Consternation passed visibly across the old mens' faces, while the lads stared at their elders in open confusion. One of the oldest riders stroked his long, white beard while staring into Morgana's eyes. "And does Morgana of Ynys Manaw guarantee that yon Irish bastards won't burn our homes round our ears and carry our children into slavery?"
"Dallan mac Dalriada of Dunadd and Bradaigh mac Art of Belfast could have held all Galwyddel and Ynys Manaw to ransom during this week past, for Medraut and I went among them alone and unarmed, under truce of marriage. They treated us with honor and pledged to add their swords to our own in blood-feud with the Saxons who murdered their kinsmen at Fortress Dunadd. I swear before Christ and Holy Mother Mary that I believe them to be honest allies of Britain. I would not have brought them, else."
The old men of Weymouth village conferred quietly among themselves, then their white-bearded spokesman gave Dallan mac Dalriada a formal bow and put away his sword. "We bid you welcome then, and Godspeed to your journey. Weymouth will send a guide to show you the fastest route north to Caer-Badonicus, where the Saxon armies of Sussex and Wessex have laid siege."
"My grateful thanks," Medraut nodded graciously, a sentiment Morgana repeated as well.
Within a quarter hour of arrival, the Irish army—more than four hundred strong—set out in a thunder of hooves across the chalk hills and open downlands of Dorset, past thatched cottages built of chalk and flint, cottages and tiny villages that were ominously devoid of males between the ages of ten and seventy. Whipping through the villages, charging across the broad downs, with their grassy, rolling hills and vast herds of sheep, they raced overland at the gallop, past the Giant of Cerne Abbas, an immense male figure cut deeply into the white chalk of the hillside, with a gnarled war club held high above his head. Whoever had carved that immense chalk man, their warlike valor was desperately needed by the Britons who now ruled this land. As the white chalk man fell away behind their fast-moving cavalcade, Morgana prayed they would arrive at Caer-Badonicus in time. And that Artorius would find it in his heart to forgive her.
Dawn's first hint of grey had barely touched the eastern sky when Stirling climbed the ladder up to the watchtower.
"There it is again," the lookout whispered, taking care that his voice didn't carry. He pointed north, toward the Mendip Hills. Wishing mightily for a pair of ordinary binoculars, Stirling peered northward. The horizon was still too dark to make out anything like actual movement, but the signal light atop the highest hill flashed out an unmistakable message:
Charge under way... charge under way...
"Send the response code," Stirling said quietly.
The lookout's lamp flashed briefly in the near darkness, carefully shielded from all directions except the direct line of sight with Artorius' signalman. Straining his ears to the utmost, tipping his head slightly to put his best ear toward the invisible cavalrymen, Stirling finally detected a faint rumbling sound, like very distant thunder—which could all too easily be taken for the real thing, since lightning flashed and jittered across the northwestern sky. In the encampment below, Saxon soldiers had barely begun to stir out of their tents, clearly reluctant to crawl out into the drizzling cold rain that had begun falling during the night.
All the better, Stirling nodded to himself.
The lookout hissed, "Look you to the south! The Saxon kings are climbing up."
Stirling turned swiftly. They were, indeed, climbing. Swiftly so. On horseback! That was a stroke of luck Stirling hadn't counted on. He grinned. "Bloody marvelous! The fools don't want to muddy their finery, slogging up here on foot! And they've brought their ranking eoldormen and thegns, as I'd hoped. Call down which marker post they're nearest when they decide to stop. And yell out the moment you actually see Artorius and our cataphracti. In this battle, timing's everything."
The lookout saluted sharply. "Yes, sir!"
Stirling skinned down the ladder to find Cadorius, Melwas, and a number of Briton princes waiting at the foot of the tower. "On their way," Stirling said tersely.
Cadorius nodded, heading toward the rendezvous point. They passed three score and nine Sarmatian archers who waited silently, crouched down on one knee so as to remain completely invisible to the approaching Saxons. They sheltered their bowstrings beneath cloaks to protect them from the wet weather until time to fire. Stirling paused to murmur, "The lookout will call down the number of the marker they stop nearest. Aim accordingly."
Nine and sixty stone-still Asian faces nodded silently, a blood-chilling sight. Warriors carved of granite, prepared to come to life at the merest whisper from above...
As the Briton kings reached the innermost wall, an arrogant Saxon voice shouted, "Britons of Caer-Badonicus! Why do your kings not show themselves?"
Cadorius climbed up, Stirling and Ancelotis to his left, Melwas to his right. The king of Dumnonia stared coldly down at the Saxons, who could not see the men crouched low in the narrow spaces between the layered walls, ready to snatch open the wooden sluice gates. Of all the gates—real and false—built into the fortress walls, only these crucial five were lined up one in front of the other. Once opened, God Himself couldn't stop the pent-up water behind them from roaring free. Ropes quivered, held taut by the gate teams, five men to each side. Lying prone across the roofing stones other soldiers waited, ready to drag up the crossbars holding the floodgates rigidly closed. Enough rain had fallen—and continued to fall—that the slight loss of water trickling from beneath those tight-wedged gates looked like simple runoff seeping down the muddy hillside.
"Well?" the Saxon spokesman challenged Cadorius, sneering through his great, gaudy blond mustaches. "What say you, kings of Britain?"
Stirling and Ancelotis could just see the Saxons' upper bodies, along with their horses' heads and twitching ears. They'd called their halt near marker post three, an innocuous looking stub of wood barely visible above the muddy ground, which had been chopped by mens' boots and horses' hooves into a fine and filthy slurry. A very faint "Line on three..." drifted down from the watchtower, the sound so faint it couldn't possibly have carried to the Saxons, who had halted some fifty yards or so downslope. Stirling held three fingers up behind his back, to be sure every archer knew the proper aim point.
Cadorius, watching the silent preparations at his feet, shouted across, "Who among you will hear our terms?"
One of the eoldormen, a man neither Stirling nor Ancelotis recognized, sent back a jeering laugh. "Your terms? You do not dictate terms to the kings of Sussex and Wessex, Briton! We dictate them to you."
"Very well," Cadorius nodded, doing a creditable job of a man determined to remain reasonable at any cost. "What terms do you offer?"
The eoldorman turned slightly in his saddle. "What say you, mighty King Aelle of Sussex?"
The Saxon king swept them with a withering, dismissive glance. "If they would save the lives of their womenfolk, let them send the females out first. Along with any children below the age of five. Let this be the first demonstration of Saxon power—and Saxon clemency."