Dover Axis the dog, leg cocked, was marking a stack of red clay roof tiles stamped with the ‘CLBR” of the Classis Britannica, the quartermaster’s mark for all British Fleet possessions, when Carausius came out of the barracks at Dover. “Good thing I’m the emperor, boy,” he grumbled. “That’s probably dumb insolence.” The emperor was in a good mood. Guinevia was well pregnant and had assured him that the child would be a boy. She had cast rune stones and consulted an oracle, and the omens were excellent. “Caros,” she had told him, “this child will be an emperor, too. He will make this nation even greater.” A man needed to hear that; a son, and one with a destiny. Life was good. The pity was he was so busy he hardly had time to take it all in. Just look at all this muddle. Building materials were everywhere, he thought, great piles of squared stone, heavy timbers, kiln-fired bricks and corrugated roof tiles. Well, he’d ordered huge construction works done all along the coast, and the troops were getting on with it. It wasn’t just roads and bridges, either.
