At least there was no moon to light the summit and upper slopes. His men gathered quietly in the darkness, waiting for the signal to begin their first nighttime raid. The Saxons far below crawled into tents for the night, leaving banked coals smouldering in the darkness like dragons' eyes. Sentries could just barely be made out, stolidly making their way past silent campfires, occluding the light as they passed.
"You know the drill," Stirling murmured. "Give it another quarter hour, to let them settle into sleep, then we'll begin."
Stirling walked the walls, studying the terrain below, the pattern of campfires, nodding to himself. Yes, they'd laid themselves out almost precisely as he'd expected. Silence had fallen over both camps now, as the frozen stars winked and glittered overhead, wisps of wind-torn cloud racing past. It was a wet wind, nonetheless, promising more rain off the cold North Atlantic—within hours, if Ancelotis were any judge of the weather.
The quarter hour passed swiftly, leaving Stirling's palms damp and his heart thudding with adrenaline. He'd made plenty of night sorties, both in training and actual combat, but pre-battle jitters were simply part of the package. He nodded to his men, whispering out the signal to begin. The Briton soldiers he'd trained so carefully in commando tactics began the raid by tying one end of an enormous ball of whip-thin, strong coradage to each of the several gates leading out through the outermost wall.
In groups of ten, they slipped out through those gates, each man letting the guideline slide through his fingers in the darkness. Stirling led one party toward the royal pavilion. When they reached the end of the first skein, some one hundred and sixty feet from the summit, the commando immediately behind Stirling tied the beginning of his skein to the end of Stirling's and they continued their silent descent.
Each band descending the hillside included one Sarmatian archer with a quiver of deadly arrows slung across one shoulder. As they approached the royal pavilion—which was not Stirling's goal, not tonight—they paused long enough for the archer to find and target the night sentry on duty outside the kings' tent. A soft slap of bowstring and a hiss of arrow's flight were followed by a muffled gasp of pain and the thud of a man's body striking the ground. Stirling was on top of him an instant later, cutting the wounded man's throat to finish silencing him. Blood, hot and terrible, flowed across his hands, which he wiped on his woolen trousers to prevent his grip on dagger and guideline from slipping.
Stirling signaled with one hand and they continued the perilous descent, down toward the flat plain at the foot of Caer-Badonicus. They tied ten separate lines to the end of the final skein, so that each of the commandos could find his way back swiftly, then split up, creeping low through the camp. Stirling's goal for the night was multifold, but his main target was the line of horses and supply wagons dimly visible as hulking black shadows at the edge of the Saxons' camp. They crept around tents where Saxons snored and turned restively in their sleep. Stirling would have given a great deal for a simple set of starlight goggles, but that kind of technology was sixteen centuries in the future, so he did the best he could with ambient starlight and the smouldering coals of the campfires.
The archer creeping along at Stirling's heels took down another sentry, catching this one through the throat with his deadly aim. The man thrashed down with a choked gurgle and went still after no more than two feeble kicks of his feet. Heart pounding, Stirling eased past the body, gaining at last the line where the Saxons' supply wagons had been parked for the duration of the siege. The draft horses had been tied for the night just beyond the heavily laden wagons. He held his long dagger in his teeth, ignoring the coppery taste from the blood of the Saxon he'd killed with it, and slipped open the satchel strapped to his back.
He lifted out one of the clay pots inside, upending its mixture of pitch, sulphur, tow, frankincense, and sawdust across the nearest wagon's contents, then crept to the next wagon in line, repeating the action until Emrys Myrddin's combustible compound had drenched the contents of ten Saxon wagons. That done, Stirling slipped around to the picket line of horses, hushing them as they whickered, patting velvety noses and thick-muscled necks. He cut the lines with his dagger, then slipped back to the nearest campfire, where he paused, waiting for the signal from the summit.
A moment later it came, as each of the teams tugged on their guidelines, signaling their readiness. Light flashed from the top of the watchtower, lantern light that glowed like a star in the inky darkness. Stirling grinned, then thrust his torch into the coals. It caught with a flare of red-gold light. Sprinting now, he ran from wagon to wagon, setting Myrddin's surprise alight. Flames roared in a great whoosh as the Greek fire ignited. Horses screamed, plunging away from the sudden spread of flames, running in panic, bolting with their cut tether lines across the great, dark plain.
Stirling let go a bloodcurdling yell and dashed back through the Saxons' camp, setting fire to tents as he ran. Wagons blazed for hundreds of yards along the Saxons' outer perimeter, spelling utter ruin for the besieging army. Grinning like a madman, Stirling fired more tents, gained the guideline, and shouted, "To the walls! To the walls, my bonny Britons!" Men came running through the blazing camp, Saxons milling in terror and confusion, Briton soldiers making a purposeful dash for the trailing guidelines.
"Move, move, move!"
Men scrambled past, climbing the muddy hillside. Overhead, the Saxon kings had burst out of their pavilion tent. Stirling's Sarmatian archer lit an arrow wrapped with oil-soaked rushes and fired high into the night air. The flaming missile whistled through the blackness and landed squarely atop the kings' tent. Fire spread in greedy tongues and rivers across the top of the cloth pavilion. Shouts of anger and panic spread through the group milling inside. Stirling's men climbed at a fast jog, bursting amongst the confused Saxons with whoops of savage glee. The kings scattered into the night, shouting for assistance.
"Leave them to run!" Stirling bellowed, urging his men back toward the summit.
Within minutes, they were safely back inside the walls, while below, fire blazed in a gaudy ring all the way around the base of Badon Hill. Cadorius was waiting to pound his back in delight. "By God's holy beard, you've done it! Look at them!"
Saxons were running in wild confusion, silhouetted against the blazing camp, trying with ragged, disjointed coordination to catch the scattering horses, to douse the flames consuming their supplies, their tents, and their caches of weapons. Britons, roused from sleep by the wild shouts below, were cheering in the night, whistling and laughing in open merriment. Stirling couldn't stop grinning, although he did pause long enough to order a trumpeter to blow the rally signal. Deep notes sang out across the hill fort's walls, a summons which brought Stirling's raiders running to report.
Of the fifty men he'd sent down in teams of ten, forty-eight had returned safely. One had been killed, his body dragged back by his comrades for proper burial. Another had been wounded and was receiving care from the camp's healers. The glow in his men's eyes closed Stirling's throat for a moment. In all his years of service to king and country, not one soldier had ever looked at him with such proud confidence in his leadership. Go back? a portion of his mind whispered to itself. Go back, when I'm needed here and now? Memory of the butchered women and children left to rot by Cutha and his Saxon cutthroats floated behind Stirling's eyelids. No. He could not go back. Not now. Not ever.