Arthur, warlord of Britain, can annihilate the Saxons once and for all by becoming the Dragon Lord. Mael, an Irish adventurer, and Starkad, his giant Danish companion, must seek both the ancient skull from which Merlin can raise the dragon, and the weapons by which alone the dragon can be controlled. Accompanied by a priestess older than time, their search takes them from a monster-haunted lake, to the barrow of a thing no longer dead, and finally to a battlefield where the enmity of Briton and Saxon rises to a cataclysm which threatens to drown the earth in blood...