A unicorn’s horn spitted the crossbowman beside him. The fellow on the unicorn slashed at Rollant with his saber. Rollant got his own sword up just in time to turn the blow. Sparks flew as iron belled off iron. The unicorn pressed on. When the northerner slashed again, it was at someone else. He laid a crossbowman’s face open, and shouted in triumph as the fellow shrieked.

Rollant stabbed the unicorn in the hindquarters. Its scream was shrill as a woman’s. It reared, blood pouring from the wound. While the rider, taken by surprise, tried to fight it back under control, Rollant stabbed him, too, in the thigh. More blood spurted, astonishingly red. Rollant could smell the blood. That iron stink put him in mind of butchering day on Ormerod’s estate. The rider bellowed like a just-castrated bullock. Then a pikeman ran up and thrust him through from behind. Ever so slowly, he toppled from his mount.

Surviving northerners broke free of the press and galloped away. King Avram’s unicorns came up just in time to chase them as they went. Smitty said, “They paid a price today, by the gods.” He had a cut over one eye, and didn’t seem to know it.

“That they did.” Rollant rammed his shortsword into the ground to clean off the blood. Baron Ormerod had always screamed at his serfs to take care of their-his-ironmongery. Rollant looked at the bodies strewn like broken dolls, and at the groaning wounded helped by their comrades and by the healers. Even as he watched, a healer cut the throat of a southron too terribly gashed and torn to hope to recover. “They paid a price, sure enough,” Rollant said. “But so did we.”

General James of Broadpath was a belted earl. The northern noble needed a good deal of belt to span his own circumference, and had to ride a unicorn that would otherwise have made a career of hauling great jars of wine from hither to yon.