Gabriel took the blow over his sinking left arm and shield, which he could no longer keep up. It smashed down from a high guard and struck just where the left pauldron met the maille of the shoulder under the aventail, which by bad fortune was caught on a buckle.

The blow knocked him to one knee, and for a long, sickening moment the pain stunned him.

A second blow slammed into his helmet.

And then the two horses crashed through the knights—so rapt in their own rage that each horse injured its own master, Gabriel knocked flat by Ataelus and losing his sword and de Vrailly caught by one of Tristan’s hooves in the back of a greave and also knocked to his knees—close enough to Gabriel that he could see the Gallish knight’s halting efforts to rise on his left leg, and the split where his lance had apparently opened a gap between the great helm’s visor and the frame—and deformed the whole outer helm. Like many knights, de Vrailly wore an outer helm and an inner, called a cervelleur.

So close. Gabriel could see that his lance tip must have come a finger’s breadth from ending the fight at the first pass.

In his bascinet, Ser Gabriel smiled. Not bad, he thought. I did that well enough.

And with that, he shook the shattered shield off his broken hand and arm, rolled to his right to rise with his empty right hand, and beat de Vrailly to his feet.

De Vrailly was slower rising.

Gabriel had a moment when he might have gotten on de Vrailly before the other knight could get to his feet. It passed. Gabriel couldn’t have said whether he was chivalrous or merely tired and wounded, but the moment passed.

He had a dagger, facing the best knight in the world with four feet of steel.

He began to bounce up and down on his toes.

De Vrailly had a moment of real fear when the horses hit, and then he was down, on his face in all the choking dust, and then back up—up with a missed attempt as his left leg almost refused its function. The second try he made it.

The Red Knight was already on his feet. He had a long baselard in his right hand, the tip of it held with his left, and he was bouncing on his toes like a boxer.

De Vrailly flicked a cut and the Red Knight parried on his heavy dagger blade.

De Vrailly stepped forward and threw two cuts—a rising cut at the Red Knight’s dagger hand from the guard of the Boar and the consequent falling blow, but the latter was out of distance as the Red Knight skipped back.