A couple of women with brazen smiles and low-cut, tightly-cinched gowns, carried trenchers full of hot food and wooden pitchers full of mead, ale, and cheap wine, undulating their way between the tables, leaning over the customers' shoulders to fill plates and mugs, and laughing at the rough groping hands, lewd stares, and monetarily beneficial transactions proposed at least twice a minute. Lailoken had no desire to follow where doubtless several hundred men had plowed before, so he merely grunted at the suggestive postures and smiles, ordered more food, and watched narrowly as the occasional minstrel wandered in, broke into song, and was hooted, shouted, and drowned out by men who fancied themselves singers but could have claimed better kinship with a marshful of croaking frogs.

He found the tavern keeper and arranged to buy a room for the night, then sought out the other minstrels, pulling out his flute and joining in the lively jig that rollicked its way across the shouting, seething mass of drunken soldiers. Between songs, he asked after business and found, to both his and Banning's intense delight, that his newfound compatriots frequently provided music for Rheged's royal villa, playing not only for King Meirchion and Queen Thaney, but also for Artorius, the Dux Bellorum, and his favorite officers.

An hour's investment of flattery, of playing in a group with flute and harp, and of half a dozen or so rounds of mead paid for out of Lailoken's funds, won an invitation to play as a member of their troupe for as long as he planned to remain at Caerleul. He accepted graciously, paid for another round of drinks, and launched into a comical series of songs that had the nearest soldiers roaring and slapping the table in appreciation. Lailoken tossed his new hat onto the floor in front of him, brim up, and grinned as coins came pelting his way, along with roared requests for bawdy favorites.

It was nearly midnight before the last of the soldiers finally staggered out into the night, leaving the tavern keeper to lock his shutters and the minstrels to case their instruments and drift off to their rented beds. Lailoken poured a surprising number of coins from his hat, delighted at the jingle they made when he added them to the balance of his horse-sale money.

All he had to do now was set in motion Banning's plans.

I shall want a large and private workroom somewhere in the town, Banning mused, a place we can work undisturbed.

How am I to pay for such a room? Lailoken frowned. The gold from our stolen horse will not last forever, and prices always rise when there is talk of war. I cannot earn enough playing and singing to pay for more than a few nights' lodging or a few meals.

Banning chuckled. Leave that to me. Britons enjoy gambling, don't they?

We're Britons, are we not? Lailoken responded with stung pride. Throwing the dice is a most popular sport, has been ever since the legions brought the game from Rome. Lailoken's frown faded as he saw the possibilities. A pair of dice and a board on which to properly toss them shouldn't cost too much, unless you've set your heart on some fancy thing inlaid with silver and fashioned from imported ivory from Africa or jade from Constantinople.

A humble board will do, Banning mused, but we must secure a good set of dice. Ivory would be best, as it's easier to make alterations that are less readily detected than with sets made of stone or wood.

Alterations? Lailoken blinked. What do you mean, alterations? Do you plan to cheat?

Banning roared with laughter. Oh, that is priceless, and you a man who's stolen three horses in as many days! You didn't think I would walk into a game and play fairly? Not when we require a large stockpile of money, as quickly as we can lay hands on it? Bah, what do I care if some wealthy Briton nobleman loses a portion of his fortune to us? Or a soldier, for that matter, when his gold is destined to help you and me destroy enemies he will therefore never have to fight with sword and spear? Think of it as a tax they don't know they're paying, to levy troops they don't realize they're supporting. Believe me, when the blow is struck, all of Britain will be in awe of what you and I accomplish.

Lailoken couldn't imagine how cheating a few rich men at dice would enable him to destroy the Irish, but he had absolute faith in his personal god. Banning was a being of fire and awesome knowledge and knew so many secrets of power, the memories they shared left him dizzy and shaking with wondrous terror. If Banning said he needed ivory dice to destroy their enemies, then Lailoken would get them, whatever the cost.

Vengeance, after all, was worth no less.

Chapter Seven

Dragging himself into the saddle was harder than it had been the first time. They set out in total darkness, a clattering mass of heavy cavalry, and rode without stop through the night. It was well past sunup when a landmark Stirling would've known anywhere rose out of the smothering downpour: a long, cat's-claw glint of silvery-grey water and rising high above that, the immense volcanic plug known in his day as Dumbarton Rock. Mary Queen of Scots had taken refuge there as a child, before being smuggled to France at the age of five. He had no idea how many successive fortresses had been built atop that craggy high ground, but there was no question about where Artorius was headed: Caer-Brithon, home of the kings of Strathclyde, the latest of whom rode strapped to a pack horse, colder and stiffer than Stirling's aching body.

He would have given a great deal to bypass Caer-Brithon and the queen who did not know, yet, that she was a widow. Morgana caught his glance, her own pale and grim, and shame for his own cowardice touched his heart. Prince Clinoch, lips thinned, back ramrod straight, led the entire thundering cavalcade of Briton cataphracti up the muddied road toward the fortress atop Dumbarton Rock. The horses slipped and snorted protests at the steep, choppy climb, which Stirling would have dreaded making when snow and ice lay on the ground. Sentries saluted as they passed the outer walls, which did not look to Stirling like Roman construction, but which would certainly have sufficed to stand off most invaders for a good, long while.

Once past the wall, Stirling could see the royal hall of the kings of Strathclyde. The design echoed Roman construction, with outer walls of heartlessly plain stone and roof of overlapped stone shingles, but it was rougher than Roman buildings, the stone not as finely dressed, although certainly solid enough to withstand siege. It occupied the place where a Roman camp's principium would ordinarily stand, but the barracks buildings and workshops surrounding it were scattered haphazardly, taking advantage of the existing terrain features rather than altering that terrain to fit human notions of organization.

Lacking the neat, ruler-precise order of a Roman fortress, the settlement was a startling visual symbol of the Britons' slow slide toward darkness, a darkness settling rapidly across all of Europe. These people were clearly desperate to keep their Roman civilization running, without the highly skilled engineers, stonemasons, and architects to carry it off properly. Still, they'd done a good job building this fortress, large enough to shelter everyone in the town below, if necessary. A colonnaded entrance, its sandstone pillars drenched by the cold rain, was a suitably impressive entryway for visitors coming to call on Strathclyde's royalty. The doors opened as they clattered into the courtyard, a sea of mud with a border of chipped and shivering Romanesque sculpture, graceful nymphs and proud heroes half drowned in the stinging downpour, looking half frozen with filmy gowns and nude male torsos bare to the wind and rain.