“Tribune?” he urged delicately.

Let it be then, but let it happen in a way that made Agrivaine think hard on its worth. “If I accept, Agrivaine, will you abide my choice of place and weapons?”

“Name them.” He seemed just as glad to be at my throat as Trystan’s. “The time?”

“If we survive, day after tomorrow, ten of the morning. The city market square.”

“Impossible.” Cador dismissed the notion impatiently. “If we have a city at all then it will be full of people going about their business. No room for horse or lance.”

“No horse, no lance, no sword.” I held Agrivaine’s eyes with my own. “We’ll need only a circle ten feet across. We’ll be stripped to the waist and barefoot. One dagger each.”

“Dagger?” Gawain echoed. “You expect my brother to brawl like a peasant?”

“Since your brother knows so much of Picts, I’ll fight him as one.”

Agrivaine understood now. A knife is brutal and quick, and I intended to take full advantage of the defective leg he hid from the world. Even if the fight were not mortal, he would be shamed in a way intolerable to him.

“You may send me your acceptance later, Agrivaine.” Meanwhile he could sweat over it.

Then and later I saw how Gawain cared for his brother. He whispered quickly to Agrivaine, who straightened away from him furiously.

“… withdraw nothing, damn you.” Then to me: “I accept now.”

“So be it.” I dropped his gauntlet in front of him and turned to the rest of the table as if nothing had happened. “Now, to repeat the order of battle …”

Sword-rattling, time wasted. It all came to nothing anyway. While we argued, a picked force of Cerdic’s men beached miles downstream, skirted wide around the city and moved in from the

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north. Well before light, while we sat confidently watching the riverbank, the cry went up from the city behind us. Fire! Fire!

Cerdic’s scaling ladders hit the north wall in pitch darkness and almost complete silence. Before the sentinels knew what was happening, the first berserkers were over the parapets quick as mousing cats. The first wave carried only sword and throwing ax, those behind were laden with sacks of oil. By the time the clamor reached us, fires roared lustily in Eburacum and the few guards on the wall were fighting grimly with little hope of relief.

Our frantic preparation had for light only the flames from Eburacum. Cador strode, armed, into the fumbling knot of us, hurried and urgent, to embrace Peredur.

“My men are no good here. I’ve got to get them back inside the gates. Good fortune, my son.”

“And to you, father. Farewell, if that’s God’s will.”

“Lord Arthur, I assume you’ll move when formed. Good fortune.” Cador moved away into the dark, shouting commands. Peredur finished buckling his armor.

“What orders, Tribune?”

What indeed till we organized? The darkness around us was a roil of shouting, confused men, rattle of iron, frightened horses.

“Light a torch, Peredur, and let every centurion take one from yours and stand by it so their men can find them.”

He ran to execute the command. One by one the torches flared in the dark, a line of fireflies as the flames from Eburacum rose higher to redden the black sky. Cador’s men were inside the gates now; with the ruddiness swelled the ugly human sound of war. Tightening my saddle cinch, I heard Bedivere’s clear voice:

“Fifth squadron, form on me.”

Then Trystan. “Fourth squadron here, hurry. Form on me.”

“Third squadron here!” Little Gareth, exuberant and furious. “Jesus God, don’t amble! Move, move, you sad little men! Form

on me.”

Agrivaine then. “Second squadron, Orkneymen, here to me.” And finally the great, primal roar of Gawain, whirling his

torch in great circles overhead. “First! First, here I am, here!

Damn you, first, here!” My mind raced ahead to the next move, working on unsteady

ground, nothing from experience to fall back on. The north wall

had to be cleared first. Till that was done, nothing else mattered.

I hauled up into the saddle and set my lance in its socket, hearing

Peredur’s command, tense but sure.

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“Centurions, report your order.”

“Fifth formed.”

“Third formed.”

Bedivere had chosen my own equipment well. The sword was from Kay’s own forges, beautifully balanced and responsive. My mount was crossbred Arabian and native stock, heavy in the chest, intelligent and obedient. Not a fabulous Trouble-horse— no, never such again—but a sturdy mate for battle. I patted his shoulder.

“Now, friend. To work.”

“First squadron formed.”

“Second squadron formed and waiting.”

A bishop of my acquaintance once noted how religious conversions rose sharply just before a battle. Understandable; a man going to war wants all the help he can get. I kissed the hilt of my sword, asked Jesu to bless it—then, not at all parochial, pattered the habitual litany to Uther’s household deities, including Mars and Mithras, while the old fear and anticipation tightened my stomach.

Peredur again, sharp and impatient as a terrier. “Fourth, what are you doing? Let me hear you!”

“Fourth squadron formed.”

They were ready. 1 whispered my last, most fervent prayer. “Mother and Lugh, protect me today and my wife and the wealth she carries.”

Peredur’s light guided me to him. There was a pale smudge of pink in the east as 1 grasped his taper and waved it high.

“Commanders to me!”

They trotted in close to ring me with light. The noise from the city was louder. Cador would be engaged by now. My hasty plan called for splitting the cohort into two elements, but inexperienced Peredur must be given the most disciplined squadrons to lead.

“We’ve got to clear those scaling ladders, put ourselves between Cerdic and his men in the city. Cador’s a match for them now, but not if they all get over the wall. First, second and third will follow me around the west wall, fourth and fifth with Peredur to the east. Whatever opposition, those ladders must-come down.”

“It’s perishing dark,” Gawain rumbled. “Can’t see who we’re fighting.”

“Tribune.” Gareth urged his mount forward a pace or two. “My man here has a darling idea for light.”

Until Gareth spoke out of the half gloom under his torch, I

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hadn’t noticed the rider beside him, features down-shadowed but the torch gleamed dully on his shirt of ring-mail. Such armor was rare in Britain.

“Well, what? There’s no time for talk.”

“Just below the north wall in the stables,” the stranger said, “there’s a shed full of old wicker cages once used for dove sacrifice. Dozens of them, Lord, and dry as dust. Fill mem with anything that will burn, soak them in oil, throw them over the wall and Cerdic will no longer have the advantage of dark.”

Audacious, but certainly worth a try. What struck me most was his educated Latin, spoken in an accent I couldn’t place. “That north parapet’s a busy spot. How many men will you

need?”

“But five, my lord, already chosen and willing. Give us leave and you shall have light.”

“Better than tumbling about in the dark,” Gareth urged.

“All right, get to it.”

The rider wheeled his mount away toward the third squadron. Gareth watched him, musing. “He’s one to mark. Tribune. It’s himself fashioned our stirrups.”

“What’s his name?”

“The men call him Lancelot.”

“If he’s still with us later, I want to talk to him. Peredur!”

“Here, Tribune.”

“Take your squadrons, and remember: the ladders are most important. Once they’re down, no matter how you’re obstructed, push through to join me.”

As Lancelot’s small detachment trotted out toward the city gate, I gripped Bedivere’s hand in a wordless blessing and took my place in front of my element. The faint streak of light in the east had not widened. False dawn and far too long till morning.

“Forward!”

Under the din from the city we rounded the northwest corner of the walls and saw the dim monkey shapes scrambling up the nearest ladders, others scurrying behind. So many of them, like rats in a dark cellar. We would crush more underfoot than our lances took.

“Bring down those ladders!”

We charged into the darkness beneath the north wall, the base of our line streaming around the scaling ladders, some levering them down with lances, some broadsiding their horses to push them over. The ladders swerved and fell and with them came the bellowing men caught climbing up. On foot in the dark with no

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kind of formation, they went down like wheat under the millstone of our force. Many tried to retreat; others doomed themselves by closing back to back as Bedivere and I at Neth, fighting with sword and shield. These were the fabled berserkers, the warrior-caste who formed the hard core of a Saxon attack force. They owned nothing, saved nothing and lived only for battle and the glory of their chief. Even in the gloom I could see they were huge men, disdaining helmets, pale hair tossing with their exertions.

One of them swung his ax at me, and I covered myself. The first blow splintered my shield, the second left it dangling shattered and useless from my arm, but before the ax landed, the lance was out of my hand, the sword in it. The berserker cursed and lunged at me again. My blade sank deep into the haft of his ax, blocking it, jerked free, slashed at him. He went down, but in the split second of the blade’s movement it gleamed with a ruddy new light. Near me, someone shouted hoarsely:

“Look, it’s Lancelot. He’s done it!”

On the parapet above, amid iron clamor like the forges of a million mad smiths, the men were dropping five, ten, two dozen burning wicker cages. The dark became flickering twilight, brighter each moment, and in the glow I saw Peredur surging toward me, cutting his way through a desperate knot of Picts, Bedivere and Trystan barely behind him and the whole element flying after. Any man in their way had no chance, simply disappeared under the sheer impetus of that hurtling wall. Those mat survived retreated out of the deadly light into the darkness beyond as Peredur clattered up beside me, crumpled forward oddly, holding his side. A dark rivulet of blood trailed from his mouth.