Shortly after the two men left, Dyllis returned from her long walk, almost breathless with excitement over the number of men now in the camp. Ygraine had heard Uther himself say that Popilius Cirro had brought a thousand men with him. but she had never seen a thousand men assembled in one place and could not begin to visualize what such a gathering would look like. Her own father, Athol Mac Iain, she had often been told, could assemble a thousand warriors from his own clansmen and put them into the field within three days, but Ygraine had never known him do so. And her husband, Lot, who dealt, she knew, in thousands of men, assembling armies of mercenaries time after time, had never dared to have that large a host, potentially hostile and uncontrollable, assemble anywhere close to him at any time.
Dyllis told her that behind their tent and facing down into the river valley, row upon row of infantry tents, each of them large enough to accommodate four men sleeping side by side, were laid out in grids and blocks, covering the hillside entirely on the south side of the river and filling up the valley. These tents had been rigorously paced out so that no tent was closer to or farther away from its neighbours than any other, and between these regular blocks of tents were much wider divisions that served as streets, broad enough to accommodate columns of men marching ten abreast or mounted troopers riding four abreast.
The two regular day guards had accompanied Dyllis, Cavan and the older Derek Split-Eye, named for the spectacular scar that bisected the left side of his face, a knife slash that had opened him from above the eyebrow down to the edge of his mouth. Somehow, savage as the blow had been, it had been shallow enough to miss the eyeball, merely slicing through the lid above and below the eye itself. It had deadened that side of Derek's face, however, paralysing the cheek and leaving patches of grey hair in his eyebrow and moustache. Derek Split-Eye was a veteran, one of Uther's original Dragons. Cavan, on the other hand, was much younger and far more comely, smooth-faced and bright-eyed, with teeth that were still white and sound. His shoulders were broad, his hands and arms almost hairless and strongly muscled. Cavan had never spoken to Dyllis before that day, but both women had known that he was strongly attracted to her, barely able from the first day of his assignment to keep his eyes off her as she went about her business. She and Ygraine had even laughed about it. Now it became plain to Ygraine that Dyllis had hardly been impervious to his charms, either.
Ygraine stood erect in the corner by the wash table, her back to Dyllis, who continued to chatter, oblivious to the fact that her mistress was no longer listening. Instead, the Queen was thinking of Uther Pendragon, bare-headed and smiling with that upward- curling lip that came so close to sneering yet did nothing of the kind.
"Lady?" she heard him say, smiling with his voice, and a rush of gooseflesh swept across her skin. She remembered how he had reached out one hand to her, saw the long, strong fingers with their square, blunt nails and the tiny black hairs that curled over the knuckles. She shuddered deliciously, feeling the now familiar sensation of breathlessness swelling in her chest. And then she inhaled sharply and deeply, willing herself to think of other things. Uther, she knew, harboured no such thoughts of her. She had long since learned to detect the slightest signs of attraction in the men around her, and how to ignore and discourage them. In Uther Pendragon's case, she had seen and felt nothing, not the slightest intimation of interest in her as a woman.
"Ygraine, my lady?"
She returned to her senses quickly, aware that Dyllis had been speaking to her, and swung back to face the other woman, banishing her dangerous thoughts. But she could not listen to Dyllis's rhapsodies about young Cavan—not if she wanted to keep her wits about her. The air suddenly seemed hot and humid, and Ygraine felt constrained and confined in the command tent. She wanted to be outside walking in the fresh air. Uncaring whether she might be bruising her friends' feelings, she sent the younger woman to her sleeping quarters with orders to mend a shawl that Ygraine had torn earlier, and then she crossed to the entrance of the tent, where she called to Cavan and asked him to take her to Uther.
Uther was not in his tent when she arrived there, and no guards stood outside it, but she knew he would not be far away, and so she decided to wait for him. She dismissed Cavan and sent him back to his post, although it was plain to see that he was not happy about leaving her there outside the King's Tent, unguarded. She smiled and asked him what he thought she might steal if left alone, or whether he thought, with so many troopers about, that she was planning to escape in broad daylight. Cavan nodded and left, flushed and flustered by her humour.
Left alone, Ygraine crossed her arms on her breast and looked about her. There was no place to sit down, but the air was cooler here outside the tent, for the site was pleasantly sheltered by the thick leaves of the surrounding trees, and so she lingered, looking up to the western sky. A heavy thundercloud had rolled in and now towered upwards for miles, flickering with lightning, an ominous tower of dark blue, black and purple, shot with malevolent highlights of yellowish brown. She stared up at it for a long time, trying to discern the direction of its drift, wondering if it would blow by or sweep closer to them and unleash its burden on their heads. She was still standing there with her head raised and her eyes closed, breathing deeply and slowly, when Uther arrived. She heard his approaching footsteps and opened her eyes just in time to experience one of those moments that are remembered forever by those who witness them. He was less than four paces from her by then, his surprised pleasure evident in his eyes, and seeing her look at him, he began to raise his hand to greet her or to question her, but then the world turned white in a blinding flash that seemed to explode directly between them with a solid, yet somehow silent concussion, like the mute crack of a mighty whip. They both felt the force of the explosion physically, and it left them stunned and badly frightened, their nostrils filled with a strange, almost salty smell, as though the very air had been singed. And then, before either of them could even begin to recover, a solid deluge of ice-cold rain hit them, soaking them instantly and depriving them of what little breath had been left to them.
Uther was the first to recover. He stepped towards her, scooped her up into his arms as though she were weightless and carried her into his tent in three long strides. He lowered her feet to the ground as soon as they were safely inside the tent and made to step back, but Ygraine clung to him, whimpering in her throat and quivering with what he took to be terror. In fact, she was shaking with an instantaneous resurgence of the same raging lust that had assailed her earlier, and it had consumed her so thoroughly that she shuddered with the strength of it.
Uther held her awkwardly in his arms, peering over her head into the dimness of the tent, highly aware of the soft pliancy of her body beneath the thin stuff of her gown and of the way her thighs pressed against his own, and debating foolishly with himself on what he ought to do. His eyes had still not recovered from the blinding white flash of the thunderbolt that had struck so close to them, and what remained of his hearing was overwhelmed by the drumming roar of the heavy rain on the leather roof panels above their heads. Ygraine moved again, almost writhing against him, and he distinctly felt the changing shape of the soft flesh of her thighs. He coughed, clearing his throat with embarrassment, and tried a second time to push himself away from her, but she clung more tightly to him than before, and he stopped, wishing that he had had the foresight to wear his armour, or at least a leather cuirass and studded loin guard that would have stopped the shape and softness of the woman from impressing itself against his body. For the first time since capturing her, he had become acutely conscious of her femaleness, and he raised one arm, cupping the back of her head in his open palm and holding her face gently against his shoulder. As he did so, however, she pulled her head back and looked up at him, her eyes enormous and her mouth open as though to speak. He dipped his head towards her and waited to hear what she would say, but she said nothing and simply continued to stare at him with those huge eyes. And as he gazed back at her, he felt her lean back further against his encircling arm, the movement, deliberate and unmistakable, pushing the lower half of her body against him, enflaming and engorging him, and he knew he had to get away from her. He reached up with his free hand to disengage her arms from about his neck, but as he did so, she rose upon the tips of her toes and grasped his head in both hands, pulling him down to where she could kiss him, her mouth closing over his and her tongue thrusting against his lips.