"They chopped it down . . . Are you telling me it was unguarded?"
Huw grinned and shot a glance at Garreth Whistler. "Oh no, it was guarded. There's a guard tower above it and another below it, but they were built to guard against an attack coming up the path from the sea, and the people in them were not expecting Pendragon bowmen. No one was expecting our scouts and no one saw them arrive. They crept around the base of the cliffs under cover of night and then scaled them on either side of the path just after dawn. Then they flanked the guard towers and picked off all ten of the guards before the fools even knew they were under attack. After that, they chopped down the bridge. So no one will be leaving by that back route unless they sprout wings and fly across the chasm. And there will be no re-supply from the sea using that route, either."
By the time Huw had finished, Uther was shaking his head in admiration. But then Garreth Whistler spoke up. "Huw's people could be very important to us were we to leave them on the cliffs, Uther."
"How so?"
"Well, they're safe there from attack from above. No one can see them down there from the walls, let alone reach them. But then again they have the advantage of height and distance when the fleet that Lot's waiting for arrives—if it arrives. Lot's people in the fort up there will have no way of letting the newcomers know they're in danger. The fleet will sail in close, expecting to land safely at the base of the cliff, and my bowmen will use the same trick they used at home against the invasion fleet: fire arrows soaked in pitch. In the meantime, you can deploy your army right across the base of the headland there, and Lot's all trussed up like a fowl for roasting. Can't leave, can't escape."
"But then we'll be involved in a siege, and one we can't win. We have neither the time nor the resources."
"We don't need them. If Lot's Erse fleet comes when it's supposed to, we'll savage it and send it limping home. That'll be a victory, and we'll rub his nose in it, since he'll have to watch and do nothing. Then, with his fleet gone, we can hold him here by leaving a small force to keep him locked up while the rest of our army marches south again."
Uther sighed and then looked about him at the way his army spread across the landscape and at the way the old fortification on the headland reared above them. From where he sat, on a hill facing the rising headland, he could barely see the sea at all. The headland rearing up directly in front of him cut off most of the view, and he was left with no more than two small stretches of flat-horizoned seascape, one on either side of the promontory. Finally he nodded.
"Very well, we'll try it, but for no more than three days. I have no wish to sit around here growing old, waiting for a fleet that might not even be a reality. Make your dispositions then and convene a meeting of all officers in the command tent this afternoon an hour before dinner."
When the others had gone, Uther looked to where Nemo and a squad of Dragons were erecting the huge tent and estimated that it would be no less than half an hour before he could hope to move in and remove some of his heavy armour. Resigned, he swung his horse around and kicked it forward to where the individual units of his army were being dismissed by their commanders and were starting to lay out their encampment. He knew it would do no harm at all to spend the time he had riding among his troopers, letting them see his face and hear his voice as they sweated to lay out their barracks lines in a way that would not draw the wrath of their decurions. And while he was bantering with some of his own men from Tir Manha, a messenger came looking for him to tell him that there was a stranger bearing tidings and asking for him by name. Uther excused himself and made his way back with the messenger.
He recognized the newcomer immediately as one of Ygraine's servants. The man had been among her retinue at Herliss's Crag Fort.
Now, however, he looked very different. While he had once appeared sleek and well-fed and unctuous, he now seemed haggard and frightened, his clothes torn and road-worn and his face and hands blackened with dirt. Uther's face closed into a thunderous frown and remained that way until the fellow, whose name was Finn, had assured him that the Queen was safe and that his own appearance was due only to his difficulties in remaining hidden from the mercenaries who thronged the roads everywhere to the south. Mollified upon hearing that, Uther called for ale and led the man into his tent, which was just now fully prepared, and sat him down by a newly lit brazier that soon began to throw out a comforting heat.
The Queen was well. Finn reported somewhat breathlessly after he had drunk deeply from the flagon of ale that had been brought for him, and so was her child, but they had recently been moved into a stronghold less than twenty miles south of where the two men now sat—much closer to Uther and his rescuing army than Ygraine could ever have hoped for. Knowing that Uther would be a mere day or two away from her. Ygraine had decided to send word to him immediately to come and get her and the child. She had been waiting for her confessor, Joseph, to return from a journey so that he could write a letter for her, but events had moved too quickly. Finn had been sent out early with added urgency when she received unexpected word from one of her informants that Lot's main army in the southwest, having failed to bring the Saxons there to battle, had turned around and was now marching back into Cambria, where it was to be reinforced and strengthened before joining with Lot's remaining forces to exterminate the Camulodians. It was now known, Ygraine had been told, that Uther's army numbered no more than two thousand in all, and the army in the southwest, prior to being reinforced, already outnumbered them by three to one.
Three undisciplined mercenaries were no match for one mounted Camulodian trooper, the Queen knew, and were even less daunting when matched against a Pendragon longbow, but she had wanted Uther to know immediately of the threat at his back. Word had been sent north by sea to Lot, she said, advising him of the change in plans and the return of his army, and Ygraine had no idea what Lot's reaction might be. She did not, however, believe that it would bode any good for Uther, and she wanted him to take nothing for granted.
The Lady Ygraine would be waiting for King Uther as soon as he could come to her, Finn concluded, and she was surrounded by a tight core of loyal followers, including her own bodyguard. The fort in which she was now held was a minor one, well removed from the normal paths of armies and battle, and it had little more than a skeleton garrison, since its present purpose was only to provide a quiet place for the Queen to bear her child, and no one expected any trouble. Her own bodyguard shared garrison duties there and was more than capable of overcoming the others and capturing the place. They would do so as soon as Uther sent her word that he was coming. In the meantime, he said, the lady was in no danger, but she was impatient for him meet her son.
Uther listened to all Finn had to say, nodding from time to time as one point or another registered in his mind, and he soon found himself wishing that he had not been persuaded to besiege the Shelter. Lot's southern army might or might not be approaching him from the rear, but he had time to deal with that, should the problem materialize. What concerned him most now was his own impatience to see his living son.
He instructed Finn to return to the Queen and tell her that he would be coming for her within the week, but before he had even dismissed the man, he was interrupted by the arrival of yet another messenger, this one a Griffyd runner sent by the seaman, Aelle of Carmarthen, whose galley now lay along the coast less than a league south of Lot's present haven. Aelle, sailing northward and hugging the coastline two days earlier, had seen an entire fleet of Erse galleys unloading an army less than ten leagues—between thirty and forty Roman miles—to the north of Uther's current position. The discovery had been unplanned and unlooked for, and Aelle had been fortunate in being concealed from the seaward side by the land against his back. He had turned back southward as soon as he could safely do so, and knowing that Uther's force was headed north and west, he had begun dropping messengers ashore, a league apart from each other, to find and warn the King.