Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

"Who are you?" he asked him.

Donuil shrugged his broad shoulders and looked defiantly back at the big man. "Cormac," he said.

"Cormac? What kind of a name is that? Arc you one of Vortigern's tame Saxons?"

I was gratified by this signal of acceptance, but concerned at the same time that Vortigern's affairs, and his folly, were so widely known. Donuil spoke on.

"It is Erse, and noble. I, too, ride with Vortigern—by choice."

"A mercenary." The leader dismissed Donuil and looked back at me, indicating my dress with a disapproving scowl. "You look Roman." He made it sound like an insult. I took no offence, keeping my voice pleasant.

"My father was. My full name is Ambrose Ambrosianus. And our armour is Roman because it works well for us. The Romans understood such things."

He scowled again and snorted through his nose. "Derek," he said then, "from the north-west coast, Ravenglass. It was a Roman town, once, before we threw them out."

"I have heard of it," I responded, ignoring the obvious boast, and indeed I had, from Vortigern himself, less than a week earlier. "The Romans had a fort near there, once, a place called Mediocogdum."

His eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Huh," he grunted. "It's still there, empty and abandoned, above the road through the high pass. How would you know that?"

I shook my head, indicating that it was unimportant. "I have a memory for insignificant things. Somebody mentioned it, a long time ago, I know not who or when, but I recall something about it being the most westerly fort along the Wall."

"There's no wall there." His voice was scornful. "The Fells are walls enough. It's a grim and cheerless place, haunted by spirits and shunned by wise men. We will ride with you. We should reach the appointed ground by late tomorrow."

I eyed his men, deciding to take no chances and knowing that I had to assert my own authority immediately with this man. "If you wish, so be it, but tell your men to keep apart from mine. We have come a long way and my men are tired and impatient of the road. You'll notice some of them have wounds. We've already encountered unfriendly strangers and I want no more such stupid, wasteful nonsense. We are on an embassage, and I have no wish to spoil it through petty squabbling with every bad-tempered stranger we meet." I waited for his response, but when it came, it surprised me.

"No more have I. My people will keep their peace, so be sure yours do not provoke them."

And so it came about that we rode in company with our enemies for several hours, during which I learned much of Lot and his affairs and what he had been about since his last attack upon Camulod. I was surprised—and yet, upon reflection, not so—to find that Lot, like his father Emrys before him, was master of a large fleet of galleys permanently engaged in piracy. He had a stronghold now, with its own natural fortifications: a high-cliffed, sea-girt island on the north coast of Cornwall, which guaranteed his pirates a safe base, and Lot grew ever richer from his levy on the flow of booty they generated. Those riches he had amassed carefully, then used to purchase armed support from all directions, gathering a massive army with large payments of gold and the promise of enormous riches to be garnered from the conquest of the wealthy area around Glevum, Aquae Sulis—and, by association, Camulod.

Derek, a king in his own right, had been recruited by one of Lot's sea-going chieftains, who bought his services with gold and promises of more to be won. Derek had taken the gold, and then he and his twenty mounted men had ridden southward on their own from their mountainous land to join Lot's gathering host. The remainder of his men, a force of perhaps two hundred, had been ferried south by Lot's galleys and would join the riders at the meeting place, thirty miles north of Aquae Sulis and approximately twenty miles south-west of our present position. I listened to all of this and said little in response.

As we rode and talked, the road had been descending gently but steadily, so that we were now riding through dense, high trees again, and I knew that the forest would stretch ever thicker and unbroken from here to the gathering place of Lot's army. If we were to avoid being trapped there, we would have to turn around, and soon, and make our way back to the high ground, free of trees, whence we would have some hope of circling around the meeting place and escaping to the south and Camulod. I glanced up at the small patch of sky I could see between the tops of the trees that pressed in on the road. It was growing late and my mind was seething with the urgency of our rapidly worsening situation. The closer we drew to Lot's gathering point, the greater would become the concentration of hostile troops converging on the meeting place, and sooner or later—if we had not already passed it—we would arrive at a point where discovery of our true identity would become inevitable.

Derek of Ravenglass, for all his roughness and his uncouth ways, had turned out to be a pleasant enough travelling companion, but now I found myself thinking seriously about ways and means of killing him and his men without creating too much noise and attracting unwelcome attention. The time was fast approaching when our new companion would expect to stop for the night, and that was unthinkable. Were we in fact to remain in his company until morning, my men and I would have no hope of escaping the trap in which we had found ourselves and which was tightening more surely around us with every moment that passed.

I reined my horse in a tight turn and rode back towards the wagons, leaving Derek and Donuil together at the point with three of Derek's senior men, then I pulled off to the side of the road, among the bushes, and looked at the wagons as they rumbled past, a mixed group of my own men and Derek's riding among and around them. I saw no signs of hostility between them; they were all soldiers together, apparently, and content to share the warrior's burden of boredom between dangers. A few nodded to me in passing but, miraculously, none snapped me the customary, punctilious salute. I saw no sign of Lucanus and presumed he was inside one of the wagons, with some of the wounded men. As the final group approached me, I saw Pellus riding in last place. He drew rein as he reached me and together we waited until we were far enough behind the others for our conversation to go unheard.

"What are you doing back here?" I asked him eventually.

"Waiting for you. Knew you'd come back sooner or later. What's in your mind?"

"Concerning what?"

He threw me a look filled with irony, tacitly begging me to spare him my word games. "There's a party of dead men riding here, Merlyn, and I don't know if it's us or them. It's your decision, but you're running out of time to make it." I did not respond to that, so he continued. "The rest of our troopers are riding behind us, five hundred paces back. They'll be along any time now. I've got a pair of my own men leading them, making sure they remain out of sight of the main party, while the road's winding like this. God knows what'll happen if it ever straightens out again to be a proper Roman road. I've called in all my people long since. Nothing to be gained by keeping them out there...too dangerous. We know Lot's people are everywhere, so there's nothing else to discover."

Even as he spoke, I heard the sound of our approaching troops. The wagon group had already vanished around a turn. I looked back at him.

"What about the large mounted group behind us?"

"Still there, fifteen miles back. But the road between us and them is full of others now. They all headed for the roadway as soon as the forest started to thicken. Might be Outlanders, but they're not stupid. We have to get off this road."

"How?" I looked at the thick undergrowth behind me. "We'd have to cut our way through that. It's impenetrable."