Jack Whyte - Uther

She let the heavy wooden yoke fall from her shoulders, its pails clattering in the morning stillness, and fumbled for the short knife she carried at her belt. It was scarcely a dagger, but it was all she had, and she ran the ball of her thumb nervously over its sharp edge, looking around her to see who else was watching. Not another person moved anywhere in sight. She strained her ears for the sound of approaching footsteps but heard nothing, and eventually, in spite of her terror, she approached the blind corner of the barrel-maker's shed and slowly poked her head around the corner.

The streets lay empty on both sides, and for a moment she was tempted to believe that she might have dreamed it all. But she knew she had not. Leir the Druid was in Tir Manha somewhere. He had found her, and soon the entire village would be turning out to look for her, to send her home with him. Fresh terror flared up inside her. He could be anywhere now, from the King's Hall to a neighbour's hut or even inside the shed she was leaning against. The sole place she could rely on his not being was behind her.

Slowly, taking one step at a time and leaving her pails and her wooden yoke abandoned where they lay, Nemo began to back away, feeling her entire body vibrating with tension, expecting at every moment to hear her name shouted with a command to stop where she was and give herself up to her father's care. But the shout never came, and no one came close to where she walked, so that she made her way unnoticed across the entire space of the rear half of Tir Manha until she could turn and run, fast and far.

The previous month, she and Uther had found a bear's winter den on a heavily treed hillside in the forest, less than a mile from the walls of Tir Manha. They had stumbled upon the place by accident while trying to locate Uther's best hunting arrow, which had brushed a sapling branch and been deflected high and to their right to disappear among a jumble of broken slabs of rock on the side of a steep, moss-covered cliff that was literally held in place, slabs and all, by the massed and massive roots of ancient oak and elm trees. Nemo had climbed higher than Uther at one point, attracted by a faint pathway descending from the upper edge of the cliff and disappearing behind one ledge of the green, moss-encrusted rock lace. The path had been beaten by a large bear whose tracks, made months before, were still visible, set in dried mud in front of the hole that led into a small but deep, dark cave. Since then, the two of them had used the spot as a private meeting place, telling no one else about it. She knew that Uther would know where to find her once it had become clear that she had disappeared.

Nemo reached the bottom of the cliff and within moments had reached the entrance to the cave. It was summer, but nonetheless she threw a large stone through the entrance and waited, listening closely, before she moved to enter the den. She heard nothing, and nothing came charging out at her, but even that did not mean the cave was empty. She knew that the proper thing to do would be to light a fire and then to throw a lighted brand into the blackness. That would bring out any frightened animal that might be crouching in there. But Nemo had neither the time nor the patience to go looking for the materials to build a fire. She drew her small knife and sucked in a huge breath, then stepped inside. For the space of a heartbeat she held her breath, her face a rictus of anticipation, but then she relaxed. The cave was empty.

She turned and looked for signs of her passage, but none could be seen. Because it was still early summer and the heat had not yet had a chance to penetrate the depths of this ancient stretch of forest, everything visible, the entire enclosure of the sylvan world stretching in front of her, was still painted in shades of green. High above Nemo's head, the towering treetops were crowned with a thick canopy of leaves, and even the great, thigh-thick ropes of root looping the cliff face all around her were covered with a greenish, mossy growth.

Uther would be coming sooner or later.

Nemo looked down at the ledge she was standing on and then lowered herself to sit with her legs dangling over the edge, her back comfortably lodged against the cliff face by the cave's entrance. The air was warm; the sun filtered through the leaves. She finally closed her eyes and allowed herself to think, without panic now, about her narrow escape from the Druid.

Uther did arrive in the middle of the afternoon, and she watched him as he climbed silently and swiftly up to where she sat. When he reached her perch, he stood looking down at her for a while, his face expressionless, and then he dipped his hand into his scrip and pulled out a wedge of cold fowl, leg and thigh, wrapped in a clean piece of cloth, handing it to her silently. Nemo took it with a nod of thanks and attacked it. She had eaten nothing since the previous night, and she was ravenous. When she had finished, Uther stood waiting, leaning indolently against the rock face with his left shoulder, his weight braced on his right foot, his head cocked to one side. He had learned long before that day that words were a commodity she used but sparingly, and sometimes heeded even less, and so he was content to wait, knowing that she had something to tell him.

She finally tilted her head back and looked up at him, wiping her lips with the sleeve of her tunic.

"They came for me."

Uther frowned. "Who came for you?"

"The Druid and the boy."

Uther was plainly perplexed. "The Druid ? You mean the new fellow? The one who came this morning? Why would he come for you? Why would you even think such a thing? He came to see Daris. All the Druids come to see Daris. He is the Chief Druid."

"The boy."

"What about him? He's the Druid's apprentice."

Nemo shook her head. "No, no, he's not."

"Come on, Nemo, of course he is. He's an ugly whoreson, but an apprentice is probably the best thing he could be, with that face of his."

Nemo frowned. "He's my brother, Carthac. My brother. And the Druid's name is Leir. He is my father."

Uther sat down beside her rather suddenly, as though his legs might have given way, and sat staring at her for what seemed a very long time, while Nemo kept her eyes fixed on the emptiness ahead of her in the middle distance. Finally she heard him snort, and from the corner of her eye she watched him draw up his knees and wrap his arms around them.

"The Druid is your father . . . What did you say his name is? Leir? Your father?" Nemo made no response, and he continued as though talking to himself. "Very well, then. And the boy is your brother." There was another long pause, and then he moved again, turning himself sideways so that his legs hung out over the cliff like hers. He slipped his hands flat, palms downward, between the backs of his thighs and the hard stone of the ledge.

"Why did you run away?"

Nemo thought about that for a moment. "Because I was afraid of him. He came home with a new wife, and—"

"No, I don't mean then, I mean today. Why did you run away from him today, from Tir Manha?"

Nemo sniffed and turned to look at Uther. "Because he had found me. He—"

"He had not found you, Nemo. He had no idea you were there. He still has no idea."

"He would have asked for me."

"What would he have asked about, then? A runaway daughter? A child? A slave? If he had wanted to find you he could have done so easily, long before now. He is a Druid, after all . . ."

They sat silently for a time, and then Uther asked, "You hate him, don't you?"

She nodded, and he nodded back. "Aye, I can see that. But why? What did he do to you? Did he beat you?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Sometimes. Mostly he frightened me. I knew he was going to kill me one day. He killed my mother, and he killed all his other wives, too. Nobody ever spoke of it, but I knew . . ."