Summer wore on and the knights were out on patrol more often. Woads were once more testing their vigilance and Tristan was out often, looking for telltale signs of enemy scouts. Woads never attacked the knights or patrols sent out by Arthur – they were not suicidal – but caravans of grain shipments, merchants or couriers with news to the Wall were fair game. Arthur grudgingly admitted that they generally did not aim to kill but rather to disrupt and harass the Imperial presence on the isle. After all the natives did not want to anger the Roman commander into retaliating against Picts who lived in towns South of the Wall, although Arthur would never be capable of such pettiness. Attacks on grain shipments, however, meant ration disruptions, and even Arthur dealt harshly with such attempts.

The knights skirmished several times with Woad raiding parties who melted away as soon as the Sarmatians appeared on the scene. The forest was their natural habitat, and even though Tristan tracked down more than a few, most melted away into the thick forest understory or marshy patches where a horse cannot follow. He bitterly reflected that they probably even knew patches of the Wall that went unprotected by the thinning ranks of auxiliary patrols. Forest cover was creeping back over to the Wall in places; previously it had been cleared regularly. An additional incentive for the Woads was that a successful raid meant booty in the form of food rations. Gawain commented with disgust that it was like chasing flies off a carcass; as soon as you turned your back they came buzzing back. Gault quipped that it was indeed unsporting of them not to stand still for old Gawain, insinuating that the fair-haired knight was slowing with age.

Small opportunist parties of Saxons continued to sneak up the river ways from the East and raid villages, so the knights were spread thin despite their additional numbers. The Saxons always got away before the knights' arrival.

Early in the season Arthur had been presented with a dilemma. Bors' simmering resentment at having to share Dagonet's time with Percy had come to a boil. Gawain unwisely made a crass joke about the closeness between the two healers and Percy snarled at him. Percy was the lone Christian convert among the knights and he did not like the implication. Senna, ever the diplomat, suggested that Dagonet be out on patrol while Percy ran the clinic with Dani and Two. So it was only Eric and Gault who rode with the British knights.

Tristan walked into the clinic late one morning, pausing for a moment in the courtyard which now featured a growing number of pottery jars of various shapes, sizes and colors, each sprouting a rose bush. Some were sporting roses that ranged from delicate and demure to shocking and bold. Who knew that dour Percy would have a penchant for roses or such artistic sensibilities, thought the bemused scout. He headed for the kitchen where Dani was usually found. He saw her rarely these days, to his mild frustration.

He found her in the kitchen surrounded by skillets, jars, pots and other paraphernalia. Herbs in various stages of drying were suspended from a rack over the oven. She had a patient and steady hand with various decoctions and tinctures – 'guaranteed to cure or kill' - that needed to be prepared for the healers. She was teaching Two but the apprentice lacked the requisite attributes of patience and steadiness, by virtue of not having lived long enough.

Two smiled at him and said hello. She had transferred some of her hero worship to him as well and he softened his forbidding look when in her company. She scooted away to give them some privacy. Dani wore a faded old gown and a mulish look.

Spring and summer was harvest season for many herbs and time to make remedial preparations for storage, but she had started to feel rebellious at the lack of exercise and, she had to admit, action. She kept up the morning weapons drill and spent some time riding every afternoon. Percy felt much the same and grumbled more often. True to Arthur's generous nature, the fort clinic was open to all comers and saw a steady stream of people, even from out of town, with various ailments and accidents. According to the dour surgeon, some of the latter was caused by idiocy rather than accident. Their servant Alan was pressed into service from time to time – 'to hold down the victims,' Dani had confided in Tristan.

'I am growing tired of being indoors,' She now sighed, rubbing her back, as Tristan folded his arms and took a seat.

'Then perhaps I have good news,' said the scout but teasingly shook his head at her questioning stare. He took an apple out of his pocket.

'You are not yet done,' he added, pointing to the worktable. She sighed again and went back to the slow and laborious job of chopping, measuring, mixing, boiling, pouring, labeling and then cleaning up. By the time she was done, it was time for lunch and her stomach was growling inelegantly. She turned up her nose at the herb bread in the oven – she was tired of herbs – and the scout laughingly offered to walk her to town for a meal. Two came along, intending to visit her mother and siblings. Vanora was pregnant again, and due in late fall.

Over a simple meal of bread and vegetable soup he told her that Arthur had been thinking aloud of sending a party of knights to the East on an extended trip, perhaps all the way to Segedunum. There were settlements to the South of river Tyne that had been hit hard by Saxon raiders and many had wounded who could not travel far. The trip would serve the dual purposes of stemming further attacks and helping the locals. Arthur was also not unaware that Percy and Dani had been feeling confined. The woman brightened.

'Something else troubles you,' said the scout as she mopped up the last of her soup. 'Besides not getting to kill anyone.' This earned him a dirty look.

'Reading my mind, are you?' she said.

'You are severe with your hair when you are vexed,' he pointed.

'Oh,' she fingered the braid and indeed her hair was scraped back in a too tight braid.

'I helped with an old woman at the clinic – a wandering storyteller with a thorn in her foot – and it was something she said.' Dani shrugged restlessly, fiddling with a thread on her sleeve. 'She called me a "daughter of Persia" and said I was a long way from home.'

'That hardly makes her a seer,' replied the scout reasonably. 'Many know you are from Persia, and it is far.' She sat silent for a while, chewing her lips, and Tristan shook off a flash of irrational fear.

'She said I would have to choose between following my heart and my head,' she finally said and added reluctantly, 'again.'

'What is it you take it to mean?' asked Tristan. The word 'again' bothered him. She had never disclosed why she had been cast out of her tribe. There was so much about the woman he did not know.

'In less than six months, you return to Sarmatia and I follow Arthur to Rome,' she said directly, looking at him. This was one topic they had never discussed, their times together had been too little and too precious to interrupt with harshness of reality. In truth her status was irregular and he did not know how exactly she fit with Senna's group. In recent months he had begun thinking of the return to Sarmatia, but the fragmented images of homeland were no longer bleak. He imagined Dani with him, somehow. He planned to ask her to return with him, as his wife. He had begun to see, with painful clarity, olive skinned boys and mischievous girls so different from their fair playmates, playing in long prairie grass. The concept seemed no longer so alien.

'Come with me,' he blurted out, not at all the way he imagined he would ask.

'I cannot,' she held up a hand to forestall any arguments. 'I made a contract with the late commander Marcus to serve with Senna and the others to the end of their service. I, too, am bound to Rome's service.' She smiled sadly at his look of comprehension.

'Besides,' she continued, 'I can never abandon them, anymore than you could your friends, and,' this time she looked at him and hesitated. 'The whole region around the Black Sea is in turmoil. Your home is not ….. as it was. We were at the limes last year, remember?'

He set his jaw and looked woodenly at the table, letting the long hair hide his face. Here was another topic that was off the discussion table. Senna and his group had been stationed at the Danuvius frontier before and had heard tales of chaos further North, including the Sarmatian lands, but were too heartsick to tell much to the British knights. Their homeland was now the staging grounds for Hun and Visigoth incursions into Roman held territories, and there was no word of how native tribes fared.

'But you will be free,' she broke in, looking hopeful. 'Come to Rome, with us,' Tristan recoiled as though struck.

'Dani! Just who I was looking for,' said Eric as he plopped down on the bench next to her. Then he noticed the strained silence between the two and started easing back out.

Author's Notes:

River Tyne, flowing from West to East, formed the boundary of Roman province of Britania. Hadrian's Wall was built just to the North of Tyne. A number of settlements and fort towns grew on its banks.

Segedunum was a fort at the Eastern tip of Hadrian's Wall where the Tyne empties into the North Sea. A tributary of Tyne flows is only a couple of hundred yards from the Cilurnum fort. I imagine small Saxon parties coming inland through less guarded riverways such as Tees to farther South and attacking settlements between Tees and Tyne

Limes refers to earthwork and roads built to connect forts and watch towers. Later the term limes came to indicate the frontier or front lines.

Roman surgeons had few anesthetics and often operated on patients who were conscious and held down by helpers.