For King and Country

Chapter Seventeen

Trevor Stirling was getting used to forced marches, short sleep, and foul weather.

The SAS should train half so hard, he grumbled, although he did so with a fair dose of wry humor.

Aye, Ancelotis sighed, war is no business for the faint of heart, nor those weak of constitution.

It was an unexpected compliment and one Stirling valued, considering the source—Ancelotis' unhappily broad experience of warfare at a level and brutality which still had the power to raise the fine hairs on the nape of his borrowed neck. He and his host had ridden far ahead of Artorius and the bulk of the army rushing south as fast as their infantry could travel. Ancelotis and Stirling were accompanied by more than a hundred cataphracti from Ancelotis' own Gododdin, men headed south toward Caer-Badonicus in answer to the summons he'd sent out several days previously.

The Sarmatian bows most of them carried were heavy-pull compound bows made of horn in the Scythian style, perfect, deadly weapons for a force of heavy cavalry. The Romans had learned at great cost—an entire legion, slaughtered to the last man—what such bows could accomplish against infantry. Those bows gave Stirling ideas. Really nasty ideas. And he ought to arrive at Caer-Badonicus in plenty of time to implement them.

"Ride ahead with word that we are on the march," Artorius had told him shortly after finding Lailoken's abandoned packhorse. "We'll need some kind of signal to let you know when we've come close enough to Caer-Badonicus to break the Saxons' siege with our infantry as well as the rest of our cavalry."

Stirling considered the possibilities for a moment. He knew multiple ways to send coded signals, but which of them were most easily adapted to current conditions? "Have you any polished mirrors?" he asked thoughtfully.

Artorius' brows flicked upward in surprise. "Mirrors? I suppose I could lay hands on a polished bronze mirror, readily enough. Why?"

"Light flashing from a mirror travels a long way. You could devise a simple code and use sunlight on the mirror to send us the message you're close by."

Artorius tugged at his lower lip for a moment. "I seem to recall reading, many years ago, as a boy under Myrddin's tutelage, that one of the Roman emperors used a mirror to send long coded messages from the mainland to one of the islands, Sicily or Sardinia, I can't recall which, now. And the Visigoths who've taken over Rome use signal fires, it's said, occluded by some barrier like a blanket, to flash out numerical patterns. They keep codebooks to translate the number flashes into words."

"Perfect," Stirling nodded. "When you reach a point within a few miles of Caer-Badonicus, use the mirror flashes if it's by day or an occluded fire if by night." He couldn't help chuckling, thinking about Rudyard Kipling again, the poem about the young British officer stationed in India, using the heliograph to flash messages to his "darling poppsy-wop," warning his bride against General Banks, that "most immoral man"—a warning inadvertently seen and decoded by none other than the general himself.

"We'll use a simple numerical replacement system," Artorius decided with a grin. One flash is 'A,' two are 'B' and so on, through the Latin alphabet. Look for the signals from the highest of the Mendip Hills. Flashes from there will be seen easily from the summit of Caer-Badonicus. And you can signal back where the Saxons' greatest troop concentration is camped."

Stirling chuckled. "With pleasure."

"Watch the northern horizon for the signal then, and when it comes, you'll know relief is only a few miles away. Cadorius and Melwas must fight a holding action if the Saxons reach Caer-Badonicus ahead of our main force. Which I suspect they will. King Aelle of Sussex would be a fool to delay, once Cutha's brought news of our disarray in the north. God help us, two kings dead and a queen..." Artorius hesitated, spat to one side, then muttered, "Enough said about Morgana. God help us, even Ganhumara worries me less."

Stirling's host would have liked to say something comforting, but Ganhumara was trouble everywhere she turned her attention. Ancelotis of Gododdin was too honest a man to mouth platitudes nobody believed, so he and Stirling took their leave silently, to begin yet another body-numbing forced march. Stirling had no idea where Caer-Badonicus was—its location remained one of the twenty-first century's greatest Arthurian mysteries—nor how many horses he would have to change out along the way. Not too many, he hoped, for the armies moving ahead of them surely would have rounded up every stray cart horse and fat pony to be found.

I hope you have some idea where we're going, Stirling groused, trying in vain to ease himself in the saddle, stiff and aching from sitting too long in one position. "South" covers a lot of territory.

Stirling's attitude only amused Ancelotis, who was a well-educated man, by sixth-century standards. Don't fret, Ancelotis advised, we Britons know how to locate a place accurately enough, even if you don't. It's the roads, lad, the Roman roads, that tell us how far south or west or northeast to ride after a marked junction. Every man of us—and most of the women, for that matter—knows the maps of these wondrous roads, even if he learns nothing else from his priests or Druids. It's the roads that tie us together, bind us into one people. Without them, we couldn't hope to mass this kind of force on such short notice.

Stirling's brows twitched upward. He'd never thought of using roads in symbolic terms before, as a metaphor of power and unification. He was simply too accustomed to their presence as a network of tools to get a person where he wanted to go in the shortest amount of time possible, given the physical terrain and its obstacles. He felt a little foolish, particularly since a good officer took very careful account of such things as logistics, how to move men and war materiel from one point to another in the most efficient manner possible.

Ancelotis nodded. You've the right of that. It pays a man well to remember that the Romans, a people of very small physical stature, for the most part, still conquered a very large chunk of the known world and held it for centuries upon centuries, with fast and good roads to move their legions and supply trains. 'Tis the roads, right enough, that are the saving of Britain, as much as Artorius' skills at organizing a battle.

The idea that stole into Stirling's mind, unbidden and startling, was the abrupt connection he made between the "people of the dragon," as Myrddin had dubbed the Britons, and the long network of dragonlike scutes that comprised the top layer of Roman paving stones. Those "dragon's scales" stretched from the Antonine Wall south to Cerniw, from the western shores to the eastern lands now held by the Saxons of Sussex and Wessex. Having seen the might of Roman engineering in other cities and having studied military accounts like Caesar's Gallic War, Stirling appreciated with sudden, startling clarity precisely what such roads could mean to a people like the Britons, widely scattered and in desperate need of unity.

And Emrys Myrddin had seen it while still a child, warning Vortigern of the danger he was unleashing against the People of the Red Dragon. A proud people connected politically and culturally via roads, long stone dragons that wound through mountains, sailed across open plains, slipped silently through deep and treacherous forests, spanned gorges and lonely, echoing valleys.

The power of the British tutelary dragon did, indeed, lie in these roads, good military highways that a cavalcade could traverse at a fast and steady pace. Roads of war. Red roads. Red dragons. Emrys Myrddin had named the dragon the tutelary beast of Britain's rightful kings—or, more accurately—her war leaders: Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last Roman among them, Uthyr Pendragon the Sarmatian, and his son Artorius.

In a very real sense, the men and women who had built the Roman roads under the direction of Roman engineers and Roman officers had not only built the blood-red dragon, they had been born from it. Born as one unified people who understood themselves to be Britons, a far-flung but important portion of the Roman empire, the last civilized bastion in the West. It was a psychological shift that lifted them out of tribalism and re-created them as one nation, regardless of tribe of birth. The dragon of Britain—the blazing emblem of Artorius—the half-Sarmatian Dux Bellorum, was nothing less than the mighty Roman roads of war.

Emrys Myrddin's genius in tying the symbolism—and the Britons—together left Stirling in awe. Ancelotis, who had never given the matter much thought, either, marveled. You're sure it's not a Druid you are, from the Otherworld? 'Tis certain you think like one, Stirling of Caer-Iudeu.

Huh. I'm no more a Druid than this horse we're riding. But I do know a thing or two about psychology and symbolism. Let's just agree to name Emrys Myrddin the genius he is, eh?

Ancelotis agreed as they raced along the back of Emrys Myrddin's dragon, accompanied by the cataphracti who had joined Ancelotis, traveling in a thunder of hooves against the ancient Roman paving stones. As they rode, Stirling tried to reconcile the sixth century's appalling lack of exactitude with his twenty-first-century desire for laser pin-point accuracies and satellite image-mapping systems, literally accurate down to the fraction of a millimeter. He mourned the loss of technology so precise that it was used, among other things, to map the rate of continental drift across the tectonic plates. With one decent satellite photo, Stirling could have pinpointed the exact location of the Saxon army boiling up from Sussex and Wessex toward the southwest of England, using that knowledge to gauge their speed, their likeliest route, and their numerical strength. He would have been content with something as relatively primitive as aerial reconnaissance from a hot-air balloon.

You're sure you can't pinpoint Caer-Badonicus more precisely? he fretted silently.

Ancelotis tried to come up with landmarks his twenty-first-century guest might recognize. I've never been there, understand, but I'm told it's near the border between Glastenning and Caer-Durnac, farther south than Roman Bath. It's west of Stonehenge, Ancelotis added, but a good way east from the Cheddar Caves. As Stirling listened, he pinned imaginary flags into his mental map of the south of England, triangulating from those three points and coming up with Salisbury Plain. Where in that broad sweep of flat land would one put a critically strategic hill fort? Then he saw it, a probable location that elicited a startled grunt. Cadbury Hill?

As he thought about it, Stirling's smile faded, replaced with a thoughtful frown. Such a location for Caer-Badonicus made sense. An army trying to take—or hold—the southwestern portion of England would be forced to guard against any detachment of troops camped on that hilltop. Failure to do so would result in lightning attacks from the ancient hill fort's summit, requiring a full-scale siege to dislodge, and a siege of that magnitude would tie up resources the kings of Sussex and Wessex could ill afford for any length of time beyond a few days.

What he could have done with gunpowder and a few small mortars on that hilltop didn't bear thinking about, since there was no time to locate the ingredients and experiment with the formula, never mind cast the mortars—or even a few hand cannons—from iron or bronze. Of course, if they survived the battle at Badon Hill, there would be ample time to experiment, provided he could obtain the ingredients. Charcoal was easy and saltpeter could be found at the bottom of manure and compost piles, crystallizing out of the muck, but what about sulphur? Wasn't that found in association with hot springs and volcanic vents? Were there any sulphur deposits in Britain? The only hot springs in Britain were at Bath—and Stirling had never heard mention of sulphur deposits associated with the springs. What he needed was a nice, cooperative volcano. And that was one thing Britain simply didn't have.

Thoughts of volcanoes triggered another whisper at the back of his memory, something important he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something important to British history, linked oddly with Arthurian lore, and he couldn't remember now what it was. Stirling frowned, while Ancelotis puzzled over the tantalizing glimpses into the future resident in Stirling's memories. Ancelotis knew virtually nothing about volcanoes, outside of their connection with ancient Greek and Roman myth, things like Vulcan at his forge deep in the heart of Mt. Etna or Pliny the Younger's eyewitness account of Vesuvius, the day it erupted to bury Pompeii and Herculaneum. Why was he remembering a connection between volcanos and Arthurian legend?

Well, if Stirling couldn't figure that out, what did he know about volcanoes in general? They tended to cluster along the edges of tectonic plates grinding past or diving under one another—he knew that much at least—and they appeared along the midoceanic ridges, as well, which were tectonic plates pulling apart, stirring up a froth of magma from the mantle, which spewed up periodically in spectacular volcanic eruptions. The mid-Atlantic ridge had produced Iceland and the mid-Pacific ridge had produced a whole necklace of volcanic islands, like Hawaii in the northern hemisphere and Easter Island in the southern hemisphere.

The rim of the Pacific Ocean had been dubbed the Ring of Fire, with volcanoes from the western shores of South America and the grand volcanoes of Chile and Peru, north to the Pacific Northwest of North America and volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens, across to Japan with its highly active volcanoes and earthquakes, south past China and down into Indonesia, where the world-famous nineteenth-century blast from Krakatoa had blown an entire island into oblivion.

That particular eruption had been heard halfway across the Pacific by the admiral of the British fleet stationed in India, who'd thought the fleet was under attack by naval guns. The explosion which had destroyed most of the island had also blasted so much rock and dust into the atmosphere, there had been a literal "volcanic winter" that year—a whole year with no summer, with dark skies and snow on the ground even in temperate and warm southern zones, and crop failures turning productive agricultural belts into wastelands—

Stirling gasped.

The wasteland!

One of the most powerful, recurring images of Arthurian lore. A land so blighted, nothing could grow, a land so sick, crops died, cattle died, and people starved to death as the land failed to produce life—a condition blamed, mythically, on the impotence and injury of the king. The wasteland was part of the Arthurian Grail lore, with the cup of Christ healing the formerly pagan king's deep physical, psychic, and spiritual wounds—and with the healing of the king came the healing of the land. He'd seen the twentieth-century movie, Excalibur, with its extraordinary sequence of the land bursting into blossom once more, one of the most beautiful movie images ever filmed.

And that image jolted loose Stirling's memory, the newspaper article he'd read on the train, heading for Edinburgh and the time-travel lab. Krakatoa hadn't blown up just once. There'd been a previous eruption—in the sixth century a.d. One that made the nineteenth-century explosion look like a champagne cork popping loose. Stirling narrowed his eyes, trying to recall exactly what that article had said. So far as he could remember, the Pacific volcano had blown itself to spectacular bits somewhere between the year 536 and 539 a.d., creating worldwide ecological devastation so severe, crops had failed and ecosystems had crashed for more than ten years. A whole decade of world-spanning wasteland. Crop failures had triggered mass migrations of people across the face of the whole earth and wars of bloody genocide had been fought over land that was still producing even marginal amounts of food.

The article had mentioned something about Irish lake fortresses. Two whole villages built on stilts in the centers of lakes as war between clans and island-wide starvation made such watery retreats the only safe places for people to live, subsisting on fish caught through the floors of the lake-straddling villages. And there was a connection, too, with the beginning of the plague years.

Something about temperature changes causing plague to spread into zones that had previously been immune, carried by traders from Constantinople as far as Britain. Plague had wiped out such an immense percentage of Britain's population that the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes—who had not been trading with Constantinople and therefore had not been weakened by the disease—had essentially waltzed in and taken over from a people nearly dead of hunger and epidemics.

There was a terrifying parallel between the end of "King Arthur's" golden years, a reign of thirty-nine to forty years after his twelfth victory at Badon Hill, and the timing of that volcanic explosion, somewhere between a.d. 536 and a.d. 539. Even with Artorius victorious at Caer-Badonicus, the Britons were doomed to lose the war to the Saxons, all because one volcanic explosion on the other side of the planet would destroy their crops, their cattle, and their strength as a unified people.

It was a vision so horrifying, Stirling found it impossible not to try and save these people from it, or at least to cushion the blow poised to fall thirty-nine years from now.

Stirling's abrupt desire to try a deliberate alteration to history far greater than the damage already wrought by Lailoken and Cedric Banning was a physical ache inside him. Dared he risk it? And what could he possibly do, even if he did decide to interfere as Banning had done? Ancelotis—stunned, amazed, and appalled by turns at Stirling's memories, suppositions, and foreknowledge that spilled like sea-foam into their shared awareness—whispered, Stirling, if these things be true, and I misdoubt them not, then we must act to save our people. And we must act quickly—but how is one man or even a handful of men to prevent something like an island blowing itself apart?

Huh, Stirling grunted. You can't. There's nothing in this world—or out of it, for that matter—that can stop a volcano from doing whatever it wants, whenever it pleases. The only thing you can do is get out of its way.

True, Ancelotis growled, but if you know a disaster is coming, you can at least prepare for it. Look at what Egypt managed, with no more warning than Joseph's interpretation of the pharaoh's dream. Seven lean cows devouring seven fat cows, seven blighted stalks of grain devouring seven fat ones. With warning, they built granaries and saved the people from starvation. Ancelotis' eyes widened slightly. Ye Gods. The Grail! A circular cup of life. If a man were to build circular cups to hold the abundance of the next thirty-nine years...

It was a beautifully simple plan.

And in the later versions of Arthurian myth, Lancelot had wandered the land as a religious hermit, doing penance for his disastrous adultery with Guinevere. What if Lancelot wandered the land, instead, as an organizer of strategic supplies, using religion and the parable of Joseph and the seven years of famine as a "sign from God" that the people of Britain were meant to lay aside foodstuffs against future emergency? Stirling realized with a chill that it would probably work. And it would probably change history irrevocably.

And with Cedric Banning's interference in Dalriada having doubtless already damaged time's fractural planes, the notion of stepping in to prevent further devastation from falling on these people was singularly attractive. He might never get home again, if he tried. And he might never get home, anyway, if Banning's mass murder of the Dalriadan Irish had changed history sufficiently. He wouldn't know the answer to that for nearly a year. If that year came and went and he was still trapped here, with history too fractured to return to his plane of origin, there would be plenty of time to prepare for the wasteland years. Close to four full decades.

It was rare that one man, in place at precisely the right time, could alter the fate of thousands of people with one simple action. Stirling knew he would likely never be given another chance to match it. The thought of returning to the twenty-first century without even trying was utterly repugnant. He had taken an oath to defend his people—and in a very real sense, these Britons were his people, his ancestors on the Welsh side, if not the Scottish side. To refuse to act seemed to Stirling cowardice of the greatest magnitude, a betrayal of all he believed in and had fought for, since joining the SAS to fight terrorism and the other forms of twenty-first-century madness threatening civilization itself.

Here, in the sixth century, he was embroiled in yet another war to protect civilization. He didn't think it was possible to walk away from this one, when damage had already been done by perpetrators from that other, once-and-future war. He could no more walk away from this than he'd been able to walk away from that flat in Belfast, without carrying the child of an IRA terrorist to safety through a burning building. God forgive me, he sent a tiny prayer winging heavenward, but I have to try. I wouldn't be fully human, if I didn't.

Ancelotis of Gododdin, thankful for any help his guest from the twenty-first century could render, expressed a gratitude too deep for words, a gratitude which wrapped around their shared heart like healing balm. It felt, God help him, like the right choice.

But first, they had to survive the battle of Badon Hill.

As they entered the broad expanse of the Salisbury Plain, the weather grew steadily worse, with fields of half-harvested, rotting crops churned into slurry where farmers—desperate for silage to feed their herds—had turned cattle loose to graze on what was left of the ruined crops. Stirling shivered. Ancelotis was worried, too. Very much so. As they rode through the southern reaches of Glastenning, they passed whole villages standing empty, their inhabitants having already fled for safety in the distant, cave-riddled Mendip Hills.

Stirling had never actually been to Cadbury Hill. He knew about it, of course; only the dullest, least diligent of British schoolchildren failed to learn something about Cadbury Hill and its ancient fortress. But he'd never actually seen it, save in photographs, and the impact of mere photos was virtually nil compared to riding across a rain-battered landscape of flat fields toward an immense fortified shape that rose up from the flatland like a great, grey battleship riding a stormy sea. Prickles ran down Stirling's borrowed back. Even Ancelotis, who had seen plenty of other massive hill forts in the north, shared Stirling's sense of awe.

'Tis a veritable city, Ancelotis breathed silently. I've seen nothing like it! Why, there's no wondering at all why the Saxons mean to strip us of its ownership. An army could hold out there for weeks, months, perhaps, if supplies were properly laid in, ahead of the need.

Concentric rings of stone circled the summit, five of them, lost at times in the low-scudding rainclouds that raced across the plain, their underbellies torn open by the hill fort's pike-studded walls. By the time they reached the base of the hill, its summit towering five hundred feet straight up, darkness was nearly upon them. Cookfires, sheltered beneath canvas tent flaps to protect them from the rain, blazed in a ragged river of light where workmen and wagoners and soldiers had paused in their work for the night. Ancelotis and his contingent of cataphracti were greeted by a perimeter guard riding diligent patrol despite the foul weather and darkness.

"Where can I find King Cadorius and Emrys Myrddin?" Ancelotis asked the guard.

"You'll find Cadorius at the summit, along with King Melwas," the man pointed toward the walls high overhead, "but Emrys Myrddin has gone to Glastenning Tor with Covianna Nim. He left near dawn this morning, although we expect him back within a day or two."

Ancelotis frowned. It wasn't like Myrddin to abandon a task before completion. "Was there news of attack at the Tor, that Emrys Myrddin's presence was required there?"

"If there was, we've heard nothing of it. The kings might know more."

Ancelotis intended to ask them.

A five-hundred-foot climb up a steep, muddy hillside in a blinding downpour was not Stirling's notion of a good time; such a climb made in utter darkness proved treacherous in the extreme. Ancelotis instructed the rank-and-file cavalrymen from Gododdin to find a sheltered spot to bivouac until he could meet with Cadorius about battle strategies. The ranking officers of the cataphracti followed Ancelotis as he reined his horse around and began to climb. The horses slipped and slid and groped for footing while the riders kept their animals centered more or less steadily along a steep path that led toward one of the wooden gates set into the outermost wall. The gate would have been completely invisible, but for the sheltered lantern set atop one post, marking the way in. Ancelotis and Stirling were challenged by sentries, who swung the gate open just enough to let Stirling, Ancelotis' officers, and their shivering horses slip through.

What lay on the other side startled him.

There was no open space between one wall and the next. The gate opened into a narrow trench which ran along the inner edge of the outermost wall.

"I'll lead you through," one of the sentries said quietly, picking up a lamp, its flame protected from the rain by thin sheets of mineral mica, nearly as clear as glass and far less prone to breakage. "The horses will put a foot wrong, else, and end with broken legs—or worse."

Stirling needed the guide, too, as they snaked through a maze of narrow passages and gates leading gradually inward as well as around the upper slopes of the summit. There was just enough room for the horses to crowd their way through, single file. Sentries had been posted every yard or so along the route. By his guide's lantern light, Stirling and Ancelotis could just make out broad, flat paving stones that formed a roof of sorts, covering most of the width of ground between the five walls. These hidden roofs were invisible from lower down the hill's slope because they were recessed some twelve or thirteen inches below the walls' uppermost edges.

"What's inside these?" Ancelotis asked as they snaked their way past the fourth wall, crossing to another gate that took them around the northern slope of the hill toward a gate in the fifth and final wall. A fierce wind battered them, sweeping across from the northwest, a cold wind blowing in from the North Atlantic, driving rain squalls ahead of it. "And why are there other wooden gates with no apparent function?"

The sentry turned his head to call back, "It's Emrys Myrddin's surprise for the Saxons. These," he patted the stone "roof" with one hand, "are full of water. Cisterns to hold the rain pouring off the summit and even more water brought up from the plain by waterwheels."

Water? Stirling frowned. With that much water stored, the Britons must be preparing to hold out for several months under the Saxons' anticipated siege, a prospect he found somewhat less than delightful. Then he made the connection between all that water and the false wooden gates set into the walls. Sluice gates! Ye gods, the man's a genius! Even Ancelotis grinned, albeit wearily.

They finally reached the final gate which would lead them out onto the hill fort's open summit. Beyond this, Stirling could make out the shape of buildings, dark structures made of stone and brick, serving as barracks rooms, storage for supplies and weapons, shelters for civilians, workshops for the armorers whose hammers still rang and clashed despite the increasing lateness of the evening. There were few windows, but doors stood partially open here and there, giving them glimpses of the work under way within.

Stirling had never seen so many blacksmiths in one place in his life. Several of the structures proved to be stables for the cavalry horses and holding pens for livestock—pigs and goats, mostly, along with chickens and geese, too many to easily count in the darkness. Smokehouses and slaughtering pens sent an unpleasant mix of smells drifting through the wet night, where the hogs were being converted with efficient industry into sausages, hams, rendered lard, and pigskin leather.

They found the kings of Glastenning and Dumnonia in the centermost building, which boasted a squat, brick watchtower that would be perfect, Stirling realized, for scanning the northern hills for Artorius' signal. Stirling and the officers of Gododdin's cataphracti slid out of wet saddles, turning their horses over to half-grown boys who led them off to a nearby stable. Ancelotis pushed open a wooden door, stepping into a roomful of warmth, where a cheerful fire crackled in a hearth set into the northern wall. Wood lay stacked along the entire width of that wall, piled higher than Stirling's head. Another wall bore a large oxhide with a map of southern Britain drawn carefully in black ink, marked with important river crossings, hill forts, towns, and the borders of the southern kingdoms—including those currently held by the Saxons. Cadorius paused in whatever discussion was under way and received them with a glad armclasp, although his face was haggard from strain and lack of sleep.

"You are most well come, Ancelotis, most well come, indeed! But is Artorius not with you?" he added, peering at the cataphracti officers at Ancelotis' back.

"No, he rides with the bulk of the army, including the infantry, which will slow him considerably. He is perhaps a full week's march behind me, maybe as much as eight or nine days, given the condition of the roads in this weather."

Cadorius frowned. "Then he will reach us well after the Saxons do. We expect the Saxon army to lay siege within five days, at most. Refugees are flooding into Glastenning ahead of them."

"The sentries tell me Emrys Myrddin has gone to Glastenning Tor?"

Cadorius nodded, gesturing to a servant, who brought hot stew and wine. As Ancelotis tackled the meal with enthusiasm, Cadorius brought him up to date.

"Melwas and I didn't want him to leave Caer-Badonicus, but he insisted. Covianna was afraid for her kinsmen, who would be unprepared if the Saxons broke through here. Myrddin agreed to ride with her to the Tor, to offer his suggestions for defenses. My greatest worry for his safety is the bandits on the roads, taking advantage of all this turmoil, looting empty villages and abandoned farmholds. Such cutthroats care nothing for which set of masters they rob. And we win this war, I'll be after cleaning them out with fire and hangmen's ropes."

"What of our defenses here? Are we ready to meet the enemy?"

Cadorius nodded. "We've laid in a good supply of food. Water," he added with a snort of wry humor, glancing at the ceiling where rain rattled and danced, "is not a problem. A week to nine days, you said, before Artorius arrives? We could hold them off at least ten times that long, and we've deliberately built of stone and brick, as much as possible, so they can't burn us out with fire arrows. We could use some of our shelters, for there wasn't time to roof everything in stone shingles. But we're nowhere nearly as vulnerable as the defenseless villages they've used that tactic against."

"I've some ideas of my own, to add to the defenses." Stirling nodded toward the officers of his cataphracti, men with Asiatic features, who watched and ate in alert silence, many of them wearing the Sarmatian tribal badge embroidered on their tunics, a naked sword thrust through a stone. "There's no force in all of Western Europe to match my Sarmatian bowmen. Come the dawn, I'll work out a few nasty surprises for the Saxons, to teach them the damage Sarmatian archers can inflict."

The officers grinned, several of them lifting fingers to brow in a jaunty salute. "It will be a pleasure," one of them chuckled, "a very distinct pleasure."

"There's little more to be done, tonight," Ancelotis nodded in satisfaction, mopping up the last of the stew with a hunk of bread. "If you've spare cots someplace, my officers and I need to steal at least a few hours' sleep. We've been riding hard these last few days, and the lack of rest is catching up to us."

Cadorius had a servant guide them across the wind-blasted summit toward the barracks. The cataphracti officers were shown to quarters with others of their rank and Ancelotis left them making plans to check on their men, to be sure the rest of Gododdin's forces had found a good spot to bed down and had found plenty to eat. Ancelotis and Stirling were escorted to another building, where the royalty of half a dozen Briton kingdoms had taken refuge for the duration. Ancelotis recognized several princes, sent by harried fathers to direct the troops lent to Glastenning for the coming conflict. There was even a scattering of royal daughters and queens who preferred the safety of the hill fort to the uncertainty of the Lowlands. Ancelotis halted in dismay when Ganhumara gave a glad little cry and rushed forward, flinging herself into his arms.

"Thank God, you've come in time!"

He placed firm hands on her shoulders, forcibly moving her a step backwards. She peered up through long, coppery lashes, feigning hurt with a masterful pout. "Is this any way to greet the queen of Caer-Guendoleu?"

"What are you doing here?" Ancelotis demanded bluntly.

She tossed her long hair across one shoulder. "If you must know, I was kidnaped."

"Kidnaped?" he echoed, disbelieving.

"By Melwas! Cadorius rescued me. Oh, he was so gallant!"

Ancelotis glowered down at her. "I refuse to believe that King Melwas was so great a fool as to kidnap you, Ganhumara. Let the story stand as a salve to your reputation, if you must, but do not attempt to fool me with it. I would strongly suggest you find some way to beg your husband's humble pardon for your continued foolhardiness when he arrives."

Ganhumara's eyes flashed, defiant and proud. "I will beg nothing from Artorius!" she hissed. "He is nothing but the son of commoners and whores! Never will I forgive my father for binding me in marriage to a half-blood bastard of a Sarmatian!"

She whirled and stalked away, stiff with rage.

Ancelotis scrubbed his face, too weary to deal with her tempers and peccadillos.

"Is she always like that?" a quiet voice at his elbow startled him.

He found a troubled, grey-eyed gaze locked on the retreating queen of Caer-Guendoleu, a quiet gaze which turned to meet his forthrightly. Ancelotis didn't recognize her, but she wore a torque of royalty, so he supposed her to be of the royal house of one of the southern kings.

"Unfortunately, yes. She is. And often worse."

"Then I pity Artorius. The Dux Bellorum has enough to worry him, without a wife like that to damage the peace even further."

"I must beg your humble pardon," Ancelotis murmured, "but I do not know you, dear lady. I am Ancelotis of Gododdin," he added.

Her lips twitched into a slight smile. "Yes. The news of your arrival spread like wildfire through brambles. It gave us heart, when all has been gloom for so long. I am Iona, last survivor of the royal house of Ynys Weith."

Ancelotis' eyes widened. "Dear God, I thought the whole family dead! I thank God in heaven that you were spared. But how?"

Tears welled up in her eyes. "The Saxons came in the night, led by traitors among the fisherfolk. They slaughtered my whole family as we slept. A servant, one of the old men from the stables who had seen the Saxons arrive, dragged me from my bed, threw old clothes across my nightdress, hid me in the kitchen. I crouched for hours in the hearth, covered with ash and shaking with terror. The Saxons came through the kitchen, guzzling wine and ale until they could scarcely stagger to the cesspits."

Princess Iona was trembling. The look in her eyes chilled Ancelotis' blood. "Just before cockcrow, the stableman led me down to the strand, where loyal fishermen hid me beneath their nets and took me to safety in Caer-Durnac. When the Saxons came across the border into Caer-Durnac, I fled into the marshes, where I hid for months, eating raw fish and learning to survive by my wits." She gazed down at her hands, visibly roughened and red, even by lamplight. "It took more courage than I thought I had left, to come out of those marshes and seek asylum with Cadorius and Melwas. But I had to come, to warn the other royal houses of Britain what the Saxons are capable of, when they set their sights on a victim."

Ancelotis reached up with gentle fingertips to wipe tears from her cheeks. "Thank you, Iona, for your courage. And for reminding us that creatures like Ganhumara are the rare exception, among Britain's royal ladies. I sorrow for your losses. Please consider Gododdin a place of refuge for you, should you ever need a home."

The tears came faster, but she managed a tremulous smile. "I am honored, Ancelotis of Gododdin. Thank you. And I fear I have kept you too long from your bed. If there is anything I can do, on the morrow, to help you and your men prepare, please ask it of me."

He offered her a formal bow, then found an unoccupied cot and collapsed onto the straw-filled tick, asleep within moments. Morning found him outside the circumvallation, walking the steep, muddy hillside in the company of the Sarmatian commanders of Gododdin's cataphracti. Stirling pointed down the lee side of the hill. "According to Cadorius, Emrys Myrddin expects the bulk of the Saxons to camp along here, protected from the weather. Frankly, I agree. What I want is for someone to pace off known distances from the outermost wall, beginning with the farthest range of a bowshot and coming back toward the wall in stepped increments, three paces at a time. Put up small wooden posts to mark the known distances."

"For what purpose?" one of his officers asked, brow furrowed in puzzlement.

Stirling grinned. "You'll see shortly. Put several men in charge of the work out here. Then join me inside the walls again."

As they hiked in through the mazelike passages between the walls, Ancelotis muttered silently, Just what are you up to? I don't understand it, either.

Stirling explained. The Sarmatian cavalry archers are very good for our purposes. The flight of an arrow is very much akin to the flight of a bullet or cannon ball—and artillery ballistics is something I bloody well know. What I'm going to do is teach our Sarmatians some drills, things I know that will increase their effectiveness, a way of shooting at targets they can't see.

What sort of drills? Ancelotis asked, unsure what artillery and firearms might even be; despite the memory images in Stirling's mind, it was difficult for the sixth-century king to grasp the concepts and distances an ordinary rifle or mortar could throw a projectile, never mind the speeds such projectiles could reach. Before he could answer, the officers of his cataphracti joined him inside the wall, so Stirling explained it to everyone at once. "How many bowmen are with us?" he began.

"Seventy, at least," one of the officers answered.

"And they shoot at individual targets, one at a time, from horseback?"

The officers nodded, expressions puzzled. "It's the way Sarmatians have fought for centuries."

"Very effectively," Stirling agreed. "But there are other ways of firing a bow than aiming directly at a target, especially since we'll have battlements to use as shelter."

Puzzlement turned to utter bafflement.

"May I?" Stirling asked, nodding to the nearest heavy compound bow, made of horn and wood and requiring a strong man, indeed, to pull it. The Sarmatian handed over his bow and a quiver of arrows. "Very good. What I'm going to teach you is a way to hit something you cannot see, do so without exposing yourself to enemy spears or javelins, by coordinating your shots."

He notched an arrow and pulled the powerful bow, drawing the string back to his chest, rather than his ear, in the older style of shooting that Sarmatians and other ancient archers had used—a technique that would remain in force until the advent of the Welsh longbow. Rather than aiming directly at the wall, three paces away, Stirling aimed high above it, eyeballing the angle and projecting the parabola of the arrow's flight.

He released the bow with a whap! and watched the arrow speed skyward. It arced upward and out across the walls, the curve descending steeply at the end of the foreshortened parabola. The arrow vanished somewhere downslope, well beyond the wall.

He turned to find the officer unimpressed.

Stirling chuckled and handed the bow back to its owner. "Shall we see how far it flew before landing?" They found the arrow several yards downslope, sticking up like a spike in the muddy ground.

"How can a man control it, though?" one of the officers asked, staring from the wall to the arrow embedded in the mud. "How would you know how high to aim, to have the arrow drop precisely where you wanted it to go?"

"That's what the posts out here are for, to mark known distances from the wall. I'll want several tall wooden poles erected inside the walls, with bands marked on them. And I'll want marker stones inside the walls, as well, so that if a man stands on the stone and aims past one of the painted rings on a pole, he'll know exactly how far that arrow will travel and where it will come down, with close approximation, relative to the marker posts out here. Then we'll drill to make sure we can hit those marks every time."

"Even so, it will be impossible to hit your enemy with any real accuracy if we can't see them because we're behind the walls!"

"Ah, but we'll have one man up top, a forward observer acting as the eyes for all the rest of us who'll be shooting at exactly the same time and exactly the same place."

Understanding dawned. "God above, it's elegant!"

They put every archer in Gododdin's cataphracti to work, cutting and setting poles every few yards along the innermost wall, painting narrow bands every few inches along the poles, setting stones in a line with those poles, and cutting marker posts which they placed beyond the walls to mark the farthest and nearest ranges of arrows when shot past the upper- and lower-most bands. Once the markers had been placed, the archers began practicing, with Stirling once again demonstrating.

"If I aim just to the left of the white band at the top, my arrow will fall very close to the post nearest the wall." He let an arrow fly and had a boy leap onto the outermost wall to call where it had landed. The boy shouted, "You're a foot beyond the post!"

Three more arrows and Stirling had put the shot within six inches of the post he could not see, nearest the outermost wall. "Mark this spot with a stone," he nodded in satisfaction, "and do the same for every pole we've put up along the line." He gestured. "Devise a shooting order, so that every man knows his place beside his comrades and always shoots from the same spot, whether he stands on a stone or to the left or right of the markers."

Stirling promised a keg of ale and a gold coin to the five archers who, at the end of a week, placed their shots consistently closest to the outside marker posts. The contest spurred the Sarmatians to a friendly competition of skill that sharpened their accuracy with amazing rapidity. Ancelotis was delighted, while Cadorius and Melwas regarded the king of Gododdin as a military genius.

"It won't be as effective if the Saxons approach in a thin skirmish line, but I've another idea or two that will bunch them up a bit, to give the archers a nice, broad target to drop arrows on, from overhead. Now, about these other ideas I have in mind, I'll need the best men we have, men who can move swiftly and silently in the darkness. And I'll need cordage, the largest, longest skeins or balls of it to be found in the southwestern kingdoms."

"Cordage?" Cadorius frowned in confusion.

Stirling grinned. "Trust me."

By week's end, Stirling was satisfied that they were as ready for the Saxons as they would ever be—and not a moment too soon, for a runner arrived in the middle of the night on a badly lathered horse, gasping out his message. "The Saxons are nearly upon us! They'll reach Caer-Badonicus by dawn!"

Final preparations took on frantic speed as the last of the horses hauled the final supplies up the hill. What the Britons could neither carry up to the hill fort nor send farther north, out of harm's way, they burned to further deprive the Saxons. It was a grim business, one that Stirling would have given much to avoid, but he knew only too well the cost of trying to walk away from madmen bent on destruction. The madmen followed, until you and everything you valued had been smashed into oblivion. Whether he acted rightly or wrongly with regard to the future timeline which had birthed him, he had no way to know. He knew only that here, in this now, he had only one real choice. He would stop the spread of darkness or die trying.

Stirling slept poorly that night and was awakened from fitful slumber by a commotion of voices. He groped for his sword before he was even fully awake; then a familiar voice, a woman's voice, drifted through the small crowd that had gathered to greet a newcomer.

"No," Covianna Nim was saying, "I can't imagine where Emrys Myrddin might be. He left the Tor three or four days ago."

Stirling and Ancelotis rose to find Covianna Nim looking half asleep and disheveled from what had obviously been a hard ride.

"Why did you come back to Caer-Badonicus?" Ganhumara asked. "Not that I'm dismayed to see you," the young queen added hastily, "for you must know I'm delighted to have a friend here, but I don't understand. They said you were dreadfully anxious about your family at the Tor."

"And I was," Covianna replied smoothly, stifling a yawn. "We've done all we can to strengthen the Tor's defenses and my clan wanted to send a master smith to Caer-Badonicus to help with the defense here. I was the logical choice, with my training in the healing arts, as well. Please, I'm dreadfully weary. I'll tell you all you want to know in the morning."

Ancelotis grunted once, then stumbled back to bed, asleep before the commotion of Covianna's arrival had fully died down. He didn't wake again until dawn, when a brassy signal trumpet sent its warning through the entire encampment atop Badon Hill. Ancelotis splashed cold water into his face, meeting grim glances from royal princes who had led troops here during the previous weeks and days. Half a dozen servants made the rounds with bread smoking hot from the ovens, served with slabs of cheese and cold ham.

Ancelotis bolted down the meal, buckling on armor and sword belt while still chewing. Leather creaked against ring-mail shirts and scale armor as the men prepared grimly for battle. Their sisters and mothers laid out spare weapons, heated enormous kettles of water over half a dozen hearths built into the room, prepared linens for bandages and set out ointments, salves, and glass vials of unknown medicines. Surgeons' tools—scalpels, bronze tweezers, saws for amputating mangled limbs—were dropped into boiling water to be held in clean readiness against all-too-probable need.

Ancelotis left the women to their preparations, harboring a secret feeling that their tasks were even harder than those of the men, knowing they sent loved ones out to be maimed or killed and quietly hugging terror and distress to their breasts while doing what was necessary to save lives. Stirling muttered silently, You may just be right about that. In his experience, gathered unpleasantly in the streets of Belfast, women were not only stronger than their menfolk, they were braver, as well, attempting to carry forward the business of living while their men were busy slaughtering one another.

It was a kind of courage Stirling didn't fully understand and found somewhat awe-inspiring to watch, that picking up of shattered lives, the bravery required for women who had seen the effect of bombs to choose, consciously and with a perhaps misplaced sense of hope, the decision to bring new lives into existence in the midst of societal suicide. It hurt, watching these women prepare for battle that might see the men they loved best maimed or killed by day's end.

Lips thinned to a marbled line, Stirling strode out into the grey morning, almost relishing the slap of icy rain and wind against his face. His cloak snapped and whipped around in the gusts, like a living thing gone mad. Mud squelched underfoot and the bleating of penned goats drifted on the wind. Everywhere he turned his gaze, Stirling saw men in armor, officers shouting directions, soldiers piling up caches of weapons, swords and long-necked iron pila, pikes and leaf-bladed spears by the hundreds, war axes and Roman-style short swords stacked beside piles of daggers.

A moment later, they had reached the southeastern slope, where Cadorius and Melwas had gathered around them the royalty of Britain. Ancelotis joined the group with a nod of greeting and watched silently as a great, boiling mass of men and horses coalesced on the horizon. It was an eerie, hideous sight, as though the driving rain had solidified into the shape of the enemy. Hundreds of men, a vast carpet of spearpoints and javelins and pikes, with a baggage train of supply wagons that reached farther than the eye could discern, even from the immense height of the hilltop.

"That," Cadorius said quietly, "is what we must hold back until the Dux Bellorum arrives with the greatest bulk of our own army."

Casting a practiced eye over the opposing force, Ancelotis estimated their strength at close to double a thousand men at arms, plus camp followers: wagoners, armorers, cooks and barber surgeons, signal men with curved ram's-horn trumpets whose calls drifted to them on the rain-slashed wind.

"They have learned a trick or two from their Briton captives," Melwas murmured, hearing those signal trumpeters. "That's no Saxon strategy, to march in formation under the direction of disciplined officers."

Cadorius glanced around, nodding grimly. "Aye, you've the right of that, Melwas. Cerdic and Creoda know well enough the strength of such organization. Filthy gewisse, all of them."

The term translated in Ancelotis' mind as "traitors."

"Let us hope," Ancelotis muttered, "that Cerdic's Saxon allies forget to maintain their discipline in the heat of battle."

They watched in silence as the Saxon army spread like plague across the Salisbury Plain half a thousand feet below. Most of them were on foot, poorly armored, but in a siege such as this, horses would be of little use to the Saxons, in any case. On horseback or not, armored or not, the Saxons had the advantage of sheer numbers, close to three times the number of Briton defenders on this hilltop. Stirling and Ancelotis and the others watched them come, watched them reach the base of the immense hill, watched the spiked carpet of men and weapons break like foam across a rocky seacoast, parting around the base of Badon Hill to surround it with a ring of glittering weapons.

At least, Stirling muttered to himself, they don't have siege engines.

The Saxon kings were in no apparent hurry to attack. An unpleasant, fluttering sensation rose from the pit of his stomach as Stirling watched the Saxons cut off escape routes one by one. At a nod from Cadorius, Stirling and his host walked the whole long perimeter of the innermost wall, studying troop deployments, squinting into the brutal teeth of the wind as the Saxons dispatched small squadrons along the muddy roads leading from Caer-Badonicus to the nearest villages.

They would find little of value in those villages, which had been abandoned for a radius of five miles around. The Saxons would find no food, no livestock, no slaves to force into building their siegeworks, nothing but a few very nasty surprises in the form of covered pit traps dug beneath barn and cottage floors. The Britons had camouflaged their man-traps with layers of dirt and straw or rushes across tightly stretched panels of woolen sailcloth, dyed brown with walnut hulls to match the color of their earthen coverings. Like Burmese tiger traps, the stake-studded pits waited for unwary predators to step into them. Very soon, the Saxons would discover just how high a price they must pay for attempting to conquer Salisbury Plain.

Down at the base of the hill, foot soldiers were busy erecting camps in a loose circle, a living noose of men, spears, and swords. They began digging trenches, as well, throwing up an earthen rampart to shield them somewhat from missiles hurled from above. Ancelotis muttered a few choice oaths, watching. "That bastard Cerdic is earning his blood money, no doubt of that." He spat disgustedly to one side, earning a grunt of agreement from King Melwas, who had joined him.

"That's a move yon bastards have never tried before," Melwas growled. "And I've fought them enough times to know."

Stirling watched and wished bitterly for better weapons than they had. What we could do with just one good machine gun... Might as well ask for attack helicopters and cruise missiles, while I'm at it.

Melwas frowned. "I see nothing like a tent a king would use down there. Not even one fit for a royal prince. The Saxons may be barbarians, but their so-called royalty are quick to demand the comforts of civilization and complain loudly when deprived of them."

Ancelotis grunted. "Try the lee of the hill. It's where I'd set up, were I King Aelle or Cerdic."

Melwas' glance was keen. "Emrys Myrddin said much the same thing."

"With good reason." Stirling grinned as fierce gusts of rain ripped through the Saxon encampment, playing hob with their attempts to set up sleeping tents.

Melwas smiled in dark humor. "They'll be cold and wet and exhausted before a few hours have passed. And unless I miss my guess, they'll have as much trouble as our own men did keeping cookfires going anywhere but the lee of the hill. "

An army fighting on cold, unpalatable rations was an unhappy army, resentful and discouraged. With the countryside laid bare in advance of their arrival, they'd find little more than dirt to add to their already strained supply of rations. He smiled in cold pleasure at the notion. Having seen enough for the moment, Ancelotis and Melwas left instructions for the men standing perimeter watch to report anything out of the ordinary in the Saxons' preparations, then headed back for the lee side, to study further developments there.

"They look to be throwing the bulk of their men downslope of here," Ancelotis told Cadorius, who was issuing orders on their own troop deployments.

Cadorius nodded. "It's as we expected, then. I've assigned Dumnonia left flank guard along the lee," he pointed to a stretch of wall some hundred feet distant, "and, Melwas, I'll want Glastenning on the right flank. Ancelotis, you and your Sarmatian archers will take the center, as we agreed and planned for." He nodded toward the banded poles set up at carefully measured intervals along the lee side of the summit. "We'll scatter the other kingdoms around the perimeter." He was scratching a rough map in the mud, sheltering it with his body as he crouched down to work.

Even with the number of men they already had, the summit and its sprawling perimeter walls were so large, the defenders would be spread dangerously thin. And they would have precious little but women and children in reserve, should Artorius be delayed on the march south.

I mislike it, Ancelotis said privately to Stirling. I mislike it a very great deal.

Stirling wasn't particularly keen on it, either. "We'll have to watch for shifts in their deployment, day and night," he said aloud for Cadorius' benefit. "The children could fill in the gaps as lookouts, particularly the older lads, and give our men more rest for the actual fighting. A sudden surge along one of the more thinly defended stretches, and they'd be among us before we knew they were climbing. Particularly after dark."

"After dark?" Cadorius grunted while Melwas' eyes shot wide.

Even Ancelotis was taken by surprise.

It was something, Stirling supposed, to startle three kings, each of them with more than a decade's bitter experience in combat. Yet the notion of a night sortie astonished them. Stirling grinned. "Why d'you think I wanted the specially trained men and the cordage? You do remember what the Oracle at Delphi said, don't you?"

Melwas frowned in puzzlement, but Cadorius had begun to chuckle. "Oh, aye. A grand story that was, I remember my own father reading it out to me in the Greek. I've forgotten which historian it was, but the story I recall very well, indeed."

Melwas looked from Stirling to Cadorius and back again. "I've not heard it."

"For a shipload of gold," the Dumnonian king chuckled, "the poor bastard was told by the Oracle of Apollo, 'You will destroy a great empire.' Sure of victory, he returned home to the war with Persia. And when the autumn came, and the time for the harvest was due, the fool retired from the field, for that was how war was fought in those days, everyone on both sides of a conflict going home to bring in the crops. Only the Persians followed him. Shocked the entire known world, waging war at harvest time. Sacked the capital, took over the gold fields, and put the vanquished king in chains, so he could repent at length on the empire he'd destroyed. His own."

Stirling nodded. "The Persians changed forever the way war would be fought, with that maneuver."

Melwas was grinning. "Fighting a night sortie will be just as great a shock to the Saxons, I'm thinking. Marvelous idea, Ancelotis."

Ancelotis, as startled as the others by the notion, laughed aloud. "Oh, aye, isn't it just, now?"

The others chuckled at the play on words.

The Saxons spent several hours erecting siege works, ditching the entire circumference of the hill and readying caches of weapons, spears and pikes, mostly. Swords were scarce amongst them, a fact which still surprised Stirling, for all that he'd heard the others discuss it. Briton forces watched in eerie silence as Germanic voices shouted far down the slope. One group climbed halfway up the lee side, dragging timbers and tools with them under the cover of a bristling shield wall of armed warriors.

"What in the devil's unholy name are they doing?" Melwas wondered aloud. "Erecting some kind of siege engine?"

"I think not," Ancelotis frowned. "A platform on which to mount one, perhaps."

"Should we discourage them from building it?"

The younger king was showing signs of impatience as the preparations dragged endlessly. Cadorius, who also stood frowning down at the activity two hundred fifty feet below them, answered the sub-king's question. "No, Melwas, I believe we'll let them build it, unhindered. The weaker we seem at the beginning, the likelier they are to err through overconfidence later. We give up nothing, for we can demolish it at our leisure, with any number of methods."

Stirling glanced at smoking braziers blazing at the bottom of firepits all along the inner perimeter, the fires protected from the weather not only by the depth of the pits, but also roofed over with small awnings and further protected by trenches the children had dug to allow any rainwater that did get in to drain away before it drowned the coals. Vats and iron cauldrons simmered over the fires, filled with rendered animal fat, much of it from the pigs and cattle slaughtered to feed them all.

And near each firepit stood a Roman-style catapult, standing ready to deliver the melted grease in each of those kettles and cauldrons. Cadorius, who followed Stirling's glance, said, "We've also prepared Greek fire, from the formula Emrys Myrddin obtained as a boy in Constantinople. With Greek fire, we can burn anything on this hill, whether it rains or no—and I am mortally certain the Saxons don't have the secret of it, to hurl back at us."

Stirling's brows had twitched upward in astonishment. The formula for "Greek fire"—an incendiary substance Greek warships had used to set fire to a Persian fleet—had been lost for millennia. Somehow, it didn't surprise Stirling that Emrys Myrddin should have added that particular secret to his truly vast collection of useful information. Ancelotis wondered uneasily where the Druidic councillor might be, for he had not returned to Caer-Badonicus and Covianna Nim claimed he'd left Glastenning Tor several days previously. Had he ridden north, to meet with Artorius on the march? Whatever the answer, Ancelotis hugged his impatience to himself and watched the Saxons.

The purpose of their platform became clear shortly before dusk, when the Saxons hauled up and erected a large pavilion tent on it, protected from the summit by a wooden wall which they'd driven into the hillside. That wooden palisade stood higher than a man, acting as a shield for the men who climbed laboriously up the first two hundred fifty feet from the broad plain, obviously intending to shelter in the tent. The broad expanse of cloth shuddered and rippled with the gusts of wind and rain, but the shield wall and the hill's own mass protected the platform, tent, and occupants from the worst of the weather.

"There's Cutha," Stirling said abruptly, as a small cadre of well-armored men climbed a muddy path up to the platform.

"And King Aelle beside him," Cadorius nodded. "They've brought their highest-ranking eoldormen and thegns with them, besides their athelings, princes of the blood. Speaking of which, Cerdic looks a bit pale, doesn't he?"

If the king of Wessex was pale, his son was ashen. Creoda kept glancing fearfully at the silent Briton defenders, bristling with weapons like an American porcupine.

"It's one thing," Ancelotis said thoughtfully, "to take a kingdom by treachery, killing off only the royal family, but quite another for a Briton traitor to order Briton troops into battle against Briton soldiers, to slaughter Briton women and children who've sheltered here. He must be wondering, even now, if his men will obey him when put to the test."

"And Aelle is wondering, right along with him," Melwas muttered. "Have you noticed, men wearing Briton armor, with Briton-made weapons, are held back from the front lines? Aelle's keeping them back as first reserves, putting loyal Saxons in the front ranks and more of his own men behind the Britons, to be sure of them."

Stirling hadn't noticed—neither had Ancelotis—but the young sub-king of Glastenning was correct. King Aelle clearly distrusted his gewisse Britons. The Saxons' high command disappeared from view into the royal pavilion. The conference they held there lasted well past darkness, with the occupants' shadows flickering, ghostlike, on the tent's walls and ceiling as the men within moved about, gesticulating occasionally to make some point. Stirling allowed himself a tight smile. Any one of his Sarmatian archers could have taken out the men inside that tent simply by aiming at those moving shadows. He filed away the plan for later execution, another piece of the plans firming up in his mind.

When it became clear that no attack would be launched this night, Cadorius suggested, "Sleep is what will do us the best good. Our sentries will watch for any possible treachery in the night, but I'm thinking they haven't completed enough of their preparations to launch an attack just yet. They're new to siege warfare and I'm thinking they'll want to be thorough about it, rather than risk haste and defeat themselves from poor preparations."

Ancelotis agreed, although Stirling would have preferred to remain on guard through the night, with his different perspective and expectations about when battles were waged. As it happened, however, Cadorius and Ancelotis were right in their assessment. They spent a quiet night, sleeping through most of it without interruption or alarms. Dawn found them on the walls again, watching as Saxon troops labored to build other relay camps halfway up the hill, laying in stashes of lightweight javelins to supplement the heavier spears and pikes the infantry would use as thrusting weapons.

Clearly, they meant to fight from their platforms as much as possible, saving themselves the added effort of climbing the entire five hundred feet from plain to summit every time they made a charge at the Britons' perimeter walls. And still the Briton defenders watched in stony silence, doing nothing to interfere or discourage the work, hiding their own strength and hoarding their finite supplies.

The silence was finally broken just after midday, while Stirling was washing down the last mouthfuls of bread and cheese with a cup of ale. A runner came skidding into the barracks where Britain's royalty were quartered, gasping out, "The Saxons are sending up a rider under flag of truce!" Cadorius and Ancelotis exchanged glances, then they were on their feet, snatching up heavy wooden shields on the way, in case of Saxon treachery. By the time they reached the spot above the Saxons' royal pavillion, the rider had nearly reached the outermost wall. Cadorius growled under his breath. "Creoda!"

It was, indeed, the nervous princeling of Wessex.

"Greetings, gewisse!" Cadorius called out strongly. "What message do you bear us from your foreign masters?"

The prince of Wessex lost what color remained in his face, lips clamping tightly at the double insult. "I bear a message from King Cerdic of Wessex!" the young man shouted back.

"And what does the usurping murderer of Wessex have to say that would possibly be of interest to loyal Briton kings?"

Creoda's ashen features flooded scarlet. "My father, king of Wessex, urges you to abandon this folly!" He swept a gesture at the walls of the newly strengthened hill fort. "We can starve you out at our leisure! Would you condemn the women and children who've mistaken your hospitality for safety, when Wessex guarantees their safety should you bow to reason and surrender quietly?"

Before any of the Briton kings could frame an answer, a woman's voice split the silence.

"Do not presume to speak of Saxon guarantees to me!"

It was Princess Iona, standing tall and proud atop the innermost wall, dark hair flying wild in the wind, grey eyes burning with rage. Creoda gasped, recognizing her.

"Yes, you might well be astonished to see me alive!" she snarled down at him. "I know whose gold it was paid the traitors of Ynys Weith! Firsthand, I've seen how Saxon dogs greet innocent Briton women and children. They spitted my infant sisters and cousins on their swords and drank wine from my father's skull! You reek of death and foul murder, traitor. Begone from my sight. Return to Aelle of Sussex and busy yourself licking his arse once more, since that is what you do best! Let this be the answer of Britain!"

She snatched up a javelin from an astonished foot soldier and hurled it with all her strength. An instant later, Creoda's horse reared with a savage scream, with the javelin buried in the animal's neck. The horse toppled, kicking and screaming as it died. Creoda, hurled to the ground, rolled and slid ignominiously through the mud. A thunderous cheer rose spontaneously from Briton throats, rolling like an avalanche down across the mud-soaked princeling.

Iona, trembling atop the wall, spat once in Creoda's direction, then turned her back. Ancelotis leaped forward, assisting her down to the ground. She was shaking violently now, barely able to keep her feet, and tears spilled loose, blinding her. Ancelotis guided her gently back toward the barracks, relieved when Covianna Nim came hurrying forward.

"Help her," Ancelotis said quietly. "She must have some relief of the grief that has wounded her heart so deeply."

"Come, Iona," Covianna Nim said soothingly, "let me help you rest."

Ancelotis was on his way back to Cadorius and the others when a scream of ram's-horn trumpets shattered the raw morning. The sound came not from the Saxons' command pavilion, but from the northern slope. He ran forward, just in time to see a group of five heavily armored riders burst down the hillside through the northern gate, horses thundering toward the Saxon lines.

"What in hell—?" Stirling gasped.

The riders met infantry with a shock of lances on shields. The first wave of Saxons went down, but infantrymen poured in from the flanks, cutting off the riders' escape. One of the Britons went down, hacked to death by Saxon war axes. The others tried again for a breakout and were blocked at every turn. When the infantry tried to drag the cavalrymen from their saddles, the Briton war-horses screamed and lashed out with flinty hooves, kicking and biting to clear a path back up the hill. The remaining four riders spurred their horses up the steep slope, having failed to break through the Saxon lines. Spears whistled after them, bringing down two of the war-horses. Their riders rolled clear of the wounded animals, then clawed their way upward, until all four were safely back inside the gates.

"What in God's name was that in aid of?" Stirling demanded.

Cadorius spoke behind him. "To convince the Saxons we are desperate to break out a message for help—and are too weak to do so."

Stirling tightened his jaw muscles, then nodded. He, too, had ordered men to their deaths. Necessity never made it easy, however, and Cadorius' eyes reflected the same pain Stirling and Ancelotis felt so keenly. "So it begins," Stirling said through clenched teeth. "A cat-and-mouse tradeoff of blows."

"Take heart," Cadorius said quietly, laying an arm across his tense shoulders. "They can do us little damage and Iona's proud defiance has stirred the men's blood far better than you or I could have done."

That, at least, was nothing more than raw truth.

And so they waited the Saxons out, midday stretching interminably toward a cold blustery dusk, while the Saxon army continued its work, throwing up fighting platforms around the circumference of Badon Hill. Four times more did Cadorius send riders thundering downhill, attempting breakout, testing Saxon strength and responsiveness, testing their signaling systems and how well they worked together as infantry. And four times more were the Briton riders turned back, with greater ease and swifter responsiveness as the day wore endlessly on and the Saxons, too, began to hit their stride as a functional battle unit. Cadorius said little, Ancelotis even less. Stirling bided his time, waiting for the proper moment to spring the first of their surprises.

By dusk of the second day of siege, the civilians atop Badon Hill were beginning to show signs of strain. "Why don't they attack?" Stirling overheard a woman asking one of the off-duty soldiers, who was gulping down a bowl of stew. "They outnumber us, why don't they attack?"

Ancelotis paused. "To wear down our nerves," he said quietly.

The woman, dressed as a farmholder, turned in surprise—and gasped when she recognized him. "My apologies, King Ancelotis," she stammered.

"No." He smiled, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It is a fair question and deserves answer. They hope to fray our patience, to leave us so jittery we'll lose all effectiveness when their charge does come at our walls."

Her eyes flashed. "Filthy curs! They'll not succeed with such tricks!"

Ancelotis smiled as she stormed off, shouting the news to the other women, sending the word of Saxon perfidiousness through the encamped refugees. Stirling chuckled. Brilliant, Ancelotis. Absolutely brilliant. You've put the fighting spirit right back into them.

Aye, he sighed. Now if we can just keep their spirits high...

Stirling waited until full darkness had descended, walking through the camp to give the high sign to the men he had selected a week previously and trained so carefully by day and night. The rain ended shortly after dark, the wind blowing rents in the clouds, through which glittering cold constellations could be seen. How long the clear weather would last, there was no way of knowing, but Stirling did not intend to waste the opportunity.

At least there was no moon to light the summit and upper slopes. His men gathered quietly in the darkness, waiting for the signal to begin their first nighttime raid. The Saxons far below crawled into tents for the night, leaving banked coals smouldering in the darkness like dragons' eyes. Sentries could just barely be made out, stolidly making their way past silent campfires, occluding the light as they passed.

"You know the drill," Stirling murmured. "Give it another quarter hour, to let them settle into sleep, then we'll begin."

Stirling walked the walls, studying the terrain below, the pattern of campfires, nodding to himself. Yes, they'd laid themselves out almost precisely as he'd expected. Silence had fallen over both camps now, as the frozen stars winked and glittered overhead, wisps of wind-torn cloud racing past. It was a wet wind, nonetheless, promising more rain off the cold North Atlantic—within hours, if Ancelotis were any judge of the weather.

The quarter hour passed swiftly, leaving Stirling's palms damp and his heart thudding with adrenaline. He'd made plenty of night sorties, both in training and actual combat, but pre-battle jitters were simply part of the package. He nodded to his men, whispering out the signal to begin. The Briton soldiers he'd trained so carefully in commando tactics began the raid by tying one end of an enormous ball of whip-thin, strong coradage to each of the several gates leading out through the outermost wall.

In groups of ten, they slipped out through those gates, each man letting the guideline slide through his fingers in the darkness. Stirling led one party toward the royal pavilion. When they reached the end of the first skein, some one hundred and sixty feet from the summit, the commando immediately behind Stirling tied the beginning of his skein to the end of Stirling's and they continued their silent descent.

Each band descending the hillside included one Sarmatian archer with a quiver of deadly arrows slung across one shoulder. As they approached the royal pavilion—which was not Stirling's goal, not tonight—they paused long enough for the archer to find and target the night sentry on duty outside the kings' tent. A soft slap of bowstring and a hiss of arrow's flight were followed by a muffled gasp of pain and the thud of a man's body striking the ground. Stirling was on top of him an instant later, cutting the wounded man's throat to finish silencing him. Blood, hot and terrible, flowed across his hands, which he wiped on his woolen trousers to prevent his grip on dagger and guideline from slipping.

Stirling signaled with one hand and they continued the perilous descent, down toward the flat plain at the foot of Caer-Badonicus. They tied ten separate lines to the end of the final skein, so that each of the commandos could find his way back swiftly, then split up, creeping low through the camp. Stirling's goal for the night was multifold, but his main target was the line of horses and supply wagons dimly visible as hulking black shadows at the edge of the Saxons' camp. They crept around tents where Saxons snored and turned restively in their sleep. Stirling would have given a great deal for a simple set of starlight goggles, but that kind of technology was sixteen centuries in the future, so he did the best he could with ambient starlight and the smouldering coals of the campfires.

The archer creeping along at Stirling's heels took down another sentry, catching this one through the throat with his deadly aim. The man thrashed down with a choked gurgle and went still after no more than two feeble kicks of his feet. Heart pounding, Stirling eased past the body, gaining at last the line where the Saxons' supply wagons had been parked for the duration of the siege. The draft horses had been tied for the night just beyond the heavily laden wagons. He held his long dagger in his teeth, ignoring the coppery taste from the blood of the Saxon he'd killed with it, and slipped open the satchel strapped to his back.

He lifted out one of the clay pots inside, upending its mixture of pitch, sulphur, tow, frankincense, and sawdust across the nearest wagon's contents, then crept to the next wagon in line, repeating the action until Emrys Myrddin's combustible compound had drenched the contents of ten Saxon wagons. That done, Stirling slipped around to the picket line of horses, hushing them as they whickered, patting velvety noses and thick-muscled necks. He cut the lines with his dagger, then slipped back to the nearest campfire, where he paused, waiting for the signal from the summit.

A moment later it came, as each of the teams tugged on their guidelines, signaling their readiness. Light flashed from the top of the watchtower, lantern light that glowed like a star in the inky darkness. Stirling grinned, then thrust his torch into the coals. It caught with a flare of red-gold light. Sprinting now, he ran from wagon to wagon, setting Myrddin's surprise alight. Flames roared in a great whoosh as the Greek fire ignited. Horses screamed, plunging away from the sudden spread of flames, running in panic, bolting with their cut tether lines across the great, dark plain.

Stirling let go a bloodcurdling yell and dashed back through the Saxons' camp, setting fire to tents as he ran. Wagons blazed for hundreds of yards along the Saxons' outer perimeter, spelling utter ruin for the besieging army. Grinning like a madman, Stirling fired more tents, gained the guideline, and shouted, "To the walls! To the walls, my bonny Britons!" Men came running through the blazing camp, Saxons milling in terror and confusion, Briton soldiers making a purposeful dash for the trailing guidelines.

"Move, move, move!"

Men scrambled past, climbing the muddy hillside. Overhead, the Saxon kings had burst out of their pavilion tent. Stirling's Sarmatian archer lit an arrow wrapped with oil-soaked rushes and fired high into the night air. The flaming missile whistled through the blackness and landed squarely atop the kings' tent. Fire spread in greedy tongues and rivers across the top of the cloth pavilion. Shouts of anger and panic spread through the group milling inside. Stirling's men climbed at a fast jog, bursting amongst the confused Saxons with whoops of savage glee. The kings scattered into the night, shouting for assistance.

"Leave them to run!" Stirling bellowed, urging his men back toward the summit.

Within minutes, they were safely back inside the walls, while below, fire blazed in a gaudy ring all the way around the base of Badon Hill. Cadorius was waiting to pound his back in delight. "By God's holy beard, you've done it! Look at them!"

Saxons were running in wild confusion, silhouetted against the blazing camp, trying with ragged, disjointed coordination to catch the scattering horses, to douse the flames consuming their supplies, their tents, and their caches of weapons. Britons, roused from sleep by the wild shouts below, were cheering in the night, whistling and laughing in open merriment. Stirling couldn't stop grinning, although he did pause long enough to order a trumpeter to blow the rally signal. Deep notes sang out across the hill fort's walls, a summons which brought Stirling's raiders running to report.

Of the fifty men he'd sent down in teams of ten, forty-eight had returned safely. One had been killed, his body dragged back by his comrades for proper burial. Another had been wounded and was receiving care from the camp's healers. The glow in his men's eyes closed Stirling's throat for a moment. In all his years of service to king and country, not one soldier had ever looked at him with such proud confidence in his leadership. Go back? a portion of his mind whispered to itself. Go back, when I'm needed here and now? Memory of the butchered women and children left to rot by Cutha and his Saxon cutthroats floated behind Stirling's eyelids. No. He could not go back. Not now. Not ever.

He hoped to God his family and his commander in the SAS would understand.

"I am deeply proud in your courage and skill this night," Stirling said in a voice that shook a little. "I have never served with finer men. It is my privilege and honor to fight at your side."

A roar went up from the watching Britons.

Princess Iona, cheeks wet and grey eyes brilliant in the firelight, smiled through her tears, then moved quietly away, clearly wanting to be alone with her grief. Stirling watched her go. Nothing he did, nothing these brave men did, could ever undo the damage the Saxons had already wrought. But they could prevent further butchery. Stirling swore an oath to God and whatever host of angels might be listening.

I will not fail these people. To the last of my strength, the last breath in my body, I will not fail them. This, I swear by all I hold holy.

Vow cast, Stirling saw his men well fed, plied with good wine, and then sought his bed, knowing full well the vengeance the Saxons would wreak, come the dawn.