The Green Knight leads Bedivere, Palomides, Dinadan, and the newly knighted Collum westward on the quest to find the last surviving Round Table knight, while Constantine and Nimue remain at Camelot to organize defenses against King Rience. Collum, awed by his new station, continues lying about his noble upbringing on Mull to Dinadan rather than confess his humble origins.

On the second day, Bedivere detours to Amesbury Abbey, where Queen Guinevere has taken refuge as a novice. Speaking from behind a screen, she refuses to help them choose a new king, citing her ruined reputation as the "Whore of Camelot," and warns them not to seek another Arthur. She grants Dinadan's request for a sister's blessing before dismissing them. The knights speculate her Eastbrook cousins may marry her off, possibly to Rience.

The next day they spot two knights, Sir Germaine and the Knight of the Borders, transporting a bound, naked prisoner who Dinadan, with supernatural eyesight, identifies as Sir Scipio. Palomides jousts Sir Germaine and unseats him with a single masterful strike. The captors flee cursing the Round Table as obsolete. Scipio, freed and unrepentant about having actually looted a dagger from a corpse, joins the company.

That night around the campfire, Collum learns that Round Table initiations grant some knights special gifts—Dinadan's far-sight, Gareth's leaping, Palomides's imperviousness to rain. A drunken Bedivere then reveals a secret: after Camlann, he threw Excalibur into the sea where a hand caught it, then watched a magical barge bearing the Queen of Northgalis and others take the wounded Arthur to Avalon. Yet at Glastonbury, the archbishop showed him a grave inscribed "Here Lies Arthur, King That Was, King That Will Be." The contradiction torments Dinadan, but Bedivere believes Arthur will return.

Sir Scipio returns from his errand and tosses two human heads into the firelight—Germaine and Borders, killed by peasants—a grim sign of Britain's collapsing order.