Love Among the Ruins by Warwick Deeping

As a wind sweeps clamorous into a wood, so Modred and his fellows, household knights, streamed into the great hall of Avalon, where the Lord Flavian sat at supper. Bearers of angry steel, fulminators of vengeance, vociferous, strong, they poured in through the screens like a mill race, bearing a tossed and impotent figure in their midst. Their swords yelped and flashed over this bruised fragment of humanity.

A gauntlet of steel was dashed often into the white face. Hands clawed his collar, clutched his body. Dragged, jerked onwards, buffeted, beaten to his knees, he sank down before the Lord Flavian's chair, blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, specking his white habit, drabbling the floor. Then only did the flashing, growling circle recede like waves from a fallen rock.