The Saxon Shore

"So I've lost eight years. That's all that means."

He glanced sideways at me. "That is almost a decade, Merlyn. Most healthy men have only five or six of those, and by your own admission yours are more than halfway gone." He stopped and then hitched himself sideways, to look directly at me. "Without evasion of any kind, without reservations, give me a quick and honest answer to this question: Why should this . . . this condition . . . suddenly become important to you?"

The question was a test, I knew, and I also knew that I had no time to think about my answer. "Philosophy," I said. I watched his right eyebrow arch.

"Philosophy?" His lips stretched slowly into a smile containing more than a little incredulity. "You will pardon me, I hope, my friend, for smiling at the thought, but I have never seen you as a philosopher."

"Nor could you have. I have never been one, and perhaps even now that is the wrong word. Philosophically speaking, I have come to believe that I am here on earth for one sole purpose, and thus it behoved me to exert all my energies towards the achievement of that purpose with devotion and single-mindedness. Sexual abstinence might help me to achieve my purpose, but would entail distractions. . . Celibacy, on the other hand, as I have understood you, is something that may be learned and practised to a higher end than mere self-denial."

He was still looking at me, one knee hitched up now between us on the wagon bench. "You have my complete attention, Caius. What is this single purpose you have defined?"

"The child, Arthur."

He blinked at me, saying nothing, and then, when he saw that I had said all I was going to say, he coughed, clearing his throat gently. "Forgive me, my friend, for seeming so obtuse. The child Arthur. . . ? What about him?"

"He is my purpose for being here, alive." I could see that Luke was completely mystified. "He is my responsibility," I went on. "He holds the essence of the Dream dreamed by my grandfather and Publius Varrus. Surely you see that?"

"No . . . But I can see that you see it. You forget I am not as familiar as you are with this dream of which you speak. I've heard you speak of it before, but never at any great length, and never in detail. Enlighten me, please."

"I will. I've been thinking about little else these past eight days." I began immediately, and he listened in absorbed silence as I told him about the vision of my ancestors, how they dreamed of resurrecting the greatness that had once been Rome, the great Republic, here upon this island of Britain, and how they had established Camulod as the first bastion of survival in the face of the chaos that would follow hard on the heels of Rome's desertion of Britain. When I had finished, he looked at me astutely.

"Uther was a king," he said. "His son, the child Arthur, may follow him into kingship one day. Is that your wish?" I nodded, and he smiled. "Kingship, my friend, the regal state, sits ill with the spirit of republicanism. The two are immiscible."

"No, Luke, not so." I had been through this matter in my own mind already. "On the surface, I will grant, the two seem at odds, and they are incompatible by definition. But what I am talking about now is not the essence of a republic, or of kingship, other than in the purely nominal sense. What I am propounding to you here is the difference between darkness and light, between civilization and barbarism, between chaos and order, between anarchy and . . ."

"Monarchy," he supplied the word I had been seeking.

"Monarchy. Yes." I felt deflated.

"Kingship."

I shook my head, impatient now with what I saw as sophistry. "Not merely kingship, Luke. I see it as leadership—the offer of enlightened leadership by one man: order and decency and literacy and justice and civility and all the things that make life worth living."

"Ah, I see. Enlightened despotism!" All of his sophisticated, Roman-bred distrust of the mere notion of kings was there in his voice.

"Damnation! How can I make you see what I mean?" He waited, saying nothing. "For four hundred years, this country was at peace, wealthy and prosperous under the Pax Romana. It was Britain, one Province, divided into several parts for administrative purposes, but those parts no more than sections of a complete entity. It had one set of laws and one system of government. It was united and its citizens were prosperous and content, and it was peaceful until shortly before the end of Rome's presence. That era ended the year that I was born. What have we now, in Britain? Within my lifetime we have seen the growth of Camulod, an enclave of sanity, and we have Vortigern, king in Northumbria and civilized enough, save that he has had to import aliens to help him hold his lands. We also had Lot, king in Cornwall, and Derek, king in Ravenglass, and Uther Pendragon, king in Cambria. How many other kings are in this land today? Only God knows. I, certainly, have no idea, but I suspect there may be dozens, and perhaps even scores or hundreds. All kings, Luke, and all supreme in their own petty realms, ruling by force and whim and whatever other methods take their fancy. Derek of Ravenglass is no arbiter of enlightenment; nor, God knows, was Gulrhys Lot, nor even Uther, rest his soul. These men are not kings, Luke, they are warlords, but they have assumed the power of kings. And then there are the 'kings'—again, God only knows how many—who now rule in the eastern lands along the Saxon Shore. Britain, in less than forty years, has fallen into utter anarchy."

"And you think this child may change all that?"

I looked him in the eye. "I do."

"How, in the name of all the ancient gods?"

"By uniting the people again, but even more strongly than they were before, when they were unified by Roman Law and Roman rule. This time, the people will be Britons, all of them, unified by the rule of a King of Britain, with an enlightened system of common laws."

Lucanus shook his head, gently and with sympathy. "My friend, I accept the dream has passed to you, down from your forebears, but it is a dream, I fear, and hardly likely to be realized."

I gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Aye, Luke, you're right, and more so than you know. It is a dream. But dreams are bread and meat to me, and they do come true, from time to time. This will come to pass. I know it will. It's why I'm here. It's why I am Merlyn Britannicus. My duty, my life's purpose, is to train the boy, to teach him all I have learned from all the sources to which I have been exposed, to make him High King of all this land. And that, my friend, will demand all of my attention, for all my life."

He was looking at me now in amazement. "You believe that! With conviction . . ."

"Completely, Luke. Never doubt that again. And I intend to become celibate from this day forward."

"But surely, if you intend to raise the boy, you'll need a woman's help."

"Aye, but there are many women, and I shall use as many as I need. But no wife. I have had a wife, whom I loved dearly, and she was to have borne me a child. She and the child were lost, and I will never know who took them from me, but I have come to believe, deep in my being, that they were taken to leave me free to assume the charge of this boy Arthur. I am convinced of it."

He shook his head again, and his voice was subdued. "Very well, I am convinced that you are convinced, and I will do what I can to help you, although I may never understand whence this. . . this sudden passion . . . this conviction arose. You will teach the boy well, I have no doubt of that. You will teach him your knowledge as thoroughly as my own tutor taught me his. But I'm afraid I may not be the teacher you require."

"I have no fear on those grounds, Luke. I want to learn, and am prepared to spend the time required."

"I told you, it will take years, Cay."

"I have years."

"Hmm. Tell me . . ." He paused, blowing out his breath noisily, and then began again. "How can you be so certain of all this, and so suddenly?"

"It's not sudden, Luke. I have been bred towards seeing that truth, and to recognise it for what it became. I saw it but recently, that is all."

"What? What did you see?"

"A dream." I grinned at him, feeling the euphoria of conviction sweep over me. "I had a dream, and recognised it. I've had them all my life and spent my life running away from them. Now I know them for what they are. I'll tell you about them some time, I promise you. But not today. I've astounded you sufficiently for one day."

"Aye," he agreed. "You have that."

"So, when can we start my lessons?"

"I knew you were going to ask me that." He sounded both resigned and regretful. "Cay, I have no idea. At this moment, my mind is completely blank on the matter of a simple starting point. In fact, I don't believe there is any such thing as a simple starting point. You have caught me completely unprepared." He thought for a moment. "Look, it's going to take some time for you to reach Donuil's home and then return. How long do you estimate you'll be away?"

I shrugged. "As long as is necessary. It may take a month, but I doubt I could be so fortunate as to find everything progresses as smoothly as I would wish it to. It could take half a year."

"Hmm. Well, will you grant me that time to consider how we can approach this matter of your training?"

"Absolutely, but my program of celibacy is already under way." I picked up my bow and dropped the single arrow back into my quiver. "We have talked for long enough. I think it's time I checked on our companions." I glanced over my shoulder into the body of the wagon and noticed a large iron pot, filled with cloth-wrapped bundles, among the profusion of crates and packages that filled most of the wagon bed. "What's that for?" I asked. "The cooking pot."

"For cooking in." He was grinning. "It's not as frivolous as you might think. Remember, I told you that these people have nothing. I meant that quite literally. Cooking pots rust and wear out. It occurred to me, while I was preparing this load, that an extra one might be appreciated."

I had been on the point of leaping down from the wagon, but now I sat down again, struck by what he had said, and before I had completed the movement, my mind was made up. "You know, I never would have thought of that?" I turned my head, scanning the woods on either side of the road. They encroached closely, all evidence of open grassland long since fallen behind us. "Look," I said, "we still have seen no signs, other than footprints, of whoever it is that's been following us, and they may have given up long since. But whether they have or not, the fact remains that you and your cargo here are too valuable to allow me to put you at risk by leaving you alone before you reach your friend Emancipatus. Half a mile can be too far from help if you run into trouble. Ten miles is out of the question, and yet it's but a couple of hours' journey. We'll stay with you until we've seen you safely arrived. No buts, Luke—my mind's made up." I had seen the protest forming in his eyes, and now he smiled and nodded, acquiescing.

"So be it," he murmured. "Thank you."

"No need. I'll be back." I swung myself down, collected my horse from the tail of the wagon and rode to join Donuil and Rufio at the head of our column.

We camped that night beneath the trees, and split the watch into two-hour, four-man shifts, so that none of us had more than four consecutive hours of sleep, but there were no alarms and we found no footprints around our camp the following morning other than our own. Our escort had vanished as silently as it had come. We made good time again throughout a. morning that brought showers and a blustery wind, and came to the inn of the Red Dragon before noon, stopping there to eat. After our meal, I had gone to relieve myself among the bushes by the road—repelled by the stench in the public latrine attached to the hostelry—and I was reentering the courtyard when I noticed Donuil standing in a comer, by the door to one of the outhouses, staring down at his feet. Curious, I walked over to see what he was looking at, and there, clearly outlined in the moist dirt of the yard, was the signature that had been absent from our campsite: the giant feet and the tiny.

"Damnation! Have you seen any sign of these people?" Donuil shook his head. "They could be anywhere now, hiding in one of these buildings or far gone on the road to wherever they came from." I was looking around me as I spoke, angry at myself for not having checked the place thoroughly on our arrival, but it was too late now to do anything useful. "Well, that's wonderful," I said acerbically. "From now on we'll ride with scouts out, although not too far away to be cut off. I hope we come upon these people. I'm just in the frame of mind to deal with them now. Roust out the others and let's be on our way."

Donuil was looking at me in puzzlement. "What are you talking about, Merlyn? Have you seen these footprints before?"

"Of course I have! You have too. They belong to the people who have been following us. They were all around our campsite the night before last, and the night before that, too. Don't tell me you didn't see them."

He shook his head. "No, I didn't. I knew you had found tracks. Rufio mentioned that, but I didn't see any need to go and look at them."

"Then why are you looking at them now, if they have no significance to you?"

"Oh, they have a significance." He was staring down at the marks again. He looked up at me again, the beginnings of a smile dawning in his eyes. "If these belong to the people I think they do, then you can forget about being attacked, unless you decide to do harm to me." He saw my mystification and grinned. "I believe, although I could be wrong, that these footprints were made by two of my father's most trusted men, a giant called Logan and a midget called Feargus. If I'm right, then they're watching over me, which means that Connor came safely home, with the child, and has told my father of meeting you." He nodded his head. "Aye, that would be the way of it. My father would have sent them off to find Camulod and you, and to discover what had become of me."

"You know these people!"

"They are my friends."

"Then why would they not come forward and say so?"

He grinned again and shook his head. "Come, Caius Merlyn, are you serious? They are Outlanders, remember? Would you have them trust your open honesty and goodwill without ever having met you? What would you have done if they had confronted you when I was not around? You would have cut them down."

There was no disputing his reasoning. I shrugged my shoulders. "Aye," I said, "I would have. But not now. Call them in now."

Donuil was still smiling. "I can't, Commander. They are not here. They would have faded away once they discovered where we were headed. We might pick them up again on the road. I'll be watching out from now on, now that I know who I'm looking for. But still, as I said, I could be wrong, so I'll do as you said and roust out the others. There might well be another two sets of feet like those in Britain, but until we know one way or the other, we'll do well to be ready for anything."

Some three hours later, Rufio came riding back towards me over the crest of a hill, and even from afar I could tell by the way he moved that he had ill news to report. I had been riding slightly ahead of our little party, swathed in my war cloak against the chilling rain, and had just returned to ride alongside Luke's wagon.

"Rufio looks upset," Luke said from above me.

"Aye, something's wrong."

When he reached us he reined his horse in a tight circle before speaking, so that none of the men behind us might overhear his words.

"Lepers, Commander, up ahead. A large group of them."

"How many?" This was Lucanus.

"About fifteen, I think. We came on them unexpectedly and they ran.

There's a house of some kind, built of logs, half buried in the ground. No way of telling how many there are inside. Not without going in." His tone made it clear that was beyond consideration.

"Stop looking like that, man, you have no need to fear anything," Luke snapped. "They won't contaminate you. These are the people I have come to see. Stay here with the others, if your fear is that great. I'll ride on alone. Who else was with you when you found the colony?"

Rufio was gazing at Luke as though the physician had lost his mind. "Prince Donuil," he answered. "He's still there, watching the place."

"Why?" Luke's scorn was withering. "Does he expect them to attack him? Sick people?" He turned to look at me. "Would you like to accompany me, Commander Merlyn?" He paused, awaiting my response, and I swallowed hard before nodding, unwilling to trust my tongue. He smiled and turned again to Rufio. "Where are they?"

An hour later we approached the lepers' place by a narrow but well- trodden path that struck away from the main road for half a mile, so that the dwelling place of Mordechai Emancipatus and his charges was well hidden from the eyes of passers-by. Donuil and Rufio had found it simply because they were scouting, on the lookout for anything unusual. Lucanus steered the wagon carefully as we made our way forward and Donuil, pale and tense, now rode beside me.

The path led us into a tiny, bowl-shaped depression too small to be called a valley, floored with fine, white sand that gleamed like snow through the grass that fronted the log structure housing the lepers. The building, of the type known as a byre or longhouse, was built, as Rufio had said, into the side of a low hill. Flanked by two rough outhouses of the same construction, it looked both large and ancient, its walls—those portions of them that projected far enough to be seen—thickly crusted with lichen and mosses. Its roof sagged dangerously in the middle, weighted down with the accretion of years of moss and weeds, so that it would have been invisible from any angle but the one from which we approached. A large cooking fire was smouldering into ashes in front of it, but apart from that sign of life the place appeared to be abandoned. The sight of our scouts, Lucanus assured me, would have driven the lepers inside, to the illusory safety of the building. He drew rein less than twenty paces from the only doorway and climbed down from his seat, slinging his big leather physician's satchel over his shoulder as he did so, and told us to remain where we were for the time being. I was appalled by the place, but it was Donuil who spoke out.

"You're not going in there?"

Lucanus looked up at him and smiled. "I am indeed. Are you suggesting I should come all this way for this sole purpose and not enter? Of course I'm going in, and I'm coming out again. Then you can help me unload the wagon." He lowered his heavy satchel to the ground and crossed to where I sat watching. "Can you reach inside the wagon and hand me down that big pot, Merlyn?" Transferring my weight to one stirrup, I stepped from my saddle onto the wagon platform and leaned inside, up-ending the pot gently to allow its contents to fall out undamaged, before handing the vessel down to him. He carried it to Donuil, grinning widely. "Here, fill this with clean water and set it on the fire there. I'll need it later."

As Donuil slowly dismounted, his face darkened by a troubled scowl, Lucanus picked up his bag again and slung it back over his shoulder. He approached the building and knocked heavily on the door, and I heard a surprisingly deep and normal male voice shout to him to go away, that they were unclean. Luke's only response was to step forward and push against the door. It swung open slowly, and he disappeared inside.

I leaned closer, trying to pierce the darkness beyond the doorway, but could see nothing. I turned then to Donuil and we looked at each other in dismay, but neither of us voiced his thoughts, and Donuil went off on his quest for water.

How long I sat there before Lucanus came out again I do not know, but it seemed like hours. Finally, however, he emerged and approached us, stopping first by the fire where he tested the heat of the water in the pot with his fingertip. When he reached my side he looked up first at me, then at Donuil, and then at me again.

"Merlyn," he said at length, "I am going to invite you to come with me on a journey into Hades, and you will see the true value of the gifts you have given these poor people."

I heard his words without surprise, for I had long since ceased to be surprised by the depths of this man's humanity and compassion. My sole wonder about Lucanus nowadays was due to my own remembrance of the time when I had thought that he was humourless, inhumanly cold and efficient, and that he and I could never be friends.

"Will you come?" He was still gazing at me.

I nodded. "Of course I will."

"Merlyn—" Donuil again, his voice sounding agonized. I cut him short.

"You stay here, Donuil. Don't let that fire go out."

On the threshold, my heart thudding loudly in my ears, I paused and drew a huge, deep breath of clean air. Then, holding it in my lungs as though it were the last I should ever know, I followed Lucanus into the darkness.

I did not know then, nor can I now imagine, what I really expected to find inside that place. A charnel house, perhaps; a hell pit of some description. What I found was Stygian blackness after the bright light of outdoors. I stopped inside the threshold, still holding my breath, and gazed around me, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. The stillness inside those walls was absolute. No one moved, and no one spoke. My head began to swim from the effort of holding my breath, and as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I exhaled noisily, explosively, then fought down a surge of panic as my lungs sucked in more air. . . contaminated air. I began to discern the shape of Lucanus, standing just ahead of me, and long lines of military- looking cots extending along both walls, right and left, the way they did in Lucanus's own sick bay in Camulod.

Lucanus spoke into the silence.

"You may light the lamps, Mordechai. This is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, my Commander. You have nothing to fear from him."

When he had finished speaking, the silence returned, and then the sharp sound of a flint striking metal made me jump, so close was it beside me. Recoiling instinctively, I turned quickly to my right and saw sparks falling, and then a tiny glimmer of light that grew into a small, bright flame. A thin wax taper dipped into the flame and caught, and then its unseen bearer moved away from me, cupping the flame in one protective hand and receding in silhouette against its flickering brightness, lighting a series of lamps down the length of the room, which emerged gradually into view. As the brightness grew and my eyes adjusted, I stared in amazement. The place, for all its Spartan bareness, was meticulously clean and neat. The floor of hard-packed earth was swept bare of dust and dirt, and strewn down the central aisle with fresh, carefully aligned, new-dried rushes. The beds along each wall were uniform; plain, unvarnished, hand-planed wood frames furnished with thin mattresses, and on each mattress sat or lay a human form, most of them swathed in long, voluminous drapery that covered their limbs and faces as well as their bodies. The air I breathed smelled clean. There was a smell, to be sure, and it hinted of sickness, but there was nothing about it of rot or filth, of carrion or contagion.

I became aware of Lucanus watching me. When I looked at him, he motioned me forward, towards the bed by which he stood. As I approached, the occupant of the bed stood up and looked at me. He was a big man, clean shaven and massive of chest and shoulder and wrapped in a single robe that hung, toga-like, to his ankles. His hair was thick and flaxen fair, hanging in ringlets to his shoulders, and his hands were thrust into the folds of his garment.

"Merlyn, this is my friend Mordechai Emancipatus," Luke said. "Mordechai, I present to you Caius Merlyn Britannicus."

I nodded to the big man, who returned my nod in silence.

"Mordechai, as I have told you, is supreme commander here, much as you are in Camulod," Luke went on. "He is a physician, as you already know, trained with me in Alexandria. He is also the breadwinner here because he is the strongest and, to this time, the least afflicted."

Afflicted! There had been no mention of affliction when Luke and I had talked of this before. I gazed at the man Mordechai in consternation. I could see no sign of sickness about him. I found my tongue at last.

"You are a leper?" I asked him, realizing the futility and stupidity of my question as it left my lips. He nodded solemnly.

"Show him your hand," said Luke.

Mordechai withdrew his left hand from the folds of his robe and stretched it towards me. I could see nothing wrong with it. Lucanus reached out and picked up the nearest lamp, bringing it to where its light showed the hand clearly. In the brightness of the lamp, the skin looked . . . scaly was the only word that occurred to me. Luke moved the light closer and I saw the discoloration of dry, painful-looking lesions, red in the centre fading to a dead whiteness at the edges, between the knuckles and on the joints of the fingers. The light moved again, throwing its brightness now on Mordechai's face. Again, the skin looked, upon close observation, somehow dry and flaky, although no flakes were apparent. The man's face reminded me somehow, and I shied away from the thought, of some kind of animal, familiar and yet strange.

"Note the leonine swelling of the features." Lucanus was speaking in his dry, professional voice and his words jarred me. The animal I had been visualizing was a lion. "A classic symptom of this illness. The whiteness and swelling of the skin around the brows and forehead, and the thickening of the nasal bridge and nostrils characterize and emphasize this leonine appearance. Note also that his eyebrows are quite white, not yellow like his hair. How long have you been afflicted, Mordechai?"

Mordechai shrugged his massive shoulders. "Eight years now."

"And before that? How long had you been tending lepers?"

"Since finishing my last tour with the legions, in Gaul. More than twenty years."

"You are now what? Fifty?"

"Forty-eight, I believe."

"Hmm, that's right, you were several years younger than I, the youngest student of us all, in fact. You look good, my friend, in spite of everything."

A smile flickered briefly on the big man's face. "Not many lepers are told that."

"Undo your robe."

The hair on Mordechai's chest was thick and darker than the hair on his head, but it was patterned with white patches, some small, some large, all roughly circular in appearance. Lucanus pointed these out to me, continuing to speak in his clipped, didactic physician's voice. "The whiteness of the hair over the emerging lesions is another unmistakable symptom, but the disease is notorious for not being uniform in its emergence to view. Sometimes the lesions themselves are white, and frequently scabrous, but they may just as easily be red and pus-filled, easily mistaken for common boils in the early stages of the sickness. As you have heard, Mordechai has had this scourge for eight years but shows remarkably few serious blemishes and is hardly debilitated at all, thank God. I have seen others, and I know you have too, Mordechai, who have degenerated to the point of digital decomposition in far less time than that." He broke off and glanced at me. "You understand digital decomposition? The finger joints and toe joints atrophy and fall away."

I nodded, fascinated, unable to tear my eyes away from Mordechai's piebald chest hair, but from the corner of my eye I saw Lucanus straighten up and look around the huge room.

"Eighteen of you," he murmured. "How many in extremis?"

"Seven," came Mordechai's response.

"How are you treating them? What medicines do you have?"

"Medicines?" Mordechai's bitterness was all the more apparent because he expressed it in a laugh. "I have water, Luke, and home-made soap, cloth bandages and gentleness. What more could I have? Whence would it come?"

Lucanus flicked a glance at me and I cleared my throat nervously. "What about light?" I asked, thinking of the cases of fine wax candles I was transporting to Donuil's father. "Is it always this dark in here?"

Mordechai looked at me kindly, his mouth twisting into a smile. "Most of the time," he answered. "With this sickness, the absence of revealing light is frequently a benison. I am the only one of our community you have seen. Some are not as comely as I am. I am still almost whole, look." He now extended his right hand, and it was sound and pink, unblemished. I coughed again, feeling painfully awkward.

"It was simply . . ." I ran out of words, then began again. "I asked only because I have a box—a large box—of fine wax candles among my possessions. They are a luxury to me, but it occurred to me they might be a blessing to your people here. I would be glad to leave them with you if they could be of use to you."

He inclined his head with great dignity. "Thank you, Master Merlyn. They would be more than useful."

"Good. They are with the rest of your supplies in the wagon. We will unload them directly."

"Wagon?" Mordechai glanced from me to Luke and back to me again. "You bring supplies for us?"

I felt my face grow red. "Lucanus brings them. They are his gift to you, apart from the candles. I merely brought Lucanus." As the two began speaking, the one offering and the other declining gratitude, I looked around the long room again. Its occupants were silent still, most of them gazing at the three of us standing in the middle of the floor, but they were no longer isolated shapes. They sat in small groups of three and four, close to each other, touching and sharing warmth and comfort and strength. I glanced at Luke again and found him watching me.

"Luke, a word with you please, outside."

He excused himself to Mordechai, as did I, and we went out again into the grey daylight, feeling the fresh, cool air snap into our lungs with our first breath. I saw Donuil straighten up in relief as we emerged, but my thoughts were with Lucanus.

"The candles are not in the wagon, Luke. They're on one of the pack- horses, back at the camp. It had occurred to me that Donuil and I might unload the wagon, but that's a task that might better wait until tomorrow, when Mordechai will have had time to think about where to store everything. In the meantime, I'll leave Donuil here with you to help you with anything you might need, while I fetch the candles."

It was almost sunset by the time I returned with the box of candles, and I found Donuil sitting his horse exactly where I had left him hours earlier. There was no sign, however, of the wagon and its team of horses. Donuil told me he had stabled the horses and the wagon in a shed at the side of the longhouse. He also told me how Mordechai's eyes had filled with tears when he saw the profusion of what we had brought for his people. The two physicians had been working ever since I left, he added, cleansing the sick and changing dressings, and as we spoke they emerged from the longhouse, stripped themselves to the waist and began washing vigorously in hot water that was white and pungent from the astringent chemicals Lucanus had added to the pot. Surprisingly, I found an air almost of gaiety pervading the small community now, fostered by the sudden wealth that had come their way.

Long after darkfall, Donuil and I made our way back to our encampment, having bidden farewell to Lucanus and his friend Mordechai. I had achieved, I felt with some pride, a modicum of understanding of the fate of these people smitten by the most dreaded illness in the world. I had spoken with most of them in the course of the evening, and had found them to be very much like other people. But neither Donuil nor I had been able to bring ourselves to share their meal as Lucanus had, and some time in the middle of the night I sprang into wakefulness, shuddering in horror at the sight of my own leprous, fleshless face in some dream mirror.

X

Donuil was astir before any of us the following morning, up and out hunting. He brought back a brace of hares and a handful of wild garlic for that night's pot. I had gone to relieve myself and then to wash in a nearby brook as I did every morning on awakening, and he returned to camp at the same time I did, the hares hanging casually from his left hand and the garlic clutched in his right. I noticed them and nodded to him in passing before the significance of what I had seen struck home to me, but then I spun on my heel and called to him.

"You've been hunting, out of camp." He nodded, smiling faintly, and I continued, hardening my voice. "You know better than that! That was foolhardy. You know the rules."

"Aye, Commander." He was still smiling slightly, his response accompanied by a nod. "But I knew what I was about and I was careful. There's no one out there; neither friend nor foe."

I breathed deeply to keep my flaring anger under restraint. "Don't do anything like that again in hostile territory, ever, without my specific permission," I snapped. "I know you think these people who have been following us might be your friends, but you yourself admitted you don't know if it's them or not. You could be lying out there now, gutted like one of those animals you're holding."

His smiled widened, infuriating me. "I hardly think so, Commander."

"Oh, really, you hardly think so? Trooper, I don't give a damn what you think! It's what I think that's important here. It's not your place to think under these circumstances." Only now did his eyes widen with the realisation of the depth of my anger. "As far as your father's people are concerned you are still a hostage to my goodwill, and they have no cause to trust me. You are already late in returning home. Had there been enemies out there, you might have been killed, slaughtered like the fool you appear to be, perhaps after a heroic fight in which you satisfied your stupid Celtic honour, but where would that have left me? I'll tell you where! It would have left me looking like a liar in your father's and your brother Connor's eyes, a self-serving, lying coward with no hope of rescuing the child they are holding against your safe return. Your corpse, and all my tears, would have been useless in gaining his release."

He looked stunned, crestfallen, recognising and accepting the truth of that. His big head dipped in a chastened bow. "You're right, Commander. I didn't think about that."

"Of course you didn't think, you idiot! That's why I'm angry. I said it's not your place to think, but it is, Donuil. It is! I cannot afford to have you or anyone else, but most particularly you, operating thoughtlessly now. There is too much at stake here to permit such foolishness."

Donuil nodded contritely. "It was irresponsible of me, I can see that. It won't happen again."

"Good. Please make sure it doesn't." He nodded again and turned away, showing no evidence of being upset by my displeasure, then turned back.

"May I say something, Commander?"

"Of course you may. What is it?"

He pursed his lips, then inhaled deeply through his nostrils. "We're getting very close to Glevum. Have you thought any more about what you're going to do if there are no ships there? We have thirty beasts for transport: a spare for each fighting man, the matched pair for my father, and six pack-

horses."

He was right. It would be virtually impossible to find a vessel, any vessel, large enough to transport our men, let alone all, or even half of our livestock. My own father, more than thirty years earlier, had been forced to leave behind more than six hundred head of prime stock in Britain—stock that now formed the breeding herds of Camulod—because of the overpowering and insuperable logistical difficulty of transporting livestock by sea upon short notice.

His words, unexpected as they were, made me realize that, until this moment, I had been drifting along, blithely convinced, utterly without reason other than some inner prompting, that everything would work out and we would cross to Eire without difficulty. The enormity of my hubris, and this sudden reminder of it, brought me to my senses. I expelled a gusty, deep- chested breath. "Well, we may have to make adjustments. We were aware of that before leaving Camulod. If everything goes against us and there are no boats big enough to take us all, the others will have to return to Camulod with the horses. If necessary, you and I will cross the sea alone."

"We should take Rufio with us. He's a good man in a tight corner."

"Aye, perhaps. Very well, the three of us."

"And our horses."

"What?"

He spread his hands, palms upward. "We have to cross by boat, and we had intended to find one big enough to carry thirteen of us, counting the boys, and thirty horses. We might still be able to find one that big, something from beyond Britain, unloading cargo."

"Consigned to whom?" The irony on my face made him shrug, conceding my point.

"You're right, it's probably impossible. But we should be able to find one, even a fishing boat from along the coast, that can transport three men, instead of thirteen and perhaps three horses where the other eleven men would have been."

"We'll see. Call the men together."

When they were all assembled, looking at me in curiosity, I cleared my throat and reminded them that, on the face of it, it was highly improbable we would find a vessel capable of transporting all our horses. If that were the case, I said, only three of us, Donuil, Rufio and I, would embark for Eire with, or without, our personal mounts. Thereafter, the remainder of the party would return to Camulod.

These men had all been personally chosen by me. They were not only excellent soldiers, but comrades-in-arms of long standing, and that gave them a certain freedom in responding to what I had said. Two of them, Quintus and Dedalus, were veterans who had ridden with me on the earliest patrols I shared with Uther in our boyhood. Now Dedalus looked at me through a frown.

"You'd really go without us? I don't like that, Merlyn. It's too damn dangerous for only three of you, heading into a land filled with Outlanders. Donuil there's one of them, and we all trust him, but even he makes no secret of the fact he can't speak on behalf of any other than his own people, and not all of them, either. Why can't we all go with you, and leave the horses here with the boys? We can fight as well on foot as from horseback."

I smiled at him. "None of us can go at all if we can't find a boat, Ded. I'm wagering on finding one. If I do, as many of us will go as is feasible. The others will remain behind. I merely wanted you all to know my mind."

There was a deal of muttering and mumbling, but no one could alter the truth of what faced us. Everything depended upon what we would find in Glevum.

The former port town of Glevum, which we reached early the following morning, was an abandoned ruin, devastated by war and time. I had expected that. I knew it had been ravaged by Lot's second army several years earlier, the army, originally bound southward for Camulod via Aquae Sulis, that had caused me to ride into the fight that cost me my memory. On that occasion the army had changed direction and, leaderless, had ravaged both Aquae and Glevum before disbanding. I had also seen the effects of time and the lack of civic government and maintenance on other towns, such as Noviomagus and Londinium itself. Glevum, I decided, had been at far greater risk than all of these during the past two decades since, as an open river estuary port, it had no protection from sea-borne raiders. I had spent the intervening day railing at myself for my own idiocy in even presuming to find sea transportation of any kind available, and my men were all aware of my frame of mind. With all of this taken into consideration, we approached the place very cautiously, yet prepared, by the time we arrived, to find it completely deserted.

I was surprised and excited, therefore, to discover that not only was there a ship at the wharf, but that it was enormous, a massive bireme with a towering mast and huge spars that would support a vast expanse of sail. We saw it first from a distance above the town, on a low hill, and at first I saw only the mass of the huge vessel itself, and the two vertical banks of long sweeps that stood along its side against the wharflike palisades. There appeared to be hundreds of men involved in the feverish activity that was going on about it, with people scurrying everywhere like angry insects whose colony had been disturbed. Then I noticed that much of the activity seemed to be concentrated either at the rear of the vessel or on the section of the wharf directly beyond it and hidden by the bulk of the ship. I swallowed my impatience and forced myself to analyze as much as I could see before committing myself or any of my people to going closer.

As far as I could estimate from our vantage point, the Roman-built craft—what other type could it be, I asked myself—had more than thirty oars in each of its double banks, which amounted to one hundred and thirty or forty sweeps. From the length of the sweeps themselves, it was obvious that at least two men, and possibly three, would be required to manipulate each blade, indicating a crew of four hundred or so oarsmen. In addition to those, I knew there would be warriors responsible for attack or defence when the ship was moving, for Roman biremes were mainly ships of war, constructed for battle and intended as moving fortresses, so that they carried a military force as well as a naval force.

Who could these people be, I wondered, and what was their purpose? It was evident at first glance that they had an urgent purpose; the energetic nature of their activity bespoke it. But even as I watched, the activity died down and altered. Now there was a definite and unmistakable movement of people towards the ship, and they began pouring up the two steep gangways in a living tide.

"They're making ready to leave." The voice belonged to Rufio, who was standing closest to me.

"You think so?" I asked.

"They're leaving. Whatever they were loading, the job's complete. They'll be gone within the hour."

I accepted his judgment completely. "Then we must stop them and negotiate passage."

"Hah!" His laugh was more of a bark, harsh and derisive. "I doubt you'd want to bargain with those people, Commander."

I threw him an ill-tempered look. "Why not?"

"They're carrion eaters. Pirates. They'd gobble us up and not bother spitting out our bones. We're twelve against five hundred."

"We're not against them, Rufio. We are a source of potential revenue to their captain."

"Aye," he grunted a laugh. "We are that." But then he caught himself and looked at me as if he thought me mad. "Commander," he exclaimed, his tone outraged. "They're pirates, they'll take our revenues and all else we have and kill us all, can't you see that?"

"I can see the possibility, but it's a risk we're going to have to assume. You could be right. On the other hand, this is too good an opportunity to pass up. We'll approach them cautiously, but approach them we must, my friend, and we don't have much time. Tell the herd boys to stay here with the extra mounts until we wave them down. Let's go!" This last was a shout to the others, and I waved my arm high to urge them on as I dug my spurs deep and aimed my horse downhill at a run on the shortest route to the outskirts of the town, leaving Rufio to make sure that the boys remained behind.

It was a hard gallop, but in less than a quarter of an hour our horses were clattering through the paved streets of the deserted town, veering abruptly this way and that to avoid the haphazard piles of debris with which the thoroughfares were littered. At one point the entire street was blocked with great piles of masonry and rubble, so that we had to swing right, along another, and ride for several blocks before we could turn back again towards the waterfront. Now we rode among warehouses, most of them wooden and in a state of collapse, but eventually we broke out of the buildings and emerged on the broad, cobbled roadway that ran the length of the long stone wharf. In the time that had elapsed since we left the hilltop, the ship had moved away from the wharf and was now manoeuvring in the deep water of the river channel about thirty paces from where we emerged, its oarsmen swinging it completely about, almost around its centre point, so skillful was their work, to point downstream towards the sea. Dedalus, who rode close to me, had a brazen horn, and now he blew it wildly to attract the attention of the crew aboard the craft.

Our appearance brought consternation on board the bireme and among the group of forty or so men who had remained behind on the wharf to watch the vessel pull out. As we left these behind and galloped along the wharf, keeping abreast of the vessel and waving to attract attention, I saw intense activity on the raised stern platform, where a cluster of men seemed to be arranging themselves in some form of disciplined order. Then, as my disbelieving eyes adjusted to what they were seeing, a blizzard of arrows came winging towards us. I heard a horse scream and a man shout in alarm, and then a hideous clatter told me that one of my men, at least, was down. No sooner had I heard the sounds than a mighty bang exploded against my helmet and I felt myself wrenched sideways and falling, seeing the cobbled street rushing up to meet me from between my horse's hooves. Somehow, instinctively, I managed to check myself, my right hand clutching the horn of my saddle by some reflex and my bent left leg, its foot jammed in the stirrup, absorbing the weight of my falling body. Germanicus veered left, dragged by my weight, and came to a halt, and I managed to haul myself partially upright before falling to the ground. There was confusion all around me now, pierced by the wicked whistle and crack of hard-shot arrows striking stone, a sound I had not heard in years. Someone came running and grasped me beneath the arms, then dragged me into a doorway before lowering me to the floor and running out again. I lay there for some time, shaking my head to clear it and regain my senses, and then I rose to my feet and ran outside, only to find myself alone on the wharf.

"Merlyn! Get back inside!" someone yelled, and I threw myself back into safety again as two arrows smacked into the wall behind me, one of them shattering with the force of its impact. The next time I approached the doorway, I did so on my belly. The big bireme was stationary in mid-stream, its decks lined with bowmen. In the water behind it, two small boats, each sculled by two men, were feeding ropes up to the stern of the larger vessel. As I watched, the ropes were pulled aboard, dragging the ends of two much thicker cables behind them. I heard the clacking of winches, and then the bowmen lining the sides disappeared, followed shortly afterwards by a groaning sound as the great oars were lowered into the water again. A drum struck up a steady cadence, and the bireme began to move downstream. Behind it, attached to the two massive ropes that were now almost taut, drifted two barges, low-sided, flat-bottomed, ugly craft of shallow draft; no more than floating platforms for the hauling of heavy cargo. As the bireme pulled away I stood up again and stepped back onto the wharf. Immediately, an arrow sought me out, falling short and almost spent. They were moving rapidly beyond bowshot and I began to look around me, calling to the others. A dead horse lay to my right, about thirty paces from where I stood.

Quintus was the first to emerge, from a doorway only a little farther down the wharf from where I had Iain. He was staunching the blood flowing from a cut on his nose with the edge of his short cloak. As he appeared, others began to come out from the various places they had sought safety. I began counting them quickly.

"Was anyone hurt?" I asked Quintus.

He shook his head, wiping his nose again and sniffing to clear his nostrils of blood. "No. Metellus went down just before you, but it was his horse took the arrow, not him. He's unconscious, but not injured apart from that. Then you went down and—" He looked at me and stopped speaking abruptly, gazing at me with his head slightly tilted, his eyes on the space above my head, then he stepped towards me, grinning through the mask of blood on his face. "Well, I'll be . . . Let me look at that. Take off your helmet."

I undid my chin strap and pulled off my helmet, which he took from me, holding it up for everyone to see. "Hey, fellows, look at this!" When I saw what he was holding, my whole body chilled. An arrow had pierced the metal framework of the crest on my helmet, and was now lodged there exactly by its centre, the flighted and the barbed ends projecting equidistantly on either side. The matched tufts of alternating black and white horsehair of the crest itself seemed undisturbed. And then I witnessed one of those phenomena that can occur only in moments like that. Completely oblivious to the fact that they had all been in mortal peril only moments before, my men all crowded around to marvel at the sight of the arrow in my helmet as though it were the greatest wonder in the world. I watched them in amazement for long moments before my good sense reasserted itself.

"That's enough of that! Give me that helmet. Where are the horses?"

"In there," Dedalus answered, nodding towards the large doorway of the nearest warehouse. "They're all safe—save for Metellus's."

"Good, then bring them out, please, and let's remember where we are." I snapped the shaft of the arrow and pulled the longer part out through the hole in my silver crest-mounting, leaving an eye-shaped aperture. "Those people tried to kill us, and there was a large group of them still standing on the wharf to our right when we swung left to follow the ship. They're not going to be any more friendly than their fellows were. How is Metellus?"

Donuil came out of the warehouse as I asked the question. He was carrying his helmet under his arm and rubbing his eyes. "Metellus is fine, Commander. He's just come to his senses. He can't stand up yet and his head hurts, but he doesn't appear to have broken anything and he won't die on us.

I noticed that Quintus had stepped away from the others and was standing alone by the edge of the wharf, staring downriver to where the bireme and its trailing barges were now mere dots. lie was still mopping at the blood on his face. I stepped to his side.

"How is it, your nose?"

He sniffed again, hawked, and spat bloody sputum into the water. "Ach, I'll live, Commander. Self-inflicted wound. I banged it against the hilt of my sword when I dismounted in a manner I'd flay my recruits for even thinking of. It'll clot in a while. I'm a bad bleeder, the medics tell me. Once I start, it takes some time to stop."

I turned and gazed back to where the remaining group of men had been, at the far end of the wharf. There was no sign of them. "Well, as soon as you are mobile again, mount up and follow us. I'm going to see what happened to those people left behind, and to see if I can discover what kind of cargo they were towing in those barges." I called to Dedalus and Donuil, telling them to assemble the others and have them at full readiness, then I went to find my own horse in the darkened warehouse. Germanicus seemed none the worse for his escapade, and as I pulled myself up into the saddle I saw Quintus preparing to mount his own horse. I stopped him and ordered him to stay behind with Metellus, whom I could see sitting in the shadows against the wall, shaking his head and resting his elbows on his upraised knees, obviously still disoriented. Quintus looked for a moment as though he might object, but then thought better of it and moved to lower himself down beside Metellus.

When the others were all mounted, I assembled them in a defensive formation, Donuil, Dedalus and I riding in front, with the water on our left and the other six strung out behind us to the right, each man half a length behind the man on his left and carrying his shield on his right arm in anticipation of attack from the buildings in that direction. Nothing moved in front of us as we proceeded cautiously to the far end of the dock, where we had last seen the men. There was still no sign of them. The cobbled roadway ran directly to the gabled end of a stone building and vanished beyond a massive pair of wooden doors the full width of the street. The interior was dark and windowless, the only light a sharply lined wedge spilling inward from the doorway. I held up my hand and drew my horse to a halt, wishing I had thought to bring my bow with me, and we sat there gazing into the huge shed. On my left, Dedalus hawked and spat.

"Are you thinking about going in there, Commander?"

I did not look at him. I was almost sniffing the air, searching for threat, attempting to define the danger my instincts told me was there. "I think we have no choice, Ded."

"Hmm. Well, at least you have a choice of who goes through that whoreson door first, and it won't be you."

Now I glanced at him. "Why not? It's my place, and who's to prevent me?"

"I am. The first man through that door will draw whatever fire is in there. He'll be stone blind, silhouetted against the light and ridiculously outnumbered. There must have been thirty, forty men in that group we saw."

"At least." I could not contain the smile his threat of insubordination had stirred in me. "So what do you suggest we do?"

"Oh, we have to go in; no argument about that, but there must be at least one other doorway . . . an entrance. This is an exit."

He was right. The doorway we were facing had but one function: to allow the goods held inside to be brought out for shipping, or to allow access for unloaded cargo. There was no other way on or off the wharf at this point. The entrance to the first side street lay some thirty paces behind us.

"So we should find the other entrance."

"Aye, or entrances. Then we can hit all of them at once. Let's turn about and ride back the way we came in. Once we're out of sight, we can stop and send half the men to ride around to the other side of the building. If there are only two entrances, we'll go five and five. If there are more, we'll divide ourselves up to fit, and by that time we'll know at least the size of the building, 'cause there's no telling from here."

"You're right. You agree, Donuil?"

Donuil, however, was not listening. As I spoke to him he kneed his horse forward and rode to the edge of the wharf, looking down into the water, about the height of a tall man below the edge. I followed his gaze and saw an empty barge of the type that had been towed behind the bireme. It was long, wide, ugly, flat-bottomed and empty, of no interest or use to us.

"Donuil?"

"I agree with him completely," he said over his shoulder. "I wonder what they ship in these things?"

"Anything they can load and tow. Come on, let's fall back."

We withdrew in order, alert for any signs of movement in the buildings we were passing and as we went I was greatly relieved to see Quintus and Metellus riding to join us from the warehouse where we had left them. They were double mounted, Metellus riding behind Quintus with his arms around his waist. His face was ashen and he looked exhausted, but he seemed firmly seated. When they joined us, I could see that Metellus was far from well. His face was vacant, his eyes staring, and he did not seem to be aware of any of us.

Quintus shook his head at me. "He's badly shaken. I think he must have landed on his head when he hit the cobbles, but he'll be fine once he can lie down and rest for a while."

I said nothing, returning my attention to the business at hand. We reached the junction with the side street and I stopped and again explained our plan. We would proceed up this street to the first cross-junction, I told them, then four of us would remain there while the other six turned left again and rode to the rear of the waterfront warehouses to look for the other entrance or entrances to the farthest one. If the exploratory group were attacked, they would turn at once and head back to rejoin us. If they were cut off from us somehow, both groups would converge on the point of attack. It was the best we could do, since it was inconceivable that we should simply turn around and ride away, leaving the field uncontested before this aspect of it had even shown any signs of dispute.

Those signs of dispute, however, materialized immediately upon our arrival at the junction of the cross-streets, just as we turned left but before our group had any opportunity to split: a hail of arrows poured down on us from attackers concealed on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Fortunately for all of us, our assailants were so jumpy, and so intent on remaining safely hidden, that none of those first missiles found a target. Before they could launch another volley, we had swung our mounts around again and were spurring them back out of the junction, swinging left once more, headed now directly away from the waterfront and the dangers it contained. I cursed the narrowness of the streets, because for several moments there was utter confusion as ten horses tried to enter a space that would permit no more than three abreast. From my position at the rear, time seemed to slow down as I waited for the first arrows to strike among the massed bodies struggling to pass through the small entrance. But suddenly they were through and I was the only one remaining in the open junction. I put my spurs to Germanicus and followed them.

Donuil and Dedalus were directly ahead of me, both of them reining in to wait for me. I waved them on and crouched down in my saddle, feeling my horse's stride lengthen as he settled into a flat run, and I quickly caught up to them. As I approached, angling my mount into the space between them, I could see that they had fallen about twenty lengths behind the others. The air thundered with the clatter of iron shoes on cobblestones. And then suddenly, with absolutely no warning, a man leapt out into the road from a doorway ahead of us, swinging some kind of enormous axe. It took Donuil's horse from beneath, in the outstretched neck, and killed it instantly. I had almost drawn level with them, my horse's head between the rumps of theirs, and the attack had occurred and was over before I could react. I had a blurred image of Donuil's horse crashing to the ground in a spray of blood, of Donuil himself flying over its head, and of the killer whirling nimbly away, back into the safety of the doorway from which he had sprung.

I swung my own mount around, hard, whirling my sword backhanded and uselessly at the killer, and then I was falling, too, my horse rearing and screaming as his hooves trampled his downed companion, kicking wildly in its death throes beneath him. I kicked my feet free of the stirrups and landed on my hands and knees beside the chaos of their thrashing bodies, smashing the fingers of my right hand between the cobblestones and the hilt of my sword. Above me, the killer sprang out again, his blood-covered axe upraised to cleave me. I let go of my shield and threw myself sideways to my left, scrambling with the speed of desperation to remain clear of the horses, and landed against the opposite side of the doorway that had hidden my attacker, just as his axe struck sparks from the stones of the road beside me. Then, scarcely aware of what I was doing, I braced my left arm against the frame of the doorway and launched myself at him, my body fully extended, stabbing my long-bladed sword like a spear into the softness beneath his rib cage. I felt no impact as my blade took him, but saw his eyes widen in surprise, then he released his axe handle and clutched at my blade with both hands. I jerked it free, slicing through his hands as I rose to my knees, and saw another man rushing at me from the passageway behind him. Before the newcomer could reach me, I was on my feet again, waiting for him. I brushed aside the short spear he thrust at me and killed him with a single, two-handed chop to the join of his neck and shoulder. Neither man had worn armour.

And now I became aware of Dedalus shouting my name, his voice shrill with urgency, and telling me to mount up, mount up, for the love of Christ! I spun towards the sound of his voice, my body still tingling with the fever of combat. Germanicus stood close by, his eyes rolling, and beyond him I saw Ded, leaning from his saddle, supporting Donuil, who was shaking his head groggily, blinking furiously to clear his vision. To my left, the way we had come, the street was filled with running men, still distant, but coming rapidly. There were far too many to fight. I snatched up my shield again and ran to my horse, jamming my foot into a stirrup and swinging myself up into the saddle.

"Come on!" Ded was shouting. "Grab his other arm and we'll carry him!" My hands were full. I jammed my left arm completely through the larger sling at the back of my shield, forcing the thing up my arm towards my shoulder until it would go no farther and hung there, anchored and offering some unforeseen protection to the back of Donuil's head. Then, my hand free, I leaned down and grasped Donuil by the upper arm, grateful for his height, if not for the weight of him, holding both the reins and my sword in my right hand.

"I have him! Let's go." We spurred our mounts and began to move, supporting Donuil's dead weight between us. As our horses began to gather speed, however, he regained awareness and began to run between us, unsteadily at first, but strengthening rapidly, so that by the time our speed had increased to a gallop, he had taken hold of each of our saddle cinches and was leaping along between us, bearing his own weight and pushing himself off the ground with one foot at a time in huge, distance-burning strides. One arrow hissed at us, clanging off Ded's metal-covered shoulder, and then we were safe, our pursuers left far behind us. On the outskirts of the warehouse area, where the thoroughfares broadened out, we met the others starting back, somewhat belatedly, to rescue us.

The aftereffects took hold of me a short time later, covering me in icy gooseflesh and rattling me with shivers as we rode quietly and sedately through the outlying area of the town, in the direction of the hilltop where we had left the boys and our extra horses. There had been little talk of who and what we had encountered. Time enough for that later, when each man had had time to absorb the fact that he was safe and whole. Now we rode each in his separate silence, reliving those few, terror-filled moments. We had been defeated and repelled by a force we had not even identified; driven off almost casually. I told myself that we had been heavily outnumbered and that there was little else I could have done. Then I remembered Rufio's warning with perfect and humiliating clarity, and there was nothing I could invoke to excuse myself for my arrogance in ignoring it. Since mine was the biggest horse among our group, and Donuil's the largest body, he rode now behind me, his arms loosely encircling my waist. Like me, he had not spoken since we met the others. Now I felt him stir and his voice spoke into my ear.

"Stone," he said.

"What? Stone?"

"Aye, marble. Isn't that what you call that smooth, shiny stuff? That's what they were taking on those cargo boats. Marble stone. I saw some broken pieces in the empty one, but I only now realized what it was. They were small, all broken, but one surface of almost every piece was smooth and shiny, polished. Some green, some white, and one reddish piece. Why would they take stone?"

His words suddenly came together in my mind, and I remembered something I had noticed earlier, on our way into Glevum; something that had been anomalous, yet insignificant at the time.

I looked around me, knowing what I was looking for now, and called to the others to halt. On a slight rise, just a little to the right of where we now sat, were the ruins of what had once been a temple. Its pillars gleamed softly in the afternoon light. I told the others to wait for me and kicked my horse forward. Donuil remained silent until I reined in and dismounted, freeing my feet and swinging my right leg forward over the horn of my saddle before slipping to the ground without disturbing him. I heard him dismount behind me as I walked forward to the temple steps. We climbed them together and stood staring in silence at the scene before us. The floor of the temple seemed artificially smooth and bare in places, gouged and rough in others, and scattered here and there with the broken remains of several of the square, black and white marble tiles that had covered it. The walls were bare, too, and it was equally evident that they, too, had once been covered with marble; entire sheets of polished, pale green marble; once again, the broken evidence remained. The facade, too, had been stripped of decorative panels in several places and the portico formerly supported by the marble Doric pillars was gone without a trace. Two pillars only remained, and they looked structurally sound in their smooth, unblemished whiteness, almost new. Four had disappeared.

"Well," I said, "there's your answer, my friend. They, whoever they are, are systematically stripping the buildings and transporting them."

"But why? What's to be gained from that? And where would they take them to?"

"There's wealth to be gained, Donuil, great wealth, I would think. Marble is the most valuable building material in the world. Now the Romans are long departed, and entire towns like this are lying abandoned, so someone has had the bright idea of dismantling them, the public and sacred buildings, at least, and shipping them to where they can be put to use by people rich enough to want to build that kind of thing elsewhere, probably in Gaul, across the water."

Donuil was gazing at me in wonder. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course I am, although I can see why it would make no sense to you or me or any of our people. These, however," and I nodded to the signs of pillage all around us, "are not our people. These are scavengers. Do you know what locusts are?" He shook his head and I smiled. "Well, I've only read about them, but they are a kind of grasshopper in Africa, and they fly in swarms so dense they can black out the sun at noon. They consume everything in their path and leave nothing behind them but destruction. That's what you're looking at here. The work of human locusts. They'll strip this land of ours until nothing remains but the hills and the trees."

He sighed and shook his head. "I don't doubt the truth of it, but I'll never understand it. It seems insane."

"Oh, it's sanity, of a kind. Do you remember the Carpe Diem, in Verulamium?"

"The tavern? Aye, what about it?"

"We called it the Carpe Diem because of what it signified, and the shortness of its life. It was open for less than a month, you know, but its owner earned a lot of money during that time."

"Aye, but he provided a good service."

"Of course he did, I'm not denying that. But Carpe diem means 'seize the day'. . . grasp the opportunity now, while it's available. Do you see what I mean?" He shook his head again, his eyes still troubled. "Donuil, thousands of people descended on that deserted town within a matter of weeks to attend the great debate. The Carpe's owner—I think his name was Paulus or something like that—saw and grasped the opportunity to profit by it. He opened a hostelry and enjoyed a thriving business while it lasted."

"Aye? So did a dozen others."

"That is exactly my point, Donuil: there will always be a breed of men who can take any circumstance and turn it into profit. And that's why these . . . these people, are here, dismantling Glevum. They're taking fortune where they find it. They'll probably spread their activities outward, eventually, to the abandoned villas all around, and unless someone does something to discourage them, sooner or later they'll come swarming towards Camulod like dung flies."

Donuil thought about that. "I understand," he said at length. "But what I don't understand is why they would attack us like that, over a pile of stones? Why would they think we might want to steal their silly stones?"

"Because they perceive those stones as having monetary value, Donuil; great value, too, probably greater than you and I could imagine, judging from the number of people involved. They must have purchasers lined up somewhere, awaiting delivery. And even though their stolen cargo might be worthless in our eyes, they would kill us out of hand to protect it. Come on, we had best rejoin the others."

Two hundred paces farther on, just as the track we were following began to ascend the hillside, we found ourselves surrounded yet again, before we had any intimation of danger. A circle of men, many of them holding pulled bows, stood up out of the long grass all around us. Perhaps because of what we had just survived and our reaction to it, all of us were caught completely unprepared. My heart pounding in consternation, I cursed and stood up in my stirrups, pulling at my sword to unsheath it, then felt Donuil's arms pinion mine as he roared in my ear, for everyone to hear.

"Stand fast, men of Camulod! These are my people!"

My men all froze, staring around them in stupefaction, and I made an instant evaluation, then sagged backwards into Donuil's embrace, fighting for composure, forcing myself to sound unconcerned in spite of the fact that my heart seemed lodged somewhere in the region of my throat.

"Well then," I said, hearing and marvelling at the lack of even a tremor in my voice, "for the love of our God and theirs, tell them to point those arrows somewhere else before someone gets hurt."

Over the course of the hours that followed, we became acquainted with our new companions, whose leaders were the giant and the midget whose footprints had caused us so much concern on the journey from Camulod. Their names were Logan and Feargus, Logan being the giant. It had taken but moments for Donuil to convince them that we were friends and that he was in no way being constrained by us. As he told them the truth of his "captivity" and of how he had become a soldier of Camulod, they watched him in silence, making no attempt to interrupt him. When he had finished his tale, the tiny man, Feargus, made his way to me, followed by big Logan. He stopped directly in front of me, his head tilted far back to look up into my eyes.

"Merlyn Britannicus," he said, in a surprisingly deep and normal voice, the lilting Erse syllables pouring from his tongue like honey. "I extend to you the thanks of my Chief, Athol, King of Scots, son of Iain, son of Fergus and of all his people, for the honour you have shown his son."

Uncomfortably aware that I lacked a suitably formal response to his words and impressed by the simple dignity with which he had delivered them, I could only bow my head in acknowledgment. Donuil, however, felt no such reservations. His delight at seeing these people was complete and heartwarming. He ran forward to embrace the two leaders, then demanded to know, immediately, why they had taken so long to come forward, since they had been following us for days.

It was the giant, Logan, who responded, avoiding the question by pointing out that we were all still mounted, and that their story could wait until we had made camp and eaten. We moved forward then, still in our two separate groups, until we had rejoined our herd boys and their charges. Fires were lit shortly after that, though it was still only early afternoon, food appeared from a variety of sources, and a guard was posted on the hillside to make sure that none of our former assailants from the town came creeping up to finish what they had started. And as we ate, the two companies finally melded into smaller, mixed groups around the fires, communing somehow, in spite of the fact that neither group spoke the other's tongue. Logan and Feargus, between them, told Donuil and me their tale.

Connor had returned home safely, bearing the child hostage, but having failed to find his sister Ygraine. Donuil and I exchanged glances at that. King Athol had listened closely to Connor's story, gazing all the time at the tiny boy who had been brought into his kingdom as a hostage. He had questioned Connor closely on whether he had believed my tale of Donuil's safety and, at the end of it all, neither of them had known what to believe. They knew, however, of Camulod, from other sources, most notably the words of Lot, the Cornish king to whom Athol had wed his daughter. And Donuil's uncle, whom I had released at the time of Donuil's capture, had recognised me from Connor's description, and upon the strength of our one brief meeting had been inclined to believe what Connor reported. I made a mental note to seek him out and thank him when we came to Eire.

Logan and Feargus, two of Athol's most trusted friends and retainers, had been dispatched with two galleys to find Camulod and discover whether Donuil was alive or dead. They had landed to the west of where we sat now, and had seen us on the first day out of Camulod, recognising Donuil immediately, but finding themselves unable to approach us openly since they were too few in numbers to deal with us if we proved hostile. The last thing they wished was to endanger their prince. They had followed us closely for two days and nights, until we approached the place where they had left their galleys, at which point the two leaders stayed close to us, but not close enough to alert us to their presence, while the others were sent to bring more men; enough to confront us successfully, irrespective of our attitude to Donuil. They had suspected, Feargus told us, that we had known about them on the second night they came close to our camp.

Donuil had been listening intently, frowning a little, and now he interrupted Feargus.

"Why did you move across the country with only six men, Feargus? You have two galleys full."

Feargus sniffed and looked at Logan. "Aye, true enough," the big man said. "But your father the king was most exact in his instructions." He glanced at me, then back to Donuil before continuing. "Remember, you stood as safeguard of the word of your father that there would be no war with your captors so long as you were safe. Five summers was the term. We had no proof that you were dead, and none that you were alive. And so the word of King Athol was that we were to find a place to lie with our galleys, safe hid, until the word of your life or death was known beyond dispute. If you were now a free man, according to the agreement, then there would be no need to show a warlike force. If you were prisoner still, we were to march and deliver you. If you were dead, we were to exact vengeance. But until we knew, one way or the other, we were to do nothing to endanger the peace to which your father had committed all of us. And so we had to make towards Camulod, few enough in number to occasion no alarm, but strong enough in number to protect each other. So we were six, and but lightly armed." He paused and grinned. "We arrived back today with enough of us to make you safe, one way or the other—until we heard that you had ventured into that town, among the snakes. Gave us a bad time there, you did." He swung his head to include me in his next question. "Are you mad, to ride in, twelve against half a thousand?"

I dipped my head in acknowledgment. "I must have been, for a short time. Rufio over there warned me against it, but I would not listen. I was too intent on shipping our horses aboard their vessel."

"Horses? Aboard a ship?" Feargus was blinking at me in amazement. "And where were you thinking of going?"

"Home, Feargus," Donuil answered. "We were going home to Eire."

Feargus blinked again. "All of you? With horses?"

I grinned, feeling distinctly foolish. "That was my fault, Feargus. I had not thought the matter through. Or perhaps I had set greater store by my instincts than by sound planning."

Logan was as perplexed as Feargus appeared to be. "Why would you even want to take horses to sea?"

The question rocked me for a moment. "To transport them, to take them with us," I explained, as though speaking to a child. I could see that he still could not understand why anyone would wish to pursue such folly. "We are cavalry, Logan. We operate on horseback, and our horses are essential to our. . ." Strategy and tactics had been the words I intended to say, but no equivalents for them existed in the Erse tongue as far as I knew. I looked to Donuil for assistance, saying the words in Latin. He smiled and took over from me without pause, directing his words to both men.

"Caius Merlyn was about to say 'essential to the way we fight,' but he found himself in the same situation as you were when you landed your galleys down the coast from here. He had no intention of fighting in my father's land, but his presence there might be unwelcome to some. His purpose was to bring me to my home, greet my father and Connor in courtesy, collect the child, his godson, and then return to his own home in Camulod. To do that, nevertheless, he knew he might have to pass through strange and perhaps hostile territories, particularly when returning. He was thinking in terms of self-defence, and self-defence to the people of Camulod entails horses."

Both listeners appeared satisfied with that explanation, and the tension faded visibly from their bodies.

"I still don't see how you could have done it," insisted Logan. "There's no room on a galley for animals, other than a few trussed sheep or pigs for slaughter on a long journey. The very thought is madness."

I agreed with him. "We would not have been looking for a galley like yours, a longboat. We would have required something much larger, with a wooden deck and some means of shelter for the beasts. Something like the bireme that left this morning."

"Hmm." Feargus interrupted, waving Logan to silence. "How essential are these horses to you?"

I shrugged. "They are not, now that the choice has narrowed to remaining here with them or going without them. We'll leave them behind. Do you have a favoured weapon. Feargus?"

"Aye," he answered, dropping his right hand to the shaft of a short, heavy- headed axe with a wide blade that hung from his belt. "This. I rely on it because of my size. I find it gives me an advantage over bigger men that's more than enough."

I nodded. "I think the same way of our horses. Mounted, each of us can master six or seven on foot."

He turned to Donuil. "And you, Prince Donuil, do you feel the same?"

"I do." Donuil paused. "I do now. It took me a long time, though, to learn the truth of that."

"Hmm." Feargus stood up, his face furrowed in thought, and walked around to the other side of the fire, his head bowed, his tiny hands clasped at the small of his back. Watching him, I found nothing ridiculous in the size of him. He paced for a while, then turned and beckoned for Logan to join him, after which the two of them walked off to a distance, muttering together. I looked at Donuil.

"What d'you think that's all about?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said, his eyes on the ill-matched pair across the fire.

Their colloquy, whatever its content, was brief, and they returned directly to where we waited. Feargus, whom I had long since identified as the senior of the two, dropped to the ground, his back against a log and his elbow crooked over it, and spoke his mind without preamble.

"I think King Athol would enjoy seeing his son atop a horse as big as those you ride, accompanied by good friends. You know that empty vessel in the town, tied up by the dock . . . the thing like a big coracle . . ."

"It's a barge. What about it?" I felt a flutter of excitement.

"A barge. Would it transport your horses?"

"Aye, and all of us, but we can't reach it, and even if we could, we could not move it, since it has to be towed."

"Behind a bireme?" He was smiling slightly now, and my excitement increased.

"Aye, or even a longboat, were it big enough."

"What about two fair-sized galleys?"

I was sitting erect now. "How would we reach the barge, guarded as it is?" I asked, knowing the answer from the grin that now split his elfin features.

"We go in from the water and take it. No one will expect anything like that. An empty barge is worthless. We send swimmers in before dawn to cut it loose, and then attack when the sun comes up. One galley to pull it off empty and the other to discourage interference."

And so it came about that the banners, the men and the horses of Camulod travelled to Eire in an open barge, pulled slowly behind Erse warriors and at the utter mercy of the winds, which graciously held their breath.BOOK TWO

EIRE

XI

Eire appeared to us as a mystical dreamscape, emerging silently and almost imperceptibly through the thick fog of an eerie dawn when nothing moved, not even the waters beneath our keel, and the only sounds to be heard were those we made ourselves. Ahead of us, attached by the long, heavy tow rope that sagged now beneath the motionless waters between us, Logan's galley drifted, looming dimly like a spectre in the fog, its big sail furled and its oars raised clear of the sea, so that the water dripping from the blades could be clearly heard by all of us. We lined the sides of our floating platform in silence, the moisture condensing on our armour and rolling down leather and metal like rain, each of us gazing intently to where, ahead and to our right, the fog bank seemed to thicken into solidness. Beside me, Dedalus leaned forward, his hands braced on the rail, the heavy wool of his cloak beaded with drops of water. Quintus stood next to him, and in the dim light I saw vapour coming from his mouth and nostrils as he breathed, and water dripping steadily down the back of his cuirass from the neck guard of his helmet. Someone behind me cleared his throat nervously and the stillness settled again, pressed down beneath the weight of the fog, absolute and impenetrable. A horse moved restlessly, stamping a hoof once on the solid planking of the deck, the sound damp and muffled and echoless, and still the silence persisted as we drifted. No one had warned us to be quiet. We had assumed our mantle of stillness in response to the sudden absence of sound from the galley. If those fierce Ersemen chose to proceed in stealth, we on our ungainly barge were glad to follow their example without prompting.

Then came a muffled order from the galley and the oars dipped again to the water, pulling strongly in a manoeuvre that won my admiration even as I marvelled at its strangeness. Five times the oars dug deep before the rope that joined us to the galley became taut and pulled us into motion, and then four times more, so that we surged forward in its wake. Then some of the oars rose vertically again, while the remainder on one side pulled forward and on the other backed water. The huge galley swung on its own centre, all oars shipped now, and came to rest facing back towards us, parallel to our course, between us and the invisible land mass as the momentum of our continued forward motion brought us alongside. Men stood ready to fend us off with long poles, but the judgment of the manoeuvre had been so exact that they were unnecessary. We glided perfectly to rest beside the larger vessel and Logan himself leapt effortlessly down to our deck. Until he opened his mouth to speak to me, no one had uttered a sound.

Well," he said, holding his voice low, "we're here. Welcome to Eire. You can't see it yet, but the shore is less than half a bowshot from us now. The tidal drift will take us in closer, but I want to take us out again until we know exactly where we are. I merely wanted to warn your people to keep all noise down. Don't let those horses make a sound."

"Why not, if we've arrived?"

He raised one eyebrow at me and glanced at Donuil. "Because we don't know where we are exactly. The fog has seen to that. If we are more than three leagues south of where we should be, we could attract attention we don't need. We have no friends to the south of us. Feargus went farther north during the night, to find our anchorage, the spot we should have reached if not for this damned fog. He should be back soon, and then we'll know."

I had looked over his shoulder as he spoke, and now I saw the top of a massive tree emerging through the tendrils of fog that wreathed its branches. "We may be closer to the shore than you think," I said, nodding towards it.

He turned to look, uttered an oath and ran, using the low side of our barge as a step and launching himself upward to his own vessel, where waiting hands pulled him aboard. Thereafter all became confusion. The oars on the side nearest us levelled towards us from above like spears and pushed us away, forcing us sideways in a sluggish, wallowing, ungainly dance, moving their own galley as much as our heavy barge, so that its high mast rolled drunkenly. As soon as we had drifted apart far enough to give them room, the oars dipped again into the sea and began to pull, but not soon enough. Their gathering impetus was immediately aborted, the sweeps stilled in the water amid chaos as the central oars on the right of the galley dug into a rapidly shelving bottom, lodging there and throwing their rowers off balance. We did not discover what had happened until much later, but we clearly heard the violent cracking splinter of at least one oar and a chorus of shouts and screams mingled with the sound of falling bodies as the prow of the galley, propelled by the partial, yet powerful, thrust from the unfouled oars on the landward side, began to swing back violently towards us, its high, pointed nose towering over us until the heavy, reinforced beam crashed slowly, but with amazing power, into our side, splintering our heavy vessel's timbers as though they were made of eggshell. I saw the barge's side bend inwards like a colossal bow and shatter with a noise that almost deafened me, and at the same instant the planking of the deck closest to the side and running from prow to stern heaved upward, splitting into fragments, some of which flew whirring viciously through the air, spinning like wind-blown leaves. Beneath the planks, within a fraction of a heartbeat, I saw the lateral struts to which they had been nailed give way, sprung apart like the sides of a log beneath the axe that was the galley's thrusting prow.

The violence of the collision threw all of us, including the horses, to the deck, where the animals immediately began screaming and whinnying in panic, scrabbling and flailing vainly to regain their footing. I landed hard on my buttocks, my shoulders slamming against the side of the deck farthest from the point of impact, and Dedalus immediately fell sprawling on top of me, his elbow ramming sickeningly into my crotch and blinding me momentarily with pain and nausea. By the time I could drag myself to my knees again, reeling and gasping for breath, everything around me had degenerated into chaos. Dedalus was gone, but Quintus lay squirming close by me, his face ashen, bleeding copiously from the nose again and clutching his right thigh in both hands. That much I saw in the first glance, but then I saw him flinch again, struck by one of the wildly flailing hooves of my own big black, Germanicus, and I knew what had happened. I reached him in a lurch, still on my knees, and grasped him by the armholes in his cuirass, hauling him clear of the horse's reach. "Broken!" he hissed in my ear, and then I was on my feet again and looking all around me. The deck beneath me was tilted steeply towards the point of impact, where the prow of the galley still thrust through our shattered side as though locked in a vise. Where the two vessels joined, sea water lay deeply pooled, its level creeping upward even as I looked. And then I saw a pair of legs sprawled on the deck, its owner's head and torso lost beneath the water. I threw myself forward and down, barely avoiding being kicked by a horse myself, and grasped the ankles, dragging the drowned or drowning man out and up the sloping deck. It was Metellus, who had not fully regained his senses since falling from his horse on the wharf in Glevum. I had no time to check him for signs of life. The silence of only moments before had been obliterated by a Hadean chaos of noise, with men and horses adding their voices to the tortured shrieks and groans of splintered, twisting timbers, and suddenly I found myself looking up at Logan, perched on the very point of his galley's prow and shouting down at me. As I stood there, trying to decipher what he was telling me, Donuil appeared at my side.

"Can't hear you!" he yelled, his hands cupped around his mouth.

Logan heard him, and did the same with his own hands, funnelling his voice towards us. "We can't backwater to free ourselves! Too close to shore. Stern's aground. We'll have to push you like this. Donuil, come aboard!"

"I'm staying here! Do what you must. Push us out if you can, then turn us.

Logan hesitated for a moment, high above us, and then turned and disappeared. Donuil grasped me by the arm and leaned closer, shouting into my ear. "Did you understand what he said?"

"Aye, he's fast aground. I heard that. But how will he push us out, if his men can't row?"

"They'll push, until they have enough water beneath the keel. It shouldn't take long. Only the stern's aground. Once they're clear, they can throw their full weight on the oars and push us around. They hit us aft of centre, so we'll swing fairly easily. The motion should break our hold on them and allow them to break free of us."

"Aye, and what then?"

"We'll sink, once they've pulled free. The barge is broken well beneath the waterline. We'll have to swim ashore." As he spoke, the motion of the barge changed suddenly, and with the change came an agonized groaning of wood from the junction of the two craft. I glared around me at my men, my mind in a turmoil.

"Damnation, Donuil, we're all wearing armour. We'll sink like stones and drown!"

He had anticipated me. "We'll swim with the horses. They'll carry us, but we have to get them on their feet. Come on!"

I ran immediately towards my horse Germanicus, feeling the barge's deck lurch again beneath my feet as Logan's men thrust their long oars against the sea bottom, poling both vessels away from the land. "Up!" I yelled to everyone. "On your feet and get the horses up! Quickly, or we all drown."

We had haltered the animals to four stout ropes slung from side to side across the deck and fastened by heavy iron spikes hammered through their knotted braids, which meant that the horses themselves stood facing either front or rear. The sidelong impact had sent them all tumbling, and only a very few had regained their footing. I reached Germanicus and knelt in front of his head, grasping his bridle in both hands, and talking to him, seeing the rolling of his eye that bespoke utter terror. "Come on, big boy," I told him, fighting to maintain the familiar level tones he knew from me. "Come on, let's get you on your feet again. Come on, up!" I raised myself, pulling the straps of his headstall, raising his head clear of the deck, then straightening and heaving as I almost dragged him to his feet. Slowly, hesitantly, but gathering confidence from my persistence, the great animal shrugged himself around until his front hooves were flat against the deck, after which he pushed himself up, as a man will on his arms, until his legs were straight. Once there, the rest was fairly simple. He tried once, then again, and on the third attempt gathered his haunches and lurched to his feet, where he stood spread-legged and unsteady, bracing himself delicately on the tilting deck, his nostrils flaring, ears laid flat along his head and his eyes still rolling wildly.

Now, all around me, I saw my men doing as I had done, pulling the animals upright. Only one still screamed, and I looked towards the awful sound and saw a beautiful roan with a mangled right foreleg, the skin broken and pierced by a long shard of bloodied bone. As I looked, absorbing the animal's wound, one of my men smote the animal between the eyes with a hand axe, killing it instantly. The sudden cessation of its agonized screaming made the remaining tumult seem like silence. I used that instant to capture everyone's attention with a shout.

They listened attentively as I explained what was about to happen, shocked, but plainly aware of the need to waste no time in making preparations. As soon as I had finished speaking, they fell to work, saddling their own mounts and stowing their weapons before loading the packhorses. I had told them not to worry greatly about cinching the saddles perfectly. It would be difficult on the sloping deck, and all that was really required was that the saddles should stay in place. They would not be riding ashore, but swimming alongside their mounts, hanging on and kicking, trusting their animals to keep them from drowning. As I turned back from fastening my own cinch, tightening it as firmly as I could, I saw Donuil back at the broken side, talking to someone up on the prow of the galley. And then, amazingly, I saw a figure dive from the side of the galley, straight down into the sea. He surfaced almost immediately and came swimming to where Donuil crouched, ready to pull him out. The diver emerged, dripping, and then Donuil helped him climb back up to the craft above again before turning and making his way to me.

"I asked for someone to dive down and see how deep the bottom is," Donuil explained. "He touched bottom on his dive, so it can't be much more than the height of a tall man."

"So? That's deep enough to drown in."

Donuil actually grinned at me. "Aye, but it's also shallow enough to dive in. The sun will be up soon enough, and that means the fog will disperse, so we'll be able to recover anything that we lose in swimming ashore. Shields, for example, and heavy weapons. All we have to do now is hope that we are either in friendly territory, or that there's no one around to ask awkward questions before we can reorganize ourselves. We—" His voice was suddenly lost in an upsurge of the grinding, wrenching noises from the join of the two ships. As we had worked to prepare ourselves, Logan and his crew had been labouring mightily, heaving on their oars in a series of complicated manoeuvres and pushing us first outwards and then around, so that our own prow now pointed towards the land, which was clearly discernible, although still mist- shrouded, in the early morning light.

My attention was immediately all for the horses. The sides of the barge were not high, but they were certainly high enough to deter a balking animal that had no wish to leap overboard.

"Tell Logan to stop, quickly!"

Donuil turned and yelled an order to the man on the galley prow. The great oars stopped churning almost instantly.

"Now," I told him, speaking loudly for the benefit of my men, "it is imperative the horses go over facing in the right direction, otherwise they're likely to swim out into deep water. Tell Logan that, and explain it. He knows nothing of horses and how stupid they can be at times. His ship is parallel to the shore now. If he reverses the thrust of his oars, he should be able to pull free, and the same motion should pull our stern around again, towards the beach. As soon as he breaks free, this thing will start to sink, tilting shoreward, if we have any luck at all. That should make it more than simple to put the horses in facing the proper way. Tell him to do it now." As Donuil sprang back towards the galley, I raised my voice to the others. "Cut the halters and hold fast to them. Those of you who can handle two, do it. When the deck starts to really tilt, lead the horses down and try to keep them calm. They'll want to panic, so don't allow them to. Go with them, and hang on. They'll get you safe ashore. You heard what Donuil said. We can come back later for any weapons you lose, so don't weigh yourselves down any more than you have to, but don't leave yourselves defenceless, either. Now, wait for my word." I glanced around me. "Where's Metellus?"

It was Dedalus who answered me. "He's dead. Kicked in the head, I think, by one of the horses."

"What about Quintus?"

"Quintus is here. He should be fine."

I turned to see Rufio standing behind me, holding two halters. Quintus was draped face upward and tied firmly to the bare back of one horse, the only white one we had, a huge gelding that dwarfed even my own mount.

"Where is his saddle?"

Rufio nodded. "Over there, on the king's stallion."

"Good. Look after him."

I saw a wave of movement as the banked oars of the galley came down into the water again and thrust backward in unison. The barge shuddered and lurched and an evil, highpitched rending sound was ripped from the mouth of the barge's open wound. For long moments nothing happened; the oars cleared the water and dipped again, accompanied by a heaving, grunting, concerted roar of effort from the galley's rowers. And then came a sudden screech and the deck beneath our feet shuddered as the galley sprang free, tossing its prow in the air, the scars on its bow planking showing new and bright against the darkness of the timbered hull, although the damage appeared superficial. The old barge, however, was mortally wounded and heaved upward, threatening to topple all of us again and sending the pool of sea water swirling around our feet before the vessel's returning, downward roll brought the holed side down beneath the level of the surface and the sea came pouring in. There could be no recovery. Within moments, what little liveliness the ungainly craft had ever had was gone, and it began to settle quickly, as the space beneath the shallow deck was inundated.

I had misread what might happen. The barge sank downward on an even keel, steadily and appallingly swiftly, so that we had no need to coax the horses over the side. The sea, instead, came up to meet them, gurgling between the planking of the deck, and before they knew it they were swimming strongly for the shore, carrying their normal passengers, although in a most abnormal fashion.

For the second time in two months I found myself immersed in the sea, out of my depth and weighed down by heavy armour that threatened to drag me to the bottom. I hung tightly to the horn of my saddle, trusting my horse's strength and attempting to kick my legs to relieve him as much as possible of my dead weight. I might as well have tried to fly! My leather- lined chain-mail coat and leggings, almost weightless in the saddle although uncomfortably bulky when walking, were lethally dangerous in water. Each futile thrust of my overburdened legs threatened to tear them from their sockets. I gave up and clutched with my hands and arms, my eyes tight shut, wrapping my right elbow tightly about the saddle horn and praying I had cinched the saddle securely enough to prevent it slipping sideways and drowning me. And then I felt Germanicus falter, then push himself erect, his feet solidly planted on the sandy bottom. Almost without pausing to adjust his balance, he began to push forward strongly, walking now, and I felt the pressure of the water against me change. A moment longer I clung to my saddle's safety, and then I let go with my elbow, feeling for the bottom with my own feet, but retaining a firm hand grip on the horn. I touched bottom immediately, my toes dragging through sand so that I had to brace myself to get my legs beneath me properly. Then, first slowly, but with increasing ease and speed, I walked towards the beach until the sand beneath my feet was dry. Only then did I fall to my knees.

As I knelt there, catching my breath, I became aware again, for the first time since it had happened, of the heavy ache in my balls caused by the blow from Dedalus's elbow, and then a gust of wind set me shivering with cold. I forced myself to my feet and looked about, seeing my men and horses all around me, most of the men already loosening the cinches and removing the heavy, waterlogged saddles from the beasts' backs. I saw our two herd- boys, too, one of them clutching the bridles of the matched chestnut roans that were my gift to Athol. The stallion wore Quintus's saddle on its back, but the mare was unencumbered. The other boy was running among the men and animals, gathering up and herding the extra horses, many of which were laden with bundles of our baggage and supplies, and I wondered briefly how much had been spoiled by sea water.

We were on a small, sheltered, steeply sloping, crescent-shaped beach with tree-covered arms sweeping out to sea on either side. The upper edge of the beach was less than the height of a man below the level of the surrounding ground. Beyond that rim, the land seemed to stretch level for a distance before sweeping sharply upward, covered completely with trees as far as the eye could reach before the low clouds obscured the view. I turned towards the sea behind me, and there was Logan's galley, riding calmly less than fifty paces distant, held in place by an occasional backward or forward sweep of a few oars on either side. I could see Logan himself up on the forward platform, gazing towards us; I waved to him and received an answering wave. I heard someone approaching me and turned to see Donuil walking head down, tugging at his clothing. He had already divested himself of his cuirass, leggings and helmet.

"Well," he said, peering down at a knot he was attempting to undo, "we're all safe ashore."

Behind him, I saw Dedalus and a couple of others lifting Quintus down from the back of the big white that had ferried him safely.

"How's Quintus, do you know?"

"Aye, he's as well as he can be, I suppose, but I wish Lucanus were with us. His leg is badly mangled. Bone right through the flesh. We'll have to set it and splint it, although I don't know where we'll find decent splints. There!" The knot at which he had been tugging came loose, and he stripped off his tunic, leaving himself naked except for a breech cloth. His huge chest was covered with goose bumps and his skin had a bluish tinge to it. "Now we have to light a fire."

"With what? You'd have to go up off the beach to find kindling and no one is strolling off alone until we're sure there's no enemy up there watching us and waiting for us to be stupid. That means you stay here until we are organized and that, my friend, is a direct command. Anyway, it would be futile—everything will be soaked from the fog." I glanced up towards the sky, surprised to see bright blue up there. The fog had vanished and the sun hung low in the sky above the horizon to the east. "It may take some time for the sun to develop enough heat to dry things out, so we will simply have to settle for being cold for a spell."

Now Donuil looked directly into my eyes, smiling. "Ach, Commander, you are in the hands of an Erseman now, in his homeland. We can always find dry moss, even in a downpour Besides, I wouldn't go alone. Let me take Ded and Rufio with me, and I'll have a fire going before you have time to grow another goose bump." He broke off and looked at the impenetrable trees surrounding the beach. "I wonder where we are exactly? Best we make no smoke until we know for certain. I'll fetch my fire-making tools and a knife, and then I'll get started. Can I go?"

I glowered at him, stifling the urge to laugh at his audacity, yet thinking that if there were enemies up there among the trees, we would be better off knowing now.

"Take four men, all of you armed, and be careful."

He grinned at me and nodded, then turned and loped away, heading back towards the pile of gear and armour he had cast off on landing. I was shivering with cold and knew that movement was what I needed. I turned and climbed the sloping beach, feeling the sand cling heavily to my sodden footwear as I trudged towards the overhang of a little cliff that rimmed the inlet. Once there, I leaned an elbow on the hard, grass-stubbled ground and peered towards the trees.

Behind me, I heard the sounds of someone approaching and I assumed it to be Donuil, but it was Rufio. Donuil followed behind him, leading Philip, Benedict, Paulus and Cyrus, all of them except Donuil still fully armoured. Almost naked, but carrying a sword and an axe, Donuil paused at the top of the bank, looking at me. "I would suggest you too strip off, Commander, before you freeze or rust solid. Then move around. The sun will warm you, and the quicker you get warm, the sooner you'll be prepared for any company that might come by." He disappeared into the fringe of trees, followed by the others in his party, and Rufio and I watched them go, then waited for any sound of conflict that might follow. None did, and I eventually decided we were alone. I hauled myself up onto the level ground and turned back to Rufio, pulling him up beside me.

"Donuil's right. Wet clothes and wet armour over cold bodies will cripple us. Better to warm ourselves first and then put on damp clothes again over the warmth if we have to." Quickly, with a minimum of effort, we helped each other remove our armour, each undoing the other's wet and slippery buckled straps, and then we undressed completely. The others on the beach, seeing where we were and what we were doing, began to move up to join us until only Dedalus was left, kneeling over the shape of Quintus. The horses, too, remained on the beach, most of them rolling in the sand, drying the sea water from their coats. They would have no way of climbing up to where we were until we created a causeway of some kind for them.

Donuil had returned without my noticing, and now I smelled the tang of smoke. I looked behind me and saw him crouched on his knees, blowing gently and lovingly on a tiny tendril of smoke. As I looked, he knelt up straighter and began to lay twigs carefully across the crackling grass and moss and bits of bark he had ignited, and the flames began to leap higher. The mere sight of it, and the promise it contained, put heart in all of us, and my sense of purpose found its feet again.

Less than an hour later, three large, roaring fires were ablaze, surrounded by steaming clothes and armour, all stretched out upon an amazing array of dead branches and sticks. Logan's galley had anchored alongside one of the protecting arms of the small bay, so that his warriors could land and form a perimeter about our small encampment, standing guard against unwelcome visitors until our clothes and armour were dry and we were fit to take care of ourselves.

Benedict and I had set and splinted Quintus's broken leg between two narrow lengths of heavy planking, split and trimmed to size with a hand axe. I had been assisted by four of our biggest men, who had had trouble holding Quintus down until he passed out from the pain of the procedure. Now the worst was over, and his wounded leg was clean, washed out and scoured by the salt water. I had hopes that he would recover, and Logan, who had provided clean, dry cloth to bind the leg, had agreed to transport him on his galley to our destination. Logan's ship had also provided us with food, a porridge made of ground, salted oats, and pots in which to cook it, and we were all feeling much better and stronger. A team of ten men, some of them ours, most of them Logan's, all strong swimmers, had dived down to the sunken barge and prised loose a number of whole deck planks, bringing them ashore and lashing them together, after which they had returned and salvaged almost everything that we had lost. Before beginning that operation, however, two of them had retrieved the corpse of poor Metellus, towing him between them to the beach, and I set two more of my men to digging a grave for him, up on the solid land far from the water. While that was happening, another group of men had laboured to break down the lip of the bank at its weakest spot, creating a ramp for the horses to climb up from below. Most of the horses' grain supply was ruined, but there was enough grazing nearby to sustain them, and they themselves had been thoroughly dried and groomed. Within another hour, I estimated, we would be self-sufficient again: rested, well fed, dried out, re-armoured—although a little stiffly and uncomfortably—and remounted.

A single glance around having shown me that everything was happening as it should, I crossed to where I had left Publius Varrus's great bow leaning against a tree bole in the sunlight. It had been among my first concerns, after the welfare of my men. At the earliest opportunity, I had dried it carefully and coated it with a fresh covering of the light oil I always carried in a tiny bottle in my scrip, working the lubricant thoroughly into the surfaces with a soft, dry cloth. It was the same oil that Publius Varrus had always used in the bow's upkeep. I had been concerned about the effect of sea water on the old weapon's triple-layered composition—the smooth, deeply polished wood of its outer curve was backed by a layer of carefully grafted animal horn, which, in turn, was reinforced by a third layer of densely woven animal sinew, painstakingly plaited into a resilient strip, then stretched, glued into place and carefully dried and shrunk by a master craftsman now dead for more than a hundred years. I had been grateful to see no signs of deterioration in any part of the huge bow, although the rational part of me knew that its highly glossed finish was proof against a mere soaking, that the glue that bonded its layers together had endured for more than ten decades and showed no signs of deterioration, and that in any event, the weapon had not been immersed for long enough to have sustained damage. Satisfied that it was unharmed, I hefted it and turned it in my hand, checking the condition of the half-dozen bowstrings of woven gut I had wrapped tightly around the shaft, spiralling from one end to the other, to allow them to dry out, too. They were drying evenly; still too damp to use, since they would stretch when moist, but showing signs of hardening again.

A leather satchel inverted over a nearby bush had been filled with my supply of arrows, each of which Donuil had dried individually, to avoid rust on the heads, and laid out fiat while I took care of the bow. I could see traces of salt riming the feathers of the flights, but that would easily be dislodged between a finger and thumb. As I stood there, looking down at them, I heard a voice shout, "There they are!" and then a chorus of cheers told me that Feargus's galley had returned. As I looked, it came surging around the headland to the north, under full oars and sail, its prow slicing through the waves that had risen with the slight wind. Their lookout had seen us before we saw them, for the long, sleek vessel was turning sharply, cutting towards us, headed directly towards Logan's moored craft. It came impressively, swooping like a hawk and then slowing dramatically as the rowers backed water in unison and then allowed it to find its own way until it glided to a halt alongside Logan's vessel and was made fast. I saw Donuil striding along the beach towards the newcomers and I followed him, restraining myself against a ridiculous urge to run and catch up.

Feargus crossed into Logan's galley immediately, ignoring Donuil and me when we climbed aboard and greeted him. Only by a warning gesture of his upraised palm did he indicate his knowledge of our presence, but the peremptory gesture contained enough authority to inform both of us unmistakably that, irrespective of our rank elsewhere, our presence was unwanted until he had discussed the situation with his own subordinate. Donuil and I exchanged a glance and waited by the mast in the middle of the ship, out of earshot of the discussion taking place on the rear deck, until the little man snorted violently, pulled himself up to his full height, and walked to the edge of the deck. There he stared out towards the dark shape of the sunken barge for long moments, his hands clasped together at the small of his back.

I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, thinking to myself that this might be the proper time to assert my own authority, but Donuil's voice murmured gently in my ear.

"Give him time, Merlyn. He takes his responsibilities very seriously, our Feargus, and there's no point in upsetting him more than he is already. In his mind we are in his charge, for the time being, in spite of what we ourselves might think, and we'll remain so until he has delivered us safely to my father's Hall, fulfilling his obligation. He will be seeing our misfortune as his own fault, for all that he was nowhere near when it occurred. As he will see it, his is the command, so his must be the fault. Of course, he's an Erse Outlander, and they're all strange, don't you agree?"

I spun to look at him and saw him smiling. Recognizing his wry allusion to my own attitude to command, I resigned myself to waiting until Feargus was ready to speak. Moments later he turned from his musing and made his way down the central spine of the ship towards us, beckoning Logan to come with him. He stopped just short of us, looking up at Donuil first and then at me.

"This is dangerous. We are in hostile territory, almost ten leagues south of where we ought to be, and by now we should be overrun and dead."

"At whose hands?" He did not even dignify my question with an acknowledgment, let alone an answer. His attention had now focused upon Donuil.

"Yourself will have to remain here, aboard my vessel. The others will have to take their chances on the land, unless they care to come on board and leave the animals here for the Wild Ones."

I straightened up at that. "The Wild Ones" was not what my ears heard but what my mind supplied as a rough translation. Years with Donuil had enabled me by this time to speak his tongue fluently, so close was it to the tongue of Uther's Celts, but now that we were among his own people again, he was conversing naturally with them at great speed and using words and phrases and entire constructions that were alien to me. The phrase I had translated as "The Wild Ones" was one of those. The disdain with which the words were uttered—forming an epithet rather than a name—carried overtones of implacable savagery and inhumanity.

"The Wild Ones?" I looked at Donuil for help, but he was already shaking his head at Feargus.

"No, Feargus, I will not leave my friends here, and they will not leave their horses."

"Don't talk like a fool, Mac Athol! Your father charged me with the guardianship of you, and you will obey me in this as you would himself. I will send half my men to escort your friends overland, out of this place, but your welfare is more important than all of them together."

Donuil turned to me. "What do you say? Will you leave the horses here and come by boat?"

"No." I did not even have to think about it. "How far are we from the nearest road?"

My question startled him. He looked at me and laughed. "From the nearest road?" He waved his hand out to sea. "The nearest road is back there in Britain, Merlyn, beyond the sea! We have no roads in Eire, not in the sense you mean. We have tracks and paths, beaten by passage over the years, but there are no Roman roads linking towns and regions. This is a different land. It has never been conquered or colonized."

I blinked at him and then turned to Feargus, trying to hide my dismay. I had never envisioned an entire country without roads. "Who are these Wild Ones you mentioned, Feargus?" I used my own words, unable to recall the exact phrase that he had used.

He looked at me in disgust. " 'Wild Ones?' That's a pretty name for such as those. They are the creatures of the dark who infest this place. Savages is too weak a word for them. They are mindless and pitiless. They have no system: no king, no chiefs worthy of the name, no government of any kind, no clan structure."

"You mean they are outcasts? Alien?"

"Outcasts?" His bark of savage laughter was derisive. "Cast out of what? They have never belonged to anything except their own madnesses. Alien? That's a strange word I've never heard before, but if it means different then yes, they are alien, as different from ordinary people as the wolf is to a boy's pup. Different indeed. They are all blood mad and all they do is fight. They spend their lives looking for folk to kill, and when they cannot find them they kill each other. It is our law that any of them we find, we kill on sight."

I frowned. "Invariably? I find that hard to accept."

"That is your right." He stopped abruptly, and then his voice changed, becoming more pensive, less outraged. "Look you, Merlyn Britannicus, I know not how it is in your land, this Camulod, but my mind tells me, from the very look and presence of you, that it must be similar to here. Here in Eire we have always known that people cannot live together without laws. The laws of each clan may differ in substance, but each has laws, and rulers, kings and chiefs and family heads to make and defend those laws, and you would be surprised to know how little most of them differ, even among clans and groups set far apart. The people you so innocently called the Wild Ones have no laws. None at all. They know no loyalties, even among themselves. They live in savagery and they are completely merciless. Woe betide any man, woman or child unfortunate enough to encounter them alone."

"Come now, they must have families!"

He cut me with a glance. "They have mates, and broods. No more." He looked around at the heavily treed land beyond the beach. "We are in their lands now. Deep within them. It is not a good place to be. I blame myself. We should have remained together."

"Don't," I told him, accepting the almost supernatural fear I sensed in him. "That would have changed nothing. You did what you thought was for the best, and it was. It was the fog that brought us to grief, not your leadership. Now, here's what I want to do. I agree with you about Donuil. He should go with you, and you must take our wounded fellow, Quintus, too." I cut Donuil's protest short with an upraised hand and continued speaking to Feargus. "As for an escort of your men, we won't need them; they would only slow us down. Fortune has been with us so far. Now all we require is a short time to allow us to dry our gear completely and make a fresh start. After that, we'll head north, following the coast as closely as we can, and try to keep in touch with you. Are there any settlements along the coast between us and where we are going?"

"Nah." His headshake was emphatic. "If there had been, we would not be here like this, undisturbed."

I looked back to Donuil. "How far is a league? In Roman miles? He said we are almost ten leagues too far south."

"About three miles to a league, I think, but that's only a guess. I'm staying with you."

"No, Donuil, you are not. You will travel with Feargus." Again I stopped his protest before it could be uttered. "Remember why I came with you, man! If we should meet any of these Wild Ones and fail to make it through, then at least the child will have a chance to return home to Camulod in your care. I know I can rely on you for that."

He looked at me long and hard, then sucked his lower lip between his teeth. I stared back at him, waiting. Finally he sighed and jerked his head in a nod. "Very well, Caius Merlyn. So be it. I do not like it, but I will do as you say. Just see that you come safe through."