There was a lengthy silence, and then- Connor raised his hand. "I know I'm not involved in this directly, but you spoke of hardships and difficulties you might be incapable of overcoming. If it's the amount of work to be done that concerns you, well, you have a group of people here, it seems to me, who might find nothing insuperable in the task. You have smiths, I know, and soldiers, stonemasons and carpenters. You'll need labourers, too—muscles to do the donkey work—but I suppose you'll be able to enlist help from your neighbours here."
"Aye, but would we want to?" This was Hector. "You heard what Merlyn said. We had to leave Camulod because we didn't know whom we could trust among our own. Now we know we can trust ourselves alone—no one else. This new fort offers us a chance to keep our numbers few and trustworthy."
"That's nonsense, Hector." Connor's dismissal was immediate. "I suggested help, not immigration. There's nothing to stop you hiring people from the town to help you complete whatever you undertake. Equally, there's nothing that says you must permit them to remain up there once the work's been done. They've already shown they don't want to live there—nothing up there for them. Build yourselves a place to live in comfort and security, then people it and guard it by yourselves," He grinned. "Even Rome must have been far from anywhere before the first people settled there. Do you want my advice, Merlyn?"
"Of course."
"Let's see how the battle goes in the morning, and if we're all alive after it's over, let's meet again tomorrow.
That will give everyone a day to think about what lies ahead. Then some of you can ride out the following day and look at this fort."
"That makes sense. Does anyone have an objection?" No one did, and Donuil spoke up for the first time.
"Does this fort have a name, Commander?"
"Aye, it does. Mediobogdum."
He pursed his lips and nodded. '"In the bend of the river.' Well, at least that means there must be water there."
"A plenitude, I'm told." I straightened up. "Well, it's late. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could use some sleep."
The gathering disbanded shortly after that, with general good wishes for the following day's activities. No doubt, though, that this would be a purely defensive action with no risk of a pitched battle. Secure behind the walls of Ravenglass, covering the only access from the sea, we believed we would have no great difficulty in repelling Condran's unsuspecting fleet.
I was unable to sleep that night. I lay awake, reviewing the numbers and skills of the small group of people in my party, thinking of the personalities involved and of the ways in which each of them might contribute to our new, small colony. Dedalus, Rufio, Donuil and myself were warriors, first and foremost, but apart from that I was at a loss as to what other, more practical skills we possessed. I knew I could turn my hand to iron-smithing, thanks to the lessons of my Uncle Varrus, but decades had elapsed since I had last tried to apply any of the skills he had taught me, and even then my memories had been faulty. I might be able to assist in a forge, but I knew I would never be a skillful smith. Donuil, I knew, possessed no skills in any kind of work other than the administrative tasks he had performed for me in Camulod. Dedalus and Rufio were soldiers, trained since boyhood in their craft. I doubted deeply whether they could have other more valuable, less warlike gifts apart from the ability to hunt and to carry burdens too heavy for weaker men.
Lucanus would earn his keep, his worth was indisputable. And Hector was a farmer before all else, so his skills would be a major contribution to our future well- being. Shelagh was simply Shelagh, to be valued for her pragmatism and common sense and womanly skills, as well as for her mead-making ability. I remember smiling, thinking that while the ability to make mead might not be definable as a necessity of life, its possession might yet allay much of the tedium that would spring from more genuine necessities. Shelagh would be castellan of any household that we formed, and Turga, Arthur's nurse, had womanly skills of her own, not the least of which was in the tanning of leather to make supple, comfortable clothing. That total, increased by the four boys Arthur, Bedwyr, Gwin and Ghilleadh, came to twelve, two-thirds of our total complement.
I had greater confidence in the remaining six members of our party, who possessed abilities in plenty. They included Lars and Joseph, two of the three surviving sons of Equus, the old friend and partner of Publius Varrus. Joseph had been the senior smith and armourer of Camulod when he chose to accompany us, leaving his duties in the capable hands of his younger brother Carolus, or Carol, as he preferred to be known. His skills would be invaluable to us.
His elder brother, Lars, a former legionary whom I had found keeping a roadhouse north of Isca when I rode off to the wars in Cornwall, had long been believed dead by his brothers, and his arrival in Camulod thereafter had been hailed by them as a miracle. Lars and Joseph had become very close since then, and when Lars had decided to accompany me—or more accurately to accompany Arthur and Bedwyr, in whom he had found substitutes for his own two sons, hanged years before by Uther's army—Joseph had decided to come along, too, seeking adventure for the first time in his life.
Both men had brought their wives, Esmeralda and Brunna. Esmeralda's skills as a weaver were the equal of her husband Joseph's as a smith, and I was glad to have her as part of our group. Brunna's skills outshone her husband's altogether, for although Lars was a magical cook and baker, so, too, was Brunna, and in addition she possessed an astonishing ability in shoe- and boot-making. Lars and Brunna, I knew, would function as our quartermasters.
Two other members of our group each combined the skills of artisans and artists, and both were single men, their names Jonathan and Mark, both bosom friends of Joseph since their boyhood. Jonathan was a stonemason, bred of generations of stonemasons, and the youngest of five brothers, four of whom yet lived in Camulod. Mark was a carpenter, although to say such a thing baldly was like saying Homer was a poet. Mark's genius extended far beyond the simple uses of tools on wood. He could fashion exquisite furnishings as quickly and as easily as he could hew a beam from a log, and his work had been the finest in Camulod, gracing the Colony's best rooms and buildings.
Among these six, I knew, we were blessed with skills, but there was only one of each of them, and life atop a distant mountain might be hard in winter. It would be difficult enough, I thought, in summer. Eighteen souls. Enough, I hoped, perhaps* with God's blessing, to survive for a while under even the bleakest circumstances. And thinking such thoughts I finally drifted into sleep.
FIVE
I was shaken awake, it seemed, almost as soon as my eyelids had closed that night. It was an hour short of first light, and I was expected up on the walls, where preparations for the morning's business were already long since under way. I hesitated over donning my armour—I had travelled wearing only leather armour aboard ship and my metal harness was still packed with the rest of our belongings—and finally decided to wear only my toughened hide cuirass and go bare-headed. There would be little danger, I thought, high on the walls, and I could see no benefit in betraying my presence in a Roman helmet.
I noticed the yellow glare of torchlight reflected in mist as I mounted the stairs to the parapet. Before searching fen- Derek and Longinus, I stopped and gazed out to sea. There was nothing to be seen out there in the bay, nor in the sky above. The entire top of the wall was completely enshrouded in a bank of fog, thick enough to swirl eerily in places as people passed through it. I could barely make out the shapes of the ballistae and the great catapult that lay less than twenty-five paces on either side of me. If Condran's fleet was out there, I thought, we had no way of knowing how close they might have approached. I knew, however, even as I formed the thought, that no single vessel, let alone a fleet, would dare to move through fog so close to shore, and I was comforted by the thought that, if they were masked from us, so were we masked equally from them. The signs of our activities upon the walls would go unseen, and the heavy fog had the effect of dampening and muffling the sounds of our preparations.