By early afternoon he was talking again, his usual, cheerful banter, and I had started to believe there might be a real chance of making a horseman of him after all. We were riding together at the head of the column, enjoying an unusually long spell of sunshine between squalls, when Donuil, whose eyes were far keener than anyone else's in the group, picked up a movement cm the ridge far ahead of us.
"Someone coming, Commander." He nodded towards die movement he had seen. "Straight ahead. Must be some of our scouts."
"How many?" I could see nothing but I did not doubt him.
He screwed up his eyes, concentrating, and it was several moments before he answered, "One. It's Orvic."
I glanced at him, irrationally irritated by this evidence of his amazing visual superiority.
"Damnation, Donuil, how can you know that? I can't even see him moving yet!"
He smiled, his eyes still on the approaching figure. "It is Orvic, Commander, and his hounds. That's why I thought at first there might be more than one man."
I saw them then, the tall, long-haired, long-legged Cambrian Celt with his golden tore around his neck, and his three great wolfhounds ranging around him. He was a distant kinsman of mine, a nephew of my grandfather, Ullic Pendragon. Orvic was a man unique even among his unique clan, for he was renowned as both fighter and hunter, yet even more famed for his skills as a bard and as a breeder of wolfhounds. He had decided that he would ride with us to Verulamium to attend the debate. He was no Christian and had no interest in the theology to be debated, but he had never visited that part of the country and he had thought it fitting that we should allow him to escort us.
When he rode up, we exchanged greetings and then waited for him to tell us why he had come back. I had long since accepted the futility of trying to rush Orvic in anything, but he came to the point with surprising swiftness, speaking directly to me. "Where are you going?"
I raised my eyebrows at his tone, but answered him directly. "To Londinium, to see what's happening. Why?"
"Forget it. You have no need to see what's happening there."
I frowned. "How can you know that?"
His frown matched mine. "Because I've been there. Believe what I tell you."
I glanced around me at my five companions. They were all watching Orvic closely, no suggestion of doubt visible on any of their faces. I turned back to the big Celt. "What's wrong there? Is it inhabited?"
"Inhabited? Aye, it's inhabited, course it is, but it's no place for you or your people."
"Why not?"
"Pestilence of some kind. It's not what I'd call rampant yet, but it's there. There doesn't seem to be wholesale death, but whatever it is, it's created chaos in the town. There's fighting everywhere, and nobody seems to know who's in charge, or who's fighting who. There seem to be four, perhaps five separate factions and there's more corpses in the streets from the violence than from the sickness. The forum's a slaughterhouse and the basilica's on fire, along with a good portion of the rest of the town."
"How did you find all this information? Were you inside the town itself?"
"Aye, and outside it, looking in."
Lucanus spoke up. "Then you may be carrying the sickness."
Orvic looked at him, then back to me. I could have sworn he was on the point of smiling. "Aye, I might. But I doubt it. I didn't get close enough to anyone to catch anything except words, except for one fellow, and he was outside the town."
"And?"
"And that's all. He was healthy as a horse and bleeding like a sow. He was a mercenary, from my part of the country, if you can believe it. I didn't know him, though. He'd fallen off the wall—been thrown off, really. I sewed up a gash in his thigh and splinted the bone, and he was happy to talk to me. Told me he started out years ago working for the Grain Merchants Guild, but that's long gone, ten years ago or more, and he ended up with a gang of ex-soldiers who looked after their own interests and nobody else's. There's no organized authority in the town. Basilica's been deserted for years, except for squatters. Town council stopped functioning more than five years ago and the so-called better class of citizens are all either deader they've moved away. I told you, it's chaos—a rats' nest. A good place to stay well clear of."
My horse reared at a fly bite, taking me by surprise and almost throwing me, and I wrestled him back under control, sawing on the bit and venting some of my frustration on the poor beast. By the time I spoke again, I had my feelings as tightly under control as the horse.
"We have no choice." My voice was stony. "We have to go in to cross the bridge."
"Find another way, Merlyn." He looked me straight in the eye. "There's nothing but heartache in there for you."
"Nonsense! We have two hundred men. We'll carve our way through if we have to."
Orvic hawked and spat, an eloquent statement of disdain. "You might take them in, but you won't take 'em all out again. You've got wagons, provisions and horses, and all of them make you fine targets. Streets are narrow and the roofs are high. It's less than a mile from the north wall to the river and the bridge, but you'll never make the transit. As soon as you approach the gates, even before you enter, all those warring bastards in there will unite against you. They'll block every street junction, then line every rooftop and cut you to pieces from above. Your men will have no room to manoeuvre, or even to dodge the missiles. And then they'll barricade the entrance to the bridge against you. Believe me, Caius Merlyn, the bridge is not available to you for crossing the river."
"Damnation! Then what do you suggest? Should we sprout wings and fly?"
"Aye, if you can." He grinned as he said the words, but there was no trace of humour in his eyes. "But it might be more realistic to skirt the city to the east, upriver, and find a ferry or a ford."
"And what if we find neither? Do you know where there are any?"
He jerked his head. "No, but you'll find one or the other, sooner or later. People do cross over without having to go through Londinium. What will it cost you? A day? Two days at the most, and you'll keep your troops alive and healthy. Increase your speed and your daily travel for the next two days after that and you'll make up the time you've lost."
What he said made sense. There had to be either a ford or a ferry not too far upstream. I decided to accept his evaluation of the Londinium situation, and signalled the dismount, giving my men the chance to relax and stretch their legs. Then, with Orvic's assistance, we spent the next hour discussing ways and means of circumventing the town and its dangerous bridge.
That night, after our plans had all been made, I wondered at myself. I have never been good at taking advice. An analyst of advice I was, certainly, in that I always took pains to consider—-and occasionally defer to—the opinions and viewpoints of those around me. I usually chose, however, to cleave to my own judgment, trusting my own instinctual responses to the responsibilities I alone bore. That, I had learned from my father. His credo on leadership had been simple: a leader—any leader—bears full and final responsibility for the welfare of the people he leads. In success, he might be magnanimous in the sharing of credit, but in failure, the fault, the responsibility and the consequences are his alone to bear. On that phase of our expedition, however, I had accepted advice twice, from two subordinates, without any reservations, on two consecutive days. On each occasion that advice had run contrary to what I myself would normally have chosen to do, and upon it I had based decisions that I would not normally have made. In the light of what happened afterward, and aided by years of hindsight, I find it impossible not to believe I was under the influence— mystical or supernatural—of powers over which I had no control.