Jack Whyte - Uther

Uther grinned and lowered himself to sit between them, stretching out his hands to the fire and thankful that in summer there was no need to pitch a tent. He had barely settled, it seemed, when a shout went up from the cooking fires, and it was time to eat.

Afterwards, sated with the delicious, fatty meat of the young pig, Uther sat gazing at Owain of the Caves, who in turn sat staring into the fire. Nemo Hard-Nose had shared their fire for the duration of the meal but was now gone, seeing to the first guard watch of the night. Garreth sat with his head back against the log behind him, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the fire, breathing deeply, perhaps asleep.

Owain turned from the fire and looked away into the darkness beyond. "Fire blind," he said without looking at Uther. "You can see wondrous things in the depths of a fire, but nothing at all when you move your eyes away. You said you wanted to talk to me. Ask your questions, then. But know I might not answer them."

Garreth opened his eyes at that and sat up, stretching hugely. "Well," he said, "I might sit here all night listening to the two of you exchanging thoughts, and I might even learn something from it. . . But one thing I already know, learned long since: if I have no part to play in two men's talk, it's a waste of time, and I might as well be warm and snug abed. I'll bid you a good night and pleasant dreams, if e'er you get to rest."

Smiling, Uther watched him depart and then turned back to Owain of the Caves. "He is a good friend, Garreth Whistler."

"Mayhap. I'd be no judge of that. Ask me your questions."

Uther stirred and shifted his backside, searching for more comfort. "I have a few, but I think I know the answers to most of them already. Do you really believe that Meradoc would have you killed for not killing me? If I am any judge of men. and I believe I am. your loyalty is faultless."

That drew him a wry, sidewise look that condemned him as a fool. "You are still alive, and not even delayed in your journey. Therein lies an end to both my usefulness and my loyalty in Meradoc's eyes."

Uther shook his head. "Am I that big a threat to him?"

"Ask yourself that, not me. My only care now is staying alive. The gods served me a bitter dish today, but I learned long ago never to question what the gods offer."

Owain turned his gaze towards the fire again so that the leaping flames picked out the details of his long, clean-shaven face with its wide mouth and deep-graven jawline. Uther searched that face for signs of bitterness or anger, but he saw only a strange, almost melancholy sadness in the man's eyes.

"Meradoc demands perfection in his . . . followers," Owain said. And then, disconcertingly, he smiled—the first real smile Uther had seen from him—and reached down to pull a burning twig from the fire. He held it up to his mouth and blew at the flames before he continued, crinkling his eyes against the sting of the smoke as the tiny flames died out. "We are but few, we who do Meradoc's bidding, and for our services we are well rewarded. But as the payment for success is great, beyond a poor man's dreams, so, too, is the penalty for failure.

"Loyalty, obedience and success. Those are Meradoc's demands. He sent me out to perform a task, and I have failed to do it. I am a walking corpse until my former allies find me."

"That is insanity. Where will you go? I mean, I know you've said you don't know, but surely your friends—"

"Friends are for ordinary folk who live and behave in ordinary ways. I kill men to please those who employ me. Men such as I never have friends."

"You are a warrior. All warriors are killers, Owain. That's what the word means."

Owain of the Caves turned and looked directly at Uther. and the younger man was astonished to see what he took to be pity in the other's gaze.

"I know that, Uther Pendragon. But you are wrong in this . . . I am no warrior. You are a warrior. Warriors make war. They stand and fight or run away, according to the rules of war—if such things truly exist. The way I see it, those rules are made by those who win, or want to win, and have the strength to try. Warriors fight, and they take pride in being seen to fight. People like me, on the other hand . . . we never fight unless we must. Fighting involves the risk of being killed, so I avoid it. I am a killer, bought and sometimes, though seldom, sold. I often kill in stealth, and sometimes I kill openly, but I never, ever kill in the heat of the moment. My killing is deliberate; it is planned. Few of my victims ever see me coming or recognize the moment of their death."

Uther kept his face straight, despite his profound shock. He had known many men throughout his life who were little more than brutes—vicious and violent and lawless—but he had never before met a man who could speak calmly as this man did of casual, dispassionate killings carried out on behalf of others in cold blood and for personal gain.

Uther cleared his throat. "What do you mean by 'bought and sometimes sold'?"

Owain flicked the twig back into the fire. "Meradoc has sometimes sold my services to others."

"He sold them? Not you?"

The barest shrug of his wide shoulders was the only indication that Owain had heard the question, and for a long time Uther thought he was not going to answer. Then the words emerged in a flat monotone. "My services were his, for him to . . . bestow. I did what he instructed me to do."

"How long have you been doing this, this—killing?" Uther resisted using the word that was in his mind, murdering.

"I have never not done it. It's what I do."

"What, you were born a killer, even as a babe?" Uther, irritated by the man's disinterested monotone, recognized the pettiness of the question even as it left his lips, but he was incapable of biting it back.

"I must have been. I have no other memories. There was a woman once who cared for me, I think, but she was killed one night when I was very young. I tried to rescue her, to help her, I suppose, but I was a helpless brat of seven, mayhap less. They beat me and broke my legs and threw me in the fire. That's why I limp."

Uther glanced down at the long, trousered legs stretching towards the fire. "I saw no limp."

"I limp."

"Who were 'they'?"

He watched the profiled face break into a wolfish, bitter grin. "My father? Brothers? Let's say my family. They were a small clan, and I have seen enough since then to know they were not. . . not as others are. At the time, though, I knew no other people, no other way of being. I thought they were all there was."

Uther felt a rush of gooseflesh, and the short hairs on his neck stirred in sheer horror at the vision of the seven-year-old boy squirming in the middle of a roaring fire.

"Who pulled you out, from the fire? You said your legs were broken."

"Aye, they were. It was another woman, Jess, I think her name was. Couldn't stand the noise or the stink, she said, so she dragged me away and threw me into a corner in another cave, and I lay there till I healed."

"What caves? Would I know them?"

"No, you would not know them, nor would you wish to. It has been more than twenty years since I last saw them, and I have no wish to go back. Anyone who passed that way became our means of living from the one day to the next. We killed whoever came along . . . robbed them, then killed them. Kept the women alive, for a while at least, until we found others, but we always ended up killing them. Sometimes we ate them, parts of them, if the winter had been long. Eventually, after too many travellers had been lost, people stopped coming that way, so we went out to hunt them.

"One day, some of our people were pursued and followed home. When the fighting was over, I was the only one left alive, and that was because I had been thrashed and thrown into a hole again the day before. The men who had come found me there, half dead, and took me out and made a slave of me until I grew too big to beat. Then one night I killed my keeper and left."