This semi-stupor gradually wore off, my half-consciousness between long sleeps growing less and less blurred, my faculties more alive, my personality emerging.
When I came entirely to myself I found Tanno seated by my bed.
"You're all right now, Caius," he said, "I have kept away till Galen said you were well enough for me to talk to you."
"Galen?" I repeated, "have I been as ill as all that?"
"Not ill," Tanno disclaimed, "merely bruised. You are certainly a portent in a fight. I never saw you fight before, never saw you practice at really serious fencing, never heard anybody speak of you as an expert, or as a fighter. But I take oath I never saw a man handle a stave as you did. You were quicker than lightning, you seemed in ten places at once, you were as reckless as a Fury and as effectual as a thunderbolt. You laid men out by twos and threes. But jammed as you were in a press of enemies you were hit often and hard, so often and so hard that, after you were downed by a blow on the head, you never came to until I had you where you are."
"Yes I did," I protested, "I came to on the hilltop this side of
Antemnae."
"Not enough to tell any of us about it," he soothed me. "Anyhow, you are mending now and will soon be yourself."
I was indifferent. My mind was not yet half awake.
"Did I fight as well as you say?" I asked, "or are you flattering me?"
"No flattery, my boy," he said. "You are a portent."