It took eight days after their planned starting date for him to get his wish, but the break did come, and although it was not exactly a bright and clarion day of glowing sunlight, there were blue patches of sky visible between banks of clouds in the early morning, and the rain had died away during the second watch of the previous night. Encouraged by the early signs of brightening prospects, he had kept his men in readiness that morning, poised for departure while he waited until the strengthening sun could break through the cloud cover with something resembling authority. Then, when it eventually did, and as the strength of its warmth and light began to grow more and more apparent, he summoned Popilius Cirro to him, along with the senior cavalry commander from the Camulod garrison, and Garreth Whistler and Huw Strongarm from the Cambrian contingent. Telling them to mount up and ride behind him, he led them up to the reviewing stand by the edge of the great drilling ground at the bottom of Camulod's hill and sat there facing his army, waiting for his presence to bring silence.
This was a far smaller army than he had originally intended to command—a mere two thousand strong, as opposed to the six- thousand-man host he had visualized months earlier—but he was convinced that it would be more effective and more lethal than the larger host might have been. His deliberations on the condition of Cornwall after receiving Ygraine's letter had convinced Uther that the advantages he might gain from numbers would be more than offset by the difficulties of feeding and sustaining a large army in a ruined land, and his allies had finally come to agree with him. An army must sustain itself by feeding off the land through which it travelled, but Cornwall, as they had ascertained from the reports of scouting parties sent out for that purpose, was utterly devastated and incapable of feeding its own after the depredations of the leaderless mercenary Outlanders and the internecine wars of the various Cornish warlords. And wherever Herliss and Lagan might be now, the massed strength they had hoped to gather against Lot had evidently failed to materialize. Uther had heard from neither man since their disappearance after the deaths of Issa and Loholt. Against his own will, he had come to realize that leading a massive army into Cornwall would be folly under such circumstances, and so he had conferred with his allies, in both Camulod and his own Cambria, in an attempt to make the best of the unpalatable situation facing them. Lot's Cornwall must be invaded they all knew that and there was no arguing against it—but the invasion Uther now proposed to lead would more resemble the thrust of a sword blade into the lines of cleavage in a lump of coal than it would the sweeping arc of a swung scythe. He would penetrate and cleave in a straight thrust, rather than surge on a broad front. And so the army waiting to depart now was composed of a mere two thousand men, half cavalry and half infantry, and included several hundred Pendragon bowmen. All of them, horse and foot, were hand picked, the best of the combined best of Camulod and Cambria, and as he waited for them to fall silent, Uther Pendragon felt proud of—and somewhat chastened by—the way they had competed among themselves to win a place in the ranks now facing him. He refused absolutely to allow himself to think he might be leading all of them to death, and he silently sucked in great, shuddering breaths to calm his voice before addressing them.
The army had been assembled in its divisions—infantry, cavalry and Cambrian clansmen—for hours, and complete stillness fell over the entire assembly as the men waited for Uther to speak. He took his time, savouring the anticipation in the air, theirs and his own. Then, when he judged the moment to be exactly right, he removed his helmet and slung it from the bow of his saddle before standing up in his stirrups and loosening the clasp of his great red cloak with its emblazoned golden dragon. He swung the garment up and off his shoulders, swirling it around in a great sweep of colour and then catching the folds of it in the crook of his left arm and draping it across his saddle in front of him. Only then did he begin to speak, using his command voice, and his words were clearly audible to every man there.
"Well, lads, the weather's breaking. It looks like a fine day to go to war."
The sound that greeted his opening words was a low rumble, like distant thunder, swelling rapidly, then dying away to silence again. Uther swept the assembled ranks deliberately with his eyes, moving his head slowly from left to right, his gaze taking in every element of the troops massed in front of him.
"We'll be in Cornwall three days from now, and you all know why. There is a pestilence in that country, and we are chosen to stamp it out. Think you we're up to it?"
"Aye, Uther, that we are!" It was a single voice, shouted from an unknown throat, but it brought a bark of laughter and a swelling chorus of agreement.
Uther shouted into the sound as it died away, "That man has won a jug of ale for himself and all his squad mates in camp tonight. Who was he?"
A stirring among the ranks then and a small commotion marked the source of the first shout, and the man, a Camulodian cavalry trooper, raised one hand above his head. Uther pointed him out to everyone who had not seen him.
"What's your name?"
"Caseady, King Uther."
"Well, Caseady, present yourself this night to the camp quartermaster and collect your prize, but you had better bring a friend to help you carry it and prevent you from drinking all of it yourself." This brought another shout of laughter, cheers and jeers, and Uther waited until it had died away completely before speaking again, his voice now sober and serious.
"We are two thousand strong, lads. Not the biggest force that Camulod has ever sent to war, but by all the gods, we might be the strongest and the most agile. We have horse and foot, both, and the finest bows and bowmen in the world. Camulod and Pendragon, side by side. Lot of Cornwall has nothing that can stand against us, but our dearest hope must be that he will try the truth of that. If he does—and he will—he'll rue the day he ever saw us coming. Are you ready for him?"
A great shout of "Aye!"
"Aye, we are, but hear me clearly. We are not marching into Cornwall to stand there and tight in enormous battles. We—you, every one of you—are a striking force. Our objective is to move quickly and constantly, striking hard and fast wherever we encounter hostiles. We are going raiding, lads, and even if we fail to find oily King Lot, we'll smash his mercenaries and we'll kill his confidence. Now, are you ready for him?"
"Aye!"
"Is he ready for us!"
"No!"
"Good! Then let's go and show him the damnable blunder he made when he invaded Camulod and Cambria. Move out!"
He stood up straight in his stirrups, drew his long sword and waved it above his head in the recognized signal, and as the cheering began to die away, the first signs of disciplined movement began among the individual columns of men and horses. Uther watched them for several more moments, then turned to his companions and nodded to each of them in turn before dismissing them to their individual duties. After that he rode back up the hill to the high vantage point overlooking the campus, where his mother and his grandmother stood with Merlyn, Donuil, Titus, Flavius and several others who had assembled to watch another Camulodian army start out on a campaign.
From the centre of the assembly, in the middle of the vast campus, a full score of enormous commissary wagons began to move, slowly and ponderously, each of them hauled by a rough-matched team of eight huge horses and commanded by an expert teamster, who sat up high on the driver's seat, wielding the reins in one hand and a long, leather whip in the other and rolling on his high, swaying perch like a sailor in the mast lookout of a seagoing galley. Slowly and sedately the wagons rolled forward and arranged themselves into pairs to assume their place in the middle of the long column of Popilius Cirro's infantry, where they would be safest from attack and depredation. The commissary wagons were the soldiers' lifeline, representing food, drink and warmth, and no enemy would be permitted to approach them casually. Watching these majestic vehicles lumber slowly into motion, noting the size and number of them, their ponderous dignity and the enormous swarm of lesser cargo and supply wagons that followed behind in support of them, Uther could appreciate more clearly than by any other example the scope and duration of the adventure on which they—all of them, his Cambrian men and Camulod's best and finest—were now being launched. By the time they returned from this campaign, those among them who did return, these mighty wagons would be empty of supplies and their ancillary support vehicles long since emptied and set to service like the commissary wagons themselves as transportation for badly wounded men. That would be many months in the future.