“I didn’t mean offense,” a voice belched. The suspicious soldier was now next to him.

“Grumble,” Richard responded. He tried to analyze what words he meant to say, and realized with disappointment that he actually said the word grumble instead of anything that could be considered language. The soldier didn’t seem to notice, but incorrectly took it as an invitation to continue talking.

“It’s just that you look familiar, is all. Have we met?”

They hadn’t. Some of the companies had been reorganized upon landfall, which was why Richard thought he might go unquestioned so close to the king. This observant soldier had insulting eyebrows and a scar across his nose, which seemed more likely to have been received by slapping his helmet on too quickly than from an enemy hoping to cleave it off. “Are you with Lincolnshire?”

“I keep to myself, and don’t intend that to change,” Richard lied, readjusted his pack, and broke to his left. His jaw chomped on the ugly English language, and no doubt the stranger heard his accent beneath. But it wouldn’t matter. That man would never speak to Richard again.

The path leaned straight here, hugging a gentle slope littered thick with curious trees, a rarity in this terrain. If Richard were an army, which he sadly noted he was not, he would hide in that hillside and noiselessly slide down into the line’s flank, taking half the king’s number before anyone had thought twice. Instead, he resigned himself to behaving quite unarmylike for a while longer, pushing on along the road, doing his best to be unnoticeable, one eye on the King.

By day’s end, the army stopped well north of Acre to regroup and supply. A campsite for eight thousand men was a wild animal, constantly twitching and kicking. An endless rolling noise combined complaint with cheer, lament with laughter. Richard closed his eyes and breathed it in, the hammering and arguing and power, all intertwined into a single voice, the sound of men. This is what made him unable to ever miss a Berengaria. The breathing of an army was unlike the breathing of a woman. His hands could feel the softness of a woman, but his heart could never be engrossed in it. A thousand men, out of their element, relying on nothing but that which they carried on their backs and the bond of the brother beside them, living for one more night of relative safety … this was something to be overwhelmed in. Richard wished he could get drunk on the sound and forget himself. There was simplicity here, a joyous numb stupidity that was shut off to him now, for whenever he opened his eyes he was closer to the king’s tent and to his duty.