Read The Silver Branch [book II] for Free Online Page B

last to follow, was aware of a grey, storm-lashed window and a sense of the wild night leaping in on them with a shout, and stood an instant holding the rich folds back, uncertain whether they might need the light of the room behind them for whatever it was that they were going to see. But Carausius said, ‘Let the curtains fall. Can’t see with the lamplight dancing in the panes.’ And he let the dark hangings swing across behind him.
    As he did so, and the lamplight was cut off, the world outside sprang out of the darkness into a hurrying, moonshot clarity. They were standing in the bay of a great window such as Justin had never seen before, that swole out with the curve of a drawn bow; a window that was a veritable watch-tower, a falcon’s eyrie, clinging as it seemed to the very edge of the cliff.
    A ragged sky of grey and silver went racing by, the moon swinging in and out of the storm-scuds, so that one moment the whole sweep of the coast was flooded with swift silver radiance, and the next, all would be blotted out by a curtain of driving sleet. Far below them the white-capped waves charged by, rank on rank, like wild white cavalry. And far away to the eastward, as Justin looked along the coast, a red petal of fire hung on the dark headland.
    ‘This is my look-out,’ Carausius said. ‘A good place to watch my shipping come and go, with Dubris light and Limanis and Rutupiae lights to guide them safely in their coming and their going.’ He seemed to sense the direction of Justin’s gaze. ‘That is the pharos at Dubris on the headland. Limanis light one can see from the hill behind the house. Now look out to sea—yonder on the edge of the world south-eastward.’
    Justin looked, and as a sleet-squall passed away from the sea, leaving the distance clear, saw, very far off, another spark of light on the skyline.
    ‘That is Gesoriacum,’ said Carausius.
    They were silent a moment, remembering that last winter Gesoriacum had been within the territory of the man beside them. And in that silence, above the mingled voices of wind and sea, the ripple of Cullen’s Silver Branch sounded in the room behind them, faint and sweet and somehow mocking.
    Flavius said quickly, as though in answer to that silver mocking of bells, ‘Maybe we are the better off without Gesoriacum. An outlying post is always something of a liability.’
    Carausius gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘It is a bold man who seeks to console his Emperor for past defeat!’
    ‘I did not mean it as consolation,’ Flavius said levelly. ‘I spoke what I believe to be true.’
    ‘So? And you believe rightly.’ Justin could hear that straight, wide-lipped smile of Carausius’ in his voice. ‘Yet it is truth that wears one face for him who seeks to make a single province strong, and quite another for him who would strengthen and enlarge his own hold on the Purple.’
    He fell silent, his face turned towards that spark of light, dimming already as another sleet-squall came trailing across the sea. And when he spoke again, it was broodingly, more than half to himself. ‘Nay, but whichever it be, either or—both, the true secret is in sea-power, which is a thing that Rome has never understood … In greater fleets, manned by better seamen. Legions we must have, but above all, sea-power, here with the sea all about us.’
    ‘Some sea-power we have already, as Maximian found to his cost,’ Flavius said, leaning a shoulder against the window frame and looking down. ‘Aye, and the black-sailed fleets of the Sea Wolves also.’
    ‘Yet the Wolves gather,’ Carausius said. ‘Young Constantius would be hard put to it to take his troops from the German Frontier this spring to drive me from Gesoriacum … Always, everywhere, the Wolves gather on the frontiers, waiting. It needs only that a man should lower his eye for a moment, and they will be in to strip the bones. Rome is failing, my children.’
    Justin looked at him quickly, but Flavius never moved; it