Jack Whyte: Uther

Garreth shrugged, his smile evident again, although it was a mere shadow of his former grin.

"Aye, Lord Uther, I am. When an army stands alone and unchallenged upon a battlefield after the fight, they have won a victory, no matter what."

Now a buzz of amazed speculation broke out among the listeners, and Uther let them talk while he motioned Garreth aside, all of his former anger dissipated.

"Come and eat, you must be hungry."

"Starved, lord."

"Aye, I have no doubt."

Uther turned to a nearby trooper and asked him to bring some bread and meat for Garreth, and then he led the Champion back to where he and Ygraine had been sitting. Garreth talked quietly to Ygraine for a few moments, asking about her son, and then seated himself gratefully on a smooth boulder. Uther, filled with thankfulness that his fears had been ill-founded, allowed his friend to rest quietly for a few moments before asking his next question.

"What happened then, after the enemy left?"

"We stood fast for more than an hour, lest any of them come back, and then we set about cleaning up the mess. Mucius Quinto organized his field hospital, tending to the wounded, and half of the men were assigned to burial duties and litter duties. The other half set up a defence perimeter, although there was little need. By that time, even the enemy wounded were aware that it was over and we had won, and they gave us no trouble. Quinto's people were attending to them, too. I asked him why, and he said that they had stopped being enemies and were now injured men."

"Aye, Quinto thinks that way, as does his friend Lucanus."

The trooper returned with Garreth's food, and after thanking the man Garreth dedicated himself to demolishing the succulent meat. Uther and Ygraine sat together side by side on neighbouring stones and watched him eat. neither of them making any move to resume their own interrupted meal but simply content to sit there quietly, close to each other. Finally, Garreth swallowed his last mouthful and drank from the flask at his side, and Uther spoke again.

"Did you see my guards on the way in?"

"You mean the squad you left behind to guard your back? Aye I did. Junius Lepo was in command. He and his men were bright and alert. . . half of them, anyway. The other half were asleep, the night watch."

"Good. So tell me now why you are here."

The King's Champion pursed his lips, looking speculatively at his friend. "Are you asking me as Uther, my friend and pupil, or as Uther Pendragon, my King and Commander?"

"Both."

Garreth sniffed. "I said before, I thought you might have more need of me than Dedalus did. He had most of his officers there . . . we lost relatively few, given what we had endured. He had already made all the arrangements to load his wounded into the wagons and was marshalling his remaining troops to march them homeward. He didn't need me. Besides, I knew what it had cost you to ride away as you did, and I thought you might be relieved to hear how everything had turned out. And so I bade farewell to Dedalus and came to find you, slipping away by the same valley you followed."

"Hmm. The thought of all the enemy forces between us didn't bother you?"

"No, not as long as I was travelling in the same direction they were. But do I look any older to you than I did when you last saw me?"

Now Uther smiled for the first time since his friend's arrival. "No, you do not. Should you?"

"Aye, I think so, for I must have aged ten years after you set that fire and sent the entire wasp's nest running back towards me. The wind from the south—and I suppose you must have thanked all the gods for it—turned that entire valley into a Hue, and the flames blowing through it took everything, every tree and bush, every blade of grass, and the gods alone know how many of Lot's men. I tell you, I was really grateful that I had a horse, for if I hadn't, I would have been cooked like that deer meat I just ate. I saw the smoke belching up the valley towards me and guessed what it must mean, so I turned my horse and put the spurs to him without stopping to think, and I was able to get up onto the hillsides close to the crest before the flames could catch up to me. It was a spectacle to behold, I'll take an oath on that. Never saw anything like it. Just like a bursting dam, it was, except that it was fire that spewed up, not water. A river of fire, moving faster than a horse could run." He paused, his gaze unfocused, and then made a deep "humphing" sound in his throat, remembering. Then he turned to Uther"Where are the others? You had four hundred cavalry. Where are they?"

"I sent most of them home a few miles back where the valley forks." Uther briefly explained what he had been thinking at that time, and Garreth sat nodding as he listened, but Uther was more interested in the story of how Garreth had reached hint.

"So, you were telling me about the fire, how well it worked. Go on."

Garreth shrugged and made a wry face. "Well, I managed to escape the flames, as you can see, but that damned fire still almost got me killed, for I wasn't the only one to seek safety up on the crest. I found myself among a large number of really unpleasant people up there. None of them seemed to know me for what I was. All too concerned with saving their own skins, I suppose, and getting their breath back. But after a while, one of them took a really good look at me, and then I had to ride hard downhill to get away. Could have come to a bad end there, too, because that horse was bouncing down the slope like a boulder, terrified, and staying on his feet only by magic. Don't know how we survived.

"And then, about half an hour later, damned if I didn't almost ride into a party of horsemen. By sheer luck, I was above them again and saw them before they saw me. They were riding through the trees down to my left, and I heard one of their horses screaming. It must have slipped and fallen on the slope. I couldn't count them accurately because of all the trees, but there must have been close to half a hundred of them. I had no idea who they were, but I knew they weren't ours, so I tried to keep well out of their way."

"You mean you failed? They saw you?"

"Aye, they saw me and came after me, but I managed to lose them."

Uther was frowning. "Who could they have been, these people? There were no horses among the army we fought."

"No, there weren't, so I guessed that whoever they were, they were no part of Lot's rabble. But I felt no temptation to ride down to them. I've heard that old nonsense about the enemy of my enemy being my friend, but you'll be an old man before you'll get me to believe it. And judging from the way they came after me, these were not friendly travellers."

"So how did you escape them?"

Garreth shrugged. "Around a hump in the hillside, a kind of shoulder in the rock. They were coming up hard to catch me on one side of the hump, so I went down the other side, passing them as they climbed. I went all the way to the bottom and then swung south again, following the road along the valley. It's not really a road, but on their way north earlier. Lot's army trampled it that enough to resemble one. I made good time for about eight or nine miles, and when I knew I was far enough ahead to have lost any pursuit, I struck upward again across the crest and back down into the valley you were in. I was south of the fire by that time, close to the split in the valley where you say you turned the others loose. Come to think of it, I saw no signs of hundreds of horsemen having passed that way. How did you manage that?"

"The ground was hard there, that's all. Bare rock and little grass. Philip was aware of the need to leave no tracks for anyone to follow, and he made sure his men knew it, too." He coughed, clearing his throat. "So, you've seen no evidence of these other horsemen since you evaded them?"