by Jack Whyte
His mounted companion watched closely as Uther cleaned his blade with the cloth, his face expressionless and calm, his eyes unfocused. Then, when the blade was clean, fastidiously wiped free of any lingering trace of blood, Uther Pendragon replaced it carefully in the sheath that hung from his belt and turned his head to look at the young woman who sat on the grass, staring up at him in silent worship with her bent knees spread, her skirts somewhere up around her waist, her entire lower body uncaringly exposed. Gazing at her, narrow-eyed, he shook his head. Nemo had no idea why he did that or what he was thinking. Before she could think any further about it, however, he stepped towards her, holding out his hand, and she reached out and took it, using it as an anchor as she pulled herself smoothly up from the ground. Neither she nor he spared as much as a glance for the three dead men at their feet.
"Are you hurt at all?"
Nemo shook her head, overcome with shyness as she always was when he spoke directly to her. She was forever unable to trust her voice around him, afraid that it would tremble and break. Uther, however, paid no attention to her silence, reacting instead as if she had spoken and nodding now towards the three dead men.
"What happened here? Do you know these people?"
She shook her head again, and he sniffed, looking down at the closest corpse.
"Well, even if you did, it would make no difference now. Good thing we came along, though. Have you had a man before?" Nemo's eyes widened slightly, but she took no offence, and he assumed from her expression that the answer to his question was negative. He pursed his lips. "Best think about it, then, and get the painful part over with. Find yourself a decent fellow and pleasure both of you. Once you've done it once or twice, there's no pain to it thereafter, no matter how they violate you. First time, though, against your will, can be brutal, I'm told. Go home now. There's no danger left here."
She nodded her head and bobbed in what might have been a subservient bow, and then she turned and was gone, disappearing quickly into the bushes that lined the road.
The two men watched her go, then Uther sucked pensively at his teeth, producing a speculative, squeaking noise. The man on the horse cleared his throat.
"Are you going to puke?"
Uther looked up at Garreth Whistler. "No, I am not. Why should I puke?"
"I thought you might. Most people do when they kill a man, it being an unusual event. You just slaughtered three men with your bare hands, so I thought you might want at least one heave."
"I used my blade, not my bare hands. But no, I don't feel sick."
"You should, boy. Sick over your own stupidity, if nothing else."
The younger man's head jerked up as though he had been slapped. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means what it said. That was stupid . . . needless."
"Needless? They were about to violate her—and then they'd probably have killed her."
"But they were already caught, Uther. We arrived, and that would have been the end of it then and there, if you hadn't gone insane."
"I didn't go insane!"
"Oh, is that so? If your father had seen you, he would account himself justified in having me hanged or disembowelled for having permitted you to reach such a degenerate condition."
Uther's eyes narrowed, so that he was almost squinting up at his friend and guardian. "You permitted nothing. I did what had to be done."
"Oh, please! Come now. 'Had to be done?' Had to be? How so? Those fellows should have been taken and hanged, Uther. I'm not disputing they deserved to die for what they were attempting almost within sight of the King's own Hall. But to tackle them the way you did was nothing short of plain, black-faced stupidity. You're what, fifteen now? Fifteen. Ten years ago, you had barely learned to talk! And now you think you're a man."
Garreth Whistler swung himself down from his tall Camulodian horse and kept his back to the younger man, ignoring him. His physical demeanour radiated disgust as he began dragging the bodies of the three dead men to where he could lay them side by side. But as he worked, even though refusing to look at his companion, Garreth talked, betraying not the slightest sign or sound of effort as he manhandled the dead weight of the corpses.
"You're big for your age, I'll grant that. Could be seventeen easily. And you're stronger than most other fifteen-year-olds." He laid the last body in line with the others and straightened up, wiping his palms against his hips where the material of his tunic was not covered by armour and finally turned to look at his pupil.
"But by all the gods you're unutterably stupid sometimes, and that comes of being fifteen. Y'see, a seventeen-year-old is legally a man, and a man would have stopped these animals, just as surely as you did. But he'd have done it from horseback, sitting up high and mighty and looking down at them, threatening them with a drawn sword. And then when they were properly chastened, he'd have had them chained up and taken into custody by other armed people on foot. He would never have dismounted. That's all you need, you see . . . to be on horseback. Scares the dung out of people on foot to see a big man on a horse, towering over them, especially if he's wearing armour and carrying a sword, and even more especially when they're in the wrong.
"But you're fifteen, too young to know any better . . . too young to show any sense, I suppose . . . You're still a bit of a baby, really, and so you go leaping off the horse and throw yourself right down there to roll in the cow dung with the commoners."
The boy was bridling, clearly resentful of the way he was being treated, and yet equally clearly aware that he had been foolish. He glowered at his teacher.
"Very well, so I'm young. You're always telling me that. But that doesn't make me stupid."
"Yes it does, boy! Oh yes it does. You know better than to do what you did there! I've taught you better than that. You had a dirk in your hand going in, and you dived off your horse without taking a heartbeat's space to check for danger. What if one or two of those three had had knives of their own? You could have been dead from the moment you hit the first man. And where would I be now if that had happened? I'll tell you where I'd be. I'd be on my way to my own death, facing your father. Uric Pendragon wouldn't believe his own son could be stupid enough to do what you have just done, so he would blame me for endangering you. And he would be right. Then I'd be dead as well as you. And for what? Because you needed to satisfy an urge to impress an ugly girl? Grow up, Uther. Men don't behave that way."
For a long space of moments those words hung in the air, unanswered, unchallenged and undisputed. Then the younger man grunted, nodding in agreement.
"She is ugly, isn't she?"
Garreth Whistler nodded, his face solemn and judicious. "Well, she's not beautiful, your Nemo . . . no more so than vomit frozen to a cold road."
They both broke into giggles, but Uther sobered quickly, waving his laughter away with a sharp pass of his hand. "We shouldn't laugh at her. She can't help the way she was born. You're the one who told me to be considerate of young unfortunates. I like her, Garreth, though I don't know why."
"Well, why not? You've known her long enough by now. No reason at all for not liking the girl simply because she's not comely." Garreth Whistler's face broke into a grin again, and Uther's own smile reappeared as his friend and mentor continued. "Just so long as you don't rut with her . . . or if you do, don't look at her in the middle of it. I saw you looking at her hairy belly there, but her face—a face like that could turn you to stone if you looked at it close up."
Uther shook his head, his smile fading. "I don't know, Garreth." He nodded his head in the direction of the three bodies at their feet. "Something attracted these three to her, despite what you may say."
"Aye, desperation probably. Aided by the fact that at least she doesn't stink like a sour sow, the way most of her neighbours do." Garreth Whistler, too, had been seduced by the Roman ways of cleanliness and hygiene, and taught thus, through his nose, he had learned to be fastidious in his womanizing, which meant that he went virtually celibate durin
g the six months that he spent each year among Ullic's people, few of whom were even familiar with the concept of bathing. Now he glanced again casually at the three corpses, then swung himself up into the saddle.
"Come on, let's get going. We'll send a wagon out for these later."
"Why? Why bother? This is human refuse. Let it lie here and stink."
Garreth Whistler tilted his head to one side and eyed his young charge quizzically. "My word, we are ill disposed today, aren't we? Stop for a moment and think about what you are saying. If we leave these characters to rot here, we'll be doing no kindness to our own people who pass this way every day. You may have killed more than your share of men already, but it's clear you still have to sniff your first rotting corpse up close, for if you had ever smelled one, you'd never think of leaving one unburied. Three dead men will make an unholy amount of stink and breed a heaving mountain of maggots. By rights, I ought to make you dig a grave for them all by yourself. Now mount up, and let's get out of here."
He sat watching sternly as Uther walked to his own mount and pulled himself up into the saddle, but then his gaze sharpened as the boy sat stiffly, staring down at the ground to his left. Garreth looked in the direction of his gaze, but there was nothing there that he could see.
"What are you staring at?"
"Nothing." Uther kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
"And what colour of nothing might that be? Look at me, boy! Don't just sit there scowling and pouting like a spoiled little girl. If there's something in your nose, hawk it out of there, get it out in the open. Tell me what's wrong with you—and don't say it's nothing."
The boy's eyes flickered towards the three dead men. "I didn't do anything wrong killing those men. If my father had found them doing what they were doing, they would be just as dead. But you're angry at me. Why are you angry at me?"
"By the Christian Christ . . . You still don't know, do you?"
Garreth Whistler pulled his horse up on its hind legs into a rearing turn, then spurred it into movement. Behind him he heard the thumping of hooves as Uther's mount followed him, moving up gradually until the lad was less than half a length behind. Then, knowing that Uther would stay with him. Whistler kicked his mount to a canter and turned his head to shout back over his shoulder, pitching his voice to overcome the thudding of heavy hooves.
"Hear me now, boy, and this time pay heed, for I'll only say this one more time. You fought well enough . . . proved that I have taught you well how to fight with a dirk."
Uther kicked his horse harder, edging it forward until the two men were riding side by side, but Garreth Whistler did not moderate his tone.
"But you are too damn hotheaded—far too impetuous. Isn't that the word your Grandfather Varrus used? He told me it means impulsive, ungovernable, lacking in control. And I thought. Yes, that's the word for our boy Uther. . . lacking in control."
Their horses swung apart, one right and the other left, to pass on either side of a huge elm tree that had somehow been permitted to grow up right in the centre of the ancient causeway, and Garreth waited until they came together again before he continued.
"Control . . . it's very important, Uther. Crucial, in fact. It's all- important in a leader of men, whether he be a soldier, a king or the leader of a gang of cattle thieves. If he can't control himself—his emotions, his temper, his rages—then he'll never be able to control others, because he'll never be able to hold their respect. No man will willingly follow someone he doesn't trust implicitly, someone he doesn't believe he can rely upon to stay in control at all times . . . in control of himself and in control of all the conditions he might encounter. Doesn't matter that his control might send his followers to their deaths in battle. That's why he's in command, and they'll forgive him that and anything else as long as they believe he's in control. Do you hear me? Do you understand what I am saying? Shout out, lad, so I can hear."
"Yes, I hear you."
"Aye, and you've heard me before, and yet still you wallow in your boneheaded stupidity. Stop! Stop your horse and listen to me, one more time." As he said the words he hauled back on his own reins, bringing his big horse to a plunging halt, and Uther's mount stopped in the same distance, so that the two remained side by side, almost touching. Before he spoke, Garreth sat staring, wild-eyed, into the face of his student.
"You could have been killed back there, boy! Stupidly, pointlessly, needlessly. Now I know you think you're immortal, but you are not. If you think about it, you might remember that you bleed when you cut yourself, and you break bones when you fall badly. D'you remember doing that last year? Well, spilled blood and broken bones are indications that you are mortal like the rest of us. You leaped off your horse back there, and you sacrificed control. Not merely your self-control, although the gods know how important that is, but control of the situation and the circumstances governing it. Any one of those three fools could have had a weapon and used it against you while you were grappling with the others. A small knife can cut your throat as easily as a dirk. Even a small club, hard swung, can crack a skull. You might have been dead, Uther, before you ever had a chance to know about it."
"But none of them had weapons, Garreth!"
"No, none of them did, but that was sheer good fortune. You leaped in there with no thought of anything other than your anger. You looked, you saw, and you reacted without thought, overwhelmed by anger and outrage."
"There's nothing wrong with anger and outrage. I've heard you—"
"Dia! Will you stop interrupting me, telling me what you think I'm saying! Just be quiet and listen! You've heard me say so, isn't that what you were going to say? Well, your main trouble is that you hear only what you want to hear, Uther. Yes, you have heard me say that there's nothing wrong with anger and outrage, but you have also heard me say a hundred times that anger and outrage call for clear thinking and sober analysis before you make any move that might endanger you or any of your people. Isn't that so? Isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Yes, and if you sigh like that again when I ask you a question, I'll knock you arse over head out of that saddle. Big for your age you might be, but you're not big enough yet to challenge me, and don't you lose sight of that. Now, let's get moving, because there are people waiting for us, and one of them at least, your father, likes not to be kept waiting by any man."
After Uther had saved her life that day and sent her back to the village, Nemo wanted to slip away to the Place of the Bows immediately to relive in her own mind what had happened. But more work than usual seemed to fall to her lot that day, with most of her regular dependants calling upon her services, and it was late in the afternoon by the time she managed to get away and slip unseen into the sacred grove. There she quickly climbed up into the branches and settled herself in her favourite cradle of limbs. She lay back against her springy cushion of mistletoe, closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift, recalling what it would.
The attack itself, the attempted violation by the three unknown men, had been in the forefront of her mind all afternoon, filling her awareness and shaking her, from time to time, with strange, unfamiliar and unwelcome sensations. She had felt hard, invading fingers probing into the centre of her, thrusting up hungrily into her body, digging for her innermost parts, seeking her very soul, it seemed to her, and violating her inner sense of wholeness. And each time that image came flashing into her mind—and it was always unexpected—it jarred her and brought anger flooding up into her throat in hot, salty waves of fury. The memory of the grasping violence of brutal, calloused hands and the scraping of thick, hard nails on the soft flesh of her inner thighs made her shudder and squirm with loathing, and rippling wavelets of disgust and horror writhed up the muscles of her back like human fingertips.
Nemo had known about such things for years before that day. She had seen many of her female companions taken and used thus by single boys, by entire groups and sometimes by fully grown men. Some of the girls had been taken against their will, but many
others had complied gleefully and diligently, evidently gaining and enjoying great pleasure in the exercises. Nemo had seen girls struggling and fighting uselessly on the muddy, dung-strewn floors of stables and byres, screaming and weeping in the vain hope of attracting help, but she had seen others, too, who smiled and pulled up their skirts before lying down or bending forward or backwards over fences, tables or sacks of grain to welcome their invaders.
At all such times, however. Nemo had been but an observer, unnoticed or ignored, and she had remarked that none of the girls, even the most ill-used, had died of such abuse or had wept for more than an hour or two. Occasionally, one would swell up with child as the result, but no one paid much attention, and the child would be duly born and absorbed into the life of the community.
It had never occurred to Nemo that she herself might be treated as the other females were, and the truth had caught her unawares. The only male she had ever thought of as a rutting mate—for Nemo had no notion of romantic, spousal love—was Uther himself.
She thought now of Uther, pausing to dwell on his strength, his long, hard limbs and his kind face. The recollections rapidly grew warmer and more enjoyable as she remembered, so that flickering lines of light pulsed and seemed to swell and grow within her. As so often happened when she thought of Uther in this mood, she soon found herself breathless and physically awash in surges of sheer pleasure, so that her hand sought their source, involuntarily, increasing the pleasure of the surging, purging waves until she could absorb no more and had to stop, shivering and convulsed.
On this occasion, however, as the waves retreated, leaving her exhausted and gasping for air, thighs quivering with the intensity of her release. Nemo's reverie was broken by the deep sound of distant male voices raised in argument. Uncaring at first, and indolent in the aftermath of what she had just achieved, she dismissed the noise initially as a quarrel among the bowmen at the distant butts, but as the sounds continued to grow closer, she realized that the men were approaching the oak in which she lay concealed. Whoever they were—and there seemed to be no more than two voices—they suddenly became a threat, and a very real one, reminding her that she was in a forbidden place, profaning a sacred oak tree with her presence. If she were found there, the consequences would be unpleasant, and they would certainly involve Druids.