But Joan shakes him off. She gives him a shove. “If you wish to leave, La Hire, I will not stop you. You remember Les Tourelles at Orléans. Dunois wanted to sound the retreat. It was already dark; the sun had set. If our men weren’t wounded, they were fainting from exhaustion. But we held on, and that is what a battle is. Whoever holds on wins. Numbers don’t matter. It is the spirit of the men who fight.”

Energy pulses through her. Her sword is light in her hand.

“And not everything is about pleasing His Majesty,” Joan adds.

Before she rides into battle, she thinks of her uncle. The walls of Paris loom ahead. He might be there now, cheating a widow, pretending to be a bricklayer or a muleteer. Still tricking his way through life.

Though for a moment, just a moment, her heart softens. Childhood still feels close, like a small person waiting in the next room. She does not have to think hard to remember the many times he held her, visited her in her corner to mutter soothing words into her hair while she rubbed her swollen mouth and picked at scabs. There are wounds in this world not inflicted by poleax or morning star—hurts that seep through the crevices of even the best-made armor and weaken the limbs, turning the bones as soft as water. Yet you must stay ahead of the pain. There will be opportunities enough after a battle is over to salve your cuts, to wonder at your bruises and cry. And if you cannot cry, if you cannot mourn, that can mean only one thing: you are dead.

Before her: the walls of Paris. Behind her: an army of three thousand. Her heart is full of rage.

So, let us go.

The miracle is when a crossbolt rips through her thigh, she doesn’t fall. She keeps moving. But slower and slower, until behind her is a long trail of blood and she is forced to kneel.

Her hand grips the bolt. She grits her teeth, pulls. From above, the archers see their chance; they take aim, their bows clustered together. They have only one target, and it is her. Though a distance separates them, she can almost hear the strain of bow strings being drawn taut, the smooth, expert release from chalked hands. It is a sound unlike any other: the broadhead tips cutting through air, the feathers slicing through a passing breeze.

A shadow approaches, just as the crossbolt is out of her leg and in her fist. She tries to stand, fails. Two shadows are racing to reach her. One from the sky: a dark blanket of arrows. The other belongs to a body, to solid arms outstretched, blocking her view of the sky and the sun, and waiting to receive the missiles already on their way down.