Behind Stirling's shoulder, Melwas muttered, "He means to butcher them before our eyes."
Cadorius' answer came out flat with apparent dejection. "You offer us no other sane choice. Very well, I will give orders to summon our women and children. And I will unbar the gates, to let them pass."
Aelle inclined his iron-helmed head in assent as grey light gradually brightened the eastern sky with long, bloody streaks of crimson, ominous predictor of more rain. Cadorius turned toward the inner compound. "Gather the womenfolk up and their babes, as well—we will send them out under a flag of surrender."
Waiting men "relayed" the command, buying a few more precious seconds while women added shrill voices to the commotion they were carefully engineering inside the compound. The Saxons sat their horses in jaunty confidence, most of them wearing smirks, clearly enjoying every moment of their triumph, which had come at a remarkably low cost in Saxon lives. Oh, yes, they were most assuredly enjoying this moment. Tension tightened through Stirling's every muscle, every sinew, waiting, waiting for the final signal—
High overhead, the watchtower sentry blew the ram's horn.
Artorius was in sight.
"NOW!" Stirling bellowed. He dropped flat. The others threw themselves down beside him. Wooden bars, snatched from their brackets, sailed into the air. The teams on the gates hauled in unison, dragging ponderous sluice doors wide open. Five wooden gates slammed into five stone walls. Gate teams scrambled for safety as the pent-up water burst free, like the gushing spillway of a dam. Muddy water frothed and flattened into a wave that spread across the whole side of Badon Hill.
Horses reared and snorted in panic as the flood smashed into them, fetlock-deep and splashing up to the horses' knees in places. The churned-up mud, already saturated from weeks of rain, liquefied instantly underfoot, like slurry thrown off a potter's wheel. Several animals lost their footing and crashed to the ground, lunging and screaming in terror and pain. Hapless riders were hurled through space to land badly in the mud and brambles, or, even worse for them, they lay pinned beneath their wounded mounts, dragged downhill with bone-crushing force as their horses skidded downward in the muck. Other horses bolted, kicking and sunfishing in their desperation to escape the shifting, slick mud. Water sucked semisolid ground out from under flailing legs. Equine panic redoubled as wounded men and downed horses thrashed and bellowed their inelegant way toward the plain five hundred feet below. In the space of thirty seconds, surprise turned into chaos and—with lightning's jagged quickflash—chaos spilled into utter rout.
Ancelotis gave the high sign. Three score and nine Sarmatian archers let fly. Arrows fell in a thick black rain. Wounded horses, already panic-stricken, bucked and pitched. More riders came adrift. Another flight of arrows slashed through armor and flesh, through mail shirts, through arms and legs and horses' fleeing hindquarters. "Fall back!" someone was shouting from within the mass of shaken Saxons. "Fall back—for the love of Frigga, fall back!"
Men slipped and scrambled through the deadly black rain. Saxon kings and royal princes cartwheeled and skidded through the muck. At the base of the hill, Saxon infantry scurried like confused ants. Someone was blowing the signal to charge. Someone else was frantically gesturing troops out of the flood's path. Water hit the wooden wall shielding the royal pavilion, parted in a great splash, and roared down into the camp below. Whole tents were swept away, their anchoring pegs yanked out of the softened, muddy ground. Saxons splashed after them, trying to rescue weapons washed away with the rest of the flotsam.
"Look!" Melwas cried.
He was pointing to the northeast corner of the hill.
Saxons were running in wild confusion, a whole mass of them fleeing in a mob. Some tried to climb the hill, others ran straight out onto the plain. A fierce exultation swept through Stirling. Ancelotis let out a wild shout. "They're running! Bastards are running! We've broken them!"
An instant later, a thousand galloping horses burst into view. Thunder rolled across the Salisbury Plain, four thousand flying hooves shaking the very ground. Artorius was visible in the vanguard, his white stallion snorting at full charge, his golden armor gleaming in the early light, the red dragon banner snapping like a ribbon of blood. The cavalry charge cut through the mass of fleeing Saxons, mowing them down like rye before a scythe. Hundreds of Saxons went down beneath the cataphracti's hooves. None of those who fell so much as stirred when the cavalcade swept past. Britons up and down the wall were shouting, hurling javelins into the clustered Saxons foolish enough to seek safety by climbing toward the fortress. A flight of Sarmatian arrows blackened the sky once more, bringing down more.
"Charge!" Cadorius shouted. "Sound the charge! Cataphracti, to horse!"
The watchtower lookout sounded a long blast. A wave of Briton infantry poured over the walls. Women and children led horses forward, running with them toward other gates snatched open by foot soldiers manning the walls. Cavalrymen vaulted into the saddle and charged through them, carefully keeping to solid ground on either side of the slurry that had spelled ruin to the Saxons' hopes. Ancelotis shouted, "Archers! Keep your ranks closed up! Advance in a group! Continue massed fire!"
He leaped onto the nearest horse, not caring whose it was, and plunged through the open gates, leading Gododdin in the charge. The Saxon kings and their shaken sons cowered against the wooden shield wall of their command platform. Covered in mud, eyes wild, horses dead or galloping away riderless across the open plain, the Saxons drew swords to face down the Britons stampeding toward them.
"Alive!" Ancelotis shouted. "Take them alive!"
A moment later, Gododdin had surrounded them, hemming them round with a glittering wall of British steel. Ancelotis gave them a mocking salute with his own sword.
"You seem to have lost an army," Ancelotis favored them with a cold smile. He gestured slightly with the tip. "Unless it is your wish to die immediately, throw down your weapons and your arrogant pride and beg the kings of Britain—whom you have greatly wronged—for mercy on your shivering wives and daughters."
King Aelle of Sussex, barely recognizable through muddy filth, blood, and shock, snarled, "What guarantees do you give us for our safety, do we acquiesce?"
"Guarantees?" Ancelotis raised his brows. "What guarantees did your murderous son and the odious, craven fool with him offer the village of Penrith? Or the farmholds within five miles of the standing stones? We guaranteed Cutha and Creoda safe passage and they repaid it by spitting infants on pikes and hacking toddling babes into scattered pieces for the crows to eat. Shall I return your courtesy back to you in full measure?"
Aelle lost color beneath the grime. Not, Stirling realized with utter contempt, because the news of the massacre was a surprise, but because Aelle finally realized that an accounting was due for their atrocities—and that he, as much as his son, would be held accountable for it. Stirling could see it in his eyes, that moment of sick horror when he realized the Britons were fully capable of slaughtering his daughters. Even Cutha looked pale around his tight-clenched mouth, pale with shock and hatred and the burning desire to sever British heads from British necks in a war he had already lost.
Ancelotis smiled down into their eyes.
"Yield up all that we demand," he said softly, "or your wives and daughters will learn the true meaning of terror. You have shown us too much of Saxon butchery to expect pity on your women and your squalling infants. Not from men whose families you have slaughtered like lambs under the axe. You have sown hatred and now you reap it in full measure. Surrender here and now, or I vow to you, there will be no stopping our soldiers in their drunken rampages across the lands you've stolen. They will defile your daughters and feed your infants to their dogs and smile while they do it. What say you, curs of Saxony? Shall I loose the hounds of Britain against your families? Or leash them and show the mercy you have failed to show any of us and ours?"