I sat that night with Ceinwyn beside a fire. ‘It reminds me,’ I said, ‘of that night on Ynys Mon.’

‘I was thinking of that,’ she said.

It was the night we had discovered the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, and we had huddled in a jumble of rocks with the forces of Diwrnach all about us. None of us had expected to live, but then Merlin had woken from the dead and mocked me. ‘Surrounded, are we?’ he had asked me. ‘Outnumbered, are we?’ I had agreed to both propositions and Merlin had smiled. ‘And you call yourself a lord of warriors!’

‘You’ve landed us in a predicament,’ Ceinwyn said, quoting Merlin, and she smiled at the memory, then sighed. ‘If we weren’t with you,’ she went on, indicating the women and children about the fires, ‘what would you do?’

‘Go north. Fight a battle over there,’ I nodded towards the Saxon fires that burned on the high ground beyond the saddle, ‘then keep marching north.’ I was not truly certain I would have done that, for such an escape would have meant abandoning any man wounded in the battle for the ridge, but the rest of us, unencumbered by women or children, could surely have outmarched the Saxon pursuit.

‘Suppose,’ Ceinwyn said softly, ‘that you ask the Saxons to give the women and children safe passage?’

‘They’ll say yes,’ I said, ‘and as soon as you’re out range of our spears they’ll seize you, rape you, kill you and enslave the children.’

‘Not really a good idea, then?’ she asked gently.

‘Not really.’

She leaned her head on my shoulder, trying not to disturb Seren who was sleeping with her head pillowed on her mother’s lap. ‘So how long can we hold?’ Ceinwyn asked.

‘I could die of old age on Mynydd Baddon,’ I said, ‘so long as they don’t send more than four hundred men to attack us.’

‘And will they?’

‘Probably not,’ I lied, and Ceinwyn knew I lied. Of course they would send more than four hundred men. In war, I have learned, the enemy will usually do whatever you fear the most, and this enemy would certainly send every spearman they had.

Ceinwyn lay silent for a while. Dogs barked among the distant Saxon encampments, their sound coming clear through the still night. Our own dogs began to respond and little Seren shifted in her sleep. Ceinwyn stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘If Arthur’s at Corinium,’ she asked softly, ‘then why are the Saxons coming here?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You think they’ll eventually go north to join their main army?’