Uther cc-7

by Jack Whyte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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