Page 40 of The Dragon's Tale

Tenderly Lance reached up and hooked the bronze catch into place. Arthur picked up the disc and pressed his mouth to it—the sun and then the moon, and then Lance’s upturned face. “Don’t grieve anymore,” he said, as his tears splashed onto Lance’s hands and the ancient flagstones of Joyous Gard. “Don’t grieve. Spring will come.”

Epilogue

As for Prince Garb: he survived. He didn’t take up with the Anglian pirates. They would have laughed, he knew, at so puny a creature as he, and despised him for his treachery even while they profited by it. Instead he ran deep into the moorlands of Bryneich. His mother had relatives in the villages who would harbour him.

He hid, and he watched and he waited. He saw his father march off north to his last war, taking with him the standing army of Din Guardi. A well-drilled regiment of King Arthur’s troops took their place, and went efficiently about their business. After a month or so, in the coldest part of the year, he saw a weary crowd of travellers arrive from the west—women, children, carts piled high with household goods, as if somewhere a whole town had been emptied and transplanted here. A fair-haired man rode at their head, his bearing noble despite his ragged clothes. They gathered outside the Din Guardi walls, and then the gates opened, and they all were taken in.

Shortly after that, when the days were beginning to lengthen, festivities shook the grim old fortress, and Garbonian heard from a source among the kitchen staff that a great wedding had happened there.

Then news came from the south of terrible Saxon incursions, and Arthur’s army marched. Garbonian had no doubt that his father’s new heir, Lance of Vindolanda, would find whatever battlefield it was and meet them there.

Arthur left the fort amply garrisoned, but Garb watched, and bided his time. Men like Lance, who rode bravely, flags flying, never lasted long. Down among the grasses like a snake, like a toad beneath a stone, Garb could endure indefinitely, passive and unnoticed. Din Guardi would be his again. He knew he could outlive King Arthur’s one good lance.