Read Chapter 26: The Prior's Account

Rochefort surrendered at sunset.

He came down the tower steps wearing armour but no helmet. His sword was carried point-first by a servant.

Martin met him in the yard.

Around them, former Concord mercenaries were being disarmed and fed.

“You bought them,” Rochefort said.

“I offered them a choice.”

“With money.”

“With food first.”

Rochefort looked toward the market fires beyond the wall.

“A distinction for poets.”

“No. Hungry men know it.”

Inside the manor, they found the Concord treasury: chests of coin, debt instruments, harvest contracts, letters of credit, and estate claims. Enough paper to bind half of Artois.

Matthieu discovered a final ledger in Rochefort's private chamber.

The Prior's Account.

It recorded distributions to members over six years.

The numbers stunned even Marconne.

“God,” he whispered.

Martin looked at him. “You did not know?”

“I knew my share.”

“Apparently not his.”

Rochefort had skimmed from the Concord itself, using shell partnerships and false transport costs to build a personal fortune.

This mattered because greed divided men more efficiently than morality.

Marconne began naming names immediately.

Other captured clerks did the same.

Rochefort watched with contempt.

“You think this ends because my partners turn on me?”

“No.”

“Then you understand nothing.”

“I understand enough.”

Rochefort stepped closer.

“Another Concord will come. Another merchant will store grain. Another lord will buy officials. Another captain will discover that starving soldiers obey anyone who feeds them.”

Martin did not disagree.

“That is why we will not solve this by hanging you.”

For the first time, Rochefort looked uncertain.

Martin had spent months thinking about what victory meant. Killing a noble would satisfy many people and change little. Confiscating all Concord wealth would make the Free Hounds rich and perhaps turn them into the next Concord.

Instead, the coalition imposed terms.

Major grain stores would be inventoried publicly for three years. Participating towns and mills would publish prices. Seized debt contracts based on coercive harvest quotas would be suspended and reviewed. A portion of Concord coin would compensate villages and fund road protection. No single military company would control depots.

It was imperfect.

Enforcement depended on people who could be bribed later.

But it changed information, access, and power enough to matter.

Rochefort listened.

“You are building institutions.”

“I am repairing roads.”

“Same disease.”

“What happens to you,” Martin said, “will be decided by courts that now have copies of your accounts.”

Rochefort laughed.

“Then I may live comfortably.”

“Perhaps.”

That was the bitter truth.

A man with Rochefort's birth and connections might escape death.

Martin could hang him now.

He chose not to become the court merely because courts were flawed.

Rochefort was transferred under joint guard to French authorities in Amiens, with copies of the evidence sent to English and Flemish recipients simultaneously.

Marconne negotiated reduced punishment in exchange for testimony and restitution.

Martin disliked it.

Matthieu reminded him, “Justice and victory are cousins, not twins.”

Jehan was buried near the granary fortress with twelve Free Hounds and seven militia fighters.

Will Hobb survived and complained that being shot had damaged his singing voice.

Nobody noticed a difference.

The captured treasury created temptation immediately. Free Hound soldiers had gone months on reduced pay. Militia leaders wanted compensation. Towns demanded reimbursement for supplies. Every ally had a plausible claim, and every claim together exceeded the coin in Rochefort's chests.

Will Hobb looked at the silver and said, “We could become respectable.”

“No amount is sufficient for that,” Ysabeau replied.

Martin ordered the treasury sealed by representatives from five groups: Free Hounds, Millers' League, town guilds, clergy, and military officers. No chest could be opened without three seals present.

Some of his own men were furious.

“We captured it,” a veteran said. “By right it is prize.”

“By the same right Rochefort called seized harvests his property.”

“We bled for this.”

“So did people who never held swords.”

The argument came close to mutiny. Martin offered every soldier the option to leave with ordinary arrears once the accounts were settled, but refused to divide the treasury as plunder.

That night, someone attempted to break a seal.

The culprit was a young Free Hound who had served only six months. Under company rules, theft from common funds meant double restitution and expulsion. Several older men demanded hanging, arguing the stakes were now too high for leniency.

Martin refused.

“If our rules change whenever the amount grows, then they are not rules.”

The soldier was expelled alive.

Marconne, watching the dispute, said, “You are learning why law is inconvenient.”

“I thought nobles enjoyed law.”

“We enjoy laws that have already been arranged.”

The treasury hearings lasted a month. Restitution went first to villages with documented losses from Concord enforcement, then to road and mill repairs, then to military arrears tied to the coalition. No one was fully satisfied.

Martin considered that a sign the process might be fair.

The more important outcome was not the distribution but the precedent: captured wealth would not automatically become the property of whoever held the strongest sword.

That principle outlived the money.

In the weeks after the fortress fell, Martin visited several villages named in the seized debt papers. He expected celebration. Instead he often found confusion.

One farmer had borrowed from a Concord lender willingly after a flood, used the money to rebuild, and repaid most of it. He did not want his contract cancelled because doing so might invalidate his claim to leased land. Another family had signed under threat and wanted the parchment burned immediately. A widow did not understand the terms at all but knew collectors had taken her ox.

Martin saw how dangerous it would be to declare every Concord agreement fraudulent simply because the network had been corrupt. People had built lives around some of those agreements.

The review councils therefore examined contracts one by one. Coercion, hidden clauses, impossible quotas, and violence could suspend debts. Ordinary loans remained enforceable under revised terms.

The process was slow and frustrating.

“Rochefort would have solved this in an afternoon,” Will Hobb complained.

“Yes,” Martin said. “That was the problem.”

They spent more time arguing over signatures than they had spent taking the fortress.

For Martin, that became the final proof that winning was easier than replacing what had been defeated. An army could break a gate in an hour. Building rules that ordinary people would accept required patience, records, witnesses, and the willingness to hear cases that contradicted the story everyone wanted to tell about victory.

He had begun the war believing power meant the ability to force an answer.

He ended it respecting the ability to keep a question open long enough for weaker people to speak.