by Jack Whyte
Nemo shrieked, insane with fear, and spun around, thrusting blindly with her short-sword as years of military training took over. The thing she had imagined at her back was not a goblin but a man, however, and as the length of her blade stabbed into his unprotected neck, she recognized him. It was Noric, Lagan's man, the one who had taken her to find her armour the day before. She saw the shock on his face as he jerked his head, trying to look down at the sword that had killed him, and watched as the light of life faded immediately from his eyes. His body, unable to fall backwards, sagged forward against her, following the pull of her blade as she tried to withdraw it from his throat, and she brought the heel of her left hand up beneath his chin and thrust him away from her, jerking her blade free as he fell back. She turned back towards the circle of oaks immediately, aware that the violent effort of killing him had reopened the wound in her side.
The screaming had stopped again. Nemo looked down at the blade in her hand, still dripping with blood, then raised it and pushed herself away from the tree, lurching forward into the circle. She saw movement immediately, close by her beneath the closest tree on her right, but her sight was blurred and at first she could not define what she was seeing. She blinked, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve, and then saw what it was: two men, one of them hauling the other up into the air by a rope around his chest and beneath his arms, the rope thrown over a low oak limb. The man being hanged was apparently dead, his clean-shaven face bloodlessly pale, and she saw that both his hands and his feet had been cut off. The other man, covered in blood and recognizable only by his size, was Lagan Longhead.
Nemo had no care for what Lagan was doing and no interest in the other man. She knew only that she had to bring Lagan to Uther. That had been the King's command, and nothing in the world had ever mattered more to her than obeying his wishes.
She tried to call Lagan's name, but all that issued from her mouth was a strangled grunt, and at the sound of it Longhead exploded into motion. Nemo saw the hanging body plummet to the ground as he released the rope and spun around, one hand whipping down to his belt while the other swung up to point at her. Then he turned completely on his heel and threw something at her. She barely had time to see that it was a whirling axe before it smashed into her forehead, killing her instantly.
Longhead barely glanced at her as he scurried to where she lay and ripped the axe out of her cloven skull, but even had he looked at her closely. Nemo was completely unrecognizable. The Cornish Chief remained in a crouch, brandishing the axe and hopping from foot to foot as he peered around, searching for other attackers, but when he was satisfied that there were none, he turned and scampered back in the same stooped run to his interrupted work, where he thrust the long handle of the axe into the belt at his waist.
The body lay where it had fallen, festooned with the coils of rope that had landed on top of it, and he stooped quickly to gather them up again, starting to loop them in one hand as he peered up at the bough above. But the large, richly brocaded bag securely fastened around the dead man's waist caught his eye and he stopped suddenly, crouching down even lower to look at it and linger its richness.
"Oh, Gully, Gully, Gully," he whispered, the words tripping over each other. "What have we here? This is perfect. Come here now, let's sit you up."
He grasped the corpse beneath the shoulders and struggled to drag it across the few intervening paces to where he could prop it up with its back against the bole of the oak tree. Then, when he was sure it was securely lodged upright and would not topple over, he stooped to undo the woven, brightly coloured belt that held the large bag about the dead man's waist.
"There," he grunted, holding the thing aloft and undoing its drawstring before spilling its few contents out onto the grass. "There, now we can do this properly. Gully. Can't send you off to meet the gods without your parts."
He turned and cast his eyes about the grass, then moved quickly, scuttling and spider-like, to snatch up the severed hands and feet that lay around him. When he had all four, holding them in the crook of his bent left arm, he went back and knelt in front of the corpse, arranging the severed extremities side by side in their pairs on the ground in front of him. That done, he twisted sideways and picked up the brocaded bag, tugging at it until the neck was wide open.
"Now," he whispered. "Feet first, that's the thing." The shattered ankles of the severed feet bristled with shards of jagged bone, showing plainly that they had not been easily removed from their natural place.
"Are you watching, Gully, can you see? Don't you go dying on me! Wait with me, we're almost done now. There. Two feet and two hands, one of them with two almost-missing fingers. Your own fault, that, Gully. You wouldn't keep still." The hand he held, which had been Gulrhys Lot's left hand, showed the clear signs of three distinct axe blows, one of which had almost severed two fingers, the smallest and the one beside that, and another, less heavily delivered, that had split the back of the hand, breaking the bones but not cutting completely through the flesh. The third had been a clean, heavy blow, cutting directly through the wrist and severing the hand. Longhead stuffed the hand into the bag and reached for the other.
The wrist of this dead and bloodless thing showed evidence of two hard, overlapping chops, and the index finger still bore the massive golden ring imprinted with the seal of the Boar, Lot's personal insignia. Longhead held it up to the corpse's eyes, as though the dead man might be able to see and appreciate it.
"And there's your seal. See you? Lucky this bag is big enough. Now, if we place this hand atop the other, the ring still up, the gods will know you when they see you. Gully. They'll see a King, just as you wanted. They'll know you for the stinking, festering pile of dung you are. There, now, my friend, my so-long-trusted friend."
He tied the ends of the belt together and looped them like a sling around the corpse's neck, and then stood up, collected the rope and coiled it carefully before throwing the loops up and over the bough above his head, catching the slack in his free hand as it fell back to him. Then, with not as much as another glance at the corpse, he bent his back to the task of hoisting the body into the tree and securing the rope around the thick and ancient bole. When he was finished, he stepped back and looked up at the dead man swaying above him.
"There, now. You're above and beyond everyone else again, as you always thought you ought to be. When the gods come looking for you, show them your mighty seal and tell them Lagan Longhead sent you." He grasped one dangling leg and swung it violently, setting the hanging body spinning, and then crashed to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and screaming his wife's name loudly enough to frighten himself. Snatching his hands away from his eyes again, he held them out at his sides as though preparing to take flight, and knelt there, hunched and quivering, for a long time, peering about him and tilting his head, listening. He leaped to his feet then and pulled the bloody axe from his belt before crouching to turn completely around again, his every move radiating menace. When nothing met his gaze he straightened, inhaling sharply, then ran off in a long, loping stride to disappear into the woods, leaving the Druids' circle to the silence again, disturbed only by the buzzing of the flies attracted to the fresh- spilled blood.
Two miles away from the Druids' circle, Uther, with no thought now of Lagan Longhead in his mind, was closer to despair than he had ever been. By his reckoning, it was shortly after noon, and below him on the valley floor his army was being slaughtered, overwhelmed by numbers that simply swamped their disciplined and normally impregnable formations. The enemy from the south had swept into view nigh on three hours earlier in numbers that appalled his eyes, marching in tight, disciplined phalanxes and spreading clear across the eastern floor of the valley before wheeling inexorably to attack the pitifully thin lines of his infantry. At the same time the masses from the north had swept down, cheering, to join them, completely surrounding Uther's now woefully inadequate force. But even above the tumult of the clash below, he had still been able to hear
the noises from the skirmish above and behind him, where his bowmen and infantry were fighting what he feared would be a losing battle with the unknown forces swarming up the hill from the rear.
Three separate armies had combined in one engagement—ten thousand men, perhaps more, against his two thousand.
He himself had led the first successful cavalry charge against them an hour before, two hundred men at his back, hammering death down from the hillside and around his own beleaguered perimeter from right to left, cleaving a bloody and relentless path through the packed masses of the enemy, shattering them and sending them reeling. The Camulodian, Philip, had led a charge in similar strength from the opposite direction, sweeping down and around from left to right, passing Uther's force on the outside of his progress at the midpoint. The attack had worked miraculously well and had given the hard-pressed Camulodian infantry the chance to regroup and reform their ranks, but devastating as the double charge had been, it had been a mere swat at a swarm of bees, and the enemy had pressed in again as soon as the charging cavalry had passed.
What was worse, and heartbreakingly so, was that the manoeuvre had worked only once. By the time the second wave of cavalry had thundered down from above to repeat the assault, the enemy had prepared for them and met them with massed banks of spears, concealed until too late by the throngs in front of them. The spearmen had ignored the horsemen themselves and concentrated upon slaughtering their mounts, so that the surging masses of heavy horses crashed into ruin, unable to penetrate the densely packed formations that confronted them and foundering against an insurmountable barrier of their own dead. Uther had watched from above, raging but utterly helpless and unable to do anything to change the situation.
He heard his name being shouted and turned slowly to see Garreth Whistler coming towards him, accompanied by Dedalus, both men carrying bright, multicoloured bundles of the clothing that Ygraine's women had discarded before their escape.
"Uther! Get down! Come down here!"
Mystified, and giving way to his anger now that they had given him a focus, Uther leaped down from his horse.
"What in the name of all the gods are you two doing? Our army's being slaughtered down there, and you're collecting women's clothing?"
"Aye," Dedalus spat. "And we're being slaughtered up above, as well. We're finished, Uther. This battle is over, save for the dying.
All we can do now is salvage what we can, and try to live to fight again."
Uther stood staring, his mind refusing to work, and then he shook his head. "What are you saying, live to fight another day? Are you suggesting that we should run away? Flee the field? Damnation to that! If we are to die, then we're to die, so let's get to it!"
"No, Uther, we don't all have to die. Dedalus has found a way to cut our losses. With these." Garreth Whistler hoisted the bundle he held in his arms. "Tell him, Ded."
"With these—" Dedalus dropped his bundle and reached out to grasp Uther's red cloak "—and this. They all know this, those whoresons down there. They've seen you lead the charge and they know who you are. Now we have a chance to stop the killing, but you have to flee with the women."
"What women? You're mad. You think I'd flee like Lot? You've lost your mind."
"No, my plan will work. But even if it doesn't, at least it offers us a chance to do something." Dedalus paused, seeing that Uther had no idea what he was talking about. "Look, Uther. These clothes here are too bright to hide, you said so yourself. That's why the women had to take them off. They would have been visible from miles away. You would be, too. You are, already, with your red and gold. Now, if we mount men behind our riders, men dressed in these things, they'll look like women from down below. And if you ride off leading them, with the remainder of our cavalry and your standard-bearer riding ahead of you, and make your way along the flank of the hill here to the southwestward, everyone down there will see you going, and what do you think they'll do?"
"They'll laugh, as I should be laughing, had I the heart for it."
"Aye, they might laugh, Uther," Garreth Whistler said, "but they'll follow you, hungry to catch and kill a King and sate themselves on his women. Lot would reward them richly for bringing him your head. And if they follow you, if even half of them follow you, our lads below will have that much the better chance of living through this day. It's only numbers that have beaten them, not warriors or tactics."
Uther stood silent. Heartsick, he turned his head and looked around him, taking stock of what he saw. Then he nodded and reached up to loosen his cloak. "It might work. Here, have someone put this on, and this helmet, then put your plan to work quickly."
Dedalus shook his head. "That's no good, Uther. It can't be anyone else who goes. It has to be you. You're the King."
"That's right, I am the King, and I will not run away and leave my men to die."
"You have to, Uther." Garreth's voice was urgent. "You have to. You have no other sane choice. It would be a waste of everything you and all of us have fought for and believed in were you to die here, leaving Lot victorious when there's no need. Even if you do escape, you might still die out there somewhere, but at least you'll have a fighting chance to live and raise another army. No one else can do that, Uther. No one. Merlyn could have once, but not now. There is only you, now. You must live to fight again and put a final end to Lot, to avenge those who have died here today. And if you go now quickly, you will save more lives in departing than you ever could in staying."
Uther hesitated, still unwilling but almost convinced, and Dedalus added his voice to Garreth Whistler's.
"We'll stay here and hold the army together, what remains of it. Trust me, Uther. If you have ever believed me or admired me, trust me now. I know that when they see you leaving—and we'll make sure they see you plainly-—those whoresons down there will think you're fleeing with your women, and they'll take after you like hounds after a stag. But they'll have to climb this hill to chase you, and you'll be mounted, and they will see only a small party leaving with you. We'll send out the rest of the cavalry unseen, ahead of you, by the same path the women took earlier. You'll cut up and around to join them on the other side of the hills once you're safely away from here, and when the whoresons catch up to you, if they ever do, they'll find you at the head of four, almost five hundred horsemen, and the 'women' they'll expect to slow you down will be your own Pendragon bowmen. What say you?"
Uther looked from Dedalus to Garreth Whistler. "Garreth, I can't believe I'm hearing this from you . . . that you're telling me to abandon my army and save my own skin. You are my oldest, closest friend . . . And so I charge you now to be truthful with me, to speak not as a friend, but as the King's Champion. Do you believe, in your heart, that this is the course I should take for the good of all?"
Garreth Whistler nodded slowly, looking his King squarely in the eye. "I do, Uther. I believe it absolutely. I believe it is your duty and your burden as the King to do this. And I know how badly it sits with you. But bear in mind your father's belief, and his father's before that: there comes a time when every King must bear the burden of being much more than a common man. That burden is called duty, and a King's duty lies in safeguarding his people."
Uther's eyes filled with tears and he turned away, sniffing angrily and staring off into the distance as he struggled with what the King's Champion had said. Finally, after a long, stiff silence, he turned back to his two friends and colleagues and spoke in a voice heavy with resignation and regret.
"So be it, then. I'll flee. See to your arrangements, and may the gods protect both of you."
"All of us, Uther. May they protect all of us, including our men left alive down there in the valley and your own son and his mother. If you ride quickly enough, you'll overtake them without much effort. They're afoot and have no road to follow, so I doubt they'll be making swift progress."
Dedalus turned away and began calling out commands, sending men running in all directions, while Garreth Whistler set about unfolding and l
aying out the bright, feminine garments that Uther's bowmen would wear as they rode behind the mounted troopers.
Even before they had travelled beyond sight of the remnants of his own army, making their way carefully along the high slopes of the hillside on the western flank of the valley that had brought the army from the south against him, Uther could see that Dedalus's ruse was working. A long-drawn, swelling roar had risen up from the swarming enemy in the valley below as men saw them and pointed.
drawing the attention of others to their flight—the "women" in their bright and brilliant colours clinging to the backs of the troopers as they made their way slowly and precariously along the precipitous hillside behind Uther's enormous scarlet and gold banner. And slowly at first, but with a steadily increasing momentum, a surge of movement away from the fighting and towards the valley mouth had announced the beginnings of a hot pursuit, the visible prizes of a fleeing King and a crowd of high-born women having their predicted effect.
Uther took great care to remain in view and move slowly, exaggerating the difficulty of their route, until the floor of the narrow valley below them was jammed with running men, many of whom were already climbing the hill towards the mounted party. Once out of view of the battleground, he could not tell with any certainty how many of the enemy had followed him, but it soon became unmistakably clear that, once begun, the tide of pursuit had swollen to completion, with few of the enemy willing to forfeit such rich prizes to others who had simply moved sooner and more greedily. As he watched them swarming below him, Uther began to hope that the remnants of the battered army he had left behind might be able to regroup, consolidate their numbers and survive the catastrophe that had struck them. His despair at having abandoned them, however, was almost unbearable, and he rode in bitter, angry silence.