‘There she is,’ breathed Count Radosav, glowering across the valley towards the lines of the enemy, ‘almost close enough to touch.’ And he ground his gloved fist into his gloved palm. ‘With any luck, there’ll be a battle tomorrow.’

His knights competed to grunt the gruffest agreements and strike the most manful poses, while Mother Vincenza and three monks she kept to carry all the reliquaries nodded belligerently along.

Baron Rikard leaned close to Jakob. ‘Not sure a battle suits us,’ he murmured.

‘No,’ said Jakob. The favour of a man like Count Radosav was a thin thread to hang your hopes on at the best of times. But in a battle, he might very well lose, or die, or be fought to a bloody stalemate, and end up in no position to help anyone. Even if he won a crushing victory there’d be prisoners to deal with, and terms to dictate, and a bumper crop of gloating to harvest. Jakob had seen it a hundred times. Good intentions can be buried in the graveyard of defeat, but they just as often sink in the bog of victory.

In a battle, their hopes of finding Princess Alexia would likely be the first casualty. ‘Peace would be better all around.’

The baron smiled. ‘Ah, the famously dove-ish Jakob of Thorn once again seeks an end to hostilities.’

Mother Vincenza was taking an opposing view. ‘Victory is assured!’ she sang at the heavens. ‘The purity of your cause is sanctified by Archbishop Isabella herself. You are in her prayers, in the Cathedral of Ragusa, dawn, noon, and sunset.’ And her monks circled their chests, and fingered their relics, and murmured the names of sympathetic saints.

Jakob took a deep breath and stepped forwards. ‘It’s a comfort to know that all the soldiers who die tomorrow will do so under sanction of the Church and reach the gates of heaven purged of their sins.’

Count Radosav frowned over at him. ‘You expect casualties?’

Jakob glared across the valley. The long slopes of damp grass. The scattered goats. The mist in the bottom, and the standing stones poking through it. When he judged all eyes were on him, and the silence had stretched long enough to make his words sound weighty, he spoke.

‘I’ve known many powerful men, Your Excellency. Emperors and kings. Fought for some. Against others. Men who steered the course of history. Men like you.’ Count Radosav pretended not to be flattered, but he did it very badly. Men born to peace and privilege often crave the approval of the violent. Jakob was counting on it. ‘A problem for men that are much loved … or much feared … is that no one will tell them hard truths.’

The count looked over his gaggle of military sycophants. ‘But you will?’

‘I have sworn a vow of honesty. I’ve no choice but to be blunt.’

‘Speak honestly, then. I demand it!’

‘A battle is always a gamble.’ Jakob took a long breath, and let it sigh away. Time might have sapped his strength and dulled his senses, but his sigh had only gained in gravelly dignity. ‘But as things stand … I don’t like your chances.’

Mother Vincenza’s face grew dark while the officers muttered and spluttered, but the count held up a hand to still them. ‘How so?’

‘I was in your field hospital. Heard your soldiers talk, unguarded. They admire you and your cause, but the campaign has been long while supplies run short. Their ranks are thinned by wounds and sickness. Frankly, they want to go home.’

‘Countess Jovanka’s men are no fresher!’

Jakob glanced towards Radosav’s ill-pitched tents, then across the valley towards their counterparts. ‘To me her camp looks very orderly. A sign of good morale and ample provisions.’

The eager young knights whispered of cowardice, which is the word eager young knights use to describe good sense, but some of the older men began to grumble.

Mother Vincenza gave a cluck of upset. ‘Count Radosav, I know you for a pious son of the Church, a dauntless warrior in the Pope’s cause. Countess Jovanka has enlisted the aid of schismatics and recusants! Her Eastern heresies cannot be permitted to stand!’

‘What an inside-out world,’ murmured Baron Rikard. ‘The priest argues for war, the knight for peace.’

Mother Vincenza waved towards one of her monks, who carried a sort of gilded lantern on a pole, but holding a shrivelled brain instead of a candle. ‘The relics of Saints Basil and Grigorije stand proudly among your host! How can victory be in doubt with such divine support?’

‘In my experience of war …’ Jakob thought, under the circumstances, Baptiste wouldn’t mind him borrowing a flourish, ‘… and I have a very great deal … the saints side with the numbers, and the equipment, and the ground.’

Vincenza glared back at him. ‘You may have experience, Jakob of Thorn, but plainly age has drained your sap—’

‘Have you ever been to Poland, Mother Vincenza?’ asked Rikard.

‘I fail to see—’

‘There is a style of dumpling served there.’ The baron held her eye, unwavering. ‘Sublimely simple and yet … simply sublime.’

The priest’s mouth dropped open. ‘Dumplings … you say …?’

‘The purity of your faith brings to mind the chapel on my wife’s estates.’ Baron Rikard gently drew her away. ‘Its door surrounded by honeysuckle. Do you know the smell of honeysuckle …?’

‘Your Excellency.’ Jakob put a comrade’s hand on the count’s shoulder and used the other to sketch the contours of the land, the likely lines of attack. ‘I know a man of your experience will have seen this at once, but the countess’s camp is higher placed than ours. The slope on her side of the valley is steeper, that stream and those rocks would break up an advance.’

‘A small advantage,’ scoffed one.

Count Radosav gave a weighty sigh of his own. ‘Battles turn on small advantages.’

‘I have seen it,’ observed Jakob, licking a finger and holding it up. ‘The wind is against us. Their arrows will carry further.’

‘The wind can change,’ snapped one of the officers.

‘The wind can change?’ Jakob turned his eyes upon the man. If the years had made his sigh a lethal weapon, it had made his glare a more deadly one yet. ‘Is that your strategy?’

‘But I have you!’ said the count.

Jakob could not help a smile at that. When Emperor Odo had his doubts about battle with the Flemish, Jakob had convinced him to charge. You have me, he’d said, self-belief burning in him like a furnace. You have me.

‘In my youth I dreamed one man could tip the balance of history,’ said Jakob. ‘Time has taught me that when one does, it can tip the wrong way as easily as the right.’

The count turned back to the valley, rubbing worriedly at his jaw. ‘The men are weary. Her camp is orderly. And neither the ground nor the weather is favourable …’

‘And they have the advantage in horse …’ chipped in one of the older knights, giving Jakob the hint of a nod.

Count Radosav thumped his fist against his armoured thigh. ‘God, but I’d love to beat her!’

Jakob had spent years talking peaceful men into violence. It seemed his penance was having to talk warmongering fools out of it. He eased closer, close enough that no one else could hear. ‘But have you thought how it would feel … to be beaten by her?’ The count blinked, then frowned across the valley once again. ‘The loss of prestige. The risk to your unimpeachable name. You want to humble her?’ Jakob shrugged. ‘Do it at the negotiation table, where your shrewdness will give you the advantage.’

Count Radosav raised his chin, jaw working. ‘I suppose, one way or another, every battle ends there.’

‘I’ve spent a lifetime at war,’ more than one, in fact, ‘and I can tell you only this. Nine times out of ten there’s more to be won from peace.’

‘Yet you still wear a sword,’ said the count.

Jakob gave a weary smile as he rested his hand on the hilt. ‘A man of my age needs something to lean on.’