‘They might have known we were coming here anyway,’ I said, trying to comfort him, though unless Merlin had betrayed Camlann to Nimue, it seemed more likely that Mordred would indeed have left some lightly armoured horsemen to watch Sagramor and that those scouts must have betrayed our hiding place. Whatever, it was too late now. Mordred’s men knew where we were and now it was a race between Caddwg and the enemy.

‘Hear that?’ Gwydre called. He was in armour and had his father’s bear on his shield. He was nervous, and no wonder, for this would be his first real battle.

I listened. My leather padded helmet muffled sound, but at last I heard the thud of hoofs on sand.

‘Keep down!’ Sagramor snarled at those men who were tempted to peer over the crest of the dune.

The horses were galloping down the sea’s beach, and we were hidden from that beach by the dune. The sound drew nearer, rising to a thunder of hoofs as we gripped our spears and swords. Sagramor’s helmet was crested with the mask of a snarling fox. I stared at the fox, but heard only the growing noise of the horses. It was warm and sweat was trickling down my face. The mail coat felt heavy, but it always did until the fighting started.

The first hoofs pounded past, then Arthur was shouting from the beach. ‘Now!’ he called, ‘Now! Now! Now!’

‘Go!’ Sagramor shouted and we all scrambled up the dune’s inner face. Our boots slipped in the sand, and it seemed I would never reach the top, but then we were over the crest and running down onto the beach where a swirl of horsemen churned the hard wet sand beside the sea. Arthur had turned and his thirty men had clashed with their pursuers who outnumbered Arthur’s men by two to one, but those pursuers now saw us running towards their flank and the more prudent immediately turned and galloped west towards safety. Most stayed to fight.

I screamed a challenge, took a horseman’s spear point plumb on the centre of my shield, raked Hy welbane across the horse’s rear leg to hamstring the animal, and then, as the horse tipped towards me, I swept Hywelbane hard into the rider’s back. He yelped in pain, and I jumped back as horse and man collapsed in a flurry of hoofs, sand and blood. I kicked the twitching man in the face, stabbed down with Hywelbane, then backswung the sword at a panicked horseman who feebly stabbed at me with his spear. Sagramor was keening a terrible war cry and Gwydre was spearing a fallen man at the sea’s edge. The enemy were breaking from the fight and spurring their horses to safety through the sea’s shallows where the receding water sucked a swirl of sand and blood back into the collapsing waves. I saw Culhwch spur his horse to an enemy and haul the man bodily from his saddle. The man tried to stand, but Culhwch backswung the sword, turned his horse and chopped down again. The few enemy who had survived were trapped between us and the sea now, and we killed them grimly. Horses screamed and thrashed their hoofs as they died. The small waves were pink and the sand was black with blood.