Rudi looked over his shoulder. The solid block of the Protector’s Guard waited, black armor and bright lance heads, the Lidless Eye on every shield and pennant, five hundred strong. The chivalry of Odell was about as numerous, but in armor bright or dark, each vassal lord with his men. Their lances swayed overhead, a forest of steel. He waved, and three horses trotted up the slope to pull up beside him.

“Now, my King?” Érard Renfrew said.

“Not quite yet, my lord Viscount,” Rudi said. “Timing is all. But better to labor to restrain the stallion than prod the mule. Edain, when we go we’re going in straight.”

The clansman looked a little unhappy, but he couldn’t be at the High King’s side in a horseman’s fight, and the best way he could safeguard Rudi would be to get the fight won, and as quickly as possible.

Rudi held out his left fist, then extended the little finger on that hand. “You like this, and the Odell crossbowmen with you. Turn the enemy back towards the lances. My lord Alleyne, you and your Rangers will screen our right.”

The fair man in black nodded. “You’re depending on . . . the Grand Constable to do the right thing,” he said neutrally.

Ah, put the feud aside, man. Yes, she wished your Astrid dead these fifteen years and more, but she had no part in her end. The which was like something from her Histories, and just exactly as she would have wished, poor lady.

“She has so far. Now to your places, all of you.”

“And mine’s by you,” Mathilda said.

Their hands touched in their gauntlets. Below the plainsmen were moving to the attack, slowly, which was wise. You saved the speed for when it was needed. Then there was a stir, an eddy, and they were in motion towards the point of the triangle on the hill, spreading around it in a swirling mass, and even across the distance you could hear the hooves.

And the chorus of yelping war cries, Cut! Cut! Cut!

The artillery spat at them, bolts and round shot; there were blackened patches on the grass, but no globes of fire went out. Then the little horizontal flicker of the crossbow bolts, and the ripple in the dun mass of the horsemen as each rose in the saddle to draw his bow . . .

Mathilda extended a hand. “Huon, lance.”

The lad was there, and the long ash-wood shaft slapped into her gauntlet.

“Now,” Rudi said. He slipped his arm into the loops of his shield and drew the Sword.

Shock ran through the world.

And over his voice, the high call of the oliphants. Behind him a rising thutter of hooves, as the lancers crested the rise a thousand strong.

“Morrigú!” he screamed.

“Artos and Montival!”

“Very neat timing,” he gasped a half hour later, and forced his breathing to slow.