Jack Whyte - Uther

"How so?" It was the first time Ygraine had spoken and she was surprised that her voice betrayed no hint of a tremor.

Uther turned to her. "Because of you. lady. He has no idea who you really are, and I think we would be foolish to tell him."

"Why is that?"

"Well, to begin with, he might, and probably would, refuse to set you free, no matter how I tried to convince him otherwise. Consider this from his viewpoint. I am his ally in this war, but my priorities and his—Cambrian and Camulodian—might not be the same. You are a prize beyond value, the spouse of the enemy's Commander in Chief. Popilius would see it as culpable folly to release you, and he would judge me insane and perhaps even treacherous to be considering this plan of ours. But even if he were to go along with our designs and do all that we asked of him, he would still be duty bound to make report on his return to Camulod on what I had done. And once that report was lodged, our secret would be out. That kind of knowledge cannot be contained once it has been released, and Lot has spies and informers everywhere, even in Camulod, for we can't keep our gates closed against the world, and the place is always full of strangers coming and going. Mark my words, Lot would hear of it within days, one way or another, so I say we should tell Popilius nothing. We have already sent one Queen to Camulod. Let him believe she is the real one.

"Within the week, I'll ride with Popilius to raid the southern coast, as we had planned. By that time, your arrangements should be made. All of your dealings in this matter will be with my men alone, my Cambrian Dragons. While we are gone, leaving only a small holding force here, you and your people will make your escape and head northwestward, avoiding Lagan completely. Popilius will hear nothing of escape or flight, and if he asks where our female prisoners have gone, I'll tell him that I sent them home. I do not wage war on women. Popilius knows that."

My lord does not wage war on women. Ygraine remembered the scorn with which she had greeted Huw Strongarm's utterance of those words and was swept by a shudder.

Uther glanced sideways at her. "Are you cold. Lady Ygraine? You're shivering."

"No." She straightened up and shook her head vigorously, denying the possibility.

"Good. Well, are we done here?" Uther turned directly back to Herliss. "You know what to do from this point onward?" Herliss growled in affirmation, and Uther continued. "Excellent. I'll take you back to your own quarters now, and I'll talk to my people this afternoon. Nemo will be the one with whom you will have all your dealings—the most loyal and trustworthy trooper I have. Been with me for years, Nemo, ever since we were brats together. So be it. I've things to think about. I'll have Nemo assign two guards to look after you day and night. Their names will be Cadwyn and Lohal, and one of them will be with you at all times from now on. But think of them as hand-picked messengers, not guards. They are completely trustworthy. They'll carry word to you and from you, acting as go- betweens for myself and the Queen . . . and you, of course. To everyone but us, it will seem that you've been placed under heavy guard for some transgression or other, so you'd better come up with a good reason for it, because you're sure to be asked why you've been so suddenly upgraded . . ."

Shortly after the two men left, Dyllis returned from her long walk, almost breathless with excitement over the number of men now in the camp. Ygraine had heard Uther himself say that Popilius Cirro had brought a thousand men with him. but she had never seen a thousand men assembled in one place and could not begin to visualize what such a gathering would look like. Her own father, Athol Mac Iain, she had often been told, could assemble a thousand warriors from his own clansmen and put them into the field within three days, but Ygraine had never known him do so. And her husband, Lot, who dealt, she knew, in thousands of men, assembling armies of mercenaries time after time, had never dared to have that large a host, potentially hostile and uncontrollable, assemble anywhere close to him at any time.

Dyllis told her that behind their tent and facing down into the river valley, row upon row of infantry tents, each of them large enough to accommodate four men sleeping side by side, were laid out in grids and blocks, covering the hillside entirely on the south side of the river and filling up the valley. These tents had been rigorously paced out so that no tent was closer to or farther away from its neighbours than any other, and between these regular blocks of tents were much wider divisions that served as streets, broad enough to accommodate columns of men marching ten abreast or mounted troopers riding four abreast.

The two regular day guards had accompanied Dyllis, Cavan and the older Derek Split-Eye, named for the spectacular scar that bisected the left side of his face, a knife slash that had opened him from above the eyebrow down to the edge of his mouth. Somehow, savage as the blow had been, it had been shallow enough to miss the eyeball, merely slicing through the lid above and below the eye itself. It had deadened that side of Derek's face, however, paralysing the cheek and leaving patches of grey hair in his eyebrow and moustache. Derek Split-Eye was a veteran, one of Uther's original Dragons. Cavan, on the other hand, was much younger and far more comely, smooth-faced and bright-eyed, with teeth that were still white and sound. His shoulders were broad, his hands and arms almost hairless and strongly muscled. Cavan had never spoken to Dyllis before that day, but both women had known that he was strongly attracted to her, barely able from the first day of his assignment to keep his eyes off her as she went about her business. She and Ygraine had even laughed about it. Now it became plain to Ygraine that Dyllis had hardly been impervious to his charms, either.

Ygraine stood erect in the corner by the wash table, her back to Dyllis, who continued to chatter, oblivious to the fact that her mistress was no longer listening. Instead, the Queen was thinking of Uther Pendragon, bare-headed and smiling with that upward- curling lip that came so close to sneering yet did nothing of the kind.

"Lady?" she heard him say, smiling with his voice, and a rush of gooseflesh swept across her skin. She remembered how he had reached out one hand to her, saw the long, strong fingers with their square, blunt nails and the tiny black hairs that curled over the knuckles. She shuddered deliciously, feeling the now familiar sensation of breathlessness swelling in her chest. And then she inhaled sharply and deeply, willing herself to think of other things. Uther, she knew, harboured no such thoughts of her. She had long since learned to detect the slightest signs of attraction in the men around her, and how to ignore and discourage them. In Uther Pendragon's case, she had seen and felt nothing, not the slightest intimation of interest in her as a woman.

"Ygraine, my lady?"

She returned to her senses quickly, aware that Dyllis had been speaking to her, and swung back to face the other woman, banishing her dangerous thoughts. But she could not listen to Dyllis's rhapsodies about young Cavan—not if she wanted to keep her wits about her. The air suddenly seemed hot and humid, and Ygraine felt constrained and confined in the command tent. She wanted to be outside walking in the fresh air. Uncaring whether she might be bruising her friends' feelings, she sent the younger woman to her sleeping quarters with orders to mend a shawl that Ygraine had torn earlier, and then she crossed to the entrance of the tent, where she called to Cavan and asked him to take her to Uther.

Uther was not in his tent when she arrived there, and no guards stood outside it, but she knew he would not be far away, and so she decided to wait for him. She dismissed Cavan and sent him back to his post, although it was plain to see that he was not happy about leaving her there outside the King's Tent, unguarded. She smiled and asked him what he thought she might steal if left alone, or whether he thought, with so many troopers about, that she was planning to escape in broad daylight. Cavan nodded and left, flushed and flustered by her humour.