The lookout saluted sharply. "Yes, sir!"

Stirling skinned down the ladder to find Cadorius, Melwas, and a number of Briton princes waiting at the foot of the tower. "On their way," Stirling said tersely.

Cadorius nodded, heading toward the rendezvous point. They passed three score and nine Sarmatian archers who waited silently, crouched down on one knee so as to remain completely invisible to the approaching Saxons. They sheltered their bowstrings beneath cloaks to protect them from the wet weather until time to fire. Stirling paused to murmur, "The lookout will call down the number of the marker they stop nearest. Aim accordingly."

Nine and sixty stone-still Asian faces nodded silently, a blood-chilling sight. Warriors carved of granite, prepared to come to life at the merest whisper from above...

As the Briton kings reached the innermost wall, an arrogant Saxon voice shouted, "Britons of Caer-Badonicus! Why do your kings not show themselves?"

Cadorius climbed up, Stirling and Ancelotis to his left, Melwas to his right. The king of Dumnonia stared coldly down at the Saxons, who could not see the men crouched low in the narrow spaces between the layered walls, ready to snatch open the wooden sluice gates. Of all the gates—real and false—built into the fortress walls, only these crucial five were lined up one in front of the other. Once opened, God Himself couldn't stop the pent-up water behind them from roaring free. Ropes quivered, held taut by the gate teams, five men to each side. Lying prone across the roofing stones other soldiers waited, ready to drag up the crossbars holding the floodgates rigidly closed. Enough rain had fallen—and continued to fall—that the slight loss of water trickling from beneath those tight-wedged gates looked like simple runoff seeping down the muddy hillside.

"Well?" the Saxon spokesman challenged Cadorius, sneering through his great, gaudy blond mustaches. "What say you, kings of Britain?"

Stirling and Ancelotis could just see the Saxons' upper bodies, along with their horses' heads and twitching ears. They'd called their halt near marker post three, an innocuous looking stub of wood barely visible above the muddy ground, which had been chopped by mens' boots and horses' hooves into a fine and filthy slurry. A very faint "Line on three..." drifted down from the watchtower, the sound so faint it couldn't possibly have carried to the Saxons, who had halted some fifty yards or so downslope. Stirling held three fingers up behind his back, to be sure every archer knew the proper aim point.

Cadorius, watching the silent preparations at his feet, shouted across, "Who among you will hear our terms?"

One of the eoldormen, a man neither Stirling nor Ancelotis recognized, sent back a jeering laugh. "Your terms? You do not dictate terms to the kings of Sussex and Wessex, Briton! We dictate them to you."

"Very well," Cadorius nodded, doing a creditable job of a man determined to remain reasonable at any cost. "What terms do you offer?"

The eoldorman turned slightly in his saddle. "What say you, mighty King Aelle of Sussex?"

The Saxon king swept them with a withering, dismissive glance. "If they would save the lives of their womenfolk, let them send the females out first. Along with any children below the age of five. Let this be the first demonstration of Saxon power—and Saxon clemency."

Behind Stirling's shoulder, Melwas muttered, "He means to butcher them before our eyes."

Cadorius' answer came out flat with apparent dejection. "You offer us no other sane choice. Very well, I will give orders to summon our women and children. And I will unbar the gates, to let them pass."

Aelle inclined his iron-helmed head in assent as grey light gradually brightened the eastern sky with long, bloody streaks of crimson, ominous predictor of more rain. Cadorius turned toward the inner compound. "Gather the womenfolk up and their babes, as well—we will send them out under a flag of surrender."

Waiting men "relayed" the command, buying a few more precious seconds while women added shrill voices to the commotion they were carefully engineering inside the compound. The Saxons sat their horses in jaunty confidence, most of them wearing smirks, clearly enjoying every moment of their triumph, which had come at a remarkably low cost in Saxon lives. Oh, yes, they were most assuredly enjoying this moment. Tension tightened through Stirling's every muscle, every sinew, waiting, waiting for the final signal—

High overhead, the watchtower sentry blew the ram's horn.

Artorius was in sight.

"NOW!" Stirling bellowed. He dropped flat. The others threw themselves down beside him. Wooden bars, snatched from their brackets, sailed into the air. The teams on the gates hauled in unison, dragging ponderous sluice doors wide open. Five wooden gates slammed into five stone walls. Gate teams scrambled for safety as the pent-up water burst free, like the gushing spillway of a dam. Muddy water frothed and flattened into a wave that spread across the whole side of Badon Hill.

Horses reared and snorted in panic as the flood smashed into them, fetlock-deep and splashing up to the horses' knees in places. The churned-up mud, already saturated from weeks of rain, liquefied instantly underfoot, like slurry thrown off a potter's wheel. Several animals lost their footing and crashed to the ground, lunging and screaming in terror and pain. Hapless riders were hurled through space to land badly in the mud and brambles, or, even worse for them, they lay pinned beneath their wounded mounts, dragged downhill with bone-crushing force as their horses skidded downward in the muck. Other horses bolted, kicking and sunfishing in their desperation to escape the shifting, slick mud. Water sucked semisolid ground out from under flailing legs. Equine panic redoubled as wounded men and downed horses thrashed and bellowed their inelegant way toward the plain five hundred feet below. In the space of thirty seconds, surprise turned into chaos and—with lightning's jagged quickflash—chaos spilled into utter rout.

Ancelotis gave the high sign. Three score and nine Sarmatian archers let fly. Arrows fell in a thick black rain. Wounded horses, already panic-stricken, bucked and pitched. More riders came adrift. Another flight of arrows slashed through armor and flesh, through mail shirts, through arms and legs and horses' fleeing hindquarters. "Fall back!" someone was shouting from within the mass of shaken Saxons. "Fall back—for the love of Frigga, fall back!"

Men slipped and scrambled through the deadly black rain. Saxon kings and royal princes cartwheeled and skidded through the muck. At the base of the hill, Saxon infantry scurried like confused ants. Someone was blowing the signal to charge. Someone else was frantically gesturing troops out of the flood's path. Water hit the wooden wall shielding the royal pavilion, parted in a great splash, and roared down into the camp below. Whole tents were swept away, their anchoring pegs yanked out of the softened, muddy ground. Saxons splashed after them, trying to rescue weapons washed away with the rest of the flotsam.

"Look!" Melwas cried.

He was pointing to the northeast corner of the hill.

Saxons were running in wild confusion, a whole mass of them fleeing in a mob. Some tried to climb the hill, others ran straight out onto the plain. A fierce exultation swept through Stirling. Ancelotis let out a wild shout. "They're running! Bastards are running! We've broken them!"

An instant later, a thousand galloping horses burst into view. Thunder rolled across the Salisbury Plain, four thousand flying hooves shaking the very ground. Artorius was visible in the vanguard, his white stallion snorting at full charge, his golden armor gleaming in the early light, the red dragon banner snapping like a ribbon of blood. The cavalry charge cut through the mass of fleeing Saxons, mowing them down like rye before a scythe. Hundreds of Saxons went down beneath the cataphracti's hooves. None of those who fell so much as stirred when the cavalcade swept past. Britons up and down the wall were shouting, hurling javelins into the clustered Saxons foolish enough to seek safety by climbing toward the fortress. A flight of Sarmatian arrows blackened the sky once more, bringing down more.