Jack Whyte - Uther

When they were side by side with him, he rode for a while in silence, then glanced from one to the other of them. "You smell, cocks. A few hours in the baths will do neither of you any harm. Ride half a pace behind me now, as you are, and spare my sensibilities." They fell back half a length, glancing mutely at each other, wondering what this new position signified, but Dedalus gave them no indication of anything, either by word or gesture.

As they crossed the training ground on the plain below the hill of Camulod, approaching the start of the road up to the hilltop fort, Uther began to take notice of the off-duty troopers, who seemed to be swarming everywhere. It seemed to him that he had never before seen so many of the garrison troops out of uniform, but the most amazing thing he could see was that most of them were bareheaded, and every man who was bareheaded was also completely bald, their skulls shaved clean of any hair. Uther gaped at Cay in amazement, although he dared not speak riding so close to Dedalus, and Cay nodded back to him, although he did not look in the least surprised. Dedalus turned his head slightly and saw the wonder and lack of understanding on Uther's face.

"Delousing," he said, his face hidden behind the large cheek- flaps of his helmet. "Head lice. Every once in a while we have an infestation, and when we do, we have to delouse everyone. It's not enough to simply bathe the men and make them wash their hair; that doesn't help. They have to be shaved clean bald, as well, to get rid of the nits—the louse eggs in their hair. There was talk of this for a while before we left. Be glad we missed it." He turned away again, leaving Uther agape over the civility he had been shown, and twisted around in his saddle to look over his other shoulder at Cay, noting the equanimity on the other boy's face. "You've seen this before, haven't you?" Cay made no move to reply, and Dedalus added. "You can speak now, the patrol's over. I asked you a question."

"Yes, Centurion."

"Hmm." Dedalus looked forward again, and Cay turned to look at Uther, who was gazing back at him, mystified and round- eyed. Cay simply shook his head, warning Uther not to be gulled into speaking out of turn, but the warning was needless. The impression Dedalus had made on both boys in eight days would prove to be indelible.

The noise from the mass of soldiers milling about them was indescribable, but from the lack of attention paid to it by Dedalus, Uther could only surmise that at such times of mass delousing, the normally stringent rules governing soldierly deportment and behaviour were relaxed to the point of non-existence. Suddenly, off to their left and no more than ten paces from where they were riding by, a scuffle broke out, and the disruption it caused spread quickly, as such things always do. Uther drew rein, turning in his saddle to see what was happening, but it was only the usual soldiers' brawl, with some men holding others back, restraining them from throwing themselves into the fray, and others wrestling violently, some on the ground, some yet on their feet. In the act of turning his eyes away again, however, Uther recognized Nemo Hard-Nose in the middle of everything, wrestling with a fellow twice her size. As his startled gaze settled on her. Nemo reared back, pushing herself with both arms, then grasped her opponent by the shoulders and snapped her head forward, butting him brutally on the bridge of the nose, the contact so solid that the meaty sound of the impact came clearly to Uther's ears across the intervening space and noise. The man dropped immediately, his knees instantly giving way beneath the hammer blow, and the weight of him dragged Nemo off balance and down with him before she could let go.

Not wishing to see any more, Uther turned his head quickly and made to kick his horse into motion again, only to find Dedalus right in front of him, watching his face. Beside them, the eighty members of their double-squadron patrol had almost passed them by.

"Wasn't that one of yours? The Hard-Nose?"

"Yes, Centurion."

"I thought so. Well named, it seems, unlike the other fellow." He tugged at his reins and swung his horse about again, then kicked it into a trot to regain the head of the column. Uther followed him, idly aware of the dexterity of the foot soldiers around them, who seemed to melt out of their way by magic. Once again, he was thinking, Nemo had managed to appall him and repel him with her mannishness, and he would have sworn that Dedalus had no idea she was a woman.

When they finally reached the main courtyard of the fortress. Dedalus reported their return formally to his fellow centurion Nellis, the guard officer of the day, and then dismissed the troopers, still under the command of their decurions, on a well-earned one-day furlough, although ordering them first to attend the bathhouse on the plain below the hill for scrubbing, delousing and shaving with all their fellows as soon as they had finished tending to their mounts and gear.

No one hearing the dismissal was under any illusion that they had really been dismissed. The last few items of which Dedalus had reminded them would amount to several further hours of work and would take the majority of the troopers well towards the end of this working day, since every man had to see to the cleaning, grooming, feeding and watering of his own horse before doing anything for himself, and then undertake whatever might be necessary for the care and maintenance of his saddlery and armour, removing the evidence of all the miles and all the wear and tear accumulated since the last thorough in-camp inspection they had undergone. Although it was yet barely noon, for some of the troopers, the unfortunate minority who had suffered some kind of damage to their equipment or trappings, it would be after dark by the time they finished all they had to do. The day that followed would be one of rest for all of them, absolutely free of responsibilities, but on the morning after that at first light, they would be on parade, going through a complete and painstaking inspection of their individual mounts and their gear.

Dedalus remained mounted, facing forward until everyone except Cay and Uther had gone, and then he turned finally to them. "As officers, you two are permitted to use the baths here in the fort or to avail yourselves of the facilities down in the Villa Britannicus. That's where I'll be headed after I've made my patrol report to the Legate. By that time, of course, you two should be long departed and asleep. Use your day of rest well, cocks. Day after tomorrow, be outside my tent at dawn. Dismiss."

The two cousins saluted, then swung down from their mounts and led them away towards the stables, holding themselves rigidly upright until they were completely sure they were out of Dedalus's sight. As soon as they knew they were safe, Uther threw his arm around Cay's neck, pulling him down into a headlock, and swung him around in circles until both of them fell down at their horses' feet. The animals merely stood and blinked at them, offering no criticism, and for some reason both boys thought that was extremely humorous, so they laughed until their sides ached. Then when they had sobered slightly, they threw their arms around each other's shoulders and made their way to the stables, where contrary to all the rules of Camulod, they bribed one of the stableboys to feed and groom their mounts while they sneaked off to the bathhouse.

Chapter TWELVE

Exactly one year later, two days before the kalends, the first day of August in what Christians would call 419 Anno Domini, Uther Pendragon and Caius Merlyn Britannicus had almost completed their first and last jointly commanded patrol. By that stage of their training, they had successfully completed several perimeter patrols of the Colony lands and had then gone on to complete three far more extensive and demanding territorial patrols, which were expeditions undertaken by an entire cavalry division, a two-hundred-man grouping of five squadrons acting as one army unit. These territorial patrols swept out from Camulod every second month, alternating to cover all the lands to the north on one occasion in a twenty-mile- wide area extending as far as Aquae Sulis and Glevum, and all the territories to the south on the next, covering the same width of land and descending as far as the old legionary fortress of Isca. Uther and Cay had been twice to Isca in the south and once to Aquae Sulis and Glevum in the north within the previous eight months, on each occasion under the command of Dedalus, who had turned out—to their immense surprise—to be an excellent and supportive commander, an inspiring tutor with a keen sense of humour and a good friend, once they had convinced him that they were worth knowing. The two cousins were now on the last probationary phase of their training, in joint command this time of their fourth patrol in division strength, and only nominally under the supervision of Centurion Dedalus, who rode with them purely as an observer on this final occasion.