"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.
Chapter Twenty.One