“Huw or one of his scouts.”

“Bring them up. This is Trystan’s area, but I’d swear we’ve been here before.”

“Not here we haven’t.”

I pointed north. “You’re daft. Don’t you remember that hill?”

“Just from the map.” Bedivere swung his mount into a trot down the valley. “The old village is called Camlann. That hill’s Cnoch-nan-ainneal. I’ll bring up the patrol. Be careful till then.”

My eyelids drooped before the painful glare. I lay back in the grass with the buzzing like drowsy bees in my head. Good to be alone for one moment, good to be quiet.

Stay alert, don’t close your eyes.

Tattered as my clothes, he said. Riding through a dusty summer, wet fall and freezing winter and into spring again, feeling every sweating, shivering day of it in my underfed bones. Our squadron proved the only one worth the name for a while. Gawain and his brother knew only tribal custom in their northern island home. Their camp near Solway was a brawling roil of

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whores and men too drunk to ride or bleeding from arguments too stupid to remember. Aloof and remote, Peredur showed some competence, but a slowness of decision dangerous in command. He saw a thousand trees, never the forest, and spent much of his time in Eburacum. I had no authority over any of them, and they interpreted Ambrosias’ orders as they lordly pleased.

Trystan was the flawed best of a sad lot, working well for weeks at a time, drilling his men with sword and the new lances, then one day he’d not come out of his tent; that day would stretch to a second and third. No one could talk to him then. Once, when the days became a week, I went privately to his tent to shake him out of it. Trystan hunched over a table, red-eyed and oblivious, glaring at me, through me, at a ship of the mind and an Irish girl he brought home for a king but loved for himself. I gave it to him without sweet.

“You’re the emperor’s centurion. Sober up and square off or you’ll have no command left.”

Like so many of my generation, he affected to despise Latin. “Centurion, no less. Aren’t we the proper Roman. Have you forgot your own tongue?”

“Have it your way, then. I don’t need to see into a sack to know it’s bursting or into your heart to know it’s full of pain.”

“Ah, listen to the sage of Severn.” Trystan glowered at me, sodden. “You’re not the man to speak of pain, never lost anything. You’re a list of rules, a machine. Trip its lever and it rides. Pull the string, it gives commands.”

“Ambrose-rix placed a trust in you, God knows why. Every patrol you miss means one more for me.”

“I’ll ride when I see fit. Now, get out. Get out! Call your little dog Bedivere and—”

“If you were the half of him,” I said, “you’d be twice what you are.”

Trystan drained his cup and pushed it aside, heaving up from the table. His smile was murderous. “Twice, is it? What a lovely day to kill you, Arthur.”

He was too drunk to be dangerous. One shove and he went down heavily. Trystan sat up, befuddled, then clambered back on his stool with the clumsy deliberateness of a mountebank’s bear. He shook the cloud from his head, peering at me as if I were a stranger just arrived on unknown business. Then the blank expression crumpled into agony and his head dropped onto his arms. I heard a muffled sob. We’re a mad and mournful race. Our storms are dark and furious and quickly past.

“You’re right,” Trystan sobbed. “I’m a scant, weak man who can’t get one small woman out of his soul.”

“Not weak, Tryst. Just a mite single-minded.”

“Well, now.” He wiped his swollen face and looked reflectively at me. Incredibly, he seemed to have forgotten it all. “Will you have a drink, Arthur?”

1 couldn’t help laughing. “Haven’t you had enough, you horrible man?”

Trystan poured a short drink, stoppered the flagon tight and shoved it aside. “Just one to bid it all good-bye. What is it now, four days, five?”

“Six.”

“Only one, then. My health wouldn’t bear the sudden leaving off.” He raised the cup: “Lady, lady, what an angel you were. And what a bloody bitch.” He tossed it down. “I’ll ride tomorrow, Arthur.”

When Ambrosius found no real cooperation in Cador’s tribunes, he decided to appoint one from among us. More confusion: Gawain and Agrivaine left for Cador’s court, each to argue for the office. Peredur placidly assumed it would go to him. Trystan was drunk again and couldn’t care less. After considerable delay at Eburacum, Ambrosius’ order arrived with frosty congratulations from Cador.

To the rank of tribune of aloe, Centurion Artorius Pendragon.

Now all their weaknesses were mine to contend with. The Orkney brothers called it favoritism, subtly seconded by the gracious but distant Cador, who implied more than he said. I set about the business of building them into a cohort, overseeing their training and haphazard supply, fighting uphill against men who saw me as an inferior. No, Gawain, more important to have provender for the horses than a wagonload of wine. Agrivaine, where are the new cloaks your father promised? No, man, I never said King Lot was mean-spirited or even forgetful, but winter is coming. Prince Peredur, when you have quite heard mass and made confession, will you tell me why your men are so poorly fed with your own supply so close? (And tell me what you can find to confess and yourself not a drinker and nothing more female in your camp than a few goats.) Speak to your sister? Very well … “Lady Guenevere, the third squadron needs fresh food. What they have on hand is spoiling. They can’t do then1 job half-starved.”

“But surely the men hunt,” she wondered. “Surely they can always find fresh meat.”

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“If they weren’t worn out from riding and if the Wall weren’t hunted bare these three hundred years.”

“You care about them.” Guenevere touched my hand in compassion. “You care so much, and so do I. But the jewelry brought less than I hoped. My money is almost gone.”

“My lords have always been unhappy under our tax system,” Cador allowed regretfully. “It’s hard to enforce payment.”

I took advantage of my new rank to contradict him. “That’s hard to understand, my lord, since the system has always allowed them to weasel out of paying in any one of half a dozen ways. And pass the burden on to the civitates. Why, your own Church has preached against this for eighty years!”

“Certain radical priests,”-Cador ceded smoothly.

“Radical and right, sir. We should unprotect those fat sons of—”

“Lord Arthur.” Guenevere gently elided my profanity. “It would please me if you stayed to dine.”

Please her? God, the sight of her was food enough, but I was needed back, though she gave me a smile worth a banquet.

“You’re a stubborn man, Arthur Pendragon. Were a woman your own wife and far as truth, I don’t think she could keep you from duty.”

Damn it, I blushed—and damn her, she enjoyed it. .

“But come again, Lord Arthur.”

Letters to Kay on leather and harness, reports to Ambrosius that would unavoidably be read at Eburacum before passing on: My lords Gawain and Agrivaine have improved their men at sword and lance, but their patrol methods are wasteful of men and time. Lord Trystan (my poor, demon-driven Tryst) is not yet properly committed to his office. Prince Peredur needs more assurance in decision. Prince this and Lord that, always holding my temper in check. If I lost that, I lost them and Ambrosius’ purpose.

Where did I learn kingship? In the dust and ice and wind that blew across the Wall. In learning why the-Saxon deserves his half of Britain. With all his royal blood, Cerdic would never have seen a crown if he couldn’t first command a raiding keel. Since the Druids, we Britons have been too respectful of rank alone, too jealous of independence and meaningless distinction to work together. We are idealists wanting a god for a king, then fighting to be free of him. It will kill us in the end.

Then that wretched patrol when Bedivere twisted in the saddle, grazed by an arrow from a bow we never saw. He lay in

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fever for weeks, burning all day and sweating ail night while he whimpered and raved and his body fought desperately against the poison. Back on patrol, letters, reports, bad food and too little of it, ignoring the insults behind my back.

“Here’s a morsel straight from Cador. He says Pendragon got the command because his mother was Ambrosius’ favorite niece. Not Other’s wife,/ his real mother. Her that was married to Gorlawse. A much-traveled woman, if you take my meaning, and mad as they come. Why else did Caius take the coronet and Arthur with no more lordship than the bare name of it?”

Nursing Bedivere through late winter into spring thaw when the sun peered timidly from lowering clouds or disappeared in sudden fog, and I could write Kay at last:

We’re scarecrows in torn leather and tatty breeches, nothing like a uniform in the half thousand of us. Don’t send the new ceremonials, I’ve no place to wear them. It’s like plowing with bulls to get the work done, and t feel I was born in that miserable saddle, but we are a cohort.

Haven’t we been here before? What place is this on the map?

The village was called Camlann. That hill is Cnoch~nan-ainneal.

Music. The low, throaty sound of a flute curling in and out of my dreams.

I woke with my back cold against the damp ground, wrapped in a blanket of fog where there had been clear sky. Fool, dozing off like that with no more thought to danger than a recruit. Where was Bedivere? My horse was gone, too. I whistled his call, but got no answering whinny.

“Bedivere?”

I dared not call again. Whoever else might be close could hear just as well. Time to move. With drawn sword 1 made a guess at the patrol’s direction. Mist could rise quickly on the moor, men and horses could blunder into bog, but this was the heaviest I’d ever seen, a blindness laid on the earth by a malicious god, thick as sheep’s wool beyond ten feet.