Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 2 - Metamorphosis

In the past six weeks, Lucca's troops had found no enemy activity to report. Lucca suggested that Ironhair's shipmasters had finally accepted the loss of the south-eastern harbours and were making no effort of any kind nowadays to approach them. They had learned that lesson, Lucca stated, only after sustaining heavy damage in a succession of all out attacks involving abortive landings, to the east and west of our positions, in the vain hope of surrounding our garrisons. Perhaps, he suggested, some of his troops would now be better employed with us, rather than languishing and growing bored, pent up in garrisons that felt no threat. He could leave a holding force in place, he reported, perhaps one third of his current complement of three thousand, to occupy, patrol and defend the south-eastern coastal harbours. The remaining two thousand could then travel the short distance to us in company with the supply train. On my approval, he said, the reinforcements would be with us in a matter of days.

I thanked and dismissed the messengers before I conferred with my own people. All of them had reservations, as I had myself. The truth was that, in our current situation, where we had had no real contact with the enemy for months, other than the ambush set by our supposed ally Uderic, we had no need of the extra troops. Until we were ready to march again, they simply represented extra mouths to feed.

Benedict, taciturn, as usual, was the only one of my captains who sat silent throughout the discussion, forcing me to ask him bluntly for his thoughts. He then asked me what I had planned for Huw's return, and how many men I expected him and Llewellyn to bring back. He had, of course, laid his finger squarely on the root of our dilemma, and that now forced me to admit that I did not yet know the answer to either of his points, since the first depended almost entirely upon the second. I was reluctant to commit myself to a course of action, I pointed out, since Huw himself had grave doubts that his people would follow him.

This evoked a buzz of comment among my listeners, but it was Benedict himself who silenced them by holding up his hand. This unaccustomed gesture brought him instant attention. He looked at me, eyes squinting against the sun, then looked around at everyone.

"Not worth considering," he said, raising his voice. "Not even tenable." He jutted his jaw pugnaciously, as though expecting to be challenged. "You all know me. I don't like conjecture and I don't make predictions. But I'll make one now, and if you'll think about it, you'll admit I'm right." He turned back to me again. "Huw Strongarm will rule Cambria within the year, free of opposition. He's the natural choice and the perfect man for the task. Ironhair's here with Carthac because there's no organized will right now to drive them out. We're organized, but we can't reach his people in the high hills, let alone fight them on their terms. Besides, we're as much Outlanders as they are, and so we're suspect in the eyes of the Pendragon kinglings. Too many little kinglings, with too many little bands that think themselves armies, and every one of them out for himself, for his own good, with his own little ambitions. Strongarm's no part of that, and had he stood up before now to be counted, he'd be in overall command already. Now he is ready. The Pendragon will follow him wherever he decides to take them, and he'll take them to victory far quicker than anyone else could. So he'll be coming back, and soon, and he'll bring thousands with him. We had better be prepared to move as soon as he arrives, and to serve as a solid platform for his catapult. That's all I have to say."

Derek almost interrupted him before he could finish, with a loud, woofing grunt of approval that grew into an appreciative roar of acclamation as the others joined in the applause. Benedict looked about him almost truculently, flushing with doubt filled pleasure.

I grasped him roughly by the shoulder. "You're absolutely right, Ben. We must be ready here when Huw returns—fully prepared, fit and ready to march." I turned to Philip. "When Lucca's squad is rested, send them back immediately with full approval of his plan. He is to delegate the harbour command to his best subordinate and then bring his two thousand here in person with the supply train, and as many extra rations and supplies as he can provide." I stood up and flexed my shoulders. "Right, then, my friends. We'll proceed as before, since there's not much we can do until the others arrive, but I want your men at their fighting best when we leave here. That might be in a week, or it might not be for several more than that, but in the meantime, I want to see our people training for real war again. We've all grown lazy, I suspect, in the past few months of inactivity. I want to see the evidence that sloth is outlawed, from this moment on. That's all."

I left them there and went looking for hot water, regretting once more the fact that the bathhouse here was irredeemable.

Tertius Lucca arrived within the week, at the head of a massive train of wagons filled with weaponry, supplies and provisions. The day of his arrival was consumed in seeing to the disposition of his force, the allocation of quarters to his two thousand men and an inventory of the wealth he had brought with him. Then, the following morning, a short time before noon, a hard riding messenger arrived from our most northern outpost with the word that an unidentified force, numbering in excess of two thousand men, was converging on us from the north and west In spite of my great hopes for Huw's success in rallying his people, it seemed to me it was yet too soon for such a host to have sprung up, even from Huw's most determined efforts, and so I sounded a general alarm. But hard on the heels of that first messenger, a second arrived almost before our trumpets had stopped clamouring, bearing the word that the approaching force had been identified as Pendragon.

Astounded and delighted, I took advantage of the furore stirred up by the alarm and rode out northward at the head of a hundred cavalry troopers to greet Huw Strongarm on his triumphant return. Instead I found Llewellyn striding ahead of his men, very much in command, and though my welcome to him was no less genuine, I found myself wondering what had become of Huw himself.

Llewellyn came to me directly and grasped my horse's bridle strap. Huw was still in the north, he told me, headed now into the Pendragon strongholds in the east and southeast of Cambria, gathering strength with every day. He had wanted to send these first two thousand south to me, so that I could begin a northward sweep, penetrating the central highlands, where Carthac was creating havoc at the head of a marauding mob of mercenaries. He hoped that I would be willing to use my troops as mobile walls in the valley floors of the mountain ranges, solid bulwarks to confine and demolish the detritus of Ironhair's levies as the Pendragon bowmen flushed them down from the hilltops.

I smiled to' hear Huw's message endorse the exact stratagem urged by Benedict a week earlier. Already I could perceive the change that responsibility had effected in Huw Strongarm: he had left me as a subordinate and an ally; now, scarcely two weeks later, he was addressing me as an equal, and perhaps even as one subordinate to him, submitting orders thinly disguised as requests through his own subordinate commander. I was not displeased by this in any way. Huw had sent two thousand men to me in earnest of his unswerving good faith and was off gathering more. The number surprised me, and I .asked Llewellyn how many men the Pendragon might field.

"In total? More than ten thousand, I would estimate, of fighting age."

"Good God! I had no idea there were so many. Five thousand fighting men, that I could see. It seems to me my cousin Uther commanded that many."