Uther

It was some time before any of the three men spoke or stirred, and Uther realized that he was trembling violently. He swallowed hard and forced himself to move, fighting to appear casual and relaxed although all three of them knew that was impossible. He stepped to the carcass and looked down on it. Even dead and supine, the creature's bulk reached to above his knee. The huge head was shattered, the point of Garreth's last arrow having passed completely through the eye, transfixing the brain and then emerging through the back of the skull.

Uther glanced from the wound to Garreth. "Did you aim that shot?"

Garreth shrugged. "Aye, I tried for the eye, but it was fortune that led it home, not judgment. I thought the whoreson had you."

"So did I." Uther subsided onto a rotten, moss-crusted log alongside the dead bear and wiped his free hand over his face before laying his bow carefully on the ground along with the arrow it still held. Then he looked at the stranger who stood silent, his gaze moving from Garreth to Uther and back while he held one hand pressed to his face. A sullen stream of blood flowed over the man's wrist and trickled downward towards the cuff of his sleeve.

"Are you all right? How badly are you hurt?"

The man looked at his hand covered in blood and shrugged. "I'll live. Slashed my hand and banged my face when I fell. It's not as bad as it looks." He covered his bleeding left hand with his right, squeezing together the edges of the wound on the side of his palm. Uther could see now that the cut on his face was no more than a gash on his left cheek below the cheekbone.

"Who are you?"

It was Garreth who answered, before the other had a chance. "Owain's his name. They call him Owain of the Caves."

Surprised at the tone he heard in his friend's voice, Uther turned to look at Garreth, then switched his gaze back immediately to the stranger, who drew himself up until he was standing stiffly erect. Garreth spoke again, this time directly to the stranger. "That is your name, is it not?" The fellow nodded. "I thought so. I've seen you several times, although you never seem to come to our part of the world. You're one of Meradoc's men, one of his . . . captains, no? The newest of them all, if what I heard is true. You are . . . a Northerner, not even a Pendragon, am I right?"

Owain of the Caves inclined his head slightly for a second time in what might have been dismissal or agreement, but Garreth paid no attention.

"Came south with Meradoc last year, when he met last time with King Uric, but you kept yourself well removed from all that was going on. I noticed you, though, and wondered why you would be so unwilling to be seen. So I asked about you. Huw Strongarm said you were a newcomer, but already one of Meradoc's most trusted men . . . and he thought you might prefer to keep your face hidden, to keep you free for Meradoc's most important work, which demands faces that are not known . . ."

"What was this all about?" Uther nodded towards the dead animal close by his feet, choosing, for the moment, to ignore what Garreth was saying.

Owain of the Caves gazed back at him steadily for the space of several heartbeats and then shifted his gaze to the bear, shrugging slightly.

"I don't know. I only know it happened too quickly for me to do anything except what I did. I must have surprised it. It might have been asleep. I don't even know where it came from. One moment I was alone, crossing this clearing, and the next, this thing came roaring at me. I managed to get an arrow out, but it was too close for me to get a clear shot—it was coming at me too quickly." He looked about him, examining the ground. "I was right about here, I think. Yes, right by that tree there." He indicated a large, solitary conifer about live paces from where he stood. "I ran behind the tree, trying to break the line of the thing's charge, and it swerved to catch me as I went around, but I doubled back and gained about ten paces on it. Then I turned to take my shot, and my foot must have landed on something unsteady. I almost fell, and I loosed too soon and hit the whoreson in the ribs. That was the only chance I got, and I didn't know how much damage I had done, but I couldn't wait to see. I might have had time to get off another shot before it recovered from the first—it was up on its hind legs, screaming and smashing at the arrow—but I didn't want to have to wager on that. So I ran for the cliff face and managed to haul myself up out of reach just before it hit the wall beneath me. One pace slower, and I'd have been its dinner then and there." He looked up now at the sky, glancing at the afternoon sun. "That was about an hour ago."

"At least that long," Uther answered, mildly. "It's been an hour since we heard the roaring. We were about half a mile from here, I'd guess, up on the trail from the ridge behind us. Lucky for you Garreth doesn't wear a helmet."

"What?" It was clear Owain had not understood the comment.

Uther tapped his finger against the heavy metal helmet he wore. "I would never have heard the noise through this. Garreth was the only one among us riding bareheaded."

"Oh." Owain of the Caves looked at Garreth. "I owe you my hide then."

"No," Garreth Whistler responded, shaking his head slightly, his face empty of expression. "You don't. Up to me, I'd have left you here to die the moment I saw you were a stranger. Had I known who you were, in fact, I would have done the same, because I would have judged you no friend of ours." He reached into his scrip and pulled out a ragged piece of clean white cloth. "Here, wrap that around the cut on your hand." As he did so, Garreth continued. "Why risk my arse against a crazed beast like that for someone I don't know? Only a fool would do anything that stupid." He nodded towards Uther. "He's the fool, although I'd not say that to his face normally. He decided he wouldn't leave you here to die, and so we came running, and he almost ended up dead. You owe him your hide. Here, hold your hand still. I'll tie that."

Uther watched in silence as Garreth used the cloth to bind up Owain's injured hand, ripping off narrow strips from the edges with his teeth to use as bindings for the makeshift bandage. As the final knots were being tied, Owain looked over Garreth's shoulder to his rescuer and nodded a wordless acknowledgment.

Uther stood up, picking up his bow as he did so, and slipped the unused arrow back into his quiver. "What were you doing here in the first place?"

Owain drew a deep breath, pursing his lips tightly. He looked once more at the dead bear and then up towards the spot where he had been trapped on the cliff face. When he spoke, his words were more of a question than an answer.

"Uther Pendragon."

Uther kept his face expressionless. "What about him?"

"That's you. You're him."

"What makes you think that?"

Something that might have been the barest hint of a smile flickered briefly at one corner of the stranger's wide-lipped mouth. "Garreth Whistler went away more than a month ago to bring Uther Pendragon back for the Chiefs' Gathering. Garreth Whistler has come back. You came with him."

Garreth spoke before Uther could respond. "Pity it would be to have saved your life only to discover a need to spill your blood myself, Cave Man."

The other man nodded, unperturbed. "Aye, I can see that, but you'll find no need. Owain of the Caves is a man who pays his debts." His eyes flicked back to Uther. "This time, the debt is a life. It is paid."

Uther tilted his head to one side, a tiny smile of incredulity appearing on his face. "What? I'm not sure I understood you there. Are you saying you are now saving my life in return for your own?"

"Aye." A plain, bald statement of fact.

Uther's smile grew to a broad grin, and he looked to Garreth for a reaction. Garreth Whistler, however, was staring hard at Owain of the Caves.

"You were sent here to kill him?"

"I was sent here to make sure that Uther Pendragon would come late, if he came at all, to the Chiefs' Gathering. I'd have done it, too, if it hadn't been for the bear."

"How? You're a long way from where we crossed the ridge."

"Aye, but I was there when you approached it, and I watched you coming. Your scouts missed me completely, because they were looking for people and movement. I was one man, hiding until they passed me by. I picked out the one who must be Uther Pendragon and then fell back towards the place I had picked for my attack. The bear interrupted me. Had it not done so, you would have reached the spot by now, and I would have completed my task."

"And you yourself would be dead."

The tall man shrugged. "Mayhap, but I doubt it. I chose the place with care—and not for its beauty. It was a trap for you, not for me. Four ways out for me, all of them safe." Owain looked at Uther now for the first time since he had started speaking. "But you would have been dead with my first arrow."

"No, Garreth!"

Whistler's sword had slithered from its sheath with a quick, sibilant hiss as he dropped into a fighter's crouch. Now he hovered, glaring at the tall Northerner who stared back at him unconcernedly, making no attempt to defend himself. Slowly, visibly, the tension seeped away from Garreth and he straightened up, still holding his sword ready, to look at Uther. Uther, in turn, was gazing at Owain of the Caves, a peculiar expression on his face.

"So, you give me back my life." He nodded slowly. "I accept it, and I am grateful. What will you do now? Meradoc won't thank you for your scruples. He is the one who sent you, isn't he?"

The other shrugged. "Aye, so I'll move on. Meradoc has no patience when it comes to failure, and he'll take this as a failure. If I go back to him. he'll have me killed. He's a great one for rewarding treachery with death, is Meradoc."

"So am I. . . but you did nothing treacherous here."

Owain's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "Leaving you alive to cross him? He might see that otherwise."

Uther looked about him, coming to a decision. "Sheathe your sword, Garreth. Owain, will you ride with us for a way? I want to talk more with you, but we have a party of men up there on the path, as you know, and they will start fretting if we don't soon return."

Owain of the Caves shrugged his wide shoulders. "I don't ride, but I'll walk with you awhile if you'll feed me at the end of it. The devil there destroyed my pack, and with it all my food. After that, we can talk if you like, and then come morning I'll be on my way to wherever I end up."

Uther glanced down one last time at the carcass of the bear. The blood-filled eye socket was already filled with a heaving, crawling mass of metallic-looking flies, and the buzzing of hundreds more was growing stronger as he looked. He counted quickly, estimating that six of the arrows that had killed the animal were salvageable. He nodded his head.

"Good. Then let's retrieve these arrows and get started."

Chapter FIFTEEN

It was late in the afternoon before they found a suitable spot in which to build a camp for the night. Uther had had no opportunity to talk further with Owain of the Caves since rejoining the main party that afternoon, but he had really not sought one. After introducing him briefly on their return to the curious troopers, he left the stranger to his own devices.

Owain had walked silently ever since, keeping close to Garreth's side. Garreth, for his part, showed no hostility to the man walking beside him, but neither did he go out of his way to make him feel welcome.

Some time after that, Uther's scouts reported finding some strange tracks, and he decided to ride out himself to look at them. Rather than risk wasting time, however, he checked first with Owain to determine whether the tracks might have been made by others in his party, but Owain assured him that he had travelled alone.

Less than two hours later when Uther returned, he smelled the appetizing aroma of roasting pork even before he reached the camp. Early in the afternoon, while Uther and Garreth had been dealing with the bear, one of the troopers had found and killed a young wild pig, a yearling, and now the entire squadron was hovering close to the fire, salivating over the sight of it turning on the spit. Bear meat was all very well, and few of the men doubted that some people might think it a delicacy, but for sheer delight in the mouth, nothing could compete with young pig.

After he unsaddled his horse and rubbed it down for the night, Uther shouldered his bedroll and made his way to where Garreth and Owain sat together beside a fire of their own, their backs against a long, mossy log. They shifted to make room for him between them, and Owain grunted a question.

"Did you find out who made the tracks?"

Uther straightened up in the act of stooping to lay his bedroll down. He could not decide whether Owain was interested or merely making conversation. He nodded.

"Aye. They were all made by one man, coming and going."

Owain's eyebrows went up. "One man? And your scouts had to take you out there to tell them that? Could they not work it out for themselves?"

"They had by the time I arrived, but they had to find a soft spot in the earth in order to do it. Mountainous terrain shows tracks, but not in great detail. They had to look for more than a mile in both directions before they found a watercourse with soft ground. Must have been some hermit or anchorite or madman living up here alone and walking each day to water. He wore a track eventually, and that's what my scouts found. They're not trackers, you understand, but they are the best at what they do."

"And what is that?"

"Fighting on horseback with disciplined tactics."

"Ah!" Owain nodded and returned his gaze to the fire.

Garreth met Uther's gaze and rolled his eyes, saying nothing.

Uther grinned and lowered himself to sit between them, stretching out his hands to the fire and thankful that in summer there was no need to pitch a tent. He had barely settled, it seemed, when a shout went up from the cooking fires, and it was time to eat.

Afterwards, sated with the delicious, fatty meat of the young pig, Uther sat gazing at Owain of the Caves, who in turn sat staring into the fire. Nemo Hard-Nose had shared their fire for the duration of the meal but was now gone, seeing to the first guard watch of the night. Garreth sat with his head back against the log behind him, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the fire, breathing deeply, perhaps asleep.

Owain turned from the fire and looked away into the darkness beyond. "Fire blind," he said without looking at Uther. "You can see wondrous things in the depths of a fire, but nothing at all when you move your eyes away. You said you wanted to talk to me. Ask your questions, then. But know I might not answer them."

Garreth opened his eyes at that and sat up, stretching hugely. "Well," he said, "I might sit here all night listening to the two of you exchanging thoughts, and I might even learn something from it. . . But one thing I already know, learned long since: if I have no part to play in two men's talk, it's a waste of time, and I might as well be warm and snug abed. I'll bid you a good night and pleasant dreams, if e'er you get to rest."

Smiling, Uther watched him depart and then turned back to Owain of the Caves. "He is a good friend, Garreth Whistler."

"Mayhap. I'd be no judge of that. Ask me your questions."

Uther stirred and shifted his backside, searching for more comfort. "I have a few, but I think I know the answers to most of them already. Do you really believe that Meradoc would have you killed for not killing me? If I am any judge of men. and I believe I am. your loyalty is faultless."

That drew him a wry, sidewise look that condemned him as a fool. "You are still alive, and not even delayed in your journey. Therein lies an end to both my usefulness and my loyalty in Meradoc's eyes."

Uther shook his head. "Am I that big a threat to him?"

"Ask yourself that, not me. My only care now is staying alive. The gods served me a bitter dish today, but I learned long ago never to question what the gods offer."

Owain turned his gaze towards the fire again so that the leaping flames picked out the details of his long, clean-shaven face with its wide mouth and deep-graven jawline. Uther searched that face for signs of bitterness or anger, but he saw only a strange, almost melancholy sadness in the man's eyes.

"Meradoc demands perfection in his . . . followers," Owain said. And then, disconcertingly, he smiled—the first real smile Uther had seen from him—and reached down to pull a burning twig from the fire. He held it up to his mouth and blew at the flames before he continued, crinkling his eyes against the sting of the smoke as the tiny flames died out. "We are but few, we who do Meradoc's bidding, and for our services we are well rewarded. But as the payment for success is great, beyond a poor man's dreams, so, too, is the penalty for failure.

"Loyalty, obedience and success. Those are Meradoc's demands. He sent me out to perform a task, and I have failed to do it. I am a walking corpse until my former allies find me."

"That is insanity. Where will you go? I mean, I know you've said you don't know, but surely your friends—"

"Friends are for ordinary folk who live and behave in ordinary ways. I kill men to please those who employ me. Men such as I never have friends."

"You are a warrior. All warriors are killers, Owain. That's what the word means."

Owain of the Caves turned and looked directly at Uther. and the younger man was astonished to see what he took to be pity in the other's gaze.

"I know that, Uther Pendragon. But you are wrong in this . . . I am no warrior. You are a warrior. Warriors make war. They stand and fight or run away, according to the rules of war—if such things truly exist. The way I see it, those rules are made by those who win, or want to win, and have the strength to try. Warriors fight, and they take pride in being seen to fight. People like me, on the other hand . . . we never fight unless we must. Fighting involves the risk of being killed, so I avoid it. I am a killer, bought and sometimes, though seldom, sold. I often kill in stealth, and sometimes I kill openly, but I never, ever kill in the heat of the moment. My killing is deliberate; it is planned. Few of my victims ever see me coming or recognize the moment of their death."

Uther kept his face straight, despite his profound shock. He had known many men throughout his life who were little more than brutes—vicious and violent and lawless—but he had never before met a man who could speak calmly as this man did of casual, dispassionate killings carried out on behalf of others in cold blood and for personal gain.

Uther cleared his throat. "What do you mean by 'bought and sometimes sold'?"

Owain flicked the twig back into the fire. "Meradoc has sometimes sold my services to others."

"He sold them? Not you?"

The barest shrug of his wide shoulders was the only indication that Owain had heard the question, and for a long time Uther thought he was not going to answer. Then the words emerged in a flat monotone. "My services were his, for him to . . . bestow. I did what he instructed me to do."

"How long have you been doing this, this—killing?" Uther resisted using the word that was in his mind, murdering.

"I have never not done it. It's what I do."

"What, you were born a killer, even as a babe?" Uther, irritated by the man's disinterested monotone, recognized the pettiness of the question even as it left his lips, but he was incapable of biting it back.

"I must have been. I have no other memories. There was a woman once who cared for me, I think, but she was killed one night when I was very young. I tried to rescue her, to help her, I suppose, but I was a helpless brat of seven, mayhap less. They beat me and broke my legs and threw me in the fire. That's why I limp."

Uther glanced down at the long, trousered legs stretching towards the fire. "I saw no limp."

"I limp."

"Who were 'they'?"

He watched the profiled face break into a wolfish, bitter grin. "My father? Brothers? Let's say my family. They were a small clan, and I have seen enough since then to know they were not. . . not as others are. At the time, though, I knew no other people, no other way of being. I thought they were all there was."

Uther felt a rush of gooseflesh, and the short hairs on his neck stirred in sheer horror at the vision of the seven-year-old boy squirming in the middle of a roaring fire.

"Who pulled you out, from the fire? You said your legs were broken."

"Aye, they were. It was another woman, Jess, I think her name was. Couldn't stand the noise or the stink, she said, so she dragged me away and threw me into a corner in another cave, and I lay there till I healed."

"What caves? Would I know them?"

"No, you would not know them, nor would you wish to. It has been more than twenty years since I last saw them, and I have no wish to go back. Anyone who passed that way became our means of living from the one day to the next. We killed whoever came along . . . robbed them, then killed them. Kept the women alive, for a while at least, until we found others, but we always ended up killing them. Sometimes we ate them, parts of them, if the winter had been long. Eventually, after too many travellers had been lost, people stopped coming that way, so we went out to hunt them.

"One day, some of our people were pursued and followed home. When the fighting was over, I was the only one left alive, and that was because I had been thrashed and thrown into a hole again the day before. The men who had come found me there, half dead, and took me out and made a slave of me until I grew too big to beat. Then one night I killed my keeper and left."

Uther had never heard anything to equal this, although he knew there were terrifying tales told of such things in the distant regions of the land, far from the holdings and customs of the major clans.

"Who were these people, the ones you grew up among?"

"The Cave People. They had no other name that I, or they, knew of. They lived barely, and to live, they killed."

"And that is how you grew up. No wonder you do what you do. but—if that's the way you live, why would you scruple to kill me? Especially when you knew it would cost you your own life?"

Owain drew a long, single-edged dirk from his belt and lingered the edge of the blade, and watching him, Uther experienced no more than a momentary, fleeting surge of alarm. After inspecting the weapon closely for several moments, Owain turned it in his fist, bent forward at the waist and drove its point into the ground, right at the fire's edge.

"I am sitting here wondering why I am telling you all this," he said mildly. "I kill because I have always killed, and life—my own included—has never seemed to be an important thing to me. We were all born to die. The killing provides enough wealth for me to live in comfort. But I do not steal, Uther Pendragon, nor do I lie. I do not harm women casually. I do not eat the dead. I pay my debts, I keep myself away from simple folk who would be frightened by my shadow, I live according to a way of life, by rules I made myself, and I respect the gods.

"Not long after I killed my keeper and ran off—I must have been fourteen years old, or something close to that—I fell sick and almost died. I lay unconscious in a wood somewhere, close by a spring, and I was found there by an old man and his wife who lived nearby. They took me home and into their lives, and by the time I had grown healthy again and tit to walk, a process that took months, they had . . ." Owain's voice faded away for a moment as he sought a word. "They had tamed me . . . I suppose that would be the proper word. I was a wild creature when they found me, feral and unnatural and utterly devoid of any trace of civilization or humanity, trusting no one and nothing. They tamed me. They taught me, by their example, by treating me with decency, tolerance and great patience, that there is kindness in the world. And then, with them, for a time, the only time I can remember, I was . . . free of care.

"Their names were Gerrix and Martha, and they wove baskets and sold them. Gerrix had lost a leg as a young man. He had been a cleric then, in the home of some high-ranking Roman magistrate. He taught me to read and to write during the first winter I spent in their home. He had a store of books that was his greatest and only treasure, and I read all of them several times. Gerrix and I would discuss them, because he had no one else with whom to speak of such things. He taught me much, including how to speak, because the truth is that before he and Martha came into my life, I had never really spoken to anyone. The thought of speaking to another person for pleasure—of discussing something logically and without passion—could never have occurred to me."

"Evidently." Uther nodded his head. "How long did you remain with them?"

"For four years." The glow that had animated Owain's face was gone. "They were killed. In the fourth winter after I joined them, I went hunting. Game was not plentiful that year, and I was gone for nigh on two days. While I was gone, marauders found them and killed them. They took what they wanted, which could not have been much, and then burned the house . . ."

The silence that followed these words was so long that Uther thought again that Owain had finished, but as he began to say something that would express his condolences, the other sniffed and cleared his throat noisily.

"I found them . . . the killers, I mean. No great task. They had not expected to be followed. Four of them. I captured them all alive, and then I killed them, very slowly, very thoroughly and very painfully, one at a time, taking care to remind them each day of why they were dying. By the time the last of them died, having watched his friends precede him, his regret at having led them in doing what they did was very real.

"Somehow, I don't know how, someone found out what I had done and told others. Soon afterward, another man, a wealthy man, came to me and offered to feed and clothe me and provide a roof over my head in return for what he called my 'protective services.' From that day until this, I have made my living by selling those services. But thanks to the gifts I received from Gerrix, I have been able to do it on my own terms and according to my own beliefs."

Uther had listened carefully, wondering at the incomprehensible logic of this man. He could see that honour played a large part in the tall Northerner's behaviour, but he was at a loss to understand the workings and the dictates of that honour, since the man's professed way of life was in violation of all that Uther held to be honourable. He decided that he wanted to understand more.

"Tell me, Owain, why did you admit to me so quickly that you were sent to kill me? Had you no fear of our reprisals? We could have killed you then, before your words had died away."

"And if the gods had wished that, you would have. I but spoke the truth."

"I know that, but why? You could have waited and kept silent and then done what you were required to do afterward. You could have killed me when I least expected it and then returned to Meradoc as a hero. I don't understand why you made that decision . . . Or do you still intend to do it later?"

Owain of the Caves pulled his dirk from the ground and rubbed the point clean with the ball of his thumb, then turned his face towards Uther and smiled again. Uther was amazed at how the man's whole face lit up when he did so.

"Impossibility. You don't see that, though, do you?" He twisted his body, reaching behind him to replace the dirk in his belt. "Do you know anything of honour down there in that place called Camulod?"

"Of course we do."

"Well, then, you should have no difficulty understanding. You saved my life at risk of your own. That laid a heavy claim on me. How then could I kill you and be a man of honour?"

"Because it was an accidental thing, my saving you. Had I known you were there to kill me, I might not have been so quick to expose myself to that bear."

"You did what you were driven to do, Uther Pendragon. So did I. That's what a man—any real man—does."

"Hmm." Uther frowned slightly and shook his head in annoyance. "And so this with Meradoc. You claim he'll have you killed if he can find you, simply for behaving, as you see this thing, with honour. And yet I detect no anger in you towards him."

"What good is anger? It's a pointless thing, most of the time destructive."

"Very well, then. So you were to kill me, but the gods forestalled you. Why were you sent to look for me at all?"

"I was sent to make sure you came late to the Gathering. I told you that earlier. The decision to kill you was my choice, since I could think of no surer means of making you late."

"Meradoc did not order my death, then?"

"No, not in words, but his choice of messenger did not lack meaning."

"Because you tend to do things thoroughly."

Owain inclined his head slightly.

"So Meradoc sees me as an enemy."

"That seems obvious."

"Well, at least it's clear enough. I do not like Meradoc, but that hardly sets me apart from the mass. But I have never given him the slightest cause to see me as an enemy."

"Meradoc needs no cause for things like that. He is the cause. Think about that. You are not a stupid man, though I begin to wonder if you are not naive. It is not unheard of for an ambitious man to take matters into his own hands with power as important as a King's at stake. And yet for Meradoc there is more." The big man sat up straighter and sniffed, then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. "Guilt, man! There's cause enough for hatred and for fear . . ." His voice died away, and then resumed. "Look you, you saved my life and fed me well, and you have made no move to hinder me or hold me, so tomorrow I will be gone, and we may never set eyes each upon the other again. Your life for my life I gave, so accept this for the meal and the freedom. Think upon your father. Uric the King. Upon his death."

"I have thought much on it. He died by a poisoned arrow, shot by one of Lot of Cornwall's men."

"Aye, but where?"

Uther had grown tense. "What do you mean, 'where?' In battle, where else?"

"No!" Owain shook his head. "I don't know where you heard that tale, but Uric was in his camp, at night, in the middle of his army when he was killed. Now ask yourself this . . . how came the Cornish there in Uric's own camp? Who was in charge of the King's safety? There were guards who died for their carelessness that night, but who was responsible for assigning all those guards?"

"Meradoc?"

"Aye, Meradoc. Someone arranged things so the Cornishman could pass through ranks of guards. And Meradoc was in charge. He had the guards all killed at once, so great was his rage, for failing in their duty to the King. They were all dead almost before the word was spread."

"And dead men can't speak out, is that what you are saying?"

"You said it, not me."

"That is . . ." Uther's voice was choked with loathing. "You know this? You are convinced this happened?"

"No, I was far away that night, up in the north, so I don't know it. But I know Meradoc and I know his greed, and what his wishes were and are. Meradoc sees himself as High King of the Pendragon Federation, but Uric was already there in place. So, to a man hungry enough and peering through a shuttered door at food on a table, the problem would have seemed simple: remove the obstacle between you and the table, then eat your fill." He moved his legs and rose to his feet. "Is that cause enough for enmity? Ask him yourself, when next you meet him. Now I'm going to sleep. Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

Uther simply shook his head, incapable of speech, and watched Owain walk into the blackness beyond the fire's range.

"I had doubts of my own, but didn't want to voice them to you until I knew more. His words have the ring of truth to them." Garreth's voice came from the darkness of the trees behind Uther's back. Uther sat silent, then spoke without turning.

"How long have you been listening there? I thought you went to bed."

"I did. I couldn't sleep."

"You suspected this treachery of Meradoc's? You should have told me, Garreth."

"Told you what, that I smelled a stink of fish? We live beside the sea, Uther. Anyway, now you know more than I knew. What will you do?"

Uther rose to his feet and picked up his bedroll, then walked away into the darkness without answering. When he came to where Owain of the Caves was stooping to lie down, having spread his blanket beneath the boughs of an evergreen, he stopped and spoke.

"Owain!"

He heard a stirring in the blackness beneath the tree. "Aye?"

"You have a place with me if you want one. Meradoc might yet kill you, but before he does, he'll have to kill me and mine as well, and I intend to give him no chance at that before he dies."

There was silence for a spell, and then the voice spoke from the darkness. "I'll think on that."

"Good." Turning to leave, Uther stopped once again. "Think on this, too, while you're about it. I prefer to do my own killing, with my own weapons. Should you choose to stay with us, you will live in new ways and in new days. And if I ever call upon your services, you will deliver them openly, by my side and shoulder to shoulder with my friends, my companions and my warriors."

There was no response, and he walked away through the long grass, swinging his bedroll up over his shoulder and thinking deeply.

Chapter SIXTEEN

Daris ap Griffyd, son of Darin and grandson of the revered and long-dead Druid Derwent, stood high above the temple gazing down from the eastern heights of the earthen wall that sheltered the sacred place, vainly trying to empty his mind of distractions. Behind him and far below, the tide of movement and noise that had driven him away in a vain search for peace and quiet showed no sign of abating. It was, he knew, the inevitable accompaniment to a great gathering of people, but, coupled with the discord of his seething thoughts, it made it impossible for him to concentrate on what he should be doing. Grimly, conscientiously, he squeezed his eyelids shut and forced himself to focus upon what must be.

He would stand here again tomorrow, in this precise spot, but on that occasion he would be dressed in the spare but splendid regalia of Chief Druid, his bright red robes brilliant in the sunlight, his beard and his long white hair brushed and carefully combed beneath the leafy corona of mistletoe that would crown his head. The same great staff he bore today, the symbol of his rank as High Priest, would be in his right hand as always. It was a solid shaft of dried and polished oak, its upper length chased in spiralling whorls of beaten silver that swept up to enfold a sun disk of solid gold, a hand's span in diameter. He would stand alone then, too, isolated by his rank. But twelve paces beyond him, on either side, the people of the clans, awed into quietude for once by the solemnity of the occasion, would crowd along the circumference of the wall, waiting for the day's ceremonies to begin. Their presence in the temple itself would profane the sacred rites to be observed there that day, so the top of the protecting wall, where he stood now, was the closest they would come to the ceremonies below.

Daris willed away the vision of the crowd and concentrated only upon the place where they would gather. The triune symbolism of the site pleased him—a circle within a circle within a circle—and he breathed deeply in a pattern of long, regular breaths designed to permit him to immerse himself in its peaceful symmetry and to ignore the debilitating tension in his guts.

The outer circle on which he stood was a massive earthen wall erected by his people when the first rapacious Roman legions came to Britain, hundreds of years before. It had been built for one sole purpose: to protect and defend the hallowed ring of sixteen uniformly quarried and dressed menhirs—standing stones each twice the height of a man—that formed the second circle. This was the original temple created untold ages earlier by craftsmen who might have been Daris's own ancestors, although the ancient legends spoke of another, older race of smaller people who had lived here in the long-forgotten past. Fortunately, the wall had never been required, because although the Romans felt driven to eradicate the Druids of Britain, they never felt a need to invade or own the ancient temples that the Druids had built. In consequence, the original circle of ancient stones remained as it had been since time immemorial.

Twenty long paces, each interval exact, separated each of the standing stones from the baseline of the surrounding defensive wall, and the circle of stones itself was thirty great strides in diameter, the precision of the whole demonstrating that, no matter who the ancient architects and builders were, they possessed quarrying and construction skills the like of which were quite unknown in the land today.

The third circle, carefully laid out within the ring of the menhirs, was temporary, purely ceremonial: Daris himself had supervised its arrangement that very morning. This was a ring of eight large, solid, wooden chairs, each placed with great care five paces in front of a specific stone, so that the chair's occupant sat with his back to that stone, flanked by two others. Each chair was separated from the one directly facing it across the circle by twenty paces, and the chairs were as uniform as the menhirs, save for one. The one designated for the King was larger than all the others, though carved from the same ancient, blackened oak. It sat in front of the menhir at the westernmost point of the ring's circumference and faced directly east, towards the rising sun.

Tomorrow. Daris hoped and prayed, only the King's chair would sit vacant, for the King was dead. Tomorrow, all the seven Chiefs of the Pendragon Federation—given the blessing of the gods—would convene here to choose another King from their own ranks. And when the King was chosen and duly set in place upon the great King's seat, then one of the Chiefs' chairs would remain empty until the King died. Because the Chief ruled by right of heredity, the rank passing from father to son, that succession was usually a formality, with an appointee from the King's family sometimes filling the post during a boy's minority. Only very seldom, when a king died with no son to claim the Chief's chair, was the succession resolved by the elders of the clan council.

But would all seven Chiefs be present come the following day? That question was the reason for Daris's tension and ill temper. The Choosing must proceed regardless, and that, Daris suspected, might be disastrous for the people. There was already much ill feeling in the matter of this Choosing, for the choices were severely limited and none of the options was pleasing to everyone, or even to a clear majority. Three of the seven ruling Chiefs were too old to occupy the King's seat, another was too young, and a fifth was too infirm. All five were thus disqualified from kingship by ancient law, save for the possibility of ruling for a brief period in time of dire need— that gap the Romans called an interregnum—between the death of one King and the legal Choosing of the next. There would be no interregnum here, on this occasion. Two Chiefs were qualified to assume the King's place and sacred seat, and one of those was already in attendance at the Gathering.

Daris snorted and gripped his staff tightly in both hands until his knuckles whitened. His gaze flicked from one side of the inner circle to the other, singling out the chairs of the two men eligible to be chosen. The laws determining who might serve as a reigning King among the Celtic peoples were clear and specific. The King must be physically unblemished, in the prime of manhood and sound in limb and wind; he must be a warrior of high repute, renowned in battle and in hunting; and he must have wealth enough to provide his people with relief in times of great hardship. Both of these men were qualified in all the main respects, but Daris knew that each of them had serious shortcomings, flaws which, while they did not contravene the ancient laws, were yet strong enough to cast doubt on either one's ability to serve the people as he ought. Although Daris himself would have no vote in the Choosing of the King, as High Priest he must look to the welfare of the people. His opinions on the candidates were expected, and would be duly considered and heeded by most of the seven Chiefs. Daris had not yet raised his voice on behalf of either man, and that fact had not gone unnoticed. His silence, if it continued much longer, would be considered irresponsible by those who looked to him for guidance and support.

Daris turned away from the temple and looked outward and down to his left towards the distant encampments—one large and the other much smaller and set apart—that had sprung into being within the week that had passed. The wide, pleasant meadow in which they had been built had already been obliterated and turned into an arid wasteland by the comings and goings of thousands of people and livestock, and Daris knew from past experience that it would take a year and more for the pasturage to return to its normal lushness. But then, he reflected, these Gatherings—happening once in five, ten or a score of years—were the reason the meadow had been carved from the surrounding forest in the first place.

For as long as Daris could remember—and that remembrance included all the memories also held and passed down to him by those elders who had died during his lifetime—the ordinary people of the clans in this part of south Cambria had called themselves the Pendragon Federation. This term was not strictly accurate, however, and there were ambitious people in the crowd down there for this Gathering who would do anything in their power to substitute their own name for that of Pendragon. An attempt to do precisely that would be made at this coming Choosing.

Three clans made up the Federation: Llewellyn, Pendragon and Griffyd. The Romans, when they first arrived, had issued their own names to the clans, misunderstanding everything about them, from their makeup to their ancient holdings. Durotriges, they had called the southernmost, and Belgae the people directly to the north of those, not realizing, in their foreign ignorance, that these were people of the same ancestral blood, and that they were Pendragon, possessors of the land flanking the great estuary to the north of the peninsula that the Romans had called Cornua, the Horn, now known as Cornwall. The other two great clans, the Llewellyns and the Griffyds, from the southern half of Cambria on the western side of the estuary, the Romans had named the Silures and the Demetae, foolish names thrust by an invader on an unconquered people. In the aftermath of their adjustment to the Roman "conquest," the three clans mingled peacefully, melding their holdings so that they could coexist in peace and relative strength without attracting the ire of the conquerors, and over the hundreds of years that then elapsed, that mingling evolved into a federation, dedicated to preserving their joint holdings.

Three clans, Daris reflected now, but seven distinct groups among them: three Llewellyn, two Griffyd and two Pendragon, each ruled by a Chief. The attraction that had bonded them one to the other in the beginning had been self-serving—each of the three clans had hoped to preserve and enhance its own status through alliance with the others— but all three had prospered equally, sharing the benefits of their closeness. And so it had come about that for more than twenty generations now, the seven Chiefs had chosen from among their own ranks a King whose voice would speak for all the people and whose primary duty was to safeguard all of them from Rome's displeasure. From those earliest days, no clan-directed rule had governed the Choosing of the King; no sequence of clan names had been applied; no precedence or preference had been permitted. Each new King had been selected by his peers, acknowledged as the most suitable among them for the task and chosen according to the ancient law.

As Rome's presence and rule settled into peaceful occupation and civil administration, and its soldiers and citizens learned to live in the comfort and security of their wall-girt towns, the people in the remote mountain regions, among them the clans of the Federation, were largely left to live their lives as they wished, so that the Kings ruled in their own right and organized their own local defences against raiders in those far-flung rural areas where Rome had no desire to penetrate. The responsibilities of the King of the Federation were many and varied, but in essence they boiled down to being present and available at all times to act as paramount Chief, final judge and arbitrator in legal disputes among members of the three clans. While it was the responsibility of each individual Chief to settle disputes and other matters pertaining to the law amicably within his own clan, there were invariably situations in which an outside, clearly unbiased judgment was required in order to reach final settlement. Those judgments fell to the ruling King, or, when a King had died and no replacement had yet been selected, to the seven men who served on the Council of Chiefs.

Over the centuries, the Pendragon clan, thanks to the prowess of its warriors and the wealth accumulated by its thrifty traders, grew to be more powerful than the others, despite the fact that there were but two Pendragon clans as opposed to three Llewellyn, and for five generations past Pendragon had provided all the men selected in the Choosing as best qualified for Kingship, the greatest of those being Ullic Pendragon, father of the dead King Uric. The five successive Pendragon Kings had all been good men and good kings—good enough to have their name adopted as the Federation's own.

The home of the Pendragon was located on the southern side of the great estuary of the river that flowed by Glevum, nigh on a hundred miles to the north. There had once been a Roman garrison posted nearby, but it had never been a major or important posting, and the stone buildings erected there had soon fallen into neglect once the Province of Britain had been welcomed into the Pax Romana, the vaunted "Roman Peace" that had subjugated the entire civilized world for a thousand years and ensured the Imperial welfare. Much more important than the small Roman fort, however, was the ancient hill fort that overlooked it, which had survived there, according to local legend, for nigh on six hundred years. Its name was Tir Manha, meaning the Place of Strength, and it was as serviceable as it had ever been. When the Romans left their tiny buildings, the Pendragons moved back into Tir Manha, and over the ensuing decades and centuries it proved to be a perfect place from which to govern the diverse peoples and territories of the Federation. The mainland of Cambria, with its former Roman administrative centre of Caerdyff, lay less than an hour's journey by boat across the estuary, and the rest of the Pendragon lands lay to the south and east, with the great Tor of Glastonbury rising up out of the extensive sea marshes directly to the southeast, and the other ancient hill fort—the one that became Camulod—some five leagues, or fifteen Roman miles, to the south and east of that again.

Now, Daris knew, at least one man would like to see the end of the Pendragons' predominance. Meradoc, the strongest of the Llewellyn Chiefs, lusted for the King's seat and had been pleading his cause with the other Chiefs for months strongly enough, Daris feared, that he might win. The Chief Druid's eyes widened as this thought occurred to him, for until then, Daris had been unaware that he actually feared it. He sucked in a great breath and blew it out noisily, thrusting that thought away, too, as his eyes scanned the scene laid out before him.

King Uric had been dead now for almost two months. But the Federation was at war, and Daris had been forced to withhold the summons until a lull developed in the fighting. Now they had begun to assemble. Meradoc had been the first of them to arrive, six days ago, and four of the seven were now present, with their retinues, in the smaller of the encampments below. Three of those were the Llewellyn Chiefs, Meradoc, Cunbelyn and Hod the Strong, and the fourth was young Huw Strongarm, Chief of the northern Pendragon yet no more than a boy. Three yet remained to come, and two of those were the eldest of elders, Cativelaunus of Carmarthen and Brynn of Y Gaer, Chiefs of the Griffyd clan. Those two would arrive within the hour, for they were travelling together and their party had been seen that morning crossing the river ten miles to the north.

The only Chief now missing, with no word of his whereabouts, was the remaining Pendragon, young Uther, son of the dead King Uric, and it was he who was causing most of Daris's anxiety, for despite his being the only Chief not actively involved in the war in Cambria, Uther was the one who must stand against Meradoc Llewellyn, and Daris had serious doubts that he would—or should—do so. He sighed and muttered a curse beneath his breath. It was already too late for Uther to arrive in time. The odds were piled too high against him now. Accept it and be glad, he told himself. You're far too old a fool to be wasting time in wishful thinking.

The Choosing would take place tomorrow when the sun god rode highest in the summer sky, his benevolent influence at its greatest peak. The law was sacrosanct, backed by a thousand years of history, established long before this Federation ever gathered to choose Kings of its own. No man could interfere with it and none might force a cancellation or postponement of the solemn rites. The Chiefs would choose at noon.

Far away to the east, where the road met the forest's edge, Daris saw signs of movement where none had been before, and he watched for a while as a body of travellers came slowly into view. He felt his heartbeat surge at his first sight of them, but even as he began to hope, he recognized that this was the double retinue of the two Chiefs whose coming had been announced earlier. Daris sighed and swallowed his disappointment, then turned to make his way down from the wall. As Chief Druid, he should be present to welcome the two senior Chiefs when they arrived.

Moving slowly, he made his way out through the passageway formed by the overlapping ends of the protective wall, turning to his right as he emerged and pacing steadily towards the distant encampment that housed the Chiefs. He felt no need to hurry: he had no wish to reach the Chiefs' camp ahead of the newcomers. If he did, he might be accosted as he waited, and entreated or enticed to take some kind of stance concerning the upcoming Choosing. Daris had no need of that and no intention of allowing it.