Jack Whyte - Uther

Uther nodded his head slightly and then made no more effort to communicate with anyone. For a time no one moved or spoke, everyone apparently grappling with the complexities of the changes that had occurred within the past short space of weeks. Garreth Whistler, however, had not yet completed his purpose in coming to Camulod in person, and in order to emphasize the importance of what he had yet to communicate, he dropped to one knee in front of Uther's chair and grasped Uther's wrist tightly, forcing the younger man to look up into his eyes.

"You're Chief now, boy. And you can be more than that, if you so wish, if you move quickly enough. Daris the High Priest has sent me to bring you home for the Choosing. In truth, he has grave doubts about your suitability, but give him his due, he wishes you to have the opportunity that is yours by right as a Pendragon Federation Chief. It will happen soon, the Choosing—this is no time for our people to be without a King. And if you harbour any hope or wish at all of following your father and grandfather to the King's seal, you have to come with me, and soon. You have to take your place among the other Chiefs for the judgment and the vote. If you come late, you'll lose your chance, for choose they must, and quickly. Do you hear me, Uther? Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Uther had listened in silence, his staring eyes fixed on Garreth Whistler's face. Now he sat for a while longer, empty-eyed. Then he sucked in his cheeks and nodded to the Champion, speaking in a voice barely above a whisper.

"I hear you, Garreth. I understand. But I must think. I need time to think."

He stood up and walked from the gathering without another word, not to be seen by another living soul for two days. Garreth's tidings had been grim enough, but no one had expected Uther to be so badly shaken by them or that he would shut himself off from all contact with anyone while he came to terms with his own grief.

He emerged from his seclusion on the morning of the third day and sought out Garreth Whistler immediately. Uther was stern- faced and showed none of the eager enthusiasm that had always marked him in military matters.

"We will go," he told the Champion tersely. "But we will need a week beforehand—no more than that—to drill the Dragons. See to that for me, if you would, starting immediately. Drill them until they drop, cursing you and me. They've been getting fat and lazy for the past few months. I want them to be at their peak when we ride into Tir Manha. If I am to be King, and I intend to be, they'll be the central core of my new armies, and I need them to be magnificent, to stir envy and admiration among our young Pendragon men and generate new troopers. See to it, if it pleases you. I'll join you later today and work with you from then on, but I have matters to attend to first."

Garreth Whistler only nodded, offering no comment, and watched the young Chief stride away.

Uther went straight to Nemo and summoned her to ride with him. She followed him to the stables and then rode close behind him as he left through the main gates of the fortress, merely waving in response when Merlyn called to him from afar and spurring his mount out onto the downhill road to the plain beneath.

They rode hard and far, and neither of them spoke a word for more than an hour when Uther finally drew rein and turned his horse around, ignoring Nemo's mount as it sidled and stamped beside him. He led them back and around by a circuitous route to a slight rise overlooking the broad drill plain below the fortress from the northeast, the same spot from which he and Merlyn had watched Camulod burning luridly against the night sky a mere two months earlier. Now from this distance, even in the bright morning sunlight, no sign could be seen of any damage to the fortress, and there was nothing visible to indicate that anything had changed here in years. Even the three huge mass graves that had been dug on the plain were no longer visible, for the earth that covered them had been levelled and compacted by thousands upon thousands of hooves since normal cavalry training resumed following the cleanup after the battle that was waged there. They sat together in silence for a while, looking at the fortress so seemingly secure upon its distant hilltop, and then Uther spoke over his shoulder.

"We have lived through the end of an era. Nemo, you and I." Nemo made no response, and after a few moments Uther continued: "Do you know what an era is?" He turned to glance at her as she shook her head, and then he looked away again, gazing at the distant towers of Camulod's walls.

"An era is a period of time. Nemo—a long period of years or even decades, sometimes centuries—that can be measured from a clear starting point to an ending. They tell us the Roman general Julius Caesar came to these shores decades before the birth of the Christians' Christus among the Hebrews, and that the last of the true Romans, the Emperor Constantine the Third, left Britain in the year I was six. That means the Romans remained here in Britain without leaving for more than four hundred years. That was an era." He glanced at Nemo again and smiled, shaking his head gently. "You don't know what I'm talking about, but what I am saying is true. That fortress over there on its hill belongs to another era, a more recent one . . . an era that overlapped the Roman one, beginning before I was born, before my father had even met my mother."

He waved his hand towards the distant buildings. "Before my grandfather, Publius Varrus, came here, there was no fortress on that hilltop. There was no Colony, no Camulod. There was no cavalry here, no garrison and no alliance between Pendragon and these people. And there were no longbows among the Pendragon. Did you know it was Publius Varrus who was responsible for bringing the longbow to Pendragon? Well, it was. He brought a giant bow with him from Africa, and our people admired it greatly. They sought to make others like it. and our long yew bows were born. All of those things have come to pass since Publius Varrus married my Grandmother Luceiia almost fifty years ago. Their marriage, in many ways, marked the beginning of the era."

Uther's voice faded into silence, and Nemo sat staring at him, waiting for him to continue. He did not even glance in her direction. keeping his gaze fixed on the hilltop fort, and she sat on his right, less than half a pace to his rear, her close-set eyes fixed unblinkingly on the point of his jaw. watching for the tiny initial flexing that would herald his next words. She was, as always, content to wait upon his pleasure.

"It began with Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus; it grew with Ullic Pendragon and Picus Britannicus; and it ended with the deaths of the last of them, my Uncle Picus's short months ago and my father Uric's weeks ago." Uther hawked and spat. "Camulod will continue to exist, and it will grow and prosper, I've no doubt of that. Merlyn Britannicus will keep it safe and hale. But it will never be the same again, because the treachery and greed of Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall have brought about changes that were never foreseen. He has destroyed the calm of Camulod as surely as the serpent destroyed innocence in the garden the Christian priests talk about. And such changes can never lie unmade. And that means that Camulod—my own Camulod that has fed and nourished me since I was a boy—is ended."

He kicked his horse into motion, keeping its head directly towards Camulod, and Nemo's fell properly into step beside him, maintaining a half-length space behind him so precisely that Nemo had need of neither reins nor bit.

"And so now we must return to Tir Manha," he continued, speaking to her without looking at her. "And this time, I think, we will stay there. It is my home, after all—everyone delights in telling me so—and it has been yours, too, for so long that I'll wager you can't even recall where you came from in the first place. But I will tell you a secret. Nemo, that no one else in Camulod would ever suspect: I do not want to go back there, not to live, and especially not now that my father is dead. I have no wish to go back to what everyone else insists on calling my home . . . grim old Cambria with its harsh-faced people. I have no need of their ill-mannered glowering, and I cringe at the very thought of living with their foul- tempered and humourless dislike day after day, year after year. My father's death, far, far too soon, has taught me that a man is a fool to live in hopes of a better tomorrow. I have a thousand better ways today to spend what time remains ahead of me, and I have brighter, lighter and more pleasant places in which to spend it. . ."