Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

"For three days?"

"That's right."

"And you saw nothing of the enemy?"

"We didn't even know if this was the enemy. Not Lot's men, at least, although anyone we met there would be an enemy."

"Wait a moment. What about the party you rode out to meet? The ones who overran our outpost?"

"Saw neither hide nor hair of them. We found signs of their passage, headed away from here to the south-west, and we followed them, but we lost the trail as soon as we hit hard ground. After that, we were searching for shadows."

"You saw no one at all?"

"That's right, Uncle. Not a soul. The land was empty."

"Until you found these corpses?" Uther nodded solemnly. "And after that you followed more tracks for three days until you rode into a trap." Another nod. "Didn't you have scouts out?" Uther merely raised an eyebrow at that, not even deigning to answer the question. "Well? Did you have scouts out?"

"Of course we did."

"Then how in the name of Christ's Cross could you ride into a trap?"

"Without the slightest difficulty, Uncle. Our scouts rode right through it without even suspecting its existence and I followed them in a similar frame of mind."

My father snorted. "I suppose you will tell us about it?" His heavy sarcasm was completely lost on Uther.

"Certainly, if you'll allow me to." I ducked my head to hide an involuntary smile. I would not have dared to tweak my father's nose in such a fashion. Uther, however, went on imperturbably. "We came to the coast, eventually. It is very rocky in those parts, and the tracks we were following kept close to the top of the cliffs. We had the cliffs and the sea on our right, and the land rose slowly and gradually on our left. There were no trees to speak of, and our scouts kept high on the hills, where they could see for miles. I had them ranging for three miles ahead of us and three out on our left flank. There was nothing, no one. And then the enemy hit us." He paused and we were content to let him take his time. "We had been on rolling terrain for more than a day—unchanging, open grassland along the top of the cliffs. The land higher up was knee-deep in gorse and bracken—nothing tall enough to hide even a man lying down, but thorny and painful enough to make our horses' lives miserable, so we kept below it, on the open grass."

"And that's where they hit you from!" My father could stand it no longer. "They took you from the gorse!"

Uther narrowed his eyes at him and pursed his lips, saying nothing for several moments. Then, "No, Uncle, I told you it wasn't thick enough or tall enough to hide even a prostrate man. They took us from die grass. From out of the ground!"

"That's impossible! Am I to believe in magic, now?"

"That's exactly what I wondered when I saw them appear. I thought, 'That's impossible!' and then I thought, 'It's magic.* Let me admit, it put the fear of death into me in more ways than one. But it wasn't impossible, and it wasn't magic. It was brilliant strategy. And I remembered that you had used it yourself, years ago.

"We were down in a dip—a hollow between two headlands, that must have been half a mile from crest to crest. I discovered later that some upheaval in the past—God knows how long ago—had torn a great crack in the earth that stretched for almost the full half-mile. It was as though the whole cliff there had leaned sideways, towards the sea. In some spots the crack dropped seemingly for miles, but for most of the way it was filled with rubble, and even had grass growing on the bottom.

"The thing—this ambush—had been long in the planning. The gorse and bracken grew down to the upper edge of the crack, but the entire length of the chasm was completely covered by a long, narrow, tightly meshed net on top of which they had spread turf mid sunk gorse and bracken plants. Then they merely climbed down beneath their net, completely hidden, and waited for us to come to them."

My father's face was grim. "How many of them were there?"

"More than two hundred."

"How did they fight?"

"Effectively, and from a distance. They were all bowmen."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? After the initial surprise I led a charge up the hill."

"And?"

"They broke and ran. To left and right. In alternating squads, each half laying down fire to cover the others in withdrawal. They were deadly. We were lucky we lost as few as we did."

"You mean they beat you completely? How many of them did you get?"

"Four."

"Four! Out of two hundred?"

"Yes, Uncle. I had other things to occupy me and I decided to call off the chase."

"Other things? What other things?"

"The screams of my men and horses."

There was silence for a few moments.

"Uther, you are not making sense. What screams? Why should screams be of any import in the pursuit of a fleeing enemy?"

Uther leaned over and refilled his cup, his face expressionless. When he had finished, he took a sip and then resettled himself on the table's edge, where he remained, silent for a while, gazing into his cup. Finally he spoke, and his words chilled us. "Uncle Picus, every man, and every horse, who was as much as scratched by one of those arrows, died screaming as though being burned alive. They died in mortal agony, their muscles locked in spasm. There were no exceptions."

"Good God!" This was my father. I could find no words.

Uther continued speaking. "I knew quickly that there was something wrong with what was happening. There are always screams in battle, particularly when horses are injured, but there was an aura of dementia about the tenor and the volume of this screaming. So even at the charge, I looked to see the cause, and there was a trooper, a stolid man I have known for years, screaming like a ravished girl and shaking a bleeding hand as though trying to tear it off his arm. And beside him, kicking and screaming on the ground, lay another, with an arrow clean through the fleshy part of his upper arm. It was a flesh wound. There was no cause for reactions such as I was seeing. Only a very few men lay dead, Uncle, but the others were all going mad. I had my trumpeter sound the recall, but even after we had stopped the hunt, the whoresons kept on firing as they ran, and every time an arrow found a mark, the screaming grew." He shook his head in disgust. "I lost sixty-three men and seventy-two horses. All dead. All wounds were fatal. No one recovered. That's why I say we were lucky to have lost no more. Even after I had called off the pursuit, they could have returned to the slaughter."

"Why didn't they?".

Uther took another pull at his drink, then answered, "Because they had been too eager. They ran out of arrows. They knew at the outset that, thanks to the venom on their barbs, they had no need to shoot to kill, so they were letting fly at random, hoping to do the maximum damage in the shortest possible time. They overshot, that's all."

"And you did not pursue them?"

"Not immediately. As I told you, I had other things to concern me. I didn't know then that every wounded man was going to die the way they did. We were concerned with trying to help them. It was only later we realized how useless our efforts were. By that time, the assassins were gone. They had galleys concealed below the overhang of the cliffs ahead of us and behind us."

"What kind of galleys?" My father's voice was sharp with interest.

"Big ones. Biremes."

"What about the thirty casualties you reported having left at our perimeter? Why didn't they die, too?"

"They were wounded honestly, in fair battle."

My father got up and walked about the room, thinking over what he had heard. "This Lot has much to answer for, when he and I come face to face."

Uther shook his head, a wry look on his face. "Apparently not, Uncle. His two crows outside deny any knowledge of venomed arrows. They claim that our attackers were not Lot's men."