Uther

BOOK THREE

Mother:

I trust that this will find you and all the other members of my beloved family safe, well and in good health. God grant that this be, and remain so.

I am writing to you in some haste on this occasion, primarily because I have the opportunity, presented suddenly and quite without warning, but also because I feel the need to share my thoughts with another woman, and there is none closer to my heart than you. I have friends among the women here, of course, several of them very dear to me, but there is no one of them with whom I could find any satisfaction in sharing what is on my mind at this moment.

All my life I have known and respected you as a loving, dutiful and obedient wife to Publius Varrus, my father. But I have also always known and understood that your obedience was born of my father's natural honesty, honour and good nature. Had he been a different kind of man, you would, I know, have withheld your willing obedience.

I know and understand that there are many times when every woman will nod judiciously and agree with a man until he has passed from her sight, after which she will proceed to do what she intended to do before he came along, but in matters that are truly important, matters that have real significance or may have lasting effects upon our lives and the lives of our families and children, we, as mere women are utterly dominated by and subservient to the men among whom we live. In Cambria, however, that situation is more real and more noticeable than elsewhere. All the women here, it seems to me, from the highest born to the meanest serving maid, are completely dominated by the men and the men's way of thinking and behaving. Since I arrived to live here in what was then King Ullic's domain sixteen years ago, I have seen no single instance of a Pendragon woman actually standing up to and defying a male or a male viewpoint on something she considered to be worth fighting for. The women of Pendragon appear to have no strong opinions on anything that is important. Their daily lives are trivial and immutable, and they do as they are told in meek obedience. They must think what they are told to think and behave at all times as their men expect them to behave. And they appear to be content to have things thus.

I made some futile attempts to speak of it with a few of my closer friends here, but invariably they would laugh, always awkwardly, and change the subject quickly. When I pressed them further, they became visibly uncomfortable and ill-at-ease, and on several occasions it became abundantly clear to me that they simply did not, and do not, know how to deal with the thoughts I was trying to introduce to them. When I became aware some time ago that two of my friends now refuse to speak with me or be alone in my company, I knew I could no longer keep speaking of such things, lest I appear to be actively undermining my husband and his authority. And so you, dear Mother, are become the sole source to which I may turn for recourse.

We have had a visiting dignitary from Cornwall living with us here in Cambria for the better part of a year now, a high-born man called Balin, who travels with his wife, much younger than he, whose name is Mairidh. Balin is a gentle and learned man, highly placed in the Council of Duke Emrys, but he has also been for many years a close friend of Uric's family, beginning when Uncullic was a youth himself.

They have been welcome and worthwhile guests, despite the length of their stay, and I for one will be sad to see them depart. Mairidh has been perhaps the one woman with whom I might have been able to discuss the things I have been describing to you but for her status as an Outlander.

As Uther will already have told you, a special messenger arrived here some days ago, having travelled at breakneck speed, apparently, all the way from Cornwall, and Balin and Mairidh have been summoned back immediately by Emrys, for what purpose we know not, although none can doubt its urgency.

We have been increasingly troubled with seaborne raiders in recent months, and the roads, as I am sure you know, are becoming increasingly unsafe for any but the strongest armed parties. With that in mind, and being at pains to make his Cornish guests' departure smoother and more efficient, Uric and his advisers have decided that Uther's Camulod-bound party will escort the pair and their own escort, which is no longer deemed large enough to protect them, until they reach the safety of the sea coast, where one of the Duke's galleys awaits them. Having seen Balin and Mairidh safely aboard, Uther's party will then strike back inland and make their way directly to Camulod, where, as I am sure you know by now, they will begin a new and different regime of training, teaching Uther's Cambrian volunteers to ride and fight as cavalry. The idea was Uric's, and I know he has been exchanging messages with Daddy on the subject for months past.

Uric thinks that, as usual, I am being too protective of the boy, for in his eyes his son can do no wrong, and at that point our recent spousal discussions have entered the territory of which I spoke earlier. I have now begun to approach the daunting point at which I find myself preparing to dig in my heels and defy my husband, although God knows I have no desire to do so. In the cause of justice, however, and in defence of Uric's point of view, I know that I do tend to be protective, and perhaps too much so from time to time. But then, on the other hand, I frequently feel that Uric inclines too far in the opposing direction and allows the boy too much freedom from supervision and accountability. And that is what has now been sticking in my craw for several months.

Uther is wild sometimes. He has a dark side to him, and as his mother, I find it upsetting. It concerns me greatly, and I am even more concerned that I seem to be the only person in Uther's entire world who feels any concern at all. It is expected of a Cambrian warrior that he be savage, fearless in war and in peace and forever prepared to confront and kill his people's foes. That is what all warriors do.

Even so, Uther can never be a simple warrior. He is destined, I fear, always to be perceived as much more than a "simple " anything. He is the grandson of King Ullic, the son of King Uric and a potential future King in his own right. It is therefore deemed right and fitting that Uther Pendragon should be a fell and fearsome warrior.

Uther has already killed several men, and everyone is proud of him for that. Everyone, that is, but me. It appalls me that at the age of fifteen years he has already killed five men. I wake up in the night sometimes from seeing him in dreams, his innocent young face running red with blood that coats his skin and fills his mouth, staining his teeth. That terrifies me.

I find myself growing jealous of poor Enid, who has been dead since Uther was born. How proud she would have been of her son, Caius Merlyn. In him, golden-haired and fair of skin, I see everything that I would wish to see in my own son. Cay is to Uther as day is to night, not just in colouring but also in moods and temperament. They love each other dearly, the two of them, and I have never known any two boys who were not brothers to be closer. When they are together, they are inseparable, riding like centaurs, side by side, vying with each other constantly for friendly dominance. And yet they are so different, each from the other. Cay is sunny, open and generous, affectionate and amiable, always smiling and ever trustworthy and reliable. Uther is more sombre, concealing his feelings more closely, masking his thoughts much of the time. He is no less amiable than Cay and no less affectionate, and he is perhaps even more generous than his cousin, and were I not his mother I would swear he is more handsome than his cousin when he smiles. And yet he is more distant somehow. His inner workings, if one can speak in such a way of a mere boy, are less clearly discernible. Uther is my son, and when all is said and done, he is wonderful, constant and utterly trustworthy, but there is something dark in him that chafes at me, and I know not how to speak of it. I find myself wondering if there ever could be a word for what I am trying to describe. How would any other mother react to the knowledge that her only son, her beloved firstborn, not only possesses but has exercised the capacity to kill others prior to undergoing the Manhood Rites? Five men left dead by my sweet son, all discovered while engaged in brutality and ravishment of women. Most boys his age would see such things occurring, and they would be afraid for their own lives and run for help, hut not Uther. He has this well of reckless violence inside him that enables him to pit himself against grown men and kill them.

His father seems to think that this is admirable, and so, in fact, do all the other men around us here. They praise the boy's courage, his ferocity, his single-mindedness. I find myself unable to see beyond their wrongness. How can they even think such nonsense, let alone voice the thoughts ? They are applauding the emergence of murderous traits in a mere boy—my boy!—and I am finding it more and more difficult within my own heart to forgive Uric for what I now see as his callousness towards his son.

Although what I am about to say might seem strange to you, and you might perhaps even think me disloyal to my husband in thinking such a thing, let alone setting it down in writing, I have no intent here to voice either plaint or grievance. I have no wish to complain at all about anything, Mother, but I find myself under a compulsion to say this to someone, to anyone who will listen without condemnation. I have learned to appreciate that I really came into a different world when I left your home to live with my husband's people. I never knew how sheltered our lives were in our Colony or how hard you and Daddy worked to keep us safe and protected as children from the realities of the life most other people know. Growing up. we, or I at least, had no awareness of how privileged and fortunate we were to be living as we lived. Even so, I can remember that we had many instances of violence in our Colony, incidents caused by raiding parties of various kinds from Outlanders to bandits and even domestic battles and upheavals. I knew that people died in such incidents, and I also knew that many others were savagely wounded, but that awareness was far less than real. And, in truth, nothing that I had ever seen or experienced could have prepared me for the extremes of violence I have found here in Cambria.

In this land, even here in Tir Manha, life itself is considered to be of little value, and most particularly so if the life being squandered or lost or taken belongs to a stranger or someone who does not belong to one's own family or one's own village.

In our beloved Camulod, men consider themselves to be either farmers, artisans or soldiers. All three ranks and standings are equal, and no man feels any shame in being what he is. In Cambria, on the other hand, every man is a warrior first, and then perhaps something else afterwards. And if that something else involves manual labour of any kind, there is always the taint of shamefulness about it.

Until I came here I did not know that there is a difference between the terms "warrior" and "soldier." Now I fully realize just how great that difference is. Soldiers are disciplined, and warriors need not be. Even more important, however, is the fact that soldiers, operating to a plan as a single organized force, are accountable for their actions, and warriors are not. When a soldier behaves badly, breaking a law or otherwise behaving in a criminal manner, he can be brought to answer for it by the system that governs or employs him. Not so with warriors. There is no system for warriors. The only source of rebuke and discipline for a warrior is another, stronger warrior, and the rebuke takes the form of violent death.

My Uric is King over seven clans of warriors, all of whom are every bit as savage and unpredictable as those Saxons whose very name fills people elsewhere in Britain with fright and fear. That savagery permeates our entire life here. And now I fear very greatly that it has affected my son and that I failed to see it happening. So much so, in fact, that I now find myself resenting things, circumstances and traditions and customs that have caused me no concern at all these past fifteen years.

The last lime young Cay was here, I found myself looking at him. not simply once but frequently, and comparing him to Uther, may God forgive me, searching for the finer elements in him that were not present in my own son. Cay is a gentle and wonderful young man, and all of us, Uther perhaps most of all, love him dearly. So there is, in his pleasant, sunny nature, much that any mother would enjoy seeing in her own son. He calls me Auntie Vron, his own personal name for me, and it makes me feel warm and content each time he does so. I know he calls you Aunt Luceiia, but I wonder if you are aware that he refers to you very lovingly as Auntie Looch whenever he talks of you to others. Cay is more circumspect than Uther in dealing with the feelings and sensitivities of others. He will seek to pacify and to soothe ruffled feathers and hurt feelings, and will strive to find a peaceful way to settle altercations and differences of opinions. Not so my darling Uther. He abhors nothing more than dishonesty, admires nothing more than forthright truth proclaimed in all its shameless purity. And he believes, and always has believed, that anyone who cannot stand to hear the truth laid out openly should stay away from those who stand behind it. It is a hard, uncompromising attitude he takes for one so young and one that sometimes fails to make friends for him, but his father the King admires him for it and so do his Councillors. So, too, do I, I suppose, although I sometimes wish he were not quite so forceful in his beliefs.

Please watch him closely, Mother, when he is with you in Camulod this time. I know you always do, since he is your firstborn grandson, but this time I would ask you to look upon him with a more discerning eye now that you have read some of my concerns and reservations. I know you will speak of them, too, with Daddy, so please tell him that his Magpie might be losing her sight, or at least her insight, since she is having difficulty nowadays seeing the sparkle in what has always been her dearest possession.

Ask Daddy, too, if you would, to find some reason to speak with one of Uther's companions, the one they call Nemo Hard-Nose, and warn him that, even though he might have trouble discerning it at first, Nemo Hard-Nose is a woman. She is aptly named. Hard, unyielding, more male and more warrior than the toughest of her companions in training, she betrays nothing female in her behaviour or comportment, and judging by the way Uther and the others speak of her, none of them has any awareness of her as a woman. I find her strange and unsettling to be around, although I have been in dose proximity to her on only two occasions. I have asked Uther about her, but all he would tell me is that he has known her since she was a child and that she has earned her place among his troopers. When I pressed him further, he grew uncomfortable and told me that he could not discuss any of "his men" with Outsiders. He is their Commander, and he has a duty to them to respect their privacy as long as they do what they are supposed to do. I asked no more after that, not wishing him to think of me as being over-inquisitive. But the girl does not like me. I felt hostility emanating from her as I passed by her. She never looked at me or spoke to me, but I could sense her dislike so strongly that I felt cold, and I knew she was jealous of me. Of what could she be jealous? Of my being my son's mother? That makes no sense. Tell Daddy his opinion on this matter, on this man-woman, is important to me.

I know you will write back to me eventually, and until you do, I will be waiting and wondering what your response will be. Give my dearest love, please, to Daddy, but keep half of it for yourself.

Veronica

Chapter ELEVEN

Because Uther led his raw recruits into Camulod beneath the ancient banner of his clan—a red dragon outlined in white on a field of green—the Camulodian troopers coined an instantaneous jibe about the rabble who were sent with the fifteen-year-old Uther: they called them the "dragon guards." Uther, acutely aware of how closely he was being watched by the governors of Camulod—his Grandfather Varrus, his Uncle Picus and all of the Council of the Colony—bit down on his anger and decided, against all his urgings and with the able assistance of Garreth Whistler, to do and say nothing in response to the goading. Garreth, at twenty-seven, was by far the eldest of the contingent Uther had brought with him, and if anything, he had more to contend with than any of his companions, for his Cambrian status as King's Champion earned him nothing in the way of respect from the Camulodians, who had heroes and traditions of their own and regarded anyone and everyone from Cambria as upstart savages. In their eyes, Garreth Whistler was simply another bumpkin recruit from the mountains, and an elderly one at that, compared to the youthful know-nothings with whom he rode.

Later, looking back on that time, Uther would be both proud of and grateful for the restraint he had exercised during their first few weeks in Camulod, but he would also acknowledge, forever afterwards, the support and assistance provided to him by the example set by his stoic friend and mentor. Without Garreth Whistler's patience, fortitude and good sense, Uther knew, he would never have been able to control the rage that flared in him daily in the face of the disdain and derision he and his people had to suffer in the condescending sneers of the Camulodian troopers. It had been Garreth who reminded Uther constantly of the objectives he had set himself and who kept him pointed in the right direction.

Much of the baiting the new recruits endured was good-natured, but they had to suffer a good deal of abuse that was malicious and deliberate. Nevertheless, they bore it all stoically in silence and absorbed everything that was thrown at them. Within a month, the abuse began to taper off, and the tenor of the baiting became less punitive as the newcomers continued to drill doggedly and to learn quickly, and began thereby to win a modicum of acceptance and respect.

And then, when their basic training had been completed, they were finally issued the uniform armour and saddlery of regular Camulodian troopers.

They passed their final inspection flawlessly at a dawn parade the following day, resplendent in their new uniforms, and were granted a day-long furlough to celebrate their success. Uther remained with them that morning until they were dismissed, and then, thinking it might be the right thing to do, he left them to their celebrations and went to join Cay and his Uncle Picus Britannicus, where he sat in on the discussions of how the new troop was to be split up among the veteran squadrons for the next stage of their training. Later in the day, however, Garreth came looking for him and took Uther back to where the celebration was being held, and the young man was touched and delighted by the welcome the Cambrians gave him. He stayed with them then long into the night, enjoying himself thoroughly but drinking only sparingly as he watched the free-flowing ale take hold of the young celebrants.

When Garreth eventually called curfew and supervised the bedding down of the new troopers, most of whom were by then too drunk to protest, Uther went to his own bed, where he lay awake for a long time, thinking about the celebration and the strange, moving and contradictory thoughts that had occurred to him while he watched his companions.

The following morning, immediately after the dawn parade, in which the haggard looks and woebegone expressions of the Cambrian troopers had gone conspicuously unmentioned, Uther presented himself at the garrison headquarters and asked to speak with the Legate Picus Britannicus. He was shown directly into the Legate's day room, where Picus sat gazing at him quizzically, one eyebrow raised high as Uther saluted him formally. Picus nodded casually, acknowledging the punctilious greeting.

"How are you feeling?"

Uther, still standing at attention, blinked at his uncle, surprised by the question, and then realized that Picus thought he might have drunk too much the previous day. He shook his head. "I feel fine, Uncle, perfectly normal."

"Good. What may I do for you?"

"Ahh . . ." Faced with the need to speak, Uther found that he did not know where to begin, but while he was searching for the words, Picus forestalled him by taking a sheet of papyrus from a small pile by his right hand and pushing it across to where Uther could reach it. Even upside down, Uther could see that it was a list of some kind.

"Sit down, Nephew, there's no need to be formal when there's just the two of us. You can save me some time here if you would not mind taking that to your man Garreth when you leave."

Uther nodded and sat in the chair in front of the Legate's work table before picking the paper up and turning it towards him. "Of course, Uncle. What is it?" Noting the fact that it had not been rolled up or folded, he had no hesitation in showing his curiosity.

"It's the new roster, the one we discussed yesterday. The allocation of your Cambrians to the regular squadrons they'll be working with from now on."

"Ah, yes." Uther cleared his throat nervously, suddenly uncomfortable and wishing he had not sat down. "Yes, well . . . that's what I've come to speak to you about. Uncle."

Picus sat waiting for a few moments until he realized that his nephew was at a loss for words.

"And . . . ? What is it that you want to say?"

"Well. . ."Another long, painful pause, and then, "It's about the roster. Is there . . . Is it. . . Is there any other way to do this?"

Picus wrinkled his brow, not understanding. Uther interpreted the look as a frown, and his nervousness increased.

"I don't understand," Picus said, his voice mild. "Any other way to do what?"

"This . . . to avoid splitting up my men."

"Your men ?" The Legate's lips twisted in a tiny smile. "You mean the Cambrian troopers? Perhaps we should clarify their status, you and I. As long as they are billeted here, training under my command, they are most emphatically my men, Camulod's men. Your father understands that, I believe. Do you disagree?"

"Well, no, sir, they are, sir, but . . ."

"But? But what, Uther?" His question went unanswered as a flush stained Uther's cheeks, and Picus continued. "Where has this sudden 'but' sprung from? You sat here yesterday while we discussed this, and you gave me no indication that you had doubts about any of it."

Uther nodded, his expression miserable. "I know, sir. And I didn't. It was only last night that—" He cut his own words off before they could be uttered, and before Picus could make any response they were interrupted by the arrival of one of his clerks. Picus had obviously expected him, for he stood up and passed another pile of papers on his desk to the man, who nodded, clicked his heels and left immediately.

Picus glanced back at Uther's still red-face, and then he rose and went to the door, where he leaned out and told the other clerk outside that he did not wish to be disturbed. He closed the door and came back to his table, where he perched casually on one corner and gazed down at his nephew.

"I think," he said, "that you have something weighty on your mind, and I know you would not come here simply to waste my lime, so I'm prepared to listen. Now take your lime and get your thoughts in order, and then try to explain to me why you suddenly believe I should keep your troopers together as a body, instead of splitting them up among our veterans, as we traditionally do, for the next, highly important stage of their training."

Uther nodded and thought for a few moments.

"It was last night, sir. I couldn't sleep, and I didn't know why. But my thoughts were full of what happened yesterday . . . the muster in the morning and the men's graduation to full troopers. They were full of it, and very proud of themselves, and I was surprised and . . . I don't know if I can describe what I mean."

Picus hitched himself further onto the top of the table, bracing himself with his straight arms as both feet left the floor. "Well, you've made a start, anyway. You were surprised, you say, and . . . what?"

"I was surprised and perhaps, I think . . . excited. About what I was seeing . . . what they were showing me. I'd never seen it before, and I suddenly knew it was important that I . . . that we keep it. Very important."

"Important enough to break with a tradition that we have built up here in Camulod since our beginnings for reasons of sound, tested common sense? That must be monumentally important." He held up a hand towards his nephew. "Wait you, I am not belittling you or casting slurs on your judgment. I am merely making a point." He thrust himself forward off the table and moved back to his own chair, settling himself comfortably.

"When I was your age, I left home to join the legions, and I did my earliest service in Gaul before the Romans had even begun to develop heavy cavalry. I spent several years there as an ordinary infantry grunt, engaged in some heavy fighting, and then I met Flavius Stilicho and fell in love with horse warfare. But even then, by which time I was close to twenty, I faced opposition whenever I tried to convince the older officers that cavalry warfare was to be the way of the future. They thought me—and Stilicho as well—no more than a jumped-up, overweening boy, out to change a thousand-year tradition to suit his own ends." He paused and eyed his nephew questioningly. "Do you see what I mean? Their experience, impressive as it was, told them that someone of my experience could know nothing. That's your situation at this moment. You see something you believe to be important. I, as your legate rather than your uncle, see an inexperienced, fifteen-year-old boy who appears to want me to change the way things are done around here, although I have no idea why. But I am granting you the benefit of all my doubts, so convince me. Tell me what it was that your men were showing you yesterday. Take your time."

Uther felt relief flowing through him, closely followed by a rush of admiration for his uncle's patience and understanding. Instead of plunging into his argument, he remained still, grappling with his thoughts and feelings, until finally he began to see it taking shape in his mind.

"It was unity, I think, sir . . . Yes, that's what it was. It was unity. They had achieved something together. Something difficult. Something to be proud of."

"Of course they had. They'd achieved the status of Camulodian troopers. They're unique now."

"Aye, but that's just it, sir, they're Cambrians, not Camulodians. They're Pendragons."

There was a silence, and then Picus nodded. "Aye, they are, but they are still troopers in the cavalry of Camulod. And their differentness simply presents another excellent reason to split them up as I normally would and dilute the distinctions between them and our regular troopers."

Uther felt frustration swelling in his chest, but he knew that to show any of it would be the worst thing he could do. Unconscious of the disrespect he might be showing, he held up his own hand as he sought to balance his thoughts.

"Sir, have you ever been to Cambria, to Tir Manha, I mean? Have you spent any time there?"

"I've been there several times, but I've never stayed there. I know little of your people and their ways, if that's what you are asking me."

"It is, Uncle, it is . . . You see . . ." He took a great breath and plunged ahead. "We Pendragons never act in unison on anything, except in emergencies- when there's a King to be chosen or when an enemy invades us. Even then, in war, we will turn out in masses but we fight as solitary warriors, every man for himself. We don't have the kind of discipline or organized training you take for granted here in Camulod. Even our bowmen with the new longbows, they're incredibly powerful together, but each one is his own man . . . aims and shoots his own arrows. I'm not making sense, am I?"

Picus shrugged. "Yes you are. I think I'm beginning to see what you mean. Carry on."

"Well, that's what surprised me . . . I think. I had never seen my own people behaving the way they behaved yesterday, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I've never seen Pendragons work together as these have . . . not with so much discipline and in a common cause. It's against everything Cambrian, absolutely everything."

Picus was silent, making no attempt to interrupt, and Uther sat frowning, thinking deeply, then burst out talking again.

"These men came here with me because my father urged them and encouraged them to come. He wants to forge a closer alliance with you here in Camulod, and to have some cavalry available to him in Cambria—Camulod's cavalry, with Camulodian officers, but made up of Cambrian volunteers under my command. He believed there might be young men in Tir Manha who would leap at the chance to get away, to try something different. But he never thought—none of us did, including me—about what might happen in the doing of that. And that's why I think it important to keep the men together. If we split them up, as you propose to do, we risk losing this . . . thing that has them all united in this new way."

His uncle smiled, shaking his head slightly. "But that makes no sense, Uther. Their confidence will grow with further training as regular troopers."

Uther nodded, but he was not about to back down now. "That is true, sir, their confidence will increase, but their sense of . . . the only word I can find is unity . . . that will melt away. They'll be good Camulodian troopers, as you say . . ."

"But?"

"But that's all they'll be." The words came out in a rush.

Picus leaned his head back and laughed aloud. "Is that supposed to win me over to your viewpoint? That's all they'll be?"

Uther was appalled by his gaffe. "No, Uncle, I didn't mean it like that. I meant no disrespect. What I meant to say is that they could be much more, in a different sense. They could be . . . will be . . . a Cambrian corps of Camulodian troopers, who will return proudly to Cambria and cause envy in the hearts of others like them. They will be the King's Guard from Camulod, but their comradeship, their pride and their discipline will raise other volunteers who can then be trained normally in the traditional manner."

"Hmm . . ." Picus sat silent for a long time, mulling over what Uther had said, and then he nodded. "Well, you've given me much to think about. I think you should leave me now. You have not convinced me, but you have captured my attention, and if you have half the brains I think you have, you will leave me to convince myself. I'll send for you before the day is out and give you my answer. In the meantime, say nothing to anyone of what we have discussed, and leave that roster here with me."

Uther pushed the list back across the table and Picus picked it up, gazing at it with unfocused eyes. Uther rose, saluted and left his uncle to his thoughts.

Then late that evening, only an hour before curfew, a trooper came looking for Uther to summon him to the Legate's quarters, where he was surprised to find Picus in conference with Garreth Whistler, the two of them sitting companionably beside a glowing brazier. They stopped talking as he approached the open door, and Picus beckoned him inside. Wondering what was happening, Uther entered and nodded to Garreth before taking the seat between them. He made no attempt to salute Picus, as all of them were out of uniform. His uncle wasted no time in coming to the point.

"Well, Nephew," he said, "I have thought of nothing but your strange request all day long, and I tell you openly I had almost made up my mind to deny it. But then I decided to consult with Garreth here, since the outcome of my decision would affect him, too, and I knew that he would not hesitate to speak the truth of what he felt about your suggestion. I was very surprised to discover that he knew nothing about it."

Uther glanced at Garreth and fell the hot colour sweeping up into his face. Before he could say anything, however, Picus continued.

"I outlined your proposal to Garreth then and tried to state your reasons for it as truthfully and accurately as I could, and afterwards he and I talked about the matter at some length . . . longer than I had anticipated. You will be delighted to know that, despite your failure to confide in him, Garreth agreed with you. More important, however, he convinced me to agree with you, too.

"So, here is my decision. You will have this year to keep your Cambrian contingent intact so that they may return to Tir Manha with you as a fully integrated unit. Thus, you will have your opportunity to build upon this new fellowship you speak of and to impress your fellow clansmen with their discipline and pride, and we will hope for additional volunteers in time to come, inspired by the example of your first levy." He held up a peremptory hand to forestall Uther's gratitude. "Wait you, you might not like what I say next. You are fifteen, a mere recruit, and hence unfit to command a unit in Camulod at this time, no matter what your father's wishes might be. And so Garreth Whistler will assume command of your contingent for the time being, until you have earned the right to lead them on your own. Garreth will command while you remain in Camulod, and you will be a trooper, no more than that. And to aid Garreth in his task, I will second a cadre of my best officers as guardians to your guards. When you return to Tir Manha, you may do as you wish, to suit your father's designs and conditions, but here in Camulod, you will conform to mine. Do you object to that?"

Uther merely shook his head, and Picus nodded. "Good. So be it. But next year, when your troopers return to Camulod, they will be dispersed among the regular troops as they should have been this year. And at that time, you yourself will enter a program of intense officer training under my best teachers. Cay will join you. Is that clear? I hope it is, because I must tell you that, in breaking with tradition in this way, I fear I may be loosing a deal of resentment on your people that you yourself might not have thought of. They will be perceived, rightfully but for the wrong reasons, as receiving preferential treatment. I can post clear orders defining at least some of my reasons for this action, and those should take care of the surface difficulties, but I doubt very much if it will stifle the resentment of our ordinary troopers. Your Cambrians might be in for a difficult time in the months ahead, but you have your wish and your opportunity to make what you can of it. And now it's almost curfew. Sleep well, and don't try to thank me, please, because I am not at all sure that I have done you any service."

Picus's assessment proved to be correct. The reaction of the veteran troopers in the other squadrons was less than friendly. The "dragon guards" found themselves treated as pariahs again, but a new spirit had been born in them with the knowledge that they were not to be split up, and they decided spontaneously, with the perverse obstinacy that frequently governs such developments, to adopt the name that had been so insultingly bestowed on them in the beginning, loudly proclaiming it as their own and taking a defiant pride in referring to themselves as the "Dragon Guards."

Then some time after that, as all things change and settle, the name was eventually accepted and shortened by everyone to become simply the "Dragons," and the new Cambrian troopers demonstrated that they were as good and as proficient at their tasks as any other troop in Camulod. It took long hours and killing work to establish that beyond dispute, but they thrived on it and grew stronger every day. By the time they eventually set out again, beneath the red and green Pendragon standard, to return to their home in Tir Manha, no one even remembered that they had initially been scorned.

It quickly became evident, however, that there was little useful purpose to be gained in taking the newly formed Dragons back to Cambria during the summer months. Summer was when the Camulodian cavalry worked hardest, not only in training and manoeuvres, but in the practical realities of patrolling their territories and defending the Colony's borders. Uther's Dragons, stuck in the far-off mountains of Cambria, thought often and enviously of the Camulodian troopers with whom they had trained all winter long and knew what they were missing.

They also felt, correctly, that their strength as a fighting force was being ignored in Cambria and therefore wasted. Uther agreed with his troopers for the most part, but he did his very best, assisted by the Camulodian training officers who had accompanied the Dragons home, to keep them busy and occupied with drills and patrols of their own territories.

Their morale suffered badly when the only two raids of that entire summer took place along the mountainous coastline, far beyond the terminus of the Roman coastal road at the legionary fort of Moridunum. The local tribes had taken over the old fort when the Romans abandoned it and called it by its ancient name, Carmarthen. It was now home base to Chief Cativelaunus, head of the powerful Griffyd clan and one of the seven Chiefs of the Pen- dragon Federation. Passage beyond the end of the Roman roads at Carmarthen was difficult at best for Uther's cavalry, since their heavy, lowland-bred horses could not make the transit of the harsh and dangerous mountain terrain quickly enough to enable the Dragons to take any part in the fighting that was taking place farther along the rugged coastline. Their compatriots, on the other hand, riding their sturdy but ludicrously small-looking mountain garrons, traversed the high mountain passes directly on their surefooted little beasts, making twice the speed of the vaunted cavalry from Camulod. By the time the Dragons reached the scene of the battle that had stopped the raiders, everything was over, and most of the Pendragon warriors had already left again to return home.

' That such a thing should happen was infuriating; that it should happen twice was unbearable. Although Garreth Whistler said nothing in criticism, Uther nevertheless learned a valuable lesson in fieldcraft from the repetition of failure. Never again would he lead his cavalry into a situation that was unsuitable for their tactical skills. Fighting on their own terms, in their own element, his Dragons were invincible, but fighting on terrain unsuited to their strength, versatility and purpose, their usefulness as a cohesive force would always be severely limited and the outcome potentially disastrous. Twice his Dragons had ridden out and achieved nothing. Twice they had arrived too late and been constrained to turn around and retrace their steps without striking a single blow at any enemy. Twice they had endured the scornful laughter of those warriors who had used their shaggy, short-legged little ponies to reach the scene first and had then employed their huge bows and merciless long arrows individually to slaughter the invaders. Twice they had known the humiliation of having to grit their teeth and swallow the sneers of their clansmen, who laughed at their fanciful name and dismissed them, along with their eye-catching uniforms and their disciplined formations, as the pampered, useless residue of the corrupt and vanished Romans. After much thought, however, Uther was convinced that he was the only person in his whole command who could add a more positive element to that humiliating litany: twice they had ridden out at his insistence and despite the cautionary urgings of his officers, and twice they had come home without a man or a horse lost through accident or circumstance or catastrophic ambush, and that was truly fortunate, for he had blundered into both situations without sufficient forethought, in blind ignorance of the odds stacked high against him. He would not soon expose his forces to such dangers again.

As soon as he had thought the matter through, Uther sought out his father, in company with Garreth Whistler, and laid the entire structure of his thoughts and findings before the King with characteristic bluntness and uncompromising honesty. He and his troopers were wasted in Tir Manha, he told Uric. They had no role to play in the kind of hit-and-run warfare waged against incoming raiders along the shores of the mountainous coastline in the summer months. Raiders landed one boatload at a time, usually in places that were inaccessible to heavy cavalry, and then they might scatter to burn and pillage, returning only at some prearranged time to sail away again and strike elsewhere. In that kind of situation, Uther swore, his Dragons were worse than useless. Better, he said, that he and his troopers should spend useful time in Camulod the following summer, learning to sharpen and tighten their fighting skills, than lie around in Tir Manha being laughed at by their own clansmen.

In time, he insisted to his father, his Dragons would be strong enough and confident enough to take their proper place among their own people, and should there ever come a day when the Pen- dragon Federation entered into an invasive war, then each of his troopers would be worth ten of the horseless, unarmoured and undisciplined warriors. Under those circumstances, he pointed out to the King, with entire armies of hostile troops flowing through the mountain valleys and lowlands, his Dragons would be a maul with which the enemy, whoever he might be, could be utterly smashed each time he ventured into open spaces. Using the network of fine Roman roads throughout their lands, his Dragons could and would dictate, determine and dominate all troop movements and supply routes in the eastern two-thirds of the low-lying areas in the country's interior. In the higher lands, into which the enemy would then be forced to withdraw, the Pendragon bowmen and their fearsome, unequalled long-range weapons could be relied upon to deal with any resistance that remained.

Uric listened to his son's harangue and then sent for those of his Councillors most suited for the hearing of such things, telling Uther at the same time to call in his own senior officers. When the entire group had assembled. Uric instructed them, without any preamble, to listen carefully, and then he turned back to his son and told him to repeat what he had said before.

When Uther had done so, the King looked around the circle of listeners until he met the eye of Uther's most senior Camulodian officer, a youngish man called Phillip, who was of an age with Garreth Whistler, a good twelve years older than Uther.

"What think you? Do you agree with my son?"

Phillip shrugged, then smiled. "I do, in this instance. King Uric."

"Why? Because he is your Commander?"

"No, sir, because his assessment seems to me to be accurate and correct."

"Hmm." Uric turned and looked at his own senior Councillors, who stood beside Daris, the High Priest. "Gethel, what say you?"

The old warrior called Gethel had stood listening with his right elbow resting on his left forearm, curling one of his long, white moustaches between his thumb and forefinger. Now he sucked in his lips and sniffed and nodded his head tersely. "Aye," he said. "It makes sense. The gods all know his people are doing no good here now, the way things stand. Better, then, that they should learn more of what it is they are supposed to do so well. And if we ever are invaded, then we will have a force that should be valuable. I say let them go."

"Daris? Have you anything to say?"

The Druid shook his head, his face sober. "Nothing more. King Uric. I agree with Gethel."

"Very well, does anyone else have anything to add? Anything negative? No? So be it." Uric turned back to his son. "We will miss having you here next summer, but perhaps your mother may travel down to Camulod to visit her own family then as well. Make arrangements, please, with Publius Varrus, to house you and your . . . Dragons . . . for the whole year. There should be no difficulty involved, but inform them for the sake of courtesy, will you?"

Everyone there, with the single exception of Daris, would have been surprised to know that Uric had decided to allow his son's request while he was listening to it for the first time and that this gathering he had called had been purely for the sake of policy and appearances. In fact, the King's decision had been made for what some might have seen as the wrong reasons, but at that level, deep inside himself. Uric did not care about what others might have thought. He had decided to accept his son's contentions and his recommendation based purely upon his own reaction to the dedication and responsibility he had seen shining in Uther's eyes, for there he had recognized the absolute vindication of his decision to send the boy to Camulod to form and train his novice cavalry using Camulodian discipline and Cambrian volunteers. Already, both he and his troops had changed beyond recognition. The wide-eyed volunteers who had departed but a few months previously as an undisciplined rabble were now proudly calling themselves the Dragons, and Uther had become their true Commander, strong and confident in the role, committed and dedicated to the prosperity and the responsibilities of his men. Uric was happy with the transformation and with the boy. The boy truly was his, and the father was more than pleased.

By the time they were both seventeen, Uther Pendragon and Caius Merlyn Britannicus had learned many lessons, seen many changes and crossed many bridges, not the least of which was the bridge between boyhood and manhood. That one they had crossed twice: once together in the Manhood Rites that symbolized a youth's transition front boyhood to warrior status; and then once more, this time separately, in the nameless rites that signified the transition from boyhood daydreams to the physical knowledge of women.

That second bridge crossing had been far more profoundly significant than the first for both young men, in that they had spent years training in the disciplines that were required for the Manhood Rites, and thus knew what was required of them at the testing time, whereas they had spent just as long talking and dreaming about the other manhood rites—and failing utterly to learn anything at all about the skills and disciplines they would need to learn in dealing with women. Each of them entered that arena alone, as all men must, and thereafter each progressed according to the dictates of his nature. And while both felt inclined from time to time to trumpet some particular success or triumph, each carried his personal failures and doubts in that most personal of all arenas securely concealed inside himself—or so he hoped. And to compensate for the sometimes overwhelming feelings of doubt and insecurity that would inevitably arise, each allowed himself to be perhaps a little more flamboyant than he might otherwise have been in those areas in which he felt most confident: outward appearances, military efficiency and disciplined precision in every endeavour.

The dispersal of the Dragons on their return to Camulod signalled the beginning of the next stage in Uther's training, as the Legate Picus had promised. Summoning Uther and Merlyn before him, Picus introduced them to their future: further advanced training in the art of command under the tutelage of one of his own imperial cavalry veterans, a senior centurion called Dedalus. Garreth Whistler would have no involvement in this part of Uther's training and would be lodged, like the rest of the Dragons, with a veteran company until such time as Uther's training should be completed for this year. In the meantime, Uther and Cay were to present themselves to Dedalus immediately following the noon meal, and Dedalus would give them his own instructions from that point.

Neither Uther nor Cay knew Dedalus personally, for the centurion was a field officer and therefore not as much in evidence around the fort as were the Legates Titus and Flavius, the members of Picus's retinue best known to the two boys. Dedalus was one of those who had returned home to Britain with Picus after the Emperor's assassination of Flavius Stilicho, when Picus and a small band of his most faithful officers and associates, warned in advance by sources close to Honorius, had escaped mere hours ahead of the heavily armed, five-hundred-man cohort of imperial Household Guards sent out to arrest and imprison Picus.

Uther's first thought on coming face to face with Dedalus that afternoon was that the man should have looked older if he had indeed been a veteran with Picus Britannicus in Stilicho's cavalry. It had been nine years since Picus Britannicus had come home to Camulod, when Uther and Cay were eight, and the former imperial legate and his group of friends had been travelling for almost a year by that time, crossing the continent in stealth, fleeing the wrath of a vindictive Emperor. According to Uther's mental arithmetic, Dedalus, a surviving centurion of Stilicho's campaign in Thrace against the Ostrogoths under their War Chief, Alaric, should have been no younger than thirty-five, and yet he looked no more than twenty-five, and that, Uther thought, could not be possible. Dedalus looked in every respect to be the epitome of a burnished, gleaming and polished Roman centurion, up to and including the large transverse crest on his helmet and the nine thick, decorative rings that were fastened to his breastplate in three rows. Each one of those decorative rings, Uther knew, had been awarded to its bearer for valorous and distinguished behaviour on an imperial campaign or in a specific battle or engagement.

Dedalus eyed his two new charges with disdain and something else that Uther thought, for no particular reason, might be regret. For a moment or two, the boy felt an indistinct but intuitive stirring of sympathy for the man, beginning to discern, if only vaguely, the difficulties that he must be facing in this situation. No one enjoys having unwanted responsibilities thrust upon him, and no man worth his salt can easily enjoy being exposed to nepotism from the exploited end of the arrangement. He had had two unknowns thrown into his care and could have no idea what to expect of them. The only thing of which he could be sure was that his superior required him to pass these two idiots along, irrespective of how good or bad they might be.

Neither of them would fail in this, Uther knew, and both of them would be not merely senior, but superior, officers.

"Tomorrow, we will go out on our first patrol." Dedalus's voice was deep and flat, his tone betraying nothing about what or how he was thinking or feeling. "It will be what we call here a patrol in strength: two squadrons, each of forty troopers, plus decurion officers and you. Each of you will ride with one of the decurion squadron leaders. You will watch him at all times and learn from him, observing how he works and obeying any commands he might issue to you. At all times, however, you will be directly answerable to me. You will do nothing without my prior approval, and that includes obeying a command from the squadron leader or taking a piss. Am I clear?"

Both boys nodded. Cay mumbled, "Yes."

Dedalus clamped his lips tightly together and inhaled deeply through his nostrils.

"Let me make myself clearer. That means that I am your Commander. It also means that each decurion is your superior, but that I am superior to all of you. It means I have the power of a living god—the Living God—over your miserable days and nights, all of them, all the time, from this moment forward.

"I have asked about you. And I have learned that you are a pair of dunghill cocks, the two of you, accustomed to crowing whenever you feel like it, uncaring that you disturb and annoy everyone about you. Well, cocks, those days are ended. You are mine now, both of you. Your daddy and your uncle—and whichever one of you is which could not concern me less—have abandoned you to me. He trusts me to make men out of you. Commanders, he suggests. I am flattered by his trust, but from what I know of you, I seriously doubt that I can do it.

"However, above and apart from all else, he has given me the power and the authority to decide whether or not you will ever be given command of troops in years to come. Therefore, I am your God, and you will treat me with the greatest of respect. You will treat me with even more respect than you extend to the Legate Britannicus. Whenever you address me, you will do so only because I have invited you or ordered you to speak, and when you speak you will address me as Centurion. You will say Yes, Centurion. You will say No, Centurion. You will say nothing more. Ever. Unless it be that I instruct you on what to say and when to say it. Do I make myself clear?"

There was half a heartbeat's space of silence, and then Uther and Cay snapped out, "Yes, Centurion!" together.

"So be it. Be outside my tent in full gear before dawn. Do not be late. Dismiss!"

Bewildered, the two young men snapped to attention, saluted as crisply as any newly trained recruits, spun on their heels and marched away in lock step, neither one of them daring to relax or slow down until they had turned a corner and put a building between them and the spot where Centurion Dedalus might still be standing glaring at them.

As soon as they rounded the corner, both boys slowed down and looked at each other wide-eyed. Nothing in their combined experiences prepared them in any way for what they had just undergone. Cay was the first to put their amazement and shock into words.

"Did I hear that man correctly? We are to be his indefinitely?"

Uther grinned, but shakily. "Aye, Cousin, that's what he said. He owns us, and your daddy has abandoned us."

Cay drew a deep breath and held it for a long count of seven before expelling it. "Well, then, we had better think carefully about that. What do you think we ought to do?"

Uther glanced around them, his gaze taking in everything. "I think . . ." he began, and then he paused, looking around him again before turning back to face his cousin. "I think we ought to spend the remaining hours of daylight looking about us at everything we can see, so that we'll be able to remember what life used to be like before we fell into this fellow's grasp . . . and then I think we should take extra-special care not to sleep late tomorrow morning."

As it transpired, the patrol might have been worse. As Cay pointed out, they might have died, somehow, in the course of it. Uther, for his part, refused to allow his cousin to shrug the experience off so easily. Death, he pointed out, would have been an improvement over what they had actually undergone.

The expedition lasted for eight days, during which the patrol rode completely around the perimeter of the Colony's landholdings, checking for signs of organized incursions by large groups of hostile interlopers, visiting each outlying farm and inspecting each peripheral guard outpost. These guard outposts were the Colony's first line of defence against infiltration and invasion, and each was garrisoned by a small force of infantry, a double-squad, twenty- man unit, which rotated twice each month, spending half the time in barracks at Camulod and the other half on outpost guard duty.

During the time that they spent in garrison, they had the companionship of others when off duty, and they could make use of the facilities of the fort and its surrounding settlement. On outpost duty, on the other hand, they were stuck with their own squad mates and left to their own devices. They were unable to leave their posts at any time during the half month of their tour of duty, since the importance of their task demanded a four-hours-on, four-hours- off system of shifts around the clock for the ten-man squad on guard each day, with the other ten on constant standby.

Sticking on post like stones in mud was how they described it. No forays into the wild woods for them, they muttered. That was reserved for the cavalry, the clean-faced, do-no-wrong boys who had everything served up to them in luxury. The poor old infantry was expected to stay close to home, to stand guard duty night and day in all kinds of weather, then do the chores, maintain the buildings and fortifications and keep the stables clean for the cavalry horses.

The garrison troops had no love for the pampered cavalry. That much quickly became clear even to Uther and Cay, and each of them made a mental note to talk about it with the other as soon as they were allowed the time to relax.

Dedalus, however, gave them no rest. The man was everywhere, indefatigable in his all-embracing mistrust of his two charges. He assigned them duties every morning and inspected them closely as they worked, sniffing and poking and carping and prying to ensure that all was done as it should be, according to his criteria of excellence. And when he saw them approaching completion of the projects he had set them, he would have replacement duties ready, announced in advance, instructions readied and presented in sufficient time to disallow the possibility of either boy stealing any rest between assignments. He kept them in the saddle all day long, ceaselessly moving in a never-ending spiral of motion that lasted throughout the normal marching breaks enjoyed by their companions, so that, to the disgust of both boys, who had believed themselves to be expert riders, when the order came to dismount at the end of each day's patrol, they both went reeling, barely able to walk upright. Only when they were in the final stages of discomfort over their natural functions each day did he allow them to dismount for long enough to relieve themselves, but even then he stayed beside them, affording them no privacy, denying them any opportunity to calm themselves or stretch their limbs. Within the space of the first four days of the patrol, both boys had learned to loathe the sight of him and to detest the sound of his carping, hectoring voice.

Eventually, however, as all things must, the patrol came to an end. Their first ordeal was over and neither of them had disgraced himself. They had taken every piece of spiteful pettiness that Dedalus could throw at them and they had chewed it up and swallowed it without overt complaint or covert whining—the latter only because Dedalus had given them no private opportunity for it. They arrived back in sight of the hill of Camulod before noon on the ninth day following their departure. As the towers of the fort came into view, Dedalus wheeled his horse around and trotted back to where they rode in formation, and then, signalling to each of them to follow him, he wheeled about again and rode to the head of the column. Uther and Cay followed him, but hung back from overtaking him, unsure of what was expected of them, until Dedalus, without looking back, raised one hand and waved them up to join him, then used both hands to indicate that they should come one on either side of him.

When they were side by side with him, he rode for a while in silence, then glanced from one to the other of them. "You smell, cocks. A few hours in the baths will do neither of you any harm. Ride half a pace behind me now, as you are, and spare my sensibilities." They fell back half a length, glancing mutely at each other, wondering what this new position signified, but Dedalus gave them no indication of anything, either by word or gesture.

As they crossed the training ground on the plain below the hill of Camulod, approaching the start of the road up to the hilltop fort, Uther began to take notice of the off-duty troopers, who seemed to be swarming everywhere. It seemed to him that he had never before seen so many of the garrison troops out of uniform, but the most amazing thing he could see was that most of them were bareheaded, and every man who was bareheaded was also completely bald, their skulls shaved clean of any hair. Uther gaped at Cay in amazement, although he dared not speak riding so close to Dedalus, and Cay nodded back to him, although he did not look in the least surprised. Dedalus turned his head slightly and saw the wonder and lack of understanding on Uther's face.

"Delousing," he said, his face hidden behind the large cheek- flaps of his helmet. "Head lice. Every once in a while we have an infestation, and when we do, we have to delouse everyone. It's not enough to simply bathe the men and make them wash their hair; that doesn't help. They have to be shaved clean bald, as well, to get rid of the nits—the louse eggs in their hair. There was talk of this for a while before we left. Be glad we missed it." He turned away again, leaving Uther agape over the civility he had been shown, and twisted around in his saddle to look over his other shoulder at Cay, noting the equanimity on the other boy's face. "You've seen this before, haven't you?" Cay made no move to reply, and Dedalus added. "You can speak now, the patrol's over. I asked you a question."

"Yes, Centurion."

"Hmm." Dedalus looked forward again, and Cay turned to look at Uther, who was gazing back at him, mystified and round- eyed. Cay simply shook his head, warning Uther not to be gulled into speaking out of turn, but the warning was needless. The impression Dedalus had made on both boys in eight days would prove to be indelible.

The noise from the mass of soldiers milling about them was indescribable, but from the lack of attention paid to it by Dedalus, Uther could only surmise that at such times of mass delousing, the normally stringent rules governing soldierly deportment and behaviour were relaxed to the point of non-existence. Suddenly, off to their left and no more than ten paces from where they were riding by, a scuffle broke out, and the disruption it caused spread quickly, as such things always do. Uther drew rein, turning in his saddle to see what was happening, but it was only the usual soldiers' brawl, with some men holding others back, restraining them from throwing themselves into the fray, and others wrestling violently, some on the ground, some yet on their feet. In the act of turning his eyes away again, however, Uther recognized Nemo Hard-Nose in the middle of everything, wrestling with a fellow twice her size. As his startled gaze settled on her. Nemo reared back, pushing herself with both arms, then grasped her opponent by the shoulders and snapped her head forward, butting him brutally on the bridge of the nose, the contact so solid that the meaty sound of the impact came clearly to Uther's ears across the intervening space and noise. The man dropped immediately, his knees instantly giving way beneath the hammer blow, and the weight of him dragged Nemo off balance and down with him before she could let go.

Not wishing to see any more, Uther turned his head quickly and made to kick his horse into motion again, only to find Dedalus right in front of him, watching his face. Beside them, the eighty members of their double-squadron patrol had almost passed them by.

"Wasn't that one of yours? The Hard-Nose?"

"Yes, Centurion."

"I thought so. Well named, it seems, unlike the other fellow." He tugged at his reins and swung his horse about again, then kicked it into a trot to regain the head of the column. Uther followed him, idly aware of the dexterity of the foot soldiers around them, who seemed to melt out of their way by magic. Once again, he was thinking, Nemo had managed to appall him and repel him with her mannishness, and he would have sworn that Dedalus had no idea she was a woman.

When they finally reached the main courtyard of the fortress. Dedalus reported their return formally to his fellow centurion Nellis, the guard officer of the day, and then dismissed the troopers, still under the command of their decurions, on a well-earned one-day furlough, although ordering them first to attend the bathhouse on the plain below the hill for scrubbing, delousing and shaving with all their fellows as soon as they had finished tending to their mounts and gear.

No one hearing the dismissal was under any illusion that they had really been dismissed. The last few items of which Dedalus had reminded them would amount to several further hours of work and would take the majority of the troopers well towards the end of this working day, since every man had to see to the cleaning, grooming, feeding and watering of his own horse before doing anything for himself, and then undertake whatever might be necessary for the care and maintenance of his saddlery and armour, removing the evidence of all the miles and all the wear and tear accumulated since the last thorough in-camp inspection they had undergone. Although it was yet barely noon, for some of the troopers, the unfortunate minority who had suffered some kind of damage to their equipment or trappings, it would be after dark by the time they finished all they had to do. The day that followed would be one of rest for all of them, absolutely free of responsibilities, but on the morning after that at first light, they would be on parade, going through a complete and painstaking inspection of their individual mounts and their gear.

Dedalus remained mounted, facing forward until everyone except Cay and Uther had gone, and then he turned finally to them. "As officers, you two are permitted to use the baths here in the fort or to avail yourselves of the facilities down in the Villa Britannicus. That's where I'll be headed after I've made my patrol report to the Legate. By that time, of course, you two should be long departed and asleep. Use your day of rest well, cocks. Day after tomorrow, be outside my tent at dawn. Dismiss."

The two cousins saluted, then swung down from their mounts and led them away towards the stables, holding themselves rigidly upright until they were completely sure they were out of Dedalus's sight. As soon as they knew they were safe, Uther threw his arm around Cay's neck, pulling him down into a headlock, and swung him around in circles until both of them fell down at their horses' feet. The animals merely stood and blinked at them, offering no criticism, and for some reason both boys thought that was extremely humorous, so they laughed until their sides ached. Then when they had sobered slightly, they threw their arms around each other's shoulders and made their way to the stables, where contrary to all the rules of Camulod, they bribed one of the stableboys to feed and groom their mounts while they sneaked off to the bathhouse.

Chapter TWELVE

Exactly one year later, two days before the kalends, the first day of August in what Christians would call 419 Anno Domini, Uther Pendragon and Caius Merlyn Britannicus had almost completed their first and last jointly commanded patrol. By that stage of their training, they had successfully completed several perimeter patrols of the Colony lands and had then gone on to complete three far more extensive and demanding territorial patrols, which were expeditions undertaken by an entire cavalry division, a two-hundred-man grouping of five squadrons acting as one army unit. These territorial patrols swept out from Camulod every second month, alternating to cover all the lands to the north on one occasion in a twenty-mile- wide area extending as far as Aquae Sulis and Glevum, and all the territories to the south on the next, covering the same width of land and descending as far as the old legionary fortress of Isca. Uther and Cay had been twice to Isca in the south and once to Aquae Sulis and Glevum in the north within the previous eight months, on each occasion under the command of Dedalus, who had turned out—to their immense surprise—to be an excellent and supportive commander, an inspiring tutor with a keen sense of humour and a good friend, once they had convinced him that they were worth knowing. The two cousins were now on the last probationary phase of their training, in joint command this time of their fourth patrol in division strength, and only nominally under the supervision of Centurion Dedalus, who rode with them purely as an observer on this final occasion.

The patrol arrived at the northern end of their excursion in the town of Glevum. This was a river port built only a few miles upriver from the throat of the estuary that separated Cambria to the north from Cornwall to the south, spilling out into the western sea between Britain and the island of Eire, which the Romans had called Hibernia, the Winter Place, because of its seemingly permanent cloud cover and its rainy, blustery, damp-cold climate.

Glevum was greatly favoured by coastal traders because of its sheltered inland harbour and its close proximity to the sea. Because of that popularity, the town had grown immensely wealthy over the previous decades and centuries of Roman occupation, so that it boasted numerous public and civic buildings with fine marble pillars, ornate pediments and entire walls clad in sheets of the finest marble imported from across the seas. The town had also been the regional administrative centre with a permanently assigned garrison to reinforce the edicts of the governing bureaucrats, and for many years its population had flourished and expanded, been nurtured and nourished by the wealth of trading activities and been protected by the military strength of the resident garrison and the nearby military base at Corinium.

Since the departure of the Roman garrisons, however, less than two decades earlier, Glevum had degenerated rapidly, and its dissolution was plain to see in the dilapidated condition of the streets, where weeds grew between the cobblestones on the main thoroughfares and entire sections of the sophisticated system of stone-carved water conduits that had once served the residential needs of the citizens had been broken and left unrepaired.

The civic government established by the Romans continued for some time after the military withdrawals. But when the army left Glevum and every other town in Britain, the power to enforce the law went with it, and the entire country began to fall, ipso facto, into a condition of anarchy. It took some time after that, however, for the truth of the situation to be fully understood, because although the force behind the law had departed, the reputation of the law remained. For hundreds of years in Britain, the ordinary people had been conditioned to behave lawfully, respecting the traditions and the proscriptions set in place by the legal, military-backed authorities, and so they continued to do so for months, and in some instances for years, after the fact of law had broken down and ceased to exist. Only very gradually did it become clear that the government had become a toothless guard dog and that people could now behave with abandon and break long-standing laws with impunity because there was no organized force in existence to stop them or to punish them for their actions.

Many of the former Roman towns took steps to safeguard their own welfare by organizing their citizens into quasi-military defensive units, while those that had the wherewithal undertook to hire mercenaries, who then functioned as private armies, policing the towns that paid their way and nominally protecting them against incursions by organized bands of brigands and raiders. Inevitably, however, even in the most successful of those arrangements, the seeds of failure and dissolution had already been sown. Hiring mercenaries to protect wealthy communities was akin to hiring wolves to protect sheep, and so within the space of ten or fifteen years, the towns of Britain, with very few exceptions, began to be abandoned by their citizenry, even though most of those citizens had nowhere better to go. It would be less hazardous, most of them thought, to take their chances of survival in the open countryside or in the forests than to remain, like sacrificial cattle, in once- wealthy towns that were natural targets for thieves and raiders.

Somehow, against great odds, Glevum had contrived to be one of the few towns in the west to retain a few shreds of its original dignity and stability, and Dedalus had told Uther and Cay on their first visit that he suspected its continuing survival had much to do with the ongoing need for its port, docking facilities and warehouses. As long as there were trading ships still plying the sea routes and merchants waiting in places such as Glevum and elsewhere for those ships' cargoes, then an incentive would exist for men of wealth and strength to fortify and defend the ports that served their needs, even if that entailed supporting them from afar and at great cost. That belief was reinforced by the presence of a strong force of mercenaries in Glevum, a force that Dedalus said had been in residence there for more than eight years. These people worked most of the time as stevedores, loading and unloading the ships and barges that came into the harbour. They guarded the docks and warehouses and otherwise kept to themselves, by and large, living a self-contained existence with their own women and everything else they needed in a few of the large dockside warehouses that they had converted into living spaces. They seldom mixed with the citizens of Glevum, but they allowed the town's populace to go on about its business without interference from them.

Whenever a force of any size approached the town, however, the stevedores put down their burdens, took up their weapons and were transformed into mercenaries until they had either discounted the threat or thrown the would-be raiders back to limp away with their tails between their legs. The Camulodians had been challenged thus on their first patrol through Glevum, and although no hostilities took place at any time between the two forces, the Camulodian commander, the Legate Picus himself, negotiated the terms of an ongoing accommodation with the town's defenders. The Camulodian patrols could find safe refuge in Glevum but were to leave the governance of the town and its affairs to the occupying mercenaries. Picus had ascertained that these people were not the common run of mercenaries, little advanced from bandits, but were well-disciplined Germanic troops of exceptionally high quality, all of them veterans of the legions and transported here to Glevum from beyond the sea for the specific purpose of guarding the dock facilities and keeping the harbour open and safe for shipping. Because of the tight-lipped discipline of the individual mercenaries, however, and the infallible discretion of their leaders, Picus had been unable to find out anything about the men's employers. Because of the enormous expense represented by their presence, he suspected that they were being kept in place in Britain by one of the surviving great trading houses of the Empire and that the investment in their presence, whoever was supporting it, was still proving to be worthwhile. To date, Dedalus had told the boys the year before, all potential disruptions of the town's trading routines had been prevented, and the thrice-yearly arrival of the cavalry column from Camulod had become a commonplace occurrence, causing no concern.

The patrol reached the town just before mid-morning to discover a regular market gathering in full swing. They set up their route camp close by the town gates in the same large meadow they had been using for that purpose for several years. By noon everything was in place: the horses had been groomed and set to grazing; the guard of the day had been installed; and those troopers due for off-duty time had been released to enjoy the market, under strict orders to be back in their places by sunset. The weather was warm and pleasant, sunny with only a few clouds to throw an occasional shadow, and Uther, finding himself briefly free of duties, left the camp in the care of Cay while he went off on a leisurely walk through the Glevum marketplace. When he returned, he would attend to his official duties for the day, and then, beginning on the following day, he would have three days of official rest, relieved of all duty and responsibility for a full seventy-two hours. For the time being, however, he was prepared to settle for a short, enjoyable stroll through the centre of the town.

His stroll, however, soon became little more than a shuffle. It seemed that every single person from the countryside for miles around had come into town for the market day. The place was jammed with people of all sizes and ages, completely overwhelming the presence of his own off-duty men, one hundred strong.

Even away from the marketplace, the streets were so crowded that he found it impossible to walk for more than two or three paces without having to step aside for someone carrying a load of merchandise or to avoid tripping over some slower person in front of him or simply to get around a knot of people who had met and stopped to talk where they stood, exchanging greetings and information, not having seen one another since their last journey to the market.

Impatient at first with his lack of progress through the dense crowd, Uther soon gave up and laughed to himself. The people who hemmed him in and blocked his way on every side were all there for the pleasures to be gained from simply being here. There was an air of festivity everywhere, and it was obvious that nothing else in their lives could give the ordinary citizens of Glevum so much delight as enjoying their own marketplace on a pleasant summer day, meeting their neighbours, trading goods and talk, and eating and drinking the appetizing wares of the stall holders—pie-makers, bakers, spit-roasters and brewers—who appeared to be selling food everywhere and were being paid in the small Roman-minted copper coins called ases, which were obviously still considered valuable currency in Glevum.

Uther stopped and looked around at their faces, searching for ill humour, and none of them, not a single face, was frowning. Laughter and smiles were widespread that day, and he shook his head and went on his way, grinning gently to himself and feeling oddly, formlessly content.

At one point he found himself gazing in admiration at one of three young women behind a stall that sold pottery and a selection of splendid pieces of barbaric, colourful jewellery. She was an exotic- looking creature of an age with him, he suspected, and he was captivated by the way her eyes flashed and sparkled as she talked and laughed with the people around her. She was wearing a tunic of bright blue material and over that a vibrant yellow shawl of some soft, delicate-looking fabric, and the brilliant colours set off her dark hair and skin to perfection. He could not see much of her body from the shoulders down, because of the pottery piled high on the table in front of her, but what he could see was alluring enough to make him work his way to the front of the stall to catch her attention.

She came and leaned towards him, head cocked to hear what he might say to her, so he asked her to show him some of the silver jewellery she had on display and to tell him where she had obtained it. Her name was Anna, he quickly discovered, and she had made the pieces herself. He admired them all quite honestly, for they were beautiful, and then, claiming to be unable to decide among them, he asked her which was her favourite. She picked out one of the two pieces he had already decided he liked best: a wide, circular brooch engraved with the thorn and leaf pattern of the north Cambrian clans. He had already visualized it gleaming on his mother's shoulder, and he knew Veronica would be delighted with it. Saying he had no goods to trade, he asked her what she would take for the piece were he to pay in coin. She gazed at him with enormous dark eyes for several moments, assessing him for a potential purchasing limit, then smiled widely, showing off perfect teeth, and named a price. It was not low, but Uther reached into one of the compartments of the scrip that hung by his side and produced a shiny, polished silver denarius, holding it up to her gaze between the tips of two lingers. The young woman's eyes went round with surprise, for the coin was certainly the brightest of its kind, and possibly the only one of its kind that she had ever seen.

Now it was Uther's turn to lean towards her, holding the gleaming coin up for her inspection, and she bent forward to allow him to speak into her ear. Her long hair tickled his nose as he spoke, and the clean smell of her set the short hairs on the nape of his neck bristling. A moment later, the young woman straightened up, a peculiar expression on her face. Then she smiled again, less widely this time, and shook her head in the negative, turning slightly as she did so to indicate an enormous and attractive-looking young man standing off to the right side of the stall. Her message was unmistakable. She was not available.

Uther looked straight at the young giant opposite, who stared back at him, straight-faced, and then he dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment, annoyed to discover that his face had flushed with discomfiture. He turned back then to the girl, smiling again, and pointed to the second piece of jewellery, which he had chosen as being almost the peer of the circular brooch, and indicated to Anna that he would exchange his denarius for both pieces. She accepted immediately, aware that she would never find a bargain of the like again, and wrapped both pieces of jewellery quickly in a square of soft blue cloth. Uther carefully placed the package in his scrip, thanked the young woman politely, smiled at her again, nodded in farewell, cast one more glance and a nod of tacit acknowledgment to her suitor—or perhaps it was her husband—and moved away into the crowd.

Far from being upset by his failure, Uther felt exhilarated by the challenge and the response he had generated from the girl Anna. She had refused him, but the reason for her refusal had been standing right there, glaring at him, and Uther had felt with absolute certainty the reluctance underlying her refusal. At another time, under different circumstances, his request might have been smiled upon. He moved on, casting his eyes around now in search of someone new to test himself against, and he thrust one hand idly into his scrip, stirring the coins there with his fingertips, aware of the smooth, almost oily texture of the shiny metal discs. All of Uther's silver coins were highly polished, ever since he had noticed one of his Grandmother Varrus's household staff using a strange- smelling mixture to clean the tarnish from silver tableware. Intrigued, Uther had asked the man to show him what he was doing and how it was done, and had then acquired a small amount of the polishing material for his own use, so that now when he went on patrol, the silver coins he carried in his scrip all gleamed, catching the eye and stirring the cupidity of all to whom he showed them.

It had taken Uther some time to grasp the concept of coins as specie when he first became conscious of it. In Cambria, no one used money, although uniformly sized bars and ingots of gold and silver, copper, tin and lead were commonly used in trade, and each had a relative value ascribed to it, depending upon availability and ease of procurement. One copper ingot, for example, was equal to five of tin, and one silver bar to five of copper, whereas one bar of tin might sometimes be valued at six bars of lead, and sometimes at fifteen or even twenty bars. The most valuable of all, of course, was gold, and one bar of gold was the equivalent of twenty-five bars of silver.

The Romans, however, had taken that concept much further than anyone in Cambria had ever thought or sought to take it. They had issued coins of differing kinds and sizes, in gold, silver and copper, and had ascribed fixed values to each one. Uther would never forget his astonishment on learning that those values had persisted for hundreds of years until a shortage of gold had developed. From that point onward, the value of gold had escalated and had been followed some time thereafter by the value of silver, so that the ten or twenty copper coins that had once been deemed equal to one silver coin had lost their value, and now it might take as many as a hundred copper coins or more to purchase one silver one. That made no sense to Uther when he learned of it, and he still had not come to terms with the theories behind such things.

In Camulod, however, and in the countryside surrounding it, as in his home in Tir Manha, no coins were used at all. All trading was conducted by barter. And yet the Colony was rich in coinage, gold and silver both. In the economy of Camulod, which depended upon the sustained manufacture of iron tools and weapons for its farmers and soldiers, an ingot of iron was worth a hundred ingots of raw gold, for nothing useful could be made with gold. Only when Camulodians went out into the urban Roman world, where some people still revered the idea of money, did they carry coinage, mainly gold and silver, to purchase the things they needed, and those were mostly raw iron ores and ingots of smelted metal.

When Uther first ventured out on territorial patrol, Cay had been the one to take coins with him, but Uther watched carefully and was greatly impressed as Cay used them, exchanging several of them in a marketplace in Aquae Sulis for various commodities he might not otherwise have been able to acquire—a unique clasp knife with a curved blade and a hilt plated with horn was one thing Uther remembered clearly.

It had been on his return to Camulod after that incident that Uther saw the silver being polished, and he worked diligently throughout one entire afternoon polishing a pile of fifty silver coins for his own use. Since then, he had only ever used five of these, but he noticed that his brightly polished silver coins invariably attracted more attention and gained him more bargains, than the dull, ordinary silver denarii used by his cousin.

Uther had not gone very far when he heard a noise beginning to swell behind him, and he knew that some kind of disturbance was underway. Voices were growing louder, and as he turned to look back, he could see that people were starting to shout and mill about, attempting to get out of the way of whatever was going on. He felt a distinct surge of pressure as the dense crowd at his back swayed against him, and he heard the first screams of terror and panic rising from women who found themselves trapped helplessly in the heaving crowd.

Cursing the loss of his good humour and telling himself that the upheaval, whatever it was, had nothing to do with him or his people, Uther nonetheless began to make his way back towards the source of the sounds, elbowing his way through the press and looking around him constantly for any sign of his own troopers among the crowd. He caught sight of three familiar helmet crests to his right. Climbing up onto the low wall of a fountain that he had passed moments earlier, he attracted the attention of the three decurions by whistling loudly and waving. They began making their way towards him as soon as they saw him, and by the time they reached him, they had been joined by three more of his men who had been close by and curious. Now that they were seven, they formed a wedge and began to make more rapid progress as they approached the scene of the disturbance. Uther was issuing orders as they went, preparing his men for anything they might encounter, but when they did emerge from the crowd, without warning, into the marketplace, they were unprepared for what met their eyes.

The crowded marketplace had been transformed into a scene of chaos, with people running in every direction, screaming and shouting to escape the vicious brawl that was seething among the stalls and in the open space that fronted them. Men struggled everywhere, hand to hand in pairs and in groups, hutting heads and flailing at one another with clenched fists. Some of them even used cudgels and other blunt weapons, drawing blood and breaking teeth and bones. Occasionally one or another of the grappling men would knock or pull an opponent off balance, reeling and toppling over to sprawl and roll among the debris on the ground. The scene bore no resemblance to the orderly marketplace Uther had left mere moments earlier, and at least one brawler in every group bore the red dragon of Pendragon on his left shoulder. The heart of the marketplace was already in utter ruin, with stalls and tables overthrown and upended and all their goods scattered and smashed and trodden underfoot. Several still forms lay scattered here and there, and one of them Uther recognized instantly as the young giant who had so silently laid claim to the young woman, Anna. Close by the huge man, almost at his feet, lay one of Uther's own men, face down and utterly motionless.

Stunned and taken completely aback, Uther nonetheless waved his decurions forward with a terse order to stop this and arrest everyone. The noise of the conflict had attracted other Camulodian troopers by this time, and the three decurions began hauling all of them into action, setting them to rounding up the miscreants who had caused the damage. The fighting was abating by that stage anyway, it seemed, the energies of the contestants bleeding away rapidly as exhaustion set in, and they began to realize that they had gone too far and might now have to pay for the excesses they had committed.

Uther remained on the outskirts of the action, breathing deeply and trying to control his anger. He felt betrayed and confounded by the fact that most of the damage seemed to have been done by his Dragons. Someone would have to do penance for this, he knew, but for the time being he was unsure of what his next steps should be. He forced himself to look once more at the group of prisoners being herded together and admitted that it was not as bad as he had feared, nor were they as numerous as they first appeared to be. He counted eight of them, and one more lying in the gutter close to Anna's big suitor. Once again he looked towards the body of the giant Celt, and as he did so he saw the man's head twitch and then his shoulders heave as he stirred and tried to sit up, only to collapse back onto the ground. Then came a hurried explosion of bright blue, and Anna dashed out from among the watchers to the big man's side, carrying a steaming bowl containing a moistened cloth with which she began to wash away the blood clotted over her lover's left eye.

Ignoring both of the young people, Uther looked back to where the prisoners stood huddled together, dejected and deflated now that their killing rage had died away. They were his men, one and all; he named them individually in his head and realized that one particular member of the group was missing. Feeling sick now, he moved to where the fallen trooper lay face down and stooped over, reaching beneath the jaw to search for a pulse. He found one instantly, strong and steady, and in his relief he gripped the shoulder strap of the trooper's cuirass strongly and heaved hard, flipping the unconscious body completely over onto its back with no pretence of gentleness.

As he had suspected, it was Nemo. Dim-witted, stubborn, savage, wilful Nemo of the too-close-together eyes, the sullen surliness, the scowling temperament and the strangely moving, endless loyalty. Rage and frustration filled him, and he pushed himself to his feet to find himself face to face with Anna. Her face was cold and distant, containing no trace of the smiles she had shown him earlier. Now she looked disdainfully at the embroidered dragon emblem that adorned his shoulder, and then dropped her eyes to look at its less ornate image on the shoulder of Nemo's uniform. As she did so, he saw that she, too, was bleeding, a sullen trickle of blood that emerged from the hairline above her left temple and flowed down into her ear before continuing downward to the point of her jaw and on into the collar of her blue tunic. Slowly, moving carefully, the young woman bent her knees and reached down to free her bright yellow shawl from Nemo's nerveless fingers. As soon as she had it, she straightened up and walked away to her man without a backwards glance.

Uther stood blinking after her, utterly bemused, seeing the stiff, unyielding posture of her back and the brilliant yellow blaze of her shawl. And then suddenly he knew, without any need of words, that Nemo must have snatched the shawl from Anna as soon as his back was turned, or at least as soon as he had left the marketplace, and that had precipitated the brawl as Anna's friends moved to defend her. He had no idea why Nemo would have done such a thing, but he could only assume it was motivated by some kind of jealousy, and the rage in his belly flickered higher.

Close to where he stood on the ground near the ruins of a fishmonger's stall were two rope-bound wooden water pails, and as one of his decurions approached him to report, Uther picked one up and emptied it over Nemo's head, bringing her back to consciousness quickly and effectively. She came up from the ground snarling and spitting, looking murderous, completely unaware of where she was or who had assaulted her but bent on revenge, her outstretched hands clawing for his neck. He remembered the head butt with which he had seen her fell one of her mates and immediately moved in towards her, lowering his head and tucking his chin into his shoulder so that as she butted him viciously, the rim of her helmet smashed into the crown of his with a concussive clang. Uther had been waiting for it, but Nemo was unprepared. Expecting to hear her assailant's nose being crushed, she had driven her own head into what might as well have been an anvil. The violence of the impact blinded her and sent her reeling off balance. As she staggered backwards, Uther leaped after her and straightarmed her in the chin with the heel of his right hand, knocking her sprawling again. He knew that everything around him had gone still, and a part of him knew he should not be brawling with one of his own, especially a rebellious ranker, but Uther was beyond caring. He felt violated and betrayed by Nemo's behaviour, and he wanted to punish her with his own hands.

Nemo lay sprawling in the welter of overturned stalls and their contents, her legs moving spasmodically until she could pull them beneath her. She knelt for a few moments, shaking her head to clear it, and as she did so, Uther launched a sweeping kick that caught her beneath the edge of the cuirass and sent her flying again. She was checked by an overturned table, then came to her feet roaring with blood lust, drawing her short-sword as she rose. Uther's own dagger slithered out with a ring of keen metal, and they began the first formal steps of the killing dance, crouched in the fighting stance, sword against dagger, each of them circling slowly to the right, focusing more and more tightly on their opponent's weight and balance. A part of Uther was appalled that Nemo would ever draw her blade on him. He had always thought her loyalty would be too great for that. But here she was, intent on gutting him, and he knew he would kill her as soon as she came close enough to cut.

And then Nemo's eyes cleared and she saw who crouched across from her on the other side of the blades. She made a strange, breathless kind of grunting noise and jerked upright as though she had been pulled up by a rope, holding her sword out at arm's length and spreading her fingers wide so that the weapon fell loudly to the ground. Staring and plainly shocked, she straightened her shoulders and snapped to attention, bringing her clenched right fist to a salute on her chest. Seeing her do so, Uther knew that she had not known until that moment who he was, and most of his anger fell away from him instantly. As Nemo stood, appalled, he allowed himself to straighten slowly, sheathing his dagger carefully and deliberately and then looking around for the decurion who had been closest to him when this happened.

The man was still standing where Uther had last seen him, ashen-faced, as were his companions. No one spoke, and if was apparent to Uther that no one even wanted to move. He looked back to Nemo, who stood there motionless, blinking to clear the fishy water from her eyes. He turned again and spoke to the decurion, his voice expressionless.

"Everyone involved here—theirs and ours, including this one—whoever was captured is to be taken back to our camp immediately, then gagged and tethered to a horse line on the outskirts under close guard. Once that has been done, you can hand over responsibility for them to Commander Britannicus, and then be on your way as you were before this happened. But be sure the gags are properly placed and the tethers are tightly lied and the prisoners closely guarded before you go anywhere. If I hear any noise from any of these people, you will be in trouble, and if any one of them escapes, I'll have your hide. Do you understand your orders?"

The decurion indicated very softly that he did, and Uther sent him on his way, after which he stood alone and watched until no sign of any Camulodian except himself was to be seen anywhere.

The crowds had settled down now that the tempest was over, and people were already setting up the damaged stalls again, salvaging all that they could from among the debris. Uther turned back towards where he had last seen Anna and her giant consort and was just in time to see them vanishing around a corner. Moving quickly, he followed them and caught them just as they were about to enter a low doorway. Not knowing the big fellow's name, he called out to Anna, and both young people swung back to face him, neither of them betraying a single sign of welcome. He spoke before either of them had a chance to start to turn away again.

"Forgive my approaching you after that out there. I have no knowledge of what happened. I promise you, however, that I will find out. Those men are mine, as you surmised, Anna. If they are guilty, I will punish them, I promise you. In the meantime, hear this." He spoke now to the big man. "I do not know your name, but you appear to have some presence here in Glevum, so I will address myself to you officially as a stall holder in the marketplace, if nothing else.

"Once I have discovered what went on here, there will be a reckoning. In the meantime, however, I want you, if you will, to tell all those who lost goods due to the damage done or caused by my men that they will be recompensed in silver coin. That I pledge you on my word as a Commander of Camulod."

The big fellow nodded. "I am Mark, a sawyer. I will tell the people of your offer."

"Good." Uther looked now from one to the other of them. "What happened? Can either of you tell me how it started?"

Mark grunted. "Aye. Someone threw a jug that missed my head and felled the man beside me. As I bent to see how badly he was injured, someone kicked me in the ribs and in the shoulder, and before I knew anything, I had three of your people hammering on me." He stopped, eyeing Uther with one eyebrow raised high. "There was no provocation, no argument involved, no angry words with anyone. You had been there mere moments earlier, yourself. You know how calm it was."

"Aye, I do. But this makes no sense. No one ever starts a brawl like this without reason."

The big man shrugged his shoulders. "Until today I would have agreed with you."

"Hmm." Uther turned back towards the girl. "Your shawl. How came my . . . man . . . to have it in his hand?"

The girl raised her head high. "He snatched it from me, but by accident. He was grasping at my hair. His fingernails did this." She pulled her hair back at the temple to expose twin scratches, deeply gouged into the skin of her scalp.

Uther winced and shook his head. "Then who knocked—who knocked him down?"

"I did," said Mark.

Uther blinked at him. "But you said you had three men all over you."

"I had, for a moment or two, but I soon lost those. And then I saw that creature of yours attacking Anna. All I had was a broomstick, but had it been a blade, that whoreson would be dead. I caught him across the back of the neck and dropped him like an ox. And then someone hit me with something. I have no idea who or what. You know the rest."

"Aye, I do indeed. Thank you for this. I shall return again tomorrow. How will I find you?"

"Let us find you. We know where your camp is."

"Very well, then. I am Uther Pendragon. Ask the guards for Commander Uther. I'll leave word that you are to be expected, and they will bring you directly to me."

"Commander Uther . . ." Uther stopped in the act of turning and swung back to face them as the young man continued. "Know that the estimated costs of the damages will be accurate," said the man called Mark. "You will not be cheated. That I can pledge to you."

Uther inclined his head, conscious of the courtesy extended to him. "My thanks to you. So be it. Until tomorrow then."

Chapter THIRTEEN

"You say there are nine of them?"

Cay sat sprawled in the command tent in front of the ancient but magnificent folding campaign desk that had been a gift from his father just prior to leaving Camulod on this, his final patrol as a trainee commander. Despite its great age, it was made from richly polished wood, although it was nicked and scarred with the blemishes of a hundred years of use, for it had travelled on campaigns across the world, serving generations of his ancestors before ending up in his first command tent. He was relaxed, his legs indolently spread, one heel resting on the edge of the box in which he carried books, maps and documents that could not be stowed inside the desk for travel.

"What do you intend to do with them?" Cay continued. "And how will you justify arresting eight townspeople?"

Uther shrugged with disgust. "I don't know, Cay, and that answers both your questions. I undertook to pay silver in restitution for the damage done, but if all of this happened because some bad-tempered stall holder took a dislike to a trooper's face and decided to rearrange his features, then that will affect the apportioning of costs, not merely of blame. Who started it all? That is the major question here, and the way we handle it once we discover the truth will greatly affect the way we are greeted next time we come to Glevum.

"No matter what we decide to do, it will have to be something draconian. My guts are telling me my people started it. I was right there moments before it happened, and there was not a whiff of tension anywhere in that marketplace. Whatever those troopers did, they did instantaneously and for reasons of their own. I would give anything to know what those reasons were and which of them was the instigator." He turned his head to where Dedalus lounged in a folding chair in one corner of the command tent, leaning back against a supporting pole. "Dedalus, do you have any suggestions?"

"About what? Punishment?" Dedalus had been peering at his fingernails, biting a ragged edge on one of them, and he continued to worry it as he considered Uther's question. Finally he sniffed and spread his fingers, holding them up to the light. "Execute all of them. They probably deserve it for half a score of other reasons quite apart from this one, and they won't be missed."

Uther made a wry face, completely forgetting that he had been terrified of this man a mere twelvemonth before. "That is very helpful, Dedalus. I can just imagine the Legate's reaction on learning that we've started executing our own troopers."

"Well, you asked for suggestions. You didn't specify that they had to be practical. Put the idiots on chain duty, then, and suspend all privileges for the next three months. No furloughs, no liberty, constant latrine duty, stable cleaning and nightly guard shifts." Chain duty referred to the direst barrack-room punishment detail, an unbroken chain of misery and sewage.

"But how do I establish their guilt?"

"You don't have to, lad. They established their own guilt when they were arrested in the middle of the mess they made. Besides, you are their commanding officer. You rule by decree, and if your decree is chain duty, then that's what they do."

"Aye, perhaps. But how will I find out who was the ringleader?"

Dedalus snorted and pointed his finger straight at Uther. "I'll wager five to one, right now, that your pet creature Hard-Nose was at the bottom of it all. From what I know of her—"

"Dedalus, you didn't even know she was a woman until I told you, and you'd been living in her company for nigh on a year by that time, so please don't advise me about Nemo based on what you know of her . . ."

"Oh, well, if you're going to be that particular over niceties, I'll shut up."

Uther paced the length and breadth of the large tent for a while, deep in thought, and his companions made no effort to interrupt his reverie. He had returned from Glevum half an hour earlier, hard on the heels of the three decurions and their party of prisoners. After waiting for Cay to return to his tent after taking delivery of the prisoners and seeing them disposed of according to his instructions, he had launched into the story of what happened in the marketplace. Uther himself had not yet been anywhere close to the prisoners since his return.

He stopped pacing after a while and drew himself up to his full height.

"Very well then, there's no point in putting this off. Here's my decision. You and I hold joint command, Cay, so we both have to be involved in this. There's no choice there. We will hold a court of inquiry right here in the command tent. We'll have the entire troop of them, including the townspeople, paraded in here one at a time, and we'll question all of them about what happened. They've all been gagged and tethered since they were arrested, so they've had no opportunity to confer together or cook up any false stories. We'll listen to all sides, we'll discuss our own conclusions and opinions, and then we will reach a judgment among the three of us."

"Oh, no, not among the three of us!" Dedalus lowered the front legs of his chair to the ground and stood up. "You two are in command here, not me, not this time. I am an observer on this outing, and that is all."

"Centurion Dedalus, sit down, if you please. A few moments ago you were telling me I am expected to rule by decree."

Dedalus sat down again slowly, looking pained, his face twisted up as though his mouth were full of a bad taste.

Uther nodded at him. "Well, then, I am decreeing that you, as the most experienced officer present, will sit on this tribunal for the purposes of advising us in assessing responsibilities and rendering judgment. No more discussion on the topic. Now, who's the captain of the guard today? We'd better speak to him now, and tell him what we intend to do, because we are going to need both his help and his people."

The inquiry lasted for more than three hours, but by the end of it the inquisitors knew what had happened, even if they had not discovered the underlying motivation. The prisoners were paraded one by one before the three-man tribunal, marched in under escort and treated as though they were on defaulters' disciplinary parade, which in fact they were, troopers and civilians alike. The eight townspeople were brought in first, their wrists in iron shackles and their mouths gagged so that they were unable to utter a single word of protest. Before the gag was removed, each of them was informed by Dedalus, as senior magistrate, that the tribunal was being held in order to discover the truth about the events leading up to the brawl in the marketplace, and for that purpose alone. No one among the three judges, they were told, had the slightest interest in listening to any prisoner's complaints about his treatment. The prisoners were here in this predicament and under martial law as the result of their own actions, because they had been committing mayhem in a public marketplace, endangering other law-abiding citizens.

Each prisoner testified that he had become involved in the brawl either in self-defence or to protect a friend, neighbour or spouse. In every instance, the men told of a sudden outbreak of brutal violence unleashed without provocation by Camulodian troopers.

Listening to all they had to say and knowing that none of these men had spoken with any of the others since their arrest, the judges had no reason to doubt what they were hearing. Before the first of the troopers was brought in, therefore, the judges had agreed that the blame lay firmly with the Dragons, and that their priority now was to identify the ringleader. After that, if the questioning of the prisoners went well, they might have some hope of being able to identify the cause. Dedalus was still insistent that the instigator must have been Nemo, the natural leader of this particular group. The hard men in her squad, the Boneheads as they were known, revered her for her insane courage under stress. Despite all that, however, Uther was unwilling to believe that Nemo might be at fault in this instance— not without provocation.

Within the hour, however, it quickly became apparent from the evidence of her squad mates that Nemo had been the one to initiate the fighting, hurling a heavy pot at the head of Mark, the giant sawyer. Her Bonehead mates had all been around her at the time, and always ready for a fight, they had joined gleefully in an indiscriminate assault on the townspeople. It became painfully clear as the inquiry progressed that the Boneheads were aptly named. None of them showed the slightest sign of guilt or remorse or even regret at appearing in front of the tribunal, and all of them seemed to take great delight in incriminating themselves and each other in the activities that were being investigated.

Nemo, brought in last of all, was not even questioned about her role in the events. She was simply accused of having started the debacle, and she made no attempt to deny her guilt. She provided no reason for her attack when invited to speak in her own defence. She had nothing to say, and she said nothing. She simply stood and glowered at a spot somewhere above the heads of the tribunal, as though defying them to do their worst with her. And so they did.

All nine of the accused were summoned together to face judgment, and when they were assembled, Centurion Dedalus informed them of the tribunal's findings and sentence. They had disgraced their own unit and the name of Camulod, he told them, and their behaviour had cost the Colony not only the goodwill of the citizens of Glevum, but also a substantial measure of the dwindling reserves of the coinage the Council of Camulod kept for emergency use. Because of that, and since they themselves had nothing of any value to offer in restitution other than toil and sweat expended in the common good, they would spend four months on chain duty, all privileges suspended for the duration of that time. They would participate in no training exercises or patrols during those four months, but would spend the entire time confined to garrison cells when they were not working punishment duties. Their confinement was to begin immediately. They were placed under open arrest, disarmed and guarded until they could be incarcerated on their return to Camulod.

It was a savage sentence, and four months was an unheard-of commitment to chain duty, lacking the commission of some extraordinary military crime such as attacking an officer or killing a comrade in a fight. But all three judges had concurred in adding an additional month to the sentence they originally considered, as a response to the utter absence of any sign of fear, shame or remorse among the offenders. The nine miscreants stood side by side and accepted the judgment solemnly, and none of them offered so much as a grunt of protest. Dedalus finally waved a hand in disgusted dismissal and they were marched away, leaving the members of the tribunal to look at each other in silence. None of them felt like discussing the matter any longer, and soon they split up and went their separate ways.

On the morning following the tribunal, Uther, in a foul frame of mind, disappeared on a three-day furlough. Later that same day, however, urgent word arrived from Camulod that Uther's grandfather, Publius Varrus, lay dying, and Caius Merlyn went galloping off in search of his cousin, leading two extra horses and claiming that he knew where Uther might have gone. Cay found him under attack in a roadhouse in the company of several skittishly attractive serving maids more than willing to fulfill a soldier's needs. Together the two of them fought off Uther's attackers, thieves who had hoped to catch him off guard while he took his pleasure with the women. Afterwards, Uther, in recompense for the villainous proprietor's participation in the murderous attack on him, burned the roadhouse to the ground. Then the two cousins made their way as quickly as they could towards Camulod.

Publius Varrus was great-uncle to Caius Merlyn, but he was also Uther's maternal grandfather, and both young men loved the old smith deeply. Before he died—and his grief-stricken wife Lucciia would swear that he hung on to life for that sole purpose—Varrus spoke privately, first to his grandson and then to his great-nephew, of his hopes for them and for the union between Cambria and Camulod, and both had listened carefully and taken his dying testament to heart.

From the day of his death, two changes were noticeable in the young men: Cay, who had always been known formally as Caius Britannicus, insisted that everyone call him by his Celtic name, Merlyn, from that time on. Uther, for his part, sobered somehow upon the death of his grandfather, becoming different, more dignified and perhaps in some elusive, indeterminable way even more manly in his bearing. Uther had grown up, matured within the space of the few days that had elapsed from the first word of his grandfather's illness to the completion of the old man's funeral services and his burial in the main courtyard of Camulod beside the grave of his best friend, Caius Britannicus, Proconsul and Senator of Rome.

Not once in the entire four months of her sentence did Nemo Hard- Nose set eyes on Uther. In the close confinement of chain duty, she was utterly incapable of tending to her self-appointed duty to protect and serve Uther, and she found that intolerable.

Nemo harboured few illusions about Uther or about herself, but she and Uther saw what happened in the marketplace that day in Glevum very differently. Uther suspected that Nemo had seen him flirting with the woman, Anna, and had been jealous. He was wrong. Uther was her god, and Nemo knew that mere mortals cannot hope to rut with gods. What Nemo had seen and noted was the threatening demeanour of the giant Mark, who had stood glaring at Uther while Uther spoke to Anna. Nemo, standing among her squad mates, had defined a threat in the big man's attitude and had immediately decided to bring him down simply for his overt disapproval of Uther. She had launched her attack without warning the moment Uther walked out of sight. The woman, Anna, had been included in her ire solely because she had been the catalyst that had precipitated the threat against Uther. In the course of chastising Anna's giant lover. Nemo had sought to punish the woman almost casually, in passing, as an incidental indication of her disapproval.

As soon as she and her companions were released from custody at the end of their four-month sentence. Nemo spruced herself up and appeared in her best uniform outside Uther's quarters, where she requested and received permission to report to him for duty. Escorted into his presence, she stood at attention until he turned to look at her, his face devoid of expression.

"So," he said, "Trooper Nemo. You've been released to duty. Did you enjoy your stay with the provost martial?"

Keeping her stance perfectly rigid, she assured him that she had not enjoyed it and did not intend ever to repeat it again. He nodded then and reiterated formally what he had already intimated in his opening words to her: that she would be starting out again from the beginning, demoted to the lowly rank of trooper. That did not concern her; she had lost her ranking as troop leader more times than any other trooper in her intake, but she had always managed to win it back through sheer guts and determination. Uther then dismissed her so that she could meet with her decurion commander.

Nemo was troop leader again within the month, and she worked hard after that at keeping her nose clean and her performance as close to perfect as was achievable, so that within the year, she had won promotion to decurion, the highest rank she had ever attained. No one really expected her to keep it for long, but this time, she swore to herself, things would be different. She was determined to remain a decurion, and months eventually passed into seasons without her earning a single demerit, let alone a demotion.

During the years that followed, Uther and Merlyn became men in fact as well as in name, passing from eighteen years old to twenty- two, and their professional abilities as soldiers matured and became finely honed and unimpeachable. They became known behind their backs by their admiring and sometimes resentful men as the Princes of Camulod, and the life they led was a full and rewarding cycle of duty, achievement and enjoyment. Nemo Hard-Nose soon became inured to the sight of the processions of beautiful young women that came and went with unfailing regularity through the private quarters that Uther and Merlyn called their "games rooms." The numbers of women and the degrees of hilarity and high living fluctuated only in response to the presence or absence of Merlyn's father, the Legate Picus Britannicus, who was still the Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod, and whose disapproval was the only thing that could really keep the two young men in line. Uther's grandmother, the widowed Luceiia Britannicus Varrus, also exercised great power over the behaviour of her grandson and great- nephew, but she was seldom seen around the fort; she preferred to spend her time alone in her home with the women of her household.

Towards the end of the fourth year, however, in the autumn, Uther and Merlyn found a young woman in the forest at the far end of one of their regular perimeter patrol sweeps when they had been riding apart from each other. Nemo's squad was there with Uther at the time, and it was Nemo who first saw the young woman kneeling on the ground among the saplings in a clearing away from the road as she rode by. Investigation would show that the young woman, who seemed to be unable to speak, was mourning the deaths of two elderly people who were lying beside her and who everyone supposed were her parents. There were no signs of violence on either of the bodies and no obvious signs of sickness. Nemo sent one of her men riding to fetch Uther, and after a cursory examination of the scene, Uther ordered two of his men to dig a grave and bury the dead. Then he swung the young woman up to ride behind him, where she remained until they arrived back in Camulod. By the time they got there, it had been established that the young woman was mute, and in the need to call her something, one of the young commanders gave her the name Cassandra, after the tragic prophetess of Troy.

On the night they returned from the patrol, in the privacy of Merlyn's games room, something happened between the two cousins that would permanently damage their relationship.

Uther disappeared in the middle of the night, taking only a few of his Dragons and riding away without informing anyone where he was going or why he was leaving so suddenly. That same night, the young woman called Cassandra was savaged and beaten to the point of death. She survived, however, and was confined under heavy guard in the surgeon Lucanus's infirmary. Then the following night, she disappeared from a guarded room in a building ringed with guards, and people started whispering that Merlyn had used sorcery to spirit her away. The woman Cassandra vanished completely from Camulod.

Shortly after that. Nemo began to pick up disturbing snippets and fragments and mutterings—nothing that made complete sense and nothing more definite than vague rumour, but the cumulative effect was that whatever might be wrong between the two commanders, Uther and Merlyn, the woman Cassandra was at the root of it all.

Merlyn, it appeared, suspected Uther of something nameless but reprehensible. It could not have been the attack on Cassandra, Nemo reasoned, because she knew that Uther had left the fort during the midnight watch, shortly after storming out of the games room. One of the Dragons from her own squad had been on guard duty outside the tower that night and saw him stride away, and still others had been posted at the main gate of the fort and checked Uther and a half score of their fellows through there shortly thereafter. They had told her, too, that Uther was in no sweet frame of mind.

Uther returned directly to Tir Manha upon leaving Camulod on the night of his quarrel with Merlyn, and many months would pass before he returned. He sent word of his whereabouts to Picus Britannicus immediately upon his arrival home in Cambria and requested that his Dragons be dispatched to join him there. He had need of them, he said, for the next stage of their training, which would be in the lowland valleys of the southeastern part of the country. Picus sent the Dragons home immediately, under the command of their own Cambrian officers, of whom Nemo was one. But it was not to be her fate to remain in Tir Manha, for Uther immediately sent her back to Picus in Camulod bearing important messages, and after that time she lived neither in one place nor the other, the majority of her time being spent on the road between them.

Uther could not stay away from Camulod permanently, however, no matter how disagreeable the circumstances of his departure had been. He had duties and responsibilities to attend to, and his conscience would not permit him to ignore them for long. On his eventual return, he and his cousin Merlyn, despite the unresolved tension between them, were jointly honoured by Picus Britannicus, who presented his two youngest commanders with sumptuous new armour and identifying standards. Uther received a magnificent new cloak, banner and shield, all bearing the device of a great golden dragon woven in thin gold wire on a deep red background. The blazon was similar to the ages-old red dragon emblem of his Cambrian Pendragon people, but it was subtly different so that it would be personal to Uther. To top off the gift and render it perfect, Picus included a new high-plumed bronze helmet in the Roman officers' style, complete with ornate, hinged cheek-flaps to guard and conceal his face in battle. Merlyn, at the same time, received a black war cloak lined with soft white wool and bearing the blazon, woven in fine silver wire, of Merlyn's own insignia: a mighty, rearing bear with spread arms and enormous claws, commemorating his killing the largest bear anyone in Camulod had ever seen while armed with nothing more than a large spear. Like Uther, Merlyn also received a new war helmet, this one made, like his personal armour, of black enamelled iron and crested in alternating tufts of black and white horsehair. With it also came a new standard and shield, each bearing his device, the silver bear on black.

The following day, however, word arrived that Camulod was under attack from two directions. One of the outlying farms, a stock- breeding operation in the south of the Colony, had been robbed, its entire two-hundred-man garrison wiped out. And simultaneously, an invading fleet of Erse galleys had landed in the north, their presence reported by King Uric's people, who had seen the galleys passing upriver. Lot of Cornwall had engineered his first double assault on Camulod, and from that day onward, Camulod would be almost constantly at war with Britain's southwestern most region.

After the initial outbreak, with that successful raid against the Colony's southernmost farm, the war progressed swiftly. Under the overall command of Picus Britannicus, Uther and Merlyn split their forces, Uther riding south and west against Lot and Cornwall with seven hundred highly mobile cavalry, while Merlyn headed north with four hundred cavalry and three thousand foot soldiers to stop the invading Ersemen. Merlyn's campaign was completely successful, ending in the capture of a high-born Eirish hostage, but Uther's cavalry was ambushed and decimated along the northern coast of Cornwall by an enemy force using poisoned arrows, which killed every one of Uther's men who sustained even a scratch from their envenomed tips.

Uther was not completely convinced, however, that his attackers were Lot's people, for there was sufficient evidence to the contrary to raise genuine doubts. A short time before the attack, his scouts had found the remnants of a massacre in which some sixty people had been stripped, then bound and slaughtered. Lot himself, speaking through a Christian bishop sent out to Uther as an intermediary, claimed that those were his own people, captured unawares and slaughtered by a strong force of seaborne raiders of unknown origin. That unexpected claim was sufficient to give Uther pause and make him doubt himself. The murderous group who attacked his force had overshot themselves foolishly, expending all their poisoned arrows far too quickly, so that the survivors of Uther's army, still more than six hundred strong, were able to rally and pursue their erstwhile attackers. But the attackers had galleys waiting for them right below the cliffs where the attack had occurred, and they were afloat and at sea before Uther's men could close with them. Uther had to wonder if Lot might be telling him the truth. His gut feelings told him otherwise, that the sixty dead might well have been the sweepings of Lot's jails expediently disposed of simply to hide Lot's guilt in the ambush; but his training in logic, acquired in Camulod under his Uncle Picus, suggested the contrary. And so he gave Lot the benefit of the doubt and released the bishop to return to Cornwall, despite his strong conviction that the man of God would rather have remained a captive in the custody of Camulod.

The bishop's visit was followed rapidly by the arrival of two strange-looking, foreign-born envoys called Caspar and Memnon, who claimed to have been sent as ambassadors from Lot, King of Cornwall, to Picus Britannicus, the Legate Commander of Camulod. Uther arranged to accompany them safely to Camulod, but beyond that he paid them little notice, and his failure to question their motives or to examine them more closely would cost him and Camulod dearly.

Within a day of Uther's bringing the strangers home to Camulod, the men were recognized, and Merlyn was able to identify them as spies and sorcerers, the men responsible for Lot's poisoned arrows. He threw them into jail in full expectation that their master, Lot, would be following hard on their heels, knowing that he had his two loyal creatures on the inside and expecting to find Camulod lulled into a false sense of security. Merlyn was correct, and Lot's treachery almost captured Camulod, but forewarned, Merlyn's and Uther's combined armies were able to defeat Lot's forces and rout them.

While the defeat of the forces from Cornwall was taking place down on the plain below the hill of Camulod, however, Lot's sorcerers managed inexplicably to escape from their cells, and thus they were able to open the rear gate of the fortress to a party of their own people sent to burn the place down.

That attack was discovered and fought off before it could develop fully, but still the fighting inside the fort was fierce and bloody. The back alleys of Camulod, close to the rear wall, were choked with corpses before the rear gate could be securely shut again. Many of the buildings within the walls had been set alight and were already uncontrollably ablaze.

When Uther and his cavalry abandoned their pursuit of Lot's fleeing forces and came riding back to Camulod a few days later, a thick column of black smoke brought them spurring from its first sighting, and only as they approached the fort did they notice that there were no signs of ongoing battle. Great open pits had been dug on the plain below the hill of Camulod, and the corpses of the slain were being interred there beneath layers of quicklime. The smoke that they had seen was from a funeral pyre. Only then did they learn that Picus Britannicus, their leader and Legate, had been murdered in his bed during the sorcerers' escape and before the night attack. Uther found his cousin Merlyn standing by the pyre, one of the chief mourners. Battle weary and still in their armour, Uther and his men stood silently at the back of the crowd to observe the rites and honour the dead.

Within a matter of mere weeks, more tragic tidings arrived in Camulod, brought personally to Uther's attention this time by Garreth Whistler. Another army raised by Gulrhys Lot, this one a compact, deadly effective striking force built mainly of foreign mercenaries, had invaded Cambria near the time when Lot's main army was attacking Camulod. This small, hard-hitting force, barely large enough to deserve the name army, had created havoc, having caught the Pendragon Federation totally unprepared for invasion from the south and ill-equipped to adapt with any kind of speed to counter a sustained attack from that direction. Uric's people and the concentration of his forces had always been primarily attuned to threats emerging from the northern boundaries of their lands, both coastal and landward.

Despite their unpreparedness, the Federation had nonetheless managed to respond with admirable speed to this new threat, Garreth reported, and the Pendragon forces had rallied well under great pressure. Meradoc, the dominant Chief of the Llewellyn clans, had distinguished himself in the campaign, as had young Huw Strongarm, Chief of the northern Pendragon, who at sixteen was the youngest Chief of a Pendragon clan in living memory. At the peak of the short, bloody campaign that followed the invasion, however, the insurgents were brought to battle, and in the course of the fighting, Uther's father, King Uric Pendragon, had been killed, felled by what had turned out to be a poisoned arrow.

Uther met the news with blank incomprehension. He heard the words and accepted them, but his mind failed utterly to accept or to even consider their import. Nemo was standing by, awaiting his instructions on some matter that would now never be mentioned again, and she watched him closely, prepared to jump forward and catch him if he fell. His eyes had gone strangely dead as though he had lost all ability to focus on anything, and he began to nod his head as though agreeing with some voice inside him that spoke to him alone. He reached behind him with one groping hand and found the chair on which he had been sitting. Pulling it towards him automatically, he lowered himself very slowly to its seat and then asked Garreth for word of his mother. Where was she now? Did he need to go to her immediately, or would she come to Camulod to her own mother, Luceiia Varrus? And when would his father be buried and where?

Garreth Whistler looked uncomfortable, and his gaze went from Uther to Merlyn Britannicus and then to the other senior officers of Camulod's garrison. The report he would now deliver, he told them, had come directly from Meradoc, the ruling Chief of the strongest of the three Llewellyn clans in the Federation. King Uric was already buried, he reported. He had been dead for ten days now and was buried within hours of his death in the place where he had fallen. The enemy had been all around the Llewellyn position, and Chief Meradoc's overriding priority was to rescue his own people from the trap in which they found themselves. The formalized, royal burial of what was by then essentially no more than one more corpse among hundreds had had to be set aside. There would be opportunity later, Meradoc had decided, to mourn and honour the dead King once the living were secure and safe again and the enemy was put to flight.

Uther showed no reaction to any of this, and so it was Merlyn who asked Garreth what King Uric had been doing among the western Llewellyns when he should have been with his own forces in south Cambria. Garreth turned his head towards Merlyn and sniffed before glancing towards Uther, who sat staring vacantly back at him. After a moment, evidently having decided that Uther's attention was engaged elsewhere, Garreth turned back to Merlyn and the others.

From the moment word of the invasion of Cambria first arrived in Tir Manha, he explained, King Uric had delegated command of his own Pendragon clansmen to him, Garreth Whistler, as the King's Champion. From then on Uric had spent most of his time touring the territories of the Pendragon Federation, accompanied by a small escort of hand-picked warriors, rallying and encouraging the fighting men of the other federated clans and demonstrating his support for each of his Chiefs in turn.

At the time of his death, Uric was visiting Chief Meradoc's host of Llewellyn warriors, the largest and strongest armed force in his overall command, and prior to that he had spent time among the warriors of the Griffyd clans with their Chiefs Cativelaunus of Carmarthen and Brynn of Y Gaer. When his visit to Llewellyn was complete, Uric intended to move on to visit the army of Huw Strongarm, Chief of the northern Pendragon.

Enemy activity had been thick and heavy around the Llewellyn territories just prior to Uric's arrival, Garreth told them, and the fighting was heavy enough that Meradoc sent word to the King warning him of the extreme danger and suggesting that Uric postpone his visit. Uric, however, would have none of that and insisted on holding to his original schedule, and so he and his escort had ridden into Llewellyn's lands and died there.

At that point Uther spoke again in a flat, emotionless voice, demanding news of his mother, and Garreth turned back towards the younger man.

The Lady Veronica, Uther's mother, he reported, had been devastated by her husband's death but had recovered quickly, showing great strength and resilience. It had been her original intent, he said, immediately after her recovery from the shock of the news of her husband's death and burial, to return to Camulod in order to be with her mother. But she had changed her mind, for reasons known only to herself, and decided to remain in Tir Manha. at least for the time being. She wrote a letter to her mother, Luceiia Varrus, explaining her thoughts and her decision to remain in Cambria. Garreth had delivered that earlier.

Uther nodded his head slightly and then made no more effort to communicate with anyone. For a time no one moved or spoke, everyone apparently grappling with the complexities of the changes that had occurred within the past short space of weeks. Garreth Whistler, however, had not yet completed his purpose in coming to Camulod in person, and in order to emphasize the importance of what he had yet to communicate, he dropped to one knee in front of Uther's chair and grasped Uther's wrist tightly, forcing the younger man to look up into his eyes.

"You're Chief now, boy. And you can be more than that, if you so wish, if you move quickly enough. Daris the High Priest has sent me to bring you home for the Choosing. In truth, he has grave doubts about your suitability, but give him his due, he wishes you to have the opportunity that is yours by right as a Pendragon Federation Chief. It will happen soon, the Choosing—this is no time for our people to be without a King. And if you harbour any hope or wish at all of following your father and grandfather to the King's seal, you have to come with me, and soon. You have to take your place among the other Chiefs for the judgment and the vote. If you come late, you'll lose your chance, for choose they must, and quickly. Do you hear me, Uther? Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Uther had listened in silence, his staring eyes fixed on Garreth Whistler's face. Now he sat for a while longer, empty-eyed. Then he sucked in his cheeks and nodded to the Champion, speaking in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I hear you, Garreth. I understand. But I must think. I need time to think."

He stood up and walked from the gathering without another word, not to be seen by another living soul for two days. Garreth's tidings had been grim enough, but no one had expected Uther to be so badly shaken by them or that he would shut himself off from all contact with anyone while he came to terms with his own grief.

He emerged from his seclusion on the morning of the third day and sought out Garreth Whistler immediately. Uther was stern- faced and showed none of the eager enthusiasm that had always marked him in military matters.

"We will go," he told the Champion tersely. "But we will need a week beforehand—no more than that—to drill the Dragons. See to that for me, if you would, starting immediately. Drill them until they drop, cursing you and me. They've been getting fat and lazy for the past few months. I want them to be at their peak when we ride into Tir Manha. If I am to be King, and I intend to be, they'll be the central core of my new armies, and I need them to be magnificent, to stir envy and admiration among our young Pendragon men and generate new troopers. See to it, if it pleases you. I'll join you later today and work with you from then on, but I have matters to attend to first."

Garreth Whistler only nodded, offering no comment, and watched the young Chief stride away.

Uther went straight to Nemo and summoned her to ride with him. She followed him to the stables and then rode close behind him as he left through the main gates of the fortress, merely waving in response when Merlyn called to him from afar and spurring his mount out onto the downhill road to the plain beneath.

They rode hard and far, and neither of them spoke a word for more than an hour when Uther finally drew rein and turned his horse around, ignoring Nemo's mount as it sidled and stamped beside him. He led them back and around by a circuitous route to a slight rise overlooking the broad drill plain below the fortress from the northeast, the same spot from which he and Merlyn had watched Camulod burning luridly against the night sky a mere two months earlier. Now from this distance, even in the bright morning sunlight, no sign could be seen of any damage to the fortress, and there was nothing visible to indicate that anything had changed here in years. Even the three huge mass graves that had been dug on the plain were no longer visible, for the earth that covered them had been levelled and compacted by thousands upon thousands of hooves since normal cavalry training resumed following the cleanup after the battle that was waged there. They sat together in silence for a while, looking at the fortress so seemingly secure upon its distant hilltop, and then Uther spoke over his shoulder.

"We have lived through the end of an era. Nemo, you and I." Nemo made no response, and after a few moments Uther continued: "Do you know what an era is?" He turned to glance at her as she shook her head, and then he looked away again, gazing at the distant towers of Camulod's walls.

"An era is a period of time. Nemo—a long period of years or even decades, sometimes centuries—that can be measured from a clear starting point to an ending. They tell us the Roman general Julius Caesar came to these shores decades before the birth of the Christians' Christus among the Hebrews, and that the last of the true Romans, the Emperor Constantine the Third, left Britain in the year I was six. That means the Romans remained here in Britain without leaving for more than four hundred years. That was an era." He glanced at Nemo again and smiled, shaking his head gently. "You don't know what I'm talking about, but what I am saying is true. That fortress over there on its hill belongs to another era, a more recent one . . . an era that overlapped the Roman one, beginning before I was born, before my father had even met my mother."

He waved his hand towards the distant buildings. "Before my grandfather, Publius Varrus, came here, there was no fortress on that hilltop. There was no Colony, no Camulod. There was no cavalry here, no garrison and no alliance between Pendragon and these people. And there were no longbows among the Pendragon. Did you know it was Publius Varrus who was responsible for bringing the longbow to Pendragon? Well, it was. He brought a giant bow with him from Africa, and our people admired it greatly. They sought to make others like it. and our long yew bows were born. All of those things have come to pass since Publius Varrus married my Grandmother Luceiia almost fifty years ago. Their marriage, in many ways, marked the beginning of the era."

Uther's voice faded into silence, and Nemo sat staring at him, waiting for him to continue. He did not even glance in her direction. keeping his gaze fixed on the hilltop fort, and she sat on his right, less than half a pace to his rear, her close-set eyes fixed unblinkingly on the point of his jaw. watching for the tiny initial flexing that would herald his next words. She was, as always, content to wait upon his pleasure.

"It began with Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus; it grew with Ullic Pendragon and Picus Britannicus; and it ended with the deaths of the last of them, my Uncle Picus's short months ago and my father Uric's weeks ago." Uther hawked and spat. "Camulod will continue to exist, and it will grow and prosper, I've no doubt of that. Merlyn Britannicus will keep it safe and hale. But it will never be the same again, because the treachery and greed of Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall have brought about changes that were never foreseen. He has destroyed the calm of Camulod as surely as the serpent destroyed innocence in the garden the Christian priests talk about. And such changes can never lie unmade. And that means that Camulod—my own Camulod that has fed and nourished me since I was a boy—is ended."

He kicked his horse into motion, keeping its head directly towards Camulod, and Nemo's fell properly into step beside him, maintaining a half-length space behind him so precisely that Nemo had need of neither reins nor bit.

"And so now we must return to Tir Manha," he continued, speaking to her without looking at her. "And this time, I think, we will stay there. It is my home, after all—everyone delights in telling me so—and it has been yours, too, for so long that I'll wager you can't even recall where you came from in the first place. But I will tell you a secret. Nemo, that no one else in Camulod would ever suspect: I do not want to go back there, not to live, and especially not now that my father is dead. I have no wish to go back to what everyone else insists on calling my home . . . grim old Cambria with its harsh-faced people. I have no need of their ill-mannered glowering, and I cringe at the very thought of living with their foul- tempered and humourless dislike day after day, year after year. My father's death, far, far too soon, has taught me that a man is a fool to live in hopes of a better tomorrow. I have a thousand better ways today to spend what time remains ahead of me, and I have brighter, lighter and more pleasant places in which to spend it. . ."

Nemo glanced sharply at him then, her curiosity piqued as he made a noise in his chest that almost sounded like a smothered laugh. "You know. Nemo, I sometimes thank the gods that you exist, for if you did not—" He left that thought unfinished and then resumed again immediately. "There is not another person in the entire world to whom I could confess this openly in the absolute knowledge that it will never be passed on. So here is my dark and dire secret: I would prefer to spend my entire life here in Camulod, without ever having to return to Cambria and Tir Manha. That does not sound like such a massy secret, does it? And yet it is, for if that word got out among my friends, I wonder just how many of them would remain my friends . . . I could not tell that truth even to Merlyn, because I fear he might take it amiss and see it as a threat to his designs for Camulod, thinking that I might seek to undermine him here. And I would not. Nemo, believe me. I would not.

"But this is my life's centre. Nemo, this—" He stood up in his stirrups and waved his hand broadly, indicating the entire countryside that surrounded them and the looming towers of the fortress on the hill ahead of them. 'Tir Manha has a beauty that I can't dismiss and can't deny—the sight and smells of the land move me and stir up my blood in a way I can't describe. But Camulod has become my home, far more than Tir Manha has ever been. My father and my mother lived in Tir Manha, and so did Grandfather Ullic, and because of that I returned there every year . . . But it was my mother who insisted, first and most strongly and ever afterward, that I should spend as much time as I could in Camulod. And I have always, ever since my earliest boyhood, been eager to return to Camulod when the summer waned and the weather began to change.

"And why would I not? Even you, Nemo, must resent returning home each year. Think of all we relinquish when we do . . . Think of all the things we have in Camulod that people lack in Cambria! Baths, for one thing—and bathing is one mighty, all-eclipsing thing! Hand in hand with bathing, Nemo, in a scented, wondrous silence, walks a more than pleasant absence of revolting people smells.

"And then there are hypocausts—furnace-fed hot-air ducts—and heated buildings. Floors that are warm in winter and rooms that are high and bright because the warmth coming through the hypocausts allows you to live in them without having to block all the exits and shut out all the light. And space, Nemo! Think about space—high- ceilinged vaults and room to walk about upright and at ease. You can't do that in the gloomy, low-roofed huts of Cambria."

Nemo listened in wonder. She was used to hearing him speak, but she had never heard him go on like this before, not at such speed. His voice was far more forceful, it seemed to her, than she had ever noticed before, his words appearing to rattle one against the other as they spilled from his mouth. And then, quite suddenly, he was silent again, and the only sounds to be heard were the thudding of their horses' hooves and the creaks and jingling of saddlery. She waited, and just when she was beginning to think he really would say no more, he spoke again, his voice more normal now.

"Of course, you might be tempted to ask me, if you cared at all, why it should be that my mother, who had every intention, according to Garreth Whistler, of returning to Camulod after my father's death, should have changed her mind at the last moment and decided to stay in Tir Manha. If it is really such a dreary place as I believe it to be . . ." He turned to look at Nemo.

"Are you tempted to ask that. Nemo? No, I can see you are not. Well, I'll answer it anyway. I believe my mother has decided to remain in Cambria because she fears that if she does not stay there . . . if she comes home to Camulod while I am here . . . then I might not return to Tir Manha at all and might forfeit my blood rights, my birthright and my Chief's rank and title. And there are numerous people, myself not least among them, who would say she had good reason for such fear . . . But they would all be wrong. Nemo, all of them. Because I will go back. I am going back. It may be that I am going back for all the wrong reasons a man could conjure up. But I am going back."

He stopped for a moment and then snorted again with the same smothered, ironic mirth that he had used against himself earlier. "Strange, is it not? After years of listening to Cousin Merlyn going on and on about duty and how sacred it is, often boring me to tears with his righteousness, I am now the one who is incapable of doing what I want to do because my duty forbids it. Well. . . it does, and none of it is Merlyn's fault. I must go to Tir Manha and release my mother to return to her mother, knowing that I will stay and do what I must do. I am my father's son. Nemo, and I am Ullic Pendragon's grandson and Publius Varrus's grandson, and no man among the three of those was ever known to shirk a duty or be irresponsible. I am clan Chief, and there is no escaping that, for I promised my father to take up the task and do it properly . . .

"I might not be chosen King, but by the gods, if I am not, it will not be because I was not there when the Chiefs took up their chairs. Not all the people are grim miseries, and they will need the strongest King that they can have. And I believe that means I must be King . . . at least for the duration of this war with Cornwall. After that, when we are all at peace again, who knows? I might give up the King's seat. It could be done, no reason why it could not be . . .

"Anyway, if I am to be King, we must go soon. Whistler says, and I believe him. I have a few things I need to do before we leave, nevertheless. The Dragons need a week's training, and I need to spend some time with Commander Merlyn planning strategy and future tactics for any joint campaign we might have to fight against Lot. I have a strong feeling that it will be a case not of if but of when. So, Nemo, as I see it, we will be leaving very soon for Tir Manha. If you have anything that you must do in Camulod before we leave, then see to it."

Nemo nodded her head deeply but said nothing. In her mind, however, she reviewed everything she might need to do before departing, and her list was very brief.

BOOK FOUR

The Choosing

Dear Mother,

Two weeks have gone by since they brought me word of Uric's death. Two blank, empty weeks spent in nothingness. I remember seeing Daris, the Chief Druid, approaching me that day, and I remember being frightened by the look on his face. After that, I can remember nothing until yesterday, when I saw Daris again. He had come this time to ask me when I wished to leave for Camulod, and I did not know why he would ask me such a thing.

It was then that I discovered that I have been living in some kind of waking dream. According to Daris, I have been acting normally and showing commendable strength throughout my ordeal, but the truth is that I have been aware of none of it. I know only that my husband, my beloved Uric, is dead.

Daris tells me that I have been calmly and rationally discussing leaving Tir Manha to come and live with you in Camulod. It seems strange to me that I would not remember saying such things. But yet another part of me, after a sleepless night last night, now knows that it is true.

When I first heard Daris speak of this yesterday, I had no doubt, despite my shock, that it was a fine idea and the sensible thing to do. My husband is gone, I told myself, and my son is already in Camulod. No need, I thought, for me to remain in Tir Manha—Uric's home but never really mine.

But at that moment, in making that admission to myself, all the pain of my loss came home to me and overwhelmed me. For the first time that I know of since my husband's death, I wept. And then I lay awake all night long, surprised to know that my mind was filled with unfamiliar yet familiar thoughts and even decisions.

Daris spoke to me at great length about the ceremony of picking a new King for the Pendragon people, an event known as the Choosing.

This Choosing will now take place as close to Midsummer as may be possible due to the upheavals of this war. There are two traditional Choosing times each year: Midsummer and Midwinter, with Midsummer being the more potent. My Uric will be replaced then by a new King selected from among the current Chiefs.

I have been through it once before, when dear Uncullic died and Uric was selected as the Chosen One by his fellow Chiefs, all seven of them, including Uric, voting in conclave. At that time I thought little of it. It seemed inevitable to me that Uric would assume his father's position, becoming the fifth in his direct line to serve as King of the Pendragon. It was plain for all to see that Uric was the best man.

By the same token, the new King should be Uther as Chief of Pendragon in his own right. I know his father dreamed of that and wished it might be so, for we talked of it, he and I, not long ago, when it seemed like an event destined for some distant, future day.

Now, cruelly, that day is here, and Uther is not merely unprepared, he is almost unknown by the Chiefs who will select the new King. He has been too long gone from Tir Manila and from Cambria itself, spending most of his time in Camulod, mainly at my insistence. The fault is mine.

I have always been afraid, since my earliest days here, of what too much exposure to the Cambrians and their savage ways might do to my son. And I have always insisted that he spend at least half of his young life with you and father and my family in civilized surroundings. I regret that bitterly today, because I now know, too late, that I was wrong. We are at war with Cornwall, as are you in Camulod, but Uther is seen here as being one of yours and not as one of ours, and the wars have thrown up another warrior Chief, a man called Meradoc, Chief of the largest of the three Llewellyn clans, who means to claim the King's Seat. I detest the man, and I know Uric had little time for him, but my personal distaste counts for nothing in the reality of things. The man is an able Chief, it seems.

And so I must remain in Tir Manila in the hope that others, including you and Garreth Whistler, with whom I will send this, will be able to convince Uther that his duty lies here, and that he owes his primary loyalty to his Pendragon heritage and to the memory of his father and his ancestors.

I know my son, and I know his failings and how headstrong and proud he can be. I know, too, that should he choose not to contest his birthright in the Choosing, he will regret it forever afterwards. This Choosing is his destiny. I know that now beyond dispute or foolish maternal selfishness. And if my presence in Tir Manha will urge his return, then my place must be here.

So, dear Mother, my request of you is to send my son home, however unwilling he might be. I pray that you will use every persuasive power at your command to convince him that he must be here by Midsummer to represent his family, his people and himself.

With all my love, your grieving daughter, Veronica

Chapter FOURTEEN

"Come on, lads! You'll be a King's escort on the way back, so let's start to look like one now."

The disordered column of armoured, mounted men making their way up the steep slope reacted to the jibe in their individual ways. Some groaned in mock protest, others muttered good- humouredly and a small number scowled, but most had a grin or a smile for the man haranguing them from the knoll by the side of the path they were climbing. Only a few kept their eyes downcast, too concerned with the treacherous ground beneath their horses' hooves to spare any attention for their leader's high spirits. The climb had been long and hard, their path a dried-out stream bed choked with water-smoothed pebbles and boulders. On either side, the flanks of the deep gully towered over them, coated with impenetrable brush and gnarled, stunted ancient trees, cutting the struggling horsemen off from the world. Now, as they approached the crest, the perceptible lessening of the heights above was the only sign they had that they were nearing the summit.

"Almost there now, lads. We'll rest at the top."

At that moment, one of the rocks littering the stream bed rolled under a misplaced hoof, and a horse went lurching sideways, skittering for a foothold and somehow managing to remain upright, although it almost unseated its rider, whose skill was the only thing that saved him from a dangerous fall. In the moment of feeling his mount lurch off balance, the trooper transferred all his weight, jamming his left foot hard into its stirrup and shifting his upper body forward to his right, dropping the reins to grasp the horn of his saddle with his right hand while he threw his left arm out as a counterweight. So close was he to the side of the stream bed that his outstretched hand touched solid ground and he used it to brace himself, leaning on it for a moment before thrusting himself back, straight-armed, into the saddle.

"Well done, Marc!" the leader shouted, but the rider, busy gathering his reins again and soothing his startled horse, paid him no heed. He moved on, his eyes now scanning the ground ahead of him, and the few remaining horsemen followed him, equally careful. The watcher on the knoll waited until the last of them had passed, and then he turned his head to look at his companion, who was staring back down the hill the way they had come.

"You see something down there?"

Garreth Whistler shrugged his broad, green-clad shoulders and pulled his horse around. "No, Uther, I see nothing," he said, sighing but smiling. "I was thinking, that's all."

Uther Pendragon grinned, shaking his head ruefully. "Garreth, Garreth, Garreth, there's little hope for you at all, with all this thinking! How many times have I told you it's dangerous to think?"

The Whistler sat silent in his saddle, gazing at the younger man and making no response other than a slow puckering of his lips as he nibbled at the skin of his inner cheek.

Uther raised one eyebrow. "So what were you thinking about this time?"

"Several things. One was that I've been spending too much time in Camulod."

"How so?"

"I'm being Romanized, that's how! Here we are out of sight of that damned road for barely an hour, and I'm mourning the loss of it. I've grown too soft."

Uther Pendragon glanced down to where Garreth had been staring and his smile gave way to a pensive, speculative look. The road Garreth spoke of lay miles behind them, utterly lost in dense forest. The narrow wedge of sky tilled with broken clouds that stretched above their present resting place was the only thing in sight that was not forest.

"Roads are good," Uther muttered. "No better, faster way of crossing country. The Romans were remarkable for that, if nothing else."

"Aye, but why didn't they build a road across these hills when they were building everywhere else?"

Another smile tugged at the corners of Uther's mouth. "Roman roads had but a single purpose, Garreth: to transport Roman armies from place to place in the shortest possible time in order to confront Rome's enemies and stamp them out. We of the Pendragon were too few then, and too distant, to attract their ire."

"Hmm! So now we have to struggle overland. Someone should have told the Romans we were here."

Garreth was now in his early forties, and he had been Uther's mentor, friend and self-appointed bodyguard for ten years. That alone would have entitled him to keep himself apart from the ruck of Uther's troops, even without the rank of Second in Command that the Chief had bestowed upon him. Garreth knew that, too. Although he rode saddled and stirrupped like the others, Garreth alone wore none of the uniform armour and trappings that marked them all as troopers of Camulod, despite the fact that most of them were Pendragon warriors. Instead, and to set himself apart, Garreth proudly wore the garb of his own people, Uther's people, the Pendragon Celts from southern Cambria.

A bright green, knee-length tunic of heavy cloth, bordered in a deep, dark, brownish red and pulled up to accommodate his saddle, was belted at Garreth's waist, and beneath it his legs were trousered in the same green cloth, the bottoms tucked into a pair of high, thick-soled, spurred boots that were his pride and joy, and the only Camulodian things the Whistler owned. A long, plain cloak of darker green was fastened at his breast by an intricately carved clasp of silver, and the sides of it were thrown back from his shoulders to hang down his back, spilling over his horse's rump and leaving his arms free. His head was bare on top of his long, curling white-blond hair. His arms, wrists and legs were heavy and strong, thickly roped with muscle, and the short, broad, sheathed sword that hung by his left side seemed slender because of their bulk.

"I was thinking, too," Garreth continued eventually, "that you were being very free with your expectations of kingship. You're not the King yet, and you might never be."

Uther blinked, and when he spoke his voice was quiet, all trace of raillery gone. "I know that, Garreth."

"I know you do, but the men don't know it—or if they do, they don't care. But what happens if the Chiefs should choose someone else? That's going to leave you looking foolish."

"And why would they choose someone else? They—"

"They might see you as too much the Outlander, that's why. You spend too much time away in Camulod, they'll say. They've been saying it for years. Too much time in Camulod and not enough in your own land. They'll disregard the fact that all the men who ride with you are their own men from Cambria. And if anyone brings it up, they'll be shouted down, and your men will be categorized as you are, strangers and no longer to be trusted. They've learned too many alien ways to be pure Cambrian warriors. And you, you're too much the Roman nowadays for some of their proud stomachs, despite your birth and boyhood. You're never here where you should be, always too far away and for far too long."

"But that's—"

"That's true, Uther. as far as they are concerned. They believe, and rightly so, that a King must tend his people all the time. Remember that these are not merely disgruntled malcontents who have nothing better to do than complain. Like you, these men are Chiefs of the Pendragon Federation—Pendragon. Llewellyn and Griffyd. They will decide upon the kingship, and you have but one vote. They have a weight upon their minds and hearts, Uther. They have a binding duty to pick the best man from those available among their own number. There are seven from whom to choose, and six of those are always more available year-round than you have been these several years."

"They will pick me, Garreth. They need a warrior."

"Balls! They are warriors, even the oldest of them—tried and tested leaders."

"Aye, but four of them are too old to take the kingship."

"Right! And that leaves three to pick among. And two of those are better known and may be better liked than you. Huw Strongarm is the youngest Chief ever to rule the northern Pendragon clans, and he's beloved by everyone—a warrior and a champion, a bard and a lover. A fine, upright young man. He'll be a great King some day."

"But not this time."

Garreth nodded, a terse jerk of his head that conveyed his reluctance to agree. "No, not this time. He's still too young, little more than a boy. That leaves only Meradoc, but he would be your biggest threat even were Huw old enough. Meradoc has the love and trust of all his own folk—" Garreth broke off, twisting his face wryly at the disbelief that had sprung into Uther's face. "Well, I may be overstating that a bit—he is Meradoc, and that in itself makes him hard to love—but nonetheless it is undeniable that he has strength enough among his own people to win. He has support, and that means he has the numbers, and it matters not whether he holds them through love or fear."

"Numbers mean nothing in this. There are but seven votes. Seven single voices."

"Numbers mean everything, Uther. Think you that the Chiefs will be unmoved by the opinion of their people? Would you vote in defiance of your own people, flouting them simply because you wish it? You could, because you are their Chief. But how would that affect the way your people think of you? Do you think after that they'll follow you willingly, or any other Chief who disregards their wishes, into battle, into death?" Garreth paused to let that sink in. "Meradoc will vote for himself, and you will vote for yourself, so those two votes are gone. That leaves but five, and of those five you will need three. You'll have no time available for courting anyone, because the Choosing will begin the moment you arrive. Everyone else will have shown up already, and you can be sure that Meradoc was the first to get there, to lay his claim for support among the others."

"He'd serve himself better by keeping quiet. Meradoc has no skill in bending men to like him."

"Perhaps not, but he is an able man, you can't deny him that, and that will speak loudly for him. He leads his people well, and the only real victories we have won so far in this war with Cornwall have been his—his planning, his force and his leadership. There's more than one minor chieftain who thinks that Meradoc would make a strong King."

"Aye, and the people would weep beneath his feet forever after. Meradoc is a bully, Garreth, and he's greedy."

Garreth shrugged. "Ambitious, isn't that the Roman word? He wouldn't be where he is now if he were not ambitious, and neither would any of the others, including you."

Uther Pendragon drew a deep breath and looked about him before responding to that. The last of his men had long since vanished up the steep stream bed, and even the sound of hooves had faded into silence. Finally he returned his gaze to Garreth Whistler, and his voice was as expressionless as his face.

"You think him stronger than me? The better man?"

Garreth curled his lip and kicked his horse into motion. "I should knock you off your horse for even asking that, boy. Come, we ought to keep up with the others."

As Uther swung his horse around to follow, Garreth set his mount to the rocky slope, half turning in his saddle to talk back over his shoulder.

"All I meant was that you should be careful of how you behave— to your own men and to the men who must judge you before choosing you. Don't look too confident, and don't look arrogant. But above all, don't look too Roman! If you ride into the gathering wearing that armour, you'll destroy any chance you have of being chosen. You know the Chiefs. You know how they think, how they disapprove of anything they see as differentness. Don't hand them the power to thwart you. Old they may be—several of them too old, perhaps, to remember how it feels to be young—but none of them has lost the taste for exercising power when he can. This conclave gives them that opportunity . . . the power to kill younger men's dreams."

Uther was very quiet thinking about that as their horses scrambled up the last portion of the steep climb to the crest. He knew Garreth was right, that something as insignificant as his appearance could cost him the King's Chair. How much better it would be if he could spring into prominence and into the kingship as his grandfather had.

Within the Pendragon Federation, Ullic, as Uther knew, had been the first man in living memory to serve as both King and War Chief. He had been elected King by the unanimous choice of his fellow Chiefs when he was only twenty-one, directly following the death of his own father, Udall. But Ullic Pendragon had already been wearing the huge Eagle Crown of the War Chief of Pendragon at the time of his election to the kingship.

A natural warrior, bred of generations of fierce fighters who led their clan with honour and distinction, Ullic had come early to recognition upon the unforeseen death, in a brilliantly executed ambush, of Ullic's Uncle Daffyd, War Chief of the Federation, and his entire staff of close subordinates. Their leaderless army found itself outflanked and outmanoeuvred by an enemy far more numerous than they had expected, led by a brilliant general, rather than by the simple seagoing brigand that they had all expected to find in command, and disaster loomed over all of them.

Within moments of the death of his commanding general, a lacklustre nonentity called Dennys ap Corfyl found himself promoted, ipso facto, to the rank of senior surviving chieftain in a trapped army. The hapless fellow, caught flat-footed, was overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control or understanding. To young Ullic Pendragon, who had only recently celebrated his seventeenth birthday, it was evident that the man was totally at a loss. What few wits the fellow possessed were by that time thoroughly addled, and the faces of the men around him, who looked to him for leadership and salvation, were beginning to show strain and signs of panic.

Ullic reacted immediately and without thought, springing forward from where he stood and using a nearby boulder to help him jump up to a rocky ledge where all could see him and know who he was. For the first time ever, he raised his great voice to draw all eyes to him, and then he began to issue orders, crisp and terse and succinct. It never crossed his mind, after that first step, that anyone would seek or wish to gainsay him, and the men he harangued accepted his command immediately and instinctively, moving to obey his fast-flying instructions without the slightest hesitation.

He called on all of them to form up in their clan groups behind him and to follow the moves of his uncle's own personal guard of clansmen, over which he then assumed undisputed control. As he took his place at their head, they cheered him once, loudly and deeply, as their kinsman and commander, and then he led them forward, directly towards the left centre of the enemy army that had outflanked them. Inspired by his fiery enthusiasm, they smashed through the extended enemy formation facing them and then wheeled back to left and right, the sheer mass of their numbers and the fury of their determination rolling the enemy up in confusion, battering at them and pressing them back upon themselves so that they hampered each other in their dense-packed closeness.

There was nothing Roman about the way Pendragon warriors fought. They fought as their ancestors had, in small, tight-knit groups of individuals who knew and trusted each other completely. Capable of combining with other groups to form heavy and dense formations, they preferred to preserve the integrity of their small units, guarding one another's back and generally combining their weight and initiative to achieve the ultimate in ferocity and, with that, victory. Ullic, they quickly learned, could lead them with the sureness of a master, inspiring all of them with his flamboyant leadership, his courage, his immense strength and his great roaring voice. Within a very short space of time on that first day, the Pendragon forces went from being outflanked and close to defeat to being utterly dominant, sending their attackers reeling and finally routing them completely.

That afternoon when the battle was over and the last of the fleeing enemy survivors had disappeared, one of his father's senior veterans brought Ullic the dead War Chief's great helmet, and backed by the cheers and applause of the army, he insisted that the young man put it on. It was against tradition, for no one ever presumed to wear the Eagle Crown of a dead War Chief, but the day had been special, and Ullic felt he had acquitted himself well and given honour to his uncle and his kinsmen, and so he held the helmet above his head, straight-armed, and then lowered it gently over his brows, shouting his father's name.

At that moment, as the weight of the heavy helmet settled on his brows, young Ullic felt the truth at last: his uncle was dead. The knowledge must have overwhelmed him. Unable to speak, he removed the helmet at once and held it up in front of him, blinking his eyes rapidly until they grew clear enough for him to see and appreciate what he was looking at. The Eagle Crown was the personal symbol of the War Chief of the Pendragon Federation. Each one was different, just as each man who held the post was different, and for the making of each crown a golden eagle, the greatest and most majestic of all birds of prey, had to die.

The body of each Eagle Crown was a curved, conical helmet of fine iron, larger and more massive-looking, although actually less thick than a regular war helmet. Specially crafted to be an exact fit for the head of the new War Chief, its interior was padded and filled, then lined with a wide, thick, comfortable leather headband. High on the front of this huge helmet, the eagle's head was affixed, cunningly worked and furnished with gleaming, wicked eyes of glass above the polished, viciously curving beak. Beneath that the feathers of the neck and breast swept down to cover all sign of the helmet's iron forehead. The wings, folded but partially open, their pinions not quite at rest, were then fitted carefully on each side, and the magnificent tail feathers were attached behind, meticulously set, arranged and spread so that they swept outwards and down to cover the shoulders of the wearer. It was as though the wearer carried a living eagle on his head, poised to take flight. Each Eagle Crown was a superb work of art, a tribute to the man who wore it and to the skills and energy of the craftsmen who fashioned it, and this one had belonged to Daffyd Pendragon. He would never wear it again, nor would Ullic ever see him again. He turned away, holding the crown out to the man who had brought it to him. The other took it in silence, and Ullic walked away; the onlookers watched him leave in utter silence.

Ullic Pendragon became the most admired War Chief the Federation had ever produced. His armies never suffered a defeat in all the years of his command, and his fame was widespread, his name known and respected far beyond the boundaries of his own lands. Even the Roman Overlords, as they used to call themselves, admired and respected Ullic for what he was.

Now Ullic's grandson, Uther, could feel the weight of the legacy of his forefathers lying heavily on his soul. Five generations of his direct ancestors, one after the other, had borne the title King of the Federation. Would his be the hands to lose their grip on the title?

Uther kicked his horse into motion and hurried to join his men, who were taking a well-deserved rest at the top of the hill.

Once the troops had fed and watered their mounts and enjoyed a brief respite from their saddles. Nemo Hard-Nose, the decurion in charge, barked the order to remount. Uther stirred himself, brushing away the crumbs of dried nuts and grain that had fallen on his breast as he ate from the small bag of food in his scrip. He pulled the drawstring tight, slipped the leather bag back into his pouch and rose to his feet, making his way to his horse without having said a word to anyone since he dismounted. For once he was completely unaware of the looks on the faces of the men as they filed past him, until one wag barked out, "King's escort. Commander!"

Uther's head jerked at that, and then he barked a solitary note of laughter before swinging up into his saddle, kicking his horse into motion and riding forward alone, passing the forty men of his squadron and delivering an occasional offhand remark to one or another of them until he rode at their head again.

The ground over which they now rode was utterly different from the thickly forested land at the bottom of the steep ascent they had just climbed, and they made swift, easy progress riding across a treeless, gently sloping plateau that fell away to the west and southwest, covered with long, tasselled grasses that reached as high as their horses' bellies. The terrain was studded in places with high, solitary granite tors that reminded Uther of menhirs, the ancient upright monoliths that his people believed were the dwelling places or the resting places of their gods. A movement caught his eye in the distance below, and for a time he watched the moving dot that he knew to be a returning scout making his way towards them. When less than a hundred paces separated him from the man, Uther held up his arm to halt his column and rode forward alone to greet the newcomer.

The scout had nothing to report. He and his companions had seen no signs of life within a clear hour's ride, ahead or on their Hanks. About a mile below, he reported, the meadow Uther and his men were crossing ended suddenly at the edge of a ridge, concealed from view now by a fringe of scrub. Beyond that the ground fell more precipitously, and from the bottom of the scree slope there was a narrow path to follow, little more than an animal track winding among and between low hills. Here and there it was almost choked with bush and thorn, and so might present difficulty for the horses. Apart from that, the scout reported, there was nothing: no human presence, no danger, no signs of life.

Uther thanked the man and raised his hand in the signal that the decurion behind him had been waiting for, and he heard, without looking, the sound of the relief troop of ten scouts separating from the remainder of the group. They would ride back now with the man who had brought the report and would relieve the men who had been scouting the land ahead since before daybreak, leaving the weary scouts either to return to the following troop or to rest for a while until the troop came up to them. Uther waved the remainder of his squadron back into motion before the departing group had ridden a hundred paces, and he beckoned to Garreth to ride with him.

As they paused at the crest of the ridge that fell away beneath them, Uther became conscious of the heat of the early-afternoon sun against his armour, and he hitched his shoulders uselessly against the itchy trickle of a bead of sweat that suddenly broke free and made its way down between his shoulder blades. He reached up and loosened his chin strap, pulling his heavy helmet off and blotting sweat from his face with the sleeves of his tunic. Uther kicked his horse's flanks, and he and Garreth began to ride down the treacherous slope, leaning backwards so that at several points their animals' rumps almost touched the earth.

By the time they reached level ground, the two men found themselves alone again, because the first bend in the narrow path before them had already taken the others out of sight and hearing. They loosened their reins and spurred their mounts to a canter to catch up, but they were surprised at how long it took to overtake them, for the tightly twisting path on which they now rode was narrow and constrictive, offering no room for the horses to extend themselves, and frequently doubled back upon itself so that at times they seemed to be riding back the way they had already come. When they did catch up, they were constrained to ride behind the others for what Uther estimated to be a mile, breathing in the dust stirred up by everyone who had preceded them along the stone-strewn, dusty trail that led them, in some places, between high walls of solid rock. It was slow going, but eventually they passed through the last of these rocky defiles, and the pathway opened up sufficiently for them to pass on up to the head of the column, and thereafter they rode in relative comfort.

It was Garreth who detected the noise first, and he called, "Uther! Did you hear that?"

Uther pulled his horse to a halt and turned back. "No. What was it?"

Garreth cocked his head, listening intently. Behind him, the men following came to a halt, suddenly tense, aware of Garreth's attitude.

"Bear," Garreth said then, and Uther realized that he had been watching the other man's mouth, waiting to read his lips, because his own hearing was muffled by the protective earflaps of his heavy helmet. He tugged it off as quickly as he could and heard the sound immediately, far off and muffled by distance, yet unmistakably the enraged roaring of the largest animal in the forests and mountains of Britain.

"Sounds like a big one."

"Aye, big and very unhappy. I wonder what has him so stirred up?"

"It's probably a sow with cubs. Something must have threatened her."

Garreth looked sideways at him. "You think so? What kind of something?"

Uther shrugged. "Another bear?"

"Then why can we hear only one? If there were two of them, they'd both be roaring, trying to frighten each other off."

Uther glanced at the men behind Garreth, all of whom sat listening intently, staring off in the direction of the distant noise. "What, then?" he asked. "It's lasting a long time."

"Only one thing other than another bear could cause a bear that much fury, and that's a wound."

"Inflicted by a man, you mean—but there's no one around here, according to our scouts."

"It could be one of them, one of our scouts. Do you want to come and look?"

Come, not go, Uther noted. He nodded, not even pausing to think. "I think we'd better, although whoever wounded it will be dead by the time we get there."

"I think not. The roaring would have died down. He may be up in a tree. I think the thing can see him, but it can't reach him, and that's why it's making so much noise."

Uther nodded and glanced to where the decurion sat watching them. "Nemo, keep the others here. Garreth and I are going to see what that's all about."

Nemo Hard-Nose nodded, raising her right hand to her cuirass in an acknowledging salute, but Uther and Garreth were already moving off the trail. Both men pulled their long Pendragon bow staves from the leather sheaths that kept them close to hand hanging on the left front of their saddles. They paused before entering the trees to string the weapons, and then they moved forward again, and the leafy boughs quickly screened them from view.

They rode several hundred paces into the forest before abandoning their mounts among bushes too dense to penetrate on horseback. Now they were moving forward on foot, covering perhaps the same distance again.

"Can you see anything? The whoreson sounds as though he's right in front of us."

The bellowing of the bear was deafening. The growth here, as it had been all the way downward from the path, was almost solid: rioting thickets of bramble, elder and hawthorn and chest-high grasses among which sapling beech, elm and birch struggled for survival. Uther held up a hand to forestall any more questions as he peered all around. They were in the beast's element. It lived here among this choking growth where they were blind and hampered, their ability to use their weapons critically impaired.

"Can't see a damned thing and I don't like the feeling," he said eventually, turning back to Garreth. As he spoke, his eyes were moving, looking upwards for a tall tree nearby, and he saw one immediately, perhaps forty or fifty paces from where they stood. It was a large oak, the closest of several he could see now. "Over there," Uther said, indicating the direction with a nod of his head. "If we can get up there into one of those, we'll be able to see more than we're going to see from here."

"Aye, and we'll be safer, too. This is madness. Let's go."

They moved as quickly as the undergrowth would permit, leaving the enraged roaring behind them on their right, and even before they reached the first tree, they saw that they would be able to scale it, although Garreth grunted that it looked easy enough for the bear to climb it, too. Uther made for the lowest limb, but Garreth caught at his cloak.

"Wait, let me go up first. I'm not wearing armour. You stay here until I see what's to be seen."

Moments later, he was leaning forward, shouting to Uther below his perch to tell him that there was a clearing ahead of them and that he could see the bear. Uther reached for a low branch and hauled himself upward until he was standing beside Garreth, only slightly out of breath from the effort of climbing in full armour.

"Ancient gods! Will you look at that thing!"

Uther ignored the comment. He had taken in the giant beast in one glance. What he needed to see most was the reason for its rage.

"There, Garreth! There's a man trapped up there on the cliff just above the beast, beyond its reach. Whoever he is, he's finished if we don't help him. It looks like he's hanging on to the sheer cliff face, and he can't move up or sideways. Look! The damn thing's within a handspan of his feet. If it backs up and runs at the cliff, it'll reach him."

At that point the bear did exactly what Uther had predicted, backing away and then hurling itself towards the cliff face, where it launched itself upward in a mighty leap. The man trapped there braced himself somehow on his arms and drew up his knees, and the mighty paw that swept towards his legs rushed on by, seeming to miss him by little more than a finger's width.

"He won't last much longer," Garreth growled. "He's hanging on like a spider, but his weight's almost all on his arms. I'd hate to be up there in his place, wondering whose strength will give out first. At least he's not one of ours, as you said, so it's no loss to— Are you mad, man? You'll never hit that thing from here. You don't have a clear shot!"

Uther had positioned himself carefully on the huge oak branch beneath his feet, leaning into his own weight and pulling his bowstring back almost to his cheekbone. He sighted deliberately, his nostrils flaring, and then released the tension and lowered the bow, drawing a deep breath.

"I don't expect to hit it, although it's within range. You're right, there are too many branches between me and it. But if I can send one close enough to distract the thing, the fellow up on the cliff might be able to escape. It's better than doing nothing. We can't just leave the poor whoreson there to die, no matter who he is." He inhaled deeply again and held his breath, then leaned slightly forward, bracing himself with his left foot as he flowed into the motions of pull and release. The arrow arced high and fell, as far as they could gauge, close by the ravening bear. Neither of the distant antagonists noticed it.

"Damnation! We have to get closer. The growth opens up over there, closer to them. That should give us a clearer shot at it."

"Aye." Garreth was already bending to climb down. "And it'll give that big black whoreson a clearer run at us, too." He leaped nimbly down to the ground, leaving Uther, hampered by his armour, to descend more slowly, but once both were on the ground, they struck out directly towards the sounds of the deafening commotion ahead of them.

The going was difficult, and despite the fact that they knew the bear was directly ahead of them, there were moments when the vagaries of sound made it seem as though the noise had passed them by and lay behind them. They pushed forward, ignoring the apparent evidence of their ears and aware that they had no dire need to be silent; the bear's own bellowing would mask the sounds of their progress. And then, quite suddenly, they were at the edge of the dense vegetation, and a clearing lay in front of them, formed by a spreading mound of scree that had fallen from the cliff that now faced them. The bear's back was to them, at the very top of the scree mound less than thirty paces from where they stood, and it stood upright on its hind legs, vainly, frantically attempting to reach the cringing figure that clung to the cliff face just beyond its reach. Uther tried to see the man's face, but a rough outcropping of rock kept most of the man's head hidden.

Uther gripped Garreth's arm. "Do you know him?"

"I don't know. Can't see his face from here, but he's one of us, Pendragon. Must be. Look, his bow's over there beyond the bear. He had time to fire one arrow, at least. It's sticking in the thing's left side. Deep. See it? No wonder it's so angry."

Uther paid no attention. His mind was racing. "Go you to your right, cautiously," he said quietly. "Keep moving until you have a clear shot and we can take him in a crossfire. He'll be confused to see two of us, but he'll move quickly enough once he decides which of us to charge. At that point, the other must rain arrows on him, all well aimed, for the chosen man will have but a short time to live lacking help."

Garreth nodded and began moving quickly but cautiously away to his right. As he did so, the man on the cliff face saw him and called out. Perhaps he was startled or in his relief he might have tried to free one hand to wave. In any case, he lost his hold on the cliff face and tumbled forward, head first and screaming, to land directly on top of the bear. The beast, which dropped to all fours again, did not see the hurtling figure falling towards him until the man's full weight landed on its back. The huge animal leaped away in fright and reared up, roaring in protest, sweeping its head around to see its unknown attacker and failing to notice that its former tormentor was now sprawled at its feet. Instead, it saw Uther, alone by the forest's edge.

He had been in the act of nocking an arrow to his bowstring, and he froze as the beast's small, furious eyes found him and focused upon him, so that for a moment it seemed as if the whole world had stopped moving. The enormous animal hung motionless, and Uther had time to see the pig-like eyes take note of him; then the creature dropped to all fours and charged, bellowing, it’s terrifying jaws stretched wide, lined with huge, glistening teeth. It seemed to move slowly at first, and its lumbering motion broke the initial shock of terror that had held Uther spellbound so that he raised his weapon immediately and leaned forward into his shot. Even as he did that, however, his mind acknowledged the chilling speed with which the creature was now approaching, flashing across the broken ground, its great maw gaping, slavering for his blood. One shot, he knew, was all he could hope for against such speed—one tiny arrow against the onrushing mass.

Now the space between him and the terrifying creature had shrunk to less than half and he had not yet decided where to aim. There was no need to choose, however; the creature's wide-stretched maw was all he could see, and he sensed the soft palate and the moist, vulnerable flesh of its throat behind the lolling tongue and flashing teeth. His bow was fully bent, and he released his arrow, leaning into it and watching the speed of its flight as it snapped across the intervening distance and smashed fully against one of the enormous, curving canines, snapping it off and driving it back into the open mouth even as the tooth's ivory deflected the point and sent the arrow flashing outward. It missed the open throat and ripped through the creature's cheek instead before vanishing beyond its left shoulder.

The beast was checked by the violent impact of the hard-shot arrow, knocked off balance by the shocking force of it and stunned by the agonizing intensity of the pain it caused. It lurched and reeled sideways, then swayed and fell over backwards like a drunken man, but it rolled even as it fell and rose immediately to its feet again, and now there was a new note to its screaming.

Uther was surprised to find a second arrow in his hand, the notched end of its shaft already hugging the bowstring. Now he swung the bow up again and fired in one smooth motion, seeing the missile's flight end this time in the great animal's throat, burying itself almost to the flights and jolting the mighty creature again as Uther pulled a third arrow into place. He could see blood—old blood—on the beast's coat, some of it already clotted, and the arrow Garreth had noticed earlier, a short, broken, blood-covered shaft protruding from the beast's left side below the ribs. Obviously it was the shot that infuriated the bear in the beginning. It must have been aimed badly or carelessly by the man on the cliff, who having failed to kill his quarry, had become the hunted one.

The enraged behemoth rose to its full height, its arms extended and its enormous claws clearly visible, and Uther suddenly had a vision of the great silver bear emblazoned on his cousin Merlyn's black cloak. That emblem represented the monstrous bear that Merlyn had attacked and killed single-handedly from the back of a horse, and in his terror Uther wondered at his cousin's courage on that occasion. Merlyn had killed his bear; Uther had no confidence that he would kill this one.

He raised his bow for his third shot as the bear rallied to charge him again, but even as it began to move, another arrow struck it from the side, smacking into its body with a solid, meaty sound and piercing deep beneath its shoulder. The great beast reared up and swung about with an outraged bellow, and Uther felt a stirring of pity, suddenly sure that they would kill the animal now and that this was a wretched fate for such a magnificent creature. Another arrow struck and then immediately after that another, which Uther guessed must have been fired by the man who had fallen from the cliff. His bow had been lying on the ground close to where he fell.

The bear swung around again to face this new attack, and as it did so, Garreth Whistler's third arrow seemed to sprout from its eye, snapping the giant head backwards. For long moments the bear seemed to hang immobile, its entire body somehow hunched, as though straining away from the agony of the outrageous pain being thrust upon it, and then it turned once again and staggered a few steps towards Uther, who held his bow steady now, inexplicably unwilling to loose his third arrow, which was still nocked and drawn. The massive creature slowed almost to a halt as it approached, and its roaring dwindled quickly into silence. Watching it, Uther was reminded of a scene from his boyhood when a wild and deranged man in Camulod, after wreaking havoc among his neighbours and emerging victorious from fighting with half a score of opponents, some of them members of the Camulodian guard, had suddenly stopped and keeled over in the street, regaining consciousness later with no recollection of anything that had happened.

Even as that thought occurred to him, the bear straightened up completely to stand erect on its hind legs, pawing at the arrow protruding from its head and mewling softly and incongruously in pain. Then it swayed and fell slowly sideways, toppling to the ground so close to Uther's feet that he had to skip away to keep clear of it, lowering his weapon yet keeping it at full draw. He knew the bear was dead as it fell, but even so, he watched it closely, staying warily out of reach of its fearsome claws. Only when it lay motionless did he release his pent-up breath and the tension in his bow.