Jack Whyte - Uther

The King shook his head. "I know not, Aelle. I've been told that they'll hit Carmarthen, and while I would like to rely completely on the truth of that, it's hearsay at this time and I can't be sure of it, so your opinion would probably be better than mine on that."

"Aye, there's a pity, then. See you, it would be much easier if we knew they'd come for you. Not knowing that, why, man, we have ten leagues of northward-facing coast to look at on this side of the river mouth itself, and the same on south-facing Cambria, across the water from you here, with five hundred bays to every league . . . bays, mind you, not beaches."

Uther knew it was the absolute truth. A Celtic league was a distance somewhere between two and a half and three Roman miles.

Aelle was making faces, screwing up his features and shaking his head. "Look you, d'you need this answer from me now, today? Can you give me three days or a week? I'd like to sail up and down and see things through a raider's eyes, instead of my own. I've seen all the bays a hundred times and more, but never once did I think to look at them as if I might land an army there in any of them . . . d'you see my meaning? Big difference there, King Uther. So I'd like to look, and think, as I might well think of something different than e'er I thought before, if ye take me."

Uther agreed, albeit reluctantly, and conceded that Aelle might take as long as was needed.

The seafarer gazed at him with eyes that were mere slits from staring at horizons in all kinds of weather. "Look you," Aelle said gruffly, "I know what you have in mind here and what you have to do. You have massy decisions to make, for all of us, so I' m not going to waste your time. But how can time be wasted if it saves you time? Ask yourself that. King Uther. If I can come back to ye with word of where I'd land my army, were I looking to invade these lands, then you can take my word and make ready to fight off a landing there. If I can't choose between two or even three places, then you'll work on those. But if I tell you nothing or if you never send me out to look, then you'll know nothing more than you know now, and you might well end up with ten or a score of good places to try and choose from, and that would be a waste of time, if you take me."

Uther nodded, grinning. "You're right, Aelle, and I take your meaning perfectly. Go you and do what you must do, and I shall be the more happy to see you when you return."

The man was gone for a week and a day, but when he came back, his normally sombre face was wreathed with smiles, and Uther felt better simply looking at him. Aelle did not keep him wailing long for his tidings, but came right lo the most important point ahead of all others: "Beer, King Uther. . . something long and cold and wet to cut a thirst, there's what I need, if you take me." The beer, still cold from the cellar, was served instantly, and Aelle drained his mug and refilled it and drank a quarter of it again before he even looked as though he might be ready to speak. Then he belched and leaned back in his chair.

"Three spots," he said. "I found three spots that I would use, each of them lovely. One of them's here on the southern coast and two are across the water on the Cambrian side. The one here's the only one that makes any kind of sense on this whole side, and it's four leagues farther up the coast, towards the river mouth. It's a clean beach, almost flat, in a well-sheltered bay behind a headland, so the men can leap overboard and wade in easily without having to struggle against great waves. Then, beyond the beach itself, there's a wide meadow of some kind, surrounded by a thick bell of trees. Land a whole Roman legion there, ye could, and lose them in the woods with no one ever suspecting they was there. I went ashore myself, just to have a look, and I'll wager mine was the first human foot to walk there in a hundred years. An army could land there in comfort without fear of being seen or attacked. It's far enough away from Tir Manha to allow the landing fleet to arrive unseen, even from the fort up on the headland there, and yet an army, once landed and organized, could be here about your ears within half a day of reaching dry land. It's perfect. The only place along the whole damn coast that a man with a brain would choose for purposes of warfare, if you take me."

"What about the other two spots?"

"Neither one as good as the first one, but they'll do in a pinch. But a leader, a what-you-call-it, a legate or a general, looking for a place to fight you . . . no question in my mind he'd choose the first one, here on the southern shore. Mind you, that all depends on what he wants to gain or who he wants to hit, and whether or not he really wants to fight. He might not be interested in prodding you at all. If he wants to attack Caerdyff instead, he'll take the easternmost beach and land three leagues to the north, and then march back south and west. That could be done, too, without much trouble. But if he wants to go against Carmarthen, as you said he might at the outset, then he has no option but to choose the western beach, and that's a long way from where you sit here. But again, it's a fine landing beach and close enough to the town to land an army and then set it to encircling the town. That done, he could then come in by night and try to seize the docks. But if he tries to land there, mind you, he'll have all of Carmarthen down around his ears, and no way to escape other than heading west again or east back towards Caerdyff. As I said, it all depends on what he wants to achieve, this fellow in charge, whoever he is."

Uther sat silent for a long time, mulling over all that Aelle had told him, and then made his decision. Aelle himself was from Carmarthen, so it was only natural that he should regard that as the strongest position in the Cambrian alliance, the place most naturally suited to repelling any invasion in strength. Uther was more doubtful of that. To his eyes, Carmarthen was looking more and more attractive by the moment as a launching spot for Lot's latest mischief. Lagan and Herliss had seemed absolutely sure that Cerdic and Tewdric, the German generals who were the joint leaders of the campaign, would launch their attack against Carmarthen, and the more Uther thought about that, the more convinced he became that his allies were right, for a number of reasons. A western invasion of Cambria would offer the invaders many advantages: it would force Uther, as King, to move far away from his own home base in order to conduct the campaign, and it could conceivably create friction between the allies of the Pendragon Federation, since the initial fighting would all take place in the deepest Griffyd territories, and the local chieftains there were likely to look with little favour on being commanded by someone who had not a drop of Griffyd blood in his veins. King of the Federation or not. Besides that, Uther's necessary presence in the region around Carmarthen during the invasion would keep him and his Dragons, and even more important, his bowmen, far away from Camulod and the other invasion—this one with two separate armies involved—that would be taking place there simultaneously. For all of those reasons, Uther was leaning more and more certainly towards Carmarthen as the site of the Cambrian strike.

He had three months of preparation time remaining to him, he estimated, and half of that would be sufficient once he knew the where and when, and providing that his information was as current as it could be. He decided to take Aelle's recommendations as presented, but to concentrate his own attention for the time being upon the Carmarthen landing place as the most likely target. He estimated that he could fortify the Carmarthen holdings with levies from Tir Manha and Caerdyff, while leaving both of those spots at half strength, but alert and on the defensive, which was better, he estimated, than being somnolent and unsuspecting at full strength. That way, even if the enemy commanders changed their plans, all would not be lost, and the force from Carmarthen could move quickly to relieve whichever of the two remaining spots was hit. In order to increase his advantage as far as was possible, however, he decided also to send a letter to Lagan, asking for any additional information that might now be or might become known. His decision made on those matters, he asked Aelle, then, if the seafarer would take him the following week to visit the site he had selected at Carmarthen. The seaman looked at him and nodded, then volunteered to do not only what Uther had asked, hut to show him the other prime sites as well and explain why he had not chosen those. Well pleased, Uther thanked him and permitted him to return home for a few days' rest.