The woods began again thirty paces beyond the stream and I had not covered half that distance when an axe hurtled out of the shadows beneath the branches. It turned as it came towards me, the day’s grey light flickering from the spinning blade. The throw was bad, and the axe hissed past a good four paces away. No one challenged me, but nor did any other weapon come from the trees.

‘I am a Saxon!’ I shouted in that language. Still no one spoke, but I heard a mutter of low voices and the crackle of breaking twigs. ‘I am a Saxon!’ I called again, and wondered whether the hidden watchers were not Saxons but outlaw Britons, for I was still in the wasteland where the masterless men of every tribe and country hid from justice.

I was about to call in the British tongue that I meant no harm when a voice shouted from the shadows in Saxon. ‘Throw your sword here!’ a man commanded me.

‘You may come and take the sword,’ I answered.

There was a pause. ‘Your name?’ the voice demanded.

‘Derfel,’ I said, ‘son of Aelle.’

I called my father’s name as a challenge, and it must have unsettled them because once again I heard the low murmur of voices, and then, a moment later, six men pushed through the brambles to come into the clearing. All were in the thick furs that Saxons favoured as armour and all carried spears. One of them wore a horned helmet and he, evidently the leader, walked down the edge of the road towards me. ‘Derfel,’ he said, stopping a half dozen paces from me. ‘Derfel,’ he said again. ‘I have heard that name, and it is no Saxon name.’

‘It is my name,’ I answered, ‘and I am a Saxon.’

‘A son of Aelle?’ He was suspicious.

‘Indeed.’

He considered me for a moment. He was a tall man with a mass of brown hair crammed into his horned helmet. His beard reached almost to his waist and his moustaches hung to the top edge of the leather breastplate he wore beneath his fur cloak. I supposed he was a local chieftain, or maybe a warrior deputed to guard this part of the frontier. He twisted one of his moustaches in his free hand, then let the strands unwind. ‘Hrothgar, son of Aelle, I know,’ he said musingly, ‘and Cyrning, son of Aelle, I call a friend. Penda, Saebold and Yffe, sons of Aelle, I have seen in battle, but Derfel, son of Aelle?’ He shook his head.

‘You see him now,’ I said.

He hefted his spear, noting that my shield was still hanging from my horse’s saddle. ‘Derfel, friend of Arthur, I have heard of,’ he said accusingly.

‘You see him also,’ I said, ‘and he has business with Aelle.’

‘No Briton has business with Aelle,’ he said, and his men growled their assent.

‘I am a Saxon,’ I retorted.

‘Then what is your business?’