Perhaps her news would change all that.

Before they reached the tumbledown monastery they were using as their chapter house, Feronantus’s attention was drawn to the skin-clad hunter. He, for no obvious reason, crouched, then performed a clownish flop to the ground, and with eyes closed, pressed his ear against a settled and moss-covered tombstone.

Not his ear, actually, but the heavy skull bone behind it. He was listening for something.

“What comes, Finn?” said Feronantus, or something like that in the rough tongue Finn favored.

Finn held up four fingers. Then he dropped his hand to the ground and made it prance along like a cantering horse.

Many steppe ponies…Finn opened his eyes and shook his head. He held his hands close and then drew them farther apart. One very big, he judged.

“Destrier,” Feronantus said.

All of the men in the compound, save Feronantus and Finn, seemed to have disappeared. Looking around, Cnán was able to see where they had gone to ground. Boys who had been brandishing wooden swords a moment ago were suddenly armed with long steel. Istvan and Rædwulf had their bows out and arrows nocked, and as soon as Finn rolled back to his feet, he did too.

It was an embarrassingly long time before Cnán could hear anything at all. But finally a heavy clop of hooves and jingle of steel penetrated the dense swath of greenery that surrounded the compound, and two riders came up the forest road abreast, each leading a spare horse.

Now here, Cnán thought, was a knight worthy of her mother’s tales. He was tall, with long brown hair swept back from a high forehead, hazel eyes, and the clean-shaven face of an angel.