Jack Whyte - Uther

For a moment she lay motionless, blinking up at the three shapes that towered above her. Three men—no, two men and a boy, all kneeling over her. The man behind her held her clutched against his lower body, her shoulders pressed against his thighs, her neck bent forward by the push of his chest against the back of her head. The man by her feet sat back on his legs, holding her more gently now, and he was smiling. Between these two, the boy knelt at her left side, holding the cloth with which he had wiped her face. All three were staring at her, but she had no thought of reading their expressions. Instead she began to fight again, kicking out strongly with more aim than before and squirming like one possessed to escape.

She almost succeeded, too, for the savagery of her attempt caught them unawares just as they had begun to relax, thinking her calmed down. The man holding her legs lost his grip on them and Jonet swung her right foot strongly upwards, aiming at his mouth, hoping to kick his teeth out. Briefly she saw blood on her own leg, much blood, and then the man reacted, blocking her scything kick with his forearm and clamping his great hand on her leg again, this time above the knee, digging deep and agonizingly with hard fingers so that her leg straightened involuntarily. As it did so, he caught her with his other hand, this time seizing her by the ankle and forcing her leg back down until he held it flat against the ground. Raging, she tried to kick out at him with her other leg, her left, but for some reason she could not make it move at all, and a sudden fear welled up in her. The man above her released the grip of his right hand above her knee and grasped her other ankle effortlessly, pulling it down and out until he held her still. She felt it move, but otherwise felt nothing.

'Talk to her," the man grunted, forcing the words out between gritted teeth.

"Listen to me!" It was the boy who spoke, the urgency of his tone cutting through the rage in her so that her eyes went without volition to meet his gaze. His face was tight with strain.

"Stop fighting us. We don't want to hurt you. You need help."

Jonet spat at him, her saliva spraying up and then falling back onto her face. The boy gazed back at her, looking right into her eyes and shaking his head.

"Spit all you want," he said then, "but listen to me. I don't know you. I don't know your name, and I don't care what it is, but we don't want to harm you. You've hurt yourself badly enough. I saw you running, just before you fell, and then you ran right off the edge of the ditch there, and fell down here. You landed on a fallen tree . . . smashed your head and gashed your leg on a broken branch. I tried to help you, but when I saw the depth of the hole in your leg and how much blood you were losing, I ran to fetch Garreth, and Glenn came back with us. Garreth will stop the bleeding and bind your wound, if you'll let him, but you have to stop fighting. Nobody's going to hurt you. I am King Ullic's grandson, Uther Pendragon, and Garreth is Garreth Whistler, the King's Champion. I swear you will not be harmed. But that wound is bad. You could die of it. Look at it. Look at it!"

The arms holding her about the chest relaxed so that she could move, and she looked down to where the boy was pointing. Both her legs were drenched in blood, but it was the left one, the one she had been unable to move, that looked so gory. There was a great hole torn high up on her thigh, and deep inside it she could see the gleam of pinkish white bone, but below the point where the bone was visible, bright red blood welled profusely. The sight shook her from head to foot, and every vestige of fight went out of her. The man behind her caught her as she sagged back against him, and then her head began to spin and she lost consciousness, the last thing in her awareness being the boy's face frowning down at her, his huge eyes bright and troubled.

For a time after that, Jonet seemed to hover between sleep and wakefulness, and sometimes she dreamed long dreams. Amid all of that, she knew she was in a hut, and in a bed, sheltered from the weather, which she also knew was foul, because every time she awoke she could hear the howling of the wind and the incessant pounding of driving, torrential rain. Two men were looking after her, one or the other of them always present when she woke up. The larger of the two men, she learned, was the one named Garreth . . . Garreth Whistler. The other man, smaller and quieter, was called Glenn. Neither of them spoke much to her, but neither of them showed her any cruelty, either. Whichever one of them was there when she awoke—and sometimes they had to waken her solely for this purpose—would change her bandages, removing the soiled dressing and setting it aside for later disposal, then washing her wounded leg in hot, stinging water before poulticing the wound anew and binding the whole in fresh, clean dressings.

In time, she seemed to sleep less often and for shorter periods, and in that same time the frightful hole in her thigh, its edges sewn together somehow by Garreth Whistler, scabbed over and began to heal, so that eventually the pain of it was replaced by an incessant itch that Garreth told her was a sure sign of healing.

She could not have said how long she remained there in that bed, in that small hut, but she knew that the boy did not come back to see her again. For a very long time she said nothing, telling herself she didn't care whether he ever came or not, but as time went by and he continued to stay away, she found herself growing angry again, and beginning to believe that he was just like all the other males in her life, hard and cold and uncaring. But then Garreth and Glenn were men, and they too had once been boys. And they had done nothing to hurt her or torment her. They did not say much to her, but they spent all their time looking after her.

And then one morning Garreth came early and proceeded to remove her bandages as usual, but when the poulticed dressing peeled away this time, it took the thick, black, shrunken mass of the scab with it, leaving her thigh clean and new-looking, the length and width of the newly healed wound showing as a bright, broad patch of shiny skin.

Garreth sat back and smiled at her. "There you are, good as ever. Now all you have to do is learn to walk again, and you'll be free of this place."

Jonet scowled at him, not because she was angry but because her face knew no other expression. "Learn to walk again? That's daft. I can walk."

His grin didn't falter. "I know you can. And you know you can. But your legs don't know. They're weak now, no strength in them, because you've been in bed for more than a month, and in all that time you haven't used them. You don't believe me? Very well, let's see."

He stood up and walked away from the bed, turning back to face her when he had gone three paces. Then he held out his hands to her.

"Come then, Nemo, walk to me."

"What?"

His head tilted to one side, unsure of what she meant.

"What did you call me? You called me something."

"Oh, Nemo." He laughed. "It's a Roman name, and it means 'No One,' or 'No Name.' We didn't know your name and we needed to call you something, so Nemo seemed right. Don't you like it?"

She swung her legs clear of the bed and sat there motionless, facing him, saying nothing.

"Nemo it is, then. Come on, stand up and walk to me. It's not far, see, and I'll hold out my hands. Don't be afraid. If you fall, I'll catch you."

Still she made no move.

"Come on, what are you waiting for? You can't be afraid, because I know you aren't afraid of anything. How old are you, ten or twelve? Big, strong legs. Come on, up you get, only three steps to me."

Jonet stood up—and promptly sat down again when she felt the floor buckling beneath her feet. Thoroughly frightened by the sensation, which was unlike anything she had ever experienced, she sat there for a time, clutching the bedclothes tightly and staring down at the floor. It was of hard-packed earth, swept clean, and in all the time she stared at it, it didn't move. Finally she drew a deep breath and tried again, this time managing to remain erect for three or four heartbeats while the entire hut swayed about her.! On her third attempt, she managed to remain standing, although her legs refused to move when she told them to. She had a brief, flashing vision of the way her wounded leg had refused to respond to her attempts to kick Garreth on their first meeting, and her belly heaved in panic. Her right foot left the floor and moved to complete her first step, and then her entire leg folded beneath her as it met the floor again, and she pitched forward face first, Garreth caught her almost before she could begin to fall and picked her up easily, spinning with her to lay her back upon the bed.