Issa finally arrived at dusk. He came with his fifty spearmen, with the thirty men who had been the guards on the palace at Durnovaria, with the dozen Blackshields who were Argante’s personal soldiers and with at least two hundred other refugees. Worse, he had brought six ox-drawn wagons and it was those heavy vehicles that had caused the delay. A heavily laden ox-wagon’s highest speed is slower than an old man’s walk, and Issa had fetched the wagons all the way north at their snail’s pace. ‘What possessed you?’ I shouted at him. ‘There isn’t time to haul wagons!’

‘I know, Lord,’ he said miserably.

‘Are you mad?’ I was angry. I had ridden to meet him and now wheeled my mare on the verge. ‘You’ve wasted hours!’ I shouted.

‘I had no choice!’ he protested.

‘You’ve got a spear!’ I snarled. ‘That gives you the right to choose what you want.’

He just shrugged and gestured towards the Princess Argante who rode atop the leading wagon. The wagon’s four oxen, their flanks bleeding from the goads that had driven them all day, stopped in the road with their heads low.

‘The wagons go no farther!’ I shouted at her. ‘You walk or ride from here!’

‘No!’ Argante insisted.

I slid off the mare and walked down the line of wagons. One held nothing but the Roman statues that had graced the palace courtyard in Durnovaria, another was piled with robes and gowns, while a third was heaped with cooking pots, beckets and bronze candle-stands. ‘Get them off the road,’ I shouted angrily.

‘No!’ Argante had leapt down from her high perch and now ran towards me. ‘Arthur ordered me to bring them.’

‘Arthur, Lady,’ I turned on her, stifling my anger, ‘does not need statues!’

‘They come with us,’ Argante shouted, ‘otherwise I stay here!’

‘Then stay here, Lady,’ I said savagely. ‘Off the road!’ I shouted at the ox drivers. ‘Move it! Off the road, now!’ I had drawn Hywelbane and stabbed her blade at the nearest ox to drive the beast towards the verge.

‘Don’t go!’ Argante screamed at the ox drivers. She tugged at one of the oxen’s horns, pulling the confused beast back onto the road. ‘I’m not leaving this for the enemy,’ she shouted at me.

Guinevere watched from the roadside. There was a look of cool amusement on her face, and no wonder, for Argante was behaving like a spoiled child. Argante’s Druid, Fergal, had hurried to his Princess’s aid, protesting that all his magical cauldrons and ingredients were loaded on one of the wagons. ‘And the treasury,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘What treasury?’ I asked.

‘Arthur’s treasury,’ Argante said sarcastically, as though by revealing the existence of the gold she won her argument. ‘He wants it in Corinium.’ She went to the second wagon, lifted some of the heavy robes and rapped a wooden box that was hidden beneath. ‘The gold of Dumnonia! You’d give it to the Saxons?’