"The Queen is safe and you and she need his counsel."
Uther nodded, his face grave. "I won't try to offer you a reward for this, but when Lot is dead and we are safe back in Cambria, you can tell me what you want and you'll have it, if it lies within my power to grant it."
"I want to live in Camulod with you and the Dragons."
Uther was surprised and touched by the simplicity with which she said the words, so close to the dearest wish of his own heart. But he could not find it in him to tell her bluntly that he would never live in Camulod again. He knew, and she did, too, were she to think about it, that his life lay now in Cambria, among his own people as their King. He had sworn an oath to that effect. And so he said nothing of that, but grinned with pleasure at her request.
"Well, my old friend, none of us can know what will happen tomorrow, but if fortune smiles on us and all goes well down here in this wild land, we might all be able to fulfill our dreams. Now, we'll be leaving here today as quickly as we can arrange ourselves and make away without appearing to run off. Our line of march will be directly southward to Herliss's fort at Tir Gwyn. You've been there. When you find Lagan, you can intercept us anywhere along that route, or at Tir Gwyn itself if it takes that long. May all the gods of Cambria go with you, Nemo, and may we see each other again soon. Farewell."
He held out his hand and Nemo grasped it in friendship and loyalty, probably for the first time ever, then sniffed and turned her face away, vainly trying to conceal the tears that stood in her eyes. Uther drew himself upright and Nemo nodded, her eyes downcast now, and then turned and strode off, jamming her helmet onto her head. As she went out, another decurion passed her on the way in and saluted Uther.
"Your pardon, lord, but we have to strike your tent again. Have you finished in here?"
Uther looked around him with a sigh. Apart from sitting in a chair by the brazier and pouring two cups of mead from the flask, he had not touched a thing since the tent was erected hours earlier.
"Aye," he murmured. "Bring in your men. I'm done here."
Less than two hours later, two hours of intense, concentrated labour by everyone concerned in the preparations, Uther's army had reformed itself and turned backward to face south, the way it had come. A full screen of scouts already rode fanned out ahead of it as it advanced, and another, similar force would deploy behind it as it marched. Uther had called for volunteers for the rearguard, a hazardous post should the northern Ersemen be as close as he suspected they might be, and command of that contingent had gone to a young officer called Marcus Bassus, a gifted junior commander from Camulod who took great pride in being the fourth generation of his family to serve in the forces of the Colony.
As his men marched away, Uther Pendragon sat alone for a while, gazing up to the towering headland where his arch-enemy might be standing looking down at him. Then, when the last of his troopers had almost disappeared from sight, he spurred his horse and rode after them, leaving young Bassus to form up his mixed guard of bowmen and infantry and take their place far in the rear of the retreating army.
Late in the afternoon of the following day, his rear ranks were overtaken and attacked by a fast-moving body of highly disciplined troops, forcing Uther to make use of a formation seldom used in his training programs, since his forces had seldom had to fight on the defensive. In the process of throwing out a protective screen of heavy cavalry to shield the infantry while they regrouped, Uther had little time to think about what the attack meant in terms of Bassus and his rearguard or his screen of rear scouts other than to recognize that they must all be dead. The enemy had advanced and attacked with shocking speed. The swiftness of their approach had made it difficult for his people to number them accurately in the early stages of the attack, but Uther was prepared to accept an approximation of from seven hundred and fifty to a thousand men, split into three independently advancing groups, each with its own commander.
The newcomers were Germanic, not Ersemen. That was obvious from their discipline and their generally well-equipped condition, with ring-mail shirts and uniform, rectangular shields. Many of them carried heavy axes, Uther could see, but the remainder carried long, useful-looking spears. Uther had never seen real Roman soldiers, for the Romans had disappeared from Britain during his early childhood, but he knew instantly that his attackers were Roman-trained veterans, tough and hard and superbly disciplined, real soldiers rather than rough bandits, men who had served and fought together for years and would be easily and eagerly brought to fight, but not put to flight. Watching the way they moved to engage his forces, he could see that they were familiar with cavalry and showed no fear of the mounted troopers. They held their formations effortlessly and were magnificently well drilled, and that set him wondering immediately whether he might be able to use their discipline to his advantage. He spurred his horse into a dead run and, closely followed by Garreth Whistler, Huw Strongarm and a small group of senior officers of the Camulod contingent, galloped to the top of a low knoll nearby, where he could look down on the activities taking place on the level ground below him.
The officer commanding the cavalry sent to interpose themselves between the enemy and Uther's deploying infantry was a Camulodian called Nestor Strabo. He had formed his men into a wedge formation for his first attack, but even as they formed up and began to move forward to the attack, he had to give the signal to halt them again when two of the three independent enemy units began moving quickly towards each other, forming themselves into the famous Roman tortoise configuration, while the third unit wheeled and moved away from them.
The two units forming the tortoise, both of them on Uther's right, grouped themselves in the classic oval formations and covered themselves completely with overlapping shields, forming a pair of flawless, protective domes that rose from the grounded shields on all sides to form two impenetrable carapaces, each of them bristling with long spears projecting between shields all around the perimeter. The long spears held the cavalry at bay, and Nestor Strabo's force was effectively neutered and rendered impotent, for their swords were neither long enough nor heavy enough to do any damage, even could they have come within striking distance of the defensive shields, and the length of the spears projecting towards them ensured that they could not even ride between the two close-set formations.
Seeing this, Strabo issued new orders and swung his cavalry wedge around in a full gallop towards the third, most distant enemy phalanx, which had been moving quickly to outflank his group as they approached the two tortoises. Instantly, the third phalanx coalesced and formed a tortoise too, while the other two disintegrated fluidly and their men moved swiftly against Strabo's cavalry from the rear. Strabo saw the move and waved his followers aside, sweeping them out of their charge and across the face of the enemy, leading his horsemen back towards the original formations, which quickly regrouped at his approach. Strabo raised an arm and brought his men to a halt at his back, then stood erect in his stirrups, his head moving from side to side as he watched all three enemy formations. The situation was static, with both sides vying for advantage and neither able to do anything effective.
Uther was watching the activity too, but seeing the inability of Strabo's troopers to close with the enemy, an alarm flared in his mind and gave him an idea. He swung to face the Whistler, unhooking the heavy flail from his saddle as he did so and holding it out towards Garreth as though it weighed nothing at all, the thick shaft pointed at the other man and the heavy iron ball dangling at the end of the short length of chain that fixed it to the shaft.