Jack Whyte - Uther

The Erse giant Donuil stood smiling there, close by Merlyn as always, and beside him the saturnine physician Lucanus, who dipped his head in silent greeting. Many of the other faces on the outskirts of the group were known to Uther, too, even if the names attached to them eluded him for the moment. The veteran legates, Titus and Flavius, stood in front, still wearing their old and proud imperial armour, and behind them towered the huge bulk of Popilius Cirro, the epitome, as always, of the dignified senior centurion. Before moving to meet them, Uther turned to where Nemo stood at attention, holding the reins of Uther's horse in one hand and her own in the other, and nodded a signal to dismiss the squadron. Only then did he move forward to embrace the two old legates and greet Popilius, who nodded courteously and bade him welcome, not quite smiling but plainly glad to see him.

As they moved into the fort, however, a thought occurred to Uther, and he turned again to Merlyn, who was close by his side.

"You called me Tiddler. I had forgotten that name. Haven't heard it in twenty years. How did you remember it?"

Merlyn smiled and shook his head. "Aunt Luceiia told me about it. She remembers everything about our boyhood."

Again Uther felt disappointment well up in him, and he turned to Titus and Flavius to mask it. "Where is my grandmother?" His tone reflected his sudden concern as he remembered now that he had expected Luceiia to come hurrying to greet him, not having seen him since the year before, and he became aware again of the bulk inside his tunic that was a heavy letter to her, written by his mother Veronica. "Is she not well?"

The Legate Titus answered him: "The Lady Luceiia is very well and will be disappointed to have missed your arrival."

Flavius completed the answer, making Uther smile as he realized again that these two men had been together for so long that they thought almost as one person. "She is down in the Villa with some of the women of her Council, but please don't ask us what she is doing. We seldom know, and we never inquire. Come inside and tell us about your journey. We have much to discuss, and perhaps we can deal with some of it—"

"Before your grandmother returns," Titus finished. "We have some excellent red wine, brought in from Gaul by a visiting bishop. Come you."

Once Uther had exchanged greetings with everyone and stowed his travelling gear in his allocated quarters, Titus, Flavius, Popilius and an assortment of dignitaries, including the governing committee of the Council of Camulod and several senior garrison staff, including his Cousin Merlyn, spent the next two hours bringing Uther up to date concerning the hurried arrangements they had made to forestall Lot's upcoming advance against the Colony.

All ten of the border guard posts protecting the outer limits of the Colony's lands had been refurbished and refortified, the resident garrisons of six of them increased to double standard. The remaining four, those guarding the southern and eastern approaches to Camulod, had been greatly enlarged to more than double their original size and garrisoned accordingly. It was one of those that Uther had passed by on his way in. A widening of the roadway down from the fortress gates to the plain beneath had already been in process when Popilius returned, in order to improve access and egress in time of need, and the reinstallation of the temporary fort on the drilling plain had been quickly achieved by setting upwards of more than a thousand people, including old men, women and boys, to the task of building it. It was a temporary erection, Cirro said, dirt and logs, ditch and ramparts, but it would endure as long as the need for it might last. In addition to that, artillery platforms had been built on Camulod's hillsides, overlooking the open spaces surrounding the fort below, and artillery machines—huge torsion-wound devices that could hurl rocks and missiles made from heavy tree trunks— had been built and set up on the platforms.

As the litany of preparations continued, Uther began to feel better and better about Camulod's prospects for surviving the attacks that were to come. It was the veteran Titus, however, who put into words what all of them were thinking: that all of these preparations were for a defensive war, with no contingency for going out to carry a cavalry battle, Camulod's single strongest advantage, to the enemy. Camulod, through its entire brief history, had never been involved in a defensive war. All things considered, however, it was clear to Uther that the situation was better than he had anticipated. The Colony could tight defensively, and effectively, for as long as it might have to. All the Colonists would be withdrawn into the safety of the walled fortress itself, and the place had its own water and was well enough supplied with other stores to endure a siege of six months or longer, should that much be necessary.

The informal meeting broke down into a general discussion of many things, and Uther soon excused himself, pleading road weariness and the need to find hot water in which to bathe. Titus and Flavius both accompanied him to the furnace-fired bathhouse against the rear wall of the fort and remained with him as he undressed himself and sank into the luxury of the hot pool. They left him then to complete his ablutions and dress to go and meet his grandmother.

Luceiia Britannicus Varrus was a constant source of amazement to her grandson. Luceiia had to be more than sixty years old, he knew, and that was an incredible age to him. He knew only one woman of comparable age in all of Cambria, and she was a wrinkled crone, twisted and warped with age and viewed with terror and superstitious awe by everyone, because she was widely believed to be a familiar of the dark gods who ruled the Cambrian night. How else could anyone explain such longevity in a land where the few women who lived to reach their fortieth year were old and withered?

Luceiia Varrus, however, bore her advanced age with dignity and retained the unmistakable characteristics of the magnificent beauty that she had been in her youth. Her back was long and straight, unbowed by time or tribulation, and her long hair fell in a heavy, silver mane, shot through with shimmering remnants of raven black. Her mouth, far from being sunken and toothless, was still full and generous. Granted, her lips were far less full than they once had been, and her teeth were more yellowish now than white, but she still had all of them, and her smile was a thing of beauty, filled with love and humour.

Greeting her again and hugging her gently to his chest, Uther wondered, as he always did, about the spirit that sustained her and kept her youthful. How could it be that she remained so vital, where others of her age were long dead and gone? But then another thought occurred to him fleetingly. Though there was no one like Luceiia in Cambria, there were other elderly women in Camulod, more than a mere few of them, and all of them were healthy, clean and well groomed despite their age. These were the women of her Council, primarily, the matriarchs of the founding families. They lived gentle lives, well cared for by their children and descendants, and they knew none of the hardships that ruled the lives of Cambria's women from day to day and year to year.

Luceiia's exuberant greeting pushed all other thoughts from his head. She was in fine fettle, as usual, and delighted to see her grandson. When she had finished fussing over his appearance, she took him by the hand and welcomed him into her home, insisting that he spend the night there. But he asked her indulgence and insisted in his turn upon remaining in the visitor's quarters assigned to him, since he might be awakened at any hour of the night now that the word was out that he was here, and only briefly. Luceiia accepted his demurral with no more than a tiny sniff of disappointment, and then demanded all his tidings, including his first impressions of Camulod on this visit.