The Duke de Barratin was wildly, murderously ambitious, but he was also shrewd, good in the field, and he commanded a well-trained force from his cities to the east. Robbin de Vaux really did not want them to align themselves with the Anglcyn.

It was unlikely, but not impossible.

The Barratin lands owed a preponderance of their considerable wealth to the textile trade, making cloth to sell around the world—and making it from Anglcyn wool. They remained part of Ferrieres, linked to the royal family, their dukes swore allegiance to the crown, but the notion that they might be the proper kings of Ferrieres was not a new one. Not even, necessarily, a bad one.

He couldn’t afford to dwell on that last right now. His task was immediate, and involved a carefully chosen battlefield.

He really did need to find that girl and the country and village people who were following her banner, carrying spades and pitchforks and wooden clubs. If Hardan found them first and slaughtered them, as he would, the wound to Ferrieres would be very great—because it was the Maiden who had restored the king to them with her piety.

She mattered. She was a symbol of their resistance and of Jad’s grace.

Hardan would know it too, de Vaux thought. He might chop her to pieces and bear her head into battle on a pike.

—

His riders did not find the Maiden’s army before the Anglcyn did.

It could be called a failure, but it really wasn’t. She could have been anywhere in a wide, empty land, and the villagers and farm people they’d asked had shared nothing. They regarded everyone as a threat to her. Jeanette was theirs. Their champion, their voice before Jad. By keeping silent, those who had seen signs of her army were helping her. Or so they thought. So they wanted, urgently, to believe. It wasn’t true, as matters unfolded, but we can ardently believe things that aren’t true.

Robbin de Vaux did blame himself for not finding her, however, all his life. Because of what happened. Because of what he believed he might have prevented with more foresight, more skill, more cleverness.

In truth, it would have been luck. Only that. Men and women hate to acknowledge how much of a role fortune plays in our lives.

The Anglcyn, staying in tight formation because their numbers were so reduced, not sending out more than a handful of scouts ahead of and beside their path through northern Ferrieres, stumbled upon the peasant army of Jeanette de Broché. An accident. Random. It was as simple and as deadly as that.