Jack Whyte: Uther

"Listen for Gwyn's horn when you're fighting among the trees. As soon as you hear it, disengage and make your way back down to the river, then form a line on me, over there, about two-thirds of the way across, where the water is less than knee-deep. You see the place? Just beyond the deepest part of the stream. That's where we'll stand and wait for them to come to us again, through deeper, faster water. Then, on Gwyn's next signal or mine, we'll retreat again ahead of them to where our horses are hidden among the fir trees. We'll mount up there and finish them as they come out of the river." He scanned the group, making sure that they had all heard him and understood. Finally he nodded. "That's all, then. Fight well and fight hard. I know you will, and I know you'll make me even prouder of you than I am now. Now let's move on and wait for my order to dismount!"

Mere moments later, it seemed, they came to the fallen tree and Uther gave the order to dismount. As the troopers swung down and the process of gathering the horses began, Uther noticed that Garreth's face was vacant of expression, his eyes fixed upon the great, dead tree that bridged the river.

"What's on your mind? You look perplexed."

Garreth blinked. "An idea. Swimmers. I need ten men who can swim. We'll come up into the woods with you to see what we're up against, but then I'd like to pull them back here to the river and get out of this armour. What I'm thinking of won't work if we're weighed down in iron. We'll strip down and then, when we hear your signal to fall back, we'll slip beneath the big tree and swim to the bank on the other side. Once there, we'll be behind the enemy and can hit them from there when they least expect it."

"You could be cut off and killed."

"So could you. But then again, we could succeed and pin the enemy between our two groups."

"Aye, you could. Very well, find yourself some swimmers."

The fight in the woods was brutal from the outset, for Uther was right and the enemy warriors simply abandoned their mounts at the first sign of trouble, preferring to fight on foot and perfectly happy to be alone, each man for himself, among the trees and bushes. Uther's men, on the other hand, striving to maintain disciplined fighting units, were hampered by the encroaching undergrowth at every turn, unable to swing their weapons as they had been trained to do. Uther was reminded almost immediately of his father's lesson, taught to him in the long distant past, about the way in which all battle plans are rendered useless with the first clash of weapons and bodies.

He watched several of his own men go down to death after their shields were pierced by hard-flung spears. The heavy spears lodged in the shields and hung there, weighing them down unbearably and rapidly tiring the shield-bearers, whose arms could not sustain the dragging weight. And as the shields went down, the blades went in. Far sooner than he would have wished, Uther called to Gwyn for the signal to withdraw.

Uther's troops disengaged immediately, glad to be out of there, and ran back towards the river, hearing the wild shouts of triumph ringing out behind them. Uther had time to look quickly and see that there was no sign of Garreth Whistler and his volunteers, before all his attention was drawn to the loose, treacherous river stones beneath his flying feet. Only once did he land on a stone that began to shift, and he thought he was finished, but the movement stopped, checked by a more solid stone behind the first, and he was able to leap to a larger, safer foothold. He reached the shallow waters of the river and moved on, trying to hurry but forced to place each step with even greater care now that the rocks beneath him were wet and slippery with moss and algae. At the deepest part, the water surged above his knees, but he pressed on, using his long sword as a staff to probe his way, and he reached the shallows beyond, where there was almost no current. There he stopped and swung around, spreading his legs and finding a solid footing as his men formed up on either side of him, those of them who still had shields placing themselves between pairs of others who had none. He steadied them with a word and then focused his attention on the enemy on the far bank. They were milling around but making no attempt to venture out onto the river stones. And then Uther saw why, and his heart sank.

A group of the enemy, twelve or perhaps fifteen men, were bowmen, and they were in the process of settling down to shoot, clustered in a tight group on the right of the enemy line directly opposite where Uther's own thin line of approximately thirty men now stood as living, defenceless targets. Even as he saw them, the first arrow came hissing across the water and thumped heavily into a wooden shield, almost knocking its bearer off his feet.

Moments later it began to rain arrows, a lethal, hissing rain of death that dropped three men with the first volley, although two of the men staggered back to their feet soon afterwards, their breastplates bruised and dented from the force of the missiles that had struck them. Uther himself made a prominent target, thanks to his huge size and bright armour, and two arrows pierced his shield while another glanced off the rounded dome of his helmet and several more hissed past him. Feeling the impact of the missiles striking his shield, Uther gave fervent thanks that the bows ranged against him were ordinary weapons and not the fearsome longbows of his own people. Pendragon shafts could strike right through armour and shields to penetrate the flesh behind them, the shock of their delivery alone enough to kill or completely disable a man.

And then Garreth Whistler burst from the woods behind the enemy, his long sword blade Hashing and whirling above his head as he led ten naked, silent men straight for the bowmen, falling on them from behind and destroying them, savaging their unprotected backs before anyone could react to his attack and leaving not one of them alive. By the time the others swung about face this new and unexpected assault. Whistler and his fellows had already fled straight towards the river, leaping naked across the wide expanse of tumbled stones and splashing through the shallows, picking their legs up high as they went, judging their leaps from rock to rock and splashing water high around them as they ran in a series of antic leaps and bounds. Only one of them fell, misjudging a step, but he was up again immediately and bounding onward only slightly behind his companions. The line of men standing alongside Uther cheered themselves hoarse as their friends came running and staggering towards them, but Uther stepped forward and seized Garreth Whistler by the wrist, steadying the Champion, whose chest was pumping like a bellows.

"Where did you leave your armour?"

"Behind you . . . in the trees."

"Get on, then, and get back into it. We'll hold them while you rearm."

As Garreth Whistler moved beyond him to obey his instructions, Uther's eye was drawn again to the opposite bank and to the mounted man who had emerged from the trees there and was now chivvying the men beneath them to attack across the stream. The fellow was enormous, tall and broad and heavily armoured in dull, battered equipment on which Uther could see the rust from where he stood looking. His face was completely hidden by a great, rusted helmet of iron with a rounded dome and full cheek-flaps, and he seemed to carry only one weapon, holding it with its butt resting on his thigh so that its long, curved blade jutted forward. It was a strange-looking device resembling a broad-bladed reaping hook with deep, serrated edges, mounted on a long kind of axe handle. Even disregarding the fact that he was the only man still mounted, it took Uther no great effort to perceive that this was the leader of the crew that faced him.

Under the prodding of their leader, who towered over all of them from the height of his enormous horse, the others began to move forward across the stream bed, advancing slowly and cautiously, their attention divided between the menace of Uther's line awaiting them and the dangers of the surface under their feet. But as they ventured out onto the stony plain, there came a surge of activity behind them and the remainder of their party came into view, ten or twelve men, moving quickly through the edges of the forest and thronging around the leader, whose urgent gestures left no doubt in Uther's mind that he was urging them onward into the water to attack. Several of them ran directly to the pile of bodies on the right and snatched up the bows belonging to the men whom Garreth's charge had destroyed, but they were obviously untrained in their use, and their inaccurately fired missiles sped harmlessly into the water for the most part, aimed too low. Still, Uther watched in horrified awe as one arrow landed flat against the surface of the river and was deflected upward, straight towards him. He barely had time to flinch before the missile slammed into his thigh, splitting the frontal muscles cleanly as it sliced vertically between their corded layers. It was not a serious wound, the arrow having had barely enough strength left to penetrate his skin, but it was a wound, and it bled freely. He reached down with his left hand and pulled the arrowhead free, hardly conscious of the pain, and then looked back to the slowly advancing enemy, their reluctance for this fight plain in the way their bodies were hunched in anticipation of the conflict facing them. Ignoring the wound in his thigh, he took a step forward and turned to face his men.