Jess sat on her bed with her head in her hands and wondered what the hell she was going to do. Even if by some freak chance involving her presence and the survival of Dagonet the knights decided not to go back to the battle – an event through which she would have to watch out for approximately one thousand Saxon foot soldiers and crossbowmen, the rain of flaming arrows from the Wodes, oil fires and, most importantly, Tristan and Lancelot, all the while swinging her swords, which she technically would not even be qualified to take to the practice ring with, let alone a full-scale battle – she was going to be left somewhere near a river that wasn't called now what it had been called in 2007 and so therefore didn't give any indication whatsoever of its actual location.

She sighed. It's moments like these you need Minties, she thought to herself glumly, and I don't even have any.1 They won't be invented for probably two millennia.

She looked over at the rest of the stuff she had removed from the church's gildatore fund as it lay propped up against the walls of her room. A tall, black myrmillo – or, in English, of Greek design – helmet and a long pennon with what she assumed was the symbol of the gildatorae on it, a pair of knives to go in the sheaths in her boots and a chain mail neck piece for Bartatua all sat in the corner, glinting slightly in the moonlight that was filtering in through her window.

There was a quiet knock on her door and she looked up to see Lancelot enter and come and sit beside her on the bed.

"So," he said quietly.

"Indeed," she said, sighing.

They were both silent for a while.

"As long as we're trying for filler words that can be used as whole sentences, I should probably use "well," but you're going to have to do the next couple because I've run out."

He sighed. "We've decided that we're still going home to Sarmatia."

She nodded. "I thought you might,"

He looked at her. "Are you going to come with us?"

She thought about it and then mentally shrugged. Better to at least try for an easy way out instead of volunteering straight up for the massacre. "Yes,"

He nodded and she put her head in her hands again, yawning and rubbing her tired eyes. She hadn't slept at all last night – spending half of it waiting for Lancelot to get off watch and then the other half having to do her own watch duty, discovering to her incredulity that Arthur had actually put them down for back-to-back half-night-each shifts. She was rather surprised that she was still on her feet.

"That was a good story you were telling earlier," he said, grinning.

She laughed. "Yeah, I like it."

"How does it end?"

"Happily," she said, shrugging. "I won't tell you anything else, though. You have to wait till we act out the rest of it."

He glared at her. "Spoilsport,"

She laughed again, hoping that there would be a time when they'd get to continue the story and wondering if she should actually tell him just in case she wasn't around by the time there was one.

"How long does your clan expect you to be gone for?" he asked.

She shrugged, thinking that no one would have actually known a specific time frame. "We weren't told any specific amount of time. They'd probably give up on me if I didn't come back for about a year, though."

He nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Would you… how… I was thinking that maybe you could, um, stay with my clan for a while when we get back to Sarmatia. I mean, you know, it wouldn't be permanently and you could leave whenever you wanted and I… you know, its closer to Gerrhi…"

She smiled at him. "Okay,"

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Great,"

"Well,"

"Oh, crap, we're doing it again."

"So it would seem."

They both laughed, although probably for different reasons, seeing as Jess was remembering the use of that line in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

"I'd never seriously thought about actually going home," he said, looking down at the floor. "And now, here I am. On my way tomorrow."

She nodded. "I guess you probably didn't let yourself hope just in case you never made it and got too disappointed."

He shook his head. "I think I probably didn't let myself hope because it would have made all the pointless waiting so much harder. Galahad reckons hope kept him going, but I think if I'd been constantly dreaming about going home, the fact that I could never get there would have driven me insane."

She sighed. "I guess both points of view make sense. I have to admit, I would be doing the same thing as Galahad in that situation, not you."

He shrugged. "You're both dreamers,"

She laughed. "I guess I am, a bit,"

He nodded. "I'm the exact opposite,"

They were both silent for a bit longer until he cleared his throat and stood up. "I should probably get going,"

"You don't have to," she said, also standing up.

He grinned at her. "Whatever my lady wishes,"

------------------------------

Meanwhile, as Guinevere told Arthur that there mightn't be a day after tomorrow, Vanora agreed to go home with Bors, Gawain asked his girlfriend – Egreyne – to marry him, Galahad convinced Eunyphore to go home with him, Ytria told Cynric that if he was staying to fight with Arthur she would as well and Tristan and Cimmeria finished doing something a little more physical and decided to go home together, Gilioneron watched, shaking his head, from his separate but adjacent world.

Having enlisted the help of the omnipotent Zeus to sort out the dilemma that was Jessamine – he had chosen to pass up on omnipotence because it was so much work – he now knew that she came from a different dimension. He was mildly puzzled by the fact that she managed to fit in so well, but at the moment he was mulling over a different problem in his head.

Even though Kelermes was gone from Jessamine's body, she still seemed like a gildatore. And he could tell a gildatore when he saw one. So could the knights, for that matter, and they had been around her the whole time and hadn't noticed a thing. Being, as he was, a God, Gilioneron had a vague prophetic idea of basically all the major things that were going to happen a week or so in advance, and he knew that there was a big battle coming up; one that involved not only the Saxon and Wode armies but also his six knights and Jessamine.

And there was also the matter of her horse, Bartatua. The animal itself was an enigma; untiring, swift, strong, loyal and intelligent. It was rare to find more than two of these in any good horse, let alone all of them, and it seemed to have chosen her specifically. Not even Dagonet, one of the best horsemen of this generation, had been able to ride him, but the big, black horse had accepted Jessamine immediately. Gilioneron could feel something familiar about the big horse, but that was hardly surprising. It could be any number of fallen knights come back to the earth, but it still didn't explain his rather unusual proficiency of talent.

Gilioneron sighed and longed for the days when everything had been easy. The days before the Romans came.

---------------------------

When Jess woke up, Lancelot was nowhere to be seen, and she could tell from the light coming through the window that the sun was about to rise. Guessing that they would probably have to make an early start to avoid becoming Saxon fodder, she yawned, stretched and then levered herself out of the bed. She decided against putting her armour on straight away – it was too much trouble – and instead climbed into her blue dress, which was now slightly green in places from grass stains and wearing thin in others from sitting in the saddle for too long. Still yawning, she pulled on her calfskin boots, bundled up everything else that she owned – not much – and then walked out the door, wondering vaguely where she would find the knights.

The caravan was massing just outside the east gate, and there was quite a lot of them. A whole cart for Vanora and all her children and Lucan, and another for everyone's gear and belongings, as well as the other girls who had decided they were coming. She dumped her meagre collection of stuff in the corner of the cart and walked back up to the stables for Bartatua, reflecting as she did so that no one had really heard anything about Cynric and Ytria. Were they leaving with the Roman contingency? Were they staying to fight?

As she was walking up to the stables she met Lancelot coming back with both his horse and Bartatua. He handed her the reins, smiling, and they turned and walked back to the caravan in companionable silence, leaving their horses to graze on the verge next to the road and going to see if there was anything that needed doing. Galahad nodded at her as he walked past, leading his horse Papaeus, and the big grey snorted at her, tried to eat her dress and then kept walking. Watching after them, she shook her head in wonder that she actually considered herself to be accepted by these people. Back in 2007 she had had to struggle for recognition, let alone acceptance or friendship.

She turned to look at the big hill that separated them from the north gate and saw Arthur, or rather saw his horse and heard the faint roar and hum of the wind through the holes in his pennon. Beside him, though, she saw a man standing, wearing furs, and his distant silhouette looked as much like Cynric as she could guess from that distance.

Their big horses all stirred and shifted position nervously as Ytria came running down to the caravan from the township, her now braided blonde hair flying behind her. She grabbed Jess as she arrived and, after waiting for a second to catch her breath, pulled her back up towards the town.

"Where are we going?" Jess asked her curiously. "And what's the rush?"

Ytria sighed, or as much as was possible after her athletic exertions. "Cynric and I are staying to help Arthur… and he told me to ask you to show me where the gildatore's armour is kept."

Jess nodded. "You're going to fight?"

The small Saxon girl nodded. "I have to help Cynric. He's hoping to challenge his father, and he's going to need a witness on the battlefield to prove that it was a challenge and not murder."

Jess shook her head. "I will never understand Saxons,"

She led Ytria to the church and then leaned against the wall to watch as Ytria picked her armour and then her swords. Her sweet braided pigtails looked very out of place against the black leather and iron chain mail of her armour, and the fact that she was about two inches too short made her look ridiculous, but she took a short Greek sword down off the wall and unsheathed it like she knew how to use it, so everything technically suited her better than it did Jess.

Jess smiled to herself as she thought about what Will Smith had said in a similar position in Men In Black.

"The difference between you and me is: I make this look good."

It was then that she realised that she didn't even miss the 21st century. Sure, she missed her friends, and she was aching to play her 'cello, but she didn't miss the movies or the Internet or the guns or the computers or the school at all. She had it all stored in her memory and she didn't need any more additions to clutter everything up. In fact, she was even beginning to enjoy the fact that she could look up at the sky at night and the stars would be brighter than any panorama of lights could ever be, or that she could go for a walk and get lost in a real live forest. Not only that, there was no legal drinking age, so she didn't even have to worry about breaking any laws.

She thought about it as she walked back down to the caravan. It was good, in a way, because her future wouldn't be marred by various fruitless attempts to figure out a way to get back home, but it was also slightly embarrassing that she would choose the squalor and disease and uncertainty of life of the Dark Ages over clean, safe 2007, especially seeing as her life here in Britannia may well not last beyond today.

Shortly after she arrived back at the caravan they were all loaded, and as they all mounted and started to ride out, Jess looked up and saw a small, female silhouette on the hill next to Arthur and Cynric.

"May all the Gods be with you, Ytria," she said quietly. "I know they're not here with me."

Bors cantered out from their coloumn and up to the base of the hill. "Artorius!"

Arthur's silhouette turned, and they could tell he was looking at them. Lancelot looked down at his hands, and Jess could tell that he felt bad for leaving Arthur here by himself. Bors shouted whatever it was that they all said as a battle cry, and Dagonet joined in, and it wasn't long before they were all shouting it. She even joined in, even though she didn't know what the word was, what it meant or if she was saying it right.

There was silence for a while and then Arthur countered with a battle cry of his own, and Cynric and Ytria beat their swords on their chests and said some kind of Saxon war cry as well.

In the silence that followed, Bors turned and cantered back to the road, and they recommenced their riding towards the gate. Jess, knowing what was coming next, braced herself.

They were nearly out the gate when the Saxon war drums started behind them. Their horses, having experienced a lifetime of battles mostly starting with the beating of drums, immediately spooked and tried to turn to face their next battle. When they had all calmed their horses down, they tried to avoid looking at each other, but the inevitable became reality and they all saw in each other's faces the revelation that this was a fight they needed to take part in.

Oh, bugger, Jess thought explosively to herself.

Tristan looked at Goetosyrus, perched on his arm, and launched him into the air. "Go on. You're free,"

The eagle circled a few times and then alighted on one of the railings on the caravan, coming back to his master even though he had been released.

The girls all looked at each other, obviously being able to read their respective consorts' minds. Cimmeria got down out of the caravan.

"You'd better at least put your armour on,"

---------------------------

Their horses surged up the hill, Jess discovering that it was very difficult to carry a pennon – which she'd had a sneaking suspicion she might need – whilst going upwards. This was made worse by the fact that Bartatua, in an inexcusable and completely unprovoked outburst of showmanship, reared up high onto his back legs as soon as they had reached the top of the hill. It was lucky she was already leaning forward in the saddle or she would have fallen off completely.

She looked at Lancelot as he sat his horse beside her. He didn't even look nervous, but her heart was beating faster than it ever had before and it was lucky she had gauntlets on or she'd have dropped her pennon. She clenched her fist on the reins and closed her eyes. She heard the horses champing at their bits, heard the twang of Tristan's bowstring as he fired the shot that would kill the traitor, heard the whistle as the arrow slid through the air, heard the stamping of their horses' feet. She could smell the oil and the smoke and the ever-present aroma of horses, and the stiff, oily smell of leather, as well as the smell of grass and rain.

She was vaguely aware of Arthur making his inspirational speech to them all, but she didn't hear a word of it. She opened her eyes and looked at the sky, noting the greenish cast that indicated fog was on the way later that day. She came back to the real world just in time to see Arthur turn Palagius rather forcefully towards the direction of the gates and draw his sword.

"Rush!" he shouted, again, and as they all joined in Jess let the word course through her veins with her blood, changing her apprehension to excitement and bloodlust, but it faded as soon as their voices did, and she was left staring at the battlefield that could very well be the place she would last stand. Breathe. Be. Live.

They dug the bases of their pennons into the ground and then cantered off down the hill to lower ground, and she saw Cynric give the signal to the two men on the gate to open it. The two unfortunate gatehorses heaved on the heavy gates, and Jess could see the mass of fur through the gates that was the Saxon army.

They all heard quite clearly the battle cry from the part of the Saxon army that was directed through the gates, and the stamp of their feet on the ground. The gatesmen pulled their terrified horses back behind the gates, and as soon as the Saxons were through the gate, they pushed the gates closed, untethered the horses, scrambled onto their backs and galloped away to the shelter of the trees. The Saxons milled, confused, on the plain, until one of them spotted the knights sitting patiently on their grassy knoll and they recommenced their march.

Arthur raised one hand and pointed it at where Jess guessed Guinevere and the Wodes were lying in wait. The first rain of arrows killed a fair few Saxons before they got it into their heads to raise their shields, and Arthur nodded at them all, the signal for them to ride out.

They galloped through the mist towards the waiting Saxon army, and for Jess everything slowed until one of Bartatua's strides could have taken five seconds. She closed her eyes and put her right hand on the hilt of the sword attached to Bartatua's saddle. As her horse's muscles unfurled and bunched underneath her the hilt grew warm in her fingers, and she remembered Tristan saying that it was a good blade.

As she closed her eyes and let her horse guide her towards a group of men that she had to kill, the normal thunder of his hooves muffled by the soggy turf, she heard the steely whisper in her mind of the sword as it spoke to her of all the lives it had taken.

Sarmatians, Scythians, Wodes, Saxons, Gauls, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Medes, Huns, Romans, Lydians, Sakas, Iberians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Norsmen, Celts, even an unlucky bear. It whispered each of their names in her mind and she shook her head, not believing what was happening, and underneath her the bunch and flow of Bartatua's muscles got faster.

Rush, my gildatore, a voice in her head whispered, and her whole body sang to the sound of that voice, the voice of her God, as she found him – and thus herself – at last.

She opened her eyes and risked one last look at Lancelot before she drew the sword from its sheath, the steely ringing sound it made adding to her internal symphony.

"Rush!" she screamed, and the others joined in.

They cut a wide scythe through the Saxon legion, and the unwary soldiers were either run down or cut down as they swung their swords wildly. As the Saxons turned to prepare themselves for another onslaught from the knights, the Wodes fired again, and there were many Saxon soldiers who didn't know what had hit them until they died – when they guessed that it was probably an arrow.

They reached the end of their charge and immediately doubled back to go again, and Jess felt her blood surge as another of them started the battle cry; she was too far gone to even distinguish whose voice it was.

They galloped up and down the field, playing cat and mouse with the Saxon crossbowmen, until there was one man left, and by the looks of the Wode arrow in his belly he wouldn't last much longer either. Arthur nodded at the gatesmen, who had emerged and re-tethered their horses, and they opened the gates and immediately headed for cover again.

The last Saxon in Cynric's former legion stumbled out through the gates and up to the feet of his chief, where he died.

Cerdic raised an eyebrow, turned and nodded at one of his sub-commanders and then stepped over the Saxon's body.

--------------------------

The remaining Saxons came marching through the gates and Jess steeled herself, drew her Scytho-Median sword with her left hand and then followed Arthur and the others as they rode back out of the range of the trebuchet the Wodes had assembled on the hill. Arthur gave the command to fire and the Wodes, led by Guinevere and Cimmeria, who had hurried to join them, fired flaming arrows into the carefully placed tar pits, creating a wall of flame that effectively halved the Saxon army – or at least put some on the outside and some on the inside. The proportions were a little off to be saying half.

The now wary Saxons were again caught off guard by the unexpected attack of the Wodes, but after a few seconds they rallied and charged as well. Arthur looked at Merlin, standing on top of the hill beside the catapults that the Wodes had so painstakingly crafted that last night, and lowered his hand.

She heard the whistle, creak and thud of the trebuchet as the massive wooden frames hurled huge boulders coated in burning pitch into the portion of the Saxon army not trapped in the ring of fire, and the knights rode out again, this time to engage in close combat with the Saxon hordes. As they charged, Cynric and Ytria appeared alongside them, both riding on tall bay horses.

The battle was long and bloody, less so until she was dragged off Bartatua's back by a tall, scarred Saxon who was surprised to find himself on the pointy end of a long curved sword shortly afterwards. She reacted instinctively to each blow that was swung her way, parrying with the longsword on her better side and slashing with the sabre in her left hand.

After about ten minutes of fighting she wasn't even aware of the situation. All she knew was that the Saxons were trying to kill her, and she had to kill them first to stop them. The battlefield and her view of the big picture narrowed to the five square metres around her, most of it obscured by a red haze she later surmised was what was known as being berserk. Even months later she remembered nothing up to the point where she looked around and discovered that there were no Saxons trying to kill her at that point.

-----------------------

Tristan stood before Cerdic on the battlefield, the Saxons and Wodes around them all too busy to notice. Tristan drew his sword. Then he saw, behind the Saxon chief, Cimmeria fighting with a hulking Saxon soldier wielding a huge lead mace and a longsword. He saw them just in time to watch her get slashed across the stomach, and she collapsed on the ground, trying to crawl to away backwards from the swing of the deadly mace.

Tristan sheathed his sword, turned away and whistled for his horse. Cerdic raised an eyebrow, and then his sword, preparing to impale Tristan as he mounted, but as he brought his sword downwards he was jerked backwards and felt a cold steel blade at his throat.

"By the power given me by the Gods, I challenge you for the right to lead the Saxon people," Cynric whispered in his ear.

-----------------------

Cimmeria kicked the Saxon knight's legs out from under him and rolled away, narrowly avoiding the fall of the bone-shatteringly-strong lump of lead with spikes on it that was masquerading for a civilised weapon. She screamed as the big soldier put a dagger in her back and scrambled to her feet faster than he could. Caught off balance, the Saxon unsheathed another dagger, but she was again faster and stuck a sword in his stomach. Just at the moment when she stabbed him, another blade came through his chest from the back, and as the bastard collapsed off both swords she looked up to see Tristan.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

She shrugged and then pulled the dagger out of her back. "I don't think so,"

He nodded and then swung her into his arms, carrying her towards some of the Wodes had set up a makeshift first aid station in the shelter of the trees.

------------------------

Inside the ring of fire, Guinevere and Arthur fought side by side, he having turned up about two minutes ago to defend her against a particularly vicious Saxon who had attempted to make Guinevere a head shorter, and she had the wound to prove it.

Gawain was fine apart from a crossbow bolt in the shoulder and looked as though he didn't need any help, especially not when he teamed up with Galahad.

"How've you been?" Gawain asked him, slicing a Saxon arm off and then breaking the man's neck with his own mace.

Galahad shrugged after knocking another Saxon unconscious with the man's shield. "You know, not too bad. I see you're still breathing,"

Gawain grinned at him. "It's fear that's keeping me alive, mate. If I die, Egreyne will bring me back and then make the rest of my life hell."

Galahad laughed and nodded. "Women, eh?"

They both laughed and continued slicing, stabbing, slashing and beating people.

Guinevere looked at Arthur and shook her head. "Men,"

------------------------

Jess spotted, across the battlefield now covered in dead bodies as well as living, Cynric engaged in a fight with his father, and Ytria standing and watching, obviously playing the witness as she had promised. Unfortunately for her, though, the Saxons around her didn't seem to be respecting that office and one grabbed her by the hair and put his sword at her throat, distracting Cynric, who then had a gash put in his back from shoulder to hip by his father.

Jess started running across the field, trying not to trip over the bodies, to reach the now struggling Ytria. She parried a thrust from a Saxon warrior and slammed her closed fist with the hilt of her sword clenched in it into his fist. He went down, reeling, and she continued running.

What she didn't notice was that the man behind her staggered to his feet again, and spotted something lying on the ground, kicking one of his fallen comrades off it and picking it up.

Cynric knelt on the ground with his father behind him, the look on his face showing that he was in great pain. His father sighed happily and put the blade of his sword against Cynric's neck.

"I've been waiting for this moment ever since you could hold a sword, my worthless son," he said, raising the blade to take a deadly swing.

Cynric looked at Ytria across the vacant circle of space that had surrounded their dueling space and clenched his fist around the hilt of his sword. Before his father could bring his blade down, Cynric thrust his up backwards until he felt it connect with something solid. Then he stood up and in one swing cut his father's head off.

Breathing hard, he turned to the pack of Saxons surrounding Ytria.

"Saxons! I have challenged my father for the right to lead you, and I have won! Saxons! Lay down your arms!"

The men in the immediate vicinity threw down their swords reluctantly, complying only when Dagonet, Bors, Lancelot and Jess, who had just arrived to save Ytria, began attacking those who didn't.

She grinned at Lancelot across the circle where there were no bodies, and he flashed her one of his own, but then the exhilaration in his eyes turned to panic as he saw something behind her. She turned, not quite quickly enough, and the crossbow bolt the man she had punched before fired caught her in the side, just underneath the ribs, knocking the breath out of her.

Her grip on her swords loosened and she bent over, trying to breathe. He threw the crossbow away, grinning in satisfaction, and then punched her in the face, returning the favour, and she fell to her knees, dropping her swords. He stepped forward and grabbed her by the throat, crushing her neck in his huge, gloved hand. She managed to grab one of her daggers and sink it into his stomach, but he just tightened his grip. The pressure loosened, finally, when Lancelot ran him through and pushed him backwards off her, but she was still winded and, try as she might, she couldn't get any air into her constricted windpipe.

The last thing that she saw before everything went black was Lancelot's concerned face.

1 Since I don't actually know where you – the readers – come from, specifically, I should probably point out that this is an Australian thing. There a sort of mint-flavoured lolly thing, and on the wrappers it has cartoon pictures of people in situations like getting electrocuted or run over, and it says "It's moments like these you need Minties." Sorry for any Australians reading this.

P.S. Don't worry - this is only the end of the chapter, not of the story.