Iona, trembling atop the wall, spat once in Creoda's direction, then turned her back. Ancelotis leaped forward, assisting her down to the ground. She was shaking violently now, barely able to keep her feet, and tears spilled loose, blinding her. Ancelotis guided her gently back toward the barracks, relieved when Covianna Nim came hurrying forward.
"Help her," Ancelotis said quietly. "She must have some relief of the grief that has wounded her heart so deeply."
"Come, Iona," Covianna Nim said soothingly, "let me help you rest."
Ancelotis was on his way back to Cadorius and the others when a scream of ram's-horn trumpets shattered the raw morning. The sound came not from the Saxons' command pavilion, but from the northern slope. He ran forward, just in time to see a group of five heavily armored riders burst down the hillside through the northern gate, horses thundering toward the Saxon lines.
"What in hell—?" Stirling gasped.
The riders met infantry with a shock of lances on shields. The first wave of Saxons went down, but infantrymen poured in from the flanks, cutting off the riders' escape. One of the Britons went down, hacked to death by Saxon war axes. The others tried again for a breakout and were blocked at every turn. When the infantry tried to drag the cavalrymen from their saddles, the Briton war-horses screamed and lashed out with flinty hooves, kicking and biting to clear a path back up the hill. The remaining four riders spurred their horses up the steep slope, having failed to break through the Saxon lines. Spears whistled after them, bringing down two of the war-horses. Their riders rolled clear of the wounded animals, then clawed their way upward, until all four were safely back inside the gates.
"What in God's name was that in aid of?" Stirling demanded.
Cadorius spoke behind him. "To convince the Saxons we are desperate to break out a message for help—and are too weak to do so."
Stirling tightened his jaw muscles, then nodded. He, too, had ordered men to their deaths. Necessity never made it easy, however, and Cadorius' eyes reflected the same pain Stirling and Ancelotis felt so keenly. "So it begins," Stirling said through clenched teeth. "A cat-and-mouse tradeoff of blows."
"Take heart," Cadorius said quietly, laying an arm across his tense shoulders. "They can do us little damage and Iona's proud defiance has stirred the men's blood far better than you or I could have done."
That, at least, was nothing more than raw truth.
And so they waited the Saxons out, midday stretching interminably toward a cold blustery dusk, while the Saxon army continued its work, throwing up fighting platforms around the circumference of Badon Hill. Four times more did Cadorius send riders thundering downhill, attempting breakout, testing Saxon strength and responsiveness, testing their signaling systems and how well they worked together as infantry. And four times more were the Briton riders turned back, with greater ease and swifter responsiveness as the day wore endlessly on and the Saxons, too, began to hit their stride as a functional battle unit. Cadorius said little, Ancelotis even less. Stirling bided his time, waiting for the proper moment to spring the first of their surprises.
By dusk of the second day of siege, the civilians atop Badon Hill were beginning to show signs of strain. "Why don't they attack?" Stirling overheard a woman asking one of the off-duty soldiers, who was gulping down a bowl of stew. "They outnumber us, why don't they attack?"
Ancelotis paused. "To wear down our nerves," he said quietly.
The woman, dressed as a farmholder, turned in surprise—and gasped when she recognized him. "My apologies, King Ancelotis," she stammered.
"No." He smiled, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It is a fair question and deserves answer. They hope to fray our patience, to leave us so jittery we'll lose all effectiveness when their charge does come at our walls."
Her eyes flashed. "Filthy curs! They'll not succeed with such tricks!"
Ancelotis smiled as she stormed off, shouting the news to the other women, sending the word of Saxon perfidiousness through the encamped refugees. Stirling chuckled. Brilliant, Ancelotis. Absolutely brilliant. You've put the fighting spirit right back into them.
Aye, he sighed. Now if we can just keep their spirits high...
Stirling waited until full darkness had descended, walking through the camp to give the high sign to the men he had selected a week previously and trained so carefully by day and night. The rain ended shortly after dark, the wind blowing rents in the clouds, through which glittering cold constellations could be seen. How long the clear weather would last, there was no way of knowing, but Stirling did not intend to waste the opportunity.
At least there was no moon to light the summit and upper slopes. His men gathered quietly in the darkness, waiting for the signal to begin their first nighttime raid. The Saxons far below crawled into tents for the night, leaving banked coals smouldering in the darkness like dragons' eyes. Sentries could just barely be made out, stolidly making their way past silent campfires, occluding the light as they passed.
"You know the drill," Stirling murmured. "Give it another quarter hour, to let them settle into sleep, then we'll begin."
Stirling walked the walls, studying the terrain below, the pattern of campfires, nodding to himself. Yes, they'd laid themselves out almost precisely as he'd expected. Silence had fallen over both camps now, as the frozen stars winked and glittered overhead, wisps of wind-torn cloud racing past. It was a wet wind, nonetheless, promising more rain off the cold North Atlantic—within hours, if Ancelotis were any judge of the weather.
The quarter hour passed swiftly, leaving Stirling's palms damp and his heart thudding with adrenaline. He'd made plenty of night sorties, both in training and actual combat, but pre-battle jitters were simply part of the package. He nodded to his men, whispering out the signal to begin. The Briton soldiers he'd trained so carefully in commando tactics began the raid by tying one end of an enormous ball of whip-thin, strong coradage to each of the several gates leading out through the outermost wall.
In groups of ten, they slipped out through those gates, each man letting the guideline slide through his fingers in the darkness. Stirling led one party toward the royal pavilion. When they reached the end of the first skein, some one hundred and sixty feet from the summit, the commando immediately behind Stirling tied the beginning of his skein to the end of Stirling's and they continued their silent descent.
Each band descending the hillside included one Sarmatian archer with a quiver of deadly arrows slung across one shoulder. As they approached the royal pavilion—which was not Stirling's goal, not tonight—they paused long enough for the archer to find and target the night sentry on duty outside the kings' tent. A soft slap of bowstring and a hiss of arrow's flight were followed by a muffled gasp of pain and the thud of a man's body striking the ground. Stirling was on top of him an instant later, cutting the wounded man's throat to finish silencing him. Blood, hot and terrible, flowed across his hands, which he wiped on his woolen trousers to prevent his grip on dagger and guideline from slipping.
Stirling signaled with one hand and they continued the perilous descent, down toward the flat plain at the foot of Caer-Badonicus. They tied ten separate lines to the end of the final skein, so that each of the commandos could find his way back swiftly, then split up, creeping low through the camp. Stirling's goal for the night was multifold, but his main target was the line of horses and supply wagons dimly visible as hulking black shadows at the edge of the Saxons' camp. They crept around tents where Saxons snored and turned restively in their sleep. Stirling would have given a great deal for a simple set of starlight goggles, but that kind of technology was sixteen centuries in the future, so he did the best he could with ambient starlight and the smouldering coals of the campfires.