The Sorcer part 1: The Fort at River's Bend

I had examined every corpse, counting involuntarily but losing track among Liam's people somewhere between a hundred and fifty and a hundred and sixty. The first twenty-six had been our men, most of them slain in the opening moments of Liam's treacherous move. I didn't think my man was among them, in either group, but I knew I could be wrong. I shook my head.

"He might have changed his clothes, Shelagh, knowing the yellow tunic made him recognizable. If he did, then any one of these bodies could be him. I told you, I never saw his face clearly. The only time I was close to him, I didn't see him until he turned to scuttle away, and then I only saw the tunic."

"You think that's likely? I don't."

"Why not? It seems logical enough to me."

Shelagh shook her head. "No. No, not at all. You're overrating this man, Merlyn. He's not that clever. He ran, and he drew your attention. A clever man would have passed you by, ignoring you, unnoticed. But he ran because he thought you'd recognize him. Him, not his clothes. Believing that, he'd never think to change his tunic. He'd be convinced that you would know his face no matter what he wore. You don't recognize anyone here, therefore your man, whoever he may be, is not among the dead."

"Which means he's still alive."

"Aye, and could be anywhere within a day's journey from here, by this time. That's very astute of you, Caius Merlyn."

I glanced at her sidelong, half smiling. "Curb your tongue, woman, or I'll have your husband take a switch to you."

She hooted, then smiled demurely and fluttered her long lashes before bowing her head in mock submission, undismayed, like me, by indulging in levity in the presence of so much death.

I had returned her knife to her that morning, congratulating her on her presence of mind and effectiveness the previous night. The children had been present, and I was glad to see they appeared to have taken no ill from their adventures in the hands of Liam's men. Not even Turga had been harmed. Donuil had already gone down to the wharves with Lucanus, Rufio and Dedalus to supervise the unloading of our stores and livestock from Connor's galleys and bring everything into safety behind the walls. Connor's crews were making ready to transport the three Mac Athol craft to safety, out of sight of Liam's fleet when it arrived.

The boys had been agog for the story of the previous night's doings, and Shelagh, who directed them to me as soon as I arrived, had told them nothing. I spent half an hour telling them everything I felt they ought to know, including the threat of Liam's fleet, due to arrive the next day. I exacted a solemn promise from each of them that they would behave themselves, respecting and staying clear of the preparations under way everywhere. Then I released them into Turga's care to visit the wharves where their uncles were working. Gwin and Ghilleadh were the sons of Donuil and Shelagh, and Bedwyr, the third of the constant trio that accompanied Arthur everywhere, was the son of Hector and his late wife, Julia, who had been killed in the attempt on Arthur's life some months earlier.

"What are you two doing?' Donuil had now approached, unseen by either of us.

"Attempting to become as thoroughly soaked as you are," I answered, turning to greet him. "I've just been talking about you, telling your wife I'd have you take a switch to her if she doesn't learn to bridle her unruly tongue." The two were embracing as I spoke, and the big Celt turned to grin at me over his wife's head.

"A switch? You're supposed to be my Mend. I wouldn't try anything like that without a troop of Camulodian cavalry to hold her down, and even then I'd lose."

"We've been looking for Caius's man in the yellow tunic," Shelagh said. "He's gone."

"Gone where?"

"Anywhere," I replied. "But away from Ravenglass, so we may never know who he was."

Donuil looked from me to Shelagh. "Is that important?"

"It could be." Shelagh's response was deliberate. She spoke to me. "What do you think?"

"I'm more interested in what you think. Your thoughts have been more crystalline than mine so far this morning. What's in your mind?"

"Much, and I like little of it. Listen, and see if this strikes you as logical." She glanced about her. "Let's go inside. I'm freezing."

The bathhouse was warm and dry, and we sat together on the stone benches in the deserted changing rooms, close to the furnace vents. Shelagh had said no more as we moved inside, and I knew she was deep in thought. When we had shrugged off our outer garments and were settled, enjoying the warmth, she returned to her topic.

"Here's what I've been thinking. We know Ironhair's intentions about Arthur, and about you, Caius, and he has already shown how dangerous he is. That's why we left Camulod—we do not know who is in his pay among the Colonists, but he clearly owns someone. That someone might be close enough to us—although the gods all know we hope it isn't so—to have found out, right at the outset of our planning, that we were preparing to remove the boy from danger. If that is the case, the word might have gone out to Ironhair as long as a month ago, perhaps even sooner. And yet I think we may safely assume, simply because of the time constraints involved, that he has not yet had time to send out spies to watch for us. Not from Cornwall, or even Cambria, by land to here—"

"He could have come by boat, Shelagh. There were more than a score of fishing craft at the wharf when we arrived yesterday."

"Aye, that's right, there were, but most of those would be local." She looked at me, nodding. "Those that were not would be remarked upon, their coming and going noticed. And if one of them left yesterday, after your altercation in the woods, we should be able to find out about it. That had not occurred to me."

"Not yet. It would have."

"Hmm. Well, until we find that out, the timing part of · this is debatable. But let's stay with my first thought, that Ironhair may know we've left Camulod but has not had time to send spies out this far. And bear in mind that we are trying to identify this fugitive of yours. Can you think of anyone, other than one of Ironhair's creatures, who might have reason to fear you enough that he would run to avoid you?"

I shook my head, slowly, thinking about that, and reminding myself forcefully that only Lucanus and myself knew anything of my leprous condition. "No, I can't think of anyone."

"Are you sure about that, Caius? Completely?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

She heaved a deep sigh and sat up straight before expelling it. "Then we would be wise to assume that Ironhair has spies everywhere, and be on guard. And even if I'm wrong, even if it's not Ironhair, someone already knows you're here, Caius."

I could see where she was headed. "No, not quite, Shelagh. Our fugitive disappeared yesterday in the afternoon and hasn't been seen since, and whether he fled by land or by sea is unimportant beside this: none of us knew until late last night that we'd be staying here. When last this man was seen, Derek had rejected my request. But I had made that request privately, in person, and he had not discussed it with anyone else. Now think about what that means. We arrived aboard Connor's galley and we unloaded no supplies. We would have been seen, by anyone who cared to look, as visitors, in transit, and no more than that. It follows that we would move on with Connor, when he left. If we are to assume this man's a spy, we must also assume that, having seen me the first time, when I rode by the tavern, he would have asked questions and found that out before he left."

Donuil was listening closely to us, his eyes switching from one to the other of us as we spoke. "So you think the word he took away is that we'll be moving on, to Eire?"

"Something like that, but merely moving on with Connor, to Eire, or to Caledonia."

"But what if he spoke to one of our people and learned the truth, that you were to stay here?"

"He couldn't, Donuil, not unless he asked one of us, or Connor himself, or any of .the other chieftains. No one else knew our plans, and none of Connor's captains would speak out to strangers."

He nodded. "What about this fort Connor mentioned? Can you tell us about that?"

"Mediobogdum. I can, but not much more than I'm sure Connor has already told you. It's in the mountains, about ten miles from here, abandoned for at least two hundred years, but habitable yet, after some hard work, according to Derek. We're going to look at it, once Liam's fleet has been driven off. You'll see it for yourself then, at the same time I do."

"Some hard work, after two hundred years?" Donuil rose to his feet. "I'd better get back. We have all the stores and crates off-loaded, and the horses, and we're moving them inside the fort. We'll be done within the hour, I expect. I'll find out before then whether any boat set sail after noon yesterday, and if any did, I'll find out who was in it. I'll also find out if anyone, in a yellow tunic or otherwise, was asking questions about you and yours of our men yesterday. What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going up to look at the catapults on the walls, to see if we can use them without killing our own people in the process. Derek says they work well, but they've been there without skilled maintenance—as far as I'm aware— for almost thirty years, and I'll be happier once I've verified their condition for myself. I'll be very surprised not to have to change all the ropes, and I'll be even more surprised if I can find enough people capable of doing it in the time we have."

Shelagh returned to our temporary quarters to oversee the disposition of the goods arriving from the wharf, and I walked back to the wharf gates with Donuil, leaving him there and making my way up to the parapet walk.

I found Derek on one of the defensive towers that projected out towards the harbour, examining one of the great, fixed ballistae left behind by the legions when they abandoned the place. The long timber throwing arm stretched vertically, high above him as he crouched at its base, and I approached slowly, my eyes more concerned with the weapon than with the king. The great ropes that bound and propelled the device's moving parts looked sound, their surfaces hard and tight-looking, betraying no signs of the dry, weather-worn fuzziness I had feared to see. Derek heard me coming and looked up.

"Ah, there you are. I was looking for you earlier."

I explained what I had been doing, all the while examining the great torsion-driven throwing device on its solid base. "This thing looks excellent," I said, when I had finished. "It looks as though it could really work." As I said the words, another man straightened up from behind the other side of the machine's base, looking at me as though wondering which pit of Hades I had sprung from and what I could possibly know of artillery.

"Hah!" Derek's laugh was a bark of delight. "You hear that, Longinus? Merlyn of Camulod thinks your ballista might really work."

Longinus had drawn himself to his full height, and now he moved around the base of the machine to where I stood, pulling a tiny splinter from the side of one callused finger as he came. When it was out, he held it up to his eyes and then flicked it away before acknowledging me. He looked me up and down, his eyes moving very slowly, then nodded. "Gaius Longinus," he said. "You know siege machines?"

I shrugged. "I know enough to know this one's been well tended."

He nodded. "They all have."

I looked about me. I could see other installations on the walls, but this seemed to be the only one that was complete. "You have others?" I asked.

"Aye, dismantled. They'll be back in place today."

"How many have you?"

"Five." Longinus was evidently a man of few words.

"All on this wall?" I had seen signs of five installations.

He nodded. "Two overheads like this, three catapults."

"All in working order?" He nodded again. "Windlasses, too?"

Now his eyebrows flicked in annoyance. "You ever see a catapult that would work with a broken windlass?"

"Of course not. Forgive me, I'm simply excited. I didn't expect to find someone here with experience in the use and care of war machines. Where did you learn?"

"Right here."

"How, exactly? Or perhaps I should ask who taught you? The legions have been gone for thirty years and more."

"My father taught me, when I was a boy."

"And how did he know about it?"

"From the army artificers. Then, after the garrison left, he took over the defences for the king. Trained me. I've been doing it since he died, twenty years ago."

"Your father was with the legions?"

"Twentieth Valeria. Thirty years."

"In artillery?"

'The last twenty on artillery."

"My grandfather commanded the Valeria."

"Did he, by God? What name?"

"Britannicus, but that was more than forty years ago, probably before your father's time:"

"No, he was serving them But I don't know the name. Before my time."

I glanced at Derek. He was grinning like a split turnip. I ignored him and spoke again to Longinus, resigned now to this business of specific questions provoking taciturn answers. "You have assistants trained?"

"Two crews for each, one in training."

This was like catching fish by hand without bait. "You mean one crew? Or five crews in training?"

"Five. Six men to a crew."

"I see, so how many men altogether?"

He blinked, computing quickly. "Four and a half score. Ninety."

"Good God! Who trains them?"

"I do."

"All of them? You have no one to help you?"

"Five. Head man on each first crew." He looked away, down into the fort beneath the wall, and I heard someone shouting up to him. Then, without another word, he strode away towards the steps and disappeared down them.

I turned back to Derek. "He's not too talkative, is he?"

"No, but I'd choose him over any other man I know, either for company or competence. Wait till you see his people in action tomorrow. You'll be impressed, I promise you. So will the Ersemen, both on shore and afloat. They've all forgotten the Romans and their heavy catapults. When they see how much damage one well-used machine like this can do, and from how far away it can destroy a ship, they'll spin about like tops and they won't stop rowing till they run their keels up onto their own beaches ... " He paused. "The dead men. You still want them hung from the walls?"

"Absolutely, every one of them. I promise you, the sight of them in their armour—with Liam and his chieftains in the middle—will be even more effective than your catapults."

"Aye, it might, but it seems gruesome. There's more than a hundred of them."

"Close to a hundred and fifty. I agree with you, but Connor knows what he is doing. To these Ersemen, that much death, so flagrantly displayed, will scream of punishment and consequences not to be ignored. If we beat them off, in addition, they'll think long and hard before they come back this way again."

Derek deliberated in silence for no more than a few moments before nodding his head in agreement.

"So be it. I'll start Blundyl on the arrangements now. He'll need at least a hundred men, I'd guess. Those chains are heavy. They can start bringing them in immediately and fastening the lengths together. They'll string them as soon as Longinus and his people are finished setting up their machines. The bodies can be hung tonight, after the sun goes down." He hesitated, looking along the parapet from right to left. "I'm glad I won't have to do any of the hanging, it's going to be an unpleasant whoreson of a task."

"The hanging" was, as Derek had predicted, a whoreson of a task, but every able-bodied man in the settlement took part in it and it was completed before midnight, by the light of multiple bonfires kindled on the tops of the walls, in the enclosure beneath and on the earthen wharf outside the gates. Stringing the lengths of chain from the battlements had been the most time-consuming part of the exercise. The chains were heavy and cumbersome and had to be joined, then strung in long, pendant scallops anchored by shorter pieces—each about the length of a tall man— secured to the top of the wall above, so that the chain formed a kind of frieze running the entire length of the western wall facing the sea.

By the time that had been done, arrangements were in hand to display the corpses effectively—a grisly enterprise made even less pleasant by the fact that the bodies had now been dead for more than a day and had begun to decompose. They hung in pairs, each pair slung by a loop of rope secured beneath the shoulders of the two corpses and then draped across the chain by men who also worked in pairs, suspended in seafarers' rope cradles from the walls above. The sole exception to the paired arrangement was the body of Liam Condranson himself, which hung in the centre of the wall by a single rope depending from the walkway above. He hung below the chain, as did his dead companions, but he was not attached to it in any way.

When the array of death was spread out in all its stark and gruesome panoply in preparation for the coming of the dawn and Liam's fleet, I passed the word among my own party to assemble in the central hall beneath Derek's thatch. I had several things to say to them before they went to sleep that night, for I had decided I owed them the right to think about my intentions overnight before committing any of them to the course of action I envisaged. By the time I arrived at the appointed gathering place, having had to stop and talk to Derek and Longinus about some last- moment arrangements, they were all waiting for me, sitting informally on a scattering of seats, benches and table tops, and all appeared to be as weary as I felt.

"I won't keep you long," I began. "Dawn will come quickly and none of us knows what it will bring us." I looked around at their faces, all watching me intently, none showing anything other than curiosity. I moved closer, positioning myself among them where all could hear without my having to raise my voice.

"We came to Ravenglass seeking sanctuary, a safe place to raise the boy. You all know that. What some of you do not know is that Derek, the king, refused our request shortly after we arrived. Fundamentally, what he said was that our continuing presence here—he meant mine, personally, and young Arthur's—would constitute a threat to the safety and welfare of his own people, since we represent a future threat to powerful factions in several places."

I stopped, expecting a reaction of some kind, but no one spoke. They seemed to sense that I had more to say.

"That, however, was yesterday. Since then, thanks to Liam and the Sons of Condran, everything has changed. Now Derek has a war on his hands. He sees us now—our continuing presence here, I mean—as. a guarantee of support from Athol and his fleets in the protection of the king's grandson. He wants us to remain now, and I believe we should, providing we can negotiate the terms of our staying to suit our own needs."

Dedalus spoke up. "And what are those? Have you defined them?"

"Aye, I believe I have, but only in the past few hours." I looked around at my listeners. "We chose this place at the outset because it offers us all that we need: safety from surprise attack, with mountains all around us and at our bade; open channels of communication with Athol and his Scots; and a degree of distance between ourselves and the dangers in Cornwall and Cambria."

I paused again, waiting for Dedalus.

"You sound unconvinced, now."

I nodded. "I am unconvinced, even with those safeties I've just mentioned. We had all of those, apart from the mountains directly at our back, in Camulod, our own home, and yet the risks were too great to remain there. Even an enclosed community like Camulod can be infiltrated, as we discovered to our cost. We could not identify our enemies even there, among our own, could not tell who might have been suborned. Now we are here in Ravenglass, an open port, and we are strangers here. The dangers are commensurably greater and therefore unacceptable ... "

"So you are saying we should move on?"

"I don't think so, Ded, but I don't know."

Dedalus raised his eyebrows and looked around at the others before his gaze came back to me. He coughed, clearing his throat. "You don't know ... Hmm. I, for one, would far rather have heard a blunt 'yes' or a loud 'no' there." He shook his head, thinking that over. The others remained absolutely still, no one as much as fidgeting, all eyes fixed either on me or on Dedalus. Finally Ded spoke again. "Look here, Merlyn, don't misunderstand what I say here ... I mean, you're more than entitled to have doubts from time to time, although we're not used to you being indecisive. We're accustomed to firm guidance from you—mostly in the form of direct orders—in anything important."

He looked about him again, as though seeking support from his fellows. If that was his intent, he gained nothing by it. Donuil coughed slightly, and apart from that there was utter stillness. He turned back to me. "We're all here because you're here and young Arthur's here. Wherever you two go, we go along. You're the leader, the commander. Tell us what to do and it's done. I don't think I can be plainer than that. Does anyone here think otherwise? Lucanus?" Lucanus merely shook his head, his eyes on mine, and it was apparent that no one else had anything to add. I smiled, grateful once more for Ded's plain, outspoken bluntness.

"I'm hesitant, Ded, that's all, not indecisive. There is another option open to us. I've had no time to look at it, or even to think much about it, but it has many disadvantages attached to it. It also has advantages that could work strongly in our favour. But opting for it would leave us open to a vast amount of work, perhaps more than we might realistically be willing or able to accomplish, and I have decided I will not make that decision without first looking at the reality carefully, or without seeking and receiving opinions from all of you. Your lives will be affected drastically, radically, in ways I suspect you could not begin to imagine, should we adopt this course."

Rufio twitched one hand, a signal he wished to speak. I looked at him invitingly and he grinned. "Worse upheavals than moving to Eire or these northern islands?"

I nodded. "Aye, perhaps much worse."

"How, in the name of God?"

"There is another Roman fort, several miles from here, inland. No one lives there."

Dedalus leaned forward, frowning. "It's in ruins?"

"Apparently not, from what I've been told."

'Then why is it lying empty?"

"It's high up, in the mountains, on a plateau. Who would want to live there when they can live here, by the sea, close to other people, close to the farms?"

"How many miles from here to there?"

"Twelve, perhaps fifteen, I don't really know. It's halfway between here and the main fort at Galava on the other side of the mountains, built to defend the road across the pass."

Ded's eyes lit up. "Then let's go! At least we can look at it, and probably make it habitable. How long has it lain empty, twenty years?" I shook my head. "Forty, then? The Romans have been gone about that long. It's a long time, but the place should be salvageable."

"Two hundred."

"What?"

"Two hundred years. Something like that. It's been empty for a long time."

'Two hundred years?" I laughed aloud at the outraged disbelief in his voice, although the truth of my statement was in fact quite sobering. He watched me as I straightened my face, and when he was sure I would not laugh again, he said, "You are quite serious, aren't you?"

I nodded, shrugging my shoulders at the same time. "Yes, I am. Apparently two hundred years up here is not the same as two hundred years elsewhere. Not according to what I have heard from Derek, at least." I noticed that Lucanus and Hector were both frowning and others were shaking their heads. "No, think about it," I insisted. 'The fort is built of local stone, and the roofs, on the granaries at least, are domed concrete. The barracks have cement floors, too, and were built of stout logs. Those may be weakened, perhaps rotted, but Derek tells me they still stand. The difference, my friends, lies in their isolation. Everywhere else we know, people tear down old buildings and use the materials to build new ones. But there are no people up there. The only damage has been caused by weather, which has little real effect on stone and concrete. The logs can be replaced. Derek tells me the forest grows right up to the walls of the place now, on the western side. It was cleared, originally, to build the fort, cut back for hundreds of paces to supply fuel for the bathhouse, but it's grown back now. The amazing truth seems to be that the place may be as salvageable now, after two hundred years, as Ded assumed it would be after forty. We will only know once we have looked and seen for ourselves."

There was a lengthy silence, and then- Connor raised his hand. "I know I'm not involved in this directly, but you spoke of hardships and difficulties you might be incapable of overcoming. If it's the amount of work to be done that concerns you, well, you have a group of people here, it seems to me, who might find nothing insuperable in the task. You have smiths, I know, and soldiers, stonemasons and carpenters. You'll need labourers, too—muscles to do the donkey work—but I suppose you'll be able to enlist help from your neighbours here."

"Aye, but would we want to?" This was Hector. "You heard what Merlyn said. We had to leave Camulod because we didn't know whom we could trust among our own. Now we know we can trust ourselves alone—no one else. This new fort offers us a chance to keep our numbers few and trustworthy."

"That's nonsense, Hector." Connor's dismissal was immediate. "I suggested help, not immigration. There's nothing to stop you hiring people from the town to help you complete whatever you undertake. Equally, there's nothing that says you must permit them to remain up there once the work's been done. They've already shown they don't want to live there—nothing up there for them. Build yourselves a place to live in comfort and security, then people it and guard it by yourselves," He grinned. "Even Rome must have been far from anywhere before the first people settled there. Do you want my advice, Merlyn?"

"Of course."

"Let's see how the battle goes in the morning, and if we're all alive after it's over, let's meet again tomorrow.

That will give everyone a day to think about what lies ahead. Then some of you can ride out the following day and look at this fort."

"That makes sense. Does anyone have an objection?" No one did, and Donuil spoke up for the first time.

"Does this fort have a name, Commander?"

"Aye, it does. Mediobogdum."

He pursed his lips and nodded. '"In the bend of the river.' Well, at least that means there must be water there."

"A plenitude, I'm told." I straightened up. "Well, it's late. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use some sleep."

The gathering disbanded shortly after that, with general good wishes for the following day's activities. No doubt, though, that this would be a purely defensive action with no risk of a pitched battle. Secure behind the walls of Ravenglass, covering the only access from the sea, we believed we would have no great difficulty in repelling Condran's unsuspecting fleet.

I was unable to sleep that night. I lay awake, reviewing the numbers and skills of the small group of people in my party, thinking of the personalities involved and of the ways in which each of them might contribute to our new, small colony. Dedalus, Rufio, Donuil and myself were warriors, first and foremost, but apart from that I was at a loss as to what other, more practical skills we possessed. I knew I could turn my hand to iron-smithing, thanks to the lessons of my Uncle Varrus, but decades had elapsed since I had last tried to apply any of the skills he had taught me, and even then my memories had been faulty. I might be able to assist in a forge, but I knew I would never be a skillful smith. Donuil, I knew, possessed no skills in any kind of work other than the administrative tasks he had performed for me in Camulod. Dedalus and Rufio were soldiers, trained since boyhood in their craft. I doubted deeply whether they could have other more valuable, less warlike gifts apart from the ability to hunt and to carry burdens too heavy for weaker men.

Lucanus would earn his keep, his worth was indisputable. And Hector was a farmer before all else, so his skills would be a major contribution to our future well- being. Shelagh was simply Shelagh, to be valued for her pragmatism and common sense and womanly skills, as well as for her mead-making ability. I remember smiling, thinking that while the ability to make mead might not be definable as a necessity of life, its possession might yet allay much of the tedium that would spring from more genuine necessities. Shelagh would be castellan of any household that we formed, and Turga, Arthur's nurse, had womanly skills of her own, not the least of which was in the tanning of leather to make supple, comfortable clothing. That total, increased by the four boys Arthur, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilleadh, came to twelve, two-thirds of our total complement.

I had greater confidence in the remaining six members of our party, who possessed abilities in plenty. They included Lars and Joseph, two of the three surviving sons of Equus, the old friend and partner of Publius Varrus. Joseph had been the senior smith and armourer of Camulod when he chose to accompany us, leaving his duties in the capable hands of his younger brother Carolus, or Carol, as he preferred to be known. His skills would be invaluable to us.

His elder brother, Lars, a former legionary whom I had found keeping a roadhouse north of Isca when I rode off to the wars in Cornwall, had long been believed dead by his brothers, and his arrival in Camulod thereafter had been hailed by them as a miracle. Lars and Joseph had become very close since then, and when Lars had decided to accompany me—or more accurately to accompany Arthur and Bedwyr, in whom he had found substitutes for his own two sons, hanged years before by Uther's army—Joseph had decided to come along, too, seeking adventure for the first time in his life.

Both men had brought their wives, Esmeralda and Brunna. Esmeralda's skills as a weaver were the equal of her husband Joseph's as a smith, and I was glad to have her as part of our group. Brunna's skills outshone her husband's altogether, for although Lars was a magical cook and baker, so, too, was Brunna, and in addition she possessed an astonishing ability in shoe- and boot-making. Lars and Brunna, I knew, would function as our quartermasters.

Two other members of our group each combined the skills of artisans and artists, and both were single men, their names Jonathan and Mark, both bosom friends of Joseph since their boyhood. Jonathan was a stonemason, bred of generations of stonemasons, and the youngest of five brothers, four of whom yet lived in Camulod. Mark was a carpenter, although to say such a thing baldly was like saying Homer was a poet. Mark's genius extended far beyond the simple uses of tools on wood. He could fashion exquisite furnishings as quickly and as easily as he could hew a beam from a log, and his work had been the finest in Camulod, gracing the Colony's best rooms and buildings.

Among these six, I knew, we were blessed with skills, but there was only one of each of them, and life atop a distant mountain might be hard in winter. It would be difficult enough, I thought, in summer. Eighteen souls. Enough, I hoped, perhaps* with God's blessing, to survive for a while under even the bleakest circumstances. And thinking such thoughts I finally drifted into sleep.

FIVE

I was shaken awake, it seemed, almost as soon as my eyelids had closed that night. It was an hour short of first light, and I was expected up on the walls, where preparations for the morning's business were already long since under way. I hesitated over donning my armour—I had travelled wearing only leather armour aboard ship and my metal harness was still packed with the rest of our belongings—and finally decided to wear only my toughened hide cuirass and go bare-headed. There would be little danger, I thought, high on the walls, and I could see no benefit in betraying my presence in a Roman helmet.

I noticed the yellow glare of torchlight reflected in mist as I mounted the stairs to the parapet. Before searching fen- Derek and Longinus, I stopped and gazed out to sea. There was nothing to be seen out there in the bay, nor in the sky above. The entire top of the wall was completely enshrouded in a bank of fog, thick enough to swirl eerily in places as people passed through it. I could barely make out the shapes of the ballistae and the great catapult that lay less than twenty-five paces on either side of me. If Condran's fleet was out there, I thought, we had no way of knowing how close they might have approached. I knew, however, even as I formed the thought, that no single vessel, let alone a fleet, would dare to move through fog so close to shore, and I was comforted by the thought that, if they were masked from us, so were we masked equally from them. The signs of our activities upon the walls would go unseen, and the heavy fog had the effect of dampening and muffling the sounds of our preparations.

I found Derek and Longinus among a small knot of men clustered around the larger of the two ballistae, where they were supervising the attachment of a small-meshed, heavy metal grid over the large wooden pan on the end of the machine's long throwing arm. A gin-pole hoist with a pulley attached stood close by, its cable descending to the courtyard below. I leaned over carefully and looked down into the sullen, angry glare of a brick furnace. Longinus had seen me arrive and now nodded to me.

"Live coals?" I asked him.

"Aye. Won't be the first time they've been used up here, but it'll be the first time they've been used in earnest since the Romans left. Those ovens haven't been lit for years. Nothing better to throw at ships than burning coals, though, once you've got the whoresons within range. Dry timbers, pitch-lined seams and weathered sailcloth. Burn like die fires in Hades. They won't even come close, once they see the first load hiss into the sea in front of them."

I returned Derek's nod of greeting and continued to speak to Longinus. "What then? You can only throw fire for a limited range."

"Aye, but we have no shortage of heavy stones. Those will fly far enough to quell the ardour of invading Ersemen."

"And what about the catapults? You have enough spears?"

"More than enough. Don't expect to fire more than a dozen, for die same reasons. If a man stands up and throws a spear at a galley, the crew keeps rowing. When the spear is a tree trunk as thick as a man's thigh, sharpened to an iron-clad spike on one end and thrown by a machine that's stronger than a thousand men and ten times more accurate, the crew's reaction tends to change, rapidly. First six bolts I shoot will do the damage. They're fixed and pie-aimed, as you know. After that, we'll have to re-sight, but once I find the range, I'll cause real damage. I've a score of the iron bolts, but as I said, I don't expect to have to use them all."

"What if you do?"

"Then we'll go to plain wooden stakes. The people they skewer won't notice the lack of iron cladding." -

I turned to Derek. "What about your men and ours?"

"Connor's keeping them below, out of sight, until the sun comes up. No point in having them up here too soon, getting in each other's way. They're all down there, and our captains know what to do and what the signals are. When we bring them up, they'll come bowmen first, spears afterwards. They'll present a pretty picture—far more than whoever's in command out there will expect to see."

Longinus snorted. "Aye, and they'll be over the heads of Liam and his dead cattle. That'll take the wind out of their Erse sails."

"It ought to." I glanced up at the sky again, noticing that the fog seemed paler. "How long till daybreak?"

Derek was looking upward too. "It's coming now. The fog won't last long, once the breeze begins to blow. Better start bringing the men up now. We want them all to be in place when the fog lifts." He stepped away and began issuing orders to the small group of men who had been standing close by, awaiting his word.

Longinus looked at me and grinned, picking delicately at his nose. "Where will you watch from?"

"Your station, if you don't mind." "Come, then. We'd best get into place. I'm aiming the catapult myself."

Less than half an hour had passed when the wind sprang up, and within moments, it seemed, the fog had been swept aside like a curtain. The sea was still empty, not a sail in sight. I stood side by side with Longinus, peering out at the tranquil waters, and Derek stood some ten paces apart from us, to my left. Apart from we three, only four others stood visible on the top of the walls. The others, almost four hundred of them, crouched beneath the line of the parapet, out of sight from the front. The word spread quickly from the men on guard, and I heard a loud muttering arise along the length of the wall from the concealed men.

Derek's voice held them in silence. "Stay down and stay alert!" he shouted. "What did you expect? Of course there's nothing there! They couldn't come in close when the fog was down, and they'll have someone on the island over there looking to see if Liam's craft are here by the wharf where they ought to be. That will take time, and their ships are lying behind the island. They'll be here presently."

Almost as he said the words, the prow of the first galley appeared beyond the low bank of the island facing us. It moved swiftly, propelled by hard-pulled oars. Others followed, until eighteen craft were fanning out into the bay— an impressive sight—less than a mile from the walls. The men were tense with expectation, but everyone remained hidden behind the parapet wall. Long moments passed and the fleet drew closer quickly. Then came a moment when we heard the swelling roar of voices as they discerned the bodies hanging from our battlements. I spoke to Longinus. "They think those are our bodies."

"Hmm. They must. They're still approaching."

"Only eighteen of them. Connor had expected more, closer to thirty. You think they're holding others in reserve, behind the island?"

"They might be. Makes no difference. They won't be using them."

On they came, deliberate and menacing, manoeuvring skillfully as they progressed. Soon they formed two lines abreast, the rearward slowing down to float almost stationary within a quarter mile of where we watched, while the foremost line came forward, shifting its shape again to permit the three central vessels of the line to forge ahead. But even watching and listening as carefully as I was, concentrating fiercely on their advance, I missed the point at which they came to see that something was amiss. I saw a flurry of signalling break out and heard some distant shouts, and then all oars were hoisted from the water, held horizontally so that the forward motion of the craft died suddenly away.

Beside me, Longinus was leaning forward, his body tense as he willed the leading vessels to approach closer. "Come on," he hissed. "Are you all gutless? You can't see who it is from there, and no one's threatening you. Those corpses should be ours. Come in!"

As though in response to his urgings, the oars of the leading galley dipped again and it moved forward, cautiously now, followed shortly afterward by the other two. Careful to betray no haste, Longinus backed away from the parapet wall, and I moved with him as he bent low and hurried to his aiming point by the catapult on the far right.

"They're waiting for a signal of some kind to tell them it's safe to approach. Probably wondering why it hasn't come. Ready, lads," he called to his other crews. He had personally sighted Ms three catapults the previous afternoon, carefully aiming each of them at some abstract point determinable only to his own eyes and gambling, he had admitted to me privately, that the Erse fleet would approach exactly as they were doing, three vessels in the lead, forming an arrowhead. I found myself admiring his professional focus as I watched him lean forward, straining like a leashed hound. Beyond him I could see brazier baskets of bright-burning coals being hoisted from below, the air about them shimmering with the fierce, smokeless heat of them, willing hands waiting to tip them into the baskets of the two tightly wound ballistae that quivered on either side of the central catapult, trembling visibly under the torsion of the mighty ropes that held them in restraint. As I glanced back to Longinus, his hands moved to the lever that controlled the locked windlass restraining the mighty bowstring of the catapult, its massive bolt aimed like a colossal arrow four strides in length, wickedly pointed and barbed with solid iron.

"Now, Derek!" he roared, and Derek's hand flew up in a signal. At the sight of it, four men who had been waiting in the courtyard at our back, holding the end of a long rope, ran behind us for four strides and stopped again. As they did so, Liam's corpse, which dangled at the other end of the long rope, jerked upward, rising almost to the top of the outer wall to dangle, stark and unmistakable, before the eyes of his astounded countrymen below. The oars flew up again as confusion struck among the galleys' crews, and in the momentary chaos Longinus gave his own signal, jerking the lever out of the windlass.

The concussion of the massive catapult's release thrummed in my breast as my eyes followed its huge bolt's swift and awesome flight out and downwards towards the ship on the right. Even before it landed, I heard a similar release on my left and glimpsed the second missile flash outward. Then the first struck home, crashing into the packed mass of oarsmen, destroying men and oars instantly before smashing down to the galley's bottom. Screams floated upwards immediately, and I swung my eyes in time to see the second bolt hit home on the lead ship, striking die central mast with sufficient force to gouge an enormous splinter from its side, and then slewing with vicious, eye- deceiving speed in a murderous pivoting motion, anchored by its barbed point, until it burst asunder with the stress and showered lethal splinters in every direction, so that sprays and gouts of sudden, brilliant blood appeared as if by magic among the mangled crew beneath.

I did not see the impact of the third missile on the remaining ship, for my attention was seized immediately by the amazing spread of arcing plumes of smoke as the two ballistae released their loads of blazing coals. Much of it splashed, hissing, into the water, and as far as I could see none touched the first ship that Longinus's bolt had pierced. The others were less fortunate, and the galley farthest from me must have been sorely hit, for now the bulk of screaming seemed to be coming from it, and already I could see smoke beginning to drift over the central spine of its decking.

I had been aware of Longinus's crew working frantically to my right, swarming about their catapult as they readied it to shoot again, some of them manhandling another heavy, lethal bolt into its place as the sounds of windlasses and straining cables creaked ever higher on the weapon's great bow frame. The target ship had not yet been able to move, other than spinning in a wild circle, since the oars on one side now far outnumbered those left working on the other.

Suddenly all movement ceased at the catapult, indicating that it was ready. Longinus scuttled into position, cast a glance along the shaft, then leaped back and released the lever. Again the tree-trunk shaft flew straight and true, striking like a thunderbolt into the churning chaos of the galley's centre and disappearing downward. And then I saw a sight that took me by surprise and left me gaping. A human body flew into the air from atop our wall, arms and legs spread, whirling like a child's toy as it arced up and then down to land among the men swarming in the waist of the farthest of the three galleys as they scrambled to douse the fires that had sprung up. Even as the shape spun high to the zenith of its arc, I recognized the green and yellow tunic worn by Liam Condranson.

This macabre finale had been prearranged, but I had not been told. The sight of the soaring corpse was the signal that brought our men erect, lining the walls and roaring their defiance as the bowmen among them sent their shafts seeking the enemy. Stunned, and feeling slightly sickened, I stepped away from the parapet and looked about me. The roaring intensified as I moved away, and I heard shouts of "Sinking!" and "Going down!" amid the tumult.

I stepped back to the edge and looked downward again to see that Longinus had done well with his two bolts. The galley he had struck was low in the water; its crew was leaping overboard, abandoning the craft, which canted sideways even as I looked, its mast waving wildly. It righted itself again, but sluggishly, and then simply settled in the water, slipping beneath the surface to rest on the shallow bottom, its mast projecting high above the waves. Men swam from it in all directions, but others, unable to swim, simply drowned, their limbs churning in panic as they rose and sank in the agitated waters.

On the far left, the burning galley was fully ablaze now, and it, too, was being quickly abandoned; its warriors- swimmers and non-swimmers alike—evidently preferred the risk of drowning to death by fire. The central, remaining boat was under way again, but very slowly. Though its crew had been decimated, the survivors were struggling to bring it about quickly, as far from the threatening wall as possible. Before they could win clear, however, two more blows shook them: a basket full of blazing coals landed full on top of the furled sail, followed almost immediately by a slashing bolt from the central catapult that struck at a shallow angle among the rowers on the right side of the mast, splintering oars and men and lodging in the vessel's side timbers, a full third of its length projecting through the shattered planking above the surface of the water. Seeing the deadly missile strike home, and recalling the angle at which Longinus's two bolts had disappeared, I found it small wonder that the first craft had sunk so swiftly. The impact of the metal-clad tree trunks must have smashed its hull beneath the water-line like an eggshell.

What followed next was an object lesson in defiance and sheer courage that I have never forgotten. One man, wearing a long blue cloak and a horned helmet, which led me to presume him the commander of the craft, moved purposefully along the central spine of the vessel, blatantly disdaining us and our missiles as he harangued the remaining members of his crew. At his urging, they organized themselves into some semblance of a unit again, bending to their oars in unison as he banged a short-sword against his shield, beating a cadence they could follow. I was not the only one who noted his behaviour, and as awareness of his actions spread along the wall, so, too, did silence, until no sound at all came from our battlements. All men, I think, revere the brave, and the spectacle being played out in front of us was one of extreme bravery. After the silence fell, only one shot was fired towards the Erse captain, and the bowman was shouted down and reviled by his own comrades, so that he stood shamefaced.

Five, six, seven strokes the oarsmen made, and then their captain called for them to stop. A knot of swimming men lay just abreast of them, and we watched as the men in the galley threw ropes to the swimmers. When they were safe aboard, the captain strode to the stern and stared up at us, then shouted more orders. The galley turned and moved slowly towards another group of swimmers, hauling them aboard as well. All of this occurred while they were still within easy range of our catapults, but we made no move to threaten them further, until another vessel from the stationary lines behind them sought to move forward.

Longinus leaped to his catapult, shouting orders, and his men began immediately to elevate the device, aiming it skyward. Longinus sighted and calculated, making swift adjustments until he was satisfied, then jumped back and threw the lever, launching the bolt. We watched it as it soared upward, shortening then lengthening as it began its downward curve. It sliced into the sea mere paces ahead of the oncoming galley, making barely a splash. The message was plain. The vessel sheared away. The rescuers continued with their work throughout, ignoring or unaware of the event. Somehow, without a word being said, the captain of the Erse craft below knew he could complete his task in peace.

At one point, a small boat of some kind was lowered from the galley and three men climbed into it. While one worked the sculls, the other two retrieved a lifeless body. Its clothing was colourless, waterlogged, but I knew they had recovered their admiral. That done, and now fully crewed again, the galley swung away and joined the rest of the fleet, after which all sixteen vessels turned and made their way beyond the island.

The men lining the parapet began to turn away, all strangely subdued, despite the totality of the victory. As they began to file by us, headed towards the stairs and talking quietly among themselves, Longinus turned to me.

"Brave whoreson, that. I wonder who he was."

I shook my head. "I don't know, but Connor might. You think they'll come back?"

He looked me in the eye and pursed his lips, then shook his head. "I doubt it. Would you? My guess is, they'll go home and raise a bigger fleet, then they'll come back, looking for blood." He glanced away, to where Connor's men were pouring rapidly, in disciplined files, down the stairs from their positions on the wall. "Where are those fellows going in such a hurry?"

I noted the serious expressions on the faces of the passing men, and returned a nod to Sean as he hurried by. Wherever they were going, they clearly had a purpose. "I don't know," I responded, "but they might be on their way to Liam's galleys, to take them out, down to the spot where they concealed their own vessels yesterday. Connor will not feel comfortable until he has his own deck back beneath his feet again, and as long as there remains the slightest chance that Condran's fleet might stay around, looking for vengeance for their admiral, Connor won't lie easy on land."

'The Ersemen will be back, with others, looking for revenge," Longinus said darkly, "and this time they'll know what to expect."

I watched the last of Connor's men disappear from view, then turned back to face him. "Not quite, my friend," I said, smiling. "They'll have respect for your weapons, I've no doubt of that, but by the time they decide to return, Connor Mac Athol will have gone home too. Remember, they don't know he's here. When they come back, they might find their passage contested by a fleet to match their own."

His eyes widened, and then he grinned and nodded. "Aye, I'd forgotten that. Let's find something to drink. By all the gods, man, we just defeated an entire fleet of Ersemen." He turned away, roaring for Derek, and we were suddenly surrounded by a throng whose noisy enthusiasm waxed rapidly with the growing realization of what they had achieved.

Connor and his men were noticeably absent from the celebrations that began immediately following the victory. They had, as I had suspected, gone to collect their galleys. Donuil confirmed it when he came looking for me some time later. In spite of the general euphoria of the gathering, however, I found myself vaguely depressed, unable to stop thinking of the sight of Liam's whirling corpse soaring up and outward from the wall to crash down on the galley beneath. It was a common topic of conversation that morning, laughed over and discussed again and again as people mingled and moved about in the thronged space beneath the walls, but I could find nothing humorous in it. The hanging of the Erse dead I could stomach as a gruesome, even necessary warning of the violence that awaited any who might treacherously challenge us. But the deliberate defilement of a corpse—even the corpse of a creature like Liam—offended everything I had been taught concerning the dignity of the dead. Eventually I removed myself and stood apart from the celebrations, ignoring everyone and thinking my own thoughts.

Lucanus materialized by my side after a while but read my mood and remained silent, content to sip at his drink beside me, A short time later Donuil and Hector drifted over to us, talking quietly, and soon after that Rufio and Dedalus emerged from the crowd and joined us as well. Rufio huddled immediately with Donuil and the others and Ded came towards me. I was surprised to notice that he clutched an ale pot, for Ded never drank intoxicants. He noticed my glance and grinned, toasting me silently before taking a deep gulp that left a white ring around his lips.

"Buttermilk," he said. "Cold. You don't look happy, my friend and commander. What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong, Ded. We've just won a bloodless victory. How could anything be wrong?"

"I don't know, but you, from the look of you, evidently do." His eyes hardened. "Should we be concerned?"

"No, not at all." I realized that I was being obscure and shook my head. "I was thinking of Liam Condranson, that's all—about shooting him like that, from the ballista."

Ded's eyes widened now in surprise. "You don't approve of that? I thought it was inspired, the only disappointment being that the whoreson was already dead. It was Connor's idea—brilliant, I thought."

"Brilliant? Why brilliant? I thought—I still think—it was barbarous."

"Barbarous?" He blinked at me, as though wondering if I had lost my wits. "Of course it was barbarous, Merlyn, but so was Liam. And so, for all of his polished charm, is Connor. These people are Ersemen, not Roman-trained aesthetes from Camulod! They fight among themselves constantly and they have different rules from ours. We would never shoot our enemies off castle walls like that, but, by God, perhaps we should! It might make us less vulnerable.

·

Seeing Liam tumbling through the sky towards them like that, his people saw an eloquent statement of Connor's assessment of their best, and of the treacherous whoreson's methods. As I said, too bad he was already dead."

I had no adequate response to that, and so I merely nodded and handed him my empty cup. "Take care of that for me. I'm going for a walk. I've matters on my mind and I must think a while."

Sometime later, I found myself beyond the walls, on the outer fringe of the common marketplace. I was walking towards Shelagh, who sat on a low wall beside Turga with her back to me, both of them watching Arthur and the other three boys at play. A knot of local children stood close by, watching our four but making no attempt to join their game, which was, in fact, a training exercise devised by Rufio to sharpen their slinging skills.

The boys stood roughly twenty paces apart on the four corners of an imaginary square, and their game consisted of hurling a fist-sized pebble from one to the other, the object being for the receiver to catch the flying stone and hurl it to the next. The rules were complex, and accuracy figured highly in the scoring. The stone was almost perfectly spherical, bound in strips of leather that were braided to form a handle two handspans long, and it was thrown with a round-arm sweep, much like a slung stone. One point was won by catching the stone itself, but three points could be scored by catching it by the handle, which permitted the ongoing throw to be carried out without changing grip. The boys could play the game for hours.

The two women heard me approach and turned to greet me, but I motioned to them to stay where they were. I sat on the wall beside Shelagh, and we continued to watch in silence for a while. None of the boys had yet noticed my arrival, so complete was their concentration.

"Who's winning?' I asked, eventually.

Shelagh responded without looking at me. "Bedwyr's in the lead, for the moment, by twelve points. Arthur's not happy. He missed three consecutive catches and threw two fouls, one to the ground and one too far away for Gwin to reach. Those cost him dearly. He had been ahead before that." She paused. "You had quite a successful morning."

"Aye, it went as expected. The surprise was against them. They sailed in and were driven off without casualties to us. Where were you while it was going on?"

"In our quarters. I kept the boys inside until it was all over."

"That must have been difficult."

She turned to look at me. "They were not exactly happy, but they knew there was nothing to be done, so they made the best of it. You sank two galleys?"

"Aye." I told her then about the bravery of the captain of the central galley, and she listened closely.

"A blue cloak, you say, and a horned helmet? Was the cloak bright blue?"

"Aye, it was brighter than any other. Do you know the man? Who was he?"

She shook her head. "There's a captain among them called Modrin, famed as a warrior. It might have been him. He is said to wear a bright blue cloak and a helmet crowned with the tined horns of a stag. Did you see that? Were they antlered?"

"I don't know. I didn't notice. He was quite far away."

Shelagh stood up, saying something I could not hear to Turga, and then turned to me, hitching a large and spacious leather satchel over her shoulder by its carrying strap.

"Come, Merlyn, walk with me. I want to talk to you, and if the boys notice you here, they'll be all over us."

We turned our backs on the boys and their game and began to stroll along the path towards the forest where I had been ambushed. Shelagh moved to walk ahead of me as we reached a short length of pathway that was almost overgrown and hemmed in oh both sides by high, rank grasses. As we went, I heard my name called urgently in a high, boyish voice and knew we had been discovered.

Shelagh glanced sidelong at me. "Don't look back. Pretend you didn't hear. I told Turga to tell them we may not be disturbed, and to stop them if they try to follow us."

I shrugged and proceeded as though I were a deaf man. Though I was looking down at my feet, I was aware that I was highly conscious of Shelagh's body today, more so than I had been in a long time, and the awareness disconcerted me. She wore a long, full-skirted gown made of a soft, green material that clung revealingly to hips and breasts. As she threaded her way through the narrow passage, she gathered her skirts casually in one hand to protect them from thorns and snags., unconsciously bringing her swaying hips and buttocks into prominence with the tightening of the soft cloth. Fortunately, the narrowest length of the path was short, and we were able to walk side by side thereafter, where the most prominent thing I had to worry over was the soft upper sweep of her breasts. I solved that problem, temporarily at least, by concentrating on the path ahead of us.

Neither of us felt the need to speak, and we walked in comfortable silence broken only by the liquid song of a blackbird. I helped her across the ditch at the edge of the woods, then led the way as we descended the slope.

"This is where I was attacked, the other day."

She glanced around, eyeing the thick briars that had ripped my hands and face so badly. "Hmm," she murmured. "You should give thanks that Donuil noticed you passing and came after you. You might as well be miles from anywhere, out here. What's up there?"

I looked up along the pathway that mounted the hill beyond the little clearing. "No idea," I said. "I didn't go beyond this point."

"Then let's go and see. Your man in the yellow tunic must have gone up there."

The path led us upward, steepening rapidly, until it became difficult to walk upright and we found ourselves proceeding almost on all fours at several points, leaning forward to obtain purchase as we climbed. The first time that happened, I found myself distracted again by the sight of Shelagh's buttocks ahead of me and the occasional flash of white leg as she pulled herself ahead. We reached a level spot and stood upright, both of us panting.

"Is this worth the effort?" I asked.

She glanced at me, blowing an errant curl from in front of her eyes then looking up and ahead again. "I think so. Look, we're almost at the top."

She was right, and moments later we stood among the few trees that crowned the almost bare hilltop. Looking back, we could see the top of Derek's eastern wall beneath us, surprisingly close beyond a fringe of small trees, the clutter of the town laid out behind it. No one stirred on the wall, and in the distance, on the western parapet, one of Longinus's great catapults still raised its arm vertically above the harbour. The streets of the town were jammed with people.

"It's like looking down on an ant hill," Shelagh said, then she turned to look in the opposite direction. "Look at the mountains!"

The ranks of rising hills stretched into the far, eastern distance to become peaks and ramparts against the sky. 'They're called the Fells," I said, admiring the peaceful beauty of them. "Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

She turned and inspected the tiny hilltop, looking for some place to sit. There was one small, dead tree, tipped over on its side, die bark stripped and worn away and its upper surface polished by the rumps and feet of visitors. She perched on its narrow seat, and I moved to lean against another tree close by. She drew her top lip back from startlingly white teeth and tapped a fingernail against them, clearly unconcerned that I might find the gesture unattractive.

"I've been thinking about the future," she said, and then she lapsed into silence.

I nodded. "So have I. What have you been thinking about?"

"Your name."

I blinked at her, absorbing that and finding it meaningless. "What about my name?"

"What is it?" She grimaced and shook her head impatiently, dismissing my blank-faced bewilderment. "Oh, never mind, I'll tell you. You have four names."

"No, I have three: Caius, Merlyn and Britannicus."

She graced me with an exaggerated, dimpled smile and tucked her skirts beneath her thighs, limning them clearly and drawing my eyes as targets draw arrows. "No, you have four, and it was hearing the fourth of them last night, during our meeting, that made me think."

"Shelagh," I sighed, "I have no idea what you are talking about." '

"Lucanus called you Cay last night."

"Of course, he often does. So do you, from time to time. All my close friends and family call me Cay."

"Exactly!" she crowed, as though she had distinctly won the point. "The fellow in the yellow tunic, do you think he came up here?"

"What?"

"What? Would you think, man? Dia! This thing's too narrow and lumpy to sit on for long." She moved quickly, half rising to her feet to free her skirts, then swung one leg demurely over the tree trunk to sit astride it like a horse, rearranging her lap impatiently before swinging her head around to face me again. "Look, the man ran away from you because he knew you and he obviously thought you would know him. He knew you were Merlyn of Camulod, and he ran away because he knew that knowledge made him dangerous. To you. Why? It's as plain as your great Roman beak! Because he intended to sell the information that you were here, to someone who would pay well for it.

"Derek knew you, too, when we arrived. Merlyn of Camulod, he called you, and he lost no time in telling you we couldn't stay, because the word that Merlyn was here in Ravenglass would bring destruction swarming about his head from Cornwall and from Cambria and every other place where Merlyn's name is known, because Merlyn of Camulod is guardian of the Pendragon brat! Have you met many others since you've been here? Others who know your name?"

I nodded. "Aye, a few."

"And what do they call you? Merlyn?" I nodded again. "And would King Derek ever call you Caius?"

"No."

"Or Cay?"

"Absolutely not."

"Good! Then that's settled. When are you going to look at this new place, the fort? Tomorrow, still?"

"Yes, tomorrow morning—but I still can't see what's settled, as you say."

She shook her head slowly, half smiling, widening her eyes as she gazed at me. "Oh, Merlyn, Merlyn ... Here am I talking to you as an equal, and you respond like an ordinary, stupid, sightless man ... " Her smile broadened to a grin. "Ah well, I'll be an Erse enchantress, then, and speak mystic secrets to you."

"You are an Erse enchantress, and well you know it. But why are you looking so pleased with yourself?"

"Oh, I am, am I?"

For a moment, I was unsure which of my remarks she was referring to, but her next words, and the sudden, wicked mischief in her eye, made everything clear.

"I know it well enough, but I'd begun to think you'd grown immune to my enchantments. I've sensed none of that wicked, friendly lust in you for years."

In the space of a heartbeat, my throat was thick with tension, my heart hammering in my breast. The friendly lust she spoke of had been mutually recognized by us long since, ungratified only because of our shared loyalty to Donuil. We had discussed and dismissed it years before, agreeing amicably, she and I, to be aware of it without pursuing it. Through her two pregnancies and my quest for a celibate existence, we had grown ever more comfortable with each other and become fast friends. The attraction, though still there, had mellowed into a warm, sustained awareness. But now, suddenly, the lust was raging in me again. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"Oh, it's been there, all along," I said, fighting to keep my tone light. "You're just getting old. Your perception of such things has dulled."

"Hah! Enchantresses do not lose their keen perceptions. Ever."

She began to hum a lovely, haunting melody and rose to her feet, stepping away from her log and holding her hands out to me. I straightened from the tree I had been leaning against, and she led me to the seat she had occupied.

"Now," she said, grinning again, "sit you there and listen to my spells, and I'll summon woman's magic to tell you how loutish, lumbering men may live in safety and rear healthy children in this mountain land. Are you ready?" I nodded, having mastered myself again, and her grin softened to a smile. "Good. Pay attention, now."

She stood for a few moments, facing me, humming again the same lilting, unearthly tune she had used before. Then she reached up and untied the filet that held her hair in place and shook her long tresses free about her shoulders. As I stared, wide-eyed and almost disbelieving, she began to turn very slowly, humming all the time, continuing to face me though her body turned impossibly, it seemed, then whipping her head around just when it seemed her neck must break. Her arms were outstretched at her sides, and very gradually she increased the tempo of her movements until she was spinning rapidly, like a child's top. As she progressed from a slow, deliberate and graceful motion to increasing, whirling speed, I sat truly entranced, watching her face and the way her long, chestnut tresses flew out about her spinning head, barely aware, for the longest time, of the gradual emergence of the long, clean length of her bare legs beneath her flaring gown. Aware of it eventually, alas, my eyes saw nothing afterward but their nakedness and strong, clean-muscled shape.

She had been watching me, I am sure, as closely as I had been watching her, and when she saw my gaze gone from her face she slopped, suddenly, hear voice falling abruptly silent on a high, clear note, her skirts cascading downward like a waving, draped curtain.

As I sat there, blinking, staring at her still-undulating skirts, awareness of how sudden had been her stop flooded me, and I leaped belatedly to my feet to catch her as she fell over from giddiness. But she stood motionless, unruffled, smiling at me, her eyes clear and even her hair tamed.

"Sit," she said. "Enchantresses do not fall down. Now hear."

As I seated myself again, she came and knelt in front of me. My heart was pounding, and I felt a sense of strange anticipation. She was lovely, and in spite of her exertions, her high breasts showed no sign of heaving.

"Close your eyes, and keep them closed." I did, enjoying the brief vision I had had of her bare, whirling legs.

"Think upon this, Merlyn of Camulod ... " .she said softly, and then she began to speak in a rhythmic, almost singing, cadenced voice that quickly lulled me, compelling me to listen to her words.

"Imagine that a party of strong men, and women, too, came to a sea-girt place called Ravenglass, then disappeared from ken, their whereabouts unknown to living men. Imagine that their enemies sought high and low to find them, and sent spies away throughout the land to hunt them down wherever they might be ... Imagine that these spies all knew a name, a strong man's name, a leader's name, and knew that in finding him, they would find what they really sought and thought to find. Imagine then, that throughout all this land, through Alba and through Eire, too, it was believed that this strong man was nowhere known where men and women throng ... "

Her voice died away, but I sat with my eyes closed for moments longer, hearing and examining the visions she had conjured in my mind. When I looked at her again, she was kneeling still, staring at me, her beautiful hawklike eyes betraying no hint of humour now.

"I saw it," she said. "It's what we've hoped to achieve. Shall I tell you where they vanished to?"

"Yes, if you know where my thoughts are leading now."

"They never left. Their ships left, in the dead of night, but they remained and lived in an abandoned fort. Their leader, Merlyn, changed his name to Cay, and while he led still, in truth, he gave the name of leader to another, not a warrior but a farmer, who would feed them all."

"Hector."

"Aye, Hector. Cay became a simple worker, so that when the spies returned at last, their search frustrated, there was no one called Merlyn known in Ravenglass."

I was staring at her in bemused wonder, amazed by the lucid simplicity of her suggestion and knowing she was absolutely right. Only a few people, to the best of my awareness, knew my real name here in Ravenglass, and for their benefit I could sail away ostentatiously with Connor and young Arthur, to be dropped ashore in some convenient spot a short way along the coast. From there I could make my way back to Mediobogdum, avoiding the town. I would be known simply as Cay. Merlyn would vanish.

"Shelagh! That could work!"

"Of course it will work! Enchantresses are never wrong, you blind man."

She was herself again, swaying lithely to her feet and reaching for her enormous satchel, from which she produced a small skin of wine, a whole cheese, a loaf of bread and a sharp knife. Seeing the knife, I became aware that this was the first time I had seen her without her throwing- knives for a long time, but the awareness was dulled by my amazement over the food.

"Good God! How did you—? Did you know we would be coming here today?"

She threw me a wry look. "Don't be foolish, how could I? But I did know I'd be keeping the boys away from the walls all day, first because of the fighting, and later, I sincerely hoped, because of the celebration. I didn't bring a cup. And I left the boys' food with Turga. Here, eat." She handed me half the cheese and half the loaf, and for the next while we ate in companionable silence-, sitting together on the ground with our backs against the fallen tree. When we were done, and the rich, red wine had left a satisfying feeling of repletion on my tongue, I turned to her.

"That was quite a dance you performed."

"Enchantment. It was an enchantment. It worked, didn't it?"

"It certainly did. Several ways." .

"Hmm. You were not supposed to be gawking beneath my skirts. Could you see my bare bottom?"

I shook my head, smiling, unaccountably comfortable again in this arena. "Unfortunately, no, I could not. But I would have made a greater effort had I known it was bare. Do you know, I was so fascinated by your, upper part, your face and head and hair, that I hardly noticed the other at all?"

"Liar. I saw your mouth fall open."

"How could you have? You were revolving far too quickly."

"Horse turds, my friend. A blink is all it takes to see that look. I stopped at once, for fear you'd have an apoplexy."

"That's unlikely. But my celibacy might have fared badly, had you continued."

She glanced down openly at my lap. "It still works, then? Despite all your single-minded self-denial?" There was no trace of prurience in her voice or her demeanour.

"Of course it does." I shifted position slightly, moving my buttocks in search of more comfort, strangely unfazed now, by this turn of talk. "Mostly in the dead of night, thank God."

"Erotic dreams?"

"Extremely."

"How often?"

"Frequently. Weekly."

"Weekly? After all this time?"

I sniffed. "Perhaps because of all this time. I don't know, and I try not to dwell on it. May we talk about something else?"

She was still gazing at my lap, her expression one of musing. Now she looked me in the eye, straightforwardly.

"Who do you dream about?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "I don't know, most of the time."

Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. "You must know! If a woman is attractive enough to draw your seed without even being there, you must know who she is."

Now I smiled at her incredulity. "It's not a woman, Shelagh, it's a dream, a spectral female form conjured by my body's needs and thy sleeping mind's instructions. I don't know how the conjuration works, simply that it does, and at some unsought, indeterminate time, by some unconscious means, I avail myself of this spectral presence, an incorporeal vessel into which I spill my seed without volition. Most of the time I am completely unaware of having done so. I only remember afterwards by the evidence in the morning."

She was frowning. "Donuil never has such dreams."

"By the Christus, I should hope not! Nor would I, could I reach out to you at night—" I caught myself, choking the words off, but she was barely listening, her brow furrowed in thought.

"You Said 'most of the time.' You don't know most of the time. That means you sometimes do. Who?"

"You, Shelagh. You, my dear. You gave me leave to dream of you, once, to lust after you in my mind. Don't you recall? And so I do, sometimes."

I had surprised her.

"How? I've given you no reason ... "

"No, nor encouragement, for several years, so be at peace. Nor have I lusted after you—not consciously, at least—in recent times. It is not a voluntary thing, on either of our parts."

"I know that. But how? I mean, oh, Dia! I sound stupid."

"Not at all." I picked up the wine skin and took a deep swallow. "You are a woman. Your body does not feel men's lusts, which seem to be more urgent, and more transitory, than women's are. Seem, I say, seem to be. I have no way of knowing if that's true, nor do you."

"It's true enough, I think. Women are slower to arousal than men are, I know that much. Men are sudden and frequent, unpredictable, except for the predictability of their frequency and unpredictability. They recognize no time as being better, more conducive, than another." She paused. "Look, I know you want to talk of other things, but you've told me something here I know nothing about, and I'm dying of curiosity. May I ask you something else?"

I shook my head again, smiling ruefully at her tenacity. "Of course. What is it?"

She sat silent for several moments, hesitating at the boldness of her words, then blurted out her question.

"When you ... when you dream of me like that ... what do you recall?"

We were staring at each other, our faces close, each of us tight with the fluttery tension of discovery, yet lacking, somehow, any sense of sexual urgency or imperative. When I answered her, my voice was husky and my words slow and deliberate.

"Everything about you, from the feel of your breasts to the clinging depth of you."

"But you've never touched me."

I moved slightly away from her. "I am aware of that, my dear, believe it or not, and looking at your legs and thighs today, I saw more of you than I have ever seen."

"No. I was practically naked that day when Julia died. You saw me then, wearing only that ridiculous flimsy mantle."

"Damnation! So I did. D'you know, I've never even thought of that since then? I had completely forgotten!"

She started to smile, but then her face grew somber. "That would have been an awful thing, Merlyn, to have found physical attraction in that place and at that time."

"Aye, it would. I suppose that's why I was unaware of it."*

"Hmm." Her face cleared slowly, the troubled frown giving way to a look of concentration. "So, when you ... lie with me, in dreams, the dreams seem real? I find that really difficult to comprehend."

"No more than I do, Shelagh, but I thank God, from time to time, that they seem as real as they do, because they bring no guilt, and no disloyalty to Donuil, or to you."

'To me? How could they bring disloyalty to me?"

"Because of how you truly are, a faithful wife. But they could not—they are merely dreams. Purely involuntary. Even Luke says so."

. Her eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "You've told Lucanus?"

I laughed aloud. "No, not about you! What do you think of me? We've talked of celibacy, that's all, and nocturnal emissions, as he calls them."

"'Nocturnal emissions ... ' That sounds very grand."

"They can be grand, sometimes, but they don't approximate the real thing."

"Why not? They sound like it, to me."

"Yes, my dear, except for the absence of one important, crucial element: the actual woman, with her delicious, lubricated friction."

We had been speaking in Latin, which she had picked up with wondrous speed, but now she raised one hand to her lips like a little girl, her eyes dancing, and suddenly her Erse speech was more pronounced. "Crucial? You mean spread out like a cross? 'Loo-oobricated friction ... ' Latin's a wondrous language. You couldn't say things like that in Erse. 'Delicious, lubricated friction ... Oh, listen to me! The gods would scream, could they hear us! I never even talk like this with Donuil. Can you imagine the face of him, sitting over there, listening to us?" She fell silent, thinking, then laughed in a girlish way. "So you're sound asleep when this happens? Dead to the world, with no idea at all of what's going on?"

"None at all, consciously. Of course, there's much going on inside your head."

"Aye, and other parts of you."

"Hmm."

She made another tiny sound of mirthful excitement, hitching herself more upright and lapsing back into her native tongue. "Wouldn't I love to see that, though? Wouldn't that be something to behold, the bright seed just springing from it like a ribbon, with no warning at all?"

"Aye," I said, more of a grunt than a word, and began to rise to my feet. "And if we don't leave now, it's going to happen here, in the brightness of the afternoon. Come on, let's go."

I held out my hand to help her rise, but she remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the erection that thrust beneath my clothing at the level of her eyes, which had turned suddenly solemn.

"Merlyn, forgive me. I didn't think. That was stupid of me and unforgivable to taunt you like that."

"Come on, get up. Here, take my hand. It wasn't unforgivable at all. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It simply means I'll do it twice this week." I pulled her to her feet then stepped away, literally turning my back on the temptation to gather her into my arms and kiss her. She would have come to me, I knew. I stood there, staring at the closest tree until her voice came from behind me, small and tentative.

"Merlyn? Is that the truth? You're not angry?"

I turned back to her, smiling. "No, Shelagh, I'm not angry. I swear it."

She was silent for a spell, and then, "Twice this week?" She was smiling again. "Does that mean—"

"Aye, four nights ago, aboard the galley, and it wasn't you."

"The faceless, wanton spectre ... Will it be me tonight?"

"Aye, it will, and for several nights to come, I think. But don't expect me to thank you for stirring me up this way."

"I won't, but ... "

"But what?"

She smiled. "I want you to know, though I shouldn't say it. But I'm just as stirred up now as you are ... It was you saying 'twice this week' that did it."

I stared at her for the space of several heartbeats, aware that we were both in grave danger, then began to turn away. "Good fortune for Donuil."

She caught me by the wrist, stopping me. "Don't think of it like that, Merlyn. It's not Donuil who has me swimming, here, and he won't benefit from it. I may not lie with you, but tonight, for you, I won't lie with my husband." She stared at me, eye to eye, but I could only shake my head.

"This is insane. We'd better go."

On the way back down we talked of other things, and by the time we came to the town she had taught me the first lines of the melody she had sung in her enchantment.

SIX

The walls of the main gateway tower reared up above my head to the height of four tall men, and the heavy double doors were made from massive, layered slabs of dense- grained oak, shrunken and dried and cracked with age but serviceable still. These were framed, around and between, by heavy, solid, mason-dressed blocks of red sandstone brought down, Derek had told me, from the quarries to the north, along the coast. I craned my neck to decipher the faded, weather-beaten words on the plaque that had been mounted there on the plinth above the double doors.

"What does it say, Merlyn?"

Young Arthur stood beside me, holding his pony's reins and gazing up at the densely packed lettering of the inscription. "You're the scholar, young man. You tell me."

His brow wrinkled in concentration. "I've been trying to read it, but there are too many words I don't know. They're all at the beginning, there. What do they mean?"

I smiled. "They're names, lad. Names you've never heard before, but in their day, when their owners were alive, the whole world knew and feared them. It says: 'For the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the divine Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, grandson of the divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus and three times Consul, the Fourth Cohort of Dalmatians set this here in the presence of the Emperor's propraetorian governor.'"

He turned to me, his eyes growing round. "Caesar Augustus?"

"Aye, but not the one you're thinking of. This one was a Caesar, but the 'Augustus' in this instance is simply a way of calling him the Great Caesar. His real name was Hadrian, just as mine is Merlyn. My full name is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, but Caius Britannicus was my grandfather."

"Hadrian's Wall? Was that his?"

"Aye. It was built during his reign."

"It says his father and his grandfather were divine. Were they truly gods?"

I grinned at him and tousled his hair. "No, but they were emperors. The Romans have always liked to turn their emperors into gods, to show that they were greater than ordinary men."

"Were they?"

"No, they were much like the rest of us, and many of them were lesser men. But as emperors they held so much more power than we could ever dream of that it appeared that they must be gods."

He thought about that for several moments then turned away, looking along the wall that stretched away to our right; its uneven top climbed upward with the rise of the land to a corner turret, some hundred paces from where we stood. Then he looked back, over his right shoulder to the huddle of low, arch-roofed buildings that housed the garrison baths.

"Are we really going to live here?"

"Perhaps. We have to find some place to live, and this might suit our needs. What do you think?"

Arthur Pendragon took some time to look about him more carefully before answering, I watched him, aware of his height, the breadth of his young shoulders and the way he held his head high as he examined the steep, rocky escarpments that reared above this site to the east and south. He then turned completely around, ignoring the watching, waiting group behind us, to gaze out over the tree-filled valley that fell steeply away, beginning some hundred paces from where we stood, to the west, back towards Ravenglass and the distant coast. Above us, on the southern cliff face, the shadow of a cloud swept along the broken, ragged stone.

"It will be cold up here in winter." I could hear from his tone that he had offered an opinion, not asked a question, so I waited as he completed his inspection, watching his eyes move deliberately along the left-hand section of the wall again and back to the central gateway.

"Can we go inside?"

"Of course, but I don't know what we'll find in there. This place has lain empty for a long time."

"Hundreds of years, Lucanus said."

"That's right. Shall we go in now?"

"In a moment. Is there another gate like this in the northern wall?"

I shrugged. "There must be. It's a Roman fort, so it should have four exits. They might not all be as big as this one."

"Why not?"

"Look about you. This is the main gate, facing the enemy. Up here, there's only one way for enemies to approach, and that's along the road, either from the pass, up there, or from the valley below. If they come from the west, below, they would have to leave the road and climb a steep hill over rough ground to attack the western gate—difficult and dangerous. The only alternative, the same open to anyone attacking from the east across the pass there, would be to come around by the road and attack the eastern gate, from above, where there's a parade-ground campus, much like the one below Camulod. I imagine die garrison, when it was here, would have kept the heights above that, on this side of the road, well occupied, posing a threat to the rear of anyone attempting that. On the far side from here, the northern wall runs along the edge of the escarpment. No army could climb that." I paused, gauging the attention with which he had been listening. "So, having heard that, what would you expect to find by way of gates in the walls?"

The boy hesitated, thinking deeply, and then turned to glance towards where the others in our party still sat their horses, waiting for us to finish.

"Never mind them, lad. They'll wait for us, just as I am waiting for you."

He looked back towards me and then down, focusing for a short while on a spot somewhere between him and the ground. Then he raised those startling, golden eyes again to mine.

"The east wall will have double gates, as big as these, because of the parade ground beyond. And they'll be well fortified against attack from that direction. The western wall will have double gates, too, but smaller, for sorties against minor attacks from beneath. The rear wall, to the north along the cliff, requires no gate, unless it be a small one to allow refuse to be tipped over the edge."

"Good lad," I said, feeling an absurd lump swelling in. my throat from pride. "That's the exact answer I had formed to my own question, for I've never been here either, you'll recall. Let's go and see if we're right."

"May I ask another question?"

"Of course."

He pointed to the tower ahead of us. "Why are the walls that surround the doors of a different stone from the tower?"

I grinned at him again. "I'm learning many things today, am I not? You teach well, young Arthur. Now look about you again and tell me why. Take your time, the answer's there in front of you."

Once again, the boy required little time to reach his answer. He looked about him, beginning with the dressed sandstone pillar between the heavy doors, then running his eyes around the gate's framework and from there to the turreted walls on either side of the central tower. I watched closely as his eyes, empty at first, grew suddenly acute, and I saw awareness grow in them as he turned to gaze up at the cliffs to the south and east. Then he stepped away and bent to wrestle something from the grass-grown ground: a long, flat slab of local stone, in thickness perhaps the width of his boy's palm. He hefted it, testing its weight, then dropped it flat on the cobbles of the causeway beneath our feet, where it shattered into four pieces.

"It's too soft, and too narrow in its depth. Excellent for building defensive walls, but the other kind of stone was necessary to hold the gates." He was still looking about him, up at the cliffs. "There's none of it here. Where did it come from?" When he realized that I would not respond, he went on again. "They must have brought it in, from some other place. Every single block of it must have been dug up and shaped and then brought here ... No wonder there's not more of it." He looked back at me now, smiling again. "Am I right?"

"You are. Full credit, and full lauds." As I turned to wave the others forward I congratulated myself on the impulse that had led me to have them wait behind while the boy and I rode forward alone. We had been travelling eastward on the Tenth Iter, an intact, strongly built road eight paces wide, the latter part of our journey a long climb up a staggeringly inclined hill to the high pass the fort had been built to guard, which now lay above us. There, reaching a small plateau beneath the summit, we had emerged from the dense forest, for the first time since leaving Ravenglass, to see the top of the gate-tower of Mediobogdum on our left, partly concealed from view by a steep crest in the short entrance road. Reaching the crest—no more than a hard- won twenty paces from the road—we had enjoyed our first clear view of the empty, silent fort. It looked impressive, from the distance of a hundred or so paces, as grim and invulnerable as the day it had been built, perched on the edge of an abyss beyond which the slopes of the opposing valley's sides were hazed in distance.

Confronting the view, without forethought and purely on the spur of a momentary urge, I had turned to Lucanus, riding by my left knee.

"Keep the others here for a while, Luke. I want to take the boy forward with me for his first look. He's the one to whom this place is most important, though he doesn't know it yet. I want to share his first reactions to the place. "

Lucanus had merely stared at me, raising his eyebrows slightly, then nodded, and I had ridden forward alone, calling the boy to accompany me.

Now, as the others joined us, dismounting and stretching limbs, I moved forward and pulled on the entrance gate, hoping to be able to open it far enough to allow me to put my shoulder to the task. To my great surprise, it swung* towards me with much more ease than I had expected, the massive, thickly rusted metal hinge pins that held it in place squealing loudly, almost unbearably, as they turned, grinding in the holes that had been chiselled in the sandstone above and below to house them, the weight of the gate itself swinging it fully open to rest against the wall. I turned back to my companions, holding up my arms.

"My friends ... " All of them stopped moving to watch me, their faces showing a broad range of interested, curious expressions. "When we step through this gate, we will be doing more than crossing a mere threshold. We'll be approaching a watershed in our lives. Beyond these gates could lie a new future for all of us. I am moved to make this request of you, and you may think it a strange one.

"We are here because, we know we could live here, in this place, for the next space of years, if we so choose. But should we choose, that choice should be born out of deep reflection and consideration. These walls above us are sound, but they are ancient. Within the walls, I do not know, nor do you, what we may find, save that whatever we do find will have lain long untouched by man. And so I would like us to proceed from this point on, each one in solitude, uninfluenced by the comments of others. That will be difficult, I know, because the temptation to look at each other and share your initial reactions will be immense and purely natural. Your first reactions might differ, one from another, from disgust to excitement; I have no idea. But I want us to consider them together, later, not in the first, raw moments of speculation. Do you understand what I mean?"

They did, nodding and muttering in their various ways until Dedalus, as usual, moved matters along.

"So you want us to walk in silence?"

"Aye, Ded, I do. But more than that, I want each of us to walk apart. Go as you wish, where you wish, once inside, but try to stay away from the others. Look and absorb and examine and reflect and be honest With yourself, each one of you, but bear in mind what we seek to achieve here. Ask yourself if you can see this place as a temporary home, a place where you could live for several years if need be, and whether it can be adapted and suited to your own purposes and those we share in common."

Dedalus looked around at his companions and then grinned. "And when may we speak to each other again?"

"As soon as we are done. When you have seen enough, come back outside. We'll build a fire out here and eat together, and then we'll talk. There is no need to hurry. Let each take all the time he needs. You too, Shelagh. Are we agreed?" ,

Lucanus spoke for everyone. "You first, Merlyn. We'll follow."

I stepped from the shadowed passageway through the portals and into the fort with feelings of trepidation and excitement stirring palpably in my breast, aware "of the boy's head at the edge of my vision as he moved to stand beside me just inside the threshold. I wanted him with me, so that I might prompt his thoughts, and perhaps even see things through his eyes. Behind me, I could hear the footsteps of my friends following closely, and I stepped away to clear the way, my eyes rapidly scanning the open spaces and the buildings in front of me—seeking, evaluating, assessing and cataloguing. Someone nudged me from behind, and I moved forward, accompanied by young Arthur. Together we walked to where the Via Praetoria, the main central street on which we stood, reached the first of the long, low barracks buildings that stood on either side of it. I was aware of their construction—heavy logs, dry- mossed, green with age and, I suspected, rot—but even as I began to examine them, I was aware that this was not where I wished to begin my inspection of this place.

Arthur had already passed me and reached the first entrance to the building on the left, leaning his head forward into the darkness beyond the empty space where the door had once hung. I moved to touch him on the shoulder, bringing him back to look up at me.

"Not here, not yet. Let's go the other way."

"The floor's concrete, Merlyn. It's dirty, but it's flat and dry and doesn't look cracked or broken."

"Aye, well, we'll look more closely at that later. Let's head up this way, for now. We'll walk around the intervallum." I led him to the right and together we climbed the short flight of steps that led us onto the narrow perimeter road that hugged the interior, uneven base of the fort's walls.

"Well," I asked him, as soon as we were up there, "what do you think of this for a Roman road?"

He glanced up at the wall that reached above our heads at that point, and then followed the line of it with his eyes for approximately twenty paces, to where it dipped out of sight before beginning to rear up again, to climb steadily towards the tower in the south-east corner. That done, he turned and gazed back to where the others were beginning to spread throughout the grounds of the fort. The ground beneath our feet at this point was a hump of solid rock, bare even of moss, and from where we stood, the plan of the fort, classic as it was, was clearly discernible, with the high, arched concrete roof of the granaries marking the central administrative area unmistakably.

"It's different," he said eventually, his tone speculative.

"Aye, but how is it different? You'll have to be clearer than that, to pass this test"

He grinned at me. "The whole fort is different, and it had to be." I said nothing, waiting for him to expound on that, and after a pause he did, looking all around him as he spoke.

"This fort is built to accommodate itself to the terrain, isn't it? There has been no effort made to level it, as there would be with any ordinary fort. This road goes up and down with the walls and the lie of the land. Bowmen could shoot from down there, beneath the walls on the other side, and pick us off up here, but—" He looked up at the wall again. "But the parapet walk up there is wider at this point, probably to hold more defenders to guard against that. This isn't a road we're on as much as pathway, smoothed out. Not really built."

"A pathway? For whose convenience?" God, but I was proud of this boy! His eight-year-old mind was fertile and intuitive, showing an awareness and astuteness I would not have looked for in a recruit twice his age. At sixteen, most boys knew nothing militarily useful. He was already answering me.

"The garrison's, of course, to allow them to move to wherever they were needed."

"Why? Wouldn't they do just as well using the parapet walk?"

He looked at me wryly. "In an attack? They'd be falling all over each other, pushing one another off the walls. There's only room for one or two men at a time up there."

"Of course. You're right. Silly of me."

He smiled at me again. "You knew that. You simply wanted to find out if I knew it."

"I did." I ruffled his hair and stepped out again, and we walked in silence until we reached the south-east corner with its square angle-tower. Arthur stopped by the narrow steps leading up to the parapet walk.

"There's no door in the tower. What's in there?"

"Nothing, probably. It would have been used for storage."

"Then how did they get in?"

"From above, by a ladder through a hole in the floor up there."

"Can we go up?"

"Certainly, but be careful of the steps."

He was already halfway up, scampering almost on all fours, and I had to call to him as I followed more slowly while he ran the few steps to the tower's entrance.

"Careful, Arthur, don't go in there! That floor is old and probably unsafe. Fall through it and we'd have a hard time digging you out."

Sure enough, when I caught up with him, he was leaning against the doorway, gazing at where the few remnants of the ancient wooden floor sagged dustily towards the black depths of the lower level. He was making hooting noises like an owl through his cupped hands, his head cocked slightly to one side listening for an echo answering him from the depths beneath. Across the gulf that had been the floor of the room, another entrance, as naked of a door as this one was, offered a glimpse of the eastern parapet walk and the land beyond the wall on the eastern side. The jut of the tower walls on either side, however, prevented us from seeing anything of scope or value.

"D'you think they were ever attacked up here, Merlyn?" His wide, golden eyes were straining to see into the blackness beneath the remnants of the floor.

"They might have been, on occasion, but I doubt the attacks were ever strong or victorious. This place is too well fortified to tempt attackers. So I doubt, too, that there are any human bones down there, if that's what you're looking for."

His eyes swung to meet mine. 'Then what happened to the floor?"

"It collapsed, that's all. This fort has been here since the days of the Emperor Hadrian, remember? That was hundreds of years ago ... hundreds of years before even your Great-grandfather Varrus was born. A wooden floor will last for a long time, if it's cared for and maintained, but it will rot and decay quickly, like anything else, if it's left to the mercy of the weather, as this one was. A tree will fall and rot away to almost nothing in one man's lifetime. A flat, solid wooden floor will dry out and rot in much less time than that, if it's not-looked after. The doors would have gone first, fallen off their rusted hinges, and once they were gone, the wind and rain and damp were free to do their damage."

"Oh." His eyes had moved away and he was looking over my shoulder now, to where the southern shoulder of the Fell behind me seemed to scrape against the sky. "Would enemies attack from up there?"

I turned to look where he was pointing. "Why don't you tell me? Would they?"

His brow clouded and he moved to the wall, where he suddenly became a small boy again, lodging a toe awkwardly between two stones and straining to pull himself up to peer over the top of the parapet that barely reached my shoulder. He made the ascent on his second try and hung there, arms duelling the top, his toes pinched inward side by side in a narrow crack in the stonework, his head moving from side to side on its impossibly slender neck as he scanned the ground beyond. The mountain top he had been looking at was half a mile away from us on the other side of a steep gully, on the far side of the road from Ravenglass. He remained there for a long time, looking out silently, the wind ruffling his dark brown hair with its golden streaks. Finally he grunted and released his hold, dropping backwards to the parapet walk.

"No, they wouldn't. Can we go down now?"

"Lead the way. Why wouldn't they?"

"It's too far away, and too difficult. Anyone stupid enough to come down from there to attack would deserve to be defeated." He was skipping nimbly down the steep, narrow stone steps to the ground; I was following much more carefully. When I reached the bottom, he walked beside me, his eyes on the ground now, looking for anything that might be there waiting to be found.

"Why would they be stupid?"

He had lost interest in the far mountain top as a source of peril and was totally absorbed in scanning the ground about his feet, so that he answered without looking up at me. "Because they would have to climb up there first. That would be stupid, when there's no need. And they'd be visible for much too long on the way down ... then they'd have to climb back up from the gully before they could become dangerous to anyone. By then they'd be dead."

The red sandstone columns of the eastern gate-tower were looming in front of us by this time, and he darted ahead of me to disappear into the passageway. By the time I emerged from the portals after him, he was already half a hundred paces ahead of me, running up the long, overgrown but clearly discernible roadway that led to the flatfish drilling area beneath the frowning escarpment of the mountainside. In the south-eastern distance, I could see a tiny ribbon of the road that crested the pass between this peak and its neighbour and continued to its end by the town Derek had told me of, by the side of the Great Mere. At the crest of the road the boy stopped running, and stood, looking about him. I lengthened my stride to catch up to him.

"It's flat, Merlyn," he said as I reached him. "Why didn't they build the fort up here?"

He was right. We were standing on the edge of an area that was as flat as the great campus training ground beneath the hill of Camulod, although much smaller.

"It's more than simply flat, Arthur. It's been flattened deliberately, by men. But it's not big enough to hold the fort. You see that ramp over there?" He looked to where a narrow, sloping ramp led up to a slightly higher area that overlooked the space beneath. He nodded, slowly, his face showing puzzlement. "That's been built up, too. Can you guess why?" He shook his head, slowly. "I'll give you a hint. Think of Camulod."

Arthur shook his head, frowning. "I don't know what you mean, Merlyn ... unless you're talking about the campus. But then it doesn't make sense, Why go to all the trouble to clear just enough ground for a training area? Why not do it properly the first time, and build the camp on the flat area?" He answered his own question immediately, his whole face lighting up in a smile. "Because of time! They couldn't! This was done long after the fort was built, when there was time to do it at leisure. So it is only a training field. And that's the reviewing stand up there, just like the one built into the hillside of Camulod."

He was gone in a moment, his long, slim legs flashing as he ran and climbed to the reviewing stand, from which he looked down at me. Then, seeing that I had turned to look elsewhere, and apparently thinking himself unwatched for the moment, he became the child again, raising his hands formally and throwing himself into an unsuccessful handstand. He could not quite succeed in bringing his feet together, so that for a long, ludicrous moment he teetered there, reversed, his legs scissoring wildly before he toppled, slowly, the wrong way, to land flat on his back at great disadvantage to his dignity. Quick as a flash, he was on his feet again, dusting himself off and glancing at me almost furtively to see if I had noticed his misjudgement. I gave no sign, and he strode to the edge of the reviewing stand closest to me, drawing himself erect and frowning fiercely.

"Attenn-shun! Dress files and form your ranks on the right of line! Wait for it, Britannicus, wait for it! Hutt!"

I drew myself to attention and snapped a punctilious salute, which the boy returned with equal gravity.

"Permission to retire, Commander?" I asked.

"Permission granted. Dismissed."

I saluted again, spun about and began to make my way towards the gates again, hearing his feet flying over the ground to catch up with me.

"Will this place be ours, Merlyn? Will we live here?"

I looked at him. He was walking almost sideways now, gazing up at me with wide, anxious eyes, the full circles of his gold-flecked irises completely visible. His lean rump bore unmistakable traces of his hand-standing misadventure.

"It's possible, as I said earlier, but would we wish to? That's what we have to ask ourselves. That's why we're here today ... to answer that question."

"I would!"

I grinned. "I know you would, but that's only because it's an abandoned fort on a high mountain pass and the weather's still fine. As you said yourself, earlier, it'll be very different up here in the rain and snow. I promise you, you'd be even more aware of that with the cold winds howling through all the cracks in the walls and everything frozen solid, including your hands and feet. The adventures you think you could have here with your friends in the summertime are hardly sufficiently strong grounds for having all of us move up here to live permanently. I hope you will agree with that?"

His face fell and he lowered his head. He remained silent until we had entered the fort again and swung right, following the perimeter walk towards the northern gate. But it was not in his nature to give up without a fight. "We could fill in all the cracks in the walls, could we not?"

I laughed aloud. "Aye, perhaps we could, lad, and mount new doors and spread skins over those to keep the draughts out. All of that we could do, although it would entail months and months of work by every single person among us, including you and your friends. But there would still remain the matter of survival, of living from day to day." I stopped and laid my hand on his shoulder, waiting for him to look up and meet my eyes. "Look, Arthur, I'm not saying we will not stay here. We may well do exactly that. But you heard what I said to the others before we came in here, did you not?" He nodded.

"Well, then, you know how important I believe it to be for everyone to form his own opinions on this, since it is a grave matter affecting everyone. We will pool those opinions in the form of a discussion, leading to consensus and only then to a decision. That's the democratic way of doing things."

The boy gazed at me, his eyes narrowing, and then his face creased into a smile. "I know it is, but I heard you say to Dedalus and Connor on the galley, days ago when you were talking of the wars in Cornwall, that democracy works best under an enlightened and determined leader."

He had me flatfooted. I had to glance away quickly, covering my mouth with one hand to conceal my rueful smile, before I could look at him again. 'True, I did say that, but I didn't know you were listening. In this instance, however, and notwithstanding what I said to Dedalus and Connor, because there are so few of us involved here and all of them my friends, I am determined to allow the will of all the others to prevail."

"Until you decide they're being timid, of going wrong, or they aren't able to make up their minds properly to agree with your opinion." His face was straight now, although his eyes were dancing, and I found myself disbelieving once again that he was only eight, approaching nine years old. If his intellect continued to expand at its present rate, this child, already one to reckon with, would be a most formidable adult.

I nodded, equally straight-faced. "That is extremely impertinent, young man, and none of our group could ever be described as timid. But ... " I allowed myself a tiny smile. "You're right, of course. Could you think otherwise?"

He giggled, something he rarely did, and ran ahead of me, towards the north gate. As I followed him, I looked about me idly to my left, towards the body of the fort. In the distance, I saw Dedalus emerge and then disappear again behind an intervening wall, and Lucanus came into view from the end of the Via Principalis, the east-west axis of the fort, his hands clasped behind him as he walked, looking up at the walls and roofs of the granaries that towered above him. I caught his eye and waved to him, and he began to make has way towards me.

"Well," he began, offering a sardonic little grin as he approached. "I presume it's safe to speak again?"

"It always was, for you. Unless you've found some compelling reason why we can't live here, from a medical viewpoint. Have you?"

"No, not one. What does the boy think of it?"

"What would you expect? He's a boy. He loves the place. His own personal fortress."

"So you're pleased with his reaction? Good. What were you two talking about for so long before the gates?"

I was scanning the fort again. Dedalus had disappeared and no one else seemed to be moving. "About the construction of the place. The gate-towers and the stone. The child is amazing, Luke. Has everyone else finished already?"

"I doubt it. I heard voices in the granary as I passed, though, so someone's already broken your rule." He was smiling again.

"Were they arguing?"

"No, it sounded as though they were discussing something engrossing."

"Merlyn, come and see what I've found!" Arthur was waving to me from close by the north gate.

I glanced at Luke, who was also watching the boy. "I knew if there was anything at all to find in here, he'd find it. His eyes have been fixed on the ground since we came back in through the eastern gate. Let's go see what he has."

Whatever it was, it was very small. Arthur held it between his fingers and examined it closely, glancing towards the ground between him and the wall from time to time as he waited for us to reach him. As soon as we were close enough to be able to see what it was, he thrust his hand towards me.

"Look, it's gold. I found treasure. I saw it shining in the grass there, beneath the wall. There are black ones, too."

He had found a small cache of coins, one of them gold. I moved to where he pointed and, kneeling down, I peered among some loose stones, where I found several small, black and dark-brown metal tokens. The black ones were silver, long tarnished, and the brown ones copper. I had no doubt the purse some legionary once lost had lain here and rotted completely away. They would never have been found, had not the boy's bright eye been caught by the dull sheen of the only golden piece among them. I gathered them up, eleven of them, and tried to see the likenesses they bore, but they were tarnished beyond recognition. Not so the boy's, however. As I straightened up he thrust it at me, and I took it and held it up to the light.

"Who's the man on the front, Merlyn? Is he an emperor?"

The gold coin was small, and well worn, and I had to squint to decipher the crude lettering around its rim. When I did, I felt a shiver stir the hairs along my neck. "No, Arthur," I murmured, aware of my own wonder, "this is no emperor ... although he might have been, for he dreamed great dreams." Reverently, I handed the coin to Lucanus, who peered frowning at it, his eyes weaker than mine. "That is Marcus Antonius, Arthur," I continued. "The friend, some say the son, of Julius Caesar himself. Mark Antony, whose concubine was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. He must have minted his own coins to pay his legions, in Egypt, and one of them made its way here, to lie in wait for you."

The boy was gazing at the coin Lucanus still held up in front of him. "Mark Antony!" His voice was as hushed as mine had been; he knew of Mark Antony from his lessons. "Did he come to Britain?"

It was Luke who answered him, handing the coin back to the lad. "No, Arthur, Mark Antony died in Egypt, fighting against his former friend, Julius Caesar's nephew Octavius, who then crowned himself emperor and took the name Caesar Augustus."

"Caesar Augustus? The one above the main gates?"

Luke made a face and looked to me fen: guidance. "I don't know. I didn't look. Most unobservant of me. Merlyn?"

I grinned at him, but spoke to the boy. "The answer is yes and no. Octavius Caesar Augustus was the first emperor. He was also the first divine emperor. All the others that followed named themselves after him. The one above the gates was Hadrian Caesar Augustus, remember?" He nodded, and I continued. "But think of your find this way, Arthur. In every fight there is a winner and a loser, and the Fates, often at whim, it appears, decree which shall be which. Had they decided otherwise the day Mark Antony fought Octavius Caesar, you might now have been holding a likeness of the first emperor of Rome in your hand."

"Hmm." He closed his fist tightly around the coin. "May I keep this?"

"Of course. You found it."

"I know you said he wasn't a god, Merlyn, but how could they even try to make him one?"

I smiled. 'They couldn't. Gods are immortal. That was sheer flattery. They called him a god, but he was only a man, and he proved it by dying like all other men. Have you noticed you were right about the gate, too? There's only one portal." I ignored Lucanus's raised eyebrow.

"I know, I saw it. Let's go and look outside." The boy stepped between us and took hold of our hands, wrapping his fingers around two of mine, and led us out, tugging impatiently, beyond the gates. Just a few paces brought us to the cliff's edge, where we all three stopped in awe, smitten by the spectacle before us.

Beneath our feet, the cliff face fell vertically, bare of vegetation for most of its vertiginous plunge to a shattered ruin of scree and fallen boulders seemingly miles beneath our perch. Its far-flung edges were lost among the forest of trees that stretched from there as far as we could see in every direction. We had been riding through that forest all morning, but seen from above, it was like a thick, green mat covering everything except that tumbled, lethal wasteland directly at our feet. Even the road and the river Esk, which I knew were down there, almost directly beneath us, were concealed by the denseness of the overhanging tree- tops. Arthur, who had let go of Lucanus to lean closer to the edge, but whose hand still clutched my Own, drew back instinctively from the gulf, drawing close to my side even though there was no danger of his falling. When he turned to look up at me, his eyes were enormous.

"How far down is it?'

"I've no idea." I tried to keep my voice light, since I could see there was no need to warn him of the danger here. "But the beautiful part of it is that it's too far up ever to be a threat to this place. No army could climb that, nor any single man I've ever met."

"No." He moved forward again, bending cautiously from the waist. "All those rocks, did they fall from die cliff?'

"Aye, they did, every one of them. That's why there are no trees on the cliff face. But there's grass on many of the ledges down there, and it's thick in places, so nothing has fallen recently."

"Hmm." He sounded far from convinced. But then, after a few mole moments' contemplation of the abyss itself, he turned his eyes outward to where the oak- and ash- and beech-covered hills shepherded the valley westward to the sea beneath low, cloudy skies of varying greys. There was nothing there to mar the forest's deep-green mantle. The peaks behind us, to the south and east, were hidden by the walls that reared at our backs. Only to the north-east did the high cliffs of the largest Fells shrug themselves free of timber.

"It's beautiful, isn't it, Merlyn? So different from Camulod."

"Aye, lad, it is. You think it more beautiful?"

"No-o, and yet yes. The mountains ... "

"You've never seen Cambria, have you?"

He threw me a glance, much more an eighteen-year- old's than an eight-year-old's, that included Lucanus and told both of us that I knew very well he had not. I grinned.

"You will, some day, I promise you, and you'll find that the mountains there, too, are beautiful, and very, very different."

"Different from these? How can that be?"

I shook my head. "As soon as you see them, you'll know. They're higher, for one thing. On some of them, in the highlands, the snow never melts. Their crests are white all year round."

He looked up at me in open disbelief. 'That's impossible. The summer sun would melt it."

"Not in Cambria, Arthur, nor anywhere else where the mountains are high enough."

"High enough for what? To escape the sun?"

I shrugged. "I suppose you might put it that way. They don't escape the light, but they do evade the heat. It's a known fact that, no matter where you are, the higher you climb above that level where the land meets the waters of the sea, the colder the air becomes. If you climb high enough, you reach a point where even the summer rain falls as snow." I grinned at him. "It's true! Ask Lucanus. He and I have ridden into summer storms, on uphill journeys in high land, where the rain turned to snow as we rode higher. And we've turned around and ridden down again, out of the swirling snowstorm to where there was no sight of snow and the rain still fell. Didn't you notice how cool it became today, when we started climbing the hill out of the valley to come up here?"

He nodded, remembering. "But why, Merlyn? Why is that?"

"I wish I could tell you, lad, but I can't. Luke, do you know?"

Lucanus shrugged his shoulders slowly. "No, I do not. But I know it is true. Heat seems to be heavier than cold, Arthur, if you can imagine such a thing, because it always grows colder, the higher you climb. And yet heat rises upward from a fire, so that the upper part of a room is always much warmer than the temperature at floor level. Contradictory, in the extreme, but true, nonetheless, and defying explanation."

"Hmm." The complexities of the abstraction were too much for the boy, and he dismissed them. "Does this valley have a name? Do you know?"

"I don't really know," I answered him. "I know the river we crossed down there is called the Esk, so this would be the valley of the Esk."

He was staring towards the western horizon, where it flattened visibly beyond the shoulder of the farthest, mist-hazed hill. "Could we see the sea from here, on a bright day?"

I followed his gaze. "I think we could. That flat part is the line of it, I believe. It's out there somewhere."

He turned to face the wall of the fort. "And what's beyond the crest of the pass where the road goes over?"

"Another valley, I imagine, and another, and then eventually another town like Ravenglass, at the end of the road."

"Was there a fort there, too?"

"Aye, and a vicus. As I said, a town just like Ravenglass."

"Cumbria ... " He murmured the ancient name of the region surrounding us, drawing it out so that the "m" became a resonant hum. "What's the difference between Cumbria and Cambria?"

I smiled, raising an inquisitive eyebrow towards Luke, who merely shrugged and made a face indicating ignorance of this, too. "They're both ancient names. There was probably no difference, at one time. They might be the same name, differing only in the way the people say them ... And before you ask me what it means, I'll tell you I don't know. But all of it is Britain, Arthur." And some day it could be yours, I thought. "Come now, we'd better go back into the fort and look at what is there. You'll have questions aplenty then, I'll wager."

My inspection of the fort itself, confined to a cursory examination of the condition of its buildings, was brief, since I knew what I was looking for, although one small construction was a surprise. Lucanus pointed it out to me in passing, and then departed in search of food, leaving me to investigate. It was a stone building, in the north-eastern quadrant of the fort, abutting the outer wall close to the guard tower. I leaned inside and then withdrew again, absurdly pleased.

"What is it, Merlyn?"

"A latrine, and a good one, too. I hadn't expected it."

Arthur approached the door then and leaned in as I had done, sniffing deeply before turning to look at me, his eyebrows raised in puzzlement. "It's tiny. What's good about it?"

I grinned at him, then led him inside, to where the air had been untainted by men for many years, and gestured to the stonework of the floor and the upright, less than knee-high wall that framed it. A handbreadth-deep channel in the concrete of the floor ran along three sides in front of this wall, and it was evident from the slight slope in the floor that the channel had been fashioned to lead water from the mouth of a pipe that protruded from, one corner of the small room towards the drain holes at each end. I recognized the style immediately as being of the kind I had only read about before: the classic, early-Roman garrison latrine. I could see where there had been spaces for nine men to squat; three to a side on three sides. In one corner, close by the end of the front wall, I saw what looked like several dust-covered pebbles and a few short sticks. I crossed and kneeled to pick up one of the "stones," finding it, as I had suspected, completely weightless.

"Here," I grunted. "Look at this. You know what it is?"

The boy examined it, clearly baffled as to its nature, and shook his head. I picked up one of the dry sticks and moved directly to the low wall that ran around the floor, where I inserted the stick into one of the three curious keyhole-like slots that pierced each side of it.

"This is very much like our own latrine in Camulod, Arthur, but very old, and even more functional. This place could service three or four hundred men. The pit behind the wall here was covered by wooden bench seats, three holes each, centred on these slots." I held up the weightless pebble. "This is a sponge, more than two hundred years old and probably much smaller than the ones we use today in Camulod. Our sponges are precious now, because they are hard to come by, but when this place was built, they were plentiful, because the Romans ruled the world and had endless access to such things. You've heard Lucanus talk about the need for cleanliness the Romans have always shown, well, here's a perfect example. The sponge was held on one of these sticks. The channel in front, here, was filled with running water. The soldiers wet the sponges in the water, inserted them through the slot in the wall between their legs, and cleaned themselves, then washed the sponge again in the channel. Simple, effective and hygienic. And if we can get the water to run again, we'll have a working, permanent latrine. Should we, of course, decide to stay here."

He wrinkled his nose. "It will stink."

"Aye, but that's the nature of latrines. I suspect, though, that since this place was built against the outer wall, above the gorge, we'll find an outlet leading to the cliff beyond the wall, which means we'll be able to" sluice the detritus out regularly. This place was built by an engineer."

"But we have no sponges."

"No, but we have cloth. Come on, let's look at the rest of the place."

By this time, we were the only ones left still exploring. We inspected the Horrea, the building that had housed the granaries and storage warehouses, and I was glad to see that the domed, concrete roof was weather-tight and solid, and that the buttresses supporting it on either side were sound, the mortar that bound them largely unaffected by time and weather. The headquarters building and the commander's house were in equally good condition, all lacking serviceable doors but surprisingly undamaged after such a long abandonment. There was nothing wooden remaining at all, anywhere, only the obdurate stone.

When we rejoined our group beyond the main gates, they were clustered around one of three fires. The other two were being used as cooking fires, tended by Lars and Rufio. Only Dedalus was missing, and I wondered if we had passed him by, somehow, inside the fort.

"Where's Dedalus?" People looked at me blank-faced, a few of them shaking their heads, but Shelagh was the only one who answered.

"I was talking to him here a little while ago. The last time I saw him, he was headed over that way, towards the bathhouse."

A few moments later, I entered the bathhouse, noting that it, too, had a sound roof. In one corner, lodged partially upright against one wall of the entranceway, the rotted remnants of a door lay mouldering; the brightly coloured glass that had filled its upper panel was still intact beneath a heavy layer of dirt. Surprised to see anything so valuable here, I looked for its fellow and saw the rectangular shape of it beneath the covering of dirt on the floor of the vestibule. Then, curious, I fell to one knee and dragged the leading edge of my dagger through the dirt on the floor itself, uncovering a bright stripe of multicoloured mosaic tiles.

More curious than ever now, I wondered idly at the temperament of the commanding officer who had overseen the building of this place. Such luxurious appointments could not have been installed without his approval, and such concern for the welfare of garrison grunts was unusual, to say the very least. I moved on to examine the rest of the place. It was not large, but it was large enough for its purpose, and it seemed to have been well designed and appointed. There was a good-sized changing room, beyond which lay the series of pools terminating in the calidarium, the hot pool, and then a narrow passageway led off to the right to an ample steam room above the furnace. Apart from the dirt of ages, everything seemed to be in excellent condition, except the floor in the hot room, which had collapsed in one corner into the space beneath, and down there, in the darkness, I heard movement and a muttered, explosive curse.

"Ded? Are you down there?" I crossed to the hole and knelt, bending forward to see into the darkness.

"Aye, and I've broken my gods-cursed head!" I heard the sound of him approaching the opening, and as he came I crouched low to look at the base of the hypocaust pillars I could see through the sagging hole in the floor. Designed to channel the heat from the furnace to where I crouched peering, they were amazingly beautiful, although never meant to be seen, each of them clad with dense-packed, deep-red glazed tiles. Dedalus appeared in the opening, crawling into view, and I reached down to help him climb out. He was filthy, covered with dirt and crusted with ancient soot.

"Whoreson," he spat, ejecting a mouthful of saliva mixed with soot as he heaved himself up to sit on the edge of the hole. "It's blacker than a raven's arse down there."

"What in die name of God were you doing?"

He scratched at his face. "Checking the furnace. That whoreson will work. It's not blocked, and it hasn't given way, except at the front, where you throw the fuel in. That's collapsed, so I couldn't get in that way. Then I remembered this hole. But the aqueduct for the run-off's still intact down there, and the cisterns above ground look good, too. I'll wager I could make this whoreson work, once we re-dig some ditches. They're all blocked and filled in, of course."

"Of course." I was staring at him in wonder. "Dedalus, what do you know about bathhouses?"

"Everything." He gazed at me, the whites of his eyes shocking in the blackness of his face, and then he grinned. "You didn't know, did you? I trained as an engineer in my earliest soldiering days. Had three years of it, before I joined your father. I was just a kid of fourteen, two years under age, but big. I started out as a grunt sapper, but I had a real talent for it. Haven't thought about it in years ... Not since I met your father, as a matter of fact. That's when I changed from builder to soldier. But when I saw this place it all came back to me. I built one just like it, in Asia Minor, acting as deputy to my first chief. He was a real engineer, an architect. Knew every damn thing there was to know about building."

My wonder had changed to amazement. "Are you saying you might be able to fix this place? A bathhouse?"

"Easy as taking a piss, Commander." His grin was ferocious, a blend of conviction and enthusiasm. "Providing there's a stream close enough, and providing we can find a clever enough stonemason to build a ditch so we can channel water to the cisterns ... and providing they don't leak. Couldn't see any cracks in them, but they're long dry, so I could be wrong. Fuel's no problem. There's enough wood within hauling distance to keep a furnace blazing for a thousand years. Given those minor details, yes, I can make this place into a working bath again."

I grinned back at him then, accepting his assurance completely. "Wonderful, Ded. You do that, and I think we can find a home here for all of us, providing the others can see it. Here, let me help you up. We'll join them now, eat something, and then find out what they think."

Ded's opinion on the bathhouse was all that was required to convince the doubters, of whom there were very few. Within the space of an hour, we had decided to decamp from Ravenglass, with Derek's blessing clearly understood, and to establish ourselves here, on the highest point of his lands, for as long as we should require to remain. The old fort was far gone in disrepair, and each of the men in the group had his own views on the priorities that must apply in remedying that, but everyone agreed that we had the skills among us to refurbish it to a decent living standard and that it could be done. We needed only time, and an ample supply of parts and services from Ravenglass, supported by mild weather and sufficient determination on the part of every man and woman concerned. Shelagh took no part in the discussion. Her female mind had been made up in favour of the place, for her own reasons, long before she ever saw it.