As for Richard of the Iron Hand, he was content to claim the arduous blessings of the day. He held his men in leash upon the hills, resting them and their horses after the marchings of the night. Wine was served out; clarions and sackbuts sounded through the ranks; the King made his nobles a rich feast in his pavilion pitched by Sir Morolt’s banner. As the day drew on, he thrust strong outposts towards the meadows, ordered his troops to sleep through the long night under arms. Their watch-fires gemmed a lurid bow under the sky, with Tamar stringing it, a chord of silver. In the meadows the rebel masses lay a black pool of gloom under the stars. Fulviac sat alone in his tent at midnight, his drawn sword across his knees. His captains had left him, some to watch, others to sleep on the grass in their armour, Sforza the Gonfaloniere to sneak in the dark to the King’s lines. Silence covered the valley, save for the voices of the sentinels and the sound of the royal trumpets blowing the changes on the hills. Their watch-fires hung athwart the sky like a chain of flashing rubies. Fulviac sat motionless as a statue, staring out into the night. Death, like a grey wraith, stood beside his chair; the unknown, a black and unsailed sea, stretched calm and imageless beneath his feet. Life and the ambition thereof tottered and crumbled like a quaking ruin. Love quenched her torch of gold. The man saw the stars above him, heard in the silence of thought a thousand worlds surging through the infinitudes of the heavens. What then was this mortal pillar of clay, that it should grudge its dust to the womb of the world? And ambition? He thought of Yeoland and her wounded heart; of Gambrevault and Avalon; of La Belle Forêt smoking amid its ruins. He had torched fame through the land, and painted his prowess in symbols of fire. Now that death challenged him on the strand of the unknown, should he, Fulviac, fear the unsailed sea! His heart glowed in him with a transcendent insolence. Lifting his sword, he pressed the cold steel to his lips, brandished it in the faces of the stars. Then, with a laugh, he lay down upon a pile of straw and slept. XLII Dawn rolled out of the east, red and riotous, its crimson spears streaming towards the zenith. Over the far towers of Gilderoy swept a roseate and golden mist, over the pine-strewn heights, over Tamar silvering the valley. A wind piped hoarsely through the thickets, like a shrill prelude to the organ-throated roar of war.