"I expect so. I'll simply stop using the berry juice that stains it brown. You think that has import, my hair colour?"
"How would I know? It changes the look of you, but I've grown accustomed to it for years now. Anyway, you would look good even if you were bald. "
"Oh, would he, indeed? Should I be feeling jealousy here, you two' Donuil had approached silently while we were talking, holding a drink he had brought for Shelagh.
I turned to him, laughing, and told him we had been discussing the colour of my hair and what I should do to it now that I was home. He eyed my head and nodded sagely, then advised me to take his wife's advice and shave it all off.
We moved to join the others after that, and I forgot about Shelagh's dream for the time being, caught up in the general conversations that were swirling everywhere. On several occasions, some of the other men, most notably among our military contingent, attempted to bring up the subject of political affairs beyond our lands, but Ambrose would have none of that and made it abundantly clear that all information would be shared equally among everyone after he and I, as joint Commanders, had had the opportunity to meet and discuss it. None sought to argue against that, and the talk returned each time to more innocuous subjects.
By the time Plato summoned us to dinner in the triclinium, there were thirty of us present: all of the original party who had left Camulod six years before, save one and twelve new immigrants from Ravenglass, plus Ambrose and Ludmilla. And when we were assembled around the open sided square of tables Plato had arranged for us, before the first course was served, we drank together to the memory of our sole absentee, our dear friend Lucanus.
SIX
"So, here we are, alone at last." Ambrose lowered himself into an armchair, smiling, and pressed his hands into his face, squeezing his eyes and then drawing his fingers down to his chin, leaving white pressure marks that faded quickly. He opened his eyes wide and yawned. "Do you feel up to this? I don't, really. Dinner was too good, and I may have had too much wine. I'm stuffed like one of Marco's roasted fowl." He stretched mightily. "I had hoped to reach this point an hour and more ago. We have much to discuss."
"Aye, so you said this afternoon, when we arrived." I settled myself comfortably into my own chair, close by the brazier. "I don't know whether I'm any more fit than you are to talk long into the night. It seems like days since I last slept, and it's been weeks since I last slept in a bed. That's seductive. But I think we'd better make the most of this time, tonight. We may not have a better chance than this to say all that needs to be said."
Ambrose glanced at me quizzically. "You have things you wish to tell me, too?"
"I do, and perhaps we should deal with that first. My information is less urgent than yours, I suspect, but I think it is important. I'll keep it brief." I then launched into the tale of my interference in the affairs of Nero Niger and his Appius clan, and detailed my thoughts on how we might be able to develop a network of useful alliances with the common people around places like Corinium.
Ambrose listened carefully, and when I had finished speaking he nodded, his expression thoughtful. He then began firing rapid questions at me, all of them concerned with the implementation of my less than lucid plan and the methods I had conceived for making it a reality. I had the answers, incomplete and tentative as they were, at my fingertips, and he weighed each of them judiciously, sometimes reshaping or realigning the thrust of them but not once dismissing anything out of hand.
Within a remarkably short while, working in easy, intuitive harmony, we had transformed my original, optimistic suggestions into a concrete and feasible campaign plan. We would put the proposal to the Council at the next meeting, and put the campaign into effect as soon as possible thereafter.
"Good," Ambrose said then, after we had both sat for a while in silence, pleased with what we had achieved. "Anything else?"
I shook my head. "No, that was all I had. Now what's going on in Cambria, and have you had any word of Vortigern?"
"No, no word of Vortigern, and too much word of Cambria. We're ready to go, you know. As soon as you're prepared. Within the week, if possible."
'To Cambria? In what kind of force?"
"One third. The First Legion—sounds grand, doesn't it? But what else could we call our groups? They're half the size of a legion—"
"I know, but probably three times as powerful. I've heard all about them from Benedict and the others. Tell me about this new Scouting Force you've organized."
For some time, Ambrose had been concerned about an inefficiency in the use of Camulod's fighting resources. Our entire way of life in Camulod was built around the breeding of horses for our cavalry, and our heavy cavalry mounts were our greatest pride. But not all of the enormous number of horses that we bred were large enough to meet our criteria for service. Camulodian cavalry was heavy cavalry, the only force of its kind in Britain, perhaps in the world, and only the largest animals could be strong enough to bear the weight of our heavily armoured troopers. That requirement had left us, over the years, with a large reserve of smaller but otherwise magnificent animals for which we had no purpose, apart from putting them to work in the fields, and the finest of those creatures, my brother had long thought, were going to waste.
Ambrose was aware of our peculiar disdain in Camulod for the light, skirmishing cavalry the Romans had used throughout their history. Primarily mounted archers with short, puny bows, Roman cavalry, in our eyes, had been useless except in the role for which it had been developed: providing a mobile defensive screen for the cumbersome legions while they were forming up in their battle order. But Ambrose had not been born and raised in Camulod, so he did not share that disdain. He was perceptive enough to realize that under certain conditions, such as heavy rain and muddy terrain, lighter—and therefore speedier—cavalry might be extremely effective. He put his findings into effect and created a new branch of Camulodian cavalry—on smaller mounts, with stirrupped saddles and with lighter armour and weapons—and called it a Scouting Force, thereby avoiding the pejorative "light cavalry."
"They're brilliant troops, Cay—hard hitting and unbelievably mobile. But most of all they're fast, and they can go to places where the heavy cavalry can't go. The heavy troopers require space and dry, level land to do their best fighting. When they have all of those, as you know, they are invincible and terrifying. Unfortunately, we seldom find all three together. The Scouts, though, can go anywhere. They can fight on level ground and they can charge uphill and down because their horses are lighter in every respect. They travel farther and faster, too, and yet tactically, fighting in formation, they're almost as awe inspiring as the heavy cavalry."
"Sounds excellent. You have them organized in the same way as the regular troopers, I presume."
"Of course. Anything else would be madness. The only difference is in the weight of the horses, and the proportional weight and weaponry of the armed riders. Their primary weapon is the light spear we designed after the one your Erse friend sent from Athol's kingdom."
Years earlier, while visiting Athol Mac Iain in Eire, I had worked with a smith called Maddan on a design for a new cavalry spear, loosely based on the long spears used by the Scots for hunting boars. Much later, when he felt he had perfected it, Maddan sent it to Camulod aboard one of Connor's ships, as a gift, and Ambrose had appropriated it in my absence. It was far lighter and less cumbersome than its size and shape suggested it would be, owing to the construction of the shaft. It had a slender, lethal head welded to a thin iron rod that stretched the entire length of the weapon. The shaft was built around the rod, a laminated cladding of tough, dried, feather light wattle—the same reeds used in house building in Eire, and in shield making by the Saxons—fastened securely along its length with tightly wound bindings of soaked, stretched deer hide that dried out iron hard. The result was a spear that was light, almost flexible and incredibly strong—a perfect weapon for a mounted man.