"Come up to the fortress, please, and tell me what's happened at Dunadd, that you've made alliance with Britons and speak of Saxon treachery."

Dallan mac Dalriada explained their grim news as they walked toward the great fortress rising up at the center of the town. Medraut glanced at Morgana and said in a low voice, "I didn't know you spoke Gaelic, Aunt."

Brenna twitched her lips as Morgana replied softly, "There is much you have yet to learn about me, nephew. Be thankful that our new kinsmen will never underestimate us again."

Bradaigh mac Art's hospitality, once stung into motion, proved cordial in every possible manner. The clan chieftain plied them with good Irish ale and steaming platters of roast boar, geese stuffed with apples, and fresh-baked bread, the dark Irish bread Brenna had grown up loving and had missed during the months in Beckett's lab in the Scottish Lowlands.

While they ate, Dallan mac Dalriada explained the monstrous act of destruction wrought by the Saxons' agent, Lailoken. "It is my intention, cousin, to sail with as many men-at-arms as I can raise by sunset tomorrow. All Britain marches to battle against these Saxon dogs. With Queen Morgana's help in securing safe conduct through Briton-held lands, I will lead an Irish army to strike the Saxons' southern flank. We'll take them by surprise and cut off their escape while Artorius and the Briton cataphracti smash them from the north."

Bradaigh tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Where think you this battle will occur?"

Morgana leaned forward to answer. "My brother, Artorius, plans to meet the Saxons at Caer-Badonicus, a fortified hill in the south of Britain. We have left more than enough troops to guard the northern and western borders," she added with a slight smile, "but Artorius will ride south with at least a thousand men under arms, or I very much misjudge Briton fighting strength. And there are many more already at Caer-Badonicus."

"More than a thousand men-at-arms?" Bradaigh echoed, visibly startled.

"Artorius," Morgana nodded, "is Dux Bellorum. Every king in Britain owes him allegiance, supporting my brother's battle plans with their finest troops. The Romans may be gone from Britain, but Britons are still finely organized under Roman structures of command. The Saxons will soon learn this at great cost."

Bradaigh tugged at his lower lip again. "And your request, cousin?" he asked Dallan mac Dalriada.

"Sword arms to increase the fighting strength of Dalriada. How many men can you send with me to drive these Saxons dogs into the sea and drown them?"

"By the son of Beli Mawr, I'll raise a hundred men to send with you by tomorrow night's tide, and fast ships to carry them. And I pledge upon my sacred honor," he added, glancing into Morgana's eyes, "no Irishman within fifty miles of Belfast will raise sword against any son of Britain nor raid British shores for plunder."

"I am glad to hear it. Medraut has already sent word through Galwyddel that the Irish of Dalriada are now their kinsmen and must be accorded the respect rightfully due a king's cousins."

Bradaigh mac Art raised his goblet, finely wrought from silver, in a toast. "To the alliance then, Ireland and Britain joined by blood and friendship—and victory over our mutual enemy, the dogs of Saxony."

The toast was drunk solemnly around the table.

Then Bradaigh mac Art called for runners to be sent out through the countryside, summoning every firstborn male householder to war. Brenna watched with a chill down her spine. It was now far too late to call back what she had set in motion. Then a rueful little smile twitched at her lips. It was, at the very least, a miracle of diplomacy. And a very good beginning.

A distant wail of rams' horns sounded far below, the sound carrying through the grey dawn, in a vast ring surrounding Badon Hill. Stirling drained the last of his breakfast ale and tossed away his cup, drawing his sword and taking his place among the men of Gododdin, with Cadorius' contingent on one flank and Melwas on the other.

"First rank, to your places!" he shouted, even as other Briton kings, princes, and high-ranking officers were bellowing instructions to their own men. Far below, another blast on the rams' horns sent hundreds of men rushing forward, spears and pikes held at the ready. Stirling saw no archers at all. But there were javelins in plenty, causing him to duck back down as the first wave of lightweight, sharp-pointed missiles came whistling across the walls. Briton shields went up in a clattering wall of quarter-inch oak. Javelin points thwacked into them, some embedding themselves deeply, others glancing off and skipping across the heads of the defenders to clatter against the stone walls behind their first rank.

At Stirling's shouted command, echoed up and down the Briton lines, a mass of iron-headed pila darkened the sky, hurtling down into the Saxons' shields. The soft iron heads struck, biting deeply into enemy shields, then bent under the weight of their own shafts, tangling one shield with another and tripping the foremost rank of attackers. Men went down in yelling confusion, stepped on and across by the men behind them. Another wave of pila whistled down, slowing the Saxon charge, but not stopping it. On they came, shouting from behind their shields, heavy spears tucked beneath armpits for stability in the charge.

Saxons and Britons came together at the edge of the outermost wall, with a shock of spears against shields and a roar of bellowing male voices. Men shouted foul curses and stabbed and jabbed with spearpoints, trying to pierce the overlapping walls of wooden shields on both sides of the thick stone barrier. When the second wave of Saxons hit the wall, driving back the defenders, trumpets sang out the retreat, sending Britons scrambling back toward the fourth wall. Even as the Saxons roared forward, Briton axemen were chopping through catapult ropes, sending gallons of sizzling-hot, melted fat soaring out over the walls. Liquid grease fell like rain across the Saxons' front ranks. Men screamed, dropping shields and spears to claw at scalded faces, beards, clothing. The Britons turned and surged forward with an unholy shout, driving the staggering Saxons back across the outer wall and leaving bodies piled underfoot.

The Saxons, shaken, retreated down the hillslope, pausing in the shelter of their wooden palisades. Stirling could hear the shouts of their leaders, kings and their atheling sons, high-ranking eoldormen and noble-birth thegns, exhorting their men to overcome such shameful cowardice and make the charge a second time. Stirling climbed to a lookout perch atop the innermost wall and peered downward, then grunted.

"Send word to Cadorius and Melwas, they're putting the gewisse Britons in the first ranks this time, rather than risk their own."

A glance back toward their own rear lines showed him the women busy tending Briton wounded, but there were far fewer than he'd expected after such a clash, which heartened him considerably and left Ancelotis jubilant. Then the signal horns called the charge again and the enemy's front ranks pounded up the hill once more. Any serious worries Stirling had, that they faced Britons this time, evaporated when the defenders struck with even greater ferocity than before. Never underestimate the power of hatred, when a man stands face-to-face with a traitor, Ancelotis grunted, scanning their lines from Cadorius's contingent on his far left flank to Melwas's on his far right.

They drove the attacking gewisse back with a steady hail of javelins and pila. As the traitors of Wessex fell, their front lines wavered and collapsed backwards, until the entire charge faltered and reversed itself back down the hill. Stirling, leaping once more to his vantage point atop the inner wall, could see King Aelle and Cerdic of Wessex snarling at one another beside the platform where their charred pavilion had been replaced with a much shabbier affair. For the next hour, the Saxons licked their wounds and rethought their strategy.