I was quick to point out-it was indeed too short in the leg to suit a man of any tribe. Out of kindness, he patched together a bridle of sorts and showed me how to wrap the folds of my cloak to make a pad.
“I shall call him Spadix,” I told the farmer, naming the pony for his bay color.
“A good name,” the farmer agreed.
I trotted off up the road, certain that Lord Artos would not be far ahead.
BY EVENING, when I had met few travelers, and none I liked the look of, I was having doubts about the whole venture. I ate my travel bread by a stream well off the track, then hobbled the pony in a fair patch of grass. Curling up in my cloak, I spent an uneasy night. The ground had this tendency to roll beneath me, and I kept waking in a fright that I was still aboard the Corellia.
IT TOOK ME THREE DAYS to catch up with Lord Artos’ band. They were making camp and someone had hunted successfully, for a pot burbled with appetizing odors on a tripod over a good hot fire.
Tegidus saw me first, rushing up to me, gesticulating wildly, his expression both welcoming and anxious. “The oak has answered my prayers, young Varianus, for I should not have undertaken this journey so cheerfully if I had known you would not be among their number, to translate the gabble they speak.”
“Lord Artos, it is Galwyn, come to rescue us from ignorance!” Bericus roared. Before I knew it, my pony and I were ringed with babbling men, pulling me one way or the other.
‘Tour uncle relented, then?” Lord Artos asked as he waded through the importunate crowd. He did not stop to hear what my answer might have been, and so I never had to give him a Me at all. “By God’s eye, I’m glad enough to see you. Signs, signals, and smiles do not make good communications. You are well come, young Galwyn, well come indeed.”
“He says that our animals are overloaded,” Tegidus complained to me. “He will not let us cook a midday meal and insists that we all take a turn at watch at night. Watch at night? I? That is why we travel with him. So that he may guard.”
“Those fools have packed their animals so badly that half have sores,” was Bericus’s plaint, “and they will not attend when we show them how to rearrange the loads properly.”
It took me only a few minutes to explain, each to the other, what was amiss, and to set it right.
Then to my everlasting joy, Lord Artos encircled my shoulder with his great arm and led me to their campfire. No matter if I was listed as a runaway apprentice by my spiteful uncle-I would gladly spend the rest of my life on a galley bench to have the mark of Lord Artos’s favor now. Bwlch heaped me a huge plate of rabbit stew, which did much to quiet my stomach. And I did not have to stand watch or help the cooks-at least that first night.
THE JOURNEY TO SEPTIMANIA W3S not without its trials: Unusual icy storms in the mountains being the least of them, and steep and rough roads the worst. The best evenings were when we’d sit about the campfire, talking. It was then I learned more about my lord Artos’s plans. I also relearned certain historical facts that I probably had had from my tutor but had forgotten-more likely ignored, as I had been an indifferent scholar. The Comes spoke of Aurelius Ambrosius, who had been his mentor-and incidentally, one of the heroes who had followed Voru’gern when that prince had united the northern tribes to drive the Pict invaders back over Hadrian’s Wall.
“Which is how the Saxons got invited into Britain,” Lord Artos remarked with a rueful smile. “To help repel the Picts. Guests who have long outstayed their welcome.”
His Companions nodded in solemn agreement.
“Why had Voru’gern done that?” The question burst from me, usually silent while my betters spoke.
Lord Artos grimaced at me across the fire, his face taking on a gargoyle look in the flames. “We had no other choice,” he said, and I knew then he spoke as Comes Britannorum, for he was not old enough to have been part of that victorious force. “The Roman legions that had guarded the Wall for so long had pulled out, and Rome itself did not answer our pleas for assistance.” He shrugged. “We had to have reinforcements.”