by Jack Whyte
Garreth opened his eyes at that and sat up, stretching hugely. "Well," he said, "I might sit here all night listening to the two of you exchanging thoughts, and I might even learn something from it. . . But one thing I already know, learned long since: if I have no part to play in two men's talk, it's a waste of time, and I might as well be warm and snug abed. I'll bid you a good night and pleasant dreams, if e'er you get to rest."
Smiling, Uther watched him depart and then turned back to Owain of the Caves. "He is a good friend, Garreth Whistler."
"Mayhap. I'd be no judge of that. Ask me your questions."
Uther stirred and shifted his backside, searching for more comfort. "I have a few, but I think I know the answers to most of them already. Do you really believe that Meradoc would have you killed for not killing me? If I am any judge of men. and I believe I am. your loyalty is faultless."
That drew him a wry, sidewise look that condemned him as a fool. "You are still alive, and not even delayed in your journey. Therein lies an end to both my usefulness and my loyalty in Meradoc's eyes."
Uther shook his head. "Am I that big a threat to him?"
"Ask yourself that, not me. My only care now is staying alive. The gods served me a bitter dish today, but I learned long ago never to question what the gods offer."
Owain turned his gaze towards the fire again so that the leaping flames picked out the details of his long, clean-shaven face with its wide mouth and deep-graven jawline. Uther searched that face for signs of bitterness or anger, but he saw only a strange, almost melancholy sadness in the man's eyes.
"Meradoc demands perfection in his . . . followers," Owain said. And then, disconcertingly, he smiled—the first real smile Uther had seen from him—and reached down to pull a burning twig from the fire. He held it up to his mouth and blew at the flames before he continued, crinkling his eyes against the sting of the smoke as the tiny flames died out. "We are but few, we who do Meradoc's bidding, and for our services we are well rewarded. But as the payment for success is great, beyond a poor man's dreams, so, too, is the penalty for failure.
"Loyalty, obedience and success. Those are Meradoc's demands. He sent me out to perform a task, and I have failed to do it. I am a walking corpse until my former allies find me."
"That is insanity. Where will you go? I mean, I know you've said you don't know, but surely your friends—"
"Friends are for ordinary folk who live and behave in ordinary ways. I kill men to please those who employ me. Men such as I never have friends."
"You are a warrior. All warriors are killers, Owain. That's what the word means."
Owain of the Caves turned and looked directly at Uther. and the younger man was astonished to see what he took to be pity in the other's gaze.
"I know that, Uther Pendragon. But you are wrong in this . . . I am no warrior. You are a warrior. Warriors make war. They stand and fight or run away, according to the rules of war—if such things truly exist. The way I see it, those rules are made by those who win, or want to win, and have the strength to try. Warriors fight, and they take pride in being seen to fight. People like me, on the other hand . . . we never fight unless we must. Fighting involves the risk of being killed, so I avoid it. I am a killer, bought and sometimes, though seldom, sold. I often kill in stealth, and sometimes I kill openly, but I never, ever kill in the heat of the moment. My killing is deliberate; it is planned. Few of my victims ever see me coming or recognize the moment of their death."
Uther kept his face straight, despite his profound shock. He had known many men throughout his life who were little more than brutes—vicious and violent and lawless—but he had never before met a man who could speak calmly as this man did of casual, dispassionate killings carried out on behalf of others in cold blood and for personal gain.
Uther cleared his throat. "What do you mean by 'bought and sometimes sold'?"
Owain flicked the twig back into the fire. "Meradoc has sometimes sold my services to others."
"He sold them? Not you?"
The barest shrug of his wide shoulders was the only indication that Owain had heard the question, and for a long time Uther thought he was not going to answer. Then the words emerged in a flat monotone. "My services were his, for him to . . . bestow. I did what he instructed me to do."
"How long have you been doing this, this—killing?" Uther resisted using the word that was in his mind, murdering.
"I have never not done it. It's what I do."
"What, you were born a killer, even as a babe?" Uther, irritated by the man's disinterested monotone, recognized the pettiness of the question even as it left his lips, but he was incapable of biting it back.
"I must have been. I have no other memories. There was a woman once who cared for me, I think, but she was killed one night when I was very young. I tried to rescue her, to help her, I suppose, but I was a helpless brat of seven, mayhap less. They beat me and broke my legs and threw me in the fire. That's why I limp."
Uther glanced down at the long, trousered legs stretching towards the fire. "I saw no limp."
"I limp."
"Who were 'they'?"
He watched the profiled face break into a wolfish, bitter grin. "My father? Brothers? Let's say my family. They were a small clan, and I have seen enough since then to know they were not. . . not as others are. At the time, though, I knew no other people, no other way of being. I thought they were all there was."
Uther felt a rush of gooseflesh, and the short hairs on his neck stirred in sheer horror at the vision of the seven-year-old boy squirming in the middle of a roaring fire.
"Who pulled you out, from the fire? You said your legs were broken."
"Aye, they were. It was another woman, Jess, I think her name was. Couldn't stand the noise or the stink, she said, so she dragged me away and threw me into a corner in another cave, and I lay there till I healed."
"What caves? Would I know them?"
"No, you would not know them, nor would you wish to. It has been more than twenty years since I last saw them, and I have no wish to go back. Anyone who passed that way became our means of living from the one day to the next. We killed whoever came along . . . robbed them, then killed them. Kept the women alive, for a while at least, until we found others, but we always ended up killing them. Sometimes we ate them, parts of them, if the winter had been long. Eventually, after too many travellers had been lost, people stopped coming that way, so we went out to hunt them.
"One day, some of our people were pursued and followed home. When the fighting was over, I was the only one left alive, and that was because I had been thrashed and thrown into a hole again the day before. The men who had come found me there, half dead, and took me out and made a slave of me until I grew too big to beat. Then one night I killed my keeper and left."
Uther had never heard anything to equal this, although he knew there were terrifying tales told of such things in the distant regions of the land, far from the holdings and customs of the major clans.
"Who were these people, the ones you grew up among?"
"The Cave People. They had no other name that I, or they, knew of. They lived barely, and to live, they killed."
"And that is how you grew up. No wonder you do what you do. but—if that's the way you live, why would you scruple to kill me? Especially when you knew it would cost you your own life?"
Owain drew a long, single-edged dirk from his belt and lingered the edge of the blade, and watching him, Uther experienced no more than a momentary, fleeting surge of alarm. After inspecting the weapon closely for several moments, Owain turned it in his fist, bent forward at the waist and drove its point into the ground, right at the fire's edge.
"I am sitting here wondering why I am telling you all this," he said mildly. "I kill because I have always killed, and life—my own included—has never seemed to be an important thing to me. We were all born to die. The killing provides enough wealth for me to live in comfort. But I do not steal, Uther Pendragon, nor do
I lie. I do not harm women casually. I do not eat the dead. I pay my debts, I keep myself away from simple folk who would be frightened by my shadow, I live according to a way of life, by rules I made myself, and I respect the gods.
"Not long after I killed my keeper and ran off—I must have been fourteen years old, or something close to that—I fell sick and almost died. I lay unconscious in a wood somewhere, close by a spring, and I was found there by an old man and his wife who lived nearby. They took me home and into their lives, and by the time I had grown healthy again and tit to walk, a process that took months, they had . . ." Owain's voice faded away for a moment as he sought a word. "They had tamed me . . . I suppose that would be the proper word. I was a wild creature when they found me, feral and unnatural and utterly devoid of any trace of civilization or humanity, trusting no one and nothing. They tamed me. They taught me, by their example, by treating me with decency, tolerance and great patience, that there is kindness in the world. And then, with them, for a time, the only time I can remember, I was . . . free of care.
"Their names were Gerrix and Martha, and they wove baskets and sold them. Gerrix had lost a leg as a young man. He had been a cleric then, in the home of some high-ranking Roman magistrate. He taught me to read and to write during the first winter I spent in their home. He had a store of books that was his greatest and only treasure, and I read all of them several times. Gerrix and I would discuss them, because he had no one else with whom to speak of such things. He taught me much, including how to speak, because the truth is that before he and Martha came into my life, I had never really spoken to anyone. The thought of speaking to another person for pleasure—of discussing something logically and without passion—could never have occurred to me."
"Evidently." Uther nodded his head. "How long did you remain with them?"
"For four years." The glow that had animated Owain's face was gone. "They were killed. In the fourth winter after I joined them, I went hunting. Game was not plentiful that year, and I was gone for nigh on two days. While I was gone, marauders found them and killed them. They took what they wanted, which could not have been much, and then burned the house . . ."
The silence that followed these words was so long that Uther thought again that Owain had finished, but as he began to say something that would express his condolences, the other sniffed and cleared his throat noisily.
"I found them . . . the killers, I mean. No great task. They had not expected to be followed. Four of them. I captured them all alive, and then I killed them, very slowly, very thoroughly and very painfully, one at a time, taking care to remind them each day of why they were dying. By the time the last of them died, having watched his friends precede him, his regret at having led them in doing what they did was very real.
"Somehow, I don't know how, someone found out what I had done and told others. Soon afterward, another man, a wealthy man, came to me and offered to feed and clothe me and provide a roof over my head in return for what he called my 'protective services.' From that day until this, I have made my living by selling those services. But thanks to the gifts I received from Gerrix, I have been able to do it on my own terms and according to my own beliefs."
Uther had listened carefully, wondering at the incomprehensible logic of this man. He could see that honour played a large part in the tall Northerner's behaviour, but he was at a loss to understand the workings and the dictates of that honour, since the man's professed way of life was in violation of all that Uther held to be honourable. He decided that he wanted to understand more.
"Tell me, Owain, why did you admit to me so quickly that you were sent to kill me? Had you no fear of our reprisals? We could have killed you then, before your words had died away."
"And if the gods had wished that, you would have. I but spoke the truth."
"I know that, but why? You could have waited and kept silent and then done what you were required to do afterward. You could have killed me when I least expected it and then returned to Meradoc as a hero. I don't understand why you made that decision . . . Or do you still intend to do it later?"
Owain of the Caves pulled his dirk from the ground and rubbed the point clean with the ball of his thumb, then turned his face towards Uther and smiled again. Uther was amazed at how the man's whole face lit up when he did so.
"Impossibility. You don't see that, though, do you?" He twisted his body, reaching behind him to replace the dirk in his belt. "Do you know anything of honour down there in that place called Camulod?"
"Of course we do."
"Well, then, you should have no difficulty understanding. You saved my life at risk of your own. That laid a heavy claim on me. How then could I kill you and be a man of honour?"
"Because it was an accidental thing, my saving you. Had I known you were there to kill me, I might not have been so quick to expose myself to that bear."
"You did what you were driven to do, Uther Pendragon. So did I. That's what a man—any real man—does."
"Hmm." Uther frowned slightly and shook his head in annoyance. "And so this with Meradoc. You claim he'll have you killed if he can find you, simply for behaving, as you see this thing, with honour. And yet I detect no anger in you towards him."
"What good is anger? It's a pointless thing, most of the time destructive."
"Very well, then. So you were to kill me, but the gods forestalled you. Why were you sent to look for me at all?"
"I was sent to make sure you came late to the Gathering. I told you that earlier. The decision to kill you was my choice, since I could think of no surer means of making you late."
"Meradoc did not order my death, then?"
"No, not in words, but his choice of messenger did not lack meaning."
"Because you tend to do things thoroughly."
Owain inclined his head slightly.
"So Meradoc sees me as an enemy."
"That seems obvious."
"Well, at least it's clear enough. I do not like Meradoc, but that hardly sets me apart from the mass. But I have never given him the slightest cause to see me as an enemy."
"Meradoc needs no cause for things like that. He is the cause. Think about that. You are not a stupid man, though I begin to wonder if you are not naive. It is not unheard of for an ambitious man to take matters into his own hands with power as important as a King's at stake. And yet for Meradoc there is more." The big man sat up straighter and sniffed, then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. "Guilt, man! There's cause enough for hatred and for fear . . ." His voice died away, and then resumed. "Look you, you saved my life and fed me well, and you have made no move to hinder me or hold me, so tomorrow I will be gone, and we may never set eyes each upon the other again. Your life for my life I gave, so accept this for the meal and the freedom. Think upon your father. Uric the King. Upon his death."
"I have thought much on it. He died by a poisoned arrow, shot by one of Lot of Cornwall's men."
"Aye, but where?"
Uther had grown tense. "What do you mean, 'where?' In battle, where else?"
"No!" Owain shook his head. "I don't know where you heard that tale, but Uric was in his camp, at night, in the middle of his army when he was killed. Now ask yourself this . . . how came the Cornish there in Uric's own camp? Who was in charge of the King's safety? There were guards who died for their carelessness that night, but who was responsible for assigning all those guards?"
"Meradoc?"
"Aye, Meradoc. Someone arranged things so the Cornishman could pass through ranks of guards. And Meradoc was in charge. He had the guards all killed at once, so great was his rage, for failing in their duty to the King. They were all dead almost before the word was spread."
"And dead men can't speak out, is that what you are saying?"
"You said it, not me."
"That is . . ." Uther's voice was choked with loathing. "You know this? You are convinced this happened?"
"No, I was far away that night, up in the north, so I don't know it. But
I know Meradoc and I know his greed, and what his wishes were and are. Meradoc sees himself as High King of the Pendragon Federation, but Uric was already there in place. So, to a man hungry enough and peering through a shuttered door at food on a table, the problem would have seemed simple: remove the obstacle between you and the table, then eat your fill." He moved his legs and rose to his feet. "Is that cause enough for enmity? Ask him yourself, when next you meet him. Now I'm going to sleep. Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?"
Uther simply shook his head, incapable of speech, and watched Owain walk into the blackness beyond the fire's range.
"I had doubts of my own, but didn't want to voice them to you until I knew more. His words have the ring of truth to them." Garreth's voice came from the darkness of the trees behind Uther's back. Uther sat silent, then spoke without turning.
"How long have you been listening there? I thought you went to bed."
"I did. I couldn't sleep."
"You suspected this treachery of Meradoc's? You should have told me, Garreth."
"Told you what, that I smelled a stink of fish? We live beside the sea, Uther. Anyway, now you know more than I knew. What will you do?"
Uther rose to his feet and picked up his bedroll, then walked away into the darkness without answering. When he came to where Owain of the Caves was stooping to lie down, having spread his blanket beneath the boughs of an evergreen, he stopped and spoke.
"Owain!"
He heard a stirring in the blackness beneath the tree. "Aye?"
"You have a place with me if you want one. Meradoc might yet kill you, but before he does, he'll have to kill me and mine as well, and I intend to give him no chance at that before he dies."
There was silence for a spell, and then the voice spoke from the darkness. "I'll think on that."