The Eagles' Brood cc-3

by Jack Whyte

  Pellus had ridden to consult with one of his scouts as soon as we breasted the hill and now he came galloping back up towards us.

  "They came from the west, along the main road." Pellus was a gruff-spoken man who had no time for titles or military courtesies, and I had long since grown used to his ways. "A big party, well over a hundred strong, but we already knew that. My men tell me they headed back the same way they came. Left lots of signs, and spilled off the road surface into the soft ground on each side. Big party. Don't know who they are, but they're not Saxons; we're too far from the sea, and they've got horses."

  I glared at him. "These are cavalry?"

  He shook his head. "Didn't say that. Said they had horses. Probably wagons, too. But there's a lot of them on foot. Took what booty they could find, though there couldn't have been much here worth having, and ail the women. My man Paulo reckons they're a day, a day and a half ahead of us, taking their time. Won't be expecting any opposition. Damn sure won't expect us to be running up behind them."

  "Their misfortune," I snapped, turning to Cyrus Appius. "Forced pace from here on out. Issue dry rations to all ranks as we move; we'll eat on horseback. Quarter-hour rest every ten miles: I want to catch these people by this time tomorrow. Tell your people." I turned back to Pellus. "I want you and all your men far out in front, in a narrow arc. Don't worry about our flanks. These people don't know we're coming. Tell your people to find them as quickly as they can, then keep them in sight, but to stay out of sight themselves. They know what to do, and you know what to tell them. Move out now."

  We rode far into the night, stopping to sleep for only four hours, then rising and saddling up long before dawn, so that by the time the skies began to lighten behind us in the east, we had already covered ten miles along the solid Roman road, and it was there that a returning scout met us with the news that the enemy was less than three miles ahead, still in camp. Pellus had estimated their numbers at something less than three hundred, of whom less than one hundred were mounted. The most puzzling part of the scout's report, however, was the indication—and it was only an indication, since no one had been able to get close enough for absolute confirmation—that there were no non-combatants among the enemy. No women and no prisoners. Surprised, but not unduly concerned, I concluded that the women had either been killed or—a more likely alternative since we had found no corpses, and women might be considered a valuable commodity in terms of slave prices—they had been detached and sent off by some other route to await eventual collection and disposal. I decided to attack the sleeping camp immediately.

  We charged out of the rising sun and surprised the strangers in a short, hard, bitter fight. It was a complete rout, and our trumpeters had to blow long and hard to recall our blood-hungry troopers from their pursuit of the fleeing remnants of the raiding party. We lost twenty-three dead and twice that number wounded, as opposed to one hundred and eighty-one enemy dead and no prisoners. I estimated that about a hundred of them had escaped, but the news brought to me by Centurion Rufio dispelled any thought of giving chase to them. Rufio had fought and killed one of their leaders, and before the man died he had damned Rufio, telling him that Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall Would take revenge for this.

  The news appalled me. If Lot was on the rampage again, and this far north—more than a hundred miles above and to the east of our Colony—then my place was in Camulod, and I had no time to waste in getting there. Now, however, thanks to this latest episode, I had more than forty disabled men with injuries ranging from slight cuts to serious wounds, and only a hundred and thirty-some sound fighters remaining, which meant that I could not reasonably split my forces and drive on to Camulod in the cause of urgency. To leave our wounded behind, even with a strong escort, in territory that might be swarming with hostile forces, would be to condemn them to death. The corollary was that my own remaining troops, minus the escort for the wounded, would be depleted to the point of dangerous folly in the event that we encountered serious opposition on our route south. I cursed myself for having tied my men, through what I could only define as my own culpable ignorance and irresponsibility, to the pace at which the most seriously wounded could travel—a snail's crawl.

  A quick conference with my officers confirmed my assessment. There was no safe means by which we could split our party now that we suspected—and had to believe—that what we had assumed to be a self-sufficient band of marauders might in fact be but one element of a much larger force: an invading army.

  I sent Lucanus to distribute the fifteen most seriously wounded men among three of our huge wagons, redistributing their remaining cargo among the others. Then I detached a forty-man squadron to augment Pellus's scouts, first making them change out of their uniforms, enabling Pellus to throw a wider and more mobile protective screen around us as we moved. Those arrangements in place, we struck out again for Camulod, driving on as quickly as we could without seriously threatening our wounded and, for that same reason, keeping to the main road as the most level and direct route, knowing that it was also the most visible and therefore the most vulnerable.

  The full truth began to assert itself within hours. Large as it was, the group of "raiders" that we had inadvertently come upon was as I had now begun to fear, no more than a skirmishing force, a single faction of a wide-ranging but rapidly coalescing army that must number in the thousands. As returning scouts began to come galloping from all directions with news of hostile sightings, a picture of the emerging situation formed quickly in my mind. Large groups of soldiers—I had no choice but to consider them soldiers, undisciplined and ungovernable as they might be—were converging, mainly on foot, upon some prearranged meeting point that seemed to lie to the south and west of our present position. According to our scouts, there were horsemen and even a few old-style chariots among these groups, but no evidence of organized cavalry. We had reports of sightings to the north-west and west, and to the east and southeast. I had early sent an extra detachment of fast riders directly to the north, behind us, to see if we were being followed from that direction. We were. A large concentration of mounted men was massed some fifteen miles behind us, using the road as we had. The scout who brought this report had managed to range fairly close to these newcomers, spying upon them from a fringe of trees close by the road, which curved in a wide loop there, winding between two hills. He had then cut across country, avoiding the loop and regaining the firm surface of the road in time to be safely out of sight on his return journey before the large group re- emerged from the hill pass. He was adamant that these people, too, were mere horsemen, undisciplined and formless, definitely not cavalry.

  My mind finally made a connection that had been eluding me. Our scouts were passing freely to this point among the various armed groups on which they were reporting simply because there were so many people crossing and criss-crossing the country around us. It was evident that none of the insurgents expected to be challenged or accosted. None suspected that we, or any other forces inimical to their own, were among them. I realized that that state of affairs would continue only until the moment somebody recognized us as being uniformed. That awareness came to me as we descended into a small, wooded valley, which offered us protection for as long as it took us to halt, shed or conceal our uniform armour, and make ourselves look as motley as we could. Although few of us carried any clothes that were not regulation uniform and colours, we did what we could, most of us contriving to disguise our soldierliness, of which we had been so proud until then, under wrappings of torn horse-blankets. There was little we could do about our helmets. They were all of a kind, and we could not very well remove them, for we would have looked even more conspicuous riding to war bare-headed. I broke up that uniformity, however, by having one man in three remove his helmet and carry it at his saddle-bow. They were all short-haired, which endows men with another unmistakable military uniformity, but I hoped that distance would disguise that from casual view. Fortunately, many of our men had acquired heavy, external clothing
of one kind or another in Verulamium because of the unseasonably cold weather, and I had seen fit to allow them to do so, more out of necessity than any willingness to allow their appearance to deteriorate.

  Before we saddled up again, I explained my thoughts to all of them and impressed them with the need to disguise ourselves even more thoroughly; I ordered all of them to be aware, from now until we could no longer disguise ourselves; of the urgent need to avoid anything and everything that could be recognized as military formality or discipline. Having spent years learning to ride as a unit, I told them, their lives now depended on appearing to be a rabble.

  We emerged from the little, wooded valley around noon, looking nothing at all like the squadrons who had entered it, and over the course of the next four miles I harangued my men continuously, forcing them to spread out into a straggling, sloppy, widely dispersed train, riding in groups of no more than five together, the majority of them ranging far out on both sides of the roadway whenever the encroaching woods would allow them to do so, thereby creating the impression, I hoped, that no more than forty or so belonged to the party closest to, and presumably escorting, the five wagons we had left in our train. Within one of those wagons, folded and concealed, lay my great black bear standard and all the outward paraphernalia that had previously marked us so clearly as a force to be reckoned with.

  A few miles further on, after passing through a long stretch of heavy woodlands, we encountered our first "hostiles." The road emerged from the woods into open grassland, bare of snow now, although the wind was still cold enough to make a mockery of the bright sunlight, and as we straggled out into the glare of the sun, we were confronted by a group of about twenty horsemen approaching the road from our right. They drew rein as they saw us, and sat watching us with suspicion but no outright hostility. Clearly they were prepared to accept us, but were curious as to who and what we were. The suddenness of the meeting crystallized some of the thoughts that had been going through my mind and I acted on impulse, forcing myself to turn casually in the saddle and speak to my companions without betraying any of the chaotic reactions that leaped in my breast.

  "Cyrus, spread the word among the men, but do it without being obvious. We are from Northumbria, detached from Verulamium by Vortigern as his ambassadors to other kings. Donuil, come with me. I'm going to speak with these people. The rest of you remain calm and take your lead from me."

  I kneed my horse sideways and approached the newcomers as though I had been expecting to meet them. Their obvious leader was an enormous man, bearded, wild-looking and heavily muscled, whose immense frame dwarfed the large horse on which he was mounted. He was armoured in layered thicknesses of toughened bull hide reinforced with plates of bronze, and he carried a large, round shield slung across his back. He sat calmly, reins loose on his horse's neck, and watched me impassively as I advanced, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts. I addressed him in the mixture of Latin and Celtic that I had used with Vortigern's people.

  "Well met," I called out when some twenty paces separated us. "I am Ambrose of Lindum, nephew to Jacob, Councillor of Lindum, and the bearer of greetings from King Vortigern of Northumbria to King Lot of Cornwall. This is our first time so far south, and we are without guidance. Can you tell us how far we have to go to the meeting place?"

  I was prepared for a challenge and swift action, because the only reference I had had to any meeting place came from my own assessment of the intelligence brought to me by our scouts, but my question provoked no suspicion and no response. By this time I had stopped almost within sword's length of him, and I allowed my gaze to move idly over his companions. They were an unsightly crew, all heavily" armed and armoured like their leader, and all unkempt, with long hair, beards and moustaches. Their leader continued to look at me in silence, considering my words, and then his eyes moved to Donuil, taking in the size of the young man.

  "Who are you?" he asked him.

  Donuil shrugged his broad shoulders and looked defiantly back at the big man. "Cormac," he said.

  "Cormac? What kind of a name is that? Arc you one of Vortigern's tame Saxons?"

  I was gratified by this signal of acceptance, but concerned at the same time that Vortigern's affairs, and his folly, were so widely known. Donuil spoke on.

  "It is Erse, and noble. I, too, ride with Vortigern—by choice."

  "A mercenary." The leader dismissed Donuil and looked back at me, indicating my dress with a disapproving scowl. "You look Roman." He made it sound like an insult. I took no offence, keeping my voice pleasant.

  "My father was. My full name is Ambrose Ambrosianus. And our armour is Roman because it works well for us. The Romans understood such things."

  He scowled again and snorted through his nose. "Derek," he said then, "from the north-west coast, Ravenglass. It was a Roman town, once, before we threw them out."

  "I have heard of it," I responded, ignoring the obvious boast, and indeed I had, from Vortigern himself, less than a week earlier. "The Romans had a fort near there, once, a place called Mediocogdum."

  His eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Huh," he grunted. "It's still there, empty and abandoned, above the road through the high pass. How would you know that?"

  I shook my head, indicating that it was unimportant. "I have a memory for insignificant things. Somebody mentioned it, a long time ago, I know not who or when, but I recall something about it being the most westerly fort along the Wall."

  "There's no wall there." His voice was scornful. "The Fells are walls enough. It's a grim and cheerless place, haunted by spirits and shunned by wise men. We will ride with you. We should reach the appointed ground by late tomorrow."

  I eyed his men, deciding to take no chances and knowing that I had to assert my own authority immediately with this man. "If you wish, so be it, but tell your men to keep apart from mine. We have come a long way and my men are tired and impatient of the road. You'll notice some of them have wounds. We've already encountered unfriendly strangers and I want no more such stupid, wasteful nonsense. We are on an embassage, and I have no wish to spoil it through petty squabbling with every bad-tempered stranger we meet." I waited for his response, but when it came, it surprised me.

  "No more have I. My people will keep their peace, so be sure yours do not provoke them."

  And so it came about that we rode in company with our enemies for several hours, during which I learned much of Lot and his affairs and what he had been about since his last attack upon Camulod. I was surprised—and yet, upon reflection, not so—to find that Lot, like his father Emrys before him, was master of a large fleet of galleys permanently engaged in piracy. He had a stronghold now, with its own natural fortifications: a high-cliffed, sea-girt island on the north coast of Cornwall, which guaranteed his pirates a safe base, and Lot grew ever richer from his levy on the flow of booty they generated. Those riches he had amassed carefully, then used to purchase armed support from all directions, gathering a massive army with large payments of gold and the promise of enormous riches to be garnered from the conquest of the wealthy area around Glevum, Aquae Sulis—and, by association, Camulod.

  Derek, a king in his own right, had been recruited by one of Lot's sea-going chieftains, who bought his services with gold and promises of more to be won. Derek had taken the gold, and then he and his twenty mounted men had ridden southward on their own from their mountainous land to join Lot's gathering host. The remainder of his men, a force of perhaps two hundred, had been ferried south by Lot's galleys and would join the riders at the meeting place, thirty miles north of Aquae Sulis and approximately twenty miles south-west of our present position. I listened to all of this and said little in response.

  As we rode and talked, the road had been descending gently but steadily, so that we were now riding through dense, high trees again, and I knew that the forest would stretch ever thicker and unbroken from here to the gathering place of Lot's army. If we were to avoid being trapped there, we would have to turn around, and soon,
and make our way back to the high ground, free of trees, whence we would have some hope of circling around the meeting place and escaping to the south and Camulod. I glanced up at the small patch of sky I could see between the tops of the trees that pressed in on the road. It was growing late and my mind was seething with the urgency of our rapidly worsening situation. The closer we drew to Lot's gathering point, the greater would become the concentration of hostile troops converging on the meeting place, and sooner or later—if we had not already passed it—we would arrive at a point where discovery of our true identity would become inevitable.

  Derek of Ravenglass, for all his roughness and his uncouth ways, had turned out to be a pleasant enough travelling companion, but now I found myself thinking seriously about ways and means of killing him and his men without creating too much noise and attracting unwelcome attention. The time was fast approaching when our new companion would expect to stop for the night, and that was unthinkable. Were we in fact to remain in his company until morning, my men and I would have no hope of escaping the trap in which we had found ourselves and which was tightening more surely around us with every moment that passed.

  I reined my horse in a tight turn and rode back towards the wagons, leaving Derek and Donuil together at the point with three of Derek's senior men, then I pulled off to the side of the road, among the bushes, and looked at the wagons as they rumbled past, a mixed group of my own men and Derek's riding among and around them. I saw no signs of hostility between them; they were all soldiers together, apparently, and content to share the warrior's burden of boredom between dangers. A few nodded to me in passing but, miraculously, none snapped me the customary, punctilious salute. I saw no sign of Lucanus and presumed he was inside one of the wagons, with some of the wounded men. As the final group approached me, I saw Pellus riding in last place. He drew rein as he reached me and together we waited until we were far enough behind the others for our conversation to go unheard.