The bowmen on the dune had stopped shooting now. It takes a certain kind of inhumanity to commit callous murder on a living, helpless woman, even when she embodies your own death. Frozen, the bowmen stood and watched, arrows nocked, as Uther's men swept towards them. And then finally, when less than fifty paces separated the two groups, one aimed and fired and drew and fired again and one rider went down, his shield and he both dead. Three more aimed and fired and Uther's group was cut to half its size, but Uther was almost at the foot of the dune by then and the bowmen broke and scattered, casting aside their useless weapons and drawing their swords. Uther threw his helpless shield to the ground and charged after one of the disarmed bowmen. I watched the slaughter in agony, still approaching. I could feel the strength draining away from my body like water pouring from a broken vase, and despair , threatened to overwhelm me. I did not know what was happening here, or who these victims were, but I had seen more callous slaughter from my cousin here than I would ever have believed him capable of.
I reined in my mount and sat there, staring. Apart from Uther and his three remaining riders by the dune, there was barely a movement on the beach. One of the women thrown from the backs of the horses got up slowly and stood swaying for a time, then began moving among the others, checking each of them for signs of life. She stooped quickly and helped another to her feet, this one swathed in an enveloping yellow garment that covered her completely except for her arms and one long, slender leg that shone from a large tear in the fabric. The two women clung to each other. Three more of Uther's men were still alive, and now mounted their horses again and began to converge, with Uther and the others, upon the two women. No one had seen me yet, sitting my horse some two hundred paces distant. Now I urged my mount forward again, but even as it began to walk, I reined in and waited.
Uther had dismounted and was approaching the women, who stood side by side, facing him. I waited for him to remove his helmet, but he did not. He merely stopped a few paces from them and stooped quickly to grasp a handful of cloth adorning one of the dead women lying by his feet. He wiped the blood from his sword blade on the cloth and straightened up, slipping the sword back into its sheath. He then flipped the edges of his cloak back across his shoulders. Puzzled, I watched him fumbling at the front of his clothing. I realized his purpose at the same time the women did, for they both turned to run. He closed the distance between them in one leap and grasped the yellow-clad woman by the shoulder, spinning and pushing her so that she fell heavily. The other woman attacked him immediately, and he thrust her aside, throwing her as casually and as easily as if she had no substance. Then he grasped the woman on the ground and, with a great heave, ripped the yellow covering from her body, tumbling her through the air so that I saw naked flesh and long, red hair as the other woman attacked him yet again, leaping this time on to his back. Now I kicked my horse into movement, and as I did so I saw Uther bend and heave and dislodge his assailant, throwing her over his shoulder so that she fell in front of him. He held her with one hand around her wrist and then pulled her erect before jerking her close to him. I knew from the way she stiffened, rigid, that he had stabbed her, pulling her onto a dagger, and I watched her sink to her knees and then fall away to the side. And now Uther was tugging at his clothes again, loosening his belt and tearing at his trousers to expose his loins. I watched him fall to his knees and drag the red-haired woman towards him, grasping her and pulling at her so that he held one of her knees in the crook of each elbow, I was very close, little more than a hundred paces away, still moving like a man in a dream. All eyes were on Uther and his sport. My mind was reciting a litany...
Deirdre of the Violet Eyes. Cassandra of the Valley. Deirdre of the Weeping Sighs. Cassandra in the Valley. Deep the grave where Deirdre lies. Cassandra, Merlyn's Folly...
I had been unaware of unslinging Publius Varrus's great bow from where it lay across my back; unaware of fitting an arrow; unaware of anything except my own criminally irresponsible naivety, All the pathetic human weakness and frailty of my doubts and agonizing over Uther's capacity to sink to the level of brutality involved in the savage beating and the murder of my beloved now writhed in my scornful awareness. How could I ever have doubted it? I had always known that Uther had a blackness in him I could never plumb. And today, here, I had seen more of it than I had suspected in thirty years of knowing him intimately. And now I found my voice again.
His head jerked up at the sound of my shout, and the six men behind him immediately broke from their admiring huddle and began to spread out, moving towards me. I ignored them.
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?"