The Eagles' Brood

XXXVII

The Great Debate ended in an atmosphere very different from the one that had surrounded its beginnings two short weeks before. The vast crowds of revellers had dispersed in the preceding days, and at the end there remained only the clerics and the military presence supplied by ourselves and by Jacob of Lindum's people. The town of Verulamium, so briefly resurrected, had already fallen back into emptiness and decay, it seemed, and Michelus and his lawkeepers were once again empowered to maintain the peace in their small village within the original walls. Outside the town, the great amphitheatre sat empty again, its ranked and tiered seats and empty stage awaiting a future performance that might never occur.

On the day of our departure, after a late breakfast and a last round of farewells, we took our separate paths homeward. Vortigern and Jacob's party, including Ambrose, rode off first, heading east to join the great road north that ran the length of Britain. Saddened as I was to part from my newfound sibling, I took pleasure in the knowledge that we would meet again soon, when he came west, as promised, to Camulod. Germanus and his retinue, with their cavalry escort, rode south towards Londinium, whence they would travel south-westward to the coast, avoiding the new Saxon coastal settlements in the south-east, and thence to Gaul. We of Camulod struck out directly west, as we had planned, for Alchester and Corinium, where we would swing south through Aquae Sulis and home.

It was cold when we set out, and it grew colder as we proceeded. We were less than a day's ride from Verulamium, on a featureless road that climbed steadily through a fog of trailing, water-laden clouds, when heavy snow began to fall in thick, large flakes that swirled in a treacherous, bone- chilling wind and cut visibility to a few dozen paces. Our men reacted to snow this early in the year with shock and anger, despite the warning cold of the previous week. It was not yet full autumn, and the trees, though browning steadily, were still in leaf! I called my squadron commanders together and issued orders that we would encamp immediately and wait for this untimely storm to blow itself out. We made a cold and miserable bivouac and remained there for three long, wintry days, during which the unseasonable storm alternated between calm, silent periods of dense, thick- falling snow and lengthy periods of Hadean savagery when the shrieking, icy wind drove pellets of frozen snow before it like lethal weapons. Its fury finally abated, however, and we were able to ride on eventually through a now alien landscape, labouring heavily through deep drifts of snow beneath a sky still thickly shrouded with heavy, sullen clouds, and belaboured by a wind that had lost little of its malignity. We were high up, so the few trees we passed were small and hardy, but their leaves had been frozen by the snow and icy winds and how hung dead and crumpled, many of them fallen from their branches while yet green, their fruit unripe, their seeds stillborn and blasted. We were too high and too far from habitation for cropped fields, but I wondered uneasily how the harvest would fare if this unusual weather was widespread.

By noon the following day, nevertheless, we were well along on the road again and the air was warming rapidly, the cloud cover breaking up and scattering to allow weak sunlight to fall through so that the spirits of our men brightened visibly. I rode in a pensive frame® of mind, once again mulling over the conversation I had had with Bishop Patricius regarding the fate of the priest Remus. I pulled my mount around at one point and rode back towards the tail of our column looking for Lucanus, feeling a sudden need to talk with him, but I found him talking earnestly with Cyrus Appius, his concentration wholly taken up with their conversation and his efforts to keep up with Appius's superb horsemanship. I turned back before I reached them, suddenly unwilling to interrupt their colloquy simply to allay my own boredom. At the head of the column once more, I cleared my mind of my previous thoughts, straightened my shoulders and increased the pace slightly, smiling to myself as I did so, feeling a small, malicious pleasure in knowing that poor Luke would have to work harder than ever now to keep his mind on the two matters demanding his attention. The sun shone fully on my shoulders, warm and pleasant, and I felt better than I had in days.

Later that afternoon, breasting a hill crest, I saw a green, unbroken meadow falling gently away before me with no sign of snow anywhere and, acting purely on impulse, I reined in my horse and waited until the head of the column caught up to me. Cyrus Appius approached me, a question on his face, and I grinned at him.

"Our horses need a ran, Cyrus, and we need to blow away some cobwebs. There's an empty valley below us, on a long, easy slope. Deploy your men in squadrons. We're going to attack it." I turned to Donuil. "Take my standard to Rufio and tell him to ride with it until he is half-way up the opposite slope yonder. When our men reach the valley bottom, he is free to go where he will. The first man to reach him and claim the standard wins a flask of my own best wine for each of his squad mates tonight when we make camp. But tell Rufio I don't want him easily caught." I spoke again to Cyrus Appius. "It's about two miles, plus whatever Rufio can gain. What do you think?" He grinned at me, saluted, and swung away to issue his orders.

I rode with them, exulting in the exhilaration of the charge and trying to be at the finish when Rufio was finally run down, but I was a hundred paces distant, my big horse faltering, when one of Cyrus's own squadron claimed the prize amid cheers and jeers and groans of disappointment. By the time the confusion and merriment had worn itself out and some kind of order had been restored, the sun was beginning to sink low and I called for my officers to set up camp again. It was a happy camp that night, and I went to sleep well pleased with myself and my men.

Two days later, we sat, stunned, at the top of another hill, gazing at the smouldering ruins of what had been the little town of Alchester. Pellus had brought the news personally, and we had ridden hard for three hours to arrive here, although we knew we were far too late to be of any assistance to anyone. His scouts had found only smouldering ruins early drat morning, which meant that the conflagration had occurred at least the day before, since they would have seen the flames had they burned at night. In the tiny forum in front of the town hall lay a heaped pile of bodies, more than seventy of them, and another thirty charred, hideous, doll-like obscenities had been found within the basilica itself. Most of the corpses in the square were men, boys and infants of both sexes. Only four ancient, withered female corpses were counted. The remains in the basilica could have been anything.

Pellus had ridden to consult with one of his scouts as soon as we breasted the hill and now he came galloping back up towards us.

"They came from the west, along the main road." Pellus was a gruff-spoken man who had no time for titles or military courtesies, and I had long since grown used to his ways. "A big party, well over a hundred strong, but we already knew that. My men tell me they headed back the same way they came. Left lots of signs, and spilled off the road surface into the soft ground on each side. Big party. Don't know who they are, but they're not Saxons; we're too far from the sea, and they've got horses."

I glared at him. "These are cavalry?"

He shook his head. "Didn't say that. Said they had horses. Probably wagons, too. But there's a lot of them on foot. Took what booty they could find, though there couldn't have been much here worth having, and ail the women. My man Paulo reckons they're a day, a day and a half ahead of us, taking their time. Won't be expecting any opposition. Damn sure won't expect us to be running up behind them."

"Their misfortune," I snapped, turning to Cyrus Appius. "Forced pace from here on out. Issue dry rations to all ranks as we move; we'll eat on horseback. Quarter-hour rest every ten miles: I want to catch these people by this time tomorrow. Tell your people." I turned back to Pellus. "I want you and all your men far out in front, in a narrow arc. Don't worry about our flanks. These people don't know we're coming. Tell your people to find them as quickly as they can, then keep them in sight, but to stay out of sight themselves. They know what to do, and you know what to tell them. Move out now."

We rode far into the night, stopping to sleep for only four hours, then rising and saddling up long before dawn, so that by the time the skies began to lighten behind us in the east, we had already covered ten miles along the solid Roman road, and it was there that a returning scout met us with the news that the enemy was less than three miles ahead, still in camp. Pellus had estimated their numbers at something less than three hundred, of whom less than one hundred were mounted. The most puzzling part of the scout's report, however, was the indication—and it was only an indication, since no one had been able to get close enough for absolute confirmation—that there were no non-combatants among the enemy. No women and no prisoners. Surprised, but not unduly concerned, I concluded that the women had either been killed or—a more likely alternative since we had found no corpses, and women might be considered a valuable commodity in terms of slave prices—they had been detached and sent off by some other route to await eventual collection and disposal. I decided to attack the sleeping camp immediately.

We charged out of the rising sun and surprised the strangers in a short, hard, bitter fight. It was a complete rout, and our trumpeters had to blow long and hard to recall our blood-hungry troopers from their pursuit of the fleeing remnants of the raiding party. We lost twenty-three dead and twice that number wounded, as opposed to one hundred and eighty-one enemy dead and no prisoners. I estimated that about a hundred of them had escaped, but the news brought to me by Centurion Rufio dispelled any thought of giving chase to them. Rufio had fought and killed one of their leaders, and before the man died he had damned Rufio, telling him that Gulrhys Lot of Cornwall Would take revenge for this.

The news appalled me. If Lot was on the rampage again, and this far north—more than a hundred miles above and to the east of our Colony—then my place was in Camulod, and I had no time to waste in getting there. Now, however, thanks to this latest episode, I had more than forty disabled men with injuries ranging from slight cuts to serious wounds, and only a hundred and thirty-some sound fighters remaining, which meant that I could not reasonably split my forces and drive on to Camulod in the cause of urgency. To leave our wounded behind, even with a strong escort, in territory that might be swarming with hostile forces, would be to condemn them to death. The corollary was that my own remaining troops, minus the escort for the wounded, would be depleted to the point of dangerous folly in the event that we encountered serious opposition on our route south. I cursed myself for having tied my men, through what I could only define as my own culpable ignorance and irresponsibility, to the pace at which the most seriously wounded could travel—a snail's crawl.

A quick conference with my officers confirmed my assessment. There was no safe means by which we could split our party now that we suspected—and had to believe—that what we had assumed to be a self-sufficient band of marauders might in fact be but one element of a much larger force: an invading army.

I sent Lucanus to distribute the fifteen most seriously wounded men among three of our huge wagons, redistributing their remaining cargo among the others. Then I detached a forty-man squadron to augment Pellus's scouts, first making them change out of their uniforms, enabling Pellus to throw a wider and more mobile protective screen around us as we moved. Those arrangements in place, we struck out again for Camulod, driving on as quickly as we could without seriously threatening our wounded and, for that same reason, keeping to the main road as the most level and direct route, knowing that it was also the most visible and therefore the most vulnerable.

The full truth began to assert itself within hours. Large as it was, the group of "raiders" that we had inadvertently come upon was as I had now begun to fear, no more than a skirmishing force, a single faction of a wide-ranging but rapidly coalescing army that must number in the thousands. As returning scouts began to come galloping from all directions with news of hostile sightings, a picture of the emerging situation formed quickly in my mind. Large groups of soldiers—I had no choice but to consider them soldiers, undisciplined and ungovernable as they might be—were converging, mainly on foot, upon some prearranged meeting point that seemed to lie to the south and west of our present position. According to our scouts, there were horsemen and even a few old-style chariots among these groups, but no evidence of organized cavalry. We had reports of sightings to the north-west and west, and to the east and southeast. I had early sent an extra detachment of fast riders directly to the north, behind us, to see if we were being followed from that direction. We were. A large concentration of mounted men was massed some fifteen miles behind us, using the road as we had. The scout who brought this report had managed to range fairly close to these newcomers, spying upon them from a fringe of trees close by the road, which curved in a wide loop there, winding between two hills. He had then cut across country, avoiding the loop and regaining the firm surface of the road in time to be safely out of sight on his return journey before the large group re- emerged from the hill pass. He was adamant that these people, too, were mere horsemen, undisciplined and formless, definitely not cavalry.

My mind finally made a connection that had been eluding me. Our scouts were passing freely to this point among the various armed groups on which they were reporting simply because there were so many people crossing and criss-crossing the country around us. It was evident that none of the insurgents expected to be challenged or accosted. None suspected that we, or any other forces inimical to their own, were among them. I realized that that state of affairs would continue only until the moment somebody recognized us as being uniformed. That awareness came to me as we descended into a small, wooded valley, which offered us protection for as long as it took us to halt, shed or conceal our uniform armour, and make ourselves look as motley as we could. Although few of us carried any clothes that were not regulation uniform and colours, we did what we could, most of us contriving to disguise our soldierliness, of which we had been so proud until then, under wrappings of torn horse-blankets. There was little we could do about our helmets. They were all of a kind, and we could not very well remove them, for we would have looked even more conspicuous riding to war bare-headed. I broke up that uniformity, however, by having one man in three remove his helmet and carry it at his saddle-bow. They were all short-haired, which endows men with another unmistakable military uniformity, but I hoped that distance would disguise that from casual view. Fortunately, many of our men had acquired heavy, external clothing of one kind or another in Verulamium because of the unseasonably cold weather, and I had seen fit to allow them to do so, more out of necessity than any willingness to allow their appearance to deteriorate.

Before we saddled up again, I explained my thoughts to all of them and impressed them with the need to disguise ourselves even more thoroughly; I ordered all of them to be aware, from now until we could no longer disguise ourselves; of the urgent need to avoid anything and everything that could be recognized as military formality or discipline. Having spent years learning to ride as a unit, I told them, their lives now depended on appearing to be a rabble.

We emerged from the little, wooded valley around noon, looking nothing at all like the squadrons who had entered it, and over the course of the next four miles I harangued my men continuously, forcing them to spread out into a straggling, sloppy, widely dispersed train, riding in groups of no more than five together, the majority of them ranging far out on both sides of the roadway whenever the encroaching woods would allow them to do so, thereby creating the impression, I hoped, that no more than forty or so belonged to the party closest to, and presumably escorting, the five wagons we had left in our train. Within one of those wagons, folded and concealed, lay my great black bear standard and all the outward paraphernalia that had previously marked us so clearly as a force to be reckoned with.

A few miles further on, after passing through a long stretch of heavy woodlands, we encountered our first "hostiles." The road emerged from the woods into open grassland, bare of snow now, although the wind was still cold enough to make a mockery of the bright sunlight, and as we straggled out into the glare of the sun, we were confronted by a group of about twenty horsemen approaching the road from our right. They drew rein as they saw us, and sat watching us with suspicion but no outright hostility. Clearly they were prepared to accept us, but were curious as to who and what we were. The suddenness of the meeting crystallized some of the thoughts that had been going through my mind and I acted on impulse, forcing myself to turn casually in the saddle and speak to my companions without betraying any of the chaotic reactions that leaped in my breast.

"Cyrus, spread the word among the men, but do it without being obvious. We are from Northumbria, detached from Verulamium by Vortigern as his ambassadors to other kings. Donuil, come with me. I'm going to speak with these people. The rest of you remain calm and take your lead from me."

I kneed my horse sideways and approached the newcomers as though I had been expecting to meet them. Their obvious leader was an enormous man, bearded, wild-looking and heavily muscled, whose immense frame dwarfed the large horse on which he was mounted. He was armoured in layered thicknesses of toughened bull hide reinforced with plates of bronze, and he carried a large, round shield slung across his back. He sat calmly, reins loose on his horse's neck, and watched me impassively as I advanced, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts. I addressed him in the mixture of Latin and Celtic that I had used with Vortigern's people.

"Well met," I called out when some twenty paces separated us. "I am Ambrose of Lindum, nephew to Jacob, Councillor of Lindum, and the bearer of greetings from King Vortigern of Northumbria to King Lot of Cornwall. This is our first time so far south, and we are without guidance. Can you tell us how far we have to go to the meeting place?"

I was prepared for a challenge and swift action, because the only reference I had had to any meeting place came from my own assessment of the intelligence brought to me by our scouts, but my question provoked no suspicion and no response. By this time I had stopped almost within sword's length of him, and I allowed my gaze to move idly over his companions. They were an unsightly crew, all heavily" armed and armoured like their leader, and all unkempt, with long hair, beards and moustaches. Their leader continued to look at me in silence, considering my words, and then his eyes moved to Donuil, taking in the size of the young man.

"Who are you?" he asked him.

Donuil shrugged his broad shoulders and looked defiantly back at the big man. "Cormac," he said.

"Cormac? What kind of a name is that? Arc you one of Vortigern's tame Saxons?"

I was gratified by this signal of acceptance, but concerned at the same time that Vortigern's affairs, and his folly, were so widely known. Donuil spoke on.

"It is Erse, and noble. I, too, ride with Vortigern—by choice."

"A mercenary." The leader dismissed Donuil and looked back at me, indicating my dress with a disapproving scowl. "You look Roman." He made it sound like an insult. I took no offence, keeping my voice pleasant.

"My father was. My full name is Ambrose Ambrosianus. And our armour is Roman because it works well for us. The Romans understood such things."

He scowled again and snorted through his nose. "Derek," he said then, "from the north-west coast, Ravenglass. It was a Roman town, once, before we threw them out."

"I have heard of it," I responded, ignoring the obvious boast, and indeed I had, from Vortigern himself, less than a week earlier. "The Romans had a fort near there, once, a place called Mediocogdum."

His eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Huh," he grunted. "It's still there, empty and abandoned, above the road through the high pass. How would you know that?"

I shook my head, indicating that it was unimportant. "I have a memory for insignificant things. Somebody mentioned it, a long time ago, I know not who or when, but I recall something about it being the most westerly fort along the Wall."

"There's no wall there." His voice was scornful. "The Fells are walls enough. It's a grim and cheerless place, haunted by spirits and shunned by wise men. We will ride with you. We should reach the appointed ground by late tomorrow."

I eyed his men, deciding to take no chances and knowing that I had to assert my own authority immediately with this man. "If you wish, so be it, but tell your men to keep apart from mine. We have come a long way and my men are tired and impatient of the road. You'll notice some of them have wounds. We've already encountered unfriendly strangers and I want no more such stupid, wasteful nonsense. We are on an embassage, and I have no wish to spoil it through petty squabbling with every bad-tempered stranger we meet." I waited for his response, but when it came, it surprised me.

"No more have I. My people will keep their peace, so be sure yours do not provoke them."

And so it came about that we rode in company with our enemies for several hours, during which I learned much of Lot and his affairs and what he had been about since his last attack upon Camulod. I was surprised—and yet, upon reflection, not so—to find that Lot, like his father Emrys before him, was master of a large fleet of galleys permanently engaged in piracy. He had a stronghold now, with its own natural fortifications: a high-cliffed, sea-girt island on the north coast of Cornwall, which guaranteed his pirates a safe base, and Lot grew ever richer from his levy on the flow of booty they generated. Those riches he had amassed carefully, then used to purchase armed support from all directions, gathering a massive army with large payments of gold and the promise of enormous riches to be garnered from the conquest of the wealthy area around Glevum, Aquae Sulis—and, by association, Camulod.

Derek, a king in his own right, had been recruited by one of Lot's sea-going chieftains, who bought his services with gold and promises of more to be won. Derek had taken the gold, and then he and his twenty mounted men had ridden southward on their own from their mountainous land to join Lot's gathering host. The remainder of his men, a force of perhaps two hundred, had been ferried south by Lot's galleys and would join the riders at the meeting place, thirty miles north of Aquae Sulis and approximately twenty miles south-west of our present position. I listened to all of this and said little in response.

As we rode and talked, the road had been descending gently but steadily, so that we were now riding through dense, high trees again, and I knew that the forest would stretch ever thicker and unbroken from here to the gathering place of Lot's army. If we were to avoid being trapped there, we would have to turn around, and soon, and make our way back to the high ground, free of trees, whence we would have some hope of circling around the meeting place and escaping to the south and Camulod. I glanced up at the small patch of sky I could see between the tops of the trees that pressed in on the road. It was growing late and my mind was seething with the urgency of our rapidly worsening situation. The closer we drew to Lot's gathering point, the greater would become the concentration of hostile troops converging on the meeting place, and sooner or later—if we had not already passed it—we would arrive at a point where discovery of our true identity would become inevitable.

Derek of Ravenglass, for all his roughness and his uncouth ways, had turned out to be a pleasant enough travelling companion, but now I found myself thinking seriously about ways and means of killing him and his men without creating too much noise and attracting unwelcome attention. The time was fast approaching when our new companion would expect to stop for the night, and that was unthinkable. Were we in fact to remain in his company until morning, my men and I would have no hope of escaping the trap in which we had found ourselves and which was tightening more surely around us with every moment that passed.

I reined my horse in a tight turn and rode back towards the wagons, leaving Derek and Donuil together at the point with three of Derek's senior men, then I pulled off to the side of the road, among the bushes, and looked at the wagons as they rumbled past, a mixed group of my own men and Derek's riding among and around them. I saw no signs of hostility between them; they were all soldiers together, apparently, and content to share the warrior's burden of boredom between dangers. A few nodded to me in passing but, miraculously, none snapped me the customary, punctilious salute. I saw no sign of Lucanus and presumed he was inside one of the wagons, with some of the wounded men. As the final group approached me, I saw Pellus riding in last place. He drew rein as he reached me and together we waited until we were far enough behind the others for our conversation to go unheard.

"What are you doing back here?" I asked him eventually.

"Waiting for you. Knew you'd come back sooner or later. What's in your mind?"

"Concerning what?"

He threw me a look filled with irony, tacitly begging me to spare him my word games. "There's a party of dead men riding here, Merlyn, and I don't know if it's us or them. It's your decision, but you're running out of time to make it." I did not respond to that, so he continued. "The rest of our troopers are riding behind us, five hundred paces back. They'll be along any time now. I've got a pair of my own men leading them, making sure they remain out of sight of the main party, while the road's winding like this. God knows what'll happen if it ever straightens out again to be a proper Roman road. I've called in all my people long since. Nothing to be gained by keeping them out there...too dangerous. We know Lot's people are everywhere, so there's nothing else to discover."

Even as he spoke, I heard the sound of our approaching troops. The wagon group had already vanished around a turn. I looked back at him.

"What about the large mounted group behind us?"

"Still there, fifteen miles back. But the road between us and them is full of others now. They all headed for the roadway as soon as the forest started to thicken. Might be Outlanders, but they're not stupid. We have to get off this road."

"How?" I looked at the thick undergrowth behind me. "We'd have to cut our way through that. It's impenetrable."

"Nah! It's not bad." Pellus hawked to clear his throat, then spat noisily. "Hundred paces, no more. After that, it's deep forest. Big trees, no undergrowth, easy going. But we have to get rid of your friends before we leave...and we have to be quiet about it. How many are there all together?"

"Twenty-one."

"Then that's almost ten to one. We'll take them tonight, shall we? After dark? Then we can head out through the woods, lead our horses until we can see well enough to ride."

It was my turn now to return his look of irony. "And what about the corpses? You think the people behind us will simply pass by twenty-one bodies without wondering who killed them, and why? Or without wondering why there's signs of two hundred horsemen leaving the road and heading off through the bushes? And have you an answer for me to the question of what we do with our wagons? Or should we simply abandon them and the fifteen wounded men in them?"

He blinked at me, his expression indicating clearly that he had given no thought to this last point. "Shit," he said, at last. 'That's it, then. We're stuck here. We can't get off this road, so we're dead men."

Something in his words triggered a thought, and I felt my heart begin to pound. "No." I held up my hand to silence him. The front rank of our main body had now almost reached us. "No, there may be a way to get us off the road legitimately and leave the wagons safely. Let me think for a moment." We drew aside again as our men began to pass us, riding in formation again, now that there was no one to see them. I watched them as a stranger might, my concentration focused on the thoughts teeming in my mind. Finally I had it. I remembered Derek's scornful remark to Donuil about being a tame Saxon. "Yes!"

Pellus watched me closely, waiting. I grasped him by the arm. "Do you have a man who has not been seen by any of these people?" He nodded. "Good. We're going to need him. Now you and I will find Lucanus, and Lucanus will write you a letter. He will also refuse to abandon his charges. I'll leave you with him to await the letter, and I'll return to the point and start getting my people settled for the night. In the meantime, as quickly as possible, as soon as he has the letter, send your man looking for me as though he were a stranger, newly arrived. It's important that he pretends not to recognize me. My name is Ambrose Ambrosianus; be sure he knows that. The 'dispatch' he carries will be from Vortigern, who is having troubles with his tame Saxons and has summoned me to return to the northeast immediately. I will leave our wagons—along with a fistful of gold for his trouble—with Derek of Ravenglass and his people. They'll see that Lucanus and his charges come to no harm, and because they're all badly wounded, Lucanus will be able to escort them through and beyond Lot's assembly point, and from there home. Your part, as soon as you've seen your 'messenger' safely on his way to me, will be to start bleeding your men away into the woods, here, in small groups, so they'll be safely ahead of my party before we set out. They should be able to move unchallenged in the darkness, and to make good time once they are out of the forest. There's a full moon tonight. We will reassemble tomorrow morning at the site of this morning's fight—we should be well behind the enemy by then—and from there we'll strike out south-east as a unit again, and loop around this meeting place and south of Glevum until we hit the high road again to Aquae Sulis and Camulod. Let's find Lucanus."

The following morning found us safely reassembled, one hundred and twenty strong, riding again beneath the banners of Camulod. My hastily improvised plan had worked in every detail, and Lucanus, with a small group of volunteer wounded, had been left in comparative safety under the protection of Derek of Ravenglass who, in return for a heavy bag of the gold coins we had never been required to spend, had promised me to see my wounded companions safely through Lot's gathering and put them on their way to a place where they could be tended. Lucanus, for his part, knew the cover story I had invented on meeting Derek. He could claim safely to have been on his way to Lot, accompanying me, as an envoy from Vortigern. His men had been wounded in a fight with others we had met along the way. It would be up to me to find a way of salving my own conscience for deserting my friend in such a manner, although my duty clearly lay in reaching Camulod as quickly as possible.

It was a fine, clear day, betraying no hint of the alien, wintry weather of the previous weeks. The sun shone brightly and warmly, and we drove ourselves hard, angling south-eastward and keeping our scouts ranging far ahead of us, on the alert for more enemy formations. The relative inactivity of the preceding weeks had worked both for us and against us. Our horses were well rested and healthy, but our own bodies had grown slack, so that more than a few men reeled in the saddle with unaccustomed aches and pains by the time we swung south and west to bypass the area where Lot's army was converging.

I missed Lucanus on that ride and so, it was plain, did Donuil. He rode in silence, his face grim as he struggled to keep his seat on the big animal that surged beneath him. Donuil would never be a confident horseman. Our order of march was simple and progressive: walk, trot, canter, gallop, canter, trot, walk; one mile of each, in three parallel, close-formation columns of six abreast, permitting our horses to conserve their energy while covering distance effectively and quickly.

By mid-morning of the second day of hard, relentless riding, we were on our home ground, tired but jubilant to recognize our own Mendip Hills in the distance. We had seen few signs of the enemy since the previous forenoon—a few distant formations, too far away to concern us, and all of those now heading north. We would be in time, it seemed, to warn our people. I was tempted to relax our pace, but resisted and instead urged my people on to greater speed. The miles fell away beneath our steady rhythm, and as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, the Mendips rose around us and we swung directly towards Camulod.

At one point, crossing a high, expansive area of open grassland that rose to a narrow pass between two low hills, I led my column forward, listening to the muffled thunder of our drumming hoofbeats as the others fell into place behind me. The blood was singing in my veins as we climbed at a steady canter, and I was reviewing the eve/its of the past few weeks, the threat of Lot and his assembling army temporarily forgotten now that we were so close to home. I had met and befriended Germanus the Bishop, Vortigern the King, and Jacob, the Chief of Lindum, and I had found a brother in, Ambrose—not merely a brother in spirit, but in fact; a sibling! I had also learned the tenor of the discussions at the great debate and could report that Alaric's immortal soul was safe and we were in no danger of being excommunicate. And now I was returning home to my Cassandra, who was Donuil's sister Deirdre, and to our child. Filled with the joy of anticipation by this last thought, I sank my spurs into my horse's flanks and surged ahead of my men as we approached the crest. Beyond it, the valley that lay ahead of me was tiny, covered in short, green turf and rising steeply to another, more pronounced crest. Hearing the riders behind me speed up in response to my surge, I put my heels to my horse again and leaned forward, bracing myself in my stirrups, and whispering into his ear for more speed, so that he bounded to the top of the crest and charged over it into the slight depression that lay beyond, where he screamed in terror and reared violently, throwing me from his back as he tried, vainly, to avoid the grisly pile of human bodies that lay concealed by the last few feet of the crest. And even as I fell heavily, I heard him crash onto his side, and the sound of arrows hissing through the air around me.

The fall hammered the breath from me, and I lay gasping in agony and out of my senses for a time, whooping and sucking in terror-stricken panic for air that would not come, while chaos blossomed around me. By the time my breathing began to return to normal, I had recognized Pellus's staring, lifeless eyes gazing into my own and had realized that the piled bodies belonged to our scouts, for Orvic lay sprawled beside Pellus; the new-healed scar from the last arrow that had sought him gleamed livid. I had little doubt that all our scouts were in this pile of dead, for there must have been a dozen corpses, and Pellus had had few more than that. How they had died, how they could have been surprised so completely, would remain forever a mystery to me. Pellus had been the best, the most experienced scout I had ever known, and Orvic had been more animal than man in sensing danger. His instincts and his ability scent trouble had astounded me on many occasions over the years I had known him. And now both were dead, Pellus's throat transfixed by one arrow and a second buried in his heart while Orvic's back was arched unnaturally, as though attempting to dislodge the shaft buried between his shoulder-blades.

The sounds of conflict came back into my consciousness—all the noise of battle, the screams of men and horses, the muffled thunder of hooves, the clash and clang of weapons, and throughout all this, the lethal, whipping hiss of hard-shot arrows. Fully conscious by this time and preparing to rise to my feet, I realized that no one seemed to be shooting at me. I raised my head cautiously and looked around me. I was alone, except for my horse, which stood nearby, head down as he cropped the short grass, ignoring the carnage close by. My head was pounding painfully and I reached up to rub it, feeling instead the smooth, sun- warmed metal of my helmet. And then I heard a new sound, an onrush of fresh horsemen, and I struggled to my feet just in time to see a wedge-shaped formation of mounted men sweeping down from the hillside above to crash into the seething ranks of my own troops. To my right and left, the hillside was alive with bowmen, most of whom were now throwing their bows aside. They could not shoot, now that their own men were in the way. As they cast away their weapons, they drew swords and rushed down to join the struggle below.

I walked slowly to my horse, feeling a sensation of dizziness which faded rapidly as my strength returned. My iron- balled flail hung from my saddle bow, unused since the first confrontation with Lot's army when my father died. I raised one foot to the stirrup and pulled myself up onto the horse's back, noting as I did so that my troops were faring very badly. Many—far too many—men and horses lay strewn on the ground. The bodies bristled with arrows. Those who remained alive were packed into a dense, milling throng, dismounted survivors among them. I loosened my flail, swung it around my head, and spurred my horse towards the fighting.

I had not even had time to spur my horse to a gallop before yet another wave of horsemen came sweeping down from above, and I felt myself groan with despair and a blossoming rage that changed to incredulity as I saw the great red and gold dragon standard of Uther Pendragon at the head of the newcomers. I screamed a welcome and urged my mount forward faster, and sometime in the course of the fight, I found myself riding knee to knee with my wild, grinning cousin, sweeping all before us until we were separated by the swirling tide of the fight.

Sometime later, my great horse went to its knees beneath me, stabbed or hamstrung, and I fell forward onto the grass, losing my grip on my flail. As I lay there, winded, Uther saw me on the ground and leaped down from his horse to stand astride me, clearing a space around us with his own whirling flail and I knew that if I could only rise to my feet, the two of us together could vanquish all who stood against us. But I could not rise, with Uther straddling me. Moments later, he grunted and sprawled forward, off balance, propelled by a spear thrust to the middle of his metal backplate. I scrambled to rise to my feet, and as I did so I felt someone grasp my dangling flail and pull it, tearing the restraining thong from my wrist as I pushed myself to my knees, and then I saw my assailant, a dirty, bearded, broken-toothed, grinning madman, whirling the ball around his head, his battle-crazed eyes fixed on mine as I knelt, off balance, at his feet. I threw myself forward again, too slowly to evade the swinging ball, and the world ended.