The memory came to Rydric unbidden that night, in the tent pitched before the closed gate of Chasluin, with the rain drumming on canvas and Baudren’s quiet breathing the only other sound. He had trained himself not to think of the lay, but the young man-at-arms on the ship had opened a door that could not be closed again. The past poured through it like water through a broken sluice, and Rydric, who had faced armies and emirs and the golden dome of the Haram al-Nur without flinching, closed his eyes and let it take him.
They had been young.
Later verses made them marble figures: crowned, consecrated, inevitable. They had not been that. The holy expedition had been led by men bright with the particular fever of those told since childhood that they were born for greatness.
Rydric was newly crowned after his father’s death when he swore the holy expedition, desperate to prove that the crown had not been an accident of birth but a destiny earned. He had been raised on the songs of Emperor Karlemund and King Arvand, on sword-brothers who loved honour more than sleep, on kings who met giants at bridges and paid for kingdoms in blood. He was already famous for his temper, his laughter, and his inability to walk past a fight without joining it. His mother, Queen Aurélise, had told him that a king who went east might return as a legend or not at all, and she had said it with the flat tone of a woman who had buried many kings.
Felrian was still dragging Valcierre out of the shadow of his father’s weak reign. He loved the same old songs and distrusted them more, which did not mean he was free of them. He had taken the Revealed Star partly from piety and partly from the cold calculation that a king who fought for the Revealed Light in the east could demand more from his barons in the west. But at Qasr al-Hawir, with the sun rising red through dust and the relic bells trembling in the chapel carts, he had looked as young as Rydric felt: pale hair under a blue helm, pale eyes narrowed against the glare, a mouth that smiled and gave away little of what it promised.
They had met months before at the great muster of the western host, where the armies gathered before the long road to the ports. The chronicles later said they clasped hands and swore eternal brotherhood beneath the banner of the Revealed Light. The truth was less tidy.
Rydric had arrived late, with too many horses and too few supplies, and had promptly insulted three Valcierran barons, a bishop, and Felrian’s master of horse before he had been in camp for an hour. Felrian, informed that the Esberian king was in the process of dismantling his logistics by force of personality, had gone to confront him.
He found Rydric among the horses, covered in dust, laughing at something one of his squires had said, with a gash on his forearm where a startled mare had caught him with a hoof. He wore no crown, no royal surcoat. He looked like a mercenary captain who had stolen a king’s tent and was daring someone to notice.
“You are bleeding on my horse-lines,” Felrian said.
Rydric looked at his arm as if noticing the wound for the first time. “It is not serious.”
“It is bleeding. Blood attracts flies. Flies trouble horses. Horses trample men. You are a hazard.”
“I have been called worse.”
“By whom?”
“My mother, mostly. Occasionally my daughter. Once a bishop, but he was very old and very drunk, and I do not think it counted.”
Felrian stared at him for a long moment. Then, against every principle of Valcierran diplomacy and his own better judgement, he laughed.
Within a month, they were inseparable. They rode together, ate together, prayed together, planned together, and argued with such ferocity that their barons learned to clear the tent when the shouting started. Rydric saw in Felrian patience, calculation, and the long game he had never learned to play. Felrian saw in Rydric courage, instinct, and the joy of battle that his own colder nature could not produce. Together, they believed they could take Solymer, hold it, and remake the east in the image of the Revealed Light. Together, they mistook likeness for destiny.
For a season, the world rewarded the mistake. Before Darat al-Bahr ground them down, before prisoner rolls lengthened and songs began to sour, there had been days when the holy expedition looked exactly as it had been promised in abbey yards and departure feasts. Banners cracked in the Kedrayan wind. Bells rang from travelling chapels. Priests lifted relics above the dust. Men who had not yet learned to count mouldy barley instead of miracles shouted themselves hoarse whenever Rydric and Felrian rode together.
The brightest of those days came at Qasr al-Hawir. The fortress stood above a dry bend of stone and scrub, its lower courses built from Heredan blocks so large that the squires swore giants had laid them. A wadi curled beneath its southern gate, dry except for greenish pools where flies gathered and horses refused to drink. The walls were not beautiful. They had the squat, stubborn look of a place that had outlived names. Whoever held Qasr al-Hawir held the road behind it, the wells beyond it, and the honour of saying that the first great door eastward had opened.
The Jaludian garrison had drawn up below the ridge in layered ranks: horse-archers forward, spearmen behind, a knot of Marduni riders guarding the road east. Their banners carried the seven pointed star of the One Covenant, green and black against the white heat. From the walls, men beat copper plates and shouted verses in Jaludi that most westerners did not understand and therefore found more frightening.
“If we break the gate,” Rydric said, “the fortress falls before sunset.”
“If we take the road,” Felrian answered, “the garrison cannot withdraw with the stores.”
“If we take the gate, we have the stores.”
“If you take the gate and they ride away with the mules, you have a wall and no supper.”
Rydric grinned. Dust had whitened his beard and gathered in the links at his throat. “You are always thinking of supper.”
“One of us must.”
Baudren, already mounted, leaned down from the saddle. “My lords, the enemy grows old while you decide whether glory or barley is holier.”
Sir Galeran laughed at that. Young and handsome, he rode near Alianor, who sat her horse in a mail shirt newly fitted to her shoulders. Mercy at her side. She had won the sword months before from a Tarseni smith whose price had been too high until Queen Aurélise’s seal made haggling unnecessary. It was a long, lean blade, not ornamented beyond a small Revealed Star, worked into the pommel, and she had named it with the solemnity of sixteen years and no actual mercy in her.
That morning, before the first horn, Rydric had knighted her on the field. Father Aldemar had objected at once. Baudren had said nothing. Galeran had held the basin. Felrian had watched from a little distance with one brow lifted, as if trying to decide whether Rydric had gone mad. Alianor had knelt in the dust before her father while the host formed around them. Her hair had been bound back, her face very pale under the rim of her helm. Rydric had struck her lightly with Mercy’s flat, once on each shoulder.
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“In the name of Elyon’s Revealed Light,” he had said, voice carrying, “rise, Alianor Aldren, knight of Esberia. Hold faith. Defend the weak. Fear dishonour more than death.”
She had risen with dust on one knee. Galeran had smiled at her.
Now Rydric looked from the gate to the road, from Felrian to the Jaludian line, and laughed.
“Both,” he replied to Baudren.
Felrian closed his eyes for one instant, as if praying for patience. “Of course.”
“Tanrek’s foot through the wadi,” Rydric said. “A threat to the southern postern. Let them turn. You take the road. I take the gate.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple.”
“The only simple thing is you.”
Rydric leaned close enough that their horses brushed shoulders. “Come, little fox. Did we cross the sea to count stones?”
Felrian’s mouth curved. “No. We crossed the sea so you could argue about walls.”
“And win.”
“And win,” Felrian conceded.
The horns sounded. A pack mule broke loose and ran screaming between two ranks of men-at-arms. A Valcierran knight lost his helmet before the first trumpet had finished. Morain’s assistant, sent to count water skins, was nearly trampled by three horses and afterward claimed martyrdom would have been easier than keeping accounts for these two kings.
Then the second horn blew, and disorder became glory. Felrian advanced beneath the blue-and-gold banner of Valcierre with terrible precision. His footmen locked shields against arrows. His knights held close. Twice the horse-archers tried to draw him out; twice he refused. He took ground by the spear-length, then another, then another, until the Jaludian riders had to wheel wider and the road behind them began to close.
Rydric vanished into the dust. For several minutes no one saw him. Then a cry rose from the left, ragged at first, then swelling until the whole Esberian line seemed to answer it. The scarlet banner had reached the wadi. Rydric came out of it like fire breaking from brush. His horse was lathered white at the shoulders. His sword was up. Beside him rode Baudren, Sir Odo, Sir Galeran, and a wedge of Esberian knights so tight that the dust around them seemed driven by a single will. They struck the lower guard before the men there had finished turning.
Alianor rode in the second rank, where she had been placed because Rydric had knighted her but had not yet lost all sense. She hated the second rank until the first man died close enough for his blood to strike her cheek. Mercy came out of its scabbard with a sound she felt through her wrist. A Jaludian spear thrust at Sir Aubrey’s horse; Alianor cut the shaft, missed the hand, and took the rider’s next blow on her shield hard enough to numb her arm. Galeran shouted something to her. She never remembered what. She remembered only that he sounded delighted.
Above them, the fortress bell began ringing wildly because someone inside had decided the end had come.
For one hour, perhaps less, perhaps more, they were the men they had always wanted songs to find. Rydric at the lower stair, laughing under arrows. Felrian on the road, cold and bright as a drawn blade. Baudren carving through the knot below the gate with the grim patience of an old butcher at winter slaughter. The Revealed Star rising over dust. The Jaludian line bending. The fortress, stubborn old thing, shuddering as if it might admit that the western songs had been true.
At midday, Rydric reached the lower gate. The hinges held, the bar held, the men above poured stones and hot sand down through the murder-holes, and the Esberians below cursed every mason who had ever been born. Then Tanrek’s foot found the postern in the wadi, and Felrian, seeing the Jaludian road-guard turn, gave the order that broke them.
He lifted one hand.
The Valcierran centre moved from steady advance into full charge. Rydric saw the blue standard strike the road and laughed so loudly that Sir Odo later swore he heard it through his helm.
“Now!” Rydric roared. “Now, you sons of bitches!”
The lower gate opened from within. Whether bribed, broken, frightened, or merely misbarred, no one ever proved.
Rydric drove through first. The courtyard beyond was smoke, screaming, mule carts, broken amphorae, and men trying to decide whether they were defenders or fugitives. The western knights poured after him. Alianor entered behind Baudren and saw a world made narrow by heat and bodies. Mercy struck mail, wood, flesh. Her shield strap tore. Someone fell against her horse. She nearly went down but Galeran caught her bridle and dragged the animal’s head clear.
“Stay with me!” he shouted.
She laughed. She had no memory of choosing to laugh. Perhaps the body did such things when terror had no other way to come out. The fortress fell in pieces. Felrian took the road stores. Rydric took the inner court. Baudren took the stair tower and emerged with a split lip and two broken fingers.
By late afternoon, the seven-pointed banners had been pulled down from the lower walls. The Revealed Star rose in their place, red with sunset and smoke. Men wept when they saw it. Some knelt. Some sang. Some were too busy vomiting from heat and fear. Father Aldemar carried Saint Eloria’s finger-bone through the gate while three squires held up the reliquary canopy because the fourth had been shot through the thigh and could not stand. Felrian rode into the courtyard with blood on his sleeve and dust pale in his hair. Rydric turned at the sound of his horse and lifted his sword. For a heartbeat, the courtyard saw them as they wanted to be seen: two knight-kings beneath one star, one scarlet, one blue, the road opened, the fortress taken, the east yielding stone by stone to their faith and courage.
Then the last crossbow fired from the upper gallery.
No one had thought any defender remained alive there. The bolt was meant for Rydric. Galeran saw the bow before anyone else did.
He moved. The bolt struck him below the collarbone and drove him backward into Alianor.
For a moment she did not understand. Galeran looked almost offended. Rydric shouted his name.
The gallery erupted as Baudren’s men stormed it. Someone dragged the crossbowman down. Alianor did not see what happened to him. She was on her knees in the mud with Galeran’s head in her lap, Mercy fallen beside her, the courtyard spinning with bells and smoke and victory songs that had not yet stopped.
“Do not,” she said.
Galeran blinked up at her. Blood had filled his mouth. He tried to speak, coughed, and smiled instead.
“Do not,” she said again.
His hand moved weakly toward his belt. Alianor caught it. His fingers closed around the hilt of a small misericorde, plain, narrow. She thought he wanted it for himself and nearly recoiled. But he pressed it into her hand.
“For when Mercy is too long,” he whispered.
“Galeran.”
“I’ll strike those who come close.”
She made a sound then. A tight sob. His eyes shifted past her, toward Rydric, who stood frozen with blood on his sword. Galeran tried to bow his head. He could not. Alianor bent over him until her forehead touched his.
He died before sunset, while men on the wall sang the taking of Qasr al-Hawir. That night, the host feasted on captured barley, sour wine, and two goats Tanrek’s men had discovered in a cellar and declared providential. They sang Rydric at the gate, Felrian on the road, Baudren’s seventeen, already stretched toward twenty, Alianor’s knighting, Sir Galeran’s noble death.
Alianor sat apart with the misericorde across her knees. Sivelle found her there after moonrise, behind a broken wall where the smell of smoke mixed with crushed thyme and blood drying in dust. She carried water and clean cloth.
“Your father is looking for you,” she said.
“He is not.”
“He has asked three men where you are.”
Alianor did not answer.
Sivelle crouched beside her and set down the water. “You should drink.”
“I should have seen the bow.”
“Yes.”
The answer was so bare that Alianor looked at her.
Sivelle did not flinch. “You should have seen it. So should your father. So should Sir Odo. So should the men paid to search galleries before kings stand under them. Grief need not make you sole steward of every failure.”
Alianor’s hand closed around the misericorde.
“He died because he moved before I did.”
“He died because a man hiding in a gallery shot a crossbow at your father.”
Alianor looked away, jaw trembling with the effort of keeping her face. “Do not be kind to me.”
“I am not. Kindness would be telling you he died heroically and now sings with saints. I am telling you he bled in mud because war is greedy and your father likes to stand where bolts can aim at him.”
Despite herself, Alianor made a broken sound that stood between a sob and a laugh.
Sivelle touched the water cup. “Drink. Then we will wash your hands. If you mean to keep his knife, you should not let his blood rust it.”
Alianor looked down. The misericorde’s grip was dark and sticky under her fingers.