Just done with it all. It's the living who still look lost.

Who's that coming? Rhiwallon: he looks like Gallius; something lost and he can't for the life of him put his finger on it. Wish he'd speak up. Can't hear him. Look at him there, moustache ends stiffened in lime, bristling like his wounded pride. What's the fool saying?

Complaining, what else? That's what the live ones do.

Tell him to go away. I have nothing to do with him now.

Two dying, these other two wounded. They weren't important. It was the priest Rhiwallon would confront, the one who led them.

' 'You are the Christian priest, the one called Raven who brought them here?"

The shaggy head turned indifferently to Rhiwallon, then away; the mind within retreated into its own questions. Rhiwallon seated himself on the ground before the silent man.

"See? I do not make you kneel, but sit and speak as one man to another. You might be surprised to learn that a barbarian can speak Latin and even a little Greek."

The Raven did not look surprised or even interested.

"I was born at Churnet Head, in that very fort on the

very night my father went to defend the sovereignty of my tribe against the benevolent civilization of Mar- s chudd's Christian grandfather. Civilization had the larger army, and by the time I'd come into the world and was washed, Churnet Head belonged to the Parisii.

"We took it back because it's ours. We barbarians. That is a strange definition, Raven. In my hall there have been contests among bards so unequaled that no man could judge among them, only weep at the wild beauty that spoke through their hands and voices. I have given hospitality to historians and mathematicians and set them to school my children. Goldsmiths and the blowers of glass, far travelers and even Christians like yourself have sat at my board, and I have listened to them all. And nowhere in the sweet song that is life have I heard such discord as comes from your kind. There was a man of the Afric desert much like you, Raven. God to him was like the pitiless sun on rock and sand. No green, no peace, only heat and more heat. I sent him away without insult but without gifts. He poked hot iron into the still coolness of reality and made the world hiss with it. I think you are the same."

Rhiwallon glanced over his shoulder at the wagons. "So they die and go to be born again in a new life or to your sick God, whatever their belief. I don't know or care. But we will leave you for Ambrosius to see. Your madness took my birthplace and honor for the second time. But for you, I could have laughed at the boy tribune. I heard you screaming as you came; no human sanity could have done it or would have. Only these creatures you have dragged out of dark into daylight."

The prince stood up and dusted his hands where they'd pressed hard into the earth with his tension. "Are the beams ready? Then set them up." Rhiwallon searched the three blank faces under the tree. "Which of you will show the way of your god to the others?"

Drust did not have the gift for Briton-speech that his brother husband could boast, but it seemed the tallfolk

had nattered on for a long time. ' 'What did a say, Mai-gon?

"A would know which of Prydn knows the way of Jesu and Father-God/'

That was clear enough. "Oh. Help me up, then." Drust got to his feet unsteadily, leaning on Malgon's arm. "I am Drust Dismas," he managed in labored British. "I am the one touched by God, bearer of the Chi-Rho."

"Marvelous." Rhiwallon beckoned his men. "Put this one up."

Since the hills between Wye and Churnet were constantly patrolled, Ambrosius knew of the captured wounded within an hour and that Rhiwallon himself led the raid. Senseless as it was, the news brought a cold elation to the tribune. Rhiwallon knew he was beaten and was dragging as much down with him as he could. On the instant, Ambrosius commandeered every horse left at Churnet, most of them captured, and every man who could ride, and was off across the hills at a killing pace. By late afternoon, the Iberian scout, riding ahead, signaled a halt and waved Ambrosius to his vantage point at the top of a high hill but shrouded in thick trees.

From the crest, Ambrosius could see half a mile across the intervening valley to the bare top of another hill. They saw the horses first.

The grizzled little Iberian was one of the few alae riders left behind when the legion departed twenty years ago. He subjected the hill to a long scrutiny. "Thirty horses, no more."

"How many does it take to attack an invalid train?" Ambrosius scanned the valley. Good tree cover all the way. With any luck they could get close enough before discovery. His force was larger, his riders armed with three pilums each in addition to sword and shield. It would be as at Wye, when the flash of genius lit his mind and Drust's at the same moment—intense boy; of all the funny little faces, Ambrosius remembered Drust's

most clearly. The spears seemed to leap into their hands even as they spurred out in front of the squadron.

The scout touched his arm. "What's that they are putting up?"

There was no mistaking the silhouettes against the skyline, or what hung on them. One by one, heavy with their burden, the crosses rose against the sky and settled into their pits.

Ambrosius turned away from the sight. The scout couldn't read his face at all just then. It was not the Beardless Mars. Ambrosius scrubbed a hand over his face and chin, blinking. He stood up, reaching for his mount's bridle.

"Back to the patrol. Pass the word to get ready."

"Yes, Tribune."

"And tell them .. ."

The scout paused. The tribune was having trouble with something.

"There will be no prisoners, tell them. No ransoms. I want—" Ambrosius paused for a deep breath or two that he seemed to need very badly. "I want every Cor-itani on that stinking hill dead. I'll give a gold aureus to him that brings me Rhiwallon's head. Anyone who brings me a prisoner gets five lashes for dereliction of duty. Go on."

They put him up between two others, but Dismas should not be in the middle, so tiny and broken on the heavy beams.

They said the sky darkened and the wind rent the veil of the Temple, but wrong, there's not a bit of wind. And the sun is bright and opaque as the eye of a god with cataracts. Why do men fear evil in the dark when horror works as well in sunlight? The sun splinters in shafts through the trees, and this obscenity is as banal and unremarkable as the eating of a spider by its mate.

Which of you will show the way of your god to the others!

My brother stepped forward. Not me, not the one who

should, but Drust: saying the words slowly for that self-vindicating Coritani to understand. / am the Chosen.

Mai is weeping. I've never seen him weep before. The Coritani are surprised, didn't think Faerie could do something so human. Pity my faith died before I will. It wasn't me who stood up, but Drust.

"Padrec?"

Someone calling me. Must be my turn. Only Mai and me left. Please to report, O Lord: the timbers are ready, and I'm posted to decorate one of them. Golgotha, that's the style. What, Sir? No, it doesn't really matter, not a question of faith at all, actually. Sorry to wake You. By all means, get on with oblivion.

"Padrec..."

O Pia, O clemens. Oh, words. When did I truly believe? When was it more than my bloated need for grace? The artifice of pearl between the oyster and his pain.

". . . Dizzy, Padrec. Pray for me."

He forced himself to look up at the reality of what he'd learned as symbol. Such heavy beams for such a small life. A butterfly spread on black cloth by a zealous but clumsy collector, the exquisite, fragile beauty trembling a moment before the pinioned life left it. Between the wings, the small body yet live enough to sense eternity.

He felt his lips moving for the first time in hours. Days? "I cannot pray."

"Nae, thee can. Hurry," Drust gasped. "Will nae be long. Head be full of cloud."

"Oh, my sweet brother—"

"Thee can pray. Be nae writ? 'All these things I do, ye shall do an ye only believe'?"

When did I believe as you do now? When? Why can't the nails drive at least consciousness out of you? Your belief shames me, your strength condemns me, and yet I can't believe. I never knew Golgotha until now. "Drust..."

"Hard to breathe. Heart be like Mai's hammer." The boy writhed suddenly. "Malgon!"

"Stay for me, brother," Malgon choked. "Do come with thee."

1 'Pray for me, Padrec. ''

I will give you all the truth in me now. I loved thee more in thy innocence than any god in a's wisdom, or all the citizens of heaven. Why not? You showed me all the God I shall ever see. You show me life. You show me how to die. May I do it as well. They'll never know the deception.

"First words thee did teach me—"

Don't.

"The Lord is my shepherd—"

The lowered is my septic and shall not mount. He leadeth me beside stale waters. Drust, you were the reality of my love, not that. Without you it was only echo, a dream of vanity.

... someone shouting. Parisii! Parisii!

Padrec peered about dimly to see men scurrying, frightened to horse and weapons, a lethal flurry of movement. In the center of it he recognized Ambrosius, white-faced, galloping nearer behind the lance, and after him the needle-pointed spears coming like a river at flood tide.

"Roman— "

Rhiwallon, transcended, making a poem of his death. Drawing his sword, poised to meet Ambrosius' lance. Oh, yes, Rhiwallon would do that. For him life was still poetry, and the ending should rhyme. Look at him bellowing his defiance against that tide, and doesn't he love it? Now he is the center of drama and meaning.

In the middle of screaming, far removed from the unreality of such things as men, horses, and retribution, Padrec knelt at the foot of the obscene cross where love was impaled.

Drust's eyes were glazing now, as the carpenter at the end, no doubt, going into darkness that held nothing,