Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"I know that well enough, Commander. But so do you and Commander Ambrose." He lapsed into silence. I blinked at him.

"Forgive me, Dedalus, but I fail to see your point."

"You two are my point, Commander, with respect." He nodded from one to the other of us. "Peas in a pod," he grunted. "Flowers on a bush. Identical. Both of Camulod. Both Commanders. To look at you, you're indistinguishable one from the other, and yet one of you's an infantryman and the other's a horseman. Why don't you assemble all the troops—as you've assembled us—and let them see that? I mean, they know it, but they haven't seen it, if you know what I mean." He sat down again, looking at his hands and allowing his words to hang there over the assembly.

I sat there for several moments, going over the implications of what he had said. The same comment had been made, although in different words and in another context, by Ambrose several nights earlier when he had suggested a formal parade. The silence in the room, which had been sustained, was suddenly broken from somewhere at the rear of the large room, where someone began to applaud, slowly, and the sound spread quickly until I had to stand up and spread my arms for silence.

Dedalus's recommendation was adopted immediately and unanimously. Such a gathering would take place, but it would have to be, by definition, extraordinary. For the space of at least two days, it was agreed, we must assume the risk of leaving our outlying lands unguarded. We had no alternative, since it would be an admission of defeat before we began were we to preclude anyone, of any rank or for any cause, from attending on this occasion. That decision made, we began to discuss the best timing for such an unprecedented convocation, and decided that it would be held on the eleventh and twelfth days after our meeting, coinciding with the recently adopted monthly changing of the guard patrols. This time, and this one time only, the old guard would come in, but the new guard would remain at home for two extra days before departing. Our most distant frontiers would be unguarded for the better part of three full days—one day for the departing guard to return to Camulod, one more for the convocation, and a third, or some portion of the third, for the new guard to return. That vulnerable time would be greatly reduced in the case of those outposts closest to Camulod, where the guards would remain in place longer before leaving and could return more quickly. Before that happened, however, and as close to the appointed time as possible, we would conduct an intensive, high-speed reconnaissance of the lands beyond our lands' perimeter, to assure ourselves as far as we were able, that no impending attack was building prior to our deliberate suspension of vigilance.

Thereafter, slightly reassured of our eventual success but greatly apprehensive of our initial method of achieving it, I spent two more days and much of both nights fretting over what we would say to the troops, until Ambrose and several of my friends virtually threw me out of Camulod with my bow, bidding me gather viands for the festivities, which would be held the day following my return.

In the grey dawn of the last day of my hunt, I experienced a phenomenon that I have never known repeated. I spent a full hour in a hunter's paradise, in a place I had discovered the day before, where a large number of deer trails, many showing the hoofprints of large animals, converged amid low, sparse bushes at the base of a jumbled pile of whitish rock. I had identified the spot as being a natural salt lick and had made my camp close by, wakening early to creep stealthily into concealment in full darkness, and confirming that the direction of the breeze had not changed overnight before placing myself well downwind of the lick, at the base of the large tree I had marked out with a dagger the day before. From here, I had estimated, I would have an unobstructed shot at whatever creatures passed the convergence of the trails that morning.

As the sky began to pale, however, the breeze strengthened to a brisk wind and then grew even stronger, blasting in hard, violent gusts, whipping the bushes wildly, rattling the bare branches of the winter trees and frequently even snatching the air from my lips as I sought to breathe. I cursed my ill fortune but remained in place, huddled against my tree bole, hoping that the sudden change would abate with the same speed that had brought it, and that no rain would follow it. Daylight grew almost imperceptibly, a long and weary struggle with the dominance of darkness, but at length I found I was able to distinguish the dense, roiling masses of clouds in the leaden sky, and all the time the wind kept rising until it was a howling gale.

I lost all judgment of the length of time I had spent huddled there, and eventually rose to my knees to leave, abandoning my hunt, only to find myself looking into the largest herd of deer I had ever seen in these parts. There must have been fifty animals in my immediate view, most of them grazing, heads down in the low brush, apparently unconcerned by the violent wind. On a low knoll less than forty paces ahead of me and to my left, the patriarch stood poised, head up, his magnificent spread of antlers almost flat along his back, his nose pointed directly into the storm. Even from where I crouched I could see his eyes were closed, and I reached for an arrow. Before I moved again, however, I looked once more at the herd and counted twelve strapping young males, all less than two years old, and thirty-nine females. I had no doubt that there were others, hidden from me by the woods and rocks.

Regretfully, I returned my attention to the herd leader, the largest animal there. I knew that the moment I killed him the others would vanish, despite their swarming numbers, swallowed up by the forest and the greyness of the day. I took aim carefully, knowing that the fury of the wind would have no effect on such a short-range flight, and then I stepped into my shot and fired, sending my arrow straight into the spot I had selected. The stag went down immediately, his brain transfixed by the missile that had entered behind his ear. I stood frozen, awaiting the bounding panic that would greet his fall, but nothing happened. The herd continued grazing, the death of their leader unnoticed, and I realized that the fury of the wind and the chaos it created had dulled their senses somehow, robbing them of their legendary acuity. Scarcely daring to breathe, and expecting to be discovered at any moment, I moved cautiously around and selected another target, this one directly on my right, close by the edge of the forest proper and even closer to me than the first had been. Directly ahead of me, between the two of us, a shoulder- high bush lashed from side to side. I took note of it, allowed for its movement, and thereafter ignored it. Again I sighted and fired, and again the animal fell to its knees, out of my sight and into death without disturbing any of its neighbours.

Aware now of a visceral excitement, I cast my eyes around in search of another available target and saw a young doe close by, almost completely hidden from me by another flailing bush. She was farther away than the others had been, however, and I could not obtain a clear view for a killing shot, so I set out with the utmost care to close the distance between us, crouching low and fully cognisant of the sea of movement all around that cloaked me. I drew as near as I dared go, for fear of being seen by the doe I was stalking or by another animal, and risked what I knew to be a hazardous shot. I loosed, and watched a vicious gust of wind snatch at the speeding shaft and send it high, so that it almost grazed the feeding creature's back. And once more, miraculously, the animal paid no heed. Emboldened now, I sighted and shot again, and this time my aim was true and she went down.