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My nephew and the rest of my sisters were somewhere in the stands. They’d come to cheer me on. As had Jinjur, who’d decided to help out for some reason. She was the one who’d scrounged up all the gear I lacked, including some mismatched pieces of armor. I suspected “scrounged up” meant “stole,” but I didn’t ask. We’d hastily painted a blank shield with my family coat of arms—a sheep rampant. It came out resembling an emaciated hamster more than any kind of sheep, but it would have to do.

I looked down at Yudit’s bent head and once again considered breaking the silence between us, but at that moment she straightened and patted Sunbeam on the shoulder. “Good luck,” she said, pointedly to him and not to me.

Well, screw her, then.

At a signal from an attendant, Sunbeam carried me up the ramp and onto the sandy field. The crowd grew even louder when my opponent and I were announced. “Sir Jules of Ecossia” and…a name I didn’t catch over the noise. I imagined that, aside from my close relatives, they were mostly cheering for my opponent. They couldn’t have the faintest idea who I was. I could see him across the field, perhaps 150 yards away, a man in gleaming armor on a black horse, his face hidden by a frog-mouth helm. The coat of arms emblazoned on his shield was a blur of color at that distance, but if I squinted, I thought I could make out a picture of a bee with a fish’s head—an observation which, even if correct, told me exactly nothing.

I glanced into the stands to see if I could spot my family, a patch of clumped redheads, but I couldn’t find them, at least not right away. Nicki had offered to make my competitors sneeze at inopportune times, but I’d turned her down. With two horses charging toward each other at full speed, their riders theoretically doing their best to avoid killing each other, a distraction seemed more likely to cause a horrible accident than win the day. I didn’t want someone aiming for my shield to sneeze at the last moment and hit me in the neck instead.

Winifred had also offered to enlarge some windows on my behalf, but I couldn’t really see the point.

If all went as planned, I wouldn’t need extra help from my family, anyway. Sunbeam had a foolproof strategy. Or so he claimed.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked as we moved into place.

“Trust me,” Sunbeam said. “I’ve got this. As long as you do your job. Which was?”

“Hold still and brace.”

“Exactly.” He pawed at the sandy ground with a hoof. “Hmph. This is going to be hell on my tendonitis. Could be a problem if my fetlocks seize up again.”

Words to inspire confidence if ever there were any. I lowered the Spear That Probably Won’t Break and hoped for the best.

The trumpet sounded, and we surged forward.

I know I’ve explained the whole one-ton-boulder thing, but that doesn’t give a real sense of how terrifying it is to see a mounted enemy racing toward you at high speed. Horses are big. Warhorses are among the biggest. Something deep in the human brain is frightened of stampedes, lashing hooves, a weight that can crush bones. This is why even well-trained soldiers can break and run in the face of a cavalry charge. It’s a shock tactic. It’s designed to make you panic.

It works. As Froghelm Fishbeeshield barreled closer, my hands trembled ever so slightly. The tip of my spear wobbled.

“Hold it steady,” Sunbeam chastised me from below. “Brace!”

Froghelm’s lance was aimed directly at my chest. I did my best to follow my horse’s instructions, aiming the spear at nothing in particular. That seemed like a very bad idea with only seconds left before impact.

“Are you sure—” I began.

At the last possible moment, Sunbeam shifted to the right. Froghelm’s lance missed my torso by less than an inch. My spear slammed squarely into his breastplate.

The concussion was bone-jarring, wrenching my shoulder and driving the spear’s crossguard into my armor. Froghelm got the worst of it, though. He went flying off his steed, landing flat on his back with a noisy clatter of metal plates.

Sunbeam wheeled around and stopped. Froghelm lay there moaning as his squire and a few attendants came over to help him off the field. His horse wandered about aimlessly until somebody grabbed hold of the reins.

The crowd burst into raucous cheers and applause. This time they were cheering for me. Well, for Sunbeam, if they’d known the truth of things.

“Oof,” my stallion muttered as he gingerly shook one of his back hooves. “That wasn’t good for my sciatica, either.” He limped back to the staging area, where Yudit helped me down. I was feeling pretty bruised and battered myself. In spite of that, and in spite of Sunbeam’s sciatica and tendonitis (and rheumatism and shingles and everything else he’d been complaining about over the past few weeks), we recovered well enough after some rest.

Our next two matches went much the same. By the third, the spectators chanted my name when we came out. Some of them threw flowers, and at least once someone tossed a pair of knickers down. Sir Jules of Ecossia was gaining a reputation.

When we emerged for the fourth match, I finally found my family in the crowd. Four splotches of bright red, plus Lulach’s brown and Jinjur’s blond. I waved to them.

“Hm,” said Sunbeam.

“What do you mean by ‘hm’?” I asked, a bit nervously. “That wasn’t a good ‘hm.’ That was a ‘hm’ that sounds like a problem.”

“This next horse looks smart.”

I peered at the horse across the field, a large dapple-gray charger. It seemed perfectly ordinary to me. Its rider had big, fancy pauldrons on his shoulders, shaped and engraved in some way I couldn’t possibly make out at that distance. Once again, I hadn’t caught his name. “Is it a talking horse?”

“Could be. Or it could just be a smart regular horse. Not all of them are down at Stinky’s level.”