by Jack Whyte
"Hold fast, lads. These newcomers are not fresh troops. They're only the remainder of the party we were expecting, the ones who stayed behind to deal with Junius Lepo and his men. I count twelve of them, but there must have been twice that many left behind, so Junius and his men sold their lives dearly. Look at these people, at the way they come. They're afraid of you, and so they should be. All we have to do is stand here looking at them straight-faced and wait. Let them come to us. That way, their fear will grow as they come closer."
"Who's the big fellow, Uther, do you know?"
Uther glanced at the Dragon who had asked the question and grinned. "No, I don't know who he is, Owen, but he's big enough to fall hard when he does fall, is he not?"
"Aye, he is. Almost as big as you are."
"Perhaps so, but I'm not going to fall. Right, no more talk. We wait in silence."
He turned back to watch the enemy advancing, but from time to time his eyes sought out their leader, who sat quietly on the opposite bank, seeming to stare back at him, although the bulk of the man's massive helmet deprived Uther of any way of knowing where his eyes were looking.
Then something happened that was utterly alien to Uther's experience, and the strangeness chilled him to the heart as a kind of fear he had seldom known swept through him, whirling him instantly back into childhood and the gruesome tales of goblins and night terrors that had sometimes terrified him as a boy, the grim tales told by men purely to frighten and horrify their listeners. Everything faded to silence around him; the screams and cheers of his men and the advancing enemy dying away to be replaced by a silent, hissing emptiness. The surrounding distractions between him and his view of the enemy leader shrank and dwindled until he felt as though he were seeing him at the end of a long, dark tunnel, but clearly, brilliantly, as though framed and featured by a beam of sunlight. Fascinated and strangely frightened, Uther watched as his opponent's huge horse walked slowly forward to the edge of the riverbank and stepped out among the stones, moving with excruciating, patient slowness, placing each hoof slowly and deliberately, testing its purchase inexorably until it was clearly settled, and then moving forward relentlessly, one more step, time after time until all four of its feet were in the water. And as the horse progressed, inevitable as some phantom, inescapable dream, Uther was appalled by the dread that unexpectedly swept over him and threatened to consume his reason.
The approaching figure reeked of death, its emanations making the very air about it waver as air did over a blazing fire, and Uther's throat closed, watching it, so that he forgot to breathe. Death, with his reaping hook, he thought, incapable of resisting the notion of the ancient image that had sprung into his mind. He could see nothing of the face beneath the heavy, rusted helmet, obscured by darkness and shadow, but his mind supplied a sudden vision of a fleshless skull, grinning teeth and empty, eyeless sockets hidden beneath the battered dome. The King felt his entire skin rise up in horror and revulsion.
"Uther!" The urgency of the roar from behind him was slow to penetrate his daze, but its repetition brought him back, jarring him into reality again. The voice was Garreth Whistler's. "Uther! Fall back and mount up. There's more of them on this side!"
Stunned and still enthralled by the vision that had transfixed him, Uther shook his head as though trying to dislodge his own thoughts. But then full awareness returned and he realized that they were being threatened anew, and from behind. He spun around again, almost losing his balance, all thoughts of the enemy across the river abandoned for the time being.
"Back, lads," he roared. "Back to the horses now!"
He found mass confusion in the woods behind him, with troopers running everywhere, struggling to mount their beasts. His own horse was ready for him, held tightly in control by one of his Dragons, and nearby, Garreth Whistler was struggling to subdue his own rearing, prancing horse, curbing it tightly and pulling its head down as he danced it in tight circles until it lost its panicked fear and settled again to his restraint.
"What's happening?" Uther roared at Garreth as he pulled himself up into the saddle and fought down his own struggling horse.
"Damned if I know," he shouted back, "but there's scores of the whoresons over here coming in from the west, where we were camped last night. I don't know where they came from or who they are, but they're here, and they almost took us from behind."
"Damnation! Then let's root them out. Lead on. To me! To me, Pendragon!" He unsheathed his long sword again and swung it above his head, hearing the whistling sound of the keen-edged blade slicing through air as his troopers surged forward to surround him.
Thereafter, all was confusion: clashing weapons, spraying blood, screams of fear and rage and pain, and the heavy thudding of hooves as the Camulodian horses pounded the soft, needle-strewn earth beneath the soaring trees, plunging and kicking as they had been trained to do against the swarming bodies that surrounded them. Someone leaped up at Uther from his left, grasping him frantically and trying to pull him down from his horse, but he slashed downward viciously across his body, his sword held close, and the assailant screamed and fell away. As he fell, however, his grasping fingers closed on the shallow arrow wound in Uther's thigh, and a bolt of agony shot through the King's body. He reeled in the saddle, close to losing consciousness. Then someone below him shouted in triumph, the flat of a blade clanged harmlessly against Uther's chest, and he pulled his horse around to the right, hard, using its weight and impetus to smash down the men about him. Three men he saw, all glaring up at him, and he killed two of them with a double swing of his heavy sword, cleaving their skulls. The third man flung himself away, and for a moment Uther was free to look about him.
He was surprised to find himself close to the riverbank again, for he had been far to the west only moments earlier in the thick of the attacking throng of newcomers. Now he had a glimpse of the big rider from the other bank, who was still crossing the river, stark and silent and slow, but now waving his weapon high above his head. He had no more time to look than that and swung himself about immediately to face whatever dangers might be coming at his back. It crossed his mind that he would have to kill the man crossing the river, but the thought was a brief one, soon forgotten in the urgency of fighting for his life.
Then he saw Garreth Whistler fall.
The Champion had been hard beset, fighting with his usual invincible perfection, whirling his horse around with absolute mastery as he Hailed about him with a crushing axe at the men surrounding him on the ground. But as he pulled his warhorse up in one mighty turn, freeing its front hooves to do the damage it was trained to do, one man leaped in beneath the flailing hooves and plunged a spear into the magnificent animal's chest, killing it almost instantly. Uther saw Garreth leap immediately, catlike, to the ground, kicking his feet free of the stirrups. But as he landed, his dying horse, whirling in its death throes, caught him with a lashing hoof high in the shoulder, and the Whistler spun away, tossed like an infant's toy, to crash face forward into the trunk of a nearby tree and then bounce back, his body twisting awkwardly to fall heavily, face down. His five remaining attackers were on him in a moment, swarming to destroy an enemy whose feet they were not fit to touch.
Black rage swelled up in Uther and he spurred his horse forward, digging bloody gouges in its side so that it crashed headlong into the press surrounding his fallen friend, hurling bodies in all directions. He had his feet free of the stirrups before the impact, and pushed himself from the saddle effortlessly, landing astride Garreth Whistler as lightly as a butterfly, his sword gripped in both hands. He killed one sprawling man before the fellow even knew Uther had come, striking his head cleanly off his shoulders with one solid, hissing slice, and then in quick succession he dispatched the other four, his whirling, slashing blade invincible and inescapable.
Finally, Uther was alone above his friend. He whirled to kneel and search for a pulse beneath Garreth's jaw, ignoring the tugging pain of the wound that still bled on his thigh. But there was no
pulse. The King's Champion was dead, and Uther felt his heart swell up and break as hot, scalding tears flooded his eyes. Then, screaming aloud in his black and violent need for blood and vengeance, he grasped his sword hilt tightly in both fists and swung up and around again, looking for someone to kill. And there, less than ten paces distant, watching him from the back of a high horse and hefting his long, strange reaping-hook weapon in his hand, sat the giant in rusted armour who had come so slowly across the stream: the leader of this doom-laden band of alien horsemen.
As soon as he set eyes on the big man, Uther's frustrated rage flared up even higher and then immediately narrowed and condensed into a hard, cold, incandescent blade of tightly focused fury. A lifetime of avoiding fighting in anger fell away from him and left him with nothing but the all-consuming need to destroy this enigmatic interloper who had brought destruction to his friends and companions. He had no thoughts now that this might be Death himself. This was a man, dirty and travel-stained and fit to die for what he had brought to this cursed place. And yet Uther restrained himself from charging blindly forward to attack.
He knew he had to get into his saddle, that he was in dire peril afoot alone against the mounted man—any mounted man—for he had killed more than a score of men in the previous short space of time precisely because he was mounted while they were not. Steadily, grinding his teeth and keeping his sword raised high with both hands in front of him, he stepped backwards until his shoulders touched the tree beneath which he stood, and then he looked about him quickly. There were men aplenty around him, but none of them was his, and all of them stood motionless, staring at him and occasionally glancing towards their giant leader.
He saw his own horse from the corner of his eye, placidly cropping a patch of grass on the forest floor, but as far away from him in one direction as the threatening horseman was on the other side. The big man hefted his reaping-hook weapon again and urged his horse forward, and Uther quickly thrust his long sword into his belt, snatched up Garreth's fallen axe, turned sharply to his left and ran towards his horse, hearing the other surge heavily into motion behind him.
Reaching his horse on the dead run, he turned and spun to face the oncoming rider, swinging the heavy axe up behind his head, then throwing it with all his strength. The big man saw it coming and quickly lowered his head, tucking his chin towards his breast, and the whirling axehead struck the domed top of his helmet and glanced off. The shock of the deflected blow nevertheless threw him backwards, sending him reeling in the saddle and almost unhorsing him. Uther watched for the space of half a heartbeat, then spun away and seized his horse's reins, raising his left foot to the stirrup with surprising, painful difficulty and then leaning forward into the swing of his rising body. But his body would not rise and swing him up into the saddle. His left thigh was useless; the wounded muscles, strained beyond repair by the effort of running, had become incapable of bearing his weight. Disbelieving, he tried again, heaving desperately but vainly to lift his body from the ground. Behind him he heard the trampling of hooves as the big man regained control of his horse and moved again to the attack. Yet again Uther tried to mount, and this time a heavy blow landed across his armoured back, smashing him into the side of his horse, which had now begun to toss its head and sidle nervously, rolling its eyes, frightened by the indecisive nature of its master's movements.
Grimly, waiting for the next blow, Uther hooked the elbow of his sword arm over the horn of his saddle and fought to drag himself up into the saddle. The blow came, smashing him yet again, but he clung on doggedly, willing himself to rise up and find his seat. Once mounted, he could fight, leg or no leg, he knew. And then a third blow hit him, this one like a massive, booted foot crashing into the small of his back, and the pressure of its impact closed up his throat and took away his breath. He felt no pain as the wicked, serrated reaping-hook blade plunged deep into his flesh, penetrating far into his rib cage with its upward swing, beneath the edge of his cuirass, and he felt none as it ripped free again, tearing his back open irreparably. But he was aware of the loosening, hot, debilitating flow of pent-up blood gushing from his open back, and of the gathering darkness that was filling his eyes as his hands slipped from the saddle horn. Slowly, his vision fading fast, he turned around to look up at the giant figure looming above him, and when he opened his mouth to speak, bright-red blood poured from between his lips and splashed down onto his cuirass.
"Ygraine," Uther Pendragon said. "Ygraine." But no one heard him.
The big man sat staring down at Uther's body and then spoke to one of his companions. "Those other people, the newcomers. Bring me their leader."
The man returned with the tall, gangling man called One-Finger, who told his inquisitor that he had been dispatched by his Chief, Othoc, with half of their party to make sure that this cavalry rearguard were held at bay while Othoc and the others captured the women in the first group. The big horseman sat straighter in his saddle.
"What women?"
One-Finger then told the story of the battle two days earlier and the chase that followed it, and when he had done, the big man turned again to his lieutenant.
"Get the men mounted right now and go after those women. See that you find them before this Othoc lays hands on them" He looked down again at the corpse in the bronze armour, and then at the massive horse the dead man had owned. "I'll come after you as soon as I've stripped this body and put his armour to good use. If these people were from Camulod, and I think they might have been, then all we've heard about that place is true, and we would do well to avoid it. But this is the first set of decent armour in my size I've seen in years. Go now, and take these others with you. Leave mc two men. That's all I'll need. When I'm done here, I'll follow you."
He watched until the others were on their way, and then he dismounted and went to kneel beside the man he had killed. Uther's open eyes were vacant, uncaring of the robbery about to be perpetrated upon his corpse. The kneeling man closed the staring eyes and then went to work, stripping Uther's body. As he removed each piece of equipment, he examined it to see if there was blood on it, and if there was he handed it to one of his two companions to clean. Otherwise, he laid each piece of the armour carefully aside, arrayed in order from top to bottom. He had a difficult time with some of the blood-slick straps and buckles, and at one point called on one of his two men to help him turn Uther over onto his front, so that he could reach the fastenings among the gore at the small of his back, but he did not mistreat the corpse, and when he was done with it and the body was bare, he turned away and began to remove his own battered, rusted equipment.
As he lugged at one of the straps holding his own much-dented cuirass, he looked back several times at the dead man lying close by him almost as though he expected to find the eyes open again, watching him. Finally he muttered an oath and turned to his two men.
"Each of you take an arm and haul this man away." He glanced around him and saw a massive fir tree close by, its bole surrounded by dead branches. "Lay him over there beside that tree."
Glancing at one another in surprise but saying nothing, the two men stooped, each of them grasping Uther by one arm, and then they tried to straighten up, lifting him. They failed, and the bigger of the two turned to their leader.
"By the henge, Derek, this whoreson's as big and heavy as you!"
"I know that. That's why I'm taking his armour. Now do as I bade you and move him over by the tree. He deserves to lie in dignity. Drag him if you have to, but lay him down carefully. Don't abuse him. He was a line, strong fighter and he died honourably. 'Twas not his fault that his leg would not hold him up."
As his men carried out his bidding. Derek of Ravenglass finished dressing himself in Uther's clothes and armour, placing the great Roman helmet on his head last of all. Everything lilted him as though made for him, save that he was very slightly smaller in the head and thicker through the waist than the armour's former owner had been. Nonetheless, Derek was delighted. He went next to th
e dead man's horse, which still stood where it had been left, it's reins trailing on the ground. He saw the richness of the red roll of cloth tied behind the saddle and unfastened the bindings, shaking out the huge red cloak and whistling at the sight of the golden dragon sewn into the cloth.
The two men had come back, having thrown Uther's body beneath the tree—Derek had not been watching in the end, and they had thrown the corpse asprawl onto the ground, as they would any other piece of offal, so that it lay awry, one bent knee hooked over a fallen branch. Now they stood wide-eyed, looking at the war cloak.
Derek of Ravenglass fingered the golden dragon. "I wonder who he was, this Chief."
The smaller of the two shook his head. "That's a King's cloak, Derek, and that helmet came straight from Rome. Could this be a Roman King?"
Derek snorted. "The Romans don't have Kings, man, they have Emperors!"
"Maybe it was Uther of Camulod," the other man said. "He's a King, isn't he?"
"Aye, that's what they say. Uther of Camulod's a King . . . a powerful King, like Lot of Cornwall. Think you then you'd find him in hole like this with only thirty men? His armies number in the thousands, man. No, this was no King, but perhaps a King's Champion. We'll never know. But at least the whoreson was big enough to bring me my new armour. Now let's go and find these women."