We took them nicely by surprise, and fought a bloody and very unpleasant little action. One roadside skirmish is very like another. This one only differed from the usual in being better generalled and more eccentrically equipped, but we had the advantages both of numbers and of surprise, and did what we had set out to do, robbed Vortigern of twenty men for the loss of only three of our own and a few cuts. I came out of it more creditably than I would have believed possible, killing the man I had picked out before the fighting swept over and past me and another knocked me off my horse and would possibly have killed me if Cadal had not parried the stroke and killed the fellow himself. It was quickly over. We buried our own dead and left the rest for the kites, after we had stripped them of their arms. We had taken care not to harm the horses, and when next morning Gorlois said farewell and led his new troops south-east, every man had a horse, and a good weapon of some kind. Cadal and I turned south for Maridunum, and reached it by early evening.

The first person I saw as we rode down the street towards St. Peter’s was my cousin Dinias. We came on him suddenly at a corner, and he jumped a foot and went white. I suppose rumours had been running like wildfire through the town ever since the escort had brought my mother back without me.

“Merlin. I thought—I thought—”

“Well met, cousin, I was coming to look for you.”

He said quickly: “Look, I swear I had no idea who those men were—”

“I know that. What happened wasn’t your fault. That isn’t why I was looking for you.”

“—and I was drunk, you know that. But even if I had guessed who they were, how was I to know they’d take you up on a thing like that? I’d heard rumours of what they were looking for, I admit, but I swear it never entered my head—”

“I said it wasn’t your fault. And I’m back here again safely, aren’t I? All’s well that ends well. Leave it, Dinias. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

But he persisted. “I took the money, didn’t I? You saw.”

“And if you did? You didn’t give information for money, you took it afterwards. It’s different, to my mind. If Vortigern likes to throw his money away, then by all means rob him of it. Forget it, I tell you. Have you news of my mother?”

“I’ve just come from her. She’s ill, did you know?”

“I got news on my way south,” I said. “What’s the matter with her? How bad?”