Conversationally, Michael said, “I am not as well educated as a magister, but I was nearly certain that the Bible told us the earth itself was about seven thousand years old.”

“Foolishness,” Mortirmir said. “The earth itself is incalculably old. I’m very interested in the matter; our astrologers have some incredible calculations . . .”

Gabriel shook his head. “This is interesting, Morgon. And yet, I fear, I must prepare for the future. The immediate future.”

Mortirmir nodded slowly. “I worry that our ignorance of the past will be our undoing,” he said. “Why are there gates? Who built them?” He looked around. “Killing our enemies seems so banal by comparison.”

“Not to me,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel rode out of the castle of Arles in armour with Michael and Cully and Morgon and his squire, and met Count Zac on the field of Arles, the great parade ground that he and Michael and Cully had paced off in person.

Zac gestured with his golden mace. His regiment, three hundred sabers, maneuvered from a column of fours to a line four horsemen deep, every man and woman wearing a scarlet khaftan, a dark fur hat, and deep soft boots. Under their khaftans they wore maille; every horse had a pair of heavy quivers; every rider had a long saber and a bucket of javelins.

And two spare horses.

The Vardariotes opened their ranks, and the emperor and his staff rode in among them. Kriax, the most famous of their warriors, saluted her emperor, unnaturally rigid. Mikal Dvor, the left squadron commander, saluted, and the two horsetail standards dipped. Gabriel rode slowly down all four ranks; looking at buckles, and bruises, horseflesh and arrows. He stopped before a very small man with a flat nose and high, slanted eyes.

“Arrows,” he said.

Dvor had to translate. The man nodded, swung a leg over his horse, and dismounted. Then he pulled both quivers off; one economical movement, untying the laces that held the quivers in one pull, the way he would have to do if required to fight dismounted. He knelt, laying out the quivers; sixty arrows, points up, fletchings down. He began to draw them from the quivers. Anne Woodstock leaned forward, fascinated.

Gabriel flashed her a smile. “Let’s take a closer look,” he said, and dismounted. MacGilly, the page, sprang forward and took his horse, and then took Anne’s, and Gabriel, armoured head to toe in his old harness, went down on one knee as the small easterner told of his arrows.

Mikal Dvor, a different kind of easterner, with high cheekbones and pale eyes, dismounted, slipping easily to the ground and nodding back over his shoulder at Count Zac, who looked pleased at the man chosen; better him than almost any other man in the third rank . . .

“He says here are forty arrows for men or horses. He says they have no soul, but they are fine arrows.” Dvor held one up: a Liviapolis Arsenal manufactured arrow, with a cane shaft, a light steel head, diamond cross-section, armour piercing point, goosefeather fletch.