‘What I can’t understand,’ said Dan, ’is how Maximus knew all about the Picts when he was over in Gaul.’

’He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know everything, everywhere,’ said Parnesius.  ’We had this much from Maximus’s mouth after the Games.’

‘Games?  What Games?’ said Dan.

Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground.  ‘Gladiators! That sort of game,’ he said.  ‘There were two days’ Games in his honour when he landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end of the Wall.  Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days’ Games; but I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the sand, but by Maximus.  In the old days the Legions kept silence before their Emperor.  So did not we!  You could hear the solid roar run West along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through the crowds.  The garrison beat round him—­clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads.  That chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes.’  Parnesius shivered.

‘Were they angry with him?’ said Dan.

’No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among them.  If he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would have been another Emperor made on the Wall that hour.  Was it not so, Faun?’

‘So it was.  So it always will be,’ said Puck.

’Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the Temple of Victory, where he lodged with Rutilianus, the General of the Wall.  I had hardly seen the General before, but he always gave me leave when I wished to take Heather.  He was a great glutton, and kept five Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles.  We could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty.  He lay snorting on a couch.  Maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts.  Then the doors were shut.

’"These are your men,” said Maximus to the General, who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and stared at us like a fish.

’"I shall know them again, Caesar,” said Rutilianus.

“Very good,” said Maximus.  “Now hear!  You are not to move man or shield on the Wall except as these boys shall tell you.  You will do nothing, except eat, without their permission.  They are the head and arms.  You are the belly!”

’"As Caesar pleases,” the old man grunted.  “If my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my Ancestors’ Oracle my master.  Rome has been!  Rome has been!” Then he turned on his side to sleep.

’"He has it,” said Maximus.  “We will get to what I need.”

’He unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the Wall—­down to the sick that very day in Hunno Hospital.  Oh, but I groaned when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best—­of our least worthless men!  He took two towers of our Scythians, two of our North British auxiliaries, two Numidian cohorts, the Dacians all, and half the Belgians.  It was like an eagle pecking a carcass.