Read Chapter 23: Saint-Bertin's Night

Rain covered their approach.

The estate consisted of a chapel, guesthouse, barns, and a fortified manor used by abbey officials. Concord guards occupied the outer yard. Martin counted nearly one hundred—far more than expected.

Marconne had been right.

It was a trap.

Martin changed the plan.

Rather than attack, he sent six men disguised as grain carters through the front gate.

Among them was Ysabeau.

“You are not going,” Martin said when she volunteered.

“Then find another quartermaster who knows merchant seals and can lie to clerks.”

“I can lie.”

“You lie like a crossbow. Effective but obvious.”

She went.

For two hours Martin waited in wet woodland while distant bells marked the night.

Then a barn caught fire.

That was not the signal.

Martin swore.

Men shouted inside the estate. The gate opened. Guards ran toward the flames.

A second fire appeared in the opposite barn.

Then three short whistles sounded from the wall.

The signal.

Free Hounds moved.

They scaled the rear wall, overwhelmed scattered guards, and reached the guesthouse. Inside, nobles and merchants were already fleeing through a covered passage toward the manor.

Martin saw Rochefort at the far end.

The count saw him too.

Neither stopped.

The real objective was the council chamber.

They found chests burning in the hearth.

Matthieu threw water over the flames while men dragged parchments free. Many were destroyed. Enough survived.

Membership lists.

Shared investment accounts.

Instructions to bribe officers.

And one extraordinary document: a proposed post-truce compact assigning regions of northern France to different Concord members for grain purchase, milling, transport, and credit.

It was not merely a cartel.

It was a private map of economic rule.

Ysabeau appeared with soot on her face.

“You started the fires?” Martin asked.

“No. Someone else did.”

“Who?”

A scream came from the courtyard.

They ran outside.

Concord guards were fighting one another.

Marconne stood near the gate with a sword in his hand.

Martin stared.

“You brought him?”

Ysabeau shrugged. “He knew passwords.”

Marconne had arrived hidden in a wagon and contacted guards loyal to his household. When Rochefort ordered the records burned, Marconne's men rebelled.

“You said competition,” Martin shouted over the fighting.

Marconne parried a blow. “I am competitive!”

Rochefort escaped through the eastern orchard with perhaps thirty riders.

The Free Hounds withdrew before dawn carrying two chests of documents.

They had achieved what Martin wanted.

Then Greybourne's messenger reached them.

English patrols north of the estate had been attacked by a larger force. Greybourne was wounded and captured.

A French messenger arrived an hour later.

Arnaud de Châtillon had been arrested by his own superiors for exceeding authority.

Rochefort had anticipated the alliance.

He could not prevent the raid.

So he cut away Martin's allies.

By noon, proclamations spread claiming brigands had attacked Church property, burned abbey grain, kidnapped nobles, and stolen sacred treasure.

The truth had documents.

Rochefort had institutions.

Martin understood that the final battle would not be won by finding more evidence.

Evidence had to reach people faster than power could bury it.

The retreat from Saint-Bertin's estate took the Free Hounds through country that had already heard three different versions of what happened. At one village they were welcomed as men who had exposed corrupt lords. At the next, the priest refused them water because he had been told they burned a chapel and stole a reliquary. By dusk, Martin understood Rochefort's advantage with a clarity sharper than any ledger: truth travelled on feet, authority travelled on seals.

A frightened abbey servant caught during the raid eventually explained the fires. Rochefort's own clerk had ordered them set. The plan had been to destroy selected records, blame the Free Hounds for sacrilege, and preserve the documents that kept other Concord members dependent on him. Marconne's intervention disrupted the scheme, but enough smoke and confusion remained to support the accusation.

“Will anyone believe the servant?” Martin asked Matthieu.

“Those who already doubt Rochefort might.”

“That is not enough.”

“No. Which is why we need records copied by people who have no reason to love us.”

They stopped at a small priory whose superior had once denounced mercenaries from the pulpit. Martin gave him one chest of documents anyway.

“Read them,” he said. “If they are false, say so publicly. If they are true, copy them.”

The prior looked suspicious. “Why trust me?”

“I do not.”

That answer earned them a place in the barn.

Two days later the prior sent three authenticated copies toward separate towns.

The episode changed Martin's strategy. Until then, he had tried to convince people that the Free Hounds were trustworthy. Now he saw that trust in a single company could become another monopoly. Better to create evidence that survived disbelief in him personally.

The idea was uncomfortable. Every captain wanted his word to matter. Martin began to prefer systems that still worked when his word did not.

On the road back to Chainbreak, he rode beside Marconne.

“You are becoming less useful to yourself,” the nobleman observed.

“What does that mean?”

“You keep building arrangements that do not require you.”

“That is the point.”

Marconne shook his head. “No lord would say that.”

Martin looked at the broken-chain badge on the men ahead.

“Good.”

The next morning, news reached them that Greybourne's captors intended to sell him to a higher bidder and that Arnaud's arrest had been ordered by an official named in the Concord accounts. Rochefort was closing every door he could.

Martin no longer intended to fight through doors one at a time.

He intended to remove the hinges.