The Sorcer part 2: Metamorphosis

The Niger community had had no long sighted Caius Britannicus to prepare it in advance for such catastrophe, and no Publius Varrus to supply its people with the tools they would require in order to survive in harsher times. In spite of that, however, they had managed to adapt very quickly to their new circumstances. Soldiers and tacticians they had aplenty, for the Niger family had served the Empire well for centuries. Nero's grandfather, accurately gauging the extent and ramifications of the earliest changes—a drastic decrease in the quantity of crops being planted and raised and an equally radical increase in the amount of work necessary to protect those crops against depredation—had quickly directed his now idle farmers to the reclamation and refurbishment of an ancient Roman encampment near the home farm. The camp, a long disused marching camp, was situated more than a mile from the nearest road and had lain abandoned for more than a hundred years and probably closer to two hundred, but its outlines were classical and clearly marked, and in its day it had offered ample, if Spartan, accommodations for a transient cohort of five hundred men. The Appius farmers, glad of a purpose and a clear objective once again, had had the place rebuilt and strongly fortified within the year.

Then, realizing the strength and safety offered by the refurbished fort, they had moved their families and dependants within their newly raised walls and redefined their arable holdings, arranging them so that every field they fanned was defensible and within easy reach. That meant abandoning many outlying fields, as we had done in Camulod at first, and clearing new lands from the forest around their new fort, so that their collective farms came to form a broad, irregular circle, the extent of which was determined by the distance a column of men could march to its defense within half a day. That, too, stirred memories in me, for until the development of our cavalry strength, we in Camulod had been bound by the same constraints.

Since then, their entire community had adapted constantly, making adjustments and accommodations for a host of circumstances and events. Where every man had initially been a fanner, all were now soldiers or, at the very least, fighters, able to defend themselves individually and capable of joining together to form a united front should the need arise. They did not all drill regularly, every day, in the way of traditional soldiers, Nero said, but they learned the techniques and disciplines appropriate to the weapons they had, sufficient to enable them to, fight together as a group.

I interrupted to ask how many men they had currently under arms. His response was that they had a central core of a round hundred men, and they went to great lengths to keep that number whole. This central cadre was tightly disciplined and close to professional in its capabilities, according to the senior soldier in their ranks, a grizzled veteran of seventy years who had seen service with the legions. Nero's father had commanded the cadre before his death. Now it was Nero's charge.

In addition to that hundred, he told me, they had a fluctuating strength of perhaps sixty more, who trained irregularly and individually, and who were nominally kept in reserve, their primary duty being to the fields of grain, rather than the field of war. I could see from his tiny smile that Nero was quite pleased with his analogy.

I nodded, waiting for him to continue, but he had evidently said all he intended to say.

"So how often are you called upon to fight?"

"Not often, thank God. We discovered long ago that a good show of force is often a sufficient deterrent. That's why we keep our hundred on their toes and disciplined. Ten ten-man squads look impressive, when they form up quickly and appear to know what they're about. Nine times out of ten the opposition simply drifts away, in search of easier conquest."

'Then I must ask you this: how came you to be alone when our men found you?"

Nero shrugged. "Mere accident. I was hunting, and when first I saw your men, I hid, more out of curiosity than fear. Uniformed horsemen was a phenomenon I'd never seen before."

"Are you saying that you hunt in armour? What in God's name were you hunting?"

This time he laughed aloud. "No, no! Truth told, I had words with my wife this morning and stormed out in a rage, with no thought of where I was going. I was wearing my armour at the time, because I had been drilling with my men, and I took my bow and arrows with me merely because I had been carrying them when I went home. Denalda was out of sorts and angry at me for something I had not done—are you married?"

I shook my head. "Not yet."

"Don't do it, ever. Anyway, I was fuming—wives have more power to reduce a man to gibbering than any enemy— and I walked heedlessly for miles, until the weight of my armour told me I was tiring and had been stupid. I sat down under a tree—this must have been shortly after noon—and while I was sitting there, I saw a stag entering the woods in the distance. I shrugged out of my armour, gratefully enough, took up my bow and arrows, and went hunting.

"About an hour later, perhaps more, I saw the first of your men riding through our fields. As I said, I grew curious, and so I watched them for a while, trying to discover whether or not they might be hostile. My intelligence told me they must be, but their demeanour—simply the way they were riding—indicated otherwise. After a time, I crept away to where I had left my armour and put it on again, thinking to return home and alert my people. Only moments after that, your men changed direction and came straight towards where I was sitting. I tried to hide. The rest you know."

"Hmm. So you have, what? Five hundred people, more or less, living in your fort?"

"More than that. We're nigh unto a thousand nowadays, counting women and children. We outgrew the fort itself more than ten years ago, and there's a thriving community now, outside the walls. It was inevitable. There simply wasn't room for all the workshops we required—the pottery and the barrelmaker's shop, the cobbler's workshop and the tiler's yard, the alehouse and the bakery, not to mention the cattle pens and stock yards. Surely you must have those in Camulod?"

"Aye, we do, but our fort stands on a hilltop. Have you enlarged your walls to protect your vicus?"

"No. We've been discussing it for years, and everyone agrees that something ought to be done. It's our greatest and most dangerous weakness. We know our situation is perilous, the way things stand today. Some day, someone is going to come marching—or riding—against us, and if we are as unprepared then as we are today, we will all suffer for it. The truth, though, incredible as it may seem when discussing it like this, is that when it comes to committing the real, sustained effort for what will be a long and difficult task, there always seems to be a more pressing need at hand, and the building is deferred yet again." He paused, considering, then added, "People are lazy when they don't feel threatened... or when they lack a decisive leader who will simply demand obedience."

"Are you indecisive?"

He looked at me, that wry half smile still in place. "No, but I'm young and too recently come to power. Too many interests, longer set than mine, take precedence."

"Then you must change that."

"I know that. What I don't know is how."

I grinned at him. "Would you like to hear my idea now? It's still a bit thin, but we might be able to expand it, working together."

"I think I might, now," he said, nodding his head. "Because I've just had an idea of my own."

"Good. No more mead, for now. Come, walk with me and meet some of my men while I show you how a cavalry encampment operates."

FOUR

Our ideas melded together very quickly, and Nero Niger threw himself wholeheartedly into the easy relationship that I had sensed might be possible between us. We had both had the same idea: that our presence in his territory, properly used, might convince his people of the need to improve their defences immediately. But our discussions went much further than that, towards an idea that made the lesson we would deliver to his people seem almost inconsequential by comparison.

As is so often the case with matters of real significance, the constituent parts came together very gradually at first, but then they fused together at the end in a crescendo of insights and explosive recognition. I can clearly recall being genuinely surprised to discover, towards the end of our deliberations, that my problem with respect to the people in the lands beyond Camulod concerned nothing less than the goals of the original Colony founded by Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus—adaptation and survival in the face of the unthinkable. My unexpected and intense involvement with Nero Niger and his Appius clan over the course of the ensuing few weeks provided the different perspective that stripped the shutters from my mind and allowed me to see the path I had been unaware of to so long.

I have resisted the temptation to describe what happened in those weeks as a beginning, because that would be inaccurate—the true beginnings had come decades earlier. Publius Varrus had witnessed the beginning of our Colony on his wedding night, before the birth of my own mother, and had described it as a birthing, the emergence of potential independence and self sufficiency in Britain. The Roman evacuations at the start of the new century had been another beginning: the beginning of vulnerability and uncertainty in what had been, for hundreds of years, a strong and vibrant outpost of the Empire; the beginning of the invasions that now threatened the very existence of the people who for centuries had called this country home. What happened during those few weeks with Nero Niger was more akin to the start of a new phase of progress.

The end of the first phase, I came to realize long afterward, had been initiated when the first, hundred plus strong detachment of Camulodian cavalry had been dispatched in support of Dergyll ap Griffyd's war in Cambria, years earlier. That force had remained in the field for nigh on two years, engaging in very little warfare and living in encampments the entire time. Because their movements had been constant and ranged the length and breadth of southern Cambria, it would never have occurred to anyone concerned to think of those troopers as garrison troops, but that is precisely what they were, although their role had been ambassadorial rather than purely military: a mobile, reinforcing presence, the potential force of which had kept the enemy from descending from the hills before Dergyll could crush them. That expedition, marking the first time a self sufficient corps of our troopers had sustained itself away from home, operating independently of Camulod, was a test of our Colony's ability to shape the events governing other, friendly groups.

Similarly, the establishment of a garrison in Mediobogdum, regularly supplied with reinforcements, replacement personnel, weapons, and horses from Camulod, had demonstrated that the Colony was now strong enough to be able to maintain its own forces plus another army, small as it might be, hundreds of miles distant, without major inconvenience. That we were now on our way home, having abandoned our briefly held outpost in the far northwest, was no reflection on the success of the garrison. What was important, what really mattered most, was that we had lived there for more than half a decade, and that the garrison we had installed there during that time had functioned with complete success, integrating itself seamlessly with the local inhabitants, coexisting with diem in harmony and to mutual benefit. Logic dictated, therefore, that a Camulodian garrison could conceivably flourish anywhere in Britain.

It was the seed of that realization that prompted me to consider the dilemma of the Appius clan and their small army and too small walls. And out of my solution to that dilemma, simple as it was, came progress.

We had decided, by the end of that first night, that Nero would return home the following day and say nothing of his encounter with us. The day after that, we would stage a mock attack on his holdings, with the object of frightening his people badly enough to make them see that, next time, such an attack might be real, and they had better be prepared. The plan, simple enough on the surface, required a full strategy session, attended by every officer we had, followed by a briefing of our entire complement. The last thing any of us wanted was for a single drop of blood to be spilled in the course of this demonstration. On the following morning, therefore, ! convened the officers' session, and then followed it up with a briefing to our troopers, outlining the objectives of the exercise, from their viewpoint, and introducing them in the process to Nero Niger.

Nero left to return home as soon as the assembly had been dismissed, and Dedalus and I accompanied him to the outskirts of our camp. On the way back, Dedalus was unusually quiet, and I asked him what was on his mind. He walked on for a few paces without answering, then looked up at me from beneath lowered brows.

"You want this make believe raid to work, don't you? I

can see that, but I don't like it. It's as dangerous as a sharp toothed whore. Why run the risk of having any of these know nothings panic and let fly with a lucky arrow or two and do us damage before we can reveal that it's all just mummery, an exercise in preparedness? One of our men dead ? would be too high a price to pay, it seems to me, for whatever might be achieved here. What does it matter if they're prepared or unprepared? There's not enough of them to makea difference either way. A hundred men they have? That's not a garrison, it's a holding force, and a skeletal one at that. "

I made no effort to respond until we had regained the centre of the camp, then I nodded towards the headquarters tent and suggested we talk in there. He followed me wordlessly and settled into the only comfortable chair, at the table assigned to the Officer of the Watch. He sat back and I folded his arms across his chest, hooking his fingers into the armholes of his cuirass, clearly waiting for me to speak. Dedalus possessed the sharpest tongue, and perhaps the sharpest wits, of all of us. He had impressed me so many times in the past with his insight and his ability to cut right to the heart of troublesome things that I had come to expect nothing less of him. I perched on the edge of the table in front of him. .

"You're right, Ded," I conceded. "It is dangerous. But I've considered the risk, and I think it will be worthwhile. If we can convince these people to build stronger defences, then we'll have created an island of strength in this region. I agree that a hundred men is not a garrison, but it could be the start of one. Camulod once had no more than a hundred trained men under arms, and look at our strength today."

"Aye, but we've had how long? Sixty five years? Sixty five years to build our strength up to this point These people don't have anything like that. And why would you want to create an island out here? What difference could it make to anything? These people could be wiped out tomorrow or next week."

"True, but perhaps not if they had help."

He stiffened very slightly and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "Help from where, from Camulod?"

"Why not?"

He looked away, as I had expected him to, his face going sombre as he chased and enumerated the thoughts going through his head. Finally he looked back into my eyes.

"Are you considering keeping our lads here, to help these people?"

"No, not at all."

"Well, thank the Christ for that! Our troopers are looking forward to going home, and they've earned that right."

"They have, indeed. But I would like to dispatch another force, once we are home, to serve the same purpose. Perhaps a hundred men."

"Merlyn, we won't have a hundred men for that kind of luxury. We're going to be at war, at least in Cambria, and possibly against the Danes from Northumbria as well."

"It's not a luxury, Ded, it's a necessity. We're going to need the strength of people like the Appius clan some day. And there must scores, perhaps hundreds, of similar settlements all over this territory. Even a score of diem, fielding a hundred men apiece, would give us a force of two thousand men."

"No, Merlyn, use your head! Where's your logic? Half a score of similar settlements would leave us short a thousand men, spread out in ten separate, piddly little garrisons."

My shoulders slumped as I digested the incontrovertible truth of what he had said, and yet...

"Damnation, Ded, I know I'm right. You read Ambrose's last letter, where he talked about the problems facing them in Camulod. Even with much of our force quartered now in Ilchester, and the fields we've added to our granaries there, we have almost too many mouths to feed, and too few roofs to cover all their heads. Here could be a way to relieve the congestion, temporarily at least, and to feed everyone better!

"Look at the fertile fields here, going to waste, lying unused, and tell my why that must be so! There is a wealth of manpower lying idle around here, and I'm not just speaking of fighting men. I'm thinking about the farmers—the homeless people living on the edges of the forest, the people living in temporary huts on the outskirts of the ruined towns, the people, helpless thousands of them, who subsist alone, because they're all afraid to gather into numbers worth slaughtering. If there are enough of them out there, and if they can be rallied and joined together for their own good, their own protection and welfare—if they can be taught, somehow, to believe in the mere possibility of that— then they would be invincible in their number.

"But I know you're right, as well. The logistics would be next to impossible, and there's no getting around that. We can't establish garrisons in every place that begs for help. We lack the strength in men, strong as we are. It was wishful thinking on my part, that's all. Forgive me for tugging at your ears."

Dedalus sat silent for a while longer, plucking at his lip and surprising me by not bounding to his feet and congratulating me on my openness to argument. "Well," he drawled, his tone speculative, "having heard what you've just said, if I look at this thing from a slightly different line of sight, I don't know how far off balance your thinking is. You do have a point worth making. There's a lot of sound sense in the idea. Hmm..." I waited as his voice tailed into a long silence. Finally he grunted again. "Y'know, I really think the only thing that's wrong with it is the scope."

"What d'you mean by that?"

He snorted, and it was almost a laugh. "You're half Roman. Do it by half the Roman way, but make your half measures full steps."

I blinked at him. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Yes you do, if you'll but think about it. How did the Romans build their holdings, first the Republic, then the Empire?"

I gazed back at him, conscious of a tiny flicker of excitement in my chest. "By converting those they conquered into allies, making them auxiliaries and teaching them the Roman way of fighting."

"That's right. Camulod has no need to conquer these folk you're considering, so there's no bloodshed involved at that stage. All you have to do is convince them they need help and that you're willing to provide it. That shouldn't be difficult. You need to give 'em back the hope they've lost. Nothing's easier than that.

"Send out patrols, routinely, each one consisting of one cohort of our troops. Order each cohort to spend two days in each place they visit. They'll construct a fortified camp while they are there, then leave it intact for the use of the locals. No shortage of trees, anywhere, for palisades. Log walls and earthen breastworks. That offers safety in a very real sense. Once the camps are built, the local people can build their own buildings inside the walls and be their own garrisons, and Camulod can supply the basic military training they'll require. That won't require a permanent base of a thousand men, but it will ease congestion in our own home jurisdiction, keeping a thousand men gainfully occupied and out of Camulod full time, if you dedicate four separate cohorts to the job and keep them busy, alternating two and two on continuous patrols. And the beauty of it is, they'll all be within easy recall, should any trouble threaten us at home. Twenty men to each camp, at first, one squad each of infantry and cavalry, should achieve the effect you want. Enlist the support of the local leaders, chiefs and elders, and their enthusiasm will stir the flames in others. Once the people see they can defend themselves, our job will be almost done. All it will require on top of that will be the regular patrols, passing by on schedule and offering the hope of assistance if invasion or attack happens. Nothing to it. Then, if war comes into this region, we'll have a home grown force to fight it with." He paused, giving me time to digest what he had said before he added, "It'll work, Merlyn. Your idea was right, merely askew in its conception. Don't thank me for my insight. It is damn tedious to have to listen to outpourings of gratitude all the time..."

I sat stunned, seeing the possibilities of what he had described. And Dedalus, once he had seen that he had given me enough to think about, yawned and stretched and then stood up and muttered something about taking a nap, since he had been on duty all night long. I barely noticed him leave.

And so, thus simply and apparently by chance began the process that would transform the land of Britain and alter Arthur's destiny from that of Legate Commander of the Forces of Camulod to Riothamus, the High King of Western Britain. That the process occurred at all was astounding; that it occurred as quickly as it did was akin to miraculous; but the time and the conditions were appropriate to the needs, and the leaven that inspired the change was hope.

Our "attack" on Nero's holdings was a complete success. Despite the terror it produced in the inhabitants, the relief it occasioned afterwards, once the realization dawned that it was but a ruse arranged by their leader, was sufficient to overcome any resentment that might have been harboured by some of Nero's elders. No one was injured in the foray, and that in itself was an indication of the success of the attack and of the level of unpreparedness we found on our arrival. In the aftermath, once Nero had explained to a general assembly of his people all that we intended to achieve— an alliance between them and Camulod that would be heavily weighted in their favour in the early stages—the decision was quickly made to begin the work of refortification immediately. That led to the recognition of the real, underlying reason why nothing had been done before this time: there was no lack of willing hands to undertake the labour, but no one among Nero's folk had any knowledge of the architectural skills required to build the needed walls. Even their senior soldier, an ancient veteran of the legions, had never been required to take part in the building of a fortified camp. Plainly he had never served with Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus.

As we stood listening to the rising consternation among Nero's people, I glanced at Dedalus, who looked at Benedict and Philip and then huddled with them, speaking quietly. Mere moments later, he turned and nodded to me.

"Two days," he said. "In that time we can lay out the design, show them which trees to cut and how to stake them, and help them to make a start on the digging." He stopped, looking me straight in the eye. "You wouldn't want our men to do the digging for them, would you?"

I smiled at him. "How could you even ask such a question?"

We resumed our homeward journey on the third day after that, leaving Nero's people in a sweat of industrious cooperation. I had promised to send another expedition to check on their progress as soon as we had arrived home and explained our newly formed alliance to the Council of Camulod. Should the Council approve, I promised that the returning expedition would bring with them additional supplies and support in the form of weapons and armour, and training personnel whose task would be to work with the Appius garrison, instructing new, local levies in weaponry techniques and simple tactics. These troops would work simultaneously with Nero and his senior people to develop strategies to govern the defensive structure of their community from that time on. Our taciturn Benedict had already volunteered to lead the returning expedition, and that in itself augured well for the campaign's success.

During much of the five year period that was to follow, Camulod itself went to war without committing any of its new allies, and it did so on two widely separated fronts, which is considered by military strategists to be suicidal. And yet the process of radical change described above continued without impediment, fostered to a very large extent by Camulod's constant efforts and encouragement.

At any other time and in any other place, what our armies achieved in those five years would have been deemed impossible. That one community—for that is all we were, a community, not a state or even a city—should commit itself and all its resources to two different, simultaneous wars would defy credence in the eyes of sane and civilized men. Yet that is precisely what we did, and the reason we were able to do it seems purely arrogant when stated baldly: it was our time.

Camulod, the young, lusty Colony that embodied the dream of its two founders, was coming to its prime. More than sixty years had passed since its formation, and those years had been dedicated diligently and incessantly to preparation for the confrontation of catastrophe, and survival in its aftermath. We had a tightly disciplined army of nine thousand, more than half of them intensively trained, heavy cavalry, and all of them commanded by an officer corps that was superb, its codes and ethics modelled upon the ancient ideals of Republican Rome. We had formed three small but hard hitting armies from our complement, each of them half the size of a traditional Roman legion, comprising fifteen hundred infantry and the same amount of cavalry, and although but half the size of a legion, each was more than twice as powerful as any legion had ever been. That power, and the crushing force of it, was the result of the mobility and versatility offered by our cavalry: a full thousand heavy troopers plus five hundred of our lighter, faster force—an innovation developed and launched on my brother's initiative, during the five years I had spent in Ravenglass—in each of our three armies. The combination of superior weaponry, entrenched discipline and inspired leadership brought Camulod to preeminence in Britain, and each of those three elements depended absolutely upon each of the others.

FIVE

Although I was born and raised in Camulod, and had served as its Legate Commander since before the death of my father, I found myself taken aback and almost moved to tears by what I found on my return. I had left a thriving Colony that was, in spite of its military strength, in essence an overgrown farming community dominated by a hilltop fortress. What I found on my return was so different that I could scarcely grasp the change.

It began with our arrival at the point where the side road to Camulod joined the main route south to Isca. This side road had always been well enough used, but it was a mere track nonetheless, two broad, parallel wheel ruts divided by a humped mound of grassy earth the width of a wagon axle. Now the track was a road, twice as broad as it had been before and uniformly flat, with no sign of grass or wheel ruts on its crushed flint surface. Instead of running straight to form a ‘T’ with the road, however, this new road curved right at the junction, to blend into the great Roman road, heading south—towards Ilchester and the new garrison, I realized belatedly.

Some fifty paces in from the main road, a new stone guardhouse had been built, roofed in thick tiles and big enough, I guessed, to house some twenty men, with stables for ten horses. The guards came spilling out to form up almost as soon as Dedalus, Philip and I, riding ahead of our group, arrived at the junction. Everything was militarily crisp, the discipline of the guard detail exemplary. The Commander of the Guard, a decurion unknown to me, stepped forward to welcome Philip and Dedalus formally home to Camulod, then allowed us to pass on our way immediately. He had looked at me and through me without recognition, and the shock of being unrecognized in my own home reminded me that I had made extensive changes to my appearance since my departure six years earlier, altering everything as radically as possible, from the colour of my hair to the style of my dress and bearing. I had set out to be, and had become, plain Master Cay, a farmer as different from the former Merlyn of Camulod as I could make him. The Commander of the Guard had looked at me and seen only a mounted farmer, plainly dressed, riding alongside the leaders of a returning military expedition.

My shock gave way quickly, however, and turned to ironic self mockery. I remained behind, waiting by the guardhouse while my military companions rode on, allowing the formations I had previously led to pass by until the wagons reached me. Shelagh and Donuil and their entire household filled up the first of them, and then Tressa came, sitting high on the driver's bench of our own wagon beside Derek, who was driving. His horse, one of ours and a gift from me, walked placidly behind, tethered to the back. I nodded to them as they passed, then swung my leg over and stepped directly from my stirrup into the back of the wagon, tying my own mount's reins beside Derek's before making my way carefully along the wagon bed to the front, sidling around and sometimes clambering over the crates and cases. I positioned myself behind the two of them, kneeling on a sack and thrusting my head between them after kissing Tress on the cheek.

Derek turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. "Why are we thus honoured? We're naught but visitors. This is your homecoming—you should be out there at the head of your men."

I laughed, wryly enough to make him twist around further to look at me, and then I told them what I had just discovered about my own appearance. After a while Tress asked, "Were you really that different, back then?"

Of course, Tress had never seen me as my true self, the man Connor called Yellow Head. I had been Cay of the brown hair and plain clothing since before she ever met me. No sooner had I begun to laugh again than the reality sobered me, so that my laugh died on my lips.

"Well," Derek growled, "Merlyn of Camulod does not exist outside his armour. Is that important at this moment? I don't think so, since the armour can't do anything without the man inside it. This lack of recognition means no more than that no one will see you've come home until you choose to show them, and that means you're free, for now, to sit up here with us and explain all the sights we'll see along the road."

I slipped my right arm about Tress's soft and supple waist and laid my left hand on Derek's shoulder. "I may not even be able to do that, my friend, for I'm already perplexed. That guardhouse wasn't there when I left, and this road we're travelling on was an old, grassy track. Those are the only two things I've seen so far that should be familiar, and they're both changed beyond recognition. But I'll explain what I can, so move over, both of you. Tress, you move towards the middle and I'll perch beside you, on the outside."

From that point onward, all along the road to Camulod itself, I saw differences everywhere and did my best, for a time at least, to point all of them out. Many of the great trees on both sides of the road, once so thick they had almost formed a wall, had been cut down and uprooted, their wood, I later learned, used to build houses and furniture, and new barracks blocks and stables down in Ilchester. As a result of the tree clearing, there were more fields in evidence now, too, on either side of the road. And everywhere I looked, there were houses, all of them wooden, some more strongly built than others. Multitudes of people were going about the business of their daily lives where once there had been nothing but rabbits, squirrels, deer and bears moving silently through dense thickets. All around me, as I rode, I saw the differences, and eventually my mind grew numb with the scope of them. I rode in silence then, trying not to see. so many changes, and my companions left me to my thoughts.

As we neared the end of the road, concealed from the sight of Camulod's hill fort by no more than a few hundred paces of fringing trees, the sound of children's voices, growing steadily louder, forced itself into my awareness. We came to a place where no more than a few giant trees remained on the right of the road. Arthur, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilly sat on their horses by the roadside, staring silently down into the open meadow beyond them. Now as we slowly approached, Arthur turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised high in a wordless question. The children's voices, raised in noisy, boisterous play, were loud enough here to cover the creaking of the wagons' axles and the crunching of the flint roadbed beneath our metal tyred wheels.

There appeared to be hundreds of children in the meadow, close to the road, ranging in age from five or six to some as old as ten or even twelve. They were surging everywhere, in front of and around a long, low building built of logs and roofed with thatch, the upper parts of its walls open to the weather, although I could see where shutters would be hung on less pleasant days. I wanted to stop and look, but I could not have reasonably done so without interrupting the entire train that followed us, and so I contented myself with craning my neck to see all that I could see in passing. Arthur pulled his horse around and brought it to the side of the wagon, where he could look up at me, but it was Derek who spoke first.

"What's going on there, then? I've never seen so many brats assembled in one place. Is it a camp? A camp for children?"

I shook my head, glancing at Arthur, who, I knew, was listening closely. "No, I don't think so. Not a camp. But a school, I think."

Derek's face was blank. "A what? What's one of them?"

"It's a place where children go to learn their lessons— how to read and write. The way Arthur and the boys did in Mediobogdum. We had a school there, too, though there were only a few children involved. This one looks far more organized." I looked down at Arthur. "What are you looking so glum about?"

He kneed his horse slightly away from the wagon, to where he would not have to peer up at me so sharply. "Will I have to go to school there?" He did not appear to relish the prospect.

I grinned at him. "I doubt it. Your next classroom will be the campaign trail, if I'm any judge. Besides, the oldest child I saw back there might have been twelve. You are beyond that, aren't you?"

He frowned slightly, until he saw that I was tweaking him, and then he smiled and pulled back on his reins, allowing us to pass by him as he swung about to rejoin his friends. The first brazen peal of a trumpet soon sounded ahead of us, to be echoed and answered by others in the distance as the word was passed from point to point that newcomers were arriving.

Moments later we rounded the last bend, and there sat Camulod, upon its hilltop. Tress caught her breath audibly, and Derek whistled softly through his teeth.

"So that's Camulod," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone.

"Aye, that is Camulod. We're home. Tress? What think you?'

"It's... it's very grand," she whispered, and I laughed again, feeling the pride swell in me.

"No more than you are, lass, and it's yours—all of it."

She turned sideways to look at me, thinking I was teasing her. "Why would you say that, Cay?"

"Say what, that it's yours? It is! At least, as much of it , as is mine is yours—in other words, all of it, and none of it. My family, Britannicus and Varrus mixed, created and built this place, Tress, and we have guarded it and governed it ever since. It stands on Britannicus land, but we have never sought to own it. The Britannici are the custodians of this place, holding it in trust but holding it nonetheless. And as my wife, you will be the castellan."

"And what about Ludmilla?"

The unexpected chill in her tone disconcerted me. "What about her? You and she—"

"Ludmilla is the mistress here in Camulod, Cay—the castellan, as you call it—and she has been since you left, perhaps since even before you left. She is your brother's wife and he has been in sole command here for the past six , almost seven, years, which means that she has, too, within her own domain. Do you expect to walk in there today and oust her, replacing her with me?"

"No, but—"

"No, but what? Think you Ludmilla will be grateful to simply back away and give up whatever systems she has put in place to run this ..." She fumbled, searching for a word to complete her thought. "... this town? Do you believe she will be thankful to me, a simple servant girl from Ravenglass, for stepping into her world and dispossessing her?"

"Tressa!"

"Don't 'Tressa' me, Cay. I'm very serious." Though she spoke in a moderate tone, her disapproval seemed progressively louder to me as she continued. "Have you thought at all about my situation here? I am not your wife, not yet. I have no rights here in this place, and I won't permit you to act or speak as though I have, or should have, or might wish to have. I am your... companion, nothing more, your consort—though most folk here will simply say your mistress, which is true enough. But I won't be thought of as an upstart or a troublemaker, and I won't be made to look like one against my will. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Tress, I hear you very well. So does Shelagh, in the wagon up ahead, I'm sure." I was amazed at what I had provoked with what I had taken to be a simple, truthful observation.

My quiet statement checked her, and she glanced quickly around her. "Was I being loud? I wasn't being loud."

"Well, not loud, perhaps, but vehement."

Her voice returned to its normal pitch. "Vehement? Does that mean firm? If it does then that's the way I feel. I don't want to be... that word... castellan, here. The thought of it is frightening, Cay. I know nothing about how to do such things. "

I slipped my arm about her shoulders. "I know that, Tress, I know. But you can learn, and you will, at your own pace. Ludmilla will teach you, you'll see. No need to take the task upon yourself today or even tomorrow or next week, my love. No one would ask that of you. You'll live with me, in my own house, and we'll be wed. And as my wife, you'll learn the running of the. place in due time, with ease and with Ludmilla's willing help. You'll see. Now hush you, here comes someone to meet us. "

Ahead, in the distance, I had seen bright colours and movement on the road from the main gates of the fort as a welcoming party headed down to greet us. Tressa looked and then stood up and climbed gracefully over the bench, disappearing into the body of the wagon beneath the leather canopy. She had time, I knew, to do what she needed to do, which was to make herself presentable according to her own criteria. The welcoming party would not reach us for some time yet.

I shifted into a more comfortable position on the bench beside Derek, who was gazing off to my right, towards the broad drilling plain, where several formations of cavalry had been wheeling and cantering as we emerged from the forest road. Now they were all motionless, their eyes on our approach. As I noticed their stillness, a distant voice rang out, loud and peremptory, and they surged into motion again, resuming their interrupted patterns.

"That's the campus, Derek, the drilling ground. It's been there since first we started building the fort above. No weed, no flower, no blade of grass ever had time to root itself here before some horse's hoof either trampled it flat or dug it up. In high summer, the dust of it never has a chance to settle. The fort is the centre of Camulod's defences, but the campus is the heart of its strength."

Derek did not address that directly. He simply muttered, 'This is a big place."

"Aye, it is. Much bigger than it was when I set out for Ravenglass, six years ago. That's Ambrose, at the head of the group, there. There's no mistaking him, is there?"

The welcoming party had reached the head of our procession, and were exchanging greetings with Philip, Falvo and Dominic, who rode at the point. I could see my brother pull his horse around in a rearing turn as he searched for me back among the wagons, and then he was cantering towards us, calling the occasional greeting to familiar faces as he passed. When he reached the first wagon, with Donuil and Shelagh on the driver's bench, he reined in his horse to exchange a few words with them.

As they spoke, Arthur came thundering up with his trio of friends, and then stopped, suddenly shy, waiting for his Uncle Ambrose to acknowledge him. Ambrose welcomed all four boys expansively, and then leaned forward in his saddle. He whispered something into Arthur's ear and then slapped the boy's mount on the rump, sending all four of the lads galloping off towards the distant fort. He watched them ride off, said something further to Donuil or Shelagh, then swung down to the ground and strode back to where we waited, his whole face alight in a great, beaming smile. I leaped down to meet him and we threw our arms about each other.

He pushed me back from him eventually, his hands grasping the points of my shoulders firmly, and looked into my eyes. "Welcome home, Brother," he said softly. "Your place awaits you, and everything is ready for your arrival." His smile broadened to a grin. "Your clothes, your proper clothes, are cleaned and dried and all laid out for you, and your armour is polished brighter than it has ever been. Time to wash out the drab brown from your hair and take your" place in Camulod again. The fanner Cay has no place here! This is Merlyn's home." He glanced up at the wagon. "Where is Tressa?" But then his eyes widened in surprise. "Derek of Ravenglass! Welcome to Camulod."

Tress now emerged from the rear of the wagon and stood, holding the edge of the bench and smiling down at Ambrose, her eyes wide and timid looking. He stepped forward and placed his foot on the hub of the lead wheel, then swung himself up to take her hand and kiss her cheek. "And you, too, Lady Tressa. We've looked for you this past week and more. Welcome. Ludmilla has been fretting, thinking that some ill might have befallen you along the way, but had we known King Derek himself rode with you, her mind would have been eased." Derek flushed and smiled at the words.

Ambrose perched on the end of the bench and spoke down to me, still holding Tressa's hand. "You've seen some changes here, eh, Brother? I promise you, there are more yet. But we'll talk of all that later. For now, we have to take you home and feed you. You must all be hungry and ready for a good, hot bath and a deep massage. After that, we will relax, drink a little mead, perhaps, and exchange idle talk in warmth and comfort. Tomorrow tonight, we'll feast and celebrate your coming, since everyone wants to join the celebration. The only place big enough to accommodate that gathering is the campus itself, and that will take the entire day to organize."

He turned to Tress again, raising her hand. "We regret the delay of an entire day when we should celebrate tonight, dear Tressa, but we have no other option. The campus is in daily use, since it's our only training ground. Tomorrow, therefore, will be a day of rest and preparation for the coming night. There are tents to put up, seats and tables to be put in place, fires to be built and cooking to be done. We have plenty of food, though. Hunting and fishing parties have been going out every day for the past week and more, so no one will go hungry. We have mountain stream salmon and river trout and saltwater fish to offer you, and we have venison, wild boar and fattened swine, goat flesh for those who like it—I do not—and an entire fat ox, well fed on grain and groomed for just this feast. What have I missed? Ah yes, the birds of the air! We have geese, swans and ducks, partridge and grouse and many smaller fowl. And in addition to all of that we have music, mummers, acrobats and wrestlers, and prodigious horsemanship, which we are ever eager to display. So, this afternoon, when you have bathed and rested for a while, we will show you our Colony, or as much as we may without tiring you. After that, your man and I must talk, at great and serious length, of many things, so I must ask you to be patient with my demands on him."

Tressa lowered her head in a gracious nod. "My man, sir, as you call him, came back to pursue his obligation to serve this Colony, not to please me. I am quite happy to be here with him and I've no doubt I shall find much to occupy me while he spends time with you."

I was smiling, proud of Tressa's self possession and amused and pleased by Ambrose's courteous reception. "Have we then so many things to talk about, Ambrose?"

"Oh, aye, Brother, I fear we have, and few of them are pleasant. But none of them are dire enough they cannot wait until tonight. You have been gone nigh on seven years while they were all agrowing, so a few more hours will make no massy difference to them. So come, let's move on, up to the fort. Merlyn, you take my horse and tell the other wagon drivers to follow us, while I stay here and talk with this beautiful woman and enjoy being conducted by a king. Derek, if you would, pull to the side of the road here on the right, and take us past this blockage. We'll lead the wagons separately up to the gates. The troopers will disperse down here when they're dismissed and we've no need to wait for them. "

Derek swung the lead horse out to pull the wagon forward as I began to pull myself up into the saddle of my brother's horse, thinking that I would find time in the course of the afternoon to ask at least a few of the questions he had postponed so lightly. I heard Ambrose calling to Donuil in the cart ahead, telling him to fall in behind our wagon. And now as I rode back and forth, marshalling the wagons of our train, I saw recognition in the faces of the people of Camulod as they saw me, mounted upon my brother's splendid horse, which alone informed them who I was.

The time that followed was hectic. Our return, as I should have anticipated, was seen as a cause for great rejoicing in a time when there was little else to celebrate. During the course of that day and the one that followed, I met and greeted everyone I knew in Camulod, together with a large number of people whom I did not know at all. Many of the latter were new officers, selected from the ranks of the new intakes assembled since my departure, and most of them seemed ludicrously young to me.

I spent the very first hour after my return, along with several of my travelling companions, exulting in the delights of Camulod's bathhouse and masseurs. Then, dressed in rich clothing for the first time in years and feeling like a new man, I was able to enjoy a light meal before being introduced to each of the new officers individually, with great solemnity, in a ceremony organized in advance by my brother and staged in the Officers' Tribunal. The Tribunal itself was an innovation, a new building erected against the postern wall of the fort for the dual purpose of serving regulatory tribunal requirements whenever necessary and housing the garrison officers in their off duty hours.

Accepting a suggestion from Ambrose, I contrived, throughout the course of that ceremony, to maintain an air of august gravity. As my brother had so wisely observed, although the men I was to meet were all unknown to me, I was known, by repute, to all of them. I soon discovered that my reputation had evidently grown to be far greater than I had thought it could be, and I had great difficulty, at first, in adjusting to that, once I had learned to recognize—and finally to accept—the look of awe they had, one and all, on meeting me.

I say I learned to accept it, because my first reaction to this uniform, awe stricken expression was to assume immediately that it sprang from the legendary exaggerations soldiers thrive upon, particularly when they want to impress recruits and newcomers with stories of their own veteran status. So my first urge was to challenge the look and dispel it, forcefully. Such unearned deference—for so I saw it—embarrassed me.

They came into my presence in unsmiling, sharply regimented groups, marching in perfect step under the watchful, disapproving eye of Tertius Lucca, our primus pilus, or Senior Soldier, and segregated into their groups by their cohortal designations: First Cavalry, First Scouting, First Infantry and so on, all the way through to Third Infantry. I realized only belatedly, after being introduced individually to the first group of nine of these earnest and deeply dutiful young men, that Ambrose had been prescient. I had been away from Camulod for a long time, and in my desire to be accepted again, I might easily have been overeager to ingratiate myself with these new, young and impressionable men. As it was, I maintained my dignity and my distance as a commander, speaking briefly but pleasantly with each new face and inquiring solicitously about the rank and station each one held, so that as the last group of them strode away after delivering a crisp salute in unison, Ambrose smiled at me.

"Now that was a tribunal reception worthy of an Imperial Legate. Well done, Brother. That leaves you to face only the new Councillors, for we have a few of those whom you have never met, and a few of the more prominently successful new Colonists—very few of those. It's difficult to be new, prominent and successful in our egalitarian Colony. That won't be until tomorrow, at the feast. Tonight, we dine in private, more or less informally, with our close friends and family. Ludmilla and I decided some time ago, presupposing your agreement, that we should hold that particular gathering down in the Villa Britannicus. The facilities there are much more suited to our needs for tonight, the kitchens are larger and more spacious. Besides, the old place doesn't get enough use nowadays. I mean, it's often used, but only as ancillary premises, if you see what I mean. It's finally complete again, you know, totally refurbished after the damage done to it in Lot's attack eleven years ago. It's exactly as it was before the family moved up here to live in the fort. Ludmilla would move back down again in an instant, but I believe my place is up here, in the centre of things" He paused, looking sideways at me. "You know, it has just occurred to me that you and Tress might enjoy living there, for a while, at least. What think you?"

Ambrose's suggestion intrigued me. Although I had been born in the Villa Britannicus, and had always loved the grand old house, I had never lived there. My grandfather had died there, brutally murdered, as had my mother, but that knowledge had never deterred me in my love for the place that had been our family home for generations. It was less than a mile from the fort, no great distance, and now, remembering Tressa's remarks from earlier that day, it occurred to me that it might be a perfect place for her to begin learning how to run a large household, free of the fear of countering Ludmilla's will.

"You know, that might be a splendid idea, Ambrose, and it would never have occurred to me. But it would have to be Tressa's decision. The sheer size of it might frighten her. She has never seen such a house, let alone lived in one. Derek's house is the finest in Ravenglass, and it's a hovel compared to the Villa. Anyway, let me mention it to her, after she's seen the place tonight and had a look at the way it is run. When are we to go down?"

"We have several hours to pass until dinner, but that will give us time to walk around the place and admire it. Our carpenters have done magnificent work on the interior, and so have some of our masons, on the inside as well as the outside walls. They've even restored some of the old mosaics that were damaged. You'll be impressed, I promise you. Let's go and find Derek and Donuil and the women, and we can all ride down together in one of the big wagons."

On the few occasions I was alone with Ambrose that day I tried to question him about conditions in Cambria and Northumbria, but he would have none of it. I made one more attempt to question him then as we set out, but he stopped me with a raised palm before I could really begin and pointed out to me that we did not have the time, right then, to discuss fully the matters that would have to be resolved. People were coming and going all around us, and we would be interrupted constantly, unless we made ourselves grossly discourteous to our Colony's new guests while we indulged ourselves in matters that could very easily wait until that night. He was right, of course, so I buried my impatience and resigned myself to making the best of the postponement.

Ambrose dispatched a soldier to the stables to arrange for one of the big, seat filled wagons to be prepared and placed at our disposal, and then we made our way directly to the former Varrus household, where We found our friends returning from a walk in the late afternoon sunlight. Seeing them approach from the far side of the central courtyard, I stopped by the three large slabs of slate stone sunk in the centre of the yard and waited for them to reach us. To Tress and Derek, I pointed out the graves of Caius Britannicus, Publius and Luceiia Varrus, and my own father, Picus Britannicus. These, I explained, had been the founders of Camulod, the progenitors of everything that flourished in the Colony today. I could think of no more to say, but I trusted that they would understand the import of these people in my life, and to what I saw as our shared future. Derek merely nodded and remained silent for a few moments, gazing down at the three stones, and then he straightened up and nodded again. I turned and led the group towards the stables and the waiting wagon.

Only nine of us rode down the hillside road to the Villa Britannicus on that first journey—the sightseers. I sat on the bench beside the driver while the others, Tressa and Derek, Donuil and Shelagh, Rufio and Turga, and Ambrose and Ludmilla as our host and hostess, ranged themselves on the seats at our backs.

Ambrose explained that they had begun the refurbishing four years earlier, initially as a summer project aimed at instilling discipline in those young people of the Colony not yet old enough to take part in adult activities. That first summer had been dedicated to cleaning up the grounds and removing the rubble that remained from the damage caused in the raid years earlier, when Lot's soldiers had almost overrun the Villa in the first treacherous attack, the night my father was murdered in his bed. Many of the outbuildings, which had borne the brunt of the damage, had been refurbished after the war, but since the war itself had shifted most of the Colony's activities to the fort on the hilltop, the priorities governing the reclamation had been less urgent, and the task had not been carried out as thoroughly as it might have been. Walls and sometimes entire buildings had been reconstructed, for example, but the debris of the old walls had been left heaped in great piles of broken masonry scattered haphazardly about the perimeter. Organized groups of children, working under adult supervision, made short work of carting away the rubble and burying it beyond the grounds.

As the Colony had continue to grow, however, and the tempo of that growth increased, it had become inevitable that more and more effort should be poured into "the Villa Task, " as it soon became known, in the years that followed. Camulod was almost visibly beginning to bulge at its seams, and no one had yet thought to establish a second, ancillary garrison. From a mere beautification effort, the Villa Task quickly grew in importance to become a first priority endeavour; every possible resource at the Colony's disposal was being exploited to its maximum, and the Villa was one of the richest. Other villas existed within the colonial holdings— fourteen of them, in fact—and all of them were already being used to capacity. The Villa Britannicus, closest of all to the fort and the original home farm of the Colony, had become an anomaly, a spacious and gracious house lying, for all intents and purposes, untenanted.

Within two more years, the Villa had been refitted and restored to much of its former beauty, and for a time it was used to house the garrison officers and their wives, and its walls had resounded for a time with the sounds of life. That same year, however, the garrison in Ilchester had been established, and the resultant exodus of more than a thousand souls and mouths from Camulod had eased tensions all around, permitting breathing space again, and time for reflection. At that juncture, Ambrose and Ludmilla had approached the Council to enlist its help in completing the Villa Task properly. The Council had concurred, and the fine finishing work had begun; the Villa Britannicus, already restored to soundness, was now returned, as Ambrose put it, to its former greatness.

Ambrose had not exaggerated. The Villa Britannicus looked better than I had ever seen it look before, and I took great pride in showing it to my guests. I was reminded of the description in my Uncle Varrus's writings of how he had first seen the place, and so I endeavoured to show it to them just as his future wife, Luceiia Britannicus, had shown it to Publius Varrus.

The entire house was laid out in the form of an enormous ‘H’ built on an east west axis, with the family living quarters closing off the open, western end to form an enclosed quadrangle. All four sides of the building facing into the courtyard of this quadrangle, I pointed out, were domestic buildings, originally built to house the serving staff and the domestic facilities, such as baths, laundry, kitchens, bakery, butchery, wine storage and the like. The main crossbar of the ‘H’ was pierced by an ornate, pillared portico that led onto a second, outer courtyard at the eastern end. The north and south wings held stables, livestock barns, cool rooms for long term food storage, a spacious carpentry shop with a cooperage attached, a pottery, a tannery, a roomy smithy with several forges and a large granary.

The entire Villa was two storeyed, and I pointed out that the ground floor walls surrounding the inner courtyard, the oldest part of the house, were enormously thick and built of huge, solid granite pebbles, smoothed and rounded on the outer surfaces, shaped around the edges to fit together and bonded with strong concrete. Above, on the upper level, the construction was similar, but the walls were less thick, the granite pebbles smaller, and the walls themselves were pierced by the shuttered, evenly spaced windows of the family's sleeping chambers, an innovation peculiar to this house and one which I had never seen repeated elsewhere. Beyond the portico, on the other hand, the extended walls flanking the outer courtyard were of timber framing and plaster mixed with broken flint.

I took delight in pointing out that all the buildings flanking the inner courtyard were entered from the courtyard, but all of those surrounding the outer one opened out into the fields surrounding the villa. Only four small doors permitted pedestrian access from these buildings into the outer yard. This was an innovation designed by Luceiia Britannicus herself when she had decided, long before she met Publius Varrus, to make the approach to the house more beautiful. She had closed up all of the entrances to the buildings around the outer yard and cut new ones in the former rear walls, and had then built a great, sweeping, semicircular road to the main portico, weaving her roadway in places to go around and among the twelve great trees that stood there: four oaks, three elms and five great, copper beech trees. She had then seeded the entire yard with grass and lavished attention on it, and when it had grown rich, she had planted formal gardens of flowers—roses, violets, pansies and poppies—among the trees.

Awe gave place immediately to open mouthed wonder from the moment I led my guests inside the house itself. I must admit that even I was stunned by the opulence that awaited us. When I was a boy, it was simply my grandfather's home, the house where I had been born and where no one really lived any longer. Today, I was seeing it through the eyes of others and comparing it with all the other houses I had ever seen. It was matchless.

The ground floor of the family quarters, where we began, had been accurately described by Uncle Varrus as palatial. Every room was differently floored. Those in the main rooms were mosaic, in a multitude of colours, depicting scenes from Greek myth and legend: Europa and the Bull, Theseus and the Minotaur of Crete, and Leda and the Swan. The lesser rooms on that floor were merely tessellated, the marble stones of their floors laid out in geometric shapes and patterns that dazzled the eyes with their brightness and colours. The triclinium, the great dining room where we would eat that night, was floored in large, lustrous squares of. dark-green marble alternating with flawless white, on which was an open sided arrangement of matched oaken dining tables that would seat upwards of sixty guests in comfort. The walls were panelled in sheets of pale-green and yellow marble so highly polished that the occupants of the room were reflected in them. Against the walls, ranked side by side, were deep shelved cabinets, some of them open fronted and others with doors, that held the family's wealth of plate and dinnerware. There were platters and bowls and serving dishes and utensils of gold and silver and copper and tin and bronze; exquisite and ancient Samian pottery, richly glazed and decorated; cups and beakers and vases of polished glass; and two enormous drinking cups of aurochs horn, polished and worn, glossy with age and ornamented with mounts of finely crafted gold.

Ludmilla had evidently decided to return these items to their proper place as part of the general refurbishment. I immediately wondered then if she would resent our presence in the house because of that. Had she intended to move her household here? And if so, would she then wish to reclaim the various pieces of plate and ornamentation?

Thinking that thought, and looking at my dear Tress gaping wide eyed at these treasures, a vision of my beloved Cassandra flashed into my mind, and I felt a momentary stirring of some ancient guilt. What would she think of this, I wondered, if she were looking down on me right now, and how would she feel about this young woman sharing my life and my possessions? And then the answer came to me as clearly as if Cassandra herself had spoken the words in my ear. Like Ludmilla, Cassandra would be glad for me, happy that I had found a woman to brighten my life as this one did. Left to my care alone, this villa would have continued to degenerate as it had for the past forty years and more. The scars it bore would have grown darker; the dust would have grown thick in its corners. Now, with Tressa, my life had changed, just as Ludmilla had brought life back to the Villa Britannicus itself.

I led the group up the double flight of wide, marble stairs to the family sleeping chambers on the upper floor. The entire upper storey was floored with thick, interlocking planks of solid pine, glazed with the patina of more than a hundred years of care. Each of the ten sleeping chambers there had its own window and was filled with spring sunlight at this hour of the afternoon. The windows were small, and covered with wooden shutters inside and out, the inner set fitted with adjustable slats that could be closed completely, or angled to permit light mid air to enter. The air circulating throughout the villa, I pointed out for the sole benefit of Tress, was uniformly warm, thanks to the heated air carried throughout by the hypocausts, hot air ducts fed by the furnace that burned constantly beneath the bathhouse and was refuelled twice each day. And the house had two sets of baths, one for the family and another for the household staff, each of them walled entirely with tiny, white, glazed tiles imported from beyond the seas when first the house was built.

We completed our tour with a visit to the facilities surrounding the interior courtyard, although the bustle of activity of the staff in the kitchens and bakery discouraged us from interrupting. Marco, the chief cook of Camulod's kitchens, whom I had known since he first apprenticed to my old friend Ludo thirty years before, greeted me warmly and was happy to make Tressa's acquaintance. Marco, as his mentor Ludo had been before him, was openly and unabashedly homosexual. He was gifted in the preparation of food of any kind, although his greatest talents were reserved for the preparation of pies and pastries. He paid Tress the signal honour of allowing her to taste and test one of his sauces, and rolled his eyes in delight when she moaned with the pleasure of it. Then, graciously, he eased us out of his kitchen again, recommending the beauty of the inner courtyard and the afternoon.

The courtyard contained a garden—more of an orchard, really, with apple, pear, cherry and plum trees as well as vegetables and herbs. The earth in some of the beds was freshly turned, and the debris of winter had been swept up into neat piles in the comers of the two sections where the soil lay undisturbed.

When we had seen all there was to see there, I led the entire group, largely silent now and much subdued, back into the family living room. Ambrose's earlier suggestion of a cup of mead and a comfortable sprawl around a brazier now seemed like an excellent idea, and we passed the interval before dinner in pleasant, general conversation, most of it dedicated to admiration of the villa and the reclamation work done under the supervision of my brother and his wife.

I was happy to see that Tressa seemed at ease with Ambrose and Ludmilla. She sat listening closely, and on one occasion Ludmilla asked her something about the fabrics on the walls and chairs. Tressa brightened and launched immediately into a response that interested me not a whit and quickly lost me in a sea of feminine intricacies. Watching the two of them talking easily, however, I was relieved to know I had been right. These two would become close friends.

As the dinner hour approached, the others who would join us began to arrive from the fort, some of them in wagons and others, notably the officers of the former Mediobogdum garrison, on horseback. We had decided that, on this first evening of homecoming celebration, the boys and other children should be accommodated elsewhere, to allow their parents the unaccustomed luxury of being themselves for once, without fear of being overheard or interrupted at their meal. All the children, therefore, including the four boys who would have been mortified at that description, were being cared for by the household staff up on the hill. As each group arrived, Ambrose and Ludmilla welcomed them and Plato plied them all with wine, ale or mead, and they were soon absorbed into the ongoing conversations.

At one point, Shelagh approached and took me by the arm, smiling at Benedict, with whom I had been discussing something trivial, and leading me away to stand against a corner wall where she could talk with me alone. I was curious to know what had prompted this move, but for some time she spoke only of the afternoon's activities and the changes Ambrose and Ludmilla had effected in the old house. Finally, prompted by her evident unwillingness to say what was really on her mind, I asked her outright why she had taken me aside. She stilled, and then she smiled.

"Why should you even have to ask? Don't you think it possible I might have wished for a few moments alone with you, to thank you personally for this afternoon? You taught me more than I have ever known about this place."

I grinned right back at her. "Aye, of course, darling Shelagh, that's it. After all the years we've known each other with our gentle lusts and unfulfilled attraction, you've chosen today to declare your love, in full view of Tress, your husband, and our assembled friends. What's wrong, really? Something's troubling you."

"No, it's not troubling. Merely that... I had a dream last night, one of those strange ones, the first I've had in years."

I felt my heartbeat surge immediately and my breath grew tight in my chest. "What? What was it?"

She shook her head. "I saw you and Ambrose, side by side, in a strange place filled with swirling smoke. He stood above you, bare headed, the light from... from something... reflected in his hair. You sat huddled at his feet, your hair dull brown as now, your shoulders hunched. But then you sprang erect and into him, and the two of you became one, brilliant with light mid surrounded by swirling smoke..."

"What? I sprang into him, you said. I knocked him down?"

"No, you sprang into him... inside him. You lost yourself in him, and he in you. You became one. "

"Oh... What happened then?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. I woke up. That is all there was. "

I turned to look to where my brother stood laughing with Tress and Mark, our carpenter, and then I looked back at Shelagh, who stood watching me with no expression that I could define.

"Shelagh, that makes no sense to me at all. Does it to you?'

She shrugged. "No, but when did these dreams ever make sense? I know only that when they occur, I recognize them for what they are, and they always have meaning of some kind. But the thing I noticed most in there was the colour of your hair. Will you change it back to yellow, now that we've come homer'

"I expect so. I'll simply stop using the berry juice that stains it brown. You think that has import, my hair colour?"

"How would I know? It changes the look of you, but I've grown accustomed to it for years now. Anyway, you would look good even if you were bald. "

"Oh, would he, indeed? Should I be feeling jealousy here, you two' Donuil had approached silently while we were talking, holding a drink he had brought for Shelagh.

I turned to him, laughing, and told him we had been discussing the colour of my hair and what I should do to it now that I was home. He eyed my head and nodded sagely, then advised me to take his wife's advice and shave it all off.

We moved to join the others after that, and I forgot about Shelagh's dream for the time being, caught up in the general conversations that were swirling everywhere. On several occasions, some of the other men, most notably among our military contingent, attempted to bring up the subject of political affairs beyond our lands, but Ambrose would have none of that and made it abundantly clear that all information would be shared equally among everyone after he and I, as joint Commanders, had had the opportunity to meet and discuss it. None sought to argue against that, and the talk returned each time to more innocuous subjects.

By the time Plato summoned us to dinner in the triclinium, there were thirty of us present: all of the original party who had left Camulod six years before, save one and twelve new immigrants from Ravenglass, plus Ambrose and Ludmilla. And when we were assembled around the open sided square of tables Plato had arranged for us, before the first course was served, we drank together to the memory of our sole absentee, our dear friend Lucanus.

SIX

"So, here we are, alone at last." Ambrose lowered himself into an armchair, smiling, and pressed his hands into his face, squeezing his eyes and then drawing his fingers down to his chin, leaving white pressure marks that faded quickly. He opened his eyes wide and yawned. "Do you feel up to this? I don't, really. Dinner was too good, and I may have had too much wine. I'm stuffed like one of Marco's roasted fowl." He stretched mightily. "I had hoped to reach this point an hour and more ago. We have much to discuss."

"Aye, so you said this afternoon, when we arrived." I settled myself comfortably into my own chair, close by the brazier. "I don't know whether I'm any more fit than you are to talk long into the night. It seems like days since I last slept, and it's been weeks since I last slept in a bed. That's seductive. But I think we'd better make the most of this time, tonight. We may not have a better chance than this to say all that needs to be said."

Ambrose glanced at me quizzically. "You have things you wish to tell me, too?"

"I do, and perhaps we should deal with that first. My information is less urgent than yours, I suspect, but I think it is important. I'll keep it brief." I then launched into the tale of my interference in the affairs of Nero Niger and his Appius clan, and detailed my thoughts on how we might be able to develop a network of useful alliances with the common people around places like Corinium.

Ambrose listened carefully, and when I had finished speaking he nodded, his expression thoughtful. He then began firing rapid questions at me, all of them concerned with the implementation of my less than lucid plan and the methods I had conceived for making it a reality. I had the answers, incomplete and tentative as they were, at my fingertips, and he weighed each of them judiciously, sometimes reshaping or realigning the thrust of them but not once dismissing anything out of hand.

Within a remarkably short while, working in easy, intuitive harmony, we had transformed my original, optimistic suggestions into a concrete and feasible campaign plan. We would put the proposal to the Council at the next meeting, and put the campaign into effect as soon as possible thereafter.

"Good," Ambrose said then, after we had both sat for a while in silence, pleased with what we had achieved. "Anything else?"

I shook my head. "No, that was all I had. Now what's going on in Cambria, and have you had any word of Vortigern?"

"No, no word of Vortigern, and too much word of Cambria. We're ready to go, you know. As soon as you're prepared. Within the week, if possible."

'To Cambria? In what kind of force?"

"One third. The First Legion—sounds grand, doesn't it? But what else could we call our groups? They're half the size of a legion—"

"I know, but probably three times as powerful. I've heard all about them from Benedict and the others. Tell me about this new Scouting Force you've organized."

For some time, Ambrose had been concerned about an inefficiency in the use of Camulod's fighting resources. Our entire way of life in Camulod was built around the breeding of horses for our cavalry, and our heavy cavalry mounts were our greatest pride. But not all of the enormous number of horses that we bred were large enough to meet our criteria for service. Camulodian cavalry was heavy cavalry, the only force of its kind in Britain, perhaps in the world, and only the largest animals could be strong enough to bear the weight of our heavily armoured troopers. That requirement had left us, over the years, with a large reserve of smaller but otherwise magnificent animals for which we had no purpose, apart from putting them to work in the fields, and the finest of those creatures, my brother had long thought, were going to waste.

Ambrose was aware of our peculiar disdain in Camulod for the light, skirmishing cavalry the Romans had used throughout their history. Primarily mounted archers with short, puny bows, Roman cavalry, in our eyes, had been useless except in the role for which it had been developed: providing a mobile defensive screen for the cumbersome legions while they were forming up in their battle order. But Ambrose had not been born and raised in Camulod, so he did not share that disdain. He was perceptive enough to realize that under certain conditions, such as heavy rain and muddy terrain, lighter—and therefore speedier—cavalry might be extremely effective. He put his findings into effect and created a new branch of Camulodian cavalry—on smaller mounts, with stirrupped saddles and with lighter armour and weapons—and called it a Scouting Force, thereby avoiding the pejorative "light cavalry."

"They're brilliant troops, Cay—hard hitting and unbelievably mobile. But most of all they're fast, and they can go to places where the heavy cavalry can't go. The heavy troopers require space and dry, level land to do their best fighting. When they have all of those, as you know, they are invincible and terrifying. Unfortunately, we seldom find all three together. The Scouts, though, can go anywhere. They can fight on level ground and they can charge uphill and down because their horses are lighter in every respect. They travel farther and faster, too, and yet tactically, fighting in formation, they're almost as awe inspiring as the heavy cavalry."

"Sounds excellent. You have them organized in the same way as the regular troopers, I presume."

"Of course. Anything else would be madness. The only difference is in the weight of the horses, and the proportional weight and weaponry of the armed riders. Their primary weapon is the light spear we designed after the one your Erse friend sent from Athol's kingdom."

Years earlier, while visiting Athol Mac Iain in Eire, I had worked with a smith called Maddan on a design for a new cavalry spear, loosely based on the long spears used by the Scots for hunting boars. Much later, when he felt he had perfected it, Maddan sent it to Camulod aboard one of Connor's ships, as a gift, and Ambrose had appropriated it in my absence. It was far lighter and less cumbersome than its size and shape suggested it would be, owing to the construction of the shaft. It had a slender, lethal head welded to a thin iron rod that stretched the entire length of the weapon. The shaft was built around the rod, a laminated cladding of tough, dried, feather light wattle—the same reeds used in house building in Eire, and in shield making by the Saxons—fastened securely along its length with tightly wound bindings of soaked, stretched deer hide that dried out iron hard. The result was a spear that was light, almost flexible and incredibly strong—a perfect weapon for a mounted man.

I was reminded then that I had not yet told Ambrose the sad news that Connor had brought. I watched his expression carefully as I spoke. "You do know that Athol is dead, don't you? Brander is the new king." Clearly he had not heard.

"Strange," he muttered. "You would think the news would have reached us before now, if he died that long ago. The death of a king is noteworthy, cause for much talk."

"Aye, but Athol's new holdings are far north of here, and newly won. And they are islands. The people have been winter bound. No means existed for the tidings to travel to Mediobogdum, or even to Ravenglass."

I went on to ask him about the biremes supposedly being used by Ironhair's armies. Ambrose nodded, looking grim. "Aye, he has them, two of the whoresons. I haven't seen them, but I've heard all about them. They're the biggest ships ever seen in these seas, I'm told, and they carry enormous numbers of men and great quantities of stores. Roman navy biremes, here in Britain, fighting for Ironhair! They have an army of oarsmen, but each of them also carries its own army Of warriors! And then, in addition to all that, they ferry levies for Ironhair in the bellies of the things. Apparently they have huge cargo holds, built right into the bodies of the ships themselves, and they carry their own cranes to load them and unload them."

"Aye, well that's nothing new—the cranes, I mean. Connor's galleys have the same device, although probably much smaller. Where did they come from, these ships?"

Ambrose shrugged his shoulders. "I have no idea. The vessel you told me about, the one you saw on your way to Eire, is the only thing of that type I've ever heard of, and I've never been able to imagine what that looked like. The thought of two of them, and the possibility that there might be even more, confounds me. God knows where Ironhair found the things. "

"Well, Brother, wherever he found them, they were for sale or for hire, and now they're here, ferrying his vermin into Cambria. What about Carthac, is he still alive?"

That brought a grunt of disgust. "Aye, he is, still alive and still demented. He'll always be demented, but I'm beginning to fear he'll always be alive, too. He seems to be unkillable. God knows many have tried. I've heard two different reports of close shot Pendragon arrows being deflected from his armour. "

"I don't believe it. Who told you that?"

He shrugged. "Two people. Two separate reports, two separate incidents. "

"How close were the shots? Did you speak to either bowman?"

"No, I merely heard the reports. "

"Rumours, then. Soldiers' stories. Those bows are accurate from a quarter mile away. A close shot from a Pendragon longbow will pierce any armour ever made, if it hits clean. Someone ought to have killed him by now with one of those things. I'll grant he may be formidable, fighting hand to hand—from all reports he's big enough to be indomitable—but he's not immortal. And you say there's no word at all of Vortigern?"

"Not a breath. Utter silence out of the northeast. "

"But Hengist is dead, you are sure of that?" He nodded. "Well, you and I agreed years ago that when Hengist died, Vortigern would have trouble with Horsa. For all we know , Vortigern might be at war right now, or he might be dead, long since. If he's at war, he might appreciate some token of support, to keep Horsa off balance. If he is dead, on the other hand, then Horsa is at large, and in power. I think we ought to try and find out what the situation is up there, don't you agree?"

Ambrose thought about that as he leaned forward to stir the fire with an iron rod that lay before the brazier. "Aye, I do," he murmured eventually. "But how? It's a long way from here to there, and logic dictates that we would only be inviting grief by going looking for trouble that might otherwise pass us by."

"Horse turds, Ambrose! You don't believe that any more than I do. Logic dictates that whatever can go wrong will go wrong if you choose to leave your fate in any way in the hands of a mad young bull like Horsa. You once told me Vortigern thought of himself as High King of all Britain, remember'? Well, he has never ruled down here, so his fancies were no more than that. But what if he discussed those fancies with others? All it would take for Horsa would be the suggestion that there might be more settled areas of Britain ripe for conquest, and he'd be here, at the head of his hordes. I don't think we can afford to wait for that to happen, and I don't think we can afford to take the risk that it won't. I think we have to go and see what's going on, up there in Northumbria, and I believe we should go up along the Saxon Shore, now, immediately."

"What? You mean an expedition in force? But that would mean—"

"Aye, I know it would. It would mean splitting our forces when we have a war to deal with here already. I know it's not feasible to do the thing now as it ought to be done, but I still think it's foolish not to slip up there and take a look, at least. The thought of an army of Horsa's Danes falling about our necks while we're involved with Ironhair is not a pleasant notion. "

"No, I've known that for months, but I've been hesitant to commit any kind of force to the task while you were away in the north. I've had enough trouble with the thought of leaving this place in other hands while I ride off to Cambria. " He pulled himself out of his chair and went to stand over the fire, rubbing his hands together in the heat rising from the coals. "That sounded different from what I had been thinking, when I said it aloud, so I don't want you to misunderstand me. We have good men here. Any one of our senior people is more than capable of looking after things in my absence, commanding the garrison and tending to daily affairs. Tactically speaking, they're all superb. But in terms of strategic ability, I don't know, Cay. There's not a single man I can think of whom I'd care—perhaps even dare—to trust with the responsibility of reacting instantaneously and decisively should the drastic need arise. " He held up a hand to forestall my objections, but I had none because I knew exactly what was in his mind. Seeing that, he continued.

"I know I should be able to delegate absolute authority in my absence. That's not my concern. My problem is, quite simply, that none of our second level commanders has ever had that kind of requirement thrust upon him. Any one of diem would accept my dictates, and assume the command and the responsibility, I've no doubt of that. But could any one of them act decisively, should the need arise? Would he commit every resource he had at his disposal to all out war on a new front—here, at home—on his own authority, or would he hesitate and wait for some kind of endorsement from me? I simply don't know, Cay, and I haven't dared risk the uncertainty. Lip service and willingness are not enough, not with so much at stake, and until I've seen with my own eyes that whoever I choose is capable of taking absolute control—and that's impossible, since I would have to be here when he needed to and that would negate the need—Ach! I can't even make sense to me!"

I cleared my throat and sat forward in my seat. "I know you expected me to interrupt you, but you are right. The problem is real and worrisome, and it has occurred to me long before now. I suppose it means, in the absolute, that armies require wars—not merely defensive disciplines—to evoke their true strength, and that's a sobering thought."

"You've thought of this before? How? When?"

"Oh, a few years ago, before I left for Ravenglass. I meant to talk with you about it at the time, but the opportunity never arose. It came to me one night, when I was thinking about ambition and what that entails. It began with Peter Ironhair. I realized that none of our senior officers seem to possess his ruthless ambition, the kind that's necessary to achieve true greatness as commanders. They're good and able men, one and all, but they're all followers. And so I began to wonder why that should be so."

"And? Did you discover any reasons?"

"Of course I did, the best of reasons: there's nowhere for them to go."

"I don't follow you."

"You will, if you think about it. We have the only army of its kind in Britain, as far as I'm aware. No?" He nodded slowly, looking bemused. "Well then, what can they aspire to, in terms of supreme command? You're here, and so am I, and we're both young enough yet to have decades ahead of us, barring sickness and accident. We have no wars—or we had none at that time—so the risk of either One of us meeting death in battle has been negligible. So the only route to supremacy for any of diem must lie in fomenting mutiny here in Camulod—and who would follow them, were they to try? Where would any malcontent find cause for general mutiny? When did we last execute a soldier? Our greatest penalty is banishment, and the fear of that alone is sufficient to maintain order in CHIT ranks, because banishment from Camulod means perdition: where is a banished man to go? Will he wait around our borders, living on what he can hunt and trap, in the hope of being joined by others, then raiding us? I think not "And so our soldiers recognize the benefits they enjoy here, and so do our senior officers. The highest rank they can attain, they hold already, and they seem content with that. We alone; Brother, you and I, must face and live with the disadvantages in such a system, which arise only at times like this. When a man—any man—has reached the limits of his progress, he tends to accept those limits and grow comfortable. There is your dilemma. "

"Hmm... " Ambrose had been pacing as he listened, and now he sat down across from me again. "You're absolutely right. And now that we are faced with war again, those expectations will all change. The dilemma will resolve itself as individual field commanders rise to the challenges they meet. "

"Aye, or fail to rise, in which case they will be replaced. Either way, we'll soon have no lack of qualified field commanders. But let's get back to the original point, which was the threat from the northeast, Horsa's Danes. Your hands have been tied in that by your not knowing whom to leave in charge, given the risk of attack from that direction. Now they're untied. I'm here, and so is Dedalus, and Ded, next to you and me, is the best man we have, in terms of possessing the will and the flair for absolute command. You were going to leave two legions here, taking the First with you to Cambria. Why? Why wouldn't you take two into Cambria?"

He held up his hands. "Because of the danger from the northeast—precisely what you were talking about earlier. I had decided that with you away in the northeast, should everything go wrong while I was in Cambria, and Camulod's defenders were essentially left lacking decisive strategic leadership, they ought at least to have sufficient defensive strength to survive until we could provide that leadership. That meant two legions, sufficient to hold and patrol our borders. "

"Good enough. But that's all changed now. I think you have to take two legions into Cambria, less one tenth. "

"/ have to take them? So you've decided not to come. What do you intend to do with the tenth I leave behind, as if I did not already know?"

I nodded. "An expedition in force, into Northumbria. You'll have six thousand men, less my six hundred. That will allow you to win in Cambria, smashing Ironhair, and it will allow me to penetrate to Northumbria in relative safety. I'll have two hundred heavy cavalry, a hundred of your Scouts, and three hundred infantry. That will discourage unwelcome attention. "

"Aye, it should, but you'll have two hundred and more miles to travel, each way, and much of it across rough country. To take the roads would not be worth the risk—people tend to congregate along the open routes. "

"No, you're wrong there, Ambrose. The roads offer the greatest advantage for speedy progress, there and back. There might be people lining the routes on either side, all the way, but we'll be travelling quickly, at the forced march. "

"You'll be tied to the speed of your infantry. The roads are speediest for heavy cavalry and infantry. But the roads also offer endless opportunities for entrapment The news of your coming will precede you at the speed a man can run to pass on word to another runner. On any of diem, your progress and your arrival at any given point will be predictable. You could lose your entire party over the course of a hundred miles, one arrow at a time. "

"True enough, I suppose, if you look only at the bleakest picture. "

"I do, and so do you. That's our responsibility. That's command. "

"Accepted. So are you telling me I should remain here and wait to see what might come down against us from the north?"

"No, not at all. I'm thinking about Cambria, my battleground. Most of it is mountainous, except for the coastal areas, which means that most of it is bad cavalry country. I've been aware of that all along, and I have what I think will be a successful strategy for using our infantry in the hills, supported by our cavalry working from base camps in the valleys beneath. I intend to flush Ironhair's levies the way boys flush out wild game for hunters to kill. One hill, one hill range at a time, I intend to push them back and off the summits, thrusting them down into the valleys beyond and into our cavalry. We can count on the Pendragon warriors and bowmen to join us, and we've trained enough of them in our own ways for us to hope, at the very least, that they'll be able to work with us in concert. Our discipline will win the battles and the war for us. In addition to that, the Scouts should be able to work well in all but the most inaccessible mountain terrain, although not in massive numbers, and that has an effect on you. "

"Very well, now it's my turn to be lost. "

He smiled. "Test this then, for logic. I need every infantry soldier we possess. I also need every individual unit of heavy cavalry. I intend to divide, my force, initially, and to interdict Ironhair's fleet from using the harbours they now hold. To do that, I need cavalry and infantry both, to seal each harbour from the land side and then drive the defenders into the sea. One legion should suffice for that, at the beginning, and I'll be able to reduce that number later, once we hold the harbours.

"In the meantime, I won't need the full complement of Scouts, while you, on the other hand, can use them. I'm suggesting you exchange your force of six hundred mixed troops for Ave hundred Scouts. That will allow you to move more quickly than otherwise possible, and to pick your own route at every stage of your journey. I'd suggest you'll be invulnerable, too, until you decide if and when to stand and fight. No one who doesn't have an army of his own would ever dream of attacking five hundred armed and disciplined mounted men. There's never been a force like that seen outside the bounds of Camulod, Cay."

My heart had begun to pound as he spoke, and now my excitement was unbearable, so that I rose to my feet and began pacing the room. From the corner of my eye, I saw one of the lamps gutter and go out, and so I knew that time had passed quickly. Ambrose was watching, making no attempt to hurry me. I forced myself to stop pacing and faced him.

"No fault in your logic, Brother, none at all. But are you sure you won't have need of the Scouts?"

"Of course I will, but we have a thousand, and I'll need no more than half of them. I'll have two thousand heavy troopers and three thousand infantry to back them up, remember. You won't, but you'll be carrying surprise with you all the way. No one will oppose you on the road to Northumbria. "

"What about spare horses? Do we have enough?"

Ambrose laughed aloud. "Enough? There are more horses in this colony than there are people, Caius. How many will you require?"

"A spare for every man. That should do it. "

"Good, then take half as many again, as a reserve. You can't replace a cavalry mount in the field unless you have one with you. "

I had a sudden image of my expedition travelling overland: more than twelve hundred horses! "My God, " I said. "The logistics of that are frightening!"

"Then delegate, Brother. We've no lack of logistics personnel. You'll need either wagons or pack animals to carry grain and other supplies. Wagons would be better, but they'll tie you to the roads again. Your spare animals can carry packs and your Scouts will all care for their own animals, so you won't need an army of camp followers to tend your needs. "

"We'll be moving slowly, then. "

He looked at me from beneath raised eyebrows. "What does that mean? Your' slowly' will yet be faster than heavy troopers or infantry could move. You won't be galloping all the way, but you'll move easily enough. So, are we agreed on this? Me for Cambria with the two legions and you for the far northeast with five hundred Scouts?"

I nodded my head. "We are. When do we begin?"

"We've begun, Brother. Now all we have to do is put our agreement into effect/Within the week, we'll both be gone from here, and Camulod will be safe in the able hands of Dedalus. Have you given any thought to your route? And how long would you expect to be away?"

"Two questions, one affecting the other. " I paused considering both of diem. "I think my best route would be the one you and I took last time. At least I'm familiar with it. We'll head east from here until we reach the Saxon occupied territories, and then abandon the roads and strike out northward, overland, probably sooner than we did before, since the occupied area has probably grown bigger. What are you smiling at?"

His smile grew broader. "Remembering our magic feat, the day we made ourselves identical and terrified those raiders by shooting at them alternately from places we could not possibly have been as one man alone, and yet all they could see was one man. What was that big Anglian's name, the farmer whose life we saved, do you recall?"

I thought for a moment, remembering the occasion from eight, could it have been nine years earlier? "Something ungodly, almost unpronounceable. Guth? Guth-something or other. "

"Guthilrod, wasn't it? There was a strange 'thlr' not a Celtic one—in there somewhere."

"Gethelrud! That was it, Gethelrud. "

"Will you visit him, think you?''

"Visit him? D' you think me mad, with five hundred men and three times that many horses? I can imagine his face, seeing me there in his yard! We couldn't even speak to each other last time, when I was alone. "

My brother was still smiling. "He may have learned our tongue since then. "

"Latin? Oh yes, I'm sure he must have, almost certainly. He probably writes regularly to the Emperor nowadays, in Constantinople. No, Brother, I'll be doing no visiting. I'll be moving as quickly as I can. As for how long it may take me to come back, how long do you expect to be in Cambria? I'll come back when I can, but not before I've done what must be done. Three months would be the shortest time, I'd guess."

"Aye, that's what I thought. You might then have to come and rescue me from Cambria."

I smiled at that. "I will, if I have to, and I'll bring the Third Legion with me, since the threat from the northeast will be resolved by then." I looked at my brother, taking great strength from his confidence and his ardour for the crucial task at hand. "Have I ever told you how glad I am you're here?" He looked at me in surprise and I grinned at him. "No, I mean it. I shudder to think of what my life would be, had you and I not met. I would have missed the better half of myself and would have had to live with half a brain. I thank God, frequently, for your existence, for the fact that we are kin, and for the miracle of meeting you."

"Kin? Man, we are practically twins."

"I know, and that calls for a drink." I glanced around me. "I suppose everyone else is long abed. We've been talking here for long enough to outlive the lamps, and the fire's almost dead."

Ambrose sat up straight and grunted. "Aye, well I'll replenish the fire and see to some of the lamps, if you'll find us some mead. There should be some left on the shelves in the triclinium."

By the time I returned, clutching a flask and two stemmed glass cups, he had remade the fire and was pouring oil carefully into one of the failing lamps. I sat down and poured mead for both of us, then waited until he returned to his seat and picked up his cup.

"You know, while I was looking for the mead, one thing occurred to me—a flaw. It's the only one I can see in what we've planned, but it's enormous."

He sipped at his drink, and I watched the expressions flow across his face as he tried to guess what I was talking about. "Very well, you must be more perceptive than I am, because I can't see it. What is it?"

'The whole thing is backwards."

He frowned, trying to make sense of that. "I don't follow you. What's backwards?"

"Our plan. I should be the one going to Cambria and you the one headed for Northumbria, because I don't speak the languages they use up there and you do."

Now he scowled. "That's nonsense, on three counts. First, Vortigern speaks Latin—"

"Granted, but Vortigern and all his people might be dead, and you speak the tongue of the Outlanders, the Danes."

"Aye, but only poorly, and I've no knowledge of the other tongues at all—Anglian, and the gibbering of the Jutes."

"But it's Horsa's Danes who worry us. Theirs is the tongue we need, even for listening. It doesn't matter if we ever talk to them, as long as we can listen to them speak among themselves, hear them and know what they are saying. I'm useless there. You should be the one to go."

"No, I disagree. And here's my second objection. If I go there and find Vortigern alive, I might have difficulty leaving again."

That caught me unprepared. "What d'you mean? You would prefer to stay there?"

"Of course not! It's simply that..." He hesitated, seeking the right words. "If Vortigern's alive, and I turn up there in his lands with half a thousand horsemen, he might be inclined to... seek to restrain me from leaving again. My force would give him an enormous advantage."

"You think he might use force?"

"No, not at all. Discourage me from leaving would be more accurate. Don't forget, I was once among his senior and most trusted captains. Until I met you and decided to come south to meet my own people, he had all my loyalty. In any event, he would try to find some way to persuade me to use my troops in his support. "

"It would be no different if I were leading them. "

"Ah, but it would. You would leave when the time came, and he would be quite powerless to stop you, whereas he might convince himself that I yet owe him loyalty. He might make it very... difficult for me. I would defy him, if I had to, but I would not enjoy that, and the thought of having to lead my men against his—against him—makes me cold with loathing. "

That made me pause. I had almost forgotten the extent of Ambrose's former ties to Vortigern. But then, evaluating what he had said, I accepted it and moved on. "You said my suggestion made no sense on three counts. You've given me two—what is the other?"

"Ah! You're not familiar with my campaign plan for Cambria, or with the strategy I've devised. "

"We can change that in a matter of days. How well do you know Cambria?"

"I don't, not well at all. "

"And do you speak the tongue fluently? Or that of Cornwall?'

He shook his head.

"And I do. I speak the tongues, and I know the land and the terrain. You explain your strategy to me, and I'll carry it out. On the matter of Vortigern's being tempted to coerce you into staying, I doubt that's likely. I don't think Vortigern would dare to make an enemy of you and your force. He has too many real enemies already. So I'll act as you intended to, and you will act as I would have, had I gone to Northumbria. Remember, we are almost identical, so no one seeing either of us from afar will be able to tell which of us he is seeing anyway. It only makes sense, then, that each of us should do what he does best. Don't you agree?'

"Partially. " He was still far from convinced. "I'm an infantry commander, Cay, not a cavalryman. "

"Horse turds. The Scouts are yours. You created diem. They'd follow you into Hades. " I stopped, then spoke more quietly. "Look, Ambrose, it's too important to decide right now, tonight, in haste. Why don't you think about it overnight. Then, in the morning, if you're still reluctant, we'll proceed as planned. Either one of us can go to either place. It simply seems more sensible to me that we should make the most of what we have, and that means using your skills in the northeast and mine in the west, where we are both familiar with the surroundings. Will you think about it?'

He smiled. "No need to think On it. You are obviously right, and what you have said makes sense in every detail. We'll do as you suggest. But there's a price to pay, for convincing me so easily to accept your plan over my own. "

"And what is that?"

"I want to take young Arthur with me, make the next stage of his training my responsibility. You've had the shaping of him exclusively for six years and more. I think it might be good for him to have a change of teacher, at this stage, and it might be safer for him, too. You will be riding into certain war in Cambria, with all its risks. I might encounter no hostility at all in the northeast. What say you?"

I did not even have to hesitate. "I think young Arthur will be delighted, and you're right about the risk. Good. I'll pay your price, and I'll take on young Bedwyr. But you've reminded me of another thing I wanted to ask you about. I saw a school on the plain, today, did I not? Is it a school?'

"Yes, it is. One of Ludmilla's female Councillors suggested it, about four years ago, and it started the year before last, in the late summer. What about it?"

'Tell me about the priests I saw there. "

He looked surprised. "What do you want to know?"

"Who are they and where did they come from? Were they invited here, and if so, why? They looked to me to be monastics. "

The corner of my brother's mouth flickered upwards, but he did not quite smile. "Monastics? There are few monastics in Britain, Cay, to the best of my knowledge. " He paused. "That is a fashion of worship and a way of life that has not yet come to our shores. The men you ask about live in seclusion, communally, cut off from the world... but they are not monastics in the sense I believe you mean, the monastics from beyond the seas. "

"Brother, you are making no sense at all. "

He sipped at his mead and swilled it around in his mouth before swallowing. "I am making perfect sense, Cay, and you'll agree, once you understand what I'm talking about. The men you saw today, although they are not priests, are from the ancient Christian community at Glastonbury, not twenty miles from here. They are followers of your good friend Germanus, who, as you may recall, decreed at Verulamium that schools should be set up to teach the ways and the word of God to the youth of this country. "

That gave me pause. Glastonbury was the oldest seat of Christianity in Britain, and there had been a community of anchorites in residence there almost since the days of the Christ himself. Some said, indeed, that the Christ himself had visited the place. I had heard the tale told several times, but I gave it no credence. The thought of the carpenter of Galilee travelling to the wilds of western Britain had always struck me, as it had most people, as being ludicrous. Nevertheless, there had always been a religious community in residence there, living in a collection of stone walled hovels high on the shelving beach above the surrounding marshes, huddled at the base of the high tor that gave the place its name, and barely subsisting on the charity of local residents. I saw immediately what Ambrose had meant by calling diem monastics. The new fashion among the religious overseas was to gather in closed communities, living in filth and poverty and in contemplation of God's works, eschewing the temptations of Devil, World and Flesh. The anchorites of Glastonbury had been living that way for hundreds of years, quietly and without notice.

"I've never been there," I said. "I've heard tell of it, but never in any way that might have attracted me. How did the priests come here?"

Ambrose smiled. "I invited them. I have been there, you see."

I looked at him in amazement. "You have? Why would you go there? There's nothing there but the tor."

"And the community. We had a visitor, in the summer, four years ago, a churchman named Ludovic who had come from Gaul, from Germanus, and was on his way to Glastonbury. His ship had been blown off course and wrecked on the north Cornish coast, and he had been washed ashore, clinging to a piece of wreckage. From there he'd made his way towards us on foot. Our guards found him on our perimeter and brought him here to me. He spent a week with us, and then I escorted him to Glastonbury. That's where I met my namesake, Ambrose, who is the leader of the congregation there. Ludovic had brought Ambrose word from Germanus, bidding him send his people out to set up schools. That was coincidence, because we had just heard from our Women's Council that they wished us to establish a school of some description here in Camulod. There was a fatefulness to it that I could not ignore, and so Ambrose's people came down here the following year, once we had built our school, and began teaching. "

"Teaching what?"

"Christianity, mainly, its principles and tenets. Not all of them are literate themselves—very few are, in fact. Ambrose teaches writing and reading, and so does Thomas. Baloric, the eldest of them, knows computation and Euclid's geometry, so he teaches those subjects to a small number of our brightest. These men refer to themselves as the Fraternity of Joseph, and their lives consist of work and prayer. They spend the autumn and winter months with us, once the harvest is gathered in, but they return to their community in spring and remain there through the summer, while our children are working with their parents in the fields. "

"Hmm. And you are satisfied their presence here is a benefit to the Colony?"

"Completely satisfied. "

"Good, then I'll say no more about them. Just don't expect me to ride to Glastonbury with them, though. My Christianity does not extend that far. "

"We demonstrate our own beliefs in our own ways. " He smiled again.

"What does that mean?"

"Whatever you wish it to mean. Some of us live our beliefs in our hearts, others show them more openly. That's all. "

"Aye, well... " I looked at the fire, and it had burned low again, mere embers glowing in the bottom of the iron basket. "It's late, but we still have to talk about young Arthur. "

"Arthur's grown tall. No doubting he is one of us. And he's filling out hugely. "

"Aye, and he's fallen in love, too."

I told him briefly about Arthur's thunderboltng, and we laughed gently together before Ambrose asked, "You think it's time he learned to go to war?"

"I do, and I've promised him he can ride out with us, he and his friends, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilly. They're of the age for it. But we'll have to separate them. They'll learn best in isolation from each other. You will take Arthur with you into the northeast, on this first foray. When you return, we two will be his teachers. He knows he must start out as a mere slave, a servant and a messenger. He'll tend our weapons, polish our armour, bed down our animals, run errands for us and learn to stand on his own feet and trust his own judgment. Meanwhile, I'll take young Bedwyr with me into Cambria, and perhaps Ghilly, too, though he's a year younger. He might serve well with Philip, on campaign, for I know he was impressed with Philip when he commanded our garrison."

"I see no objection to that. What about the other lad, Gwin?"

"I'll leave him here in Camulod, as servant to Dedalus. He won't like that, at first. He'll be bitterly disappointed at not riding out with the others, but he couldn't have a better mentor than Ded will be. Then, when we return, the boys will all change masters, and Gwin will have his turn on the campaign trail. You think that will work?"

"I think there are only three things more certain, at this point."

"And what are those?"

"It's very late, my mead is gone, and I am going to bed. Sleep well, Brother, because tomorrow will be a long day. It may all be celebrations of one kind or another, but by the end of it you'll be whimpering for sleep. Blow out the lamps when you leave, and don't be mean enough to waken Tress when you slip into bed. "

I yawned and followed him out towards the stairway to the upper floor, blowing out the last two lamps as I went.

The day that followed was as long as Ambrose had predicted, but paradoxically it flew by, from the early morning trumpet calls that turned out the garrison to prepare the campus for the coming celebrations, to the late night gatherings around bonfires where the sounds of singing and stringed instruments spread outward from the various assemblies and mingled at times into a cacophonous welter in the ears of the people moving from group to group.

I have only two lasting impressions of that day. One was the realization, shortly after daybreak, that we did, in fact, have thousands of soldiers in Camulod. The day had been decreed a festival and the entire garrison excused from formal duty, save only for a skeletal force selected by lot to form the guard for the day. The troopers still had lesser responsibilities governing them; however, the task of setting up the venue for the afternoon's gathering was theirs, and their freedom to make merry afterwards was strictly curtailed by a ban on drinking during daylight hours.

I watched them from above, from a bend in the hill road, as they swarmed upon the broad campus below, transforming it in a few short hours from a dirt grey, barren space to a sprawling tent town dotted with massive, unlit tires in shallow depressions around which heavy, wooden tables with attached benches, all made from raw lumber, had been arranged in concentric rings. In the centre of all, they left a rectangular space, some sixty paces long by forty wide, which would accommodate the major spectacles later in the day. Some of them had dug pits for the cooking fires the night before, off to the side of the main campus, close to the fringe of trees on the south side.

The spit roast cooking of the largest animals had begun long before dawn, under the watchful eyes of Marco and his staff of cooks. That entire southern area, on the grassy, lightly treed meadows flanking the great drilling ground, had been fenced off, and guards had been posted there to keep the curious outside and away from the preparation of the food. Within the fence was a bustling chaos of activity. My primary impression, however, was that the number of men working on the drilling ground itself seemed beyond credence. I had never seen so many soldiers in one place before.

My second memory is of the exhibition of horsemanship and weapons skills that took place in the afternoon. Then, for the first time, I witnessed what a body of mounted men—our new Scouts—could do with the new, light spears. Group after group swept forward, covered from head to foot in toughened leather armour, galloping at full speed and leaning far out from their saddles, braced only by reins and stirrups, to pluck brightly beribboned coloured targets from the ground on the points of their spears. Later, others advanced in lines at the full charge against a row of propped up shields, to pull their horses up into rearing turns, moving as one, while the riders braced themselves and threw their spears above the edges of the shields to where they would have skewered the men who held them. As they rode away from the "encounter," swerving easily between the riders now approaching in the following lines, each rider held a new spear, drawn from its carrying place behind his saddle. I knew, watching these manoeuvres, that I was witnessing a new form of tactical warfare.

Dedalus had been standing beside me throughout all this, as had Rufio, and now, as the last of the demonstration teams rode off the field to enormous applause, Rufio spoke up. "See what our fellows have learned while we've been gone? Makes you feel inadequate, doesn't it?'

Ded glanced sideways at him, smiling. "Rufe, if you hadn't met that demon cursed bear, we could have given them a display of swordsmanship, with our game of two stick, that would have made them all feel sick. "

As Rufio nodded and spat disconsolately, Ded turned back to me. "The boys still could, you know. Not two stick, they don't have the skill for that, but they're good enough with one oak staff each to raise these people's eyebrows. What think you, Cay?'

The thought had already occurred to me, but I had dismissed the notion. "No, Ded, I don't think that would be a good idea. In the first place, it might not look right—might give the impression we're feeling as inadequate as we are, and trying to compensate by showing off. And in the second place, I don't think it would be good for the boys to be singled out like that. Let's not do anything to call unnecessary attention to Arthur. "

Ded shrugged and nodded. "You're the Commander, so be it. " He raised his head and sniffed. "God, that meat smells good. I'm starved. Let's go see if they're ready to start serving. "

We strolled together towards the cooking area, and that, as it happens, constitutes my last distinct memory of that day. I know that Tress had a wonderful time, for I recall her flushed and laughing, bright eyed and slightly out of breath from dancing with one of the young men; and I know that the food was varied and excellent, for I remember Marco being carried shoulder high by a boisterous crew of troopers and cooks; and I know I met many more new faces throughout the day—but I remember none of that in detail, nor do I remember going to bed that night.

The day that followed was dedicated to cleaning up, and once again the troopers overran the great campus. By the end of the day, in the brief spring twilight, there was no sign that the tent town had ever been there; even the blackened rings of fire scorched earth had been raked over with harrows, their depressions filled and the ashes buried or scattered.

By the time the sun rose the morning after that, the enormous campus was transformed yet again, its entire surface covered by precisely aligned formations of motionless men: the rearmost half was made up of squadrons of heavy cavalry, the flanking troops were composed of smaller bodies of the Scouting Force, and the front central ranks and files were composed entirely of foot soldiers. Riding through the front gates, on my way down with Ambrose to inspect them, I pulled my horse to a stop. Ambrose reined in, too, looking at me.

"What?"

"Brown," I replied. "They're all brown."

He turned away for a moment, looking down on the army assembled below us, trying to decipher my meaning, and then he looked back at me. "The armour, you mean?"

"Yes. Seeing them all together like that, as an entity, it suddenly struck me. There's not much metal."

"No, we don't have much metal, not enough to armour thousands. But we don't really need metal armour. The Romans conquered the world in leather armour, didn't you know that?" He grinned. "Triple layers of toughened oxhide with metal studs will turn most weapons. Besides, our weapons are all iron, and they are the best in Britain, made in our own smithies. And if you look closely, you'll see that our officers are all armoured in metal. They're the ones who need it most, since they're the ones who stand most exposed to the enemy. Shall we go on?"

"In a moment, wait!" He had begun to urge his horse forward, but now he stopped again. "Where are we obtaining our iron nowadays?"

"Where we always have—anywhere we can find it Carol has contacts scouring the countryside all the time. The ore beds are mostly in south Cambria to the north of Glevum, and along the southeast shore. But few people are mining them now and, of course, the south-eastern shores are Saxon occupied. So most of our raw iron still comes from Pendragon country... " He fell silent thinking, then sniffed. "Publius Varrus said in his writings that iron would one day have more worth than gold. I wish he had been wrong. "

"He seldom was, in matters of metal. And that reminds me, I have something for you, in my quarters. It's not a gift, since it's as much yours as mine, but it will please you. As soon as we are finished down below, if you'll ride back with me, I'll give it to you. In the meantime, our troops look magnificent, as they ought to... Let's ride on down. We have kept them waiting long enough. "

We made our way down onto the plain, and as we approached the dense mass of our army, coming close enough finally to be able to discern the unsmiling, individual features beneath the rows and rows of identical war helmets, it struck me forcibly that I would be seeing very few soft, feminine faces in the days and months that stretched ahead.

It took more than two hours to inspect our troopers, but it was a pleasant and rewarding task in the warm springtime sunlight. Our men were ready, primed for war, and there was a sense of bubbling anticipation among them, though they stood silent and arrow straight as we walked among them, peering critically at their weapons and armour, their animals and saddlery.

The veterans of Lot's War, years earlier, stood out unmistakably among the assembly, distinguished by the decorations they had won in the conflict. They alone had the right to wear a stiff, whitish crest of boar bristle on their parade helmets in commemoration of the fact that they had fought and defeated Gulrhys Lot, whose emblem had been the Boar of Cornwall. All other Camulodian troopers wore crests made of brown horsehair.

In addition to the crests, many of our veterans also wore combat rings, directly adapted by my grandfather Caius from the ritualized reward system employed by the Romans, where meritorious service in varying degrees won individual soldiers, the right to carry rings of differing sizes and metals—gold, silver, bronze and iron—mounted on their cuirasses. Some of these rings were ornate, others were plain, and each of them had its own significance.. The largest, the size of a man's palm, symbolized the crowns that could be won by heroic soldiers in ancient times for outstanding deeds of valour, such as capturing an enemy stronghold.

Tertius Lucca, our primus pilus, wore three rows of three such rings on his breastplate, covering his whole chest. Two woe of plain gold, indicating instances of unparalleled personal valour and achievement, while two more were of silver carved to look like rope, announcing to the world his leadership of victorious companies in two distinct campaigns; two more were plain silver, and the three on the bottom row were bronze, each denoting a companion's life saved single handedly in battle. He wore shoulder flashes, too, of polished iron, covering the seams of his front and rear armour, and these were crusted thick with twelve smaller honour rings, welded atop each other in layers. Atop his helmet, which was equipped with full face flaps that protected everything except his gleaming eyes, he wore a huge, spectacular crest of stiffened white horsehair, sweeping from shoulder to shoulder in the centurion's manner.

Tertius Lucca, in the prime of his manhood, made an impressive sight in his parade armour, and at the conclusion of our formal inspection of his troops we thanked him ceremonially and returned the control of the assembly into his hands after our final salute to the podium, where the massed standards of our formations were ranked together. As we rode away then, the two Commanders side by side, followed by our corps of staff officers, we heard Lucca's voice, as loud as Stentor's, marshalling the throngs one last time, bidding them prepare to be dismissed in good order.

Back at the fort, I thanked the other officers and dismissed diem, before leading Ambrose into the room in my quarters into which I had piled all the crates and cases I had not yet unpacked. I quickly identified the one I sought and prised the lid off it to reveal Excalibur's case, carefully packed in wood shavings, and the two replicas made from the last of the skystone metal. I hoisted one out and tossed it to Ambrose. He caught it by the sheathed blade and held it up to the light, staring at it.

"I thought of this the other night, when you reminded me about making ourselves identical that day in Saxon country. Remember how you worried because our bows were different, as if the people we attacked could notice such a thing from a hundred paces distant?" He smiled and brought the hilt closer to his eyes. "Well, our swords will be identical from now on, at least. " I held out the other of the pair, so that he could see that they woe, in every respect, identical from pommel to sheath tip.

"Who made the scabbards?"

I held mine out and withdrew the blade. "Joseph made them, using the same techniques Uncle Varrus used. They're sheepskin, as you can see, folded and sewn, with the fleece inside and shaved away to a mere nap that polishes and cleans the blade each time you draw it out or slip it in. The upper part is reinforced with a metal sleeve, to keep it stiff and snug around the top of the blade, and to support that long, straight hook on the back of the scabbard. We needed something to enable us to carry these things, and this hook is what Joseph came up with.

'The blade's too long to permit a straight arm draw, either over your shoulder or from your side, and it's far too long even to let you walk, if you are carrying the sword hanging by your side. The only alternative you have is to carry the thing in your hand all the time, and that is obviously ridiculous. So, the long tongued hook on the back of the sheath slips into the harness ring between your shoulders, and the sheathed blade hangs down your back, the hilt above your shoulder. Nothing new there. The new part comes when you need the sword. See?" I had been demonstrating as I spoke. "You take hold of the hilt, reach behind you with your free hand, low, push the scabbard up until the hook clears the ring at your back, then flip the blade forward, over your shoulder, to where you can catch it again in your free hand. Draw the sword, like that, and slip the sheath hook into your belt, so you don't lose it. The sheath dangles, flexible and harmless, and you have a naked, dangerous weapon in your hand. You approve?"

"Hmm, I do. Very ingenious. Joseph came up with this?" Ambrose was fumbling behind him, attempting to insert the long, straight hook of the scabbard into the ring at his back where his long bladed cavalry spatha normally hung, its blade through the ring.

"He did. You'll grow used to that manoeuvre. I had difficulty with it myself, for the first few days, but it's usage, like anything else—balance and feel. I slip the hook in there nowadays without even thinking about it, and I can have the sword drawn and bare in my hand before a man can count to three. "

He slid the scabbard into place eventually and then went through the motions of drawing the weapon, his movements slow and clumsy. I repeated them, my own movements smooth and liquid, bouncing the sheathed blade against my right shoulder for impetus, then twisting my wrist inward on the down pull, bringing the blade across my chest to where my left hand could grasp the scabbard just below the hilt; a straight pull in opposite directions with either hand, and I had my bared sword ready to strike. The scabbard flopped empty in my left hand as I slipped the retaining hook into my belt.

"As I said, you'll soon capture the trick of it, and the marvellous thing is that it works even better on horseback than it does on foot. "

Ambrose was examining the blade of his sword, holding it close to his face and angling it so that the light reflected along the length of it. "Aye, " he said, absently. "I'm sure it does. You know, this thing even looks better— I mean up close like this, close to the eye—than any other sword I've ever seen. It has a wavy pattern in the iron, much more than in any other sword. I know it's from the way the smiths fold and twist the metal bars that make up the blade, when they heat them and then hammer them flat, but it looks different, somehow. "

'It is different. The metal's different. It's skystone metal, not mere iron. "

He glanced at me and straightened his shoulders before sliding the blade of his new sword carefully back into its leather sheath. "Where is Excalibur now?"

I nodded towards the open crate. "In there. "

"May I look at it?'

I retrieved the polished wooden case from the packing crate, blowing away a few tiny curls of wood shavings that clung to its gloss, and then I opened it and produced Excalibur, grasping it through the silken cloth that covered the blade and offering it hilt first to my brother. Ambrose gazed at it in silent wonder, making no move to reach for it, and then he quickly stripped the scabbard again from the sword he held, dropping the empty sheath on a table top and transferring the sword hilt to his left hand before reaching for Excalibur with his right. He stood with both arms stretched ahead of him, comparing the two swords side by side.

"It's so much more... elaborate, " he whispered.

"Aye, it is. It's as much for display as for use—a king's weapon. The other, by comparison, is a working sword, a fighting man's weapon. "

He jerked his head to look at me, his mouth quirking into a half grin. "May not a king, then, be a fighting man?"

"You know better than that, Brother. But many's the fine fighting man could never be a king. "

"No, nor would want to be. " He had turned back to his comparison. "See how shiny the blade is! There has never been anything like it. "

"No, you are wrong, Ambrose. There are two others like it, and you are holding one of them in your other hand. Their blades seem duller, that is all, but that is simply because Excalibur is burnished. They are exact replicas, merely plain and unadorned, while their companion piece is gaudier."

"Gaudier... that's an ugly word, Cay. It smacks of falseness. This is Excalibur! There's nothing false about it. Has Arthur seen it yet?"

"No, not yet. He's still too young to take it. Soon, now, it will be his, but I will have to be convinced that he is old enough to understand why I have kept it from him until then."

Ambrose looked at me from beneath a raised eyebrow, then smiled sardonically, changing his grip on Excalibur to grasp it by the cross guard and extending the hilt to me. "Now, that," he drawled, "was a convoluted statement, but I think I understood it."

"Excellent. Let's hear you repeat it, then."

"The boy's too young and won't be old enough to know until he's old enough to know that he's too young. Is that not what you said?"

I laughed and closed the lid on the polished case, returning the glorious sword to its storage space. "Exactly, Brother! That is precisely what I said."