Free Arthur Invictus by Paul Bannister Page A

was returning, and relief flooded her mind.
    The sorceress’ plea flew through the mists to the stone house on the under the sacred mountain Yr Wyddfa. Myrddin was working in the high-walled courtyard and an observer would have seen him raise his head and scent the air like a stag that senses the hounds.
    “Guinevia,” he muttered, brushing his hands against his robe and leaving the planting on which he was engaged. He walked briskly into the viewing chamber where his scrolls were ordered, neatly tied, on shelves above the spiral mirror and glossy obsidian block that the necromancer used as mental focusing devices.
    He took a deep breath, pushed back his braided hair with both hands and leaned over the mirror, looking at the shifting shapes he could see in its depths. In a minute or so, images appeared, and he exhaled gustily. “So that is what it is,” he said quietly. “Yes, Guinevia, you need some assistance. And you, too, Arthur-bach, you have a stony road ahead.”

 
    Chapter XV - Blizzard
     
    With the darkness of late afternoon came the snow, thick, soft flakes that muffled and hid from us the sky, the fields, even the cross-country landmarks we needed to navigate. I was shivering and cursing it for arriving so unseasonably early and thick. The weather hadn’t been right since old Gaius Julius changed the calendar. We were only in Octo, the eighth month of the old calendar, and it was like the tenth, and we were dealing with heavy snow and bitter cold.
    We were travelling away from the road where we might meet military patrols, and the snow at least gave us the advantage of concealment from spying eyes, but we were only three days out from the island citadel and this would make the rest of our trek slower and more difficult. It would certainly reduce the chances of finding the ship or two we would need to carry us across to Britain.
    This was the most dangerous stretch of our journey, for the Romans monitored the coast for pirates and bandits, and now we had to cope with a snowstorm that froze and blinded us while we moved and would leave tell-tale tracks when it ceased.
    The gallant little ponies the Huns had gifted us seemed not to notice the cold, but we men were suffering. Apart from our military cloaks, we were ill-equipped for such conditions, as we had travelled light on our shipyard raid. This swirling, feathery, wet enemy blanketed us in a grey world, sifted inside our cloaks to steal body warmth with its wetness, blocked our eyes, ears and mouths, numbed our faces, soaked our frozen feet, iced our beards and turned our bare hands into stinging, clumsy lumps whenever we beat some feeling into them.
    We had to find shelter and lie up until the storm passed, or we would lose men to the insidious cold that makes even warriors want to lie down and sleep themselves into death. I resolved to commandeer the next cottager’s hut, barn or bothy, to kill the occupants if needed to keep them from giving us away. All we had to do was to grope through the blizzard and find somewhere. We made that find, but it took long, miserable hours.
    It was the smoke that led us to the place. A whiff of woodsmoke came to my frozen nostrils and I snuffled like a hound. The young decurion Iacomus Aureus had already detected it. He had pulled up his pony and I came alongside. He whispered urgently: “A settlement, lord, somewhere here!”
    “Right.” I gestured for the horsemen following me to halt their steeds, then we edged forward again, but slowly, cautiously, though there was little chance of anyone or anything moving in that blinding whiteout.
    Aureus again spotted it first. A glint of light, not even a beam but a glint had leaked from behind a leather window covering and it guided us to a low, wood-walled building. Aureus was already off his pony, sword in hand, two of his men following, before I waved. The door creaked and a wan light showed us the drifting snow, the shapes of the three soldiers as they moved inside