CHAPTER ELEVEN
C
aradoc’s
business did not keep him long in Sorbiodun. In the rambling thatched house of the local chieftain, Gwyddion, the horsemen refreshed themselves before the King went out to speak to the people in the open market-place. Here, for the first time since he had begun his journey to the west, he was among his own folk—true Belgians, part-Celt, part-German; the tall, fair people of Europe. There was not a black or a red head to be seen in the market-place as he spoke. And as his voice gained in strength and passion, these yellow heads nodded in approval of his words and the woad-streaked hands hammered on their bronze shields in applause.
Caradoc told his story simply: the Belgae were great, he said; their future was a noble one. That the mongrels of Rome had torn the
