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.