"It was true. And he made no attempt to deny it, because he knew whence it came."
"Aye." Hod the Strong turned his head slightly to look at Owain of the Caves, who stared back at him. his face expressionless. "But we'll never know for sure, will we?" He glanced back at Uther. "Very well, then. I'll tell my people what occurred, and I'll make no attempt to stir them against you, but I can't speak for Cunbelyn."
The other, hearing his name, held up his hand palm outward and shook his head. "Nor I," he said. "Nor I."
"So be it." Uther turned away from the two Chiefs back towards the other witnesses, who were now standing in a quiet group.
"Have someone clean that up," he said to no one in particular, nodding in the general direction of the headless corpse, and then he stalked away, still carrying his bloody sword, followed by Garreth Whistler and Owain of the Caves. He had taken no more than four steps, however, before he stopped and looked back over his shoulder to where young Huw Strongarm stood watching him. For a short while he stood there, staring deliberately at the younger man, and then he dipped his head in the tiniest of nods.
"You'll yet have some questions to ask me, I think, eh. Cousin? More than had occurred to you when we spoke earlier, no? Come then, if you like, and I'll try to answer them for you."
Young Strongarm nodded in return, then threw his cloak backwards, over his shoulders, drew a deep breath and stepped forward to accompany the trio.
Cativelaunus watched them leave and then threw off his hood and shook out his long white hair before turning to Brynn of Y Gaer.
"So," he said. "There's an end to uncertainty! No interregnum. Daris will be happy. Let's go and tell him." He snapped his fingers to attract the attention of one of his own minor chieftains, then waved towards the body of Meradoc.
"Throw this in a hole with the others—a deep hole. Three bodies, four heads. Make sure you plant them well, too, because we don't want to be snouting them later." He stopped short, staring at the man to whom he had been speaking, then leaned slightly forward and repeated himself more slowly. "Three bodies, I said— four heads. Count them if you don't believe me. Meradoc, Petifax and Janus the two-faced Roman!"
Chapter EIGHTEEN
Huw Strongarm felt very strange. He would be hit with an overpowering urge to laugh, shout and leap around, and then within the space of a few heartbeats, he would want instead to weep like a child—although his dignity as a warrior and a Chief would never have permitted any possibility of his being able to do either. Nonetheless, his breast felt tilled to bursting with tumultuous feelings, all of them demanding some kind of violent, demonstrative, physical outlet. Rather than give in to any of them, however, Huw forced himself to walk stiff-legged, taking great strides, chin pulled in to his chest, fists clenched, arms pumping, his eyes fixed on the path ahead of him, following the tracked footprints in the mud.
Huw Strongarm, Chief of the northern Pendragon clans, was not yet seventeen years old, a boy in all but size and rank. But no one who knew the youth had ever doubted his natural leadership. Even in childhood, he had outstripped his cradle-mates at every stage of growth and development, being the first among them to crawl, and then to walk, to talk and even to reason coherently and with logic. By the time he was eleven, approaching twelve, his voice had begun to break, and long before his thirteenth birthday he had acquired a coarse body hair. But even so, no one, himself included, had been prepared for the incredible growth that he experienced in the two years, that followed. Almost overnight, it seemed, between one season and the next, the boy exploded in size, outstripping his own friends almost visibly day by day, until he towered even over his father's chieftains, some of whom were the largest men in the Federation.
Encouraged by all the wonders that were happening to him so quickly, he might easily have become a bully or a loud-mouthed, unpopular, opinionated lout. But Huw did neither. By the time his beloved father drowned, just prior to his son's sixteenth birthday, Huw had completely endeared himself to all his people simply by being himself—modest yet confident, admirable and unmatchable in everything he did. He had undergone the Manhood Rites at the age of fourteen, a full year ahead of his birth-year brethren, going alone into the forest to subsist by his own wits for two long weeks, and then returning with the skins and pelts of creatures he had hunted and killed during that time. Among those had been the pelt of a black wolf and the tail and knife-edged tusks of a wild boar. Few men in living memory had returned with two such trophies from a single foray, and only one boy entering manhood had ever equalled either kill in size, by bringing back the skin of a large bear.
Huw knew that there were some who sniggered behind his back at the enormous spurt of growth that had shot his body into a man's size, and who claimed that his mind had been weakened accordingly by deprivation, but most of the time he was able to ignore such things completely, being clever enough to understand that the disdain of his detractors was born of jealousy. They called him a freak, envious of his size and strength, and some of them even whispered that his shocking growth had been magical, achieved through sorcery. For many months now. however, no one had dared say or even whisper such things within range of his ears . . . not since the day he had been pushed too far and had thrashed two of his own cousins, breaking bones, blackening eyes and drawing blood from both, despite the fact that they were both half a decade older than he was.
As he walked now, Huw smiled, remembering that occasion. People thought he had lost his temper that day—the first time in years that anyone could remember Huw Pendragon having done so—but Huw himself knew differently. What he had done was deliberate, carefully considered and planned in advance, and then carried out with precision and dispatch. He had even manipulated the circumstances, staging the event so carefully and completely that not even the principals, two bullying louts from another branch of his clan, had suspected that they were being used. Huw had contrived matters so that his cousins had ended up taunting and challenging him in a public place, raucously belittling his unseemly size. The punishment he had then meted out was swift, thorough and well-deserved, and a clear warning to others to respect the matter, and the manner, of the differences that set him apart.
In the aftermath, while they were still dazed and uncomprehending, he was deeply solicitous, apologizing for his loss of temper as he saw to the tending of their injuries.
Since that day, there had been no challenges of any kind issued to Huw in any way. Upon the death of his father earlier in the year, the elders of his clan had ratified Huw's succession to the Chief's chair, ignoring his extreme youth and honouring instead his physical prowess, his natural sagacity, astounding in one so young, and his unfailing goodwill.
Now, Huw's conflicting moods were born of the knowledge that he would be one of the six men personally responsible for raising Uther Pendragon to the kingship. Part of him—the better, more realistic part, Huw knew—was convinced that he would be doing the right thing and that Uther would make a fine, perhaps even a magnificent King—a natural champion of truth and honour, seeking and achieving nothing but the best for the people who were his responsibility.
Another part of Huw, however, was less than convinced of that. That jaundiced, less trusting and more cynical part of him lay deep down, hidden at the very bottom of his mind, sullied and stained by the impressions of the trampling, careless feet of those who had disappointed and disillusioned the young man during his boyhood— ambitious men to whom truth and honour were worthless things, sacrificed early in the struggle to realize their own designs. That such men were everywhere, and that they were not always easy to identify, Huw was acutely aware. One of them, Meradoc, lay newly dead, and until a short time before his death, Huw had been completely in his thrall, convinced that the Llewellyn Chief was the man who should be the chosen King and that Uther Pendragon was an enemy to the good of the Federation.