Sitting idly chatting in the middle of a pitched battle felt somewhat odd, but no one else seemed to think anything of it.

"Are you sure there's nothing we should be doing to help?" I asked for, seemingly, the fiftieth time as one of the troubleshooters strode out to hack at an especially troublesome Saxon.

"I'd take a fireball or two if you had one to spare?" Bors looked at me, hopefully.

I shook my head. Although there was a decent amount of paint now cycling around my artist's studio, my channels were painfully raw. New-Jimmy-Choos-two-sizes-two-small-and-an-eight-hours-bar-shift raw. Merlin kept muttering gloomily about 'ruptures', 'Qi exhaustion' and 'catastrophic decompression' every time he sensed me so much as glance towards my essence.

"Not really, then. It's what people don't realise about battles. Most of it is fucking boring. Until it suddenly very much isn't. More often than not, a shield wall press is just a brutal, monotonous grind until one side calls it a day. There's two different war bands hitting us - the fuckers who think they're wolves are giving us a bit of trouble on the left-hand side, but the other lot, fighting under a stag skull sigil, aren't much cop. Hearts aren't in it."

Melehan flinched at that. Bors and I gave him a chance to expand, but he went back to staring blankly into the distance. Since helping with the semi-healing of Arthur, he was giving off some serious Lieutenant-Dan-after-the-legs-were-gone vibes.

He looked a bit like Gary Sinise, too.

Bors, sensing there was nothing more to be added by the Saxon, resumed. "It's not all heroic one-on-one duels like you hear about in sagas. The boys are all packed together so tightly that they can barely move, and all most of them can see are the backsides of him in front. There's not much for me to do right now, to tell the truth. There's no grand strategy to it. It's just a game of push and shove. As long as our lads keep their footing and don't get knocked to the ground, the Saxons are not getting through. But we're not going anywhere quickly, either."

The troubleshooter returned to the middle, the left-hand side of his face painted with blood. He accepted a waterskin from one of the others and sluiced it over his head. "They've pulled back a touch on the right, Sir Bors. Probably not gone far, but if we're going to move, now would be a good time."

Bors nodded, stood and brushed himself down. "Fair enough. This is where we earn our mead, gentlemen," he nodded at me, "and lady."

His voice suddenly ratcheted up in volume, so it boomed around the clearing. "Right, that's enough standing around weighing our balls and calling it foreplay. We've got places to go, people to kill. On my mark, we're going to withdraw, slowly, along the path the Prince was taking us. Any fucker wants to stand in our way and contest our progress is to be shown the error of their ways. With extreme prejudice. Are we clear?"

A roar answered him. Four of the troubleshooters came forward with a makeshift stretcher on which they carefully laid the body of Arthur. He hadn't been able to tolerate anything touching his skin, not even a light blanket, so the extent of his burns was fully displayed.

I very much like Sir Bors' confidence, my dear, but this is a profoundly delicate military manoeuvre. Once moving, it will not take much for the coherence of our square to be imperilled. And should that happen, you must be prepared to immediately fast-travel Arthur to a place of safety.

"I thought my channels were fucked by all the healing?"

If the shield wall fails, I think we can consider the rupturing of your channels to be the lesser of two very bad evils, my dear. Bors is quite correct when he says the survival of Arthur is to be our only consideration.

I looked at what, charitably, could be described as a cured block of corned beef that smelt vaguely of lavender. "I'm not being funny, Big M, but is there much point? I doubt there's enough Bio-Oil in the world at this stage."

There was an uncomfortable silence. When Merlin spoke, there was a heaviness to his voice. My dear, in my long life, I was granted but a few pure glimpses into the future. Moments of genuine prophecy, if you will. The strongest of these was of the court of King Arthur and the age of peace that he brought to the world. I will not relinquish my faith in that future until we have exhausted all possibilities. Whilst the Once and Future King lives, I will hold on to the hope we can, somehow, bring that dream to pass.

"There's being alive, Merlin, and then there's," I looked at Arthur's form again and suppressed a shudder, "whatever that is."

Should I be what I once was, I am sure I would have been able to heal him. Our key aim must be to enable you to find a similar solution.

I was about to carefully, and in great detail, explain why expecting someone who'd been cultivating for about a week to be able to match the achievements of fucking MERLIN was batshit crazy when the square in which I was standing started, very slowly, to walk to the right.

Stolen story; please report.

*

Pæga licked his lips and nodded with reluctant appreciation. "The balls it takes to try this. I doubt my men could execute it in the best of circumstances, let alone whilst under sustained attack."

Cedric spat in response and glared at Pæga's tone. "They're fools. What are they hoping? To walk all the way back to Tintagel with us hammering them every step of the way?"

Pæga thought that was precisely what the British commander had planned. It did not seem especially prudent to mention it.

"One slip, and we'll have them." Cedric gestured for his skirmishers to press in again. If they were weary of the struggle, Pæga did not see it on the faces of the warriors wearing wolf-skins. They howled and charged the line of shields again. His own spearmen held back, far less keen to tangle further with this determined and well-organised foe.

There had, considering the ferocity of exchanges, been relatively few losses on either side. The men in the square had, thus far, been happy to hold the line and allow the Saxons to exhaust themselves and withdraw when wounds were taken. Every indication Pæga could see was that, should the Saxons choose to fully disengage, the British would be happy to simply vanish into the woods.

After another assault was bloodily beaten back by the retreating square, he suggested as much.

"Are you such a fool? They must be here for a reason. Every fyrd we have encountered, every single one, has been crushed without thought. Yet here and now we encounter these formidable men. Why is Uther happy for such as these to flit around at the edges of our army? More so, we have seen nothing of wizardry - so what caused that pillar of flame that drew us to them? No. There is more to this, and I would know what before I let them leave."

"So let us alert the other war chiefs. Let us see if these men can still stand against double, triple our numbers and then -"

In suprise, Pæga rocked backwards at the force of Cedric's slap, slipped and fell into the mud.

Later, looking back on the incident, it would be that the West Saxon did not even give him the respect of a punch that would burn his soul the most. That and the faces of scorn turned his way by Cedric's men as he lay sprawled on the ground. More than a few of his own men turned their eyes away in shame.

Cedric stood over him, bellowing out his rage. "We do not turn tail and beg for help from allies! We do not show our stomachs to those we will rule and plea for their support. They must know we are strong and that it is their luck to be allowed to join us in the hunt! And we do not let prey slip away simply because it lowers horns and resists. We. Are. Saxons. Do you not know what that means?"

Pæga lowered his eyes, submitting to the other man's wrath. This was the Cedric of which he had heard so much. The one everyone, even the boldest in the invasion, feared. Suddenly, he was dragged upright by one wolf-fur-clad arm. "I shall not have you cowering at my feet. Take your men and break that shield wall. Do not come back until you have done so. I will, personally, skin anyone who takes a backward step. At the end of this day, those of the stag that still live will be shouting in victory or screaming in pain beneath my knife. Thus do I vow." Paega was thrown into the arms of his men, who backed away, unsure whether they felt anger, fear or shame for the dismissal of the war chief and the threats that spurred them on.

Cedric watched them go and, when they were out of earshot, spoke softly to his own spearmen. "Let the British spend themselves on the cowardly stags. The moment you see an opening, strike. I want their chieftain's heart."

There was no howl in response, the warriors merely slipped into the wake of Pæga's men, who, mindful of Cedric's threats, were all, each and every one of them, charging the front of the British line.

*

"Fuck me, something's crawled up their arse. Front line, brace!"

The square had moved maybe five hundred yards, leaving a trail of broken weapons, crushed foliage and the odd dead Saxon in its wake. It was painstaking going, as each warrior needed to move in complete synchronisation with the man at his shoulder to avoid disaster. I'd tried line dancing once, and if I'd thought Cotton-Eyed Joe was tricky in a church hall whilst wearing cowboy boots, I now had a new appreciation for the complexity of the whole 'moving in unison' thing.

But it was going okay.

From what I could tell, Bors had no interest in his men killing Saxons, so keeping the small force compact and taking one step at a time was relatively easy. The edges of the square were where there was the most likelihood of the whole thing collapsing in on itself, and it was there that men who I most probably knew stories about were positioned. No Lancelot, as far as I could tell, though. Probably back at Camelot pumping Guinevere.

And then, for no obvious reason I could see, the Saxons went all Leroy Jenkins. Whereas there'd been something of a rhythmical ballet of charge, clash, and withdrawal going on, it was suddenly like someone flicked a switch, and wildebeests were coming down the mountain to crush Simba's dad.

The first inkling I had that some serious shit was going down was all the troubleshooters gathered up their things and ran to the front of the formation. Arthur's stretcher was on the floor, and Melehan and I looked at each other with our best 'I've got a bad feeling about this' expressions.

The noise of the collision was deafening.

I thought I had got used to the sound of battle, but this was up another level. Over the screeching of metal on metal, I could just about hear Bors shouting orders, but there was more than a little of the last few minutes of '300' about his tone.

Get ready, my dear. The pressure is too great, and the line is bending. One of the warbands seems to be undertaking an utterly suicidal charge.

I drew Drynwyn, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since turning the King of all England into a flaming sambuca.

"Can they hold?"

Not against men who don't care if they live or die. Rhyddrech Hael always said you never fucked with a Berserker. There was a pause. Or was it never fuck a Berserker? One of the two.

"Are my channels healed enough to fast-travel out?"

Merlin's silence was the least welcome, most awkward pause I'd heard since telling my ex I was pregnant.

What do you want to do?

Funnily enough, Warren had said much the same thing.

And, with a splintering shudder, the British line broke.