In places the heather had encroached on the old paved road, and the ponies’ hooves fell suddenly soft, their legs brushing through it as through shallow water. High overhead a kestrel hung bivvering against the sky, then dropped on its unseen prey. Otherwise nothing moved but the little knot of horsemen in all the emptiness. Alexios, already wearing the uniform of the Frontier Scouts, leather tunic over crossed-gartered breeks like any barbarian, a cloak of thick rough wool that was the dark and sullen green of mountain juniper, rode staring straight ahead of him between his pony’s ears. Behind him – more than two months behind him now – lay the Inquiry. Stern faces round the table that had been set up in the cross-hall of the Principia at Regina. Someone drumming on the table with impatient fingers. Voices that went on and on: ‘Grave error of judgement . . .’ ‘Lack of experience rather than cowardice or deliberate treachery . . .’ The President of the Court giving the final ruling, ‘That you receive a severe reprimand to be placed on the records, and that you be relieved of your post forthwith.’ And afterwards, the voice of one young officer speaking to another in the colonnade: ‘Of course if it were you or me it would be the end of our careers altogether; but then neither of us has the Dux Britanniarum for an uncle.’ Behind him was the summons to Britain.
