Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

I shook my head, seeing Cassandra's battered body in my mind. "No, Uther, I would not, not for that one. That was inhuman, unforgivable. I simply hope it wasn't you who did it, and until the day when I know for certain, one way or the other, I will treat you as Uther Pendragon, cousin and friend untarnished."

He was no longer smiling. "Caius," he said, "I tell you truthfully that I can see your reasons for doubting me. .Were I in your shoes, thinking these doubts of you, I do not know if I could hold myself to be as magnanimous as you are now. Thank you for that." And then the devil flickered in his eyes again, and he added, "But do try to remember that most human men, being only men, cannot stand too much magnanimity in others. It smacks of sanctimoniousness." He rose to his feet before I could frame a response. "Come, we had better be on our way. Time is not waiting for us and our troopers are."

We made good time for the remainder of the day, but it was after sunset before we arrived at the abandoned farm where our forces awaited us. Uther spoke for both of us, issuing orders that we would break camp at dawn and march back immediately. We would encamp the following night and finish our return journey by sunrise, so that, providing the enemy was in place, we would arrive at his back before noon.

We held a short council of war for the benefit of our junior officers and then Uther and I retired to our leather campaign tents, exhausted by the day's journey, and hoping against hope that we had built our campaign around the correct supposition: that Lot could not know our true strength, since we ourselves did not know it, having had no opportunity to conduct our census. If we were wrong somehow, if Lot had assessed our true strength accurately, then we would be riding back to Camulod without the advantage of surprise.'

We headed back towards Camulod the following morning by a longer, more circuitous route than the one Uther and I had taken on the way out, making no attempt to hurry. It was essential that we arrive no sooner than Lot, and our best estimates indicated that he would strike against the fort either the following day, the third of our schedule, or the one after that. Uther wanted to have our forces within striking distance of the Colony by dawn on the fourth day. I would have preferred to wait one day longer, to allow Lot the time to assess his position and commit himself to a course of action that we could then disrupt.

As it turned out, however, neither of us had a choice. We had miscalculated by one entire day in Lot's favour, for he had arrived with his army on the plains of Camulod midway through the afternoon of the day we left, and as we made our leisurely way southward, his forces were battering brutally at the fort itself.

His unexpected arrival took my father and his defenders totally by surprise. A large number of infantry, almost a full cohort, were busily at work throwing up a defensive breastwork and ditch at the bottom of the hill. Popilius himself, our senior warrant officer, was commanding them, and faced with a decision either to abandon the incomplete breastworks or remain there to defend them, he chose the latter. Approximately a mile to the north of his position, to his left, another large party of troops was involved in removing everything useful from the buildings of the villa farm. The officer in charge of this operation was a young man, but a wise one. By the time he was apprised of the rapid approach of Lot's advance parties, it was already too late for him to retire to the fort in safety with his men, so he took immediate steps to strengthen the main building of the villa to the best of his ability. By overturning the wagons they had been loading and using them as barricades, he and his men were able to construct a defensible perimeter, and there they remained, a potential thorn in the side of Lot's advancing army.

The fighting on that first afternoon was savage. Lot's army was largely undisciplined, each unit paying heed only to the most basic orders of its local commanders. His soldiers, if they could be called such, were all unruly individuals, and their first assault on the villa's defenders turned into a disorganized brawl, quickly and effectively won by the defenders, who fought as a unit and drove their attackers off to lick their wounds as darkness began to fall. Instead of allowing his men time to relax after beating off their assailants, however, the young officer in charge took advantage of the weakness he had perceived in the enemy's lack of discipline and led his men through the darkness, in a hard and bitter fight, to join Popilius's cohort a mile away. Hearing the noise of the fighting, and guessing what was happening, the veteran Popilius flung out his men on his left flank along the hillside, until they made contact with the fighters from the villa and enabled them to gain the comparative safety of the unfinished breastworks.

In the meantime, under cover of the darkness, the opportunity arose for Popilius to withdraw his men completely from their unfinished camp and get them up the hill in safety to the fort. Instead, he sent a courier up the hill to inform my father that he intended to hold his position and defend it against Lot's rabble. His major problem, he pointed out, would be the danger of being outflanked and infiltrated by Lot's people, who might attempt to climb the hillside on either side of his position, and start shooting arrows into his men from above and behind. My father sent out two squadrons of bowmen to guard his flanks, and at the same time he sent out three of his best riders to break through Lot's cordon and find us, warning us to get back sooner than we had planned.

These messengers were to tell us that Picus himself would be holding back his own cavalry. The brunt of the initial defence would fall on the shoulders of Popilius and his infantry. As soon as we put in an appearance, my father would loose his own seven hundred cavalry in a frontal attack, down the road and into the centre of the enemy.

One of these three messengers found us just after noon the following day and we immediately began a forced march, cursing the caution that had sent us so far north needlessly. My father had estimated the strength of Lot's army at around four thousand, a number that surprised me and added greatly to my sense of having erred badly. The urgency of a quick return had become immediately and devastatingly obvious.

Late in the afternoon, heavy grey clouds began piling up in the west, and we could see lightning flickering among them. The heat grew more and more oppressive as the storm drew closer, so that I found myself anticipating the chill of the rain that was sweeping towards us. My pleasure was short-lived. The downpour was awful, blowing against us in torrents, soaking everyone and everything completely and almost instantly, and turning the soft earth under the hooves of our thousand horses into a bog, so that headway was almost impossible. I had never seen such heavy rain, and it showed no signs of abating. The clouds were so thick that they blocked the sun completely, so it seemed we rode at night, although we knew there were still several hours of daylight left. We had no option of resting to wait it out, however; we had to keep moving as quickly as possible, and what had started as a leisurely march quickly degenerated into a nightmare ride, with horses slipping and falling everywhere, terrified by the savagery of the storm, the glare of the lightning and the chaotic noise of thunder, wind, rain and battering hailstones.

The freak storm lasted for almost three hours, and by the time the clouds finally began to break, our force was totally demoralized. It had been impossible even to shout to each other during that time, and every man had been immured in his own private hell, suffering the agony of cold, wet clothing and armour, exhausted by the relentless struggle to keep his horse upright, moving and sane. The first break in the clouds showed us the pink and purple high sky of the setting sun, which took with it our only opportunity of finding warmth and dryness that night, for all the wood in the land lay soaked. We settled our minds to the prospect of a long, miserable night.