JUST AS IT HAD HAPPENED weeks before when we marched on Treille, at every village we came to, every crossroad, people joined our ranks. Our fame had spread, and it was embarrassing. Certainly it was humbling.

Farmers in their fields, carpenters, goatherds with their flocks, ran to their fences to see a lord like Baldwin bound behind a fool.

How can you continue on? people asked in wonder. Stephen has damned your very souls.

He might as well, we called back, since that's all we have left.

Once again I marched at the front in my tattered jester's suit, carrying the holy lance. But this time the army was properly outfitted. We had real swords and newly minted shields taken from Baldwin's men and painted in the green-and-red checkerboard that had become our crest. We also had crossbows and catapults to mount a siege, oxen and stores of food to sustain an entire army.

You cannot take Bord, some mocked us. A thousand men could not take Bord.

We could not takeTreille , either, Odo replied huffily.

We trust the lance, Alphonse would say. It is truer than any b-bishop's judgment.

New recruits fell constantly into line. I'll come.This is a new world if a lord is dragged by a fool! Young and old knelt before the lance and fell in.

Yet even as we marched, I knew this new battle would not be as easy as the last. Stephen would never let our ragtag army approach without a fight. He had a much larger and fiercer army than Baldwin. Better trained. He himself was known to be a formidable fighter.

And to be sure,I was no general. The only military skills I had were those I had picked up in the Crusade. Nor did Georges, or Odo, or any of my other men have any tactical training. They were farmers and woodsmen. An old worry began to consume me: that I could be leading innocent men, who believed in my call, to slaughter.

I needed a leader, but where could I get one?

The third night out, I wandered over to where Baldwin and his men were being held. The duke glared at me belligerently. I merely shook my head and laughed.

I knelt beside his chatelain, Daniel Gui. He was handsome and held himself wit............