Uther

As his men marched away, Uther Pendragon sat alone for a while, gazing up to the towering headland where his arch-enemy might be standing looking down at him. Then, when the last of his troopers had almost disappeared from sight, he spurred his horse and rode after them, leaving young Bassus to form up his mixed guard of bowmen and infantry and take their place far in the rear of the retreating army.

Late in the afternoon of the following day, his rear ranks were overtaken and attacked by a fast-moving body of highly disciplined troops, forcing Uther to make use of a formation seldom used in his training programs, since his forces had seldom had to fight on the defensive. In the process of throwing out a protective screen of heavy cavalry to shield the infantry while they regrouped, Uther had little time to think about what the attack meant in terms of Bassus and his rearguard or his screen of rear scouts other than to recognize that they must all be dead. The enemy had advanced and attacked with shocking speed. The swiftness of their approach had made it difficult for his people to number them accurately in the early stages of the attack, but Uther was prepared to accept an approximation of from seven hundred and fifty to a thousand men, split into three independently advancing groups, each with its own commander.

The newcomers were Germanic, not Ersemen. That was obvious from their discipline and their generally well-equipped condition, with ring-mail shirts and uniform, rectangular shields. Many of them carried heavy axes, Uther could see, but the remainder carried long, useful-looking spears. Uther had never seen real Roman soldiers, for the Romans had disappeared from Britain during his early childhood, but he knew instantly that his attackers were Roman-trained veterans, tough and hard and superbly disciplined, real soldiers rather than rough bandits, men who had served and fought together for years and would be easily and eagerly brought to fight, but not put to flight. Watching the way they moved to engage his forces, he could see that they were familiar with cavalry and showed no fear of the mounted troopers. They held their formations effortlessly and were magnificently well drilled, and that set him wondering immediately whether he might be able to use their discipline to his advantage. He spurred his horse into a dead run and, closely followed by Garreth Whistler, Huw Strongarm and a small group of senior officers of the Camulod contingent, galloped to the top of a low knoll nearby, where he could look down on the activities taking place on the level ground below him.

The officer commanding the cavalry sent to interpose themselves between the enemy and Uther's deploying infantry was a Camulodian called Nestor Strabo. He had formed his men into a wedge formation for his first attack, but even as they formed up and began to move forward to the attack, he had to give the signal to halt them again when two of the three independent enemy units began moving quickly towards each other, forming themselves into the famous Roman tortoise configuration, while the third unit wheeled and moved away from them.

The two units forming the tortoise, both of them on Uther's right, grouped themselves in the classic oval formations and covered themselves completely with overlapping shields, forming a pair of flawless, protective domes that rose from the grounded shields on all sides to form two impenetrable carapaces, each of them bristling with long spears projecting between shields all around the perimeter. The long spears held the cavalry at bay, and Nestor Strabo's force was effectively neutered and rendered impotent, for their swords were neither long enough nor heavy enough to do any damage, even could they have come within striking distance of the defensive shields, and the length of the spears projecting towards them ensured that they could not even ride between the two close-set formations.

Seeing this, Strabo issued new orders and swung his cavalry wedge around in a full gallop towards the third, most distant enemy phalanx, which had been moving quickly to outflank his group as they approached the two tortoises. Instantly, the third phalanx coalesced and formed a tortoise too, while the other two disintegrated fluidly and their men moved swiftly against Strabo's cavalry from the rear. Strabo saw the move and waved his followers aside, sweeping them out of their charge and across the face of the enemy, leading his horsemen back towards the original formations, which quickly regrouped at his approach. Strabo raised an arm and brought his men to a halt at his back, then stood erect in his stirrups, his head moving from side to side as he watched all three enemy formations. The situation was static, with both sides vying for advantage and neither able to do anything effective.

Uther was watching the activity too, but seeing the inability of Strabo's troopers to close with the enemy, an alarm flared in his mind and gave him an idea. He swung to face the Whistler, unhooking the heavy flail from his saddle as he did so and holding it out towards Garreth as though it weighed nothing at all, the thick shaft pointed at the other man and the heavy iron ball dangling at the end of the short length of chain that fixed it to the shaft.

"You have one of these?" he shouted.

"No, why?"

"How many of your men have them?"

"Almost all of them. It's your weapon, and they're your Dragons. They do what you do. Why?"

"Look at Strabo's people down there. They're useless. Those spears are no real danger to them. All the enemy can do is hold them out there to fend off the horses, but they can't thrust with them or spear anything. And yet Strabo's men are hamstrung, because their swords can't reach the enemy shields. Can't get past the spears. And even if they could, they couldn't penetrate the shield cover."

Uther brandished the flail, swinging it over his head. "Now, if I were down there swinging this, I'd wrap the chain around a spear shaft, sidewise, and rip the spear right out of the grip of whoever was holding it. Do it often enough, I'd rip out enough spears to allow me to move closer and smash the ball into one of the shields. I'd break the shield or batter it down. D'you believe me? Quickly, man, do you believe I could?"

"Yes."

"Good, and if I did it, if I knocked a hole in that tortoise's shell, do you think another ten or twenty men with me, all of them swinging flails, could do the same? Of course they could! But if I had another ten or twenty bowmen waiting nearby, watching and waiting until we had made those holes in the shell, they could then shoot arrows in through the holes we made."

Huw Pendragon's eyes were alight as he made the mental leap before Garreth Whistler could. "They could, Uther, and that would be the end of the tortoise, for we'd pour so many arrows through those holes that no one inside the shelter could survive and the shell would collapse."

Uther turned in his saddle to look at the officers around him. "Did you all hear that? Do you understand it? You see what's involved?" They were all nodding, some of them shouting in approval, and he grinned and held up the Hail above his head. "Well, then, let's try it. Let's find out if I'm mad or not!" He pulled his horse backwards and around, tugging it into a rearing dance on its hind legs. "Garreth, we'll need three squadrons of cavalry, all Dragons and all with flails, and three more squadrons, without flails if need be, to back them up and add weight. Whichever way that works out, I want every trooper who has a flail to be involved in this attack. So, six squadrons in all. One double squadron to each tortoise.

"Huw, we'll need three squadrons of bowmen to work with them, waiting until the holes have been torn in the shells and then shooting into them. Mind you tell all of them to waste no arrows firing onto the top of the tortoise shell. Every arrow must go through a hole. Then, when the shells start to collapse, I'll want strong infantry formations waiting to move in and crush them. At that time, the bowmen will fall back and the cavalry will disengage and circle, looking for stragglers and escapees. Am I clear?"

From that moment forward, the entire impetus of the struggle changed, with the advantage shifting slowly but heavily in Uther's favour. The new tactics did not have any immediate or startling effect, simply because they were too new and therefore strange to Uther's troopers. For a long time they seemed to achieve nothing at all. But after several failures and several more ineffectual attacks, some of Uther's Dragons began to understand what was required and adjusted their movements, swinging their flails sideways, rather than vertically, and soon the protective spears, lashed by swinging iron balls and pulled by coils of heavy chains, began to break and to fall. And once that began to happen, then it gradually became easier for the flailing horsemen to come close enough to the enemy to smash down the shields and create holes into which the Pendragon bowmen could shoot.

The engagement was long-drawn-out and fluid, in spite of the static nature of the enemy defences, more a series of skirmishes than a set battle. Uther was not present to see the outcome of his newest strategy, for the fight lasted until late the following day, by which time, knowing his forces were winning, he had ridden off with a strong escort to find and rescue Ygraine.

In the end, as Uther had suspected in that first flash of insight, the German enemy was destroyed by its own perfect discipline and training, which proved too rigid to allow them to adapt their defences to meet the new style of attack being mounted against them. They fought well and ferociously, neither seeking nor showing mercy, and they fought off attack after attack, breaking away from time to time in good order and then moving decisively back to the attack, reforming and regrouping time after time until they were reduced to one under-manned formation incapable of forming the tortoise. When that happened, they finally drew themselves into a ring behind their shields, then stood there and fought until they died. But they took a large number of Uther's followers with them, and the broad path over which they fought their way for an entire day and a half was littered with dead and dying warriors, many of them Camulodian and Cambrian infantry, cavalry and bowmen.

When he arrived at the isolated stronghold that held Ygraine and her party, Uther found a scene of controlled chaos. The signs of heavy fighting were everywhere, with bodies strewn all around the entrance- way and a heavy pall of smoke hanging over everything. He was expected, however, and he could see from the waving figures atop the first earthen rampart that Ygraine's bodyguard had been the winners of the struggle that had taken place.

The Queen herself, surrounded by a protective ring of her own guardsmen, was waiting for Uther when he reached the main gates, and she left the protective cordon and came to meet him as he entered and dismounted. Her face was radiant, her long hair hanging down her back, bound over her brows with a wide ribbon of some bright green fabric, and as she approached, not quite running, she held their child aloft in her hands.

Despite his haste and the many problems that swarmed in his mind, Uther was yet surprised to notice how small she was and to realize that he had been completely unaware of that in all the time he had known her. In his mind she had always seemed taller and more buxom than she looked now, despite the fact that her breasts were now swollen with milk and her waist was still thickened from her pregnancy.

No thought of secrecy or circumspection in her mind now, Ygraine came directly to him and handed him his son, her face wreathed in a smile of welcome, and as he took the child from her and held it up to where he could see it plainly, all awareness of pain, loss and battle-weariness faded immediately from his mind.

The boy was beautiful, even Uther could see that, despite his total ignorance of babies. He had thick, dark hair shot with streaks of pale brown, and enormous, shining eyes of a strange golden colour the like of which Uther had never seen. A great lump formed in his throat, closing off his breath, and for several moments he thought he might weep with the beauty of what was stirring in his breast. He was vaguely aware that everyone in the gateway and the courtyard beyond was looking at him, watching to see what he would do or say, but he had eyes only for the child, his son, Arthur, and he could feel Ygraine's wide eyes fixed on his face, gauging his reactions to what he was seeing.

He swallowed, hard, and drew a deep, shaking breath, holding it until he was sure he could speak without his voice trembling, and then he hefted the child gently as though measuring his weight. "Arthur, you said, that is his name? Arthur? There's little of the Cambrian in him." He saw her stiffen as though in shock and smiled at her, continuing to speak. "This one is Roman more than Cambrian, but British Roman. You made my son well, lady, complete with eagle's eyes.

"My grandmother has often told me of her brother, Caius Britannicus, who founded Camulod. He had eyes like this one here, bright, golden, eagle eyes. A soldier's eyes. A leader's eyes. A King's eyes, in truth. This one will be a King like none before him." He finally looked at Ygraine, smiling broadly and shifting the child into the crook of his right arm as he reached for her with his left, seeing the tears trembling in her eyes. "Now will you kiss me in front of all the world and be my wife and mother to my son for everyone to see and know?"

She swallowed a sob and moved quickly into the crook of his arm, lifting her face to him and kissing him deeply, and as they stood locked in their embrace, the child between them on one side, someone began to cheer, and the sound spread quickly, bringing him back quickly to awareness of where they were and what remained to be done.

"I can hardly wait until tonight," he said into her ear, hugging her close with the arm that encircled her and hoisting the child in his other arm. "We soon must make another one of these." He squeezed her even more tightly against him, already looking over her head and starting to take note of things beyond the gates in the interior of the stronghold. "But before then we have much to do. Is Lagan here?"

Ygraine shook her head and moved away from him, reaching for the child, and as he handed over his son she said, "No. I have no idea where he is, but they say he is tearing the land apart looking for Lot, with an army at his back, made up of clansmen from all over Cornwall. No one knows where he is, but the stories say he is everywhere. Where are your men?"

"Coming. At my back. We had some trouble with Germanic mercenaries. A strong force, far superior to Lot's usual filth. But things were well in hand when I left them, and my men should be close behind me. Are you ready to leave?"

"Aye, we are."

"How many people have you?"

"Fifty of my own guard under my cousin, Alasdair Mac Iain, another thirty of Herliss's clansmen and twelve of my women, with some other servants and attendants."

"Twelve women? Gods, Ygraine, we are at war! What am I to do with twelve women? I can barely look after my own men."

"What would you, Uther? I cannot simply leave them to Lot's mercy; he would kill them all. We have three wagons, each with a team of four horses. We will not hamper you."

"You could not hamper me, my love, not with my son in your arms . . . but twelve women . . . Well, we can but make the best of it. How quickly can you be prepared to leave?"

"We are ready now, and have been since last night. The fighting was all finished here by sunset. But we have just received word, a half hour before you came, that Lot is on his way here from the coast, a mere four leagues away."

"Damnation!" The news hit Uther hard. "That's no more than ten, twelve miles. How many are with him?"

"We don't know. The man who brought the news had not seen them, but he said he had been told it was an army . . . hundreds of men."

"Landed from the galleys that we saw earlier. Damn his foul, craven soul."

Ygraine was squinting up at him. "How did he escape you in the north?"

"He did not have to escape. There was nothing I could do to capture him. We had enemies approaching from all sides. We could not stay and wait for him to come to us and we could not attack him. I'll tell you all about it later. For now, we must be on our way, and quickly, and the only way open to us is to the south. Have you heard any more of this southern army?"

Ygraine shook her head. "No, only that they are on their way, moving north and living off the land, which means that they cannot be moving too quickly. But whether they are in the east or the west I know not. and I have no idea how close they are. I do know that my brother, Connor, is coming to find me, but he will land more than seven leagues to the southwest of here at the mouth of the river they call the Camel. That is close to where I was, but Connor does not know that I have been moved. Calum, the man I sent to you with my last letter, arranged for us—me and my guards, I mean—to meet him there. We know where it is, but it is a long way from where we are now. Connor will be there within the week, if our timing is right."

"Good, then we will head for the river mouth there, striking directly southwest, and hope we don't meet Lot's main army before we reach your meeting point." He began leading her towards the gates as he spoke, one arm about her shoulders. "I'll leave you there with sufficient men to keep you safe until your brother comes, and then I'll go and do what I have to do. We took severe punishment from the people we met yesterday. I didn't know Lot had units of that quality, and I hope he has no more of them. They savaged us, ripped us to pieces, and the fault was mine. I underestimated my enemy. Now. when we come face to face with Lot, I will be poorer by several hundred good men, and he already had us outnumbered by at least three to one. I only wish I could find Lagan and his army. There's no time to spare. So let's get your women loaded into those wagons and be on our way."

Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

The addition of Ygraine's eighty men more than doubled the size of Uther's party, but they made good progress and intercepted the main Camulodian force without incident in less than two hours. That, however, was the last of Uther's designs that went as planned.

As soon as the two groups had reunited and even before the arrangements had been made to fit the extra wagons into the baggage-and-supply train, a messenger came from Popilius Cirro to summon Uther into a council of war. He went immediately, knowing that Cirro must have strong and convincing reasons for such a peremptory summons, but he was dismayed when the trooper sent to find him led him back towards the hospital wagons, where he discovered that Popilius had been twice wounded in the fighting earlier that day. The first injury, an arrow through the fleshy part of his upper arm, had knocked the veteran commander off his feet, and while he had lain on the ground, vainly trying to dislodge the barbed arrowhead from his flesh with his uninjured hand, he had been slashed in the left thigh by a running mercenary, who had himself been struck dead before he could raise his sword a second time.

The second injury, much more serious than the first, had severed the large muscles in Cirro's thigh, depriving him of the ability to walk and thus destroying his ability to command in the field. But the hardened old soldier had refused to yield to his pain and surrender himself to Mucius Quinto's medics before passing over his responsibilities formally to Uther and to his own second in command, the veteran Dedalus, who had terrorized Uther and Merlyn during their early training. Dedalus, while primarily a cavalryman, had nonetheless extensive experience as a commander of infantry and was above all a sound judge and leader of men. Uther had great respect for the man, remembering him as a stern and unforgiving, but absolutely just and impartial tutor. Despite that, however, Uther found it difficult to accept or even to envision Dedalus in the place of Cirro. and it took him long moments to overcome a sense of unreality about what he was seeing transpire.

Popilius Cirro, one of the last surviving veterans of the imperial legions left in Britain, was one of the few men in the world whom Uther Pendragon regarded with awe. Ever since Uther had been a snot-nosed boy, he had walked in fear of the big man, whom he had never seen in any condition other than impeccable, whether that referred to his uniform dress, his dignity or his conduct and deportment.

Now Uther found a Cirro he had never seen before, stripped of his polished armour and wearing only a white, knee-length tunic that was torn and heavily stained with blood. His hair, normally covered completely by his heavy, ornate helmet, was thick and completely white, matted and plastered to his scalp with sweat. The senior centurion was propped up stiffly in a camp chair, his back against the bole of an enormous oak tree, his face pale and haggard and his eyes sunken and feverish, the skin beneath them beaded with sweat. His entire left thigh was swathed in thick, blood-blackened bandages and his right arm was tightly bound and strapped against his chest to keep it immobile, but the steadfast old campaigner was deep in conference with the senior officer cadre of the army. The group surrounding him, gathered in a semicircle beneath the boughs of the oak tree, included Strong- arm and Whistler, representing the Pendragon bowmen and Dragons respectively, and his own Camulodian cavalry and infantry commanders headed by Dedalus.

Most of the officers turned to look at Uther as he approached, then turned quickly back to Cirro, as though afraid to look away from him for too long, lest he expire between one breath and the next. Cirro himself was the only one who did not look away again from Uther. He merely stared, solemn-faced, and nodded in greeting as the King approached.

Uther knew that everyone there was aware that he had brought hack women and a baby to join their party, and he knew, too, that their curiosity about who these people were and why they should have come with him must be immense. He himself had offered no explanation to anyone and had warned his own people to keep silent. Now he fully expected that Cirro, despite his obvious pain and exhaustion, would demand to know what was going on, as was his right as commander of the Camulod contingent of the army.

Uther marched directly up to the older man, laid a friendly hand on his shoulder and asked him how he was feeling, knowing that the question was stupid and yet unable to stop himself or to think of anything more appropriate to say.

Cirro waved away Uther's concerns with a gesture of his left hand and then surprised him by making no reference at all to Uther's absence or to the newcomers he had brought back with him. He had more important matters to communicate and discuss before relinquishing his command.

They had defeated the German mercenaries, he reported, speaking sibilantly through clenched teeth, but had lost more than a hundred men in the encounter and almost as many again with serious wounds. More than sixty of their casualties had been infantry soldiers, but twenty of them had been Pendragon bowmen, isolated and cut down by unexpected enemy manoeuvres. Another half score and more had been cavalry brought down by arrows or, in a few instances, by the axes and spears of the enemy. Almost before the echoes of the fighting had died away, however, scouts from the rear had come running to report the advance of another, far larger host from the north, this one apparently composed entirely of Erse Galloglas. The veteran German mercenaries who had caused them so much trouble had numbered in the region of seven to eight hundred men, according to Cirro's best estimate, but the new force streaming towards them appeared to be almost twice as large as that.

Listening to the infantry commander's report and recognizing the effort and the pain involved in making it, Uther sucked in his breath and held it, realizing that he had committed a great error in judgment. He had assumed, when the German mercenaries attacked with so much strength and purpose, that this was the army he had been warned about, and that the earlier identification of it as an Erse force had been wrong. Now, faced with the reality of a second, larger host where he had anticipated only one, he was forced to reassess the odds he might be facing, and he was daunted by his own sudden uncertainty and his ignorance of what was really happening. This second army had to be the Galloglas enemy that Ygraine had named earlier, the Ersemen who called themselves the Sons of Condran, and they must have been landed, exactly as she had described, from a large fleet of Erse galleys somewhere to the northwest above the Shelter. Visualizing that, Uther felt the first, unfamiliar sensations of panic in his breast, stirrings that he grimly fought down, forcing himself to consider his revised options as dispassionately as he could. Turning his back on Cirro and the others, he reviewed the possibilities now swarming in his mind.

It now seemed highly unlikely to him that the mercenary force he had been fighting, which had come from the same northerly direction, could have been an advance unit of the Galloglas army. The temptation to accept it as such was strong, but when he looked squarely at the evidence, the combination of disciplined, battle- hardened imperial mercenaries and undisciplined Erse warriors in the same force was too alien to imagine. Besides, he told himself, he had been engaged with the mercenaries for a day and a half. Had the Ersemen been part of the same force, no matter how dilatory, undisciplined or unwilling, they would have caught up to an advance guard long before the end of that encounter.

Whence, then, had the Germans come, and where had they been going? And if Ygraine's report was accurate and yet another licet had now landed Lot himself on the coast nearby, where had it originated? It hardly seemed possible that it could be part of the same Erse fleet. But then, if it was another fleet entirely, who commanded it, and how large a fighting force had it disgorged on his western flank?

Compressing his lips into a thin line, he swung back to face Cirro and the others, who had all been standing silent, waiting to see how he would react to the word of this new threat. Wasting no words, he told them that the women he had brought back with him were Lot's Queen, Ygraine—the real one this time—and her companions. In clipped tones that permitted neither interruption nor comment, he explained, to the astonishment of most, that his spy in Lot's camp had been the Queen herself, and that she was sister to Merlyn's Erse friend and former hostage Donuil, and also to Merlyn's own dead wife, Deirdre. She had a child with her, Lot's acknowledged heir, Uther said, declining for the time being, on a sudden impulse, to name the child as his own. He told them that Ygraine was to be picked up from the southwest coast by her brother Connor, who commanded the fleet of galleys owned by their father, King Athol Mac Iain of the Erse Scots, and that he, Uther, as commander in chief of the combined Camulodian and Cambrian armies, had undertaken to get the Queen to the meeting place safely, both in reward for her loyal and dangerous aid to this point and in order to keep the Erse King neutral in this war, and in recognition of the strength and the bargaining power Lot's legitimate heir would offer them as a hostage.

He also told them about Ygraine's latest report of the landing in the west, and that Lot himself was now bearing down upon the fort in which the Queen had been held, only a few miles from where the Camulodian army now stood.

He ended by telling them bluntly that, in his opinion, the combined odds stacked against them at this time were too great to defy, but he was surprised by the intensity of the relief he felt when all of them, Popilius Cirro included, agreed with him immediately, making no attempt to debate or deny his conclusions. The best thing they could do, based upon all the knowledge they now had, Cirro said in a greatly weakened voice, would be to withdraw immediately, as quickly and as discreetly as they could, heading directly southward as fast as they could travel until they were clear of any threat from Lot's newly landed fleet and its cargo of warriors on their westward side. After that, once they were safely out of the way of Lot's incursion from the west and ahead of the Galloglas behind them, they could change direction and make their way directly southwest towards the mouth of the River Camel, where they might fortify themselves for a while and await the arrival of the galleys Connor was sending to carry his sister home.

Uther listened now in silence, stifling his own doubts. He had no wish to see Ygraine sail off across the sea to Eire, carrying his son, but on the other hand, he was equally sure that he had no wish for her and the child to remain in Cornwall, in danger of being taken and killed out of hand by Gulrhys Lot. He said nothing of that, however, confining himself to agreeing with the general plan of evasion and hoping that Nemo would find them before they struck southwestward with news of Lagan Longhead, his whereabouts and the number of men in his command.

Uther ratified Dedalus's promotion to immediate, overall command of the infantry, satisfying Cirro, and then moved to see to his senior officer's comfort. Two of Cirro's own troopers lifted him gently onto a stretcher and carried him away to one of the hospital wagons, with the senior medical officer Mucius Quinto walking beside them, and as soon as they had gone, Uther turned his attention to the rest of his arrangements. The infantry, now approximately nine hundred strong but strengthened by the addition of Herliss's thirty clansmen and the Queen's fifty-man bodyguard, was to be dispatched within the hour to march south at maximum speed, escorting the baggage and supply train with its inclusion of the Queen's women, while the thousand cavalry, including Uther's Dragons and supported by Huw Strongarm's four hundred bowmen, would make its way more slowly behind their march, searching for a suitably open spot that they could use as a battleground on which to detain and deter the oncoming Galloglas.

Once he had found such a place, Uther explained, he intended to hold the enemy there long enough to permit the infantry and their charges to forge well ahead of pursuit. The Pendragon bowmen would do what they did best in any defensive situation, demoralizing and decimating the approaching enemy from a great distance until the Galloglas came close enough to be engaged by the cavalry. At that time, the bowmen would disperse and move ahead swiftly to follow and eventually rejoin the infantry, leaving the horsemen to savage the Galloglas in a holding action that Uther believed could be completely victorious. When this engagement was complete and the Ersemen demoralized, the cavalry would disengage and then catch up quickly with the remainder of his army, moving at three to five times the speed of the infantry column or of any Galloglas still functional enough to pursue them.

It was a good plan and it might have worked well, had the Galloglas behaved as Uther expected. Instead they hung back and refused to be drawn into a fight, melting away from sight of the Pendragon bowmen every time a force was sent against them. The lack of conclusive action was frustrating and time-consuming, and Uther found himself growing more and more aware that his men were tiring rapidly. He was still deep in hostile territory and highly vulnerable, separated from his woman and their child, under threat of attack from almost every direction and yet completely ignorant of where his main enemy was.

In the end, after another day of little progress, he dismissed his bowmen shortly after sunset to catch up with the infantry column, then posted doubled guards and rallied his troopers to be mounted before dawn and ready for anything.

Only one unexpected event occurred to add to his discomfiture as he waited in vain for the Galloglas to meet his expectations. Owain of the Caves came to him as he was sitting by his campfire, having just dismissed his bowmen. Uther was glad to see the taciturn Northerner, but Owain had not come to exchange pleasantries. He spoke, as he always did, directly and to the point.

"Why are you bothering with this Queen and her brat?"

Uther gazed up at him in surprise, but answered mildly enough. "Because I must. I made a promise and am honour bound to keep it."

"What promise? To see them safely out of your own power?"

"If you want to see it that way, yes, that's what I promised."

"Then you're a fool, Pendragon. More the fool than I would ever have thought you could be. They're Lot's creatures and they'll be the death of you. The brat's his flesh and blood. Better you slit their throats, all of them, and leave them here beside the road. That's what he would do to yours. You'll see no joy of this."

"Oh," Uther said, his voice still mild, "I think you might be wrong."

"Aye, well I know I'm not. They'll be the death of you. I said it and I mean it. Bear that in mind. As for me, I want no part of it. Give me the word and I'll kill them for you. Otherwise, I'm leaving."

"They are not to be harmed, Owain."

"So be it. Fare thee well, for as long as may be." The big Celt spun on his heel and stalked away.

Uther was sorely tempted to call him back and tell him the truth, but there were too many eager ears about, and he chose to say nothing for the time being, unaware that he would never see Owain of the Caves again.

The dawn came, and Uther led his cavalry on a surprise attack across a broad front that took the Galloglas completely by surprise and sent them reeling, scattered in every direction and apparently demoralized and terrorized by the co-ordinated force of the charging squadrons of horsemen, a phenomenon the like of which none of them had ever encountered. After the initial impact of the charge had shattered any semblance of resistance or cohesion among the Ersemen, Uther allowed his troopers to harry their fleeing foes for a while, and the reports of the slaughter they achieved were impressive, even allowing for the natural exaggerations of excited warriors in the heat of blood lust, lie knew that the Galloglas, despite their vaunted savagery and courage, were no match for his cavalry under any circumstances. They could not even run away, since the horses chasing them were faster than they were, and their weapons were puny and useless against the mass, weight and height of the uniformly armoured troopers, most of whom fought with whirling iron flails that smashed men into nothingness.

When he judged that the rout had lasted long enough, Uther ordered the recall to be sounded and marshalled his men into their squadrons again. They had not lost a single trooper in the dawn attack. He swung them around and led them southward at a fast trot, determined to catch up quickly to the group ahead of them. It look him all of that day, but by the time night fell his army was reunited, and they seemed to have won free of any threat of immediate attack. He was able to spend the night, finally, sleeping with Ygraine in his arms while their son slept in a cot alongside theirs.

Uther was brought back harshly to reality, however, when the alarm went up some time before dawn and he came awake to the sound of clashing weapons and screaming men. He rolled out of bed before he even knew where he was, reaching for his sword belt and unsheathing his weapon even as he moved, and it took him several moments after that to become aware that he was as naked as the blade in his hand. By that time, he was already outside his tent, trying to see what was happening around him, and as he stood glaring into the darkness, seeing only indistinct moving forms and unable to distinguish friend from foe, someone came hurtling towards him, arm upraised to strike.

Uther instantly anticipated the downward slash of the weapon and stepped forward to his left, bending low to avoid the path of the blade that was hissing towards him. and then lunging on his right foot to stab with his long sword, feeling the point plunge home beneath his assailant's upraised arm. The man screamed as Uther twisted the blade before tearing it loose again to pivot completely on his left heel, sweeping his sword around in a full turn to bring the edge of the blade smashing down in a backhanded slash to the falling man's exposed neck. As the man fell away, Uther was already moving forward in a crouch, looking for another target, but then he heard his name being shouted and turned to see Garreth Whistler and four fully armoured troopers running towards him. Whistler seized him by the arm and pushed him back towards his tent, telling him to get dressed and that he and the others would guard the Queen's tent while Uther armed himself.

Uther emerged again a short time later, once more the King, fully dressed and armoured, but the attackers, whoever they had been, had already been beaten off. The entire camp was still in an uproar, and as Uther stepped out of his tent, sword in hand. Whistler was in the act of pulling himself up into his saddle. As soon as he saw Uther, he pointed to where another trooper held the King's mount, fully saddled and ready. Uther ran directly to the horse and heaved himself up into his own saddle, then stood upright in his stirrups, trying to make sense of everything he was seeing. Dawn was already flushing the eastern sky, and where he had been able to see only darkness and shadows mere moments earlier, he could now recognize individual men in the growing light. But nowhere could he see any enemies. He twisted in his saddle to look back at Whistler, who was moving up to his side.

"Who were they?" he shouted.

"Who knows? Whoever they were, they knew what they were about. They penetrated two rings of guards—one mounted and the other afoot—without letting a squeak out of any of them." Whistler's horse reared and he fought the animal down, grim-faced, "One thing's certain—two things, in fact: they were after the horses, and they must have friends out there close by. I can't imagine an unsupported group of under a hundred men attacking a force of this size otherwise, unless they were all crazed. They might be our Galloglas friends from yesterday, regrouped, but I doubt that. I don't think the Ersemen could have reorganized themselves that quickly after the treatment we dealt them. But the fact that they even tried this tells me there are others like them close by, and we might have them down on our heads at any moment. We're striking camp now."

"Good man." Uther pulled back on his reins, dancing his horse in a circle, his eyes taking in everything around him. "How many men did we lose, and who's chasing the raiders?"

"No one's chasing anyone—we don't know what's out there. As for the guards, I've sent one of my people to do the rounds of the sentry posts. My guess is that we lost at least ten, but it might have been twice that. How these people were able to approach mounted men and pull them down in silence is something I intend to find out. Apart from that, we lost a few men during the fighting here in camp. We could have lost you, too, the same way, leaping around bare-arsed in the open like some demented hermit. Ah, there's my man. I'll be back as soon as I have some answers."

Uther watched Whistler ride away and then dismounted and went quickly back into the tent, where he found Ygraine surrounded by her women, all of them involved in hurriedly repacking the sparse belongings they had unpacked the night before. The baby was still sleeping, unaware and uncaring of the commotion going on around him. Uther had a word with the Queen, caressed his son's cheek briefly and then went to supervise the activities outside, throwing his great red-and-gold cloak over his shoulders as he went.

They were on the move within the hour, before the sun had crested the horizon, headed due south in a condition of extreme vigilance, the cavalry moving in tight formations, circling the marching column constantly in a defensive screen. Strongarm's scouts, dispatched in the immediate aftermath of the aborted raid on the horse lines, had returned in an appallingly short time with reports of heavy enemy formations to the north, northeast and west of them, and even within the acknowledged limitations of distant views and round estimates of numbers, it was soon clear to Uther and his commanders that the three forces combined outnumbered his own army by at least half, three thousand to their two. Uther had no means of estimating the quality of the enemy troops, but his recent encounter with the German mercenaries had left him no room for optimism, and as he rode southward, scanning the horizon in all directions, he was more worried than he had ever been.

Behind him, he knew, the three separate enemy forces might well be coalescing into one solid mass, their differences abandoned in the heat of the chase, but three thousand rabble against his two thousand disciplined troopers was no great disadvantage, he knew—his mounted troopers alone were easily capable of routing twice as many again. What was looming huge in his mind was the fact of Lot's main army marching northward towards him. He would have given anything to know how far away they were and how great their numbers were, and because he did not know, he dared not turn again to savage the enemy at his heels. If he turned back to fight and the other army came up on him during the battle, then the three thousand pursuing him would become an anvil, and he and his people would be trapped between it and the hammer of Lot's main force. He could not permit himself to speculate on Longhead's army, or whether or not it might have intercepted Lot's main force.

He had no choice other than to keep moving south, hoping against hope that he would be able to swing southwestward and ensure the safety of Ygraine's party before the southern army came in sight. Tight-lipped, he issued strict orders that any fighting that occurred on the march must be purely defensive. On no account were any of his squadrons to be committed to an attack that would take them away from their defensive positions.

It galled Uther to appear so passive, and he had to fight down the black and bitter anger of his resentment lest it affect his own people. For the time being, however, there was no other responsible course open to him.

The first attacks, two of them coming simultaneously on the west and east flanks, hit them less than two hours into the first leg of their journey. They were jagged, undisciplined affairs, mere mobs of armed men rushing against the moving column with no visible order and obviously no central plan governing their movements. Each attack was stopped short and destroyed by co-ordinated cavalry charges. But that was only the beginning. Similar attacks followed, none of them posing any great threat to the security or good order of the moving column, but all of them cumulatively resulting in a general slowing of progress, since the speed of the column was governed by the need to keep the defending cavalry close to the main train. Dedalus's infantry were frustrated by the fact that all they could do was watch and keep moving forward, for their new commander allowed them no opportunity to become involved in the lighting. Huw Strongarm's bowmen fared little better; their orders were as rigid as those governing the foot soldiers. Uther kept them close, and they were forbidden to shoot at anything other than targets too close to miss. There were three wagons with the column that carried nothing but spare arrows, tightly bound and heaped together and then bound again like piles of firewood, but Uther knew he had to hoard those. He could see no benefit in squandering precious arrows on moving enemies who were too far away to hit.

Towards mid-morning they arrived at a river, and sitting on its high bank, staring down at the roiling waters below the edge Uther's frustration once again threatened to overwhelm him. The stream itself was not particularly deep—thigh-high at worst and no more than forty paces across—but it was fast-flowing, channelled by banks as high as a tall man on both sides, and its bed was littered with boulders that churned the waters into a powerful and treacherous torrent that could easily destroy his wagons. There was an island in the middle, but it was as boulder-strewn as the riverbed, and the sight of it offered him no comfort. In the normal course of things, he would have sent scouts along the bank in both directions, looking for a spot where he could ford the stream more easily, but the enemy was close on both sides of him now, and he knew that he could not afford to turn his people in either direction without inviting disaster. He called Dedalus to him and told him what he was thinking, and the taciturn infantry commander nodded and agreed, then made his dispositions without further comment, and the business of crossing the river was quickly organized and put into effect.

The infantry corps was split into three groups, each of approximately three hundred men, and two of those moved rapidly to form a defensive perimeter about the wagon train, forming a secondary line of defence should any attackers breach the cavalry curtain beyond them. The Pendragon bowmen were sent quickly across the river to set up another defensive half-circle on the far side, facing outward and vigilant against any hostile developments over there. In the meantime, the remaining three hundred infantry were set to creating a crossing place for the wagons. Fifty men set to work immediately with picks and shovels on each bank, tearing down the earth of the high riverbank to form a sloping path from the high ground to the water on both sides of the stream, while the remaining two hundred laboured to move the worst and biggest of the boulders to one side or another, in order to create a clear passageway for the wagons, a path that might permit them to cross without shattering wheels or axles.

It was a gargantuan task, and it was accompanied by the sustained cursing of the wet, cold men who struggled in waist-deep water to dislodge and roll the obdurate river rocks, which created new chaos as they incessantly changed the force and direction of the waters crashing against them. The job was accomplished in something under three hours, and by shortly after noon the wagons had all been safely manhandled to the opposite bank, each vehicle carefully harnessed by ropes to stop it from tipping or being overturned by the force of the water.

When it was done, Uther allowed his weary workers no respite but harangued them into motion again, regrouping them and marching them out while their clothing was still soaked. The delay had cost them dearly, for the enemy had made good use of the time and was now numerically far stronger and more concentrated than they had been before. Many of them had crossed the stream above or below Uther's crossing point and had circled inward in the hope of gaining an advantage by waiting on the far side. Only the arm-long arrows loosed by the Pendragon bows had kept them safely at a distance.

For the rest of that day, Uther kept his army moving at forced- march pace, hating the necessity of driving them so hard. The infantry had trained for this for years and, if anything, they bore the pace as well as the cavalry, who proceeded constantly at the walk and the trot, easy gaits for the horses to maintain. The sustained trotting, however, was punitive for the mounted troopers, whose bodies were continually jarred by the awkward rhythm of their jogging mounts, and there was loud muttering and cursing among the saddle-sore men each time they paused to rest the horses. It was the draught horses, pulling the heavy commissary wagons, that suffered most on the long haul, for their burdens were enormous and the constant demands of pulling them made serious inroads into their strength and stamina. But as the miles fell steadily behind the column, so too did the Erse enemy, who lacked the discipline necessary for such sustained effort.

Then, when they had travelled almost sixteen miles, they came to another wide stream, this one shallow and sandy-bottomed, offering them little difficulty in crossing. They had seen no signs of hostile activity for several hours by then, and their scouts had been searching actively for more than an hour for a suitable camping spot where the army could spend the coming night. The column was passing between the first two hills, which were low and covered with small trees, when the scouts brought back word that they had found a suitable spot, less than a mile ahead: an enormous, almost flat meadow, close to a mile in length and half as wide, at the base of a shallow bowl formed by the flanks of four hills.

Dedalus was riding at Uther's side, slightly ahead of the main command party, muttering darkly about how he hated hills and hated even more being on the low ground among them, when the narrow valley in which they were riding opened up to the southward and revealed the proposed camping ground. Uther sat up straight as soon as he saw the place, and his eyes went immediately to the flanks of the westernmost hill, which were bare of trees and broken by two long, strangely formed outcrops of craggy stone that arched outward from a common height and stretched all the way to the bottom of the hill on both sides, forming a pair of crude but protective walls that embraced the main width of the valley to the southwest and were at least a hundred paces apart at the base of the hill. Staring at the place, assessing its potential for defence, he saw the distinct line of a plateau of some kind less than a third of the way up the gently sloping hillside, just above the point where the stone outcrops emerged from a common fault. Above the plateau, the trees resumed again, covering the crest.

"There," he said, pointing it out to Dedalus. "If that level area up there is deep enough, we can command the field and fight here. Get the wagons up there somehow, and they'll be safe. It doesn't look too steep. Cavalry halfway up on both sides above those stone cliff outcrops, so they can cover the field wherever they're needed. Bowmen on the plateau there with a wide, clear field of fire. Infantry in front at the bottom, protected by the cliffs on either side."

Dedalus nodded. "Aye, if it's deep enough, as you say. But is it?"

"Looks deep enough from here. If it's as little as thirty paces, front to back, we can use it. If I'm right, then once we're installed there, anyone who wants us will have to come to us. We'll be able to see them coming and greet them properly, on our terms. Those cliff walls are widespread enough at the lower ends to let us attack outward, but they're high enough to stop us being outflanked or raided during the night as we were last night. We'll stand here and face these Ersemen when they reach us. I've done enough running for one campaign."

Dedalus dipped his head in agreement. "It's your decision."

"Aye, it is. Let's get our people up there. Send out your trumpeters to sound the recall and get everyone back here, the bowmen, too. Break off all engagements. We've held the Ersemen back long enough. Time for them to come to us. Do it now!" He swung around in his saddle and waved his arm in a circle, summoning the officers and commanders who rode with his party and barking out his orders even before they had crowded around him.

Uther had the impression that Dedalus had not moved at all when he turned back to him again. The infantry commander was still staring upward to the plateau on the side of the hill. Uther looked from him to the hillside and back again.

"What ? You're still here? What's wrong?"

Dedalus did not even glance at him. "I sent out the trumpeters. They're on their way. But we can't take the wagons up there, Uther. It's too damn steep on the hillsides above those cliffs. They'd have to be manhandled all the way up, and we haven't got the time . . . And I don't even want to think about what might happen if we had to get them down again in a hurry. Besides, the horses are exhausted. It won't work."

The King's eyes flashed in irritation. "Don't tell me what we can 't do, Ded! Find a way to do it."

Dedalus merely shrugged. "Bark as much as you want, but the truth's the truth. We'll be asking for grief if we try to get those wagons up there. Better to mass them, all the wagons, behind the infantry formations in the shelter there at the base of the hill. And we'll probably have the damned Ersemen about our necks before we can even begin to do that. They can't be far behind us."

Uther bit back another angry retort and looked towards the hillside again. He sniffed, and then spoke more temperately. "You're right. It's wishful thinking." He turned to where one of the cavalry commanders sat waiting for orders. "Philip. Take a squadron of your men and carry the women up on to that plateau on the hillside there. One woman to a horse, as many as you need. And one trustworthy man to carry the child they have with them, carefully, without injuring him. They'll need tents and bedding, too. See to it."

As Philip spurred his horse away, Dedalus was already issuing orders to marshall the wagons at the base of the hill and to send men to carry the King's tents up to the plateau.

Night fell slowly, the day's light lingering in the early-summer sky long after the sun had set. Uther spent the first two hours of the night making the rounds of the sentry outposts with Dedalus, exchanging at least a few words of comfort and encouragement with every man on duty. There had been no sign of the pursuing enemy.

Few of the army had much sleep that night, Uther among them, for they knew that, come the dawn, they would probably be facing death again. Uther sat by his fire for hours with Dedalus, Philip and several of his other senior officers, planning for the events that might come with the day, and then, when he was finally alone and all the others were asleep, he sought his own rest. Highly aware of the allure of the willing female body that lay inside his tent close to his son, he bit down on his desire and wrapped himself in his huge cloak, then stretched out on the ground by the fire outside, still in full armour.

In the morning, the Ersemen were back in sight. Uther's trumpets roused the army and sent them swarming into their formations.

"A mob. Look at them."

Dedalus sat his horse beside Uther on the lip of the plateau overlooking the scene beneath. The enemy hordes had come streaming from the valley between the two hills to the north and had then bunched there in a milling mass at the far end of the long meadow, obviously unwilling to come any closer to the area below the hill, where the tightly disciplined Camulodian infantry were now drawn up in order of battle.

Uther did not respond immediately, his attention focused upon the three Roman-style legionary formations of infantry below. Each of them was laid out cleanly and perfectly, rank and file, fifty men wide and four deep, with an additional hundred in reserve behind the fourth row of shields, waiting to fill the ranks of the fallen. The space between the files was the classic distance of two long paces, the first taken up by the infantry soldier with his long, grounded shield, and the other left as empty space, providing fighting room. Each soldier's duty was to protect the man on his right, making sure that no enemy could come close enough to strike his partner down. Behind the front rank, the other ranks were staggered, so that the men in the front line could fall back to rest and safety while the rank behind advanced to replace them. This technique, in use since before the days of the Caesars, had enabled the Roman legions to subjugate the world, and the founders of Camulod's small army had seen no reason to abandon it. Most of the foot soldiers who now stood facing the enemy, waiting for them to advance, had been born and raised in Camulod and had been drilled for years, since boyhood, in the stern discipline that gripped them now. They would stand there and light until they had won or died, Uther knew, and he felt his heart swelling with pride for them.

Two of their formations faced the enemy to the north, the central one confronting the Ersemen squarely, the left angled obliquely backwards, looking towards the northwest lest the enemy try a flanking attack from that direction. The most westerly files in that formation stood protected by the outcropping spur of rock from the hill at their back. The third formation, on the right, stood at right angles to the centre, facing directly east towards the open meadow that, for the time being at least, seemed to offer no threat. Behind all three formations, close against the protective base of the hill on which Uther and his officers now stood, Dedalus had positioned his quartermasters' wagons, the hospital wagons and the extra, lighter wagons that had carried the women.

The wagons and the infantry were as safe as they could be, with the hill at their backs and their eastern and western flanks protected by the long ridges of rock and by vigilant cavalry massed in tightly dressed squadrons drawn up on the hillsides above them. Uther scanned the scene below one more time and accepted it as the best available to him, and then raised his eyes towards the mass of the enemy at the northern end of the plain. He did not bother to look at Dedalus as he responded to his observation.

"You're right, they are a mob. But a very large mob."

Dedalus hawked and spat. "Numbers count for nothing in a situation like this, Uther. I taught you that long ago. They outnumber us, but they don't like the prospect of attacking our lads. They can see that if they do, they'll be like water smashing against rocks."

Uther looked around him. He and Dedalus were at the centre of a small knot of twelve commanders, who would soon be moving down to join their individual units below, but upwards of two score more messengers, runners and riders both, were grouped in a wide semicircle behind them, and behind those, Ygraine's blood guard and the Cornish clansmen stood waiting to be used in reserve. At the rear of the plateau, the tents of the women and the King's party had been pitched, safely hidden from view from the valley beneath by the front edge of the escarpment. Above his head, rolling in from the west, great banks of lowering grey clouds were slowly blotting out the blue of the morning sky, skirts of rainfall trailing from their bellies.

"It's going to rain. Coming right towards us."

Dedalus glanced up at the clouds. "Showers, no more."

"Mayhap, but we don't need wet grass under our horses' hooves. Can you see any sign of anyone in charge over there?"

Dedalus leaned forward in his saddle, peering towards the enemy, his eyes shaded with one hand. "No, I can't, but that means nothing. Wait a moment, though. You see that group of bright colours on our left, on the hill above and behind them? That must be the commanders, whoever they are. Colour's a sign of rank among these Ersemen. The brighter the colours, the more important the man."

"I wonder what they're waiting for?"

"Guts. I told you, they're afraid to attack us. They have us out- manned, two or three, perhaps even four to one, but they know it's not enough."

"No!" Uther shook his head. "No, Ded, it's not that. They might not have our discipline, but they've no lack of guts. They're waiting for something."

"Runner coming in, sir, from the south. One of yours."

The shout came from behind him and the King turned to peer over his right shoulder. Sure enough, the returning scout was plainly visible, one of Uther's Pendragon bowmen, running through the long grass on the valley bottom, far to the south of where they stood, straight towards the ranks of the men drawn up closest to him. Uther watched him for a few moments, his lips drawn into a thin line. It was plain, even from this distance, that the runner was exhausted, for he was weaving as he ran, and at one point he stumbled and almost fell headlong.

"That man has important tidings," Uther said, almost to himself. "Were they less so, he would be kinder to himself. Let's hope he brings word of Lagan Longhead's coming." He turned to one of his aides. "Take an extra horse and go and meet him, then bring him here to me as quickly as you can. He won't want to ride, won't know how, but tie him into the saddle if you must."

Another shout came from behind him, but this one was more distant, coming down the hill from above, from the tree-covered summit at his back.

"Go now." Uther waved the aide away on his task and turned immediately to gaze up towards the hilltop. The trees up there were small and bushy, mainly hawthorn and hazel, but they provided very effective concealment from below. Uther scanned the entire hillside as far as he could see, but nothing seemed to be moving up there, despite the fact that there were a hundred of his own bowmen among the trees.

Then he saw a sudden Hash of movement and a man came bounding down the hillside, leaping hugely and carrying his long Pendragon bow above his head in one hand while he clutched his arrow quiver tightly beneath his other arm. It was a man called Brock, whom Uther had known all his life. He reached the plateau and came running to where Uther and the others sat waiting for him, but there he had to pause for breath, gulping air into his lungs. Finally he shook his head and pulled himself erect, his voice unsteady with effort.

"We're being attacked up there, Uther. Hundreds strong, coming up the hillside from the back. We need more arrows."

Uther turned immediately to another of his aides. "See to it, Spartek, quickly. Two squads of men, each with two bundles of arrows. Get them up there immediately." He looked then to where Huw Strongarm stood listening. "Huw, I need you to detach a hundred more of your bowmen to reinforce the men up there. Take fifty from each flank and move them up to the summit as quickly as you can. If there are hundreds attacking us up there, as Brock says, the people we sent up are sorely pressed."

Huw turned and moved quickly away, speaking hurriedly with his own deputy commander before they split up and headed down the hill, one to each side.

Uther spoke to Brock again. "Hundreds, you said?"

"Aye. Hundreds of them. Outlanders, they are, Uther. Real Outlanders. Black faces, some of them. And they've got bows, Wicked little things, strangely bent but strong."

"Where have they come from, do you know?"

"No, but I know where they're trying to get to, and that's the top of this hill. If they reach there, it'll be because we'll all be dead, and they'll be coming down about your ears, so I'd better be getting back."

Uther nodded. "Good man, and tell your mates up there another hundred bows are on their way to share the fight with them. Go now, and may the gods protect you. But send back word to me as soon as you can see how many are coming against you up there."

As Brock turned away, Uther spoke again to Dedalus. "Ded, form another unit of your men and get them up there, too, quick as you can. Take fifty from each of the three groups in reserve down below. We might not need them, but we've no way of knowing what the situation is on the other side of the summit. I don't know who these black-faced whoresons are or where they came from, but we can't afford to run the risk of losing the summit and having an enemy above us."

"Right." Dedalus summoned three runners and rapped out commands to all of them, sending them down the hill at the run. Then he turned and gazed up towards the summit above them, within easy bowshot. "How many armies does this gutter-spawned whoreson have, Uther?"

"Too many. What happened to that messenger from the south?"

Dedalus pointed with one raised arm. "Here he comes now." Together, he and Uther watched the newcomer approach them.

wide-eyed with apprehension as he clung tightly to the horn of his tall mount's saddle. The fellow made no attempt to hide his relief on sliding down to the ground, where he nodded to Uther, almost but not quite making a gesture of acknowledgment and submission. Uther smiled slightly, a mere tugging at one corner of his mouth, and nodded.

"We saw you coming and guessed you had important tidings. Were we right?"

The man nodded. "Aye, King Uther, you were. Ill tidings, though. You won't like them."

"Let me be the judge of that. What have you?"

"An army, lord, coming up from the southeast, three, perhaps four hours distant."

"Whose army? We are expecting allies, an army of Cornish clansmen risen in revolt against Lot's tyranny. This might be them."

The man scowled, and Uther remembered his name was the same as the Whistler's, Garreth.

"I didn't see them myself, King Uther, but from what I was told by those who did see them, they're no Cornishmen. These are Outlanders, differently dressed and armoured than any clansmen from these parts. They march in formation, I was told, and they bear the banner of the Boar."

"Damnation!" The boar was Lot's own symbol, and Uther felt anger and frustration welling up in him. "How many are they, do you know?"

"Thousands strong is the word I heard. The man who brought it was almost dead from running. He said their strength was beyond counting, but that they had been found last night by the lights of their campfires, and they were on the march by dawn. Three leagues behind him, he said they were, and he was the sixth runner in the chain. I'm the seventh, and I left him almost a full league behind me."

"You ran a whole league? Three miles?"

"Aye, or most of it. Had to stop twice to rest. There should have been another man waiting halfway to take over from me, but I couldn't find him, so I waited as long as I could to catch my breath and then ran on."

"Good man!" Uther reached out, showing the man none of his anger, and gripped him by the shoulder. "Get you up on that horse again and go to the quartermaster's wagons below. Eat and drink. You've earned a rest."

He swung away then and lowered his voice to speak to Dedalus, whose face was blank, showing nothing of his thoughts.

"Four leagues. Twelve miles. They'll be here by noon."

"It's less than that. They've been moving since the first runner set out, so they've probably covered several miles already. Say they're nine, perhaps ten miles away. But if there are thousands of the whoresons they won't be moving very quickly, unless they send a faster moving force ahead of their main army. But why would they do that? They don't know we're here."

"We don't know that, not with certainty. I said just moments ago that those others down there, the Ersemen, were waiting for something. It could be that they've already made contact with these newcomers, probably the same way we have, using scouts and runners. If that's the case, we're in dire straits." Uther turned back to the messenger, who had refused to mount the horse again and was just beginning to move away on foot.

"Garreth! The route you took to come here, was it the only one you could have taken?"

The man frowned, thinking before he answered, then shook his head. "I think so. It's a long valley, straight and narrow, and I had to stick to the path along the centre. No other place to go. No gaps in the hills . . . none that would offer an easy crossing, anyway. Long straight lines of hills on both sides. So yes, I'd say I came the only way I could from where I was to here."

"My thanks. Go now."

"What are you thinking, Uther?" Dedalus's voice was low- pitched, close to Uther's shoulder.

"About what to do, what else? A long, narrow valley, he said, a league long, with no way out."

"Aye, but we can't block it, not with that Erse mob at our back."

"No, but we have three hours, perhaps four, and as you said, the Ersemen have little stomach for facing our cavalry. We could hit them now, the way we did before—scatter them and send them running north, their tails between their legs."

Dedalus looked dubious and turned to gaze at the distant enemy. "I think not, not this time. We scattered them the day before yesterday because we had them in the open with no place to hide. Look at them now. There's a narrow valley at their backs, so they won't try to escape through there. They might be Erse and stupid, but even they could see that would be suicide, jamming together in that narrow entranceway. My guess is if we attack them now, they'll scatter sure enough, but they'll scatter uphill, into the trees on both sides, where they can shoot down at us and our cavalry won't be able to reach them. What think you, Philip?"

The cavalry officer agreed with Dedalus, who nodded in acknowledgment and kept speaking. "Besides, if you're right and they've been in contact with this new rabble coming up from the southeast, they have no reason to run—hide in the trees, certainly, and wait until the others come, but run away? No, Uther. That makes no sense. I think we're better where we are, standing fast and waiting for them to come to us."

"And if they don't come to us? It doesn't look as though they will. And I don't like the thought of simply standing here and waiting for another army to come. Damnation! What's happening up there, and where are those reinforcements?"

A loud tumult of fighting had broken out on the hill crest above them, the sounds of clashing blades and raised voices carrying clearly down to where they stood, and Dedalus moved to look down into the valley. He spoke over his shoulder.

"Strongarm's bowmen are here now, on their way up on both sides. My lads had to be regrouped. They're just reaching the base of the hill now."

A glance confirmed that the reinforcements were on their way, but Uther was not convinced that they would be in place soon enough. He raised a hand and the leader of the Cornish clansmen moved towards him. Uther explained what was happening and asked the fellow if he would take his followers up above to help out, and the Cornishman nodded and wheeled, waving to his men, who were moving rapidly upwards into the trees mere moments later, evidently relishing the prospect of a fight. Uther barely paused to watch them go. His eyes had fixed upon the Queen's blood guard of Scots, and Dedalus seemed to read his mind.

"We ought to get those women out of here, Uther. Down the hill to the wagons or clean away, because there's no safety here with an enemy storming our rear. If anything spills over from the crest up there we'll be hard put to defend them."

Uther looked around at him, one eyebrow raised in a query. "Clean away? To where?"

"Southwest, over the flank of the hill and down into the valley that runs parallel to the one your scout used, behind the ridge of hills he said he couldn't cross. They have their own guards, and we can send an escort of our men with them for extra protection. But they'll have to move quickly if they're to escape without being seen."

The King nodded and dismounted, heading straight to his tent.

Uther found Ygraine wailing for him. He told her tersely what was developing, that he was beset on all fronts and facing a major battle, and that he was sending her out overland with her women, on foot and away from trodden paths, towards the coast to meet her brother. With her would go her own Erse guard, an escort of Camulodian troopers to carry their baggage and a strong party of Pendragon bowmen. The women must carry only minimal burdens, leaving most of their possessions here in his camp, and he would also send some of the Cornish clansmen with them to guide them safely to the River Camel and from there to the meeting place on the coast.

Ygraine was not at all pleased with the prospect of leaving him there, but she accepted the situation and made some suggestions of her own. She would meet Connor, she said, and embark on his vessel as planned, but she would then keep her brother there, riding offshore and safe from attack, for two days. When Uther had won his battle, he should come to her on the coast and either take her home with him to his own kingdom or bid a temporary farewell to her and his son and make arrangements for them to join him again at a later date, once his campaign in Cornwall was completed.

Uther promised to follow her as soon as he could, perhaps even overtaking her, if the gods were kind, before she reached the coast.

They were hugging each other closely in a last embrace when the woman Dyllis emerged from the rear of the tent, carrying the baby Arthur, and Uther straightened, staring at her and pushing Ygraine gently away to arm's length, turning her towards Dyllis, who stood staring back at him.

"You will have to change your clothing, Ygraine, you and all your women. Look at Dyllis. That yellow gown she is wearing would be visible for miles. Half a score of brightly dressed women like that would draw pursuers like flies to honey. Call all your women to you now. Tell them to remove everything bright and colourful and dress themselves in drab hues. They won't like that, I know, but if they want to live and get out of here safely, that's the price they'll have to pay. Now, my love, move quickly. Every moment is urgent. There's no time to lose. I'm going directly to speak to your cousin Alasdair. Your father charged him with your safety, and the time has come for him to see to it." He pulled her close and kissed her one more time, long and deep, then took his infant son from Dyllis and kissed him, too.

"I've never been a praying man, Ygraine, but I'll assail the heavens with cries for your safety until I see you again. Now hurry, and may the gods go with you."

The party that finally left the plateau on the hillside numbered close to a hundred, but they vanished quickly among the trees, unseen either from below or above. They would move along the hill side, well below the fighting on the summit, until they could safely strike upward and cross the crest of the long ridge of hills that stretched to the southeast, making their way down into the valley behind. Uther's heart was sore and his stomach sour as he watched Ygraine turn to cast one last look back at him before she disappeared from sight. Beside her, her cousin Alasdair, the captain of her guard, paused to wait for her. On his back, Alasdair carried his newest cousin, Uther's son Arthur, carefully swaddled and securely fastened in a leather satchel slung between his shoulders. Uther felt as though he were watching a vital part of himself being torn away as mother and son vanished beneath the canopy of leaves.

Another runner had arrived from the south, and Dedalus spoke into Uther's torment, informing him that the enemy army was now less than an hour's march away and coming on in good order. Uther ignored the news until all signs of Ygraine's party had vanished, and then he turned back to overlook the valley below him.

"In good order, eh? Well, I think we might put an end to that. We're as ready for them as we'll ever be, and we'll give them a fight to remember, those of them who are left alive. What I'm wondering, though, is what in Hades has happened to Nemo and Longhead."

Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

Nemo, who was less than two miles from Uther and his army, might have considered Hades to be a very apt description of where she was, had she enjoyed either the wit or the time to wonder about it.

She had lost track of the days she had spent looking for Lagan Longhead, despite the fact that he was travelling with an army of men and ought to have been easily traced, but she had counted ten days of constant searching before simply resigning herself to the daily hunt. She discovered that, with the countryside swarming with Lot's mercenaries, Lagan had taken to keeping his forces in concealment in the deep woods during the daylight hours, and then moving to spread havoc by night, launching brilliant and ferocious attacks against any mercenary installations he could find. Nemo travelled the length of Cornwall searching for him, gleaning information on his movements from those few local clansmen who dared or were willing to speak to a stranger. But each time she went to a place where he had been. Lagan had already moved on.

She finally found him by accident when she was taken captive late one evening by a patrol of his scouts after she had made her camp for the night, and only the fact that she was unarmed and unarmoured saved her life—that, plus the fact that she carried his token, and it was recognized by one of her captors. They took her directly to their Chief, then, and Nemo found a man far different from the amiable Lagan Longhead she had met months earlier.

Nemo had heard about Lagan's recent losses from Uther and knew that his father, his wife and his only son had all been killed on

Lot's orders within a few short days of each other, but being Nemo, she had not thought about what that entailed and had made no effort at all to comprehend the effect the triple tragedy might have had on the man. Now, by his small campfire in the gathering dusk, she saw the evidence with her own eyes, and the changes penetrated even her indifference.

Lagan Longhead had always been a comely man, tall, strongly built and richly dressed, with open, wholesome, fine features and a ready smile that reflected his friendly, outgoing nature. But the Lagan Longhead facing her now was another person altogether. Still tall and strong, this man seemed stooped and older than his years, and much of the firm flesh and heavy muscle had withered from his frame, leaving him thin and ill-looking. But it was his face that showed the ravages of what had been done to him. He was hollow- cheeked and gaunt, his face deeply lined and heavily bearded where he had always been clean-shaven. His beard was dirty and untrimmed, too, as was his hair, and his eyes were deep-sunken, glittering beneath his frowning brows with a hectic but icy fire that whispered of madness.

He did not know Nemo at first, and he failed at first even to recognize the token that she brought to him from Uther. Eventually, however, he took it from her, unwillingly she thought, and clutched it tightly in his hand, sitting down on a stump close to the fire and gazing at his clenched fist for a long time before opening his fingers and staring down at what he held. It was a plain, waxen seal, marked with a cross, the same token she had brought to him and to his father on several occasions. He sighed and spoke, but his voice was so low that Nemo could barely hear. She tried to move closer to where he sat, but her guards, who had received no orders to release her, held her back.

"Lord," she said loudly enough to penetrate his trance, "Lord Lagan, read the words from Uther, the King."

He sucked in a breath and turned to look at her, then waved the guards back.

"Your name is Nemo."

"Aye, lord."

"I remember you. Uther Pendragon is your King. Lot was my King, and I served him well. What of your King?"

"He is in Cornwall, lord, at war with Lot, and he calls for you to join him."

"He calls for me. To join him. Why should I? None but a fool would ever trust a King."

Nemo did not know how to respond to that, and so she stood silent for a while.

"You say he is at war with Lot? You lie. I am at war with Lot from night to night, and I have seen no sign of your King."

Still Nemo said nothing. The letter she had given Lagan lay where he had dropped it, unread, by his feet. Finally she pointed to it.

"Read his words. Lord Lagan. He wrote them for you weeks ago. He was marching then to attack Lot in the north."

Lagan looked from Nemo to the letter at his feet, and back again. "Words," he said. "Words win no fights. My wife and son were killed in order to send words to me."

"Read them, lord. I have brought them a long way for your eyes."

Lagan sighed again, then pointed his foot towards another stump close to the one on which he sat. "Sit. Eat." He turned to one of his men. "Bring him food." Then he reached down and picked up the package at his feet, breaking the seal with his thumb and spreading the folded paper that lay inside the leather wrapping, and for a time he sat whispering to himself as he read the closely inscribed words. Shortly after that, without another word to Nemo, he issued orders to assemble his army and prepare to march north.

Nemo looked on in amazement as his army gathered in the darkness between the fires in almost complete silence. It was not a large force. She estimated it as being less than one-quarter the size of Uther's. But she was struck by the air of grim determination that radiated from the men. They were all heavily armoured in a featureless mixture of odds and ends and bits and pieces of equipment, and beneath this ill-assorted gear they wore plain, drab clothing, in some cases little more than poorly tanned animal skins, that showed no uniformity of any kind and bore nothing in the way of marks or colour patches to distinguish them even to each other. They were heavily armed, too, with weapons of every description, from spears to heavy clubs and long, thick staves, and the majority of them carried shields slung across their backs. She saw bowmen among them, and axemen, but most carried spears and a sword of some type.

They moved in a silence that seemed almost sullen, with no orders being issued and no signs of any predetermined formations. And she saw no signs of levity or humour anywhere among them, not even the black humour of bored and frightened warriors. She had been told they marched and fought at night, using the darkness itself as a weapon to spread fear and terror among their enemies, and now it seemed right to her that they should move in such grim silence.

Only as his men began to move away into the trees, leaving their small fires still smouldering, did Lagan Longhead turn to look at her again. He gave no indication that she should come with them, but she interpreted his look as an invitation and moved to walk behind him. He stopped walking immediately and looked her up and down from head to toe.

"You have no weapons, no armour?"

"No, lord, save this." She showed him the short, thick-bladed dagger concealed beneath her tunic. "King Uther warned me not to go armed. I was to find you and attract no attention until then from anyone. I could run away from any threat like this and not be thought worth following. If anyone did follow me, the dagger would have been enough."

Lagan stared at her and then turned to one of the group of men surrounding him.

"Noric, find him some armour and a sword."

The fellow he had spoken to jerked his head in a sign for Nemo to follow him, and he led her to what served as Longhead's quartermaster's stores, a small handcart piled high with an assortment of armour and weaponry, most of it heavily stained and crusted with old blood. She searched quickly and dressed herself in a battered metal breastplate with a thick leather back-protector, both pieces slightly too small for her, a dented helmet that fitted her tolerably well and an ancient Roman kirtle of armoured straps that protected her groin. She even found an old Roman short-sword with a scuffed sheath and a serviceable belt, and a heavy, ungainly shield, rectangular in shape, made from layers of hardened bull hide, studded with iron lozenges and reinforced in the back by latticed strips of wooden lath. By the time she and her guide caught up with Lagan again, she felt prepared to defend herself adequately in the event of a fight.

They marched all night, although marching was a word that no Camulodian would have applied to their progress. What they did was walk steadily and slowly, threading their way by moonlight, always northward, through endless groves of stunted trees separated by expanses of barren, rocky, heath-covered ground that was treacherous and dangerous underfoot. They kept going even after the moon went down, picking their way more slowly in pitch darkness but progressing steadily enough by the light of the stars to make her believe that these Cornishmen were somehow gifted with better eyes than other men.

And then, in the first dim greyness of dawn, when the dew on the ground had turned to mist that rose up to shroud them all in wet, ghostly wreaths, they walked straight into the path of another large force of men advancing eastward from their left.

Longhead's scouts had detected the advancing enemy, but not in time to permit any avoidance of the danger. Lagan's clansmen fell back as far as they could and went to ground immediately, lying motionless and hoping to stay concealed while the other group passed by, and they were almost successful, but one unit of the advancing enemy swung far to the right of their fellows, literally walked onto some of Longhead's men, and the die was cast.

The Cornishmen, prepared, made the most of the surprise their unsuspected presence caused, but they were outnumbered from the start, and the enemy were better equipped, many of them wearing shirts of ring-mail that could deflect the sharpest spear point. Slowly, the tide of the fight turned against the Cornishmen.

Nemo had lost sight of Lagan in the opening moments of the battle, and she suspected that he might be dead. She herself was isolated at one point, soon after she first smelled the smoke of burning grass, with a score or so of Cornishmen, and they formed a defensive knot, standing shoulder to shoulder and battling in grim near-silence with the endless stream of men who surged towards them out of the smoke-filled mist. And then Nemo was struck on the head and knocked to the ground, unconscious.

When she regained her senses some time later, she was choking in dense smoke, but she was fully aware of where she was and of the danger she was in, lying alone and defenceless on the ground. Her head was aching violently, and she had to vomit before she could struggle back to her feet, at which point she discovered that she had lost both her helmet and her shield. She still held her sword in her hand, however, her knuckles sore from clutching it, and as she stood weaving, fighting for balance and blinking her eyes until her vision cleared, she saw another sword lying close by. Her world stopped swaying moments later and she bent and snatched up the second weapon.

The knot of men with whom she had been fighting had been reduced to half their number while she lay unconscious, but they were still close by, and as soon as she saw them she ran to join them again, hacking and slashing at the exposed backs of the few enemies between her and her former companions, knowing that she would be safer in the group than she would be alone. Some time after that, fighting on the extreme edge of the dwindling knot of clansmen, she sensed a threat to her left and swung around just in time to take a spear thrust in her side. As her attacker ripped his spearhead free, she flew at him in a rage, feeling no pain from the wound, and slashed her short-sword across his throat, severing the arteries there so that he fell away in a spray of lifeblood. She fell then, too, on top of him, and the mixture of their blood must have made it appear that they were both dead, for no one leaped forward to finish her off.

She had been fighting for what seemed like hours, although she had no idea of how much time had actually passed, and she was growing weaker by the moment. Her arms were heavy with fatigue, her entire body slick with blood, much of it her own, and she had to contend with the ragged pain of the deep wound in her left side, where the spear point had penetrated beneath the edge of her ill- fitting body armour and then been ripped out again. Its barbed edges had torn through flesh and muscle, and even though she had barely felt it at the time, her attention focused tightly upon killing her assailant, the pain was now threatening to overwhelm her. She knew that if she did not rest soon and staunch the wound somehow, she would simply fall down and die, or be killed as she lay helpless. Even as the thought passed through her mind, her knees gave way and she fell heavily, almost losing consciousness in a blinding flash of agony. And yet her awareness of danger was so strong that she immediately began to struggle to her feet again, digging the point of the longer of her two swords into the ground and attempting to use it as a prop to pull herself back to her feet. But she could not rise. She managed to struggle up until she was kneeling on one knee, leaning heavily on the sword, but she could go no farther, and her eyes teared over with the effort.

Only then did she realize, hazily, kneeling and swaying weakly from side to side, that she was alone and the fighting had passed her by. The only sounds of conflict she could hear were distant now, muffled by the roaring of the flames in the nearby trees.

Someone moaned aloud close by her, but there was no threat in the sound, and she ignored it. Another man screamed repeatedly in long, sustained crescendos, but he, too, was far away, somewhere off to her right.

She lowered herself to all fours, retaining her grip on her short- sword, and began crawling slowly towards a huge beech tree, aware that the ground at its base was covered with thick, springy moss. When she reached it, she pushed herself up until her back rested against the bole and then set to work to remove the armoured breastplate that she had borrowed from Lagan Longhead's supplies. It had been made for a shorter body than hers, and that had left the gap found by the spear point that had almost killed her.

Weak as she was, her fingers could not cope with the blood-slick straps and buckles of the harness, and so she cut the leather, shrugged out of the armour and then pulled up her tunic, baring the wound. It was wide and deep, and strips of raw flesh hung in tatters where the barbs of the spear had been ripped free. Blood welled from the long trench and flowed down over her hip. She gritted her teeth and struggled to pull the leather scrip at her side around to where she could reach into it, and from it she pulled a thick wad of cloth, the pads and binding strips she carried to deal with the monthly flow of her menses. She untied the bundle, setting the long strips aside and wadding the larger pieces into one thick pad, and then she tore up a double handful of the sphagnum moss she was sitting on and packed it as tightly as she could into the raw wound, sucking in her breath and biting down hard against the pain. She held the moss in place until the sickening waves of fresh pain receded, and then she carefully placed the cloth pad over it and bound it tightly in place with six long strips of cloth, each of them wrapped twice around her waist and knotted as tightly as she could pull them.

The pain lessened immediately, and the dressing felt tight and strong as she pulled her tunic back down, then cinched her wide leather belt closely around her, pulling it until she could hardly breathe and then using the point of her small eating knife to pierce a new hole in the leather strap. After that, she laid her sword across her knees and leaned back against the tree, wiping the blood from her hands with another handful of moss and then reaching into her scrip again for a small package of dried, smoked venison. It was practically inedible, and she had no appetite, but she knew she needed the strength and sustenance it would provide. It tasted and felt like tree bark in her mouth at first, but she persevered, chewing doggedly until her saliva had softened the stuff and she could taste the rank, smoky flavour of it. It was a large piece of meat, and she forced herself to sit there and gnaw at it, mouthful after mouthful, until it was consumed, and she felt her eyes begin to close against her volition.

Nemo opened her eyes suddenly, surprised that she had dozed off, her heart flaring with panic. No one was near her. She was still sitting propped against the bole of the beech tree, and the pain in her side had diminished to a dull ache. She fumbled gently at the dressing on her side, testing it. Nemo checked her hand then for signs of fresh blood, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Moments later, she again heard the sound that had snapped her from her doze. It was a sustained, agonized screeching, coming from a tortured throat, a demented, inhuman series of shrieks that set her teeth on edge and caused a formless, queasy stirring in her guts. She knew it was a man screaming and vaguely remembered having heard it earlier, but it seemed to her that the screaming had been more distant then. Now it was close by, and it sounded far worse than it had, and that frightened her, because she knew that such a thing could not be possible. No man who was wounded badly enough to produce such sounds could possibly move anywhere. Her entire skin rose up in a gooseflesh of superstitious horror as the thought came to her that the demonic sounds might not be coming from a man at all but from some hideous goblin, drawn from the blackness of the underworld by the smell of all the blood that had been spilled here in this place.

She was on her feet, holding her breath and clutching the hill of her sword in both hands before she even knew she could move. Her head was filled with the ungodly screaming in the middle distance, and until the sound died away into silence she stood staring about her wildly, her back pressed against the trunk of the tree. Then she became aware of the stillness that surrounded her. The morning mists had evaporated and the winds had died away, and because of that the fires had died down so that the blackened trees on her right only smouldered now, angry smoke drifting silently upward on the edges of her sight, rising into lowering rain clouds. No bird sang and no breath of air disturbed the sullen calm. No sound of battle or movement anywhere. Nothing except the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears. Nemo looked about her at the carnage, unable to count the corpses that littered the ground, observing the way the bodies of her former companions all lay together where they had fallen, in a clear line that ended in a tangled knot of bodies, a long windrow of corpses showing the direction and distance of their slow advance into annihilation.

Suddenly the screaming came again, louder and more agonized than before, and this time she could tell where it was coming from, directly ahead of her when she turned slightly to her left. The ground there rose gently to a low ridge, and the sounds were coming from beyond that. And then, because it was the last thing in the world that she wanted to do, she sheathed her sword slowly and began to move towards the awful noise, biting down hard and pressing her left hand against the bulky dressing over the wound in her side as she placed one foot carefully ahead of the other, step after faltering step, surprised that she was even capable of movement. Slowly, painfully, she moved towards the low ridge, bending into the rising ground and leaning for support on everything and anything that came close to her and was big enough to bear her weight.

She saw the crown of the trees even before she breasted the ridge, and her throat closed up in terror as she recognized immediately what they represented: a Druidic circle of ancient oaks, towering over the scrub trees that surrounded them. But still she moved forward, until she reached the crest of the low ridge and could see them clearly, and she was appalled but unsurprised to hear that the unearthly screaming was issuing from there. Her eyes were filmed with tears from the effort of climbing the slight incline, but a huge image of her long- forgotten father's face, hated and feared throughout her childhood, interposed itself between her and the circle. He had come for her, she knew, and the screams were his—rage and anger, hatred and despair blended into one demanding, unforgiving summons. A chill shook her entire body, reminding her of the bowel-loosening terror she had known once before, when she had chased the witch, Cassandra, to her lair. But she had killed the witch. Perhaps, if the gods willed it, she could kill the ghost of Leir the Druid the same way, with black iron. Unsteadily, her head reeling. Nemo drew her sword again and moved down towards the ring of oaks.

She was unaware of time passing as she crossed the distance to the nearest tree in the circle, making her way slowly and painfully around and between the clumps of hawthorn and hazel that had grown up around the perimeter of the circle over countless years. All her attention was focused upon the screaming, which seemed to grow weaker and less strident as she approached. Finally she reached the first great tree and leaned against it, her face against the bark, her legs shaking with fear and her entire body drenched with clammy sweat as she tried to will herself to straighten up and move on. And as she leaned there, exhausted, a hand clamped on her shoulder.

Nemo shrieked, insane with fear, and spun around, thrusting blindly with her short-sword as years of military training took over. The thing she had imagined at her back was not a goblin but a man, however, and as the length of her blade stabbed into his unprotected neck, she recognized him. It was Noric, Lagan's man, the one who had taken her to find her armour the day before. She saw the shock on his face as he jerked his head, trying to look down at the sword that had killed him, and watched as the light of life faded immediately from his eyes. His body, unable to fall backwards, sagged forward against her, following the pull of her blade as she tried to withdraw it from his throat, and she brought the heel of her left hand up beneath his chin and thrust him away from her, jerking her blade free as he fell back. She turned back towards the circle of oaks immediately, aware that the violent effort of killing him had reopened the wound in her side.

The screaming had stopped again. Nemo looked down at the blade in her hand, still dripping with blood, then raised it and pushed herself away from the tree, lurching forward into the circle. She saw movement immediately, close by her beneath the closest tree on her right, but her sight was blurred and at first she could not define what she was seeing. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve, and then saw what it was: two men, one of them hauling the other up into the air by a rope around his chest and beneath his arms, the rope thrown over a low oak limb. The man being hanged was apparently dead, his clean-shaven face bloodlessly pale, and she saw that both his hands and his feet had been cut off. The other man, covered in blood and recognizable only by his size, was Lagan Longhead.

Nemo had no care for what Lagan was doing and no interest in the other man. She knew only that she had to bring Lagan to Uther. That had been the King's command, and nothing in the world had ever mattered more to her than obeying his wishes.

She tried to call Lagan's name, but all that issued from her mouth was a strangled grunt, and at the sound of it Longhead exploded into motion. Nemo saw the hanging body plummet to the ground as he released the rope and spun around, one hand whipping down to his belt while the other swung up to point at her. Then he turned completely on his heel and threw something at her. She barely had time to see that it was a whirling axe before it smashed into her forehead, killing her instantly.

Longhead barely glanced at her as he scurried to where she lay and ripped the axe out of her cloven skull, but even had he looked at her closely. Nemo was completely unrecognizable. The Cornish Chief remained in a crouch, brandishing the axe and hopping from foot to foot as he peered around, searching for other attackers, but when he was satisfied that there were none, he turned and scampered back in the same stooped run to his interrupted work, where he thrust the long handle of the axe into the belt at his waist.

The body lay where it had fallen, festooned with the coils of rope that had landed on top of it, and he stooped quickly to gather them up again, starting to loop them in one hand as he peered up at the bough above. But the large, richly brocaded bag securely fastened around the dead man's waist caught his eye and he stopped suddenly, crouching down even lower to look at it and linger its richness.

"Oh, Gully, Gully, Gully," he whispered, the words tripping over each other. "What have we here? This is perfect. Come here now, let's sit you up."

He grasped the corpse beneath the shoulders and struggled to drag it across the few intervening paces to where he could prop it up with its back against the bole of the oak tree. Then, when he was sure it was securely lodged upright and would not topple over, he stooped to undo the woven, brightly coloured belt that held the large bag about the dead man's waist.

"There," he grunted, holding the thing aloft and undoing its drawstring before spilling its few contents out onto the grass. "There, now we can do this properly. Gully. Can't send you off to meet the gods without your parts."

He turned and cast his eyes about the grass, then moved quickly, scuttling and spider-like, to snatch up the severed hands and feet that lay around him. When he had all four, holding them in the crook of his bent left arm, he went back and knelt in front of the corpse, arranging the severed extremities side by side in their pairs on the ground in front of him. That done, he twisted sideways and picked up the brocaded bag, tugging at it until the neck was wide open.

"Now," he whispered. "Feet first, that's the thing." The shattered ankles of the severed feet bristled with shards of jagged bone, showing plainly that they had not been easily removed from their natural place.

"Are you watching, Gully, can you see? Don't you go dying on me! Wait with me, we're almost done now. There. Two feet and two hands, one of them with two almost-missing fingers. Your own fault, that, Gully. You wouldn't keep still." The hand he held, which had been Gulrhys Lot's left hand, showed the clear signs of three distinct axe blows, one of which had almost severed two fingers, the smallest and the one beside that, and another, less heavily delivered, that had split the back of the hand, breaking the bones but not cutting completely through the flesh. The third had been a clean, heavy blow, cutting directly through the wrist and severing the hand. Longhead stuffed the hand into the bag and reached for the other.

The wrist of this dead and bloodless thing showed evidence of two hard, overlapping chops, and the index finger still bore the massive golden ring imprinted with the seal of the Boar, Lot's personal insignia. Longhead held it up to the corpse's eyes, as though the dead man might be able to see and appreciate it.

"And there's your seal. See you? Lucky this bag is big enough. Now, if we place this hand atop the other, the ring still up, the gods will know you when they see you. Gully. They'll see a King, just as you wanted. They'll know you for the stinking, festering pile of dung you are. There, now, my friend, my so-long-trusted friend."

He tied the ends of the belt together and looped them like a sling around the corpse's neck, and then stood up, collected the rope and coiled it carefully before throwing the loops up and over the bough above his head, catching the slack in his free hand as it fell back to him. Then, with not as much as another glance at the corpse, he bent his back to the task of hoisting the body into the tree and securing the rope around the thick and ancient bole. When he was finished, he stepped back and looked up at the dead man swaying above him.

"There, now. You're above and beyond everyone else again, as you always thought you ought to be. When the gods come looking for you, show them your mighty seal and tell them Lagan Longhead sent you." He grasped one dangling leg and swung it violently, setting the hanging body spinning, and then crashed to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and screaming his wife's name loudly enough to frighten himself. Snatching his hands away from his eyes again, he held them out at his sides as though preparing to take flight, and knelt there, hunched and quivering, for a long time, peering about him and tilting his head, listening. He leaped to his feet then and pulled the bloody axe from his belt before crouching to turn completely around again, his every move radiating menace. When nothing met his gaze he straightened, inhaling sharply, then ran off in a long, loping stride to disappear into the woods, leaving the Druids' circle to the silence again, disturbed only by the buzzing of the flies attracted to the fresh- spilled blood.

Two miles away from the Druids' circle, Uther, with no thought now of Lagan Longhead in his mind, was closer to despair than he had ever been. By his reckoning, it was shortly after noon, and below him on the valley floor his army was being slaughtered, overwhelmed by numbers that simply swamped their disciplined and normally impregnable formations. The enemy from the south had swept into view nigh on three hours earlier in numbers that appalled his eyes, marching in tight, disciplined phalanxes and spreading clear across the eastern floor of the valley before wheeling inexorably to attack the pitifully thin lines of his infantry. At the same time the masses from the north had swept down, cheering, to join them, completely surrounding Uther's now woefully inadequate force. But even above the tumult of the clash below, he had still been able to hear the noises from the skirmish above and behind him, where his bowmen and infantry were fighting what he feared would be a losing battle with the unknown forces swarming up the hill from the rear.

Three separate armies had combined in one engagement—ten thousand men, perhaps more, against his two thousand.

He himself had led the first successful cavalry charge against them an hour before, two hundred men at his back, hammering death down from the hillside and around his own beleaguered perimeter from right to left, cleaving a bloody and relentless path through the packed masses of the enemy, shattering them and sending them reeling. The Camulodian, Philip, had led a charge in similar strength from the opposite direction, sweeping down and around from left to right, passing Uther's force on the outside of his progress at the midpoint. The attack had worked miraculously well and had given the hard-pressed Camulodian infantry the chance to regroup and reform their ranks, but devastating as the double charge had been, it had been a mere swat at a swarm of bees, and the enemy had pressed in again as soon as the charging cavalry had passed.

What was worse, and heartbreakingly so, was that the manoeuvre had worked only once. By the time the second wave of cavalry had thundered down from above to repeat the assault, the enemy had prepared for them and met them with massed banks of spears, concealed until too late by the throngs in front of them. The spearmen had ignored the horsemen themselves and concentrated upon slaughtering their mounts, so that the surging masses of heavy horses crashed into ruin, unable to penetrate the densely packed formations that confronted them and foundering against an insurmountable barrier of their own dead. Uther had watched from above, raging but utterly helpless and unable to do anything to change the situation.

He heard his name being shouted and turned slowly to see Garreth Whistler coming towards him, accompanied by Dedalus, both men carrying bright, multicoloured bundles of the clothing that Ygraine's women had discarded before their escape.

"Uther! Get down! Come down here!"

Mystified, and giving way to his anger now that they had given him a focus, Uther leaped down from his horse.

"What in the name of all the gods are you two doing? Our army's being slaughtered down there, and you're collecting women's clothing?"

"Aye," Dedalus spat. "And we're being slaughtered up above, as well. We're finished, Uther. This battle is over, save for the dying.

All we can do now is salvage what we can, and try to live to fight again."

Uther stood staring, his mind refusing to work, and then he shook his head. "What are you saying, live to fight another day? Are you suggesting that we should run away? Flee the field? Damnation to that! If we are to die, then we're to die, so let's get to it!"

"No, Uther, we don't all have to die. Dedalus has found a way to cut our losses. With these." Garreth Whistler hoisted the bundle he held in his arms. "Tell him, Ded."

"With these—" Dedalus dropped his bundle and reached out to grasp Uther's red cloak "—and this. They all know this, those whoresons down there. They've seen you lead the charge and they know who you are. Now we have a chance to stop the killing, but you have to flee with the women."

"What women? You're mad. You think I'd flee like Lot? You've lost your mind."

"No, my plan will work. But even if it doesn't, at least it offers us a chance to do something." Dedalus paused, seeing that Uther had no idea what he was talking about. "Look, Uther. These clothes here are too bright to hide, you said so yourself. That's why the women had to take them off. They would have been visible from miles away. You would be, too. You are, already, with your red and gold. Now, if we mount men behind our riders, men dressed in these things, they'll look like women from down below. And if you ride off leading them, with the remainder of our cavalry and your standard-bearer riding ahead of you, and make your way along the flank of the hill here to the southwestward, everyone down there will see you going, and what do you think they'll do?"

"They'll laugh, as I should be laughing, had I the heart for it."

"Aye, they might laugh, Uther," Garreth Whistler said, "but they'll follow you, hungry to catch and kill a King and sate themselves on his women. Lot would reward them richly for bringing him your head. And if they follow you, if even half of them follow you, our lads below will have that much the better chance of living through this day. It's only numbers that have beaten them, not warriors or tactics."

Uther stood silent. Heartsick, he turned his head and looked around him, taking stock of what he saw. Then he nodded and reached up to loosen his cloak. "It might work. Here, have someone put this on, and this helmet, then put your plan to work quickly."

Dedalus shook his head. "That's no good, Uther. It can't be anyone else who goes. It has to be you. You're the King."

"That's right, I am the King, and I will not run away and leave my men to die."

"You have to, Uther." Garreth's voice was urgent. "You have to. You have no other sane choice. It would be a waste of everything you and all of us have fought for and believed in were you to die here, leaving Lot victorious when there's no need. Even if you do escape, you might still die out there somewhere, but at least you'll have a fighting chance to live and raise another army. No one else can do that, Uther. No one. Merlyn could have once, but not now. There is only you, now. You must live to fight again and put a final end to Lot, to avenge those who have died here today. And if you go now quickly, you will save more lives in departing than you ever could in staying."

Uther hesitated, still unwilling but almost convinced, and Dedalus added his voice to Garreth Whistler's.

"We'll stay here and hold the army together, what remains of it. Trust me, Uther. If you have ever believed me or admired me, trust me now. I know that when they see you leaving—and we'll make sure they see you plainly-—those whoresons down there will think you're fleeing with your women, and they'll take after you like hounds after a stag. But they'll have to climb this hill to chase you, and you'll be mounted, and they will see only a small party leaving with you. We'll send out the rest of the cavalry unseen, ahead of you, by the same path the women took earlier. You'll cut up and around to join them on the other side of the hills once you're safely away from here, and when the whoresons catch up to you, if they ever do, they'll find you at the head of four, almost five hundred horsemen, and the 'women' they'll expect to slow you down will be your own Pendragon bowmen. What say you?"

Uther looked from Dedalus to Garreth Whistler. "Garreth, I can't believe I'm hearing this from you . . . that you're telling me to abandon my army and save my own skin. You are my oldest, closest friend . . . And so I charge you now to be truthful with me, to speak not as a friend, but as the King's Champion. Do you believe, in your heart, that this is the course I should take for the good of all?"

Garreth Whistler nodded slowly, looking his King squarely in the eye. "I do, Uther. I believe it absolutely. I believe it is your duty and your burden as the King to do this. And I know how badly it sits with you. But bear in mind your father's belief, and his father's before that: there comes a time when every King must bear the burden of being much more than a common man. That burden is called duty, and a King's duty lies in safeguarding his people."

Uther's eyes filled with tears and he turned away, sniffing angrily and staring off into the distance as he struggled with what the King's Champion had said. Finally, after a long, stiff silence, he turned back to his two friends and colleagues and spoke in a voice heavy with resignation and regret.

"So be it, then. I'll flee. See to your arrangements, and may the gods protect both of you."

"All of us, Uther. May they protect all of us, including our men left alive down there in the valley and your own son and his mother. If you ride quickly enough, you'll overtake them without much effort. They're afoot and have no road to follow, so I doubt they'll be making swift progress."

Dedalus turned away and began calling out commands, sending men running in all directions, while Garreth Whistler set about unfolding and laying out the bright, feminine garments that Uther's bowmen would wear as they rode behind the mounted troopers.

Even before they had travelled beyond sight of the remnants of his own army, making their way carefully along the high slopes of the hillside on the western flank of the valley that had brought the army from the south against him, Uther could see that Dedalus's ruse was working. A long-drawn, swelling roar had risen up from the swarming enemy in the valley below as men saw them and pointed.

drawing the attention of others to their flight—the "women" in their bright and brilliant colours clinging to the backs of the troopers as they made their way slowly and precariously along the precipitous hillside behind Uther's enormous scarlet and gold banner. And slowly at first, but with a steadily increasing momentum, a surge of movement away from the fighting and towards the valley mouth had announced the beginnings of a hot pursuit, the visible prizes of a fleeing King and a crowd of high-born women having their predicted effect.

Uther took great care to remain in view and move slowly, exaggerating the difficulty of their route, until the floor of the narrow valley below them was jammed with running men, many of whom were already climbing the hill towards the mounted party. Once out of view of the battleground, he could not tell with any certainty how many of the enemy had followed him, but it soon became unmistakably clear that, once begun, the tide of pursuit had swollen to completion, with few of the enemy willing to forfeit such rich prizes to others who had simply moved sooner and more greedily. As he watched them swarming below him, Uther began to hope that the remnants of the battered army he had left behind might be able to regroup, consolidate their numbers and survive the catastrophe that had struck them. His despair at having abandoned them, however, was almost unbearable, and he rode in bitter, angry silence.

He maintained his slow progress along the Hank of the hill for four miles and more, grimly holding his mount in check, yet easily outstripping those eager forerunners who sought to take him on the hill. Then, when he could see that the hillsides were alive with climbing men, he signalled his people to turn their mounts and set the spurs to them, climbing the hill until they crossed over to the other side and made their way down into the valley that lay there to join the far larger group, more than four hundred to Uther's forty, that awaited them.

Reunited with his men, he led them at a fast, sustainable canter that devoured the miles ahead of them, but he left scouts behind in sufficient numbers to be visible to the pursuing enemy and to create the illusion that they were almost within reach, and he dispatched relays to relieve them every half hour, so that there was a constant stream of troopers coming and going between his main force and the pursuing hordes.

They caught up with Ygraine's party in less than an hour after reaching the valley bottom, the women's progress having slowed almost to a crawl as the hardships of struggling on foot through a pathless wilderness exhausted them. Ygraine's guards, no doubt frustrated by their lack of progress, had heard his party approaching and were tightly grouped around the Queen and her women, prepared to die there, when Uther arrived.

Ygraine was delighted and surprised to see him so soon, for it had been less than six hours since they had parted, and she wanted to know immediately how he had fared in the battle, but he waved her to silence and wasted no time trying to explain what had happened. Instead, he deflected her questions by rapping out commands to have the women hoisted onto horseback behind fresh troopers while his bowmen dismounted, aching and sore from their long ride, and stretched their legs until they felt sound again. He hoisted Ygraine to his own horse, to ride in front of him, loving the feel of her waist in the bend of his arms in spite of his anger and frustration, and ordered the baby's carrying pack transferred to the back of one of his own troop leaders. Only then did he summon the leader of the Cornish guides who had accompanied the women.

"How far are we from the river now?"

The Cornishman shrugged and pointed towards the brook that ran along the valley bottom. "A league, perhaps another half. No more than that. All these streams feed into the Camel. And on our present course, we'll reach it about another league inland from the sea."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Aye, as sure as any man could be. I've lived in these hills all my life. They're growing smaller, the hills, and the trees are growing bigger as we move south. You can see that, can't you? That means we're closing on the Camel. By the time we reach it, you won't be able to see a hill in any direction until we reach the shoreline. There's cliffs there, to the south again."

"Good, then we'll keep moving. We can travel a league in less than an hour, even if the ground grows rougher than it is, so we should reach the coast before nightfall." He turned to speak into Ygraine's ear. "If your brother is on time, he should be there already. How far from the river's mouth will he be waiting?"

She pressed his arm against her breast. "There's a landing place, a bay with a steeply shelving beach below the third high headland to the south of the river's mouth. I've never seen it, but that's what Colum told me, and it's there that Connor will wait for us. Will you come with us?"

"No, I can't, not yet, but I'll see you safely delivered there before I leave you." He turned in the saddle and gave the signal to move on again, and as his men kicked their mounts into motion, moving in columns of four abreast, he saw a splash of yellow where one of them had tucked Dyllis's long, folded gown into the belt at his waist. A more careful look around then showed him that most of the other troopers had also kept the brightly coloured gowns after their "female" passengers had discarded them, safely distant from pursuit.

"We have your clothes with us, the gowns I made you leave behind this morning. We used them earlier to gull the enemy into thinking you were riding with us and wile them away from our army. I'll have them returned to you when we stop and you should give them back to your women to wear once you have reached the coast. . . but only then and not before."

Ygraine twisted in his arms to look up at him. "Why? You said they were too bright, and they are. You used them yourself for that very reason. Did the ruse succeed?"

"Aye, they followed us, and they're behind us now. That's why we have to keep moving quickly. But once on the coast, bright clothing, highly visible, will attract your friends. What was wrong inland will be right there."

Ygraine was still twisted in her seat, craning her neck to see his face.

"What happened this morning, Uther? You had no time to win a victory and then catch up to us."

Uther shook his head and avoided her eyes until she turned away, fatigued by the strain of peering up at him from such an awkward position, but after a while, as they rode on directly south, he began speaking quietly and bitterly into Ygraine's ear, telling her of his ignominious abandonment of his army. She listened intently, absorbing the depth of his shame, and made no attempt to interrupt his confession. Only when his voice had died away into silence did she speak, keeping her eyes fixed forward but pressing his free hand to the softness of her bosom.

"You have wise friends, King Cambria, and brave. You should be proud of them. Their advice was sound, and they were right. You did what you had to do, and the doing of it saved hundreds of lives that would have been wasted otherwise. Not merely these hundreds here with you, but all the others who remained alive after you left. You have no need for shame or guilt. Was Lot there?"

She barely heard his answer. "No, only his creatures in their thousands. Your spouse has little love of danger. And yet I thought he might be there to gloat. . ."

"Then he will be elsewhere on another day, and you will find him and destroy him."

"Aye, mayhap."

"Mayhap? There is no doubt in my mind, my love. You will."

"Aye, I will. I'll destroy him one day. But I doubt if even your Christian God could tell how I might find him. The man is swift and secret as a serpent."

As Uther said those words, a gust of wind caught Ygraine's long, loose hair and blew it up and back towards him, swirling about his face, tickling his cheeks. His shoulders stiffened at the contact and he sat more erect in his saddle, peering over her head, straight ahead into nothingness. Another gust buffeted him, and he drew rein, waiting. Moments later came another blast, stronger than those that had preceded it, and then the wind settled in to blow steadily from the south. Uther waited to see if it would die away, but if anything, it grew stronger.

A squadron of cavalry was leaving at that moment to ride back and relieve the rearguard still playing decoy to the pursuing enemy, and Uther waved to catch the attention of the squadron leader, a Celt called Declan, as he rode by. Declan hauled on his reins and turned his horse in a circle to bring it close to Uther's mount.

"Declan, can you make fire? Have you your firebox with you?"

"Aye, lord."

"Good, then I have new instructions for you. The gods have sent us this wind, and we should use it. Take your men up as you intended and relieve the rearguard, but on your way up, look closely at the spot where the valley broadens, less than half a mile behind us here. It is full of long, dry grass and bushes. Leave some of your men there to kindle a fire—small, but large enough to supply you with ample burning brands when you need them. Then go you and relieve the rearguard, and when they are safely gone, abandon the action there. Let the enemy see you fall back, and coax them if you can to follow you. Then put the spurs to your mounts, and when you reach the place where your men have the fire, set the grasses ablaze. Ablaze, you understand? Take the time to spread the fire wide, so there is no chance of its burning out. This wind from the south will do the rest and will funnel the smoke and flames back up the vale towards the enemy. Away with you now, and see to it."

The squadron leader smacked his forearm against his breastplate in salute and wheeled his horse away, spurring it to a gallop.

Uther replaced his arm about Ygraine's waist. "That, if it goes well, might save us a deal of trouble. Now let's find the River Camel."

Some time later, just as the first of the returning rearguard were beginning to join them, they came to a place where the valley split into two, one branch leading off eastward to their left. Uther halted the advance and called again for the Cornish guide, who told him that the eastward valley led to a much-travelled route that crossed the entire peninsula of Cornwall and intersected one of the smaller roads built by the Romans. That road in turn led to the main Roman road running north and south by the abandoned town of Isca.

Uther thought about that information for a while and then lowered Ygraine gently to the ground while he rode back to meet Declan, returning from the north. The valley was ablaze, Declan reported, and the brisk wind had whipped it into an inferno that had rushed up the northern valley like a river of fire. He had no knowledge of its effect on their pursuers, but he doubted that they would be coming down about King Uther's neck anytime soon.

Uther thanked the man and turned back to where his officers sat waiting for him. The senior cavalry commander with the group was Philip, and Uther went directly to him and told him the decision that had been taking shape in his mind since speaking to the Cornishman. Philip was to take seven-eighths of their present force, approximately three hundred and sixty troopers and officers, and lead them directly homeward, immediately. Uther would retain the remaining troopers—a double squadron of his own Dragons comprising forty men and live officers—to ride with him as escort to the Queen and her women and to amplify the force of her own bodyguard and the thirty Pendragon bowmen who had accompanied them. Combined, the various elements of Uther's party would number in excess of one hundred men, plus the women. Uther expected no trouble this far south, he told Philip, but if he were wrong and trouble did develop, he believed that his small force would be enough to handle it.

Philip was dubious as to the wisdom of splitting their forces, but he wisely said nothing and merely asked the King how far he thought he and the others might be behind them, once they had delivered the Queen safely to her meeting place. Uther estimated that he would be three days at the most before riding to overtake Philip, but he was emphatic that Philip must not wait for him and his party. He must get his own men home to Camulod in safety and as quickly as possible.

Philip listened, nodded, offered no opinion pro or contra the King's decision and promptly set about marshalling his forces for the ride home. Uther and his party waited until the larger group had disappeared from sight along the valley to the east, and then the King gave the signal to resume their march south. Behind them, far to the north and low on the horizon, the sky was obscured by a low, dense pall of drifting smoke.

Chapter THIRTY-NINE

They reached the River Camel an hour before sunset, by which time the wind from the south had strengthened into a whipping, buffeting gale, although it brought no rain. Uther left a squad of cavalry behind as guards, posting them on the highest point of land to watch for unwelcome activity along the path his group had travelled. He did not believe there might still be danger threatening from there, but he would take no chances.

He had decided that they might be wise to camp for the night in some sheltered spot along the last league that separated them from the western sea. The river was placid, neither deep nor wide, although their Cornish guide told them that this was due only to the time of year, and that in winter and springtime the flood became impassable. Uther had already recognized that from the width of the broad, boulder-strewn expanse on either side of the stream bed and the fact that nothing green grew among the stones. There were drowned trees and bushes aplenty on both sides, all of them littered with masses of dead, trailing weeds, and he could see the high-water mark where the dried, dead grass and mosses clinging to the stones marked the height of the floodwaters. Beyond the flood spill and the banks on both sides, the forest was dense, although he could see few large trees.

Uther rode along the riverbank, scanning the growth on both sides with great care, but he saw nothing suspicious and felt no discomfort with his surroundings, and his resolve to camp somewhere inland for the night grew stronger. He had no wish to forge ahead and reach the coast in deep dusk, when he would be committed to making a camp hurriedly in some unexplored spot where they might find themselves trapped with the sea at their backs. All their fine leather tents and creature comforts had been left behind on the high hillside plateau overlooking the battlefield, so there would be little luxury in their camp that night. They would sleep on the ground, under the stars, wrapped in their cloaks—something to which all of them, except the Queen and her women, were inured by a lifetime of hardship. Better then, he thought, to sleep on the relatively soft earth of a dry mud riverbank than on the hard, pebbly surface of a sea beach.

They eventually found a secure camping spot on the far side of the river, midway between the point at which they had reached the Camel itself and the place where it spilled out into the sea, and as soon as Uther had examined the site to his own satisfaction, he gave the welcome signal to dismount. The spot was sheltered among a grove of enormous old evergreens and backed by a high stone cliff, with a spring of clear, fresh water that bubbled at its base and splashed down onto the rocks bordering the stream bed. As soon as they dismounted, some of the men left their horses to their mates and set about lighting fires and preparing the campsite, while others went foraging for an evening meal. Those who remained shared the task of unsaddling and grooming the mounts of the workers when they had finished looking after their own animals. The foragers did well; there were fish in the stream and deer in the forest, and so there was no shortage of fresh food that night for the King's weary party.

Later in the evening, but well before darkness fell, Uther stood by smiling while his infant son was bathed in warm water and made ready for sleep, and then, as the child suckled at his mother's breast until his strangely beautiful, gold-flecked eyes fluttered several times and finally closed, Uther stood close behind Ygraine with his hand resting lightly on her neck, while she leaned back against him for support. Around them, the camp was in that state of pleasant anticipation brought on by the end of the day's labours and the tantalizing smells of a meal in the final stages of preparation. The first watch of guards was in place, and nothing marred the stillness of the evening peace, but Uther felt a sudden, familiar prickling sensation on the nape of his neck and turned casually to see who was watching him.

No one was, as far as he could see, and he dismissed the feeling, shrugging it away and turning back towards his small, new family.

Ygraine stood up, holding the child securely, and went to place him in his leather sleeping bag, and Uther held the backpack open until she was satisfied that the baby was properly installed and sleeping comfortably. They left him then in the care of Dyllis and made their way slowly, arm in arm and talking fondly about the child's sweet temperament, towards the centre of the clearing, where the men who had cooked the various dishes were preparing to serve them. Uther cut each of them a thick slice of venison from the inside of a haunch, laying the meat on two thick slabs of heavy, wholesome bread that they had brought with them, baked the night before the battle to the north, then led Ygraine to a spot by the waterside close to the spring, where they settled down, listening to the birdsong that assured them there was nothing dangerous lurking among the trees.

Behind them, however, opposite the high cliff and high on the grassy slope of a small hill that rose above the trees to the west of them and overlooked the camp, they were indeed being watched. A man lay there, concealed behind a clump of grass. He lay almost motionless, gathering his strength and watching the activity below, and as he did so, he rubbed unconsciously at the stub of the single finger remaining on his left hand.

He and his companions had barely managed to escape the path of the growing lire that Uther's men had set in the narrow valley to the north, but they had clambered safely to the top of the western ridge and then swooped down to safety in the valley beyond, where they had stopped to rest and recover their breath before their leader decided what to do next.

They knew the enemy they were pursuing could not be far ahead, and they knew that the women in the fleeing party were slowing them down, making it possible for their hunters to catch up. But now they found themselves on the wrong side of the crest, and the hillsides on the other side were ablaze. Sooner or later, the leader knew, he and his men would have to cross over the ridge again to regain the valley they had so recently left. He had summoned the six fastest runners among the four score who remained alive with him and sent them off to the southward, bidding them run as far and fast as they could, until they could scale the ridge again and find the enemy.

The runners had fallen away one at a time as exhaustion overtook them, but One-Finger, the last and strongest, had run on, his long, wiry legs and effortless stride devouring distance. The lie of the land itself and the thickness of the brush that choked the hillsides had dictated the route he must take, and that route had pushed him farther and farther west, away from the ridge on his left side as it sank lower and lower, its summit angling steadily downwards towards sea level, until he lost sight of it completely, separated from it by at least two miles and hemmed in by an impenetrable press of stunted, thorny, bushy trees that defied him to enter them and fight his way through. Then, finally, just as he had been on the point of collapsing and giving up, he had broken out of the high bushes that surrounded him and found himself on the bank of a river. He had fallen on his knees and drunk the river water, then rolled in the stream, cooling his exhausted body. And afterwards he had climbed up onto the biggest boulder he could find and looked about for a high vantage point. He saw only one possible location, a solitary, low hill thrusting up from the trees from which he had just emerged, about half a league east of where he stood. He had headed directly towards it and had breasted it just in time to see the arrival of Uther's party at their campsite.

Now as he lay watching, he felt excitement grow in him. If he could find his friends quickly enough, he could bring them by the route he had found to where it met the river. The enemy would pass there early the following day, and he and his could be waiting for them there in ambush. Carefully, keeping his head low and moving with great caution, One-Finger crawled away until he was beyond sight of the encampment below. Then he stood up. breathed deeply several times until his lungs were full and set off northward at a steady lope.

Uther and Ygraine had barely begun to eat when the alarm was shouted and a lone rider came cantering towards the camp. Uther stood up, his food forgotten as he heard someone shout Garreth Whistler's name, and a great flood of dismay swept up from his belly. Despite the distance between them, he had recognized Garreth almost before he heard the distant shout naming him, for the King's Champion rode bare-headed, his long, white-golden hair catching the last of the sun's light. Ygraine, too, had come to her feet, and now she bent to place her food on the rock on which she had been sitting, and reached out to grasp Uther's wrist, her touch calming him and helping greatly to soothe his fears. He knew that Garreth's arrival could hardly bring good tidings, and a vision of a battlefield on which only ravens yet lived sprang into his mind. Forcing himself to remain outwardly calm, he, too, stooped slowly and laid down his food, then disengaged his wrist from Ygraine's hold and moved forward slowly to where Garreth could see him easily. Stone-faced, he watched as the approaching figure recognized him and angled directly towards him, keeping his horse at a steady lope until he had reached the spot where Uther stood. By that time, the King had seen the wide grin on his friend's face, but he ignored it, his own face a strictly schooled mask that showed nothing. The Commander's perception was the only one that counted here: this was a subordinate approaching who ought to be with his own men. Uther fought to keep his own imaginings under control.

Whistler brought his horse to a halt and swung his right leg forward easily over his horse's head, sliding effortlessly to the ground and striding forward to embrace his King. Uther halted him with an outstretched arm and spoke through stiff lips.

"What are you doing here, Garreth? I gave you clear instructions to stay with Dedalus."

Garreth Whistler stopped short, but his smile barely altered. "He didn't need me. He has everything in hand and more assistance than he needs. I thought your need of me might be greater than his."

"How so, when I told you what I required of you?"

Whistler looked from Uther's angry gaze to where Ygraine stood watching and bowed deeply. "My lady, I trust you are well?"

"We are. Garreth. all of us, as you can see. Thank you for asking."

"I'm waiting," Uther said, his voice soft and cold. "Make your report."

The other man looked back to him, his grin finally fading, and inclined his head. "Of course, my lord. Forgive me. I have to report that all is well with your army. Better than any of us could have expected earlier today. The plan proposed by Dedalus worked to perfection. The enemy went running after you in ever-growing numbers and left the field to us."

Uther blinked. "Left the—? You mean they all came after us?"

"Aye, lord, they did. Or most of them did. But not all at once. The first runners went after your party, seeing their chance for riches and hoping to catch you quickly. And then others realized what those first pursuers were doing, and they gave chase too, hoping to share in your capture—and especially in the capture and rape of the women they thought you had with you—your pardon, my lady." This last was to Ygraine, who merely nodded and said nothing. "Then, once things had reached that point, others joined in until the flow became a flood, and those who were then left behind, unsure of what to do, could see that Dedalus was strengthening his formations and making ready to fight again to the death. I think by that time they had had enough. Ded said all along they had little stomach for fighting our lads, and it was only their numbers that encouraged them. He was right. With what looked like more than half their army gone, chasing you, the others apparently thought it might be wise to follow them. Certainly none of them moved back to the attack. They simply melted away after that, many of them back towards the north. And as I said, they left the field to us."

"How many men did we lose altogether?"

"Too many. More than half. But when the enemy disengaged, we had a full five hundred still standing in formation, some of them slightly wounded, and more than a hundred mounted troopers regrouped on the hillside."

There was a long silence as Uther absorbed this. A silent ring of men had gathered around just within earshot, eager to hear the tidings Garreth had brought. He made no move to banish them, but when he spoke again he raised his voice slightly.

"You are describing a victory."

Garreth shrugged, his smile evident again, although it was a mere shadow of his former grin.

"Aye, Lord Uther, I am. When an army stands alone and unchallenged upon a battlefield after the fight, they have won a victory, no matter what."

Now a buzz of amazed speculation broke out among the listeners, and Uther let them talk while he motioned Garreth aside, all of his former anger dissipated.

"Come and eat, you must be hungry."

"Starved, lord."

"Aye, I have no doubt."

Uther turned to a nearby trooper and asked him to bring some bread and meat for Garreth, and then he led the Champion back to where he and Ygraine had been sitting. Garreth talked quietly to Ygraine for a few moments, asking about her son, and then seated himself gratefully on a smooth boulder. Uther, filled with thankfulness that his fears had been ill-founded, allowed his friend to rest quietly for a few moments before asking his next question.

"What happened then, after the enemy left?"

"We stood fast for more than an hour, lest any of them come back, and then we set about cleaning up the mess. Mucius Quinto organized his field hospital, tending to the wounded, and half of the men were assigned to burial duties and litter duties. The other half set up a defence perimeter, although there was little need. By that time, even the enemy wounded were aware that it was over and we had won, and they gave us no trouble. Quinto's people were attending to them, too. I asked him why, and he said that they had stopped being enemies and were now injured men."

"Aye, Quinto thinks that way, as does his friend Lucanus."

The trooper returned with Garreth's food, and after thanking the man Garreth dedicated himself to demolishing the succulent meat. Uther and Ygraine sat together side by side on neighbouring stones and watched him eat. neither of them making any move to resume their own interrupted meal but simply content to sit there quietly, close to each other. Finally, Garreth swallowed his last mouthful and drank from the flask at his side, and Uther spoke again.

"Did you see my guards on the way in?"

"You mean the squad you left behind to guard your back? Aye I did. Junius Lepo was in command. He and his men were bright and alert. . . half of them, anyway. The other half were asleep, the night watch."

"Good. So tell me now why you are here."

The King's Champion pursed his lips, looking speculatively at his friend. "Are you asking me as Uther, my friend and pupil, or as Uther Pendragon, my King and Commander?"

"Both."

Garreth sniffed. "I said before, I thought you might have more need of me than Dedalus did. He had most of his officers there . . . we lost relatively few, given what we had endured. He had already made all the arrangements to load his wounded into the wagons and was marshalling his remaining troops to march them homeward. He didn't need me. Besides, I knew what it had cost you to ride away as you did, and I thought you might be relieved to hear how everything had turned out. And so I bade farewell to Dedalus and came to find you, slipping away by the same valley you followed."

"Hmm. The thought of all the enemy forces between us didn't bother you?"

"No, not as long as I was travelling in the same direction they were. But do I look any older to you than I did when you last saw me?"

Now Uther smiled for the first time since his friend's arrival. "No, you do not. Should you?"

"Aye, I think so, for I must have aged ten years after you set that fire and sent the entire wasp's nest running back towards me. The wind from the south—and I suppose you must have thanked all the gods for it—turned that entire valley into a Hue, and the flames blowing through it took everything, every tree and bush, every blade of grass, and the gods alone know how many of Lot's men. I tell you, I was really grateful that I had a horse, for if I hadn't, I would have been cooked like that deer meat I just ate. I saw the smoke belching up the valley towards me and guessed what it must mean, so I turned my horse and put the spurs to him without stopping to think, and I was able to get up onto the hillsides close to the crest before the flames could catch up to me. It was a spectacle to behold, I'll take an oath on that. Never saw anything like it. Just like a bursting dam, it was, except that it was fire that spewed up, not water. A river of fire, moving faster than a horse could run." He paused, his gaze unfocused, and then made a deep "humphing" sound in his throat, remembering. Then he turned to Uther"Where are the others? You had four hundred cavalry. Where are they?"

"I sent most of them home a few miles back where the valley forks." Uther briefly explained what he had been thinking at that time, and Garreth sat nodding as he listened, but Uther was more interested in the story of how Garreth had reached hint.

"So, you were telling me about the fire, how well it worked. Go on."

Garreth shrugged and made a wry face. "Well, I managed to escape the flames, as you can see, but that damned fire still almost got me killed, for I wasn't the only one to seek safety up on the crest. I found myself among a large number of really unpleasant people up there. None of them seemed to know me for what I was. All too concerned with saving their own skins, I suppose, and getting their breath back. But after a while, one of them took a really good look at me, and then I had to ride hard downhill to get away. Could have come to a bad end there, too, because that horse was bouncing down the slope like a boulder, terrified, and staying on his feet only by magic. Don't know how we survived.

"And then, about half an hour later, damned if I didn't almost ride into a party of horsemen. By sheer luck, I was above them again and saw them before they saw me. They were riding through the trees down to my left, and I heard one of their horses screaming. It must have slipped and fallen on the slope. I couldn't count them accurately because of all the trees, but there must have been close to half a hundred of them. I had no idea who they were, but I knew they weren't ours, so I tried to keep well out of their way."

"You mean you failed? They saw you?"

"Aye, they saw me and came after me, but I managed to lose them."

Uther was frowning. "Who could they have been, these people? There were no horses among the army we fought."

"No, there weren't, so I guessed that whoever they were, they were no part of Lot's rabble. But I felt no temptation to ride down to them. I've heard that old nonsense about the enemy of my enemy being my friend, but you'll be an old man before you'll get me to believe it. And judging from the way they came after me, these were not friendly travellers."

"So how did you escape them?"

Garreth shrugged. "Around a hump in the hillside, a kind of shoulder in the rock. They were coming up hard to catch me on one side of the hump, so I went down the other side, passing them as they climbed. I went all the way to the bottom and then swung south again, following the road along the valley. It's not really a road, but on their way north earlier. Lot's army trampled it that enough to resemble one. I made good time for about eight or nine miles, and when I knew I was far enough ahead to have lost any pursuit, I struck upward again across the crest and back down into the valley you were in. I was south of the fire by that time, close to the split in the valley where you say you turned the others loose. Come to think of it, I saw no signs of hundreds of horsemen having passed that way. How did you manage that?"

"The ground was hard there, that's all. Bare rock and little grass. Philip was aware of the need to leave no tracks for anyone to follow, and he made sure his men knew it, too." He coughed, clearing his throat. "So, you've seen no evidence of these other horsemen since you evaded them?"

"No, not a sign."

"Good. Then we had better get ourselves to sleep. It has been a long and wearying day, and this will be a short night with another long day tomorrow."

It had grown dark as they spoke, and the entire camp was almost silent, few of the tired men possessing the energy to sit up talking by the fires for an extra hour as they normally would. Uther slipped his arm around Ygraine, as Garreth Whistler vanished in search of his saddlebags and bedroll, and he led her close to one of the fires nearby. There he covered her with his great red cloak, draped his sleeping blanket over that and then lay down beside her in full armour, pulling the coverings over himself, too. They kissed a few times, each of them comforting the other, and then fell asleep in each other's arms.

Uther awoke before dawn in pitch darkness, brought to awareness by the sounds of banked fires being rekindled. He lay blinking up at the stars for several moments while he adjusted to where he was, and then he raised the coverings and rolled out of his ground-hard bed, lowering the covers back quickly over Ygraine before the night air could sweep in and chill her. It was cold, and everything was wet with a heavy dew, so he moved well away from his sleeping place before he began to stamp his feet, jarring the kinks out of his joints and swinging his arms to warm and loosen them, too. As soon as he felt that he could walk without creaking, he made his way downstream along the edge of the river until he was well clear of the camp, and there he relieved himself gratefully before washing his face in the icy stream.

By the time he returned, everyone was astir, even the Queen and her women, and he and Ygraine shared a quick breakfast by one of the fires, talking about her brother Connor and his expected arrival while they ate their normal morning travelling ration of lightly roasted grains and nuts mixed with chopped dried fruit, washing it down with fresh, cold water from the spring. Somewhere behind them, they could hear their son whimpering and fretting as one of the women changed his swaddling clothes, cleaning him and making him ready for the day's journey. After that, as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten with the first, faint promise of a new day, everyone shared the duty of cleaning up the campsite, the men rolling and tying their bedrolls and the women packing their few belongings, while the Cambrian bowmen readied themselves for the march, tending to their bows and bowstrings and wiping any moisture they could find from the blades of their other weapons. The troopers checked their harness and weapons and found their own mounts among the horse lines, saddling and bridling them and fastening bedrolls and saddlebags before pulling themselves up into the saddles. Controlled chaos became eddying confusion and then quickly gave way to order as the milling troopers formed themselves into disciplined units.

It was almost full daylight by then, and Uther, his head bare and his huge helmet cradled in the bend of his elbow, was waiting impatiently for everything to be in order, and as awareness of his disapproving frown spread among the men, that order was achieved, and a stillness fell. Uther nodded, satisfied, but just as he raised his clenched fist to give the signal to move out, a shout went up from the outer ring of guards and a mounted trooper came hammering towards them, shouting an alarm.

Uther rode out to meet the approaching man immediately, waving him down as he drew closer, but he already knew what the trooper, whose name was Curio, would tell him. Sure enough, he brought word of a large body of heavily armed and armoured horsemen approaching quickly, forty or fifty strong, coming down the valley from the north by the route that Uther had followed the day before. They had come with the first light of dawn, Curio said, and they had been moving slowly over the unfamiliar and night- shrouded ground, but fortunately young Telas, the man with the best eyes among the guards, had been on duty and alert for any signs of movement in the gathering light. He had seen the newcomers the moment they came into view and had raised the alarm.

Junius Lepo had sent Curio off immediately at full gallop to warn Uther, while he and his remaining ten troopers had gone into hiding, prepared to meet and engage the newcomers, hitting them by surprise. That had been less than half an hour earlier. Curio could not know how long Junius Lepo and his ten men might be able to fight off the strangers, or if they would be successful in holding them at all, but he had ridden at the gallop all the way, escaping unseen and sure that he was leaving his mates to their death.

Uther listened, resisting the urge to curse Garreth Whistler for his insubordination of the day before. It was by no means certain, he told himself, that the newcomers had followed the Whistler. They might have simply come south on their own initiative, looking for plunder of any kind. But even as he thought the words, he doubted them.

"Very well," he said to Curio. "Come with me and stay close by me, but keep your mouth shut. I'll do all the talking."

He wheeled his horse and spurred it back to where the others sat watching him and waiting, but he pulled up short of them, where none of them could easily hear him speaking quietly.

"Garreth," he called. "A word with you."

Garreth Whistler kneed his mount forward to where the King and Curio had drawn rein, some way from the rest of the party.

"Those riders you evaded yesterday, were they cavalry?"

The Champion's brow clouded. "No. They were mounted, but they had no formation and showed no signs of discipline. I wouldn't call them cavalry. Why?"

"Because they're coming down on us right now. Junius Lepo and his men are trying to hold them, but they're outnumbered. Call in the perimeter guards and have them form up with the others. Cato, over here!" Garreth moved away immediately, and when the junior cavalry commander presented himself, saluting smartly, Uther told him to send one of his best mounted men back along the track behind them to watch for the first signs of an approaching enemy and then bring word of how far away they were and how quickly they were coming.

Cato saluted again and turned away briskly, and Uther was already calling others to him: Alasdair Mac Iain, the Queen's captain; Ivor, the captain of the remaining Pendragon bowmen, no more than thirty of them left now; and Catt. their Cornish guide. Tersely, he told these three what was happening and ordered them to take their men and strike out immediately for the coast with Ygraine and the other women. They were sixty strong, he pointed out, and probably more than enough to fight off the newcomers, but the strangers were mounted and apparently well armoured, and that would give them an enormous advantage even against Pendragon bowmen in a running fight. For that reason, he and his troopers would remain behind to stop the oncoming horsemen, giving the foot party a chance to reach the coast where, if the gods were kind, Connor Mac Athol would be awaiting them with his own forces.

His listeners looked at each other, tight-lipped, but no one spoke. Finally Alasdair nodded. "So be it. Fight well. King Cambria."

Uther's eyes widened at the name that, as far as he had known, no one but Ygraine used. Then he nodded. "I need to say a word to the others to let them know what's afoot, and I need a few moments alone with your cousin and my son. As soon as I have done so, we will be gone and so will you. Waste no time on the road, my friend, even should it mean carrying some of the women."

He saluted the three men and then turned to face the remainder of his group, telling them succinctly what he had told their commanders. He wasted no words and made no attempt to lessen the impact of what he had to say. They listened grimly, and then the two groups, those on foot and those on horseback, began to move apart.

Uther shrugged out of his great red cloak and folded it twice across his arm before throwing it to one of his troopers. "Here, fold this tightly and then bind it behind my saddle here, if you would, with my bedroll."

He swung down from his seat then and went directly to Ygraine, who had turned to Dyllis and was now taking the baby's travelling pack from the smaller woman's arms. As Uther reached her side, the Queen turned to him, holding out the baby, who was snugly wrapped for travelling on such a chilly morning in the soft-tanned, pliant skin of a black bear that covered every part of him but his face.

"Your son. King Cambria. Arthur Pendragon. He wears the black bear emblem of your cousin Merlyn, but only against the morning chill. He is his father's son in every respect. Kiss him goodbye, and me, and wish us well. Then go and do what you must do and rejoin us soon. We will be waiting for you."

He kissed the child, sniffing deeply to inhale the clean, milky smell of him, and then embraced Ygraine.

"Uther, my love," she whispered into his ear, bringing his skin up in gooseflesh. "Be quick, and come back to me soon. I love you."

"And I you, lady. Your name will be in my mind and in my heart through all that happens. My love. My Ygraine. Go now, and take good care of my son." His eyes abruptly filled with tears and he swung away from her quickly, striding back towards his horse and almost leaping up into the saddle. "Away with you now," he shouted. "Farewell. And may all the gods of Cambria watch over you until we meet again." He pulled his horse up into a high, rearing turn and thrust his arm straight up and then out, back towards the direction from which they had come. He rowelled his horse's belly with the spurs and moved forward, hearing the creak and jingle of saddlery behind him as the column at his back surged into motion.

Uther led his men forward slowly, eastward along the riverbank, using the narrow strip of sand bordering the river between the boulder- strewn flood bed on his right and the dense growth of trees on the banks at his left. As he went he eyed the opposite bank closely, looking at the terrain there and preferring it to where he was. No more than two men could ride abreast here on the northern bank of the Camel, restricted as they were to where their horses could find footing, but the high cliff towering over the other side of the river had provided shelter for some large trees, and one large grove of enormous firs drew his attention. He turned to Garreth Whistler, who rode on his left.

"I hope Junius Lepo is still holding those whoresons, because we can't fight here, and I can think of no better spot between here and the valley mouth where we came out."

Garreth grunted. "No more can I, but it's no worse for us than it will be for them. We might have to fight them two against two if we meet them on this path, and if we do, then you and I must bear the brunt of it. D'you want to fall back and put someone else in front?"

Uther ignored the levity and shook his head.

"You're wrong, Garreth. You said it yourself, we're not going up against cavalry. When it comes to a fight, these people, whoever they are, will probably jump right down and fight on foot. That means they could light among the trees. We can't. And we can't take the horses out onto the rocks on the riverbed, either. Those boulders are certain death for horses."

Garreth eyed the riverbed, a chaos of layer upon layer of smooth, rounded boulders of every conceivable size. "I've never seen so many stones. Where could they all have come from?"

"From the cliff there over thousands of years. Slide after slide, century after century, broken down and worn smooth by the river water."

He was interrupted by the drumming of approaching hooves, and the scout sent out by Cato came thundering towards them. The enemy was close behind him, he reported, no more than a mile. More than a score of horsemen.

"A score? That's less than half of what I saw." Garreth's eyes were wide.

Uther made a vexed, tutting sound through his teeth. "Damnation! That's why they're so close. You know what they've done, don't you? They left half their number behind to deal with Junius and his ten men while the rest of them came on. That means they know we're here, and they're clever and determined." He was standing in his stirrups, looking back across the river to where the fir trees towered along the base of the long, high cliff, and then he swung back to the scout.

"There's a spot somewhere behind you where the river narrows between high banks, and there's a huge dead tree lying clear across it from side to side. We had to detour through the forest yesterday to get around it. How far back is it?"

"Less than a quarter of a mile, Lord Uther, perhaps two-thirds of that. I had to go around it too, going and coming."

"Right. Here's what we're going to do, Garreth, but we haven't got much time. That tree will stop them as it stopped us. They'll have to dismount and lead their horses around it through the underbrush. We'll wait for them there in the forest. The river's shallow on this side of the fallen tree, but on the other side of it there's a great, deep hole, fed by a waterfall. They won't be able to approach us from that direction, even on foot, because the tree stretches all the way across and the water's too fast and deep.

"We'll send half of our men across the river on foot when we reach the tree, each of them leading two horses. They'll leave them there among those giant firs and come back to join us. We'll lie in wait for these whoresons in the forest, as I said, but then we'll fall back and form a line in the river, where they'll have to come to us.

But they won't be able to use their horses any more than we can use ours, and we'll be standing among the rocks as they clamber over them to reach us. It should work. Then, when the time is right, we'll fall away in front of them and mount up among the trees below the cliff there. They're enormous, and the ground beneath them will be free of growth. The enemy will follow us on foot, and we'll be mounted again, waiting for them. What think you?"

"Let's do it." Garreth's voice was decisive, and Uther stood up in his stirrups and backed his horse around to face the column at his back.

"Hear me now, all of you! We're going to fight close by here, by that big fallen tree we found yesterday. It's not the place I would have chosen, but it's the only place we have, and we'll make it work for us, so listen closely." He paused, giving them a chance to spread out slightly to where they could all see and hear him.

"We can't use our horses here. There's no footing in the stream bed and no room to move among the undergrowth up above, but that's to our advantage if we can be ready in time. So when we reach the tree, on my order, we'll dismount, and every second man will take two horses and lead them across to the other side of the river. Leave them there, out of sight, and then get back to this side quickly. In the meantime, every other man will come with me up into the trees. The others will follow us with Garreth, the King's Champion here, when they return. It's time for us to teach some Outlanders what being Cambrian means. We'll be fighting on foot at first, but then we'll fight our way back across the river to our mounts. So thank the trainers in Camulod now for all that infantry drill they put you through, then bring your favourite weapons and your shields. You've called yourselves Dragons for years, so here's your chance to live up to your name and bring death, fire and destruction to the Outlanders, standing on your own feet."

He looked to his standard-bearer, the man who had ridden by his side or just ahead of him for more than ten years now. "Gwyn, you will take my battle standard and carry it with you across the river, then hide it somewhere—somewhere you know you can find it easily later, when we want to show it to these whoresons coming against us. Then come back and join me, but don't forget your horn." He raised his voice again for all to hear.

"Listen for Gwyn's horn when you're fighting among the trees. As soon as you hear it, disengage and make your way back down to the river, then form a line on me, over there, about two-thirds of the way across, where the water is less than knee-deep. You see the place? Just beyond the deepest part of the stream. That's where we'll stand and wait for them to come to us again, through deeper, faster water. Then, on Gwyn's next signal or mine, we'll retreat again ahead of them to where our horses are hidden among the fir trees. We'll mount up there and finish them as they come out of the river." He scanned the group, making sure that they had all heard him and understood. Finally he nodded. "That's all, then. Fight well and fight hard. I know you will, and I know you'll make me even prouder of you than I am now. Now let's move on and wait for my order to dismount!"

Mere moments later, it seemed, they came to the fallen tree and Uther gave the order to dismount. As the troopers swung down and the process of gathering the horses began, Uther noticed that Garreth's face was vacant of expression, his eyes fixed upon the great, dead tree that bridged the river.

"What's on your mind? You look perplexed."

Garreth blinked. "An idea. Swimmers. I need ten men who can swim. We'll come up into the woods with you to see what we're up against, but then I'd like to pull them back here to the river and get out of this armour. What I'm thinking of won't work if we're weighed down in iron. We'll strip down and then, when we hear your signal to fall back, we'll slip beneath the big tree and swim to the bank on the other side. Once there, we'll be behind the enemy and can hit them from there when they least expect it."

"You could be cut off and killed."

"So could you. But then again, we could succeed and pin the enemy between our two groups."

"Aye, you could. Very well, find yourself some swimmers."

The fight in the woods was brutal from the outset, for Uther was right and the enemy warriors simply abandoned their mounts at the first sign of trouble, preferring to fight on foot and perfectly happy to be alone, each man for himself, among the trees and bushes. Uther's men, on the other hand, striving to maintain disciplined fighting units, were hampered by the encroaching undergrowth at every turn, unable to swing their weapons as they had been trained to do. Uther was reminded almost immediately of his father's lesson, taught to him in the long distant past, about the way in which all battle plans are rendered useless with the first clash of weapons and bodies.

He watched several of his own men go down to death after their shields were pierced by hard-flung spears. The heavy spears lodged in the shields and hung there, weighing them down unbearably and rapidly tiring the shield-bearers, whose arms could not sustain the dragging weight. And as the shields went down, the blades went in. Far sooner than he would have wished, Uther called to Gwyn for the signal to withdraw.

Uther's troops disengaged immediately, glad to be out of there, and ran back towards the river, hearing the wild shouts of triumph ringing out behind them. Uther had time to look quickly and see that there was no sign of Garreth Whistler and his volunteers, before all his attention was drawn to the loose, treacherous river stones beneath his flying feet. Only once did he land on a stone that began to shift, and he thought he was finished, but the movement stopped, checked by a more solid stone behind the first, and he was able to leap to a larger, safer foothold. He reached the shallow waters of the river and moved on, trying to hurry but forced to place each step with even greater care now that the rocks beneath him were wet and slippery with moss and algae. At the deepest part, the water surged above his knees, but he pressed on, using his long sword as a staff to probe his way, and he reached the shallows beyond, where there was almost no current. There he stopped and swung around, spreading his legs and finding a solid footing as his men formed up on either side of him, those of them who still had shields placing themselves between pairs of others who had none. He steadied them with a word and then focused his attention on the enemy on the far bank. They were milling around but making no attempt to venture out onto the river stones. And then Uther saw why, and his heart sank.

A group of the enemy, twelve or perhaps fifteen men, were bowmen, and they were in the process of settling down to shoot, clustered in a tight group on the right of the enemy line directly opposite where Uther's own thin line of approximately thirty men now stood as living, defenceless targets. Even as he saw them, the first arrow came hissing across the water and thumped heavily into a wooden shield, almost knocking its bearer off his feet.

Moments later it began to rain arrows, a lethal, hissing rain of death that dropped three men with the first volley, although two of the men staggered back to their feet soon afterwards, their breastplates bruised and dented from the force of the missiles that had struck them. Uther himself made a prominent target, thanks to his huge size and bright armour, and two arrows pierced his shield while another glanced off the rounded dome of his helmet and several more hissed past him. Feeling the impact of the missiles striking his shield, Uther gave fervent thanks that the bows ranged against him were ordinary weapons and not the fearsome longbows of his own people. Pendragon shafts could strike right through armour and shields to penetrate the flesh behind them, the shock of their delivery alone enough to kill or completely disable a man.

And then Garreth Whistler burst from the woods behind the enemy, his long sword blade Hashing and whirling above his head as he led ten naked, silent men straight for the bowmen, falling on them from behind and destroying them, savaging their unprotected backs before anyone could react to his attack and leaving not one of them alive. By the time the others swung about face this new and unexpected assault. Whistler and his fellows had already fled straight towards the river, leaping naked across the wide expanse of tumbled stones and splashing through the shallows, picking their legs up high as they went, judging their leaps from rock to rock and splashing water high around them as they ran in a series of antic leaps and bounds. Only one of them fell, misjudging a step, but he was up again immediately and bounding onward only slightly behind his companions. The line of men standing alongside Uther cheered themselves hoarse as their friends came running and staggering towards them, but Uther stepped forward and seized Garreth Whistler by the wrist, steadying the Champion, whose chest was pumping like a bellows.

"Where did you leave your armour?"

"Behind you . . . in the trees."

"Get on, then, and get back into it. We'll hold them while you rearm."

As Garreth Whistler moved beyond him to obey his instructions, Uther's eye was drawn again to the opposite bank and to the mounted man who had emerged from the trees there and was now chivvying the men beneath them to attack across the stream. The fellow was enormous, tall and broad and heavily armoured in dull, battered equipment on which Uther could see the rust from where he stood looking. His face was completely hidden by a great, rusted helmet of iron with a rounded dome and full cheek-flaps, and he seemed to carry only one weapon, holding it with its butt resting on his thigh so that its long, curved blade jutted forward. It was a strange-looking device resembling a broad-bladed reaping hook with deep, serrated edges, mounted on a long kind of axe handle. Even disregarding the fact that he was the only man still mounted, it took Uther no great effort to perceive that this was the leader of the crew that faced him.

Under the prodding of their leader, who towered over all of them from the height of his enormous horse, the others began to move forward across the stream bed, advancing slowly and cautiously, their attention divided between the menace of Uther's line awaiting them and the dangers of the surface under their feet. But as they ventured out onto the stony plain, there came a surge of activity behind them and the remainder of their party came into view, ten or twelve men, moving quickly through the edges of the forest and thronging around the leader, whose urgent gestures left no doubt in Uther's mind that he was urging them onward into the water to attack. Several of them ran directly to the pile of bodies on the right and snatched up the bows belonging to the men whom Garreth's charge had destroyed, but they were obviously untrained in their use, and their inaccurately fired missiles sped harmlessly into the water for the most part, aimed too low. Still, Uther watched in horrified awe as one arrow landed flat against the surface of the river and was deflected upward, straight towards him. He barely had time to flinch before the missile slammed into his thigh, splitting the frontal muscles cleanly as it sliced vertically between their corded layers. It was not a serious wound, the arrow having had barely enough strength left to penetrate his skin, but it was a wound, and it bled freely. He reached down with his left hand and pulled the arrowhead free, hardly conscious of the pain, and then looked back to the slowly advancing enemy, their reluctance for this fight plain in the way their bodies were hunched in anticipation of the conflict facing them. Ignoring the wound in his thigh, he took a step forward and turned to face his men.

"Hold fast, lads. These newcomers are not fresh troops. They're only the remainder of the party we were expecting, the ones who stayed behind to deal with Junius Lepo and his men. I count twelve of them, but there must have been twice that many left behind, so Junius and his men sold their lives dearly. Look at these people, at the way they come. They're afraid of you, and so they should be. All we have to do is stand here looking at them straight-faced and wait. Let them come to us. That way, their fear will grow as they come closer."

"Who's the big fellow, Uther, do you know?"

Uther glanced at the Dragon who had asked the question and grinned. "No, I don't know who he is, Owen, but he's big enough to fall hard when he does fall, is he not?"

"Aye, he is. Almost as big as you are."

"Perhaps so, but I'm not going to fall. Right, no more talk. We wait in silence."

He turned back to watch the enemy advancing, but from time to time his eyes sought out their leader, who sat quietly on the opposite bank, seeming to stare back at him, although the bulk of the man's massive helmet deprived Uther of any way of knowing where his eyes were looking.

Then something happened that was utterly alien to Uther's experience, and the strangeness chilled him to the heart as a kind of fear he had seldom known swept through him, whirling him instantly back into childhood and the gruesome tales of goblins and night terrors that had sometimes terrified him as a boy, the grim tales told by men purely to frighten and horrify their listeners. Everything faded to silence around him; the screams and cheers of his men and the advancing enemy dying away to be replaced by a silent, hissing emptiness. The surrounding distractions between him and his view of the enemy leader shrank and dwindled until he felt as though he were seeing him at the end of a long, dark tunnel, but clearly, brilliantly, as though framed and featured by a beam of sunlight. Fascinated and strangely frightened, Uther watched as his opponent's huge horse walked slowly forward to the edge of the riverbank and stepped out among the stones, moving with excruciating, patient slowness, placing each hoof slowly and deliberately, testing its purchase inexorably until it was clearly settled, and then moving forward relentlessly, one more step, time after time until all four of its feet were in the water. And as the horse progressed, inevitable as some phantom, inescapable dream, Uther was appalled by the dread that unexpectedly swept over him and threatened to consume his reason.

The approaching figure reeked of death, its emanations making the very air about it waver as air did over a blazing fire, and Uther's throat closed, watching it, so that he forgot to breathe. Death, with his reaping hook, he thought, incapable of resisting the notion of the ancient image that had sprung into his mind. He could see nothing of the face beneath the heavy, rusted helmet, obscured by darkness and shadow, but his mind supplied a sudden vision of a fleshless skull, grinning teeth and empty, eyeless sockets hidden beneath the battered dome. The King felt his entire skin rise up in horror and revulsion.

"Uther!" The urgency of the roar from behind him was slow to penetrate his daze, but its repetition brought him back, jarring him into reality again. The voice was Garreth Whistler's. "Uther! Fall back and mount up. There's more of them on this side!"

Stunned and still enthralled by the vision that had transfixed him, Uther shook his head as though trying to dislodge his own thoughts. But then full awareness returned and he realized that they were being threatened anew, and from behind. He spun around again, almost losing his balance, all thoughts of the enemy across the river abandoned for the time being.

"Back, lads," he roared. "Back to the horses now!"

He found mass confusion in the woods behind him, with troopers running everywhere, struggling to mount their beasts. His own horse was ready for him, held tightly in control by one of his Dragons, and nearby, Garreth Whistler was struggling to subdue his own rearing, prancing horse, curbing it tightly and pulling its head down as he danced it in tight circles until it lost its panicked fear and settled again to his restraint.

"What's happening?" Uther roared at Garreth as he pulled himself up into the saddle and fought down his own struggling horse.

"Damned if I know," he shouted back, "but there's scores of the whoresons over here coming in from the west, where we were camped last night. I don't know where they came from or who they are, but they're here, and they almost took us from behind."

"Damnation! Then let's root them out. Lead on. To me! To me, Pendragon!" He unsheathed his long sword again and swung it above his head, hearing the whistling sound of the keen-edged blade slicing through air as his troopers surged forward to surround him.

Thereafter, all was confusion: clashing weapons, spraying blood, screams of fear and rage and pain, and the heavy thudding of hooves as the Camulodian horses pounded the soft, needle-strewn earth beneath the soaring trees, plunging and kicking as they had been trained to do against the swarming bodies that surrounded them. Someone leaped up at Uther from his left, grasping him frantically and trying to pull him down from his horse, but he slashed downward viciously across his body, his sword held close, and the assailant screamed and fell away. As he fell, however, his grasping fingers closed on the shallow arrow wound in Uther's thigh, and a bolt of agony shot through the King's body. He reeled in the saddle, close to losing consciousness. Then someone below him shouted in triumph, the flat of a blade clanged harmlessly against Uther's chest, and he pulled his horse around to the right, hard, using its weight and impetus to smash down the men about him. Three men he saw, all glaring up at him, and he killed two of them with a double swing of his heavy sword, cleaving their skulls. The third man flung himself away, and for a moment Uther was free to look about him.

He was surprised to find himself close to the riverbank again, for he had been far to the west only moments earlier in the thick of the attacking throng of newcomers. Now he had a glimpse of the big rider from the other bank, who was still crossing the river, stark and silent and slow, but now waving his weapon high above his head. He had no more time to look than that and swung himself about immediately to face whatever dangers might be coming at his back. It crossed his mind that he would have to kill the man crossing the river, but the thought was a brief one, soon forgotten in the urgency of fighting for his life.

Then he saw Garreth Whistler fall.

The Champion had been hard beset, fighting with his usual invincible perfection, whirling his horse around with absolute mastery as he Hailed about him with a crushing axe at the men surrounding him on the ground. But as he pulled his warhorse up in one mighty turn, freeing its front hooves to do the damage it was trained to do, one man leaped in beneath the flailing hooves and plunged a spear into the magnificent animal's chest, killing it almost instantly. Uther saw Garreth leap immediately, catlike, to the ground, kicking his feet free of the stirrups. But as he landed, his dying horse, whirling in its death throes, caught him with a lashing hoof high in the shoulder, and the Whistler spun away, tossed like an infant's toy, to crash face forward into the trunk of a nearby tree and then bounce back, his body twisting awkwardly to fall heavily, face down. His five remaining attackers were on him in a moment, swarming to destroy an enemy whose feet they were not fit to touch.

Black rage swelled up in Uther and he spurred his horse forward, digging bloody gouges in its side so that it crashed headlong into the press surrounding his fallen friend, hurling bodies in all directions. He had his feet free of the stirrups before the impact, and pushed himself from the saddle effortlessly, landing astride Garreth Whistler as lightly as a butterfly, his sword gripped in both hands. He killed one sprawling man before the fellow even knew Uther had come, striking his head cleanly off his shoulders with one solid, hissing slice, and then in quick succession he dispatched the other four, his whirling, slashing blade invincible and inescapable.

Finally, Uther was alone above his friend. He whirled to kneel and search for a pulse beneath Garreth's jaw, ignoring the tugging pain of the wound that still bled on his thigh. But there was no pulse. The King's Champion was dead, and Uther felt his heart swell up and break as hot, scalding tears flooded his eyes. Then, screaming aloud in his black and violent need for blood and vengeance, he grasped his sword hilt tightly in both fists and swung up and around again, looking for someone to kill. And there, less than ten paces distant, watching him from the back of a high horse and hefting his long, strange reaping-hook weapon in his hand, sat the giant in rusted armour who had come so slowly across the stream: the leader of this doom-laden band of alien horsemen.

As soon as he set eyes on the big man, Uther's frustrated rage flared up even higher and then immediately narrowed and condensed into a hard, cold, incandescent blade of tightly focused fury. A lifetime of avoiding fighting in anger fell away from him and left him with nothing but the all-consuming need to destroy this enigmatic interloper who had brought destruction to his friends and companions. He had no thoughts now that this might be Death himself. This was a man, dirty and travel-stained and fit to die for what he had brought to this cursed place. And yet Uther restrained himself from charging blindly forward to attack.

He knew he had to get into his saddle, that he was in dire peril afoot alone against the mounted man—any mounted man—for he had killed more than a score of men in the previous short space of time precisely because he was mounted while they were not. Steadily, grinding his teeth and keeping his sword raised high with both hands in front of him, he stepped backwards until his shoulders touched the tree beneath which he stood, and then he looked about him quickly. There were men aplenty around him, but none of them was his, and all of them stood motionless, staring at him and occasionally glancing towards their giant leader.

He saw his own horse from the corner of his eye, placidly cropping a patch of grass on the forest floor, but as far away from him in one direction as the threatening horseman was on the other side. The big man hefted his reaping-hook weapon again and urged his horse forward, and Uther quickly thrust his long sword into his belt, snatched up Garreth's fallen axe, turned sharply to his left and ran towards his horse, hearing the other surge heavily into motion behind him.

Reaching his horse on the dead run, he turned and spun to face the oncoming rider, swinging the heavy axe up behind his head, then throwing it with all his strength. The big man saw it coming and quickly lowered his head, tucking his chin towards his breast, and the whirling axehead struck the domed top of his helmet and glanced off. The shock of the deflected blow nevertheless threw him backwards, sending him reeling in the saddle and almost unhorsing him. Uther watched for the space of half a heartbeat, then spun away and seized his horse's reins, raising his left foot to the stirrup with surprising, painful difficulty and then leaning forward into the swing of his rising body. But his body would not rise and swing him up into the saddle. His left thigh was useless; the wounded muscles, strained beyond repair by the effort of running, had become incapable of bearing his weight. Disbelieving, he tried again, heaving desperately but vainly to lift his body from the ground. Behind him he heard the trampling of hooves as the big man regained control of his horse and moved again to the attack. Yet again Uther tried to mount, and this time a heavy blow landed across his armoured back, smashing him into the side of his horse, which had now begun to toss its head and sidle nervously, rolling its eyes, frightened by the indecisive nature of its master's movements.

Grimly, waiting for the next blow, Uther hooked the elbow of his sword arm over the horn of his saddle and fought to drag himself up into the saddle. The blow came, smashing him yet again, but he clung on doggedly, willing himself to rise up and find his seat. Once mounted, he could fight, leg or no leg, he knew. And then a third blow hit him, this one like a massive, booted foot crashing into the small of his back, and the pressure of its impact closed up his throat and took away his breath. He felt no pain as the wicked, serrated reaping-hook blade plunged deep into his flesh, penetrating far into his rib cage with its upward swing, beneath the edge of his cuirass, and he felt none as it ripped free again, tearing his back open irreparably. But he was aware of the loosening, hot, debilitating flow of pent-up blood gushing from his open back, and of the gathering darkness that was filling his eyes as his hands slipped from the saddle horn. Slowly, his vision fading fast, he turned around to look up at the giant figure looming above him, and when he opened his mouth to speak, bright-red blood poured from between his lips and splashed down onto his cuirass.

"Ygraine," Uther Pendragon said. "Ygraine." But no one heard him.

The big man sat staring down at Uther's body and then spoke to one of his companions. "Those other people, the newcomers. Bring me their leader."

The man returned with the tall, gangling man called One-Finger, who told his inquisitor that he had been dispatched by his Chief, Othoc, with half of their party to make sure that this cavalry rearguard were held at bay while Othoc and the others captured the women in the first group. The big horseman sat straighter in his saddle.

"What women?"

One-Finger then told the story of the battle two days earlier and the chase that followed it, and when he had done, the big man turned again to his lieutenant.

"Get the men mounted right now and go after those women. See that you find them before this Othoc lays hands on them" He looked down again at the corpse in the bronze armour, and then at the massive horse the dead man had owned. "I'll come after you as soon as I've stripped this body and put his armour to good use. If these people were from Camulod, and I think they might have been, then all we've heard about that place is true, and we would do well to avoid it. But this is the first set of decent armour in my size I've seen in years. Go now, and take these others with you. Leave mc two men. That's all I'll need. When I'm done here, I'll follow you."

He watched until the others were on their way, and then he dismounted and went to kneel beside the man he had killed. Uther's open eyes were vacant, uncaring of the robbery about to be perpetrated upon his corpse. The kneeling man closed the staring eyes and then went to work, stripping Uther's body. As he removed each piece of equipment, he examined it to see if there was blood on it, and if there was he handed it to one of his two companions to clean. Otherwise, he laid each piece of the armour carefully aside, arrayed in order from top to bottom. He had a difficult time with some of the blood-slick straps and buckles, and at one point called on one of his two men to help him turn Uther over onto his front, so that he could reach the fastenings among the gore at the small of his back, but he did not mistreat the corpse, and when he was done with it and the body was bare, he turned away and began to remove his own battered, rusted equipment.

As he lugged at one of the straps holding his own much-dented cuirass, he looked back several times at the dead man lying close by him almost as though he expected to find the eyes open again, watching him. Finally he muttered an oath and turned to his two men.

"Each of you take an arm and haul this man away." He glanced around him and saw a massive fir tree close by, its bole surrounded by dead branches. "Lay him over there beside that tree."

Glancing at one another in surprise but saying nothing, the two men stooped, each of them grasping Uther by one arm, and then they tried to straighten up, lifting him. They failed, and the bigger of the two turned to their leader.

"By the henge, Derek, this whoreson's as big and heavy as you!"

"I know that. That's why I'm taking his armour. Now do as I bade you and move him over by the tree. He deserves to lie in dignity. Drag him if you have to, but lay him down carefully. Don't abuse him. He was a line, strong fighter and he died honourably. 'Twas not his fault that his leg would not hold him up."

As his men carried out his bidding. Derek of Ravenglass finished dressing himself in Uther's clothes and armour, placing the great Roman helmet on his head last of all. Everything lilted him as though made for him, save that he was very slightly smaller in the head and thicker through the waist than the armour's former owner had been. Nonetheless, Derek was delighted. He went next to the dead man's horse, which still stood where it had been left, it's reins trailing on the ground. He saw the richness of the red roll of cloth tied behind the saddle and unfastened the bindings, shaking out the huge red cloak and whistling at the sight of the golden dragon sewn into the cloth.

The two men had come back, having thrown Uther's body beneath the tree—Derek had not been watching in the end, and they had thrown the corpse asprawl onto the ground, as they would any other piece of offal, so that it lay awry, one bent knee hooked over a fallen branch. Now they stood wide-eyed, looking at the war cloak.

Derek of Ravenglass fingered the golden dragon. "I wonder who he was, this Chief."

The smaller of the two shook his head. "That's a King's cloak, Derek, and that helmet came straight from Rome. Could this be a Roman King?"

Derek snorted. "The Romans don't have Kings, man, they have Emperors!"

"Maybe it was Uther of Camulod," the other man said. "He's a King, isn't he?"

"Aye, that's what they say. Uther of Camulod's a King . . . a powerful King, like Lot of Cornwall. Think you then you'd find him in hole like this with only thirty men? His armies number in the thousands, man. No, this was no King, but perhaps a King's Champion. We'll never know. But at least the whoreson was big enough to bring me my new armour. Now let's go and find these women."

EPILOGUE

As Derek of Ravenglass spurred his newly acquired warhorse to overtake his men, a solitary figure, dressed all in black, with polished leather and burnished silver armour, an enormous, double-arched bow slung diagonally across his shoulders over his cloak, emerged from the valley less than two miles to the north of him and resolutely turned his mount westward along the riverbank towards the sea. Merlyn Britannicus, fully and painfully restored to conscious awareness after a two-year hiatus, had no knowledge of his exact location. He knew only that his cousin Uther was somewhere ahead of him, and that some time soon he would find him and confront him before taking vengeance for a murdered wife and child.

For more than a week now, Merlyn had been riding south and west through the war-ravaged peninsula of Cornwall, following the wide-trampled path of large bodies of men moving ahead of him. Who these men were, and whether or not the groups were large enough to constitute armies, he could not tell, but he knew beyond dispute that his cousin's original army had been harried and beset at every step of their journey. The bodies strewn along his present route, some of them charred beyond recognition as friends or enemies, bore eloquent testimony to the hard-fought progress Uther Pendragon had won.