“This is not the ground,” he said slowly. And then shook his head.

“Yes,” he said suddenly. “Form! Form on me!” he roared in Occitan, and a hundred knights rode to his side—men fell in the rush to join their prince.

To the west, some of the Count of the Border’s better disciplined men were higher on the ridge side and better formed. Sauce rode at them, waving. To her shock, a crossbow bolt hit her breastplate—and whanged away into the trees. She rocked in her war saddle and turned her helmeted head to see a line of crossbowmen—she ducked, far too late.

Her horse died. She fell—one long fall and two bounces…

She rolled to her feet and drew her dagger, the only weapon to survive the fall, and turned to face the three men who came at her, all with swords.

“C’est une pucelle!” shouted one. He laughed.

They all laughed. And in that laughter, they became all the men she’d ever hated. Two moved to flank her, and her hip hurt, and the earth was rumbling and the rain suddenly felt so hard—

Sauce moved. She got her back against a downed tree and rolled over it, kicking high, and then she was between the two who’d tried to go around her. She rammed her dagger into the side of one’s head—in, and out—and her knee crushed the second man’s testicles as her gauntleted hand broke his nose and one finger penetrated his left eye. She let gravity take him, but kept his sword, and turned.

The crossbowmen were winding. The third man was two paces away—at a dead run, buckler raised.

Sauce rolled her right wrist and her borrowed sword’s point came on line. It went between the man’s buckler and his sword—he’d had poor teachers—and went into his neck almost to the hilt. Sauce used the dagger as a crowbar to scrape him off her blade, dumped his screaming near-corpse to the ground, and ducked behind the log as the crossbows came up.

She had the satisfaction of seeing Ser Gavin’s knights sweep across the back of the line of crossbowmen, uncontested. The ambush had caught only her.

She heard Gareth Montjoy’s war cry, and saw the border knights charge.

The crossbowmen were steady. They loosed, and immediately spanned, and a dozen knights’ saddles were empty.

Sauce crawled under the log as the crossbowmen began to span again, and ran, bent double, in plate armour—no mean feat.

There were thirty—no, more than fifty of them.

Sauce ran, light-footed, through the hobblebush and gorse, and they finally noticed her.

Ten paces out, and one had his weapon reloaded.