Friday before the Feast of St. John, 1198

“Who else has committed high treason against the Holy Roman Emperor and his rightful vassal in this manor? Who else has bargained the lives of his comrades for a handful of the Count’s silver?” Daria stared at the two cotters. The great hall was silent; even the mice in the rushes had gone still.

Diederick, one of the village yeomen, had brought in Staas. “I caught him in the forest with three of the Count’s soldiers,” he had explained. “He was guiding as they marked a path. The soldiers fled, but this one was not so fleet of foot.” Staas’s cousin Erich was also brought in. He confessed to taking silver to sour the castle well, but found he didn’t have the stomach to complete the task.

“The punishment for high treason, by the immutable laws of the Holy Roman Empire, is dispossession, torture, and dismemberment,” Daria continued, her voice low. “By right I should have your eyes gouged, your tongue rent from your throat, and every bone in your feet broken one by one before I have you drawn and quartered. But there is not time.” She turned to other business, waving dismissively. “Hang him. Not here—down in the village.”

A crowd had gathered by the time Staas was dragged behind Stephan’s great destrier to the old oak by the green. Staas had lain at the center of many a village dispute over the years, and traitors are hated by all. But troubled times breed troubled minds, and the Count had worked hard to sway the villagers’ loyalties. “The Count is strong, and they say he will bring a real army,” Erich had said, before Daria dispossessed and exiled him. “He tells everyone he will put a new lord in the castle, and many believe him!” Indeed, a furtive mumble passed through the assembled villagers, and many a brow was creased.

And then there was Etien, surrounded by his men, watching and jeering from the edge of his camp. Stephan rode calmly into the center of the green, high in his saddle, and fixed the crowd in his eye. “Villeins of Bois de Haillot! We are each of us, from your Lady Daria to the poorest cotter on this manor, and all between, vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor. We are all bound to his law, and we all owe our allegiance to him. Soon it may come to be that we will have to account for our duties with our very lives.” Here he was interrupted by hoots and cries from the Count’s camp, but a steely glare in that direction quieted them. “I will be the first to defend our homes and our honour,” Stephan continued, looking from villager to villager, then sweeping his arm back toward Gaspard and Madeleine, “as will all those from the castle. No amount of silver will sway us from our duty.” He lowered his voice. “If there are any here who would shirk from that duty, let him now speak.” The crowd was silent, then one man stepped forward and spat on Staas. Another hissed, and others scrambled for dung and stones to throw at the hapless traitor. Michi swung the rope over a branch and fixed the noose around Staas’s neck. He hoisted it with a merciful jerk.

Etien scowled as the villagers jeered the hanging man, his eye meeting Stephan’s for a moment as the knight turned back toward the castle.

The rest of the day was spent in preparation. With the Count inciting treason—even the poisoning of the well—it seemed clear he did not intend to depart without control of the castle, however gained. The levies were drawn up and armed; the remaining villagers called to the castle. After much debate, Daria agreed that their duty to hold the Emperor’s fief superseded the terms of their Imperial charter (which forbade the improvement of the castle), and raised stone along the never-finished perimeter of the bailey wall.

The Count’s attack came late, after Compline, with a hail of arrows from the dark as a ram was run up to the newly-restored gatehouse door. An intense exchange drove the attackers back with the gate unbreached, but it was a feint only, and a further assault drove at the broad flank of the bailey wall. That very morning a man might have scrambled through the gaps, but Etien had not counted on that; the attackers had ladders and soon gained the wall. They were trained men, and fierce, and eager for easy glory against a pathetic cadre of untrained and poorly armed defenders. They cut easily through the levy, slicking the wall-walk with blood, but the defenders had determination and numbers on their side.

The din of fighting was drawing down when Madeleine cocked her ear. “A woman calls out—beyond the walls!” Below, just emerged from the brush of the surrounding forest, Lady Juliana struggled against a pair of soldiers. Stephan was over the wall in an instant, Michi, Gaspard, and Madeleine just behind. They cut quickly through the attackers and pulled Juliana back to the shadows of the curtain wall. “Why are you here?” Stephan demanded. “I had to warn you,” Juliana replied. “My lord Etien has built ladders in secret—tall ladders; much bigger than these.” They scrambled back into the castle and deposited Juliana in the hall with Daria and Johannes before climbing up to the roof of the keep.

They were just in time. The keep had never been finished above the second floor, and the uncrenellated walls offered little protection against the rain of arrows decimating the small contingent of levy stationed there. But that was coming to an end, as the Count’s soldiers were planting their long ladders and beginning to climb. Michi and Stephan rushed to the wall, but the attackers were already pouring over, led by the knight Geert. Etien’s man fought like his namesake, tenaciously and with no concern for his injuries, and by the time Stephan had dropped him another dozen men had gained the wall.

It was a true melee. Men fell screaming to their death, while others met axe or sword. The rotting floorboards ran slick with blood and offal, and everywhere was the din of steel on steel, of screams and shouts. Daria appeared, and her command of the winds blasted a handful of attackers from the wall. Michi and Madeleine forced over the last of the ladders, and slowly, finally, the fight came to an end.

And in the quiet that followed there was a rasping, cough-like laugh. Everyone turned. On the wall opposite, above the cliff face looking down upon the Meuse, a figure tottered into the meagre torchlight. Like Thorold, its flesh was the colour of brick, but thin and papery, stretched taut over near fleshless bone. It was dressed ancient opulence, robes embroidered heavily in the arcane symbols of the Order of Hermes. It stepped forward, pointing at Daria, while two more creatures, red and bloated and once soldiers of the Count, crawled over the wall behind it. Around its neck, on a simple leather thong, swung a fired clay disk with the mark of Triamore--an aegis token; the same key given visiting magi so that their magics might not be hindered by the covenant's protective spells. The most closely guarded of Triamore's treasures, and the key to unlock all its defenses.