Jack Whyte: The Eagles' Brood

Broad-shouldered, deep-chested and heavily muscled, Picus Britannicus was more than simply a big man. In a world where normal men were five and a half feet tall, he towered more than six. Fully half a head taller than his tallest subordinate, he was a soldier from head to toe, inside and out. He was magnificent to look at, with his unusual golden hair, a splendid tunic of white wool bordered with a thick, black stripe, and his gleaming, highly polished black leather armour and equipment. Even the crest on his helmet was striking, composed of alternate clumps of black and white horsehair. The only part of his dress that did not fit his strict colour scheme was the bronze hilt of the short-sword that hung by his right side, the sword given to him by Uncle Varrus when he first joined the legions. His horses, too— always jet black—were specially selected for their height, so that he was prominent no matter where he went, drawing men's eyes by his size, and by the flashing whiteness of the soft, white wool that lined his great black war cloak. My father was every man's vision of a Commander, and his soldiers loved him.

To his small son, however, he was a daunting, intimidating figure. He spoke little, for an arrow had torn his throat before I was born and had left him with a terrible affliction, so that when he did speak his words were laboured and guttural. He was determined to overcome this failing, however, and as he grew older he did defeat it to a very great extent. He wore his golden hair long, an affectation to cover the hideous scar where the arrow that pierced his mouth had emerged through the back of his neck, and that also marked him as singular among the short-haired Romans whom he led.

On that first day I met him, he awed me completely. The first thing he did after looking me over in silent, wide-eyed surprise was to pick me up by the elbows and lift me like a feather, up into the air until I came eye to eye with him. Then he grinned a huge grin, full of white teeth, and shook me, gently, and placed me back on the ground, growling something I couldn't understand. His men all stepped to meet me, shaking hands with me solemnly, as though I were a man, while the one who had saved me recounted my adventure almost word for word the way I had told him it happened.

This man was Titus, it turned out, one of my father's friends of whom I had heard and read. Another, Quintus Flavius, knelt by the fire, tending the rabbit stew Titus had been savouring on his scouting patrol around the camp before he found me.

As soon as Titus had finished recounting my story, my father looked at me. "Uther?" he growled. "Where is he?"

I shrugged, aware of my own confusion. "I don't know where he went, sir."

"Was he followed?"

Again I shrugged. "I don't know."

"Right. Mount up!"

We left the fire burning. Flavius upended the cooking pot into the coals and a hissing cloud of smoke and ashes whirled into the air. In a matter of seconds we were all mounted and heading back the way Titus and I had come. I rode in front of my father this time, my nakedness covered by his long cloak, and I felt fine, although I was worried about what we might discover on reaching the scene of the attack.

We emerged from the forest almost at the point where I had entered it, and the first person I saw was Uther, fully dressed, riding towards us with four of his father's men. He saw us at the same time and hauled his pony back in a rearing stop, but even as he prepared to run from this new threat, he saw me mounted in front of my father, and I heard the gladness in his voice as he yelled my name and waved my tunic above his head.

"That's Uther!" I said. "He has my clothes."

Two of the men with Uther recognized my father and they came with us as we approached the rest of the survivors. One of my father's men let. out a low whistle of wonder. "Will you look at that!"

For the first time, we saw the effect of Ullic Pendragon's long, yew bows when they were wielded by trained and determined men. There were Saxon bodies everywhere. I tallied fourteen before losing count. Some of our Celts were out among them, pulling their arrows from the dead and wounded bodies. It turned out that our party had lost four men, killed in the first attack, which had caught them by surprise. Not one had been lost after the bowmen began to light, and the surviving Saxons had fled in terror from the arrows against which they had no defence.

One of the hillmen laughed as he described what had happened. 'They thought they were safe, you know, inside their fancy ring shirts, until they started falling, pierced through, fancy shirts and all. They've fought against bowmen before, but they've never come up against anything that bites as hard as our new arrows do. Huw, there, hit one of them smack in the head and pierced him through, helmet and all!"

"How far away was he?" my father asked.

"No more than twenty paces. These arrows will go through an oaken board a handsbreadth thick at a hundred and sixty."

My father grunted, an impatient sound, and looked around at the corpses littering the grass. By this time, all of them had been stripped of weapons and of armour, and these had been dumped into a pile close to one of the cooking fires. Huw, the leader of our party of Celts, noticed the Legate's seeming lack of patience and shouted to his men in their native tongue, telling them to get ready to move out, and ordering that the bodies of our four slain men be thrown across their horses for burial later.

Titus nodded towards the pile of weapons and armour. "What will you do with those? Do you have a wagon to load them into?"

"No," growled Huw. "And we can't carry them. I'd thought to bury them. Can't leave them lying around."

Uther interrupted, his voice sounding out of place among the men. "Offer them to the goddess of the tarn, there, where Caius and I went swimming. It's very deep."

"Now there's an idea, boy!" Huw took him up on it and immediately detailed four men to carry the booty over and throw it into the pool. "Breaks my heart to see such waste, but a proper sacrifice in thanks for victory never hurt anyone nor went amiss."

"What about the bodies? The Saxons?" This was Titus again.

Huw's look of contempt was eloquent as he answered. "What about them then? Let the whoresons rot where they lie. The wolves and crows will not take long to clean them up." Something had caught his attention and he raised his voice to a yell. "Come on, you people! Get a move on, will you? It's twenty miles to Camulod from here! We want to get there during damn daylight! Move your arses!"

Flavius was frowning slightly, his face showing puzzlement. "Camulod? Where's that?"

"That's what we call the fort, sir," I answered him. "Camulod."

He looked at my father, who raised one eyebrow and shrugged, saying nothing.

We left the body-strewn field as it was and set a good pace for the Colony. I had pulled on my clothes again and my body was a mass of pain from all the welts, bruises, scratches and cuts I had taken. My right eye was swollen shut and I wanted to cry, but I dared not show myself to be so weak.

Titus reined close to me. "How are you feeling, young Merlyn? Tired?" I tried to smile at him, nodding my head. "I thought so," he continued. "You had a long run there." I nodded again. "Why don't you come and ride with me? Then, if you fall asleep, at least you won't fall off the horse."

He must have read the gratitude in my face, for he brought his horse right alongside my pony and lifted me up in front of him. I looked around me to see if any of the others were laughing at me, but no one was paying any attention at all, and I fell asleep almost immediately, cradled in the grip of Titus, my protector.

I awoke a long time later to the sound of horns, and there in the distance were the walls of Camulod, crowning their hill and overlooking all the valley below. I was a very stiff and sore little boy by then, and I remember it took all of my determination not to cry out in pain as Titus handed me down to the willing hands that reached for me in the courtyard of my uncle's villa. I had a hot bath, and my tiredness overcame me in the course of it. I have no memory of being . put to bed. The next morning, however, I awoke with all my normal vigour, remembering that my father, the Legate Picus, had come home, and hoping that he would stay. He did. He was home this time for good.