I saw it all. It was my first great battlefield, and I am not ashamed that it was almost my last. My battles were not fought with sword and spear. If it comes to that, I had already had a hand in the winning of Kaerconan before I ever reached it; and when I did reach it, was to find myself playing the very part that Uther had once, in jest, assigned to me.

I had ridden with Cadal as far as Caerleon, where we found a small body of Ambrosius’ troops in possession of the fortress, and another on its way to invest and repair the fort at Maridunum. Also, their officer told me confidentially, to make sure that the Christian community—“all the community,” he added gravely, with the ghost of a wink at me, “such is the Commander’s piety—” remained safe. He had been detailed, moreover, to send some of his men back with me, to escort me to Ambrosius. My father had even thought to send some of my clothes. So I sent Cadal back, to his disgust, to do what he could about Galapas’ cave, then rode north-east with the escort.

We came up with the army just outside Kaerconan. The troops were already deployed for battle and there was no question of seeing the commander, so we withdrew, as instructed, to the western hill where the men of the South Welsh tribes eyed one another distrustfully over swords held ready for the Saxons below. The men of my escort troop eyed me in something the same manner: they had not intruded on my silence on the ride, and it was plain they held me in some awe, not only as Ambrosius’ acknowledged son, but as ‘Vortigern’s prophet’—a title which had already stuck to me and which it took me some years to shed. When I reported with them to the officer in charge, and asked him to assign me a place in his troop, he was horrified, and begged me quite seriously to stay out of the fight, but to find some place where the men could see me and know, as he put it, “that the prophet was here with them”. In the end I did as he wished, and withdrew to the top of a small rocky crag hard by where, wrapping my cloak about me, I prepared to watch the battlefield spread out below like a moving map.