I grasped him roughly by the shoulder. "You're absolutely right, Ben. We must be ready here when Huw returns—fully prepared, fit and ready to march." I turned to Philip. "When Lucca's squad is rested, send them back immediately with full approval of his plan. He is to delegate the harbour command to his best subordinate and then bring his two thousand here in person with the supply train, and as many extra rations and supplies as he can provide." I stood up and flexed my shoulders. "Right, then, my friends. We'll proceed as before, since there's not much we can do until the others arrive, but I want your men at their fighting best when we leave here. That might be in a week, or it might not be for several more than that, but in the meantime, I want to see our people training for real war again. We've all grown lazy, I suspect, in the past few months of inactivity. I want to see the evidence that sloth is outlawed, from this moment on. That's all."
I left them there and went looking for hot water, regretting once more the fact that the bathhouse here was irredeemable.
Tertius Lucca arrived within the week, at the head of a massive train of wagons filled with weaponry, supplies and provisions. The day of his arrival was consumed in seeing to the disposition of his force, the allocation of quarters to his two thousand men and an inventory of the wealth he had brought with him. Then, the following morning, a short time before noon, a hard riding messenger arrived from our most northern outpost with the word that an unidentified force, numbering in excess of two thousand men, was converging on us from the north and west In spite of my great hopes for Huw's success in rallying his people, it seemed to me it was yet too soon for such a host to have sprung up, even from Huw's most determined efforts, and so I sounded a general alarm. But hard on the heels of that first messenger, a second arrived almost before our trumpets had stopped clamouring, bearing the word that the approaching force had been identified as Pendragon.
Astounded and delighted, I took advantage of the furore stirred up by the alarm and rode out northward at the head of a hundred cavalry troopers to greet Huw Strongarm on his triumphant return. Instead I found Llewellyn striding ahead of his men, very much in command, and though my welcome to him was no less genuine, I found myself wondering what had become of Huw himself.
Llewellyn came to me directly and grasped my horse's bridle strap. Huw was still in the north, he told me, headed now into the Pendragon strongholds in the east and southeast of Cambria, gathering strength with every day. He had wanted to send these first two thousand south to me, so that I could begin a northward sweep, penetrating the central highlands, where Carthac was creating havoc at the head of a marauding mob of mercenaries. He hoped that I would be willing to use my troops as mobile walls in the valley floors of the mountain ranges, solid bulwarks to confine and demolish the detritus of Ironhair's levies as the Pendragon bowmen flushed them down from the hilltops.
I smiled to' hear Huw's message endorse the exact stratagem urged by Benedict a week earlier. Already I could perceive the change that responsibility had effected in Huw Strongarm: he had left me as a subordinate and an ally; now, scarcely two weeks later, he was addressing me as an equal, and perhaps even as one subordinate to him, submitting orders thinly disguised as requests through his own subordinate commander. I was not displeased by this in any way. Huw had sent two thousand men to me in earnest of his unswerving good faith and was off gathering more. The number surprised me, and I .asked Llewellyn how many men the Pendragon might field.
"In total? More than ten thousand, I would estimate, of fighting age."
"Good God! I had no idea there were so many. Five thousand fighting men, that I could see. It seems to me my cousin Uther commanded that many."
"When? In Lot's War? That was a long time ago. We are a numerous people, Caius Merlyn, and we're farmers before anything else. It's true our farms are small, nowhere near as rich or fertile as yours in the south, but they need equal tending and even harder work because of that. Five thousand was the smallest number of Pendragon men your cousin led, in the final years of the Cornwall affair, but he always left a greater number at home in Cambria, tending the land. We lost too many men down there. The last battle cost us dearly, but now we have recovered. And this war is here, on our own land, in our own fields. We'll win it quickly now, with Huw to lead us and with your help, so every man in Cambria will do his part. Huw should bring five thousand more, I'd guess, and others will come later."
I was still astonished and sat looking about me for several moments before looking back to him. "Let's head back to camp. Will you ride with me, if I offer you a horse?"
Llewellyn looked at me and grinned. "Aye, willingly, but will you unhorse one of your own for me?"
I turned to look at Bedwyr, who had been listening to all of this, and he was already dismounting. Once on the ground, he offered his reins to Llewellyn, who accepted them with a nod of thanks and swung himself easily up into the saddle as Bedwyr caught Rufio's good arm and swung himself up behind him, to ride double.
I watched Llewellyn's mount to the saddle in surprise, and he read it in my face. "Rufio taught me how to. ride," he said. "I learn quickly."
"It would seem you do." I kicked Germanicus into motion and Llewellyn rode beside me on my left, knee to knee, back to our encampment. As we rode, I took up the conversation where we had left off. .
"Five thousand more? How will Uderic react to that, I wonder?"
Llewellyn turned towards me but did not look at me. He kept his head down, his one eye fixed, it seemed to me, on Germanicus's ears. "Uderic? He won't react at all. He's dead." Now he glanced at my face and read my shock. His own face again wore a sardonic grin. "Uderic had difficulties with the word we spread about his conduct with the Outlander Ironhair. He didn't enjoy hearing himself being called what he was, and so he challenged Huw. Should have been a wiser man and simply left, but then, Uderic never was a wise man. They fought. It was brief."
"So now Huw is king indeed."
"Hah! I thought that was all settled between you and him! Huw Strongarm has no interest in being king. Did we not go through all that? Huw's War Chief of Pendragon and that's all he Wants to be. He sees his task as settling the land for its new king, King Uther's son. Mind you, they tried to make him king, after he killed Uderic, but he laughed at them and told them all that's what their problem has been since Uther died—too many people looking to be king, and none prepared to do the heavy work. That shut them up."
We rode in silence after that, and when I broke it again it was to speak of something that had been in my mind for several days, ever since Ben had made his prediction.
"I would like to make Huw a gift of some kind, Llewellyn, a mark of my respect for the stance he has taken. What would be appropriate to give to the War Chief of Pendragon? I could offer him armour, or weapons, but I think he has no need of either—certainly not of the kind we wear and use. Can you think of anything that might please him?"
"Aye, one of those." We had arrived at our encampment, and I looked to see what it was that he had identified so quickly, but nothing obvious presented itself to me. Llewellyn read the incomprehension on my face and pointed straight ahead. "One of those. That big tent of yours."
"What, you mean my command tent?"
"Aye. Huw doesn't have one. There isn't one such tent in all of Cambria save this. What better gift could you present to a War Chief than such a visible symbol of his power? A big, wide, leather tent with a high, lofty roof, where he can assemble and meet with his own leaders in all kinds of weather, warm and dry in the foulest times. That were a kingly gift, were it within your power to bestow it. D'you have another one like it?"