The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [31]
"Rest you there," I told it, and at the sound of my voice running round the crystal walls it hummed again.
I went back to the bright fire, and the stars gemming the black sky outside. I lifted the great harp to me and -- hesitating at first, and then more easily -- made music.
Rest you here, enchanter, while the light fades,
Vision narrows, and the far
Sky-edge is gone with the sun.
Be content with the small spark
Of the coal, the smell
Of food, and the breath
Of frost beyond the shut door.
Home is here, and familiar things;
A cup, a wooden bowl, a blanket,
Prayer, a gift for the god, and sleep.
(And music, says the harp,
And music.)
6
With the spring came, inevitably, trouble. Colgrim, sniffing his way cautiously back along the eastern coasts, landed within the old federated territories, and set about raising a new force to replace the one defeated at Luguvallium and the Glein.
I was back in Caerleon by that time, busy with Arthur's plans for the establishment there of his new mobile cavalry force.
The idea, though startling, was not altogether new. With Saxon Federates already settled, and by treaty, in the south-eastern districts of the island, and with the whole eastern seaboard continually at risk, it was impossible to set up and effectively maintain a fixed line of defense. There were, of course, certain defensive ramparts already in existence, of which Ambrosius' Wall was the greatest. (I omit Hadrian's Great Wall here; it was never a purely defensive structure, and had been, even in the Emperor Macsen's time, impossible to keep. Now it was breached in a score of places; and besides, the enemy was no longer the Celt from the wild country to the north; he came from the sea. Or he was already, as I have explained, within the gates of southeast Britain.) The others Arthur set himself to extend and refurbish, notably the Black Dyke of Northumbria, which protects Rheged and Strathclyde, and the other Wall that the Romans originally built across the high chalk downlands south of the Sarum plain. The King planned to extend this wall northward. The roads through it were to be left open, but could be shut fast if any attempt was made by the enemy to move toward the Summer Country to the west. Other defensive works were planned, soon to be under way. Meanwhile, all the King could hope to do was fortify and man certain key positions, establish signal stations between these, and keep open the communicating roads. The Kings and chiefs of the British would keep each his own territory, while the High King's work would be to maintain a fighting force that could be taken at need to help any of them, or be thrown into whatever breach was made in our defenses. It was the old plan with which Rome had successfully defended her province for some time before the withdrawal of the legions: the Count of the Saxon Shore had commanded just such a mobile force, and indeed Ambrosius, more recently, had done the same.
But Arthur planned to go further. "Caesar-speed," as he saw it, could be made ten times as speedy if the whole force were mounted. Nowadays, when one sees cavalry troops daily on the roads and in the parade grounds, this seems a normal enough thing; but then, when he first thought of it and put it to me, it came with all the force of the surprise attack he hoped to achieve with it. It would take time, of course; the beginnings, perforce, would be modest. Until enough of the troops were trained to fight from horseback, it would have to be a smallish, picked force drawn from among the officers and his own friends. This granted, the plan was feasible. But no such plan could be put into being without the right horses, and of these we could command relatively few. The cobby little native beasts, though hardy, were neither speedy enough nor big enough to carry an armed man into battle.
We talked it over for days and nights, going into every detail, before Arthur would put the idea