"What's over there?"
"A valley, like the one below us here, except that it's entirely enclosed. The road winds down from the crest there, along the length of it, and then up the slopes at the far end to another pass."
"A big valley? Have you seen it?"
I grunted, almost but not quite laughing. "Aye, I've seen it, but only from the crest up there. There's nothing to see. It may be three miles long, but no more than that. The whole valley is filled with trees, growing up to the shoulders of the highest Fells, just as they do in the one below us. I didn't go down into it, because if I had, I would only have had to climb back up again. There's nothing down there to see except the road itself and the stream along the bottom of the valley floor."
"So where does the road go? What's the reason for its being there?"
It really surprised me to recognize that my brother knew absolutely nothing of this region or its history, although I was fully aware that I myself had been as ignorant as he mere months earlier.
"Have you ever heard of the Tenth Iter?"
"No, should I have?"
"Not really, but it was widely celebrated once, as the only Roman supply route into the heartland of north-west Britain from the coast. This is it, and it runs for twenty miles, from Ravenglass, up over the pass here and on to the garrison fort at Galava, by the side of the big mere."
"The big mere ... That's what the people here call a lake, is it not?"
"Aye, it is. And a mountain is a fell. We are standing among the Fells."
"Hmm." Ambrose glanced up at the mountains dismissively, plainly unimpressed, his mind elsewhere. "So you have never been to this Galava place? Then you cannot know if it is abandoned, like this."
"No, I've never been there, but it's not abandoned. People live there yet, just as they do in Ravenglass, in the community the local people and suppliers built up around the fort over the years. The road goes beyond there— another road it is, in fact, built at a different time by different legionaries—but it joins up somewhere beyond there, I'm told, at the old fort called Brocavum, with the main trunk road running down the length of Britain."'
"All the way down? You mean you could travel on solid Roman roads all the way from there to Londinium?"
"Aye, that's what they tell me, or to Glevum and Aquae Sulis and thence to Camulod, depending on which fork you take at Brocavum. One road goes almost directly south from there, through Glevum and Aquae all the way to Isca, and another branches east and goes almost directly down the centre of the country to Londinium. You must know it, it passes through Lindum."
"I know two roads converge at Lindum, from the north—one coming directly south, the other from the north-west—but I have never been more than a hundred miles north of Lindum. I did not know the road reached so far into the north-west." Ambrose sounded fascinated, although I could not see why. The water route by which he had come here was faster, more direct and far less dangerous than the overland journey he was now evidently contemplating. Finally my own curiosity overcame me.
"Why are you asking all these questions? Have you a wish to strike out overland from here to Lindum?"
"No, nor to anywhere else, but it's good to know there's a solid, passable route in and out of this place if anything goes wrong at the seaward end."
"What does that mean?" He heard the alarm in my voice and turned towards me quickly, raising a placatory hand.
"Nothing, Caius! I swear it means nothing. I'm but being pessimistic. There is no danger and no catastrophic fate threatening you from the sea. I was merely thinking about a conversation I had with Connor, on my way up here. He told me he has heard nothing of the Sons of Condran since the slaying of Liam and the repulse of their fleet from Ravenglass, and he is intelligent and responsible enough to be concerned over that. Some sort of demonstration of Condran's displeasure should have occurred by now, he thinks, and I agree with him. The fact that nothing has occurred, and that nothing seems to be stirring on or beyond the seas, even to the north by the new lands, is disconcerting. Call me foolish, if you wish, but I have had visions of an enormous fleet of alien Erse sails darkening the horizon, come to burn Derek's halls about his ears. But now I know that if that should occur, and all attempts at succour or rescue fail, you and yours will be able to escape across this pass, and thence to the south and safety."
"I see ... " I faced him squarely, attempting to mask my unease. "Have you really dreamed of this enormous fleet, Ambrose?"
He grinned at me and reached to slap my shoulder. "No, not as you mean it. Not in die way you dream, Brother—no magical occurrences or spectral loomings. No, I'm simply attempting to see what might, could, lie ahead ... And speaking of that, hard labour lies immediately ahead. Where are these carpenters and charcoal-burners?"
"Behind us, about a mile from here" I pulled Germanicus up into a rearing, two-legged turn. It was a move we had practised down through the years and one we both enjoyed, I purely for the skill it demanded and displayed and for die awe it inspired in observers. I noticed Ambrose now sniffing the fresh smell of green wood- smoke borne on a stray eddy of wind. "If we follow our noses, we'll ride them down," I said, and I kicked my horse forward.
It took us the better part of half an hour to cross the distance from the fort's gate to the steep hillside clearing where our men were labouring, and as we went we talked of many things, not least of which was the evident and . startling intellect of the boy who was our charge. I mentioned again to Ambrose my recently born fear that the very place I had chosen for his tutoring—this lonely, isolated fort with its tiny and embryonic society—would prove to be inadequate for the task I had set myself. This sanctuary we had found—safe, it appeared, from the eyes and weapons of potential assassins of all stripes—was yet no place in which to train a future king. This conviction I had come to accept only with the greatest reluctance. That had not been my first opinion, when I was flushed with the challenge of escaping danger and establishing ourselves in safety in the ancient fort. Only as the weeks stretched into months had I come to see how small our outpost was,
here on the edge of nothingness, and how minuscule a template it provided for any parallel study of building and running a kingdom. The boy would have to come to know the larger world of men.
Ambrose listened closely to all I had to say, and when I had finished he reined in his horse and kicked one foot free of the stirrup, hooking his knee over the front of his saddle as he turned to peer at me.
"You think this place is too isolated for the task you've set yourself? And yet you brought him here precisely because of that, and you have effectively achieved a complete disappearance, from Camulod, from your previous life and from all danger to the boy."
"Damnation, I know that, Ambrose, and for months I believed that I had done the right thing. But as I watch the boy shoot upward, growing like a young tree, I grow increasingly afraid that too much of the time he spends here will be time wasted when he could be learning other things, necessary things, elsewhere, in similar safety."
"How so? What could he learn about better elsewhere that he cannot learn here?"
"Life, and the living of it among men of all kinds, venal and noble!" I realized how that sounded and hurried on to negate the insult implied to my friends. "Our people here are good and fine, noble and gracious enough, God knows, and among Derek's Celts the lad will come to no harm. But he is not a normal boy, and that is the crux of all my concerns. We are not raising Arthur Pendragon to be a normal man, Ambrose. Our purpose is to breed a warrior and an enlightened leader. It sounds grandiose and overstated, phrased thus baldly, but it is, nonetheless, the truth.