She is the spring-time,

She is the morning.

Fair as the Lilly,

and dew on the grass.

Bless us with your touch,

Wash us in ice melt.

Make us as new as

Saint Lailahel.

* The Song of Lailahel, from Lady Clarisant’s Book of Hours

☀

9th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Trist was roused from sleep by Clarisant lurching up, shoving aside the blankets, and leaving their tent. She’d slept the night through with her back to him, and a pillow between their bodies.

The chill air of the hour before dawn made him shiver, and the temptation to pull the blankets back around his body was strong. His mind was muddled and fuzzy with half remembered dreams. Instead, Trist scrambled to his feet and went after his wife.

It was a jarring difference from his trip into Falais, to camp with a dozen other people, and twice as many horses, all of them well supplied by the King’s army. In the Ardenwood, it had been only three of them, and then a fourth with Yaél. Up among the heights and valleys of the Hauteurs Massif, they’d added Sir Divdan, whose good humor Trist missed now nearly as much as the solid, comforting presence of Luc. Even when they’d ridden down out of the mountains with Ismet and her surviving men, they had been only half the size of the troop Trist commanded now.

As a result, they had a palisade and a ditch surrounding the camp, horse lines, a latrine dug downhill, and two people on watch at all times. Trist was, as the ranking knight of the expedition, excused from this duty, which made him feel quite odd. Clarisant, of course, had no place standing guard duty.

“Here my Lady, let me help you.” Trist recognized the voice of Dame Etoile, who’d secured her place in his memory by relishing Henry’s cooking so much that she’d joked about marrying him for it. Trist’s eyes ignited with the red hum of Auberon’s boon, and the night parted for him as easily as a curtain. Off to one side and slightly downhill, away from both the great oak tree and the horse line, Clarisant in her white nightgown was on her hands and knees, retching into the grass. Etoile, armed and armored, crouched next to her, holding his wife’s long hair out of her face.

“Are you sick?” Trist hurried across the grass. He searched Clarisant’s neck for any sign of the pustules characteristic of the plague, and when she’d stopped heaving long enough to catch her breath, he rested the back of his hand against her forehead to check for fever. If somehow Agrat had infected her, at least he could cure the sickness with some wine and a Boon.

“I’m fine,” Clarisant said, and accepted the wineskin that Dame Etoile had been holding ready for her. She swished a mouthful around for the space of a few breaths, then spit it out. “Most mornings it isn’t so bad,” she explained, passing the wineskin back. “Just an upset stomach. I can usually roll over and go back to sleep.”

“Most mornings?” Trist frowned. “How long has this been going on?” And why hadn’t she told him? The answer was obvious: if Trist had known she was ill, then he would have insisted she stay with the carriage in the army. Perhaps insisted she stay with Baroness Arnive at Falais, until she had recovered.

“Long enough to be certain, though this is not how I wanted to tell you,” Clarisant said, reaching out and grabbing his hand in her own. “We’re going to have a child, Trist.”

With a thump, Trist sat back on his rear in the dew-damp grass.

“Congratulations,” Dame Etoile said, awkwardly. “If you need anything, Sir Trist, Lady Clarisant, I’ll be up the top of the hill.”

As soon as the other knight had gone, Clarisant scrambled forward, still clutching Trist’s hand, and pressed it to her belly. He could feel the heat of her body through the thin nightgown she wore, which was rapidly becoming sodden with dew. “It’s yours, Trist, I swear it,” she whispered, too softly for either of the knights on guard duty to hear.

Trist swallowed. Somewhere beneath his palm, even if he couldn’t feel anything but Clarisant’s body, was a child. “It doesn’t matter one way or the other,” he told his wife. “If it were my brother’s son, I’d raise him just the same.”

“But it isn’t,” Clarisant insisted. “Do you believe me?”

“Of course I do,” Trist said, getting his feet under him and pulling her up with him. He was stronger than any mortal man could ever be, and Clarisant felt light as a breeze, but he was careful not to move too quickly or jostle her. “Come back to the tent, so we can get you into something dry.”

Learning that his wife was pregnant put the day of hard riding to come in an entirely different light. They needed to reach Rocher de la Garde before dark; their ability to outpace the army and reinforce the city was the entire reason that King Lionel had detached their small, mobile force from the rest of the marching army.

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“But is it safe for her to ride,” Trist asked, again. Everyone had broken their fast with cold rations in between taking down the tents: dried and salted strips of jerky, slices of cheese, an apple. He’d tried to make sure Clarisant got her fill, but his wife still insisted she wasn’t hungry, and that her stomach was upsetting her.

“I carried both my sons to the end,” Dame Ettarre, one of the two knights who had come with Sir Florent, assured him. She was shorter and slighter of frame than Dame Etoile, and lacked those broad shoulders, but Trist had already noticed what a good hand she was with the horses. “And I rode both times, everyday, until I was too fat to get up into the saddle myself.” She grinned, pulling her nut-brown hair back and tying it. “Your wife will be safe, and your babe as well. I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you,” Trist said. “It is a comfort to have someone riding with us who has experience with this.”

“I told you,” Clarisant scolded him. “Now help me up.” Trist was careful to place his hands well to her sides, away from her belly, and settled her as gently atop her palfrey as he could.

“We start on the spares,” he said, turning to the other knights and squires. “I want us on war-horses when we come close to the city, and I want them fresh, in case we need to make a charge.” The other knights nodded, and swung up into their saddles. The three squires followed suit, if somewhat more awkwardly, after passing up lances. Once the entire company was mounted, they set off east again, into the rising sun.

It was a second day of hard riding, with breaks only to swap horses and eat a cold meal at noon. The ordeal was only made worse by the heat of the day: it was well and truly summer, now, and every one of them was sweating. The knights couldn’t possibly wear their plate all day in the heat, so they stuck to padded gambesons and chain, without wearing helms. But, of course, if they were going into a fight, Trist not only wanted their horses well rested, but everyone fully armed and armored.

To that end, he consulted those most familiar with the city during the break for a midday meal. His cousin Lucan, along with the other two knights Baron Urien had sent, Erec and Etoile, as well as his wife, all gathered round, finding seats in the grass off the road and speaking in between slices of bread slathered in herbed goat cheese.

“We’ve well and truly come down out of the foothills,” Lucan said, after washing a bite down with a gulp from his wineskin. “We’re on flat land now, well past the halfway point.”

“When you can smell the sea,” Dame Etoile advised. “That’s when we should armor up, m’lord.”

“Will we truly notice?” Trist asked, frowning.

“I would know the smell if it had been a lifetime that I’d been gone,” Clarisant assured him. “Trust us, husband. We will let you know.”

“I do trust you,” Trist told her, then raised his voice. “Gather round.” The knights from the Barony du Rive Ouest, along with the squires, crowded in, finishing their last few bites of food. Henry came, as well, and Trist noticed his face turn red when Dame Etoile patted the boulder she was perched on, inviting him to sit at her side.

“The moment anyone smells the bay,” Trist explained, “We stop, dismount, put our armor on, and switch to warhorses. Our priority is to get to the city quickly. If we find it already invested by enemy troops, we must cut our way through, and speed will be our best ally. If Rocher de la Garde is not yet under siege, that makes our task simple. We enter the city, and present ourselves to my wife’s brother, Sir Gareth, who holds command in his father’s absence.”

“And what of this plan where you ride north alone, cousin?” Lucan asked him, with a frown.

“That will be determined based on what we learn from Gareth,” Trist said. “Even if the city isn’t besieged, it could be Camaret-à-Arden has already been burned.” He swallowed, trying not to picture the faces of people he’d grown up with pale and bloated in death, like the corpses after the battle at the mouth of the Passe de Mûre. His father, John Granger, Brother Alberic. “But yes, if it seems I have any reasonable chance at getting through, I will take a spare horse along the river-road north to the Ardenwood, and see the town evacuated, with as much Iebara wood as we can take.”

“If you go, m’lord, I’m going with you,” Henry said, from where he sat stiffly on the boulder. “You’ll need help, and I need to get my family out.”

“I suppose that I cannot truly object to that,” Trist said. Henry must be just as worried for the people he cared about as Trist was, and it wouldn’t be fair to make the man wait at Rocher de la Garde.

“You’ll need your squire,” Yaél said. “Unless you want to be strapping on all your armor yourself.” She grinned.

“Aye, that is true enough,” Trist said. “I need my squire.”

“I will ride north with you, as well,” Clarisant declared, and Trist frowned.

“I suspect your brother will not like that,” he said simply. “And nor do I. But let us get to the city, first, and speak of it more then.” For a moment, his wife looked as if she would argue, but then she nodded. “We’ve rested long enough. Everyone back into the saddle,” Trist said, and Sir Florent took up the call with a booming voice that brooked no dissent.

“You heard the man! In the saddle and ready to ride!” Florent rose himself, and strode to the horses.

“We will speak more of this,” Clarisant hissed when he lifted her up into her saddle.

“I know we will,” Trist agreed. “But alone.” She nodded her head, and he turned to mount his own spare horse.

It must have been nones, or just after, when they smelled the bay.

Clarisant called out first, echoed by Trist’s cousin Lucan, and while he couldn’t taste it in the air himself, Trist had faith in them. They’d both grown up in Rocher de la Garde, after all. Everyone swung down out of their saddles, and there was a rush to dig pieces of armor out of saddlebags. With only three squires, all of the knights helped each other as well, buckling on sabatons, pauldrons and gorgets. Sir Florent even had a bit of barding for his destrier, which none of the other knights were wealthy enough to afford. In fact, Trist and Lucan were the only others with destriers: everyone else made do with less expensive coursers and rounceys.

“We ride in a wedge,” Trist said, once he was back up on Cazador’s back. Sir Florent takes my right, and Sir Lucan my left. Squires, Henry, you’re inside the wedge, with my wife.”

“We’ll keep her safe, m’lord,” Henry assured him. Yaél’s eyes were wide and shining, positively feverish, while Clarisant’s hands were white-knuckled around her reins.

Trist nudged Caz over to her, leaned over, and murmured, “It will be fine.” Clarisant nodded stiffly, and Trist called, “Form up!” Then, he settled his helm on, accepted a lance from Yaél, and rested the butt of the weapon on the toe of his sabaton. Once everyone was in position, the thirteen riders, with their spare horses on long leads held by the squires trailing behind, set off to cross the final stretch to the city.

The city walls were in sight when they caught sight of a group of outriders, Kimmerian mercenaries armed with axes. The city wasn’t under siege yet, but for enemy scouts to be west of the walls, it was a very near thing.

Trist lifted his lance, and the other knights followed suit. “Knights of Narvonne!” He shouted. “Charge!”