The brigans were throwing down their weapons.

“You make a mockery of knighthood!” Ser Hartmut said.

Ser Gavin laughed. “I think, Ser Hartmut, that you killed my parents. I think that you have hidden behind a shield of pretence for your whole life. And now, I think you’re going to die, and no one is going to call me base, or coward, or knave—no one at all. In fact, I suspect only my version of this fight will ever be heard.”

Gavin’s smile was terrible.

Then, he dismounted.

“I hold you in contempt—as a knight, and a man.” Ser Gavin tossed his reins to Jean, Bertran’s squire.

The Black Knight raised his sword, and attacked.

He struck air.

Gavin was fresh, and he simply evaded the other man’s blows. Hartmut had fought for hours. Gavin let him swing. He ran—he skipped. He mocked.

At some point, Gabriel turned his head away.

Hartmut cursed, and cursed in Gallish, and swung, and swung, and stumbled. Behind him, De La Marche’s sailors surrendered, the last force still fighting in the whole of Thorn’s host.

Someone—later, men said it was Cully—tripped the Black Knight. He fell heavily, and for a moment, he lost his sword.

His great helm had tilted across his eyes. He roared his frustration, pulled the lace with armoured fingers and threw his helmet at Ser Gavin, who casually struck it to the ground with his little steel axe. Then he stood—a big man in black armour, wearing a steel cap over an aventail.

“I thought of this fight a long time,” Ser Gavin said, conversationally. “It wasn’t you I wanted to fight. But you’ll do to make my point.”

“Shut up and fight!” Ser Hartmut barked.

“You want rules to protect you when you are weak, and no rules to slow you when you are strong.” Ser Gavin took a gliding, sideways step—

Gabriel’s heart was in his mouth.

The long sword licked out—a heavy feint, the false blow of a man who fears no riposte.

Like the flight of an arrow, Gavin stepped into distance, flicked his axe, and buried the spike in the middle of Hartmut’s face.

The Black Knight fell.

Gavin turned to his brother. “It should have been de Vrailly,” he said.

Harmodius felt the rain slowing with the tempo of the combat. He felt it when Mogon accepted the surrender of the survivors of the Dead Tree and Flint took the bended knees of the Big Nose irks. Down at Gilson’s Hole, the Hillmen pushed into the rear of the boglins—already hesitant—and broke them, and the little creatures melted away into the marsh and ravines.