He and the little red cylinder from Pompey would start out at once, for it would take several days to reach Caesar. The horses were brought; the Trinobantes and a Roman prefect of cavalry mounted and rode off through the north gate, where five hundred Aeduan horse troopers swung to enclose them in the midst of a column five horses wide and a hundred long. The prefect kicked his mount to the column's front, leaving the King and his noblemen free to talk among themselves. "You can't be sure they don't speak something close enough to our tongue to understand," said Mandubracius, sniffing the hot damp air with relish. It smelled of home. "Caesar and Trogus do, but surely not the others," said his cousin Trinobellunus. "You can't be sure," the King repeated. "They've been in Gaul now for almost five years, and for most of that among the Belgae. They have women." "Whores! Camp followers!" "Women are women. They talk endlessly, and the words sink in." The great forest of oak and beech which lay to the north of the Cantii marshes closed in until the rutted track over which the cavalry column rode grew dim in the distance; the Aedui troopers tensed, cocked their lances, patted their sabers, swung their small circular shields around. But then came a great clearing stubbled with the relics of wheat, the charred black bones of two or three houses standing stark against that tawny background. "Did the Romans get the grain?" Mandubracius asked. "In the lands of the Cantii, all of it." "And Cassivellaunus?" "He burned what he couldn't gather in. The Romans have been hungry north of the Tamesa." "How have we fared?" "We have enough. What the Romans took, they've paid for." "Then we'd better see it's what Cassivellaunus has in store that they eat next." Trinobellunus turned his head; in the long gold light of the clearing, the whorls and spirals of blue paint on his face and bare torso glowed eerily.