Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

Uther disengaged himself almost casually from the woman's body and stood up, his male organ gleaming wetly as he stuffed it into his clothing and began to rebuckle his belt. I knew I could kill him from where I sat, but I lusted to confront him, to tell him why he was dying by my hand. Instead, I shot the man closest to me, driving my first arrow through his head, between his eyes, and stringing a second arrow almost before the first struck home. As the dead man's companions began to react, and to spur their horses, I shot a second and then a third, aiming almost casually and without either compunction or excitement. They were merely an annoyance, coming as they did between me and my task that day. Two of the surviving three made the mistake of trying to break away and flee; the third kept coming at me. Had they come together, they would have had me, but as it was, I shot the man approaching me through the breastplate of his armour when he was less than ten paces from me. With the hollow but solid, slightly metallic thunk of his death loud in my ears, I turned after his two companions. One I brought down at the edge of the water. He fell into the waves of the returning tide. The last of them, far off by now, presented the first challenge I had yet had. I sighted carefully, leading him as he rode across my left side, and loosed my arrow. It arced and hummed in a perfect trajectory and he watched it seek him, throwing up an arm as though to fend it off, so that it sank to the feathers into his exposed armpit.

My cousin had mounted his horse by this time and sat watching me, waiting. The body of the red-haired woman lay almost beneath his horse's feet. I leaned from the saddle and gently dropped my bow to the sand, and then shrugged the quiver strap over my shoulder and let that fall, too. That done, I nudged my horse slowly towards him. He sat motionless, his helmeted head cocked to one side, watching me and waiting for my next move. When only ten paces separated us, I halted and stared at him. When I spoke, I was amazed at the calmness of my own voice, for I wanted to scream.

"Bloody business, killing women, Cousin." I nodded at the woman's body. "But not your first time, eh?"

I began counting my heartbeats during the silence that followed. At twelve, he said, "'Cousin?' Who are you?" I felt as though I had been struck, and I actually felt myself reel. This was not Uther! "Are you deaf? Who are you?"

Slowly, my hand shaking, I reached up and undid the chin strap of my helmet. He sat watching as I took it off and held it in the crook of my left arm and now I saw him react, although his reaction stunned me more than his first words had. I saw his eyes narrow beneath the front plate of his helmet as he stiffened with surprise, and then he spoke again, hesitantly on the first word, and then with complete conviction.

"Ambrose...Ambrose of Lindum! I thought you went home."

Now it was he who undid his helmet and removed it to show me a face I had not thought ever to see again. He was Derek, the king from Ravenglass, whom I had met and befriended briefly on the road two years before.

"You're with us," he said. "At least you were.. .with Lot. Why did you kill my men?"

I ignored the question. "Where's Uther?"

"Uther?" I could hear the mystification in his voice. "How would I know?"

"You're wearing his armour."

"Oh, him!" He stopped and looked at me wonderingly. "That was Uther Pendragon?"

I nodded. "It was. You killed him?"

"Well, yes, but I didn't know who he was. Never seen him before, not that it would have made a difference."

"Personally? You yourself?"

"Personally. Me myself. I killed him." He seemed to be challenging me to do something about it.

"When?" My voice was no more than a croak and my heart was thundering in my ears as I asked this question, for I suddenly dreaded to hear the answer.

"This morning." The words I was hearing echoed in my head as though emerging from a deep well. "Just before daybreak. We'd been chasing them for days and caught them just as they were breaking camp. Knew it was Uther's army, but they were all scattered and chewed up. Didn't know it was Uther himself."

"Why did you take his armour?" I asked the question knowing it was a vain attempt to avoid what was to follow.

He looked at me as though I were crazed. "Why wouldn't I? He didn't need it any more. I haven't been home in more than two years. He was the only man I've met in months—years, because the last one was you—whose armour was big enough to fit me. Even his helmet fits me."

"How.. .exactly how did you kill him?" It was a question I had to ask, to quell my own sudden certainty.

He shook his head in wonder at my stubborn pertinacity. "What does it matter? With this, same as I kill most men I fight against." He reached down and produced a fearsome weapon from where it hung at his saddle bow. It looked like a reaper's hook fixed to the handle of a battle axe. It had a broad blade three handspans long, both sharpened edges of which were wickedly serrated. The sight of it chilled my gut and brought a cataract of teeming memories.

"In the back. You caught him low in the back.. .here." I pointed to where I had felt the agony.

He nodded, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. "That's right, just below the edge of his backplate. He was trying to mount his horse when I reached him...one foot in the stirrup, but the horse was shying. Couldn't get a clear swing at his head or neck because of his helmet, tried twice, but couldn't, so I took him low, backhanded. How did you know that?"

"I dreamed it, twice. I felt it this morning, when it happened." His eyes grew wide as he stared at me.

"What are you talking about?"

I shook my head, bemused, trying to shake off the feelings that assaulted me, but he kept talking.

"What d'you mean you felt it? Felt what? What madness is this?"

"Your weapon...that thing you have there. Did you have it with you when last we met?"

"No." He shook his head. "No, I took it from a Saxon in the north about a year ago. Best thing I ever came across for swinging from a saddle. Why?"

"I saw it in a dream, the night after I first met you. I saw you standing over a dead man...someone I couldn't see...but I was saddened by his death. And in my dream you turned on me, with that.. .thing in your hand."

He drew himself erect, settling himself in his saddle and blowing out his breath with an explosive sound. "What are you, some kind of sorcerer?"

I was asking myself the same question, for I could no longer deny, as I had been denying all my life, the strangeness of the power that sometimes stirred within me, frightening me with its potency. In a grim, silent parade of mockery, the memories of all the dreams of all the times before passed before my mind's new and all-seeing eye: a hundred and more shadowy events, but prime among them the death of my father; my vision of Ambrose before we met; and the death of Uther at the hands of Derek of Ravenglass. I knew the word for what I had conceived. It was prescience, but prescience was sorcery, and I had abjured all things magical throughout my life, discrediting their existence unless they involved human, manipulative trickery and the underlying wish to win power, to whatever degree, over men's minds. If what were there within me lay beyond my knowledge, let alone my control...I could not face the consequences of that line of thought and so I banished it, turning elsewhere for salvation.

I looked down again at the woman. "Who is she?"

Derek of Ravenglass shrugged. "Lot's whore. I'd heard tell she was fornicating with one of the Camulod bastards. When I saw her with them, I knew it was true."

"But you still didn't know it was Uther?"

"No." He was vehement. "How could I know that? I've been up in the north-west for the past two years. Only came back south this spring, three weeks ago."