The fight had been short and sharp, and Uther, who was still some distance away and approaching rapidly, watched with approval as Garreth Whistler, in command of the returning cavalry, called off the chase that would have put an end to all of the surviving raiders. Uther doubted that they had enough men left to man their craft, and Garreth plainly had more urgent matters on his mind. The raging grass fire that the Outlanders had started was burning out of control, sparks and whirling embers blown everywhere by the wind so that the conflagration was spreading faster than a man could run. It had already crossed the Hat plain of the ridge's top and swept down into the narrow valley behind, where the wind funnelled it and led it directly to the rows of infantry tents that lined the hillsides.
The fire lasted only moments, but the damage it did in that time was appalling. More than half of the infantry's leather tents, all ranged in perfect formation and clean lines, were destroyed, along with everything in them. And two of their four remaining commissary wagons had been badly burned, the bone-dry wooden bodies and wheel spokes catching fire instantly and blazing fiercely before the vehicles could be run out into the bed of the stream that wound through the valley bottom. Everything that they contained, all the provisions and supplies, was either destroyed completely or rendered unfit to eat.
It was one more example of Uther's Luck, and the only grounds Uther had for gratitude lay in the fact that their hospital tents and wagons had been laid out and drawn up on the flat, gravelly bottomland of the bend on the far, north-facing bank of the stream. Four more large commissary wagons, long since emptied of provisions, had been turned over to hospital duties, and these were completely unharmed. There was little growth of any kind on the inhospitable ground there on the other side of the stream, for it was the flood lands of the little river, so although the storm of flying sparks and embers had swirled across the stream bed easily, the sparse grass that was there had been trodden down too thoroughly to burn fiercely.
Looking at the scene and visualizing the carnage that might have taken place had his wounded been trapped on the side of the stream nearest the fire, with its thick, dry grass, Uther sucked air sibilantly between tight lips and reminded himself that they were at the end of the campaigning season and due to go home soon anyway. Masking his disgust, he met with Popilius Cirro, Garreth Whistler, Huw Strongarm and the other officers and issued orders to break camp and form a column for one final march, to stamp out a crawling enemy column in passing, and then to head homeward to Camulod and a winter season of well-earned rest.
The march homeward was straightforward and presented them with no difficulties, despite the shortage of supplies caused by the fire. Even the enemy column, almost a thousand heavily armed men, caused them little trouble, for Herliss had been specific in his instructions, and his intelligence regarding the mercenary expedition was flawless. All of that, combined with the veteran Cornish- man's comprehensive knowledge of the terrain over which the enemy would be moving, virtually guaranteed a victory for the Camulodians.
Uther set his trap in a long, narrow, steep-sided defile that provided the only easy route between two neighbouring valleys. The place was an obvious setting for an ambush, of course, and the enemy commander scouted it thoroughly before committing his troops to advance, but Uther had anticipated that and planned for it. His own scouts lay in slight depressions on the open ground above the defile on both sides, covered by nets woven with grass torn from neighbouring clumps. From more than twenty paces, they were invisible to the enemy scouts, who were looking only for large parties of warriors. They were invisible, too, to Uther's own advance guard on both sides of the defile, until they stood up and signalled that the enemy scouts had withdrawn, satisfied that the way was safe.
Uther's Pendragon bowmen then launched themselves at the run, quickly covering the half mile from where they had lain concealed while the scouting progressed. As they approached the lip of the defile on both sides, they dropped to their bellies and remained there, concealed from everyone in the narrow passageway below until the signal came to bring them to their feet. As the bowmen sprang into view of the enemy, Uther's cavalry charged both ends of the passageway, blocking advance and retreat, and the hapless mercenaries, most of whom were on foot, rapidly fell into a confused piled of maimed men and corpses under the hissing, deadly accurate rain of long Pendragon arrows, against which they had no defence.
When it was over, Uther was well satisfied. His men had ended the campaign on a high note, with a victory that would soon resonate from one end to the other of Lot's domain. He sent men to collect the enemy baggage-and-supply train—a rich and valuable haul—and to count the slain, and he was unsurprised that they brought back a tally in excess of seven hundred dead, not one of whom was Camulodian or Cambrian. Not all of the slain had died of arrow wounds, and many had been slaughtered out of hand upon surrendering. Uther knew that well, but he made no attempt to question the report. The hundreds of wounded now left alive, he knew, would be sorely injured and would provide no further threat to him or his. The less badly wounded, who might have been inspired to fight again someday, had all been inspired instead, by their captors, to succumb to their injuries. That was the way wars were fought. Neither side had time nor resources to handle large numbers of prisoners. Local warriors, native to the land in which they fought, might reasonably expect that they would be spared to return to their own homes. Not so mercenaries. Mercenaries understood their own risks when they hired themselves out.
After leaving the scene of the ambush, they encountered no other hostile activity along the way. They were able to keep hunting parties ranging ahead of them at all times, and to everyone's surprise and pleasure, the hunters were invariably successful. The marchers dined on venison almost every day, and in the early stages of their journey, in what appeared to be a reversal of their bad luck, they even found a burned-out farmstead with a pair of granaries that were almost full, one of them holding oats and the other wheat. They found them by accident, for the small buildings had been cunningly hidden in a dense copse more than a hundred paces from the farm buildings by a farmer clever enough to anticipate that it might be to his benefit to have a hoard that was not plainly visible. Unfortunately, it had done him and his family little good, for the marauders who came upon his farm had burned the place down about his ears anyway, evidently killing him and his whole family, without discovering the hoard of grain.
Eight days after that, lit and healthy, the returning raiders reached the point of their journey closest to Camulod, and the following morning Popilius Cirro and his thousand men split away from the Cambrian contingent and made their way without ceremony north by west for the last short stage of the journey home. Uther was sorely tempted to interrupt his own ride home in order to go with them, even for a brief visit, for the young boy in him still tended to think of Camulod, uneasily, from time to time, as his true home. He told himself that it was important that he visit the Legates Titus and Flavius, or whoever was in charge in Camulod nowadays, in order to pass on his news about the impending spring invasion, and for a time he almost yielded to the urge, but his common sense would not allow him to deceive himself that thoroughly, and so he grudgingly steeled himself against the lure of Camulod and its luxuries. Instead he spent an entire evening with Popilius Cirro, first outlining and then detailing and emphasizing the crucial instructions he wished the veteran commander to pass on to the authorities in Camulod.