Uther cc-7

by Jack Whyte

  Despite her wishes and her best resolve, however, she was thwarted simply because Garreth Whistler had been right. No one was keen to travel in the kind of foul weather that covered all of southern Britain at that time, and those fortunate enough to be able to postpone their travels did so. Among those was the party travelling from Camulod to Ullic's Cambria. They remained in the warmth and comfort of their home base for ten days before the weather broke, far longer than they had originally intended, and by the time they arrived in Ullic's territories, she had regained her full strength and moved out of Garreth's care, since she no longer had reason to stay. She did not stray far, however, for she had no desire to live alone in the woodland again, and since she had no intention of returning to her former home, the woodland would have been the only option available to her. Instead, filled with single-minded resolution, she set about making herself useful to the villagers, beginning with those who lived closest to Garreth's hut. These were the only people she had been able to observe—and she had watched them closely—during the final days of her recuperation. One of them, an old, bent woman, lived alone with no man to look after her, and Nemo had seen that Garreth treated the old woman with courtesy and kindness, carrying burdens for her and stopping to speak with her almost every time he passed her door.

  On the first day of her new life, she approached the old woman and offered to work for her in return for a place to sleep. The old woman accepted her offer, but wanted to know her name, and Jonet, with barely a pause for thought, told her that her name was Nemo. The old woman then provided her with a pallet in one corner of her single-room dwelling, close by the fire. She was grateful, and even more so when the old woman spoke well of her to her neighbours. Within a matter of days, thanks to this kindness, she had managed to ingratiate herself with several other people, establishing that she was a hard and willing worker, providing real value for the pittance in food she consumed and the space she occupied at night. She was feeling better about herself, too, by that time, for the name Nemo had reminded her of her own mother's name, Naomi. She had never known her mother, but she liked the sound of the name, and it was close enough to Nemo to be remarkable to the girl, so that, in the quiet safety of her own thoughts, she began to call herself Naomi and to think of herself by that name—very tentatively at first, and then with increasing pleasure and confidence as she grew used to it. Naomi was a beautiful name, and she simply knew that no person with such a name could ever bear any resemblance to anyone known as Jonet the Toad.

  Thus she was at hand, known to all the villagers as Nemo, when Uther Pendragon returned and came seeking Garreth Whistler, and she watched the boy, wide-eyed with surprise over how young he was. She had remembered him as being her own age or older, but in fact he was considerably younger than she was . . . almost as young as her disgusting half-brother Carthac, although bigger and far better-looking. Carthac had been damaged at birth, in the act of being born, and his entire skull was deformed, flattened on one side so that the features of his face were all askew. While she would freely admit that she herself was unsightly, there could be no question that Carthac's ugliness went beyond that: he was grotesque. Nine children out of ten would not have survived such a birthing, but Carthac seemed more cruelly strong and healthy because of the disadvantage with which he had to contend.

  She sidled closer so she could see Uther more clearly. He waved a greeting of acknowledgment and recognition, smiling briefly at her before turning his attention back to his hero, Garreth, and she felt her face flush and prickle with a rush of blood that confused her sufficiently to make her hide herself again.

  Nemo made her home in Tir Manha after that, and was accepted as a useful presence, willing to do the work that others thought unpleasant and tiresome. She was still, from time to time, an object of ridicule because of her appearance, but she was long accustomed to keeping her head down, and as time passed, these instances of cruelty and mockery grew less and less common. In any case, the only person whose opinion truly mattered to her was Uther, and his acceptance of her, even when it manifested itself as benign indifference, was like a balm to her soul. She was by now completely besotted and obsessed with him, and within the narrow confines of the world in which she lived and dreamed, she believed, without conscious thought, that Uther was just as aware of her.

  Nemo was ever determined to be of service to Uther in return for the kindness he had shown to her. Sitting one day in her high perch in the Place of the Bows, she had heard Garreth telling King Ullic that one of the local boys, a hulking bully called Cross-Eyed Ivor, whose father was one of King Ullic's warriors and councillors, had taken it upon himself to make young Uther's life a misery since his return from Camulod, knowing his own father's rank would protect him from any grave consequences of his bullying. This Ivor, who was of an age with Nemo, almost two full years older than Uther and therefore much bigger, had gathered a large following of younger boys, most of whom were terrified of him and hoped that by toadying to him they might escape having his nastiness focused upon them.

  Uther, seven at the time but big for his age, had ignored Ivor for as long as he could, according to Garreth's account of what had happened, but ignoring the lout had been the worst possible course of action. Uther had ended up with a bruised and bleeding leg.

  Nemo was outraged to learn that Garreth had not immediately gone looking for the boy called Cross-Eyed Ivor and punished him. But it was not and could never be his place, Garreth said to King Ullic, to intervene physically in this affair between boys. That was something Uther must resolve alone and in public view. Garreth could not be seen to be involved, because he believed that any intervention by him, the King's Champion, would surely destroy any chance young Uther had of escaping from the older boy's tyranny through his own efforts. If Uther were to gain the respect <>l his peers in this, he could do it only by standing alone against the bully. And so, Garreth informed the King, he had advised Uther to cut the bully down to size by approaching him again directly and tackling him immediately when he, Uther, was ready to fight, instead of waiting for Ivor to come to him when Ivor was ready.

  Nemo listened carefully as Garreth Whistler reported to his patron how he had spoken to Uther of honour and duty, of commitment and dedication, and of the urgency of knowing how to distinguish friends from enemies. He had talked to the boy, he said, about degrees of enmity and friendship, defining them clearly and using, in some instances, words that Nemo had never heard. A friend he defined as anyone who reacted benignly to a leader's presence, plans, actions, results and ultimate objectives. An enemy was anyone who did not. And, Garreth had insisted, the only way to deal with an implacable enemy was to convert him to a friend—or kill him, if that was the only way of gaining his compliance. Nemo took clear and careful note of that. He should do all in his power to endear himself to friends, Garreth had explained. And if he did it well enough, he would have no living enemies.

  No sensible man ever likes or chooses to light when there is no need, Garreth had told the boy, for lighting always entails the risk of serious injury and death. But once a man decides that he must fight, then his commitment should be total, and his attention to the outcome—his eventual victory—should be tightly focused upon that end alone. Any man who fought without that kind of dedication was a fool, Garreth said, and deserved to die.

  A few days after she overheard that conversation, the seven- year-old Uther, this time armed with a heavy stick and accompanied only by his cousin Cay, once again went looking for the bully Cross-Eyed Ivor and found him in the market square, surrounded by his entire crew of sycophants. Wasting no time, Uther shouted a challenge at Ivor across the intervening space and then ran directly to the attack. Cay moved aside, interposing himself between Uther and the onlookers, keeping one eye on the fight and the other, more warily, on Ivor's cronies, lest any of them be tempted to take Ivor's side. His presence was unnecessary. Those who witnessed the fight reported that Uther's ferocity made him seem like a madman, heedless o
f danger. His face distorted with rage, he ignored the blows being directed at him, using his stick two-handed, as a club at times, to keep the larger boy beyond arm's reach. At other times he also used his stick as a lever, with which he eventually tripped his opponent. He brought him crashing down on the cobblestones of the market square and then thrashed him until he howled for mercy. But as soon as he, and all the others watching, could be sure that Ivor was beaten, Uther stopped the punishment and stepped back, calmly lowering his weapon to his side. Ivor rolled over, sobbing and blubbering at first, but gaining more control of himself as he pushed himself upward to his hands and knees, where he remained for a while, head downward, drooling blood and spit onto the cobblestones.

  Uther watched him for a space of heartbeats, then stepped forward again, placing the thicker end of his stick on the other's back, between the shoulder blades.

  "Ivor," he said quietly but clearly. "You and I should be friends, for the time will come when I will have no living enemies. Think on it." Uther Pendragon then turned slowly, eyeing each of the watching boys individually. Many of them had never harmed him, but some among them had been quick to torment him in the past at Ivor's urging. Few of either kind would meet his eye, however, and so he nodded to Cay and then turned and walked away, swinging his stick. Cay, grinning with delight, followed him in silence.

  To celebrate Uther's victory, which in his eyes marked a momentous step forward in the boy's life and training, Garreth Whistler decided that he and his new student, accompanied by some of Uther's friends, should go fishing. They left that very afternoon and were gone for seven days.

  Ivor the bully might have thought afterwards on what Uther Pendragon said to him concerning friendship, but no one would ever know, for in the course of that same night someone, or some supernatural agency, introduced a deadly adder, Britain's only venomous serpent, into young Ivor's bedding, and in his thrashing to escape from the embrace of the sleeping skins in which he had wrapped himself, the boy was bitten many times. He died before the sun rose, and Uther Pendragon, ranging the forest riverbanks that morning fishing for silver trout, had no idea that his lifelong reputation had been initiated.

  Nemo would smile, thinking of that, hugging her secret to her bosom, exultant in the knowledge that no one, not even Uther himself, knew that it was she who had exacted revenge for him and started building the name that would keep all men in awe of him and his prowess. From then on, they would say of him that he was one who had no enemies—alive.

  Nemo followed Uther around closely whenever he was in his Cambrian grandfather's lands, arranging her itinerary from day to day so that she could always be somewhere near to him if possible. And during those dreadful occasions when he would disappear for long months, detained by his relatives on his mother's side in far-off Camulod, Nemo would hold herself tightly in control throughout his seemingly interminable absences, swallowing and ignoring her frustrations with great difficulty, thanks only to her certain knowledge that King Ullic would never permit his grandson to stay away from Cambria for too long.

  Nemo knew in her heart that Uther would always be her champion, no matter where he went, and he never failed her. Not even on the day, years later, that she had thought would be the end of the world.

  She had left the hut early on a bright morning in early summer, the year she turned twelve, making her daily journey to the well, carrying a brace of water pails mounted on a yoke across her shoulders. She had passed the corner of the barrel-maker's shed and was angling to her left, towards the well, when a man came into view on her right, cutting diagonally across her path from the gates leading into the village. She glanced at him incuriously, attracted more by his movement than anything else, and then she froze in mid- step, her mouth falling open and her heart leaping up into her throat in fear. The man was Leir the Druid, her father, and slightly behind his tall, stooped figure, she saw the smaller, shambling shape of her half-brother Carthac, his gross cranial deformity visible even from a distance.

  Certain that she had been seen, and overwhelmed by panic, she hid behind the barrel-maker's wall and stood motionless for a long time, her heart hammering at her rib cage. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that they had discovered her whereabouts by some gross mischance and had come to take her home with them. There was also not the slightest doubt in her mind that she would die here in Tir Manha rather than go with them.

  She let the heavy wooden yoke fall from her shoulders, its pails clattering in the morning stillness, and fumbled for the short knife she carried at her belt. It was scarcely a dagger, but it was all she had, and she ran the ball of her thumb nervously over its sharp edge, looking around her to see who else was watching. Not another person moved anywhere in sight. She strained her ears for the sound of approaching footsteps but heard nothing, and eventually, in spite of her terror, she approached the blind corner of the barrel-maker's shed and slowly poked her head around the corner.

  The streets lay empty on both sides, and for a moment she was tempted to believe that she might have dreamed it all. But she knew she had not. Leir the Druid was in Tir Manha somewhere. He had found her, and soon the entire village would be turning out to look for her, to send her home with him. Fresh terror flared up inside her. He could be anywhere now, from the King's Hall to a neighbour's hut or even inside the shed she was leaning against. The sole place she could rely on his not being was behind her.

  Slowly, taking one step at a time and leaving her pails and her wooden yoke abandoned where they lay, Nemo began to back away, feeling her entire body vibrating with tension, expecting at every moment to hear her name shouted with a command to stop where she was and give herself up to her father's care. But the shout never came, and no one came close to where she walked, so that she made her way unnoticed across the entire space of the rear half of Tir Manha until she could turn and run, fast and far.

  The previous month, she and Uther had found a bear's winter den on a heavily treed hillside in the forest, less than a mile from the walls of Tir Manha. They had stumbled upon the place by accident while trying to locate Uther's best hunting arrow, which had brushed a sapling branch and been deflected high and to their right to disappear among a jumble of broken slabs of rock on the side of a steep, moss-covered cliff that was literally held in place, slabs and all, by the massed and massive roots of ancient oak and elm trees. Nemo had climbed higher than Uther at one point, attracted by a faint pathway descending from the upper edge of the cliff and disappearing behind one ledge of the green, moss-encrusted rock lace. The path had been beaten by a large bear whose tracks, made months before, were still visible, set in dried mud in front of the hole that led into a small but deep, dark cave. Since then, the two of them had used the spot as a private meeting place, telling no one else about it. She knew that Uther would know where to find her once it had become clear that she had disappeared.

  Nemo reached the bottom of the cliff and within moments had reached the entrance to the cave. It was summer, but nonetheless she threw a large stone through the entrance and waited, listening closely, before she moved to enter the den. She heard nothing, and nothing came charging out at her, but even that did not mean the cave was empty. She knew that the proper thing to do would be to light a fire and then to throw a lighted brand into the blackness. That would bring out any frightened animal that might be crouching in there. But Nemo had neither the time nor the patience to go looking for the materials to build a fire. She drew her small knife and sucked in a huge breath, then stepped inside. For the space of a heartbeat she held her breath, her face a rictus of anticipation, but then she relaxed. The cave was empty.

  She turned and looked for signs of her passage, but none could be seen. Because it was still early summer and the heat had not yet had a chance to penetrate the depths of this ancient stretch of forest, everything visible, the entire enclosure of the sylvan world stretching in front of her, was still painted in shades of green. High above Nemo's head, the towering treetops were c
rowned with a thick canopy of leaves, and even the great, thigh-thick ropes of root looping the cliff face all around her were covered with a greenish, mossy growth.

  Uther would be coming sooner or later.

  Nemo looked down at the ledge she was standing on and then lowered herself to sit with her legs dangling over the edge, her back comfortably lodged against the cliff face by the cave's entrance. The air was warm; the sun filtered through the leaves. She finally closed her eyes and allowed herself to think, without panic now, about her narrow escape from the Druid.

  Uther did arrive in the middle of the afternoon, and she watched him as he climbed silently and swiftly up to where she sat. When he reached her perch, he stood looking down at her for a while, his face expressionless, and then he dipped his hand into his scrip and pulled out a wedge of cold fowl, leg and thigh, wrapped in a clean piece of cloth, handing it to her silently. Nemo took it with a nod of thanks and attacked it. She had eaten nothing since the previous night, and she was ravenous. When she had finished, Uther stood waiting, leaning indolently against the rock face with his left shoulder, his weight braced on his right foot, his head cocked to one side. He had learned long before that day that words were a commodity she used but sparingly, and sometimes heeded even less, and so he was content to wait, knowing that she had something to tell him.

  She finally tilted her head back and looked up at him, wiping her lips with the sleeve of her tunic.

  "They came for me."

  Uther frowned. "Who came for you?"

  "The Druid and the boy."

  Uther was plainly perplexed. "The Druid ? You mean the new fellow? The one who came this morning? Why would he come for you? Why would you even think such a thing? He came to see Daris. All the Druids come to see Daris. He is the Chief Druid."