Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Are you surprised then, Merlyn Britannicus?" Her great, hawk eyes were flashing with pleasure and her teeth were alabaster white behind her crimson, wind-stung lips. I knew I must respond soon, and well. I could feel the eyes of my companions.

"Surprised?" I managed to say, forcing myself to drawl. "I am thunderstruck! I've watched your husband clutch one hand to his horse's mane and the other to his saddle for years, and had believed no Eirishman could ever ride a horse."

"Mayhap you're right, Commander, for I am a woman, though that might be hard to tell at this moment."

That brought another bark of laughter from my friends who, as they were quick to tell me now, had all conspired to keep me uninformed on this. Dedalus himself had been her teacher—a reluctant one at first, bound by the promise he had made her on the boat to Britain, to aid her in anything with which she might require assistance. Once begun, however, it had quickly become apparent to Ded that his tyro student had a natural seat upon a horse and was, in fact, a born equestrian. Excited by the discovery, but bound by a promise to say nothing to me, he had brought Rufio into the plot, and soon all eight companions of the Eirish expedition were taking turns to groom and train the prodigy. Ambrose, as joint Commander, had been admitted to the secret, too, since Shelagh's serious training could not go forward without the approval of either him or me. And so it was done. Of all the new recruits trained in the winter's exercise, Shelagh had been the most outstanding; the one spectacular success, adopted by the troopers to a man, so that they had combined to keep her presence hidden from my eyes.

At that point, I had turned to Shelagh. "Are these men telling me that you have ridden right before my eyes without my knowing?"

She grinned, completely unashamed. "Aye, and with your veterans, too! You've looked right through me, many times, though once you mentioned me to Ded for having performed well in a wheel sweep."

"Damnation," I said. "I need a drink of mead." I turned to the others. "I am not used to drinking with conspirators of any stripe, but all things change, it seems. Will you join me?" We rode uphill to the fort and retired to the family room, which Ludmilla and the other women of the household kept as pristine as it had been while its castellan yet lived there.

A week thereafter, to the day, our expedition left for Glevum and Shelagh rode with us, having earned her place. Even with the merit she had earned, however, I would have been loath to include her, had it not been for the fact that her father would ride with us, too, driving the wagon filled with goods for Mordechai, which he would unload before following us into Glevum, there to await the arrival of Donuil and Feargus's galleys bearing his livestock.

Her father's wagon would slow us down too much, I knew, even upon the great, straight Roman road that we would ride to Glevum, and so I seconded an escort of fifty men, under the command of Rufio, to ride with it and follow on our heels as quickly as they could. Shelagh stayed with her father, and I promised to rejoin them at the hostelry of the Red Dragon as soon as we had cleared the Berbers out of Glevum.

Huw Strongarm and his men went with us, too, but they remained on foot, serving as scouts. They left a day ahead of us and remained out of sight, save for a single man who came each evening, after we had camped, to tell us all was well and nothing moved ahead of us or around us.

We made excellent time, considering there were still large snowbanks on the great roadway among the deeper woods, and we came within sight of Glevum in the early afternoon of our fourth day out from Camulod. Huw sat on a milestone waiting for me two miles from the town. The Berbers were there, he reported, and had apparently wintered in one of the warehouses by the harbourside. They had grown careless and overconfident, doubtless through having remained undisturbed for months, and Strongarm's men had been able to penetrate the town itself in daylight without being discovered. He reported thirty-four Berbers present, all armed with bows and long, curving swords. No contact had been made with anyone, he said, so we might well surprise them if we proceeded cautiously.

His report caused me concern. I had thought to find more men than thirty-four, and said so. Huw shrugged and said nothing, since there was nothing he could say, and Dedalus proposed that the Berbers' numbers might have been severely depleted during the winter months. These people were not accustomed to cold, he pointed out. Their natural habitat was desert land, beneath the sun of Africa. I was unconvinced, but had no option but to concur. Huw now volunteered a plan.

His suggestion was based, he said, on the fact that all the Berbers were bowmen and afoot. My troopers, horsed or unhorsed, would be at a serious disadvantage among the streets and buildings. I nodded, telling him I knew exactly what he meant, for we had had precisely that problem on our previous visit. Now he suggested we permit him and his men to vanguard the attack. They were sixteen, all told, against odds of two to one, but if they were in difficulty they would fall back, their lesser numbers tempting the Berbers to pursue them beyond the town and into our grasp. I could not deny the logic involved, but the odds against Huw and his men depressed me. The compromise that immediately came to me, however, offered them a better edge. If our infantry were to penetrate the town under cover of darkness, accompanied by his bowmen, then we could arrange to split our forces into groups, arranged in open spaces, that would await the Berbers in pursuit of Huw's bowmen, who would lead them directly into our traps. The only obstacle anyone could find in that was that we had no way of knowing where these traps should be set up. None of us knew the town. Huw sat grinning, then offered to take me with him into Glevum, to see for myself and select my own spots.

The idea appealed to me immediately, and the inherent danger heightened its appeal. And so Dedalus and I, accompanied by Huw himself, the giant Powys, and Owain of the Caves, slipped into Glevum on foot in the light of day and made our dispositions in situ. We returned without having seen a sign of Berbers, though we could smell the smoke from their cooking fires.

That night, in the darkest hours before dawn, we made our way back again at the head of two hundred of our men, moving in stealth and silence, our arms and armour muffled against the slightest betraying clink of sound, and settled down to wait. We saw the dawn grow to day and the sun rise in the east in a clear blue sky before the first howls of outrage assailed our ears. We closed ranks immediately, four groups of fifty men, each assigned a specific location to which Huw's bowmen would lead their pursuers. It was over within the hour and our casualties were slight: two men killed and five wounded, none of those seriously. Of the two men killed, one was from Camulod, a veteran called Marc Mercus killed in the street fighting, and one a Celt, the hairless Elfred Egghead, killed in the opening moments of the attack by an arrow in the back, shot by a guard who must have been asleep, since Elfred had passed him by without seeing him. The Berbers fought hard, to the last man, evidently preferring death to the prospect of captivity. I myself had not bloodied my sword throughout the entire affair, and I led the withdrawal from the town assailed by a sense of foreboding. What should have been a satisfying victory had been a stale, unwholesome business.

We assembled our entire force on the flats beyond the town, within sight of the estuary, established a camp and allowed the men to break their fast. I left Dedalus in charge there and rode alone to meet with Liam's party, after which I would ride to visit Mordechai as promised, and then rejoin the army. We would leave for Cambria as soon as I returned the following morning.