MERLIN'S MIRROR 9
lean, dark man with cleanly shaved face, wearing the
breastplate and helmet of the Emperor's men. The Em-
peror was long gone, though it was said that emperors still
ruled overseas. But the Imperial Eagles had been lost
from this land since her father was young,
It seemed that at least one leader still believed in the
Emperor. The dark man had come from him to ask Ny-
ren's men for his war banner, just as the messenger who
had spoiled the feast tonight. That one had had a strange,
tongue-twisting name, after the style of the Romans. Brig-
itta said it aloud now, proud that she knew enough of the
old speech to say it properly.
"Ambrosius Aurelianus." She added the equally strange
title he held, for he did not claim any kingdom, Dux Bri-
tanniae. Lugaid had said it meant Leader of Britain in the
other tongue. It was a lot for a man to claim when half
the land was filled with Vortigen's new kin, the Winged
Hats from overseas.
Her father had been schooled at Aquae Sulis in the old
days when the Emperor Maximus had ruled not only Brit-
ain, but half the lands overseas. He remembered how it
was when there was peace and one only had to fear the
Scotti raids or trouble along the border. So he was one
who had inclined to the Roman, one of those Vortigen
had hunted out of the cities because the High King feared
their influence.
Thus Nyren had returned to the clanship of his fathers,
had drawn around him those of kin blood. Perhaps he had
only been waiting ... Brigitta sipped her ale again. Her
father was one who kept his own counsel, even among the
kin.
She studied him now where he sat in the high seat of
the clan house. Though he wore the dress of the hills it
was in more somber colors than that of the men around
him. His tunic of fine linen had been worked by her own
hands with a pattern copied from an old vase, a wreathing
of leaves in threads of gilt and green. His trousers were of
dark red, his cloak of the same shade. Only the wide
torque of gold about his throat, the two brand-bracelets on
his wrists and the seal ring on his forefinger, equaled in
splendor the ornaments of his fellows,
