Almost six hours later, Nemo was beyond weariness. Her entire attention was focused solely upon reaching Camulod and its hot baths as quickly as she could. The rain had stopped more than an hour earlier, and encouraged by a break in the clouds and a flash of blue sky that she had seen off to her right, she had stopped in an empty cattle byre and dressed herself again in full armour, prepared to ride into Camulod properly attired. But no sooner had she pulled herself back up into the saddle after that than the rain began again, heavier than ever. Her final reserves of patience vanished almost immediately, although now she could almost see the topmost towers of the rear walls of Camulod as she spurred her horse to scramble up the steep slope at the back of the hill. The walls were very close, but they were almost completely obscured by a billowing, low-lying cloud that shrouded the entire hilltop, it's sullen weight spewing rain.
Cursing and muttering to herself, Nemo urged her horse forward along the path that was now growing rapidly less steep. As she looked up into the slanting rain, she heard a sentry's challenge and the blowing of a trumpet to summon the guard commander.
"Who goes there?"
Nemo cocked her head, hoping to identify the voice, but it was unrecognizable.
"Nemo," she shouted back. "Decurion. Uther's Dragons. From King Uther, with word for Merlyn Britannicus. Nemo."
There was silence for a spell, and then a new voice, one she knew well, came down to her.
"Nemo? Is that you? What did you do last time when you came back from Glevum ?"
"Chain duty. Four months you gave me. Centurion Dedalus. You know it's me. Let me in."
The heavy gate swung open and Nemo spurred her horse forward, passing through the entrance and the narrow new curtain passageway that had been built inside it after Lot's first, near fatal assault. She glanced up at the faces of the guards looking down at her front the high walls, recognizing a few of them and seeing for the first time how effective this winding passage was. Anyone attacking through this door in future would have to fight their way through a narrow, high-walled tunnel lined with defenders above them at every step.
"Hey, Hard-Nose, you look as though you've been out in the rain!"
Nemo ignored the taunt and all the others like it as she made her way through to the end of the curtainway. There, in a wider but still confined courtyard, she was met by Dedalus and a trooper who stepped forward to take her horse. She raised her hand to wave the trooper away, but Dedalus forestalled her.
"Let him take the horse. Nemo. You look as though you'll have enough to do taking care of yourself. My advice would be to stop at the bathhouse before you go anywhere or do anything else. It should be quiet there at this time of day."
Nemo hesitated, looking at him with a scowl, and then she shrugged her broad shoulders and reached for her saddlebags, slinging them over one shoulder and relinquishing the horse to the trooper with a surly nod.
"Merlyn Britannicus?"
Dedalus knew what she meant. "He's out on patrol, but not a long one. He'll be back later this afternoon. They're getting ready to leave on an expedition to the other side of the country, Verulamium. to attend a meeting of churchmen."
Nemo was not interested in churchmen. "I have messages for him from King Uther."
"I know, I heard you. He should be back by the time you have thawed out. Do you have any dry clothing with you? No? Then go ahead and warm yourself back to humanity. You can eat later, once you feel better. In the meantime, I'll send someone to the laundry to find you some clean clothing. He'll bring it to you in the bathhouse. I'll tell him to shout out your name and leave the new clothing in the dressing rooms. Leave your armour there for him, too, he'll pick that up at the same time and take it to one of the smithies to dry out near the forges before it can start to rust."
"It won't rust. The rings are bronze."
Dedalus twisted up his face and shook his head as though in pity. "Nemo, do you really think I didn't know that? Go now. Away with you." He paused, eyeing her as she turned to go, and called her back. "No, wait you, Nemo . . . Before you go to the bathhouse, you might feel better to know that your dispatches for Commander Merlyn are safe. Where are they?"
Nemo glowered at him, then reached across with her left hand and patted her armour on the right side. "They're safe."
Dedalus grinned. "Aye, safe now, but will you take them into the hot pool with you?" He watched her blink, then start to frown, her scowl deepening by the moment, and he took pity on her. "What you need to do, Nemo, is find someone that you can trust . . . and if there's no one you can trust, then find someone you know Uther would trust. Were I you, I'd take my dispatches into the administration building and leave them with one of the senior legates there before I went to bathe. Titus or Flavius, doesn't matter which. They are equally trustworthy."
Nemo looked at him narrowly and then looked down at the arm still stretched across her breast. She hovered indecisively for several moments, and then nodded once and made directly for the administrative building.
An hour later, having made her progress through the intermediate baths. Nemo was luxuriating in the calidariun, the deep hot pool, and deliberating with herself whether or not she would make the effort to climb out and make her way into the curtained-off sudarium, the steam room, where the tiled walls and hanging leather curtains contained the roiling clouds of vapour that belched out of floor-level vents, heated to boiling by the furnace below the bathhouse. She decided to remain where she was, thinking that she could never have enough of this magnificent hot water and remembering, too, how she had believed, only short hours before, that she might never again be warm.
There were only two others in the bathhouse with her, and two more had been leaving when she arrived. All of them had known and recognized her, and had acknowledged her with nods. None of them had attempted to speak to her, and none had paid any attention to her sex, elaborately ignoring her nakedness as though it were as unremarkable as their own. Nemo had barely noticed. She had settled all of that kind of nonsense very emphatically long years before.
Apart from the most basic and obvious evidence of her femininity, her appearance was very masculine. She had always been short and squat of stature as a child, with immense strength for her size and age, and by the time she had volunteered for Uther's cavalry force, her arms, chest, back and shoulders were massive and dense with muscle. Her breasts and pectorals were less feminine than many a man's, except that they were hairless and tipped with large and obviously female nipples. Her hips and buttocks, belly and thighs, were lean and hard. Only the black-haired cleft at her centre ruined the illusion of swarthy, virile strength and male vitality.
And yet, there had been some among the troopers of Camulod who had insisted upon seeing only the woman in her. purely from the perspective of male rut. Her female body, unused, was an insult to their manhood. Many ventured to deal with her as they thought appropriate, singly and in groups. And all of them failed, humiliatingly and publicly, because, brutal and debased as they might have been, they could not conceive of, let alone match. Nemo's implacably savage response to their assaults. Where they had sought to bully and conquer her as a woman, she had responded as a threatened man, maiming and disabling, so that invariably they went reeling and limping, broken and bleeding, in every direction. Two of these died, killed in the struggle when a group of six of them jumped her here in this very bathhouse. One of those deaths came from a straight-armed smash with Nemo's open hand, the heel of which drove one attacker's nose bone into his brain. The second was caused when another assailant slipped and fell, trying to dodge a flying kick that would have unmanned him. He landed strangely and crushed his skull between the corner edges of the deep pool. Two more of the surviving four had been grievously injured, one with a broken leg and the other with shattered ribs, before the other two fled, unsatisfied.