The dice fell from my very human fingers. A two and a one. No need to have the power if you could have the luck. Dinias gave a grunt of satisfaction and gathered them up, while I slid more coins towards him. The game went on. I lost the next three throws, and the heap beside him grew respectably. He was relaxing. No one was paying us any attention; that had been imagination. It was time, perhaps, for a few more facts.

“Where’s the King now?” I asked.

“Eh? Oh, aye, the King. He’s been gone from here nearly a month. Moved north as soon as the weather slackened and the roads were open.”

“To Caerynar-Von, you said Segontium?”

“Did I? Oh, well, I suppose he called that his base, but who’d want to be caught in that corner between Y Wyddfa and the sea? No, he’s building himself a new stronghold, they say. Did you say you’d get another flask?”

“Here it comes. Help yourself, I’ve had enough. A stronghold, you said? Where?”

“What? Oh, yes. Good wine, this. I don’t rightly know where he’s building, somewhere in Snowdon. Told you. Dinas Brenin, they call it . . . Or would, if he could get it built.”

“What’s stopping him? Is there still trouble up there? Vortimer’s faction still, or something new? They’re saying in Cornwall that he’s got thirty thousand Saxons at his back.”

“At his back, on both sides—Saxons everywhere, our King has. But not with him. With Hengist—and Hengist and the King aren’t seeing eye to eye. Oh, he’s beset, is Vortigern, I can tell you!” Fortunately he was speaking quietly, his words lost in the rattle of dice and the uproar around us. I think he had half forgotten me. He scowled down at the table as he threw. “Look at that. The bloody things are ill-wished. Like King’s Fort.”

Somewhere the words touched a string of memory to a faint humming, as elusive and untraceable as a bee in the lime trees. I said casually, making my throw: “Ill-wished? How?”

“Hah, that’s better. Should be able to beat that. Oh, well, you know these Northmen—if the wind blows colder one morning they say it’s a dead spirit passing by. They don’t use surveyors in that army, the soothsayers do it all. I heard he’d got the walls built four times to man height, and each time by next morning they’d cracked clear across . . . How’s that?”

“Not bad. I couldn’t beat it, I’m afraid. Did he put guards on?”

“Of course. They saw nothing.”