The wrist of this dead and bloodless thing showed evidence of two hard, overlapping chops, and the index finger still bore the massive golden ring imprinted with the seal of the Boar, Lot's personal insignia. Longhead held it up to the corpse's eyes, as though the dead man might be able to see and appreciate it.
"And there's your seal. See you? Lucky this bag is big enough. Now, if we place this hand atop the other, the ring still up, the gods will know you when they see you. Gully. They'll see a King, just as you wanted. They'll know you for the stinking, festering pile of dung you are. There, now, my friend, my so-long-trusted friend."
He tied the ends of the belt together and looped them like a sling around the corpse's neck, and then stood up, collected the rope and coiled it carefully before throwing the loops up and over the bough above his head, catching the slack in his free hand as it fell back to him. Then, with not as much as another glance at the corpse, he bent his back to the task of hoisting the body into the tree and securing the rope around the thick and ancient bole. When he was finished, he stepped back and looked up at the dead man swaying above him.
"There, now. You're above and beyond everyone else again, as you always thought you ought to be. When the gods come looking for you, show them your mighty seal and tell them Lagan Longhead sent you." He grasped one dangling leg and swung it violently, setting the hanging body spinning, and then crashed to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and screaming his wife's name loudly enough to frighten himself. Snatching his hands away from his eyes again, he held them out at his sides as though preparing to take flight, and knelt there, hunched and quivering, for a long time, peering about him and tilting his head, listening. He leaped to his feet then and pulled the bloody axe from his belt before crouching to turn completely around again, his every move radiating menace. When nothing met his gaze he straightened, inhaling sharply, then ran off in a long, loping stride to disappear into the woods, leaving the Druids' circle to the silence again, disturbed only by the buzzing of the flies attracted to the fresh- spilled blood.
Two miles away from the Druids' circle, Uther, with no thought now of Lagan Longhead in his mind, was closer to despair than he had ever been. By his reckoning, it was shortly after noon, and below him on the valley floor his army was being slaughtered, overwhelmed by numbers that simply swamped their disciplined and normally impregnable formations. The enemy from the south had swept into view nigh on three hours earlier in numbers that appalled his eyes, marching in tight, disciplined phalanxes and spreading clear across the eastern floor of the valley before wheeling inexorably to attack the pitifully thin lines of his infantry. At the same time the masses from the north had swept down, cheering, to join them, completely surrounding Uther's now woefully inadequate force. But even above the tumult of the clash below, he had still been able to hear the noises from the skirmish above and behind him, where his bowmen and infantry were fighting what he feared would be a losing battle with the unknown forces swarming up the hill from the rear.
Three separate armies had combined in one engagement—ten thousand men, perhaps more, against his two thousand.
He himself had led the first successful cavalry charge against them an hour before, two hundred men at his back, hammering death down from the hillside and around his own beleaguered perimeter from right to left, cleaving a bloody and relentless path through the packed masses of the enemy, shattering them and sending them reeling. The Camulodian, Philip, had led a charge in similar strength from the opposite direction, sweeping down and around from left to right, passing Uther's force on the outside of his progress at the midpoint. The attack had worked miraculously well and had given the hard-pressed Camulodian infantry the chance to regroup and reform their ranks, but devastating as the double charge had been, it had been a mere swat at a swarm of bees, and the enemy had pressed in again as soon as the charging cavalry had passed.
What was worse, and heartbreakingly so, was that the manoeuvre had worked only once. By the time the second wave of cavalry had thundered down from above to repeat the assault, the enemy had prepared for them and met them with massed banks of spears, concealed until too late by the throngs in front of them. The spearmen had ignored the horsemen themselves and concentrated upon slaughtering their mounts, so that the surging masses of heavy horses crashed into ruin, unable to penetrate the densely packed formations that confronted them and foundering against an insurmountable barrier of their own dead. Uther had watched from above, raging but utterly helpless and unable to do anything to change the situation.
He heard his name being shouted and turned slowly to see Garreth Whistler coming towards him, accompanied by Dedalus, both men carrying bright, multicoloured bundles of the clothing that Ygraine's women had discarded before their escape.
"Uther! Get down! Come down here!"
Mystified, and giving way to his anger now that they had given him a focus, Uther leaped down from his horse.
"What in the name of all the gods are you two doing? Our army's being slaughtered down there, and you're collecting women's clothing?"
"Aye," Dedalus spat. "And we're being slaughtered up above, as well. We're finished, Uther. This battle is over, save for the dying.
All we can do now is salvage what we can, and try to live to fight again."
Uther stood staring, his mind refusing to work, and then he shook his head. "What are you saying, live to fight another day? Are you suggesting that we should run away? Flee the field? Damnation to that! If we are to die, then we're to die, so let's get to it!"
"No, Uther, we don't all have to die. Dedalus has found a way to cut our losses. With these." Garreth Whistler hoisted the bundle he held in his arms. "Tell him, Ded."
"With these—" Dedalus dropped his bundle and reached out to grasp Uther's red cloak "—and this. They all know this, those whoresons down there. They've seen you lead the charge and they know who you are. Now we have a chance to stop the killing, but you have to flee with the women."
"What women? You're mad. You think I'd flee like Lot? You've lost your mind."
"No, my plan will work. But even if it doesn't, at least it offers us a chance to do something." Dedalus paused, seeing that Uther had no idea what he was talking about. "Look, Uther. These clothes here are too bright to hide, you said so yourself. That's why the women had to take them off. They would have been visible from miles away. You would be, too. You are, already, with your red and gold. Now, if we mount men behind our riders, men dressed in these things, they'll look like women from down below. And if you ride off leading them, with the remainder of our cavalry and your standard-bearer riding ahead of you, and make your way along the flank of the hill here to the southwestward, everyone down there will see you going, and what do you think they'll do?"
"They'll laugh, as I should be laughing, had I the heart for it."
"Aye, they might laugh, Uther," Garreth Whistler said, "but they'll follow you, hungry to catch and kill a King and sate themselves on his women. Lot would reward them richly for bringing him your head. And if they follow you, if even half of them follow you, our lads below will have that much the better chance of living through this day. It's only numbers that have beaten them, not warriors or tactics."