Read Chapter 21: The Battle of Three Banners

The confrontation came near the village of Crécy-en-Ponthieu, where older men still pointed to fields and told stories of the great battle fourteen years before.

Martin wanted no battle there.

History did not care.

A Concord convoy of two hundred wagons moved west under armed escort. The grain had been seized under harvest contracts and was bound for coastal depots.

Martin intended to stop it at a narrow ridge, negotiate release of disputed loads, and withdraw.

Instead, a French force arrived from the south with orders to arrest him.

An English raiding party appeared from the northwest, having learned of the grain.

Three armed groups faced each other beneath three kinds of banner.

The convoy guards formed a circle around the wagons.

The French captain demanded Martin surrender.

The English captain demanded the French move aside.

The Concord factor demanded everyone respect private property.

Will Hobb said, “At last, a man with courage.”

Then somebody fired.

No one ever discovered who.

The battle unfolded in fragments.

French cavalry charged the English. English archers took position behind hedges. Concord guards tried to move wagons off the road. Martin ordered the Free Hounds to seize the ridge and not advance.

“Let them exhaust each other!” Jehan shouted.

Martin agreed.

Then he saw villagers trapped between the wagons and a ditch.

Concord guards were forcing them forward as human shields.

Martin changed orders.

Free Hound crossbowmen fired into the guard line. Spearmen advanced behind pavises. Ysabeau led wagoners through a gap and pulled civilians clear.

The French captain, seeing Martin move, assumed he was attacking the convoy on behalf of England and turned men toward him.

Greybourne was not present, but several English soldiers recognised the broken-chain badge and hesitated.

That hesitation saved Martin.

He rode between the lines without helmet, shouting in French and English.

“The grain is not worth dying for them!”

A French knight tried to strike him and was knocked from the saddle by Jehan.

The battlefield became chaos.

Martin did the only thing he could think of.

He ordered the grain opened.

Free Hounds cut wagon ropes and threw sacks into the road. Villagers, soldiers, and camp followers stared.

“Take what you can carry!” Martin shouted.

The convoy ceased to be a strategic prize.

It became thousands of individual sacks disappearing in every direction.

Men who had been fighting over ownership began dragging food away.

The Concord factor screamed himself hoarse.

Within an hour, the battle dissolved.

The French withdrew with prisoners. The English rode off with grain. Villagers vanished along lanes carrying sacks on carts, shoulders, and backs.

The Free Hounds held the ridge.

They had lost nineteen men.

Martin stood among bodies and spilled wheat.

This did not feel like victory.

A dying French soldier asked him for water.

Martin knelt and gave it.

The man looked at the broken-chain badge.

“Are you English?”

“No.”

“French?”

“Yes.”

“Then why…”

He died before finishing.

Martin knew the question.

Why fight Frenchmen if you are French?

Because some lines mattered more than banners.

He wished the answer felt cleaner.

After the Battle of Three Banners, Martin ordered the dead separated only by names, not allegiance. French, English, Concord guard, Free Hound—each body received whatever identification could be found and was buried or returned accordingly.

Some men objected.

“They would not do the same for us,” a spearman said.

“Then we are fortunate not to be them.”

The answer sounded more noble than Martin felt. In truth, he was exhausted by categories that became meaningless once armour was removed.

He found one Concord guard carrying a child's carved horse in his pouch. A French soldier had a letter from a wife asking for salt. An English archer wore a saint's medal identical to one Martin's mother had owned.

None of this erased responsibility. Men still chose whom to serve and what orders to obey. But the objects made hatred difficult to keep tidy.

Martin wrote to families when he could. Brother Matthieu handled most of the letters because Martin's hand was poor and his sentences worse.

The battle also damaged his reputation among French nobles. Songs now called him the man of no banner. Some meant it as praise. Others as accusation.

Martin accepted the name more readily than hero.

A banner told a soldier where to stand.

It did not always tell him what was right.