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whipped to the salute, and turned away in desperate haste, with the order to his men to mount.
    It was not until the little escort had swung on to their horses and were clattering away with the wind and sleet behind them down the Limanis road, that the Emperor turned back to the two young men, who stood by, holding their mounts. ‘I fear that I forgot to ask you whether you would accompany me,’ he said.
    Flavius’s lip twitched. ‘Does one refuse to ride with an Emperor?’
    ‘If one is wise, one does not.’ Carausius’s blunt seaman’s face answered the laughter for an instant, harshly. ‘Also, observe; the wind is rising, Rutupiae is all of fifteen miles away, and my house, for which I was bound when Nestor cast his shoe, rather less than five, and once there I can offer you an open fire, and better wine than any they keep in Rutupiae.’
    And so some two hours later, fresh from a hot bath, Justin and Flavius were following a slave across the courtyard of a great house on the cliff edge high above the sea, to the chamber in the North Wing where the Emperor waited for them.
    The great square chamber was bright with lamps in tall bronze stands, and a fire of logs burned British fashion on a raised hearth, so that all the room was full of the fragrance of burning wood. Carausius, who had been standing by the fire, turned as they entered, saying, ‘Ah, you have washed the sleet out of your ears. Come you now, and eat.’
    And eat they did, at a small table drawn close before the hearth; a good meal, though an austere one for an Emperor, of hard-boiled duck eggs and sweet downland mutton broiled in milk, and wine that was better, as Carausius had promised, than anything they had at Rutupiae; thin yellow wine that tasted of sunshine and the south, in flasks of wonderful coloured glass, iridescent as the feathers of a pigeon’s neck, and wound about with gold and inset jewels.
    They were served by soft-footed table slaves of the usual kind, but behind Carausius’s chair, to serve him personally, stood a creature whom they had glimpsed once or twice before, distantly, at his lord’s heel, but never seen at close quarters.
    He was a very small man, lightly built as a mountain cat, his legs sheathed in close-fitting dark hose, his body in a woollen tunic of many coloured chequer that clung to him like a second skin. Straight black hair hung in heavy locks about his cheeks and neck, and his enormous eyes were made to seem still larger and more brilliant in his narrow, beardless face by the fine blue lines of tattooing that rimmed them round. About his waist was a broad strap of crimson leather set with bright bronze studs like a hound’s collar, and into this was thrust a musical instrument of some kind, a curved rod of bronze from which hung nine silver apples that gave out a thin and very sweet chiming as he moved. But the strangest thing about him only appeared when he turned away to take a dish from another slave, and Justin saw that hanging from his belt behind, he wore a hound’s tail.
    The odd creature served his master with a kind of proud and prancing willingness, a slightly fantastic flourish that was very different from the well-trained impersonal bearing of the other slaves. And when the third course of dried fruits and little hot cakes had been set on the table, and Carausius dismissed the serving slaves, the creature did not go with them, but laid himself down, hound-wise, before the fire. ‘When the Lord of the House is away, Cullen sleeps in the warm cook-place. When the Lord of the House comes home, Cullen sleeps beside his lord’s fire,’ he said composedly, stretching himself out on one elbow.
    The Emperor glanced down at him. ‘Good Hound, Cullen,’ he said, and taking a cluster of raisins from the red samian dish, tossed it down to him.
    Cullen caught it with a swift and oddly beautiful gesture of one hand, his strange face splitting into a grin which reached from ear to ear. ‘So! I am my