Jack Whyte - Uther

"Aye, we are, but hear me clearly. We are not marching into Cornwall to stand there and tight in enormous battles. We—you, every one of you—are a striking force. Our objective is to move quickly and constantly, striking hard and fast wherever we encounter hostiles. We are going raiding, lads, and even if we fail to find oily King Lot, we'll smash his mercenaries and we'll kill his confidence. Now, are you ready for him?"

"Aye!"

"Is he ready for us!"

"No!"

"Good! Then let's go and show him the damnable blunder he made when he invaded Camulod and Cambria. Move out!"

He stood up straight in his stirrups, drew his long sword and waved it above his head in the recognized signal, and as the cheering began to die away, the first signs of disciplined movement began among the individual columns of men and horses. Uther watched them for several more moments, then turned to his companions and nodded to each of them in turn before dismissing them to their individual duties. After that he rode back up the hill to the high vantage point overlooking the campus, where his mother and his grandmother stood with Merlyn, Donuil, Titus, Flavius and several others who had assembled to watch another Camulodian army start out on a campaign.

From the centre of the assembly, in the middle of the vast campus, a full score of enormous commissary wagons began to move, slowly and ponderously, each of them hauled by a rough-matched team of eight huge horses and commanded by an expert teamster, who sat up high on the driver's seat, wielding the reins in one hand and a long, leather whip in the other and rolling on his high, swaying perch like a sailor in the mast lookout of a seagoing galley. Slowly and sedately the wagons rolled forward and arranged themselves into pairs to assume their place in the middle of the long column of Popilius Cirro's infantry, where they would be safest from attack and depredation. The commissary wagons were the soldiers' lifeline, representing food, drink and warmth, and no enemy would be permitted to approach them casually. Watching these majestic vehicles lumber slowly into motion, noting the size and number of them, their ponderous dignity and the enormous swarm of lesser cargo and supply wagons that followed behind in support of them, Uther could appreciate more clearly than by any other example the scope and duration of the adventure on which they—all of them, his Cambrian men and Camulod's best and finest—were now being launched. By the time they returned from this campaign, those among them who did return, these mighty wagons would be empty of supplies and their ancillary support vehicles long since emptied and set to service like the commissary wagons themselves as transportation for badly wounded men. That would be many months in the future.

Uther had made all his farewells to everyone, and he had been more aware than ever before that he might never see any of his beloved friends and family again. Of them all, the leave-taking that had pained him most was the parting from his Cousin Merlyn, who had smiled and hugged him close and wished him well with absolute conviction and sincerity—though the Caius Merlyn Britannicus with whom Uther had grown to manhood would have had to be tied down to his bed and then locked up in a barred cell before he would have permitted Uther Pendragon to ride off to war without him at the head of a Camulodian army.

As the main body of his infantry began wheeling and regrouping into their marching formations, Uther turned his head slightly and glanced again at his cousin. Merlyn was watching the troops closely, the expression in his eyes making it clear that he was enjoying the intricacy of their disciplined manoeuvres, but there was nothing there that reminded Uther of the Caius Merlyn of his younger days. He heaved a great sigh, filled with regret, then turned to his left and bent forward in his saddle, reaching out to where his Grandmother Luceiia sat beside his mother, close by him, in a light, one-horse cart that her husband Publius Varrus had built years earlier. Luceiia saw him lean towards her, reaching, and stretched her hand out to meet his. He kissed it, squeezed it gently, nodded to her one last time, blew a kiss to his mother, and then dug his spurs into his horse's flanks, kicking it down towards the departing army on the great plain.

Chapter THIRTY-SIX

Even before penetrating Cornwall, Uther had decided that he had no wish to waste time and manpower in besieging strongholds, so from the outset of his campaign he took evasive action every time his scouts identified a strongly held, fortified position. He preferred to send his army looping around the obstacle, rather than run the risk of being inveigled into a long, costly and unsatisfying siege that would tie up most of his resources. He took particular care, too, in not merely avoiding but staying far away from several of the largest and best-known strongholds, in particular Golant, Lot's own strongest holding and his most often used base, and Tir Gwyn, Herliss's White Fort. Herliss, he knew, was gone, and it would not have surprised him to learn that his stronghold had been seized by Gulrhys Lot. Until he knew one way or the other, Uther had decided he would be cautious and make no attempt to approach the place.

Passing it by on his first advance southward, however, he had dispatched Nemo alone on foot at the closest point of his approach to find out what she could about the situation in the White Fort. Nemo had gone willingly but slowly, in the guise of a homeless peasant and armed only with a heavy cudgel and a knife with a rusted but serviceable blade, and she had been clearly warned, however needlessly, about the potential dangers in penetrating an enemy stronghold.

Nemo was gone for nigh on three weeks, and then returned bearing mixed tidings. Tir Gwyn had been confiscated, as Uther had guessed it might be, forfeited by Herliss as punishment for his continuing absence from Lot's service, and it was now garrisoned by a strong detachment of mercenary Outlanders. Nemo had entered the fort easily enough, finding it full of rootless people whose only common bond was that none of them was from Cornwall, and had immediately begun blending into the place, attracting no attention, but listening closely and waiting until she felt her face had become familiar to the people around her. That had taken ten days, Nemo estimated, and after that she had begun casually and indirectly asking questions.

It was common knowledge that Lot's fury on learning of the defection of Herliss and Lagan had been spectacular in its insanity: he had slaughtered the entire party that brought him confirmation of the disappearance, despite his full awareness that he himself had sent them out specifically to discover and report the truth of the situation. He had apparently seen no irony in having them killed for succeeding.

No one knew where Herliss and Lagan were hiding, Nemo reported, but rumours abounded that they had been joined by several other powerful Cornish Chiefs and leaders, and that they had raised and were training an army of Cornish clansmen outside the boundaries of Cornwall itself to invade their own homeland and overthrow Gulrhys Lot. As a direct result of these rumours, Lot had withdrawn most of his free-ranging mercenary forces and formed them into armies again, keeping heavy concentrations of them within the protecting walls of the score and more of hill forts, some of them ancient and unused for hundreds of years, that were scattered the length and breadth of Cornwall.

Uther was prepared to accept Nemo's news with relief, since, along with everyone else in his army, he had been finding it hard to accept that they had spent more than four weeks in Cornwall, marching openly from one end of the peninsula to the other and then back again, without ever encountering an enemy force large enough to fight. They had seen many small groups, but those were always small enough and clever enough to disappear into the nearest hills immediately upon catching sight of the Camulodian host.