1. The Sword 1
2. Left-Hand World 14
3. The Birds of Rhiannon 25
4. The Horses of a Dream 34
5. Bedwyr 47
6. The Laborer and the Hire 62
7. Frontiers 75
8. Wind from the North 87
9. War Horns in the Spring 104
10. Battle Before Deva 117
11. The Witch’s Son 132
12. Trimontium 145
13. The People of the Hills 159
14. Cit Coit Caledon 177
15. Midsummer Fires 193
16. Lammas Torches 212
17. Guenhumara 228
18. The Lovers 239
19. The House of Holy Ladies 255
20. The Beast and the Flower 272
21. Earth Mother 295
22. The Last of the North 311
23. Threnody 321
24. The Fetch 330
25. Shadows 342
26. The Sword in the Sky 350
27. The King’s Hunting 361
28. Rex Belliorum 369
29. Badon Hill 379
30. Hail Caesar! 397
31. The Bargain 409
32. The Queen’s Captain 421
33. “It Was Warm Between Thy Breasts, Lalage” 434
34. Thinning Ranks 447
35. The Traitor 460
36. The Last Camp 470
37. The Corn King 480
Abus River — Humber
Anderida — Pevensey
Aquae Sulis — Bath
Bodotria Estuary — Firth of Forth
Burdigala — Bordeaux
Calleva — Silchester
*Castra Cunetium — Castledykes
Cluta — Clyde
Combretovium — Baylam House
(Suffolk)
Corinium — Cirencester
Corstopitum — Corbridge
Cunetio — Mildenhall
Deva — Chester
Dubris — Dover
Durocobrivae — Dunstable
Eburacum — York
Garumna — Garonne
Gaul — France
Glevum — Gloucester
Isca Dumnoniorum — Exeter
Island of Apples — Glastonbury
Lindinis — Ilchester
Lindum — Lincoln
Londinium — London
Luguvallium — Carlisle
Metaris Estuary — The Wash
Môn — Anglesey
Narbo Martius — Narbonne
Portus Adurni — Portchester
Sabrina Sea — Bristol Channel
Segedunum — Wallsend
Segontium — Caernarvon
Sorviodunum — Old Sarum
Tamesis — Thames
Tolosa — Toulouse
Trimontium — Newstead
Vectis Water — The Solent
Venta Belgarum — Winchester
Vindocladia — Badbury
Viroconium — Wroxeter
Yr Widdfa — Snowdon
* Latin name of author’s own invention
NOW that the moon is near to full, the branch of an apple tree casts its nighttime shadow in through the high window across the wall beside my bed. This place is full of apple trees, and half of them are no more than crabs in the daylight; but the shadow on my wall, that blurs and shivers when the night wind passes and then grows clear again, is the shadow of that Branch the harpers sing of, the chiming of whose nine silver apples can make clear the way into the Land of the Living.
When the moon rises higher, the shadow is lost. The white radiance trickles down the wall and makes pools on the coverlet, and then at last it reaches my sword lying beside me — they laid it there because they said I was restless when it was not ready to my hand — and a spurt, a pinpoint, of blazing violet light wakes far, far down in the dark heart of Maximus’s great amethyst set into the pommel. Then the moonlight passes, and the narrow cell is cobweb gray, and the star in the heart of the amethyst sleeps again; sleeps . . . I reach out in the grayness and touch the familiar grip that has grown warm to my hand in so many fights; and the feeling of life is in it, and the feeling of death. . . .
I cannot sleep, these nights, for the fire of the wound in my groin and belly. The Brothers would give me a draught stronger than the fire, if I let them; but I have no wish for the sleep of poppy juice and mandrake that leaves a dark taste in the mind afterward. I am content to wait for another sleep. And meanwhile there is so much to think of, so much to remember. . . .
Remember — remember across forty years, the first time that ever I held that blink of violet light in my hand, answering not to the cold whiteness of the moon, but to the soft yellow radiance of the candles in Ambrosius’s study, on the night that he gave me my sword and my freedom.
I was sitting on the foot of my sleeping couch, busy with the twice-daily pumice stone. On campaign I generally grew my beard and clipped it short, but in whiter quarters I always tried to keep a smooth chin in the Roman manner. Sometimes that meant the butchery of goose grease and razor, and left me scraped and raw and thanking many gods that at least I was not, like Ambrosius or old Aquila my friend and mentor in all that had to do with cavalry, a black-bearded man. But there was still pumice stone to be got when one was lucky, for it took more than the Franks and the Sea Wolves to quite close the trade routes and pen the merchant kind within their own frontiers. One of the merchant kind had come into Venta Belgarum only a few days since, with pumice stone and dried raisins and a few amphorae of thin Burdigala wine slung in pairs on the backs of his pack ponies; and I had managed to buy an amphora, and a piece of pumice almost the size of my fist, enough to last me through the winter and maybe next whiter also.
When the bargaining was over, we had drank a cup of the wine together and talked, or rather he had talked while I listened. I have always found pleasure in hearing men tell of their travels. Sometimes the talk of travelers is for listening to by firelight, and best savored with much salt; but this man’s talk was of a daylight kind and needed little salt, if any. He talked of the joys of a certain house in the street of sandalmakers at Rimini, of the horrors of seasickness and the flavor of milk-fed snails, of passing encounters and mishaps of the road that brimmed with laughter as a cup with wine, of the scent and color of the roses of Paestum that used to serve the Roman flower markets (he was something of a poet in his way). He told of the distances from such a place to such another place, and the best inns still to be found on the road. He talked — and for me this had more interest than all the rest — of the Goths of Southern Gaul and the big dark-colored horses that they bred, and the great summer horse fair at Narbo Martius. I had heard before of the horses of Septimania, but never from one who had seen them with his own eyes and had the chance to make his own judgment of their mettle. So I asked many questions, and laid by his answers, together with certain other things that had long been in my heart, to think over, afterward.