They were guarding him, he understood, at risk of their own lives.

In that instant, utterly calm in the midst of wild battle, with a dead man trampled into the ground at his feet, Blaise de Garsenc came into his true awareness of power. On a field of death, fighting his countrymen on the day his father had killed his brother, Blaise realized that he really did know what he wanted for Gorhaut, and that he thought he could achieve it if given but half a chance.

He did not expect, pushing forward between Rudel and Hirnan, feeling his horse's hooves unavoidably trample the body below, to live long enough to do anything about it.

Later he would remember how that last bleak thought had come to him even before he heard Rudel, his companion on so many battlefields, speak a malediction of bitter ferocity, and Blaise, looking over to the west, saw what his friend had seen and felt something colder than winter enter his heart with the awareness of treachery and of the final, inexorable revenge of the past.

On the forested ridge of land west of the valleys a company of men could be seen at the edge of the trees. A very large company, arrayed in precise rows, well armed and armoured. Above their heads were flying not one but two banners. One was a green device Blaise had come to know well in Arbonne. The other was that of the kings of Gorhaut.

Urté de Miraval had come to war, and their worst nightmares were made real as those grim, meticulous ranks began to move down the slope. Fulk de Savaric, Blaise saw, had somehow managed to fight his way around by the shore of the lake. He and his men had turned north and were even now poised to turn and strike at Ademar's centre from behind.

It didn't matter any more. They were going to be annihilated, their backs completely exposed to the men of Miraval, who were gathering speed now as they swept into the valley. If Fulk turned to face Urté they would be equally helpless before Ademar's corans. Blaise had sent those men to the worst sort of death.

With their own soon to follow. Blaise looked a long way over then—there seemed to be a respite here on their flank as men in both armies turned to see what was happening—and he picked out the fiercely battling figure of Bertran de Talair. Once he had thought the man no more than a lord who debased his rank by consorting with singers and frivolously pursuing any woman who came under his blue gaze. These things were true, there was no gainsaying them, but there was nothing in the man he saw just then that could have been called less than lordly as Bertran fought for his land in the face of betrayal and what would have to be the knowledge, bitter as poison, that Urté de Miraval was the source of their undoing.

With a horrified fascination—the way one watches a coiled snake before it strikes—Blaise saw the corans of Miraval, fifteen hundred of them, sweep down from their ridge behind the majestic figure of the duke. He saw them come up beside the first of Fulk's wheeling, scrambling men, swords and spears and axes uplifted and levelled and poised.

And he saw them go straight past those desperate men, no horse or man of Urté's company so much as breaking stride, to crash, with a sound and an impact that seemed to shake the earth, full into the rear of the army of Gorhaut.

In the instant before that impact, just as he realized, with a wild surging in his heart, exactly what was happening, Blaise heard his father's voice rise up again—to tower like a presence over the valley, crying the name of the god in his need. There was no answer though, no reply from Corannos in the cold blue sky. Only the huge thunder of hooves on hard earth and the screams of terrified men as the racing corans of Miraval smashed into the rear of Ademar's men, with the warriors of Savaric turning swiftly to join them and Bertran's men coming forward from the other side, roaring in exultation, to pincer them mercilessly.

"He fooled them!" Rudel screamed in Blaise's ear. "He fooled them completely!" It was true, Blaise saw: the disruption in the Gorhaut ranks caused by the first Garsenc defections earlier had turned into utter chaos. Corans of Garsenc Castle, men he had known all his life, were joining with Fulk de Savaric now, closing in upon Ademar's own guards even as he watched.

"Come on!" Blaise cried. In front of them the men on their flank were falling back in panic, fearing to be cut off. Blaise drove his horse recklessly forward into the gap between the armies. It seemed to him as if something oppressive had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight from the darkness of the past. He felt light, invulnerable, and he wanted Ademar. He didn't even look back to see if anyone was following him. He knew now that they would be; he was their leader, and a chance, a hope, a promise like a lantern's glow seen from afar in a night forest, had appeared for them where none could ever have been foreseen.

He was driving in to the centre, straight towards Ademar, and so was actually quite close when he saw Duke Urté de Miraval meet the king of Gorhaut in the midst of the roiling tumult.

Ademar feels as if he might actually choke in the heat of his fury. It is hard to breathe. Even with the chill of the winter afternoon he is sweltering in his armour and helm. He knows it is rage that is doing this to him. He is almost dizzied by wrath. First the Garsenc betrayals: it has always been the de Garsenc who have balked him, he thinks, slashing savagely at a Miraval foot-soldier, almost severing the man's head with the blow. Swearing, he drags his sword free. He cannot believe, he cannot believe, that with victory so easy, so assured, those Garsenc corans have been mad enough to turn upon their own ranks. Surely any sane man with a sense of self-preservation would have known better than to rally to that doomed pretender's pennon!

That was before he realized that Fulk de Savaric—another traitor, another man who ought to have been by his side! — had somehow managed to bring his company around behind him. There had been some real danger there, and Ademar was snapping urgent commands when one of his captains pointed triumphantly upwards to the west, and the king of Gorhaut, looking there, had felt his choler recede, eased and cooled by something near to joy. He had never been afraid, he was not a man inclined to fears, but with the sight of the Miraval corans on that ridge beneath the banner of Gorhaut, Ademar laughed aloud, tasting the sweetness to come.

He had a few moments to think that way, to watch the well-trained men of Duke Urté start smoothly down the slope, gaining speed, bringing the end of this war with them and the final exaltation of Gorhaut.

Then it all went wrong; wildly, desperately wrong.

There was one moment, when Urté de Miraval whipped his warhorse straight past the corans of Savaric, when Ademar did know fear—just for an instant. Then he felt the impact of those thundering Miraval horsemen as they smashed into the rear of his ranks, driving men back before them like so many helpless children.

Now, buffeted in the midst of a nightmare chaos, rage is foaming like a river in flood through the king of Gorhaut. Ademar hears his High Elder trumpet his call to the god and he curses in his heart the very name of Galbert de Garsenc who has brought him to this, who persuaded him that the duke of Miraval, whose overtures to them in the past few days were direct and explicit, was a necessary man to enlist in their cause, to act as first regent of Arbonne after their conquest.

It was a trap. It is clear now that everything Urté did was a trap, and they are in the jaws of it, between the corans of Talair and Miraval, with Fulk de Savaric and the renegades of Garsenc coming hard against them. Ademar lashes his horse westward, screaming in fury, and as men fall back before him he comes swiftly up to the man he needs to kill now, right now, immediately, before this battle turns hopelessly against them. He is aware, vaguely, that his own corans have also fallen back, that a ring of men has formed around the two of them, as if even in the midst of war there is a sense that this combat must take place. And so Ademar of Gorhaut begins his second single-challenge of this day.