“Then say my name.”

I gathered the reins tight to bring up Trouble’s head. She must run faster than the wind, faster than fate itself. “Arthur Pendragon.”

The mare leaped forward over the crest and down the hill.

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Behind me I heard Merlin’s great shout of victory as Trouble ate up the downward slope and flew onward over the level moor, stretching with ease into the run she was bom for. I didn’t look back; he wouldn’t be there. Swift as we were, Merlin would be ahead of us, dashing toward tomorrow.

Guenevere

I picked up one of the two imperial roads leading south, gave Trouble her head and let her fly.

Fifty miles to the Wall. The best mount in Britain couldn’t get me there fast enough, but there was never such a horse as Trouble. She ran through the last of the pale sun, ran through the night, burning her heart out. Twice I stopped to walk her briefly, then could give her no more respite. Mounting for the last time I whispered, “Now, Trouble. Forgive me.”

And we flew on. Numb with fatigue, I heard nothing but the wind in my face and the tortured shriek of the mare’s laboring breath. The road stretched white in the late sun, gray in the moonlight, a dim ghost-line unraveling forever before me. Giddy pictures “flashed in my mind, repeated senselessly over and over: Dorelei clutching my wrists. Morgana running for me in that last moment. I raved at them, light-headed and hoarse, while Morgana’s words molded inanely to the drumming of,Trouble’s hoofs. Never go back never go back there’s nothing there nothing there thee’s gone from me thee’s gone from me.

Trouble ran, Trouble soared, mere horse no longer but goddess of all flight, mother of all speed, until the road topped a low hill and I saw in the first morning light the long, straight line of the Wall.

I tried to shout “We did it!” but only a raw croak came out. Trouble bolted forward, obedient to the rein, took two great bounds and fell under me. There was no need to dispatch her, dead when she fell. She had atoned for Dorelei. Only a moment I lingered over her, then began to run.

A bowshot from the mile castle, I cried hoarsely at the two

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sentinels who leaned on their pylums and stared at the ragged apparition pounding toward them across the moor. When I stumbled to a gasping halt at the access ramp, they put their spears up to the ready. The older one called down to me.

“Where d’you think you’re going?”

“I’m Tri— Tribune Pendragon.” 1 waited for more breath to go on. “Sixth alae. Got to get to Corstopitum. Need a horse.”

The grizzled sentry only scoffed. “Go on, Picti-Iad. It’s a quiet day, no need for trouble. Get away from the ramp,”

His companion marveled at me. “The cheek of him. Pendragon six months dead and this one thinking we wouldn’t know

it.”

“I was a year on the Wall and never saw you either.” I glared

up at him. “I was captured.”

“Na, killed. They said so. Peredur’s head of the alae now.”

The sweat poured down me, and the breath whistled in my lungs. “Do I look dead, Goddamnit?”

The older guard raised his spear again. “The look of you’s a different matter entire. You didn’t get those cheek scars in the cavalry. Be off.”

Precious minutes wasting, bleeding away while these two dolts held me here. I flailed my arm to the east, exasperated. “Listen. Out there at sea are half the Picts and Saxons ever born, sailing half the ships ever built toward Humber mouth. Cador’s got to know and Bedivere and Peredur, and if I have to stand here any longer, I promise you sons of bitches will carry slops and dig latrines from now-till hell holds mass. Now snap to, square off and gel me a horse.”

The gray-headed guard regarded me with a thoughtful expression. “Well,” he allowed finally, “looks is one thing, but if

that’s a Pict, so am I.”

Convinced, they allowed me up the ramp to gulp leek-and-turnip soup while one of them unharnessed a wagon horse. They stared at me while I knotted a rope bridle and hauled myself up, a weird scarecrow in greasy rags. They believed me: tattered or not, I was a soldier of the emperor, and they pitied my plight. Ah, Jesus> caught and tortured by the rotten Picts, was there any fate worse? Give thanks for my escape, and what godless savage

scarred me so?

“Faeries.” I slapped the reins and left them gaping after me in

the morning sun.

The east-west roads ran the length of the Wall and joined at Corstopitum, base supply camp for my cavalry stations. I dashed

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into the fort an hour later with a fragmentary explanation to the bewildered centurion in charge who recognized me without parlay. Someone ran to draw me fresh duty leather and trousers while I scrubbed several layers of Pictland off me and fired rapid instructions at the centurion. Three of the fastest mounts and best riders to depart instantly for the Solway, Cilurnum and east to the third squadron. If patrols were out, leave them. All available men were to join me here, fully armed, with extra horse and equipment for me. Another courier for Eburacum to alert Cador. Not in half an hour, Centurion, not five minutes, but now!

The orders given, I sank down onto the offered bed and dropped through it into soft, black, dreamless sleep—to be dragged up out of it two hours later with the news that the first of them had been sighted on the east road. Red-eyed and wool-brained, I doused my head with cold water and lurched out to meet them.

One of my precious days was already spent as the third squadron clattered down the Via Praetoria and wheeled onto the drill ground where I awaited them. As they drew up, some of the men recognized me.

“Suffering Christ, it is the trib.”

They were led by a short, barrel-bodied little centurion named Gareth, once Peredur’s second-in-command. An Irishman, Gareth had a long torso and short legs, one of those men who managed to look like Mars on a horse and a monkey on foot.

“God and the squadrons welcome you home, sir,” he greeted me in his Leinster lilt. “And was it a pleasant journey?”

“Not really. I understand Prince Peredur commanded in my absence. Where is he?”

Gareth was slighdy embarrassed. “Well, sir—when not needed, he’s usually in Eburacum.”

I glanced up at the squadron; the men crackled with readiness and spirit, every one with a lance and longsword. Perhaps Peredur had done a good job with them, or maybe it was Gareth. No time to ponder.

“The need would seem to be now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Unsaddle, let them rest.”

If the men were astonished by my reappearance, no one, least of all Gareth, questioned my authority. Any complaints from Peredur or the royal house of the Parisi would be heard when time permitted. While his men unsaddled and trooped toward the kitchens, Gareth and I went over the maps of Eburacum and the Imperial roads south of Corstopitum. Furthest away, Gawain and

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Agrivaine must follow as they could. When Bedivere andTrystan came up, we’d move with the three squadrons. If the Orkney brothers raised Eburacum in time, so much the-better. If not, we could still hurl almost three hundred lances at Cerdic in a new kind of warfare he’d never forget.

Ambrosius and I had long since worked out the problems and possibilities of a raid up the Humber. If I were Cerdic and planned merely to harry the undefended villages on the coast, I could go in any time. But if I wanted to take Eburacum, I’d lay offshore just over the horizon from Humber mouth until dark and then go in. Five hours of steady rowing would see me well into Ouse River, turning north into the Use. Another three would put me in sight of the city’s watchfires. I’d rest and go ashore at first tight against an unprepared skeleton force.

With the wind against him, Cerdic needed at least thirty-six hours to raise the Humber from where I sighted him. That meant tonight at twelve. If he chose to lay out and come in under cover of the next night, that gave me eighteen extra hours. He should do that; once into Humber, he ran against time.

But what if he didn’t wait?

What if he assumed he’d be sighted and made it part of his plans? He couldn’t afford delay then, but must sail straight in and pull hard to make Eburacum by dawn with exhausted men. Would he gamble that against Cador’s force?

The coast must be written off. We couldn’t defend it, they wouldn’t stop for it. Like all combined raids, this was an investment. It had to show a profit. A Pict might sell his mother, but only if the price was right. No one could gather them into such a force just to raid a few villages. If they came in at all, it must be for.the city.

Did Cerdic know of the cohort?

In my mind, Ambrosius chuckled drily: Wouldn’t you?

Yes. He’d know from a hundred sources, spy or buy the information before planning the venture. Very likely Cerdic knew where we were, how many, how long it would take us to gather and move. The answer was simple arithmetic. Even if we were already on the move, even if we got there first, he’d be rested, we’d be spent.

Please let him think that, let him wait.

1 kept asking, what hour now? Near four, sir. Repeated calls to the sentries on the west rampart. Do you see them? Even dust?

Not yet, sir. Gareth sat on the ground, carving apples and sharing them

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with his horse. His squadron lounged about us as the sun sank lower, some singing, others setting a fresh edge to their swords, the zang-zang of the whetstones counterpoising their music.

Mellow and wistful with the melody, Gareth murmured, “My wife was just gone to chapel down the road when your message came. I sent a man to tell her, but it’s a poor farewell.”

“There’s worse.” I thought of my own parting on a lost green meadow a million miles and a thousand years gone since yesterday. Gareth spat out a seed and offered another tidbit to his stallion. “Is it in your mind we can stop them, Tribune?”