The embattled King Arthur faces rebellion by anti-Christian pagans as he fights the invading Saxons. The rebels demand a return to the worship of Druid gods, claiming only they can save Britain. Final volume in a trilogy.

Wart, as Arthur is called, becomes a wiser, more thoughtful person and a worthy king as a result of Merlin's lessons.

The first book John Steinbeck read as a child was the Caxton Morte d'Arthur, and he considered it one of the most challenging tasks of his career to modernize the stories of King Arthur. "These stories are alive even in those of us who have not read them," he says. "And, in our day, we are perhaps impatient with the words and the stately rhythms of [Thomas] Malory. I wanted to set the stories down in meaning as they were written, leaving out nothing...