Iron. Like many poisons, in its natural state iron was bearable, even for the Sí. Growing up in Betws-y-Coed, Arthyr had been aware of the presence of iron in the soil as one is aware of sheep droppings: an inconvenience to be stepped over and avoided. Should an iron item touch him, he felt a mild pain, akin, say, to that which I would feel should I knock over the candle which is beside me and spill the liquid wax onto the bare skin of my arm. As most of the villagers had Sí ancestors their preferred metal for their pans and tools was copper.[1]

Iron, therefore, was an unpleasant but not a dangerous substance, not until brought out of the ground and smelted so that it ran in orange-hot rivulets out of the base of the furnace, to cool as bloom, and be shaped on the forge as ingots until ready for use. Yet here Arthyr was, enclosed in an iron-bound room and he felt sick with the smell of the metal. Its heavy presence in the bars of the small window and in the fastenings of the door leaned on his mind, preventing him from sensing any spirits or any hint of the realm of Uffen. Worse, though, were the iron shackles on his ankles, which caused him to curl up, unable to do anything other than shudder with the pulses of nausea that wracked his body.

A clatter outside the door. The turn of a heavy key. A bolt withdrawn. And then two men were in the room. Angry men; strong soldiers; staves in their hands. A voice from the doorway. A voice that Arthyr had already learned to hate.

‘Barbarian filth,’ said Druffus, articulating the two words slowly and bitterly. ‘Do you know why we are here?’

When Arthyr didn’t reply, the small tribune squatted down beside the magician and stroked his raven hair, before leaning in close and whispering with intimacy, ‘We are going to batter your pretty face until the brains leak out of your head. Did you think when you cast a spell on me today the legate would save you? Did you think you could humiliate me in front of the army? Well, you were wrong.’

Arthyr had no doubt that Druffus was in earnest. That the Roman officer would take cruel pleasure in the murder of someone who had damaged his pride as severely as had Arthyr. Arthyr needed to escape. He had to cross into Uffen, where there was no iron and there were no Romans. Wild and unpredictable as it was, Uffen now represented safety, a haven. Yet he could barely sense the other realm, let alone move across. Outside, the early stars were visible in a violet sky and even if they were looking down sympathetically at Arthyr, they offered no way out.

‘In the morning, it will be discovered that your cell is empty,’ Druffus continued, standing again and walking to the door to make room beside Arthyr for his soldiers. ‘We will tell the camp and the legate that you ran away. Everyone will believe it. But your broken body will be deep under the lake.’ Druffus gave a quiet laugh, ‘It can join the others there.’

Uffen was unreachable. Arthyr therefore gathered himself to cry for help in this world. Perhaps someone would hear him in time to save him. No longer wracked with spasms of iron-sickness, his fast-beating heart drove out all ill effects and gave him the strength to roll to a kneeling position, from which he drew a deep breath.

By the half-light of dusk and the torch on the wall outside the building, Arthyr saw the black outline of two burly soldiers either side of him and that of the much smaller Roman officer, standing in the doorway with an arm in a splint and pale bandage strapped across his chest. In the dark, glittering eyes of the man was a deeper malice than Arthyr had seen in the blood-drinker.

‘Break his jaw and mouth first.’

It was as though Druffus could hear Arthyr’s thoughts. A soldier took a step towards him…

‘Don’t do that,’ came a woman’s voice from outside. She had a northern accent. ‘Unless you want to be crucified by the empress.’

‘Who’s there?’ said Druffus, with a touch of anxiety, ‘show yourself.’

Someone stepped into the room beyond the door. Following the angry gaze of Druffus, Arthyr could see it was the tall northern woman from his contubernium, the woman he had practiced with earlier that day.

‘What are you doing here, soldier? Are you looking for the lash?’ Up until these words, Arthyr had heard only vengeance and cruelty in the voice of the tribune, now he heard aggression. But the woman only laughed.

‘I know men like you. Little men. Small in spirit as well as stature. And I knew you would try to hurt my comrade. We are all here, his tent-mates.’

‘Long before you get to speak to the legate; you’ll all be dead. I run this camp. The prefect does what I say.’ Even when at his most threatening, when he rose onto his tiptoes and craned his head upwards, like a cockerel eyeing up an enemy, there was something weak about Druffus, some inner unhappiness that fuelled his constant state of anger.

Again, the woman laughed, thrilling Arthyr with the confident scorn that her voice contained. The distinct sound of a sword being drawn followed.

‘I understand everything. Which is why we do not wait for the legate. Take one more step towards our comrade and we kill you.’

While Arthyr had the love of his family and the equally strong but unspoken ties to his friends, he had never heard words like these. And from a stranger too. Staunch words, expressing a deep solidarity between himself and the other soldiers of Nine-Ten. Did he feel that same, live-saving solidarity? From this moment, he always would.

‘This isn’t over,’ Druffus was surprisingly matter-of-fact. ‘You’ll regret this action. All of you.’ He turned back to the cell, made sure to met Arthyr’s eyes, then ordered his soldiers out. When the bolt was slid back into place and their footsteps had died away, Arthyr heard a voice below the window.

‘How are you Arthyr?’

‘Sick with the iron… But... Thank you. Thank you everyone.’

‘There is only me,’ the woman chuckled.

‘You lied?’

‘Of course.’

Managing a laugh also, Arthyr also felt giddy, a sense of vertigo. Life and death were so close together.

‘My name is Runa.’

‘Thank you, Runa.’

‘You are a strong seithkona, as we say at home, a magician. The Romans may hate you, but we respect a seithkona.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Bjorgvin. It is very far north. Near the ice.’

‘And yet the Romans are there too?’

‘Nearby.’ Her pale hands were on the bars and with a grunt, she drew herself up enough to look in for a moment and smile at him. ‘They mostly leave us alone. But we have to give scouts to their army. That is me and Herkja this year.’

There was a pause, Arthyr unable to think of what he wanted to say, despite his awareness that she wouldn’t be able to hold on for long. Knowing it was rushed and probably clumsy, he said, ‘you came because you are attracted to me. From the training ground.’

‘Well. Perhaps. You are a beautiful youth. But not yet a man. And perhaps also you have a spirit that is too vain for me.’ She dropped back down to the ground and her voice came from below the window. ‘Yet you were brave today and I was impressed. I will get Herkja now and the two of us will guard you. Don’t worry.’

Outside, the night had covered the sky like a black bearskin and the stars were bright enough for Arthyr to recognise the Archer, a constellation that he usually felt was a benign and lucky one. Now, it was almost mockery: the archer roaming the skies and him contained in an iron-bound box. Still, there was the comforting thought that at home his mother and father and brother would be looking up at the sky and seeing the exact same patterns in the twilight sky. For a moment Arthyr felt united with his family.

‘I just want go home.’ As the nausea from iron poisoning returned Arthyr spoke the words aloud, praying to his gods and Dagda[2] in particular. ‘Set me free.’

***

Three days (and several visits from Runa) later, Arthyr was released by a shocked and contrite Sapentia. By now the reader will appreciate that Sapentia was not normally an officer who wielded her authority with fury and threats. Yet on discovering that Arthyr was being held in prison by iron shackles, Sapentia had used the full powers of her position and had raged with uncharacteristic shouts against the Camp Prefect and his six equestrian tribunes, one of whom — right arm in a splint and bandaged across his chest — was Druffus. I would have liked to have been present when the Legate brought home to them very forcefully indeed the extent of their mistake.[3]

Quite apart from the personal vendetta that now existed between Arthyr and Druffus, these officers held to the traditional values of the Roman army with respect to Tartarus, namely that there should be no dealings with the dark and magical people across the border between worlds and insofar as one encountered a spirit from that realm, one used good, solid, cold, Roman iron to destroy it. They had fallen a long way behind the new thinking in Rome.

The explanations given for Arthyr’s imprisonment (insubordination, the need to instil discipline, the importance of example) were brushed aside by Sapentia with the chilling and irrefutable argument that the empress and her brother depended on the magicians to lead the army into Tartarus and that both had expressed a personal interest in meeting the new recruits from Cambria. Of course, every one of the officers present immediately jumped as high as the legate demanded, including Druffus, and Arthyr was set free even as Sapentia arrived at his cell expecting to have to order his release.

Naturally, Arthyr knew nothing of this meeting between Sapentia and the senior officers of the camp. Yet youthful as he was, he had no difficulty in appreciating the way that matters had changed. As he stepped out from his cell and relished his release from the grip of iron and the fullness of the blue sky above him, he was met by the leaders of the garrison. The Camp Prefect, Druffus and the other tribunes looked shaken and anxious, while Sapentia came forward to beg Arthyr’s forgiveness.

Arthyr barely said a word in response, looking around him with disdain and — he hoped — an expression that indicated to the Romans that they had made a new and powerful enemy. This seemed to have an effect. The less that Arthyr spoke, the more that Sapentia apologised and hurried her sentences to assure him that Rome valued him very much and that this incident had been a complete misunderstanding and that nothing like it would ever happen again.

When Sapentia finally bid Arthyr farewell (after a tediously repetitive effort to appease him), the Camp Prefect and his six tribunes escorted Arthyr back towards his barracks. Every soldier whom they passed stopped and saluted. And every soldier too had eyes that travelled from the officers to Arthyr with an expression of curiosity.

The shortest way to the barracks of Nine-Ten was through the training grounds and there an even stronger reaction to the sight of Arthyr took place. Like a ripple, the clack-clacking sounds of stave upon stave came to a halt as all the new recruits stopped their practice. Then, one after the other without exception,[4] the trainees saluted Arthyr in the Roman way, right hands outstretched towards him.

Half way across the field, Arthyr stopped in order to take this all in. A Roman camp: where imperial authority should have flowed through the senior officers down to the trainees; and where the threat of violence – death even – from the lash should have kept every soldier in a state of fear and obedience. Yet here were a hundred new recruits quite deliberately defying the camp leaders and Druffus in particular.

Among the crowd, Arthyr could pick out many smiling faces, including Gawain, Netanya, Runa, and other members of his contubernium; Laurence was nearby and while the decanus did not join in the mass salute, he gave Arthyr a discreet tilt of his head. Feeling light-hearted and happy for the first time since arriving at Aventium, Arthyr threw out his hand towards his fellow recruits in a return of their gesture.

With a face resembling a purple grape, without looking at Arthyr, Druffus leaned in and said something to the Camp Prefect, who passed an order to the decani and soon the shouts were everywhere: ‘soldiers, resume your practice.’

Unhurriedly, the recruits did then drop their salutes and pick up their staves, but only after Arthyr had resumed his walk back towards the barracks. Aware that he was grinning widely, Arthyr’s marching gait changed to become a saunter. It was not, perhaps, so bad, being in the Roman army.

When Arthyr entered his contubernium barracks room, having promised to join the Camp Prefect for a meal in his wooden dining hall that evening, he found the room to be empty. Outside, there were distant shouts and the tramp of marching troops. Here, for once, there was peace.

Tired from having slept poorly in the prison cell, Arthyr was happy to be alone and rest. As he made his way along the rows of beds, Arthyr felt a warmth towards the missing occupants, his fellow scouts-in-training. Until now, it had never crossed his mind that he might have friends among the Romans.

Lying back on his bed, Arthyr pictured again the new recruits, over a hundred of them, saluting him. Never, in Betws-y-Coed, had he received such acclaim. Nor could he have, even if the entire village turned out to cheer. Having been forced out into the wider world against his wishes, he was, in this moment, finding the experience vastly more rewarding than he had expected. If only the bitter old druid, Ithel, could have seen all those Romans saluting Arthyr. And this was just a training camp. What could Rome itself offer him? Could he obtain appreciative roars from crowds vastly greater than even the assembled troops of Aventicum? With this pleasant prospect in his thoughts to soothe his experience of captivity and his fears of the great city, Arthyr fell asleep.

In his dream, Arthyr was sinking under the lake near the ancient stone seat. This was nothing to be fearful of because he could breathe easily. There was a difficulty, however, in that the deeper he went, the darker the water became. And the cold was intense. Where was the floor of the lake? Would he ever reach it? Perhaps it was time to begin to swim upwards to the surface; yet there was a reason he was here and if he went up now he would miss a message of importance from the spirit of the lake.

Out of the darkness came a dim pale light, like the suggestion of a crescent moon struggling to be seen from behind a layer of cloud. Arthyr was not afraid, not even when pallid, slightly luminescent tentacles reached towards him. Tentacles? No, strands of hair that enfolded him and brought him towards an enormous face. Although her eyes were grey and cold, this was a powerful female spirit with a beauty all her own. Whether it was the subtle movements of her mouth, which was as wide as he was tall, or the delicate swirls of icy water that accompanied each movement of her long eyelashes, or the turquoise lustre of the skin on her wide cheeks, Arthyr gazed upon this womanly vision with the same feeling of pleasure as when looking at the peak of Snowdon against a cloudless blue sky.

‘Who are you?’

‘Be true to the treaties of Síamharaíonnarach. Do not betray us, Arthyr.’

She opened her mouth, allowing Arthyr to swim inside the cave.

[1] In her Σιδηρεία, Timycha, the wise Greek alchemist, proposes that the differences between Faerie and Earth are all derived from the presence of iron in the soil of Earth and the lack of iron in the spirit kingdom. She was a passionate advocate for the practice – now discontinued by nearly all – of nailing a cast-off iron horseshoe to the door of one’s sleeping chamber for protection against evil spirits. It is said that the Greek king Dyonides, cursed with avarice by having broken a geas while on an expedition to Faerie, captured Timycha, believing her to have the secret of turning iron to gold. Rather than reveal any of her knowledge, which was given to her by the grand-daughter of Pythagoras and which she considered sacred, Timycha bit off her own tongue and spat it in the face of Dyonides.

[2] The foremost of the gods worshipped by the people of Wales. Thus, very many Roman authors refer to Dagda as Zeus. But there are such significant differences in the aspects of these gods that I will not follow them in doing so. Readers interested in appreciating these differences will find an extensive discussion in my unjustly neglected work, The Gods of Cambria and Hibernia.

[3] According to my sources, not only was there mention of demotion and fines but even flogging.

[4] That is, of the actual raw recruits. Four of the ten decani also joined in this display of enthusiasm for Arthyr.