Bertran's own corans had been waiting for them and Blaise knew the soldiers of Miraval were not far away, but these were lost to their army now, if not worse.

For the hundredth time since that meeting in Barbentain four days ago Blaise found himself wrestling with the wisdom of the countess's decision to name Bertran to lead the armies. She had to have known that Urté would react as he had. Even Blaise, an oblivious stranger to that bitter tale only a year ago, could have guessed how Urté would bridle at submitting to Bertran's authority. Granting that de Talair was the obvious man to lead Arbonne, was that worth fifteen hundred men? Would Thierry de Carenzu have been so terrible a choice?

Or was it possible that Signe had expected Urté to rise above what lay between Talair and Miraval, with so much at stake now? With everything, really, in the balance. If so, she had been wrong, and Blaise was well-enough versed in the histories of war to know that Arbonne would not be the first country to fall to an invader because it could not set aside its own internal wars.

On Bertran's castle ramparts in the brilliant sunlight he shook his head but kept grimly silent, as he had in the council chamber and ever since. In some ways it might all be purely a matter for historians and dry philosophers to come: the men who picked over the bones of dead years like the scavengers who came out at night after a battle to despoil the slain and dying.

The stark reality today was that even with the corans of Miraval they would have needed an enormous number of mercenaries to have had any real chance of defending themselves, and the winter invasion had eliminated that possibility. They were brutally outnumbered by the army Ademar of Gorhaut had brought safely through the mountains. Ademar, and Galbert: Blaise knew, as surely as he knew anything in the world, that this winter war was his father's stratagem—cunning and long planning mingled with a sublime, unwavering certainty that the god would see him through the pass. And the frightening thing, of course, was that Corannos had. The army of Gorhaut, which was the army of the god, was in Arbonne, and Blaise, looking north from the ramparts with Bertran and Fulk de Savaric and others, felt fear like a hard object lodge against his heart.

Only fools and madmen do not know fear before a battle. His first captain had told him that, and Blaise had offered the same reassurance over the years to young men under his command. He was positive, though, that his father had no fear just now, riding here in pursuit of his life's long dream. What that meant, he really didn't know.

"We'll array ourselves at the south-east end of the valley," he heard Bertran explaining to the three men who had just joined them. Barons from the south. One of them was Mallin de Baude. He and Blaise had had time for no more than a quick greeting and an exchange of glances. There might never be time for more. "The castle and the lake," Bertran went on, "will be behind us so they can't flank around. There is a slight slope downward—if you look closely you can see it—in the valley to the west that will help. It'll give the archers a little more distance if nothing else." Bertran, Blaise thought, knew this land like a melody from his childhood. He surprised himself with the image. Perhaps, he thought, he should start being less surprised: he was among the army of Arbonne, after all.

"What about Rian's Isle?" one of the new barons asked. "Can they reach it from the western shore of the lake if we're leaving them access to that side?"

"No boats. We've brought them all to our wharf or across to the isle itself. I don't think they'll be thinking about that in any case until they're done with us." Bertran's voice was calm. Blaise was impressed, though not especially surprised: he'd had some time now to take the measure of this man. He trusted him and he liked him, and only a year ago he wouldn't have expected either to ever be true.

Bertran was bareheaded as always, and without armour, clad in his usual outdoor garb of unassuming brown hues. When Blaise had first seen him riding up to Baude Castle last spring those rough-spun clothes had seemed a perverse affectation on the part of a lord of such immense power and wealth; now, in a curious fashion, Bertran's appearance seemed entirely apt to a war-leader on the eve of a battle. It was as if, in some inexplicable manner, de Talair had always been readying himself for this. Blaise wondered if that might actually be true: he remembered—another image crowding in—the biting, sardonic verses the duke had sung in Baude Castle about Ademar and Galbert and Daufridi of Valensa. The man who had written those words might well have anticipated a response to them. The first response had been an arrow dipped in syvaren, Blaise recalled, glancing at Rudel a little further along the wall walk. The second response seemed to be war.

He looked away west. The massive Arch of the Ancients shone in the sunlight at the end of its elms. A little nearer he saw the strand beside the roadway where six corans of Miraval had killed his horse and pack pony and then died by his arrows. He remembered the young priestess from the isle coming to bear him to Talair. We have been waiting for you, she had said, assured and arrogant as they all seemed to be. He had never properly understood what they had meant. It was part of the same unsettling web of mystery that had brought them here now in response to Beatritz's warning.

Who knows what the women do when they go out in the woods at night? His father's words once, before burning another presumed witch on Garsenc lands. He preferred not to remember such things. There would be fires here, though, an almost unimaginable inferno if Galbert conquered. With some effort Blaise forced himself to push that thought away, to think back, instead, to the music that had been playing as he'd entered this castle for the first time beside Valery that day in spring. It seemed a long time ago.

Fulk de Savaric moved closer, resting his elbows on the stone in front of them. Without taking his eyes from the northern end of the valley, he murmured wryly, "Do you have anything extremely clever in mind?"

Blaise's mouth twitched. "Of course I do," he said, matching Fulk's tone. "I intend to challenge Ademar to single combat. When he foolishly accepts I'll kill him, take command of his grateful army and we'll all ride home to Gorhaut in time for spring planting."

Fulk gave a snort of amusement. "Sounds good to me," he said. "Do I get to deal with your father?"

Blaise didn't smile this time. "There are a few people who might want to do that," he said.

"Including you?" Fulk turned to look at him.

"I suppose so." He didn't meet the other man's gaze, and after a moment Fulk de Savaric turned away.

In the distance to the south-west, clearly visible from this height in the windswept winter air, Blaise could see the towers of Miraval. Even now, with all he had learned, and with the image of Duke Urté, on his knees before Signe de Barbentain, then striding from the council chamber, there was a part of him that could not quite believe that fifteen hundred fighting men would stay within those walls if battle came.

Whether that was cause for a sliver of hope or a deeper, colder dread he did not know.

What he did know was that he had spent most of his own life pursuing a dream or a vision of Gorhaut, what it should be, what it once had been, and that vision had had Corannos at the very heart of it. And now, having rashly claimed a crown for himself, he was about to go to battle amongst the men of woman-ruled Arbonne in a goddess's name against his own country and king—and father if it came to that—and against an army marching beneath the banner of the god he had vowed to serve with honour all his days.