The Saxon Shore

BOOK THREE

THE SAXON SHORE

XIX

It was the taciturn Benedict who put into words the happiness we all felt at coining home. Ded and I had been riding at the head of our small column and, on being relieved by Philip and Paulus, had fallen back to check that all was well behind. We found Falvo riding where he should be at the rear, but peering back over his shoulder, where there was no sign of Benedict, who had fallen behind, presumably to relieve himself. Falvo was about to go back to check on him, but we bade him ride on, and Ded and I kicked our horses to a canter in search of our missing companion. We were not alarmed, merely being cautious.

We came upon him almost immediately, standing by the side of the road, concealed by a thicket of evergreens that overhung the roadway, his reins in one hand and his head bent, staring down at something green he held in the other. As we approached him, he looked up and waved what he was holding. It was a large, broad-leafed weed of some kind. When we reached him, I saw the mark between the cobbles at his feet where he had uprooted it.

"What have you there? Looks like a weed."

"Aye. Growing in the road."

I looked at Dedalus and he raised one eyebrow in return, saying nothing. One seldom knew what went on in Benedict's head. Now, however, he had chosen to show more eloquence than Ded or I had ever suspected him to possess.

"I saw a lot of Empire when I was a boy, long before I came here, but until now I never thought to note how dangerous growth is." Slowly and with great deliberation, Dedalus crossed one arm over his chest and leaned the other on it, masking his mouth behind cupped fingers and schooling his face to show no expression. I, too, fought hard not to smile, but Benedict did not notice. "Today it's a weed, growing between the stones," he continued, gazing down at the uprooted plant he held. "In ten years, it'll be a tree . . . In a hundred years, this road will be destroyed." He looked up at us. "Until we went to Eire, I never thought about roads. It never even crossed my mind that some lands might have no roads. Gaul has roads. Even the Saxon lands have roads. The whole Empire has roads."

"Rome never conquered Eire," I said, no longer feeling the urge to smile.

"I know, but I've only come to see that now," Benedict said, turning his gaze to me. "No Roman conquest means no roads. So Rome means roads . . . And roads mean towns at each end and along them . . . So without Rome, we'd have no place to go and no way of arriving. And here I am, forty and more years old and never knew that till now! I've spent much of my life being glad the Romans left Britain, but I'll spend the rest of it being glad they came . . ." He threw the weed aside and climbed onto his horse, then rode off back towards the column without another word to either of us. Dedalus looked at me wide-eyed, his face still extravagantly empty of expression. I shrugged and kneed my horse into a turn.

"I think he means he's glad to be back home."

"Aye," Ded agreed. "A veritable Benedictish benediction. Amazing."

We had ridden fifteen miles after that incident, counting the milestones, when Rufio, who had been ranging a mile and more ahead of us, came spurring back, waving his arms as soon as he came into view. A large body of armed men was approaching, he reported. He had managed to remain unseen only by good fortune, having picked up the signs of their movements as they crested a hill ahead of him, about three miles from where we were now. He had left the road immediately and made his way back along the verge, hidden by foliage, until he no longer risked being seen, and then had galloped the rest of the way. He had been too far away to recognize anything about them, he reported; they might be friend or foe, but they outnumbered our small party, as far as he could estimate, by no less than three to one.

We had to assume, as Rufio had, that all strangers were enemies, so my first concern was for the cart holding Quintus and the women. I ordered Liam Twistback, who held the reins, to get the vehicle off the road and out of sight among the trees as quickly as he could. Then, while Liam was looking around for a place to leave the road safely, I turned my attention to our extra horses, setting Cyrus, Paulus and Philip to assist our two trainees in leading the animals from the road, too, spreading their exit points as widely apart as possible in a short time to obscure the evidence of their exit. That done, I turned back to hiding the cart. It was a slow and awkward process, hampered by the poor condition of the cart itself and its high, narrow wheels, which sank alarmingly into the soft ground, leaving deep tracks. I assigned three men to that task, too: Benedict to lead the horse forward by its halter, steadying it and eliminating the need for a driver, and Falvo and Paulus to walk alongside, one by each wheel, to help maneuvre it among the bushes and obstructions that littered the ground. I followed behind it with Dedalus, both of us working to conceal the signs of its passage.

As we laboured, Ded talked. He was convinced, he told me, that the men approaching were the same who had attacked us in the town the day the great bireme had sailed away. They had been left behind for some purpose, he observed, reminding me that I myself had feared they would range farther afield in their search for booty, once the town had been stripped bare of marble. Already there was not much left to plunder and they had gone scouting for a new supply, perhaps even as far as Aquae Sulis. Now they would be returning.

As soon as the cart was safely out of sight of the road, I shrugged out of my heavy, black cloak, with its conspicuous white lining, and left it on the cart. Then I strung my bow and hung a quiver of arrows from my shoulder and Ded and I returned alone to find a spot from which we might watch whoever passed without being seen ourselves. As we drew close to the road Ded stopped and looked up, pointing to the tree that soared above us, an ancient, massive oak hung with dense clumps of mistletoe. He jabbed upward with his thumb, raising an eyebrow in silent query. The sight of the mistletoe, and the idea of climbing up there, immediately took me back across a gulf of thirty years to the day I had fled for my life, aged six, from a Saxon pursuer and found salvation in the person of Flavius, my father's friend and Junior Legate. By the time I had recalled the incident, Ded was already far above me, climbing strongly, apparently unaware that he was wearing heavy, bronze armour. I slung my bow across my shoulders and followed him, pulling myself up surprisingly easily to where we each found a sturdy crotch among the upper limbs and settled down to wait, with an unobstructed view of a clear stretch of road no less than thirty paces long.

For a long time after our ascent nothing happened and the forest settled into utter stillness around us, broken only occasionally by the sounds of birds. Then, gradually, noise began to swell in the distance, first the sound of raised voices, laughing and shouting, and then the creak of laden wagons and the clop of hooves. I glanced at Ded, who seemed to have better hearing than I.

"What language is that?"

He shrugged, making a face. "Nothing I've heard before. Might be Saxon."

"Saxons? Here in the west?" I shook my head, still listening to the alien sounds. "They're a long way from home, if they're Saxons. . ."

"Well, we'll see them any moment now." Almost as he murmured the words, the men leading the party came into view, four of them, all heavily armed and armoured, arguing hotly. They trudged by our vantage point without looking left or right, two of them looking down at their own feet and the other two glaring at each other as they exchanged angry-sounding words, although there seemed to be no acrimony in their posture.

I had heard Ded's hissed intake of breath at his first sight of the strangers, but his surprise had been no less than my own. These men were like no others I had ever seen, but I had recognized the bows they carried instantly as being related to the one I bore. Despite their smaller size, about half the length of my own great weapon, I knew from their elaborate, double-curved form that they were made of laminated layers of different materials, and that marked their bearers in my mind as Africans, since it was out of Africa that the bow I held now had come, brought to Publius Varrus's grandfather by some returning legionary a hundred years ago or more. They were swarthy of skin, these men, dark brown, with coal-black beards, and their dress and armour were exotic. Their necks and shoulders were protected from behind by thick, armoured leather flaps suspended from the bottoms of the shining metal helmets they all wore—helmets uniform in shape and design, more conical than domed and each crowned with a high, sharp spike. They wore heavy cuirasses, front and rear, of the same shining silvery metal fastened over mid-thigh-length tunics of ringed mail. Their legs, seemingly unarmoured, were covered by long, loose black trousers, and from each man's waist, slung low and almost dragging on the ground, hung a long, heavy sword with a curved blade. I had never seen metal curved in such a fashion and the sight of them told me that these people, whoever they were, were master smiths, far more skilled in ironwork than any in our land.

Before the first four had passed from our sight the main body of the group began to appear from the screen of leaves that had masked them from us. We counted thirty-eight men, twelve of them pulling an enormous, four- wheeled cart filled with a chaos of goods, among which I saw a heavy wooden table and two high-backed Roman chairs.

We watched them pass, holding our breath when one fellow left the road to defecate almost beneath us, within two paces of the rutted tracks of Liam's cart, which, from our elevation, stood out like fresh-burned brands upon the ground. Fortunately, the fellow squatted with his back to them and concentrated solely on his task, wasting no time afterwards, but running to catch up with his companions who had passed from sight. We waited again, still silent, until the sounds of their withdrawal had faded, then Ded hawked and spat.

"I almost emptied my bowels before that whoreson did, when I saw where he was headed."

" They're Africans," I said. He glanced at me, surprised enough to stop himself in the act of swinging his legs up onto the bough on which he had been sitting.

"Aye," he said, musingly, after a pause. "Perhaps. . . North Africa could have spawned them, but I'm more inclined to think them Barbarians."

I grinned at him, feeling light-headed with the relief of danger safely past. "Of course they're barbarians, Ded. They're not civilized like us."

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean they're Barbarians, the Berbers, from the far end of the Middle Sea, across from Africa. I've been there, seen them in action, ran from them once, when several of their accursed galleys almost caught us alone, close by the Pillars of Hercules You think Athol's Eirish galleys are fearsome? You'd never think so again if you once saw some of those Berber galleys come slashing towards you on a bright blue sea. There's a sight to loosen your bowels! They're fast, and sleek, and built exactly to their purpose, crammed with savage, fighting predators, and all their rowers are slaves, chained to the oars. The sight of them has emptied the bladders of bigger and braver men than you and me . . ." He stopped abruptly, peering down between his knees to the ground far below. "Come on, we'd best get down and on the road again."

As we climbed down, I questioned him further. "I didn't know you had been that far away from Britain, Ded, to the Middle Sea. My father never served in that area, did he?"

"Nah," he grunted, hanging from one thick branch while seeking another with his feet. "I was only a tad at the time, travelling with my father. He took me with him when he went to Constantinople." He found his footing, the last difficulty between us and the ground, and from that point on our descent was swift and he talked non-stop, his eyes moving constantly as he sought his next hand- or foothold. "I didn't join your father until years after that and even then, I was still but a lad. Hadn't even begun to grow a beard. Your father was my first Imperial Commander, and my last. I was serving as a runner to him when he was betrayed. I brought him the word of danger just ahead of the killing squad Honorius had sent to arrest him. Consequently, I was one of the ten he took with him when he escaped. The rest of our contingent stayed behind to give him breathing space. God knows what happened to them, but if they weren't killed fighting whoever had been sent, they'd have been executed out of hand for simply being Picus's men."

We reached the ground, he slightly ahead of me, and paused to sweep the dirt and bark from our dress. "Anyway," Ded concluded, "Berbers makes sense. They came on that big bireme, which they probably captured in some naval fight. Their own galleys, fearsome as they are, are too light and small to survive out of the Middle Sea, and far too small to pull the kind of cargo they're dealing in now."

We joined the others, then made shift to haul the cart back out onto the road. We were eight miles and more from our destination and the sun had begun to sink already, lengthening our shadows on the road. Rufio rode out ahead of us again and I sent Philip rearward to make sure the strangers had not reversed their course for any reason. We made good progress after that, but it was deep twilight when we finally approached the small valley that provided refuge to the lepers.

Lucanus was astonished and delighted to see us returned so soon. He had thought us gone for at least six months. That our absence would last less than six weeks had not occurred to any of us as a realistic probability. While our men set up our tents at some distance from the leper longhouse in the barely adequate light of two large fires, Luke and I sat by the larger fire, and I began to tell him of our journey. He had examined Quint's leg as soon as we arrived and the greetings were over, and pronounced it healing splendidly. Quintus would have some deep-trenched scars, he pronounced, but should have full use of the limb once the bone was fully set. More men than Quintus had sighed with relief on hearing that, and one of them was Benedict, who had set the bone and splinted it.

Now, as we sat and talked, his eyes sought Shelagh, who was preparing food with Paulus, the best cook among us, and Turga. The baby slept safely, wrapped in a bundle of blankets close by Turga's side.

"The woman, Shelagh. Who is she?"

"Liam's daughter, I told you when you met her."

"I know that, Cay, but who is she? Why is she here?" His eyes had not left the young woman, whose long, tousled hair disclosed and obscured her face and eyes alluringly in the leaping of the flames. I had to take my own eyes from her deliberately.

"She is to be Donuil's wife."

His head swivelled slowly towards me. "Then where is Donuil?"

"At home in Eire." Before he could question me any further, I launched into the tale of what had happened in the past week, omitting nothing, and as I talked the tent-raising around us was completed and the men began to gather close around the fires, although they took care to leave us room to continue speaking in private. I ended my tale with my agreement with Athol to acquire a concession from Pendragon that would permit Liam to raise his animals on their lands for at least a year.

"You think you can obtain such a concession?" he asked, when I had finished. I could only shrug and observe that it seemed reasonable. There was no ill-will between Uther's people and my own of which I was aware. To my concealed dismay, however, Lucanus named the single concern that had been gnawing unacknowledged at the edges of my mind since I had spoken of this to Athol. I myself had not visited the Pendragon lands since the accession of Uther to his father's throne, and Uther's support of Camulod in the recent wars had cost Pendragon dearly, not in men alone, but in losses of the precious longbows that were so hard to replace, since each one took so long to make. Those losses, allied with the apparent lack of gratitude and concern expressed by me, or any in Camulod, either privately or publicly, might well have eroded the goodwill that had existed between our peoples since the days of King Ullic, Uther's grandfather. In the eyes of the Pendragon, he said, I might well have earned the reputation of an ingrate. Untrue as that might be, it was not an unlikely perception.

Chastened considerably, I admitted that I had given insufficient thought to this possibility, and we agreed that this was a matter that demanded an immediate journey by me into the Cambrian mountains, to express that gratitude, belatedly, and to explain to whoever now held power among the Pendragon the many reasons for the lapse of time since I had burned Uther's corpse and returned home to Camulod. From there, we moved on to talk of other things, and he told me how they had lost five of their number, several days before, struck down by arrows from an unseen enemy. I stared at him, but he had nothing more to say.

"What do you mean, an unseen enemy? You were attacked, yet saw no one?"

"That's what I said. Whoever it was shot at us from the woods, there. From the summit of the hill behind us."

"And killed five people, without attacking further after you had run and hidden? Did you show them you were prepared to fight?"

"To fight? Fight with what, Cay? These people are lepers, not soldiers. . . And no one ran to hide. The five who died were all outside, walking, most of them with the aid of staves and crutches. They were too weak to run. Whoever killed them knew well what they were, and did their slaughter from afar, running no risk of contagion. It was butchery, callous and inhuman."

"The Berbers," I said, and told him of the armed band we had seen returning from this region. As he listened, his face grew troubled.

"Then they will return, is that what you are telling me? They'll pass this way again and come looking for further sport, and Mordechai has no way of deterring them."

"Mordechai may not, but Camulod does," I told him, feeling a monstrous anger boiling in my gut. I looked to where Dedalus sat talking with Benedict and Cyrus and called them to us, bidding them summon the others. Briefly then, once all of them were listening, I repeated what Luke had told me of the arm's-length slaughter of helpless invalids, and I spoke of the inherent threat of further outrages by the alien Berbers, and I saw the same anger stirring in their eyes.

"Now," I said. "We return to Camulod tomorrow and should arrive within the next three days. As soon as we have won back and I have settled several matters within the Colony, I must leave again for Cambria, to visit the Pendragon lands and find out who rules there today. You, Ded, will accompany me and so will you, Rufio. The rest of you, however, all five of you, will return here under the command of Cyrus and Benedict, bringing with you a full cohort of our troopers, and you will cleanse Glevum of this barbarian filth that has polluted it. Do you hear me?"

"Aye!" All five spoke as one.

"Good. So be it! Now eat and then get some rest, all of you. We will be up and away, come dawn. I'll need Lucanus's wagon harnessed ere the sun comes up, and the women and the baby safely installed in it. Eat well, and then sleep well, and deeply."

As soon as they had gone, clustered around the cooking pots and the delicious aromas they emitted, Lucanus and I sought out Mordechai, so that I could bid him farewell and inform him of what would happen upon our return to Camulod. Mordechai listened and then thanked me, although his eyes told me he had a question. I prompted him, curious, and he shook his head, the hint of a smile on his lips.

"I was merely thinking how strange the ways of people are," he murmured. "These Berbers you speak of stand far back and kill us from concealment, because they are afraid to come too close to us, risking contagion. Now you tell me your own men, who are equally afraid of us, will return in strength for our protection. It is a non sequitur, my friend."

"Not really, Mordechai. There is ample logic there. Granted, my men fear your people and avoid their presence, as I do myself. But it is leprosy they fear, rather than lepers, and the avoidance of contagion is mere prudence. These are simple soldiers, ordinary men with ordinary terrors. They dread the sickness far more than the sick . . . But they are decent men, and casual slaughter of the kind that happened here outrages them. As for these Berbers, if that is what they are, they represent a threat to us, and to our Colony, so we will wipe them out and guard against their return. The service we will provide for you is incidental, an entailment to your benefit. However, my men will not come anywhere near your encampment on their return. I see no need to feed the idle curiosity of our troopers by telling them of your presence here. The aliens must be cleaned out of Glevum; that is sufficient reason for our punitive expedition, and all that will be given."

He nodded, accepting my words, and thanked me again with great dignity. When we left him, assuring him he would be quit of us come dawn, Lucanus walked with me back to my tent. I paused there, before entering, and looked him up and down, as friend to friend, the exigencies of the day all dealt with.

"Well," I asked him. "Are you well? Convinced you have contracted no disease?"

"Leprosy?" he responded, smiling. "No, Cay, I am convinced there is nothing of the leprous in me now that was not here ere we arrived."

"I'm glad of that, my friend," I told him then, only half jocular. "As I told Mordechai, I am not at ease in proximity to such potent threat as is concealed beneath the clothes of even such a friend as he." He stared me directly in the eye and I nodded. "So be it. Are you hungry, or have you already eaten?"

He pursed his lips and shook his head. "No, to both your questions. But I am tired. I have not slept properly since the night of the attack, waiting for a return visit."

"Well, you can sleep now. No one will bother us tonight and we leave for Camulod at dawn. Sleep well, Luke. It will be good to reach home again, even for a few days."

We passed by Aquae Sulis late the following day without looking for signs of life, making twelve additional miles before we camped for the night, and as I made the rounds of our small camp before seeking my own bed I was aware of the feeling of anticipation that filled everyone. Even the women seemed to be looking forward to tomorrow, although neither of them had ever seen our Colony. We would be up and on the road before first light, travelling at campaign speed, and we hoped to sight the towers of Camulod before noon. I wrapped myself in my cloak and an additional blanket beside the fire and then discovered, to my great surprise, that I could not sleep. I lay awake for a long time, tossing and turning, feeling the earth grow harder beneath me, before I accepted my insomnia and crawled out from my blankets to throw more wood on the sinking fire. As I did so, I heard the sound of the baby whimpering somewhere close by, and then the sound of Turga's voice crooning and whispering to him, soothing him to silence again.

Returning to my blankets, I lay still for a while with my back to the fire, watching the shadows form beyond me as the new fuel ignited, and listening for more sounds from the baby, but he was silent again. Something had struck me as different in the sound of his crying, however, and I found myself wondering if his voice was deepening, then smiling in the darkness at the silliness of the thought. And yet, he was growing like a weed—even my unsophisticated masculine eye could see the change in him since we had first landed in Eire. The child had grown visibly, not so much in height—length, I amended—but in overall bulk. He had thickened, that's what it was.

That notion, the thickening and strengthening of his small body, reminded me of Benedict's comments that morning, concerning the weeds growing in the roads of Britain. In a hundred years, he had opined, the roads would be destroyed, fractured and torn apart and ultimately replaced by the inexorable growth of millions of plants, beginning with green, healthy weeds that would root between the cobblestones, as had the one he noticed, and, over time, would widen and then split the surface cracks before giving way to shrubs, bushes, saplings and eventually mighty trees whose roots would sunder and obliterate all that the legionaries had achieved. The idea grew in fascination as I considered it; the notion that a simple, everyday broad-leafed plant—a weed—could have the capacity to precipitate such mass destruction of man's greatest achievements.

From that point, somehow, and by some logic that escaped me then, the weed in my analogy transfigured itself into the child, Arthur. He, too, I realized, possessed the potential of that thickening, ever-thriving weed. Seeded almost by chance between the enduring, close-knit edges of Britain's contiguous clan territories, with their differing, but equally rigid and unyielding systems of survival and their lack of anything resembling a centralized core of laws, young Arthur Pendragon could become a wedge that would break apart the cobblestones of Britain and reshape them into a bonded surface that would cover all the land. Nurtured by the Roman-bred, republican ideals of his immediate ancestors, the boy might bring about a revolutionary change in the ancient ways, if he were properly instructed and guided. The raw potential was there in his makeup. But then I saw his laughing, innocent face clearly in my mind, for a moment, and tried to imagine it in manhood, frowning and solemn with righteousness. The attempt was ludicrous, and I turned onto my other side, emptying my mind of such nonsense and staring wide-eyed into the leaping flames.

The darkness beyond the firelight was absolute, and the stillness of the night was disturbed only by the crackling of the new wood on the fire, and I soon found myself thinking about my brother Ambrose for the first time in days and wondering how he had progressed with Ludmilla. Those thoughts led me to Donuil and his love for Shelagh, a love that seemed almost to have sprung into being magically, although in truth I knew the seeds of it had been planted years ago and had merely lain dormant until the two set eyes upon each other once again. From there, my thoughts passed on to Luke and the matter of his celibacy, and my own. He had promised to think about how he might counsel me in that matter during my absence, but I had been gone far less long than either of us had thought possible, and I knew he had had much to occupy him during that brief time. I resolved to ask him about it on the journey to Camulod, but the idea lacked urgency somehow, and I realized, after some time and with great reluctance, that I was being distracted from my task by Shelagh's face, mainly her eyes, which interposed themselves between my own and Luke's image in my mind.

Surprised at myself, and feeling more than slightly guilty, I took myself to task, questioning the source of such thoughts. And of course, as is normal in such matters, the answer I found was even more disconcerting than the question I had asked: I had not willed myself to think of Shelagh. She was simply there, in my mind, but now I realized that she was seldom absent from my thoughts, even when I was unaware of them. With that awareness came an increase in the guilt I felt. Shelagh was to be Donuil's wife, and Donuil was my friend above all else, entitled to my unswerving loyalty. And damnably, with that conviction came the insidious thought that the two must now wait months to lie together, to consummate their bond . . . and I visualized that consummation, save that it was I, not Donuil, who reared above Shelagh's exultant body, supported on my outstretched arms and watching the ripples of pleasure distort her lovely face. Frightened now in my soul by the intensity of what had sprung unbidden to my mind, I rose up from the fire and blundered off out of the firelight, blind from the flames, seeking I knew not what. I was fleeing from myself, I knew, terror-stricken by my own sudden arousal; fiercely, demandingly engorged and seething with surging lust and guilt. The mere existence of such unsought, urgent wanting in my body seemed to me a betrayal of Donuil's friendship and a violation of his trust.

I crashed headlong into a tree trunk and knocked myself off my feet, seeing flashing lights all around me in the darkness and knowing they were only in my head. Stunned and confused, I raised myself to a sitting posture and remained there for a while, asprawl on the damp ground, until the coldness penetrated to my buttocks, after which I pulled myself to my feet. My eyes had now adjusted to the dark and the riot in my blood had abated considerably. As I turned to return to the tents, however, I heard a sound that froze me in mid-step. I strained to recognize it, then smiled at myself. It was only the splashing of water from the brook that curled around our campsite. Somewhere upstream, beyond where we had camped, there must be a small waterfall, and the sound of it had caught at my ears. I walked in the direction of the noise and found a pool, some fifty paces removed from where we slept, where the water swirled over some large boulders and fell into a small basin. Above my head, the moon shone through a gap in the clouds, lighting the place with silver, and I remembered the advice of the Legate Titus to young men on long patrols: "When your lusts bother you, and if you have the opportunity, seek out a pool of cold water and steep yourself. It will clear your head and your veins." I stepped forward and knelt by the little pool, then leaned forward, supporting myself on my hands, and plunged my head slowly beneath the water. Sure enough, my fires were doused, for the present, at least. I towelled myself dry with the lining of my cloak as I returned to the fire and took my seat again, thinking once more of Shelagh, but this time with awareness and circumspection.

"Have you been dreaming again?"

Shelagh's voice startled me, making me jump. I had not heard her approach, but now she stood beside me. I turned towards her, standing up as I did so and willing myself in the moment not to look too closely at her.

"No," I managed to say, attempting to smile. "I couldn't sleep. Excited at returning home, I suppose. What are you doing awake at this hour?"

She nodded downward, indicating the bundle she held, and only then did I become aware of the sleeping infant she held in her arms. "He is fretful, upset by something, so I took him. Turga has had no sleep these past two nights." She peered more closely at the child. "Look, he's sleeping now. Isn't he beautiful?" She pulled the covering from the boy's face and I leaned closer to look at him, acutely aware of her proximity. He slept peacefully, his tiny eyes gently closed, showing the dark lines of his long, thick lashes against the softness of his baby skin.

"Look at his lashes," Shelagh said quietly, as though she had read my mind. "Have you ever seen such lashes on a baby?"

I was gazing at the child in wonder, my discomfort at being so close to her miraculously abated. "I don't think I have ever seen another baby," I answered. "Not like this, I mean, not up close. I've never really looked at one before."

She glanced up at me, smiling broadly. "Then look more closely at this one. Here, hold him. He's heavy. Come on, take him! He won't break. But take him gently, don't wake him."

Before I quite realized what was happening, I was holding the future King of Britain in my arms, my muscles locked in panic lest they flex too suddenly and crush him. And Shelagh was laughing at my evident discomfort.

I willed myself to stand still and simply relax, allowing my arms to adjust to the minuscule size and weight of their burden and to hold it easily and without awkwardness. The child slept on, long lashes feathered against the incredible smoothness of his cheeks. He represented total innocence, un- marred by any vice or weakness, and an unformed thought teased me with hints of the sadness of all he must learn in future to equip him for the tasks we, his future trainers, had in mind for him.

"He doesn't look much like a High King, does he?" I murmured.

"Not now, of course not. But he will, Caius. As he grows, those yellow eyes of his will note and change the entire world. I have never seen a baby with golden eyes; nor an adult, for that matter. Have you?"

I shook my head. "No, but I've read of one. His great-grandmother's brother, my own grandfather; the same Caius Britannicus after whom I'm named. He had golden eyes. Eagle's eyes, Publius Varrus called them."

She glanced at me sidelong, a tic of puzzlement appearing on her brow. "Who's Publius Varrus?"

The question took me unawares, reminding me forcefully that she really was alien to our ways. I smiled at her. "He was this young man's great-grandfather, husband to my own great-aunt Luceiia Britannicus. I'll tell you all about him one of these days."

"And this great-grandmother, what did you call her, Luceiia? She is still alive?"

"Aye, very much alive, in Camulod, which was founded by her husband and her brother. She's waiting patiently to see this young man."

"She must be very old."

"Extremely old, and tiny now, shrunken with age. But very strong, too, for all that. In her youth she was a great beauty."

Shelagh was looking down at the baby again, and now she reached out and laid one fingertip against the tiny fist with its dimples on each knuckle. "Yes," she said. "This one will be High King, right enough. He'll be big. He has the size already, and the strength, of an older child." As she spoke, the child opened his small fingers and grasped her fingertip. She smiled. "And the strength of him! What this one owns, he will hold. Someday those fingers will grasp a king's corona."

"Aye," I thought. "And a king's sword." I had received an instantaneous vision of the child, aged about twelve, holding Excalibur. He stirred and wriggled in my arms, uncomfortable, no doubt, against the hardness of my metal cuirass.

"Here, give him to me. I had better sleep for a while. Dawn will come too soon."

I watched her leave, with the baby, and then I, too, sought my blankets again, and this time I slept.

We arrived within sight of Camulod in the middle of the afternoon of the next day, having ridden the entire way from our previous night's camp without encountering a living soul. The countryside had become more familiar all around me as I rode, and when Philip came spurring back to tell me we were there, I made sure to ride beside the wagon holding Liam, Shelagh and Turga as we breasted the last rise, so that I saw them see Camulod for the first time. It was an impressive sight, even from an eminence as low as that on which we stood.

The valley that embraced the main holdings of the Colony lay spread in front of us, angling sharply westward in a carpet of greenery, among which the rectangular shapes of cultivated fields stood clearly etched. In the distance, dominating everything at its feet, the hill of Camulod stood out proudly upon the landscape, the silver grey of the stone walls that crowned it clearly visible. We were too far away to make out signs of human activity, but the shapes and angles of the castellated walls and towers spoke of strength and durability even at this distance. I heard the catch of Shelagh's breath as she registered what she was looking at. Liam was more serene. This was not his first time in Britain, and he had seen Roman-style fortifications before, as opposed to Roman ruins like the abandoned towns of Glevum and Aquae Sulis. His eyes narrowed as he took in our fortress, and then swept down into the valley, towards the fields.

"Much land under the plough, Caius Merlyn."

"Aye," I responded. "But the fields you can see are only the largest, about one quarter of the total on this side of the fort. The smaller fields are shrouded from this height and distance by the trees surrounding them. We have a large number of Colonists, and all of them have to eat. Most of us are farmers."

He looked across from the driver's bench of the cart, smiling slightly. "I thought most of you were soldiers?"

"Not most, many," I responded, returning his smile. "You dealt with the Romans in your boyhood, I recall, so you are probably aware that the Roman citizen soldiers who built the Republic, before the Empire, prior to the time of Gaius Marius and Caesar, were all farmers and landowners; free men who wore their swords while they walked behind their ploughs. We are much the same, in many ways. Our soldiers exist primarily for the protection of our farmers. It may sound strange to you, but that is the truth. The horsemen provide the farmers with peace and protection while they grow the crops that feed them and the soldiers. Come, we have another ten miles to ride, but the good road lies some two miles to our right, and once there, the way is straight and easily travelled." I kneed my horse forward and heard Liam cluck to the horse between the shafts of his cart.

An hour later, we came to the first guard post on this approach to Camulod. It was a small, fortified farmhouse, built of stone and elongated to accommodate its permanent garrison, its outhouses long since altered to provide stabling for the horses of the troopers who shared the posting with the infantry. The young centurion in charge greeted us with delight, slightly awed to have so many veteran superiors descend on him at once, and Dedalus, being Dedalus, set out immediately to inspect the installation. While he was doing so, I bade the others alight and rest while I spoke with the young commander, whose name was Decius.

"How many men have you here, Decius?"

"Fifty, Commander. One multiple squad of thirty-four afoot; two squads of cavalry."

"Since when, and why? The normal complement here is half of that, is it not?"

"Aye, Commander, it was, until a few weeks ago. Commander Ambrose changed the duty roster for all outposts."

"I see. Thank you, Decius. You may return to your duties. We pause here only for water and a rest, and then we strike on to the fort. Is Commander Ambrose in Camulod?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea, Commander. We have been here for ten days; four more to go."

"Very well, Centurion Decius, you may go." He saluted me, bringing his clenched fist to his left breast, and spun away.

We had lost no time on the road, but the news of our arrival far outran us, and an entire cavalcade, headed by Ambrose himself and his entire staff, came riding out to meet us as we approached the outer edge of the great campus, or drilling ground, that stretched out at the foot of the hill of Camulod itself. It was a joyous reunion, and as soon as Liam, Shelagh, Turga and her charge had been introduced, they were made as welcome as the rest of us. We would feast that evening, Ambrose told us; the stewards and the commissariat had already received their instructions and the quartermasters had been ordered to open their precious stores of luxury goods to welcome home the escort to the great-grandson of Publius Varrus. The Legates Titus and Flavius were stirring their aged stumps supervising the arrangements and the following day had been declared a holiday. Even though the guest of honour himself was much too young to recognize the honour done him on his first visit, his great-grandmother would welcome all comers to the feast in his name.

His great-grandmother was my primary concern, now that we were safely home, and she was the object of my first question once the civilities were done and I could ride alone with Ambrose on the way up to the fort. He told me that she had been ill, failing visibly ever since I left, but the news of our return, outrunning us magically hours before, as such news always seems to travel, had brought her from her rooms for the first time in weeks and the change in her, according to my brother, had been truly remarkable. That she intended to preside over the evening's festivities had completely astounded him. I looked at him when he said that.

"Is she capable of doing so?"

He grinned at me. "You know, Cay, I find it hard to credit that I have known her only for a few months, but if I have had time to learn anything about Luceiia Britannicus Varrus, it is that neither she nor I has ever found anything she is incapable of doing. She will be there, and she will play the hostess to all of us. Her pride in her great-grandson will bear her up. She may not last the entire course, but she'll be there for most of it."

"With all her women. Which reminds me. How is the Lady Ludmilla?"

He grinned at me, all eyes and flashing teeth. "Magnificent! I am in love . . . we are in love."

"Do you tell me so?" Returning his grin, I made no effort to hide my irony, but I sobered quickly. "I am glad of it, Ambrose. Will you be wed?"

"Aye, we will, come spring."

"Good. I look forward to your nuptials. For the moment, however, there are other matters that must concern us. The question, for example, of why you have doubled the strength of all the guard posts. Are you expecting trouble?"

His grin changed, becoming more rueful. "No, Cay, no trouble." He turned in his saddle, glancing around at the group that followed us closely, almost surrounding us, giving himself, I thought, time to phrase a response.

"It is an experiment," he said finally. "Ever since arriving here, I've been aware that we have a need to combine our tactics, allowing us to gain the best advantage from both our forces, infantry and cavalry." He paused, looking a question at me. "Were you—Are you aware we have a serious rivalry between the two, Cay?"

I shrugged. "We have always had rivalry, ever since the day Britannicus and Varrus decided to mount our men on horses. Rivalry is good; it keeps people mettlesome."

"Aye, but it can be damaging, too. I said we had a serious rivalry, not mere competition."

"How so? What d'you mean?"

"I mean it's bad, Brother. I began watching closely as soon as you had left for Eire, and I did not like what I saw. Your cavalry are elite troops; none better anywhere that I have seen, but that undoubted excellence has bred a sullenness among the other troops. Remember, I am an infantry commander by training. I know what I am talking about. Anyway, I began asking questions, and I would not accept any expedient or placatory answers. I spoke to the senior officers in both divisions, and to the rank and file as well, and what I found convinced me that we must make some effort, expeditiously, to heal the rift that has sprung into being over the past few years since Lot first marched against Camulod. And so I have been working closely with our infantry commanders, developing strategies that will enable us to draw full measure of the potential of our infantry in fighting with our cavalry in future. The doubling of strength in the guard posts is the first step towards that. Not because I want more strength there. I want more men there, living together in harmony, getting to know each other, and working together on developing the plans I've put in place."

"Hmm. And is it working?"

"Too soon to tell, but it seems to be."

"Tell me about this rivalry. You say it's only recent, since the start of the war against Lot? If that's so, then I would not have been aware of it. I've spent too much time being someone else since then."

Ambrose began his account, but we were too close by then to Camulod's gates and the waiting throng of welcomers that choked them. We agreed to talk again, later that night, and he abandoned me to the well-wishers. It took me more than an hour to win free of them and then to remove my armour, wash quickly and change into fresh clothing before going to collect the child from Turga. That done, I made my way directly to Aunt Luceiia's rooms, for I knew she was waiting there, curbing her impatience, to welcome me and her great-grandson. And as though he knew that this was a momentous occasion, the six-month-old child who was Arthur Pendragon rode easily in the bend of my elbow, wide-eyed, alert and staring at his new home with great, golden eyes.

I had been preparing myself for some time, ever since hearing from Ambrose that my great-aunt had been confined to bed by illness, to be appalled by the changes in her. She was a very old woman, having long outlived all of her own contemporaries, and genuinely merited the word "ancient" in the eyes of everyone else around her, and her advanced age had brought her to that stage of life where the smallest irregularity of health could wreak startling changes on her appearance. She stood up quickly as I entered the room bearing my small ward and moved immediately towards us, her eyes fixed upon my burden to the exclusion of all else so that I was able to scrutinize her as she approached. I could see no sign of illness. Her skin, as pale and delicate as fine papyrus, seemed to shine with health, although it may have been the simple radiance of her anticipation, and her great blue eyes, faded but still remarkable, sparkled in the late afternoon light from the unshuttered window she had ordered added only recently to the long rear wall in the family room, admitting welcome light from the small atrium beyond. She had a brief smile of welcome for me, open and heartfelt but nonetheless distracted in the urgency of greeting her great-grandson.

"Careful, Auntie, he's heavy," I said as she reached for him. She ignored me and plucked the boy from my arms as though he were a feather, carrying him directly into the light from her new window, where she held him aloft, peering into his tiny face. The child returned her scrutiny with complete equanimity, his eyes wide and calm, so that she gave a surprisingly girlish little crow of delight and pressed him quickly and lovingly to her bosom before holding him away from her again to continue her examination.

"Hello, young man," she said to him, for all the world as though only she and he existed. "Aren't you the wonder I never hoped nor thought to see? Arthur Britannicus Varrus, bearing the likeness of your ancestors as though to show the entire world who you are and whence you sprang." Now she turned her head and spoke to me, inviting me to join their tiny circle. "The eyes are pure Caius Britannicus—I never saw Cay's equal in eye colour until now—and the golden hair is a family heritage my brother used to blame on a too-loved northern slave of former days. You and your father have made it commonplace within the family nowadays, but it was once rare. But look at this fellow! Look at the strength of him, the shoulders and the depth of chest! How old is he? Six months? He has the body of Publius already, and could be the strongest smith in Britain. You could, couldn't you, were you not destined for other, greater things?" Responding to her tone, the infant smiled at her and she hugged him again, kissing his baby cheek.

I was beginning to feel stirrings of concern for her, because all of this time she had been standing, holding the child away from her easily, despite the fact that what I had said was true: the child was heavy, a solid lump of bone and sturdy muscle that could remind even my arms of what they bore. Now, however, she moved to a couch and sat down, holding the child seated on her lap, and the eyes she turned to me glowed with happiness.

"Thank you, Cay, for bringing this wonder home to me before I die. He is the future—the future of this Colony of ours and of this land. Look at him! That certitude is stamped into the essence of him. He is my entire life story, the history of all my loves made into one small boy." She fell silent again for a while, gentling the child at first when he began to squirm impatiently, and finally bending to allow him to slip down to the floor by her feet, where he lay kicking and waving his sturdy little arms, his eyes roving all around this strange, large room, registering the play of light and sparkle upon furnishing and ornament and ignoring the two people who watched him.

When she spoke again, her words had a musing, self-absorbed intimacy. "I can see all of them there, when he moves in certain ways: Publius Varrus in the very way he breathes and clenches his fists; my brother Cay in his eyes; even Ullic Pendragon and his own father Uther in his bearing, though how a child can have a 'bearing' kicking on his back is beyond me . . . it's there, nevertheless." She paused, then glanced at me. "His hair has a red tinge to it I have never seen before. Even as babes, your own hair and your father's were more yellow, more fair than this."

"His mother had red hair," I told her.

"Ah! Then that would explain it. It may change as he grows, to red or to pure gold like yours, or it may not. Only time will tell. Was he born with red hair, or did the change come afterwards?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, Auntie. It was that colour when I found him, but by then he was three months old. Is that long enough for a child's hair colouring to change?"

"Sometimes, but it is unimportant. Did you know the mother? What was her name? Ygert?"

"Ygraine. No. When I found her she was already dying. Lot's wife. And young Donuil's sister. And my wife's too."

Aunt Luceiia shook her head, smiling gently. "It's strange, stranger than anything I have ever known through all the years I've lived, the influence that this unknown, alien clan from another land has brought to bear on you, Nephew. Does it not amaze you?"

I had to nod in agreement, for the same thought had often occurred to me and been the subject of long mental deliberation in my quiet times. I disliked and distrusted coincidence, and had been taught by my own father that coincidence per se did not exist. The relationship between Donuil, Ygraine, Connor and myself was explainable, involving the politics of kingship and territorial alliances more than anything else. Having captured Donuil legitimately in a war waged by his family, and having befriended him thereafter, it did not seem strange to me in any way that I should later meet the members of his family who were involved in all the varying activities of warfare and alliances. The one coincidence that defeated me, that I could not explain, was meeting Donuil's sister, my dead wife, long months before I went to war and captured Donuil. The probabilities against two such unrelated encounters assuming the significance they had, defied credence. And yet it had occurred, and my life had been utterly changed beyond redress. My aunt was sitting still, watching me closely.

"Aye," I admitted, finally. "It does seem strange."

"Cod's will always seems strange to simple people."

"Cod's will?" I smiled as I looked at her. "Come, Auntie," I twitted her, seeking to ease my own sudden pain. "You think God's will extends to making sure that I would meet my wife and go through the joy and suffering I did before—and after—I lost her?"

I was well aware of my Aunt Luceiia's lifelong dedication of herself and all she did to the Christian Cod and His Church here in Britain. I considered myself a Christian, I believed in the existence of God, but my religious conviction was a private thing, and I seldom thought of God or of His Son, the Christ, as contemporary personalities. More Roman in such things than anything else, I felt, deep within myself, that God—as in "the gods"—had more important things to do than worry over individual people and the details of their abject little lives. Aunt Luceiia, however, refused to be teased. Ignoring the child at her feet for the time being, she composed herself, hands folded in her lap, and looked me straight in the eye.

"You are being flippant, Nephew, and I will not dignify your levity with discussion. But think of this: Had something not guided your feet to where you found her, on that patrol with Uther, none of the things that happened after would have come to pass the way they did. All of them might have happened, certainly, but they would not have been interconnected so intimately. Donuil would have remained a trusted hostage, perhaps even a friend. And you would not have pursued Uther so angrily nor so jealously—" She interrupted herself, responding to the sudden expression of shock I felt registering itself upon my face at her knowledge of what I had thought to be a secret known only to myself. "Oh, yes, I know the truth of all of that and what you thought and did. And while I am aware of the kindness with which you sought to shield me from your conviction of 'the truth,' I am neither blind nor feeble-minded . . . Most of all, however, I find myself accepting that had you not believed you had cause to suspect Uther in the death of your beloved wife, you would not have pursued him into Cornwall and my great- grandson would have perished. Instead, here he is, kicking at my feet. Your suspicion of Uther thus prevented the destruction of the great Dream you described to me but recently, the Dream of my brother and my husband Publius, personified in this child and his apparent Destiny. Without your doubts and beliefs, all of it would have gone unrealized. Will you make fun of that?"

By the time Aunt Luceiia had finished speaking I had mastered myself. I had also lost any urge to treat her observation with levity. Chastened, I realized that what she had said was the simple truth and that my own convictions regarding coincidence involved a contradiction in terms. Belief in Christianity, or any acknowledgment of a supernatural order of existence, entailed a willingness to accept that coincidence, or any series of synchronous yet apparently illogical events arranged in rational sequence, somehow related to the supernatural will. I drew a deep breath.

"No, Auntie, and you make me feel ashamed. I will never commit that error again, I promise."

She smiled and relented, waving her hand to dismiss the topic. "No need to feel shame, Nephew. You must merely keep an open mind in future. Remember your uncle Varrus. All of his learning told him no stone could fall from an open sky without first being hurled up into it from earth. Had he chosen to accept that, he would never have found the Skystone that he sought, and that wondrous sword Excalibur would never have existed." She paused, allowing her words to sink home in me. "Keep your mind ever open, Cay. Accept no other's dictum as the final word on anything you think to question. Now, get you off and bathe and steam and shave, and leave me with my grandson here. Who is his nurse, by the way?"

I told her about Turga, and then spent a full half hour telling her of the baby's other family in Eire, and of his other grandfather, Athol, King of Scots. Finally I told her of Liam Twistback and his daughter Shelagh and the absence of Donuil. She listened to most of this in silence, asking only a few questions, and then suggested that both Shelagh and Turga should move into her own household as guests, the one to await the return of her husband- to-be, the other to guarantee her hostess constant access to the child. I smiled again and again as I listened, and then kissed her fondly before leaving to find Ambrose, with whom I had much to discuss.

XX

I discovered that Ambrose was out on the hilltop lands behind the fortress walls, conducting target practice with some of our younger foot-soldiers whom he had decided to train as bowmen. Intrigued, I started to make my way directly to the spot, but then I recalled my aunt's instructions and paused, considering them. I had washed and changed out of my travel clothes before going to her, ridding myself of the uppermost layer of human and horse sweat, but I was still far from being either clean or refreshed. I knew that a visit to the bath house would revivify me. A quick glance at the sky showed me some hours of daylight yet remained, and so I beckoned to a passing soldier and sent him to Ambrose with a message that I was bathing and would join him, bringing my own bow, within the hour. That done, I headed for the sanctuary of the baths as quickly as I could, and regaled myself in the luxury of the hot pools leading to the sudarium, or steam room, where I surrendered myself willingly to the ministrations of the two masseurs then on duty.

Later, refreshed and feeling new born, and clutching Uncle Varrus's great bow and a quiver of arrows, I made my way to where Ambrose had set up his new target range at the rear of the fort, beyond the postern gate that had given access to my father's assassins years earlier. In those days, the rock- strewn, grassy hilltop had lain empty, but I knew that the space was now put to full use, with buildings, horse pens and roofed stables filling most of the area. Ambrose, apparently, had commandeered the last clear, level stretch of terrain for his current use, and I heard the laughing shouts and jeers of the participants as I approached. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived, but what I found amazed me.

There must have been close to thirty men there, all of them clustered at the end of the range opposite a row of four clearly marked, black-and-white ringed targets, each one spread over what I later discovered to be bound bales of densely packed straw. Ambrose stood to one side, watching the proceedings with his back to me as I approached, and most of the milling throng over which he presided I identified immediately as young recruits and trainee soldiers. Several other faces among these, however, distinguished by the un- trimmed beards and hair that framed them, leapt out at me; older faces these, well known but unexpected in this place and at this time. As I walked towards them, still unnoticed, two more young men stepped forward to the rough line gouged in the earth that marked the aiming point, their heads bent and all their attention concentrated upon the long, tapered Pendragon bows each of them held with the awkwardness of learners. The sight of the bows shocked me even more than had my recognition of the several faces I had last seen in Uther's company, and checked my advance. This sudden stop attracted the attention of one thick-set, bearded Celt, who turned his head towards me and then earned my gratitude by breaking into a smiling roar of recognition, so that suddenly I became the centre of attraction, surrounded by the enthusiasm of old, back-slapping companions whose existence I had all but forgotten.

There was Huw Strongarm, direct descendant of Publius Varrus's old friend Cymric, the Pendragon bowyer who had made the first long yew bow stave, and with him was his son, another Cymric, whom I had last seen as a stripling lad. Behind Huw loomed the enormous bulk of Powys, the largest and strongest man I had ever met, who could lift a struggling heifer in his arms unaided. Other names flashed back to me, unthought of in years, as their owners greeted me: Owain of the Caves; the trio Menester, Gwern and Guidog who, I had learned long since, had been born within four days of each other and had done everything together since childhood. Cador the Fisherman was there, as was Medrod, who had been one of Uther's most trusted retainers, and Elfred Egghead, who had lost all his hair, including lashes and brows, almost before attaining manhood. These nine I knew immediately. Five others stood with them whose names I did not know, although I recognized them all by sight. By the time their boisterous greetings had died down and I was able to look beyond the circle of them, I saw Ambrose standing watching me, a slight smile on his lips, and grouped beside him were his trainees, almost a score of them, some clutching Celtic bows, and all of them staring at me with expressions varying from slack-jawed awe to something approaching reverent admiration. Several heads swung back and forth from me to my brother, remarking and cataloguing our amazing resemblance to each other. None of these young men was known to me, and that realization made me more aware than anything else until that time of how far I had drifted, all unawares and for a multiplicity of reasons, from the daily life, activities and people of the Colony that was supposed to be my home.

I raised my clenched fist to my breast, saluting Ambrose, and he returned the greeting gravely, though his eyes were dancing, but when I would have moved to meet him I found myself confronted by Huw Strongarm with a challenge to test my Varrus bow—that was what he called it—against his homegrown pride. Though his tone was one of friendly raillery, I knew at once that this was not a challenge I could easily refuse, for the growl of approbation that sprang from the throats of his fellows was unanimous, and so I shrugged and accepted. Two men ran immediately to spread new targets over the existing ones, which were already pierced and tattered, although I noticed, even from this distance, that the central rings of all four targets were almost unmarred. They were plain enough targets, made from raw cloth stretched over square frames of woven reeds like the circular Saxon shields carried by Ambrose's men on their arrival. Black rings, concentric circles, had been drawn on the plain cloth, each circle growing smaller by a handspan until the smallest, itself a handspan wide. They were set up a hundred measured paces from the firing line, which Huw and I approached together.

Each of us glanced sidelong at the other, eyeing the other's weapon. Because of its double curve and triple compound layers of construction, my bow looked bigger and somehow more formidable than Huw's, and my arrows were perhaps a palm's width longer, but I took no satisfaction in that appearance of superiority. Huw's bow, bent and strung, looked graceful and slender, and much shorter than mine, although I knew that was illusion.

Unstrung, his bow was equal to his own height and was painstakingly carved from a single sapling, the result of years of care and conscientious labour, carefully dried and straightened, worked with heavy linseed oil, then planed and shaved by hand to taper perfectly from its central thickness, which filled up a grown man's palm, to its notched extremities, each the size of a fingertip. My bowstrings were of dried animal gut, stretched wet, then plaited into single strands of great strength. His were of spun-hair twine, braided and waxed. Only our arrows bore comparison, made from straight ash shoots— mine the longer—and fletched with goose feathers, slightly curved, to make the missiles they adorned spin smoothly.

The sun was behind us on our right, more than halfway down the sky, so that it threw our shadows, long and slanting to the left ahead of us. Huw sniffed and grinned at me. "Ready?"

"Aye," I murmured. "But yon centre's a massy ring, and close."

"That's true enough, but none of your boys have hit one yet."

"Then perhaps what they lack is inspiration?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "Something smaller, then?"

"Much smaller," I said with a smile.

He thought for a moment, then grinned and reached up to his breast, where he unpinned the kind of brooch I had remarked King Athol wearing, although Huw's was much smaller. It was a simple circle of silver, held by a straight pin. The rim was half the width of my small fingernail, its central space as wide as the distance from the tip of my thumb to the first joint. Turning, Huw threw it to the closest bystander, big Powys.

"Powys," he said. "D'you think your fingers delicate enough to place this thing in the centre of the target there? But mind you don't close the pin! Stick it straight into the target. We'll be putting arrows through the ring and I don't want my fine brooch broken." Few of our young men understood what had been said, but as the giant Powys strode forward and affixed the silver circle to the centre of the first target, a murmur of awe arose around us. When Powys was clear of the line of flight, I turned to Huw with a small nod.

"Your brooch, your shot."

He nodded back and raised his bow immediately, hardly seeming to bother taking aim. The bowstring smacked against the heavy leather arm guard that protected his left arm and as it did so the sound of his arrow smacking home echoed it immediately. There was a shout of acclamation, and I saw the feathered end of his shaft slanted across the distant silver circle. The point was buried in, or close to, the ring itself.

"Fine shot," I said. "Did you hit the brooch?"

"I hope not, for if I did, there's ruined it is. I missed the target, anyway. I think you could insert a thumb between the arrow and the mark. Make sure you do the same, either in or out. Don't hit the brooch, for 'twas a recent gift from one who'd have the hide off me if she knew how I was using it."

I smiled and drew the string back to my ear, aware of lack of wind or distraction. As the tip of my arrow crossed the line of my eye, I loosed and watched the shaft speed straight and true, hearing another roar of admiration.

"That missed, too," I told Huw. "But I think it's closer than yours."

"Well then, we'll check it. One shaft at a time is all we can try here, for more than that will block the view and endanger the brooch. A clean shattering from a single, well-aimed shot I could live with, but to do so carelessly simply because either one of us could not see clearly would be unforgivable." He raised his voice to Powys, who had remained at the far end of the range. "Powys! Which one was closer?"

The big man crossed to the target and leaned close to it, measuring carefully, it seemed, before straightening up and pulling out both arrows.

"Merlyn's," he called back. "But not by much. His to the right and centre, yours to the left and high. I had to use one finger to my thumb's end to mark the difference."

"Stand away then. The next one's mine." As Powys walked away, Huw nocked another arrow and then froze in the half stoop used by all men who pulled these mighty bows, his eyes fixed on the distant target, his bow arm hanging almost loosely by his side, his right arm bent across his middle, holding the bowstring gently. Long moments he stood there, his concentration absolute, and then he straightened, stepping into his shot, bringing the full strength of his upper body into play as his weapon swung up and he pulled and loosed, again without having seemed to aim. I watched the arrow's flight, marvelling at the big man's coordination and speed of delivery. I knew how good I was, and knew that few men were my equal in this arena. Huw Strongarm, however, was one of those few, and I knew that I could never match his speed and ease. This time I was almost unaware of the cheers coming from the watchers. Huw's shot was closer than his first had been. It might even have pierced the centre. We were too far away to know beyond doubt.

Drawing a deep breath once, twice and then a third time, blowing the air from my chest so hard that my cheeks puffed out, I nocked, then willed myself to relax and gather my strength as my eye sought and followed the flight of the arrow I would send towards the target. Then, when I knew my eye was true and my mind satisfied, I released the series of rippling moves that would unleash my thunderbolt, leaning into my pull so that I actually pushed the bow stave forward as I brought the taut string back towards my ear. The shot sped clean once more, and I knew Powys's thumbnail would be employed again. This time, however, it was my arrow that lay farther from the mark.

"One more to decide?"

I grinned and nodded. "But no more than one. I think you have been practising more than I have."

"Practising? I don't practise, man. This is what I do!"

This time, as I watched my opponent prepare for his shot, I listened to the silence around us. Thirty and more grown men all held their breath and watched as I did, enthralled by the rapt attention Huw gave to his task. Again I marvelled at the taut stillness of him, and then at the explosive force as he snapped into motion, seeming to expand simultaneously in all directions as he released the pent-up energy that had sustained his trance. This time big Powys whooped and went capering across to the target, where he peered downward and then spun around, leaping in the air and crying that Huw's shaft was in the ring. I felt the tension drain from me like water.

"Well done, Huw," I said, meaning it sincerely. "That was a master's shot."

He looked at me in surprise. "What, you mean you're giving up?"

"Giving up?" I laughed aloud. "God, man, you pierced the ring! I can't beat that."

"No, but you could equal it. There's room in there for two."

"Not if you hit dead centre, and I'd guess you did."

"No, I hit to the left of centre, almost against the side."

"How can you know that?"

"I saw it! I'm not blind, man."

"By God, then I am, and that's enough for me. You can see so clearly that far away?"

"Aye. You can't?"

"No, and I would wager not one other man can, either, except you." I turned back to Powys, who was still standing by the target. "Powys," I shouted. "Where was the hit?"

"Left of centre. Against the rim," came the reply. I turned again to Huw, my face, I knew, betraying my amazement. But Huw was already shouting to Powys.

"Is there room in the circle for another shaft?"

"Aye!"

Huw looked at me. "Well? Will you shoot, or are you prepared to give up the legend that the Varrus bow is superior to the Pendragon?"

His tone was jocular, but I knew he spoke in earnest, and the gravity of what he said came home to me. For decades now, the great African bow brought to this country by Publius Varrus had remained a thing of legend. This was the bow that had inspired Cymric the bowyer to build the first Pendragon bow, which Ullic the King himself had been the only man with the strength to pull. From that first bow of yew the rest had sprung, so that over a period of short decades the Pendragon had become the most effective fighting force outside Camulod, the fame of their dread weapons spreading far and wide throughout the South and West. Now, in this confrontation that had begun between two old friends, I saw the challenge clearly. If the Varrus bow were found wanting, then the name of Varrus himself would suffer neglect hereafter. I sighed, a gusty sound of anger and sudden frustration.

"No, I don't think so, Huw," I answered him, hearing my own voice grating on the words. "Not yet, and not without a fight." I pulled another arrow from the quiver at my shoulder and stepped back to the line, putting my thoughts in order. That was, I found immediately, more easily attempted than achieved. I found myself in the grip of an unreasoning anger, and I knew it would obscure my judgment if I allowed it to persist. Aware of the deep silence that had fallen all around me again, I forced myself to stand motionless and concentrate upon the task at hand. As calmness began to assert itself and my anger faded, I turned away from the mark, glancing at Huw, searching his face for any sign of mockery or scorn. I saw none. He stood motionless, his bow grounded, watching me calmly and without any expression other than the respect due from one opponent to another in a contest of skills.

I nodded to him and turned again towards the mark, exhaling completely and then breathing deeply in the pattern I had taught myself over the years. And the world around me vanished, to be replaced by a long tunnel that stretched away ahead of me to where a silver circle shone, large and clean- lined, against a field of dun, untreated cloth. As I loosed my shot I knew it was my best ever. I had turned away to Huw before it even hit the mark, aware that the watching crowd yet held its breath, waiting for Powys's verdict. But I knew, and Huw knew, judging by his grin, that my shaft had lodged with his, inside the ring. As we shook hands, the air around us shattered under the noise of the watchers' cheers.

"So it was meant to be. The Varrus bow has lost nothing with the years, including its master's skills." Huw's admiration was genuine and ungrudging.

"Had you not said what you did, your victory would have gone uncontested, my friend."

"I knew that, Merlyn, but I knew, too, that you had not seen it, did I not?"

"Aye, you're right. It needed to be said. My thanks to you. But why are you here, Huw? Why in Camulod, and since when?"

He made a wry face. "Since life in our own place became unbearable," he answered, as the throng bore down on us, led by Powys, who brandished Huw's brooch above his head. "We'll talk about it later."

Once again I found myself surrounded by well-wishers, and it occurred to me that here was a day for interrupted conversations.

After the sun went down, destroying any hope of further shooting, the recruits were dismissed and dispersed, and Huw and his fellow Celts accompanied Ambrose and me to the refectory, where I prevailed upon one of the presiding cooks to pack up a quantity of foods, both hot and cold, to feed sixteen of us. Ludo, my effeminate old friend from boyhood days, had died some time before, but he had disciplined his staff over the years to accede to any demand that I might make at any time. Then, armed with good food and ale, we sought a firepit by the road outside the walls by the main gate. We found one, manned by some of the recruits who had been with us earlier, and sent them searching elsewhere for a fire, while we sat down to eat and talk. There was a chill nip to the evening air, but most of the men wore cloaks and the day had been pleasant, with more pale, wintry sunshine than showers.

Conversation was desultory while the food lasted, but Huw was quick to show me his brooch, returned to him by Powys, which had now become a trophy. It bore two small, parallel identical scars where the inside upper rim had been nicked by our arrows, and Huw was immensely proud of it.

"Look you, Merlyn," he pointed out to me, kneeling beside me and balancing the meat he had crammed inside a wedge of bread precariously on one bent knee while he held the brooch out for my inspection. "If you were to draw crossed lines, splitting the circle in four parts, each arrow's point would pierce above the level cross line, you see?—but exactly the same distance on either side from the vertical, so that the upper edges of the arrowheads have nicked the rim! It looks as though the marks were made a-purpose, doesn't it?" I agreed that it did, gaining great pleasure from his simple excitement, and he went off to share his explanation with the others.

"He'll get drunk on that brooch for years," Ambrose murmured from where he sat beside me.

"Well, why not?" I responded, watching Huw's progress. "He's entitled to. That was probably one of the best shots he ever made in his life; I know it was mine. That the two should occur together like that almost goes beyond belief, but fortunately for Huw, he has witnesses aplenty. Now, to business." I turned and faced my brother as squarely as I could when we were seated side by side on the same log. "Where did he and the others come from, and when and why?"

Ambrose threw his remaining, well-gnawed bone into the fire and wiped his grease-covered fingers on the hem of his tunic before answering, finishing his toilet by scrubbing at his lips with the back of one hand. "Arrived on the day you left," he said. "All fourteen of them together. Frightened the marrow out of the sentinel. He neither saw nor heard them until they spoke to him, right in his ear. They had crawled up on him from behind . . ." He paused, reflecting. "I almost had the fellow charged with dereliction, until I thought the matter through. Obviously such a thing could not have happened had Huw's men not been so thoroughly familiar with our ways and territory, and of course that does nothing to relieve the guard of any fault, but it served to point out one of the many weaknesses in our current system. Had Huw's people been hostile for any reason, possessing the same knowledge, they would have been among us before we knew they were near. So instead of punishing the guard, I embarrassed him by making him explain the whole affair to his companions: how and why he was at fault; what might have happened had these not been friends; where he had been careless; how, exactly how, he would take steps to be more vigilant in times to come. I was merciless on him, but I think the lesson worked. All our guards are more alert now, everywhere. Anyway—" He broke off what he was saying to pick up his ale mug. "Huw says there is much trouble in our dead cousin's Cambrian hills, Brother. Minor, perhaps major wars are being waged over the vacant kingship. Uther had no natural successor, being the last of his direct line, but I gather there is no dearth of secondary claimants; uncles on his mother's side, cousins and a whole host of far-flung relatives."

"Hmm. I thought that might be the case, although I must admit I am surprised to hear you speak of warfare. That kind of war pits brother against brother."

"Aye, and mother against son, in some instances."

"So why did Huw's people leave?"

"Ask him. He thought I was you, when he first saw me, and came right to me. He was much nonplussed to find I did not recognize him." His face broke into a smile. "But he was really stunned when he found I was not you. I made him at ease, for all that, and there were many others around to welcome him and his men. Titus and Flavius both made much of them, and they helped me tremendously in gaining their acceptance. Later, when Huw had come to know me slightly better, he spoke of his reasons for leaving the hills and coming here. Fundamentally, he and his men had been away too long to enable them to form sudden, clear-cut loyalties to any of the contenders in the struggle that they found when they reached home. Uther had been their lord, and they his men. So after spending an entire war against Lot, surviving as a unit, they maintained their unity at home, without committing to one faction or another. And that failure to commit, as I am sure you will already have surmised, bred hatred from all sides. Originally twenty- four, their party was depleted one by one, by stealth and treachery over the course of less than four months, to the point where only fifteen remained alive. Huw decided to come here to save the others, their loyalty transferred from Uther to you as Uther's natural successor."

"Uther's successor? I have no claim on Uther's kingship!"

"They said nothing of kingship, Cay. Their talk was all of loyalty and commitment."

"Ah! Do they know aught of the child Arthur?"

Ambrose shook his head. "Nothing. I reasoned it was not my place to tell them."

"Good. I may tell them later, for we will have need of them and their loyalty. Tell me about your school of bowmanship."

He stretched his legs and rose to his feet, massaging his buttocks, then sat down again, straddling the log so that he faced me directly. "Huw offered to teach some of our men to shoot, and I seized on it. It fitted in perfectly with my design to meld the elements of Camulod's forces into a single entity. I told you about the rift I have discovered between our horsemen and foot- soldiers. At the most fundamental level, a schism—which may be groundless but is nonetheless extremely real—has been created between the two." Again he stopped himself, and I could almost see his mind working as he scanned the words he would use next. "Understand me, Brother, I see little of this stemming from you yourself, but from all I have gathered you have been, albeit unknowingly, part of the problem. When you lay injured, and even afterward, when you were up and about, the guiding hand, the strength and wisdom you had formerly lent to all in Camulod, were sadly lacking. During that time, too, Camulod was at war, and principally under the command of Uther and his staff of officers. Most of those were cavalry, for the simple reason that Uther, when he required the men of Camulod to supplement or complement his Celtic Pendragon, required them urgently, insisting they be capable of moving quickly to prosecute his aims. He took large bodies of our infantry as well, but those served as foot-soldiers always do, slogging through mud and mire and sleeping on the ground in filth and squalor: no wondrous feats recorded of them; no deeds of brilliant daring; no glowing victories. . . no privileges, and no new equipment, whereas the vaunted cavalry received, it appeared, the best of everything.

"And so, over a span of years of brutal war, a division was created, born of the simple envies and resentment bred in men who see themselves as put upon and not appreciated while others more fortunate than themselves are lauded for performing similar but more ostentatious and less meritorious deeds at far less cost and under far fewer hardships. Schism . . ." He paused, then added, "An unpleasant word, Cay, and a far less pleasant fact."

"Aye," I said. "I can see it now, listening to you, but I had no idea. Thank God you came to Camulod, Brother. What's to do now? You have already started, I'm aware, by doubling the presence in every outpost, mixing the men. But if the schism is as deep and angry as you say it is, how will that help? The mix, at such close quarters, might be incendiary."

"It could be, but I think I have forestalled the danger, at least in part. Now that you've returned, the matter should proceed more quickly with your support." A couple of the men around us had moved closer to where we sat, seeking the fire's heat. They were paying us no attention, but once Ambrose had become aware of them, their presence inhibited the flow of his speech. He glanced at them again and then stood up. "Walk with me a little. I'll explain as we go."

No one paid us any attention as we strolled out of the firelight into the darkness, which was now almost complete, and we made our way automatically to the paved road that wound down the hill from the fortress gates, seeking the soundness of its surface beneath our feet. As we went, Ambrose told me of his plans to unify our Camulodians, as he referred to them, more tightly than ever before. He knew that they had always been a single force until the present difficulties had begun, and he was confident they would soon be again. He would arrange the military affairs of the Colony, provided he had my support and assistance, so as to ensure that neither arm of our forces would ever act entirely independently of the other again. Patrols would be organized in such a way that each of the outlying guard posts would be in constant contact with the others on either side of it. There were twelve such outposts placed around the perimeter of Camulod's territories at the present time, and Ambrose had allocated each an identifying number, from one through twelve. Six double squadrons of cavalry would soon begin to ride the bounds, each double unit beginning its tour from one of the even- numbered camps, progressing at a pre-set pace and continuing from camp to camp until they had completed the entire circuit, a course that would take a month; twenty-four days for travel, six more in which to deal with unforeseen developments. Infantry support from each camp would accompany each group of riders to the half-way point between camps, at which an infantry detachment from the next post would be waiting. Each outgoing infantry patrol would then return to its own camp to await the arrival of the next mounted group, while the mounted troopers rode on to the next camp, escorted by the infantry who had awaited them. This activity, Ambrose believed, would keep all the men active and on the move at all times, neutralizing the danger of boredom or dissatisfaction.

I was impressed by his vision of how his innovations would work, but I had not yet heard the really ambitious part. Each soldier, he told me, horse and foot, would henceforth do a month of patrol duty at one stretch, and then would have two months in Camulod itself. We had the resources to arrange that, I knew. But during his two months in Camulod, as rapidly and intensively as possible, each soldier would learn the other force's skills. All mounted troopers would train as infantry; all foot-soldiers as horsemen. That way, Ambrose maintained, each would learn the benefits and the drawbacks of their fellows. It might be chaotic at first, and he was prepared for that, but he believed the chaos would be short-lived. Some troops would wish to change, he said, and there might be apparent imbalances for a time because of that, but his belief was that eventually the balance would settle again to resemble the current status quo. The best of both groups, however, on a voluntary basis, would be given the opportunity to join a new branch of Camulodians: to become bowmen, armed with the long Celtic bows.

By the time his recital was done we had reached the bottom of the hill, turned and made our way up again almost to the point from which we had set out. I saw big Powys above us, clearly outlined by the flames from the firepit.

When I was sure Ambrose had no more to add, I grinned at him and shook my head in admiration. "You have wasted no time since my departure, have you, Brother? To say that I am impressed would not do justice either to what I feel or to what you've achieved, in planning, at least. How long will all this take? I'm assuming you have plotted all of it?"

"A year or so; certainly no longer than that. As I said, it will be slow at first, then all will follow like a landslide for some hectic months, and then there will be a period of months for slowing down and refining. Less than a year, when all's been said and done."

"And after that the schism will be gone."

"After that? God, Cay, it should vanish within the month, as soon as we can see we've truly begun."

"And when will that be?"

"Tomorrow, if you're in accord with me. The basic elements are all in place."

"What will you require of me, apart from my personal involvement?"

"Total, visible and vocal support and commitment." He had been waiting for me to ask that specific question.

"You have all of it. How do I express it?"

He grinned. "First, in Council; next, to the assembled officers of Camulod, high and low; then to the troops themselves, in formal parade. Time we had one of those. The last formal parade we had here was the one you called to signal my arrival."

"Agreed in full, and here's my hand on it. Let it be done." As we clasped hands to forearms, I added my single condition. "I hope you can begin without me, for at least the first week or two."

"I can," he said with a nod. "What have you planned?"

"An expedition of a hundred troopers to Glevum, without me, the reason for which I'll explain in a moment, and for me, a journey to Cambria, although I see that might be difficult and dangerous, from what you have told me."

"Potentially fatal, I would say. Take my advice and speak with Huw on that. He will have things to say that will make more sense than anything I've told you. What's this about Glevum?"

I told him briefly about the Berbers we had seen, and their attack on the leper colony, and he listened, tight-lipped, then nodded. "You're right. Something has to be done about those people. Otherwise, they'll grow like a nest of wasps. Best to get rid of them before they can settle in to a nesting spot. There's a formal Council meeting the day after tomorrow. Can this wait that long for Council's approval?"

"Yes. It will take that long to make ready. The expedition can leave the morning after the meeting."

He pursed his lips. "Tell me, has the Council ever withheld approval of a venture like this?"

"You mean a punitive expedition? No, how could it? The mere idea is ludicrous. Things like that are only undertaken for the good and protection of the Colony itself and the Council is the legislative body of the Colony."

"What would you do if the circumstance ever arose? For the sake of argument, let's say that, for some reason inconceivable to either of us now, Council should someday decide to withhold its approval of an expedition like the one you now propose. What would you do, hypothetically?"

I grimaced and shook my head slowly. "Hypothetically? Well, I suppose hypothetically I'd do the same as I would practically. I'd override them and imprison any councillor who sought to stay me."

Ambrose grinned. "That, Caius Merlyn, is the response of an autocrat."

I grinned back at him. "Is it really? Well, I might quibble with you over that, Brother. I'd say it's the response of a professional soldier to a question that is, by definition, hypothetical—a soldier, bear in mind, whose title is Commander of the Military Forces of Camulod and whose responsibility is to the safety of the Colony . . . In my opinion, Ambrose, and perhaps it would apply within this context alone, a councillor is but an adviser with a grander title. The function of the Council in such purely military matters, in my 'official' eyes, is to counsel and support, by providing a consensus—a concurrence and a commitment—of the senior minds within our Colony. It may strongly advise against a particular course, but it is never to forbid."

"Hmm," he murmured, still smiling as his eyes focused on something behind me. "Here's Huw now. Ask him about the journey you intend to make."

"What journey?" Huw was one of the few among Uther's Celts who spoke our Latin tongue with anything approaching fluency. I swung around to face him as he joined us.

"To Cambria, Huw. I have to travel to your country, to speak with whoever is in command there now."

His face twisted into a scowl of disgust, and to express it he lapsed back into his own tongue. "In command? No one is in command there. The place is a morass—a bog of shit and waste and treachery. That's why we are here, myself and the others. The pride we've borne all our lives in being Pendragon has been blasted like a tree in a thunderstorm and all that's left of it is a smoking stump riven into shattered pieces, each leaning like a drunkard in its own direction." His eyes had been fixed on mine throughout this and I was struck by the image his words brought into my mind, but he had not yet finished. "I'm serious, Merlyn. Nothing you have to do is important enough to warrant a journey into that nest of rats."

His vehemence, and the words he chose to express it, gave me more cause for concern than I had yet considered. "Nest of rats? Huw, that is your own home you are speaking of."

"I know that!" He snapped the words at me, their utterance a rebuke for my ignorance. "But the rats I refer to are no relatives or clansmen of mine. Rats thrive among people, Merlyn; they always have. They feed on the waste people discard. That doesn't make rats of the people who supply their food, nor does it make rats' nests of their homes, but as surely as you'll find green shit in the guts of a cow, you'll find rats' nests among human dwellings. All I meant was that there's a plague of two-legged rats running around my homeland nowadays in all directions; a plague; a sickness—an insanity."

"Hmm!" I thought about that, and sighed gustily. "Still," I said. "There's no help for it. I have to go there."

"Why, in the name of all the Druids and their gods?" His exasperation made him sound angered at me.

"Because I have given a promise, Huw, perhaps foolishly, to achieve something. It may be unachievable, but that is something I will have to prove for myself, and to the satisfaction of those concerned."

"And who are they, these concerned people?" Huw's voice had regained a tone of normality. "Do you want to tell me?"

"Aye, willingly, if you'll sit down and stop barking at me like an angry dog." He sat down by the fire, close to Ambrose, and I told him of Liam Twistback and his breeding cattle, and of my promise to King Athol to arrange a temporary sanctuary for the man and his animals in the little-used grazing lands to the south and west of Glevum.

"That's all it is?"

"Aye, but I would not choose to dismiss it as scornfully as that. I made a promise. I must honour it."

"And what does this King Athol offer in return for this. . . what did you call it? Sanctity?"

"Sanctuary. A Roman word, meaning a safe haven, a place free of danger, conflict and penalty."

Huw barked a loud, hard laugh. "Sanctuary! A strange term to be applying to Pendragon country nowadays."

"I can see that now," I agreed. "But it did not seem so silly when I made the promise. I knew nothing of what's going on up there."

"Aye, much can happen to alter the world in a short time. Anyway, I asked what this king offers in return."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Nothing, in effect, because we did not discuss the matter in those terms. I would suspect, nevertheless, his people would be willing to make some form of payment, perhaps in kind, for the use of the land. I see no risk of conflict there. The risk is involved in finding whoever it may be who can confer such rights on Liam and his people."

"How many people?"

I felt myself frowning, perplexed at his pursuit of such detail. "Ten . . . Perhaps a dozen . . . The people who would tend the beasts. No more than that."

"Done, and settled, providing your Outlanders are dreaming no surprises. Bring me to this Liam Twistback." He grinned, fierce and sudden, at the look of surprise on my face. "Those lands are mine, Merlyn, south and west of Glevum—mine and my clan's, which means mine and my son's, since all the rest of us are dead."

"Yours? They're yours?" I found myself almost blustering.

He gazed at me, an expression akin to compassion complementing the smile in his eyes. "Aye, that's what I said. Those lands are mine and have been in the care and keeping of my people since before the Romans came. They thought to conquer us and called us Belgae and Silures because they didn't know the names of our clans, but we are of Pendragon, and our land was ours and well ordered long before the Caesars came and called our country Britain. The Romans are long gone, but our land remains ours as it remained ours throughout their occupation. We were never conquered, Caius Merlyn; we merely stopped fighting."

"Then I have no need to enter Cambria."

"That is what I am saying. No need to go. I can extend the right to your friend Twistback to live on the land . . . What I cannot do is guarantee his safety, any more than I could ensure my own, were I to attempt what he will. To breed his cattle, he will have to stay in one place and defend it against all who come his way. I have no envy for him there, because all of Cambria is in chaos and he may find himself in the way of many unwelcome visitors."

"Well, that may be looked after in due time, by one means or another. God! Is there any of that ale left, Ambrose?"

"No." My brother leaned forward and groped for a flask by his side. "But I have some good mead."

Later that night, in the comfort of the family room after Aunt Luceiia had retired, I discussed the entire day's happenings in flickering firelight with Lucanus and Ambrose. We talked at length of the expedition to cleanse Glevum of the Berbers' occupation, and of the need to provide some means of protection for Liam Twistback and his people in their temporary home south of Glevum. Those territories lay outside the bounds of Camulod—far outside, in fact—but the unrest reported farther north in Cambria might spill southward, and it seemed sensible to all of us to establish some form of defensive outpost in Huw's territory. It was Ambrose, my far-sighted brother, who pointed out that it might also be politically astute to arrange for a constant presence in the coastal waters, to be provided by Connor's fleet in protection of their own interests. I determined to find some means of making such arrangements with Connor, and from there the conversation drifted aimlessly for a while as we discussed a range of matters distinguished only by their lack of urgency.

It was Ambrose, too, who led the discussion on to its next stage. He had been sitting silent for a time, staring into the fire, but suddenly he stirred and turned towards me. "You know," he said, "it has just occurred to me that you are free to lead the raid on Glevum if you wish to, now that you won't be going to Cambria."

"The thought had passed through my mind," I answered, "but I decided against it. If you and I are to work together as closely as you suggest, and if the task ahead of us is as complex as you believe, then I think my time would be better spent here with you, getting on with it. My lads have no need of me to do that job. They know what's necessary and they have the motivation and the spirit. They'll make short work of it and be back here within ten days. Your task and mine, which is much more important, would not be begun too soon were we to tackle it tomorrow. Don't you agree?"

"Aye . . ." A slight hesitation turned his positive response to a negative.

"What's wrong? You foresee a problem with so quick a start? Do you still have preparations to make?"

He sighed and sat up straighter. "No, Cay, not at all, but my mind was on other things. I was lulled by the fire, dreaming about Vortigern. You know I still have to return and tell him I intend to stay here in Camulod."

"Aye, but you said you felt no time constraints in that. You spoke of returning after a year, and you have been here less than three months. Has something changed your mind? Have you news from Vortigern?"

"No, nothing like that. I have been thinking about him recently, that's all, and I thought for a moment I might achieve that task while you were off in Glevum. But it would not be possible. The timing is wrong in all aspects. I had been thinking your expedition might take longer than you clearly expect it to. Ten days would hardly be long enough for me to reach Vortigern's territories, let alone find him and return."

"No, a month would not be long enough, especially at this time of the year. There will be snow on the mountains by this time, and you might have difficulty in the high passes. Better to wait for spring. How long do you anticipate this melding of our troops would take were we both devoted to the task?"

"If we can throw ourselves into this thing together, side by side, without permitting anything to distract us from our intent, it should be achievable in a matter of two or three months. All we have to do is supply the outline and define the pattern we wish to follow, and convince our men that it is sane, desirable and good for all of us."

Lucanus leaned forward and stirred the coals. "So, you believe it could be done by spring?"

"Aye, easily."

When Luke responded, his words were to Ambrose, but he looked at me. "Then your task and your time lines are clearly defined, and you can journey together to meet Vortigern come spring, if you so wish."

"Together? I have no reason to travel across Britain simply to visit Vortigern."

"You think not? I can give you at least two, here and now, with no further consideration."

"Then do so, please. I'm curious."

He stood up and wrestled a big, fresh log onto the fire before he responded. "Very well then," he said finally, dusting his hands and returning to his seat. "The first of them is self-evident. You two have much yet to discuss and share. A ride across the country would give you the time and the leisure to deal with much of it and to enjoy each other, free of duty for a spell."

Ambrose smiled and nodded at me and I grunted. "Aye, agreed, if duty will spare us. What is your second reason?"

"Your own curiosity about the parts of this land you have not seen, and the people who inhabit them. Those Saxons who live along the Saxon Shore, and Vortigern's mercenaries. I know you are concerned about some of them, at least; those of them who have lived here now for several generations. You spoke of them when you returned from the south, after Lot's War . . . of how the people there feared the Saxons far less than Lot's Cornish mercenaries and Uther's bowmen. Am I not correct?"

"Aye, you are. What of it?"

"And again, you spoke of it when Ambrose here arrived with his men all dressed as Saxons, having travelled through the Saxon-occupied territories to reach us. . . It seems to me that a journey to Vortigern's kingdom might provide you with a wondrous opportunity to look more closely at some of these people . . . to meet them and assess them. Ambrose speaks their tongue—"

"One of their tongues," Ambrose interjected.

"One of their tongues, so be it. And he and his men have the clothing and the weaponry to pass unremarked among them."

"With good fortune," Ambrose interrupted again.

"As you say, with Fortune on your side. But—" He broke off and looked from me to my brother, leaving his thought unfinished. Ambrose nodded.

"Luke's right, Cay. Know thine enemy. It's an opportunity to meet some of these people face to face and pass among them. It would be valuable."

"Of course it would be valuable, but it would also be highly perilous."

Ambrose grinned at me again. "Life is highly perilous, Brother, had you not noticed that before now?"

I found myself suddenly impatient with the tone of this entire conversation. "Damnation, Ambrose, be serious! It would be folly to undertake such a journey, and you know that. We could both be killed, and where would that leave us?"

"Dead in a forest or a meadow somewhere, removed from all further concerns. Unbend, Cay. We were but making idle conversation. There's no need to grow angry over it. And yet I agree with Luke. It would be worthwhile to scout the land, and enjoyable to do it in concert with you. What would be lost by it, given that we return alive?"

"Discipline, for one thing." I moderated my tone, but I was far from mollified. "With both of us gone, at the outset of a program as ambitious and portentous as the one you've been describing, things could fall into chaos again within days of our departure. Who would you leave in charge? In the three months since you arrived, have you found anyone you might trust to such an extent?"

His eyebrows went high on his forehead. "Aye, several. If there is one thing Camulod does not lack it is ambitious, bright young leaders, in both arms of our force."

"Name some."

"Young Brian Melitas, and his two companions, Cornelius Nimmo and Jacob Cato; Jacob's own father, Achmed Cato, although he is not young; your own companions on your journey to Eire, every one of them; Silas Agorine, one of the most brilliant young infantry commanders I've ever seen; Johan Sitrabo, another of the same calibre. There is no lack of deputies in Camulod, Cay."

I sat staring at him for long moments, aware of Luke's eyes on me. Then I cleared my throat. "Apart from Achmed Cato, his son Jacob and my own companions, I know none of those men. That is unconscionable." Neither of my friends said anything to that, and I continued, speaking now almost to myself. "Only today, watching your young bowmen at practice, I realized that I have been away too long, both physically and mentally. I no longer know my own people. Even worse, I don't know our best and brightest young commanders. You have been here mere months, and you know them all far better than I do. I have a task ahead of me."

Ambrose laughed gently and leaned forward to the fire, reaching for the great iron poker that lay in the hearth to stir the logs. "Don't berate yourself, Brother. Your neglect could hardly be described as willful." He busied himself with his task. "Besides, by the time you and I have immersed ourselves in our new program for a few days, you will know all of them. Such things come quickly, you and I know."

Thereafter we sat silent, staring into the fire, each thinking his own thoughts, and the time went by until the logs began to settle, more than half consumed. The entire household was still, we three its only waking occupants. Lucanus was the first to move, standing up and yawning, ready for sleep. His action stirred a like response in us, and the last thing that was said that night was mine. I told them that I would consider riding to the east with Ambrose in the spring, to see for myself how matters were progressing elsewhere, but that my self-appointed task throughout the coming winter would be to come to know the Camulodian Colonists again—all of them, farmers, artisans and troopers—which prompted me to wonder what had become of Peter Ironhair since his departure. No one had seen him. No word had come of his whereabouts since the day he fled.

We doused the candles and the lamps and left the family room in darkness that glowed with the embers of the dying fire, and I made my way directly to my quarters. I lay awake for a long time, thinking about all that had happened in the past few months, and was happy to be aware that Shelagh demanded little of those thoughts. Most of them, in truth, concerned the boy, Arthur, and the growing influence I suspected he was going to have upon my life from that time forth, and they had been precipitated by the short discussion of Peter Ironhair and his whereabouts and doings. No one had heard of him, but I had no reason to believe him dead, or indifferent to our affairs. He had simply faded from our immediate awareness, and that, I suspected without any real reason, might bode ill for us along some future way. Ironhair was alive and well, somewhere, I was convinced. But now, for some reason, I could not put the man out of mind. I tried to tell myself that he had consigned all of us to perdition and decided to live out his life elsewhere, far removed from sight and sound and memory of Camulod, but there was something within me that prevented me from being so sanguine. I tried eventually to banish him by thinking on the baby Arthur, and discovered to my mild astonishment that the mere contemplation of the child's existence was a source of delight to me, something I would not have believed possible mere months earlier, and I fell asleep some time after that, filled with the warmth of the memory of his tiny, sleeping face with its long, thick, almost feminine eyelashes.

XXI

Five days after that evening in the family room, seething with frustration and a debilitating fear, I decided—or to be more accurate and truthful, my friends decided after long and sometimes impassioned debate—that for the sake of my own sanity and the welfare of the men under my command, particularly the younger officers, it would be best to remove myself from all human contact for a while, and so I sought the stillness of the forest, armed with my bow and a quiver filled to capacity with arrows. There, for an entire week, and never less than five miles from the fortress, I hunted singlemindedly, cleaning my frequent kills and leaving them for collection at predetermined points by soldiers sent by Ambrose, with whom I had made the appropriate arrangements. None of the collectors ever saw me, although on each occasion I watched from concealment to ensure that they arrived and the meat was not spoiled. Each time, once assured that my orders had been carried out, I moved on to my next selected location and began my hunt anew, and all the time I struggled with my thoughts, my plans, my desires and my various dilemmas, one of which was what I should do about Shelagh, who had become, through my own carelessness, the second woman ever to set eyes upon Excalibur.

The incident had occurred the day after my arrival home, before I became involved in the matter of Ambrose's schism. I had been up and about early that morning, full of good cheer and enthusiasm for the days ahead despite the fact that the rain was falling steadily outside, and I was on my way to Uncle Varrus's Armoury to search out a reference to Alexander's cavalry I had remembered from one of his books. On my way I had met Shelagh, quite accidentally, rounding the corner of a passage. She was carrying the infant Arthur, straddled across her right hip and supported in the bend of her arm, and had been pleased to see me, laughing and talking to the child about me. He, for his part, had seemed singularly unimpressed by his "Uncle Merlyn," as Shelagh had called me. His large golden eyes had observed me without expression and then moved on to gaze at other, more interesting vistas down the passageway.

On discovering that I was merely headed for the Armoury to read something, and in no particular hurry, Shelagh had asked me to mind the child for a few moments while she attended to something that she had forgotten to do. I took the child from her and watched her walk away, enjoying the sight of her firm buttocks moving tautly beneath her robe. When she had gone, and the child and I were alone, an impulsive idea occurred to me and I took the babe into the Armoury, mere steps away. I laid him on the floor while I pulled up the floorboard and retrieved the case from its concealment. Quickly, kneeling beside the infant, I wiped the dust from the polished wooden case with a cloth and then brought out the wondrous sword itself, waving it slowly now above the supine infant's form, and his eyes fastened immediately upon the shifting patterns of light along its shining blade.

"There, Sir King," I breathed. "What think you of that? Pretty, is it not? This is your own sword, Excalibur. Would you like to hold it?" As quickly as the thought came to me, I held the weapon, pommel down, towards him. "See," I whispered. "It is yours. Take hold of it." He did, immediately, with both hands, and I felt the hairs stir along my nape. It was probably the polished gold of the pommel that attracted his eyes, carved as it was in perfect replication of a large cockle shell, but his tiny fists clamped just above it, at the junction of pommel and hilt, below my own hand; first the right hand, then the left, and both with authority.

Long moments we remained immobile, and then I smiled and moved to break his hold, pulling the weapon gently back towards me. The child, however, would not let go. His golden eyes stared straight upward, fixed on the length of the great blade that reared above him, and his chubby fists hung on. Intrigued, and still smiling slightly, I increased my pull gently, seeking to break his tiny grip, but he clung staunchly, refusing to quit even when my greater strength began to lift his shoulders clear of the floor. Astonished now, I continued pulling and watched him continue to rise without effort, so that he was almost sitting up completely. A sudden vision of his grip breaking and his tiny skull striking the wooden floor made me stoop immediately to cup my free hand behind his head, but still he maintained his grasp on Excalibur. Finally, shaking my head in wondering admiration, I relented and lowered him gently and carefully back to the boards, removing my guarding hand only when he was supine again and using it to pry his tiny fingers loose from the hold he seemed determined to maintain. When I had done so, his eyes gazed now at me and I grinned at him and shook my head.

"Not yet. Sir King," I told him, whispering still. "Not yet, but one day, surely, when your own size is greater than your sword's. Then you will grasp it firmly, and relinquish it to no man." The mighty sword still reared between us, but now the child seemed to have eyes only for me, as though he heard and understood my words. "Do not forget this day," I admonished him. "Nor this. Its name is Excalibur. Excalibur. . . Remember it."

Done then, I began to rise to my feet again, only to be confounded by the sound of Shelagh's voice behind me, by the door she had opened noiselessly.

"Merlyn, what are you doing?"

I must have appeared either ludicrous or dangerous, or possibly both, scrambling to my feet and whirling towards her while attempting uselessly to conceal Excalibur behind my back. Her eyes were wide with alarm as she took a step further into the room, one hand reaching out towards the baby on the floor.

"Stop!"

She froze in mid-step, beginning to frown.

"You're not supposed to come in here," I spluttered, hearing the futility in my own voice.

Her brows came together now and her eyes flashed. "And why not? No one told me anything of that. It seemed a room like any other—" She stopped speaking abruptly and glanced quickly around the walls, noting the array of weapons that hung there, and the large books that lay on tables here and there. From there, her eyes went quickly to the child still lying placidly by my feet, then to the sword I held so ineffectually behind my back, its long, silver blade quite evident where it reached beyond my body, and thence to the open case with its leather-lined, sculpted cradle for Excalibur. I knew then, all at once and with despair, that I had forfeited all chance of diverting her from the sword. Had I possessed the presence of mind merely to hold it casually when she appeared, I might have smoothed things over, brazening it out. But my own horror in discovery had betrayed me.

For long moments, neither of us moved nor spoke. Then, apparently satisfied that the child, at least, was safe, Shelagh drew a deep breath and stretched to her full height, turning her back to me and moving away resolutely towards the door. Once there, however, she increased my consternation by closing the half that lay ajar and turning back towards me, laying her shoulders flat against the join of the bronze-covered panels.

"So be it, Merlyn Britannicus," she said, speaking in level, courteous tones. "I should not have come in here. Unfortunately I did, seeking you and the child and knowing no better. . . And now I have seen that weapon you are trying so uselessly to hide behind your back and the case in which it is kept, which evidently causes you great concern and makes you both afraid and angry, although I know not why. What is done is done. I have seen what evidently should not have been seen. So what am I to do? We may regret such things, once done, but we are powerless to change them."

I gusted a great sigh then, I recall, and shook my head, shamefaced, then lowered my eyes to the floor, unable to meet her gaze and allowing Excalibur to come to rest with its point on the floor by my right foot. She waited for me to say something and when I did not, she moved swiftly to stand beside me, placing her hand upon my wrist, above the sword's hilt. When she spoke again, her voice was gentle, filled with sympathy.

"The sword is wondrous, Merlyn, and plainly worth more than anything I have ever seen. Is that it? Is that your concern, that having seen it I might talk of it with others? Should I be unaware of its great value?"

"Of its existence," I said, looking at her and watching her eyes narrow in surprise and incomprehension.

"What did you say?"

I sighed again. "I said you should not be aware of its existence. Almost no one else is."

Distractedly, to give herself time for thought, she knelt and picked up the child, straightening immediately and settling him anew across her hip, where he leaned forward and began to nuzzle hungrily at her breast. She pushed his mouth away gently with the back of her fingers and hitched him higher. "There's nothing there for you, young man," was all she said, before squinting up at me.

"What is it that is so remarkable about this thing's existence?"

"It is the only one of its kind in the world."

She pursed her lips, dropping narrowed eyes to where the huge cross-hilt gleamed in front of my fist, and then she reached out with one extended fingertip and placed the ball of her finger gently against the silver of the blade.

"I can see that the guard there is different. That may be unique, as far as I can tell, and the colour of the blade is vastly different. But the blade itself is of a length with your own sword, so there's nothing special there. How then is this so magically rare that it's unmatched in all the world?" She glanced back at me. "Can you tell me? Will you? Wait! Before you answer, let me ask this: Has Donuil seen this sword?"

I shook my head. "No, he has never seen it, but he knows of its existence. That he has never seen it is due merely to circumstance. The opportunity to show it to him has never arisen. Donuil is one of a very special group of living souls who know of it. The others are myself, my brother Ambrose, my great-aunt Luceiia, and now you. There are no more."

Her eyes were wide with wonder. "But why?" she asked. "Why keep it secret? It is no more than a sword!"

I found, quite suddenly, that I could smile again. "Ah, Shelagh, there you are wrong; in grievous error. This is far more than a sword. This is Excalibur, the High King's sword, and that young person in your arms is the High King himself. And now, if you will bear his regal hunger to be satisfied, I shall wait here for your return and tell you the entire tale of Camulod, Excalibur, and the Dream of the Roman Eagles who created both."

She hesitated, tugged by the wish to leave and then return, and by the fear that I might leave while she was gone. "You will wait here?"

I laughed then, feeling immensely better. "Aye, you need have no fear. A modicum of knowledge is greatly dangerous and now, to disarm that danger, I must tell you all there is to know. Only then will you be able to comprehend the secret you must hold from this day forward. Co now, and send someone to light a fire in here against the cold, then come back quickly."

By the time she returned, Excalibur had been safely cached once more, the fire had been kindled and was burning brightly. She had taken time to change her dress and comb out her hair, and I thrilled with guilty pleasure as she crossed the room to sit beside me, close to the leaping flames. We talked then, or rather I spoke and she listened, for a space of hours, and in spite of my familiarity with the tale I told, its power consumed me yet again, so that I soon lost all awareness of her as a woman and spoke only for her ears and mind. So wrought up in my tale were we that we forgot eventually to tend the fire, and by the time I had finished, it had been reduced to glowing embers. As I replenished it, knowing the drying warmth to be beneficial to my uncle's books, Shelagh began to ask me questions, and we talked further, and the time passed quickly. But now that my self-absorbing tale was told, I found myself aware of her again, watching her body's supple sinuosity; seeing and sometimes sensing the motion of breast, belly, buttock and thigh; the flashing, laughing, flaring, breathtaking eyes; the casually tousled curls that hung and swung in such profusion, inviting contact, apparently wishing to be touched, caressed and smoothed. The physical disturbance caused by all of these things was almost overwhelming, and utterly deceptive. I knew implicitly that Shelagh felt no such desire for me. The invitations that my mind supplied were of my mind alone. Finally, almost in desperation, I stood up abruptly, interrupting something she was saying.

"Shelagh," I could hear the tension in my own voice. "I have lost track of time. Forgive me, but I promised Ambrose I would spend the afternoon with him, talking to people on a matter of great urgency, and it is long past noon. The time has flown. Will you permit me to. . . leave now?" The hesitation had been very slight, but I had almost used the word "escape." I wondered fleetingly if she had noticed, but her response showed she had not. In a moment she was on her feet, taking my hand in a tight, two-handed grasp.

"Of course, Caius," she said. "Go now, but before you do, tell me this. Do you believe, completely without reservation, that I will guard your trust in this?"

I raised her hands to my lips and kissed her fingers, feeling the fiery contact searing into my memory and being branded there with the scent of her skin. "Completely, and without reservation. Now pardon me, I must go." I spun on my heel and walked from the room, humiliatingly aware of my own arousal and cursing myself for my perfidy.

Recalling that as I lay in my cot that first night in my solitary hunting camp, I felt myself stirring again and turned my thoughts to another topic: the matter that had taken me to meet with Ambrose that same afternoon.

I had originally accepted Ambrose's opinion on the schism within our forces without argument, simply because I had been convinced with that curious, half-blind arrogance that seems to lie within all of us, that the opinion he expressed was merely that—a personal perspective on a minor problem. I had not questioned his belief in the troublesome division he reported, nor did I doubt the existence of the dichotomy itself. The unfortunate corollary was that I had equally little doubt that the phenomenon must be no more than a minor, distracting irritant—a barrack-room philosopher's complaint, born of some misunderstanding, then broadcast and blown out of all proportion. I had, at root, no doubt of my own power to correct it merely by directing my attentions towards healing the rift. In consequence, I began my remedial efforts on the afternoon following our discussion, blithely confident that the problem, once defined and isolated, and once I had shown that I was concerned about it, would dry up and disappear in a spontaneous explosion of Colony-wide goodwill and military solidarity.

By the end of the second day, however, it had become obvious, even through an intransigence as vast as mine was then, that matters were far from well within Camulod's once close-knit little army. Dismayed by what I had already discovered, I had taken leave of Council that morning to absent myself from the regularly scheduled session, for even by then it had become undeniable that Ambrose was right, and that the rivalries between the men who formed our two main forces were much less than amicable. Underlying, deep hostilities had surfaced rapidly in the recent past and now I could see they were but thinly masked, and that impending violence between our cavalry and infantry lay buried by no more than a single, shallow layer of ill- borne discipline.

The recognition of another pair of competing factions destroyed my complacency. Aware that the consternation caused by the affair of the Farmers and the Artisans had not yet had time to fade from the minds of the Colonists at large, I was appalled to find myself facing a similar, frighteningly comparable situation, this time within my own command. And in this instance there appeared to be no obvious progenitors—no identifiable group who were recognizably at fault. My initial, instinctive reactions to what I found beneath my nose were fear and dismay, quickly followed by a violent urge to roar and rend—to vent my anger and outrage on my disgruntled troops—which, of course, I could not do without the risk of provoking them to outright rebellion. The officer cadre, however, was another matter, and for a short time I came close to yielding to the temptation to create havoc within those ranks. I gave thanks to God many times thereafter for the presence of my brother and his placid, unruffled perception and wisdom. He cajoled me and calmed me, diverted my anger, and made me see and finally accept that my own complicity, through simple ignorance, was as great as any other's. I slept poorly that night, nevertheless, and then for no more than an hour or so.

On the morning of the third day, we held the meeting we had planned, assembling all the officers in garrison at the time—Staff, Field and Warrant ranks, Cavalry and Infantry. Dedalus and his six comrades from our Eirish travels were in attendance, their expedition to Glevum summarily postponed for the time being pending the outcome of this plenary officers' conference, the first formal Tribunal ever held in Camulod for the resolution of a purely military domestic emergency. It was convened, for the sake of privacy and security, in the old, now-empty but still well-maintained Villa Britannicus on the plain beneath the hill of Camulod. No guards were assigned to duty there that day, and no servants permitted within the Villa confines. We fed ourselves between sessions from cooking fires lit outside the gates. The word had been passed among the attendees the previous day and everyone arrived at the Villa at the pre-ordained time, within half an hour after the break of dawn. The Colonists must have speculated wildly at the sight of the entire complement of the garrison's officers blearily making their way, singly and in small groups, down the road from the main gates in the pre-dawn darkness, but their speculation would go unresolved for many days, since everyone who attended that extraordinary session was sworn to secrecy.

The order of the proceedings was straightforward, and the first directive was that the two disciplines, horse and foot, should mingle in equality, no two of either discipline sitting together. There were almost two hundred officers present, and Ambrose and I shared the office of Convenor. I began by outlining the situation succinctly and forcefully, apportioning no blame and voicing no criticism. I defined the Schism, as I had come to think of it, as a military fact requiring an immediate solution, and then threw the topic open for debate.

By the end of the day, as the sun was going down, we had made progress, but the process had been noisy and at times almost unruly. Voices had been raised in angry disagreement at various times, and acrimonious insults had flown freely, but I believed that no new enmities had been forged and no lasting ill will fomented. A consensus had been reached: the problem that faced us was dangerous, inimical to the well-being of the Colony. It behoved all of us, therefore, to act together, according to the dictates of a carefully defined agenda, to pour soothing balm on the hurts, real and imaginary, suffered by each side in this dispute at the hands of the other. The primary difficulty, of course, would lie in the identification and definition of a solution, and in the development of a means of putting it into effect.

As I might have expected, it was Dedalus who came up with the most practical observation, after having sat for some time, bent forward, in a huddled conversation with Philip, Quintus and Rufio, all of whom were grouped close by him, interspersed among infantry officers.

"Commander!" He held up his hand, demanding my attention, and when I recognized him he rose slowly, looking around at his assembled colleagues while addressing me. "I've been talking with some of the people around us, from both sides—" He broke off, apparently realizing too late what he had said, and then grinned his rogue's grin. "Your pardon . . . from both viewpoints might be a better way of phrasing that." Everyone laughed and I immediately felt more sanguine about the outcome of this affair.

"Aye. It might. Captain Dedalus," I answered him, allowing my face to crease into a slow smile and provoking more, but restrained laughter. "But guard your mouth from now on. No more seditious talk. We are one force, you know."

"I know that well enough, Commander. But so do you and Commander Ambrose." He lapsed into silence. I blinked at him.

"Forgive me, Dedalus, but I fail to see your point."

"You two are my point, Commander, with respect." He nodded from one to the other of us. "Peas in a pod," he grunted. "Flowers on a bush. Identical. Both of Camulod. Both Commanders. To look at you, you're indistinguishable one from the other, and yet one of you's an infantryman and the other's a horseman. Why don't you assemble all the troops—as you've assembled us—and let them see that? I mean, they know it, but they haven't seen it, if you know what I mean." He sat down again, looking at his hands and allowing his words to hang there over the assembly.

I sat there for several moments, going over the implications of what he had said. The same comment had been made, although in different words and in another context, by Ambrose several nights earlier when he had suggested a formal parade. The silence in the room, which had been sustained, was suddenly broken from somewhere at the rear of the large room, where someone began to applaud, slowly, and the sound spread quickly until I had to stand up and spread my arms for silence.

Dedalus's recommendation was adopted immediately and unanimously. Such a gathering would take place, but it would have to be, by definition, extraordinary. For the space of at least two days, it was agreed, we must assume the risk of leaving our outlying lands unguarded. We had no alternative, since it would be an admission of defeat before we began were we to preclude anyone, of any rank or for any cause, from attending on this occasion. That decision made, we began to discuss the best timing for such an unprecedented convocation, and decided that it would be held on the eleventh and twelfth days after our meeting, coinciding with the recently adopted monthly changing of the guard patrols. This time, and this one time only, the old guard would come in, but the new guard would remain at home for two extra days before departing. Our most distant frontiers would be unguarded for the better part of three full days—one day for the departing guard to return to Camulod, one more for the convocation, and a third, or some portion of the third, for the new guard to return. That vulnerable time would be greatly reduced in the case of those outposts closest to Camulod, where the guards would remain in place longer before leaving and could return more quickly. Before that happened, however, and as close to the appointed time as possible, we would conduct an intensive, high-speed reconnaissance of the lands beyond our lands' perimeter, to assure ourselves as far as we were able, that no impending attack was building prior to our deliberate suspension of vigilance.

Thereafter, slightly reassured of our eventual success but greatly apprehensive of our initial method of achieving it, I spent two more days and much of both nights fretting over what we would say to the troops, until Ambrose and several of my friends virtually threw me out of Camulod with my bow, bidding me gather viands for the festivities, which would be held the day following my return.

In the grey dawn of the last day of my hunt, I experienced a phenomenon that I have never known repeated. I spent a full hour in a hunter's paradise, in a place I had discovered the day before, where a large number of deer trails, many showing the hoofprints of large animals, converged amid low, sparse bushes at the base of a jumbled pile of whitish rock. I had identified the spot as being a natural salt lick and had made my camp close by, wakening early to creep stealthily into concealment in full darkness, and confirming that the direction of the breeze had not changed overnight before placing myself well downwind of the lick, at the base of the large tree I had marked out with a dagger the day before. From here, I had estimated, I would have an unobstructed shot at whatever creatures passed the convergence of the trails that morning.

As the sky began to pale, however, the breeze strengthened to a brisk wind and then grew even stronger, blasting in hard, violent gusts, whipping the bushes wildly, rattling the bare branches of the winter trees and frequently even snatching the air from my lips as I sought to breathe. I cursed my ill fortune but remained in place, huddled against my tree bole, hoping that the sudden change would abate with the same speed that had brought it, and that no rain would follow it. Daylight grew almost imperceptibly, a long and weary struggle with the dominance of darkness, but at length I found I was able to distinguish the dense, roiling masses of clouds in the leaden sky, and all the time the wind kept rising until it was a howling gale.

I lost all judgment of the length of time I had spent huddled there, and eventually rose to my knees to leave, abandoning my hunt, only to find myself looking into the largest herd of deer I had ever seen in these parts. There must have been fifty animals in my immediate view, most of them grazing, heads down in the low brush, apparently unconcerned by the violent wind. On a low knoll less than forty paces ahead of me and to my left, the patriarch stood poised, head up, his magnificent spread of antlers almost flat along his back, his nose pointed directly into the storm. Even from where I crouched I could see his eyes were closed, and I reached for an arrow. Before I moved again, however, I looked once more at the herd and counted twelve strapping young males, all less than two years old, and thirty-nine females. I had no doubt that there were others, hidden from me by the woods and rocks.

Regretfully, I returned my attention to the herd leader, the largest animal there. I knew that the moment I killed him the others would vanish, despite their swarming numbers, swallowed up by the forest and the greyness of the day. I took aim carefully, knowing that the fury of the wind would have no effect on such a short-range flight, and then I stepped into my shot and fired, sending my arrow straight into the spot I had selected. The stag went down immediately, his brain transfixed by the missile that had entered behind his ear. I stood frozen, awaiting the bounding panic that would greet his fall, but nothing happened. The herd continued grazing, the death of their leader unnoticed, and I realized that the fury of the wind and the chaos it created had dulled their senses somehow, robbing them of their legendary acuity. Scarcely daring to breathe, and expecting to be discovered at any moment, I moved cautiously around and selected another target, this one directly on my right, close by the edge of the forest proper and even closer to me than the first had been. Directly ahead of me, between the two of us, a shoulder- high bush lashed from side to side. I took note of it, allowed for its movement, and thereafter ignored it. Again I sighted and fired, and again the animal fell to its knees, out of my sight and into death without disturbing any of its neighbours.

Aware now of a visceral excitement, I cast my eyes around in search of another available target and saw a young doe close by, almost completely hidden from me by another flailing bush. She was farther away than the others had been, however, and I could not obtain a clear view for a killing shot, so I set out with the utmost care to close the distance between us, crouching low and fully cognisant of the sea of movement all around that cloaked me. I drew as near as I dared go, for fear of being seen by the doe I was stalking or by another animal, and risked what I knew to be a hazardous shot. I loosed, and watched a vicious gust of wind snatch at the speeding shaft and send it high, so that it almost grazed the feeding creature's back. And once more, miraculously, the animal paid no heed. Emboldened now, I sighted and shot again, and this time my aim was true and she went down.

In the half hour that followed, buffeted and shaken by the wind until my clothes seemed useless and I was chilled to the bone, I wrought havoc among that herd, nocking my arrows with cold, nerveless fingers, keeping myself downwind at all times, so that the buffeting of the gale hit me directly in the face, and moving laterally in a narrow arc, hither and yon, remorselessly killing the beasts on the outside of the dwindling herd. A score of them fell to my deadly attack before the twenty-first, a massive-muscled young stag, leapt about and fled, bugling a note of panic. Watching him go, I wondered what had frightened him, for I knew by that time that it would not have been my presence. Perhaps, I thought, he had caught the scent of fresh- spilled blood, borne on an errant eddy of gusting wind. Whatever the cause of his fright, however, they were gone.

Slowly then, I walked around the scene of my slaughter, counting my kill. Twenty fresh deer, of a kind unknown to me, far bigger than the common red deer to which I was accustomed in these parts. Twenty large deer! I had not the slightest hope of being able to clean and dress them alone, but I had to do something with them.

Four hours later, shaking with exhaustion, I gutted the last of them and dragged it, with the help of my horse, to lie beside its fellows. After that I returned to my campsite and finally broke my fast before breaking camp and heading towards the spot where I had left my three-carcass kill the previous day, safely cleaned and, unlike the other twenty, hung high from the branches of an oak. The wind had died down a little, but the day was still unfit for man or beast. I arrived at the spot before any of the collectors had arrived, so I found a depression out of the wind beneath a fallen log, wrapped myself in my cloak and sat down to rest. The twenty deer might be discovered by a predator, but that was something over which I now had no control, and so I dismissed them from my mind for the present, concentrating, with a sense of well-being, on other, more pleasant things.

I must have fallen asleep, because the voices startled me into a panic- stricken crouch, my dagger in my hand and my knees protesting at the sudden movement. There were four men in the party, and I knew all of them. Even better, I had the pleasure of surprising them as much as they had me, for they had not seen me lying asleep beneath my log. Now I winged an arrow into a tree trunk beside them and laughed as they scattered, cursing and clawing for weapons. I stepped forward immediately and they shuffled together uneasily, crestfallen at the apparent magic with which I had "crept up on them" across an open glade. I said nothing to disillusion them, but set them quickly to lowering the three carcasses from the oak tree, and then I led them to the clearing where I had left my twenty new prizes. These had remained untouched, Fortune continuing to favour me throughout the day.

I still recall with pleasure the effect that cache had on those soldiers, for I had been through a sufficiently long period of self-doubt the previous week to enable me to revel in their wonder. Their eyes grew wide and their mouths gaped, for never had such bounty been seen as the result of one man's solitary hunting in a single day. Again, I offered no explanation of how I had achieved such a harvest, and such was their awe, they would not have considered asking me. I apologized, however, for the unskinned condition of the catch, pointing out that I had neither had the time nor the tools to skin all twenty beasts. I left them to their task then and they set to work immediately, muttering in wonder among themselves and casting superstitious glances my way whenever they thought they were unobserved.

Directly the men were finished loading the meat onto the wagon they had brought, I returned with them to Camulod and made my way straight to the bath house, where I spent little time in the intermediate pools before lodging myself for an hour and more in the steam room. Thereafter, although November's early darkness had not yet begun to fall, I sought my cot and slept like a baby.

They wakened me hours later, in the dead of night, with a hurried summons to present myself in the Praetorium, nominally my own working quarters but in fact the headquarters of the Officer of the Watch at any time of day or night. Alarmed by the appearance of the white-faced, stammering young soldier who had been sent to roust me from my bed, I threw cold water on my face, pulled on a heavy winter tunic, wrapped myself in my cloak and made my way directly to the Praetorium, where I found Ambrose, as tousled as I was, huddled with a group of senior officers including Dedalus, Rufio and Achmed Cato, who, as I perceived immediately from his immaculate uniform, was Officer of the Watch. They broke off their colloquy as I hurried in, each of them scanning me from head to foot as I approached. I saw and accepted that without a thought. I felt fresh and well rested, and I gauged I had already been abed for six hours or more.

"What's happened?" I asked as I strode up to the table. Ambrose reacted first, picking up one of the objects that lay on the table and tossing it to me as I drew near. The silence held as I pulled the flying object from the air and looked at it: part of an arrow, much like my own, save that the shaft had been cut through, leaving no way to tell how long the missile had originally been. Six more exactly like it remained on the table. I sucked in air as I glared at the thing in my hand. Its barbed head and the first handspan of its length were coated with dried and clotted blood, and the cut shaft had been deliberately severed with a sharp blade. I scraped the barbed iron head with my thumbnail, noting the way it had been made and the size and weight of it.

"This is Pendragon." I rapped out the words, an indictment in themselves, looking around at each of them. "Who has killed whom?"

Achmed Cato cleared his throat. "Are you sure of that, Commander? That it is Pendragon?"

"Don't be dense, Achmed. I'm as sure as you are. This was made for a Pendragon longbow. The arrowhead betrays that. It's far too large and heavy for a short bow." I turned to Ambrose. "No one has answered my question. Tell me."

Ambrose shrugged his shoulders and scratched beneath his armpit. " 'Whom' is some of us," he answered in his clear, ever reasonable tones. " 'Who' is unknown. One of our outposts has been wiped out: Calibri, the one farthest to the northwest, closest to the Pendragon lands. Fifty men, all dead, and all the horses stolen. Twenty-four animals—mounts for two squads, one with remounts. The raid occurred less than a week ago. The patrol from the next camp, Horse Farm, waited for them this morning, since they had been scheduled to join the Horse Farm group. When they had not arrived by mid-morning, Saul Maripo, the officer in charge at Horse Farm, led a contingent of his men to see what the problem was. He arrived at Calibri before noon and found everyone dead. A head count showed no one was unaccounted for. There were no enemy corpses."

"Shit and corruption! When did this occur?"

Ambrose shook his head, but it was Achmed Cato who answered me. "Maripo had been there five days earlier and all was well when he left then, just before nightfall. Whatever happened must have taken place the next day or the day after that. From the condition of the bodies, he estimates they had been dead at least three days."

"Damnation!" I curbed my angry reaction and looked around at each of them. All of them met my eyes, and I burst out again. "The raid, you say? Fifty garrison troopers dead and you think this was a mere raid? Are you all mad?" I paused then, looking about me again. There was something in the bearing of all of them that struck me as strange. "What is going on here?" I snarled at Cato. "You are the Officer of the Watch. Have you sounded the Assembly? I heard no horns."

"No, Caius, we have not."

His words astounded me, but I was aware of the general attitude here and realised that I had not heard all there was to hear. I drew a deep breath, stifling the urge to rant further.

"Very well," I said when I had mastered my breathing again, hearing the ominous quiet in my own voice. "Would someone care to tell me why?"

"Saul Maripo will tell you himself," Cato said, his own voice calm and dignified. "I regret he was not here when you arrived, but he arrived himself only a half hour ago, having spent the entire day in the saddle, riding hard, and I gave him leave to go to the latrine while we awaited you. He should be back at any moment."

Even as Cato spoke, I heard the ringing of metal-studded boots on marble and turned to see young Maripo stride into the room and skid to a halt as he saw me. He snapped immediately to attention and smashed his fist against his cuirass in a salute, flushing scarlet. He was stained and dirty and travel- worn, dark rings of exhaustion clearly visible beneath his eyes from where I stood across the room. I waved him down and put him at his ease.

"Saul," I greeted him, nodding. "I hear you have had an eventful day."

"Aye, Commander." He was still at attention, swaying on his feet.

"Sit down, lad, before you fall down. And relax. No one is going to disembowel you." I moved to the chest that stood behind my desk, stooping to raise the lid and withdrawing the flask of mead and one of the cups I kept there for occasions like this. Around me, I could almost feel the tension drain from the other officers. I poured the cup to the rim with the honeyed, fiery drink and carried it to where young Maripo had subsided into a high-backed chair brought forward by one of the others. He accepted the cup from my hand, nodding gratefully, and drank deeply, then caught his breath and coughed against the fire in his throat. No one laughed. When the young man had regained his composure, I nodded to him again. "Take another one, more slowly this time." He did, and then sat back, relaxing visibly, his eyes on mine.

I moved back to the table and leaned against it, placing the mead flask by my side. I took my time now, knowing the floor was mine and no one would interrupt me. Perhaps to compensate for my earlier volubility, I waited longer than I might have and then spoke slowly and clearly.

"The others have told me part of your story . . . the distressing part. All that remains now, it would appear, is for you to explain why no one is raising our army to repel a possible invasion of our territories. Can you enlighten me?"

The young officer nodded. "Yes, Commander. There is no threat—no immediate threat, I mean."

I sighed, loudly. "I see. And how have you arrived at that conviction?"

He flushed again, hearing the irony in my tone. "I looked, Commander. And I looked with great care, and at great length, and with as much speed as I could."

I dipped my head slightly, accepting his word. "Explain, if you please. From the beginning."

Now it was his turn to heave a quick, sharp sigh, and I watched him search for the words to tell his tale. When they came to him, they emerged in the clipped tones of a formal report to a superior.

"I assembled my entire command at dawn, Commander, and set them to breaking camp completely, knowing that this was an unusual day, in that the post would be abandoned overnight, today and tomorrow. It seemed an ideal opportunity to clean up and prepare the post for a new start by the returning guard, who might appreciate a clean and wholesome billet at the outset of their stay. I also knew I needed to keep the men occupied until the arrival of the force from Calibri—there was a festive spirit in evidence that morning, because of the occasion, and I thought it might be mildly prejudicial to good discipline to allow the men to indulge it. I expected the Calibri contingent to arrive before mid-morning." He paused, evidently remembering, then resumed. "When they had not materialized by the expected time, I became concerned, but decided to allow them half an hour of leeway, thinking they might have decided to clean up their own camp before leaving. Eventually, however, my discomfort drove me to investigate their absence. We ourselves had experienced nothing out of the ordinary prior to that time, and so I took the entire mounted force under my command and made my way towards Calibri at all speed. Before I left, however, anticipating that there might be something amiss, I also sent a rider on our fastest horse to summon the cavalry troops from the next camp to the southeast, bidding the commander there, Decius, to take note of my concern and send his men as backup for my own."

I interrupted him. "Pardon me, Decurion, I have no wish to interrupt your report, and so far I am impressed, but how many horsemen did you have?"

"Sixteen, sir. Two squads; half a squadron. And thirty-four infantry, whom I left in camp, standing to arms."

"I see. Co on."

He cleared his throat, collecting his thoughts after my interruption. "We made good speed to Calibri, and when I was sure that no one was coming to meet us, I sent four scouts ahead on our flanks. The camp was silent when we reached it. It had been burned and there were dead men everywhere."

"I see. All ours; no enemy dead?"

"No, sir." He blinked and I watched his eyes focus on a point somewhere between himself and me. "As soon as I had confirmed the death toll, I began to fear that the enemy, whoever they were, might have outflanked us along the way, hiding until we had passed by, and then riding to attack my own camp at Horse Farm. I knew I had to ascertain, immediately, their numbers and the direction they had taken when they left Calibri. I deployed my men in line abreast to sweep around the perimeter, using the camp itself as a pivot. Fortunately, we found the sign immediately, beginning at the paddock where the horses had been kept, and heading away directly towards the northwest. I examined the signs myself and gauged the raiding party to have been less than a hundred strong. . ." He broke off and his eyes became troubled, then fixed directly on my own. "Those bows, Commander. We've known what they can do for a long time, but they have worked for us until now, suiting our purposes. Used against us, they represent an entirely new form of attack against which we're utterly ill-equipped for self-defence. All our dead were killed by arrows. I know that because I examined each body individually. Not one man bore a sword cut or an axe wound. Every single one had been shot to death by arrows, and most of the arrows had been ripped out of the bodies afterwards. I had one of my men cut some of the few remaining from the bodies of our dead, and brought them with me in the belief that they might be important to the identification of the raiders."

"Aye," I nodded. "They are. The arrows were reclaimed to be used again. They are difficult to make, and much too valuable to be abandoned when they might be salvaged. The few that were left were probably too deeply lodged to be freed quickly, so they were cut through in order to deny their usefulness to others." Or to disguise their source, my mind added, tacitly. "Carry on."

"Sir. One of my men, called Kenith, is a Celt, highly skilled in tracking, and he confirmed my estimate of their numbers. He also divined, and later confirmed from his own observations of the tracks, that the attackers were Celts. He is a scout and a tracker, as I have said, and he pointed out to me that the trail was old, by several days at least. All marks other than the deepest gouges and footprints had been wiped out; the grass straightened by time. And yet their trail was plain, beaten by the hooves of the horses. No rain had fallen in the interim, Kenith indicated, and we might follow them with ease. I so decided, and left a pair of men behind; one to await the arrival of the riders from the other camp, who would be following behind us, and bring them in pursuit of us; the other to return to Horse Farm at all speed, with orders to Sextus Sulla, the infantry commander there, to march his men to Calibri and bury our dead in a common grave." He broke off again, clearly feeling a need to explain. "There was no time, Commander, to do other than that. We could not bring fifty three-day corpses home for burial, nor could we bury them in single graves."

I nodded in agreement, saying nothing, and he continued, apparently relieved by my concurrence.

"That done, I set out directly with my remaining fourteen troopers to follow the raiders' tracks. At all times, Commander, I deployed half of my force as scouts, ranging far out on both sides of our route. I also kept all my men on full alert, so there could be no possibility of missing any sign of a body of men departing from the principal trail. We followed it for four hours, riding hard even through the deep woods—although those we pursued had avoided the worst of the forest and kept to clear game trails—before I called a rest stop in a large clearing where the evidence of their passing was unmistakable. The raiders had stopped there themselves, and had built fires and rested, evidently a clear day ahead of us, since the ashes of the fires were damp and we had had clear skies throughout that day. The horses had grazed on one side of the clearing where the grass was rich, and the men had slept apart from them. We found the days-old guts of a deer just inside the woods, and I knew then that what Kenith had said was true: these men had not anticipated any swift pursuit." Again he stopped, his face reflecting puzzlement. " The raiders had remained on foot, Commander, throughout the entire withdrawal. They made no effort to ride the horses, and they left the saddles and bridles in the stables."

"Probably didn't know what they were," I said. "These are mountain men, Decurion. They've never ridden anything other than their own small mountain ponies. The sheer size of our horses might have inhibited them from trying to master them while still so deep in hostile territory. Carry on with your report; you're doing well."

" Thank you." He cleared his throat again, frowning in concentration. "We cleared the forest, eventually, and came out into rolling grassland. I began to grow convinced our quarry was in full flight, headed for the mountains we could see in the distance north and west of us each time we topped a hill. When I became sure of it, I increased our speed—the open country made that easier—and we covered more than twenty miles, until we came to the crest of a long rise, where the ground fell away beneath us, exposing a vista that was flat and bare as far as the eye could see—probably another twenty miles, since the sun was shining then and the light was clear. There was nothing moving anywhere out there, though all of us scanned the entire valley carefully for signs." He paused and sniffed, then drew another deep, long breath.

"We did see something there, however, Commander. A broad swathe of tracks, disappearing out of sight in a large arc to either side of us, cutting directly across the tracks we were following." He looked around at the assembled group. "We moved down to investigate these signs and saw they had been made by a large party of shod horses, riding from west to east. Again, it was Kenith who observed that they were cavalry, most likely our own, since we know of no other. He pointed out that they had ridden in files, four abreast, and once that had been mentioned the tracks became plain to see. We moved on to the point where these tracks met with our quarry's and found that the cavalry tracks had crossed the other, older tracks. They had stopped there, then followed the old tracks for a while, but the marks of their return were clearly evident. At that point, assuming that this earlier pursuit had proved fruitless, I decided there was nothing to be gained by my proceeding further with such a puny force. I knew the entire garrison of Camulod would be meeting here tomorrow, and I had determined to my own satisfaction that no army on foot could cover the distance from beyond our sight to Camulod in sufficient time to take us by surprise, once I had made my report. I also knew that I had made no move to ascertain, at that point, whether the next camp on the other side, to the west of our perimeter, had been molested. I judged from the regularity of the cavalry arc we had found that those riders, whoever they had been, had ridden well clear of our borders on their way around from the west. So I turned back and met shortly thereafter with Decurion Decius, who was leading his cavalry to join us. I dispatched him, with his own men and mine, to check the next camp west, at Acorn Lake. I then made my way directly here at top speed, stopping only briefly at Calibri to set my own infantry back on the road to Camulod via Horse Farm, and then at my own camp again to change to a fresh horse. Decurion Decius, had he found anything amiss at Acorn Lake, would have sent his fastest rider to confirm my report and add his own. No such messenger has yet arrived, although one may arrive within the hour. If no one comes, we should be able to assume that all was well at Acorn Lake when Decius arrived and he is now on his way with the Acorn Lake garrison as scheduled. I arrived back about an hour ago, and made my initial report to Tribune Cato. That is all I have to report, Commander."

"Hmm. You have acquitted yourself well, Decurion Maripo. Your report, and your presence of mind, are both laudable. Your assumption about the identity of the cavalry whose tracks you found was on the mark. They were our own, sent out in four separate groups to sweep around our entire perimeter, each to a quadrant twenty miles outside our bounds, to check for signs of alien activity that might affect our standing down today and tomorrow. They returned this morning, early. The only sign found by any of the four groups was the one you followed. The sweepers found those tracks a day ahead of you, so your judgment on the timing was accurate, too. You have our gratitude. We will take over from here, so get yourself off to sleep. You have earned your rest."

The young man stood up, snapped to attention, saluted me crisply and left. All of us watched him go.

"Well, gentlemen, I now concur with your decision not to sound a General Muster at this time. The question we must answer now is what do we do next? I am open to suggestions. Ambrose? Cato? Anyone?"

Dedalus responded with a question. "Are we at war, then, Commander, with the Pendragon?"

"Certainly not!" My retort, stung from me by the suddenness of the question, from him of all people, was too angry. I moderated my tone immediately. "You should know better than even to phrase such a question, Ded. The Pendragon are our allies and our friends."

Ded was unimpressed and undaunted. "Perhaps," he murmured, but his softly spoken words were clearly heard by everyone. "But it strikes me there are fifty lads from Camulod lying cold out there in Calibri who might think otherwise."

Before I could respond to that, Ambrose intervened. "That is true, Captain Dedalus," he drawled. "But there are also fifteen of King Uther's bowmen asleep at this moment, here beneath our roof. They came to us in friendship, offering us their skills to use until such time as order is restored in their home lands. And should you care to count, you would find, I am quite sure, well upward of a hundred more about and throughout our domain, living in amity among our people. Are we at war, so suddenly, with these? Or should we look at numbers only? A hundred living here, at least, and a hundred Celtic raiders, arguably Pendragon. Shall we then say we are at war with half the Pendragon, but that the other half are still our friends and allies and thus we will fight husbands and spare wives? Or kill fathers and recruit sons?"