Baldwin at Montgisard.

All those strategy games they’d played as children—valiant Christian and Saracen knights they could bring to life with spare scraps of fabric, wooden swords, and their limitless imagination—it has been brought to life in the form of her brother charging across those open, ceaseless desert plains, barrelling into the side of her father’s army. Like a puncture wound, the body of the army begins to crumble—and Atte watches as her brother and his horse are engulfed by the great sea of Saracen men.

The guards within the city walls scramble to spread the news, to gather as many men as they can to join the King’s effort, and the Lady Atefeh of Jerusalem, the Princess of Egypt and Syria, watches for her sixteen-year-old brother in the fray, praying for his victory and health.

And he is victorious. At sixteen, he routs the Sultan of Egypt and Syria’s entire army, and nearly dispatches her father himself.

…The victorious warrior; boy King; the mirage of salvation bathed in blood—Atte is sure the sheer euphoria of triumph and victory alone will carry him to a hundred, despite his failing health.

Part of the From Eden series.