The tide had turned, and the first fishing-boats were coming home. We hailed them as they passed the spit, but most ignored our calls, for common folk all too often have good reason to fear spearmen, but Galahad waved a gold coin and that lure did bring one boat which nosed gingerly into the shore and grounded on the sand near the blazing balefire. Its two crewmen, both with heavily tattooed faces, agreed to take the women and children to Caddwg’s craft, which was almost afloat again. We gave the fishermen gold, handed the women and children into the boat, and sent one of the wounded spearmen to guard them. ‘Tell the other fishermen,’ Arthur told the tattooed men, ‘that there’s gold for any man who brings his boat with Caddwg.’ He made a brief farewell to Guinevere, as I did to Ceinwyn. I held her close for a few heartbeats and found I had no words.

‘Stay alive,’ she told me.

‘For you,’ I said, ‘I will,’ and then I helped push the grounded boat into the sea and watched it slowly pull away into the channel.

A moment later one of our mounted scouts came galloping back from the broken ghost fence. ‘They’re coming, Lord!’ he shouted.

I let Galahad buckle my helmet strap, then held out my arm so he could bind the shield tight. He gave me my spear. ‘God be with you,’ he said, then picked up his own shield that was blazoned with the Christian cross.

We would not fight in the dunes this time because we did not have enough men to make a shield wall that would stretch right across the hilly part of the sandspit, and that meant Mordred’s horsemen could have galloped around our flanks, surrounded us, and we would have been doomed to die in a tightening ring of enemies. Nor did we fight in the fort, for there too we could have been surrounded and thus cut off from the water when Caddwg arrived, and so we retreated to the narrow tip of the spit where our shield wall could stretch from one shore to the other. The balefire still blazed just above the line of weed that marked the high-tide limit, and while we waited for the enemy Arthur ordered still more driftwood to be heaped on its flames. We went on feeding that fire until we saw Mordred’s men approaching, and then we made our shield wall just a few paces in front of the flames. We set Sagramor’s dark banner in the centre of our line, touched our shields edge to edge and waited.