This part’s always disagreeable, the brute scramble up towards daylight. He burrows through clay, grabs at roots, until the earth falls away and he’s looking up at a vaguely yellow sky.

It’s not a great kingly sword like Caliburn, with garnets cloisonned into the pommel; the blade is not emblazoned with the word of God; the crossguard isn’t inlaid with silver or fashioned like the True Cross. It’s just a well-balanced sword in the Roman style, good for spilling guts; a bit weighty in the hilt because he likes to be able to turn it

It looks more like Venice than London. The river has swelled its banks enormously, flooding Chiswick and Shepherd’s Bush. Half the city drowned with floodwater, glistening in the sun.

A shield is not just for protection. It’s also for drawing attention. The face of Herne is painted white, and the iron boss will gleam in this bright sun. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s better than doing nothing. He plants the shield at the top of the stairs, driving the rim down between two bands of the metal walkway. Then he kneels behind it,

The woman is getting further away. That’s what matters. He’s keeping the Saxons distracted. All he needs to do is stay where he is. He learnt a few hundred years ago that sometimes the most useful thing he can do is to just let himself get killed. Merlin’s covenant with the earth didn’t grant him the strength of an ox, it didn’t make his flesh

She’s speaking English, the bastard horse-trading language that people have been speaking since the Normans arrived. It still sounds new and vulgar to him, ringing strangely in his ears, but Merlin’s magic makes it so that they can understand each other. Part of the covenant. The gift of tongues. Give him knowledge of the words which are spoken by

fingernails. Hot showers are one of the few pleasures in this endless nightmare. Whisky, motorcycles, good bars with loud music. Italian coffee. Cashmere. Hotels with good soap. They make all the rest of it slightly more tolerable.

Riding through the old forests, you could never shake the feeling that there was a quest around the corner, put there by some greater power, whether that power was the Christ King or the Saxon gods or some older goddess of the trees. Arthur never seemed to notice. It seemed natural to him that things of import should occur in his proximity. If

He gets his shins above ground, and then he’s up, kneeling in the sun, panting in the heat. Wearing a coat of mail and a green wool cloak, both rimed with muddy afterbirth. His dreadlocks are matted with earth.