Gallius heard the buccina with only part of his awareness. He stared down at his own gashed leg and the blood seeping over his shoe. Someone called to him with the queasy sound the wounded make. Only then did he link the braying horn to a meaning: Recall. The second wave was already running or stumbling back. Gallius went to the wounded soldier and lifted him up. His mind worked stiffly as a frozen hand. He hoped they could get back to the ditch alive.

Ambrosius stalked down the ditch past the wounded wreckage of his first three assaults, those that got back. They were stopped dead, lost all initiative. Recall was necessary.

The reserves were up now and just to his rear, waiting without enthusiasm for the order to move forward. A moment's rest, then, while he sorted frantically through possibilities, knowing the one thing harder than starting a difficult attack was starting a failed one up again. He passed Gallius Urbi on his rump in the dirt, cursing feebly as he wrapped linen about a slash in his leg.

"Get them standing to, Gallius. We'll be going again."

Gallius and several others gaped at Ambrosius in what was left of surprise. Again? Go up and get this done to them again?

4 'You don't want to spend all day in this rutting ditch, do you?"

Gallius went on cursing over his leg like muttered prayers. Ambrosius moved on, stepping over and around men who hunched or huddled alone with their fear among other lonely men. He almost tripped over Patri-cius, who sat with a dead Faerie in his arms. The priest's hands were bloody. In the dirt by him was the arrowhead pulled free of the fatal wound.

Ambrosius knelt by him and spoke softly. 'Tut him down. You can't mourn one man like this. It will demoralize the rest."

"He was my brother. I'd be dead but for him. His name was Artcois. You might just remember it. And I will mourn him." But there was something about the priest not so still as mourning, that moved and coiled. "I confessed him this morning and gave him the last rites just now for whatever sins he incurred while walking up this hill for God. It should be God's, this place. And now, if you have no immediate orders, I would be alone. Sir."

Then the arrow detail hopped down into the ditch, tossing their bundles to waiting hands, Bredei crowing with breezy cheer. "Nae, did tell thee would be swift back. Artcois?"

Drust and Malgon only stretched their hands to the

sky and down to cover their faces. Then Bredei saw what Padrec held.

Without a word he came to lift his brother husband from Padrec's arms.

"Did say the magic even as a died, Bredei. Thy brother will not stay long enough in purgatory to know the place."

Bredei kissed his brother's forehead and laid him down on the earth. "Remember how Neniane called us children? True, we were." He smoothed Artcois' long t hair. "Was all play to us."

A sound like a purr began low in Bredei's throat, soft at first but rising in pitch and power. Malgon took it up, then Drust and a dozen, more and more swelling the eerie wail that went through Ambrosius like a fingernail down slate.

All along the ditch, the Prydn were rising as they joined their voices to the ululation. Ambrosius felt his skin crawl and the tribesman in him shiver. The sane world he knew held no place for such a sound. It was like a dark always hidden behind sunlight, suddenly bursting through to give sanity the lie. He kept from covering his ears only by an effort of will.

The Parisii and Brigantes shuffled about, unnerved by the wall. On the ramparts, heads rose curiously, ears cocked to identify that which had no name but a niche in their fears older than time.

There was a word Padrec had never heard before, a harsh, percussive sound like hardness breaking against hardness. The word cracked from Bredei's lips, then Malgon's, echoing along the ditch as the Prydn men rose. Bredei drew his sword, tossing away the scabbard and belt, hooking the shield over his left arm.

"Prydn will end this for Ambrose, Padrec."

Malgon's sword belt dropped across Bredei's in the dirt. "Can nae win from here." A brief, muttered word to Padrec, and they scrambled out of the ditch, running downhill toward the waiting ponies. More Prydn trotted after them, ignoring Ambrosius.

4 'What is this?" he demanded of Padrec. "Are they retreating? I gave no order to pull back/'

''No." Padrec snaked the blade from his own scabbard, discarding the belt. The priest looked ashen but his mouth was set. Ambrosius looked down the hill after the small, darting figures.

"Are they deserting? What did they say to you?"

Padrec picked up his shield. "In literal translation, they mean to borrow your tallfolk war. Tell Gallius to follow us in. Close."

"What?" Ambrosius didn't relish surprises not authored by himself. "Follow you . . . ?"

"Into the fort. Tell Gallius to be close behind and everything you've got after him."

Insane but true: the Faerie were running back up the line, leading their ponies. "Patricius, are you mad?"

"No, but they're sick of the smell of fear and losing brothers. They're going in."

Ambrosius recovered himself, restraining the little priest with a hand on his arm. "Centurion, you will not do this."

Padrec only shook him off. "I must; they'll go anyway."

"A mounted charge straight through the . . . it's insane!"

"Of course it isV Padrec pushed the younger man back from him. "And you can't stop it now any more than I could the day you called them the children of Christ. Get away."

Malgon rode up, leading Padrec's gelding. The priest jumped his saddle, lifting his sword amid the keening that sounded to Ambrosius like the buzzing of maddened bees. "This hill to God, Ambrosius. And land to the Prydn. Remember it." Then Padrec joined in the keening as the Prydn rode toward the paths filled in by sappers.

Ambrosius couldn't stop them all; it would be chaos and demoralize the rest of his badly shaken men. The Coritani, with no arrows to duck, just stared at them a

moment before they responded. Totally mad—undefended horsemen stringing out by twos this side of the ditch.

Ambrosius pounded down the ditch to Gallius, fiercely hauling the big man to his feet. 'They're going in, Gallius!"

4 'What? They're what?"

"Are you blind? Look at them. I can't stop them, but I'm not going to waste them. The priest said for you to follow them in. Get ready. First maniple over. Now. That's an order."

Ambrosius leaped out of the ditch, running toward the centurion of the second maniple. "Be ready. We're going in."

Stunned as Gallius, the centurion pointed forward at the moving Prydn. "What in the name—"

"You heard me. We're going in. Third maniple, up to me!"

Ambrosius heard the rumble as the Prydn spurred into a gallop, sweeping toward the fort entrance. His breath burst from his throat in a gasp of sheer disbelief. The lunatics were doing it.

He couldn't stop it, had to use it, make insanity into a weapon, follow it with another and another, his whole force if that's what it took. Once the entrance was breached, Rhiwallon would have to draw men from other parts of the wall, and then ...

Ambrosius whirled in his coiling excitement, expecting to see Gallius' men halfway to the fort entrance.

OK no. Jesu, Mithras, and Mars, no . . .

The first maniple was just moving out of the ditch, while the Prydn were already disappearing around the spur defense into the fort under a shower of arrows. Gallius would be late by that much when every second meant a man dead in that alley.

Gallius knew it for madness, and he'd been given a mad order on top of it when all of them were glad merely to be alive in the safe ditch. Through the fort entrance—a solid line of large targets in a narrow

trough. His men were on their feet, none of them wanting this any more than he did, and somehow the order stuck in Gallius' throat as the seconds bled away. Then the fear turned to anger. Ambrosius would cheerfully execute him if he didn't move. Die now, die later, small choice. vSomehow his hand grasped a high rung of the ladder and pulled him up a step. Gallius stared at the hand. It belonged to someone else who stole his own raw voice.

"Shield bearers out. Follow me. Let's go."

Plunging around the turn into the fort alley, Padrec had no time to look back at their support. He rode in the pack of his brothers still keening their death-song. There was no leader, only a single drive to close and kill.

The first arrows began to take them.

Padrec pushed his horse high along the side of the sloped ditch after Bredei, practically able to reach out and touch the archers drawing on them. Still they churned on, mindless of the milling confusion behind them, men and horses slowed by the underbrush choking the entrance. Screaming, flattened over their ponies' necks, the Prydn bounded straight up the ditch walls to cut down the archers or be impaled.

Malgon's pony took two shafts full in the chest and neck, and Padrec caught a brief flash of Mai going down under the stricken animal. Then Bredei screamed high— off his dead mount and swinging his sword two-handed as two Coritani leaped at him. In the swirl of close combat, his heart pumping like a blacksmith's hammer, Padrec caught a glimpse of the spur they'd just passed. Not there, Gallius isn 7 there. I told him to follow. He betrayed us.

Then his own horse stumbled and went down on its foreknees, dumping him into a pile of sharpened branches. He felt the wood cut into his back and legs, not deep but jarring pain that bathed his brain in a sudden red light. Pain roared into rage. The rational fear

that wanted to live melted away in lunacy as the tattooed tribesman leaped down at him, spear thrust forward. At the last instant, Padrec knocked it aside with his shield and windmilled his sword at the copper-haired skull.