For King and Country

Chapter Twenty

Morgana was aware of narrow scrutiny from all sides as she rode through Caer-Badonicus' open gates with Irish kings and high-ranking noblemen at her back. Whispers and muted sounds of shock followed their progress. By the time she swung down from the saddle, she was weary enough that standing was an effort. King Cadorius greeted her with outstretched hands and a kiss on the cheek, a far more gracious welcome than she'd been expecting.

"I will not ask," he murmured, "until council has been convened. Please introduce me to your guests."

The introductions went round, formal and stiff and wary on all sides. Curious women and children clustered to stare while Briton soldiers manning the walls, still alert despite the resounding victory, stood ramrod stiff, studiously facing their duty posts; but she could tell just how intently they were listening. Cadorius welcomed the Irish king and his daughter with quiet respect, gesturing Medraut and his wife into the meeting hall. For a long moment, Morgana didn't even want to move. Then Ancelotis came up close behind her shoulder.

What he breathed softly into her ear, for her hearing alone, sent shock and terror skittering through her veins. "Brenna McEgan?"

She lurched around, heart pounding. The muddy ground slid and shook underfoot. The look in Ancelotis' eyes shocked her even more deeply than his words. He was trying to smile.

"Dr. McEgan," he said softly, in English, "I owe you the deepest apology it is possible to offer. Cedric Banning played me for a fool and fouled up both our lives rather spectacularly. Please believe me when I say SAS officers do not appreciate being manipulated into suspecting the wrong party."

Brenna's lips parted, trembling, but no sound emerged past the constriction in her throat.

"Will you answer one question?" he asked softly.

She nodded, still unable to find her voice.

"Were you Cumann Na Mbann?"

Her eyes stung with salt. She nodded, bit her lip. "I watched an Orange bomb blow up my sister, my niece. I was young, so full of rage and hurt... I left them, eventually, when I realized the hate was turning me into the same thing I was fighting. Left for Dublin and made a clean break. I'd no contact with the IRA for years. Until this." She blotted her eyes with shaking hands. "My grandmother was the one who convinced me I was the only one who could get close to him, close enough to find out what his plan was and stop him. I had the professional credentials to join the team.

"I'm convinced Banning engineered the motor crack-up that killed the team members he and I were hired to replace. I found out that he'd arrived just after the accident, chatted up Dr. Beckett, met him at the pub and convinced him to put Banning on the team. It was a good bit more difficult getting me in. I still don't know who pulled all the necessary strings, but the strangest part of it was, at least some of the people who made it possible were Belfast Protestants."

Stirling's brows shot up.

"Aye," she said softly, "it was a bit of a shock. The Orangemen had gone to the Provos to ask their help. Banning had gone wildcat on them, disappeared, vowing to destroy all Britain for what he saw as betrayal. London had vowed the election would take place as scheduled, even when it was clear there'd be a Catholic majority for the voting. He knew that majority would vote for reunification with the Irish Republic, destroying his country. He vowed to destroy Britain for it. He'd gone too far even for the Orange marching societies and paramilitaries and they wanted help finding him."

"Which the Provos did?"

She nodded. "They could have simply shot him or blown up his car, but when they realized what he was after, what the project was all about, both sides realized this was one job neither the Provos nor the Orange paramilitaries wanted publicized. And shooting or blowing up a research scientist in a remote little village in the Scottish Lowlands would've drawn publicity down on everybody's heads."

"So they sent you in to stop him? To kill him?"

She shook her head. "No. To identify him and determine what his plans might be. There was an IRA team waiting for my signal, to let them know I'd learned what I needed—whether or not the project was actually viable, whether or not he actually intended to sabotage it, to try and alter history. I was to signal them, so that if the danger was real they could arrange something that would seem accidental, damaging his car so he collided with a tree, lost his brakes, something that wouldn't be an obvious IRA hit."

The man Brenna had feared would kill her rubbed the back of his neck in a rueful gesture. "And he got the drop on both of us, instead." His eyes went dark, then, as Ancelotis' unseen guest sought to confirm the worst. "And he truly poisoned a whole town in Dalriada?"

Tears stung her eyes again. "I went there, Medraut and I did. With Dallan mac Dalriada and Medraut's bride. I saw with my own eyes what he'd done to Dunadd. He poisoned the wells with botulism toxin."

Stirling nodded. "We found Lailoken's packhorse, trying to track him, after we rode into Galwyddel and heard the news. There were several bottles in the panniers."

"You knew it was Lailoken?"

"Oh, yes. Artorius and I rode for Caer-Birrenswark to try and stop the wedding—"

"How did you know about that?"

Captain Stirling's borrowed lips quirked. "Thaney discovered that a minstrel had forwarded a letter from Covianna Nim to Artorius, a message betraying your plan. Artorius rode out of Caerleul at a dead gallop, without speaking a word. Thaney told me, or rather my host, what had happened. Begged us to stop Artorius, to protect you. Thaney thinks the world of Morgana, you know."

Her eyes misted.

"Anyway, we went tearing after Artorius. We ran slap into a party of soldiers trying to track Lailoken for the murders."

"And Covianna Nim betrayed us to Artorius? She must have heard us talking to Medraut, right after Morgana and I caught him in Ganhumara's arms."

Ancelotis—it was fascinating, watching the shift in the face shared by the king of Gododdin and his host, as one or the other personality came to the fore—just groaned. "Ganhumara?" he cried, adding in Brythonic, "A liaison between those two is the last thing we need!"

"That's been rather thoroughly squashed," Morgana said firmly, also in Brythonic. "Trust me for that much, at least."

One corner of Ancelotis' mouth twitched. "Morgana, you know I trust you implicitly. And I'm coming rapidly to trust you, as well, Dr. McEgan," Stirling added in English, with a twinkle in his eyes.

She smiled wanly. "I'm glad to hear it. Particularly as I could've done away with you ages ago, had I meant you harm."

Stirling groaned this time. "Oh, God, how inept was I?"

"No more so than I, just a bit more, ah, publicly."

"The challenge match with Cutha?"

She chuckled. "According to Morgana, the Britons have a number of highly effective close-combat techniques, but I've seen aikido. It's rather unmistakable."

"So it is."

"I don't suppose Lailoken's been found among the prisoners? The Irish want him rather badly."

"I'll just bet they do. And frankly, I can't imagine a more fitting application of the king's justice. We'll give the order to search the dead and the prisoners. Meanwhile, we've a council of kings and queens to convene." He offered his crooked arm.

Brenna McEgan, who never in her wildest imaginings had considered it possible for friendship to be offered her by an SAS officer, smiled in rueful amazement and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. Perhaps—just perhaps—there was hope, after all? If not for their own future, the timeline of their mutual origin, perhaps for this one? She intended to try with all her heart. And for the first time in many, many years, she was no longer alone in the attempt.

They found Lailoken alive, huddled with the Saxon army in the remains of their washed-out camp. When he was dragged into the council chamber, struggling and covered with mud, the minstrel took one look at Dallan mac Dalriada and screamed, trying violently to free himself. The grim-faced soldiers who'd hauled him up the hill shoved him to his knees. Several princes arrived hard on his heels, out of breath from hurrying up from the battlefield. Artorius gestured them to seats, while studiously ignoring Ganhumara, who sat in stony silence to his left.

"Thank you for arriving so promptly for council," Artorius said quietly. "We have much to discuss. Royal princes, your fathers have deputized you as their official representatives for this battle. The council I have called is very much a part of that battle. What we decide here will affect Britain for the next hundred years."

Stirling glanced from one face to the next, seeing no dismay, only grim resolution to do what was necessary to make the correct decisions. Even the queens and princesses, many of whom had seen battle firsthand and several of whom had led troops into battle, wore the cold, closed expressions of leaders on whom the lives of thousands of innocents depended. It was a sight Trevor Stirling had never seen before, one that sent chills up his borrowed spine: a room full of world-class leaders, tempered like fine steel by harsh reality, united in purpose, determined to safeguard the interests of their people, their way of life.

And, moreover, to do so through the power of the vote in lawful council. Lailoken's unseen guest, Cedric Banning—world-class terrorist fighting no less urgently to safeguard the interests of his culture—stood in vivid, revolting contrast, a man willing to subvert law, to murder not only thousands of civilians in an "enemy" city, but billions of innocents in the world whose future he had come here to destroy.

Banning's fate would be decided in this council chamber.

By rule of law.

Artorius spoke again. "The Saxons have been defeated. Utterly. Their kings have surrendered and are held prisoner in our custody. This council must decide the terms under which their kingdoms must be surrendered, as well. We have defeated two thousand of their men-at-arms, but thousands more Saxon settlers remain, from Ceint to Caer-Durnac. This council must draw up the terms of how these Saxons are to be ruled—or exiled, sent back to Saxony and Jutland where their grandfathers were born. This council also must decide the future of Briton relations with Ireland and Dalriada."

A low buzz went around the room. Word of the marriage of alliance had spread through the settlement like wildfire. Medraut sat very straight, very proud, with Keelin's hand clasped in his own, claiming her openly with just a touch of defiance in his stare. Keelin, too, sat with chin high, very young, very beautiful, but with a haunting look of grief in her eyes that nothing, not even time, could ever erase. She perhaps didn't realize it, but that wounded pain behind eyes that had seen more death and atrocity than any human being should ever have to witness firsthand, was the most powerful argument anyone could have presented in favor of the alliance she and Medraut were trying to forge.

"And finally," Artorius said coldly, staring down at Lailoken, "we have the matter of a Saxon spy, a traitor to Britain, guilty of murdering an entire Dalriadan city with foul poison. It is in my mind that he tested his bottles of death against the Dalriadan Irish to provoke an Irish invasion of Briton kingdoms at a time when he knew the bulk of Britain's fighting forces were rushing south. It is also in my mind that he fully intended to spread his gift of death to every major city in Britain and Ireland, every hill fort, every village, every farmhold he could reach—and that his Saxon allies would do the same, using the same method. I accuse Lailoken, Saxon spy and traitor, of conspiracy to commit genocide against the Irish and British peoples. This council will deliberate his guilt and determine what sentence to hand down."

Lailoken's dirty face, smeared with mud and his own blood, washed a sickly hue. He kept his gaze on the floor, where it belonged, unable to face those he had so grievously wronged. What Cedric Banning was thinking, Stirling had no idea—but intended to find out. Artorius asked for the roll of royal houses to be called. The kings and queens and princes of Britain answered for the people and lands they represented, until every kingdom had been accounted for—even Ynys Weith, answered for by Princess Iona in a strong, clear voice.

"Let the first matter before this council be the fate of the Saxons." Artorius gestured and the Saxon kings and princes were marched into the chamber, wrists bound, clothing matted with filth. "Aelle and Cutha of Sussex. Cerdic and Creoda of Wessex, gewisse traitors to Britain, who slaughtered the royal families of the kingdoms they have overrun. What say you, kings and queens of Britain, to their fate?"

Debate was brutally brief. Recommendations were universally grim. At the end of the tally, the vote was unanimous for beheading Cutha, who stared straight ahead and remained stone-silent throughout his sentencing. Opinions varied on whether to hang Creoda by the neck until dead, or simply burn out his eyes and let him wander as a beggar for the rest of his days. The princeling fell blubbering to his knees. "Please—I never killed any of those poor souls at Penrith, it was Cutha's doing, him and those brutes of his—"

Cadorius glared down at him. "Your crime is worse than Cutha's in my eyes, gewisse. You brought them among us, under oath of truce. You collaborated with them, scheming to insinuate yourself into Rheged's council, in the very council hall where Artorius and the high councils meet. You are a weak, spineless, sniveling thing, wretched beyond loathing. When your allies slaughtered all Penrith, did you lift a hand to stop them from butchering innocent babes?"

The princeling's lips trembled, wet and pathetic. "I—I feared too greatly they would turn upon me—"

"Yet you brought these jackals among us!" Cadorius roared to his feet, bringing his fists down so hard the table jumped and Creoda fell to his knees. "You brought them! Knowing you could neither control them nor enforce their honorable behavior. Fool, you are ten times the traitor for unleashing that on people whose blood flows through your veins! You disgust me." Cadorius spat on the floor, wringing a flinch and a moan from the ashen young man. "Hanging is too quick a mercy for his like. Blind the bastard and let him repent his folly at leisure." When Cerdic began to plead for mercy on his son's behalf, Cadorius stopped him with a single backhanded blow.

"That," he said through clenched teeth, "is for the murders of Princess Iona's entire family at Ynys Weith! Dear friends of mine, married to my own beloved cousins. I leave your fate to her discretion, for among us, none is so grievously wronged by your greed than she."

Iona rose with slow dignity, grey eyes as haunted by grief and horror as Queen Keelin's. She stood gazing down at Cerdic for a long time, her face like cut marble, her lips thin and hard. Keelin, at least, still had her father. Iona had lost everyone. Everything. Except herself. Her eyes were chilly as the winter Atlantic, stormy seas clashing and rolling behind those eyes, behind that long, utterly silent gaze. Cerdic flushed, ran icy pale, began to tremble. When she finally spoke, her voice was scarcely a whisper, yet as clear and strange as warped faerie bells in the twisted midnight glen.

"Show him the courtesy he showed to me. Send him naked into the winter marshes to hunt for his survival with nothing but his ragged nails and teeth. Let him eat fish raw from the bones while his hands bleed from the brambles he's pulled up to make a hand-knotted net to trap his wet and scaly dinner in, without so much as a knife to cut the thorny stems. Let him sleep in rotten rushes with the crabs and the mice to nibble at his frozen toes. And send him thus, exiled from human civilization, of which he knows nothing, lawfully deprived of all he holds dearest."

Cerdic had begun to tremble.

"Let his daughters and the infant grandchildren playing in his grand hall be taken as hostages. Let him trade places with me for the year I cowered and crawled in those self-same marshes. But grant his loved ones the mercy he failed to grant mine, for I will never demand that his kinsmen be slaughtered without pity, as mine were. Let the kings and queens of Britain decide how they will gift his family, should he ever try to leave those marshes. I wash my hands of the House of Cerdic and pray God has yet some mercy to spare in His rage over what you have done."

It was, Stirling realized slowly, while harsh in its demand for justice, still the most humane punishment yet suggested. All the more surprising, given what Iona had so grievously lost. As though reading his mind, Brenna McEgan murmured in a low English whisper, "Good for her. She's refusing to sink to their level. That child has more courage and more compassion than any five men in this room."

He shot her a startled glance, then nodded. She was right. More than right. It was a hopeful sign, one he almost dared believe would prevail. Artorius put the matter to a vote and within moments, Cerdic's fate had been sealed—along with his family's. Cadorius, commander of the besieged defenders at Badon Hill and highest-ranking monarch of the southern kingdoms, gave pronouncement on Cerdic's head.

Staring coldly down at the defeated Briton traitor who had crowned himself king with Saxon gold and treachery, Cadorius said, "You will be stripped of land, rank, title, and possessions. You will be sent into the salt marshes of Dumnonia's Irish-facing coast, away from your people, away from anyone who might give you pity or shelter, to live there by your wits, or die as God wills. If you so choose, you may take your son with you, once this council has carried out his sentence. He may share your exile, to remind you of the blind folly in your own dark hearts. Your children and grandchildren will be brought to Dumnonia, where they will remain my guests. So long as neither of you sets foot outside those marshes again, they will be treated with courtesy and respect. More than this, the kings and queens of Britain will not grant. Unlike God, our mercy has reached its limits. Do not ask for more."

The Saxons were taken away, heads bowed in utter defeat.

Artorius called for mulled wine to be passed round, symbolically washing the bitter taste of vengeance from their mouths before moving to the next item of business. Tension ebbed away and a low murmur of voices broke out as people rose and stretched their legs, strolled in conversation, sipped at the heated wine servants brought in clay pitchers. Covianna Nim brought a goblet of the steaming, spiced beverage to Artorius, smiling as she spoke in a low voice. He chuckled softly and drank with evident thirst. Morgana was frowning at the younger woman, a mixture of worry and hostility in that long, narrow-eyed stare. Ancelotis, alert to the fact that Covianna Nim had been the one to betray Morgana's intention to Artorius, decided to join her conversation with the Dux Bellorum.

"Have you received any word of Emrys Myrddin's whereabouts?" Ancelotis asked as he strolled up, while watching Covianna closely.

Lovely eyes widened slightly. "No, I haven't. I can't understand what's happened to him. He was so eager to return to Caer-Badonicus when he left the Tor, to oversee final preparations here. I fear bandits may have overpowered him. Or Saxon scouting parties."

Ancelotis narrowed his eyes. The likelihood of Saxons sending a reconnaissance party as far as Glastenning Tor was almost nonexistent, given its distance west and north of Caer-Badonicus. And Badon Hill was—so far as anyone had been able to determine—the farthest west and north any Saxon force had penetrated. "Bandits, more likely," he said coolly. "We'll have to scour the countryside for them, burn them out."

She lowered long, ash-blonde lashes, sipping at her own cup of wine. "Yes, we will. A dreadful business."

Something about her, something Stirling couldn't put a finger on any more than Ancelotis could, was raising his hackles, for no reason he could fathom. Perhaps it was only that she had given Artorius that letter, accusing Morgana of treason. Which was, Ancelotis thought darkly, gut tightening down in dread, the next order of business on the council's agenda. And there was almost nothing he could do to protect her—or Brenna McEgan—if this council decided Morgana was also guilty of treason to Britain. Smuggle her out, perhaps, to live with the Irish...

The council reconvened with a shuffling of feet and a refilling of goblets as servants hurried around with more pitchers of wine. When everyone had returned to their seats, Artorius spoke again. "We have among us guests from the north and west, from Dalriada and Belfast, guests who have been as greatly wronged by the Saxons as we have, here in Britain. At our last high council, we debated the wisdom of making contact with the Irish of Dalriada and found ourselves divided on the matter." A brief smile came and went on the Dux Bellorum's deeply gullied face. Listening in surprise, Ancelotis dared to hope for the first time that Artorius might possibly support Morgana in this.

Artorius gestured to the Irish delegation. "Kings and Queens of the Briton High Council, I formally present to you Dallan mac Dalriada, King of the Irish Scotti clan, and Queen Keelin, daughter and heiress to Dallan mac Dalriada and bride of Medraut, newly crowned King of Galwyddel."

A stir of surprise ran round the room, as the wild rumors were formally confirmed.

"Riona Damhnait, Druidess to King Dallan mac Dalriada, will translate his greeting."

The Druidess rose gracefully, hair caught back in a jeweled net that scattered light in bright sparkles. "I speak for Dallan mac Dalriada, King of the Scotri of Dalriada. Greetings to you, my neighbors and now my kinsmen. The history of our respective peoples has been a violent one, with warfare between us for many generations. Yet we are more like one another than any of us realized, until the coming of the Saxons. This threat touches our hearts deeply, for Saxon treachery has destroyed the capital of Dalriada, four thousand souls murdered by poison poured into the town's wells.

"This creature," she gestured contemptuously toward Lailoken, huddled now along one edge of the room, between his guards, "wormed his way into the confidence of Briton queens and kings, offered himself as go-between in the matter of alliance between Briton Galwyddel and Irish Dalriada. I embraced this alliance with joy, seeing the good it would do all our peoples, Briton and Irish alike, for we all face a rising threat from the Jutland Danes, the Saxons, the Angles from Denmark's Angeln Peninsula, and their cousins of Frisia. I gave my only child, my greatest treasure, in marriage to the king of Galwyddel, to forge an alliance I believed necessary for the safety of both our peoples.

"When this foul poisoner fled," Lailoken withered beneath her cold contempt, trying to cower down through the floor, "betraying Briton and Irish alike, Queen Morgana and King Medraut risked death to warn us of the treachery he had committed. They could have remained silent, could have allowed me to drink from a final, poisoned gift, but rushed to prevent yet more deaths and the senseless blaming of innocents that would surely have occurred, had not their honor driven them to act with greater courage than any I have ever witnessed."

A stir ran through the room, at that, surprise at the candor and the compliments.

The Druidess let the buzz of hushed reaction die down, then continued gravely. "My king, Dallan mac Dalriada says, the murder of four thousand Dalriadan Irish only strengthened my resolve to destroy this Saxon threat to both our peoples. I raised an army from the countryside around Dunadd, sailed for the town of Belfast, where kinsmen joined us to meet these Saxons in battle. And when Artorius' charge scattered the Saxons ahead of him on the plain, we were waiting; Artorius' hammer crushing them against our Irish anvil, preventing their escape. Together, Briton and Irish soldiers kept these Saxons from regrouping elsewhere with a fighting force still capable of waging war."

That point, at least, could not be argued. Stirling had seen it almost at once, so had Ancelotis. Given the look in Artorius' eyes, he could see the truth in it, as well. Without the Irish "anvil" stopping their headlong retreat, the Saxons might well have escaped to regroup elsewhere—making another battle and another after that, for months or years, painfully necessary. Together, they had accomplished something profound.

Riona Damhnait gazed at each of the tables in turn, each of the kings and queens and princes, each of the princesses and royal advisors seated beside and behind them. "We ask only two things of this council. Give this alliance a chance. Honor the pledge these young people have made to one another and to peace between our peoples. Give us a chance to exchange artisans and craftsmen, to send home any Britons who were taken from their homelands while we were enemies, with compensation for them and their families. Give us a chance to marry Irish widows to Briton landsmen, to knit up the damage wrought by war, give us all the chance to build something better in its place. And give us the traitor, Lailoken. I, Dallan mac Dalriada, King of the Scotti clan of Dalriada, thank you for the chance to ask these things, and for the hospitality and honor you have shown us."

The Druidess returned to her seat.

For a moment, absolute silence reigned.

The explosion of voices rattled dust from the rafters. Artorius was on his feet, banging the hilt of his sword against the table, shouting for silence. "Is this the way Britons greet guests and allies?" he snarled into the babble of angry words. "You shame us, shame the good names of your royal families and clans!"

Mutters finally died away into silence once again. Artorius glared around the room, pinning each and every one of them with an icy stare. Cadorius had the good grace to look troubled. But young Clinoch of Strathclyde was on his feet, literally shaking with rage.

"Ally ourselves with the butchers of Dalriada?" the boy spat. "We've fought them across our borders longer than I have been alive! They killed my grandfather's brothers, they've taken our people into slavery, plundered our fishing and trading fleets, and you would ask me to break bread with them? To call them allies? Kinsmen?"

Before anyone could answer the boy's vitriolic burst of hatred, Keelin rose to face him, pale to her very lips. She promptly astonished everyone in the room by speaking fluent Brythonic.

"Honored Clinoch, King of Strathclyde, our nearest Briton neighbor, I beg you to remember that I, too, have lost kinsmen in the wars between Strathclyde and Dalriada. My uncles, my grandfathers, both of my own beloved brothers were killed in the fighting. And our fleets have been attacked by Strathclyde's, as well, sometimes with cause, in retribution for raids, but sometimes not. There has been wrong on both sides of this war. Yet when Medraut of Galwyddel came to Dunadd and offered alliance, I put aside the grief for my own much-loved brothers. I recognized the great courage it took for him to sail into Dunadd Harbor, to ask for this alliance. I married Medraut, with all the anguish of the past between us, because I believed it was the best, the only way, to ensure that no one else from his people or mine ever grieves the loss of loved ones in a war that we have the power to stop, now and forever."

Tears were running openly down her cheeks. Medraut, visibly stricken, drew her close, his tenderness and care so open and honest, a low hum ran through the assembly, softening expressions and defusing much of the tension that had tightened so dangerously through the room. Clinoch of Strathclyde stood silently for long moments, jaw clenched as he, too, fought powerful emotion. Children, Stirling realized with a pang, these three passionate souls deciding the fate of all Britain, are mere children. Clinoch was barely fifteen, Medraut and Keelin no more than sixteen and seventeen. It was, perhaps, only fitting that the future of Britain rested in the grief and pride and courage of her children.

In a gesture that surprised everyone, perhaps except Stirling, Princess Iona of Ynys Weith rose with outstretched hands, clasping Keelin's trembling fingers in her own. "I know the grief you feel, know it to the depth of my heart. The Saxons have wounded us deeply. I, Princess Iona of Ynys Weith, formally greet you as sister."

She embraced the trembling Irishwoman, kissed her cheek, then turned and faced Clinoch of Strathclyde. "Your father is but a few weeks in the ground, Clinoch, but remember that it was not Dalriada who murdered him."

"If the Irish had not driven the Picts from their homeland—"

"You would not now be king, faced with a choice that will affect your grandchildren's grandchildren. Would you throw away the chance to stop war between them and Keelin's great-grandchildren? When you have been given the chance to build peace, instead? To strengthen your borders against enemies of both Strathclyde and Dalriada? To pull men needed badly elsewhere away from a border that no longer needs guarding? You have younger sisters, do you not?"

He nodded, face a mask of anguish.

"Would you have them grow to womanhood, wed, and watch their sons march to war, knowing that you could have spoken the word that would send them north as kinsmen and guests, instead?"

Bright water glistened in his eyes. "Would you have me forget the wrongs done us?"

"Would you have me forget the butchery of my family? It was in my hands, the fate of Cerdic and all his kinsmen. A man who drank ale from my father's skull and laughed while he did so."

Clinoch flinched. So did many others listening in silent judgement.

"Clinoch," Iona stepped toward him, hand extended, "I know the pain you hold in your heart. But I will never sink to the level of my family's murderers. That victory, I will not grant them. My soul is too precious to stain it with hatred and murder. And Clinoch, it is not the Scotti of Dalriada who have done your family, your people their greatest harm. Please, remember that and think long and hard on the way your answer here, today, will harm or stain your soul, and the souls of those who look to you for their best protection."

The brightness in the boy's eyes had spilled over, tracking down his face. He gulped once, fighting to retain control, no longer a child, not yet a man, with the weight of decision cruel and heavy on his young shoulders. He looked into Iona's eyes, looked into Keelin's and Medraut's, sipped air, willfully stilled his unsteady lips. "It is not in my heart to inflict war on my people. I have not your strength, Iona, to greet them as kinsmen, but for the sake of Strathclyde, for the sake of my people, I will give this alliance a chance."

Iona embraced him gently, while Keelin's eyelids came clenching down over more tears.

In such a highly charged atmosphere, not even those most adamantly opposed to alliance could cheapen the gesture made by Clinoch and Iona. The voting went swiftly. Ganhumara sent Keelin a dark look of utter jealousy, but under the eyes of all Britain—and her husband—even she voted to let the alliance stand. Morgana seemed stunned by the outcome, clearly having expected to be censured, at the very least, if not convicted of treason during time of war. More heated wine went round, with Covianna Nim once again carrying a goblet to Artorius. Toasts were made and answered, congratulations offered on the marriage, and articles of treaty debated and ratified, providing for trade, exchange of artisans, even the establishment of missions by Briton Christian priests.

As the final details were recorded, Artorius called once again for the council's attention.

"We have one final order of business. Bring the traitor, Lailoken."

He was hauled forward by his guards, eyes downcast.

"Have you anything to say in your defense, Saxon?"

The man looked up, eyes wild with fear. "It was the demon made me do it! The demon in my head, whispering secrets, promising revenge on the Irish butchers who murdered my wife, my children..."

"He's mad," someone muttered.

Stirling watched with a chill in his blood, pitying the Briton minstrel whose life had been shattered by the Orangeman from sixteen centuries in Lailoken's future. Ancelotis, too, felt a complex blend of pity and revulsion, having had his own life wrenched inside out by Stirling's arrival. The look in Morgana's eyes was ghastly. She rose to her feet and spoke, gaze locked on the minstrel as though facing Grendel.

"Cedric Banning," she said in coldly in English, causing Stirling to suppress a gasp, "what have you to say to me?"

The man's head jerked up, as though wrenched by a giant, unseen hand. Shock washed across Lailoken's face. Then he snarled, hatred twisting his features. "Filthy Irish bitch! I should have broken your neck that night in the lab!"

She held his gaze levelly, neither speaking nor moving.

Banning spat at her, eyes mad with a sparking insanity that left Stirling ill. "I'm only sorry I hadn't the chance to poison every well in Ireland!" Banning laughed, the sound wild and mad. "Get home if you can, McEgan. And if you can't, take your exile as a last gift of the Orangemen of Ulster!"

Stirling, rising swiftly to stand beside her, said softly, "Who do you think told the IRA and the SAS to hunt for you?"

The denial balanced on Banning's lips died there when Stirling held his gaze levelly, staring down at Banning with all the loathing he could summon. He saw it form, the realization that his own had betrayed him, the slipping of what little solid ground remained under the man's feet. The caved-in, sick look in Banning's eyes, might, under other circumstances, have moved him to pity. But Banning had chosen hatred and death at every step along his life's path, had allowed his anger and desire for revenge to fester until he'd murdered his own sanity with it. Faced with such a creature, there was only one humane course open to Stirling—or to anyone else in like circumstances.

Voice soft in the uncertain hush of the council chamber, Stirling said, "In the name of His Majesty's British government, I charge you with terrorism and mass murder, Cedric Banning. If I had access to a gun, I would consider ordering you shot by firing squad. That is the way the Orange paramilitaries deal with traitors to their own, isn't it?"

A terrible sound broke loose, timbers cracking under the weight of a glacier. Banning began to tremble violently. His lips, wet and quivering, glistened horribly in the light. The looks of utter revulsion sent his way by the silent, stunned audience were lost on the man, whose gaze had not left Stirling's face.

"This"—Stirling swept a gesture at the council, men and women staring in puzzled silence at the three of them, speaking a language no one else understood—"is the trial by law you are entitled to receive. Take whatever comfort you can find in the knowledge that the murder of every soul in Dunadd may have accomplished what you set out to do. You may well have fractured history for all time, destroying several billion innocents in the process. We," he gestured to himself and Brenna McEgan, "won't know that for a year, if ever. But you, Cedric Banning, you will never know. You will never be given the chance to find out. May God pity your soul, for the rest of us do not."

Switching to Brythonic, Ancelotis said coldly, "He has confessed his intention to murder as many Irish and British souls as possible. Gododdin votes to hand him to the Irish for whatever punishment they find most appropriate."

At the head table, Artorius—clearly wanting to know what language they'd been speaking and why—sent Ancelotis a hooded look, but he merely nodded and called for the council's vote. The final tally was unanimous. "Lailoken," the Dux Bellorum said in an icy, iron voice, "you are formally remanded to the custody of Dallan mac Dalriada, who will carry out the death sentence both our peoples have rendered upon your head. If you request it, a Christian priest will accompany you to perform last rites."

Banning laughed wildly, gasped out in English, "Oh, God, it's too precious, the Dark Ages baboon's offering me papist rites!"

Artorius frowned, glancing at Ancelotis.

"He doesn't want a priest."

"Ah."

When the king of Dalriada gestured his ranking officers to take charge of the prisoner, Banning spat on them, laughing insanely one moment, cursing them the next, until he was dragged unceremoniously from the room. Artorius rubbed his eyes wearily. "I thank you, kings and queens of Britain, for your wisdom in this council. It is time for us to look to our homes and our harvests and the coming winter. We will meet again tomorrow to settle the matter of reoccupying Saxon-held lands."

The council—and the war—had finally come to a close.

At least, Stirling qualified it, until the next time the Saxons grew bold enough and strong enough to try it again. And he knew only too well that they would, again and again. He met Brenna McEgan's eyes, read in them exactly the same weary resolution he felt, to stay and fight for these people as long as they possibly could. It was, perhaps, a form of atonement the two of them could offer these people, for the destruction the twenty-first century had unleashed in their midst. As the council broke up into a genuine celebration, with wine flowing freely and laughter taking the place of grim debate, Stirling felt more hopeful than he had since his abrupt arrival, a few short weeks and a lifetime ago.