The pyre the Anglcyn had lit was still smouldering on the western side of the meadow. Some wanted to build it back up and burn the invaders’ king on it. Robbin de Vaux did not consent to this. His control of his army by then was absolute. A victory so complete will do that for a commander.

Only a small number of the army of Angland ever made it home: those left to guard the ships, and the few who’d grasped the disaster unfolding that morning and had fled from the meadow of Azingar, then made their way north to the coast. They had enough mariners to get three ships back to their own coast.

The weather was mild, benign: sunshine, and a good wind for sailing.

—

Usually there are no headstones for the dead of a battlefield. Sometimes a mound is raised.

What we know, or decide we know, of the past needs to be judiciously weighed and measured. It rarely is. We have our allegiances, even when centuries have gone by, season after season, year after year after year.

—

In due course, back in Orane, King Hardan was not accorded the customary privileges extended to a royal prisoner. Royal hostages were hardly unusual in those decades of war; the chroniclers had records of many such figures, and their courteous treatment while ransoms were negotiated and eventually paid. It sometimes took years.

There were two circumstances that prevented this from happening in the case of King Hardan. One was the burning of the Maiden of Ferrieres, the one who’d summoned King Roch back to them, who had brought the storm. Who had, in dying, shown the army of Ferrieres exactly where the enemy was—so the great constable, Robbin de Vaux, by then the Duke de Curton, had said.

The other complication was that Angland refused to pay the ransom demanded. King Hardan’s brother Jarl was, it appeared, in no great hurry to have his brother back and his own place on the throne surrendered.

King Jarl, as he began, very quickly, to style himself, yielded many castles and tracts of land the Anglcyn held in Ferrieres, including the back-and-forth, taken-and-retaken castle of Curton on the coast, which became de Vaux’s seat and reward.

Nor was King Hardan released upon any sworn oath by him, to mingle with the court in Orane. He remained confined on an upper floor of the Châtelet, in perfectly acceptable rooms. He had servants, food and wine, reading material, access to the small sanctuary. But he remained…a prisoner. He was never received by the king of Ferrieres. Nor was he ever ransomed by his brother. Ferrieres would have been content to take only a portion of the originally demanded sum and send him home to cause strife and chaos across the channel. It didn’t happen.