She draped the blanket and saddlebags over the saddle and hitched it up until it rode on her left hip. Then, picking up the flail in her free hand, she carried everything over to the fire, where she positioned the saddle with care and spread the blanket out over it to dry out. From the saddlebags she removed the equipment she carried for the horse: a cylindrical leather nosebag, folded flat, a set of leg hobbles, a wide, stiff-bristled grooming brush and a leather bag of oats, sealed by a drawstring, that was about one-quarter full. From the other bag she produced a tightly folded and bound one- man blanket, woven of thick wool yarn that had been brushed and coated lightly with a scraping of wax. She also removed her most precious possession, a leather boiling bag, given to her years earlier by Uther. Its edges had been carefully stretched and sewn over the rim of the wide iron ring that formed its top, and she checked carefully, as she always did, to make sure that no damage had been done to it in her travels. She laid the bag aside, along with the long, slender, hand-crafted legs of the collapsible iron tripod on which it was made to rest. Within the leather of the boiling bag itself reposed another, smaller bag, this one containing a spoon and a cup, both made of horn, the cup itself containing a measure of salt wrapped in a twist of cloth, and several individually wrapped plants and herbs: small onions, cloves of garlic and dried mushrooms. Nemo ignored the cooking items for the time being, taking out only the horn cup and replacing everything else where it had been, except for the folded and tied blanket, which she stowed carefully for safekeeping beneath the curve of the saddle by the lire.
She filled the nosebag with oats, then scooped up her metal helmet and removed its leather liner. A steady stream of rainwater poured from one end of the sagging remnant of roof, and Nemo moved towards it, holding her helmet upside down to catch the falling water. When it was almost completely filled, she held it carefully in the crook of her elbow and bent to pick up the nosebag, and then she made her way around the sagging wall to the rear of the building.
The horse was used to being hobbled and made no attempt to move away as Nemo knelt awkwardly, fighting the stiffness of her armour as she fastened the restraints around his forelegs; he knew that as soon as she had finished with the hobbling, she would stand up and remove the bridle and the hated bit from his mouth. Moments later, his head was free and he was slurping noisily from the water in the helmet. He was not very thirsty, however, and he soon tossed his head to show that he had had enough. Muttering softly to him, allowing him to hear the comforting sound of her voice rather than any kind of sensible words, Nemo strapped on his nosebag and left him to eat. He tossed his head gently and stomped about a little until he had himself placed the way he wanted, rump firmly presented to the unfriendly wind, and then he lowered his head and its hanging bag to the ground and settled down to eat his oats. Nemo watched him for a moment or two and then collected her helmet and left him there.
Back by the fireside, Nemo sat on the saddle and undid the fastenings of her armoured coat, then spread it wide, throwing it open to allow the heat to penetrate her damp, quilted tunic. She reached beneath her right arm to pull out the thick leather wallet that she carried there for safety, protected, like her heart itself, by the thick armour of her fighting coat. The wallet contained the dispatches that Uther had entrusted to her care for delivery to Merlyn, and she peered down at it closely to make sure that it was still securely closed. Then she tugged hard on the strap that crossed her chest and held the wallet firmly in its place, testing it, too, before thrusting the wallet back into place beneath her arm. She used the blanket from her saddlebag then to dry her face and neck as well as she could, towelling her short-cropped, wet hair. Stripping completely to dry herself properly would have meant stripping off her armour, and when it was cold, wet and stiff, removing armour became a formidable task. Putting it back on quickly would have been simply impossible, and there was something too intimidating about exposing herself naked to anything that might be out there watching in the night, seeing her barely sheltered by broken walls and a sagging fragment of roof, and lit up by the fitful, flickering firelight, with the darkness pressing in upon her from every side.
When she was as dry as she could be, she propped the damp blanket up beside the fire, one end of it weighted and secured on the ground by a few large stones, and the other raised towards the fire on two long sticks stuck into the dirt. She sat beneath its shelter then and fed herself slowly, cutting pieces of smoke-cured, salted venison from the supply she carried in one of the pockets of the deep leather scrip that hung by her side. She chewed each piece slowly, savouring the deep, smoky tang of the meat and feeling the warmth of the fire slowly begin to penetrate the quilted thickness of her tunic. After attending to her horse again, she finally lay down beneath the blanket lean-to and slept fitfully, waking every now and then to feed the fire, prompted by fears of what she would have to go through to light it again if she allowed it to die out completely.
In the morning, she was still cold to the bone, shivering in her wet clothes and heavy, chafing armour. The daylight, uninspiring as it was, nevertheless encouraged her to take thought for herself and her welfare, and she swallowed her misery and went back out into the rain to gather more armloads of firewood to replace what she was using. She then built the fire up into a roaring blaze and stripped naked in its warmth, towelling heat and life back into her body with the warm blanket. She warmed most of her cloth garments close by the fire while she sat huddled nearby, wrapped in her blanket, planning how she would handle the day ahead of her. As she did so, she ate a dry breakfast of roast grains, shelled hazelnuts and chopped, sun-dried fruit. After leaving the shelter briefly to relieve herself, she squatted naked for a while in front of the flames, holding her blanket wide open and allowing the radiant warmth to wash over her until every bit of her felt stretched and tingling with the heat. Then, precisely at the moment when she felt she could absorb no more without burning up, she turned away and pulled dry, light underclothing from her saddlebag. After that, she slung her precious dispatch wallet across her chest and tucked it beneath her arm again before pulling on her damp, heavy tunic and leggings, her heavy woollen socks and iron-studded boots, and dashing out quickly to bring her horse into the building itself. Beneath the roof and out of the rain, she rubbed him down as well as she could, leaning heavily on the stiff-bristled grooming brush and taking plenty of time as she squeezed and combed the night's moisture out of his heavy coat, taking particular care with the broad expanse of his back, where the chafing weight of the heavy cavalry saddle, imperfectly placed, could quickly make the animal's discomfort intolerable.
After she had saddled her mount, she laid her main armour—a heavy leather coat and wide, trousered leggings of the same leather, all sewn with thousands of tiny, overlapping metal rings—across the saddle and lashed together her shield, helmet, cuirass and thigh guards, using their own leather straps and buckles to join them to each other, before laying them over the ring-mail and covering them with her heavy woollen cloak.
A wide, strongly made sword belt supported a sheathed Roman- style short-sword that hung by her right side, its handle projecting just behind the large leather scrip that also hung there, and a matching dagger rode by her left hip. Attached to the sword belt in two places, ahead of and behind the dagger on her left side, another belt of the same weight and thickness rose diagonally between her breasts and crossed her right shoulder. Fastened to the back of it, between her shoulder blades, hung the wide iron ring that supported her sword. Nemo pulled the long cavalry sword from where it had stood in the floor all night supporting her cloak and used both her hands to guide it into place. Satisfied with the feel of it then, she took hold of the horse's bridle and led it out into the weather, where she turned her face in the direction of Camulod. She decided to walk, to keep herself warm and conserve the animal's strength, since she herself was unencumbered by armour and therefore able to move more quickly and easily.