Kleon squatted cross-wise and regarded the proceeding with passionless gaze.

‘Who is Kokolkh?’ he asked.

‘I come from the northern seacoast of Iberia,’ the short man said, ‘but I am no Iberian. My name is Titul and my people are the last of a race that lived on the world’s edge, far in the Western Sea. This people was a great people: but they neglected to sacrifice to the God Kokolkh. So he whelmed their country in mud and sand; and the seas rose against it and devoured it.’ He paused ceremonially, being mad, and chanting an oft-told tale. ‘But my fathers fled in boats and them Kokolkh allowed to escape. They saw him, the God visible, in the lightning fires that smote the islands. He was bearded with serpents and on his head were the feather-plumes of the sun.’

Kleon nodded, as the slurred chant ended. ‘It was the island of Atlantis, for so Plato tells. Of him you’ve never heard. And why worship this ill God?’

‘He is Pain and Life,’ said Titul, and ate the heart ceremonially, watched by Brennus the agnostic and Kleon the atheist. The sun wheeled westward. Brennus clasped his hands round his knees, and sang a song in the broken Latin of the vulgares slaves:

‘These are the things I desire:

The city of stakes

And the darkened rooms

Of my home,

And the curling smoke,

And the moon;

Wild cattle low in the woods:

Shall I not return?’

‘He’s a poet,’ said Titul; and fell to his drone. ‘Mighty were the poets of old in the vanished Western Isle.’

Brennus yawned. ‘They were fools. For they were drowned. Let’s sleep.’ He yawned again, and shaded his eyes and looked south. ‘There’s a big farm across that stream.’

Kleon nodded. ‘We’ll try to get near at dusk, and free the slaves. If we form a large enough company, we can march openly to join the Games men.’

Titul licked his thick lips and also peered through the haze.

‘There may be women there – women of the Masters.’

Stretched full-length on the sun-warmed grass, Brennus purred drowsily. ‘No women are like the Gaul women. Oh, Gods, Gods, none at all! And I haven’t had one since they brought me south, four years ago this Spring. Deep-breasted and with wide full hips; and we used to raid them. Gods! for a strong, warm woman to weep under your hands!’

‘In the Western Isle,’ said Titul, ‘there were mighty women.’

[iii]

A day later Kleon halted his band by a river ford. With him were forty men and three women. More than half of the men were Gauls, tall, thin, and black-burned by the sun. Shepherds, they were matted still with the filth of their night-time kennels where every sunset they were led and chained when the horns of the horreum sounded. They had ceased to weep and sing and stare, and challenge one another to racings and wrestlings. Now, wearied, Brennus elected their leader, they lay down at halts and cast lots for the use of the three women captives.

Since daybreak they had marched through a country deserted. Like droppings of blood long shed, the grapes hung heavy in abandoned vineyards. Flocks strayed without shepherds and the horrea were found fast-locked and barred.