“We’re going all the way to Lorica, then?” Michael asked. Ser Gabriel was up and down the column, and where Tom and Michael used ridicule and open coercion to keep men moving, Ser Gabriel was everyone’s friend.

So far. He grinned at Michael, his teeth white in the moonlight. “Look ahead of you,” he said.

In the middle distance, the cathedral of Lorica rose above the town’s walls, which gleamed like white Etruscan marble in the moonlight. Just short of the walls, fires burned.

He waved, and turned his horse—his fourth of the day—back down the column. “Less than an hour now, friends,” he called.

Outriders greeted them well outside the silent town. Ser Ranald embraced his cousin, and then dismounted and bent his knee to the Queen and her son.

The Queen gave him a hand. “It was you—in the darkness,” she said.

“Not just me, your grace,” he said. “But yes, I was there.”

She smiled in the moonlight, and for the first time that Gavin had seen her, she seemed older, with lines around her mouth and under her eyes. Not old—just not the vision of youth she had been that afternoon, riding in the shadow-spackled sunlight.

“Will you command my son’s guard?” she asked.

Ranald grinned. “I have the better half of it right here,” he said. He waved in the direction of the camp.

But Ser Gabriel forbade any kind of ceremony. “Unless your grace overrules me directly,” he said, “I want everyone to bed.”

But Lady Almspend—Becca, to the Queen—was at Ranald’s side, and there were more hugs, and the Queen all but fell into her friend’s arms.

The captain rode up almost between them. “I’m sorry, your grace, but there’s two hundred men who have fought for you this day, and they want to be asleep.”

The Queen sat back. “Of course—I’m thoughtless. Go!”

But despite this admonition, men and women were roused as the column entered camp. Blanche was surprised at how orderly was the apparent chaos. Sukey, who she had thought ere this to be a decorative camp follower or possibly the Red Knight’s lover, stood by the palisaded gate with two pages at her shoulders with torches and read off tent assignments. When Tom Lachlan rode up, Blanche was close behind. Too close.

Sukey graced him with a pleasant smile.

“Not my tent, Ser Tom,” she said.

He grimaced.

“You’ll find Donald Dhu and all the beeves he has yet unsold just a long bowshot to the west, by the river,” she said.

“And if I don’t want to ride any further, woman?” he asked.

She tossed her hair. “There’s space in the ditch outside,” she said. “Next!”