De Vrailly turned his helmeted head. His visor was open and his angelic face seemed to shine from within. “Eminence, you make me regret I ever invited you here to help me rule this realm. I am a knight. The order of knighthood is the only one to which I have ever aspired. The Red Knight has challenged us to battle.”

“And I say—”

“Silence.” De Vrailly spoke sharply, and the archbishop flinched. No one had ever told him to be silent in all his life.

“You think I am a fool who believes in an outdated code. You think that we should cower behind our trenches and build trebuchets, conduct mass killings in Harndon to silence the city and goad our enemies into throwing themselves at our bastions and earthworks. I tell you, Eminence, that you are the fool, and that if we do that, we will find ourselves starving in a ring, a sea, of enemies, none of them contemptible. We lack the manpower to cow Harndon even if we had no foe in the field against us. The Harndoners saw the Queen and the babe. The challenge is just—the Red Knight knows the law of war. But even if it were unjust, we would be fools to do as you suggest. Do you understand me?”

The archbishop was red in the face. He struggled to find words, and finally, he turned his horse, summoned his guard, and rode away.

Ser Eustace d’Aubrichecourt turned his helmeted head. “Well said, Ser Jean.”

Other knights murmured, and while they were doing so, a herald appeared at the far wood line. He rode across the field with one man behind him, cantering easily. He held the traditional green flag that heralds bore in times of war.

He came over the low rise—really, no more than the height of a man—that stood at long bowshot from de Vrailly’s lines. Behind him, horsemen appeared in the wood line.

De Vrailly’s men began to loosen swords in their sheaths and tighten straps and girths.

De Vrailly watched the herald come with nothing in his heart. He had closed himself to his angel since the day after the tournament, and he felt as if he was already dead.

He had been used. Betrayed.

I only wish to die well, he thought. Not a thought to share.

The herald rode down, aiming for de Vrailly’s banner. At this distance, it was plain that the man behind him was Du Corse, on a good riding horse, wearing his arming coat and hose and boots.

L’Isle d’Adam and d’Aubrichecourt came forward and joined de Vrailly.

Du Corse looked grim.

“Welcome back,” de Vrailly said. “Is it too much to hope that you have escaped?”

Du Corse shook his head. “I come on oath—on my word. In exchange for Corcy’s sons.”