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Born of the chaos of the Dark Ages, the Dream of Eagles produced a king, a country and an everlasting legend-Camelot
Most know him as Merlyn; all call him Commander. Caius Merlyn Britannicus is responsible for the safety of the colony known as Camulod, and for the welfare of the colonists who look to him for guidance, leadership, justice and salvation. Uther Pendragon, the man who will father the legendary Arthur, is the cousin Merlyn has known and loved since their births-four hours apart on the same day, the year the legions left Britain. As different as can be, they are inseparable: two faces of the same coin. In a world torn apart by warfare and upheaval, each is the other's certainty until a vicious crime-one that strikes at the roots of Merlyn's own life-drives a wedge between them.
PROLOGUE
I cannot think of Camulod without thinking of horses. They were everywhere and they dominated my boyhood. The life of the place revolved completely around them-them and the men who rode them-and the earliest sights and smells I can remember are those of the stables. Almost half of the entire hilltop on which the fort was built was given over to stables and exercise yards, and a huge, barren campus, or drilling ground, had been created on the plain at the bottom of the hill. At any hour of the day, you would find up to a dozen separate groups of horsemen there, wheeling and manoeuvring at the walk, the canter or the gallop, and sometimes charging in great, massed formations, so that in the summer months a pall of dust hung over the plain and never settled. Horses, and the noises and the smells of horses, were a constant and unchanging fact of life in Camulod, and every generation of them bred there was bigger than the one that had produced it.
I did not know that at the time, of course, because I was a boy, and to my eyes they grew ever smaller. As a very small child I was dwarfed by the horses of the mounted troopers I admired as gods. As a boy of eight, they still made me feel small until I mounted one of them. But as a youth, approaching man's stature, I found that they had become reasonably sized.
Throughout my boyhood, Publius Varrus, who was my great-uncle and my guardian in the absence of my father, kept entire crews of smiths working in revolving shifts in six separate smithies, four within the fort itself and two more in our villa on the plain beneath the hill. The fort smithies were completely dedicated to the needs of the cavalry. Two of them made nothing but horseshoes and harness and armour. A third made nothing but nails, thousands upon thousands of them: nails for horseshoes and nails for building barracks and stables and stalls; small nails and studs for boots; and rivets for leather and armour. In later years, this manufactory also produced the bronze and iron wire for the tiny loops that we joined to make the chain link armour our horsemen used. The fourth smithy in the fort produced weapons for the riders: spears, swords and daggers, fitting products for the largest and the noisiest forge of all.
On the plain below, the villa smithies supplied the rest of our Colony, producing all of the farming tools and implements and the thousands of utensils required for their daily working needs by a population of upwards of four thousand people.
Most know him as Merlyn; all call him Commander. Caius Merlyn Britannicus is responsible for the safety of the colony known as Camulod, and for the welfare of the colonists who look to him for guidance, leadership, justice and salvation. Uther Pendragon, the man who will father the legendary Arthur, is the cousin Merlyn has known and loved since their births-four hours apart on the same day, the year the legions left Britain. As different as can be, they are inseparable: two faces of the same coin. In a world torn apart by warfare and upheaval, each is the other's certainty until a vicious crime-one that strikes at the roots of Merlyn's own life-drives a wedge between them.
PROLOGUE
I cannot think of Camulod without thinking of horses. They were everywhere and they dominated my boyhood. The life of the place revolved completely around them-them and the men who rode them-and the earliest sights and smells I can remember are those of the stables. Almost half of the entire hilltop on which the fort was built was given over to stables and exercise yards, and a huge, barren campus, or drilling ground, had been created on the plain at the bottom of the hill. At any hour of the day, you would find up to a dozen separate groups of horsemen there, wheeling and manoeuvring at the walk, the canter or the gallop, and sometimes charging in great, massed formations, so that in the summer months a pall of dust hung over the plain and never settled. Horses, and the noises and the smells of horses, were a constant and unchanging fact of life in Camulod, and every generation of them bred there was bigger than the one that had produced it.
I did not know that at the time, of course, because I was a boy, and to my eyes they grew ever smaller. As a very small child I was dwarfed by the horses of the mounted troopers I admired as gods. As a boy of eight, they still made me feel small until I mounted one of them. But as a youth, approaching man's stature, I found that they had become reasonably sized.
Throughout my boyhood, Publius Varrus, who was my great-uncle and my guardian in the absence of my father, kept entire crews of smiths working in revolving shifts in six separate smithies, four within the fort itself and two more in our villa on the plain beneath the hill. The fort smithies were completely dedicated to the needs of the cavalry. Two of them made nothing but horseshoes and harness and armour. A third made nothing but nails, thousands upon thousands of them: nails for horseshoes and nails for building barracks and stables and stalls; small nails and studs for boots; and rivets for leather and armour. In later years, this manufactory also produced the bronze and iron wire for the tiny loops that we joined to make the chain link armour our horsemen used. The fourth smithy in the fort produced weapons for the riders: spears, swords and daggers, fitting products for the largest and the noisiest forge of all.
On the plain below, the villa smithies supplied the rest of our Colony, producing all of the farming tools and implements and the thousands of utensils required for their daily working needs by a population of upwards of four thousand people.
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Extended Details
- SeriesCamulod Chronicles #3