Jack Whyte - Uther

She ended by telling him that the seaborne invasion, under Tewdric and Cerdic, was still planned, but that it had been enlarged by more than thirty galleys full of men. Herliss and Lagan had vanished into the hinterlands, she said, and Lot was raving about what he called their treachery and desertion. She had no idea how that would be resolved, nor did she know if either man had been in touch with Uther, but she was grateful that Lagan, at least, had taken his wife and son with him this time.

So, although the invaders were late, Uther knew they were coming, and in greater strength than previously planned. He worked his clansmen hard, going to extreme lengths of invention to keep them keen and on their toes, and prepared for a vicious, bitter tight.

Then, on a wind-wracked day close to the end of the month, out of a violent April gale, the ships were sighted. The invasion fleet sailed into the welcome shelter of the bay and spilled its cargo of men—hundreds of them wretchedly seasick—into Cambria.

The enemy loitered on the beach after landing, glad to be ashore. Perfectly confident that they had reached safety unobserved and unsuspected, their leaders took the time to form them up in regular divisions before they made any attempt to strike inland. The galleys that had brought the army, riding high in the water now that they were no longer laden, were in no hurry to strike out to the open, gale- swept seas again, and so they, too, loitered long after they should have dispersed and made away, clustered together in dangerous proximity to each other in the tranquil waters of the narrow bay.

Virtually unseen before they hit their first targets, volleys of flaming arrows began to rain down with deadly accuracy from the high, flanking cliffs onto the closely packed and tinder-dry ships below, each missile wrapped in burning cloths soaked in oily pitch. Within moments of the first attack, fire had broken out on a score of vessels, and as the rising screams of the panicked crewmen trapped out on the water began to reach the ears of the men assembling on the shore, the hissing cascade of accurately aimed destruction continued, and towering fires began to leap from ship to ship among the close-packed throng.

The army commanders on the beach reacted instantly. Horns and bugles began to signal the advance as the first heavy drops of rain began falling from stone-grey skies. The leading formations of the invaders struck straight into the belt of woods enclosing the beach, only to find themselves faced with an impossible and impenetrably dense forest that began no more than fifteen paces inside the leading fringe of trees. From that point on. the way was impassable, because for months hundreds of Dergyll's Griffyd warriors, working in concealment, had laboured enormously within the woods to create an appalling trap, digging large, deep, steep-sided, overlapping holes among the growing trees, leaving no level ground on which to walk, scooping the dirt out from among the exposed roots and studding the sides and bottom of each hole with long, sharp, lethal stakes.

Initial dismay quickly gave way to mass confusion and then to panic as the realization dawned on the invaders that they were trapped and doomed, for the few ships that had escaped the rain of fire behind them had already fled, and the surface of the sea was littered with charred debris and still-blazing galleys.

Uther watched it all unfold with grim satisfaction from a bare knoll to the northeast of the woods that hemmed in the suddenly unfriendly beach. On the landward side where the King stood, the ground rose sharply, with only the merest trace of soil covering the solid bedrock. The mass of Uther's army was drawn up on this bare ground, looking down on the woods, but they made no attempt to move, for the Pendragon bowmen who had set fire to the ships had left their high positions now and hurried down to regroup in a long, double line fronting their own army, facing the outer fringe of the woods. From there, as the first of the men who had survived the staked trap beneath the trees began to emerge, exhausted from their passage, the bowmen shot them down remorselessly, so that a ring of corpses soon marked the exit from the trees.

When he thought sufficient damage had been done, Uther signalled his bowmen to withdraw, and they clustered around the two large wagons, laden with sheaves of fresh arrows, that sat off to his right. There they refilled their empty quivers before returning again to the high cliffs on either side of the bay on the far side of the belt of trees. From those heights, overlooking the exposed beach, they would set up a crossfire killing zone, taking advantage of the great range of their longbows and making it impossible for any of the Outlanders to return to the beach in search of safety.

In the meantime, as more and more of the enemy emerged cautiously from the trap among the trees, stepping over the arrow- riddled corpses of their fallen fellows, they found themselves facing rank upon rank of waiting warriors, fresh and unblooded, who stood calmly looking down on them, waiting for them to approach. More than a few turned and ran back into the woods, but there was nowhere for them to go, because the woods were choked with cursing, frightened men coming their way.

Uther found that he was clenching his jaw so hard that his muscles were beginning to ache. He sucked in a deep breath and made himself turn his head to look to his right and then his left. He knew what would happen from then on. His subordinates had been well instructed, and they would show the invading Outlanders no mercy. They had neither the time nor the facilities to accommodate prisoners. And the unforeseen destruction of the entire enemy fleet meant that there would be no salvation from the water for the Outlanders. The slaughter here today, he knew, would be appalling, but there was nothing he could do to obviate it. The Outlanders, were he to leave them alive, would show no gratitude. Indeed, they would interpret his mercy as a weakness, one in which they would never indulge. They would not then make their way humbly homeward, grateful for being spared. They would behave according to their natures and attack again, and so they must all be killed.

Below him, the destruction continued, and most of his army had not yet made a move towards the enemy. He turned to Dergyll ap Griffyd and nodded for him to take over, then swung his horse away and angled it uphill, back towards his own camp, hoping as he went that he had situated it far enough away from the battle to be beyond the range of his hearing.

Thanks to Uther's informants, the invasion was over almost before it had a chance to begin, providing him with a chilling lesson on the importance of secrecy, security and earning the loyalty of the people.

Uther was back on the road to Camulod again in early May, a full month ahead of what he would have considered possible only three months earlier, and at the head of a larger army than he could have anticipated—an army, moreover, that was strong in morale and confidence, its personnel still more than slightly drunk with the swiftness and totality of the victory they had won over Lot's invaders.

No move had yet been made against Camulod, and so Uther brought his mother, Veronica. Veronica and Luceiia would be able to look after each other, he knew, while he was gone, and he blessed the gods who had permitted everything to work out so well for him and his people, when they might easily have looked the other way. Perhaps, he dared to whisper to himself, his luck had turned at last.

Despite his gratitude for all his good fortune, however, Uther was sombre and uncommunicative, riding alone most of the time, closely followed by Nemo, who guarded him jealously and was never without an unsheathed weapon in one hand or the other. Garreth Whistler and Huw Strongarm both watched this, saying nothing to anyone but wondering independently of each other what could be bothering the King. He ought, by rights, to have been soaring high in the aftermath of his complete victory, but it seemed to them that nothing could be farther from the truth.