e
tall Winged Hats.

'In this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which is very bad for
doubting troops, the War came upon us. At first the Winged Hats swept
in from the sea as they had done before, and there we met them as
before--with the catapults; and they sickened of it. Yet for a long
time they would not trust their duck-legs on land, and I think, when it
came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little Picts were
afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads across the heather. I had
this from a Pict prisoner. They were as much our spies as our enemies,
for the Winged Hats oppressed them, and took their winter stores. Ah,
foolish Little People!

'Then the Winged Hats began to roll us up from each end of the Wall. I
sent runners Southward to see what the news might be in Britain, but
the wolves were very bold that winter, among the deserted stations
where the troops had once been, and none came back. We had trouble,
too, with the forage for the ponies along the Wall. I kept ten, and so
did Pertinax. We lived and slept in the saddle, riding east or west,
and we ate our worn-out ponies. The people of the town also made us
some trouble till I gathered them all in one quarter behind Hunno. We
broke down the Wall on either side of it to make as it were a citadel.
Our men fought better in close order.

'By the end of the second month we were deep in the War as a man is
deep in a snowdrift, or in a dream. I think we fought in our sleep.
At least I know I have gone on the Wall and come off again, remembering
nothing between, though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my
sword, I could see, had been used.

'The Winged Hats fought like wolves--all in a pack. Where they had
suffered most, there they charged in most hotly. This was hard for the
defenders, but it held them from sweeping on into Britain.

'In those days Pertinax and I wrote on the plaster of the bricked
archway into Valentia the names of the towers, and the days on which
they fell one by one. We wished for some record.

'And the fighting? The fight was always hottest to left and right of
the great statue of Roma Dea, near to Rutilianus's house. By the Light
of the Sun, that old fat man, whom we had not considered at all, grew
young again among the trumpets! I remember he said his sword was an
oracle! "Let us consult the Oracle," he would say, and put the handle
against his ear, and shake his head wisely. "And this day i