters were invariably successful. The marchers dined on venison almost every day, and in the early stages of their journey, in what appeared to be a reversal of their bad luck, they even found a burned-out farmstead with a pair of granaries that were almost full, one of them holding oats and the other wheat. They found them by accident, for the small buildings had been cunningly hidden in a dense copse more than a hundred paces from the farm buildings by a farmer clever enough to anticipate that it might be to his benefit to have a hoard that was not plainly visible. Unfortunately, it had done him and his family little good, for the marauders who came upon his farm had burned the place down about his ears anyway, evidently killing him and his whole family, without discovering the hoard of grain.

Eight days after that, lit and healthy, the returning raiders reached the point of their journey closest to Camulod, and the following morning Popilius Cirro and his thousand men split away from the Cambrian contingent and made their way without ceremony north by west for the last short stage of the journey home. Uther was sorely tempted to interrupt his own ride home in order to go with them, even for a brief visit, for the young boy in him still tended to think of Camulod, uneasily, from time to time, as his true home. He told himself that it was important that he visit the Legates Titus and Flavius, or whoever was in charge in Camulod nowadays, in order to pass on his news about the impending spring invasion, and for a time he almost yielded to the urge, but his common sense would not allow him to deceive himself that thoroughly, and so he grudgingly steeled himself against the lure of Camulod and its luxuries. Instead he spent an entire evening with Popilius Cirro, first outlining and then detailing and emphasizing the crucial instructions he wished the veteran commander to pass on to the authorities in Camulod.

Uther knew that his relationship with Ygraine, Herliss and Lagan Longhead was still a secret, and that Popilius Cirro knew and suspected nothing. He knew, too, that in order to safeguard that relationship, since the lives of his new friends depended upon it, he must be extremely careful in what he said about Lot's planned invasion the following spring and in the way he presented the idea, because he could not afford to provoke any curiosity about his advice or to suggest to anyone, even indirectly, that he might be in possession of secret or privileged information about Lot's plans. He could not even acknowledge the truth to his own people, simply from fear that any one of them might let the secret slip in a careless moment, not out of malice but out of sheer human fallibility.

He decided that he would have to conceal his knowledge and present his convictions as a set of strongly worded reservations and suggestions based upon opinions and insights that he had gathered during his campaign in Cornwall. His task would lie in presenting them with sufficient authority to elicit an immediate and positive response from the Camulodian high command. If he could word it properly through Popilius, he knew that would suffice, for once the initial work was begun, he himself could add further details and substance to what was happening when he visited Camulod himself at a later date.

He spent hours talking to Popilius, and when he was convinced that he could not improve upon the other's understanding of the situation or increase his awareness of the urgency and strength of his convictions, Uther nodded, indicating his satisfaction. Then he asked the older man to pass along his love and filial affection to his grandmother, Luceiia Britannicus, and his promise to ride back and visit Camulod as soon as he could, in hopes of finding his Cousin Merlyn restored to full and active health. Only then did he allow the Camulodian detachment to strike out for home, carrying their few seriously wounded in their remaining wagons. Then, not even waiting to watch the infantry column until it was out of sight, he signalled to his trumpeter and set his own Dragons and his large contingent of bowmen back on the road for Cambria and Tir Manha.

Even in Tir Manha, however, Uther's Luck remained in force. They arrived back to find themselves the healthiest group in the entire countryside, and before they had been at home for three days, they themselves were beginning to succumb to the pestilence that had swept all of Cambria with the onset of autumn that year. It was not a fatal disease, whatever it was, but it was debilitating, frustrating and painful. Its symptoms were a high fever accompanied by vomiting and loose bowels, and a painful rash that itched unbearably as it began to heal -which it seemed to do after a period ranging from four to six days. The rash then scabbed over as the result of the scratching, and afterwards left small but permanent pits in the skin when the scabs had fallen away.

Uther himself was one of the first of his party to come down with the sickness several days before the Samhain equinox, and because he was the King, he had all the wisdom of the local Druids, and all of the lore they had garnered collectively about the sickness, directed towards his well-being. He was constantly reminded not to scratch the itch, unless he wished to disfigure himself and endanger his own kingship, since it was a matter of law that a King must be physically whole and completely unblemished. And so for the duration of his sickness Uther remained in his private quarters and submitted to the gentle baiting of Garreth Whistler, whose health was, for the time being, in flawless perfection, and to the gentler, more considerate ministrations of his mother and her women as they bathed him in a mixture of oatmeal and cold water to combat the unbearable itch that covered his arms, shoulders, back and torso.

Time passed, and so did the sickness, but the Samhain celebrations were poorly observed that year because their occurrence coincided with the worst of the outbreak, and even by the time the Roman holiday of Saturnalia came by, towards the end of December, Tir Manha still had not returned to normal.

That changed with the new year, and Uther found himself thankful that January arrived with a mildness that was most unusual. He had regained his strength by that time and was lit again, ready for the task that faced him, so that when Aelle of Carmarthen arrived at Tir Manha, Uther was pacing the floor impatiently, fretting to get to work.

Aelle was the closest thing the Pendragon Federation had to a seagoing warrior. His father had been a ship-builder, and Aelle himself had studied the art, but had soon discovered that he would far rather sail ships than build them. He had handed his interest in the shipyard over to his younger brother in return for a galley of his own, and had then assembled a crew and begun sailing up and down the coast, trading for whatever he could find. Because he and his crew had had to fight for what they held, Aelle of Carmarthen had earned himself a reputation over the years as a doughty fighter, and now he captained a trio of formidable galleys.

Uther took Aelle into his own chambers, where they would not be disturbed, and told him openly all that he knew of Lot's invasion plans for the months ahead. Which of the spots along the coast, he asked, would be most suitable for landing an army and would also be most likely to attract the eye of an invading general?

Aelle listened soberly and sat staring into middle distance as he reviewed in his mind the possible sites. Finally, the seafarer sat up and sucked in a great breath.

"I have five places, all within a day's march of here, north or south—chosen out of a possible half score, mind you—but they're all this side of the Severn. Think you the Cornish whoresons will strike for you here in Tir Manha?"

The King shook his head. "I know not, Aelle. I've been told that they'll hit Carmarthen, and while I would like to rely completely on the truth of that, it's hearsay at this time and I can't be sure of it, so your opinion would probably be better than mine on that."

"Aye, there's a pity, then. See you, it would be much easier if we knew they'd come for you. Not knowing that, why, man, we have ten leagues of northward-facing coast to look at on this side of the river mouth itself, and the same on south-facing Cambria, across the water from you here, with five hundred bays to every league . . . bays, mind you, not beaches."

Uther knew it was the absolute truth. A Celtic league was a distance somewhere between two and a half and three Roman miles.

Aelle was making faces, screwing up his features and shaking his head. "Look you, d'you need this answer from me now, today? Can you give me three days or a week? I'd like to sail up and down and see things through a raider's eyes, instead of my own. I've seen all the bays a hundred times and more, but never once did I think to look at them as if I might land an army there in any of them . . . d'you see my meaning? Big difference there, King Uther. So I'd like to look, and think, as I might well think of something different than e'er I thought before, if ye take me."

Uther agreed, albeit reluctantly, and conceded that Aelle might take as long as was needed.

The seafarer gazed at him with eyes that were mere slits from staring at horizons in all kinds of weather. "Look you," Aelle said gruffly, "I know what you have in mind here and what you have to do. You have massy decisions to make, for all of us, so I' m not going to waste your time. But how can time be wasted if it saves you time? Ask yourself that. King Uther. If I can come back to ye with word of where I'd land my army, were I looking to invade these lands, then you can take my word and make ready to fight off a landing there. If I can't choose between two or even three places, then you'll work on those. But if I tell you nothing or if you never send me out to look, then you'll know nothing more than you know now, and you might well end up with ten or a score of good places to try and choose from, and that would be a waste of time, if you take me."

Uther nodded, grinning. "You're right, Aelle, and I take your meaning perfectly. Go you and do what you must do, and I shall be the more happy to see you when you return."

The man was gone for a week and a day, but when he came back, his normally sombre face was wreathed with smiles, and Uther felt better simply looking at him. Aelle did not keep him wailing long for his tidings, but came right lo the most important point ahead of all others: "Beer, King Uther. . . something long and cold and wet to cut a thirst, there's what I need, if you take me." The beer, still cold from the cellar, was served instantly, and Aelle drained his mug and refilled it and drank a quarter of it again before he even looked as though he might be ready to speak. Then he belched and leaned back in his chair.

"Three spots," he said. "I found three spots that I would use, each of them lovely. One of them's here on the southern coast and two are across the water on the Cambrian side. The one here's the only one that makes any kind of sense on this whole side, and it's four leagues farther up the coast, towards the river mouth. It's a clean beach, almost flat, in a well-sheltered bay behind a headland, so the men can leap overboard and wade in easily without having to struggle against great waves. Then, beyond the beach itself, there's a wide meadow of some kind, surrounded by a thick bell of trees. Land a whole Roman legion there, ye could, and lose them in the woods with no one ever suspecting they was there. I went ashore myself, just to have a look, and I'll wager mine was the first human foot to walk there in a hundred years. An army could land there in comfort without fear of being seen or attacked. It's far enough away from Tir Manha to allow the landing fleet to arrive unseen, even from the fort up on the headland there, and yet an army, once landed and organized, could be here about your ears within half a day of reaching dry land. It's perfect. The only place along the whole damn coast that a man with a brain would choose for purposes of warfare, if you take me."

"What about the other two spots?"

"Neither one as good as the first one, but they'll do in a pinch. But a leader, a what-you-call-it, a legate or a general, looking for a place to fight you . . . no question in my mind he'd choose the first one, here on the southern shore. Mind you, that all depends on what he wants to gain or who he wants to hit, and whether or not he really wants to fight. He might not be interested in prodding you at all. If he wants to attack Caerdyff instead, he'll take the easternmost beach and land three leagues to the north, and then march back south and west. That could be done, too, without much trouble. But if he wants to go against Carmarthen, as you said he might at the outset, then he has no option but to choose the western beach, and that's a long way from where you sit here. But again, it's a fine landing beach and close enough to the town to land an army and then set it to encircling the town. That done, he could then come in by night and try to seize the docks. But if he tries to land there, mind you, he'll have all of Carmarthen down around his ears, and no way to escape other than heading west again or east back towards Caerdyff. As I said, it all depends on what he wants to achieve, this fellow in charge, whoever he is."

Uther sat silent for a long time, mulling over all that Aelle had told him, and then made his decision. Aelle himself was from Carmarthen, so it was only natural that he should regard that as the strongest position in the Cambrian alliance, the place most naturally suited to repelling any invasion in strength. Uther was more doubtful of that. To his eyes, Carmarthen was looking more and more attractive by the moment as a launching spot for Lot's latest mischief. Lagan and Herliss had seemed absolutely sure that Cerdic and Tewdric, the German generals who were the joint leaders of the campaign, would launch their attack against Carmarthen, and the more Uther thought about that, the more convinced he became that his allies were right, for a number of reasons. A western invasion of Cambria would offer the invaders many advantages: it would force Uther, as King, to move far away from his own home base in order to conduct the campaign, and it could conceivably create friction between the allies of the Pendragon Federation, since the initial fighting would all take place in the deepest Griffyd territories, and the local chieftains there were likely to look with little favour on being commanded by someone who had not a drop of Griffyd blood in his veins. King of the Federation or not. Besides that, Uther's necessary presence in the region around Carmarthen during the invasion would keep him and his Dragons, and even more important, his bowmen, far away from Camulod and the other invasion—this one with two separate armies involved—that would be taking place there simultaneously. For all of those reasons, Uther was leaning more and more certainly towards Carmarthen as the site of the Cambrian strike.

He had three months of preparation time remaining to him, he estimated, and half of that would be sufficient once he knew the where and when, and providing that his information was as current as it could be. He decided to take Aelle's recommendations as presented, but to concentrate his own attention for the time being upon the Carmarthen landing place as the most likely target. He estimated that he could fortify the Carmarthen holdings with levies from Tir Manha and Caerdyff, while leaving both of those spots at half strength, but alert and on the defensive, which was better, he estimated, than being somnolent and unsuspecting at full strength. That way, even if the enemy commanders changed their plans, all would not be lost, and the force from Carmarthen could move quickly to relieve whichever of the two remaining spots was hit. In order to increase his advantage as far as was possible, however, he decided also to send a letter to Lagan, asking for any additional information that might now be or might become known. His decision made on those matters, he asked Aelle, then, if the seafarer would take him the following week to visit the site he had selected at Carmarthen. The seaman looked at him and nodded, then volunteered to do not only what Uther had asked, hut to show him the other prime sites as well and explain why he had not chosen those. Well pleased, Uther thanked him and permitted him to return home for a few days' rest.

Uther spent a number of long, frustrating hours that evening with ink and paper, working far into the night by the light of a cluster of tapers as he struggled to find and then set down the words he wanted to address to Lagan Longhead. It was one of the most unpleasant and demanding tasks he had set himself in years, since it involved intense mental effort without physical release from the cramped constraints of writing, head down, for hours . . . everything, in fact, that he found least pleasing . . . but eventually it was done, and he had a fair copy, free of blemishes, of what he wished to say to his Cornish ally.

The following morning, he summoned Nemo and explained to her what he required of her. She was to ride to Lagan, carrying the stone about her neck to present to him, and once she had been received by him, she was to deliver Uther's letter and then return home to Tir Manha. Any response to the letter would be sent back by another messenger at a later date.

Nemo listened, nodded, saluted and left immediately to carry out her commission, and Uther, resigned, settled in to wait and to hold himself in patience.

Chapter THIRTY-FOUR

In late January a messenger arrived from Cornwall, bearing a letter from Lagan Longhead, its three pages dense with information. Uther greeted the messenger with grave courtesy and thanked him for his time and effort, then sent him off with Garreth Whistler to be made welcome in the kitchens.

As soon as he was alone and could expect to be undisturbed for a time, the King went into his own quarters and sat close by a burning brazier to read what Lagan had to say. He read slowly, concentrating fiercely on forming the sounds made by the block letters that Lagan had inscribed in a firm, bold hand, and listening internally to the music of the Latin words as he formed them, haltingly at first, and then more confidently once he began to catch the sense of what he was reading and saying aloud.

The Queen, Lagan reported, had worked hard to ingratiate herself with the two German generals, Cerdic and Tewdric, and had learned that their plans were well advanced—far beyond the initial stages. Their attack would be launched from Cornwall as close as possible to the middle of April, around the time of the Roman Ides, and the landing place would be Carmarthen, on the other side of the great estuary from Tir Manha. The reason for the mid-April timing was one of co-ordination. The other invasion, involving the twin armies of Issa and Loholt, neither of whom the Queen had been able to approach in any way, would begin moving northward, overland towards their attack points, some time in the first week of April, weather permitting. Their departures would be separated by a week in order to enable the first army, which had much farther to travel, to make the great, looping movement required to turn and attack Camulod from the east. In order to ensure that all three attacks combined should generate the greatest impact and preserve the element of surprise, Cerdic and Tewdric would contain their seaborne army in Cornwall for a full two weeks after the departure of the first of the two land armies. Only then, when both of those were close to being in position, would the naval invasion set sail.

The initial attack from the sea into Cambria would be a two-part thrust. The Cornish fleet would strike land initially in a large, shallow and sheltered bay with a gently sloping beach approximately three leagues to the west of Carmarthen, unloading its army during daylight, after which the newly landed force would move quickly against the town itself. They would spend the night on the hills behind the former Roman fort at Carmarthen and attack with the dawn, hoping to surprise the defenders and overwhelm them before they could organize any resistance.

According to Ygraine's report. Lagan wrote, the leaders of the planned assault were confident and self-assured. They had accurate information about the defences of Carmarthen itself and about the lie of the land in the immediate area surrounding the walls, and they had two contingency plans governing the outcome of their initial attack. If their surprise was as successful as they anticipated, they would simply take possession of the town and use its wharves and warehouses to unload and store their supplies. If, on the other hand, their initial surprise fell short of expectations, their vanguard would fall back in time to conceal the full strength of the attacking force and would then draw itself up in battle lines on the flat land outside the town walls, from where they would taunt the Carmarthen Griffyds until their warriors went out against them. As soon as that happened and the Griffyds were committed outside the walls, an arranged signal would be sent and half a score of Cornish galleys that had not unloaded their cargo of men with the rest of the invading fleet would swoop in and attack the wharves and docks along the waterfront, spilling sufficient warriors into the town from that side to attack and capture the town gates.

That was all Lagan had to report, but he promised to write again as soon as he came into possession of any other information. He ended his letter by mentioning that Gulrhys Lot had been seen smiling recently, since he had learned that his wife, Queen Ygraine, was with child and would give birth sometime in June, just in time for his victory celebrations.

Uther sat gazing open-mouthed at the letter in his hand, his face gone blank, the colour draining from his cheeks, his awareness of the world around him suddenly suspended as he found himself reeling on the edge of an abyss called Fatherhood. He had joked about the possibility with Ygraine. but he had never really anticipated for a single moment that it might be possible for such a thing to happen. Casual by-blows as the result of pleasurable but meaningless coupling occurred all the time, seldom drawing notice, but the fathering of an heir, fatherhood with responsibility . . .paternity as he remembered Merlyn calling it . . . was for other people— people who were ready for it. It was for men who sought it; men who had an eye to their mortality; men who were married and besotted with their wives. He was a King, still very young and untried, with grave responsibilities. He did not have time to be a father . . .

At that moment, he caught himself and remembered that this paternity would be no burden on him here, for Gulrhys Lot seemed happy to accept and acknowledge the child, if it should be a boy, as his future heir. . . his first-born legitimate son . . . But this would be Uther's first-born, not Lot's . . . most certainly not Lot's! And suddenly he was deeply, viscerally angry that Gulrhys Lot should dare lay claim to a Pendragon child. Bad enough that he already had half a dozen sireless bastards all of whom he claimed were his, but that he should now seek to use a Pendragon, a blood descendant of Ullic and Uric, as a false crutch to prop up his sorry claims to manhood— it was too much!

"In the name of the lame god, what's wrong with you?"

The words brought Uther back to himself with a start and he turned to blink in surprise at Garreth Whistler, whom he had not heard entering the room. Owain of the Caves stood behind him, gazing calmly at the King over Garreth's shoulder. Uther gathered his wits and sat up straighter, responding to the unexpected question with false bluster.

"What d'you mean, what's wrong with me? There's nothing wrong with me. Good day to you, Owain."

Owain nodded wordlessly as Garreth Whistler grinned and held up his hands in mock surrender.

"Oh, then I'll ask your pardon. I simply happened to see the look on your face and the death grip you have on that parchment you're holding, crunched up into a ball. . . Lagan's news was good, then? I confess, from the look on your face I thought it might be disastrous."

Uther looked down at the crumpled missive in his hand and shook his head ruefully. "I . . . I was not aware of doing that. Here, sit yourselves down and listen and judge for yourselves whether or not I should be angry." He smoothed the letter out and then read it to them, leaving out only the mention of the Queen's pregnancy. When he had finished, Garreth sat quietly for a while, staring into the brazier, while Owain of the Caves sat gazing straight at Uther.

Finally Garreth spoke. "Where did that come from? It's specific. And it's not the kind of information given to the average grunt."

Uther nodded. "You're right, it's not. It came from my informant in Lot's camp."

"Your informant. I see. In Lot's camp. Of course, where else could it have come from? How long have you had one of those?"

Uther sighed and signalled to both of them to be seated, and when they were, he told them everything about his dealings with Herliss and Ygraine. They listened without interrupting until he had finished, and then Garreth Whistler asked, "Why did you not tell us sooner?"

"Because we didn't need to know about it." This was Owain, and his response, and the readiness of it, caused both men to look at him in surprise. "Well, it's the truth, isn't it? What we didn't know we couldn't let slip in our cups. Now, it's clear that you want us to know, so what happens next?"

"I'm not sure," Uther said. "That's why I'm asking for your advice." He glanced inquiringly at Garreth Whistler.

Garreth shrugged his broad shoulders and looked away, pursing his lips before responding. "I know we'll be able to make life rough for the seaborne invaders coming into Carmarthen," he said eventually, his eyes fixed on the glowing coals. "The terrain will work for us there and we'll have the advantage of surprise, so I'm confident we'll hammer them and throw them back to where they came from . . ." He turned and looked back at his protégé, the King. "But what can be done against the other two armies, the ones hitting Camulod? That's what I'm wondering . . . and I can see you are, too. There's no terrain advantage there for Camulod to use . . . nor us, either. A mile out of Camulod itself in any direction except straight along the high road, you're in deep forest, and deep forest works as much against you as it does for you. Can't use cavalry in there, and bowmen are useless most of the time. Too many trees and not enough space to shoot cleanly." He stopped and looked at Uther shrewdly. "Do you have anything at all in mind, or are you waiting for the Camulod people to work out their own salvation?"

"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 Cerdic 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.

It seemed that he was, for as Uther approached the group in front of the gates, the golden-haired giant sprang out ahead of all the others and bounded to take hold of Uther's bridle.

"Tiddler," he shouted. "Late again, as usual, never where you are supposed to be at any time! We have been waiting for you now these three days past. Welcome home."

Ignoring all the others in his delight, Uther kicked free of his stirrups and swung his right leg up over his horse's head, dropping to the ground and throwing his arms around his cousin, hugging him close. Wordlessly then, he shifted his weight suddenly, grasped Merlyn by the shoulders, hooked his right leg behind the other's knee and twisted, [t was an incomplete movement, halted almost in the execution, but it was a trick from their boyhood, practised a thousand times and calling for a particular and specific response. Merlyn reacted immediately, countering in exactly the right way, intuitively and with consummate ease, and Uther's heart soared.

"Hah!" he roared. "How long since you've done that?" He leaned backwards and peered into Merlyn's eyes, gripping him by the upper arms. "I was speaking of that very move to Dergyll ap Griffyd only weeks ago." He thought he saw a flicker of uncertainty in the eyes that looked back at him, and he hurried on. "You remember Dergyll ap Griffyd. You threw him on his arse with that same move the first time we ever met him, when we were boys and my father took us up to Carmarthen for the first time. He remembered it well, for he spent months practising it himself thereafter. He asked to be remembered to you."

But even as he spoke, Uther felt his spirits sinking. It was plain that Merlyn held no memories of Dergyll or of the incident he was describing. The clear, golden eyes had gone blank and then filled up with something resembling panic that quickly faded to regret. Uther tried hard to give no indication of his overwhelming disappointment, but he lost the flow of words that had sprung so readily to his tongue. He stood there for a moment longer, gazing at his cousin and struggling against the grief that had suddenly swollen up in his throat. Nothing had changed, he finally admitted to himself. Merlyn was glad to see him and knew who he was. but only because he had learned. Although everything about the outside of the man proclaimed him to be Caius Merlyn Britannicus, the truth was, still, that he was not.

This was the Merlyn who had never known his own wife, Deirdre, or the expectant joys of impending fatherhood. That thought, springing from nowhere, almost confounded Uther, reminding him of the child that would soon be born to him and calling up pain-filled shame over the role he had played, however unwittingly, in the tribulations Merlyn had endured.

He fought down the sudden urge to weep, blinking his eyes rapidly and swallowing hard, and then forced himself to smile again before he reached up to tap the centre of his cousin's forehead with the knuckle of his index finger.

"It's good to see you again, Cay. Good to know that head of yours is as hard as it ever was." He drew a deep breath, then released his cousin and turned back to where the others who had come to meet him stood watching. "Gentlemen, well met again."

The Erse giant Donuil stood smiling there, close by Merlyn as always, and beside him the saturnine physician Lucanus, who dipped his head in silent greeting. Many of the other faces on the outskirts of the group were known to Uther, too, even if the names attached to them eluded him for the moment. The veteran legates, Titus and Flavius, stood in front, still wearing their old and proud imperial armour, and behind them towered the huge bulk of Popilius Cirro, the epitome, as always, of the dignified senior centurion. Before moving to meet them, Uther turned to where Nemo stood at attention, holding the reins of Uther's horse in one hand and her own in the other, and nodded a signal to dismiss the squadron. Only then did he move forward to embrace the two old legates and greet Popilius, who nodded courteously and bade him welcome, not quite smiling but plainly glad to see him.

As they moved into the fort, however, a thought occurred to Uther, and he turned again to Merlyn, who was close by his side.

"You called me Tiddler. I had forgotten that name. Haven't heard it in twenty years. How did you remember it?"

Merlyn smiled and shook his head. "Aunt Luceiia told me about it. She remembers everything about our boyhood."

Again Uther felt disappointment well up in him, and he turned to Titus and Flavius to mask it. "Where is my grandmother?" His tone reflected his sudden concern as he remembered now that he had expected Luceiia to come hurrying to greet him, not having seen him since the year before, and he became aware again of the bulk inside his tunic that was a heavy letter to her, written by his mother Veronica. "Is she not well?"

The Legate Titus answered him: "The Lady Luceiia is very well and will be disappointed to have missed your arrival."

Flavius completed the answer, making Uther smile as he realized again that these two men had been together for so long that they thought almost as one person. "She is down in the Villa with some of the women of her Council, but please don't ask us what she is doing. We seldom know, and we never inquire. Come inside and tell us about your journey. We have much to discuss, and perhaps we can deal with some of it—"

"Before your grandmother returns," Titus finished. "We have some excellent red wine, brought in from Gaul by a visiting bishop. Come you."

Once Uther had exchanged greetings with everyone and stowed his travelling gear in his allocated quarters, Titus, Flavius, Popilius and an assortment of dignitaries, including the governing committee of the Council of Camulod and several senior garrison staff, including his Cousin Merlyn, spent the next two hours bringing Uther up to date concerning the hurried arrangements they had made to forestall Lot's upcoming advance against the Colony.

All ten of the border guard posts protecting the outer limits of the Colony's lands had been refurbished and refortified, the resident garrisons of six of them increased to double standard. The remaining four, those guarding the southern and eastern approaches to Camulod, had been greatly enlarged to more than double their original size and garrisoned accordingly. It was one of those that Uther had passed by on his way in. A widening of the roadway down from the fortress gates to the plain beneath had already been in process when Popilius returned, in order to improve access and egress in time of need, and the reinstallation of the temporary fort on the drilling plain had been quickly achieved by setting upwards of more than a thousand people, including old men, women and boys, to the task of building it. It was a temporary erection, Cirro said, dirt and logs, ditch and ramparts, but it would endure as long as the need for it might last. In addition to that, artillery platforms had been built on Camulod's hillsides, overlooking the open spaces surrounding the fort below, and artillery machines—huge torsion-wound devices that could hurl rocks and missiles made from heavy tree trunks— had been built and set up on the platforms.

As the litany of preparations continued, Uther began to feel better and better about Camulod's prospects for surviving the attacks that were to come. It was the veteran Titus, however, who put into words what all of them were thinking: that all of these preparations were for a defensive war, with no contingency for going out to carry a cavalry battle, Camulod's single strongest advantage, to the enemy. Camulod, through its entire brief history, had never been involved in a defensive war. All things considered, however, it was clear to Uther that the situation was better than he had anticipated. The Colony could tight defensively, and effectively, for as long as it might have to. All the Colonists would be withdrawn into the safety of the walled fortress itself, and the place had its own water and was well enough supplied with other stores to endure a siege of six months or longer, should that much be necessary.

The informal meeting broke down into a general discussion of many things, and Uther soon excused himself, pleading road weariness and the need to find hot water in which to bathe. Titus and Flavius both accompanied him to the furnace-fired bathhouse against the rear wall of the fort and remained with him as he undressed himself and sank into the luxury of the hot pool. They left him then to complete his ablutions and dress to go and meet his grandmother.

Luceiia Britannicus Varrus was a constant source of amazement to her grandson. Luceiia had to be more than sixty years old, he knew, and that was an incredible age to him. He knew only one woman of comparable age in all of Cambria, and she was a wrinkled crone, twisted and warped with age and viewed with terror and superstitious awe by everyone, because she was widely believed to be a familiar of the dark gods who ruled the Cambrian night. How else could anyone explain such longevity in a land where the few women who lived to reach their fortieth year were old and withered?

Luceiia Varrus, however, bore her advanced age with dignity and retained the unmistakable characteristics of the magnificent beauty that she had been in her youth. Her back was long and straight, unbowed by time or tribulation, and her long hair fell in a heavy, silver mane, shot through with shimmering remnants of raven black. Her mouth, far from being sunken and toothless, was still full and generous. Granted, her lips were far less full than they once had been, and her teeth were more yellowish now than white, but she still had all of them, and her smile was a thing of beauty, filled with love and humour.

Greeting her again and hugging her gently to his chest, Uther wondered, as he always did, about the spirit that sustained her and kept her youthful. How could it be that she remained so vital, where others of her age were long dead and gone? But then another thought occurred to him fleetingly. Though there was no one like Luceiia in Cambria, there were other elderly women in Camulod, more than a mere few of them, and all of them were healthy, clean and well groomed despite their age. These were the women of her Council, primarily, the matriarchs of the founding families. They lived gentle lives, well cared for by their children and descendants, and they knew none of the hardships that ruled the lives of Cambria's women from day to day and year to year.

Luceiia's exuberant greeting pushed all other thoughts from his head. She was in fine fettle, as usual, and delighted to see her grandson. When she had finished fussing over his appearance, she took him by the hand and welcomed him into her home, insisting that he spend the night there. But he asked her indulgence and insisted in his turn upon remaining in the visitor's quarters assigned to him, since he might be awakened at any hour of the night now that the word was out that he was here, and only briefly. Luceiia accepted his demurral with no more than a tiny sniff of disappointment, and then demanded all his tidings, including his first impressions of Camulod on this visit.

He began by handing her the letter from her beloved daughter, but she made no move to open it and read it while he was there, preferring, he knew, to savour and anticipate the pleasure she would gel from reading it when she could be alone to appreciate it. This time was for her grandson, and she listened closely as he told her all his tidings, smiling and frowning alternately. And when he had finished, she amazed him yet again.

"Tell me about those women you captured, the ones you sent here. The tall, beautiful one with the yellow hair like Cay's was striking, to say the least. . . She called herself Lot's wife, Ygraine, and for a while all the men here thought they had landed a prize of great value."

Uther smiled. "You knew, of course, that she was not."

"Well, not quite, not at first. I know the real Ygraine is sister to Donuil and to poor Deirdre, and I felt from the beginning that there was something far from right. I barely spoke to the woman at all, and I betrayed nothing. Call it a woman's intuition if you will. But I merely decided to wait for Donuil and wait upon his word . . .

"I knew he would be back the following day, for he had gone out hunting with Caius the day before, and so I watched for him and took him aside the moment he got back, before he had a chance to confront his 'sister.' Of course, one look was all that was required."

Uther was grinning widely now. "So what did you do then? Did you confront her?"

"No, Donuil and I decided to say nothing. We did not know what was happening, what was involved, but I decided it might be unwise to let her know we knew she was not who she said she was. I had mixed feelings about keeping her imposture a secret, but I decided to wait and see what would transpire. And then your messenger arrived a few days later with your written dispatch informing Titus and Flavius that she was not the Queen, but that they should say nothing about knowing the truth and simply release her and her women, under escort, back to the boundaries of Cornwall. So I have a question for you, grandson: how did you know she was not who she said she was? To the best of my knowledge, you knew nothing about the woman, and you barely knew her sister Deirdre or her brother Donuil."

Uther shook his head in admiration. "You are a clever old woman, Grandmother Luceiia."

"No, I am simply a woman. I have a mind that is not haltered by being masculine. So tell me, how did you find out who she was, or who she was not?"

"I knew, because the woman she pretended to be was there with her, pretending to be one of the Queen's attendants." And he proceeded to tell her the tale, starting from the beginning and omitting nothing except the intimate details of what had taken place between himself and Ygraine.

Luceiia sat silent throughout, eyeing him shrewdly, and when he had finished she pursed her lips and reached across in front of her to pick up a small silver bell from a low table. When a woman appeared in answer to her summons, she asked for wine for herself and her grandson and then sat silent again, staring into the brazier in the fireplace.

"I find that as I grow older, the cold becomes more sharp," she said, and then she lapsed into silence again, her mouth moving occasionally as she appeared to chew upon everything he had said. The serving woman returned with a tray bearing twin silver goblets and a beautiful silver ewer, misted with cold and beaded with drops of moisture. Uther thanked her with a nod and she placed the tray on the table and withdrew. Quietly, being careful not to distract his grandmother from her thoughts, he rose and filled the two cups with pale yellow wine, then placed one close by her elbow. Finally she looked up at him and nodded.

"So she is your source, Ygraine, and this Duke, Herliss. And the other woman, the blond one . . . Morgas . . . what of her? Does she know the truth?"

"Gods, no! Nor is she any longer in Cornwall. She returned to her home in the northlands to marry some local King there. I have not seen her since she left our camp to come here to Camulod."

"Good, that pleases me. She spoke of you, and I could tell she knew you, partially at least, but there was something about her that I could not warm to."

Uther felt momentarily uncomfortable, wondering how much the old lady knew or guessed, but he could see little profit to be gained in pursuing that, and so he let it pass.

Uther explained the thoughts he had entertained about how best to serve his mother in the coming fight, and how he had decided she would be safest at home in Tir Manha, where he hoped Luceiia would join her to wait out the spring campaign in safety. Luceiia, however, would have none of that. She herself was far too old and set in her ways now to leave her home in Camulod to seek some fleeting safety in another land. She would remain where she had lived for so many years, close to her memories and the graves of her husband and her brother.

On the matter of Merlyn, Luceiia had little to offer Uther in the way of hope for the future. Merlyn was physically well, she told him, alert and happy and in full possession of most of his faculties, apart from memory. But he had lost his aggressiveness and his love for fighting. Gone was his once brilliant and instinctive grasp of campaigning, strategy and tactical matters. He could still fight, she had been told, but it was as though he fought only for the pleasure of the exercise. Young Donuil was convinced that Merlyn had completely lost the propensity to kill, and in any real fight involving lethal weapons and ill feelings, Merlyn would be killed simply due to his own unwillingness to inflict harm on an opponent.

Luceiia laid her hand over Uther's. She had always loved Merlyn, she told him, but since his injury she had grown to love the new Merlyn Britannicus, with his gentleness and loving nature, even more than she would have believed possible. She would dearly love to have her great-nephew back, she said, but even were that to happen and Merlyn was suddenly restored to them as he had always been, she feared she might regret the loss of that new gentleness.

They were interrupted at that point by Luceiia's women bringing them an evening meal, and for hours after that they sat talking by the glowing brazier, discussing bygone days and precious memories of Caius Britannicus, his son Picus and Publius Varrus. Uther went to bed that night feeling a contentment he had not known in ages, and he slept well and soundly.

The following day Uther was up and into the kitchens before the cocks began to crow, and by sunrise, his belly pleasantly full and his heart at peace, he was meeting with Titus, Flavius, Donuil and Merlyn, and Popilius Cirro, arranging the final details of their plans as firmly as was possible, given the nature of the tasks ahead of them. He was finished by mid-morning and summoned Nemo to him, ordering his Dragons to be ready to leave by noon, and after that he took the time to say his farewells properly to everyone, including his grandmother.

He noticed something was amiss among his troops as he went to mount up in the main courtyard at noon, and he drew Nemo aside, out of their hearing.

"What's going on here? The men look angry."

Nemo blinked at him with her normal, vacuous look. "Some of them don't want to leave yet."

"Well, that's a pity, but I have to be back in Tir Manha quickly. There might be word from Cornwall." He began to move away, but then he hesitated and turned back. "And what's wrong with you?"

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 flushed 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.

The army commanders on the beach reacted instantly. Horns and bugles began to signal the advance as the first heavy drops of rain began falling from stone-grey skies. The leading formations of the invaders struck straight into the belt of woods enclosing the beach, only to find themselves faced with an impossible and impenetrably dense forest that began no more than fifteen paces inside the leading fringe of trees. From that point on. the way was impassable, because for months hundreds of Dergyll's Griffyd warriors, working in concealment, had laboured enormously within the woods to create an appalling trap, digging large, deep, steep-sided, overlapping holes among the growing trees, leaving no level ground on which to walk, scooping the dirt out from among the exposed roots and studding the sides and bottom of each hole with long, sharp, lethal stakes.

Initial dismay quickly gave way to mass confusion and then to panic as the realization dawned on the invaders that they were trapped and doomed, for the few ships that had escaped the rain of fire behind them had already fled, and the surface of the sea was littered with charred debris and still-blazing galleys.

Uther watched it all unfold with grim satisfaction from a bare knoll to the northeast of the woods that hemmed in the suddenly unfriendly beach. On the landward side where the King stood, the ground rose sharply, with only the merest trace of soil covering the solid bedrock. The mass of Uther's army was drawn up on this bare ground, looking down on the woods, but they made no attempt to move, for the Pendragon bowmen who had set fire to the ships had left their high positions now and hurried down to regroup in a long, double line fronting their own army, facing the outer fringe of the woods. From there, as the first of the men who had survived the staked trap beneath the trees began to emerge, exhausted from their passage, the bowmen shot them down remorselessly, so that a ring of corpses soon marked the exit from the trees.

When he thought sufficient damage had been done, Uther signalled his bowmen to withdraw, and they clustered around the two large wagons, laden with sheaves of fresh arrows, that sat off to his right. There they refilled their empty quivers before returning again to the high cliffs on either side of the bay on the far side of the belt of trees. From those heights, overlooking the exposed beach, they would set up a crossfire killing zone, taking advantage of the great range of their longbows and making it impossible for any of the Outlanders to return to the beach in search of safety.

In the meantime, as more and more of the enemy emerged cautiously from the trap among the trees, stepping over the arrow- riddled corpses of their fallen fellows, they found themselves facing rank upon rank of waiting warriors, fresh and unblooded, who stood calmly looking down on them, waiting for them to approach. More than a few turned and ran back into the woods, but there was nowhere for them to go, because the woods were choked with cursing, frightened men coming their way.

Uther found that he was clenching his jaw so hard that his muscles were beginning to ache. He sucked in a deep breath and made himself turn his head to look to his right and then his left. He knew what would happen from then on. His subordinates had been well instructed, and they would show the invading Outlanders no mercy. They had neither the time nor the facilities to accommodate prisoners. And the unforeseen destruction of the entire enemy fleet meant that there would be no salvation from the water for the Outlanders. The slaughter here today, he knew, would be appalling, but there was nothing he could do to obviate it. The Outlanders, were he to leave them alive, would show no gratitude. Indeed, they would interpret his mercy as a weakness, one in which they would never indulge. They would not then make their way humbly homeward, grateful for being spared. They would behave according to their natures and attack again, and so they must all be killed.

Below him, the destruction continued, and most of his army had not yet made a move towards the enemy. He turned to Dergyll ap Griffyd and nodded for him to take over, then swung his horse away and angled it uphill, back towards his own camp, hoping as he went that he had situated it far enough away from the battle to be beyond the range of his hearing.

Thanks to Uther's informants, the invasion was over almost before it had a chance to begin, providing him with a chilling lesson on the importance of secrecy, security and earning the loyalty of the people.

Uther was back on the road to Camulod again in early May, a full month ahead of what he would have considered possible only three months earlier, and at the head of a larger army than he could have anticipated—an army, moreover, that was strong in morale and confidence, its personnel still more than slightly drunk with the swiftness and totality of the victory they had won over Lot's invaders.

No move had yet been made against Camulod, and so Uther brought his mother, Veronica. Veronica and Luceiia would be able to look after each other, he knew, while he was gone, and he blessed the gods who had permitted everything to work out so well for him and his people, when they might easily have looked the other way. Perhaps, he dared to whisper to himself, his luck had turned at last.

Despite his gratitude for all his good fortune, however, Uther was sombre and uncommunicative, riding alone most of the time, closely followed by Nemo, who guarded him jealously and was never without an unsheathed weapon in one hand or the other. Garreth Whistler and Huw Strongarm both watched this, saying nothing to anyone but wondering independently of each other what could be bothering the King. He ought, by rights, to have been soaring high in the aftermath of his complete victory, but it seemed to them that nothing could be farther from the truth.

He was still in the same frame of mind when they reached Camulod, and as far as they could see, nothing had changed by the time he rode out with Titus and Flavius, Merlyn, Donuil and Lucanus to inspect the perimeter of the Colony's holdings and assess and examine the quality of the army Camulod had set aside for Uther's use.

Uther himself felt no burden upon him, other than the familiar one of responsibility and a novel, unaccustomed need to conduct himself with great caution and much forethought in the adventure he was about to undertake, for the political situation within the troubled land of Cornwall was not one that could be lightly dismissed by an advancing army from outside. He was about to launch a hostile incursion into that territory, and while it wouldn't be his first, he had never before faced such a dangerous Cornwall, teeming as it was with unsettled native Cornish troops—factions and private armies—whose loyalties were now highly unpredictable. When Lot fell, as he undoubtedly would in the near future, the lighting among the Cornish warlords would likely escalate into full and open war, depending upon who emerged from the ruck, fighting for dominance. That struggle in itself was dangerous enough to demand a cautious approach, but the risk of catastrophe was increased indescribably by the presence of the thousands of leaderless but highly volatile mercenary Outlanders who had formed the armies of Issa and Loholt. These might swing their support at any time to back any one of the contending warlords, depending upon who was able to negotiate most tellingly with them. Or instead they might produce new leaders from among their own ranks, as Ygraine had forewarned, and join forces to overrun Cornwall on their own behalf, crushing the local Cornish opposition.

Eclipsing even his preoccupation with the threat of war within war in Cornwall, however, Uther found himself haunted by the looming spectre of fatherhood. Ygraine would give birth to their son—it had never even occurred to him that the child might be a girl—in a matter of mere weeks, or perhaps even days, and it was not inconceivable that she might have already done so—which meant that he could already have a son and heir living in Cornwall. That, more than any other consideration, was what consistently gave him pause and had led to the unusual distance remarked on by his men.

Uther had been raised and schooled in the formerly Roman and traditionally Camulodian discipline of responsible leadership, where no commander ever lightly risked the lives and welfare of his men. His own life, however, had always been another matter altogether, barely meriting consideration. That it was invariably placed at the disposal of, and dedicated to the safety of, the men who relied on him for his leadership was a simple given, one of the facts of his life that was so much part of him as to be unremarkable. Now, however, for the first time in his life, Uther found himself considering his own vulnerability and mortality, visualizing himself as he truly was in battle: isolated at the head of his own formation, in front of all his men and presenting himself not only as their unmistakable leader, but also as the prime target of the enemy.

From the moment of his discovery that Ygraine was pregnant and Lot had acknowledged her child as his own, Uther had refused even to allow himself to consider that any relationship might ever develop between the child and Gulrhys Lot. He knew that Lot would soon die at his hands, and dead. Lot could make no claim to anyone's paternity. But then, more recently, a new thought had occurred to him: what would happen, he wondered, if he himself were killed, leaving the child an orphan—what then? The child would be as helpless as any other child must be—all of the children who were not his son and heir to Pendragon—for years at the mercy of all the ills that fate could shower upon a fatherless infant until it had grown to the point at which it could begin looking after its own interests.

He did not even attempt to delude himself that Ygraine might make do, left alone. She would be stuck in Cornwall, where being a woman meant being a slave, a chattel, with no more worth or value than her looks might earn for her on any one day. Certainly, a mother might look after a child's basic needs, but the strength and protection of a powerful and caring father was something no child should ever have to live without. It occurred to him that his own father's love for him had been uncommon, and that most of the other fathers he had known and observed had been very unlike Uric Pendragon, unwilling to show open love to their own sons or to anyone else. Be that as it may, he decided that he would be unstinting with his love to his own son. If he lived. If he stopped making a target of himself for eager enemies. If he survived to see his son grow up without the need to grow reliant upon his mother alone.

But if that were not to be, if he were killed in the fighting that loomed ahead in Cornwall, what could he do to ensure his son's welfare then? How could he arrange to have immediate and infallible assistance sent to Ygraine and her son, his son, immediately upon his death? No one knew the child was his except Ygraine herself. Sharing that knowledge with another, any other, meant increasing the risk of the word spreading, and if it spread too far too soon, then Lot would find out, and mother and son would die, long before Uther could reach them.

He could write a letter, a testament, and leave it in trust with his Grandmother Luceiia in Camulod when he rode off to war, with instructions that it was to be opened after his death in battle. He would acknowledge that the child born to Ygraine was his and would leave instructions for the rescue of the boy and his mother, and for their transportation to the sanctuary of Camulod, where they could both live in comfort and prosperity among family who would love them. After that, it would remain only for the rescuers to find the mother and child in the chaos of Lot's Cornwall.

And if that proved to be impossible? How long would it take until the boy outgrew the need for his mother's protection and became strong enough and clever enough to look out for himself? That would be at least fifteen years, he thought, feeling stirrings of panic in the pit of his stomach. But then he thought, well, twelve at least . . . twelve years for a boy to grow smart enough to run and hide, to save his skin. After all, even a tiny tyke like the seven-year- old Nemo could scuttle into hiding. Nevertheless, after seven years living as an orphan in Cornwall, how would the boy ever know that he was born of Pendragon?

Uther felt frustration and anger wash over him, and he knew that thoughts such as these could unnerve him completely. He threw himself into other activities, then, determined to lose himself in their urgencies. No matter what he did, however, the concern for his unborn son's welfare was there in the back of his mind, and the vision of Ygraine smiling at the infant on her knee was always close to the forefront.

By the time he returned to Camulod from his inspection tour of the perimeter defences, he had arrived at a concrete decision: his main priority upon entering Cornwall would be to find Ygraine and her child, separate them from Lot and his creatures and spirit them quickly and safely back to Camulod. Once that had been achieved, and he was sure of their safety in the custody of his mother and grandmother, he could settle in to the campaign properly and give it all the attention it required and deserved. He had able and loyal deputies who could stand in for him at the start of the campaign, until his first, main task—ensuring the welfare of his heir—was taken care of. After that, he would take the reins back into his own hands and, at the head of his cavalry—his own and Camulod's—he would sweep Gulrhys Lot, his presence, his treachery and his armies not merely out of Cornwall but out of the land of Britain.

He wrote his letter of testament slowly and with great care, reworking it several times until he was convinced that its meaning was clear and precise and that no one could possibly misconstrue what it said. Then he left it with his Grandmother Luceiia, with appropriate instructions as to how and when it was to be opened.

Foul weather caused Uther great concern and gave him much to fret over. With his allies and supplies all in place, his army had been assembled for more than two weeks, and his carefully prepared plans all indicated that he should already have been on the road for a full week, heading southwestward along the great Roman road to the ancient town of Isca, where they would swing west into the peninsula of Cornwall. But Uther had hung back, against what his mind was whispering might have been his better judgment, stubbornly hoping for a break in the weather and refusing to give the marching order until the last possible moment. He could see little sense in leading an army off to war if its personnel were already sniffling and miserable, cold and soaking wet before they even set out. Their morale, he maintained in the face of the little opposition and disagreement he encountered, would be non-existent before they even lost sight of the battlements of Camulod if they had to slog their way through pouring rain, chill winds and ankle-deep mud. And so he waited, living in hope from day to day that the abominable weather would finally break and that he could lead his men out in sunshine, dry for at least the beginning of their campaign.

It took eight days after their planned starting date for him to get his wish, but the break did come, and although it was not exactly a bright and clarion day of glowing sunlight, there were blue patches of sky visible between banks of clouds in the early morning, and the rain had died away during the second watch of the previous night. Encouraged by the early signs of brightening prospects, he had kept his men in readiness that morning, poised for departure while he waited until the strengthening sun could break through the cloud cover with something resembling authority. Then, when it eventually did, and as the strength of its warmth and light began to grow more and more apparent, he summoned Popilius Cirro to him, along with the senior cavalry commander from the Camulod garrison, and Garreth Whistler and Huw Strongarm from the Cambrian contingent. Telling them to mount up and ride behind him, he led them up to the reviewing stand by the edge of the great drilling ground at the bottom of Camulod's hill and sat there facing his army, waiting for his presence to bring silence.

This was a far smaller army than he had originally intended to command—a mere two thousand strong, as opposed to the six- thousand-man host he had visualized months earlier—but he was convinced that it would be more effective and more lethal than the larger host might have been. His deliberations on the condition of Cornwall after receiving Ygraine's letter had convinced Uther that the advantages he might gain from numbers would be more than offset by the difficulties of feeding and sustaining a large army in a ruined land, and his allies had finally come to agree with him. An army must sustain itself by feeding off the land through which it travelled, but Cornwall, as they had ascertained from the reports of scouting parties sent out for that purpose, was utterly devastated and incapable of feeding its own after the depredations of the leaderless mercenary Outlanders and the internecine wars of the various Cornish warlords. And wherever Herliss and Lagan might be now, the massed strength they had hoped to gather against Lot had evidently failed to materialize. Uther had heard from neither man since their disappearance after the deaths of Issa and Loholt. Against his own will, he had come to realize that leading a massive army into Cornwall would be folly under such circumstances, and so he had conferred with his allies, in both Camulod and his own Cambria, in an attempt to make the best of the unpalatable situation facing them. Lot's Cornwall must be invaded they all knew that and there was no arguing against it—but the invasion Uther now proposed to lead would more resemble the thrust of a sword blade into the lines of cleavage in a lump of coal than it would the sweeping arc of a swung scythe. He would penetrate and cleave in a straight thrust, rather than surge on a broad front. And so the army waiting to depart now was composed of a mere two thousand men, half cavalry and half infantry, and included several hundred Pendragon bowmen. All of them, horse and foot, were hand picked, the best of the combined best of Camulod and Cambria, and as he waited for them to fall silent, Uther Pendragon felt proud of—and somewhat chastened by—the way they had competed among themselves to win a place in the ranks now facing him. He refused absolutely to allow himself to think he might be leading all of them to death, and he silently sucked in great, shuddering breaths to calm his voice before addressing them.

The army had been assembled in its divisions—infantry, cavalry and Cambrian clansmen—for hours, and complete stillness fell over the entire assembly as the men waited for Uther to speak. He took his time, savouring the anticipation in the air, theirs and his own. Then, when he judged the moment to be exactly right, he removed his helmet and slung it from the bow of his saddle before standing up in his stirrups and loosening the clasp of his great red cloak with its emblazoned golden dragon. He swung the garment up and off his shoulders, swirling it around in a great sweep of colour and then catching the folds of it in the crook of his left arm and draping it across his saddle in front of him. Only then did he begin to speak, using his command voice, and his words were clearly audible to every man there.

"Well, lads, the weather's breaking. It looks like a fine day to go to war."

The sound that greeted his opening words was a low rumble, like distant thunder, swelling rapidly, then dying away to silence again. Uther swept the assembled ranks deliberately with his eyes, moving his head slowly from left to right, his gaze taking in every element of the troops massed in front of him.

"We'll be in Cornwall three days from now, and you all know why. There is a pestilence in that country, and we are chosen to stamp it out. Think you we're up to it?"

"Aye, Uther, that we are!" It was a single voice, shouted from an unknown throat, but it brought a bark of laughter and a swelling chorus of agreement.

Uther shouted into the sound as it died away, "That man has won a jug of ale for himself and all his squad mates in camp tonight. Who was he?"

A stirring among the ranks then and a small commotion marked the source of the first shout, and the man, a Camulodian cavalry trooper, raised one hand above his head. Uther pointed him out to everyone who had not seen him.

"What's your name?"

"Caseady, King Uther."

"Well, Caseady, present yourself this night to the camp quartermaster and collect your prize, but you had better bring a friend to help you carry it and prevent you from drinking all of it yourself." This brought another shout of laughter, cheers and jeers, and Uther waited until it had died away completely before speaking again, his voice now sober and serious.

"We are two thousand strong, lads. Not the biggest force that Camulod has ever sent to war, but by all the gods, we might be the strongest and the most agile. We have horse and foot, both, and the finest bows and bowmen in the world. Camulod and Pendragon, side by side. Lot of Cornwall has nothing that can stand against us, but our dearest hope must be that he will try the truth of that. If he does—and he will—he'll rue the day he ever saw us coming. Are you ready for him?"

A great shout of "Aye!"

"Aye, we are, but hear me clearly. We are not marching into Cornwall to stand there and tight in enormous battles. We—you, every one of you—are a striking force. Our objective is to move quickly and constantly, striking hard and fast wherever we encounter hostiles. We are going raiding, lads, and even if we fail to find oily King Lot, we'll smash his mercenaries and we'll kill his confidence. Now, are you ready for him?"

"Aye!"

"Is he ready for us!"

"No!"

"Good! Then let's go and show him the damnable blunder he made when he invaded Camulod and Cambria. Move out!"

He stood up straight in his stirrups, drew his long sword and waved it above his head in the recognized signal, and as the cheering began to die away, the first signs of disciplined movement began among the individual columns of men and horses. Uther watched them for several more moments, then turned to his companions and nodded to each of them in turn before dismissing them to their individual duties. After that he rode back up the hill to the high vantage point overlooking the campus, where his mother and his grandmother stood with Merlyn, Donuil, Titus, Flavius and several others who had assembled to watch another Camulodian army start out on a campaign.

From the centre of the assembly, in the middle of the vast campus, a full score of enormous commissary wagons began to move, slowly and ponderously, each of them hauled by a rough-matched team of eight huge horses and commanded by an expert teamster, who sat up high on the driver's seat, wielding the reins in one hand and a long, leather whip in the other and rolling on his high, swaying perch like a sailor in the mast lookout of a seagoing galley. Slowly and sedately the wagons rolled forward and arranged themselves into pairs to assume their place in the middle of the long column of Popilius Cirro's infantry, where they would be safest from attack and depredation. The commissary wagons were the soldiers' lifeline, representing food, drink and warmth, and no enemy would be permitted to approach them casually. Watching these majestic vehicles lumber slowly into motion, noting the size and number of them, their ponderous dignity and the enormous swarm of lesser cargo and supply wagons that followed behind in support of them, Uther could appreciate more clearly than by any other example the scope and duration of the adventure on which they—all of them, his Cambrian men and Camulod's best and finest—were now being launched. By the time they returned from this campaign, those among them who did return, these mighty wagons would be empty of supplies and their ancillary support vehicles long since emptied and set to service like the commissary wagons themselves as transportation for badly wounded men. That would be many months in the future.

Uther had made all his farewells to everyone, and he had been more aware than ever before that he might never see any of his beloved friends and family again. Of them all, the leave-taking that had pained him most was the parting from his Cousin Merlyn, who had smiled and hugged him close and wished him well with absolute conviction and sincerity—though the Caius Merlyn Britannicus with whom Uther had grown to manhood would have had to be tied down to his bed and then locked up in a barred cell before he would have permitted Uther Pendragon to ride off to war without him at the head of a Camulodian army.

As the main body of his infantry began wheeling and regrouping into their marching formations, Uther turned his head slightly and glanced again at his cousin. Merlyn was watching the troops closely, the expression in his eyes making it clear that he was enjoying the intricacy of their disciplined manoeuvres, but there was nothing there that reminded Uther of the Caius Merlyn of his younger days. He heaved a great sigh, filled with regret, then turned to his left and bent forward in his saddle, reaching out to where his Grandmother Luceiia sat beside his mother, close by him, in a light, one-horse cart that her husband Publius Varrus had built years earlier. Luceiia saw him lean towards her, reaching, and stretched her hand out to meet his. He kissed it, squeezed it gently, nodded to her one last time, blew a kiss to his mother, and then dug his spurs into his horse's flanks, kicking it down towards the departing army on the great plain.

Chapter THIRTY-SIX

Even before penetrating Cornwall, Uther had decided that he had no wish to waste time and manpower in besieging strongholds, so from the outset of his campaign he took evasive action every time his scouts identified a strongly held, fortified position. He preferred to send his army looping around the obstacle, rather than run the risk of being inveigled into a long, costly and unsatisfying siege that would tie up most of his resources. He took particular care, too, in not merely avoiding but staying far away from several of the largest and best-known strongholds, in particular Golant, Lot's own strongest holding and his most often used base, and Tir Gwyn, Herliss's White Fort. Herliss, he knew, was gone, and it would not have surprised him to learn that his stronghold had been seized by Gulrhys Lot. Until he knew one way or the other, Uther had decided he would be cautious and make no attempt to approach the place.

Passing it by on his first advance southward, however, he had dispatched Nemo alone on foot at the closest point of his approach to find out what she could about the situation in the White Fort. Nemo had gone willingly but slowly, in the guise of a homeless peasant and armed only with a heavy cudgel and a knife with a rusted but serviceable blade, and she had been clearly warned, however needlessly, about the potential dangers in penetrating an enemy stronghold.

Nemo was gone for nigh on three weeks, and then returned bearing mixed tidings. Tir Gwyn had been confiscated, as Uther had guessed it might be, forfeited by Herliss as punishment for his continuing absence from Lot's service, and it was now garrisoned by a strong detachment of mercenary Outlanders. Nemo had entered the fort easily enough, finding it full of rootless people whose only common bond was that none of them was from Cornwall, and had immediately begun blending into the place, attracting no attention, but listening closely and waiting until she felt her face had become familiar to the people around her. That had taken ten days, Nemo estimated, and after that she had begun casually and indirectly asking questions.

It was common knowledge that Lot's fury on learning of the defection of Herliss and Lagan had been spectacular in its insanity: he had slaughtered the entire party that brought him confirmation of the disappearance, despite his full awareness that he himself had sent them out specifically to discover and report the truth of the situation. He had apparently seen no irony in having them killed for succeeding.

No one knew where Herliss and Lagan were hiding, Nemo reported, but rumours abounded that they had been joined by several other powerful Cornish Chiefs and leaders, and that they had raised and were training an army of Cornish clansmen outside the boundaries of Cornwall itself to invade their own homeland and overthrow Gulrhys Lot. As a direct result of these rumours, Lot had withdrawn most of his free-ranging mercenary forces and formed them into armies again, keeping heavy concentrations of them within the protecting walls of the score and more of hill forts, some of them ancient and unused for hundreds of years, that were scattered the length and breadth of Cornwall.

Uther was prepared to accept Nemo's news with relief, since, along with everyone else in his army, he had been finding it hard to accept that they had spent more than four weeks in Cornwall, marching openly from one end of the peninsula to the other and then back again, without ever encountering an enemy force large enough to fight. They had seen many small groups, but those were always small enough and clever enough to disappear into the nearest hills immediately upon catching sight of the Camulodian host.

Uther's Cambrian scouts, predominantly Pendragon bowmen, ranged as far as three miles ahead of the main army at all times, forming a moving, semicircular screen around the advancing troops, and they were the ones who monopolized such fighting as there was, surprising small, unsuspecting groups of enemy warriors, many of them hunting parties, and dispatching them swiftly and effectively from hundreds of paces away.

Despite the lack of a tangible, physical presence, however, it was plain to Uther's people that the enemy had been here recently, for the entire land lay ravaged in the aftermath of the Outlanders' revolt. Burned and ruined buildings lay everywhere they looked: huts, cottages, roundhouses and longhouses, many of them built of wood and recognizable now only by the shape of their charred remnants. They found larger settlements, too, where people had congregated in hamlets and permanent encampments, usually at a crossroads of some description, although the "roads" were frequently little more than well-worn tracks or livestock trails, and close to those settlements, all of them ruined and abandoned, the Camulodians could not fail to note, mainly because of the inescapable stench, the rotting corpses that hung from almost every tree.

Garreth Whistler brought it to Uther's attention that among the burned-out buildings, most of those that had been built of stone had had their walls pushed down after the fires, after the roof trees had fallen in, because the fallen stones of the walls invariably lay on top of the charred timbers and ashes of the thatched roofs. Plainly the damage had been more than a mere incidental by-product of war. These buildings had been demolished deliberately in order to deprive local people of shelter and living space.

Uther nodded and took careful note of the fact, filing the information away for retrieval later when he could think about it properly. For the time being, he had other matters on his mind, not the least of which concerned Ygraine's whereabouts. He had blindly expected her to contact him when he entered Cornwall. Now, after days of watching and waiting, he had to admit to himself that he had no idea where she might be and no way of discovering whether she was well or unwell, or whether she was free or being confined against her will in one of Lot's many scattered strongholds. The helpless frustration of not knowing dominated everything he tried to do.

Finally, sitting by his own small campfire on a cold night after a long and exhausting day spent ploutering about in fetlock-deep mud and pouring rain, Uther took Garreth Whistler into his full confidence and told him everything about what had happened between him and Ygraine. The King's Champion listened attentively, without attempting to interrupt the tale, and then sat staring silently into the fire after Uther had finished.

He had known, he said, that there was something going on in Uther's mind that was distracting much of his attention from the task at hand. Now that he knew what it was, he felt greatly relieved, particularly since he could tell that Uther was worrying needlessly. When Uther challenged him on that, surprised by such an offhand dismissal of his concern, Garreth merely shrugged and pointed out that the Queen was at the full term of her pregnancy, a cruel and demanding time for any woman, when her mind must be awash with fears and concerns over her own life and death, and with the entire spectrum of birth and survival and the health and welfare of both herself and her first-born child. Unrealistic, he grunted, for Uther to expect that she might make the time to sit down, empty her mind of her own concerns and write him a letter, even had she the freedom and a willing, trustworthy scribe to write for her.

He pointed out, too, that she had also told Uther openly in her last letter, by his own admission, that she was beset and surrounded by Lot's spies and was being closely watched, and that she had been able to write to him on that occasion thanks only to the god-sent, unexpected opportunity presented by the wandering priest who had visited her. Would she, then, be tempted to destroy herself and her child, the Champion asked, by entrusting any kind of message to the people surrounding her simply in the hope of soothing his troubled brow? Uther's fretting was pointless and illogical, since common sense could explain the Queen's silence. Besides, he growled, it was unworthy, womanish behaviour for a King at the head of an army that looked to him for manhood and leadership.

Uther's natural reaction to this was to bluster and object, but Garreth Whistler gave him no chance. Presumably, he continued, Ygraine had not yet come to the birthing stage. After all, had the birthing been successful and produced an heir born to his legitimate Queen, Lot would have had the tidings trumpeted from every dunghill in Cornwall. Had it been otherwise, had anything happened to Ygraine or to her child, be it male or female, that word would also be abroad in the land, whether Lot wished it or no. But word of neither event had been heard, so Garreth thought it safe to assume that there had been no birth yet.