by Jack Whyte
By the same token, the new King should be Uther as Chief of Pendragon in his own right. I know his father dreamed of that and wished it might be so, for we talked of it, he and I, not long ago, when it seemed like an event destined for some distant, future day.
Now, cruelly, that day is here, and Uther is not merely unprepared, he is almost unknown by the Chiefs who will select the new King. He has been too long gone from Tir Manila and from Cambria itself, spending most of his time in Camulod, mainly at my insistence. The fault is mine.
I have always been afraid, since my earliest days here, of what too much exposure to the Cambrians and their savage ways might do to my son. And I have always insisted that he spend at least half of his young life with you and father and my family in civilized surroundings. I regret that bitterly today, because I now know, too late, that I was wrong. We are at war with Cornwall, as are you in Camulod, but Uther is seen here as being one of yours and not as one of ours, and the wars have thrown up another warrior Chief, a man called Meradoc, Chief of the largest of the three Llewellyn clans, who means to claim the King's Seat. I detest the man, and I know Uric had little time for him, but my personal distaste counts for nothing in the reality of things. The man is an able Chief, it seems.
And so I must remain in Tir Manila in the hope that others, including you and Garreth Whistler, with whom I will send this, will be able to convince Uther that his duty lies here, and that he owes his primary loyalty to his Pendragon heritage and to the memory of his father and his ancestors.
I know my son, and I know his failings and how headstrong and proud he can be. I know, too, that should he choose not to contest his birthright in the Choosing, he will regret it forever afterwards. This Choosing is his destiny. I know that now beyond dispute or foolish maternal selfishness. And if my presence in Tir Manha will urge his return, then my place must be here.
So, dear Mother, my request of you is to send my son home, however unwilling he might be. I pray that you will use every persuasive power at your command to convince him that he must be here by Midsummer to represent his family, his people and himself.
With all my love, your grieving daughter, Veronica
Chapter FOURTEEN
"Come on, lads! You'll be a King's escort on the way back, so let's start to look like one now."
The disordered column of armoured, mounted men making their way up the steep slope reacted to the jibe in their individual ways. Some groaned in mock protest, others muttered good- humouredly and a small number scowled, but most had a grin or a smile for the man haranguing them from the knoll by the side of the path they were climbing. Only a few kept their eyes downcast, too concerned with the treacherous ground beneath their horses' hooves to spare any attention for their leader's high spirits. The climb had been long and hard, their path a dried-out stream bed choked with water-smoothed pebbles and boulders. On either side, the flanks of the deep gully towered over them, coated with impenetrable brush and gnarled, stunted ancient trees, cutting the struggling horsemen off from the world. Now, as they approached the crest, the perceptible lessening of the heights above was the only sign they had that they were nearing the summit.
"Almost there now, lads. We'll rest at the top."
At that moment, one of the rocks littering the stream bed rolled under a misplaced hoof, and a horse went lurching sideways, skittering for a foothold and somehow managing to remain upright, although it almost unseated its rider, whose skill was the only thing that saved him from a dangerous fall. In the moment of feeling his mount lurch off balance, the trooper transferred all his weight, jamming his left foot hard into its stirrup and shifting his upper body forward to his right, dropping the reins to grasp the horn of his saddle with his right hand while he threw his left arm out as a counterweight. So close was he to the side of the stream bed that his outstretched hand touched solid ground and he used it to brace himself, leaning on it for a moment before thrusting himself back, straight-armed, into the saddle.
"Well done, Marc!" the leader shouted, but the rider, busy gathering his reins again and soothing his startled horse, paid him no heed. He moved on, his eyes now scanning the ground ahead of him, and the few remaining horsemen followed him, equally careful. The watcher on the knoll waited until the last of them had passed, and then he turned his head to look at his companion, who was staring back down the hill the way they had come.
"You see something down there?"
Garreth Whistler shrugged his broad, green-clad shoulders and pulled his horse around. "No, Uther, I see nothing," he said, sighing but smiling. "I was thinking, that's all."
Uther Pendragon grinned, shaking his head ruefully. "Garreth, Garreth, Garreth, there's little hope for you at all, with all this thinking! How many times have I told you it's dangerous to think?"
The Whistler sat silent in his saddle, gazing at the younger man and making no response other than a slow puckering of his lips as he nibbled at the skin of his inner cheek.
Uther raised one eyebrow. "So what were you thinking about this time?"
"Several things. One was that I've been spending too much time in Camulod."
"How so?"
"I'm being Romanized, that's how! Here we are out of sight of that damned road for barely an hour, and I'm mourning the loss of it. I've grown too soft."
Uther Pendragon glanced down to where Garreth had been staring and his smile gave way to a pensive, speculative look. The road Garreth spoke of lay miles behind them, utterly lost in dense forest. The narrow wedge of sky tilled with broken clouds that stretched above their present resting place was the only thing in sight that was not forest.
"Roads are good," Uther muttered. "No better, faster way of crossing country. The Romans were remarkable for that, if nothing else."
"Aye, but why didn't they build a road across these hills when they were building everywhere else?"
Another smile tugged at the corners of Uther's mouth. "Roman roads had but a single purpose, Garreth: to transport Roman armies from place to place in the shortest possible time in order to confront Rome's enemies and stamp them out. We of the Pendragon were too few then, and too distant, to attract their ire."
"Hmm! So now we have to struggle overland. Someone should have told the Romans we were here."
Garreth was now in his early forties, and he had been Uther's mentor, friend and self-appointed bodyguard for ten years. That alone would have entitled him to keep himself apart from the ruck of Uther's troops, even without the rank of Second in Command that the Chief had bestowed upon him. Garreth knew that, too. Although he rode saddled and stirrupped like the others, Garreth alone wore none of the uniform armour and trappings that marked them all as troopers of Camulod, despite the fact that most of them were Pendragon warriors. Instead, and to set himself apart, Garreth proudly wore the garb of his own people, Uther's people, the Pendragon Celts from southern Cambria.
A bright green, knee-length tunic of heavy cloth, bordered in a deep, dark, brownish red and pulled up to accommodate his saddle, was belted at Garreth's waist, and beneath it his legs were trousered in the same green cloth, the bottoms tucked into a pair of high, thick-soled, spurred boots that were his pride and joy, and the only Camulodian things the Whistler owned. A long, plain cloak of darker green was fastened at his breast by an intricately carved clasp of silver, and the sides of it were thrown back from his shoulders to hang down his back, spilling over his horse's rump and leaving his arms free. His head was bare on top of his long, curling white-blond hair. His arms, wrists and legs were heavy and strong, thickly roped with muscle, and the short, broad, sheathed sword that hung by his left side seemed slender because of their bulk.
"I was thinking, too," Garreth continued eventually, "that you were being very free with your expectations of kingship. You're not the King yet, and you might never be."
Uther blinked, and when he spoke his voice was quiet, all trace of raillery gone. "I know that, Garreth."
"I know you do, but the men don't
know it—or if they do, they don't care. But what happens if the Chiefs should choose someone else? That's going to leave you looking foolish."
"And why would they choose someone else? They—"
"They might see you as too much the Outlander, that's why. You spend too much time away in Camulod, they'll say. They've been saying it for years. Too much time in Camulod and not enough in your own land. They'll disregard the fact that all the men who ride with you are their own men from Cambria. And if anyone brings it up, they'll be shouted down, and your men will be categorized as you are, strangers and no longer to be trusted. They've learned too many alien ways to be pure Cambrian warriors. And you, you're too much the Roman nowadays for some of their proud stomachs, despite your birth and boyhood. You're never here where you should be, always too far away and for far too long."
"But that's—"
"That's true, Uther. as far as they are concerned. They believe, and rightly so, that a King must tend his people all the time. Remember that these are not merely disgruntled malcontents who have nothing better to do than complain. Like you, these men are Chiefs of the Pendragon Federation—Pendragon. Llewellyn and Griffyd. They will decide upon the kingship, and you have but one vote. They have a weight upon their minds and hearts, Uther. They have a binding duty to pick the best man from those available among their own number. There are seven from whom to choose, and six of those are always more available year-round than you have been these several years."
"They will pick me, Garreth. They need a warrior."
"Balls! They are warriors, even the oldest of them—tried and tested leaders."
"Aye, but four of them are too old to take the kingship."
"Right! And that leaves three to pick among. And two of those are better known and may be better liked than you. Huw Strongarm is the youngest Chief ever to rule the northern Pendragon clans, and he's beloved by everyone—a warrior and a champion, a bard and a lover. A fine, upright young man. He'll be a great King some day."
"But not this time."
Garreth nodded, a terse jerk of his head that conveyed his reluctance to agree. "No, not this time. He's still too young, little more than a boy. That leaves only Meradoc, but he would be your biggest threat even were Huw old enough. Meradoc has the love and trust of all his own folk—" Garreth broke off, twisting his face wryly at the disbelief that had sprung into Uther's face. "Well, I may be overstating that a bit—he is Meradoc, and that in itself makes him hard to love—but nonetheless it is undeniable that he has strength enough among his own people to win. He has support, and that means he has the numbers, and it matters not whether he holds them through love or fear."
"Numbers mean nothing in this. There are but seven votes. Seven single voices."
"Numbers mean everything, Uther. Think you that the Chiefs will be unmoved by the opinion of their people? Would you vote in defiance of your own people, flouting them simply because you wish it? You could, because you are their Chief. But how would that affect the way your people think of you? Do you think after that they'll follow you willingly, or any other Chief who disregards their wishes, into battle, into death?" Garreth paused to let that sink in. "Meradoc will vote for himself, and you will vote for yourself, so those two votes are gone. That leaves but five, and of those five you will need three. You'll have no time available for courting anyone, because the Choosing will begin the moment you arrive. Everyone else will have shown up already, and you can be sure that Meradoc was the first to get there, to lay his claim for support among the others."
"He'd serve himself better by keeping quiet. Meradoc has no skill in bending men to like him."
"Perhaps not, but he is an able man, you can't deny him that, and that will speak loudly for him. He leads his people well, and the only real victories we have won so far in this war with Cornwall have been his—his planning, his force and his leadership. There's more than one minor chieftain who thinks that Meradoc would make a strong King."
"Aye, and the people would weep beneath his feet forever after. Meradoc is a bully, Garreth, and he's greedy."
Garreth shrugged. "Ambitious, isn't that the Roman word? He wouldn't be where he is now if he were not ambitious, and neither would any of the others, including you."
Uther Pendragon drew a deep breath and looked about him before responding to that. The last of his men had long since vanished up the steep stream bed, and even the sound of hooves had faded into silence. Finally he returned his gaze to Garreth Whistler, and his voice was as expressionless as his face.
"You think him stronger than me? The better man?"
Garreth curled his lip and kicked his horse into motion. "I should knock you off your horse for even asking that, boy. Come, we ought to keep up with the others."
As Uther swung his horse around to follow, Garreth set his mount to the rocky slope, half turning in his saddle to talk back over his shoulder.
"All I meant was that you should be careful of how you behave— to your own men and to the men who must judge you before choosing you. Don't look too confident, and don't look arrogant. But above all, don't look too Roman! If you ride into the gathering wearing that armour, you'll destroy any chance you have of being chosen. You know the Chiefs. You know how they think, how they disapprove of anything they see as differentness. Don't hand them the power to thwart you. Old they may be—several of them too old, perhaps, to remember how it feels to be young—but none of them has lost the taste for exercising power when he can. This conclave gives them that opportunity . . . the power to kill younger men's dreams."
Uther was very quiet thinking about that as their horses scrambled up the last portion of the steep climb to the crest. He knew Garreth was right, that something as insignificant as his appearance could cost him the King's Chair. How much better it would be if he could spring into prominence and into the kingship as his grandfather had.
Within the Pendragon Federation, Ullic, as Uther knew, had been the first man in living memory to serve as both King and War Chief. He had been elected King by the unanimous choice of his fellow Chiefs when he was only twenty-one, directly following the death of his own father, Udall. But Ullic Pendragon had already been wearing the huge Eagle Crown of the War Chief of Pendragon at the time of his election to the kingship.
A natural warrior, bred of generations of fierce fighters who led their clan with honour and distinction, Ullic had come early to recognition upon the unforeseen death, in a brilliantly executed ambush, of Ullic's Uncle Daffyd, War Chief of the Federation, and his entire staff of close subordinates. Their leaderless army found itself outflanked and outmanoeuvred by an enemy far more numerous than they had expected, led by a brilliant general, rather than by the simple seagoing brigand that they had all expected to find in command, and disaster loomed over all of them.
Within moments of the death of his commanding general, a lacklustre nonentity called Dennys ap Corfyl found himself promoted, ipso facto, to the rank of senior surviving chieftain in a trapped army. The hapless fellow, caught flat-footed, was overwhelmed by circumstances beyond his control or understanding. To young Ullic Pendragon, who had only recently celebrated his seventeenth birthday, it was evident that the man was totally at a loss. What few wits the fellow possessed were by that time thoroughly addled, and the faces of the men around him, who looked to him for leadership and salvation, were beginning to show strain and signs of panic.
Ullic reacted immediately and without thought, springing forward from where he stood and using a nearby boulder to help him jump up to a rocky ledge where all could see him and know who he was. For the first time ever, he raised his great voice to draw all eyes to him, and then he began to issue orders, crisp and terse and succinct. It never crossed his mind, after that first step, that anyone would seek or wish to gainsay him, and the men he harangued accepted his command immediately and instinctively, moving to obey his fast-flying instructions without the slightest hesitation.
He called on all of them to form up in their clan
groups behind him and to follow the moves of his uncle's own personal guard of clansmen, over which he then assumed undisputed control. As he took his place at their head, they cheered him once, loudly and deeply, as their kinsman and commander, and then he led them forward, directly towards the left centre of the enemy army that had outflanked them. Inspired by his fiery enthusiasm, they smashed through the extended enemy formation facing them and then wheeled back to left and right, the sheer mass of their numbers and the fury of their determination rolling the enemy up in confusion, battering at them and pressing them back upon themselves so that they hampered each other in their dense-packed closeness.
There was nothing Roman about the way Pendragon warriors fought. They fought as their ancestors had, in small, tight-knit groups of individuals who knew and trusted each other completely. Capable of combining with other groups to form heavy and dense formations, they preferred to preserve the integrity of their small units, guarding one another's back and generally combining their weight and initiative to achieve the ultimate in ferocity and, with that, victory. Ullic, they quickly learned, could lead them with the sureness of a master, inspiring all of them with his flamboyant leadership, his courage, his immense strength and his great roaring voice. Within a very short space of time on that first day, the Pendragon forces went from being outflanked and close to defeat to being utterly dominant, sending their attackers reeling and finally routing them completely.
That afternoon when the battle was over and the last of the fleeing enemy survivors had disappeared, one of his father's senior veterans brought Ullic the dead War Chief's great helmet, and backed by the cheers and applause of the army, he insisted that the young man put it on. It was against tradition, for no one ever presumed to wear the Eagle Crown of a dead War Chief, but the day had been special, and Ullic felt he had acquitted himself well and given honour to his uncle and his kinsmen, and so he held the helmet above his head, straight-armed, and then lowered it gently over his brows, shouting his father's name.