Britain is a place riven by anarchy, slaughter, famine and darkness. Its armies are destroyed, its heroes dead, or missing. Arthur and Lancelot fell in the last great battle, and Merlin has not been seen these past ten years. And now the Saxons have returned. Their king seeks dominion, their war bands stalk the land. As for the lords of Britain, they look only to their own survival, unable or unwilling to unite as they once did under Arthur, with his horse-warriors and his legendary sword Excalibur. In a monastery hidden in the marshlands of Avalon, a novice monk prepares to take his vows. But the life he has known is about to be turned upside down in a welter of blood. Two strangers – the wild-spirited, Saxon-killing Iselle and the ageing warrior Gawain – will pluck him from the ruins of his sheltered existence. Together they will go in search of the last druid, to find the cauldron of a god, and to raise an army to hold the darkness at bay. And as they journey, so the novice will cast aside his training and embrace his legacy. His name is Galahad. He is a warrior born. He is Lancelot’s son . . .