ime?

The voice of Valery de Pirenne, Simon's new equerry, broke in on Simon's
tormented thoughts.

"I am not sorry to be leaving home this time of year. What better place
to spend the winter than sunny Italy?"

_I have already caused the death of this young man's brother. Will I
kill Valery too?_

"It rains much in Italy in January," said Thierry, now Sire Thierry
d'Hauteville, having been knighted by Simon at the beginning of November
on the Feast of All Saints. His tone was lofty with experience.

"Bad weather for war," said Henri de Puys, whose experience was ten
times Thierry's--or Simon's, for that matter. "But the rains should be
over by the time we reach that infidel Manfred's kingdom."

"Look there," said Thierry. "More knights coming to meet us."

Simon saw a line of about a dozen men on horseback, three canvas-covered
wagons and a straggling column of men on foot with spears over their
shoulders. The oncoming knights and men were tiny in the distance,
marching along a road that would meet Simon's route.

_Oh, God, now it will be harder to turn them back._

"That will be the party from Chateau la Durie," Thierry said, pointing
to the horizon where the four towers of a small castle were just barely
visible.

A distant bell was ringing out the noon hour as Simon's troop met those
from la Durie. All of the new knights wore red crosses on their tunics.
Sire Antoine de la Durie was a stout man about de Puys's age with a huge
mustache called an algernon, whose ends grew into his sideburns. Simon
and de la Durie brought their horses together and embraced. The knight
smelled like a barn.

"How was your harvest, Sire Antoine?"

Large white teeth flashed under the algernon. "Ample, Monseigneur. But
not so ample, I trust, as what we shall gather in Sicily."

They all wanted this so much.

How his chief barons had cheered and roared and stamped when he
announced this war to them at his Midsummer's Eve feast in the great
hall at Chateau Gobignon! It was at that very moment, when he had seen
the ferocious eagerness of his barons for war, that he had begun again
to doubt.

Antoine de la Durie gestured with a callused, bare hand to three young
men on horseback whose russet cloaks were patched, but whose longswords
proclaimed their knighthood. They grinned shyly at Simon.

"These are the Pilchard brothers, Monseigneur. They are not Gobignon
vassals, but they are Madame de la Durie's cousin's sons, and I vou