Read Chapter 5: The King's Men

Captain Arnaud de Châtillon wore polished plate over velvet and spoke of France as if the kingdom were a woman he had personally promised to defend.

He also cheated soldiers of pay with great elegance.

“Your service begins today,” he told Hugues.

“Our service began yesterday when we escorted your clerk through bandit country.”

“That was courtesy.”

“Courtesy costs six livres.”

Arnaud smiled. “Then you are too courteous.”

Martin disliked him immediately.

The tax mission took them through villages north of Arras. Royal demands had increased because garrisons needed wages. Local lords demanded their own levies. Church tithes remained. English raids had destroyed winter stores. Yet the orders assumed every household possessed hidden surplus.

At the first village, there was none.

At the second, the reeve opened a barn containing six sacks of rye and begged them not to take seed grain.

Arnaud's clerk marked all six as taxable.

Hugues objected.

“The order says surplus.”

“The Crown determines surplus.”

“The Crown is not planting this field.”

The clerk summoned two men-at-arms.

Martin placed his crossbow on his shoulder, not threateningly but visibly. The Grey Hounds shifted behind Hugues.

The clerk looked at them and reconsidered.

Four sacks were taken.

That night Hugues said, “We are leaving after this contract.”

“We have thirty days left,” Martin replied.

“We will find a reason.”

The reason found them first.

On the twelfth day, the company was ordered to escort confiscated grain to a fortified storehouse belonging to Lord Géraud de Vaux—the same name given by the dead man's daughter outside Lillers.

The storehouse stood behind thick walls and a dry moat. Martin counted forty guards, too many for a private granary. Wagons from several directions waited to enter.

He saw sacks stamped with marks from English-controlled territory.

Inside the yard, French tax grain was unloaded beside English purchase grain.

No one seemed troubled by the contradiction.

Martin walked among the carts, pretending to inspect his crossbow string. He copied merchant marks into the dust with his boot and memorised names painted on wagon boards.

One cart bore Bellon's device.

The merchant who had hired them months before had joined the network—or been swallowed by it.

Then Martin saw something worse.

In a side shed lay sacks blackened by damp. Rats had torn several open. Grain spilled across the floor, moulding where it fell.

A guard kicked it aside.

Outside the walls, people starved.

Inside, food rotted because holding it longer might raise the price.

Martin stood very still.

A voice behind him said, “You are in the wrong shed.”

He turned to find a young knight in a blue surcoat. Not heavily armed, but confident.

“I followed a rat,” Martin said.

“Then follow it back out.”

The knight's gaze dropped to Martin's crossbow, then returned to his face.

“Who are you?”

“Martin Vautrin. Grey Hounds.”

Recognition flickered.

“Ah. Brachet's dogs.”

“You know us?”

“Lord Marconne knows everyone who interferes with his roads.”

The knight smiled.

It was not a threat delivered in anger. That made it worse.

Martin returned to Hugues and told him everything.

That evening, Hugues gathered the company.

“We finish no contract,” he said. “We ride tonight.”

Several men protested. Pay was due in eighteen days.

Hugues threw a small sack of mouldy wheat into the fire.

The grain hissed and smoked.

“Any man who wishes to stay may stay. Understand what you are guarding first.”

Nobody stayed.

They left before midnight.

At dawn, twenty horsemen followed them from the direction of the storehouse.

Captain Arnaud's colours flew above the riders.

But the knight leading them wore Lord Marconne's badge.

During their brief French service, Martin watched Captain Arnaud perform the rituals of nobility with remarkable precision. He heard Mass before riding, addressed knights by rank, and never sat while a superior stood. Yet his camp followers went unpaid and his quartermaster bought bread through agents tied to Marconne.

The contradiction bothered Martin because Arnaud did not seem consciously corrupt. He inhabited a structure in which certain transactions were simply invisible to honour. A noble might be shamed for retreating too early, but not for signing a supply order whose inflated cost emptied ten villages.

One evening Martin asked him directly why confiscated grain went to private storehouses.

“Because the Crown lacks secure barns,” Arnaud replied.

“Then why not abbeys?”

“Some abbeys are unreliable.”

“Town granaries?”

“Politics.”

“Marconne?”

“Efficient.”

There it was: the word that excused everything.

Arnaud noticed Martin's expression. “You think war can be run like a village market.”

“I think a village market knows when bread is missing.”

“Armies require scale.”

“And scale requires men like Marconne?”

Arnaud did not answer.

Years later, when he became one of Martin's uneasy allies, Arnaud admitted that conversation had angered him because the crossbowman had asked a question his social rank did not permit. Only later had he realised rank had nothing to do with the answer.

At the time, Martin merely returned to camp and added another name to the hunger book.