‘We’re safe now,’ Arthur said. We could smell the sea, gulls called above us, ahead was the endless sound of waves breaking on a shore, and Balig and the Saxon were hitching the sail’s yard to the ropes that hoisted it up the mast. There was one last great loop of the river to negotiate, one last encounter with Nimue’s horsemen to endure, and then we would be swept out into the Severn Sea.

‘How many men did we lose?’ Arthur wanted to know, and we shouted questions and answers back and forth between the small fleet. Only two men had been struck by arrows, and the one stranded boat had been overwhelmed, but most of his small army was safe. ‘Poor Emrys,’ Arthur said, and then was silent for a while, but he pushed the melancholy aside. ‘In three days,’ he said, ‘we’ll be with Sagramor.’ He had sent messages eastwards and, now that Mordred’s army had left Dumnonia, there was surely nothing to stop Sagramor coming to meet us. ‘We shall have a small army,’ Arthur said, ‘but a good one. Good enough to beat Mordred, and then we start all over again.’

‘Start over again?’ I asked.

‘Beat back Cerdic once more,’ he said, ‘and knock some sense into Meurig.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘There’s always one more battle. Have you noticed that? Whenever you think everything is settled, it all seethes up again.’ He touched Excalibur’s hilt. ‘Poor Hygwydd. I shall miss him.’

‘You’ll miss me too, Lord,’ I said gloomily. The stump of my left wrist was throbbing painfully and my missing hand was unaccountably itching with a sensation so real that I kept trying to scratch it.

‘I’ll miss you?’ Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘When Sansum summons me.’

‘Ah! The mouse lord.’ He gave me a quick smile. ‘I think our mouse lord will want to come back to Dumnonia, don’t you? I can’t see him gaining preferment in Gwent, they have too many bishops already. No, he’ll want to come back, and poor Morgan will want the shrine at Ynys Wydryn again, so I shall make a bargain with them. Your soul for Gwydre’s permission for them to live in Dumnonia. We’ll free you of the oath, Derfel, never you mind.’ He slapped my shoulder, then clambered forward to where Guinevere sat beneath the mast.

Balig plucked an arrow from the sternpost, twisted away its iron head that he tucked into a pocket for safe keeping, then tossed the feathered shaft overboard. ‘Don’t like the look of that,’ he said to me, jerking his chin towards the west. I turned and saw there were black clouds far out to sea.

‘Rain coming?’ I asked.