“Sound the call, Wilhelm,” Marcus urged. “Before it’s too late!”

“Barking mad,” stated Sir Troeven, commander of the knights of the Prince’s Own, and he did not bother to keep his voice down.

Those words, cruel words, heard from his childhood on, were a fiery sword. Anger, hot and refining, cleansed Marcus’s soul, burning away fear and doubt.

Marcus came to himself and saw that his father, his brother, their knights on their horses gathered around him, looked ill-at-ease, embarrassed.

“Marcus, my son,” the king was saying, “you have to calm yourself ...”

Marcus backed his horse, backed away from their anguished attempts to assuage the madman, backed away from their pity. He regarded them—poor blind humans—with pity.

“You can’t see them, but they are there,” he said. “And I will show you.”

Marcus took firm grip on the reins and touched his spurs into the horse’s flanks. The horse leapt forward. The knights and his father and his brother sat there like lumps and watched him.

It wasn’t until Marcus began to ride his horse down the ridge that his father finally realized what his son intended. The king gave a shout that jolted men to action. Bearded faces beneath steel helms loomed up in Marcus’s path. Gloved hands tried to grasp hold of the reins and drag him to a stop. He kicked at them and kicked at his horse, urging it on, and men fell back or risked being trampled.

The animal plunged down the steep ridge, sliding and slipping and almost foundering. Marcus hung on with fixed determination, and the horse managed to regain its footing and continued on at a gallop, heading straight for the grassy plains. The empty grassy plains.

Horse and rider rode through the camp, overturning cooking pots and knocking down tent posts. Men, half-awake, had to jump for their lives as Marcus thundered past. The king shouted for someone to stop the prince, but no one wanted to risk death beneath the horse’s hooves, and Marcus rode, unimpeded, for the plains of quivering grass.

And then he heard, behind him, pounding hooves. Marcus glanced over his shoulder. Mounted knights—the Prince’s Own— were chasing after him. The knights were not riding to his call, inspired by his show of courage to join him in desperate battle. They were riding to catch him, drag him from his horse, fling him to the ground, and truss him up in a straitjacket.

Marcus faced forward, smiling grimly In truth, they were riding to his call. He was leading them into battle.

They just didn’t know it.