[Camulod 9] The Eagle by Jack Whyte

Author:Jack Whyte
Language: eng
Format: azw
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Legends & Mythology, Historical, Folk Tales
ISBN: 9780812568998
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2007-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

1

We were back within ten days, having taken two days to reach Baldwin's estate, where the women were being held, and three more to return with them in our train. Among the first things that I heard upon crossing back into Corbenic was that Pelles had been alive and his condition improving the day before. Even so, by the time we reached the villa, the change in his physical condition was startling, and he was far more alert than I had expected him to be. The lesions on his skin had faded noticeably and the sunken pockets beneath his eyes no longer held the degree of ghastly discoloration that had so upset me when I first saw him. He was still extremely weak, but he appeared to have lost none, of his mental faculties, for he recognized me and greeted me with a tremulous smile, and he was touchingly glad to see his mother and sisters restored to him.

Our physicians, however, were guarded in their prognostications. Only the passage of time, they told me privately, would tell the real story of how much he would recover. Baldwin's report on his degenerating mental condition had been self-serving lies, but the king had been subjected to large amounts of poison for a long time, and none of them was willing to guess whether or not his mind might have been damaged by the abuses he had suffered.

In spite of all that, however, now that he was being tended by his mother and sisters and was eating only foods that had been carefully selected and prepared, Pelles improved daily.

Our raid on Baldwin's villa had unfolded perfectly. Thanks to Cortix's knowledge of the terrain and the excellence of Griffyd's scouts who ranged in front of us the entire way, we were able to penetrate Baldwin's supposedly formidable defenses and ride right to our target without being seen by anyone. Four times we were warned of danger by our Pendragon scouts, but on each occasion, thanks to their vigilance and skill, we were able to ride around the threats—three of them manned watch posts and the fourth a well- armed hunting party.

We had arrived in sight of the villa by mid-afternoon of the second day, riding downwards from a high ridge that we had crossed by following a deep fold in its crest. The upper slopes of the hillside fronting the ridge were thickly forested, and Cortix led us down through them, along a tapering arm of woodland that extended almost to the upper edge of the tailored vineyards that covered the hillsides below. We were all impressed with the richness of the carefully cultivated valley extending from right to left below our vantage point, and the villa itself was less than a mile from where we sat, so we decided to stay where we were until dusk and attack under gathering darkness, since there was no slightest chance that we could cross the vineyards in the afternoon light without being seen, and we wanted

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