As Uther emerged from the screen of willows, Herliss saw him and began striding towards him, holding up a peremptory hand so that Uther stopped in surprise and waited for the other man to reach him.
"What's wrong?"
Herliss was glowering at him. "Nothing, but you and I have to talk, alone. I need to know, where do we go from here?"
Uther grinned in satisfaction. "You mean you are in favour?"
"Do you take me for a complete fool? Of course I am in favour, and not merely because mine is the first life that will be saved." The old man looked about him. "I need a drink of something, something cold. Do you people drink beer?"
"Come."
Uther turned immediately and led the way along the riverside towards the main body of the camp. They came to a fallen tree, shorn of its limbs, that stretched across the stream, and crossed it in single file. When they reached the commissary tents, Uther went directly to the second one in line and called for beer, and moments later turned back to Herliss, a large flagon topped with foam in each hand.
"Here. Cambria's best."
They drank, and Herliss swallowed enormously, draining half his flagon, then nodded judiciously and belched loudly.
Close by them, in front of one of the commissary tents, was a trestle table flanked by a long bench on either side. Uther nodded towards the benches and moved to sit on one of them. Herliss sat opposite him and placed his tankard on the tabletop.
"Good beer. Now let's talk about how to proceed from here."
"You made your mind up quickly."
Herliss's response to that was swift and keen-eyed. "You think I'm gulling you?" Uther kept his face expressionless and made no attempt to speak, and finally the other man grunted and growled in his deep, rough voice, "Either that, or you think me an idiot and a facile coat-changer."
He waited, cocking one eyebrow in defiance, but when Uther again failed to respond, he continued. "I spent most of my life being loyal and obedient to Lot's father, and, in the old Duke's memory, I have been loyal to his son. Not always obedient, though, and not recently. Loyalty, however, I've given. Too much. It is a strange word, loyalty. Loyalty is honour, or it was where I was raised . . . and when I was raised . . .
"Where loyalty and honour and even obedience are passionately involved, people can go blind and deaf from time to time, and things can happen that don't get looked at too closely. But loyalty makes demands of its own. It has to be two-way, otherwise it can't live long. It's a give-and-take thing, and there's no getting around that. And if people don't get loyalty in return for their own loyalty, sooner or later they stop being loyal. And then they start to see things they didn't see before, and to hear things they never heard, and they start to pay attention to what's going on around them . . . Things like having their own sons sent out to bring them back in chains and being forced to do that under the threat of danger to their families. Lot is holding my grandson's life over my head as a threat . . . Ach!" He spun away and spat. "But why should I be surprised? He's been doing the same thing for years to almost everyone I know. That is how he ensures their loyalty."
Herliss picked up his tankard again and emptied it. "Tell me, what are your plans for Cornwall?"
Uther gazed at him blank-faced for a long count and then shook his head. "For Cornwall? I have no plans for Cornwall, other than to kill this creature who kings it and then get back to my own home as quickly as I can. I have hundreds of plans for Cambria, for my own home, all of them urgent, but I can tend to none of them since every time I turn around this rabid animal who calls himself your King is sneaking and snarling at my back. I want him dead. Dead and dismembered. I want his loathsome hide nailed to a wall for everyone to see and spit upon. I want him gone from this world, never to harm another living soul, his maggot-eaten skull impaled before my tent, a grinning warning to all men who would be like him. What I want, in the end, is the opportunity to live my life among my own, in peace and comfort. I want a wife of my own, and sons to bear my name, and I want them to live contentedly in Tir Manha in Cambria."
Herliss had sat gazing at Uther throughout this declaration, his eyebrows rising slightly as the outpouring increased in fervour and in vehemence, and when it was done, he sat with pouting lips for a count of live heartbeats. Then he nodded.
"Fine. We both want the same thing: Lot dead and you gone back to Cambria or Camulod or wherever you want to be, so that Cornwall can recover from the chaos and the damage he has caused. Lot is a rabid animal and must be treated as one, struck down swiftly, immediately and lethally. To do that, though, we'll have to be close to him and in a position of trust. Closeness we can achieve, but that last is near impossible. He trusts no one. This nonsense with Lagan and my grandson proves the truth of that."
"But if you win free from here and take the Queen back with you in a spectacular escape, then he will have to welcome you for the sake of appearances. Is that not so?"
"Aye, it is . . . at least it would be so, were he a normal man. But I believe he's crazed, and growing more so all the time. So what will actually happen once we do win back is in the hands of the gods. But if we succeed without disaster blasting us, what then? Will the Queen start sending you intelligence of what Lot intends to do? Will you need me to do that, too?"
"Aye, but only as and when you learn, or the Queen learns, of developments in Lot's planning. And we must take great care as to how we go about such things. If we are to rid ourselves of this monster, then we need to work closely together and yet take as few risks as possible, for you and your people will be unable to trust or depend upon any of Lot's mercenaries."
"Agreed. So how will we go about this?"
"You will start by bribing my people, immediately and lavishly, so that they will arrange for you to visit the Queen's bodyguard. Once there, you will tell Alasdair, their captain, that the Queen has provided you with treasures from her and her women in order that you might suborn our troopers and arrange a mass escape. It will be obvious that you have made a successful start on your planning. I'll provide the people to be bribed, and they will be my best and most trusted. They will go along with everything, and your own troops will be none the wiser. You'll achieve your escape and return to Lot, avoiding any encounter with your own son on the way, and once you are safely reinstalled in your own home and your own responsibilities, I will find a way of coming to you and we can work out ways and means of remaining in touch with each other."
"Good. I'll wager that Lagan will be our main liaison."
Uther smiled and nodded. "I hope you are right. I would enjoy meeting him. And we have a mutual friend in Cambria, the Lady Mairidh."
"Lydda's sister. Aye. She is married to my brother, Balin."
Uther called for two more tankards of beer before turning to smile at the grizzled Cornish veteran. "We have agreed on mighty things here, you and I. Our world will not remain the same, I think, in the aftermath of what has occurred today."
Their beer came quickly, and as they tipped an offering onto the ground to appease and thank the gods, Herliss nodded, his eyes on the foam atop his tankard.
"Aye . . . Uther, Ygraine and Herliss. A strange mix, I think. I wonder, will anyone take note of it in times to come?"
Chapter TWENTY-NINE
Until the moment he found himself kissing her, Uther had had no conscious intention of bedding Ygraine of Cornwall. She was a hostage for one thing, and his honour as her captor and her value as a commodity both dictated that he treat her with care, consideration and courtesy, returning her undamaged at the end of her captivity. That her husband had refused to trade for her was a setback, but Uther had almost expected Lot's indifference and had been thinking, from the moment of the woman's capture, that he could surely trade her with advantage back to her father, Athol Mac lain, King of the Hibernian Scots in Eire. For that reason alone, therefore, Uther would have regarded any contemplation of Ygraine in a sexual light as a foolish, irresponsible and reprehensible waste of time. Besides, he was fresh from the bed of the magnificent Morgas, who, if she lacked many of the attributes of the ideal wife, lacked none of the requirements of the ideal mistress.