They are still with her now, both of them, at this enormous hunting lodge. They are among the army of men and women that has formed around her. That had begun gathering from the time she started north towards the sea, though not going there yet. She isn’t supposed to, yet.

In every village and town they passed through, she went into a sanctuary and prayed, with the cleric, or without him, if he deemed her immodest, unwomanly, even heretical, with her talk of hearing voices from the god. Then she would go outside to speak to whoever had come to see this strange girl, and she’d invite them to join her in defending Ferrieres for Jad. At some point, someone had handed one of her brothers a breastplate small enough for her, and a sword for her to carry.

They began calling her the Maiden, and word of her progress started to precede her. There came to be larger crowds awaiting her arrival wherever she went. Most would pray with her, listen to her speak of the need to defend Ferrieres against the enemy she had been told was coming again.

Everyone knew who their enemy was, north across the channel. They had landed before, many times. Taken cities and castles. Many times. The war was very old. It was time, Jeanette said, for it to end.

There was war within the country, too, by then, or the risk of it, but she didn’t speak to that. She invited men—and women, if they wanted to, and could—to join her on a march to the coast, because it would soon be time for that, she said.

She is still not afraid. She never does become fearful. Not of dying.

It is springtime by then, and it is a disrupted, uncertain world in which they all live. Many do set aside their lives for a time (as they think) to follow the Maiden. The name stays with her.

And then it seems there are many hundreds of them, and they do turn north, and they come at last to the sea.

A stony strand, east of walled Calienne. Wind and waves, whitecaps, seabirds calling. She prays in an abandoned sanctuary near the shoreline. It is so small only a handful can come inside with her, the roof barely there, birds’ nests, the wind. All the others kneel outside. And after, she walks down to the water under a morning sun, the god’s gift of light, and she kneels again, in her armour, sword at her hip, and she prays again to holy Jad.

The story begins there, from that moment: that she’d invoked the storm that smashed the Anglcyn fleet that was already sailing towards them that day.