Jack Whyte - Uther

"I learned it by your side. Lord Lot, from your own teachers."

"Aye, you did, better than me!" He grunted a laugh and swallowed a mouthful of wine, then looked out into the courtyard again.

Lagan look a sip from his own drink. "You sent for me. What do you need?"

Without looking at him, Lot turned and moved away from the window, crossing directly to the table, where he put down his cup and picked up a rolled scroll and a tubular dispatch case made of toughened hide. He slipped the scroll into the cylinder and then turned and offered it to Lagan.

"I need you to go to Herliss today. Give him this and bring me back his answer as quickly as you can."

Lagan pursed his lips and took the container from the King's hand, hefting the weight of it in his own. "Is my father expecting this? Will he be surprised?"

"No, he is not expecting it. . . not immediately, at any rate. But no, he will not be surprised. Inconvenienced, perhaps, but he is my steward, and this relates to his duties."

Lagan merely nodded. "And why so sudden, Gully? You made no mention of this when we spoke together yesterday."

"There was no thought of it in my head yesterday."

"Am I allowed to ask what it concerns?"

"Aye, of course you are. Sit down, man, sit down. Since when have you needed to stand in my presence?"

Lagan never had, but he knew better than to spoil the mood of the moment by saying so. Gully had little ways about him, and this was one of them: by reminding Lagan that he had no need to stand, he intimated that he had the power to make him stand.

Lagan sank into the chair the King had indicated, and Lot hooked another forward with his foot, settling into it and leaning close.

"There are two matters of great import that your father holds in his stewardship, and both of them are dealt with in this missive. I could not exaggerate their importance, Lagan, even were I so inclined. Suffice to say that only you could carry it for me. There is no one else I could or would trust with such a mission, and you will see why when I tell you that the first of them is treasure. Your father holds great stores in my name. Gold, jewels and weaponry, but chiefly weaponry. I need it now. I believe he has it scattered for safekeeping throughout his strongholds on the coast."

Lagan nodded in agreement. His father had four coastal strongholds, each of them guarding a harbour for Lot's marauding pirate fleets. In return for safe anchorage, the pirates paid him tribute in Lot's name—one full half of the booty they brought back from every voyage. Herliss collected all of it and held in safekeeping for the King.

"Lagan, I believe Uther Pendragon will be back here again with the spring weather, hammering at our gates. The winter has been mild, so spring is almost here." The King was being his most appealing self, his voice deep and low and filled with trusting confidentiality. Lagan waited, saying nothing.

There came a thump at the door behind them, and one half of if swung open, held by the arm of a guard, to admit Lestrun, Lot's most senior adviser. The old man ducked under the extended arm as he shuffled in, then nodded to Lagan, offered the same gesture, perhaps somewhat more deeply, to his King, and proffered a pair of tightly rolled scrolls from beneath his right arm. Lot looked at them contemptuously, and for a moment Lagan thought he would savage the elderly Lestrun for interrupting them, but then he nodded curtly, jerking his head towards the long work table.

"Put them over there with the others."

Lestrun bowed his head but remained where he was, facing the King. "I will, as you say, Lord Lot," he said quietly, almost hissing in the sibilant, lilting tones that were so unmistakably from the northwest of Cambria. "But not before you promise me that you will read them as soon as you are alone. Both are highly important, and a decision must be made today on one of them, at least, if you are to achieve what you have told me must be done."

As the other spoke, the King's face went white with sudden fury. "Curse you, man! Will you have me do your bidding like a threatened boy? Put them down and get out!"

The old man nodded calmly, unimpressed. "I will do so, but not before I have your word. It is your own designs, your own intent, that are at risk, here. Rail at me all you wish, but if I fail to have you do what must be done, you will have my head off in any case."

Lot's nostrils flared, and Lagan wondered, as he had many times before, at the old councillor's utter lack of fear in defying a man who was so notoriously ill to cross. And then, to his astonishment, the King's color disappeared abruptly and he barked a laugh that might have been admiring.

"By the gods, Lestrun, one of these days you will push me too far, and I will regret having killed you after it is done . . . Very well, I promise I will read the blasted things as soon as I am alone again, and I will make my decision immediately upon having done so. Now get out."

The old man bowed, then nodded to Lagan, his face expressionless, before turning to withdraw, and again an unseen guard held the door ajar until he had gone. The sight of a disembodied arm clad in leather armour, stretched across the open doorway, suddenly incensed Lagan intolerably. When the door closed again, he looked at Lot.

"Why do you have these people. Gully? It's hardly as if you need them."

"Who, my advisers?" This was said with a half smile.

"No, damnation, these guards. You don't need guards. To guard against what, your own folk? I had to pass by ten of them between the main entrance and your quarters. Six outside, two in the yard and two right here outside your chamber. Are you expecting to be attacked?"

The King's small smile remained in place, but he did not answer immediately, and the thought occurred to Lagan, not for the first time, that the well-known half-smile concealed far more than it illumined.

"Do you believe I'm expecting to be attacked here in my own house? No, Lagan, no." The smile was full-blown now, the voice that spoke the words mellifluous and confiding. "It is not the man who needs the guards. It is the rank, the title."

Lagan blinked, his brow furrowing. "I don't follow you."

"It's quite simple. I am a King, Lagan. Kings require guards, not to protect them—at least not all the time—but to define them."

"Define them as what. Gully? And to whom? You are as clearly defined in my eyes today as you were when first we became friends two decades and more ago."

"Aye, in your eyes, my friend. In your eyes, I have not changed, and in the name of all the gods at once I swear I have not. But in the eyes of others . . ." A rising intonation made the statement a rhetorical question. "I have changed my station. I am a King, today . . ." He turned suddenly and walked away to perch on the edge of the table that held the drink flagons, his left leg extended and his right knee bent and supported by a foot on the seat of the wooden chair by the table's side. "Sit down there, where I can see your face."

Lagan moved silently and sat facing Lot, squinting slightly against the brightness of the late-winter sunlight that now fell across his face. Lot waited until he was settled, cup in hand, and then continued, leaning forward slightly to rest his elbow on his knee.

"When my father became clan Chief, and as both his fame and his influence grew, he was able to travel beyond these shores, into Gaul at first, and then southward all the way into Iberia. On those journeys—for not all of them were warlike—he encountered Kings among the upstart Burgundians of southern and central Gaul, and even among the incoming Franks, whose holdings fie further afield. And he took note of how such men behaved: how they dressed: how they conducted their lives; and how they governed their peoples.