Read Chapter 7: The Captain's Last Rule

Hugues Brachet died in a stable because the abbey infirmary was full of starving children.

He approved of the arrangement.

“Children complain less than soldiers,” he muttered when Martin suggested moving him.

By then his skin was grey. The wound smelled sweet and rotten. The abbey's surgeon had cut away dead flesh, burned the edges with iron, and prayed. Nothing helped.

The Grey Hounds waited outside the stable in uneasy silence.

Hugues called Martin in near sunset.

“You are captain.”

“No.”

“That is why you may survive it.”

“There are older men.”

“Older men who are good at being older.”

“Ysabeau has more sense.”

“She does. She also knows nobody in this company will obey a woman when frightened, which proves she has more sense.”

From the doorway, Ysabeau said, “I heard that.”

“Good.”

Hugues coughed until blood appeared on his lips.

Martin sat beside him.

“I do not want your company.”

“It is not mine. That is the first rule.”

“You never told me there were rules.”

“I was saving them for when you became annoying enough to need them.”

Hugues lifted three fingers.

“First: pay men when you promise, even if you must sell your horse. Second: never burn what you may need to eat next month. Third…”

His hand trembled.

Martin leaned closer.

“Third?”

“Know who profits when everyone else is losing.”

He died after midnight.

They buried him beneath an apple tree because the monks refused to bury a mercenary captain inside consecrated ground. Martin almost argued, then decided Hugues would have found the dispute tedious.

The next morning, the company gathered.

Thirty-eight remained.

Jehan Leclerc, the senior sergeant, wanted to disband. The English deserters proposed returning to Calais. A Breton named Alain suggested robbing Marconne's next grain convoy and retiring.

Everyone looked at Martin.

He disliked all of them for it.

“We have no contract,” he said.

“We have no captain,” Jehan replied.

“You have me until we reach somewhere safe.”

“Where is safe?”

Nobody answered.

Martin took a breath.

“Then we make something safer than we have.”

He proposed three rules drawn from Hugues and one of his own. The company would not seize food from villages that could not spare it. It would not serve any employer who required indiscriminate burning. Pay shares would be written and witnessed. Any member could leave after a contract without penalty.

Alain laughed. “You are making laws.”

“No. I am making prices. If someone wants us to behave like animals, he pays by not having us.”

“What if no one hires us?”

“Then we find work worth doing.”

Ysabeau folded her arms. “And what is this company called now?”

Martin glanced toward Hugues's grave.

“Grey Hounds.”

She shook her head.

“That was his name for us.”

“Then choose another.”

A young spearman said, “Free Lances?”

Half the company groaned.

An English archer suggested “The Honest Bastards,” which received more support.

In the end they chose nothing.

For the next month they escorted abbey grain, protected market roads, and accepted payment partly in coin and partly in food. Their reputation spread faster than Martin liked. Peasants began calling them les francs chiens—the Free Hounds.

The name stuck.

So did the consequences.

A proclamation arrived from Arras naming Martin Vautrin and his companions outlaws guilty of theft, desertion, and rebellion against lawful authority.

The same week, an English officer from Calais sent an offer.

Sir Thomas Greybourne wanted to hire them again.

The target was a French-held castle.

The castle, Martin learned, belonged to Eustache de Marconne.

After the burial, Martin spent his first night as captain awake beside the company chest. The Grey Hounds owned less silver than he had imagined. Hugues had often paid wounded men from his own share and disguised the shortage through future earnings. His generosity had been another form of debt.

Ysabeau found Martin counting coins for the third time.

“They will not multiply.”

“I am checking.”

“You are panicking with arithmetic.”

He looked up. “Can we pay everyone?”

“For twelve days.”

“And after?”

“Earn something.”

The simplicity offended him because it was true.

The next day, when he presented the rules, Martin added a requirement Hugues had never formalised: every contract would be read aloud before acceptance. Many men could not read. Too often captains used that ignorance to change terms later.

Jehan objected that employers would dislike it.

“Then employers can hire someone easier to cheat.”

That sentence won more loyalty than Martin expected.

The Free Hounds' first weeks under him were not heroic. They repaired harness, negotiated prices for onions, buried a mule, and spent two days searching for three missing bolts of wool that turned out to be under Ysabeau's own wagon cover. Martin discovered that command consisted largely of solving problems too small for songs and too important to ignore.

When the outlaw proclamation arrived, several men expected him to burn it.

Instead he posted it beside the rules.

“Why?” Will Hobb asked.

“So everyone knows what we are accused of.”

“And if it is lies?”

“Then we should know those too.”

The paper remained there until rain destroyed it.

Martin's first real test as captain came from a quarrel over a wounded horse. One of the Flemish pikemen claimed the animal as compensation for unpaid wages. Ysabeau insisted it belonged to the company because company coin had purchased it. The argument drew half the camp.

Under Raoul de Beaulieu, the answer would have been simple: the lord owned the horse, the lord decided. Without a lord, ownership had to be explained.

Martin asked who had paid for feed. The company. Who had cared for the animal? The pikeman for most of the winter. What was it worth injured? Less than the wages owed.

He ruled that the pikeman could take the horse if he accepted its assessed value against his share and paid the company any difference after the next contract.

Nobody was entirely satisfied.

Hugues, had he lived, would have called that a good ruling.

The incident also taught Martin why written shares mattered. A company without records gradually turned every object into an argument. A cloak, saddle, captured knife, or bag of flour could split men who had survived battle together.

Brother Matthieu began copying the pay rolls more carefully. Ysabeau marked common property with a broken-link symbol before the company had even formally adopted the badge. Years later, veterans would joke that their famous emblem began because two men nearly killed each other over a lame mare.

Martin never corrected them. Legends improved when their origins stayed embarrassing.