The Sword and the Skull: How Arthur Became King (Magic is in Everything)

By Steven Hager

Britain, twenty-eight days.

An old king is carried home dying, and the housekeeper who runs his castle chooses two people to sit up with him - a boy who carries firewood, and a Danish girl who has been a hostage since she was eleven. She picks them because neither of their words is worth anything, so nothing said in that room can ever be used.

On the first night, with nothing to say to each other, she takes a clay board out of a box and teaches him a Roman game.

Four weeks later he is King of Britain, married, and standing over a Saxon warlord on a chalk hill, and every decision that got him there came off that board - which he does not know, and never learns.

Told at eighty-one by the man who was there, The Sword and the Skull is the story of a kingdom won by a boy nobody asked, planned by a man who would not carry a sword, and set in motion by a girl nobody ever consulted about anything.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HG1GGVL6
• ISBN13: 9798194015405
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 118 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"