A full hundred horsemen of the Briton cataphracti waited, already mounted on massive animals that must have been the direct ancestors of medieval chargers. They greeted him with a great shout that sent the rooks flapping in alarm from nearby trees. The men were beating the flats of their swords against their shields. Ancelotis returned the salute even as Stirling's first real shock detonated behind their shared eyes. The faces of a startling number of those cavalrymen bore distinctly Oriental features—and the ones who weren't Asiatic still looked Middle Eastern, Iranian, perhaps. They looked for all the world like a band of the Great Khan's hordesmen—or refugees from Darius' Persian army—lifted out of Central Asia by a playful godling and dropped in the hills of Scotland.
He stared at the Asiatic horsemen, trying without much success to figure out where the devil they'd come from. Ancelotis' silent answer struck him with the strength of a thunderclap: Sarmatians! Memory stirred even as the impact of the word detonated. Sarmatian auxiliarymen... Thousands of the wild horsemen, Sarmatians and Alanians from the Hungarian plains to the steppes of Russia and even as far away as Central Asian Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, had joined the Roman legions as auxiliary forces, mainly in the cataphracti—and the cataphracti was Artorius' strongest weapon, giving him a winning edge over Saxon invaders, an edge slated to last for more than fifty years, all told. There must have been thousands of Sarmatians stationed in Roman Britain, along Hadrian's and the Antonine Wall.
Aye, Ancelotis said with a hint of amusement in his thoughts, fifteen thousand Sarmatians in all, the records say, were sent by Rome to patrol the border. A fair number of them decided Britain suited them better than Italy, so they stayed when the legions left a hundred years ago. Stayed and married the Briton girls who'd captured their wild hearts.
Stirling was speechless. Among the best cavalrymen of the ancient world, the Sarmatians had held their own against Scythians, Persians, Germanic tribes, Gauls, Parthians in the deserts of the Middle East, and Carthaginians in Northern Africa. Over the millennium and a half separating Stirling's time from this one, the Sarmatian blood of the men who'd elected to remain in Britain must have been diluted until virtually no trace of Asiatic features remained in the gene pool.
But in a.d. 500, barely a century had passed since the departure of the legions—and a century was not nearly enough time to dilute the bloodlines of several thousand Asiatic warriors. He caught glimpses of battle pennons and shields bearing what must have been Sarmatian symbols, since only those men with Asian features carried them. Most of their spears were topped with bronze dragon heads, to which cloth banners had been tied, fluttering like windsocks, mouths wide open, with tails that ended in streamers flying wild as their Asiatic owners. And the symbols painted on their shields... A sword plunged into a stone was shocking in this context and left him wondering about the connection of that particular image with Arthurian lore.
Artorius, the Dux Bellorum who commanded the Sarmatian cataphracti...
Ancelotis said silently, When Artorius was still a young lad, not yet turned seventeen, but already showing signs of promise as a shrewd and successful war leader, he persuaded the Sarmatians of Gododdin to finally give up their pagan gods and follow Christian ways. They began referring to him as the man who pulled the Sarmatian sword from its sacred stone, a true war leader who replaced their centuries-old tribal icon with a new god and new ways of worshiping. They also say he's the only mortal man ever born worthy to drain their sacred cup of heaven, like enough to Christ's grail, it wasn't so difficult for them to switch their allegiance to Artorius' new god. It didn't hurt, of course, that Uthyr Pendragon was one of their own...
Stirling blinked. No wonder Artorius looked more Eurasian than Briton.
Oh, aye, Ancelotis agreed, he's one of them, right enough, and they know it. They would dare things in battle under Artorius' direction they wouldn't even consider, when my brother, King Lot, was giving the orders. These men will follow Artorius anywhere and gladly die for him, if they must. In their eyes, he is more of a king than I will ever be, more than the Dux Bellorum of the Britons, far more than just their commander. They have given him their sacred souls for safekeeping. And he has never betrayed that trust.
Nor would he ever betray it, Stirling realized numbly. Arthur, tribal "king" of the Sarmatian cataphracti of Britain... The far-reaching implications shook him, even while explaining the astonishing persistence of the sword-in-the-stone tale.
He shook himself slightly, focusing his attention on the men themselves. The cavalrymen wore an assortment of gear as widely varied as their genetic heritages. Most sported iron helmets, either of Roman design—looking something like a metallic baseball cap worn backwards, with protective metal cheekpieces—or a Celtic adaptation with conical iron points jutting upward and to the rear like metallic goats' horns. Many of the helmets, whatever style they might be, sported masses of feathers designed to make the wearer seem taller and more fierce.
All the men of the cataphracti wore close-fitting woolen trousers in wild checks and plaids, bloused and tied at the ankles over leather boots. Some wore wild-animal skins, others linen or leather tunics beneath Roman scale or ring-mail armor which glittered dangerously in the early sunlight, but most of them wore the scale armor that was a hallmark of Sarmatian heavy cavalry and had been for hundreds of years, going back several centuries before Christ even.
They were armed with a bewildering array of Saxon war axes, single- and triple-bladed spears with typically Celtic ironwork points, which were long and heavy, with concave edges. He also saw heavy Roman cavalry broadswords plus lances and javelins, even short Sarmatian bows and quivers full of bristling arrows. Iron-studded wooden shields—long, slightly dished ovals—were painted in bright colors, with a confusing mix of Christian and pagan symbols. Many of the weapons were heavily decorated with silver inlay, particularly sword and dagger hilts. The better a man's armor, he noted with a narrow-eyed glance, the more ornate his weaponry; but all of it was lethally functional. No ceremonial nonsense anywhere in sight.
Most of the horses wore at least minimally armored leather harnesses with circular metal bosses, which were spaced at regular intervals, wrought of iron and bronze. A fair number wore heavy coats of the same Sarmatian scale armor as their riders. Saddles were cinched tightly over fringed saddlecloths, many of them wildly patterned to match their owners' trousers. The saddles themselves were oddly horned affairs with four jutting projections that cradled a man's leg front and back. Weapons, water bags, and other equipment hung from leather cords slung around the saddles' four horns.
The detail that caught his eye almost instantly, however, was the presence of solid iron stirrups. Surprise caught him again—and Ancelotis chuckled once more. A grand invention of our Sarmatian cataphracti, eh? The Saxons were as shocked as you to see stirrups the first time we rode them down. He added with justifiable pride—and a dark sense of wasted lives and effort—Had the Roman legionary commanders understood cavalry as well as we Britons, they might not have lost an empire.
Stirling couldn't argue that. Roman generals had been notorious in their poor understanding of the proper uses of cavalry. Clearly, Artorius and Ancelotis and their Sarmatians had not made the same error.
Stirling was distracted by the sight of the beautiful copper-haired girl with the fur-lined cloak who had paid him a secret visit. She had already mounted a smaller horse, more suited to her petite frame than the massive horses of the armored cataphracti. Palfrey, they would call the smaller riding animal in later centuries. She sat easily in the saddle, however, clearly accustomed to riding astride. She looked very nearly as competent in the saddle as the armed warriors of their escort and she'd slung a smaller version of a war sword at her hip.