Despite the Bishop's promised prayers for succour on our journey, it quickly became evident that God and His heavenly host had others matters on their minds while we were travelling, for our progress was a nightmare from the outset. More than a hundred miles of unknown territory lay between us and our destination, with dangers at every step of the way. We were beset with conflicting urgencies that kept us angry and frustrated: my overriding temptation, andmy prime imperative, was to move with the utmost speed,' but the paradox therein was that the utmost speed involved far too much slowness. Festina lente was the ancient watchword of the Romans, hurry slowly, and we were constrained to recognize the truth in the old warning. We could not put the spurs into our mounts and ride flat out; we had to conserve their strength and nurture their endurance lest we kill them on the road, leaving ourselves on foot. And so we chafed against the discipline of travel but endured it, changing gait each quarter hour, from walk to trot to canter, then galloping and reining in to canter, then to trot, and then to walk again.
We seldom took time to rest in daylight, and then we always stopped beside a running stream, tending to our ablutions hastily, splashing ourselves with water and shocking ourselves back to reality with its cold kiss. We were filthy, and we soon began to stink of sweat, human and equine, and of other, less pleasant things. The women suffered far more than the men, as it transpired, for I discovered that both were going through their menses, and the discomfort and inconvenience that entailed must have been almost more than they could bear, atop the agonies of all else. We rode long into the night when the skies were clear and the moon bright enough to light our way" and therein we were fortunate; the first three nights were clear and cloudless and the moon was almost full. Only when the moon went down and darkness thickened sufficiently to hamper us did we unsaddle our horses and fall down to sleep for a few hours, rolled in our blankets on the open ground.
Twice in the first two days we encountered bands of alien looters and marauders, but we were fortunate enough to see them before they could see us and so avoided detection. But the knowledge that such bands were abroad along our route took its toll on us, so that by the end of the fourth day, somewhere amid gentle, rolling hills long miles from anywhere, we were all reeling from exhaustion and I realized that this was folly. Festina lente, I reminded myself, more haste, less speed! We found a dense copse of low trees and made a camp that night, pitching our leather, one man legionary tents and posting guards on two hour watches, and although we did not dare to ignite a fire, we all slept soundly for the first time since leaving our companion.
Some time in the middle of that night, I awoke to sound of rain striking my tent, and as I listened, it quickly to a solid downpour. All the world was wet when we broke camp, cursing the slimy wetness of our tents we sought to roll and secure them, and we rode that day in a huddle of misery, eating from our rations of roast grain and nuts in the saddle as we went and wishing our woollen travelling cloaks were denser, warmer and more heavily waxed. Early in the afternoon, one horse slipped heavily the mud of an incline and went down, breaking a foreleg Fortunately, its rider was unhurt, merely winded by his fall but we had to kill the screaming horse quickly, for fear that unfriendly ears might hear its agony. The trooper change to his spare horse after distributing its load among his mates and we moved on, beginning now to penetrate a heavily forested region of low hills where an occasional bare cliff face reared above the trees.
I remember my face being chilled from the rain that streamed down from my helmet to spill sideways from the hinges of its face protecting cheek flaps and flow down my jaws on either side, and I remember comparing our current journey to the progress we had made on our outward expedition. Then, we had ridden slowly, the air about us filled with the sound of laughing voices and the squeaks, groans clinks and rattles of saddle harness, wagon springs and turning wheels. Now we pressed forward grimly, silently, each rider struggling with his or her own discomfort and worst fears, the world about us blocked by the sound of hurrying horses' hooves and the steady, constant hiss of driving rain. From time to time in the early stages Tress or one of the others would try to speak to me, hoping to comfort me or to take my mind off the troubles that beset me, but eventually all conversation ceased and we drove forward in bleak, miserable silence.
Then, around midafternoon, the rain stopped falling and the clouds began to break apart, allowing beams of sunlight to illuminate the landscape around us and lifting our spirits for a brief time. Too brief, alas, because even though we felt no breeze, the skies were soon fouled again by enormous banks of fast moving storm clouds that changed shape visibly as they were torn by high, turbulent winds, As they swept overhead they seemed to distort the light until it took on a yellowish, threatening colour, and thunder rolled ominously in the far distance.
It was shortly after this last change began that I saw horsemen flanking us, galloping swiftly away along the upper reaches of a hillside on our right. I had been deep in thought, watching the scudding clouds and paying little attention to where I was, and I had only a fleeting glimpse of these riders among the trees before they vanished. My first thought was that they had been our own, ours being the only horsemen I had seen since leaving Camulod, but a swift glance about me verified that all our party rode together. I felt alarm flaring in me. I called to Dedalus then, pointing to where the riders had disappeared, but there was nothing there for him to see, and I could tell that he was sceptical. Angry at being doubted, yet at the same time doubting my own eyes, I sank my spurs into my horse's sides and bounded away, uphill, to where I thought I had seen the phantom riders, and I could plainly hear Ded following me.
Sure enough, there on the soil of the hillside was a double set of tracks, made by unshod hooves. Dedalus cursed and led the way as we rejoined the others, and from then on we rode with straining vigilance, drawing together into the wedge formation we used for both attack and defence. We had no idea who these people might be, but the fact that they were horsed had shaken us. I rode at the point, flanked by Ded on my left and Tress on my right. I removed my heavy cloak and rolled it up, securing it behind my saddle with my sleeping roll, and unsheathed my sword, lodging the point of it securely in the wooden stirrup with my right foot and gripping the hilt as though it were the shaft of a spear. Tress, on my right, rode with her spear held in the same fashion.
The depression through which we were riding was almost too shallow to be called a valley. We were riding upward along its length, and the crest of it lay half a mile ahead of us. Then, when we were less than a hundred paces from that point, a sudden shout from one of our troopers brought my head around and I could see that the bushy hillside on our right was alive with running men, bounding towards us, A second warning cry, from my left, announced the same message: we were under simultaneous attack from both sides. I rose in my stirrups, swinging my sword around my head, and led my people in a charge towards the top of the rise, the only exit open to us. We were trapped in a funnel, and I cursed myself uselessly for not having sent outriders ahead of us.