And as he cantered up, with Du Corse converging from another angle, Michael saw no movement at all. The two men lay in a huddle of limbs and arms.

Gabriel never lost consciousness.

He had time to panic about his position, and to realize that he was atop de Vrailly, and de Vrailly was not moving. Gabriel’s chin strap was broken, his neck hurt savagely, and his bascinet was twisted enough on his head to make seeing difficult. And his head was ringing.

He realized that he was covered in blood. It was an odd, slow realization—the stickiness of his right hand, the sheet of pain from his left with its slickness, the taste of blood in his own mouth and nose all slowly added together into a universe of blood.

He couldn’t use his left hand, trapped between them, at all.

He tried to pull at his dagger to get in another blow, all with aching slowness, and it came free with a slick, wet feeling that told him where it had been.

He used the dagger to push off the ground, and got to his knees. Shook his head to clear his vision, and ignored all the pains, and settled his visor so that he could see.

But no further blow was required. Somewhere in the fall, his dagger’s point had slipped from its position on the outer helm, baulked of its prey. It had followed the path of least resistance, probably driven by their contact with the ground, sliding in between the helmets, through de Vrailly’s left eye.

The great knight was dead.

Gabriel Muriens sat back on his knees, his weight on de Vrailly’s breastplate. He heard hoof beats. He dropped his dagger, having to shake it from his sticky fingers, and scrabbled with the buckle of his chin strap until he could pull his own helmet off his head, and then he drank in the air. He drank it in, again and again, blind to the men gathering around him.

He finally raised his head, and there was the herald, and Du Corse. And Michael. He thought of Gavin, whose fight this ought to have been. Many, many thoughts came into him then, as if he’d been an empty vessel and now he was again filled.

He wept.

And Ser Michael put an arm under his and raised him to his feet. “Come, my captain,” he said. “These worthy gentlemen want to take the body of their friend, and go.”

The words passed over Gabriel, and left no mark. But other men shouted orders, and other men made plans and, in an hour, the Galles were headed south in a dejected company, with Jean de Vrailly borne on a litter between four horses.

Ser Gerald Random followed them at a discreet distance with a tithe of the Harndon militia.