After a race of nearly two hundred kilometers, they arrived at the mouth of the River Ouse, where it dumped flood-stage debris—swirling brown water, snags of deadwood, uprooted trees—into the Humber. They stopped on the muddy bank, staring in dismay at the barrier, for the river was clearly impassable without a ferry—and the ferry lines had been cut, from the far side. Cutha, reaching the far banks of the Ouse at least a day, perhaps two days, ahead of them, had left the ferry boat stranded on the eastern riverbank, along with what looked sickeningly like a dead ferryman sprawled in a puddle of black blood. Carrion crows were once again in abundant evidence, a sight which still had the power to turn Stirling's stomach.

Ancelotis cursed long and loud.

Young Clinoch muttered, "Surely we can cobble together another ferry?"

Before Ancelotis could answer, a Saxon patrol appeared on the far bank, marking the line where Ebrauc gave way to Saxon territory in Dewyr. The appearance of that patrol forced them to admit defeat. Cutha had outrun them. To attempt further chase would be to precipitate immediate war with the Saxons of Dewyr, which the Britons could not yet risk. The bitterness of it tasted like poison in the back of Ancelotis' throat. Clinoch snarled a few choice oaths himself, before turning back. "I've defenses to build," the boy said in a harsh, weary voice, "and men to send south with the Dux Bellorum."

"Aye." Ancelotis spat to one side. "We're both of us a long way from home. I'll take word to Artorius, myself, that Cutha reached Dewyr ahead of us." That decision, at least, brightened Stirling's mood considerably. Any number of fatal "accidents" could have befallen Artorius by now, with Brenna McEgan watching for the chance to complete her mission. And the chaos of preparing for war would present her with many excellent opportunities to strike, with Artorius distracted and not expecting treachery from a Briton. Stirling's sense of urgency had begun to affect Ancelotis.

"I'll ride by forced march back to Caerleul," he told the others, "traveling light and fast. Half my cataphracti I'll send home to Gododdin to strengthen the hill forts along the northern borders. The other half, I'll send on to Caer-Badonicus, for Cadorius and Melwas will need every sword arm and strong back they can beg or borrow. You can bet whatever you care to wager that Sussex will mobilize for invasion the instant Cutha arrives home, and it won't take him long, by sea. Spread the word northward, as you ride, that Cutha has made good his escape."

"That I will," Clinoch muttered. "Beginning with King Gergust of Ebrauc, should yon bastards"—he nodded toward the distant shore of Dewyr and its armed Saxon patrol—"decide to launch an attack across his border to distract us from the greater threat to the south."

Stirling, impressed by the lad's grasp of tactics, was immediately informed by Ancelotis—somewhat peevishly, since they were both tired—that Briton royalty learned such things from infancy. Princes and their heiress sisters study Greek histories of Alexander the Great and they read Julius Caesar, both the Gallic Commentaries and his Civil War, to learn the art of winning battles from warfare's greatest masters. How else do you suppose Artorius learned his trade as Dux Bellorum? Emrys Myrddin and Ambrosius Aurelianus spent years teaching Artorius, alongside my brother Lot Luwddoc and myself, drilling into us the tactics and strategies that lead to victory, even against greater numbers than your own.

I meant no insult, Stirling apologized, even as a fierce glow of pride in his ancestors had begun to suffuse itself through his conscious awareness. A dangerous glow of pride, as he found himself identifying ever more strongly with the Briton cause, his loyalties shifting like quicksand between the future he was trying to save and the past he was beginning to identify as something worth defending against all comers. He had joined the SAS from a sense of patriotic honor, after all, determined to defend "king and country" to the best of his ability. The longer he stayed in Artorius' Britain, the shakier his definition of "king and country" grew.

In the twenty-first century, such notions were diluted by other distractions, by larger loyalties as a subject of the British Empire and a member of a world community that had set itself in opposition to tribal violence and terrorism. In the sixth century, Stirling's larger loyalties were fading away, increasingly insubstantial, half-remembered dreams, while the raw immediacy of his new reality—where a man's honor and personal courage were often all that stood between loved ones and brutal death—tugged at him with almost irresistible strength.

As miserable as the trek from Carlisle to Humberside had been, the journey back was infinitely worse, with nothing but saddle galls and shaken loyalties and defeat to carry back with him.

Emrys Myrddin and the kings of the south sped rapidly along the dragon's spine, rousing the men to arms as they passed town, village, and farmhold. And as they rode, day by miserable, rain- swept day, Myrddin began to develop his plan for defending Caer-Badonicus. He had been to the hill fort only once, but his was an excellent memory and he had been watching men wage war for more than fifty years. He knew how leaders thought, had studied the histories, understood very well indeed, why Alexander of Macedonia and Julius Caesar had won victory after victory. By comparison, the Saxons they were soon to face were little more than yelling apes, baboons with swords and thrusting spears and no concept of strategy other than overwhelming an opponent with sheer numbers.

That, of course, was Britain's chief problem: the sheer number of the barbaric creatures. Still, Saxon ignorance was an advantage to be used and Myrddin had a fair idea how to go about exploiting it. Hard riding took them deep into the southlands, where unseasonal autumn rains were even heavier than they had been in the north, destroying crops and threatening the countryside with starvation over the winter. Little wonder King Cadorius and Sub-King Melwas were all but frantic, facing such a winter with such neighbors about to come calling at their borders.

Emrys Myrddin and the kings of the south skirted the eastern end of the Cotswold Hills to enter a countryside thick with ancient monuments, places like the monolithic barrow dubbed West Kennet, with its mass graves hidden deep within the mound, and the mysterious Silburis Hill, a man-made tower of white chalk blocks rising more than a hundred thirty feet into the air. By riding cross-country from one great monument to the next, a man could follow the ancient ley lines Myrddin's Druidic instructors had named the "dragon lines," conduits of energy that wound, braidlike, through the region, touching such places as Caer-Aveburis and Stonehenge, where immense circles of standing stones had sat since the beginning of time, erected by a people so ancient, not even the Druids could recall their names.

The dragon lines snaked through more than a dozen such ancient monuments left by the old ones. Emrys Myrddin might not know who had built these holy places, but he understood very well, indeed, their deep impact on the minds of those who lived near to them. He and Uthyr Pendragon and Ambrosius Aurelianus before him had used that awe to forge ties of alliance between widely scattered tribes of southern Britons. It had worked so well, Emrys Myrddin had spread the concept north and east and west, throughout the whole of Britain, literally creating one people united by a commonly held identity.

It was, Myrddin knew, his greatest legacy to the people of Britain. And now he must fight to save that legacy from foreign destruction.

There was no mistaking Caer-Badonicus for any other hill in Britain. Even Silburis Hill was a mere child's toy, compared with Caer-Badonicus. Its windswept summit, a broad, flat stretch of land fully eighteen acres in area, towered five hundred feet above the Salisbury Plain. Broodingly immense against the stormy grey rainclouds scudding past its flanks, Caer-Badonicus was a natural fortress, crowned with ancient and crumbling walls, an earthwork fortification so old, not even Emrys Myrddin had ever heard its original name. During the long centuries of peaceful Roman rule, hill forts like Badonicus had fallen into ruins, no longer necessary to safeguard the people of the surrounding plain. The wheel of time had turned, however, and walls were needed once again. Emrys Myrddin was here to ensure that the walls they built were the strongest, most protective walls ever built by Briton hands.