We killed twenty of them and took sixteen prisoners, and when the prisoners had told us all they knew, we killed them too. Arthur grimaced as he gave the order, for he disliked killing unarmed men, but we could spare no spearmen to guard prisoners, nor did we have any mercy for these foes who carried unmarked shields as a boast of their savagery. We killed them quickly, forcing them to kneel on the sand where Hy welbane or Sagramor’s sharp sword took their heads. They were Mordred’s men, and Mordred himself had led them down the beach, but the King had wheeled his horse at the first sign of our ambush and shouted at his men to retreat. ‘I came close to him,’ Arthur said ruefully, ‘but not close enough.’ Mordred had escaped, but the first victory was ours, though three of our men had died in the fight and another seven were bleeding badly. ‘How did Gwydre fight?’ Arthur asked me.

‘Bravely, Lord, bravely,’ I said. My sword was thick with blood that I tried to scrape off with a handful of sand. ‘He killed, Lord,’ I assured Arthur.

‘Good,’ he said, then crossed to his son and put an arm around his shoulders. I used my one hand to scrub the blood from Hywelbane, then tugged the buckle of my helmet loose and pulled it off my head.

We killed the wounded horses, led the uninjured beasts back to the fort, then collected our enemy’s weapons and shields. ‘They won’t come again,’ I told Ceinwyn, ‘not unless they’re reinforced.’ I looked up at the sun and saw that it was climbing slowly through the cloudless sky.

We had very little water, only what Sagramor’s men had brought in their small baggage, and so we rationed the water-skins. It would be a long and thirsty day, especially for our wounded. One of them was shivering. His face was pale, almost yellow, and when Sagramor tried to trickle a little water into the man’s mouth he bit convulsively at the skin’s lip. He began to moan, and the sound of his agony grated on our souls and so Sagramor hastened the man’s death with his sword. ‘We must light a pyre,’ Sagramor said, ‘at the spit’s end.’ He nodded his head towards the flat sand where the sea had left a tangle of sun-bleached driftwood.

Arthur did not seem to hear the suggestion. ‘If you want,’ he said to Sagramor, ‘you can go west now.’

‘And leave you here?’

‘If you stay,’ Arthur said quietly, ‘then I don’t know how you will leave. We have only one boat coming. And more men will come to Mordred. None to us.’

‘More men to kill,’ Sagramor said curtly, but I think he knew that by staying he was assuring his own death. Caddwg’s boat might take twenty people to safety, but certainly no more. ‘We can swim to the other shore, Lord,’ he said, jerking his head towards the eastern bank of the channel that ran deep and fast about the tip of the sandspit. ‘Those of us who can swim,’ he added.