“Oh, I can see you are no Saxons.” He waved a hand. “Your grain pit, for instance . . . I have seen some Saxon farmers. There are many in this country already, you know, off to the east. The way they do things is sometimes better, sometimes worse than what you have worked out here. But they do not do things quite like this. And it is the threat of the Saxons that has brought me here. Listen to me,” he said, raising his voice to address the rest of the people. “Things have changed. The Saxons are coming.”

“We know that,” Regina said.

He growled, “Perhaps you have heard of Vortigern. That foolish kinglet was much troubled by Pict raiders from the north. So he invited in the Saxons, to help keep the Picts at bay.” It had been an old trick of the Romans, Regina knew, to allow in one set of enemies as allies to oppose another lot. “I will not deny that the Saxons did a good job. They are sea pirates after all, and fared well against the Picts in their clumsy coracles.

“But,” said the riothamus, “the Saxons, under their brute of a leader Hengest, who is already notorious on the continent, betrayed Vortigern. They brought in more and more of their cousins, and demanded more and more in tribute from Vortigern. But the more they took from him, the less he could pay them, and the weaker he became.

“Now Vortigern is dead, his council slain. And now that they have a foothold in the east, the Saxons are becoming greedy.

“You may have heard of their cruelty. They are not the Romans! They hate towns and villas and roads, all things of the Empire. And they hate the British. They are spreading across the countryside like a plague. They will burn these flimsy huts, they will drive you out of here, and if you resist they will kill you.”

“The Emperor will help us,” somebody called.

The riothamus laughed, but it was a grim sound. “There have been pleas. No help comes. We must help ourselves. I will help you,” he said boldly. “I am building a new kingdom in the west—I have a capital there. It is a place the Romans themselves struggled to defeat, and it will see off a few hairy Saxons.” There was a little laughter at that, and Regina saw the skill in his mixture of fear and humor. “But I need you with me. The land is emptying. Everybody flees, fearing the raiders. And if you come with me—” He drew his sword, and flashed its polished surfaces in the air above his head. “—I swear before the gods that I and Chalybs will protect you to my own death!” Chalybs, which he pronounced Calib, was the Latin for “steel.”

He was met by uncertain silence.