Jack Whyte - Uther

And then, in the first dim greyness of dawn, when the dew on the ground had turned to mist that rose up to shroud them all in wet, ghostly wreaths, they walked straight into the path of another large force of men advancing eastward from their left.

Longhead's scouts had detected the advancing enemy, but not in time to permit any avoidance of the danger. Lagan's clansmen fell back as far as they could and went to ground immediately, lying motionless and hoping to stay concealed while the other group passed by, and they were almost successful, but one unit of the advancing enemy swung far to the right of their fellows, literally walked onto some of Longhead's men, and the die was cast.

The Cornishmen, prepared, made the most of the surprise their unsuspected presence caused, but they were outnumbered from the start, and the enemy were better equipped, many of them wearing shirts of ring-mail that could deflect the sharpest spear point. Slowly, the tide of the fight turned against the Cornishmen.

Nemo had lost sight of Lagan in the opening moments of the battle, and she suspected that he might be dead. She herself was isolated at one point, soon after she first smelled the smoke of burning grass, with a score or so of Cornishmen, and they formed a defensive knot, standing shoulder to shoulder and battling in grim near-silence with the endless stream of men who surged towards them out of the smoke-filled mist. And then Nemo was struck on the head and knocked to the ground, unconscious.

When she regained her senses some time later, she was choking in dense smoke, but she was fully aware of where she was and of the danger she was in, lying alone and defenceless on the ground. Her head was aching violently, and she had to vomit before she could struggle back to her feet, at which point she discovered that she had lost both her helmet and her shield. She still held her sword in her hand, however, her knuckles sore from clutching it, and as she stood weaving, fighting for balance and blinking her eyes until her vision cleared, she saw another sword lying close by. Her world stopped swaying moments later and she bent and snatched up the second weapon.

The knot of men with whom she had been fighting had been reduced to half their number while she lay unconscious, but they were still close by, and as soon as she saw them she ran to join them again, hacking and slashing at the exposed backs of the few enemies between her and her former companions, knowing that she would be safer in the group than she would be alone. Some time after that, fighting on the extreme edge of the dwindling knot of clansmen, she sensed a threat to her left and swung around just in time to take a spear thrust in her side. As her attacker ripped his spearhead free, she flew at him in a rage, feeling no pain from the wound, and slashed her short-sword across his throat, severing the arteries there so that he fell away in a spray of lifeblood. She fell then, too, on top of him, and the mixture of their blood must have made it appear that they were both dead, for no one leaped forward to finish her off.

She had been fighting for what seemed like hours, although she had no idea of how much time had actually passed, and she was growing weaker by the moment. Her arms were heavy with fatigue, her entire body slick with blood, much of it her own, and she had to contend with the ragged pain of the deep wound in her left side, where the spear point had penetrated beneath the edge of her ill- fitting body armour and then been ripped out again. Its barbed edges had torn through flesh and muscle, and even though she had barely felt it at the time, her attention focused tightly upon killing her assailant, the pain was now threatening to overwhelm her. She knew that if she did not rest soon and staunch the wound somehow, she would simply fall down and die, or be killed as she lay helpless. Even as the thought passed through her mind, her knees gave way and she fell heavily, almost losing consciousness in a blinding flash of agony. And yet her awareness of danger was so strong that she immediately began to struggle to her feet again, digging the point of the longer of her two swords into the ground and attempting to use it as a prop to pull herself back to her feet. But she could not rise. She managed to struggle up until she was kneeling on one knee, leaning heavily on the sword, but she could go no farther, and her eyes teared over with the effort.

Only then did she realize, hazily, kneeling and swaying weakly from side to side, that she was alone and the fighting had passed her by. The only sounds of conflict she could hear were distant now, muffled by the roaring of the flames in the nearby trees.

Someone moaned aloud close by her, but there was no threat in the sound, and she ignored it. Another man screamed repeatedly in long, sustained crescendos, but he, too, was far away, somewhere off to her right.

She lowered herself to all fours, retaining her grip on her short- sword, and began crawling slowly towards a huge beech tree, aware that the ground at its base was covered with thick, springy moss. When she reached it, she pushed herself up until her back rested against the bole and then set to work to remove the armoured breastplate that she had borrowed from Lagan Longhead's supplies. It had been made for a shorter body than hers, and that had left the gap found by the spear point that had almost killed her.

Weak as she was, her fingers could not cope with the blood-slick straps and buckles of the harness, and so she cut the leather, shrugged out of the armour and then pulled up her tunic, baring the wound. It was wide and deep, and strips of raw flesh hung in tatters where the barbs of the spear had been ripped free. Blood welled from the long trench and flowed down over her hip. She gritted her teeth and struggled to pull the leather scrip at her side around to where she could reach into it, and from it she pulled a thick wad of cloth, the pads and binding strips she carried to deal with the monthly flow of her menses. She untied the bundle, setting the long strips aside and wadding the larger pieces into one thick pad, and then she tore up a double handful of the sphagnum moss she was sitting on and packed it as tightly as she could into the raw wound, sucking in her breath and biting down hard against the pain. She held the moss in place until the sickening waves of fresh pain receded, and then she carefully placed the cloth pad over it and bound it tightly in place with six long strips of cloth, each of them wrapped twice around her waist and knotted as tightly as she could pull them.

The pain lessened immediately, and the dressing felt tight and strong as she pulled her tunic back down, then cinched her wide leather belt closely around her, pulling it until she could hardly breathe and then using the point of her small eating knife to pierce a new hole in the leather strap. After that, she laid her sword across her knees and leaned back against the tree, wiping the blood from her hands with another handful of moss and then reaching into her scrip again for a small package of dried, smoked venison. It was practically inedible, and she had no appetite, but she knew she needed the strength and sustenance it would provide. It tasted and felt like tree bark in her mouth at first, but she persevered, chewing doggedly until her saliva had softened the stuff and she could taste the rank, smoky flavour of it. It was a large piece of meat, and she forced herself to sit there and gnaw at it, mouthful after mouthful, until it was consumed, and she felt her eyes begin to close against her volition.

Nemo opened her eyes suddenly, surprised that she had dozed off, her heart flaring with panic. No one was near her. She was still sitting propped against the bole of the beech tree, and the pain in her side had diminished to a dull ache. She fumbled gently at the dressing on her side, testing it. Nemo checked her hand then for signs of fresh blood, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.