It was, Stirling realized, a sound plan on Cutha's part, since the Saxons would never have a free hand in the north of England so long as the thirty-six forts along Hadrian's and the Antonine Wall remained in Briton hands. Those fortresses threatened any Saxon troop movements with a lightning attack from Briton strongholds between the Firth of Forth and the Firths of Solway and Clyde. Just how fast could a mounted troop of heavy cavalry move across country? Given their starting point from Stirling Castle Cliff, he estimated the journey to Carlisle would take a good three days, absolute minimum, by horseback. And given Artorius' steady course southwestward along the Romans' ancient but enduringly constructed military road, they would not be traveling the shortest route, either.
He had no idea how far west they would have to swing to find a road that cut south through the mountains. After a moment's thought, however, Stirling supposed the ancient road couldn't be too far from the modern roadway, given the same constraints faced by engineers at both ends of history. There were a limited number of options, when faced with the daunting and expensive task of pushing a road through mountains. In which case, they might well travel halfway to the Atlantic coast before swinging down through the natural pass in the Southern Uplands.
Three days might not be enough time, not if they had to follow that long, snaking route—and if his guess about the number of miles they could cover in one day was anywhere close to accurate. A very large "if" based mostly on the old cavalry song he'd heard a couple of slightly drunken American soldiers singing in a pub, once: forty miles a day on beans and hay in the regular army-o... The shift in thinking required to calculate travel time in terms of horseback, rather than car or even military lorry, was yet another rude awakening.
No wonder Artorius had been frantic to get under way.
Riding a horse was not as easy as it looked, either. Stirling discovered a few hours into the ordeal that if he blanked his mind and let Ancelotis' muscles take over, he was less likely to jar himself beyond endurance, but it was still a grueling ride. When the last light faded above the hills, they lit torches hacked from deadwood in the forest and kept riding. They needed the torches, too. Cloud cover lay so thick above the mountain peaks, blocking any hint of moonlight, the riders couldn't even see one another, much less the road. Stirling's respect for the Celtic cataphracti rose enormously during a night that stretched out beyond the edge of forever. The only good thing to come of the exhausting ordeal was as unexpected as it was welcome. The more fatigue took its toll, the easier it became to let Ancelotis' muscles take over on autopilot.
They slowed to a walk periodically to rest the horses and drank from skin pouches draped over the double front horns of their saddles. Stirling discovered trail rations—dried meat and leathery bread an unknown number of days old—in the oddly shaped saddlebags behind his rump, hung from the rear horns. He hadn't even noticed them until Ancelotis reached back, digging into them for a quick meal. The stuff wasn't remotely palatable, but he'd eaten worse field rations in the twenty-first century and he was hungry enough to eat shoe leather. It was still unsettling to have what felt like his own arm move under the direction of someone else's mind; Stirling decided he did not enjoy the sensation, but couldn't really complain, given the unpleasantness he'd inflicted on poor Ancelotis.
Ganhumara, as silent as the men of Artorius' cavalry, maintained the killing pace without complaint, although her face showed pale and strained in the flickering light from torches. Morgana and Covianna, too, rode like women carved of iron, rather than yielding and womanly flesh. It was positively humiliating, to be outmatched by women, one of whom was more than ten years his junior, maybe closer to fifteen years younger. What in God's name was he to do when the time came to fight the Saxons?
The dismal light of false dawn arrived with a cold dampness heavier than mist, not quite thick enough to call it drizzle. The wet air left him shivering beneath his woolen garments, deeply envious of the women's fur-lined cloaks. They flashed across the invisible border of Strathclyde—another Dark Ages kingdom from Stirling's history books—well before the sun could rise above the mountains at their backs. He wouldn't have recognized the border from any other bump of ground his horse had jolted across, if not for a brief murmur he overheard between Covianna and Ganhumara.
"Strathclyde at last," Covianna said quietly, catching the queen's glance in the oyster-grey light of predawn. "I have always loved this land."
"I would love it better without the constant wet and the God-cursed midges," Ganhumara shot back, voice bitter as the wind whipping down the mountainsides.
Stirling, who had grown up in the relatively dryer eastern half of the Scottish Lowlands, was inclined to agree with the young queen's assessment. The lowland reaches of western Scotland, far rainier than the eastern coast, were virtually uninhabitable during midge season, thanks to millions of aggressive gnats—a species apparently peculiar to the Scottish lowlands' marshes—which drove fisherman, farmers, and campers alike indoors from sheer desperation. Grown men, usually unwary foreign tourists, were occasionally reduced to gibbering lunacy by the stinging clouds. Stirling shuddered to imagine what the effect would be on a person unable to retreat indoors or—worse yet—without access to strong insect repellant. Maybe that was the origin of the Pictish practice of smearing themselves with blue-tinted mud?
Whether or not he'd hit on the answer, Ancelotis found his speculation enormously funny, which left him alternating between lunatic grins and scowls at each new jolt of his saddle against anatomy that Stirling, at least, was unused to having jolted. The whole concept of something that would repel insects captured the Scots king's fancy and he found himself attempting to explain the difficulties inherent in trying to produce from scratch something like DEET mosquito repellant, or even one of the widely available commercial brands, all of which required a fairly high-tech society with advanced knowledge of chemistry to produce. Churlish sot, Ancelotis complained at length. You might at least pay for the privilege of showing up inside my skull by sharing your wizardry at keeping off the God-cursed insects.
Stirling sighed. It was going to be a long year.
The distinctive scent of woodsmoke drifting on the early morning air tickled his nostrils before Stirling actually saw the source. As the road curved around the shoulder of a mountain, that source finally glimmered into view. Tiny fires dotted the grassy verges where the stone road stretched away through the predawn gloom. There was no village, which was what Stirling had expected to see, just hundreds of tiny cook fires where enough people to outfit a small army had camped beside the highway. Was it an army? More of Artorius' men? Or maybe warriors beholden to the king of Strathclyde, whoever that might be?
As dawnlight strengthened and they neared the first encampment, Stirling realized this was no army at all, but ragged bands of refugees, hundreds of them, mostly on foot. A few tired-looking ponies pricked ears at the approach of the cataphracti's battle horses. More than a few women screamed and scattered for the forest, carrying small children, while their menfolk hunted for weapons. Who in the world were these people? The men were heavily tattooed, giving Stirling the answer even as Ancelotis snarled.
Picts!
The painted people.
Whole clans of them, driven southward by invading Irish. How the devil had they gotten past the line of watchtowers and mile forts along the border? Had they overwhelmed some isolated garrison, murdered the men on duty, and flooded across? Morgana, whose husband had just been murdered by Pictish invaders to Gododdin, went ashen in the grey dawnlight and young Medraut snarled out a string of oaths, gripping the pommel of his sword with a whitened hand. Covianna, riding close to Stirling's horse, followed his stare. Her glance softened into one of pity.