It came to Remy’s attention gradually, that their company had grown. What had begun as eleven knights and two squires, already a more conspicuous group than he desired, had swelled into something larger, noisier, and, to his mind, deeply inconvenient. Twenty-five. An entire small procession, capable of drawing the gaze of every lord, thief, and opportunist along the eastern roads.

  The cause was obvious. Word traveled swiftly whenever coin lingered in one place too long, and Remy’s “funding,” as Sir Gaston called it with a mixture of pride and amusement, stirred all manner of restless men. Wanderers, farmhands, defeated soldiers, men with debts nipping at their heels, men seeking absolution, and a handful of those who simply desired adventure unburdened by the consequences of reason, all drifted into their orbit in Buda. And they wished to follow.

  Remy did not approve.

  He stood beneath the inn’s overhang that evening, watching the growing number of horses tied in the courtyard, the unfamiliar faces hovering at its edges, and felt a familiar pinch of irritation. More people meant more delays. More mouths. More noise. More sickness. More of everything he wished to avoid.

  Sir Gaston, however, insisted.

  “They will be useful, Master Valois,” Gaston had said, in that maddeningly calm voice he used whenever he wanted Remy to concede something he had no intention of conceding. “More hands lighten the burden. Cooks, laborers, men to carry gear, men to fetch water—”

  “They will slow us down,” Remy cut in.

  Gaston lifted a hand as if to smooth the air. “Only if you choose the wrong ones.”

  “And most are the wrong ones,” Remy answered plainly.

  It took Sir Bernat d’Urgel, their ever-meticulous logistician, to sway him. Bernat laid out the numbers with the kind of precision that left little room for argument, the weight of their supplies, the miles ahead, the need for people who could handle beasts of burden, prepare fires, carry spare equipment, mend tools, repair tack, clean armor. Knights alone could ride and fight, yes, but they could not sustain themselves indefinitely without aid. Not on such a long road.

  So Remy gave one condition.

  “Then let it be so,” he said at last. “But I will examine every man and woman who joins us. I will not be moved on this.”

  He was not.

  One by one they came to him in the courtyard behind the inn, under the weak spring sun. Remy sat upon a stool with his satchel at his feet, sleeves rolled back, his expression as unreadable as a statue. Jehan stood nearby, arms crossed, observing quietly. The knights formed a loose boundary, ensuring the line remained orderly.

  Remy examined each hopeful traveler with the same calm efficiency he brought to all things. He checked their tongues for signs of plague, and swell, felt the pulse beneath the wrist, pressed fingers against the neck, and the ribs. He listened to the breath. He asked questions, were they fevered recently, did they cough at night, did their stools run thin, did their bones ache after cold mornings? He refused to be deceived by bravado or layered clothing.

  And many of them were unfit. More than half.

  Some trembled under his hands, bodies weakened by winter sickness. Some bore the telltale rattle of consumption. Others hid infections beneath tunics, rot in their gums, swelling in their joints. Some had wounds that had festered too long. And some were simply too frail to survive a long march.

  He told them so with the same steady tone each time.

  “You are unfit for travel.”

  Many pleaded. Some begged outright. A few collapsed into tears, their dreams of pilgrimage or purpose dissolving like frost beneath the morning sun.

  One man, pale and trembling, insisted that God would strengthen him.

  Remy shook his head. “God does not heal a fever because you wish Him to. You must help yourself before you ask for His help. Go home.”

  Another, a bearded fellow who stank of herbs and sweat, tried to argue that he had walked to Buda from the western edges of the kingdom.

  “And the journey nearly killed you,” Remy said simply. “You cough blood. Travel farther and you will die on the road.”

  A third man, angered to madness, shouted in his face, calling him godless, a false Christian, a man who denied pilgrims the path of righteousness.

  Remy let the tirade pass without reaction. “I deny you nothing,” he said calmly. “Your body denies you. If you wish to die, do so in your own home, not on the backs of my company.”

  He held firm. No amount of fury or weeping swayed him.

  And the Company, more importantly, supported him. Remy had made clear to them the reason for this rigor was to also protect their health as much as to protect the would-be travelers themselves. Disease spread faster on the road. Weakness in one meant danger for all. And Remy would not burden his duties as physician with preventable deaths.

  Thus, from the original seventy who wished to follow, only twenty-five had remained.

  Jehan had asked him afterward, as they walked through the side streets of Buda, “Why do you refuse those who suffer only illness? Is it not only small illness in some of them?”

  Remy looked ahead at the cobbled road glistening with melted frost. “A small illness is like a roll of snow,” he answered. “Left alone, it grows larger as it tumbles. On the road, what begins as a sniffle becomes a fever. A fever becomes a plague. One sick man becomes five. Then ten.”

  She considered this. “So you refuse them to protect them.”

  “To protect all of us,” he said. “To tolerate what can be prevented is to harm them. And us.”

  After that, there was little left to do in Buda. They had lingered long enough, longer than Remy preferred, though he admitted the time had not been wasted. Gaston had spent days gathering knowledge from locals, caravan leaders, and merchants who frequented the eastern roads. Bits of rumor. Accounts of weather. News of Ottoman patrols along the Serbian passes. Information of rivers too swollen to ford, villages too poor to give shelter, bandits who prowled under cover of night.

  With this, Sir Gaston drafted a clear itinerary.

  “We cross Pest first,” Gaston explained one evening at the table, tapping a rough map with one calloused finger. “Then ride to Rákosmez?, the great plain where the Hungarians once held their national assemblies. Beyond it lies Isaszeg. Then G?d?ll?.”

  Remy leaned over the parchment, studying the lines, nodding slowly. Practical. Direct. Alive with potential complications, but manageable.

  Before they departed, the Company attended a final mass at the Mary Magdalene Church in the upper town. It was a cold morning, the light thin and silver, filtering through narrow windows. The bells echoed across the roofs of Buda, calling the faithful like a soft command.

  Remy entered with the others, cloak drawn against the wind. The scent of incense mingled with the chill. Noblemen in the pews turned their heads at the sight of them, a force twice the size it had been days earlier. Some murmured blessings. Others approached after the mass to press letters into Remy’s hands, or into Sir Gaston’s or Sir Raimund’s, with requests to deliver messages eastward, to kin, to merchants, to men stationed in Constantinople. Each promised coin upon arrival.

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  Remy declined none of them. A letter weighed little, and it cost nothing to carry hope in paper.

  He placed a generous donation in the coffer at the front of the church. Enough that the priest blessed them twice, once formally and once again as the men filed out.

  Afterward, Sir Bernat made one final inspection of the luggage, checking the straps of the packs, the bundles of herbs Remy carried, and the crates of dried goods. The extra horses, bought with Remy’s coin, were fed and brushed, their reins tested for wear.

  They gathered before dawn, the sky a pale blue washed thin by the cold. Breath rose in small clouds. The city was still half-asleep as they moved toward the ferry that would carry them from Buda to Pest. Twenty-five riders, cloaks snapping in the morning wind, horses stamping against the frost.

  As they waited for the ferry to dock, Remy looked back once at Buda, the stone towers, the rising smoke from kitchens, the narrow alleys where he had treated men and children alike. There was comfort there, fleeting though it was. A place where his actions had done some good.

  Then he looked ahead to Pest. To the plains beyond. To Serbia. To the long, winding road toward Constantinople.

  The wind coming off the river was sharp, carrying the scent of thawed mud and distant forests.

  Sir Gaston nudged his horse beside Remy’s, smiling faintly. “A good morning to begin something,” he said.

  “Or to be damned by it,” Remy answered.

  Gaston chuckled. “Always the optimist.”

  “I am realistic,” Remy corrected.

  Jehan rode up on Remy’s other side, her hood drawn low. “We begin today?”

  Remy nodded. “We begin.”

  The ferry moored at last, creaking as its ropes tightened. The deckhands waved them forward.

  The Company mounted, single file, and crossed onto the boat. Twenty-five souls. A road without certainty. And the Holy Land far beyond the horizon.

  Remy tightened his grip on Morgan’s reins, the boards beneath them shifting with the river’s gentle sway.

  Whatever lay ahead, the path had already chosen them.

  And now they walked it.

  Pest, a large market town on the east bank, greeted Remy with its usual clamor of vendors shouting, wagons groaning under grain and hides, the air rich with the heavy scent of dried peppers and horse-sweat and horse dung. Though he rode at the head of the Company, he felt the eyes of the townsfolk gathering upon them like flies to honey. Their size alone drew curious gazes with men, women, and even children trailed after their horses, whispering, pointing. The guards, having grown familiar with him from his continual errands between Buda and Pest, offered only cursory nods, their faces lighting in friendly half-recognition. None thought to stop him or question the company’s movement. His reputation, irritatingly persistent, preceded him even in this town.

  It did not take long for Pest’s wooden homes and crenellated walls to fall behind them, replaced by the expanse of the Rákos plain stretching to the horizon. The wind came strong and clean, sweeping across the tall grass and rattling its blades as if some vast unseen hand brushed the earth. The sun bore down on them, an unbroken disc in a faultless sky, its heat prickling through mail and cloth.

  Sir Aldred rode beside Remy for a stretch, wiping sweat from his thick brows. “This is too hot, Master Valois,” he grumbled, though his voice lacked any sharpness. “Far too hot for a man to be wearing steel.”

  Remy gave him a small shrug. “This is not hot. You should visit Toledo in the summer, Sir Aldred. You would know the heat then.”

  “Is that so?” the knight said, shifting in the saddle. “Truly, you’ve trained your body for this?”

  “Indeed, I did.”

  And that was that. Sir Aldred fell quiet, accepting the answer with the simplicity of a man easily contented when conversation reached beyond the scope of his experience.

  They rode in formation, as Remy preferred. Fully armed, fully visible, their presence on the plain unmistakable. From a mile away the ruckus of horses, steel, and riders would be seen and heard and there was no hiding a company of twenty-five. Jehan rode stiffly at his right, alert as always, her gaze scanning the horizon. Sir Gaston occupied Remy’s left, too talkative for Jehan’s taste but oblivious to the shortness of her answers.

  “You see,” Sir Gaston was saying, gesturing with one gloved hand as though shaping air into images, “when we campaigned in France, this was under the Count of Foix, mind you, our regiment had a man nearly your age. A fine shot with a bow! Not unlike you, Jehan. Nothing compared to Joan of Arc, of course, but—”

  Remy caught Jehan stiffening. There was a look on her face that was not irritation this time, but something tightened, drawn inward. Melancholy, he recognized. Perhaps even pain. She kept listening, though, Jehan, fierce as she was, held reverence and sadness for Joan of Arc, though she never admitted why.

  Sir Gaston went on describing campaigns, needing no encouragement whatsoever. Jehan endured it, silent, letting him fill the air with his pleasant arrogance. Sir Gaston was harmless in his bluster, and perhaps his endless stories did serve some purpose, they kept the company entertained and the mood from dipping into dourness.

  Behind them rode the majority of the knights. Remy heard their clamor, the mingling voices of Sir Henri de Montclar and Sir W?adys?aw Grzyma?a as they kept order at the rear. The horses’ hooves created a rhythm beneath them, a steady clopping that matched the roll of the plain around them.

  Eventually, G?d?ll? came into view, a small settlement rising from the flatness like a modest blessing. It was hardly more than a cluster of farmhouses, a chapel, and a few storage huts behind timber fencing. But to travelers, any settlement was a welcome sight.

  As they approached, the villagers grew still. The chatter died. Children stopped their games and women froze where they bent over washbasins as old men straightened, gripping their staffs. Foreign knights, well-armed and numerous, were not common guests. Caution stiffened every face.

  The Bailiff arrived promptly, riding with two anxious men. His nervousness was so tangible that Remy could see the bob of his adam’s apple even from horseback. The man's left hand shook on the reins.

  Remy approached him with deliberate calm. In Hungarian he spoke, “We come in peace. We are travelers, on our way to Jerusalem. We will stay here. Tell your master, your lord, that the Company of the Cross-Borne Star has visited. Here are our passes and letters from Archbishop Pálóczi Gy?rg.”

  The Bailiff’s eyes widened at the mention of the Archbishop. The letters were accepted with trembling eagerness, and after a brief reading his entire posture changed. From fear to relief, from caution to an almost clumsy hospitality.

  “Distinguished… guests,” the Bailiff stammered. “Of course, of course, honored sirs. You are welcome here. Our homes—”

  Remy raised a hand politely. “We will not intrude. We will rest outside your village. It is no trouble.”

  But the Bailiff insisted. They did not accept. Remy did not wish his company to impose upon unwilling hosts. A camp was set on the outskirts, near a clear patch of earth by a shallow hill. The horses were tethered, armor loosened, and supplies unloaded. A fire was struck by the laborers Remy had reluctantly allowed to join them.

  Remy purchased food and drink from the village, a barrel of thin ale, several baskets of rye loaves, smoked meat, a wheel of modest cheese. When the company gathered, cups raised, he stood upon a barrel and let the firelight carve his features.

  “The road is long,” he began, voice carrying with practiced steadiness, “and I guarantee that it will be filled with hardship.” The knights shifted, listening. The squires stood at attention. The laborers looked on with a mix of awe and uncertainty. “Many of you have heard of me by now, spoken with me or seen my actions. So I'll tell you this! Do not fear.”

  He held up his cup.

  “If we do meet enemies on the road, so long as you are alive and breathing, I will see you stand again. If God wills it, we shall have a peaceful ride.”

  He paused, allowing the fire’s pop and crackle to fill the silence briefly.

  “But I have heard news.” His voice dropped slightly, and the men leaned closer. “Csanád County. The southern Szeged hinterland. The Bács and Szerém counties. And the Kiskun region between Pest and Kecskemé,” Remy listed. “Raids plague these frontier lands. The lower Tisza and Maros suffer. Ottoman ak?nc? rides.”

  The company stiffened, some exchanging glances. The word “ak?nc?” carried weight as they were raiders, light cavalry, known for their ruthless speed and precision.

  “So I ask you to be vigilant and wary. But also to have strength. We are pilgrims. We do not fight unless we must. But—”

  He slammed the cup down on the barrel. The sound rang like steel striking steel.

  “If they ask for it, they will taste our steel!”

  The cheer that rose from the company shook the stillness of G?d?ll?’s quiet fields. Even the villagers, watching from afar, probably could not help but smile at the sound.

  Remy stepped down. The knights clapped shoulders, exchanged jests, lifted their cups. The fire warmed their spirits. Jehan stood beside him, giving him an approving nod. Sir Gaston slapped him on the back with the enthusiasm of a man too used to thriving in war and prayer alike.

  But after the smile, Remy watched them, wondering how many would stand with him in Jerusalem.