Jack Whyte - Uther

Uther instantly anticipated the downward slash of the weapon and stepped forward to his left, bending low to avoid the path of the blade that was hissing towards him. and then lunging on his right foot to stab with his long sword, feeling the point plunge home beneath his assailant's upraised arm. The man screamed as Uther twisted the blade before tearing it loose again to pivot completely on his left heel, sweeping his sword around in a full turn to bring the edge of the blade smashing down in a backhanded slash to the falling man's exposed neck. As the man fell away, Uther was already moving forward in a crouch, looking for another target, but then he heard his name being shouted and turned to see Garreth Whistler and four fully armoured troopers running towards him. Whistler seized him by the arm and pushed him back towards his tent, telling him to get dressed and that he and the others would guard the Queen's tent while Uther armed himself.

Uther emerged again a short time later, once more the King, fully dressed and armoured, but the attackers, whoever they had been, had already been beaten off. The entire camp was still in an uproar, and as Uther stepped out of his tent, sword in hand. Whistler was in the act of pulling himself up into his saddle. As soon as he saw Uther, he pointed to where another trooper held the King's mount, fully saddled and ready. Uther ran directly to the horse and heaved himself up into his own saddle, then stood upright in his stirrups, trying to make sense of everything he was seeing. Dawn was already flushing the eastern sky, and where he had been able to see only darkness and shadows mere moments earlier, he could now recognize individual men in the growing light. But nowhere could he see any enemies. He twisted in his saddle to look back at Whistler, who was moving up to his side.

"Who were they?" he shouted.

"Who knows? Whoever they were, they knew what they were about. They penetrated two rings of guards—one mounted and the other afoot—without letting a squeak out of any of them." Whistler's horse reared and he fought the animal down, grim-faced, "One thing's certain—two things, in fact: they were after the horses, and they must have friends out there close by. I can't imagine an unsupported group of under a hundred men attacking a force of this size otherwise, unless they were all crazed. They might be our Galloglas friends from yesterday, regrouped, but I doubt that. I don't think the Ersemen could have reorganized themselves that quickly after the treatment we dealt them. But the fact that they even tried this tells me there are others like them close by, and we might have them down on our heads at any moment. We're striking camp now."

"Good man." Uther pulled back on his reins, dancing his horse in a circle, his eyes taking in everything around him. "How many men did we lose, and who's chasing the raiders?"

"No one's chasing anyone—we don't know what's out there. As for the guards, I've sent one of my people to do the rounds of the sentry posts. My guess is that we lost at least ten, but it might have been twice that. How these people were able to approach mounted men and pull them down in silence is something I intend to find out. Apart from that, we lost a few men during the fighting here in camp. We could have lost you, too, the same way, leaping around bare-arsed in the open like some demented hermit. Ah, there's my man. I'll be back as soon as I have some answers."

Uther watched Whistler ride away and then dismounted and went quickly back into the tent, where he found Ygraine surrounded by her women, all of them involved in hurriedly repacking the sparse belongings they had unpacked the night before. The baby was still sleeping, unaware and uncaring of the commotion going on around him. Uther had a word with the Queen, caressed his son's cheek briefly and then went to supervise the activities outside, throwing his great red-and-gold cloak over his shoulders as he went.

They were on the move within the hour, before the sun had crested the horizon, headed due south in a condition of extreme vigilance, the cavalry moving in tight formations, circling the marching column constantly in a defensive screen. Strongarm's scouts, dispatched in the immediate aftermath of the aborted raid on the horse lines, had returned in an appallingly short time with reports of heavy enemy formations to the north, northeast and west of them, and even within the acknowledged limitations of distant views and round estimates of numbers, it was soon clear to Uther and his commanders that the three forces combined outnumbered his own army by at least half, three thousand to their two. Uther had no means of estimating the quality of the enemy troops, but his recent encounter with the German mercenaries had left him no room for optimism, and as he rode southward, scanning the horizon in all directions, he was more worried than he had ever been.

Behind him, he knew, the three separate enemy forces might well be coalescing into one solid mass, their differences abandoned in the heat of the chase, but three thousand rabble against his two thousand disciplined troopers was no great disadvantage, he knew—his mounted troopers alone were easily capable of routing twice as many again. What was looming huge in his mind was the fact of Lot's main army marching northward towards him. He would have given anything to know how far away they were and how great their numbers were, and because he did not know, he dared not turn again to savage the enemy at his heels. If he turned back to fight and the other army came up on him during the battle, then the three thousand pursuing him would become an anvil, and he and his people would be trapped between it and the hammer of Lot's main force. He could not permit himself to speculate on Longhead's army, or whether or not it might have intercepted Lot's main force.

He had no choice other than to keep moving south, hoping against hope that he would be able to swing southwestward and ensure the safety of Ygraine's party before the southern army came in sight. Tight-lipped, he issued strict orders that any fighting that occurred on the march must be purely defensive. On no account were any of his squadrons to be committed to an attack that would take them away from their defensive positions.

It galled Uther to appear so passive, and he had to fight down the black and bitter anger of his resentment lest it affect his own people. For the time being, however, there was no other responsible course open to him.

The first attacks, two of them coming simultaneously on the west and east flanks, hit them less than two hours into the first leg of their journey. They were jagged, undisciplined affairs, mere mobs of armed men rushing against the moving column with no visible order and obviously no central plan governing their movements. Each attack was stopped short and destroyed by co-ordinated cavalry charges. But that was only the beginning. Similar attacks followed, none of them posing any great threat to the security or good order of the moving column, but all of them cumulatively resulting in a general slowing of progress, since the speed of the column was governed by the need to keep the defending cavalry close to the main train. Dedalus's infantry were frustrated by the fact that all they could do was watch and keep moving forward, for their new commander allowed them no opportunity to become involved in the lighting. Huw Strongarm's bowmen fared little better; their orders were as rigid as those governing the foot soldiers. Uther kept them close, and they were forbidden to shoot at anything other than targets too close to miss. There were three wagons with the column that carried nothing but spare arrows, tightly bound and heaped together and then bound again like piles of firewood, but Uther knew he had to hoard those. He could see no benefit in squandering precious arrows on moving enemies who were too far away to hit.