The article had mentioned something about Irish lake fortresses. Two whole villages built on stilts in the centers of lakes as war between clans and island-wide starvation made such watery retreats the only safe places for people to live, subsisting on fish caught through the floors of the lake-straddling villages. And there was a connection, too, with the beginning of the plague years.

Something about temperature changes causing plague to spread into zones that had previously been immune, carried by traders from Constantinople as far as Britain. Plague had wiped out such an immense percentage of Britain's population that the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes—who had not been trading with Constantinople and therefore had not been weakened by the disease—had essentially waltzed in and taken over from a people nearly dead of hunger and epidemics.

There was a terrifying parallel between the end of "King Arthur's" golden years, a reign of thirty-nine to forty years after his twelfth victory at Badon Hill, and the timing of that volcanic explosion, somewhere between a.d. 536 and a.d. 539. Even with Artorius victorious at Caer-Badonicus, the Britons were doomed to lose the war to the Saxons, all because one volcanic explosion on the other side of the planet would destroy their crops, their cattle, and their strength as a unified people.

It was a vision so horrifying, Stirling found it impossible not to try and save these people from it, or at least to cushion the blow poised to fall thirty-nine years from now.

Stirling's abrupt desire to try a deliberate alteration to history far greater than the damage already wrought by Lailoken and Cedric Banning was a physical ache inside him. Dared he risk it? And what could he possibly do, even if he did decide to interfere as Banning had done? Ancelotis—stunned, amazed, and appalled by turns at Stirling's memories, suppositions, and foreknowledge that spilled like sea-foam into their shared awareness—whispered, Stirling, if these things be true, and I misdoubt them not, then we must act to save our people. And we must act quickly—but how is one man or even a handful of men to prevent something like an island blowing itself apart?

Huh, Stirling grunted. You can't. There's nothing in this world—or out of it, for that matter—that can stop a volcano from doing whatever it wants, whenever it pleases. The only thing you can do is get out of its way.

True, Ancelotis growled, but if you know a disaster is coming, you can at least prepare for it. Look at what Egypt managed, with no more warning than Joseph's interpretation of the pharaoh's dream. Seven lean cows devouring seven fat cows, seven blighted stalks of grain devouring seven fat ones. With warning, they built granaries and saved the people from starvation. Ancelotis' eyes widened slightly. Ye Gods. The Grail! A circular cup of life. If a man were to build circular cups to hold the abundance of the next thirty-nine years...

It was a beautifully simple plan.

And in the later versions of Arthurian myth, Lancelot had wandered the land as a religious hermit, doing penance for his disastrous adultery with Guinevere. What if Lancelot wandered the land, instead, as an organizer of strategic supplies, using religion and the parable of Joseph and the seven years of famine as a "sign from God" that the people of Britain were meant to lay aside foodstuffs against future emergency? Stirling realized with a chill that it would probably work. And it would probably change history irrevocably.

And with Cedric Banning's interference in Dalriada having doubtless already damaged time's fractural planes, the notion of stepping in to prevent further devastation from falling on these people was singularly attractive. He might never get home again, if he tried. And he might never get home, anyway, if Banning's mass murder of the Dalriadan Irish had changed history sufficiently. He wouldn't know the answer to that for nearly a year. If that year came and went and he was still trapped here, with history too fractured to return to his plane of origin, there would be plenty of time to prepare for the wasteland years. Close to four full decades.

It was rare that one man, in place at precisely the right time, could alter the fate of thousands of people with one simple action. Stirling knew he would likely never be given another chance to match it. The thought of returning to the twenty-first century without even trying was utterly repugnant. He had taken an oath to defend his people—and in a very real sense, these Britons were his people, his ancestors on the Welsh side, if not the Scottish side. To refuse to act seemed to Stirling cowardice of the greatest magnitude, a betrayal of all he believed in and had fought for, since joining the SAS to fight terrorism and the other forms of twenty-first-century madness threatening civilization itself.

Here, in the sixth century, he was embroiled in yet another war to protect civilization. He didn't think it was possible to walk away from this one, when damage had already been done by perpetrators from that other, once-and-future war. He could no more walk away from this than he'd been able to walk away from that flat in Belfast, without carrying the child of an IRA terrorist to safety through a burning building. God forgive me, he sent a tiny prayer winging heavenward, but I have to try. I wouldn't be fully human, if I didn't.

Ancelotis of Gododdin, thankful for any help his guest from the twenty-first century could render, expressed a gratitude too deep for words, a gratitude which wrapped around their shared heart like healing balm. It felt, God help him, like the right choice.

But first, they had to survive the battle of Badon Hill.

As they entered the broad expanse of the Salisbury Plain, the weather grew steadily worse, with fields of half-harvested, rotting crops churned into slurry where farmers—desperate for silage to feed their herds—had turned cattle loose to graze on what was left of the ruined crops. Stirling shivered. Ancelotis was worried, too. Very much so. As they rode through the southern reaches of Glastenning, they passed whole villages standing empty, their inhabitants having already fled for safety in the distant, cave-riddled Mendip Hills.

Stirling had never actually been to Cadbury Hill. He knew about it, of course; only the dullest, least diligent of British schoolchildren failed to learn something about Cadbury Hill and its ancient fortress. But he'd never actually seen it, save in photographs, and the impact of mere photos was virtually nil compared to riding across a rain-battered landscape of flat fields toward an immense fortified shape that rose up from the flatland like a great, grey battleship riding a stormy sea. Prickles ran down Stirling's borrowed back. Even Ancelotis, who had seen plenty of other massive hill forts in the north, shared Stirling's sense of awe.

'Tis a veritable city, Ancelotis breathed silently. I've seen nothing like it! Why, there's no wondering at all why the Saxons mean to strip us of its ownership. An army could hold out there for weeks, months, perhaps, if supplies were properly laid in, ahead of the need.

Concentric rings of stone circled the summit, five of them, lost at times in the low-scudding rainclouds that raced across the plain, their underbellies torn open by the hill fort's pike-studded walls. By the time they reached the base of the hill, its summit towering five hundred feet straight up, darkness was nearly upon them. Cookfires, sheltered beneath canvas tent flaps to protect them from the rain, blazed in a ragged river of light where workmen and wagoners and soldiers had paused in their work for the night. Ancelotis and his contingent of cataphracti were greeted by a perimeter guard riding diligent patrol despite the foul weather and darkness.