As soon as I realized he would not fight me merely for looking at him, I ignored him and kept moving, for I knew exactly who and what he represented: that brotherhood of veterans in every army who have survived everything they encountered and have learned to trust and rely upon their own close comrades only, and no one else. I had shared that same comradeship of veterans during Gunthar’s War and thus knew at first hand how powerful a bond it was. But somehow, foolishly, I had not expected to find its like in Britain.
Now that I had become aware of this phenomenon among Pendragon’s armies, however, I found myself watching for similar instances as I rode on, and I found no lack of them. But what surprised me most, as I paid closer attention to the men I passed, was that I began to fancy I could gauge a man’s war experience merely from the way he reacted to my presence. The more I saw, the more I became convinced that I was right and that the true veterans, the hardened core of this army that was all around me, were a highly distinctive group, easily identifiable despite the countless human differences between each man and his neighbors.
Completely engrossed in this new and intriguing train of thought, I eventually lost all awareness of where I truly was and what I was about. I rode by one group of veteran spearmen, all of them wearing what came nigh to being a uniform of drab green tunics with bright yellow blazons at their left shoulders, and I put my theory to the test by approaching very close to them, almost to within touching distance.
The silence that fell over them at my approach was profound. I counted a score and a half of them before one of them finally looked up and saw that I was bearing directly down on them. He frowned and cleared his throat but no words emerged from his mouth. The expression on his face, however, made words unnecessary and heads began to turn toward me more and more quickly, until thirty pairs of eyes were glaring at me in outrage, their owners shocked into silence by the suddenness and effrontery of my approach.
I had identified the group leaders some time earlier, and now I nodded gravely in acknowledgment and greeting to the one I deemed to be the senior of three. Showing no sign of curiosity and making no eye contact with anyone lest it spark a challenge, I rode steadily through their midst and they moved grudgingly but wordlessly to grant me passage.
When I had passed safely through and beyond them I made no attempt to look back, for I could feel the glare of their collective gaze in the center of my back. I did, however, permit myself to smile then, knowing that it was only my appearance that had saved me from being dragged off my horse and thrashed for my presumption. The fact that I was in this place at all, riding among them, meant that I must be an ally of some stripe, but that would have mattered not a whit had any of those men decided that I needed to be taught a lesson in good manners and decorum. Had that been the case, they would have had me off my horse in the blinking of an eye and I knew I must have come very close to having that happen.
There was sufficient foreignness about my appearance, however, to have given them pause; not only was I mounted, but I was superbly mounted, on a magnificent and richly caparisoned horse, and although I wore none of the wondrous armor given me by Germanus, the clothing I wore, I knew, spoke loudly of wealth and privilege—loudly enough to suggest unmistakably that I might be someone with a great deal of power, or at least influence, whom it were better not to offend or accost.
I rode then for a short time through a lightly wooded area where I encountered no one. It was the first time I had been free of the sight and sounds of people since leaving my own quarters in the fort, and for some time I was not even aware of the change. But eventually I relaxed so that I nearly slouched in the saddle, allowing my horse to pick his way forward at his own speed. When he carried me to the edge of a pleasant and fast-flowing brook, I considered dismounting and simply lying on the grassy bank for a while, listening to the sounds of the swift-moving stream, but as I reined in, preparing to swing my leg over his back and slide to the ground, I heard the sudden, familiar, rhythmic clacking of heavy, hard-swung wooden dowels spring up nearby, very close to where I sat listening. Someone was practicing swordplay, just beyond the thick screen of hawthorn trees to my right, and the rapid, stuttering tempo of the blows told me that the people involved were experts. Instead of dismounting, I pulled my horse around and walked him through the hawthorn thicket toward the sounds.
I saw seven of them, at first glance, as I emerged from the trees surrounding the meadow where they were, and at the same moment recognized the place as my original destination. I had reached it almost by accident, but I saw at a glance that my memory of it had been accurate. There lay the bridge of logs covered with crosswise planking, and on the far side of the stream the gently sloping sward was dotted with copses and clumps of low trees and bushes, mainly hawthorn and elder. I turned my gaze back to the seven men and saw now that they were all young, strong, and vigorous warriors whose clothing, like my own, declared them to be well-born and privileged. Two of them were fighting skillfully with training swords of heavy wooden dowel, similar to those I had used since my earliest days at the Bishop’s School. I saw immediately, however, that these swords were longer and heavier than those we had used in Gaul, and I wondered briefly why that should be, but set the question aside as irrelevant once I saw that neither of the two opponents seemed the slightest bit inconvenienced or put out by the extra length and weight.
They were well matched, the fighting pair, neither one possessing any apparent physical advantage over the other. Both were of medium height, wide shouldered and heavily muscled, their bare forearms taut and tight with the tension and strain of controlling their whirling weapons. They circled each other as they fought, leaning forward on the balls of their feet and grinning ferally, their friendship as apparent in their faces as was the iron determination in each of them to win this bout. The man facing me as I emerged from the trees was the first one to. see me, and as soon as he did he took a backward leap and grounded his weapon, shouting something I failed to understand. And at that point, as is only natural, every eye in the place was turned toward me as I brought my mount to a halt, eyeing the group carefully.
There were nine of them, I could see now. Two had been lounging on the bank of the stream, my view of them obscured by a low-lying clump of heather or gorse, but now they had raised themselves on their elbows to look over at me. I ignored them after that first glance, avoiding eye contact with any of the group as I looked around again. Something white flashed from a dark place on the far side of the stream, and as I squinted in that direction my eyes adjusted to the light and the distance and I made out the shapes of several horses—nine of them, I presumed—hobbled in the shade of a clump of hawthorns. All of them were saddled, indicating that their owners were on their way to some other destination and had merely stopped here to rest for a time.
I nudged my horse gently with my spurs to start him moving again and then rode forward slowly, angling him toward the bridge. But I knew I would not pass unchallenged this time, for none of these people’s clothes were shabbier than mine. No one man among them made any overtly threatening move or betrayed any kind of hostility toward me, but suddenly they were all moving, perhaps in response to some signal unseen by me, and so fluid was their motion, so precise and instinctual, that I quickly found myself facing an unbroken line of them, seven men shoulder to shoulder across the front of the bridge.
I kept moving, guiding my mount with my knees until a mere ten paces separated me from the line of warriors, all of whom stood facing me. Three of them were smiling. I took note of that but drew little pleasure from it, since the likeliest reason for their smiles was anticipation of the pleasure they were about to take in thrashing me. Of the four who were not smiling, two were frowning and the other two had blank, expressionless faces from which wary eyes watched me intently. It was one of the latter two who spoke to me first, his tone of voice as expressionless as his face.