Страница 89 из 114
Chapter Seventeen
Trevor Stirling was getting used to forced marches, short sleep, and foul weather.
The SAS should train half so hard, he grumbled, although he did so with a fair dose of wry humor.
Aye, Ancelotis sighed, war is no business for the faint of heart, nor those weak of constitution.
It was an unexpected compliment and one Stirling valued, considering the source—Ancelotis' unhappily broad experience of warfare at a level and brutality which still had the power to raise the fine hairs on the nape of his borrowed neck. He and his host had ridden far ahead of Artorius and the bulk of the army rushing south as fast as their infantry could travel. Ancelotis and Stirling were accompanied by more than a hundred cataphracti from Ancelotis' own Gododdin, men headed south toward Caer-Badonicus in answer to the summons he'd sent out several days previously.
The Sarmatian bows most of them carried were heavy-pull compound bows made of horn in the Scythian style, perfect, deadly weapons for a force of heavy cavalry. The Romans had learned at great cost—an entire legion, slaughtered to the last man—what such bows could accomplish against infantry. Those bows gave Stirling ideas. Really nasty ideas. And he ought to arrive at Caer-Badonicus in plenty of time to implement them.
"Ride ahead with word that we are on the march," Artorius had told him shortly after finding Lailoken's abandoned packhorse. "We'll need some kind of signal to let you know when we've come close enough to Caer-Badonicus to break the Saxons' siege with our infantry as well as the rest of our cavalry."
Stirling considered the possibilities for a moment. He knew multiple ways to send coded signals, but which of them were most easily adapted to current conditions? "Have you any polished mirrors?" he asked thoughtfully.
Artorius' brows flicked upward in surprise. "Mirrors? I suppose I could lay hands on a polished bronze mirror, readily enough. Why?"
"Light flashing from a mirror travels a long way. You could devise a simple code and use sunlight on the mirror to send us the message you're close by."
Artorius tugged at his lower lip for a moment. "I seem to recall reading, many years ago, as a boy under Myrddin's tutelage, that one of the Roman emperors used a mirror to send long coded messages from the mainland to one of the islands, Sicily or Sardinia, I can't recall which, now. And the Visigoths who've taken over Rome use signal fires, it's said, occluded by some barrier like a blanket, to flash out numerical patterns. They keep codebooks to translate the number flashes into words."
"Perfect," Stirling nodded. "When you reach a point within a few miles of Caer-Badonicus, use the mirror flashes if it's by day or an occluded fire if by night." He couldn't help chuckling, thinking about Rudyard Kipling again, the poem about the young British officer stationed in India, using the heliograph to flash messages to his "darling poppsy-wop," warning his bride against General Banks, that "most immoral man"—a warning inadvertently seen and decoded by none other than the general himself.
"We'll use a simple numerical replacement system," Artorius decided with a grin. One flash is 'A,' two are 'B' and so on, through the Latin alphabet. Look for the signals from the highest of the Mendip Hills. Flashes from there will be seen easily from the summit of Caer-Badonicus. And you can signal back where the Saxons' greatest troop concentration is camped."
Stirling chuckled. "With pleasure."
"Watch the northern horizon for the signal then, and when it comes, you'll know relief is only a few miles away. Cadorius and Melwas must fight a holding action if the Saxons reach Caer-Badonicus ahead of our main force. Which I suspect they will. King Aelle of Sussex would be a fool to delay, once Cutha's brought news of our disarray in the north. God help us, two kings dead and a queen..." Artorius hesitated, spat to one side, then muttered, "Enough said about Morgana. God help us, even Ganhumara worries me less."
Stirling's host would have liked to say something comforting, but Ganhumara was trouble everywhere she turned her attention. Ancelotis of Gododdin was too honest a man to mouth platitudes nobody believed, so he and Stirling took their leave silently, to begin yet another body-numbing forced march. Stirling had no idea where Caer-Badonicus was—its location remained one of the twenty-first century's greatest Arthurian mysteries—nor how many horses he would have to change out along the way. Not too many, he hoped, for the armies moving ahead of them surely would have rounded up every stray cart horse and fat pony to be found.
I hope you have some idea where we're going, Stirling groused, trying in vain to ease himself in the saddle, stiff and aching from sitting too long in one position. "South" covers a lot of territory.
Stirling's attitude only amused Ancelotis, who was a well-educated man, by sixth-century standards. Don't fret, Ancelotis advised, we Britons know how to locate a place accurately enough, even if you don't. It's the roads, lad, the Roman roads, that tell us how far south or west or northeast to ride after a marked junction. Every man of us—and most of the women, for that matter—knows the maps of these wondrous roads, even if he learns nothing else from his priests or Druids. It's the roads that tie us together, bind us into one people. Without them, we couldn't hope to mass this kind of force on such short notice.
Stirling's brows twitched upward. He'd never thought of using roads in symbolic terms before, as a metaphor of power and unification. He was simply too accustomed to their presence as a network of tools to get a person where he wanted to go in the shortest amount of time possible, given the physical terrain and its obstacles. He felt a little foolish, particularly since a good officer took very careful account of such things as logistics, how to move men and war materiel from one point to another in the most efficient ma
Ancelotis nodded. You've the right of that. It pays a man well to remember that the Romans, a people of very small physical stature, for the most part, still conquered a very large chunk of the known world and held it for centuries upon centuries, with fast and good roads to move their legions and supply trains. 'Tis the roads, right enough, that are the saving of Britain, as much as Artorius' skills at organizing a battle.
The idea that stole into Stirling's mind, unbidden and startling, was the abrupt co
And Emrys Myrddin had seen it while still a child, warning Vortigern of the danger he was unleashing against the People of the Red Dragon. A proud people co
The power of the British tutelary dragon did, indeed, lie in these roads, good military highways that a cavalcade could traverse at a fast and steady pace. Roads of war. Red roads. Red dragons. Emrys Myrddin had named the dragon the tutelary beast of Britain's rightful kings—or, more accurately—her war leaders: Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last Roman among them, Uthyr Pendragon the Sarmatian, and his son Artorius.