That night, to the apparent pleasure of the garrison, the siege engines were withdrawn from Romans’ Way and the breached places in the outer rampart. Instead, great piles of brushwood and hewn branches were stacked in the gaps, and the army tightened its ring round the crest of the hill, with a circle of archers waiting, and men ready to cut down any who should escape. In the quiet hours before daylight the order was given. From every quarter the arrows, pointed with flaming, oil-soaked rags, showered into the fortress. It did not take long. The place was largely built of wood, and crowded with the wagons, provisions, beasts and their fodder. It burned fiercely. And when it was alight the brushwood outside the walls was fired, so that anyone leaping from the walls met another wall of fire outside. And outside that, the iron ring of the army.

They say that throughout, Ambrosius sat his big white horse, watching, till the flames made the horse as red as the Red Dragon above his head. And high on the fortress tower the White Dragon, showing against a plume of smoke, turned blood red as the flames themselves, then blackened and fell.

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

WHILE Ambrosius was attacking Doward I was still at Maridunum, having parted from Gorlois on the ride south, and seen him on his way to meet my father.

It happened this way. All through that first night we rode hard, but there was no sign of pursuit, so at sun-up we drew off the road and rested, waiting for Gorlois’ men to come up with us. This they did during the morning, having been able, in the near-panic at Dinas Brenin, to slip away unobserved. They confirmed what Gorlois had already suggested to me, that Vortigern would head, not for his own fortress of Caer-guent, but for Doward, a mountain fastness at the very edge of Wales, on the river Wye. And he was moving, they said, by the eastbound road through Caer Gai towards Bravonium. Once past Tomen-y-Mur, there was no danger that we would be overtaken.

So we rode on, a troop now about twenty strong, but going easily. My mother, with her escort of fighting men, was barely more than a day ahead of us, and her party, with the litters, would be much slower than we were. We had no wish to catch up with them and perhaps force a fight which might endanger the women; it was certain, said Gorlois to me, that the latter would be delivered safely to Maridunum, “but,” he added in his sharp, gruff way, “we shall meet the escort on their way back. For come back they will; they cannot know the King is moving east. And every man less for Vortigern is another for your father. We’ll get news at Bremia, and camp beyond it to wait for them.”