"I'd rather have some roast pork and a bed, myself," Swindapa said, her urchin grin bright. "And a bath, nice and hot."

Marian suppressed an involuntary groan at the thought of sulking into a steaming tub. Irondale's lights showed bright through the wavery murk ahead as they came down onto the road along the narrow riverside flat. By the roadside was a man-tall granite boundary-marker. On one side were Fiernan geometries; the other bore the Republic's eagle, with an olive branch in one claw and a bundle of arrows in the other.

"It's grown," Swindapa went on thoughtfully, looking at the town's lights. They'd last visited in 04, when the new settlement was nothing but mud, stumps, tents, and construction-yard litter. "Three thousand four hundred residents, according to the latest report."

Her slight singsong accent grew a little stronger, as it did when she used the mnemonic training she'd received as an apprentice to the Kurlelo Grandmothers at the Great Wisdom.

"When I saw the numbers I thought that was many," she continued after a moment. "But I hadn't realized that three thousand four hundred was so many."

Which was natural enough; the whole of Alba hadn't had a single town, before the Event. As near as they could tell, there were fewer than half a million people in the whole of the British Isles. Possibly many fewer. By the standards of this era that was a dense population; the best estimate the Republic's explorers and savants had been able to come up with counted around fifty million for the entire planet.

"Halt! Who goes?"

She nodded approval as the sentries stepped out from neatly camouflaged blinds on either side of the road and raised their rifles. One had a bull's-eye lantern as well, and snapped it open to shine the beam on their faces. Marian raised her right hand to halt the little column.

"Commodore Marian Alston-Kurlelo and Lieutenant Commander Swindapa Kurlelo-Alston and party," she said.