by Jack Whyte
The newcomers were Germanic, not Ersemen. That was obvious from their discipline and their generally well-equipped condition, with ring-mail shirts and uniform, rectangular shields. Many of them carried heavy axes, Uther could see, but the remainder carried long, useful-looking spears. Uther had never seen real Roman soldiers, for the Romans had disappeared from Britain during his early childhood, but he knew instantly that his attackers were Roman-trained veterans, tough and hard and superbly disciplined, real soldiers rather than rough bandits, men who had served and fought together for years and would be easily and eagerly brought to fight, but not put to flight. Watching the way they moved to engage his forces, he could see that they were familiar with cavalry and showed no fear of the mounted troopers. They held their formations effortlessly and were magnificently well drilled, and that set him wondering immediately whether he might be able to use their discipline to his advantage. He spurred his horse into a dead run and, closely followed by Garreth Whistler, Huw Strongarm and a small group of senior officers of the Camulod contingent, galloped to the top of a low knoll nearby, where he could look down on the activities taking place on the level ground below him.
The officer commanding the cavalry sent to interpose themselves between the enemy and Uther's deploying infantry was a Camulodian called Nestor Strabo. He had formed his men into a wedge formation for his first attack, but even as they formed up and began to move forward to the attack, he had to give the signal to halt them again when two of the three independent enemy units began moving quickly towards each other, forming themselves into the famous Roman tortoise configuration, while the third unit wheeled and moved away from them.
The two units forming the tortoise, both of them on Uther's right, grouped themselves in the classic oval formations and covered themselves completely with overlapping shields, forming a pair of flawless, protective domes that rose from the grounded shields on all sides to form two impenetrable carapaces, each of them bristling with long spears projecting between shields all around the perimeter. The long spears held the cavalry at bay, and Nestor Strabo's force was effectively neutered and rendered impotent, for their swords were neither long enough nor heavy enough to do any damage, even could they have come within striking distance of the defensive shields, and the length of the spears projecting towards them ensured that they could not even ride between the two close-set formations.
Seeing this, Strabo issued new orders and swung his cavalry wedge around in a full gallop towards the third, most distant enemy phalanx, which had been moving quickly to outflank his group as they approached the two tortoises. Instantly, the third phalanx coalesced and formed a tortoise too, while the other two disintegrated fluidly and their men moved swiftly against Strabo's cavalry from the rear. Strabo saw the move and waved his followers aside, sweeping them out of their charge and across the face of the enemy, leading his horsemen back towards the original formations, which quickly regrouped at his approach. Strabo raised an arm and brought his men to a halt at his back, then stood erect in his stirrups, his head moving from side to side as he watched all three enemy formations. The situation was static, with both sides vying for advantage and neither able to do anything effective.
Uther was watching the activity too, but seeing the inability of Strabo's troopers to close with the enemy, an alarm flared in his mind and gave him an idea. He swung to face the Whistler, unhooking the heavy flail from his saddle as he did so and holding it out towards Garreth as though it weighed nothing at all, the thick shaft pointed at the other man and the heavy iron ball dangling at the end of the short length of chain that fixed it to the shaft.
"You have one of these?" he shouted.
"No, why?"
"How many of your men have them?"
"Almost all of them. It's your weapon, and they're your Dragons. They do what you do. Why?"
"Look at Strabo's people down there. They're useless. Those spears are no real danger to them. All the enemy can do is hold them out there to fend off the horses, but they can't thrust with them or spear anything. And yet Strabo's men are hamstrung, because their swords can't reach the enemy shields. Can't get past the spears. And even if they could, they couldn't penetrate the shield cover."
Uther brandished the flail, swinging it over his head. "Now, if I were down there swinging this, I'd wrap the chain around a spear shaft, sidewise, and rip the spear right out of the grip of whoever was holding it. Do it often enough, I'd rip out enough spears to allow me to move closer and smash the ball into one of the shields. I'd break the shield or batter it down. D'you believe me? Quickly, man, do you believe I could?"
"Yes."
"Good, and if I did it, if I knocked a hole in that tortoise's shell, do you think another ten or twenty men with me, all of them swinging flails, could do the same? Of course they could! But if I had another ten or twenty bowmen waiting nearby, watching and waiting until we had made those holes in the shell, they could then shoot arrows in through the holes we made."
Huw Pendragon's eyes were alight as he made the mental leap before Garreth Whistler could. "They could, Uther, and that would be the end of the tortoise, for we'd pour so many arrows through those holes that no one inside the shelter could survive and the shell would collapse."
Uther turned in his saddle to look at the officers around him. "Did you all hear that? Do you understand it? You see what's involved?" They were all nodding, some of them shouting in approval, and he grinned and held up the Hail above his head. "Well, then, let's try it. Let's find out if I'm mad or not!" He pulled his horse backwards and around, tugging it into a rearing dance on its hind legs. "Garreth, we'll need three squadrons of cavalry, all Dragons and all with flails, and three more squadrons, without flails if need be, to back them up and add weight. Whichever way that works out, I want every trooper who has a flail to be involved in this attack. So, six squadrons in all. One double squadron to each tortoise.
"Huw, we'll need three squadrons of bowmen to work with them, waiting until the holes have been torn in the shells and then shooting into them. Mind you tell all of them to waste no arrows firing onto the top of the tortoise shell. Every arrow must go through a hole. Then, when the shells start to collapse, I'll want strong infantry formations waiting to move in and crush them. At that time, the bowmen will fall back and the cavalry will disengage and circle, looking for stragglers and escapees. Am I clear?"
From that moment forward, the entire impetus of the struggle changed, with the advantage shifting slowly but heavily in Uther's favour. The new tactics did not have any immediate or startling effect, simply because they were too new and therefore strange to Uther's troopers. For a long time they seemed to achieve nothing at all. But after several failures and several more ineffectual attacks, some of Uther's Dragons began to understand what was required and adjusted their movements, swinging their flails sideways, rather than vertically, and soon the protective spears, lashed by swinging iron balls and pulled by coils of heavy chains, began to break and to fall. And once that began to happen, then it gradually became easier for the flailing horsemen to come close enough to the enemy to smash down the shields and create holes into which the Pendragon bowmen could shoot.
The engagement was long-drawn-out and fluid, in spite of the static nature of the enemy defences, more a series of skirmishes than a set battle. Uther was not present to see the outcome of his newest strategy, for the fight lasted until late the following day, by which time, knowing his forces were winning, he had ridden off with a strong escort to find and rescue Ygraine.
In the end, as Uther had suspected in that first flash of insight, the German enemy was destroyed by its own perfect discipline and training, which proved too rigid to allow them to adapt their defences to meet the new style of attack being mounted against them. They fought well and ferociously, neither seeking nor showing mercy, and they fought off attack after attack, breaking away from time to time in good order and then moving decisively back to the attack, reforming and regrouping time
after time until they were reduced to one under-manned formation incapable of forming the tortoise. When that happened, they finally drew themselves into a ring behind their shields, then stood there and fought until they died. But they took a large number of Uther's followers with them, and the broad path over which they fought their way for an entire day and a half was littered with dead and dying warriors, many of them Camulodian and Cambrian infantry, cavalry and bowmen.
When he arrived at the isolated stronghold that held Ygraine and her party, Uther found a scene of controlled chaos. The signs of heavy fighting were everywhere, with bodies strewn all around the entrance- way and a heavy pall of smoke hanging over everything. He was expected, however, and he could see from the waving figures atop the first earthen rampart that Ygraine's bodyguard had been the winners of the struggle that had taken place.
The Queen herself, surrounded by a protective ring of her own guardsmen, was waiting for Uther when he reached the main gates, and she left the protective cordon and came to meet him as he entered and dismounted. Her face was radiant, her long hair hanging down her back, bound over her brows with a wide ribbon of some bright green fabric, and as she approached, not quite running, she held their child aloft in her hands.
Despite his haste and the many problems that swarmed in his mind, Uther was yet surprised to notice how small she was and to realize that he had been completely unaware of that in all the time he had known her. In his mind she had always seemed taller and more buxom than she looked now, despite the fact that her breasts were now swollen with milk and her waist was still thickened from her pregnancy.
No thought of secrecy or circumspection in her mind now, Ygraine came directly to him and handed him his son, her face wreathed in a smile of welcome, and as he took the child from her and held it up to where he could see it plainly, all awareness of pain, loss and battle-weariness faded immediately from his mind.
The boy was beautiful, even Uther could see that, despite his total ignorance of babies. He had thick, dark hair shot with streaks of pale brown, and enormous, shining eyes of a strange golden colour the like of which Uther had never seen. A great lump formed in his throat, closing off his breath, and for several moments he thought he might weep with the beauty of what was stirring in his breast. He was vaguely aware that everyone in the gateway and the courtyard beyond was looking at him, watching to see what he would do or say, but he had eyes only for the child, his son, Arthur, and he could feel Ygraine's wide eyes fixed on his face, gauging his reactions to what he was seeing.
He swallowed, hard, and drew a deep, shaking breath, holding it until he was sure he could speak without his voice trembling, and then he hefted the child gently as though measuring his weight. "Arthur, you said, that is his name? Arthur? There's little of the Cambrian in him." He saw her stiffen as though in shock and smiled at her, continuing to speak. "This one is Roman more than Cambrian, but British Roman. You made my son well, lady, complete with eagle's eyes.
"My grandmother has often told me of her brother, Caius Britannicus, who founded Camulod. He had eyes like this one here, bright, golden, eagle eyes. A soldier's eyes. A leader's eyes. A King's eyes, in truth. This one will be a King like none before him." He finally looked at Ygraine, smiling broadly and shifting the child into the crook of his right arm as he reached for her with his left, seeing the tears trembling in her eyes. "Now will you kiss me in front of all the world and be my wife and mother to my son for everyone to see and know?"
She swallowed a sob and moved quickly into the crook of his arm, lifting her face to him and kissing him deeply, and as they stood locked in their embrace, the child between them on one side, someone began to cheer, and the sound spread quickly, bringing him back quickly to awareness of where they were and what remained to be done.
"I can hardly wait until tonight," he said into her ear, hugging her close with the arm that encircled her and hoisting the child in his other arm. "We soon must make another one of these." He squeezed her even more tightly against him, already looking over her head and starting to take note of things beyond the gates in the interior of the stronghold. "But before then we have much to do. Is Lagan here?"
Ygraine shook her head and moved away from him, reaching for the child, and as he handed over his son she said, "No. I have no idea where he is, but they say he is tearing the land apart looking for Lot, with an army at his back, made up of clansmen from all over Cornwall. No one knows where he is, but the stories say he is everywhere. Where are your men?"
"Coming. At my back. We had some trouble with Germanic mercenaries. A strong force, far superior to Lot's usual filth. But things were well in hand when I left them, and my men should be close behind me. Are you ready to leave?"
"Aye, we are."
"How many people have you?"
"Fifty of my own guard under my cousin, Alasdair Mac Iain, another thirty of Herliss's clansmen and twelve of my women, with some other servants and attendants."
"Twelve women? Gods, Ygraine, we are at war! What am I to do with twelve women? I can barely look after my own men."
"What would you, Uther? I cannot simply leave them to Lot's mercy; he would kill them all. We have three wagons, each with a team of four horses. We will not hamper you."
"You could not hamper me, my love, not with my son in your arms . . . but twelve women . . . Well, we can but make the best of it. How quickly can you be prepared to leave?"
"We are ready now, and have been since last night. The fighting was all finished here by sunset. But we have just received word, a half hour before you came, that Lot is on his way here from the coast, a mere four leagues away."
"Damnation!" The news hit Uther hard. "That's no more than ten, twelve miles. How many are with him?"
"We don't know. The man who brought the news had not seen them, but he said he had been told it was an army . . . hundreds of men."
"Landed from the galleys that we saw earlier. Damn his foul, craven soul."
Ygraine was squinting up at him. "How did he escape you in the north?"
"He did not have to escape. There was nothing I could do to capture him. We had enemies approaching from all sides. We could not stay and wait for him to come to us and we could not attack him. I'll tell you all about it later. For now, we must be on our way, and quickly, and the only way open to us is to the south. Have you heard any more of this southern army?"
Ygraine shook her head. "No, only that they are on their way, moving north and living off the land, which means that they cannot be moving too quickly. But whether they are in the east or the west I know not. and I have no idea how close they are. I do know that my brother, Connor, is coming to find me, but he will land more than seven leagues to the southwest of here at the mouth of the river they call the Camel. That is close to where I was, but Connor does not know that I have been moved. Calum, the man I sent to you with my last letter, arranged for us—me and my guards, I mean—to meet him there. We know where it is, but it is a long way from where we are now. Connor will be there within the week, if our timing is right."
"Good, then we will head for the river mouth there, striking directly southwest, and hope we don't meet Lot's main army before we reach your meeting point." He began leading her towards the gates as he spoke, one arm about her shoulders. "I'll leave you there with sufficient men to keep you safe until your brother comes, and then I'll go and do what I have to do. We took severe punishment from the people we met yesterday. I didn't know Lot had units of that quality, and I hope he has no more of them. They savaged us, ripped us to pieces, and the fault was mine. I underestimated my enemy. Now. when we come face to face with Lot, I will be poorer by several hundred good men, and he already had us outnumbered by at least three to one. I only wish I could find Lagan and his army. There's no time to spare. So let's get your women loaded into those wagons and be on our way."
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
The addition of Ygraine's eighty men more than doubled the size of Uther's party, but they made
good progress and intercepted the main Camulodian force without incident in less than two hours. That, however, was the last of Uther's designs that went as planned.
As soon as the two groups had reunited and even before the arrangements had been made to fit the extra wagons into the baggage-and-supply train, a messenger came from Popilius Cirro to summon Uther into a council of war. He went immediately, knowing that Cirro must have strong and convincing reasons for such a peremptory summons, but he was dismayed when the trooper sent to find him led him back towards the hospital wagons, where he discovered that Popilius had been twice wounded in the fighting earlier that day. The first injury, an arrow through the fleshy part of his upper arm, had knocked the veteran commander off his feet, and while he had lain on the ground, vainly trying to dislodge the barbed arrowhead from his flesh with his uninjured hand, he had been slashed in the left thigh by a running mercenary, who had himself been struck dead before he could raise his sword a second time.
The second injury, much more serious than the first, had severed the large muscles in Cirro's thigh, depriving him of the ability to walk and thus destroying his ability to command in the field. But the hardened old soldier had refused to yield to his pain and surrender himself to Mucius Quinto's medics before passing over his responsibilities formally to Uther and to his own second in command, the veteran Dedalus, who had terrorized Uther and Merlyn during their early training. Dedalus, while primarily a cavalryman, had nonetheless extensive experience as a commander of infantry and was above all a sound judge and leader of men. Uther had great respect for the man, remembering him as a stern and unforgiving, but absolutely just and impartial tutor. Despite that, however, Uther found it difficult to accept or even to envision Dedalus in the place of Cirro. and it took him long moments to overcome a sense of unreality about what he was seeing transpire.