Some of his most senior commanders, including Mucins Quinto, the military surgeon attached to the contingent from Camulod, remained unconvinced that Uther's information was incontrovertibly valid, despite Uther's fiery convictions, and their skepticism was aggravated by his stubborn refusal to identify his informant, aware as always of the need to protect Ygraine. Quinto's objections were based upon the risk of useless slaughter. Slaughter was part and parcel of warfare, Quinto knew, but needless slaughter was anathema to him. The march Uther was proposing to undertake was foolhardy under the circumstances, an unacceptable risk under any conditions and one that directly flouted Uther's own rules governing the selection of military objectives and the responsible disposition of troops.
Agreeing with Quinto, Popilius Cirro went so far as to call Uther's suggestion outrageously impulsive; it had to be considered unjustifiable, until and unless they could obtain more concrete information from at least one additional source about the supposed threat posed by the Saxon army reported to be massed on Lot's eastern borders. They had no proof that army was even there, Popilius maintained, and even less proof that Lot's main army had been dispatched to deal with them. That lack of certainty, entailing the very real possibility of a threat from their rear on a northward march, allied with this other unconfirmed report of an advancing army of Ersemen from the north, cried out to be resolved and settled before any major decisions could be made concerning troop movements and objectives.
Uther listened to all of them and then vetoed their disapproval, claiming that the existence of the written report he had received was proof enough. He even read the pertinent section of his letter aloud in an attempt to demonstrate his good faith, but his continuing refusal to put a name to his informant worked against the credibility of his information.
In the end, of course, Uther's will as King prevailed, but a degree of uncertainty over the outcome of his projected thrust remained, because none of his people had ever seen the fort Ygraine had described, and so they could not know how accessible the seacoast was from the fort's walls, or how wide the outer space around the fort, between the walls and the clifftop, might be. That information was vital, and Uther himself swore he wanted no part of attacking the position if Lot could simply escape by sea, leaving his mercenaries to defend his back. There was nothing they could really do to resolve that impasse, however, since they would not be able to answer the questions until they approached the place and saw it for themselves.
Once the decision to go there was made, however, Popilius and the rest of his commanders accepted his wishes, and the remainder of their planning fell quickly into place, although he reminded all of them, as always, about the standard observation and proviso governing all such planning. Uther had been taught by all his mentors and instructors that no battle plan, irrespective of how well or how painstakingly it might have been prepared, had ever been known to survive intact after the first real clash with the enemy. That was an accepted axiom of all warfare: to be effective and successful, a battle plan—and a commander's mind—must allow for an enormous amount of flexibility.
Uther and his commanders spent three days working on their strategy, and on the fourth day they set out for the northwest coast. They encountered no more opposition than they had in the previous month, so they made excellent time, and the miles fell away at their backs. Late in the afternoon of their fourth day's march, their forward scouts sent back word that they had reached the coast and were now within sight of the Shelter.
Uther called a halt and established camp immediately. Many of his troops, he knew, would spend a sleepless night, as he would, anticipating the next day's battle, and all of them would be up and ready to advance before dawn's hues first began to tinge the night sky.
All the sleepless nights, however, were wasted. As soon as Uther came within sight of the stronghold called the Shelter and stopped to take a long, evaluating look at it, he knew that their journey had been but one more frustrating element in a campaign already filled to overflowing with disappointment and inaction. The thought had barely had the time to form in his mind, however, before Garreth Whistler and Huw Strongarm rode up to put the lie to it. They, too, had seen the hopelessness of the situation, but they had seen beyond it, too, and sensed an advantage to be gained while they were there in force.
The fort, a typical concentric ditch-and-dyke construction, had been built on a headland, as his information had indicated, and its walls were safely withdrawn from the edges of the cliffs of crumbling, friable rock, leaving a clear area surrounding the perimeter that could conceivably accommodate an encircling force. Only an idiot would have tried to put such a force there, however, for what Uther's information had lacked was detaiclass="underline" the headland itself rose steeply towards the sea, then ended in an abrupt, unscalable cliff, and the fortification that had been established there over hundreds of years had been adapted admirably by its builders to the steeply sloping terrain. Many of the surfaces within the ramparts had been raked so they were level, and the walls at the front of the fort, facing the mainland, were more than twice as high as those at the rear. Those walls showed Uther immediately that the place would not be taken by direct assault; no besieging force could scale those enormous front slopes. Nor could any sustained attack be mounted against the lesser walls at the back, for in order to reach the rear of the fortification, any attacker would first have to circle the walls, using the narrow strip of land between walls and clifftop as their only pathway. There was not a patch of cover anywhere. While the attackers would have to fight every pace of the way against the steep slope, the defenders on the ramparts high above them would be standing on artificially levelled ground. The entire area around the walls was a killing ground.
"Not what we thought, eh?" This was Huw Strongarm. Garreth Whistler said nothing at all, merely watching Uther with tightly pursed lips. "Still, it could be worse, from our point of view."
"Could it?" Uther asked. "How?"
Huw allowed his surprise to show fleetingly and then ploughed onward. "Well, Lot's in there, and he's stuck there as long as we stay."
"We have no way of knowing he's in there, Huw."
"Yes we have. He's there, I've just been told."
"By whom, and why have I not been told?"
Huw shrugged and dipped his head. "Because the word came to me through one of my own men no more than moments ago, and I'm telling you now. One of our scout patrols picked up two local farmers early this morning. They are no supporters of their King, and they didn't need much persuasion to tell everything they know about this place. They saw Lot's arrival here eight days ago, and he hasn't been seen since. So we have him, safely cooped up in there. There's no way out that I can see."
"You can't see the back view of the cliff, Huw. They could have flights of stairs leading all the way down to the beach there, for all we know. Lot could have left by sea days ago."
"Aye, he could have. It's possible, I'll grant you that. But I'll wager he didn't, and if he stayed, then he'll stay there now until we say he can leave. There was a way out at the back, for some of my fellows have been there, seen it and closed it off. You set me in charge of all the scouts, remember, and that means that all our scouts are now Pendragon. First thing I set them to do once they got here was to explore the seaward side of things. There's a way down to the sea from the back, certainly, but it's not man-made. There's a few flights of steps, but they're primitive, and the rest is as nature made it—steep and narrow and dangerous. About two-thirds of the way down from the top there's a chasm, as though the entire cliff fell sideways at some time. My fellows couldn't see the bottom of it, said it's just like a hole clear down through the earth. Anyway, the gap's about ten paces wide at its narrowest point, and crossed by a bridge. Or it was. My fellows chopped the bridge down."