A few terrified routiers ran around the end of the line of archers and went south to safety. More of them died as they were run down by mounted archers.

To Gavin’s left, a dozen Galles re-emerged onto the road. And then suddenly there were fifty lances—more, perhaps.

“Oh well,” the captain said as he closed his visor. Nell put his horse’s reins in his hand and took his ghiavarina.

He swung a leg over Ataelus. Gavin got up on his Bohemund. A dozen more knights closed in around them, coming from the south.

“Up the lane,” Gabriel ordered through his visor.

The Gallish men-at-arms were forming for a charge. They were being hit with occasional arrows—a torment of shafts, but not a torrent, and not an immediate danger. Here, a shaft found a horse—there, a man whose mail didn’t fit under his arm.

The company knights—some of them, anyway—rode into the village lane and a short distance up the hill, and then turned to face their pursuers.

The Galles halted when they began to pack into the lane.

“Come on,” muttered the Red Knight.

But the Galles hung back.

“They’re moving into the field beyond the hedge,” Ser Danved shouted.

“Back,” the Red Knight called. Ganfroy sounded the retreat again. They had twenty lances by then—all the picked jousters in the company, the men who had intended to fight at the tournament.

Except Michael and Bad Tom.

They reached a point almost halfway up the hedge-lined lane.

Finally, the Galles at the foot of the hill followed them. There were no more arrows flying. The horns from the direction of Second Bridge were closer.

“Let’s break a lance,” the captain said. “For the Queen.”

“The Queen!” his knights called.

Gabriel opened his visor and smiled at his brother. “This is the way war is supposed to work, isn’t it?” he said. “We’re hideously outnumbered, and we charge them. Two at a time. Care to join me?”

Gavin laughed. “You’re mad,” he said. “Of course.”

“See the little bend?” Gabriel said. “See the path into the field?”

Even as he spoke, the lead Galles passed it.

But Gavin was an old hand at jousting, if not at this kind of war. “See you in the fields,” he said, and pulled his visor down again.

He put spurs to his horse before Gabriel had his visor shut, and he was alone, flying down the narrow, cool lane. His war horse’s hooves struck sparks off the white gravel of the road.

The men at the front of the Gallish column should have been ready, but they were far more concerned with the arrows that came through the hedge from time to time and had killed a valuable war horse.