I felt flustered and oddly upset. “But she’s just an infant, not near old enough to go off with that randy lot.”

Chin on folded arms, Bedivere watched his radiant daughter as the procession wended toward a hilltop. “Sixteen, Artos. Some of her own friends are married, but I hoped she wouldn’t. Not

just yet.”

A whole new generation, and where did they spring from? Where were we so busy we didn’t notice? I felt like saying to the world, “Slow down, this is much too fast.” For the first time in ages I thought of my own son, wondering if he leaped through the fire and danced this Samhain on some hill with a Prydn girl.

Not likely. Peredur’s last letter reported Morgana and her people moving boldly toward the Wall in such numbers no village dared stop them. Bedivere was at Camelot to ride north with Gareth for observation, but now his worry was all for the splendid girl on the white horse.

“Bedwyr-fach,” I invited, “would you care for a drink?”

His eyes never left her. “At least one.”

I bade him farewell a few days later when he rode out with Gareth. He was still bemused and now a little bewildered, muttering absently as the grooms cinched straps and tucked away his sword. Suddenly his hand slammed down hard on the saddle.

“Damn! The cheek of him!”

Rhonda had come tripping home to announce herself betrothed to one of the lads who led her horse at Samhain. And next night hadn’t the boy come to speak with her da, and himself all of raw

eighteen?

“You were an officer at eighteen, Bedivere.”

“That was different. We grew up quicker then, we had to. This boyo, where’s he been, what’s he done? Comes in all proper-dressed and scented, a Silure tongue so thick I could cut it like cheese. Shifty lot, the SUures, never trusted one of them.”

My friend fretted over his gear while I hid a tender smile.

“So this cub tells me they were proper plighted at Samhain night, and he would now speak of the marrying, if you please.”

Well, Bedivere just wasn’t ready for that. Sometime, yes, but not yet. He made an awkward scene of it, Myfanwy and Rhonda waiting expectantly in the background and the boy nervous and eager but trying to put a manly face on it. Saying Rhonda’s father was a man of great honor and responsibility with, state matters that weighed on his advanced years, and he might overlook a daughter passing the right age for marriage.

That was the wrong tack. Bedivere squared him off sharp. The visit ended with the lad embarrassed and incoherent, Myfanwy furious—“She’s not a child, Bedwyr”—Rhonda in rebellious tears and Bedivere feeling wounded and guilty all at once.

“That little pup. Advanced years. Oh, did I give him some-tiling to think of as he went unplighted home. Did you hear that, advanced years? When I was his age—when I was—and I can still ride all day and night, and—Artos, I don’t find this funny at all.”

Neither did I, though I smiled. Not a boy but the hand of time touched Bedivere, and he was only just feeling it. He hauled himself into the saddle with a grunt as much disgust as effort.

“Ach-y-fl, the boy’s barely placed in the world.”

“You’re right to make them wait.” I took his offered hand. “But for myself, I found no better friend in all my life than the son of a groom.”

“It must be thought over, Artos. I don’t hand my Rhonda to the first Jacky comes sniffing by on Samhain night. By God, i do not. And yet she barely spoke to me by way of good-bye. If you had your own to raise, you’d know the worry of it.”

One of my own. I thought about that long after Bedivere rode out and in the middle of the thought, wished: Lugh, let me see my son once befoft J die.

More love letters from Rome recalling our great days as the jewel in their crown of provinces. The new king, Theodoric, promised me an ambassador: Lucuilus Aurelianus, who would come like a dove cooing friendship. More likely Lucuilus was to note which British princes might be persuaded toward Roman rule for love or money and how much of the latter. Business as usual.

Lucuilus waited at Brittany for my answer. On a gusty day in late autumn with cloud shadows racing over the Severn, I was :& framing a cautious invitation when old Prince Maelgwyn appeared |:in the doorway of my small scriptorium, scarlet cloak flung

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back, sword belt in his hand. He dropped the sword on a bench and knelt stiffly to me.

“You old turtle, I’ve missed you. What’s the news?” .

Maelgwyn dropped into a chair by the fire, clawing through the white mop of his windblown hair. “Not good, Arthur. I think they’re coming.”

That only meant one thing. “Cerdic?”

The old prince nodded. “Not that we weren’t expecting it.”

Maelgwyn knew well the Saxons who nibbled at his borders, a thickening crescent of busy farmsteads to the east and south. Yet since harvest most of them appeared almost deserted. His scouts searched in vain for the men of the tuns.

“The whole border’s dead. It’s downright eerie.” But then Maelgwyn winked. “It was a whore set me thinking. One of my young lords got in a row with mis dox. Bleedin’ shrew said she was tired of stingy Brits, she’d go down Winchester where there’s enough Saxons to make her rich in a month.”

I saw his reasoning. Why no men on the tuns and suddenly so many in a sleepy stockade where dogs usually dozed in the

middle of the road?

“We questioned her, gave her a few coins,” Maelgwyn recounted. “She allowed they weren’t in the town but up in the hills.” “The hills?”

Maelgwyn preened a little. “So, not to bother you, I sent my own lads to look. They’d walk into a dragon’s mouth to count its teeth. For sure, there’s the Saxons all in camps, neat and proper. But nothing permanent, not even a ditch. They’re going somewhere.”

I frowned over the intelligence. “How many men?” “At least three thousand, more coming in all the time.” Sitting by the fire, we worried it between us. No war chief would hold thousands of men together without moving. They must be supplied out of his own pocket, and Cerdic was smarter than he was rich. More, I was kept informed of all shipbuilding and fleet movements in harbor on the Isle of Wight. Since nothing unusual was reported, a sea venture appeared unlikely. “Not a raid, Mal, not even a big one. It’s the invasion.” The old Catuvellaun scratched his head. “That Saxon bastard, I never could cipher him out^. He shouldn’t, Arthur. There’ll be snow soon or rain enough to drown the Ark.”

No, he shouldn’t. You don’t push a large army through winter country barely able to feed itself, but who said Cerdic wouldn’t? After all, the mud would hinder me as much as him.

And who said he couldn’t?

Not how but where.

It nagged me to sleep and through the next chilly morning and then snapped into place so suddenly I stopped in mid-stride down a corridor in front of a startled servingwoman.

“Ambrosius!”

“S-sir?”

The old fox, he guessed it twenty years ago. “Where’s Lord Ancellius?”

Confused, the woman didn’t know for sure. “So please you, he may be with the queen’s audiences.”

“Find him, tell him to meet me at Prince Maelgwyn’s lodging by the south gate.”

I broke into a trot, rounded a comer and collided with a ruddy-faced young knight, Lord Bors of my combrogi. He stepped back hastily and bowed. “Forgive me, I’m sent to find you, sir. Bedivere and Gareth are back from the Wall.”

“No time.” I hurried on past him.

“But, sir! They said it’s urgent news that you alone—”

“Take it to the queen.”

“But, my lord, Bedivere said—”

I fixed Bors with an imperial forefinger. “To the queen, damn it, and send Gareth to me at Maelgwyn’s. That’s an order. Hurry!”

I burst into Maelgwyn’s quarters, waving the map at him. “I know, Mal. I know.”’

He looked up, startled, from his breakfast. “Eh, what? What?”

I pushed the dishes aside and spread out the map. “Ambrosius was right. Look: forty miles from Winchester, two days’ march. Mount Badon, the biggest fort in the south.” . “But my own horse and infantry are sitting on it,” Maelgwyn protested. “Four, five hundred men and two dozen catapults.”

“Against three or four thousand? Old Cat, if Cerdic gets there first, he can spend twice that many storming it and as many cleaning it out.”

And there he’d sit, as Ambrosius predicted, king of the highest Hill in the south midlands, a day and a half from Severn, two

-days from the CatuveHauni, the same from Cornwall. Winter didn’t matter now. A force that size could carry enough grain

•and meat to last a good while on measured rations. Cerdic knew .just how far he had to march, and if Badon were his, he’d have trouble convincing the other Saxon princes to push west

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behind his spearhead. No doubt they were already poised and waiting to swing on the hinge of his success. “It’s Badon, Mal. It has to be.”

When Gareth came, still weary from his travel from the north, 1 barely gave him a chance to speak, throwing the situation and orders at him. He must set up a chain of post riders between Severn and as close to Winchester as possible, touching at Mount Badon. Lightly armed men on fast horses to report mom-ing, noon and night to Camelot.

“If a dog takes out after a rabbit, I want to know, is that clear? Where’s Anceilius? What’s the news from the north? Did you take it to the queen?”

Intent as I was, I only then noticed Gareth’s diffidence and the flush like anger or shame on his face.

“That we did, sir. We tried to see you first.” Just then Lancelot’s thick frame filled the doorway, and I dragged my lord-milite to the map in a flurry of facts and orders. “I want a workable plan of march based on combrogi as point, the tribes behind. Before anything else, I want Badon strengthened, and then—Lancelot, what is it? Gareth? Both of you look like you’ve been spanked.”

Lancelot sighed with Gallic pessimism. “Lord Gareth was more involved. Perhaps he should tell you.” “Gareth?”