He seemed to attempt a smile. Instead he grimaced. “If I were you, I think I would do the same.”

The field was quiet but for the sound of buzzing insects. Overhead: the occasional flap of black wings. His senses weren’t yet lost to him. He heard the buzzing, the flapping. A panicked look. His mouth opened.

“My body…I do not want…” Her language didn’t come easily to him, so he relied on gestures instead. With a finger, he pointed in the direction of the circling birds.

She watched them, as her hand drifted back to her sword. Her face was placid; if she left, he would die anyway, but she wanted to finish him. The grip on her hilt tightened. All it would take was one stroke…and what he wanted and didn’t want, what were these things to her? When another deserving of mercy wished to be spared, who heeded her voice? Yet in her chest, she felt the chains of steel shake. She felt a small lock open, and out of it slipped…a question.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“William.”

Guillaume. William. He might have thought she was frowning at him, but she was trying not to cry. They were not tears for him but for herself. She had asked God for a heart of stone, so what was this? How could she avenge if she could still feel for the enemy?

But she kneeled, giving in to a part of herself she thought was long dead. She lifted the boy’s head from the ground, and her steel arm became a pillow against which he could rest.

She saw where and how he had been wounded. A stab to the chest a few inches from the heart. Blood was still leaking from the cut. Perhaps if he had been tended to at once he could have been saved, but now it was too late. She realized with surprise that her hand was applying pressure to slow the bleeding, that English blood was slipping through her gauntleted fingers.

“Did I…?” She couldn’t finish the question but stared at the gash. Her memory was good, yet there were so many faces in a battle. She couldn’t remember them all.

“No.” His reply was cold, even a little proud. “It was another. One of your captains.

“I did not want to come here,” he said without prompting. “I did not want to fight. And now…”

He looked down at his own blood. His jaw tightened.

“Please…” He pointed again to the sky. “My body…”

She wondered, if she were not a woman, would he have dared expect such mercy? Would he have pleaded for burial if it were La Hire’s face or her squire’s staring down at him?

She nodded, and in her arms, she felt relief shake through him.