The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis

I nodded to the other two bishops, then grinned at him. "Aye, I can find a flask or two, but what about food? Have you eaten today? No matter, I'll bring some bread and fresh broiled meat, and we'll eat here. When should I come?"

Germanus looked at the other two and both men shrugged their shoulders and professed themselves well satisfied with what they had achieved.

"How quickly can you find the victuals?"

"Stay there, I'll be back directly. "

I returned a short time later with two flasks of Shelagh's own mead, drawn from the enormous keg she had insisted on transporting with us in the commissary wagons. I crossed to the table and set the flasks down safely, then pulled two horn cups from my scrip before unhooking the long sword that hung in its sheath between my shoulder blades. I had forgotten I was wearing it. Now I placed it carefully in a corner of the tent, propping it in the angle of the leather walls. "The food will be here shortly," I said over my shoulder.

I filled both cups and handed one to him, and we had barely raised them to our lips when three troopers came to the entrance of his tent, one carrying another folding table and the others each bearing an enormous wooden platter; one contained a mound of thick sliced, succulent wild boar and a large jug of dark, red wine, and the other two loaves of fresh, crusty bread, a dish of boiled greens still steaming from the pot, a jar of olive oil and another of olives pickled in brine. Germanus marked my amazement and smiled, gesturing towards the delicacies and the wine jug. "I brought them for you, as a gift," he said. "I remember how much you enjoyed these olives in Verulamium, and how you said you had not seen or tasted their like in years."

"Nor have I seen them since," I said, with reverence in my voice.

His smile grew wider. "The wine is from our own vineyards in Gaul. I had my brethren deliver these things to your quartermaster, knowing he would hold them in trust for you. He evidently decided to broach the supplies tonight. We can but hope he did so in secrecy, for I brought merely enough for your own enjoyment."

We ate like kings that evening, enjoying the lack of urgency and the pleasure of renewing our friendship. We spoke of many things throughout the lengthy meal, and most of them were inconsequential, although we discussed the Cambrian campaign against Ironhair and Carthac and spoke at even greater length about the growth of the communities around Camulod and the resurgence of hope that was occurring there. By the end of the meal, when the last of the brine pickled olives had been consumed and the few remaining drops of olive oil had been mopped up on soft, rich bread, little remained of the wild pig meat and even less of the full, rich, heavy wine.

Germanus slumped lower in his chair and belched delicately, covering his mouth with one hand. "You cannot know how good it feels, my friend, to eat to satiation for once. I seldom take the time to eat an entire meal nowadays, and when I do, it is rarely that I eat this well. Show me that sword of yours, will you?"

I rose and collected the sword from where it leaned in the corner, unsheathing it carefully before offering it to him hilt first. He held it straight armed, horizontally in front of him, with greater ease than I would have thought possible, considering his age. He squinted along the blade to test its straightness, then tested the edge with the ball of his thumb, producing a hair thin line of blood. "I barely touched the thing, " he whispered.

"Aye, it's a sharp one. " .

"Miraculously so, some men might say. " He was still peering closely at the weapon, now touching its broad cross guard with the fingers of his left hand. "I have never seen its match. Where did you find it? May I ask you that?"

"Aye, you may. Our master smith made it, in Camulod. "

"Ah, but whence came the iron? It seems... different, somehow. "

"It is. It's skystone metal. " I saw from his face that he had no notion what I meant, and it might have been the excellent wine that prompted me, but I suddenly found myself telling him the story of Publius Varrus and his skystone. I tried to keep it brief, and I omitted any mention of Excalibur, but it is not a tale that lends itself to brevity, and by the time I had finished, it was growing dark within the tent He sat silent, his eyes gleaming in the heavy shadows as he thought of what I had told him.

As I looked around the tent I saw the glimmer of a tiny, solitary votive candle in the farthest corner. "The light of learning," I murmured.

"What?"

"It's dark in here, quite suddenly, and I was recalling that you used to burn fine candles in profusion late at night."

"I still do, though not as profligately as I recall you did. Here, let's light some."

He pulled himself out of his chair and gave me back my sword, then crossed to where a makeshift curtain hung against one wall of the tent and pulled it back to reveal a long, low table ranked with candelabra. He then lit a taper from the single votive lamp and went about lighting the larger candles, almost a score of them, turning the tent's interior into a fantastical array of soft, yellow, dancing light. I sat and watched him, aware that the effects of his fine wine had worn off in the telling of my tale, and remembering that the mead I had poured for both of us hours earlier still sat upon the small table, virtually untouched. I rose and fetched the cups, handing his to him as he settled down again.

"So," he began immediately, "the statue that your uncle made sat unused for years before you thought of turning it into swords. What prompted you to try that?"

"Hmm?"

"What made you think, so suddenly and after such a long time, that this statue—this Lady of the Lake—might be induced to yield fine swords?" One corner of his mouth was twitching in a smile that his neatly trimmed beard did not quite conceal. "And bear in mind, if you please, that I am a bishop, consecrated to God's truth."

"I... Forgive me, Bishop, I don't follow you."

"Oh yes you do, you know exactly what I mean. There was another sword, wasn't there? Varrus made a sword from the statue. That is the only tiling that would explain the difference in weight you spoke of at one point, and the pattern of this sword, which is unique, while you, who supposedly designed it, are no armourer. There are holes in your tale, Master Merlyn, although you do conceal them very well. I suspect you have a secret of some kind, but if it is indeed a secret, then say so and I'll ask no more questions."

I raised my horn cup to him in a wry salute. "To perspicacity," I said. "You miss but little, Bishop Germanus, and I salute you. I appreciate now why it should be you who was selected and appointed to come here and debate theological imponderables. You're right, of course. There is another sword, Excalibur, and you are the first person ever to have guessed at its existence."

He leaned forward, his eyes alive with interest. "There is another? Still extant? I had thought there was, once, but supposed it had been lost or stolen."

"No, it has lain hidden now for years. I am its guardian. It is the King's Sword."

"What king?"

"The High King of Britain. The Riothamus—Arthur Pendragon, I believe."

"Arthur? The boy who is your charge? Tell me of this, Merlyn. I smell a story here. What is so wonderful about this sword, this... what did you call it?"

"Excalibur. Its hilt was poured and cast in a mould, as was this one I have here. A solid mould." I saw his blank expression and a thought occurred to me, bringing me to my feet. "I've something in my tent that will show you what I mean. I'll be right back."

When I returned, I handed him the small white cube of ; fired clay that I used as a weight to anchor the small pile of! documents and notes that my desk attracted daily. "Here. Break it apart," I told him. "It's made in two pieces." He did so, after only a moment of examination, and the brass apple ! it contained dropped into his hand. "It's solid brass. My Uncle Varrus made it, years ago, and I've carried it with me since his death, as a memento of his skills. Each half of the mould is a perfect replica of half the apple, as you can see now that it's open. He packed the mould with wax, then bound the halves together with strong wire, so that no air could enter. Then he poured molten metal, slowly, through that small hole at the top. The metal melted the wax, which escaped slowly through a series of tiny holes in the mould— slowly enough to ensure that the metal settled evenly and perfectly within the mould, leaving no air bubbles, since no air was present when the metal was poured. The result is a perfect, solid brass apple.

"The hilts of these swords were made the same way, but with the mould for the hilt constructed around the tang of the blade and the skeletal side bars of the guard. When the pour was complete, the molten metal had bonded perfectly to the sword's tang and guard and the entire hilt was flawless, one solid piece. That's where the name Excalibur came from: it means 'out of the mould.'"

Germanus sat silent for long moments, rubbing the surface of the apple with his thumb, then reached out again to take the sword and gaze at its hilt, fingering it in the same way. Finally he looked up at me. "I've never seen a finer sword, Merlyn, nor one so large and long. How much finer is Excalibur, that you must keep it hidden?"

I grimaced and shrugged my shoulders. "Excalibur makes this sword here look worthless, dull and lustreless.

Excalibur's blade is so pure, it seems made of shining, burnished silver, dazzling to behold, and its very fabric contains lines of layered metal so fine that they form a pattern that shimmers like water, when held up to light. Its edge will cut a hair, yet is so strong that it will slice through other, lesser swords. This one will, too, but this lacks the spectacle Excalibur imparts to every swing. And where this guard is plain, Excalibur's is intricately wrought with Celtic scrollwork, and its hilt is bound in the rough belly skin of a great shark, then tightly woven with both gold and silver wires, never to shift in the wielder's grip. Its pommel is a golden cockleshell, perfectly wrought in every detail to the size and shape of a real cockleshell found by Publius himself. The artist who created it, a priest called Andros, had a heavenly gift for artifice. Where this sword here is plainly fine, Excalibur is ornately dressed perfection. "

"Hmm. And what does young Arthur think of this sword he will some day wield?"

"He doesn't know of its existence. I have not shown it to him. "

I knew I had surprised him again, but he concealed it well, merely resting his right elbow on his left wrist while he raised his hand to twirl the hairs of his moustache reflectively. At length he sniffed and reached again for his cup, sipping a tiny amount of mead and rolling it around in his mouth, all the while deeply immersed in his thoughts.

'Tell me about the boy, " he said, at length.

"What would you like to know?"

"Everything, but first about his right to be a king. Excalibur is the King's Sword, you said, Arthur's sword. Not a king's sword. Explain your thinking to me, and believe me when I say I do not ask this lightly. "

I launched myself again into talk, explaining Arthur's lineage in full and relating every aspect of it to my own grandfather's vision of the future, the great dream he had shared with Publius Varrus and the other founders of our Colony. And once again Germanus listened intently, making no attempt to interrupt me.

When I finally fell silent, he leaned forward again. "So he has claims through both sides of his parentage to Cambria, to Eire, to Cornwall and to Camulod itself. That equates to all that remains of Roman Britain, save for the regions now occupied by your invaders. It is a huge territory, and if your anticipation of his destiny is accurate, it will be a terrifying responsibility. I know him, from his letters to me— and from the correspondence you and I have had concerning him—to be a serious young man, and dedicated to the tasks you have defined for him, but he is yet very young. So young, in fact, that I have to ask you again, face to face, is he capable of shouldering such a weight of responsibility? And do you think him worthy of such enormous trust?"

I nodded. "I believe he is, completely capable and completely worthy. He is an amazing young man. His entire „way of life, his thinking and his behaviour, all reflect the integrity of his beliefs. Besides, he has been much exposed to Ambrose, and greatly influenced thereby. And Ambrose, as you know, does not flaunt his piety, he merely lives it...; to such an extent that I believe he might have become one of your own bishops by now, had his destiny not brought him to Camulod and me. Enos certainly thinks that is so."

The old bishop nodded. "I know, he has told me so himself. And the boy thinks highly of Ambrose?"

"As of a god. Mind you, he thinks the same of me, and God knows I am neither devout nor pious. But his morality—his Christianity and his living of it—owes far more to the example set by Ambrose than to any tuition of mine."

I spoke for a time then about the boy's education and training, and the role that each of us in Camulod had played therein. Germanus listened attentively, even though little of what I said was new to him. But then I went on to speak of Arthur's own emerging philosophy—as if any boy of his young age could be said to have a philosophy. I talked about the lad's ideas on justice and on human dignity, citing his anger by the side of Lucanus's grave when he considered that the grave might be defiled by strangers in the years to come, with no one there to speak for Luke or to defend his resting place. This time, when I had finished speaking, Germanus stood up.

"Walk with me, " he said. "We still have much to say on this, and it is late. Some cool night air will blow the cobwebs from our minds. "

We made a circuit of the encampment together, and he did all the talking as we walked. He was greatly concerned, he told me, by the escalating ravages of the invading Saxons. The Anglians were becoming Christians at a pleasing rate and were, for the most part, willing settlers and strong providers for their families. The Saxons, on the other hand, were a different matter altogether, and they had declared war on God's Church and its missionaries. Increasingly frequent reports were reaching him, through his fellow bishops, of appalling and inhuman atrocities committed against Christian clerics: decapitations, mutilations and fiendish torture, prolonging agony for as long as possible before death intervened. Bishops and priests woe being flayed alive, he said, the skin ripped and peeled from their bleeding flesh to expose their entire body's living muscle to the air. Some were then left that way, hanging by the wrists to die in excruciating torment, while others had been roasted alive over slow burning fires. The people who could do such things were not God's children, he maintained, but animated creatures of evil, sent from the Pit by Lucifer himself to torment mankind. Even the apostate bishop Agricola, the man whom he had come to Britain to denounce, had written to warn him of the dangers of travelling by Britain's eastern coast.

As we walked the perimeter of the camp, acknowledging each guard in passing, I found myself becoming more and more depressed and despondent at the litany of unsuspected ills my friend was pouring into my ears. I had known Britain was being ravaged, but I had not suspected half the evils that he had described, and I found myself wondering if we in Camulod were blessed or cursed by our isolation in the west. By the time we returned to the central area of dimly lighted tents, we were both walking in silence.

Inside the tent again, Germanus shrugged off his cloak, and I sat in my chair observing him.

"You paint a bleak picture, my old friend," I said.

He pursed his lips, looking me in the eye, then nodded, sharply. "Aye, it's bleak, but I have begun to think it is not entirely hopeless. This lad of yours, young Arthur Pendragon, might well be the salvation of us all."

At first I thought he was being facetious, but then I saw immediately that he was not. "You believe Arthur might be the salvation of us all today? That is ridiculous. How could you even think a thing like that? He's but a boy, barely sixteen!"

"He is a king, you said. The King. You named him as the possible Riothamus."

"Some day, perhaps, but not for years to come."

"No, next year. He'll be seventeen. Flavius Stilicho was. seventeen when Theodosius sent him on embassies to foreign kings. At twenty-one, he ruled the armies of the whole Empire. He was my Imperator and your father's."

"But that was Stilicho, the greatest military mind since Alexander—greater than Gaius Marius, greater even than Julius Caesar! And he was favourite of the emperor, with all the patronage a man could ever want. Arthur Pendragon is a boy, unknown, and no one's favourite save mine. He'll be of age next year, and he will have his own command in Camulod, but he must learn to exercise command. Until he does, no warrior of note would follow him, a stripling boy. The very thought is ludicrous"

"Is it? And would it still be ludicrous if he were crowned by me, or by the highest bishops in this land, and named Protector of our Holy Mother Church? I swear to you, my Mend, such patronage is worth more than an emperor's favour nowadays, when Rome's own emperors have vanished from the earth. " I sat gaping at him, robbed of the ability to speak, and he smiled down at me. "I mean it, Merlyn. I am not speaking lightly. "

"But how... why, in God's name, would you suggest such a thing?"

"Precisely for that reason: in God's Holy Name. You have answered your own question. God needs a champion today, Merlyn, to defend His people and His faith right here in Britain, and you have described that champion to me this night, in Arthur Pendragon. He will lead Camulod, by your own admission, and you could, if you so wished, arrange it so that he comes into power sooner, rather than later. Wait you! Hold your rejections. Think about all I have said tonight before you refuse to hear me.

"Britain is falling into darkness rapidly, in danger of being overrun by devils. The bishops who present the word of God to all His faithful are being slaughtered wherever they are found by these marauders. They know safety only in the northeast, where Vortigern holds power, in the southeast, where people such as Cuthric still rule, and in the west, in Camulod. Vortigern has problems with his Danish friends, but between diem, they hold the Saxons to the south. And< recently, you say, the Danes have moved into the Weald. If it is God's wish, they may combine with Cuthric to have the' same effect. But in the west, where Camulod holds sway, there is no danger for our people or our Faith. And Camulod—Camulod's armies—are invincible. Nothing like them exists in Britain or elsewhere. Who rules those armies could, and should, rule Britain, providing that he be a man of simple faith and Godliness, of dignity and inborn nobility., Arthur Pendragon will be that man, I believe, for we will place him high upon a throne that all the land will see, and under his leadership and guidance all the folk of Britain will combine to throw these Saxons out and make this land once more a place where Christian folk may worship without fear."

Still I sat shaking my head, wordless and incapable of framing any of my thoughts. He turned away from me, crossing again to where my sword leaned against the wall. He came back and sat again across from me, holding it by its sheath.

"Do you recall my mention of a new order?"

"Aye," I responded, blinking. "Knights, an order of horsemen. I've been thinking about that."

"And what have you decided?"

"Nothing." I shook my head, wondering at this sudden change of topic. "It would need something... some means of achieving status, and I have no idea what that might be. Simple possession of a horse is not enough. Every one of our troopers has a horse."

Germanus whipped the sword out of its sheath with a rasping sound and jammed the point of it hard into the ground, leaving it to sway gently back and forth. "There's your status!"

"How? What do you mean?"

"Look at it, man! Look at its shadow there, on the wall. " He picked up a candelabrum so that its light threw the shadow of the sword onto the wall of the tent. "It's a cross! The symbol of our faith. We talked of symbolism once before, do you remember?"

"Aye, I do. " The shadow of the sword, with its straight cross guard, did look like a cross. "You said that every great popular movement required a recognizable symbol to stir the people. "

"Good man, you do remember! Well, every order requires a symbol, too, and what could be a better symbol for a Christian fellowship than the Christ's own Cross? Let it be known that Arthur's most deserving followers may become Knights once they have earned the right to enter the new order. That earning must involve commitment, and a sacred oath to safeguard Mother Church and all her flock, from the most exalted to the humblest. Your Knights must become defenders of the Christian Faith itself, and when they do, they will have the blessing of the Church and the sworn right to wear the symbol of the Cross upon their armour. Can you see that now? Can you visualize it?"

"Aye, I can, " I whispered, feeling my heart begin to hammer in my chest and recalling clearly my dream of several nights before. "The Cross, in red, upon their breasts. "

"In red? Why not? The symbol of the Redeemer and the colour of the sacred blood He shed. On a field of white, for purity of soul and spiritual humility. " Germanus seemed to have grown taller as he spoke, and his eyes were glowing with a huge excitement. "Do you think that concept might appeal to your young King?"

I nodded, feeling a slow grin widen on my face. "It would, it would indeed. It is an idea made for his beliefs... I need a drink."

I rose and filled my cup, looking at Germanus to see if he wished me to pour for him, too, but he was deep in thought. He was tossing the apple mould from hand to hand, relishing the weight of it each time it thumped solidly into his grasp. Then, as I sat down again, he looked across at me.

"A coronation," he whispered, almost to himself. "We must have a coronation." Again he fell silent, and I wondered what was going on within his mind. Moments later he was on his feet, pacing about the tent briskly enough to set the candle flames flickering.

"That would be perfect, Merlyn, think of it. A coronation, just as in the days of ancient Rome, when the greatest champions were honoured with the placing of a crown upon their brows, an honour that set them high above all other warriors. Arthur will be our crowned warrior, the Church's champion, Defender of the Holy Christian Faith, and all his men—his Knights—will be God's warriors, protecting Arthur's people and his lands. But the appointment must be public, and widely heralded, presented with great ceremony and high import in some distinguished place... in Verulamium, in the great theatre there! It holds full seven thousand people, seated.

"Visualize the scene, Merlyn. All the bishops of Britain will be assembled, to concelebrate a great, triumphal Mass. Arthur will enter there, escorted by his Knights, while his armies are spread around the town, protecting the proceedings. And after the consecration of the sacred Host, before the congregation is dismissed, I, or some other senior bishop, will place a golden circlet on his brows, the champion's corona, and proclaim him King, in the name of the Church. Think of the effect, Merlyn! None could dispute his kingship. "

I grunted. "Vortigern might, for one. "

Germanus threw me a look of pure disdain. "Vortigern has no cavalry, and no long swords like these. Besides, he has been less than zealous in his work on our behalf. Agricola and his heretical fellows thrive under his patronage. No, I believe Vortigern will accept the Pope's decree, if he has hopes of his immortal soul's salvation. "

'The Pope's decree?" I grinned at him, feeling better by the moment. "You know, my friend, you should have been an impresario. The world of public spectacles and entertainments would have been improved by your presence. "

He did not react to my humour as I had expected, but spoke with gravity. "You mock me, but you should not. Appearances matter greatly in such things as these we are discussing. In order to create a great impression—and that is exactly what I intend to achieve—you must make it memorable. Spectacular proceedings foster awe, and reverence, and therefore memories. Colour we will use, and music and spectacle, and massive ceremony carried out with dignity and due solemnity. Remember Rome, and the imperial persecutions of our faith. Thousands of the faithful died in dreadful purges, but those most readily remembered died in the arena, torn apart by lions and wild tigers, trampled and gored by angry elephants for the enchantment of the Roman mobs. We will have spectacle at this, the coronation of our King, and people will remember it and talk of it forever. Mark my words. "

He glanced down at the mould that lay on the table beside him, and reached to pick it up. "May I keep this, for now? I will return it. " I nodded, and he tossed it in his hand, then broke it open once again and stared at the perfection of the half apple that he could see. "When will you show Excalibur to Arthur?"

I shrugged, shaking my head. "I don't know. When he is ready, I suppose."

"And how will you know that?"

I scowled at him. "I have no idea, but I suspect you have. Am I correct?"

"Perhaps." He removed the apple from its mould and then replaced it carefully. "There is only one way to put this apple back..." I said nothing, and he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I have an idea—yet unformed and incomplete, but fundamentally sound, I think. But it will entail keeping the boy in ignorance about the sword until the moment of his coronation. Is that feasible?"

"Of course it is feasible, but why must we keep him in ignorance?"

"Because I believe he must be as overawed as everyone else when we unveil it to the eyes of the world. If we are to present what will appear to be a miracle, then everyone \ involved—everyone—must see and experience the miracle." ;

I shook my head, suddenly feeling tired. "Now you have " lost me. A miracle, you say? I know you are a man of God, Bishop, and I also know the power of your mind, but tell me, please, how you intend to prearrange a miracle."

He told me, and I could find no sleep for the remainder of that night.

FIFTEEN

It is almost impossibly difficult for me to write about the period that followed that discussion. I have spoken of the fact that I had two momentous conversations in the course of that one week, and I have written fluently about the first of those, recalling every word, every inflection of Germanus's voice with clarity and exactitude. But the memories that haunt me of the ensuing time are harsh and bitter; fragmentary, pain filled images of grief and terror and despair and disbelief; images that withstand recall and defy description.

My old friend Dedalus, who had some training in the art of engineering, once told me a fundamental truth he said was known to every engineer. The occasion, I believe, was a discussion we were having about the way in which the army engineers had drained the mountain lake in which Publius Varrus had hoped to find his skystone. The lake had lain at the end of a mountain glen, formed by a dam of rock blasted from the mountainside itself in a cataclysm; they had examined the exposed side of the dam and then undermined it, cracking it open like a broken bowl. Using the example of the keystone found in every bridge's arch, Ded told me then that every construction, natural or man made, contained a central, focal point on which all its energies depended. Remove that point—that beam, or rock, or log— destroy it or dislodge it, and the entire construction would come crashing down in chaos and ruin.

The construction that I thought of as my life came crashing down after that second conversation, splintering in ruin and chaos on the hard floor of reality, and the disruptive force that brought it down was a human voice, speaking an alien tongue.

Briefly, we encountered a large force of Outlanders the day after I had talked so long with Germanus. Benedict brought the news of their arrival. He had been scouting with his forward force on our right flank, and one of his foremost outriders, riding beyond the limits of his own appointed sweep, had seen the enemy approaching. Had he been obedient to his orders and performing as commanded, he would have been elsewhere and would have missed them. As it was, he reported back to Benedict immediately.

From his concealed position, two miles ahead of us, Benedict watched and counted more than a thousand men, all of them afoot, moving in five divisions each perhaps two hundred strong. They had emerged from the forest in the east and crossed the valley bottom, headed directly towards us, moving steadily and in good order. Benedict waited to see no more, convinced that they knew where we were and were moving directly against us. He withdrew his scouts and rode back at full speed to report his findings. Between the enemy and us lay two wide valleys. The hillsides of the farther of these two were thick with trees; those of the nearer valley, atop which we now sat, were grass covered, with not a tree in sight.

I made my dispositions quickly, I recall, thinking clearly and logically. A thousand strong force must have been organized long since, and the odds were great that they had marched to intercept Germanus and his party and were unaware of our cavalry. A plan came fully formed into my mind, drawn from my memories of my grandfather's notes on the tactics of Alexander of Macedon. I quickly ordered a hundred of my men to dismount and present themselves as infantry, and sent the remainder of our forces out of sight on the far side of the hill. I then briefed Germanus quickly on how he should proceed.

He would descend into the valley at the head of a small, mounted party, riding towards the enemy in company with three wagons filled with another twenty of my men, all of them dressed as clerics. When confronted, my hundred would form a line and hold their position, waiting until the enemy attacked. The wagons and the riders would turn and flee, my "clerics" leaping out of their slow moving vehicles, abandoning both them and their defending foot soldiers and tempting the enemy to attack. Then, at the first sign of an enemy advance, my hundred would fall back uphill, in formation, to break and run only when the hostile force was committed to a charge across the valley bottom and up the opposing hillside. At that point, with the enemy charging uphill, I would loose my cavalry to sweep around and down on either side.

Germanus listened as I outlined my strategy, and then smilingly asked if his men might shout Alleluia! I smiled in return, and then withdrew beyond the hilltop.

It was quickly over, and hardly worth the mention, save for the carnage that took place. The enemy fought bravely and showed more discipline than I had seen in any of our recent enemies in Cambria, holding their individual formations well, and even constructing defensive walls with their shields to stave off our attacks. The sheer weight and numbers of our horses were too much for them, however, and the shield walls buckled, then disintegrated. From that point on, they were in defeat and few of them escaped alive.

I moved among the banks and rows of their dead and wounded, and I noted that they were, as Dedalus had said they might be, very poorly armed. Few possessed swords; their most common weapon was the battle axe, and some of them had heavy spears. Most of them, however, were armed only with thick staves and daggers, and many had no more than heavy, crudely carved wooden clubs.

Many of the wounded might survive, I thought, could they but gain some medical attention, but that was not my concern. I had neither the time nor the desire to care for aliens. Germanus, however, refused to abandon them to death and set his bishops to go in among them, offering aid. Shamed by the sight, some of my own troopers, especially the medical personnel, began to lend assistance, too, and thus we passed the remainder of that fruitless day catering to our foes and spent the night uncomfortably in a makeshift camp high in the hills.

Two days later, close to Londinium, which Enos told me had lain abandoned now for nigh upon ten years, and less than two days' travel from our destination in Verulamium, the talk about the evening campfires was still of the cavalry charge and how we had mown down the Outlanders, whom someone had identified as Jutes. I was distempered and out of sorts, for I had slept but little for the previous two nights, disturbed by terrifying but ill remembered dreams that startled me awake, time and again, drenched in clammy sweat and gasping in horror. My inability to recall what it was that had brought me screaming into wakefulness infuriated me because it frightened me deeply. I had spent a lifetime dreading dreams that eluded my recall, but I had dared to hope myself all done with that in recent years.

It was frustration born of those fears that made me impatient with such silly talk of victory that night, and I said something snappish about how fortunate we were that these had been mere Jutes and not Horsa's Danes. We had consumed our evening meal by then and were grouped around a fire. I was sitting beside Germanus with Tress on my left. Cuthric sat on the bishop's right, and on his right sat Cayena. Then came Dedalus, and Benedict, and I knew not who else, for the fire was high and fierce and concealed those people sitting across the circle from us.

I saw Cuthric raise his eyebrows at my words and then lean close to talk to Germanus, who answered him, listened again, then shrugged and turned to me.

"Cuthric heard you speak of Horsa and his Danes, and wondered how you know of him."

"I know he's there, and that's enough to know. Only now am I beginning to breathe freely, knowing that he and his horde lie far behind us. For the first few days, and in particular when we were headed directly east, I thought we might penetrate their new territory and encounter them at any time. We have women with us, and that thought did not appeal to me."

Germanus translated this for Cuthric and the big Anglian grunted in surprise and spoke again, looking this time at me. I waited for Germanus's translation.

"He says he is surprised that you should know of Horsa's presence in the Weald, but that the Danes are no longer there and your concerns were groundless. They remained there for a time, many boatloads of them, settling temporarily in several of the ancient Roman forts along the shore while they explored the land, looking for holdings they could seize. But then they left again, all of them, in a great fleet, nigh on a month ago."

"What? They went back to the north?" I was incredulous.

Again Germanus questioned Cuthric, but this time as the big man answered him I saw the bishop stiffen, and the blood drained from his face. "Dear God," he said, turning back to me, his voice gone slack with shock. "Cuthric says that Vortigern is dead." He swung back to face the Anglian and the conversation between the two became fast and filled : with tension. I could hardly bear to listen without interrupting, but eventually the elderly bishop slumped and spoke to me again.

"It's true. He's dead, slain in battle by Horsa himself.: The report was brought to Cuthric by one of his own elders, whose daughter fell enamoured of a Dane of Horsa's party, and the fellow boasted of his prowess in the fighting, and of how he had struck off the hand of the Northumbrian king the hand that had dared to threaten Horsa. Cuthric has no idea who Vortigern is, or was, nor did he suspect that you or I could know of him. To Cuthric, he was but an unknown, faceless name who happened to be a king, far in the north. God rest his soul."

"Amen," I whispered. "Do you know, I heard my father say it would come to this, when I was just a boy. He knew, even then, that naught but harm could come from bringing Outlanders into this land to live." I heaved a sigh. "So Vortigern is gone. And so is Horsa, back to the north. He will be king in Northumbria now, I suppose."

"A Danish king, in Britain? I hope not."

"How does your Cuthric come to know so much about Horsa?"

The bishop shrugged his shoulders. "He shares a common interest with you, I suspect. Horsa and his Danes are?!

a threat to the settled Anglians close by, to the north of them. " He hesitated. "I wonder, though, how much he truly knows. He says the sky was black with Horsa's banners. "

I frowned. "Why should that trouble you?"

"It rings false, somehow. The Saxons don't use banners, nor do the Anglians or Jutes. None of these people do. "

"Horsa's a Dane, not a Saxon, Bishop, and he has lived his life observing Vortigern. Now there is a man who uses banners. His emblem is—damnation, was—the wolf's head. I can't believe he's dead. Anyway, Vortigern used his banners all the time, for spectacle's sake. You understand that, do you not?" He ignored my jibe, which was ill timed, and I continued. "So you see, it's more than possible that Horsa has taken his example. Ask Cuthric what Horsa's banner was. "

That took but a moment. "He says it's a bear, not unlike yours, save that Horsa's bear is black, while yours is silver. Every one of his ships' crews has a black bear banner, but the markings on the individual banners vary. "

He turned back to talk to Cuthric again, and I watched the expressions on the faces grouped around the fire as the word spread of Vortigern's death. I was talking to Tress about it when I felt the bishop's hand on my arm. He was still deep in conversation with Cuthric, but I knew he had something he wanted me to hear. Finally he turned back to face me, his eyes troubled.

"Horsa returned to the Weald, nigh on a month ago, as Cuthric said earlier. He summoned his warriors, spent a week collecting them, then sailed away again. But less than one third of the total fleet sailed north again, with Horsa. The major portion sailed south, commanded by a senior captain. "

I felt an instant chill of premonition. "South? There's nothing to the south except the Narrow Sea. You think they crossed to Gaul, without Horsa?"

I doubt it" Again he swung away, towards Cuthric, and I leaned towards them, listening closely to the rattle of the alien language that sounded guttural and hoarse to my ears. They seemed to speak for hours, this time, but among the gibberish I suddenly heard the first word I had ever recognized upon the Anglian's lips, and it was Ironhair.

By the time Germanus had swung around to look at me I was already on my feet, the blood roaring in my ears and my body reeling from the crashing understanding that had flooded me. Ironhair! I had no need to hear another word than that accursed name to understand what had happened. Ironhair, the great collector of allies, pirates and mercenaries, had not been in Cambria when we went searching for him. He had been away, no one knew where, while in the meantime his armies had searched for Dolaucothi and its gold mines! I cursed myself because I knew at that moment what I should have known long before, because the information had been given to me by the man himself. His emissary, the man called Retorix, had suggested that I might choose to make peace with Ironhair, in order to have the time to assist my ally Vortigern in dealing with the Saxon problem in the far northeast. He had told me he knew about Horsa's Danes! How blind a fool could a man be? I should have known instantly which way the devious mind of Ironhair would lean!

. I might have fallen headlong into the fire had not Donuil sprung up at Tressa's cry and grasped me by the arm, pulling me to his chest. I saw Philip and Benedict looming behind him, all amazed, because they could not know what had occurred, what had been said. Not even I knew all, and yet I knew too much from the utterance of that one name alone.

I dragged in a deep breath and mastered myself. Donuil leaned over me, refusing to release my arm until I was seated, and I could see the concern and confusion in his face. Benedict and Philip had moved to stand behind me, and now Dedalus was there on my left, his fist clenched upon the hilt of the dagger at his side.

Tressa's fingers were digging painfully into my upper arm, and I reached up to take her wrist, nodding my head to reassure her that I was well. Then I turned immediately to face Germanus once again. My friend had aged visibly, within a matter of moments, the lines in his cheeks suddenly graven deeper before.

"What did he say?" I asked him.

He had to moisten his mouth and swallow before he could reply. "I am afraid I may have undone all your work, with this request to join me here, my friend—"

I cut him short, dismissing his apology with something approaching gruffness. "You're a bishop, not a seer, " I growled. "Whatever has happened is no fault of yours. Tell me what Cuthric said. "

The others were all listening now; the only sound to be heard was the guttering of the fire in its pit. Germanus cleared his throat, then spoke quickly.

"The first wave of Danes came into the Weald last autumn, and spent the winter in the empty forts along the Saxon Shore. I told you that. Then, less than a month ago, Horsa returned with another, larger fleet and summoned all of them to rejoin him. He had made alliance, he said, with a king from the far west, a man called Ironhair, who required assistance in pacifying his domain. In return for that assistance, he was willing to provide land holdings in the territories to his north and west, and to provide the Danes with open access to the gold mines of Dolaucothi in the land of Cambria, in addition to the riches they could all win for themselves in the process of conquering the king's enemies. Ironhair was there, with Horsa, aboard his ship, and made his promise personally to the Danish warriors. They left within the week."

"How big was Horsa's fleet?'

Germanus relayed the question, and Cuthric listened closely, then shook his head in answering. Germanus nodded. "He does not know with certainty, but he was told there were in excess of two hundred ships."

"Two hundred! God curse the man to Hades, he is determined to become a king. The lands to the northwest of Cornwall are ours. He plots against Camulod, as well as Cambria. I must return, now, Germanus. Tonight." They dissuaded me from that foolishness quickly.

Germanus thought our entire force should head homeward at first light, but I rejected that. The bulk of them would move too slowly, tied as they were to the speed of the wagons. Instead, I would ride home ahead of them with .a small escort—small enough to travel at maximum speed < and large enough to discourage interference. Our main force would follow at its own best speed.

There was some discussion of who would accompany me and who would remain, but I made short work of that, having no patience with the democratic process In time of extremity. Donuil would ride with me, as would Tressa and Shelagh; Ded would come, too, and Benedict, and Bedwyr, together with a score of our best troopers, selected by Dedalus. Philip would remain behind, in overall command, with Falvo and Rufio. Their orders were to bring our thousand home to Camulod as quickly as they could. Germanus and his party were close enough now to Verulamium to make it safely on their own.

I dismissed everyone then, and sought my bed, determined, if not to sleep, at least to seek some rest for my aching bones and body while I wrestled with my fears.

In spite of all my anxiety and the turmoil in my soul, I slept heavily, awakening with a cry of fear from some dark dream only when Dedalus came into my tent and shook me by the shoulder in the darkness before dawn. He had had people working through the night, preparing marching rations for our journey—enough to last us for ten days, at least, should we be forced to rely on them alone for sustenance—and our horses were saddled and ready, an extra mount for each of us. The score of troopers who would ride with us were waiting in the darkness, highlighted intermittently by flames from the high piled fires. I was fully dressed and tying the long, dark shaft of the Varrus bow securely beneath my saddle flaps when Germanus found me. He embraced me in silence, then held me by the shoulders, gazing into my eyes.

"Go with God, my Mend, " he said. "And I hope you will find it in your heart not to think badly of me for removing you from Camulod at this of all times. My prayers for your swift and safe homecoming will assail the ears of God Himself, beseeching Him to set His heavenly hosts to watch over you on the road. When you have dealt with this threat and come home safe, remember what we spoke of in my tent. Enos will stay in constant touch with you and will bring word from each of us to the other with no needless loss of time. I'll pray we meet again next year, at Eastertide, to share the celebration of our heavenly and earthly kings. Farewell, and journey safely. "

I sighed, and clasped his arms above the elbow. "Pray hard, old Mend, and often, for I fear we'll all need prayers. Arthur is in Cambria, alone with Llewellyn, and none know who he is, so he may yet be safe. If we emerge alive fro this travail, we'll see him crowned just as you described and Christian Britain will have a Christian King."

He turned away and kissed Tressa and Shelagh on either cheek, then blessed our party and stepped back.

I looked about me from my saddle. A throng of our me had gathered to see us leave, but they were silent, shroud still in the dark of night, black among the blackness. I saw Philip standing close by, flanked by Falvo and Rufio, an I raised my right hand to my helmet, acknowledging the' presence. All three snapped to attention and saluted me, an' I heard the metallic clatter of armguards against cuirasses as the throng about us did the same. I swallowed hard an nodded once again, abruptly, afraid to trust my voice speak without betraying me, then swung my horse around and led the way out from the firelight in search of the road home to Camulod.

Despite the Bishop's promised prayers for succour on our journey, it quickly became evident that God and His heavenly host had others matters on their minds while we were travelling, for our progress was a nightmare from the outset. More than a hundred miles of unknown territory lay between us and our destination, with dangers at every step of the way. We were beset with conflicting urgencies that kept us angry and frustrated: my overriding temptation, andmy prime imperative, was to move with the utmost speed,' but the paradox therein was that the utmost speed involved far too much slowness. Festina lente was the ancient watchword of the Romans, hurry slowly, and we were constrained to recognize the truth in the old warning. We could not put the spurs into our mounts and ride flat out; we had to conserve their strength and nurture their endurance lest we kill them on the road, leaving ourselves on foot. And so we chafed against the discipline of travel but endured it, changing gait each quarter hour, from walk to trot to canter, then galloping and reining in to canter, then to trot, and then to walk again.

We seldom took time to rest in daylight, and then we always stopped beside a running stream, tending to our ablutions hastily, splashing ourselves with water and shocking ourselves back to reality with its cold kiss. We were filthy, and we soon began to stink of sweat, human and equine, and of other, less pleasant things. The women suffered far more than the men, as it transpired, for I discovered that both were going through their menses, and the discomfort and inconvenience that entailed must have been almost more than they could bear, atop the agonies of all else. We rode long into the night when the skies were clear and the moon bright enough to light our way" and therein we were fortunate; the first three nights were clear and cloudless and the moon was almost full. Only when the moon went down and darkness thickened sufficiently to hamper us did we unsaddle our horses and fall down to sleep for a few hours, rolled in our blankets on the open ground.

Twice in the first two days we encountered bands of alien looters and marauders, but we were fortunate enough to see them before they could see us and so avoided detection. But the knowledge that such bands were abroad along our route took its toll on us, so that by the end of the fourth day, somewhere amid gentle, rolling hills long miles from anywhere, we were all reeling from exhaustion and I realized that this was folly. Festina lente, I reminded myself, more haste, less speed! We found a dense copse of low trees and made a camp that night, pitching our leather, one man legionary tents and posting guards on two hour watches, and although we did not dare to ignite a fire, we all slept soundly for the first time since leaving our companion.

Some time in the middle of that night, I awoke to sound of rain striking my tent, and as I listened, it quickly to a solid downpour. All the world was wet when we broke camp, cursing the slimy wetness of our tents we sought to roll and secure them, and we rode that day in a huddle of misery, eating from our rations of roast grain and nuts in the saddle as we went and wishing our woollen travelling cloaks were denser, warmer and more heavily waxed. Early in the afternoon, one horse slipped heavily the mud of an incline and went down, breaking a foreleg Fortunately, its rider was unhurt, merely winded by his fall but we had to kill the screaming horse quickly, for fear that unfriendly ears might hear its agony. The trooper change to his spare horse after distributing its load among his mates and we moved on, beginning now to penetrate a heavily forested region of low hills where an occasional bare cliff face reared above the trees.

I remember my face being chilled from the rain that streamed down from my helmet to spill sideways from the hinges of its face protecting cheek flaps and flow down my jaws on either side, and I remember comparing our current journey to the progress we had made on our outward expedition. Then, we had ridden slowly, the air about us filled with the sound of laughing voices and the squeaks, groans clinks and rattles of saddle harness, wagon springs and turning wheels. Now we pressed forward grimly, silently, each rider struggling with his or her own discomfort and worst fears, the world about us blocked by the sound of hurrying horses' hooves and the steady, constant hiss of driving rain. From time to time in the early stages Tress or one of the others would try to speak to me, hoping to comfort me or to take my mind off the troubles that beset me, but eventually all conversation ceased and we drove forward in bleak, miserable silence.

Then, around midafternoon, the rain stopped falling and the clouds began to break apart, allowing beams of sunlight to illuminate the landscape around us and lifting our spirits for a brief time. Too brief, alas, because even though we felt no breeze, the skies were soon fouled again by enormous banks of fast moving storm clouds that changed shape visibly as they were torn by high, turbulent winds, As they swept overhead they seemed to distort the light until it took on a yellowish, threatening colour, and thunder rolled ominously in the far distance.

It was shortly after this last change began that I saw horsemen flanking us, galloping swiftly away along the upper reaches of a hillside on our right. I had been deep in thought, watching the scudding clouds and paying little attention to where I was, and I had only a fleeting glimpse of these riders among the trees before they vanished. My first thought was that they had been our own, ours being the only horsemen I had seen since leaving Camulod, but a swift glance about me verified that all our party rode together. I felt alarm flaring in me. I called to Dedalus then, pointing to where the riders had disappeared, but there was nothing there for him to see, and I could tell that he was sceptical. Angry at being doubted, yet at the same time doubting my own eyes, I sank my spurs into my horse's sides and bounded away, uphill, to where I thought I had seen the phantom riders, and I could plainly hear Ded following me.

Sure enough, there on the soil of the hillside was a double set of tracks, made by unshod hooves. Dedalus cursed and led the way as we rejoined the others, and from then on we rode with straining vigilance, drawing together into the wedge formation we used for both attack and defence. We had no idea who these people might be, but the fact that they were horsed had shaken us. I rode at the point, flanked by Ded on my left and Tress on my right. I removed my heavy cloak and rolled it up, securing it behind my saddle with my sleeping roll, and unsheathed my sword, lodging the point of it securely in the wooden stirrup with my right foot and gripping the hilt as though it were the shaft of a spear. Tress, on my right, rode with her spear held in the same fashion.

The depression through which we were riding was almost too shallow to be called a valley. We were riding upward along its length, and the crest of it lay half a mile ahead of us. Then, when we were less than a hundred paces from that point, a sudden shout from one of our troopers brought my head around and I could see that the bushy hillside on our right was alive with running men, bounding towards us, A second warning cry, from my left, announced the same message: we were under simultaneous attack from both sides. I rose in my stirrups, swinging my sword around my head, and led my people in a charge towards the top of the rise, the only exit open to us. We were trapped in a funnel, and I cursed myself uselessly for not having sent outriders ahead of us.

The terrain changed abruptly on the far side of the gentle crest. We came thundering to the top to find the surface falling in a chute away from us between thick banks of tall, thin evergreens. The narrow aisle we had been following was blocked a short way beneath us by a rearing crag of stone around which men were clustered, with long, sharpened spikes, cut from those same straight evergreens, stretching to meet us, their butts pressed against the base of the crag. I saw the entire entrapment at a glance, as did Dedalus, who was already turning towards me, waving me away to his right as he pulled his horse's head hard to the left. We split apart, and as we did, I saw that Tress had understood and was already veering outwards to my right. Behind us, the others followed at the full gallop, wrenching their mounts away from the certain death ahead of them, to follow right or left depending on their position in the wedge. And then I was among the densely packed, tall, narrow trees, my full attention concentrated upon staying in the saddle and preventing my mount from killing himself or me by colliding with some obstacle.

In mere moments, we were reduced almost to a standstill, faced with the impossibility of moving quickly through such dense growth. The ground underfoot sloped steeply downward and was littered with dead and fallen trees, many of them caught between the boles of their living neighbours. All of these fallen obstacles were small, but any of them was capable of piercing a horse's gut. I heard much crashing and cursing behind me, and the occasional clang of iron, but I had no time or opportunity to look back. Tressa was safe, that I knew, for I could see her just ahead of me. And then the trees began to thin slightly, and I kicked my horse forward faster. Soon we were able to gain momentum, and I broke free again to find myself in the treeless central aisle we had followed to the crest above. I swung my horse around then to look behind me, and the pathway above me was thick with men, leaping down towards me. More of my own men were beginning to emerge from the trees on the hillside now, but the enemy was closing quickly. I saw little point in approaching them up the steep path, so I decided to stand my ground and fight where I was.

The long sword felt almost weightless in my hand, and I used it efficiently, killing the first three men who came within my range before any of them had a chance to aim his weapon at me. The fourth thrust upward at me with a long, heavy spear, but my arcing blade cut it as though it were a hollow reed, and my next swing, backhanded, caught my attacker clean across the eyes with the blade's tip. An arrow clanged against my cuirass and knocked me backward, reeling, and while I was unbalanced someone grasped my leg and tried to pull me down. I clutched my saddle horn with my left hand and stabbed downward, but my assailant had already released me, staggering back and scrabbling to reach between his shoulder blades where Tressa's spear had pierced him. Another fell beside him, transfixed by a thrown spear, and a third man fell on top of him, spewing blood from his throat. I felt a hand tugging at my bridle and heard Ded's voice shouting in my ear, yelling at me to fall back. I did, swinging my mount around, and moments later we were descending again, our horses' hooves slithering on the steep, rain slick surface.

We were close to the bottom by then, and soon there was level earth beneath our hooves. I looked back yet again, attempting to count our numbers, and was surprised to see that almost all of us had survived the trap. Shelagh was close beside me, Donuil at her side. Benedict was bleeding from a shallow cut across his nose but seemed strong otherwise. Our pursuers had fallen behind, outdistanced by our horses' longer gait. I lost count of our people at nigh on a score, confused by the moving bodies, but I felt my heart lighten within me. I would not have been surprised to discover we had lost half our number. I heard someone ask how many men had attacked us, and another answer that it must have been more than a hundred, since he had seen at least two score of them on our right before the left attacked.

I heard Dedalus yell again and looked ahead to see a group of mounted men in the distance, watching us. They were making no attempt to come towards us, it appeared, merely waiting for us to arrive. I estimated the distance separating us at somewhere near two hundred paces.

"Eight, " Donuil shouted, and Ded answered, "Aye, eight that we can see... The good Christ only knows how many more there are in hiding. But we've little else to do and nowhere else to do it! We can't go back, so let's keep moving forward. To me!" He stood upright in his stirrups, brandishing his sword, and then sat back and spurred his animal forward.

We had neither the time nor the space to form a wedge for this attack, so we had to rely on individual speed and impetus, and we were clawing for both when disaster struck. Dedalus was ahead of all of us, closely followed by three troopers riding hard on his heels and four others more widely spread. Then came Tressa, Shelagh and Donuil in a row, barely ahead of where I rode half a length behind them. I checked over my shoulder, and seeing that all our men were still with us, I set myself to catching up with the others, crouching forward over Germanicus's ears and slapping him with the flat of my blade. And then I saw Dedalus hurled backward from the saddle as though he had hit a. wall. His feet flew up, high above his head and completely over, so that he spun in a backward somersault and crashed to the earth face first. Immediately, the three men riding close behind him were hurled from their horses in the same manner, snapping backwards from their saddles and crashing to the ground. So violently were they unseated that I thought they had been hit by Pendragon longbow fire, and I was looking for the arrows in their chests when two more men went down. It was then I saw the rope that killed them, stretched taut between two trees, at the shoulder height of a mounted man. One more man threw himself sideways in his saddle, vainly trying to avoid the deadly tiling, but it caught the crest of his helmet and I heard the snap of his spine clearly, above the thumping of our horses' hooves.

Donuil and Shelagh and Tressa were almost upon it, headed for certain death and completely unaware. I screamed, I believe, and spurred my big black savagely, sending him leaping forward with a scream of his own, trying to overtake my companions as I stood in the stirrups and swung my sword high above my head. I leaned far out over my horse's ears and brought the long blade whistling down, afraid I had misjudged the distance and my stroke would miss, yet knowing that I might already be too late to save my friends.

I barely felt the contact as the tip of the sword's razor sharp edge cut through the rigid rope, but I heard the thrumming twang as the strands parted and the ends flicked away. Then I heard another, double scream. The rope's end, recoiling with the sudden release of tension, had struck Tressa's horse full in the muzzle, and the animal had thrown itself violently backward, rearing erect, forelegs flailing. I had a glimpse of Tress herself, her feet free of the stirrups, pushing away from the animal, and then I was beyond her, my chest filling up with murderous rage as I saw the eight observers, the architects of this slaughter, preparing to scatter.

They were much too slow. I was among them before they could recover from their shock at seeing me cut through their rope. Two of them died on my first charge, one on my left, the other to my right as I swung my blade with the strength of dementia. I pulled my horse around hard, veering to my left, and swung directly back to attack again, cleaving one fleeing craven from behind so that his right arm fell away, severed cleanly by the blow. Then another, more brave than his fellows, came charging towards me, his arm bent backwards to hurl a short, heavy spear from a close distance. He threw, and I swung and caught the heavy missile just behind the head with the centre of my blade, smashing it from the air. The sudden, jarring weight of the spear caught my sword's edge and pulled me sharply and uncontrollably to my left, out of balance. My right foot slipped out of my stirrup and I felt myself falling.

I did not lose consciousness, but every bit of wind was driven from my body as I hit the ground. I was incapable of moving for some time, my chest and throat a mass of agony. There was noise everywhere, all around me, and then I felt hands pulling at me, raising me up, and I gasped for breath. Donuil hauled me to my feet, his fingers hooked inside the armholes of my cuirass, and I saw his eyes peering, wide and anxious, into my own. He shouted at me, asking if I could move, and I nodded and pushed him weakly away, but he hung on to me and half dragged me to where my horse stood, snorting and rolling his eyes, held firmly by one of our young troopers. Donuil cupped his hands and hoisted me back up into my saddle. As I hung there, still fighting for breath, I saw Tressa and Shelagh, both mounted, sitting their horses tensely, staring at me and obviously waiting to move again. I looked down at Donuil, who was pulling himself back into his own saddle.

"Where's Ded?" I thought this was a shout, but it emerged as no more than a pain filled, choking wheeze.

"He's dead, Cay, " Donuil shouted back. "They're all dead, all of them who rode into the rope. Now move, or we'll be joining them!"

He pulled his horse in, close to my right side, while Benedict flanked me equally closely on the left, and we began to move again, gathering speed quickly until we were riding at full gallop. As we went, my breathing became easier, and soon I nodded and shouted to my two escorts, letting them know that I could now control myself and my big horse. They nodded and edged away from me, and after a short ; time I was able to look around me again. Our party had shrunk by half, perhaps more.

Donuil knew what I was thinking. He leaned closer to me and shouted again, his voice interrupted by the wind roaring through the ear flaps of my helmet:"... don't know who those people... too many of them to light... lucky to break through them... lucky to stay ahead of them. Most of them were afoot, but... horses ... don't know how many... won't be far behind us, though, if they're coming at all... best keep moving... outrun them."

Some time after that, the ground began to rise more and more steeply beneath us and our horses started to flag. Germanicus was foaming at the mouth, and I knew he was close to foundering. Then we came to a spot where the steep pathway levelled out for a stretch, and on an impulse I drew rein, calling to the others to halt, and turned to look back the way we had come. This spot would be defensible, I thought, for the crest of the rise was almost a straight edge and beneath it was a fringe of low, thick bushes. Anyone coming up towards us would be totally exposed, while we might remain concealed.

I jumped down immediately and untied the bindings that held Publius Varrus's great bow in place beneath the flaps of my saddle, calling to one of the troopers to unlash the quiver from the other side and bring it to me. As he did so, I fumbled in my scrip for a bowstring and made the weapon ready, shouting to Donuil to organize the others and change the saddles from the horses we had been riding to the spare animals. Somehow, we had come through that running fight with almost all our spare mounts. They had been roped together in four groups, and we still had three of those with us. As that work progressed, I stood on guard, an arrow nocked and ready to draw at the first sign of movement on the slope beneath. Behind me, Tress finished transferring her saddle to her spare mount, then set about tending to Germanicus, but Donuil relieved her of that task and finished it.

For half an hour I stood there on guard, while my people and their horses caught their breath and regained their strength. Towards the end of it I started looking at the skies again, where the heavy, sullen, strangely coloured clouds were still boiling. Someone behind me cursed, briefly and viciously, but when I spun to ask what was wrong he merely held out his hand, palm upwards. It was starting to rain again.

Below me, on the flank of the hill, I heard a dull, scrabbling sound and a muffled curse. I jerked my arm up, warning the others, and then scanned the trees below. As I did so, four running men emerged, one of them limping, running like a crab and scrubbing at the fresh mud that caked his right knee. They were all peering upwards towards where I stood, but there was no focus to their attention, and I realized they had not seen me. I was still concealed from them by the brow of the slope and the low screen of bushes just below it, and from the way they ran, dogged and silent but showing no sign of caution, it was evident that they did not expect to find us there so close. Five more men followed them, and now I could hear the sounds of others farther back among the trees.

I had twenty three arrows in my quiver and one nocked to my bowstring. I pulled and loosed almost without aiming, bringing the leading man down in midstride, the force of the arrow knocking him over backwards. I immediately loosed another missile, then a third, and two more men went down. A chorus of howls and shouts broke out momentarily, and then all sound and movement ceased, except for the writhings of the third man I had shot. I ignored him, putting aside the temptation to waste another arrow, and scanned the greenery below. The fourth man had thrown himself down behind a hummock of grass, and I could see one of his legs projecting into the open. '

It was raining heavily again, and the noise of the rain! hammering on leaves drowned all other sounds from below. Behind me, however, I could hear the sounds of my people ! mounting and preparing to leave. I was taking careful aim; at the exposed leg when Donuil appeared at the edge of my vision. I turned my head slightly to look at him and as I did! so, all the world exploded in a blinding flash of blue-white light and sizzling heat that sent both of us reeling backwards, away from the lip of the crest. As quickly as it had! come, the light vanished, and I was blind, blinking my eyes uselessly in panic with the stink of something alien in my nostrils. I heard people and horses screaming in the blackness all around me, and then my vision started to come back to me, imperfectly, marred by glaring spots of brightness that shut much from my sight. Staggering with nausea, I ran back to the edge of the path and looked down again, still blinking wildly, and saw movement beneath me on the slope. Nothing at which I looked directly was visible to me, but I could see men rushing on both sides, as though around a hole in my sight. My mind told me that a lightning bolt had struck beside us, and it told me in the same flash that the men below, further away from it, had not been affected! as I had, and that they were now swarming up the hillside.

I nocked another arrow, made out a target on my left, then swung towards the running shape and fired, but as soon as I did so, I lost sight of both target and arrow and had no idea

of whether I had hit or not. Undeterred, and feeling a snake of fear biting at my entrails, I repeated the manoeuvre, this time spinning to my right and loosing at a half seen shape; this one went down, spinning to fall among long grass. More than half blind I might be, but the attackers had no way of knowing that, and once again they dropped to the ground. Still, I saw movement among the growth, far on my right, too far away and too indistinct to offer a target. I knew what the movement represented, though: people moving uphill to outflank us. I shot two more arrows into the area directly ahead of me, pulling the bowstring back to my ear each time. The blind spot before my eyes was diminishing.

It was then I saw a most amazing, overwhelming thing. The very surface of the trees below me seemed to bend and flex, as though pressed flat by some enormous, unseen hand. Everything in my sight faded almost instantly to an impenetrable greyness and was lost in a swelling roar of deafening sound. I barely had time to marvel, for almost instantly that alien force came beating down on me. It was a hailstorm, massive and elemental, and the sheer fury of the onslaught hammered me to my hands and knees. The noise against my metal helmet was appalling and the weight of hailstones beating at me was insupportable. I allowed myself to fall face down, abandoning my weapons and rolling my body up into a ball. Every exposed portion of my skin was a mass of sharp, stinging pains and I wondered if I might die there, battered to death by ancient forest gods. But then the force of the storm abated slightly, and I opened my eyes.

Donuil was riding towards me, bent forward from his saddle, his right arm outstretched to seize me. I uncurled my body and pushed myself erect, grasping my long bow in my left hand and reaching upward with my right, aware as I did so that I clutched a single hailstone the size of a .: horse turd. I dropped it and bent my arm, locking elbows with Donuil as he galloped by and leaping upwards as he swung me across his horse's rump. It was a trick we hadpracticed a hundred times. I clung to the back of his saddle as he turned, just short of the path's lip, and headed back towards the others. I leaped down and pulled myself up into my own saddle, fighting my horse as it struggled and reared away from me, maddened by the pulverizing hail. I managed to mount, eventually, and to bring my horse under a degree of control, and then we were moving again, seeking shelter that was nowhere to be found. Even among the trees there was no respite, for the hailstorm had stripped the leaves from the thick canopy above. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the deluge of ice ended and a profound silence settled everywhere.

None of us moved in that silence, not even our horses, as though all of us were afraid to stir lest the gods of the storm detect our movement and unleash the ice again. But the silence held, and grew, and we began to accept that it was over. I twisted in my saddle and looked about me, gratefully conscious that my sight had fully returned. All the land about us was carpeted with solid ice and slush. I pulled myself together and kicked my horse into motion again,' beginning to feel the smarting ache of the pounding my body had taken, and the others moved with me, gathering themselves and moving slowly towards the path again. Only twelve of us remained: Benedict was there, and young Bedwyr, who looked exhausted and far older than his years, Shelagh and Tress and Donuil, and six troopers. Germanicus, my black, was still with us, though he had lost his saddlebags, and beyond him I could see the other spare horses, more than half a score.

An arrow shot close by my face and glanced harmlessly off the cuirass of the man ahead of me, startling us all and reminding us abruptly and frighteningly that we had enemies in close pursuit. I raised my bow and reached behind my shoulder for an arrow, only to discover that I had none. I had lost the entire quiver somewhere below, most probably when Donuil had snatched me from the ground. I waved everyone forward and we rode again, spurring our mounts and cursing loudly as we tackled the steep slope above us, all of us painfully aware of the ice beneath our animals' hooves. Mere moments later, the rain came back, lancing down heavily through the fading light of the late afternoon and cutting visibility to where we could barely see the rider ahead of us. The cursing grew louder, but we took some comfort in knowing the enemy were all afoot and must be suffering even more than we were.

The pathway grew rapidly steeper and narrower, slippery and treacherous underfoot. It swung around to the left, where we found ourselves on an exposed slope, with a steep cliff above us and a yawning chasm falling away on our right. Far out, above the mist shrouded valley below, a jagged fork of lightning flashed and was mirrored instantaneously by a much closer one. Shelagh rode directly ahead of me now, and in front of her several of the spare horses followed three troopers, who rode directly behind Donuil. Beyond Donuil I could see Benedict's red crested helmet and in front of him rode Tress, with another trooper on her left. Another arrow fell in front of me, wobbling spent and harmless. I turned in my saddle to look back, but there was nothing there to see. I felt sure that this was a parting shot, a last, defiant arrow. We had beaten our pursuers.

It was then that my horse reared, whinnying in panic. Ahead, I saw one of our horses, its legs kicking wildly as it fell from the pathway into the void beneath. The scene ahead of me was terror and madness, a mass of rearing, plunging animals and milling arms. A second horse went over the edge, a rider clinging to its back, and I saw another flailing human form plummeting down.

Directly in front of me, Shelagh's horse slipped and fell, sliding backwards into my mount and kicking the legs from beneath him. As he went down, I threw myself from the saddle, sideways, to my left. Shelagh landed flat on her back in front of me. I heard a splintering crack as I fell sprawling and felt something give, sickeningly, beneath me. Stunned, I waited for the pain that must surely accompany such a sound, but I felt nothing other than the solidness of the ice covered earth. I looked down then, and saw that the noise had been the splintering of my bow, the mighty and ancient Varrus longbow, which now lay broken and useless beneath me. In a curious condition of mindlessness, I stared at it, thinking that this weapon had been more than a hundred years old, cared for by generations of proud owners, and now it was shattered and dead.

I snapped back to awareness. People had fallen! I scrambled to my feet and saw that Shelagh had not moved; she lay with her arms and legs sprawled wide. In that same glance, I saw someone else, on the far side of the path—a helmet and shoulders, hands clutching at the icy edge of the pathway and huge eyes peering terror stricken into mine. I threw myself forward in a dive, reaching for those arms, but they fell away before I could grasp them. I landed face down on the ice and slid forward on my metal cuirass, head first, over the edge. I twisted violently, reaching frantically for a handhold, and fell, only to find myself arrested and dangling by one leg, upside down over the abyss.

I have no knowledge of how long I hung there, but I remember some of the thoughts that went through my head. I knew that I was hanging suspended by one of the metal greaves I wore on my legs. It had evidently snagged on some protrusion, perhaps a sapling or a root. Only two thin leather straps secured that greave against my leg. If either of them broke, the other would snap, too, and I would fall head first. I knew that my sword was still safely at my back, for as I fell it had slipped freely through the metal ring between my shoulders, and its cross guard had lodged beneath the neck flap of my helmet. I could feel the weight of it, pressing against my helmet and pushing it forward onto my brow, forcing my chinstrap hard against my jaws to choke me. Someone far below me was moaning in agony, and lightning still flickered in the darkening sky, setting thunder rolling in great, crashing, concussive waves. And the rain still poured.

It was Benedict who found me. I heard his voice above my head, calling my name and warning me not to try to move. I tried to answer him, but my helmet's strap had jammed my mouth tightly shut. Some time passed, and then I heard sounds of movement, and two men came down to where I hung, lowering themselves on lengths of rope, Benedict and a trooper called Marco. Marco held an additional length of rope, and once he had anchored himself securely he passed it carefully around my shoulders to Benedict on my other side. I felt them cinch it tightly, securing my sheathed sword against my back in the process, and then Benedict held on to me while Marco reached above and cut the straps that held my greave in place. I fell free, safe in Benedict's grasp, and found myself facing the cliff face, solidly supported by the rope. Benedict told me to hang on, then both of them swarmed back up to the path and began to raise me to safety. I was grateful and unsurprised as I arrived at the top to see Donuil standing there above me, his giant body braced on thick muscled legs as he hauled me upward, hand over hand, while the other two stood watching anxiously.

My legs would not support me when I reached the path above, and Benedict had to untie the rope about my chest. Donuil had returned to kneel over Shelagh, who was propped against the wall of the cliff face, her eyes open but staring vacantly. I asked if she was well, and he nodded, his eyes huge and wide. I looked about me then. Benedict and Marco were close by and I could see two other men working with the horses some distance above.

"Where's Tress?" Even as I asked, I knew the answer, and Benedict lowered his head.

"She's gone, Cay. Her horse took her over the edge."

I felt nothing, except an enormous lassitude that settled over me like a cloud of fog.

"What happened, Ben?"

He drew a long, deep breath. "It was a wildcat."

"What?"

"A wildcat, or some such animal. It must have been crazed by the storm. I saw it leaping from the cliff face above us, and then it landed on a horse's neck and all the world went mad. I saw it happen and there was nothing I could do. The animal it landed on spun around screaming, rearing and kicking the horse behind it, which tried to do the same but fell and slid back down the hill into the animals behind. Once that had begun, it was chaos. I saw Tressa's mount rearing and circling on its hind legs while she stood in the stirrups trying to pull it down, and then one ' of its hooves slipped off the edge and they went over. My own horse fell sideways, the other way, pinning me against the wall, and I was stuck there until it got to its feet again.

Donuil leaped off his horse and managed to avoid being crushed. Marco and Rufus went down, too, but they were fortunate and landed between horses. Bello, who's working with Rufus, fared similarly. Shelagh was thrown safely, though she took a hard, hard fall, and you went over the edge. I didn't see you go. I thought you were dead with the others. Thank God we looked for you. "

I remembered the moans I had heard coming from beneath me. "Someone's alive down there, " I said.

"Aye, we know. We heard him, but we can't see where he is. "

"It might be her—it might be Tress, Ben. "

He grimaced. "I doubt it, Cay. Tress went over with her horse, much farther up the track, and the sounds I heard were made by a man, I think. "

I struggled to rise to my feet and fell back. "We have to look. We have ropes. We'll climb down. "

"Merlyn, we can't. It's too dark now, too dangerous. There are only seven of us left, and we're all frozen and exhausted. If we go clambering down there in the darkness, we could all be killed. We'll have to wait till morning. "

"By morning they might all be dead. "

"I know. But there's no other possibility. "

Again I gathered myself and attempted to rise, and this time I made it to my feet, but when I took my first step my right leg, the one from which I had hung for so long, folded uselessly beneath me and Benedict barely managed to catch me as I fell headlong. My face hit his cuirass, then all the world went black.

SIXTEEN

Madness can take many forms. Mine took the form of Peter Ironhair, and because of it, a year was to elapse before I would truly mourn my Tressa. My first great love, Cassandra, had been two years dead before I mourned for her, but then I had been ill, incapable of understanding my loss since my wits were scattered and my past life hidden from my mind. Tressa, the only other woman who could claim my soul, having mastered my heart, had to wait a conscious year while I, with all my faculties apparently intact, went through the madness of vengeance. I was aware of loss through all that time—aware that grief boiled, unspilt, filling me totally; aware of yawning emptiness in all my world aware that all the joys I had ever known were gone from me—and yet I wilfully refused to think of those things of countenance what ailed me. I had been set one task to complete before I died, a task forged and hammered into being in the emptiness of my soul: the personal destruction of an enemy and the excision of his living heart.

In sleeping and in waking dreams Ironhair's face was never absent from my mind for longer than it took me to complete one minor task and turn towards another. I would discuss some strategy or other with my officers—for I had no friends at that time, and dealt with people strictly on the dictates and requirements of the moment—and then would turn to walk or ride away, and there would be Ironhair, the creator of my despair, grinning at me in my mind. I saw him always as he had been in Camulod, before we threw him out: an open faced, attractive, smiling man with the suggestion of goodwill and fellowship ever about him. His face, clearly recalled in every detail, came to be more familiar to me than my own, which I saw but seldom in those days. Even in sleep he was with me, and he was everyone I dreamed of. Each solitary night I was startled awake as his face appeared on Tressa's, Ded's and even Arthur's shoulders. Lucanus came to me in dreams, to talk, but even he never failed to become Ironhair, mocking me with his smile.

I have said that in those days I had no friends; that is both true and false. My friends stood by me—Donuil and Shelagh, Benedict and Falvo, Philip and faithful Rufio—but I abjured them and avoided them, cutting them cruelly with coldness and indifference whenever they sought my company and treating them as mere subordinates when I had to deal with them in government or war. They bore it stoically, knowing whence it came, but nowadays, when I think back to how I was, I sense their pain and loss, which must have seemed to them as bitter and unwelcome as my own.

It passed, in time, that dreadful misery, but I was never able to recapture the easy intimacy I had known with all of them; I had progressed by then from being simple Merlyn, trusted companion, brother-in-arms and laughing friend, to being Merlyn the predator, the avenger and the sorcerer.

A year, lost to me save for minor, insubstantial memories, as surely as the two years when I lived as someone else; and a lifetime, forfeited in payment for a dream of vengeance.

It began on that steep path above the gulf that swallow: Tress.

The morning sun rose in a cloudless sky that revealed no trace of the killing storm and found us huddled still in sleep, seven chilled and agued bodies shuddering in soaked clothes and huddled together for warmth in a single mast like nested spoons in a field kitchen case. Someone, I guessed Benedict, since he lay on the outside, had covered} the sleeping mass of us with cloaks and bedroll blankets and layered leather tents in an attempt to conserve our body; heat. Shelagh lay pressed against my back when I awoke,; her arms about my waist hugging me tightly, and I, in turn, was clutching the trooper Rufus. When the first of us awoke the others followed, and I remember feeling every ache and pain of all my forty plus years as I rolled free of our makeshift bedding, shivering from the chill of the morning and the dragging dankness of my cold, wet clothing.

We broke our fast briefly and in silence, eating without awareness from the rations left in one of the remaining saddlebags, and then we began searching for our friends. The abyss that had seemed so deep and dark in the storm; the previous night turned out to be nothing so enormous. At its deepest point, it was less than a score of paces, vertically, from the path above. Its bottom, however, was littered with loose boulders that had long since fallen from the cliff face and were now hidden by scrub and bushes. The sapling from which I had hung—my greave was still in place, lodged in the dirt at its base—had suspended me no more than my own height again above the ground, sufficient to have killed me, had I fallen down head first, but nothing resembling the depth I had imagined to be under me as I swung there. There, too, below and to the left, his lower body twisted in a shallow pit and his torso partially hidden by a tree trunk, we found Bedwyr, unconscious but alive, his left leg broken beneath him, a splintered length of bone protruding from his thigh. We left Rufus and Marco, the medical orderly attached to our troop, to straighten and splint the broken limb while Bedwyr was still unconscious and then to extract him from the pit in which he lay. The rest of us went looking for the others who had fallen.

Tressa had died beneath the weight of a falling horse— not her own, which lay several paces away, but mine, the beautiful big black gelding that she had called Bucephalus. Tress lay seemingly asleep on her back, her face at peace though tinged with the faintest shade of blue. Her helmet was still in place, covering her lustrous hair so that she looked more like a sleeping boy than a woman. Her lower body, however, from the rib cage downward, lay entirely concealed by the enormous bulk of the black horse's massive hindquarters, which were covered in blood and offal from its ruptured abdomen. She had been right, I thought as I stood gazing down at her. The creature had been aptly named. I remembered how she had teased me in bed, on the evening of the day I changed his name. She had preferred Bucephalus to old, mundane Germanicus, she said; Bucephalus had dignitas, the rolling majesty of a magnificent, historic name. My response had been to gather her into my arms and mount her, laughingly telling her that Bucephalus had killed the most wondrous man in all the world of his day, throwing him from a cliff, and I had challenged her to throw me from her saddle with such ease. But she had had no wish to unhorse me that night, and Bucephalus had been forgotten as we rode together, repetitively seeking the temporary little death to which we both knew she could always throw me. And now another Bucephalus had killed the most wondrous woman in my world.

It took us half a day to bring down the horses and haul the big black's hulk away from Tressa, and then to bury her I found a sheltered spot for her, between two spines of rock some way below the place where she had died, and by myself I dug the shallow pit that would hold her, loosening the earth with my sword and scraping it away with my remaining greave. When I could dig no deeper, I laid her gently in the stony grave and packed her body carefully in the earth I had removed, leaving her beautiful face free of dirt. That done, I placed two slanting slabs of stone over her head, angling them so that they would form a roof above her face, and then I placed a multitude of rocks over the mound that marked her resting place, piling them with great! care so that they fit together and would yield to no marauding wolf or bear. For hours I toiled at that, travelling farther each time in my search for stones till all the grass and earth | around was trampled flat and her funeral place was covered] by a chest high pyramid. Only then did I stop, feeling the laboured ache within my chest threaten to overcome me.

While I had been employed in that, the others had been similarly busy, above me, piling rocks over the three troopers who had met their deaths beside my Tress on that treacherous chute. Gunnar, Casso and Secundus, their names had been. I had known them all as casually as any leader knows his men, but I had not loved them.

As I climbed back up the steep slope beside the path, Donuil came forward to greet me, holding out his hand to help me clamber up the last short distance. But as I took his hand, his face changed into Ironhair's, and I leaned back and pulled him, hard, attempting to throw him out and over, above my head. Thank God he had already braced himself to take my weight, but even so, I almost succeeded in dislodging him, so great was his surprise. He grunted, frowned and then heaved, pulling me up onto the path and then pushing me aside. I know I was demented, and he told me afterwards that he had seen it in my eyes. The moment passed and I stood there, shaking my head as he asked me what was wrong.

We came to Camulod days later, bearing Bedwyr on a litter made out of leather tents slung between two long poles cut from tall, straight saplings and carried between two horses, front and rear. I have no recollection of the journey, or of our arrival.

My first awareness of being home again came when I opened my eyes in the sudarium, the steam room of the fort's bathhouse. I was sitting up, and had been talking, apparently, to Benedict, who sat across from me. I was instantly assailed by a kind of vertigo, with images springing to my mind of similar awakenings, years before when I had lost my memories of myself. Benedict leaned towards me quickly, his face creased with concern, asking if I was well. I nodded that I was and decided then and there to say nothing of my loss of awareness. He continued to eye me uneasily, nevertheless, but the moment passed without further comment.

My clothes, when I located them, were clean, and different from the clothing I had worn out on the road, so I knew I had been home long enough, at least, to have changed them. I went in search of Dedalus, hoping to pick his brains without betraying myself, and had gone half the way across the yard before I remembered seeing him fly from his horse and crash to the ground. Dedalus was dead. Again the vertigo swept over me, and I moved slowly to the nearest wall to lean against the stones, feeling the nausea churning in my gut. I vomited, explosively, but felt no better for it, and then all at once I was down on my knees and falling forward I awoke again with Ludmilla and Shelagh hovering over me. When they saw my open eyes, Ludmilla bent and placed a cool, soft hand across my brow.

"You have had a fever, Caius, and have made us all afraid for you, these past few days. Now lie still until I bring Mucius. Shelagh will stay with you."

When Ludmilla had gone, I tried to turn to Shelagh, but I could not move my head, and panic flared in me. My thoughts leaped back to the time of my earlier injury, when Lucanus had had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure there. He had strapped my head to a retaining device to do so. Shelagh, however, had been watching my eyes and now she bent over me, slipping her arm beneath my neck and raising me slightly, setting my fears to rest. I had simply become too weak to move my head. I tried to speak to her, but my lips were stuck together. She quickly moistened a scrap of cloth and wiped my mouth, and I recalled the pleasure I had felt long years before when Aunt Luceiia had done the same thing for me. I licked my lips and spoke, but what emerged was a mere whisper.

"What's happening, Shelagh? Where's Ambrose?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, where's Ambrose?" The door at the foot of my bed swung open and Mucius Quinto swept into the room, crossing directly to my side and placing his hand on my brow. His eyes seemed to be on Shelagh, however, and he did not glance down to where I lay watching him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, speaking to Shelagh.

She shook her head, frowning still. "He doesn't remember anything."

Quinto looked down at me, then, and raised his hand a little from my brow. "Hmm, " he grunted. "Better. I'm not afraid of losing my hand this time. " He smiled. "I've seldom felt, or seen, a fever such as you have had, my friend. You were afire, for almost a week. Absolutely burning up. Is Shelagh right? How much do you recall?"

I blinked at him. "Of what?" I asked, again in a whisper.

"Of anything. What is the last thing you remember?"

Tressa's high piled grave flashed through my mind, choking me suddenly. I forced my thoughts on, past that, and saw Donuil above me, reaching down to me. "Ironhair, " I said.

"Hmm, " Quinto murmured, seemingly unsurprised. "Do you remember coming back to Camulod?" I shook my head. "Hmm!" he said again, more emphatically this time. "Donuil was right, then. " He turned away and stepped out of my sight but returned mere moments later holding a horn cup. "Here, drink this. " He reached his hand behind me to support my head.

"Donuil was right?" I rasped. "Don't you mean Shelagh?"

"She, too. Come now, drink. "

I kept my mouth closed, however, refusing the cup. "Am I losing my mind again, Quinto?"

"Losing—? Oh, you mean your memory!" He laughed, throwing his head back, and I felt relief touching me. "No, of course not! Not the way you did before, at least. You know us all here, don't you? And you know who you are, so your memory is fine. You have been ill, that's all, Caius. A raging fever and a rabid cough. Pneumonia, and not surprisingly. Benedict had it, too, though to a lesser degree, and this skin ailment that you show did not appear on him. Your memory is fine, I assure you. You may have lost some recent details, here and there, but that was the fever's fault, not your mind's. Now drink, and sleep. "

"Why can't I move?”

"Because you're as weak as a baby, famished and dehydrated. Be grateful you're alive, because now you'll start to regain your strength. Drink, man!"

The potion had a chalky, bitter taste, but I drank all of it, and when I had, Quinto lowered my head back to the pillow and moved beyond my sight. Shelagh leaned over ml again and wiped the corners of my mouth before stooping closer and kissing me gently on the forehead. I felt her lips cool and soft, then felt her move away.

"What skin ailment?" I asked, but no one answered me I knew I was dreaming from the moment I opened my eyes for the room was dark and yet I could see perfectly. Ironhair sat beside my bed, slouched in a padded armchair, leaning his chin upon his bent left arm and gazing at me through narrowed eyes. He wore the toga praetexta, the purple bordered toga of a Roman senator. When he saw that I had come awake, he smiled and straightened up.

"Caius Merlyn Britannicus," he drawled. "My people ten me you've been seeking me. How may I serve you?" !

"Serve me by staying alive until I come for you," I answered, and he laughed, his voice filled with what sounded like genuine amusement.

"I will! You may rest assured I have no plans to die. But why would you come for me?"

I simply lay and looked at him, seeing the misleading attractiveness I had always seen in him, the apparent lack of malice. "Why?" I asked him then. "Why did you set out to destroy my life?"

"Destroy—?" He laughed again, but when his laughter died away, there was perplexity stamped between his brows.

"Why would you think that I would waste my time destroying you? Are you that arrogant in your conceit?" His voice grew colder, angry now. "You're but one man, Britannicus, and though it may offend your ears to hear it, I have worthier, more important matters to occupy me. I have a kingdom yet to win for my prime client, Carthac Pendragon, and until I have done that I can have little time for squandering upon my own past grievances."

He paused, and I interjected, "Your client? Are you then become a senator, in truth, that you have clients?"

He ignored my interruption completely, continuing as though I had not spoken at all. "Oh, it's true enough, I'll grant you, that you and I had different viewpoints once, and that you used your power to thwart me. But that was long years since, and life has moved along since then—new challenges, new lands and different hills to climb! I've seldom thought of you in years, except for one or two occasions when your name came up in casual discussions. Merlyn of Camulod, you call yourself today. A far cry from Caius Merlyn Britannicus, Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod, as you once named yourself to me."

'That stuck in your craw, didn't it?"

"Stuck in my craw? Come now, Merlyn! We have both grown up since then. That long and overblown self entitlement was the posturing pride of a self important little man who feared his spurious powers might be challenged. Admit it."

"No, it was a statement of fact, made with authority, and it sufficed to put you down and quell your plans for usurpation of this Colony."

"Only temporarily," he drawled, almost inaudibly.

"What did you say?"

He smiled, a long, slow smile. "I said it set my plans back temporarily. I will have Camulod, you know, once Carthac has claimed his place in Cambria." "Never," I murmured. "Not while I am alive to stop you ' "You? Ah, Merlyn, you are already half way dead. Fully alive, perhaps, in mental terms, but physically? No." He shook his head. "Your leprosy will write an end to you in Camulod"

"It might," I said, totally undismayed to hear him name my deepest fear. "But not before I chop the living heart out of your breast."

"Hah!" He rose swiftly to his feet and moved behind the chair, then slowed to settle the folds of his snowy toga to drape perfectly before he placed his hands on the chair's back and leaned over it, towards me. "Merlyn," he said, his voice betraying a hint of impatience, "you are not a stupid man, I know. Tiresome, indeed, but not stupid. So if you hear no other word from me but this, hear this clearly: I will die, as all men must, but I will not die by your hand. Believe that. You and I will never come together, chin to chin, as warriors do to test each other's mettle. Believe that, and lei me do what I must do. Live out your silly, miserable life however you will but please—if I must implore, I will—do not delude yourself that I would stoop to notice any detail of your life. Now let me go, I am required elsewhere." "Carthac," I said. "What of Carthac?" "Why do you aid him?"

"Carthac is a means to my own ends. He is insane, an animal, unworthy to be called a human man, but he is necessary, for the time being, at least. He is impervious to pain, you know, and utterly fearless. I think he may be truly invulnerable. He bleeds like any man, so I suppose that is not quite true, but I seriously doubt he can be killed like any ordinary man. I once watched as a surgeon butcher carved his thigh and dug a long, barbed arrow from the wound. Carthac bore it all without a grunt, without a flicker of annoyance. Mind you, he killed the surgeon afterwards, but that was merely as an afterthought. As I said, he is insane. "

. "And when he turns to rend you limb from limb, what then, Ironhair?"

"He never will. He loves me, in his own demented way. I am the only friend that he has ever known, and he trusts me completely. And now I must go. Release me, if you will. "

"Presently I will, but you have much to answer for. The assault on our children, years ago, and the murder during that assault of Hector's wife, Julia, a blameless woman if there ever was one. The recent death of my own wife, Tressa. The death of my good friend Dedalus, and much, much more, the tally of which has barely begun—"

He made a tutting noise, cutting me short. "These charges are nonsense, Britannicus. I know nothing of this woman Julia, although I'll take your word that she was killed. That was unfortunate and incidental to the main concern, which was to stifle the Pendragon brat. In that, I struck at you, once and no more. I was displeased with you. Mind you, had I known then what I know now, I might have tried the harder, but that was before dear Carthac came into my life.

"As for your wife and friends, what fault lies there of mine? Yours was the choice to come thus howling home, abandoning the simplest steps that might have saved their lives. You were the one who rode though unknown land with no protective scouts ahead of you.. And why? I have yet brought no threat to bear on Camulod, nor will I, till I'm done in Cambria. Really, you must admit I am blameless, there. "

"What about Horsa?" |

"What about him? I required mercenaries, and he provided them."

"He is a Dane, an Outlander!"

"He is a mercenary, Merlyn! He fights for payment"

"Aye, and for land and plunder and rapine. He slaughtered Vortigern, who was more than good to him and his kind. You'd turn his people loose among your own?"

His lip curled in a sneer. "What's this about my own? I have no people of my own, other than those I own by right of purchase. Spare me these minatory mouthings and let me go."

I nodded to him and lay back. "Go then, but be prepared for me. I'm coming for you, Ironhair, and I will find you"

He smiled again and began to fade from my sight, tin light that revealed him to me dimming slowly. "I have told you, Merlyn, you will not find me. Look to yourself, and to your charge, Arthur Pendragon. There is the one you should be grieving for and fretting over... He is accursed... much like you..."

When the room was completely dark and he was gone, I tried to shift myself upright but could not move. I raised my voice, instead, and was answered by another, coming from beyond the door. Then the door swung open and a young woman came in, bearing a lamp with a brazen reflector.

"Master Merlyn? Can I do aught for you?"

"No," I replied, pleased to hear that my voice was as strong as it had ever been. "What is your name?"

I cannot recall her name, but she told me she had heard me talking in my sleep, and I smiled and told her that I had been dreaming. She left me alone again, and I lay staring up at the darkened ceiling in wonder, stroking my fingers up and down the roughened surface of my scaly, dry skinned chest. Her lamp had been bright, amplified by the polished brass reflector. It should have dazzled me, after hours in a darkened room, but it had not. My eyes had grown accustomed to bright light before she entered.

I have never since been able to explain it, but I believe that Ironhair was in my room that night, and I have often wondered if he knew of it.

I was fully recovered and up and about a week later, little the worse for my strange illness, save that my skin was still rough and reddened. I checked myself and found nothing in the least resembling lesions; rough, scaly skin was all I had to show for my exposure on the night of the storm. Rough, scaly skin externally, and an equally rough, scaly texture to what lay inside me.

I reviewed everything that had happened prior to our arrival, and by the time Philip and Rufio and Falvo brought the remainder of my thousand back to Camulod, I had everything in hand, functioning efficiently.

Connor had seen the Danish fleet on its arrival, after it came around the tip of Cornwall's peninsula. He had spied it sailing downwind from afar and fled ahead of it with his two biremes and his fifteen escorting galleys. Vastly outnumbered—his estimate of the enemy's fleet was two hundred sails—he made no attempt to linger and fight but struck northward instantly, intent on gathering his own fleet. In passing, nonetheless, he dispatched two groups of messengers to bring warning to us and to Huw Strongarm, who lay encamped at Caerdyff. He would return, he said, when he could fight effectively against such numbers.

When the word arrived in Camulod, Ambrose was left with little choice but to ride to Huw's assistance. A fleet so large would land four thousand warriors, at the minimum of twenty men to a craft, and he knew the Danes used crew of at least thirty, and would be over crewed with warriors seeking spoil. He reckoned on six thousand warriors, and would not have been surprised to learn that they were eight or even ten thousand.

Huw's armies, Ambrose knew, had been disbanded in the.' aftermath of their victory on the coast by Dolaucothi. No one had expected Ironhair to raid again until the following year, and no one had expected to be confronted by another, vastly different army. Ambrose had not yet learned that these were Ironhair's new allies. It would take an entire month, at least, he reasoned, to rally Huw's Pendragon hostagain, for they were busy with their farms, ploughing the land in preparation for seeding. An army thousands strong; landed as unexpectedly as this one, would spread across the land like wildfire, gaining enormous impetus before it could be challenged or brought to fight. Only a mounted force; from Camulod had any chance of stopping them, for fearsome as they were aboard their swooping ships, once they were on the land they were mere infantry, immensely vulnerable to our massed horsemen.

Within the week, Ambrose had taken two full legions of our total force—two thousand heavy horse, a thousand scouts, and three thousand foot—and entered Cambria, headed directly to the southern coast, to Caerdyff, where he hoped to find Huw Strongarm. Derek of Ravenglass had ridden with him. Behind him, in full charge of Camulod, Ambrose left Tertius Lucca with a holding force of two thousand, fully three fourths of those garrison foot soldiers. He had also left word for me, should I return before he did, that I should remain in place, looking to the defence of Camulod and all the lands about it—from the Appian Colony in the north all the way south to Ilchester and beyond—but that I should send on my thousand horse to him as reinforcements, under Tertius Lucca himself, should we remain unthreatened here at home.

No word had come from Cambria of Arthur, and Ambrose had been gone for nigh on a month when we came home.

On the day following the return of Philip and the others, two troopers came to my quarters in the fort, carrying a large, wooden chest. It was from Plato, majordomo of the Villa Britannicus, and there was a single sheet of paper affixed to the lid. In it, Plato expressed his condolences on the loss of my beloved lady and informed me that Derek had left it at the Villa for me before riding off with Ambrose. I sat staring at it for some time, knowing what it contained, before I took my knife and cut the cords that bound it shut, throwing back the lid to look inside.

Beneath the carefully folded mass of his great red dyed war cloak, my cousin Uther's armour was intact, no single piece of it missing. It bore a few deep scores, but it was in fine condition. The helmet was more splendid than I remembered, crested with a fine display of stiff horsehair, dyed a deep scarlet; the visor band above the brows had been embossed with Uther's fiery dragon, enamelled in red. The same device, much larger, was engraved into the cuirass, the cuts of the engraving similarly packed with fired enamel, so that the device stood out sharp and clear against the dull matte of the bronze breastplate: a broad winged dragon, standing erect upon its strong rear legs and breathing curls of fire. I saw my cousin wearing it, and laughing at me, showing his strong, white, even teeth. He had told me once that I was too judgmental, and his opinion had wounded me deeply, before I realized that it was the simple truth.

Suddenly I missed him, grievously. I picked up his enormous, heavy cloak and spread it carefully out on the floor. Covering all the back of it in heavy layers of colourfully worked, rich needlecraft, that same great dragon reared its head and spread its wings over the wide stretched shoulders, this time done all in threads of pure, finely wrought! gold. Arthur would look magnificent in this, I thought, and turned my head to where Uther stood watching me still. He laughed again and said, "The boy's accursed..." in Ironhair's voice. I turned away again and slammed the lid on the; great box, then sat there looking at it while my mind recalled! the other two great chests I possessed, those that contained! the tools of death of two Egyptian warlocks. !

"Ironhair," I whispered, "I have a gift for you." I attended a meeting of the Council of Camulod the day after that, and left before the business was concluded. I knew few of the Councillors after my absence of so many years, and I found I had no patience now with the minutiae of government. On leaving, I sought out Tertius Lucca and asked him to walk with me, and as we strolled outside the gates of the fort I informed him that I intended to ignore my brother's request to send him personally with the extra thousand horsed His place, I said, was here in Camulod, where he was particularly suited, both by nature and by training, to oversees the conduct of the collective garrisons of the surrounding outposts and to work with the Council. I would send Philip with the cavalry reinforcements, I told him, and would hand over full command again to Lucca, until such time as Ambrose returned.

He listened, keeping his eyes cast down, and when I had completed what I had to say, he nodded, then saluted me, accepting my decree. I left him standing there beneath the walls and made my way to the bathhouse, feeling a grim excitement welling in my breast.

A short time later, I sat alone again in my own chambers, bare to the waist, repeating something I had once seen Lucanus do. I held one of Tressa's longest needles in my hand and I was sticking it gently, but judiciously, into my chest, moving it from place to place and taking note of what I felt. In most places, I felt the pain of a piercing needle. In many others, however, at least half a score of them, the metal needle slipped into my flesh without producing any sensation at all. Eventually I stopped what I was doing and sat there, staring into nothingness, empty and unmoved by the discovery. I had noticed the discoloured patches while lying in the steam room earlier: areas of whitish, dead looking skin, roughly circular in shape, the body hair within their boundaries already turning grey. Not lesions, yet, but growing. Mucius Quinto's "minor ailment of the skin. " Leprosy.

After a time, I rose and dressed again, wearing my finest leathers, and then sent for Philip, Falvo and Rufio. When they arrived, I told them to prepare to leave for Cambria in two days' time. I spent the remainder of the day poring through the warlocks' chests.

That night, I sought out Donuil and Shelagh to tell them I would be leaving Camulod for a time, and that they should not worry about me. Donuil I charged with looking after things while I was gone; Shelagh I charged with looking after Donuil. When Donuil sought to embrace me, I thrust him away and he fell back, abashed. Shelagh merely kissed her own palm and then laid it gently on my cheek. I heaved a deep, shaking breath, swallowed hard and left them.

Hours later, when the only people stirring were the night guards, I visited the stables, where I found a light, two wheeled cart and a plain, sturdy horse to pull it. I harnessed the animal and took it to my quartets, where I loaded four cases onto the cart. One of them contained Uther's armour.; Two more were the warlocks' chests. The last held a variety of things I thought I might need—clothing, and twine, a small hand axe, some coils of iron wire of varied thickness, some knives of varying sizes, fish hooks and lines, a matched set of shortsword and dagger, made by Publius Varrus, a polished mirror that had been my Aunt Luceiia's, my own long sword and Excalibur in its long, wooden case. ; I also took foodstuffs, scavenged from the kitchens: some? bread, slabs of both salted and smoked meat, a bag of flour, ; a smaller bag of salt, a clutch of onions and some corms of garlic, and the remainder of the olive oil, olives and wine brought to me by Germanus and carried safely home to me by the chief quartermaster. When I. had loaded everything,;! I swathed myself in an ankle length, black, threadbare garment which resembled a cloak, save that it had long, deep sleeves and a peaked, capacious hood that obscured my face. Then I hauled myself up to the cart's bench and set the horses moving, pulling the hood's deep cowl forward over my face. I had appropriated the garment that afternoon, from a peg outside the refectory where it had been; left hanging while its owner went in search of food. In return! I had left a heavy, woollen cloak of my own, sleeveless but" far finer than the one I took and much too fine for my intended purposes. As I expected, when I steered my cart out through the gates, shortly before dawn, the guards paid: no attention to my passing.

I reached my little, hidden valley of Avalon as the sun climbed high enough to throw long shadows from the surrounding trees down onto the waters of the tiny lake concealed within its depths, and I was keenly aware that seven whole years and more had passed since I had last been here, and that my Tress had lived her life and died without knowing of its existence. Cassandra's grave was barely noticeable now, its mound sunken to the level of the surrounding ground, and the door to the stone hut was still securely closed. This was my sanctuary; the world held no dominion over me here. The ropes that formed the cradle of my old bed were still strong enough to bear my weight, and I soon fell asleep, only to awaken within the hour, well rested and filled with a profound sense of calm as I listened to the song of birds in the woodlands around the tiny lake.

I spent some time thereafter gathering firewood, then lit a fire in the old firepit just beyond the door of the hut. I made a meal of cold, smoked meat and some of the bread that I had carried from the fort, and then I sat by the fire and opened up the warlocks' chests, retrieving my own copious notes and studying them closely. I must have been lost in them for many hours, because when I looked about again the sun had vanished and my fire was almost out, though I had fed it several times throughout the day. I coaxed it back to life again, noticing that the hoard of fuel I had amassed that morning now was almost gone, and thereafter I sat staring into the flames, lost in my thoughts as the light about me faded into dark.

Carthac was fearless, utterly so; Ironhair had said so in my dream. Strongarm had said the same: invincible, invulnerable, fearless, afraid of neither man nor beast. Horsa's Danes were fearless, too, according to all reports that I had heard. Savage, they were; invincible in their ferocity; implacable in their fierce hatred of any that withstood them or sought to thwart them; afraid, in all their godless pride and arrogance, of neither man nor beast.

My men were fearless, too, in war: invincible in their sure strength and confident that no mere human force could withstand diem. And yet I knew my men, in Camulod, had once known fear of me when I was young—not of my human strength, but of the mere suggestion that I, Merlyn, possessed powers that were more than human. Their fears had been unfounded, for the deeds that awed diem had all been achieved by trickery and mere suggestions fed by me into their willing minds. The most notorious of those had concerned the disappearance of Cassandra from a guarded room in the dead of night, and that had been no mere mischief. I had feared for the girl's life at the hands of some unknown assailant and had smuggled her away unseen before the guards were set to protect an empty room. The mystery came later, when I claimed to have been wakened by a dream that she was gone, and a subsequent search had proved this to be true. For years thereafter, soldiers walked in awe of me and watched me surreptitiously, awaiting further marvels. Those fearless soldiers, scorning man and beast, had nonetheless feared me and what I whispered to their minds of darknesses where their swords could not save them.

Now I had ranged before me, in the flickering firelight, an entire armoury of dark and fearsome tools, all of which could bring death and other terrifying effects, all of them garnered by two men whose evil minds possessed no other wish than to bring terror to the minds of ordinary men by causing death through awesome, mystifying and unnatural means. I had small, black, envenomed thorns that would bring instant, painful death to anyone they pricked, and I possessed a green and noxious paste that carried fiery poison that would burn a man to death from within, from the merest scratch. I had tray upon tray of unguents and oils and powders and salts and crystals, dried, withered berries, seeds and nuts, and crushed admixtures of all kinds; grasses and twigs and unknown, fibrous substances that burned with noxious, stultifying smoke; and all of these things brought death, in one form or another.

I would teach Carthac fear, I had resolved, and Ironhair, and all his swarming men. They would know fear the like of which they never could have dreamed: the fear of living death and magical enchantment; the fear of darkness and the stinking, evil things that crawled therein; the fear of being naked in the path of ravening beasts whose shapes could neither be imagined nor endured, grim, unseen creations from the human mind's darkest recesses. I, Merlyn, would teach them how to fear.

But before I could achieve any part of what I planned, I also had practical considerations to resolve, all of them dealing with the bulk of what lay spread about me. How much of it could I take with me, and how would I carry it? I would be journeying alone, a solitary man, so I would be a fool to carry anything that might appear worth stealing. I would be walking, too, once I reached Cambria, since a horse would attract attention where I wanted none. And I would be unarmoured to the point of appearing weaponless, although I would have both shortsword and dagger concealed beneath my cloak. It was my hope to travel by night, most of the time, and then I would be aided by the dark and by my long, black robe. But how much of this portable mass of death could I take with me?

Then I remembered Lucanus, and I smiled. Luke had been a gatherer of all things medicinal—leaves and herbs and roots and pods and berries—and he had devised a means of garnering and saving them that left his hands free of the need to carry them. He had had several robes made to his precise design, and had thereafter worn one every time he ventured out on any errand of collection. They were long and black and sleeveless, made of strong, homespun cloth in double thickness. Belted at the waist, they were open from neckline to ankle, and completely festooned with pouches and pockets, each strongly sewn in place and all overlapping one upon the other as they hung. I recalled the pride and enjoyment with which he had demonstrated it, when it was new. I had made some comment on its appearance, and he had brushed that aside, entreating me to think of its function rather than its look; the capacity to carry large quantities of different plants, berries and leaves, without the fear of losing them or mixing them together. Luke was long dead, but one of those garments hung in my own quarters in Camulod, where he had left it and forgotten it years earlier, before we went to Ravenglass. I had noticed it mere days before, hanging still in place, but had thought nothing of it at the time. Now I knew that I had to return to Camulod to collect it.

Pleased that I now knew how I would proceed, I set about the selection of my deadly tools. I set aside one ceramic, lidded box of the green poisoned paste first. That was my sine qua non, my most essential element: the death I had selected for both Ironhair and Carthac. They would both die consumed by inner fires, as had the warlock Caspar. After that, I laid apart the rolled ribbons of cloth that held the finger joint long poisoned thorns, each placed beside its neighbour with great care, the deadly points thrust through the cloth for safety and for ease of carrying. As I progressed, the choices became more difficult. Vials of liquid of varying colours, each of them deadly' enough to empoison an entire army, if added to the water that they drank. Boxes of powders that, mixed into food or drink, could produce frothing, convulsive, agonizing death within mere moments. Clusters of fibrous stuff that , thrown into a fire, produced a sweetish, sickening smoke that stupefied all who breathed it.

One substance gave me no concern at all, and that was the large box of combustible powder that I thought of as fire powder. I would not have considered leaving that behind. Another substance, this one a reddish, crystalline compound evidently crushed with mortar and pestle, affected me similarly, and my sole regret was for the paucity I had of it. This substance, when ingested, brought paralysis. Years before, I had dissolved a tiny pinch of it in water and then fed it to a rabbit, which had quickly died in a spasm, board stiff. I had set the poor dead tiling aside, holding it by its rigid legs and meaning to burn it later, after I had completed my notations on the day's activities. But when I looked again, perhaps an hour later, the "dead" rabbit had revived completely and went bounding from the table when it saw me move. Astonished more than I can say, I had repeated the procedure with another rabbit, with the same results. The paralysis was total, but reversed itself within the hour. The second time I carried out the test, I watched far more closely, and observed that the little creature's eyes did not glaze over as they would in death. In fact, they seemed alert, though motionless. I brought a taper close, and the pupils contracted, indicating an awareness of the light. I could not, of course, be certain, but I believed the animal had not lost consciousness but merely the ability to move. If that were true, it might apply to men, as well. I set the reddish crystals aside, checking with care to see that the lid still fitted snugly on the small box that contained them.

My final selection was no selection at all, but rather the careful removal from its packaging of the amazing, hair crowned human mask that fitted me as though shaped to my face. Then I repacked both large chests and locked them , dragged them deep into the trees, covering them first with a leather sleeping tent, and then laying branches over them. It was almost completely dark by then, and I carried my selected treasures into the hut, where I piled them carefully in a corner before lighting the fire in the iron basket against the wall at the foot of the bed.

The following morning, I returned briefly to Camulod, avoiding everyone and merely visiting my quarters to collect the long robe that Lucanus had left there. I was back in my valley long before nightfall, and in the course of the evening I repeated the entire procedure I had rehearsed the previous day, having discovered that Luke's pocket rich garment would hold far more than I had suspected. It was heavy, when I picked it up to put it on, but it hung easily, once donned, and when I had distributed the contents to remove the chinking sound of vials knocking on each other, I found that I could walk silently while wearing it. I then spent another entire day teaching myself which substances lay hidden in which pocket, so that soon I could reach for each package without thought.

I was prepared.