The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis

The engagement was short and punitive.

I crossed the bridge at the head of my fifty horsemen and no one sought to challenge us. The forest around us, briefly severed by the rushing channel of the narrow, turbulent river, lay silent and seemingly empty of life, though I knew Ironhair's people were there and searched for them diligently as we passed. Nothing stirred in the fastnesses of the woodland beyond the thick fringe of shrubs and saplings lining the narrow road, and I marvelled at the stealth possessed by such men as these surrounding us. Our cavalry were forthright and noisy in their progress, resigned to the impossibility of muffling or disguising the metallic chink of military harness and the creaks and groans of leather saddlery. Ironhair's men and Huw's, on the other hand, moved in stealth, in complete silence. I knew we were being watched by scores of eyes as we passed by, but I took satisfaction in my awareness that the watchers, in turn, were unaware that a full hundred of Huw Strongarm's men lay securely concealed behind them.

Once across the stone arch, moving in columns of four, we pressed straight ahead, riding at an easy lope and following the road as it swept northward to our right, so that we were soon out of sight of anyone on the bridge and riding between the dense banks of close packed trees that fringed the roadway on both sides. Less than a mile now lay between us and the site of the ambush. As we approached the end of that stretch, I signalled to the men behind me and slowed down to a walk just before we reached the limits of the wood that screened us from the valley ahead. I saw a stirring in the greenery ahead and to my right, and Huw Strongarm stepped forward to the edge of the road. He carried his strung longbow in his left hand, and as I reined in he spoke up.

"No trouble back there?"

"No, not a sign of anything. Are your men ready?"

"Aye, all in place. We'll be in range of you, concealed by just the front bushes. As soon as they attack, have your men fall back this way, along the road. As soon as they've passed by, we'll step out and give your harriers a welcome they'll not be expecting."

"Fine, Huw. There will be an appearance of panic and disarray among us as we break up. Every man knows his own part. We will scatter at first and look disorganized. Some will not come back your way at all, but we'll all stay well clear of your arrows. Warn your men that when they hear my trumpeter they should beware, for we'll be coming back together to finish up the action. My men need some blooding, too. Then, when the opposition has been silenced here, we'll turn around and head back to the bridge. Your other hundred should be in place behind Ironhair's infiltrators by then, to make short work of diem. " I checked my men, who were sitting quietly, their eyes on me. "Very well, then, let's be about it. " I raised my arm in a pumping gesture and led my men forward again.

We advanced in good order, proceeding at the canter as we entered the open, grass strewn convergence of the valleys ahead of us, giving no indication to watching eyes that we expected trouble. Directly ahead of us, appearing to block our route at this point, was the flat topped hill described to us by Huw, its upper slopes and featureless top appearing empty and deserted. We bore gradually to our right, heading for the valley to the east. I passed the word back to spread out slightly, allowing our appearance to suggest a casual disregard for danger, and kept pressing steadily forward. I could feel the tension building in my chest as we passed beyond the point of the projecting hill, so that we now had threatening slopes dominating all of our left flank.

Suddenly, the first hostiles appeared on the slopes above and beyond us. They were premature, undone by their own lack of discipline. Their appearance would have given us sufficient advance notice of attack for us to have reformed and escaped the trap, had we, in fact, been unaware of the ambush. As it was, their enthusiasm caused difficulties for me, because I then had to appear to miss my opportunity for flight. I swung my horse around and saw that my men were as aware as I of the enemy's error and were swerving and cavorting madly, giving a convincing show of panic and indecisiveness.

Above us on the hilltop, whoever was in charge could see what had happened, and soon the upper slopes were aswarm with running men, leaping and bounding down towards us, the strident ululations of their battle cries shattering the quiet of the summer afternoon. Paul Scorvo, one of my best independent squadron leaders, now broke away to the rear as planned, trailing a formless squad of eight behind him as he angled his horse slightly uphill, across the front of the attackers, drawing them down and to the right to converge with his escape route. Rufus Metellus, another of the young firebrands Ambrose had promoted to squadron leader, was galloping off now to the north, leading a motley herd of sixteen more troopers down and away from the exposed slopes, to the right of the road, and making sufficient speed already to outdistance any pursuit. I put my spurs to Germanicus and aimed him back along the road we had come by, shouting as I plunged right through the middle of my own troops, who surged together in a rabble at my back and kicked their mounts into a flat out run following my panicked example. The battle screams above our heads changed now to howls of exultation as our attackers saw us disintegrate and flee, most of us back towards the other trap that now lay set for us.

I stood upright in my stirrups, balancing easily now that Germanicus had found his stride, and turned to look over my shoulder, sweeping my eyes along the crest of the hill. The entire complement of our attackers were now in full pursuit. The bulk of them were rushing in pursuit of my own party, while a small number on either flank went bounding after the two lesser groups led by Scorvo and Metellus. I saw a flicker from the corner of my eye as an arrow skimmed down towards us, and then I saw the bowman, poised on the hillside. The brief glimpse I had was sufficient for me to see that his bow was short, the standard bow in use by all save the Pendragon. And then I heard a crash and a double scream behind me as a horse went down into ruin. I swung Germanicus hard to the left, reining him in brutally as I sought to see what had happened.

One of our troopers lay on the ground, his back arched in pain, his mouth forming a gaping black hole as he screamed. His horse lay nearby, struggling to rise to its feet, the shaft of an arrow protruding from its neck. I kicked my horse forward and leaned from the saddle, my hand outstretched to pull the man erect, but he kept screaming, his staring eyes looking through and beyond me. I could see from the ungodly way his back was twisted that he was beyond my help.

Now I became aware of running footsteps closing rapidly. I reached behind me and unhooked my sword, drawing it quickly and hooking the scabbard to the ring at my belt. The weapon felt strange in my grip, feather light and almost insubstantial, and I knew that this was because I had never yet swung the sword in earnest against a living enemy. I heard coarse breathing and a muttered curse. I turned to my left to see an enormous man throwing himself towards me, his short sword drawn back for a killing chop. With no time to do anything else, I swung my own sword overhand, chopping it downward towards him and bracing my foot in the stirrup for leverage. The hasty blow missed my assailant's head but came down on his right arm, drawn back for the kill, and severed it so cleanly that I barely felt the impact, even though I had cleft cleanly through bone. He screamed and fell away, clutching at the sudden stump even before it had time to begin spewing his life blood, and I pulled Germanicus up into a rearing turn, spurring him to the run as his front hooves found the earth again. Only one other was close enough to me to offer danger, and Germanicus hammered him flat to the ground.

As we began to pick up speed, surging steadily forward and slightly downhill, other shapes came hurtling towards me, none close enough to make contact. Then a spinning knife clanged frighteningly against the front of my helmet, snapping my head backwards and filling my mind with the deafening clangour of the unexpected blow. I reeled and fought momentarily for balance, struggling against my own reflexive recoil. Then I was among my own and in control again, overtaking the rearmost of my troopers, and I dimly saw the moving shapes of Huw's bowmen as they stepped forward from concealment among the trees on our left to form massed ranks on the short grass between the road and the forest's edge. Realizing that I had passed beyond the last of them, I immediately reined in again and turned to watch.

The charging mercenaries from the hilltop were skidding to a halt, the nearest of them no more than ten or twenty paces from the formidable obstacle that had sprung up in front of them. Huw's people were drawn up in three ranks, each containing perhaps thirty men. Almost before my mind could grasp what I was seeing, the first rank launched their arrows and stepped aside, each man to the right. Now the second rank stepped forward, bows already drawn, and loosed their arrows. They, too, stepped aside to make way for the fellows at their back and to fill the spaces left by the men of the first rank, who had already fallen back one pace and were now fitting arrows to their bows and drawing them, preparing to step forward into the front rank again. Almost more quickly than I can describe, four lethal flights of arrows sought and found targets among the stupefied attackers facing them, and the fifth flight was in the air before the first of the confounded mercenaries rallied enough to try to run for safety.

They had no place to run, and so they were cut down in moments. The ground was filled with squirming, writhing men kicking in agony, and the air was dense with screams and choking gurgles of pain. Every living man in the main body Of the enemy was down, and the fight was over, except in the distance to my right and left. There, the charade of indecisiveness long since abandoned, the three eight man squads commanded by Scorvo and Metellus were delivering an object lesson in military precision to the hapless survivors who had chosen to pursue them.

My own trumpeter was sitting on my left, awaiting my signal, but I waved him down. My own group would not be needed. Moments later, I saw Paul Scorvo wave his men back towards me, and almost before they had swung into motion, Rufus Metellus and his sixteen men were cantering in my direction, too. Now I turned to Benedict and bade him send two men to find and comfort the trooper who had gone down behind me. They found him quickly, his throat cut from ear to ear.

Huw Strongarm's men assembled in front of me, their faces strangely blank, showing no pleasure in the slaughter. I was preparing to lead our party back to the bridge when I heard a commotion behind me and turned to see three more of Strongarm's men approaching at the run. The fight there was over, too, with losses of only four of Strongarm's bowmen. None of the interlopers from the ravine had survived. Thereafter, I led our party back into the convergence of the two valleys and settled in to wait for the remainder of our troops.

The cavalry came first, four hundred and sixty troopers, by the route we had followed. Within half an hour of their arrival, the blare of a trumpet to the west announced the arrival of our infantry from the coast, and soon they, too, came into view, marching along the valley bottom in columns often, led by Huw Strongarm's scouts. When all had assembled—five hundred cavalry, a thousand foot soldiers and more than two hundred Pendragon bowmen—I climbed to a prominent rock on the hillside and addressed diem all briefly, outlining what we must do next Then I led them north and east at the forced march pace towards the place where we had been summoned to meet with Uderic Pendragon.

The "king" was not in residence when we reached Moridunum. Word of our surprise must have passed ahead of us. The Roman fort lay still and vacant although the debris littering the ground and the smoke from numerous smouldering fires made it quite obvious that large numbers of men had waited here but a short time previously. Without dismounting, I dispatched Benedict and our five hundred Scouts in pursuit of whoever they might find, and then I ordered the remainder of our people to set up camp here for the night I set out on a short inspection of the old fort itself. It reminded me considerably of our former home in Mediobogdum, save that it was situated in a valley rather than on the heights. Fundamentally, it was exactly the same fort, built to the classical design of a cohortal unit and meant to house as many as six hundred men in comfort. Even the bathhouse, built beyond the walls, was comparable, although it had not been quite as lavishly appointed, and the furnaces were cold and long since dead, their flues blocked by soot and the detritus of decades. Unlike Mediobogdum, however, which had sat high and inaccessible among its mountains, remaining almost inviolate for more than two hundred years, all of the buildings here in Moridunum had been used and abused by careless strangers and were far advanced in ruin, roofless and crumbling after a mere four decades of abandonment.

I finished my tour, accompanied by Rufio, and returned to the fort's ruinous main gate, where Donuil called out to me, inviting me to come and look at something he had discovered. I could see young Bedwyr kneeling on the ground by his feet, his body partly concealed by the stone gatepost. As I stood up in the stirrups to step down from the saddle, I heard an angry, lethal, hissing noise, lightning fast, and saw a flash of movement at the edge of my sight. Then, before I could react, I was hammered by a stunning concussion between my shoulder blades and flung over my horse's head to crash to the ground, unconscious.

I came to my senses in one of the ruined buildings in the fort, beneath the remnants of a sagging roof that extended for about three paces from the gable end before giving way to open sky. As my eyes opened and my vision swam for a few moments, I saw Donuil and Rufio, Derek of Ravenglass, Benedict, Philip, Paul Scorvo, Rufus Metellus and several others, including Huw Strongarm. They were all looking at someone to my left and their faces wavered in my sight during those first few, blinking moments, dissolving and reshaping themselves as my eyes struggled to adjust to the brightness that filled the room. As I lay there, my head ringing, the memory came back to me—the crashing blow against my back, the clang against my helmet and the swooping vision of my horse's ears looming in my face and then passing beneath me. No one had seen my eyes open, and now I heard the sounds of their voices, unintelligible for a time, then sharpening into a babble of discrete words.

It was Donuil who glanced down and saw me watching him, and his shocked reaction, uttering my name, silenced everyone else and brought them closer. Slowly, fuzzily, I raised my arm and waved them all away and they moved back, tentatively, watchful and wary. A new face now bent close to me, that of Mucius Quinto, our senior surgeon since the death of Lucanus and himself almost as old as Luke had been. He laid his hand on my forehead, pressing me back down onto the pallet, and asked me if I knew him. I was astonished to discover that my voice would not respond when I sought to answer him, but I swallowed, then breathed deeply several times and tried again. This time my tongue worked.

"I'm fine, Quinto, " I rasped, in a voice unlike my own. "What happened? Something hit me. Did I fall?"

He nodded, the frown fading from his face as he concluded I was no longer at death's door. "Aye, " he answered. "You fell on your head, from your horse. You were shot, with a Pendragon arrow. "

"A Pendragon arrow?' I digested that for the space of several heartbeats. "Then I should be dead. "

"Aye, you should. " This was Derek's voice, and I could see the concern stamped on his ruddy, bearded face "On two counts, you should be dead, but the arrow hit the blade of the sword across your back, and apparently that's even harder than your head."

Donuil, it transpired, had saved my life by noticing that there was still grease in the pivot wells of the lintel that held the great gateposts. He was amazed that the lubricant had remained in place for more than forty years, and that was what he had wanted me to look at. In standing up to go to him, I had moved my neck out of the bowman's sights, replacing it with the cross slung upper blade of the long sword that hung between my shoulders. Only that sword, made of the skystone's metal, could have deflected the hard shot Pendragon arrow. A mere cuirass would have been pierced and I would have died instantly. Instead, the arrow struck the blade exactly in the centre and shattered upon impact, the force of it slamming the cross hilt of the sword against my helm, concussing me and hurling me forward between my horse's ears, so that I fell to the stony ground head first and remained deeply unconscious for more than an hour. The blade of the sword, when I examined it later, showed not even a tiny scratch, although the thin iron cladding of the scabbard that had housed it was mangled and ruined.

I grunted and grimaced, feeling a stabbing pain now at my right shoulder. I tried to sit up but fell backwards again, my head swimming. Quinto leaned over me immediately, his face crumpled in solicitous concern, his hand reaching for my forehead, but I brushed it away. "Don't do that, Quinto, there's nothing wrong with me but vertigo. Help me sit up. "

He supported me with his right arm, and I leaned on him. Once I had taken several deep breaths, the room settled down again and I could see clearly. I began to feel better, and my deep breathing soon dispelled the nausea that had threatened to overcome me at first. Finally I felt strong enough to sit fully erect, moving away from the support of Quinto's arm. I drew one more deep breath and then looked around at the small group hovering in front of me, watching me with varying degrees of concern on their faces.

"Very well, then, I'm not dead and I do not intend to die, so will someone tell me who it was that shot me?"

Several heads turned towards Huw Strongarm. He stepped forward, flushing slightly, and threw a Pendragon longbow onto my bed, where it landed across my legs. "Owain, " he growled. "The Cave Man. "

Owain of the Caves, the traitor who had deserted us to join with Ironhair, the man I had eventually come to suspect of complicity in the attempt on Arthur's life. I looked into Huw's eyes, knowing the answer to my question even as I asked it.

"Where is he now?'

"He's dead. I wish I could say I killed him, but mine was but one of seven arrows in his corpse when I reached him, and Llewellyn had struck off his head even before I arrived. " Huw paused, and no one else sought to speak during his hesitation. "He had lain hidden, here, in one of the wall towers. He must have hoped to get a shot at you and thought his life well worth the risk, for he knew he'd never get away alive, once he had shown himself. He hit you from no more than sixty paces. Don't know how he missed you the first time, but the second shot was right on target. He must have died happy, thinking you were dead. "

The man had sacrificed his life simply to kill me. Why? And then I recalled what I had seen last, and I knew.

"Where's Bedwyr?"

It was Philip who answered me. "He's outside, trying to mend the covering on the scabbard of your sword. Why, do you want me to send for him?"

I sank back immediately, only then aware of how much I had stiffened in protest at what my mind had told me. "No, leave him. " I looked back at Huw. "He wasn't only after me. He wanted the boy, too. They thought he was Arthur. "

Huw was the only one there who did not yield in the general buzz of speculation. His eyes narrowed, and then he nodded. "Aye, " he growled. "That makes sense. He didn't miss you with his first shot, then. From that distance, the Cave Man never would have missed a mark as big and plain as you. His first shot was for the boy. But the lad was on the ground, and kneeling half behind the gatepost, looking down at the shit in the hole there—people moving between him and Owain, too. First shot missed, hitting the gatepost. Second shot for you, knowing that everyone would run to you, leaving the boy as a clear target. Except that Llewellyn just happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. Suspicious whoreson, Llewellyn One-Eye, trusts no one and likes no strange places. He never lets his guard down, and he sees more than most people do with two good eyes. He saw Owain move to make his first shot, and by the time the second was on its way, Llewellyn had already fired and death was on its way to Owain of the Caves. Good man, Llewellyn, for a suspicious, one eyed, ugly whoreson. "

I smiled at Huw, feeling suddenly very tired. I fought off the weariness and swung my feet over the side of the cot to the floor, bracing myself with my hands on the edge of my bed. The room swayed again, but then held steady, and I forced myself to breathe deeply again.

"Send him to me later, would you? I would like to thank him personally for saving my life. "

Huw Strongarm made a dismissive noise with his pursed. lips. "Llewellyn? Forget that, Caius Merlyn. He won't thank you for thanks, and he won't thank you for making him feel obligated to you for noticing. He won't thank you for anything, in fact, and the best thanks you can give him is to stay far from him and say nothing. "

My smile broadened to a grin and I shook my head. "Can't do that, my friend. Send him. I'll find a way to thank him— a way that he will like. " I paused, wondering how I might even begin to make that last statement true. "You like him, this Llewellyn. And he has your especial trust, I suspect. "

Big Huw nodded. "Aye. As I said, he doesn't look like much—an ugly, ill looking whoreson and that's a fact—but one of my sisters married him some years ago, seeing the man beneath the ill used countenance, and now she thinks she's chosen by the gods and he's the god who chose her. He has been good to her—to her and for her—and to everyone around him, too. Apart from the mess that is his face, there's not a flaw in his make up. He's the best of the best. "

As Huw turned to leave, picking up Owain's bow to take it with him, I stopped him with a gesture of my hand. It was an impulse, and just as capriciously I changed my mind. I shook my head and waved him away again, but still he hesitated.

"What? You wanted to say something?"

"Aye, but it's pointless. Owain's dead. I was merely going to say I wish I could have looked him in the eye one last time before he died. "

Huw nodded again, then he grinned a crooked grin. "Aye, well, you might still look him in the eye, but you won't get much out of him in response. I'll send Llewellyn to you later. "

I watched him go, wondering what he could have meant, but I soon dismissed it and turned back to the others.

"Donuil, is there any word of Connor?"

"He's patrolling the coastal waters with his fleet, hoping to intercept Ironhair in the other big bireme.

"Philip?"

Philip interrupted his conversation with Benedict to face me, and as he did so I held out my hand to him. He grasped my wrist and I pulled myself to my feet, gripping him strongly and using his solid bulk to anchor myself against the unsteadiness that threatened to dump me unceremoniously back onto the cot. Once I had steadied myself, I loosened my grip on his arm. I stood spread legged, still unsteady but feeling the strength sweeping back into my legs with every heartbeat. I looked at Benedict now, over Philip's shoulder, remembering that I had sent him away earlier to look for any signs of Uderic's contingent.

"Ben. Did you find anyone out there?"

He grunted a negative, emphasizing it with a shake of his close cropped head. "We searched for about an hour, but the ground's too hard up here to hold a trail of any kind. Once beyond the end of this valley, there were three separate ways they might have gone without climbing the hills. I suspected they might have split up and gone in all three directions, but I didn't want to split my forces on the strength of suspicion alone, so I brought our people back. "

I nodded, accepting his judgment, and spoke to Philip. "Well, what have you to tell me about Connor?"

Philip shook his head slightly. "Nothing, really. I know nothing more concrete than Donuil has already told you. But Connor said to tell you that he'll sweep steadily north, doubling back as necessary from time to time to make sure the waters at his back are, as he put it, kept clear of offal. He'll stay dose to the coast, though, and maintain a land watch from every galley. Should you want or need him to touch shore, his people will be watching for three equal fires set burning side by side. That will summon Connor. Four fires will summon all the fleet When they see either signal, they'll land with the next high tide. His assumption was that you'll keep penetrating northward, hugging the western shore. "

"Good, so be it" I took my first hesitant step then, and made my way completely around the cot unaided, watched by all of them. When I had done so, I reversed myself and did it again. "I'm fine, " I told them then. "Nothing wrong with me that a short sleep won't cure. Will you leave me now? Wake me if anything happens. If any messengers arrive, I want to hear what they have to say immediately. Thank you, gentlemen. "

They left me alone then, all save Quinto, who hovered nearby, watching me anxiously as I lowered myself back to the cot and closed my eyes. I could tell he was loath to leave.

"What is it, Quinto? What do you want?"

He cleared his throat. "I want you to sleep, Caius. Will you drink a potion if I prepare it for you?"

I opened my eyes again and squinted up at him, wondering whether I could trust the soldier in him to prevail over the physician. "Aye, " I grunted, "providing you can guarantee your potion will not keep me laid out here for days, unconscious. I need to keep my wits about me, much as I need to sleep. If they have cause to wake me, I want to come awake alert and able to do anything I need to do. Can you ensure that?"

"Yes, I believe I can. A simple sedative, to help you sleep, that's all I'll give you. Three or four hours should see its force dissipate. After that, you ought to be yourself again. "

"Ought to be? Not will be?"

He dipped his head sideways. "Ought to be. My calling is physician, not magician. "

"Hmm. So be it. Go and fetch your foul brew, then. "

He left immediately, but by the time he returned I was already deeply asleep, and the potion sat unused on the folding table beside my cot.

TEN

Quinto's sleeping draught was the first thing I saw when I awoke by myself several hours later, just before sunset, feeling completely normal again.

Someone had set a leather basin in a frame beside my. cot, and I rose easily and rinsed my face in the cold water from a leather bucket that hung beside it from a tripod. After that, I went outside to see what was happening.

The fort was bustling, jammed to capacity, bodies moving everywhere. A sprawling community of leather campaign tents had been established in the surrounding meadows. Perhaps because of the brief spell of injury I had endured, my sense of smell seemed unusually acute, and I stood for a while with my head tilted back, singling out the various aromas that filled the late afternoon air: the smell of horses and dung from the huge area at the rear where the horse lines had been set up; heavy wood smoke from hundreds of fires; and then the more elusive scents of cooking meats and bread baking among coals. Someone not far from me was frying smoked, salted ham, and from another direction, fleetingly, came the smell of wild onions and garlic. As the mixture of unmistakable savours entered my nostrils , it brought the saliva spurting from beneath my tongue, reminding me that I was ravenously hungry.

I began to look about me, searching for the familiar outline of the large field cooks' tent that served us as a commissary on campaign. As I did so, I noticed something I had missed before, and my jaw dropped in astonishment as I realized that I must have passed within a few paces of it without seeing it.

The corpse of Owain of the Caves had been decapitated; his head had been stuck on a sharpened stake and set up outside the building in which I had lain unconscious. That was what Huw had been trying to tell me in his cryptic way. Now, as I saw it, with its pallid, waxen, moustached face framed by lank, dull brown hair, all thoughts of hunger fled.

I stepped closer to the atrocious thing, at war within myself. This, I knew, was Pendragon justice, an example set up for others to note and take warning from, and yet a terrible outrage stirred within me, evoked by its mere presence. I wanted to snatch the disgusting thing off its spike and hurl it from me as hard as I could, but I also knew that the last thing on earth I wished to do was touch it. I imagined myself clutching it by the hair and whirling it around my head before I threw it, scattering gouts of congealed blood in a circle, feeling the greasy hair slipping through my fingers. Instead, I merely shuddered in revulsion and forced myself to stand there, close to it, and look at it, remembering the man whose head this once had been.

He had been a ferocious mid successful warrior who had served my cousin Uther well and honourably in his time, fighting throughout Lot's War as one of Uther's most trusted captains. Only after Uther's death, for reasons that would now forever be unknown, had Owain turned away from his service, from his own Pendragon loyalties and from Camulod, selling himself to Ironhair and working thereafter to set that upstart in place as ruler of the Cambrian Pendragon. To that end he had conspired to bring death to Uther's own son, and he had finally, willingly, given up his own life in the attempt to achieve that goal. Why? What land of powers did Ironhair possess that could subvert a man as strong as Owain of the Caves and induce him to turn against his lifelong loyalties? I had asked myself the same question a hundred times before, and I had never come any closer to answering it than I was now. Strangely, as I stood gazing at the lifeless head, wondering vainly what thoughts, desires and drives had filled it during life, I found my horror at its presence leaving me, draining away. I finally nodded to it, gazing into the open, opaque eyes. "Rest then, and settle your own debts with God, " I murmured.

As I turned to walk away, one of the men squatting at a nearby cooking fire stood up, watching me. Though my view of him was obscured by thick smoke, I saw enough of him at first glance to be struck by his physical appearance. Whoever he was, I thought, he dressed to be noticed. He was of medium height, and well made, with a narrow waist that tapered from wide, straight shoulders. He wore a short, startlingly beautiful cape of winter ermine furs, one end thrown back over his left shoulder so that the black tips of its outer fringe of tails hung in a brilliant bar across his chest. White and black were his colours, enhanced by silver metalwork and jewellery. I wondered fleetingly who he was, but as soon as the smoke cleared and I saw his narrow, ravaged, hatchet face, I knew he was Llewellyn One Eye. I stopped short, gazing right back at him and struggling to disguise my reaction to his hideous disfigurement.

Then I turned my head slightly to indicate the staring trophy on the stake, pitching my voice so he would hear me clearly.

"This is your work, Llewellyn?"

He came towards me, walking slowly, clutching a cooked leg of some kind of bird in one hand. When he reached my side, he looked at the head on its stake and bit off a mouthful of meat before he made any attempt to answer me. I felt my hunger come back, stronger than ever, as I watched him chewing. He inspected the impaled head as though he had never seen its like before.

"Aye," he said eventually, speaking around the mouthful of meat he had wadded into one cheek. "It's mine. Does it displease you?"

I felt myself start to smile. "No, he's well dead, and your arrow saved my life. I wanted to thank you."

He looked at me sideways, tilting his head strangely to see me with his single eye, the right one. "Horseshit," he said, disparagingly. "Your sword saved your life, and his next arrow would have been for the boy. I thought you were dead before I loosed my shot. Besides, I was shooting for myself. He was a treacherous whoreson, that one, a disgrace to his name and his people."

"How, and why? Because he fought for Ironhair?"

Now Llewellyn turned to look me full in the face. "No, because he sold himself to Outlanders. He was a Pendragon born and bred, a son of these mountains, and he betrayed his birthright and his people. For that he died. It matters not what the Outlander's name was, except that it was other than Pendragon."

"What happened to your eye?" I had been staring at Llewellyn as he spoke, analysing the startling horror of his face, and the question had left my mouth before I was even aware I was going to ask it. He went very still, and then he cocked his head to one side again, peering up at me with his good right eye, thrusting the disfigured side of his face into grim prominence.

"An accident," he said, mildly. "When I was a boy, apprenticed to an iron maker. I was puddling iron and the metal splashed." I winced at the thought, but he went on as though be had not noticed. "It caught me in the eye and splashed down onto my cheek and nose. The smith pushed my head into a tub of water and expected me to die. I didn't So when the iron drops had cooled, he plucked them out of me... Well, some he had to cut out, I've been told, because the flesh was roasted into them. But I was out of my senses at the time, so I don't remember that You can see the shapes of them, if you look close."

He suddenly leaned nearer to me, cocking his head in an invitation to examine his disfigurement and even though I knew he expected me to cringe and pull away, I looked. Sure enough, I saw the evidence clearly. One large, tear shaped drop had settled on the plane of his left cheekbone, its tail stretching upwards and in towards his eye, where its ferocious heat had blinded him on that side, burning away the eye and carving a channel deep into his lower lid. As it healed, the tension of the scar tissue had twisted and pulled the skin and flesh downward, exposing his eye socket horribly and creating a deep fissure down the distorted flesh beneath the eye to join the large teardrop. Three other drops had landed on his face, as well. The smallest of them was in the hollow of his nose, just above the pad of his left nostril, another fell on the outer end of his upper lip, and the third, almost as large as the main splash, had caught him on the outside of his face, beneath the crest of his cheekbone close to the ear, searing a deep hole there before trickling down the line of his jawbone and melting the flesh as it rolled.

Afterwards, as the flesh healed, the shape and depth of the injuries had resulted in the grotesque facial mutilations that now set this man apart. The entire left side of his face was a sight to frighten children, with a leering, empty eye socket set above a ropy network of scars leaving no discernible trace of normal humanity. Above the edge of his mouth, emphasizing the terrifying differentness of this face from all others, a circular hole the size of a fingernail showed his eye tooth and the gum that held it.

He was staring at me intently, waiting for me to say something that would betray my revulsion. But I felt none.

"Yes, you're right. The marks are plain. Four drops—two small, two larger, one of them huge. At least you still have your teeth."

He glared at me for a moment, and then his face creased into a huge grin. He finished chewing the food in his mouth and swallowed, before sucking at a tooth on the right side of his mouth and rubbing his lips with the back of his hand.

"Huw told me you wanted to talk to me. What was it about?"

"I told you, I want to offer you my thanks, but Huw warned me you would accept no gratitude. Do you still work with iron, or—"

"Did the experience frighten me away?" He laughed, a single bark. "No, I kept at it and I'm an ironsmith now, save when we're at war. Then I'm a Pendragon, first and foremost, and so I fight."

"An ironsmith."

"Aye, you might say iron's a part of me." He laughed again. "It certainly consumed a part of me, but I'm more careful now, by far. Do you know anything of smithing?"

"But little. When I was a boy, I had a favourite uncle who was a master of the craft. A man called Publius Varrus. He taught me something of forging and shaping iron."

Llewellyn stood slightly straighter. "I know the name. You own his great bow now, do you not?"

"I do. How did you know that?"

"Huw told me about you, and I've seen the badge he wears, the one with the arrow nicks in it."

I nodded, remembering with pleasure the time I had matched shots with Huw. Both of us had landed arrows side by side within the tiny circle of the brooch his wife had give® him, filling the space so closely that our arrowheads had left parallel nicks in the upper and lower edges of the silver bauble's inner rim. Huw wore the brooch as proudly as a Roman centurion, might have worn the corona on his breastplate. Another thought occurred to me.

"Tell me, how did you know the Cave Man's next arrow would have been for the boy?"

"I didn't, until Huw told me what you said."

I looked straight at Llewellyn now, assessing the man, gauging his mettle. "And have you any idea why he tried to kill the lad, even before me?"

"Aye, he thought him someone else. Young Arthur Pendragon."

"Hmm. And what do you know of Arthur Pendragon?"

Llewellyn twisted his mouth up in what might have been a lopsided smile, except that it exposed the tooth beneath the hole in his cheek. "He's Uther's son, they say. Sired upon Lot of Cornwall's willing wife."

He took another bite from the leg he held in his hand, and I distinctly heard the juicy sound of the meat ripping away from the bone. "Is there any left where that came from?"

"Aye, or there was when I left the fire. Come." He led me back, and as we approached, the two men who sat there yet stood up.

Llewellyn waved his hand from me to them. "Gwynn Blood-Eye and Daffyd, Merlyn of Camulod. Daffyd's our cook, and better than any you have brought with you, I'd wager. Gwynn Blood-Eye's here because he's the only whoreson in this place who's uglier than me! Sit you."

I nodded to the two men and sat down on a rock, gazing at the whole, spitted carcasses of two fowls that still hung above the fire, the grease from them dripping onto the coals beneath and flaring in small, furious bursts of fire. A large pile of bones lay on a square wooden platter close by Daffyd's feet and a half eaten carcass clung to another spit. As I sat down, the man called Gwynn Blood-Eye, who indeed had one eye that was the deep red of blood, with no discernible iris or pupil, reached down to his side and passed me a wooden board like the one that lay by Daffyd. I thanked him and balanced the thing on my knee as Llewellyn reached across the fire, deftly lifted off another spit and then slid the carcass of the bird free of its spike and onto my platter.

"Eat," he said. "It's duck, basted with pig fat. You'll like it. There's some salt there, in the clay pot." He returned to his own fowl as I began to rip mine apart, heedless of the searing heat of it. I raised a dripping thigh and crunched my teeth into it, burning my lips with hot fat, yet utterly uncaring as the delicious flavour of the hot meat filled my mouth. For a while, there was no more talking around our fire, until I had stripped the bird's bones clean. As I finished it, throwing the last of the remnants into the fire, Llewellyn handed me a cloth to clean my hands.

"You were ready for that"

"Aye, it's the first real food I've eaten in the past two days. I didn't know how hungry I was until I came outside to look around and met you, with that leg in your fist."

"Here." He reached down and handed me a clay pot filled with ale, and I drank deeply. The taste of it was quite unlike anything I had ever tasted before. When I had slaked my thirst, I lowered the pot and looked at him.

'That, I believe, is the finest ale I've ever drunk. Where in the name of God did you get it?"

"You're the stranger here, Merlyn of Camulod. We live here. And that ale was made not five of your Roman miles from where we sit now." As Llewellyn spoke, Gwynn Blood-Eye and Daffyd both rose to their feet, nodded to me and left the fire, heading in different directions, Daffyd carrying the last remaining spitted bird.

I looked inquiringly at my host. "Where have they gone?"

"Who knows? They have things to do and they know we have matters to discuss. You were asking me about the boy, Arthur, before your hunger got the best of you. Had you finished with that?"

"No." I blinked at him, surprised at how he had redirected me to our former conversation. "You had just finished detailing his parentage, which I had thought to be a secret. Where did your information come from?"

"About Uther and his lady love? It's common knowledge."

"Is it, by the Christ? I was unaware of that."

"Well, it's a common rumour, let's say. Few, if any, know the truth of it. When our men returned from Cornwall, after Uther's death, they brought word of his exploits and of his love for the woman. She had a baby son, that much was known. As to whether the brat was Lot's or Uther's, that was anybody's guess. And as for what happened to him, that was totally unknown, to most folks. But then, a few years ago, the rumours sprang up again. Some said he was in Camulod, with you, all along. Others said that you had fled from Camulod and taken the boy with you, and that you were living among the Scots, across the water. Some said the boy was dead, killed in his infant years. I knew nothing and cared less, in those days, because I was too caught up in my own miseries to care about any other's.

"I took no part in Uther's wars because I thought his wars woe no concern of mine. My war was with the folk around me here, who lived in fear of me because of this face of mine. But then, nigh on eight years ago, I met my wife, Martha, and through her, I met her brother Huw, and we became good friends. Since then, I've come to see that not all I had believed was true—most of it was Horseshit, born of self pity. Now I look at life, by and large, through a different eye, you might say, and Huw respects my judgment in most things. So when he told me about you, and about the boy who is your charge, and about who he thought the boy might be, I did some thinking of my own. The lad is Uther's son. Am I right?" »

"What if you are?'

"Why then, the whole world changes, and this whoreson war has found a purpose and a champion. If I am right, then Arthur Pendragon is the rightful king, born to rule in his father's stead, and all this Horseshit over Carthac and that idiot Uderic is pointless. "

"Pointless? How so?'

"Because the real king is with you, in Camulod. All the others are mere posturers! So what we need to do is rid ourselves of all these false claimants—the whole rat's nest of them—and recognize our king, the son of Uther Pendragon. That's why you're here in Cambria, no? To safeguard the boy's interests. "

I cleared my throat. "Well, yes, and no. Arthur is yet too young." I had decided then, and only at that moment, to trust Llewellyn fully. "But there's more to it than that. As his mother's son, he holds a claim to Cornwall, as well. That, more than anything else, is why Ironhair wants him dead. And then, in addition to that, because his mother was the daughter of Athol Mac Iain, once king of the Scots people of Eire, young Arthur has blood claims to that kingship, too. And he is heir to Camulod—not king, mark you, for Camulod will never have a king. He is the great grandson of Publius Varrus of the bow, and great great-nephew to Caius Britannicus, the founders of Camulod."

When I had finished, Llewellyn shook his head slowly. "That is too much information, containing too much danger, Merlyn of Camulod. Why would you tell all that to me, a stranger whom you have never met until today?"

"Because Huw Strongarm trusts you, and I find I do, too, now that I've spoken with you and listened to you. You are strong in your belief in the lightness of the boy's claim to Pendragon Cambria. Would you support him?"

"Of course. I've said so, haven't I?"

"Will you support him now?"

Llewellyn frowned. "Now? How would I do that? He is not here, and you have said he is too young."

"Not too young, yet not quite old enough. He is sixteen, or will be on his next birthday. Right now he needs a teacher, and I think you could be the one to teach him what he needs to know. Would you be willing?"

He slumped back, evidently mystified. "A teacher? Me? The lad would run in fright at the sight of me. Besides, I know nothing worth teaching."

"You don't know the lad, Llewellyn. He would not flinch from the sight of you. And as for your having nothing to teach him, I take leave to doubt that. He is a Cambrian Pendragon, as you are, but he knows nothing of the land or its people. He speaks the tongue, but he does not know the folk. He'll be a warrior of note, I have no doubt of that, yet he knows only cavalry and horses, swords and spears and clubs. He is a big, strong lad, but he's no bowman yet, and he knows nothing of your mountain ways. I would like him to learn these things. No one knows Arthur in this land. That's why the Cave Man tried to kill Bedwyr. But if I bring him here, then everyone will know exactly who he is, because he is with me. Instead I would like you to ride back with me to Camulod, to meet the boy and bring him back here with you, so that he can live a year or so among your clan and learn to be the Pendragon he must become. Would you do that for me? For him?"

"For all of us." He sat silent then, for a long time, and when he spoke again it was with an emphatic nod. "Aye, I would and will. He'll be my prentice. I'll set him to the work of shaping metal, but I'll make him known among the people, too, and he'll be taught the skills he'll need to know—hunting and shooting and living quiet, off the land. When do we go?"

I laughed. "Not before we take care of Ironhair, Carthac and even Uderic. We can't walk away prematurely."

Llewellyn grunted, "Nah, that's already begun, simply thanks to your being here in Cambria. That horseshit with the ambush won't go unremarked or unrewarded. There was nothing there of honour or bravery, and it was clear proof that Uderic has begun to treat with the invaders. He has done little enough to endear him to Pendragon in the past, and any music in his song has become hard to hear, these past four months. This latest treachery will kill him—at the very least, it will kill his designs. You mark my words, Merlyn of Camulod—within the month, you'll have as many Pendragon bows at your command as you have troopers now, and that will bring an end to Carthac and the filth that follows him. With every new Pendragon in your camp you'll take a step closer to uniting all Pendragon under one head. That head won't be Pendragon, true enough, since you are nominally Outlander yourself, but we will at least follow a leader who has Pendragon's interests at heart. "

"What about Huw?"

Once again, the curious stillness I had noticed before descended upon Llewellyn. Now he moved his head minutely to look at me attentively. "What about him?"

I had no answer, yet I felt a lightness in me and so pressed ahead.

"I don't know. I'm merely wondering aloud. I'm an Outlander, as you correctly said. I have no ambition to lead the. Pendragon anywhere in anything. And yet, for them to coalesce, to come together as you have said, they'll need a leader. It strikes me now that Huw Strongarm might be the one. Isn't he some kind of chief among you? I know his family held the land to the south of here, along the coast. It was he who rented holdings there to Liam Twistback, for the raising of his beasts, and I remember him saying his family had held those lands since long before the Romans came. "

Llewellyn sniffed, then nodded his head in a tiny gesture of acknowledgement. "That's true. Huw is a chief. One of our foremost, if you think in terms of claim to leadership. His forefathers have ranked among our best and most able chiefs since pre Roman times, as you have said. But Huw has no desire for kingship. All he wants is peace and the chance to lead his life at ease among his family. "

"But he has been at war for years. When did he last spend . any length of time at home?"

"Long years ago... " Now Llewellyn's face twisted again in what I was coming to recognize as his favourite kind of smile, a tiny dicker of wry amusement. "What are you saying, Merlyn of Camulod? Spit it right out. "

"I am saying, I suppose, that the quickest way for Huw Strongarm to win home in peace might be for him to take upon himself the burden of leadership, don't you agree? He's an honourable man—"

"Horseshit! You can't feed on honour. That's a Roman concept—we have no need of honour. But you're right if what you're saying is that Huw Strongarm is highly thought of among his people. That's a fact, and it's not an easy status to achieve. "

"Well then, we should convince him that he is responsible for helping bring this conflict to an end. Would the people follow him, were he to step forward?"

'They would. I'm sure of that. But would he be willing? That's what I don't know... " He paused, thinking, and then continued. "Let's go back a bit, to what we were talking about earlier—young Pendragon, your Arthur" "What about him?"

"About his father, first. Huw was Uther's closest friend among all our folk, did you know that?" I merely nodded, and he continued. "Aye, well it was more than that, too. Uther was Huw's king, you see. There was no slightest doubt of that in either of their minds. Huw was Uther's man, to the death, and had always been so. That's why he has never had the slightest wish to rule the Pendragon: when Uther fell, the kingship fell, and Huw never thought in terms of kingship for himself. He is, above all else, a king's man, not a king. If Uther ever set a task for him, that task became Huw's life till it was done. " Again he paused, and I waited. "So, it seems to me that Huw Strongarm might stand up and fight to champion the boy, the son of his true king. What think you about that?"

"I think we should ask him, now, while it is fresh in our minds. Where might he be?"

"Not far from here, wherever he is." Llewellyn stood up. "I'll find him and bring him back. Stay you here."

While the enigmatic one eyed man was gone, I sat alone, rethinking everything that had come to pass so surprisingly in the previous hour or so. It was growing dark rapidly now, so that I could barely see beyond the firelight, and I threw some new fuel on the embers that remained in the shallow pit in front of me. It had caught and been more than half consumed by the time Llewellyn returned, accompanied by Huw Strongarm.

I could see from the look on Huw's face that Llewellyn had said nothing about why he had brought him to me. It took almost an hour of talking, during which several of my men came looking for me and were all sent away again unheard, but by the end of the hour, Huw had agreed to my suggestion, backed as it was by Llewellyn's quiet, strong support. He would, he agreed, serve as a rallying point for those of his people who might come to him—his modesty was such that he had serious doubts that any would—and he would, furthermore, prepare the way, and the people of Cambria, for the coming of their true king, Uther's only son, Arthur Pendragon.

I had to bite hard on my lip, hearing those words, for memories of what my brother had told me of another, firstborn son reared up again to frighten me. I stifled the thought, nonetheless, and swore in return to Huw that, if he were as true to this as he had been to Uther, I would be no less true in supporting him, with all the strength of Camulod, in his endeavours to end this present war. And so we were agreed.

By midafternoon of the following day, not a single Pendragon Celt remained in camp. Llewellyn and Huw had begun their work almost immediately, and throughout the morning the Pendragon had been assembling in groups throughout the camp, only to break up again and circulate, spreading the word and then regathering in larger groups. By noon, close to three hundred men had assembled there, vociferous in their support of Huw Strongarm. Huw had addressed them briefly then, amid a crowd of my own troopers attracted by all the activity and excitement, and shortly after that the noisy, colourful Celtic crowd had begun drifting apart and scattering to the winds, to carry the word of Uderic's perfidy and Huw Strongarm's summons to arms to every village and hamlet in the Pendragon lands.

Small in number though their group had been, their passing nevertheless left a certain quiet hanging over our encampment. To keep my men occupied and to expend the useful energies stirred up in them by the morning's events, I set them to refurbishing and refortifying the ancient walls. We would be staying in this place for two full weeks and perhaps even longer, awaiting the return of Huw and Llewellyn, and there was much to do to set aright forty years of neglect and make the place acceptable again as a defensible stronghold.

I joined in the work, stripped to my tunic and glad of the hard exercise as I sweated among a chain of men, passing heavy building blocks from the man behind me to the one ahead, towards a group of our masons working industriously to repair a fallen section of wall. I had been hard at it for well over an hour by the time Derek and Benedict found me, and so I felt no pang of conscience as I walked away from the chain with them, wiping the sweat from my shoulders, neck and face with a rough cloth. A squad of messengers had arrived, Ben said, with word from Tertius Lucca, who was holding the harbours at Caerdyff and Caerwent on the south Cambrian coast, behind us and to the east. Lucca had. received word that a substantial train of supply wagons was on its way north from Camulod. It would proceed directly to him in Caerdyff, and he would redirect it to us.

In the past six weeks, Lucca's troops had found no enemy activity to report. Lucca suggested that Ironhair's shipmasters had finally accepted the loss of the south-eastern harbours and were making no effort of any kind nowadays to approach them. They had learned that lesson, Lucca stated, only after sustaining heavy damage in a succession of all out attacks involving abortive landings, to the east and west of our positions, in the vain hope of surrounding our garrisons. Perhaps, he suggested, some of his troops would now be better employed with us, rather than languishing and growing bored, pent up in garrisons that felt no threat. He could leave a holding force in place, he reported, perhaps one third of his current complement of three thousand, to occupy, patrol and defend the south-eastern coastal harbours. The remaining two thousand could then travel the short distance to us in company with the supply train. On my approval, he said, the reinforcements would be with us in a matter of days.

I thanked and dismissed the messengers before I conferred with my own people. All of them had reservations, as I had myself. The truth was that, in our current situation, where we had had no real contact with the enemy for months, other than the ambush set by our supposed ally Uderic, we had no need of the extra troops. Until we were ready to march again, they simply represented extra mouths to feed.

Benedict, taciturn, as usual, was the only one of my captains who sat silent throughout the discussion, forcing me to ask him bluntly for his thoughts. He then asked me what I had planned for Huw's return, and how many men I expected him and Llewellyn to bring back. He had, of course, laid his finger squarely on the root of our dilemma, and that now forced me to admit that I did not yet know the answer to either of his points, since the first depended almost entirely upon the second. I was reluctant to commit myself to a course of action, I pointed out, since Huw himself had grave doubts that his people would follow him.

This evoked a buzz of comment among my listeners, but it was Benedict himself who silenced them by holding up his hand. This unaccustomed gesture brought him instant attention. He looked at me, eyes squinting against the sun, then looked around at everyone.

"Not worth considering," he said, raising his voice. "Not even tenable." He jutted his jaw pugnaciously, as though expecting to be challenged. "You all know me. I don't like conjecture and I don't make predictions. But I'll make one now, and if you'll think about it, you'll admit I'm right." He turned back to me again. "Huw Strongarm will rule Cambria within the year, free of opposition. He's the natural choice and the perfect man for the task. Ironhair's here with Carthac because there's no organized will right now to drive them out. We're organized, but we can't reach his people in the high hills, let alone fight them on their terms. Besides, we're as much Outlanders as they are, and so we're suspect in the eyes of the Pendragon kinglings. Too many little kinglings, with too many little bands that think themselves armies, and every one of them out for himself, for his own good, with his own little ambitions. Strongarm's no part of that, and had he stood up before now to be counted, he'd be in overall command already. Now he is ready. The Pendragon will follow him wherever he decides to take them, and he'll take them to victory far quicker than anyone else could. So he'll be coming back, and soon, and he'll bring thousands with him. We had better be prepared to move as soon as he arrives, and to serve as a solid platform for his catapult. That's all I have to say."

Derek almost interrupted him before he could finish, with a loud, woofing grunt of approval that grew into an appreciative roar of acclamation as the others joined in the applause. Benedict looked about him almost truculently, flushing with doubt filled pleasure.

I grasped him roughly by the shoulder. "You're absolutely right, Ben. We must be ready here when Huw returns—fully prepared, fit and ready to march." I turned to Philip. "When Lucca's squad is rested, send them back immediately with full approval of his plan. He is to delegate the harbour command to his best subordinate and then bring his two thousand here in person with the supply train, and as many extra rations and supplies as he can provide." I stood up and flexed my shoulders. "Right, then, my friends. We'll proceed as before, since there's not much we can do until the others arrive, but I want your men at their fighting best when we leave here. That might be in a week, or it might not be for several more than that, but in the meantime, I want to see our people training for real war again. We've all grown lazy, I suspect, in the past few months of inactivity. I want to see the evidence that sloth is outlawed, from this moment on. That's all."

I left them there and went looking for hot water, regretting once more the fact that the bathhouse here was irredeemable.

Tertius Lucca arrived within the week, at the head of a massive train of wagons filled with weaponry, supplies and provisions. The day of his arrival was consumed in seeing to the disposition of his force, the allocation of quarters to his two thousand men and an inventory of the wealth he had brought with him. Then, the following morning, a short time before noon, a hard riding messenger arrived from our most northern outpost with the word that an unidentified force, numbering in excess of two thousand men, was converging on us from the north and west In spite of my great hopes for Huw's success in rallying his people, it seemed to me it was yet too soon for such a host to have sprung up, even from Huw's most determined efforts, and so I sounded a general alarm. But hard on the heels of that first messenger, a second arrived almost before our trumpets had stopped clamouring, bearing the word that the approaching force had been identified as Pendragon.

Astounded and delighted, I took advantage of the furore stirred up by the alarm and rode out northward at the head of a hundred cavalry troopers to greet Huw Strongarm on his triumphant return. Instead I found Llewellyn striding ahead of his men, very much in command, and though my welcome to him was no less genuine, I found myself wondering what had become of Huw himself.

Llewellyn came to me directly and grasped my horse's bridle strap. Huw was still in the north, he told me, headed now into the Pendragon strongholds in the east and southeast of Cambria, gathering strength with every day. He had wanted to send these first two thousand south to me, so that I could begin a northward sweep, penetrating the central highlands, where Carthac was creating havoc at the head of a marauding mob of mercenaries. He hoped that I would be willing to use my troops as mobile walls in the valley floors of the mountain ranges, solid bulwarks to confine and demolish the detritus of Ironhair's levies as the Pendragon bowmen flushed them down from the hilltops.

I smiled to' hear Huw's message endorse the exact stratagem urged by Benedict a week earlier. Already I could perceive the change that responsibility had effected in Huw Strongarm: he had left me as a subordinate and an ally; now, scarcely two weeks later, he was addressing me as an equal, and perhaps even as one subordinate to him, submitting orders thinly disguised as requests through his own subordinate commander. I was not displeased by this in any way. Huw had sent two thousand men to me in earnest of his unswerving good faith and was off gathering more. The number surprised me, and I .asked Llewellyn how many men the Pendragon might field.

"In total? More than ten thousand, I would estimate, of fighting age."

"Good God! I had no idea there were so many. Five thousand fighting men, that I could see. It seems to me my cousin Uther commanded that many."

"When? In Lot's War? That was a long time ago. We are a numerous people, Caius Merlyn, and we're farmers before anything else. It's true our farms are small, nowhere near as rich or fertile as yours in the south, but they need equal tending and even harder work because of that. Five thousand was the smallest number of Pendragon men your cousin led, in the final years of the Cornwall affair, but he always left a greater number at home in Cambria, tending the land. We lost too many men down there. The last battle cost us dearly, but now we have recovered. And this war is here, on our own land, in our own fields. We'll win it quickly now, with Huw to lead us and with your help, so every man in Cambria will do his part. Huw should bring five thousand more, I'd guess, and others will come later."

I was still astonished and sat looking about me for several moments before looking back to him. "Let's head back to camp. Will you ride with me, if I offer you a horse?"

Llewellyn looked at me and grinned. "Aye, willingly, but will you unhorse one of your own for me?"

I turned to look at Bedwyr, who had been listening to all of this, and he was already dismounting. Once on the ground, he offered his reins to Llewellyn, who accepted them with a nod of thanks and swung himself easily up into the saddle as Bedwyr caught Rufio's good arm and swung himself up behind him, to ride double.

I watched Llewellyn's mount to the saddle in surprise, and he read it in my face. "Rufio taught me how to. ride," he said. "I learn quickly."

"It would seem you do." I kicked Germanicus into motion and Llewellyn rode beside me on my left, knee to knee, back to our encampment. As we rode, I took up the conversation where we had left off. .

"Five thousand more? How will Uderic react to that, I wonder?"

Llewellyn turned towards me but did not look at me. He kept his head down, his one eye fixed, it seemed to me, on Germanicus's ears. "Uderic? He won't react at all. He's dead." Now he glanced at my face and read my shock. His own face again wore a sardonic grin. "Uderic had difficulties with the word we spread about his conduct with the Outlander Ironhair. He didn't enjoy hearing himself being called what he was, and so he challenged Huw. Should have been a wiser man and simply left, but then, Uderic never was a wise man. They fought. It was brief."

"So now Huw is king indeed."

"Hah! I thought that was all settled between you and him! Huw Strongarm has no interest in being king. Did we not go through all that? Huw's War Chief of Pendragon and that's all he Wants to be. He sees his task as settling the land for its new king, King Uther's son. Mind you, they tried to make him king, after he killed Uderic, but he laughed at them and told them all that's what their problem has been since Uther died—too many people looking to be king, and none prepared to do the heavy work. That shut them up."

We rode in silence after that, and when I broke it again it was to speak of something that had been in my mind for several days, ever since Ben had made his prediction.

"I would like to make Huw a gift of some kind, Llewellyn, a mark of my respect for the stance he has taken. What would be appropriate to give to the War Chief of Pendragon? I could offer him armour, or weapons, but I think he has no need of either—certainly not of the kind we wear and use. Can you think of anything that might please him?"

"Aye, one of those." We had arrived at our encampment, and I looked to see what it was that he had identified so quickly, but nothing obvious presented itself to me. Llewellyn read the incomprehension on my face and pointed straight ahead. "One of those. That big tent of yours."

"What, you mean my command tent?"

"Aye. Huw doesn't have one. There isn't one such tent in all of Cambria save this. What better gift could you present to a War Chief than such a visible symbol of his power? A big, wide, leather tent with a high, lofty roof, where he can assemble and meet with his own leaders in all kinds of weather, warm and dry in the foulest times. That were a kingly gift, were it within your power to bestow it. D'you have another one like it?"

I laughed aloud and slapped him on the back in my delight. "Llewellyn, you are a man of great discernment. It is, indeed, the perfect gift and Huw Strongarm should have one. Not only do I have another, I have a new made one, never used, its leather panels still smelling of smoke and tanning and its poles and guy ropes clean and free of grime or dirt Tertius Lucca brought it with him but yesterday, in one of his wagons—an unexpected gift from the Council of Camulod, for my use. It will be Huw's, instead, because despite the laudable concern of the Council, my own trait there is in perfect condition. Well done, Llewellyn, Well done. Now, is there anything that you would like?"

He answered me promptly. "Aye, there is. I'd like a horse of my own, and a saddle. " He was grinning widely now, the left side of his face twisted. "I find I love to ride. I would not take it with me when I'm with my own, but when I go with you, I'll go in pride and comfort. "

"So be it, my friend. Visit our horse lines and pick out the horse you want then speak with Philip about a saddle. But you know that, once the horse is yours, you'll have to care for it yourself?"

"Aye, Merlyn, I know it. Rufio is a thorough teacher. He's the man you should have teaching young Arthur, not me. "

I grinned and nodded. "I might agree, but Arthur has long since learned everything Rufio had to teach him. Now he teaches Rufe! That's why I need you for him: new tricks, new Cambrian skills and new techniques, to keep the lad on his toes. "

We struck camp the following morning. I had dispatched written messages to Camulod, acknowledging receipt of the supplies and bidding Ambrose to sit there until he heard again from me, since I knew not where we might end up and we had no need of reinforcements at this time. I also sent off messengers to Huw Strongarm, bearing the gift of his new command tent—the messengers who carried it had spent hours the day before learning to erect and diamante it—and apprising him of what we intended once we had penetrated the central highlands.

We would march north and east towards the ancient gold mines of Dolaucothi, where it seemed most likely that Ironhair and Carthac might be found, grubbing for gold in the ancient workings. I invited him to send messengers to us there, since, were we unable to find our quarry in Dolaucothi, we would then face two optional, equidistant choices of route. One, to the north and east again, was a Roman fortification with no Roman name I knew of; to Llewellyn, it was simply the Roman place at Colen, in the middle of Cambria. To the north of that, a full day's march to westward, was Mediomanum, the last of the Roman forts of central Cambria. To the southwest from Dolaucothi, on the other hand, lay the famous fort at Cicutio, a long held stronghold of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix. That would have been my natural choice, had I been free to make it, but the choice of our final destination would be based upon Huw's information regarding the enemy's whereabouts.

Once out of Moridunum that morning, we made our way quickly towards Dolaucothi, heading into the mountain glens that sank deeper and deeper into shadow as the hills surrounding them grew higher. Not a single day passed from then on without groups and bands of silent men joining us from the hills as we moved, swelling our ranks until our numbers rose to top nine thousand. So rapid and so visible was this influx that, despite our newly refurbished stores, the logistics people in our quartermasters' company grew concerned at the number of mouths we had to feed. But food came to us without our seeking it, sent in from villages and hamlets and from solitary farms along our route, few of them ever seen by us, since we kept to the valley bottoms and most of the dwellings we passed nestled in the shelter of the thick treed hillside slopes.

As I sat on a hillside outcrop one morning, reviewing the turnout as my army swept by my perch, I noted the division that had grown apparent in my forces and paid more attention to Llewellyn's Celts than to my own troopers. Dour and silent, grim faced and self absorbed, these newcomers woe different from the Pendragon Celts our soldiers had known before. These were hillmen, the true Pendragon people, born and bred among mountain solitudes that seldom knew the presence of Outlanders, and they held themselves apart from the rest of us with a fierce, distrustful and self centred pride. They made it plain, without words, that they marched with us in answer to the call of their people and their land; they owed no allegiance to us, or Camulod, or any other Outlandish power. They marched in utter silence, for the most part, and they bristled with weapons of all shapes and sizes, the most prevalent among them the great weapon known as the Pendragon longbow. Every man, it seemed, now carried a bow stave as tall as himself, and at least one quiver of long arrows made from the wood of ash saplings and flighted with goose feathers.

The sheer quantity of bows perplexed me, for I knew from my own readings of the chronicles of Publius Varrus and my own grandfather, written mere decades earlier, that these weapons had then been few and precious, numbering in the mere hundreds. Ullic Pendragon, Uther's grandfather, had decreed in those days that the new longbows were the property of the people; no man could own one as his personal possession. Each man served as the custodian of a bow for a time, responsible for its upkeep and well being, then passed it on, at the end of a year, into another's keeping. Many of the bows I was seeing now had been among those protected by that very law and were now fifty, sixty and more years old.

For decades now, Druids had walked these lands searching for yew trees in their journeying, and planting and cultivating new groves of yew wherever they found places suited to their growth. And as increasing supplies of yew staves were brought home, the number of bow and arrow makers had grown, too, and mastery of the skills required to make the weapons had become the greatest art of these fierce folk.

I took note then of the bows themselves and found more room for surprise. All of the longbows I had ever seen before were round in section, each carved with loving care from one dried, cured stave of yew. Some of these I was seeing now were different, apparently rectangular in section like the huge, laminated bow I owned myself, now far more than a hundred years in age arid polished with a patina of untold decades of close care and maintenance. The Varrus bow, as I thought of it, was compound in make up, with a double arched shape—two bows, in fact, above and below the carved handhold at the centre—made in flat layers of some dark, exotic wood backed by hand shaven plates of animal bone and braided strips of sinew, glued and dried to iron hardness, the whole crafted and bound and baked by unknown means in Africa by a long dead Scythian master and defying duplication here in Britain.

When Llewellyn himself passed by me I asked him about these new bows, and he confirmed what I had suspected. They were, in fact, made in laminated sections, although they each possessed the single arch of the traditional Pendragon longbow. Most of them were made of ash, he said, though some were still of the rarer yew. The original round bow required a stave of specific dimensions and properties, thickness and straightness being the first two of these. Since not all saplings grow straight, it followed logically that not all were suitable for making bows. But the Pendragon bow makers remembered that the Varrus bow, on which all their new bows were based, had been laminated in sections. In consequence, some had continued working with the lesser woods which, though they lacked the resilient strength of yew, yet had other valuable qualities: dense, narrow grain and pliability. Someone, then, had discovered that a suitable length of sawn ash, well cured, kiln-dried and straight edged, could be split laterally with great care and then rejoined, bonded with impermeable glue, the pieces reversed so that the grain of one piece opposed and reinforced the other. That done, the resultant stave could be hand planed, shaved and tapered to produce a formidable weapon, lesser in strength than the long yew bow, but nonetheless efficient and deadly when it came to piercing enemy armour, even from great distances , Absorbing that, I thanked Llewellyn courteously and then moved on alone, thinking about what had been achieved in the art of warfare, almost within my own lifetime, here in this land of Britain. The huge longbow itself had sprung from nothingness within a hundred years, inspired by the enormous bow that now rode with my own baggage. The cavalry who rode now in extended formation to my right existed only because I myself had stumbled upon the secret of the stirrups that now supported each trooper's feet. The long, cross hilted sword that hung suspended from an iron ring between my shoulders was one of only three similar weapons in the entire world. The iron ball that hung from my saddle bow, secured by a thong around its short, thick wooden handle and swinging on a length of chain, had first been made by my cousin Uther and was now in widespread use, a lethal, deadly flail that, whirled around his head, gave a man five times his own strength in combat. And the long and slender spears, lightweight and almost flexible yet indestructibly strong, carried by the majority of my own troopers, had sprung from our need to have a weapon that our men could use effectively from horseback, on the run. Even our cavalry, I now realized, had doubled upon itself, expanding its effectiveness, with the development of the Scouts.

As I rode, deep in thought, I realized how easy it had been to take all these weapons and developments for granted, and to assume that everyone possessed them. But of course, that was not the case. Few people, beyond Camulod and Cambria, had ever seen their like; no people were equipped to stand against them, and none had the skills, the years of training or the discipline in fabrication to duplicate them. At that precise moment, it came to me with the force of a revelation that if we used our forces and advantages properly we would truly be invincible in war.

That evening, I convened a meeting. I wanted to share my new found revelation with my companions, my subordinates and my allies. My listeners—among them Llewellyn and several of his captains, as well as my own troop commanders—sat in silence for a long time, mulling over all that I had said. Though much of what I had told them they already knew, none of them, for all that, had seen the truth of it in its largest dimensions. The value of the exposition made itself immediately apparent the following day, implicit in the new air of confidence and good humour everywhere as the commanders communicated their own enthusiasm, mostly by attitude alone, to their troops.

Our northward thrust pressed forward effortlessly and with complete success, and the few concentrations of the enemy that we encountered woe exterminated mercilessly by the swarming hillmen who ranged the hills above and ahead of us. Very few of them escaped the lethal hail of arm long arrows, and those who did flee with their lives lost them soon afterwards, when their inevitable descent from the heights brought them into the ken of my massed formations. Within days of setting out from Moridunum, I had joined the fighting on the high ground, leaving my heavy troopers and infantry formations far below and leading my lighter Scouts up into the hill passes. Our presence there restricted the enemy's movements to the hilltops and crests, where Llewellyn's bowmen dealt with them as farmers deal with pests, trapping and destroying them.

For all my hard riding, nevertheless, I had blooded my sword only once, in a fleeting skirmish with some fleeing Cornishmen, by the time we reached the abandoned gold mines at Dolaucothi. Huw Strongarm had arrived ahead of us, I knew, because word had come back to me the previous day, from the leading party of Llewellyn's bowmen, who were ranging far in advance of our troopers in the valleys below. They had made contact with Huw's people, who were ranged among the hills to the north and east of the valley closest to the gold mines. Llewellyn's forces had occupied the southern and western slopes, keeping behind the crests and exercising great care to ensure that the mob of Cornish and mercenary levies in the valley remained unaware of their presence until the infantry and heavy cavalry had arrived to seal all the exits. Confident of Philip's ability to marshal our main forces, I kept to the higher valleys, in the hope of being able to bring my Scouts to a hillside position that would allow us to strike downward.

We were within sight of the last ridge remaining between us and the site of the anticipated battle, however, when a storm of noise erupted ahead of us, and I knew that someone had been unable to wait for the proper moment I never discovered who or what caused the premature outbreak of fighting, but the rapidly swelling noise told me clearly that battle had been joined in earnest Cursing with frustration, I signalled to my men and led them forward as quickly as we could go.

Unfortunately, the terrain in which we found ourselves precisely at that time made it impossible for us to build momentum, and our advance quickly lost all coherence as men and horses surged this way and that among loose boulders and deep scored gullies that defied efficient progress. I had an immediate lesson in why and how cavalry is useless in mountainous terrain. I set Germanicus at an ascending track that looked like a wide and much used game path, but even as his massive haunches thrust us up the hillside, the men on either side of me had to fall back as the track narrowed rapidly and finally ended at the precipitous edge of a ravine. I reined him in hard and swung him left again, downhill, and had to lean far back in my saddle, braced hard in my stirrups, as he picked his way delicately downward, following the ravine's edge. I could hear someone else coming down behind me, but I did not look back to see who it was; I was too busy gauging the confusion among the other Scouts scattered along the hillsides and the valley floor below me.

I found a place where I could cross the ravine, and after that the going improved slightly, so that I was able to make better speed towards the crest of the ridge that concealed the fighting. I came to a tumbled rock pile just beneath the crest and Germanicus slowed again, before picking his way around the pile and gaining a flat surface that edged another ravine, this one small and shallow enough to leap. I stopped him at the lip and turned him around, leading him back as far as I could to give him at least a few paces before he launched himself. Then, as he surged forward again and settled himself for the leap, I saw a man come into sudden view above me, on a ledge above the spot where we would land. He held a spear, angled back for the throw; the leading fingers of his left hand were pointed at me as he balanced himself and then launched his missile. It was a long, heavy spear, and its shaft was warped, so that as it spun in flight, its butt end wavered in a circular motion. I saw the long, sharp, barbed head clearly as it arced towards me, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it as my mount leaped clear of the ground and sailed forward. As we rose in that great, uncoiling leap, the spear's angle of flight steepened rapidly and the weapon fell away in front of me. I had just begun to breathe a prayer of thanks when I heard it strike my horse. It hit with a solid, wrenching sound. I felt the great beast beneath me flinch in mid air as his head snapped back and he grunted in agony. Then his knees hit the ground on the far side and he fell forward, throwing me over his head.

So stark, so agonizingly detailed was my vision of what was occurring that it seemed time itself had slowed down, enabling me to retain all of my faculties and react instantaneously. I landed, somehow, on my feet, sprawling forward but not falling; my sword hilt was already in my hand without my being aware of having unhooked it. I stripped away the scabbard and threw myself at the slope, bounding upward to where the spear thrower crouched, axe now in hand, waiting for me. I knew Germanicus, my faithful friend of many years, lay dead or dying behind me, but I did not look at him. I concentrated only upon scrambling up the steep slope to the top of the knoll. His killer rushed forward as soon as I arrived, to cut me down like a tree, but I was still possessed by the same preternatural awareness that had come upon me earlier and I skipped away easily from his clumsy, flailing rush. His scything blow came nowhere close to me, and the edge of his enormous axe hit the ground where I had been, striking sparks from the stone. The force of his swing had unbalanced him and as he staggered forward, trying to right himself, the short sheepskin vest that was his only upper body covering flapped up and forward, baring his arched back. I sprang towards him then and smashed him with a full, two handed, overarm swing that caught him clean edged and cleaved through his waist, a cut so clean and deep that, in pulling my blade away, I sliced through the guts of him and cut him in half. It may have been the rage that fuelled me, but I have never struck any other man as hard or as savagely as I did that man, and the long, sharp tongue of the skystone sword sliced through him so easily that he screamed long after he had seen his severed lower half kicking in front of him.

I stepped back from him, unsurprised and unimpressed, and then I heard running steps approaching. I glanced over my shoulder and saw three of his companions rushing at me, one with a spear and two with short, Roman style swords. Almost without thinking I struck the head from the thrusting spear and spun on my right heel, whipping the sword about again in a complete circle to decapitate the spearman. As his body reeled off to one side, I dropped to my right knee and drew back my sword arm so that my hand almost grazed the ground by my ankle. The first sword bearer was coming on much too quickly and had realized his error, but before he could slow down he died from a long, stabbing thrust beneath his breastbone. I jerked my point free, sprang to my feet again and launched myself at the third man. To his credit, he hunched his shoulders and, throwing up the small round shield he carried, came straight towards me. He was helmetless, and I cleaved his skull before his short sword could begin to come anywhere close.

Then I was alone on top of the knoll, whirling again to face the sound of feet scrabbling against the stony surface of the hill's flank. But even as I began to launch myself towards the sounds, my sword arm whirling high, I saw the horsehair crest of one of my own helmets and then Donuil's face surged into view beneath it. I grounded my point immediately and reached out to pull him up to join me, and we both stood wordlessly, looking at the carnage around us. Small knots of men were fighting everywhere, but the enemy were fighting with the desperation of doomed men and they were dying quickly, in large numbers, most of them picked off by the deadly arrows being fired from the ridge above us. One massive, huge bellied man, swinging a long, clumsy looking blade, was thrown into a gully by the force of an arrow that struck him just above the ear, plucking him off his feet and hurling him aside as though he were weightless.

I became aware then that Donuil was shouting at me. There was noise everywhere, and apparently I had been deaf to all of it for some time. I shook my head and forced myself to listen. Donuil was asking me if I was hurt, or wounded, and that surprised me until I looked down to see myself covered in crimson; my armour, my tunic, my arms and hands and the sword I gripped were all running with blood, and I experienced a surge of fear as I thought, for a moment, that all of it was mine. But I had escaped unscathed.

I shook my head and looked about me again, this time taking better note of all that I was seeing. The fighting had died down and now only a few fierce, widely separated struggles were still being waged. Murder was being committed before my eyes, for men were throwing down their weapons, attempting to surrender, and were being killed out of hand, mainly by arrows from the ridge above. I drew a deep breath and ordered Donuil to find our trumpeter and sound the recall, and as I spoke I heard the tremor in my voice. He looked at me, wordlessly, then turned and disappeared over the edge of the knoll again.

I walked stiff legged to the other side of the small eminence. I do not remember going down to my horse, but I found myself kneeling by his head, staring through tears at his noble face and at the milky glaze that was already forming in the one large eye that I could see. The spear had pierced him cleanly, plunging deep into his chest even before its butt lodged against the ground and the full weight of his plunging corpse fell upon it, hammering the point home to burst his great heart. For almost a score of years, this magnificent beast had borne me bravely, offering nothing but total obedience and love in return for the meagre attentions I bestowed upon him. Now the spectacle of his egregious death unmanned me completely and I sat down and wept, leaning my back against his shoulder and laying my left arm flat along his solid, silky neck. All around me, strewn among the rocks and gullies of this inhospitable place, the bodies of dead and dying men lay like discarded garments and lacked any power to move me to grieve for diem. Their deaths had been a natural consequence of their lives as warriors and mercenaries. The death of my noble and unselfish friend Germanicus, on the other hand, was intensely personal, and it overwhelmed me with a sense of loss and destitution.

Some time later, I felt Donuil's hand upon my shoulder and I stood up, dry eyed by that time, and followed him to where he had tethered another horse for me. We rode in silence to meet Huw Strongarm.

The victory, Huw told me later, had been much greater than I had realized. The invaders had been summoned to Dolaucothi in numbers far surpassing our expectations, gravitating towards the gold mines in large bands. Surprised from the north and the south simultaneously, however, they had been broken and routed, their ranks decimated and devastated by the Pendragon bowmen on the hillsides above them. The survivors, thousands of them despite their enormous losses, were now in full flight westward, back towards the sea, harried and pursued relentlessly by the terrifying hillmen who could strike men dead with their long arrows from nigh on half a mile away.

Huw was in high spirits, full of excitement and enthusiasm, and he seemed larger than I remembered him, far more regal. It took me only moments to identify the change in his appearance, and he saw me notice it and broke off what he had been saying, looking at me strangely.

"What?" he asked. "What is it? You look... Is something wrong, Merlyn?"

"Your helmet," I replied, shaking my head. "I recognize it, though I've never seen it. It belonged to Ullic Pendragon. I've read descriptions of it in my uncle's books. But it must be a hundred years old, and yet it looks new. How can that be?"

His eyes flared in surprise, and with both hands he removed the war helmet and held it out to me. The head of the great golden eagle that fronted it looked alive, so fierce were its eyes. The huge wings were folded on either side of the helmet's dome and the spread tail feathers fanned out and down to cover his shoulders. 'Take it," he said. "Look closely. This bird was in the air, last year. Ullic's was similar, but this is mine, new made for me." I examined the eyes, made of glass or polished stone, and the precise way the neck feathers had been arranged over the helmet's brow. "The eagle helmet is the ceremonial helmet of the War Chief of Pendragon, Merlyn, and each new War Chief receives his own. Uric and Uther were both King, as was Dergyll ap Griffyd, but only Ullic was both King and War Chief, so he had the helmet. I am the first War Chief of all Pendragon since Ullic. "

I handed the helmet back to him with the reverence it deserved, and he led us then to where his huge new tent was being erected and his senior sub chiefs and captains were already assembling to await his next dispositions. As I listened thereafter to the details of his planning and the way he absorbed and adjusted to every new report being brought to him, I found my excitement rekindled, and I felt myself more able to accept the aching loss of Germanicus with a resigned pragmatism.

For the following three weeks, we stormed through the mountain passes of western Cambria, leaving a trail of slaughter in our wake. We reached the western shore at the end of that time to find the remnants of Ironhair's embattled levies drawn up along the strand, facing us defiantly behind crude and hastily made fortifications. Their evacuation plans had fallen into ruin. The fleet that should have been there to carry them away to safety had failed to meet them, and there was no sign of its coming. They were vulnerable to siege, starvation and thirst, crammed into a narrow space backed with saltwater and bare of any kind of vegetation other than the wrack of seaweed cast up by each high tide. Yet still they refused to surrender, fearing, I had no doubt, the total lack of mercy shown by the Pendragon to any of their ilk.

By the end of the third morning of the "siege, " the defenders were completely encircled and at the mercy of the Overwhelming superiority of the Pendragon besiegers.

I sought out Huw Strongarm and asked his blessing to return with my people to Camulod. Ironhair's invasion, to my eyes and his, was over. The principals, Ironhair himself and Carthac Pendragon, had escaped unscathed, as far as we knew, their bid for mastery in Cambria having failed abjectly. As surely as Ironhair's army had expected to be rescued by a waiting fleet, I, too, had expected to see signs of Connor Mac Athol's presence in the waters off the coast. As neither fleet had been seen, my conjecture was that they had met at sea and, dependent upon the outcome of the battle, either fleet could materialize at any time. Whatever developed, however, Huw now had sufficient strength surrounding the enemy bastion on the beach to handle it. He did not need our continuing presence, or the aggravation of continuing to feed us when we might be better employed at home in Camulod.

Huw believed that Ironhair and Carthac would be likely to return, but not for another year, at least. By that time, Cambria would, under his leadership, be unassailable. A spirit of unity among the Pendragon had been unknown for long enough now—since the death of Uther—that its nearly miraculous re-emergence gave it an exceptional fire and vigour. Should Ironhair invade again in days to come, Huw would request our assistance again, in return for his wholehearted support of young Arthur's claim to Cambria as Uther Pendragon's son. I told him then about my agreement with Llewellyn, which would bring the lad to Cambria the following year, and Huw immediately relieved Llewellyn of his current duties and released him to return to Camulod with us. We two then embraced as friends and equals, and shortly afterwards I turned my two half legions around and led them home to Camulod. We had been away from our Colony for nearly half a year.

ELEVEN

Autumn had already touched the trees with its mordant breath by the time we came down from the highlands and began to approach Camulod from the northwest, having made our way without incident from Dolaucothi in the central hills. We travelled down to the southern coast of Cambria and thence eastward along the littoral, collecting our holding forces from Caerwent and Caerdyff in passing. Then we forded the river mouth to the west of Glevum at low tide—a relatively simple task at summer's end—and struck inland, south and east, to skirt Aquae Sulis and find the great road running south from there to Camulod. Pleased though we were to be going home, we were nevertheless strangely subdued; an air of dissatisfaction hung over us, born of the barely mentioned but inescapable conclusion that it had primarily been the Pendragon Celts, not the forces of Camulod, that had beaten the invaders. We knew we were the anvil against which the Celtic hammer had crashed down to smite and flatten the enemy; it was our solid, unyielding weight against which they had found themselves trapped and crushed. Llewellyn himself had constructed the analogy. But our Camulodian pride was not accustomed to accepting a secondary role, and so many of our number felt discontented and unfulfilled, believing themselves to have achieved nothing of moment.

Needless to say, the mood of our army lightened as we' grew ever closer to Camulod and the comforts of home. My men were looking forward to removing their armour and taking their ease for a spell; the thought of making love to a wife or sweetheart was present in the mind of every man who rode with us, and I was no exception.

Our homecoming was both triumphant and chaotic. Never before had an army returned victorious to the Colony with so few casualties—less than a hundred men had died in the summer long campaign, and no more than three hundred had been wounded. The chaos, meanwhile, was precipitated mainly by the arrival of thousands of hungry mouths. Notwithstanding the fact that our advent had been expected and awaited, the abrupt appearance of our swarming numbers caused immediate dismay and consternation among the Colony's quartermasters, for as Publius Tetra, my own senior campaign quartermaster, had pointed out to me days earlier, it is one thing to contemplate the existence of six thousand legionaries, knowing that they once belonged and lived in one place. It is quite another matter to overlook the fact that those six thousand have another thousand in attendance upon them, and then to see full seven thousand living men descend upon your camp, eyeing your stores and granaries.

Thanks to the foresight of Tetra and his fellow quartermasters, however, we had been at pains to annul the impact of our arrival from that viewpoint, at least; I had sent organized hunting parties out to scour the land for game in the last five days of our approach, and we brought wagons laden with fresh meat and even grain, gleaned from the granaries of those new garrisons we had passed by. Heartened by the new strength offered them in those outlying areas, and encouraged by the prospect of a new, safe and bountiful harvest within the month, the farmers in three communities had been grateful and happy to supply us with their surplus at summer's end.

Another, unforeseeable aspect of the chaos arose from the number of guests in the Colony who had been, with differing degrees of patience, awaiting our arrival. I learned immediately that Connor Mac Athol was in residence, having arrived mere days earlier to find his brother Brander already there, also awaiting me. Ambrose and Arthur had returned the previous month from Northumbria, too, expecting to find me already returned from Cambria, and Ambrose had brought several of Vortigern's senior advisers back with him. They had come, ostensibly, to meet and confer with me about the expedition I would lead northeast the following year, but in reality Ambrose's intent was to demonstrate to these powerful men—and through them to their king—that Camulod, which no one among them had ever seen, was indeed what we had said it was: a prosperous and self sufficient colony and a source of allies far richer than the five hundred Scouts Ambrose had led forth. Finding me still from home, Ambrose had been playing host to the Northumbrian leaders ever since, and those duties had expanded to include Brander, from the moment of the Scots king's unexpected appearance with a full retinue that included his wife, Salina, her niece, Morag, and a round score of the Scots chieftains who were his counsellors. And as though that were not enough, an entire delegation of eleven bishops had then arrived under the leadership of the elderly Bishop Enos, who had ministered to my Great aunt Luceiia. They, too, had come seeking me.

I discovered all of this from Dedalus, whom we found awaiting us at the head of a magnificent honour guard when we reached the boundary of Camulod at the great north south road. The protocols of welcome and entry to the Colony quickly taken care of, Ded and I rode knee to knee while he warned me of how many people would try to claim my attention. When he had done, I laughed at the irony of my thoughts of Tressa and the wishes I had had so recently. I shared my thoughts with him and he laughed with me, his laughter softer than mine and rich with sympathy.

Moments later, we rounded the last bend and saw the walls of Camulod ahead of us, crowning the hill, and we were immediately caught up in a whirlwind of welcome and felicitations that swept all of us away.

A succession of images and partial memories is all that remains to me. I know I met and greeted Brander and his wife, Salina, and Bishop Enos, but I can barely recall the separate groups that escorted each of them. Those faces, all strange to me, blended into a welter of inconsequential greetings. I do remember thinking that since the Eirish Scots were recognizable by their bright colours, and the clerics by their homespun, ankle length robes, then the others who were strange to me must be the Northumbrians who had arrived with Ambrose.

Ambrose was the first to reach me, and as I embraced him, hugging him close, I looked about me for Arthur, and I remember the keen disappointment I felt when I saw that he was not among the crowd who surged to greet me as I stepped down from my horse. Then Tressa moved forward shyly, and my heart soared with delight as I released my brother and turned to her with open arms, drinking in her beauty. She was dressed all in green, her gown a drape of some fine, soft material that moulded to her every curve and closed my throat up tight with love and longing. The noise of the surrounding crowd fell away in my ears and I lost consciousness of all who surrounded us, my entire attention focused on the glorious young woman who had come to take me to my home and to her bed. She approached me quickly, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling, but then she stopped short, her hands grasping my elbows as she leaned slightly backwards, gazing up at me with eyes suddenly awash with unshed tears. I stooped to place one arm about her waist, and all at once my arms were full of her and I lifted her high, as though she were weightless, to bring her mouth to mine, and all about me I could hear the strangely distant sounds of laughter and applause. Thereafter, from the moment when I set her back upon her feet, I held her tightly by the hand, keeping her by my side as I passed among the throng of well wishers who crowded the courtyard.

The hours that followed seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, punctuated only by entreaties from each of the people waiting for me that his need to speak with me was more urgent than anyone else's. In each instance I smiled and promised to meet with him at my first opportunity, while behind my smile I wondered how and when I could find, or make, time for any of them when my overpowering concern was focused upon my own burning need to be alone with Tressa.

At last there came a moment when the three of us were almost alone for the first time since my arrival. I took my brother aside, holding him by one elbow and keeping Tressa close to me with my other hand as I requested the few others in the room to pardon us. Then, as soon as we were alone, I released Ambrose's arm and stepped away to lean against a wall, draping my arm across Tressa's shoulders. Ambrose watched me as I did so, his eyes crinkled in a smile.

"I am at your service," he said, bowing slightly, his eyes amused. 'Tell me what you want."

"I want to spend some time alone with Tress. That's what I want, first and above all else, and I'll be disappointed if you're not already aware of that. Then I want to know where Arthur is and why he is not here. And then I want your insight into the reasons why so many people want to talk to me, because I have to find some order in which to meet with them. I can't sit down with all of them at once, and each of them seems to think his need is paramount Connor has news I want to hear, I have no doubt of that, and I'll speak to him first. But until I know what all the others want, I can make no decisions. So, what do you know?"

His smile did not waver. "In order of importance? Very well. Your first urgency should be your own. Take Tress and disappear until this evening. I will make apologies for your... tiredness. Your second urgency is Arthur. The boy's in love, and that is the only thing that could ever seduce him into being away when you arrived. In his defence, we had no idea you would arrive so soon. The word we had was that you would arrive tomorrow, at the soonest. Then your messenger reached us yesterday with the news that you were ahead of expectations, but by then Arthur had already gone, with Shelagh and young Morag. They have gone hunting, and will be home this afternoon. Arthur will be sick with disappointment to have missed your coming. He's been talking about it for weeks now. You'll see great changes in him, don't you agree, Tress?"

Tress nodded, smiling at me. "Aye, he will that," she whispered.

Ambrose continued. "Connor you've decided to see already, and you can do that as soon as you come back up from the Villa. As for the others, Brander has been waiting longest and must leave immediately, once he has spoken to you, but his request is of no great or worrisome moment— I mean, it is to him, but should not be to you. It's not even you he wishes to speak to, really, but Huw Strongarm. He is seeking Huw's permission to move Liam Twistback and his cattle breeders back onto Pendragon land for a time. It seems the clime in their new island home does not lend itself sufficiently to such operations. I offered to pass on his request and assured him I could see no difficulty in the granting of it, but he feared that perhaps Strongarm himself might have come to grief in the war, so he wished to speak to you in person. But you have been long in coming and now he is fretting, wishing to be gone again, back to his own duties. .. " He paused then, reflecting, before he went on. "My Northumbrian guests can await your pleasure. They are in no particular hurry. Bishop Enos, on the other hand, I cannot speak for. I have no idea what his mission consists of, or what time constraints may press upon him. You will have to be the judge of that. That's all I can tell you. My suggestion would be Connor first, then Brander, since he is a king, then Enos, and then the Northumbrians. "

"So be it. That's the order I'll adopt. Now, can you get us out of here without our being seen?"

Before Ambrose could answer, Tress turned in my arm and brought one hand up to lay her fingers over my lips, pressing me to be silent. She pointed out that neither she nor I could be so rudely selfish. She had waited half a year for me to come home to her, she said, blushing to be speaking so openly in front of Ambrose; another half day would be sufferable. I attempted to interrupt her on several occasions, but each time the insistent pressure of her fingertips against my lips kept me from speaking out, and as I listened, I reluctantly acknowledged the truth of what she was saying. Ambrose stood silent, throughout all of it, watching us intently. Finally I nodded, mute. Tress read my submission in my eyes and removed her hand. I stooped and kissed her briefly, then straightened again to look at Ambrose over her head.

"Well, " I said, "such willing self sacrifice demands respect. Where will we find Connor?"

We met with the admiral in Ambrose's day room, where we closed and locked the door behind us to ensure that we would be undisturbed. It was cool, almost cold, with that hint of winter that insinuates itself into all places unlit by the sun on short, bright autumn days. Ambrose lost no time in lighting the fire that lay ready in the brazier, and while he did so I went directly to the chest in which he kept his mead and poured a small cup for each of us, gently bidding Tress to sit and let me wait upon her. By the time I turned around with the mead for Connor and Tress, the two of them were already deep in conversation, talking about the new Scots settlement in the islands of the far northwest. I handed each of them a cup and then held one ready for Ambrose when he rose from in front of the brazier, rubbing pieces of ashy grit from his knees. I saluted each of them with my raised cup, and we drank together. After I had sat down, I looked inquisitively at Connor, who then immediately launched into what he had come to tell me, half story, half report.

As I had suspected, he had intercepted Ironhair's fleet on its way to evacuate the Cornish mercenaries. The meeting was accidental, just after daybreak on a windless morning, when the surface of the seas was obscured by drifting fog. When the fog cleared, the two fleets were in plain sight of each other, and Ironhair was disadvantaged by being between Connor's vessels and the too close, rocky shores of a wide bay. The fleets were almost evenly matched, Ironhair with his bireme and twenty galleys and Connor with his own bireme and eighteen galleys. But Ironhair was also saddled with an enormous fleet of smaller vessels, mainly fishing boats and shallow draft barges, destined for the shore where he had planned to meet his levies upon their withdrawal from the interior and Dolaucothi.

Ironhair surprised Connor by attacking at once. His massive bireme heeled hard over as its oarsmen put their backs into angling the huge craft out from the shore towards the Scots admiral's vessel, building up quickly to something approaching top speed almost before Connor had had time to assess what was happening. Once he saw what his enemy intended, however, Connor took immediate evasive action, swinging his bireme to the right and then angling back immediately, hard left, as the approaching ship changed course to meet his first feint. As he did so, he released the attack signal to his fleet, turning them loose against the assembled shipping that stretched in an undisciplined sprawl along the coastline, and from that moment on he gave all his attention to the task of dealing with the other bireme.

For more than an hour, he said, the two great vessels swept and cavorted in a dignified yet deadly dance, each captain seeking to outmanoeuvre and out sail his opponent and to put his own vessel into the winning position. From the outset it was clear that Ironhair's plan was to ram Connor's ship, crushing its hull beneath the waterline with the huge, metal clad ramming horn that projected from his bow. Connor's plan, on the other hand, was to bring his craft alongside his enemy's and capture it, and this desire forced him into a defensive, evasive role. He would await the enemy ship's forward rush and then sweep clear of its path , to one side or the other, before cutting back across its wake and positioning himself to await its next attack. In this, Connor had one massive disadvantage, for his desire to capture the enemy vessel, rather than simply destroy it, exposed him to a hazard that he could not match.

At each pass, the catapults on Ironhair's raised rear deck hurled pots of blazing oil towards Connor's sails, and although most of these missiles fell harmlessly into the sea, the fire fighting parties on Connor's decks were hard pressed to smother and contain the flames from the three that did land on the fighting platforms, smashing against the dry, pitched wood and throwing streams of blazing oil in all directions to ignite timber, cordage and human beings alike. These fire fighting duties were carried out grimly and in double jeopardy, since the danger of the flames—and there is no greater danger on a ship at sea—was enhanced by the danger from flying arrows. Bowmen on both vessels exchanged heavy volleys, every time they came within range. Connor told me that he had wished passionately for a contingent of Pendragon bowmen on his rolling, pitching decks, since he could see plainly how the superior speed and strength of the Pendragon longbows would have sharpened the edge for him in such a conflict.

Connor's principal strategy, however, involved a manoeuvre on which his crew had been working for some time, one that he carefully held in reserve until the time was right. Connor Mac Athol played a wily game that made his efforts to evade attack seem ludicrous and cowardly. At first, each sideslip away was without design, save that whichever way he avoided the enemy's charge, he cut immediately across their wake and withdrew to a safe distance. Soon, after several of these flights, his men could hear the jeers from the enemy vessel as they passed by. But that was what they had been waiting for; they had been working hard to earn the enemy's scorn. Now they began to work their master strategy, aiming each lumbering evasion to move themselves subtly closer to the shore. Finally one swift attack, as it went hissing by them, took the enemy vessel into the confines of the bay itself and directly towards the shallow coastal shoals. This time, as soon as the enemy ship had passed, Connor gave the signal and the driving drumbeat of the overseer changed immediately. The rowers on the left all shipped their oars for one long stroke, while those on the right dug deep and heaved, spinning their massive vessel so that its prow now lay towards the enemy's stern, within half a bowshot's distance. The left oars dipped, the tempo of the drumbeat escalated, and Connor's ship went leaping in pursuit of the other bireme, which found itself, for the first time, in the role of prey and in rapidly shoaling water.

The enemy ship's captain was now practically helpless. He had grown careless, convinced of his own superior ship handling skills, and had underestimated the man against whom he was pitched; it was a fatal error. Beneath his hull the water was growing shallower with every stroke of the oars, yet he could not break to either side without exposing himself broadside to Connor's ram. Instead, showing great courage and determination, he attempted to alter the inevitable by stopping his ship dead in the water. In the space of a single oar stroke, all his sweeps started back paddling, cutting his vessel's headway so abruptly that Connor's bireme seemed to leap forward, closing the gap between the two craft so suddenly that Connor himself was almost completely taken by surprise. It was a brilliant move, and Connor found himself admiring it even as he moved to counteract it, changing his own craft's heading so that it would sweep alongside the enemy instead of ramming it directly in the stern.

As the two vessels closed, Ironhair's oarsmen struggled to ship their oars, swinging them up and inboard, and they might have succeeded had Connor's bireme not been one oar stroke too close, moving too swiftly, and one beat ahead of them in reacting. Connor's left banks of oars swept up towards the vertical moments before the other bireme's right banks attempted to do the same, and the overtaking vessel swept along the slower one's right side, shearing the rising oars like icicles hit by a stick, smashing them to kindling and creating havoc, carnage and utter destruction among the rowers, who, chained to their sweeps, were cut down by jagged flying splinters and flailing oar stumps. Only a few benches of rowers towards the bow of the stricken vessel were able to ship their oars in time, but even they fell victims to the chaos behind them.

While the left banks of oars were high out of the water, the front right quadrant of Connor's rowers stroked again, driving their bireme sideways into their quarry. As they did so, the two vertical gangway towers fore and aft slammed down to drive their holding spikes into the other ship's decking, creating bridges to the other ship, and Connor's Scots surged forward in a screaming tide.

Ambrose, Tress and I sat spellbound as Connor described the encounter. The ensuing fight was short and decisive, he said, and he was aided by the fact that his men were not slaves and all could fight. Connor took the bireme into his possession and threw its crew, save only the slaves and leaders, overboard, to drown or swim.

Only then did he give his attention to what was happening with the remainder Of his fleet. The entire shoreline was littered as far as the eye could see with the wreckage of the smaller vessels that had sailed up from the south in convoy with the fighting ships. Eventually, he would learn that his Scots had won a great victory, inflicting huge losses on the enemy, sinking nine of their twenty galleys and crippling and capturing five others. Only six managed to escape completely. The price of the victory was three Scots galleys sunk with all hands, and two set afire. There were many survivors picked up from all five of these vessels.

I was glad to hear of the victory, but I was afire to find out about Ironhair and Cardiac, and Connor's news on that topic stunned me. Neither man had been aboard the bireme. The man who had captained the ship was captured and he told Connor that Ironhair had not been with the fleet, nor had he been with the armies in Cambria. He was not even in Cornwall and had not, in fact, been seen by anyone in more than two whole months. He was away, the man said, with Carthac, replenishing his armies.

Upon learning that, Connor had set out to find me immediately, first sailing north to where Huw's forces penned the hapless enemy upon their narrow strip of beach, then heading swiftly south and east to intercept me at Caerdyff. Too late to find me there, he had struck southward again, to find his brother Brander's fleet anchored at the point closest to Camulod. From there, he came inland, arriving at the Colony ahead of us.

Connor's revelation about Ironhair came as momentous and unwelcome news to me, for since the outset of his tale I had been convinced that the ending would involve the capture or death of my enemy. To learn that he was still alive and still a threat appalled me and left me speechless. I was conscious of the pressure of Tressa's fingers around my own and knew that she was squeezing my hand tightly, but whether in sympathy or in distress I could not tell. Ambrose and Connor both sat silent, watching me until I was ready to speak again, and Ambrose was frowning slightly, evidently perplexed.

"So," I said at last, "he's still alive and still plotting. That is simply wonderful—exactly what I had hoped and needed to hear. Damnation take the man!"

Now Ambrose leaned towards me, his frown deeper than before. "Brother, I don't like this, but I have to speak and to ask you something now, so please understand that my question comes from simple ignorance and curiosity. Why are you so violently concerned about this man? Your reaction seems... disproportionate, somehow. I know that you and he are enemies. I also know that he has successfully attempted to suborn some of your people in the past. You threw him out of Camulod, but he has never sought to return here—not really. Why does the mere mention of his name incense you so?

"Peter Ironhair has never been a direct threat to Camulod. He has never moved overtly to attack us. Certainly, he has invaded Cambria, but that was in support of Carthac Pendragon, who has, however ludicrous it might be, a blood claim to the leadership he seeks. Ironhair's support of his cause may indeed be specious. Nonetheless, Brother, what he does in Cambria should not concern you as greatly as it does, here in Camulod. If and when he ever does move against Camulod, then you will be justified in seeking his death. Until then, I must say I believe you are overreacting, and you are wrong to feel and behave as you do."

I sat staring at my brother as he spoke, making no effort to mask my astonishment and, I must admit, my displeasure. It was the first time he had ever voiced any doubts about my motivation or my beliefs. Hearing him speak so plainly in disagreement with me made my face flush, and I had to bite back the bitter words that sprang to my tongue. I forced myself to sit still and absorb what Ambrose had said, thinking it through objectively, to the best of my ability, and attempting to see my behaviour through his eyes. But that was impossible: my anger flared, overriding coherent thought. Ambrose knew he had infuriated me, but he was his own man, and he spoke his own beliefs openly and without fear.

The silence stretched and grew. Connor sat as though carved from wood; Tress, I knew, was gazing down into her lap. Finally, when I felt sure I had mastered my voice and the tone of it, I replied.

"Very well, let me see if I can satisfy your curiosity. Are you familiar with the old saying, 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"' He nodded. "And do you agree with the sentiment?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose I do. "

"Good. What about the corollary: "The enemy of my friend is my enemy. ' Would you agree with that?" I held up my hand, palm outwards. "Don't answer, because it's not important right now. What is important is that / believe it. You and I have not talked about what happened in the final stages of the campaign in Cambria, but the turning point came when Huw Strongarm took up the leadership of all Pendragon. Huw has no ambition for himself—had he any, he would long since have declared himself a contender for the kingship. He is now War Chief of Pendragon, and he has sworn to uphold the honour and freedom of Pendragon in Cambria, maintaining it in trust for the man he believes to be his true king, the son of the king he followed all his life, Uther Pendragon. So Huw rules now, or will rule soon, in Cambria, as regent for Arthur, just as surely as Flavius Stilicho ruled in Rome as regent of the young Emperor Honorius. "

Ambrose grunted. "Let's hope he fares better than Stilicho did."

I saw nothing amusing in that. "Think you that's unlikely?"

Ambrose was already waving me down, shaking his head. "No, of course not. It was a poor and ill considered jest. Please continue. I knew nothing of Huw Strongarm's change of status. You really believe he will support Arthur's claim?"

"Completely. It is already in hand. I brought Huw's most trusted captain back with me, a man called Llewellyn, an ironsmith and a warrior. He will take Arthur back with him to Cambria, incognito, to live among his own people few a year or so, to learn their ways and live their life among them. I had been excited for the lad, imagining how well he would adapt to new ways without either you or me around to influence him. Now, however, hearing that Ironhair is out there, replenishing his armies, fills me with new concerns. Should he invade again, young Arthur will be there without our support."

Ambrose sucked air sharply through his teeth. "Should he invade again, with Arthur there and under these new circumstances, then he will indeed be contravening our peace and threatening our nephew—"

"And mine!" This from Connor.

"Aye, Connor, and yours," Ambrose continued. "That would change everything, and my concerns are already laid to rest, Cay. I did not know you had made these plans."

I nodded, mollified, but spoke on. "Thank you for that, but hear the rest of it. I have had dealings with Peter Ironhair. You have not. I know the man, and, to tell the truth, I could have liked him, had things been other than they were. He has much to like about him—a good mind, great strengths and a subtle turn of wit—and he is often generous to his close friends and allies, who value his friendship highly. People follow him instinctively, because he has the attributes of leadership, But he also has much in him to detest. There is something wrong with the man, inside him, and it's not mere ambition. I could live with that. Ironhair has shown himself, to me at least, to be fundamentally treacherous and venal, a venomous creature who will do anything to achieve his own ends. He deals in perfidy and in subornment, seducing friends to vileness and murder. In my mind, he is a serpent. I would kill him with as little thought as I would kill an adder, and feel better for the deed being done, because there would be one less threat in the world for innocent people. I detest him. But more than anything else, I distrust and fear him—not the man himself, but his capacity for evil. I would prefer to know him safely dead. "

"Hmm. " Ambrose winkled his nose, then nodded. "I think I begin to understand, now. "

"No, Ambrose, you do not—not really, not yet. You never knew Hector's wife, Julia. She was Bedwyr's mother, and a gentle, lovely woman who never caused a moment's pain to anyone. Ironhair caused her death, directly, when he sent hirelings sneaking into Camulod to murder young Arthur. For that alone, I swore that he would one day the by my hand. Before that day, this Colony of ours had been like Eden. Ironhair destroyed that innocence and drove us out of Camulod into the world, in fear and distrust."

Connor spoke up, changing the topic. "You said he was replenishing his armies. How can he do that? I know he uses mercenaries, but where does his gold come from? He has to pay them. That's what mercenaries are—a walking demand for payment that you ignore at your peril. "

"No, Connor. He needs no gold. " My companions looked to me for an explanation. "I've discussed this several times with Huw and Llewellyn. Ironhair's mercenaries are not from Britain. Most of them are Burgundians, from Gaul, and some are Franks. The Burgundians were causing problems for the Romans long before the legions left Gaul, and the entire land across the Narrow Sea is being fought over from north to south. There are far more people over there than are to be found in all of Britain, and they are living in anarchy. There are thousands of landless men, bandits and brigands. Those are Ironhair's conscripts. He offers them the plunder they can find in Britain, and he offers diem a home and food and drink and women. So they flock to fight for him, because they're fighting for themselves. It makes them fierce and bitter foes of everyone they meet over here. The only problem he will have with them is in controlling them—and since he simply turns them loose to save his purposes, with no concern over what they do otherwise, that is no problem at all. "

In the pause that followed someone knocked at the door, which we had locked on entering the room. I glanced at Ambrose, who shrugged in annoyance and shouted, asking who was there. I recognized Arthur's muffled voice at once, and I released Tressa's hand and strode to the double doors. I swung the door quickly open, my face breaking into a grin that changed immediately into wide eyed shock as I set eyes on my ward. He stood directly outside, eye to eye with me, taller than I would ever have imagined he could have become in the short space of months since I had last seen him. He had left me as a boy, approaching manhood. Now, in height at least, he was a man.

I stepped back quickly, gazing at him, aware of the young woman who stood close behind him but ignoring her as my eyes devoured Arthur Pendragon and the changes I could see in him. He hesitated on the threshold, grinning shyly at me and nodding tentatively to Ambrose, Connor and Tressa in apology for his intrusion. A mere flick of the eyes was all he gave to them, however, and thereafter his eyes remained on me.

"Merlyn," he said, his voice uncertain. "Welcome home. I wanted to be here when you arrived, and I can hardly believe I was not. We did not expect you until tomorrow."

I stepped towards him again, spreading my arms, and he came into my embrace, clutching me fiercely. I crushed him in a hug, then pushed him away to arm's length, gazing into his face.

"You've grown up. I knew you would have, but these three here did not tell me how much." He smiled, but before he could respond I stepped aside, stretching out my hand to young Morag, who stood shyly behind him. "Come in, come in. Morag, it pleases me to see you again. Was your hunting successful? I know you know Ambrose and Tress, but have you met Arthur's Uncle Connor?" She nodded, smiling at Connor, and then moved to stand beside Arthur again, tipping her head demurely to Ambrose and Tressa. Arthur spoke for her.

"We killed a stag, a good one, but it was I who had to shoot it. Morag decided at the last she did not want to do it." As I looked at him from beneath raised brows, he shrugged. "I would have let it go, then, but Shelagh had spent the entire morning stalking it. I did not want to seem... ungrateful."

I nodded, smiting still. "You made the right decision. So, you are obviously well—"

"Aye, well enough. But you must forgive us. I had no thought to interrupt your gathering; I merely wanted to see you and welcome you safely home."

"I'm glad you did, so don't concern yourself with that. Have you just returned?"

"Aye, can you not smell the sweat on me? I came straight here without unsaddling."

"Then shame! I taught you better than that. Go back, then, and take care of your mounts. By the time you've finished that, we'll be done here and you may join us."

I stood by the door, holding it ajar as I watched them walk away. The lad was broad, as well as tall, his shoulders wide and clean, his back tapering to a narrow waist and hips above long, well muscled legs. He was dressed all in greens, in a dark, quilted tunic that was belted at his waist and emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and pale green leggings tucked into high boots of soft looking, supple leather. His dark brown hair fell to his shoulders, and as he walked through the shadows outside, the yellow streaks that shot through it seemed to be almost white. When they had gone a score of paces, he reached out his arm and placed it about young Morag's waist, directing my attention to the shape of her and the fact that she, too, had left childhood behind. I was conscious of Ambrose standing close behind me, looking over my shoulder.

"Well," he asked. "What do you think? There's no mistaking that he's one of us, is there?"

"No," I concurred. "Neither in the size of him nor in his eye for a pretty woman. Has he... I mean, are they... 7'

"Bedding each other? Not unless they're doing it by magic. That young woman is more closely guarded than your favourite sword. King Brander takes his duties very seriously in that regard, as in all others. The two are in each other's company constantly, but they are never alone for long enough to fall into mischief. When Shelagh's not there, they're with Brander himself, or with Salina, or me, or Tress. They have no time for mischief. Not of the dallying kind."

Connor had said nothing since Arthur arrived, and now he sat smiling to himself, as though he knew a secret. I caught his eye.

"What are you grinning at, Connor?"

"Nothing, nothing at all!" His face mirrored utter innocence. "I'm merely impressed by Camulod's security, for I know that were I my nephew there, and we at home in our isles, there would be no power on earth or in the heavens to keep me from between my true love's legs."

Tress answered even before I could begin to frame a response to that. "Ha, Connor Mac Athol, but you are a bull at stud, we all know that. No woman could ever resist you— isn't that what you tell yourself? But here is a love story between a sweet young man and a lovely girl who is visiting and is begirt by guardians. Mind you, some day I'll have to hear your wife's opinion on your abilities in that arena."

"Ah, you've a bitter tongue on you for one so young and beautiful," Connor shot back with a deep sigh.

I looked back to Ambrose. "I would never have believed he'd grow so big so quickly. He has become enormous! How was he on your journey? Were you pleased with him?"

"Aye, as pleased as I could have been, and even more than I thought to be. I had expected him to take some time adjusting to being in my charge after having spent so long in yours, but there was no sign of anything of the kind. From the outset, from the moment we rode out, he was a willing student, absorbing all I could throw at him and adapting to my ways and wishes instantly. I kept him hard at work, too, most of the time, but there were times we talked, exchanging values and ideas and coming to know each other. He is a fine and admirable young man, and even my troopers quickly came to hold him in esteem.

"On our homeward journey, once we were clear of any threat from Horsa's holdings, I sent him out patrolling with the Scouts, as an observer on the first few occasions and under the watchful eyes of my own commanders. But I had such good reports of him that finally I sent him out at the head of one patrol, although I took the precautionary step of providing one of my senior decurions as a nursemaid, just to ensure that nothing went too far awry. The sweep went perfectly, and Arthur showed no need for supervision."

"Did he know he had a watchdog?" I was remembering how my father and my Uncle Varrus had done the same to Uther and me, when we first rode out on patrol.

"I don't think he suspected," Ambrose murmured. "Certainly, if he did, he cloaked it admirably."

"Good. How long has young Morag been here?" The young couple were now lost from my sight and I swung the door shut again.

Ambrose cocked his head towards Tressa. "How long, Tress, three weeks?"

"Almost four. They arrived the week after you and Arthur came back." She moved close to me again, slipping her arms about my waist.