“And if—if Modred’s men come to Glendower? What of our neighbor Iscar? He has long wanted our lands. You can send me forth only bound and gagged and under guard!”

Marius must have read his son’s determination, for suddenly he looked very tired and gave a small shrug. “So be it. But if you stay you are under my orders.”

Artos drew a deep breath. “That I know.”

Thus he was one of the army that marched south and west. Army? It was hardly a full troop to begin with, though men continued to gather and add to the number as they went. More messengers arrived with ill news of the Saxons pushing inland and of Modred setting up a camp to which came men of the tribes, swearing blood oaths of loyalty under the stolen Red Dragon.

The High King laughed harshly when he was told of this.

“Blood oaths, is it? Do they remember that in the past such oaths were also given to me?”

“But the priests say that they are absolved of them, since they were given to one who did not hold the true church in reverence,” observed Gawain with a twist of lip. It was well known that he was one who followed the old gods, and that the High King had many times been urged by the priests to turn him away for that very reason.

“Men cannot be absolved from treachery so easily,” was all that Pendragon answered.

But it seemed that traitor or not, Modred was gathering the greater host. And only half of it marched under the horse-tail standards of the Saxons.

Artos rode as Marius’ trumpeter and messenger, always at his father’s back as he cantered alone at the head of the troop. Most of them were of the old Roman breed. They used the shorter swords of the Legions, and their faces, overshadowed by the old crested helms, differed from those of the tribesmen. Their standard was an Eagle, mounted on a pole, its wings outspread.

Caius carried it, and his place, too, was behind his commander. Artos envied him that honor. The war horn bumping at his own hip was not nearly as fine a symbol as that Eagle.

There came a time when at last they could see the fires of the enemy camp. But between lay a swampy, broken land, unfit for horses.

“Modred has chosen well,” Artos heard his father say to the first Centurion, Remus, as they looked down from a hillock.

“Traitor though he be, he is still a fighting man. But then he has not yet met Caesar in battle.” There was confidence in Remus’ answer.

They had further additions to their force. Kai came out of Venta with what was left of the defenders there. Artos saw among them a sprinkling of his in-training comrades, so the old and the very young had closed ranks together. Yet no Red Dragon led the van now.