The dragon army lay ahead of them. The dragon was above them. Death behind and death below. Did the enemy have them surrounded? Were they cut off from the castle and the cannons that were to save them? Was this warning even true, or was this the dragon’s way of defeating them before they’d started?

The summons came to ride. Accoutered in his heavy armor— plate over chain—Marcus clanked into the courtyard in time to hear a messenger from his brother reporting to the king that the night had passed with no alarms.

None of the knights that comprised the Prince’s Own looked at Marcus this morning as they mounted and made ready to ride. No one spoke to him either, except his father, to wish him a good day. And Edward’s voice sounded strained.

Marcus mounted his war horse and rode in silence, the words writhing about inside his brain.

Death ahead. Death behind.

Death above. Death below.

No escape.

The king’s messenger had galloped on ahead to apprise Prince Wilhelm of their coming, and he was on hand to greet them as they dismounted, giving his father an affectionate embrace and his little brother a cool nod. Prince Wilhelm was about eight years Marcus’s senior. The difference in their ages alone would have likely prevented the two from being close. Add to this the fact that Marcus had been a very strange child, given to visions and fancies and finally going insane, and the result was that the half-brothers scarcely knew each other.

To give Wilhelm his due, he had never resented the bastard son or feared him or distrusted him, as often happened in other royal households. Wilhelm had defended and protected his little brother, mostly with words, sometimes with fists. Marcus never knew this, or if he did, it was lost in the dazzling, lunatic swirl of dragon-dreams that had comprised his childhood.

A goodly blend of both father and mother, Wilhelm had fair hair, his father’s hazel eyes, and a tendency to his mother’s plumpness that he worked hard to avoid. His nature had always been of a serious bent, and he took his duties as crown prince in earnest. When the king and his retinue came upon the prince, he was hot, tired, and in a bad humor. Marcus could not particularly blame his brother. The most vicious foes Wilhelm faced at the moment were fleas, ticks, gnats, grasshoppers, and clouds of ferocious mosquitoes.

As the morning sun sparkled on the distant river, Wilhelm sat his horse atop the ridge, the visor of his helm raised, trying to ignore the itching of the many bug bites that he was unable to scratch beneath his armor. He made no attempt to keep the annoyance out of his voice as he indicated to his father and the assembled officers how he had deployed his troops.