part0002

Her sharp eyes picked out the male bulk lumbering to the palings and looming out over them.

"Naiton?"

"I am Naiton," he roared back. "Who calls me? Is it the little bitch dog I marked with iron but a day gone?"

"Be Dorelei Mabh, Naiton. Let thee remember my name. The mark of thy weak magic fades on me even as thy power in the land. See what I hold in my hand."

At Dorelei's sign, Cru and Padrec moved their mounts forward to flank her on either side; then the three of them drew nearer to the stockade. Dorelei held up the iron arrowhead.

"See, Naiton tallfolk?" she challenged. "Iron be tamed. From this time will be fhain's as well."

"That is a trick that it is. Not iron at all but a stone."

Naiton was bluffing. Dorelei heard the hesitation in his deep voice. "Come down and see. Here/' She tossed the broken arrow to the ground. "Will leave't for thee when Taixali find the courage to come out."

"It is no trick, Naiton," Padrec called. "The magic of Jesu, the Son of God, houses these people like a fortress. Iron has long since bowed to Christ and bent in the shape of His Holy sign. Now it is friend to Prydn, no longer yours alone. Let that teach you caution if not kindness, Naiton."

Dorelei barely turned her head. "Cru."

Cru's bow came up. Naiton had no time to duck, but the shaft was not aimed to kill; it merely drove into the palings within his reach.

"Gern-y-fhain has said." Padrec's voice rang like a clear doom in the winter stillness. "And as sign she sends the last bronze arrow you will ever see from her. If you trouble her further, the next will be of iron. And closer."

Dorelei laughed easily. "Will go now, Naiton. And send thee no harm, as thee will not us. But this magic will go out to enfold all Prydn. Think no more to put iron as a bar in my path. Or if thee must, put a price on the iron, for fhain will buy it."

Dorelei turned her pony and moved away across the snow through the line of her people. Her heart sang with the victory. Other fhains would hear of this. The magic would go forth to all of them. Behind her she heard Naiton say something, then the music of Padrec's strong voice: "Oh, Naiton, Naiton—why be enemy where you can be friend? Don't you know a queen when you see one?"

Dorelei rode on. If a queen, he made her one. Mother and Lugh, but she loved the man. She would love him.

-oAo-

Bod into jSnake

In the forum of Prince Marchudd's palace, Meganius mused back and forth beneath the raised statue of Mercury to one side of the dais. The forum was empty save for himself, leaving his whole attention to the grubby scrap of vellum covered with minute Latin. He'd read it several times, but Father Patricius' references were as unfamiliar as his extremes were troubling. The letter must remain confidential.

He was searching a shelf for a map when Prince Mar-chudd exploded into the chamber, rushed as always, hurrying to him.

"I thank the courtesy that makes your grace ever punctual. The rest of my council will be tardy as usual, and I need your excellent common sense."

Meganius went on rummaging through the rolls on the shelf. "Ever at my lord's service. Is it the new Cor-itani raids?"

"Yes, yes. The war will come. It is coming."

"You will march against them?"

"Wouldn't I love to," Marchudd ground between his teeth, "and won't I just, when I've got something like a legion. For now I can only demand repayment of the cattle. What are you looking for?"

"A map of the north, if there is one."

"Not much there, but—yes." Marchudd drew a roll from a neat stack. "The problem is preparedness. We

haven't had anything like a real legion for twenty years, since Constantine took the lot to Gaul and promptly lost most of them."

In British tunic, freed of Roman dress, Marchudd didn't fidget as much but still moved restlessly about the chamber, half his mind on the problems of the next hour, the next day. 'The so-called Sixth Legion is a feeble joke now. I've got to rebuild it."

Meganius knew the Coritani as well as Marchudd. "And I doubt the heathen will come to terms."

"I know they won't," Marchudd snapped. "We'll play the old game, and I'm very good at it. They'll delay, I'll insist. They'll haggle, and I'll prepare. And no two of my council have the same idea how to proceed. You know young Ambrosius?"

"The tribune, Aurelianus? I know his family."

"I daresay. Well-connected whelp. Kinsman to the Dobunni prince. My legate pro tern, the only reasonable excuse for a commander I've got." Marchudd bounded up onto the dais and dropped into one of the two chairs, one booted foot crossed over the other knee and jiggling furiously. "A boy! Barely into his gown of manhood, barely twenty. Competent enough, but he's telling me how to reorganize the legion. In faith, I could form a cohort from military messiahs alone. They come along every day. Alae, no less."

"My lord?"

"Cavalry: that's the sweat from Ambrosius' perfervid genius." Marchudd vented a bark of derisive laughter. "Have you ever seen that dismal lot of errand runners and donkey drivers? The tribune will be in council today, and I tell you under the rose, don't listen to his cant, Meganius. I put my faith in the foot legion."

"Yes, quite." Meganius sat on the edge of the dais, spreading the map before him. "Though I don't imagine the Coritani will fight in neat formations."

"The foot legion can take and hold high ground," Marchudd recited as to a student. "Once taken, they can fortify it in a few hours."

"Once taken."

"And defended while they build, that's the crux. Archers."

The bishop was not a military thinker, but it seemed reasonable. "Ah, yes?"

The prince sounded rather messianic himself. "Massed archers. Dozens, hundreds of them."

"Which my lord has?"

"Wishes he had. That's my idea. The damned Coritani aren't going to wait while we haul catapults and onagers into place against them. Archers." Marchudd hunched forward morosely. "The problem is time. Any man can throw a pilum well in a month of practice and be proficient with a shortsword in three. In six you can take a lout who can't keep his seat in a latrine and make a fair horseman out of him. But do you know how long, Me-ganius, how long it takes to train a good archer, the sort to match those tribesmen? Two years, Meganius. Well."

The prince of the Parisii and Brigantes hurled himself against the chair back so hard it creaked in protest. Like all energetic men, he even relaxed at full charge. "Just wait. They laugh at me, call me coward until I'm ready, and then ..." In Marchudd's parody of relaxation, suddenly there was genuine stillness. His mouth curled in a cold smile. "And then, when they've awakened from the royal drubbing I've given them, those heathen bastards will find they've lost a holy war and been converted."

Meganius looked up with the feeling he'd missed something. "Holy?"

"Oh, yes. You will bless my banners, which will then go forward in Christ's name. I'll annex as much of their northern lands as my soldiers can hold, and your grace will have a larger diocese. Should I expand so much for an odd lot of cattle? Certainly Rome will call it fair trade, they always do. What are you looking for on that map?"

"Succatus Patricius."

4 'Who?"

"You met him in my garden last summer."

'That stuffy little priest? What of him?"

"I've received another letter. He can't write very often, but he's made converts among the—uh, Prydn."

"Never heard of Picts by that name."

"Faerie, Highness."

"Oh, God!" Marchudd hooted. "Not Faerie! Those lice aren't even human. Do they count as converts?"

Meganius mused over the map. "An interesting question. And Father Patricius is a far more interesting man than one would think."

"And how long will they stay converted?"

"He's taught them the use of iron."

"Oh, come." Marchudd waved it away. "They run from iron, always have. All my peasants carry a bit of it for protection, like stinking herbs in a plague year."

"Nevertheless, they're using it. Marvelous craftsmen, he writes."

Marchudd yawned, tired of the subject. "Extraordinary."

"Perhaps my lord will illuminate this map for me. Here are the Venicones and here the Votadini. What lies north of them?"

Marchudd scanned the sparsely featured map. "Taix-ali, Damnonii. Somewhere . . . here."

The bishop's finger moved up the map. "And this line?"

"The old Wall of Antonius. Bank and ditch, a few forts. Abandoned in Antoninus' own time. Nothing there now."

"And north of that?"

The prince shrugged. "Moss, rocks, and reindeer. Why?"

The blank space north of the faded line was colored in pale blue. To Meganius it seemed inadequate for what it contained, a man doing miracles and teetering on the edge of heresy. "Well, that is where he's gone."

"Indeed." Clearly uninterested, Marchudd drummed

his fingers on the chair arm. Suddenly he launched out of it, off the dais, charging toward the chamber entrance to bark at the guards in the hall.

1 'Where are those tardy people who call themselves a council? It's late. It's getting late." Marchudd vanished down the hall, trailing concern and invective.

Meganius rolled the map and returned it to the case. Moss, rocks, and reindeer, that's where he's gone. Farther than that, much farther.

Is it apostasy or simple truth to say that earth is mother and sky father—nature itself a religion to these folk? They have, after a fashion, an Exodus old as our own. Not that they cannot but will not enter a state of Grace with so much of their belief forced to remain outside, abandoned. While Rome wrangles with Alexandria, and Antioch wars with Athens over definitions of God and Grace, this is a fact that our Holy Mother Church will stumble over again and again, the Council of Nicea notwithstanding, until we see our position anent those we hope to bring to Christ.