They had a council about it, at the fort near Gloucester where the first bridge crosses the Sefern river. I could picture it, Ambrosius listening and weighing and judging, and answering with that grave easy way of his, allowing each man his say for pride; then taking at the end the decision he had meant to take from the beginning, but giving way here and there on the small things, so that each man thought he had made a bargain and got, if not what he wanted, then something near it, in return for a concession by his commander.

The upshot was, that they marched northwards within the week, and came on Vortigern at Doward.

*   *   *

Doward is in the valley of the Guoy, which the Saxons pronounce Way or Wye. This is a big river, which runs deep and placid-seeming through a gorge whose high slopes are hung with forests. Here and there the valley widens to green pastures, but the tide runs many miles up river, and these low meadows are often, in winter, awash under a roaring yellow flood, for the great Wye is not so placid as it seems, and even in summer there are deep pools where big fish lie and the currents are strong enough to overturn a coracle and drown a man.

Well north of the limit of the tidal floods, in a wide curve of the valley, stand the two hills called Doward. The one to the north is the greater, thick with forest and mined with caves inhabited, men say, by wild beasts and outlawed men. The hill called Lesser Doward is also forested, but more thinly, since it is rocky, and its steep summit, rising above the trees, makes a natural citadel so secure that it has been fortified time out of mind. Long before even the Romans came, some British king built himself a fortress on the summit which, with its commanding view, and the natural defences of crag and river, made a formidable stronghold. The hill is wide topped, and its sides steep and rough, and though siege engines could at one point be dragged up in dead ground, this ended in crags where the engines were useless. Everywhere except at this point there was a double rampart and ditch to get through before the outer wall of the fortress could be reached. The Romans themselves had marched against it once, and only managed to reduce it through treachery. This was in the time of Caractacus. Doward was the kind of place that, like Troy, must be taken from within.

This time also, it was taken from within. But not by treachery; by fire.

Everyone knows what happened there.