"Lodged in your armour, sir, at the shoulder."
"In the back?"
"Yes, Commander, between the joints."
I shook my head. "Didn't feel it. Careful, it might be poisoned."
The trooper held it up to the light and then his face registered amazement. "By the gods, Commander, I think it is! There's a coating of some kind on the iron."
I felt the goose-flesh of horror stirring on my neck again. "Let me see that. Give it here." I held it up to the light as he had done and saw what looked like a residue of silvery- green crystals on the iron tip. They resembled nothing I had ever seen before. I shuddered in loathing and threw the thing from me. "It might well be. The very thought of it sickens me. Be careful of it!"
The trooper who had handed it to me had moved to retrieve it. He picked it up, holding it very carefully, and peered again at the discoloured tip. "Well," he said, almost to himself, "we'll soon find out."
"And how will you do that, Trooper? Do you intend to try it out?" My voice sounded slurred to my own ears, so tired was I.
"Yes, Commander. On one of those whoresons over there." He nodded to a huddle of prisoners I had not noticed.
"You will do no such thing!"
"Why not, Commander?" His look was one of hurt innocence. "I will simply scratch one of them. If it's not poisoned, then there's no harm done. If it is, then we will know who used them last time."
I blinked at him, remembering the harmless arrow that had nicked my wrist, and remembering that this arrow, the one he held so cautiously, had lodged within a fraction of a finger's breadth from my neck. I nodded. "Go ahead, then."
He crossed directly to the group of prisoners, seized one of them by the arm, pulled him out of the group and scratched him deeply with the arrowhead. The prisoner gazed at the wound, dull-eyed, for several moments and then raised his eyes to me, his injured arm held stiffly, so that the small, bleeding wound inside his elbow joint was plain to see. His face was empty of any expression.
I turned away to the centurion beside me. "Water. I need to wash some of this mess off."
"I have already ordered it, Commander."
I saw two soldiers approaching, bearing jugs of water, and then I heard a strangled moan from behind me and whipped my head around to look. The prisoner's face was no longer vacuous; it was a rictus of pain and terror as he held his injured arm out stiffly in front of him. Even as my mind accepted what we had done to him, his moan changed to a high, gurgling scream and he threw himself to the ground, writhing in agony, tearing at his arm and jerking it as though trying to wrench it from his body. I opened my mouth to shout, but nothing emerged, and we stood there, horrified beyond expression, watching the fellow go into paroxysms, arching his back clear of the ground so that he was supported only by his head and his heels until he toppled sideways, scissoring and writhing. It was the most awful spectacle any of us had ever seen. My mind was screaming. That should have been me! That should have been me! until one of the centurions suddenly regained his senses and put the suffering man out of his misery with a swift, merciful, chopping arc of his short-sword. Yet even after the man's head was severed, the body continued kicking and convulsing, spraying great gouts of blood around the yard.
I swallowed the bile in my throat with a great effort and looked for the man who had scratched the prisoner. He stood transfixed, his face as white as death, the arrow lying at his feet where it had fallen from his nerveless fingers.
"You were correct," I heard myself say. "Pick up the arrow and keep it safe for me. Treat it with care to protect its coating. I will have need of it later." I turned then to the ashen-faced soldiers who had brought my water. "Bring that into the tent there. I will wash now."
I washed myself in a haze of cold detachment, dousing my whole head in the water that remained, and then I dressed again in my armour and the tattered remnants of my great, black cloak. My body felt refreshed, I remember, but my mind seemed numb, and I was conscious only of what I had to do next. When I emerged from the tent I found Popilius himself awaiting me, and the camp filling up with dusty, bloodied and weary soldiers.
"Commander Merlyn." Popilius's voice was full of concern. "Are you unhurt? We had thought you dead."
I reassured him mechanically and asked him what had happened in the fort above. His face immediately became troubled but he could tell me nothing other than that whatever had occurred had taken place after nightfall. Since then he had had neither the time nor the opportunity to learn of conditions there.
"So be it," I said, "I shall discover for myself. I am going up there now. What about Lot? Where is his army?"
"Scattered, Commander, what is left of it. Destroyed."
"And Lot?"
Popilius shrugged his big shoulders. "No one seems to know, Commander. He may be among the dead."
"No." I heard the disgust in my voice. "Not that serpent. His kind seldom die that way, with honour. He must have run."
Popilius sounded dubious. "If he did, then he did it quickly, Commander. Uther's men were in his camp within minutes of their first charge."
"Oh, Popilius, he did it quickly, rest assured of that. But he cannot run far enough. Britain is no longer big enough to hide that man from me." I glanced towards the hilltop. "Form up your men, Popilius, and let's go see what waits for us in Camulod."
He cleared his throat, as though apologizing for his next words. "It cannot be too bad, Commander. The cavalry came out They would not have done that had they been hard pressed."
'True enough, but did my father lead them?"
"I don't know, Commander."
"Well, let's go up and find out how bad the damage is. It worries me that no one has come out yet."
He was determined to be sanguine. "They'll all be fighting the fires."
"Aye, and glad of our help,"
Popilius was right. Every able-bodied person in the fort was fighting die fires, most of which appeared to be under control by the time we arrived. It was only as I entered the gate into the smoke-filled yard and saw the extent of the damage that I thought of the Armoury and the treasure that lay hidden beneath its wooden floor, and my heart leaped into my mouth. The courtyard was chaotic, criss-crossed with lines of firefighters swinging leather and wooden buckets from hand to hand from the great reservoir tanks by the west wall. The yard was awash in filthy, soot-scummed water. I left Popilius deploying his men to the bucket lines and made my way as quickly as I could to the west wall, against which Uncle Varrus had built his house and Armoury. Miraculously, I found the building intact, but surrounded by a phalanx of Uther's Celtic bowmen. The thatch had been fired in places, but the flames had not had time to take proper hold before being doused with water from the nearby tanks. As I approached the bowmen I heard my name being called and Donuil came towards me, accompanied by his guardian, Centurion Rufio. Both men were black with soot from head to foot, but they were the first faces I had recognized since my arrival.
"Donuil," I snapped, one eye on the bowmen, "What has been happening here? What is going on?"
He drew a great, gulping breath, trying to suck fresh air into his lungs when there was none. "It was the wizards, Merlyn, Caspar and Memnon. They escaped from their cells in the middle of the night and opened the gate in the rear wall. There were men waiting outside. They had come up the cliffs at the back."
I was stunned. "They escaped? How? That should not have been possible. They were heavily guarded, were they not?" Both men nodded in assent. "Then how could they escape?" I saw the troubled look in both men's eyes and pounced on it. "You know. Tell me. How could they escape?"
Donuil's low voice contained a hint of truculence. "I told you, Merlyn Britannicus, before you left, when first they came. These men are necromancers—wizards, magicians, servants of death. They have powers that ordinary men lack."