Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

When I looked up, Uther was standing in the middle of the floor, grinning at me, his chest heaving as he gulped in great breaths. "One of them got away," he wheezed.

"Good riddance. Let him go." I was too exhausted to care.

He crossed the floor and sat on the steps beside me, hooking his right elbow around my neck and squeezing tightly, to my very great discomfort. I was too tired even to struggle and so I just sat there, pulled across him, seeing the curling hair on his thighs that were within inches of my face, smelling the well-known smell of him and thanking God I had arrived when I did.

Eventually he released me and lay back against the stairs and our breathing slowed down and began to return to normal. After the pressure and the tensions of the fight—the first real, life and death struggle in which I had ever been personally involved—I felt as weak as a baby, and I began to tremble all over. I sat erect and clasped my hands together tightly in an effort to control the shaking, and as I did so I became aware of the blood for the first time. It was everywhere. Wherever I looked I saw blood. It lay in puddles and gouts and rope-like streaks on the rushes of the floor. The man who had tried to kill me with the axe lay less than three feet from me, across the legs of the owner of the place whose upper body reared freakishly erect, impaled on Uther's broken spear. He had obviously landed on it as he fell, breaking the shaft and forcing the point clean through himself. Everything misted over and I vomited where I sat, choking and retching on the bitter gall of victory. When my vision, cleared again, I was kneeling on the floor and Uther was removing my helmet, letting the cool, fresh air reach my heated forehead and my sweat-matted hair.

"Feeling better?" I nodded, wiping my lips and chin and spitting to clear the sourness from my mouth. "Good," he went on. I've just decided I do not ever want you to be angry with me. You are a wild man, Cousin, when you are angry. You killed four of these people."

I looked around me at the slaughterhouse. "So did you."

He grinned. "Ah, but I killed them all from behind, while they were watching you."

"I was behind them too, remember. Lucky I found your spear on the floor over there." My voice was shaking. "And lucky you had them all involved at the top of the staircase. If things had been different, we would be dead now, you and I."

"Foolish talk. They weren't and we aren't."

I spat again. "My mouth tastes foul. I need a drink." I rose and crossed to the table with the casks and poured myself a cup of ale. It was flat and stale, bitter and sickening. Unable to swallow it, I rinsed my mouth and gargled and spat the stuff on the floor, feeling better with every second that passed. I looked around me then and nodded at the carnage. "What do we do about this?" As I spoke, I heard a sound above me and my head snapped up to see two women looking down at us from the loft, large-eyed and very frightened. I nodded towards them. "Some more friends of yours?"

Uther looked up and saw them. "Come down here, quickly!" When they had reached us, cowering with terror, their eyes flickering wildly from one to the other of us, he drew his sword again. "Take off those clothes!" They did as he said, and when they stood naked he shook his head slowly from side to side, looking at them in rueful amusement. "Caius, can you believe I almost got killed for this? We almost got killed for this, and I know you wouldn't stick mine into either of these, let alone your own!" The women stood close together, staring at him in fear, not knowing whether they were to live or die, but knowing completely that they were looking at Death himself in my cousin. "You!" he said, pointing his sword at the larger of them. "Turn around. Look at my friend." She turned to face me, her large breasts hanging heavy against her ribs, her belly sagging sadly over her pubic hair. "You almost got him killed, you slut, and he's a prince! He almost died because you teased my lust" with your great, squeezy teats!" He slapped her hard across the buttocks with the flat of his sword and she leaped in fright and pain, tears springing from her eyes. "Get out of my sight, both of you," he roared. "Out! Out, out, out, out!" The smaller one started to reach for her clothes, but he swung his sword again, catching her on the flank with the flat of it. "No!" he roared. "Take your thieving, murderous lives and let that be enough! No clothes. Be born again, as the Christians say. Go naked into a new life as you entered this one and think twice before you dare to tempt another witless reveller to his death! Out!" They ran, scampering in terror across the body-littered floor and out into the gathering dusk.

He watched them go, with that half-crazed grin of his that I loved, and then he slid his sword into the ring in the belt across his shoulders so that the blade hung down his back. "Should I have let them go, Cousin? They did try to kill me."

"No they didn't, Uther. They merely enticed you. All three of them together could hardly have raped you, but only one of them attacked you, and she suffered for it."

He was watching me closely, a half smile still lingering around his mouth.

"You think I was too hard on them?"

"No, not too hard. They deserved some chastisement, I suppose. You let them off lightly."

"But?"

I shook my head. "But nothing. It merely occurred to me to wonder what they'll do now to feed themselves, now that their livelihood is gone."

He grunted. "They'll find a way. What would you have me do, take them with us?" He picked up my helmet and mounted the stairs to the loft, where he gathered his cloak, put on his own helmet and picked up his shield before returning to where I stood watching. As he handed me my helmet he asked, "Did I tell you how glad I was to see you?" I nodded, and he crossed to pick up a lamp that burned by the ale casks. "I'm always glad to see you, Cay, but today you looked beautiful. Usually you are unimpressive. In fact, most of the time, you're almost ugly. Today, however, you were magnificent. Mad, but magnificent." As he prattled on, he was kicking the rushes into a pile at the bottom of the wooden stairs. He decided finally that he had enough of them and dropped the oil-filled lamp so that it broke on the flagstones. As we watched, the flames spread quickly.

"This is no fit place for decent people, anyway." He glanced again at each of the bodies on the floor. "May they rest in peace, as the Christians say. Let's get out of here. Why did you come here, anyway?"

I felt as though I had been doused with icy water. I had forgotten! "Varrus is dying, Uther. We are called back to Camulod."

His face went blank with shock. "No...You can't mean that, Cay. Not Grandfather!"

I could only shake my head. His disbelief mirrored my own so closely, it threatened to unman me. "We have to hurry. I brought extra horses."

We left the hostelry and its silent crew to the leaping flames. Uther's horse was safely stabled in one of the buildings at the rear and I held it steady as he threw the saddle over its back and tightened the cinches, kneeing the horse in the belly as he did so to make sure it wasn't playing tricks on him by distending its gut. In the early days of using the device, we had often found ourselves falling sideways because the harness had not been properly secured. He swung into the saddle and I leaped up behind him and directed him to where I had hidden the other animals. He took the lead rein of one of the extra horses and we headed south, keeping off the road surface to save our horses' hooves.

Neither of us had spoken since we left the hostelry, except for a few grunted directions from me, and the silence lasted until we had ridden for three or four miles at a steady canter. It was Uther who spoke first, breaking into my thoughts and showing me a different, more serious side of himself than he had shown earlier.