"Yes, I suppose. Though it won't be much."

"After a year and more? There's arrogance, boy."

"Is it, your grace?" Padrec smiled across the atrium at his brothers. They were following intently the movements of the bishop's peacocks, having never seen one before. How dost fly and why dost cry so mournful with such beauty on's back?

"Would it be confession?" Padrec posed the question out of the serenity that covered him like a cloak. "There's more broken vows in me than a brothel, and I've never felt happier or closer to God."

"To God, Sochet, or merely a man's acceptance of himself?"

"I've considered that too. I've a wife. I may have a son."

"May? Preserve us!"

"One can't be sure, and one doesn't ask. It's a matter

of good manners. The only thing I could confess now is joy and pride. How strange it is to err in love and through an error to find the right. To find how much I love them. The truants return to Eden. Their sins are like tiny flecks of dust on God's notion of perfect. One flick of His finger and they shine again. Suffice to say," Pad-rec admitted with a sidelong glance, "I am no longer quite an Augustinian."

The bishop shrugged. "I cannot grieve for that."

"Rome can haggle the boundaries of Grace, but these people ..."

Padrec lifted his head to the waiting men. "You should know them, your grace. They are a definition of faith in themselves, perhaps one forgotten since Peter."

"Oh, Sochet." Meganius tried to mask the sorrow in his sigh.

"No, hear me. I've learned a deal since I brayed damnation at your parishioners. Do you recall the Gospel of Mary?"

The bishop knew it better than Padrec: no longer included in Canon, but a cryptic and troubling testament to many literate clerics like himself.

"There is more spiritual power in women than men will acknowledge, Caius Meganius. And more in men than the Church remembers. My people live that power. It's like apotheosis."

Meganius felt constricted by his learning and urbanity. He knew Marchudd and Ambrosius to their hard core and how these Faerie, unworldly as their priest, came to squat at his gate. He was grateful when Coins appeared with their refreshment.

"Did you urge them to this war, Patricius?"

"Not I. They couldn't be stopped once Ambrosius asked."

"Ah, I see."

"And I must lead them. They'd follow no one else." Padrec laughed suddenly, a clear, free sound. "Can you imagine me as Hannibal?"

"Oh, quite. If you can refrain from preaching to the

elephants." The bishop tried to sound cheerful. In that the Word would spread to pagans, the war was holy. This he could not deny—nor a small, clammy wish that Ambrosius would not sleep too well henceforth. The holiest aspect of the war was sitting here on his bench. "Some wine?"

Corns served them and hovered in the background. "Did your grace wish something from the kitchen? There are pastries just out of the oven."

"No, but wrap some for Father Patricius and his men. And bring me the box from the table in my closet. I want you to write to me, Sochet. As often as possible."

"Surely, if there's that to write on."

"I have a gift for you."

The bishop's gift was a birchwood writing case with six new wax tablets and a good stylus. Padrec's fingers caressed the treasure. "Do you know how rare such things are north of the Wall?"

"I didn't know when you would come but bought it anyway. As much a request as a gift. Write to me. It is Church privilege. The post riders will bring them straight to me, unopened. Well. I send John into the wilderness and he comes back Joshua. Write to me, Sochet."

And care for him, my dear Lord. Such men must always drink too deep. Drunk with You and now with life, which he has found rich in his path. I imagine he came to the woman as to faith, like a child astonished by joy, and no hair shirt in his pack. I saw the taste for life in him the first day he came. Do not grudge him the woman or the happiness. Lord. What holiness he's found, there will be none in this business. Take care of him.

"If your bishop asked you ... if I excused you by clerical privilege from this?"

"Nonsense." There was something definitely patronizing in the way Padrec patted the old man's hand. "They'd drag me anyway, Drust and the rest. Didn't I say they are a definition of faith?"

Padrec sprang up from the bench like a child bidden

be quiet too long and now released, holding his gift high. "Yah! See! Father-Raven sends us gifts from Jesu to go with us. Come bless them, your grace. I am a magician to them and you the father-raven who sent me." He hauled the old bishop to his feet, gentle but not to be denied. "And if they offer you gold, take it for the poor. They are more than Christians, they are Galileans."

With urgent respect, the young man propelled Me-ganius down the atrium walk, calling to his brothers.

The drilling centuries wheeled back and forth, splashing through shallow puddles of last night's rain. Along one edge of the bald quadrangle, the wagons lumbered into line, filled with supplies. Stone slingers carried bundles of arrows and pilums to be tallied before inclusion on the vehicles. Over it all, centurions bawled orders and curses to hurry them to completion before sundown, while the mounted tribunes dashed here and there like Rof on a busy day.

Padrec and his Prydn were bunched in a corner of the quadrangle, the men in the rear spilling up onto a sodded bank. Padrec stood before them with a sharp stick and three empty wine jugs. With these he would draw them an image of their part in the war. A crucial part; with the exception of a few messengers and wagoneers, they were the entire cavalry of VI Legio, one hundred eighty men divided into three small squadrons of sixty each. There was no usual complement of stablers or blacksmiths. The alae were to be light, totally self-contained, modeled on the Goth horsemen but more disciplined.

To be sure, VI Legio itself was a reconstruction. The original force was twenty years lost and gone in Gaul. This was whatever Marchudd's father had been able to scrape from the barrel bottom, pat into shape, and pass on to his son. Very few were soldiers in the old sense, none had the old legionary spirit that simply fell in and marched on order for its allotted twenty years before settling down to a government bounty, house, and plot of land. These men had never fought and hated the idea

of leaving comfortable homes in safe Eburacum. They were led by officers like Gallius Urbi, who grudged the time to cram themselves into harness and drill infrequently on the quadrangle. Now suddenly it was all too real. Holy, justified, or gilded, they were going to war, and people died in wars; going now when Ambrosius must have known they weren't ready. Padrec grasped that much from the meeting at the palace. With Malgon as his lieutenant, he'd stood in the forum and listened to Ambrosius. The tribune had strong ideas about cavalry that none of the other officers understood, let alone agreed with. A great deal of responsibility fell to the Prydn in this campaign. They were attached to the First Maniple commanded by Gallius Urbi, a first centurion who didn't like the idea at all. Was it the tribune's command?

Ambrosius squared him off. "It is. You are the leading maniple of foot. They are the point. In supply and quartering, they are to have the best and the first."

In practice they got the worst and the last, though that was the least of their problems. Standing before his men, Padrec tried not to shade them with his own dissatisfaction. Some were as young as fifteen, none over twenty, waiting and trusting to him in the gray afternoon.

"Was a braw speaking at the great rath," he began heartily. "Mark the manner of it." He tried to make them laugh as they learned, mimicking the iron stance of Ambrosius, spear-straight and no-nonsense. / will make this body of horsemen into something new. Step, step. Halt. Sharp pivot. There will be a number of army horses assigned to you.

"And must be returned," Padrec cautioned.

"If a do not first get lost," Malgon amended.

A few only for scouting. Patricius, you will impress on your men that scouts will never engage. Step, step. They will observe and, by Mithras, get back with the information. Now. Weapons.

"See!" Padrec held up the army arrow with its well-fietched feathers, tooled shaft, and triangular head. "Bet-

ter than at home. Will be a wonder with Prydn bows. This spear be called pilum." He hefted the balanced spear that ended in a two-foot iron rod and standard triangular head. "Each man will have to his saddle as many as a can carry/'

If you were fighting in flat country, Vd remount the lot of you. But your own ponies are all better for the hills.

"So thee will most times ride a friend," Padrec assured them. "Now, the words of Prince Marchudd-Rhys." Abruptly his pacing became more agitated, lunging.

Land, you say? Land where? How much does she want? Well it doesn't matter now, with a hundred other things . . . wish you y d brought it up some other time. Yes, yes, there will be a patent of land. I can f t say where just now, really. I must get on to the matter of supply.

"Be a's word," Padrec told them. "As we be Christian, we live by the given Word. For this land-gift, now learn our task. Come closer."

Padrec drew a wavering line in the muddy earth and another three paces away, roughly parallel to it. Between these he placed the three wine jugs in a wide triangle.

The first line was the River Wye, which they must cross. There was a bridge, but they must assume it destroyed. Ambrose must know for certain, the first job of the scouts. Once across Wye they would not make war on each settlement of Coritani but take and hold the three jug-forts between Wye and Churnet. With this strategic wedge deep in his holding, Rhiwallon, prince of the Coritani, would come to terms and his people to Christ.