Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

But I had not been blind. I had been oblivious and without memory. I still clutched his sleeve, recognizing his impatience. "I'll leave you alone, I promise, but I must know. Where is Uther? And where is Lot of Cornwall?"

He wrenched his arm free, turning away from me, then stopped and looked back at me with a granting sigh.

"They're together, wherever they are. Where else would they be? When he saw we were beaten, Uther escaped with his reserves to the south—there, between those two hills. I saw them go. So did Lot. He was up on that hill, over there to the east. We had been in a running fight with an army of Ersemen who'd been chewing at our heels for days. I was with Uther and the leading party when we came out into this valley and he saw a chance to turn and fight them. He led us up there, onto the flank of that hill, and as we began to climb it, getting ready to turn and face the enemy, Lot led an army over the top above us, and another entire army, thousands of men, came through the two passes on either side of us. We were trapped from the outset. They'd been waiting for us to do exactly what we did. From then on, it was pure slaughter. Uther managed to cut his way sideways, across the hill and down across the field here and up the eastern flank, but he had less than a thousand men with him. Once there, there was nothing he could do to help anyone. It was all over too quickly. Lot had the advantage from the outset and it kicked the guts out of our men. And when some of our people tried to surrender, they were cut down anyway, so the rest of us prepared to die fighting.

"That's when Uther decided to run..." A long pause. "Uther's no coward. I know why he ran. He knew that if he escaped, with the women, Lot would follow him forever and the rest of us left here might have a chance."

"With the women? What women?"

He looked at me as though I should have no need to ask such a simple question. "Lot's women. The queen and her people... Any way, that's what happened. Lot and his savages took off after Uther's group and left us fighting. But all his people followed him, even the ones who were engaged with us. When they saw the others leave, they left us and followed them, and the fighting was over. That was about three hours ago. The rest you know."

"How did Uther come by Lot's queen?"

He shook his head, dismissing my question as trivial. "I can't tell you that, Commander. I do not enjoy your cousin's confidence. I only know that we collected her in passing from one of Lot's strongholds, after we started our march south."

I did not know what to make of this information, but I dismissed it as unimportant beside the urgency of my pursuit of Uther.

"I have to find them."

"Then God go with you, Caius Merlyn. You'll need His help."

"Which way should I go from here?"

He nodded towards the south. 'They left by that southern valley. Be cautious, Merlyn."

"I will, my friend. Farewell."

I left him to his work and remounted my horse, closing my eyes and ears to the miserable sights and sounds around me, and for the next quarter-hour I picked my way carefully through that awful field.

I had almost won clear of the battlefield when I heard my name being called. I drew rein and looked in the direction of the voice, and there was Popilius, our senior centurion, sitting against the bole of a small tree less than thirty paces from me. I was shocked at almost failing to recognize him at first glance. Popilius had always been my exemplar of military propriety, polished and shorn and brightly armoured, upright and solid and thoroughly dependable in every circumstance. The man at whom I found myself gaping now was different from the image I carried of him in almost every respect.

He was without armour, for one thing, and his right thigh was swathed in bandages crusted with dried blood and dirt. His left arm was cradled in a sling made of coarse, grey woollen cloth torn from a blanket, and the fingers of the hand that protruded from its cradle were curled and clawlike, also wrapped in blood-stained bandages. The entire left side of his face was bruised into a blackened mass, and his hair, which I suddenly noticed for the first time was long and" white, hung unkempt and matted over his forehead, which bore the striations of pain like horizontal bars above his eyes. His chin was coated in grizzled, grey-white stubble. Popilius had grown old, very suddenly.

I leaped from my horse and made my way to where he lay sprawled, almost supine, against his tree trunk. An empty wineskin lay beside him and I smelled its harsh, sour vinum on his clothes and on his breath. He was lucid, however, and his forehead was cool to my touch, and I quickly assured myself that his injuries were not life threatening. He told me he had taken a sword slash to the thigh and an arrow through the forearm in the running fight the day before they blundered into Lot's trap. He had been a non- combatant this day, helpless to influence anything, watching the entire, catastrophic battle in frustrated rage from the deck of a wagon Quinto's people had been using to transport the wounded. No one had paid him any attention, either during or after the battle. He had not eaten anything since the night before, and had drunk all his wine, finishing it gluttonously hours earlier in hope of finding oblivion from the horror that surrounded him. He had thought he was dreaming when he recognized me riding by, a vision in my cleanliness and wholeness.

I could not simply leave him there as I had found him. He was Popilius Cirro, one of the last of my father's most trusted friends, and he deserved some show of care from me. Forcing myself to stifle my restlessness and the urging that prompted me to rush on callously in my pursuit of Uther, I fed him from my own supplies and spent some time changing the dressings on his wounds, using strips torn from a spare, clean tunic from my saddle bags. That done, I found some water on a nearby wagon, probably the one he had occupied, and washed him as well as I could, before helping him to move and arranging him as comfortably as possible on a grassy knoll.

I had done as much as I could for him, and it was time for me to move on. I told him so, and he nodded, accepting that, but then he asked me about regaining my memory and we talked for some time of that, and how it had affected me. I told him also about finding young Bassus, and how I had had to kill him. He listened in silence, fingering the stubble on his chin. When I had finished he sighed.

"I'd give anything in this world, Commander, to undo the last three years; to be back in Camulod, with your father alive and the world unfolding peacefully about us. But of course, that's nonsense—women's wishes. You'd best be on your way, if you're to find Uther, though I don't know what you'll be able to do to change anything."

I had nodded and risen to my feet, prepared to leave, when something in his voice, in the tone of it, alerted me. I could not identify what I had heard, but for some reason it made me think of what Quinto had said about Lot's women. I stopped and cleared my throat, looking down at him. "Tell me about the women, Popilius, about Lot's queen. What's going on? How did Uther capture her?"

He, too, cleared his throat, but he looked away, avoiding my eyes. "The Lady Ygraine."

"Sweet Jesus!" As he uttered it, the name flashed across my mind like Publius Varrus's Skystone blazing across the sky. Ygraine! The daughter of the Erse king who was Donuil's father! I remembered Donuil telling me the first time we met that his father and Lot were to be allied by marriage. His sister Ygraine had been betrothed to Lot mere months before. But that meant—and this thought was crushingly, overwhelmingly new to me—that she was also Deirdre's sister... my Cassandra's sister... The bitter, tragic irony of it almost buckled my knees, and I had to turn my back and walk away from Popilius to master my thoughts before he read the despair in my eyes.