Read Chapter 9: A Company With Rules

After Licques, Martin refused to remain in English service.

Greybourne called him a fool.

“You have evidence. Stay under my protection.”

“Your protection ends when your commander orders you to arrest me.”

“Probably.”

“Then I prefer uncertainty.”

Greybourne gave him two copies of the seized accounts and kept another.

“If I am killed, find my sister in Canterbury,” he said. “She owes me money and dislikes authority. A useful combination.”

Martin promised nothing.

The Free Hounds rode south with forty-six men and three pack animals carrying documents. Their numbers grew almost by accident. Two Flemish pikemen joined after Licques. Five deserters from a French garrison asked for work. A blacksmith's son followed them for two days until Martin stopped trying to send him home.

At Auxi-le-Château, Martin held the first formal muster.

He wrote the company's rules on parchment with help from Brother Matthieu, the monk who had first hired them for the abbey.

One: no plunder without order.

Two: no taking seed grain.

Three: no violence against clergy, women, children, or unarmed villagers except in immediate defence.

Four: shares of pay fixed before service.

Five: wounded men receive a full share for one month.

Six: any employer may be refused by vote of captains and sergeants.

Seven: any man stealing from another member loses twice the value from his share.

The English archer Will Hobb raised a hand. “What if he steals something worthless?”

“What did you steal?” Ysabeau asked.

“Nothing yet.”

The company laughed.

Martin realised that laughter was part of discipline. Men obeyed rules more easily when they believed the rules belonged to them.

They elected squad leaders. Jehan Leclerc became chief sergeant. Ysabeau took charge of supply, which made her more powerful than anyone except Martin and perhaps more dangerous. Brother Matthieu became clerk, quartermaster's assistant, and reluctant confessor.

The company finally adopted a badge: a grey hound running beneath a broken chain.

“Too noble,” Martin said.

“Too late,” said Ysabeau. “I paid for the cloth.”

Their first independent contract came from three towns that wanted a road kept open between market days. Payment was modest but regular. Martin stationed patrols, repaired a wooden bridge, and hanged no one.

This last fact impressed people.

Soon they were asked to escort pilgrims, salt wagons, cattle, and tax silver. Martin refused the tax silver.

“Money is lighter than grain,” Alain complained.

“And more people chase it.”

Behind the ordinary work, they investigated the grain alliance.

Matthieu compared seals and names. Ysabeau questioned merchants. Will Hobb drank with English soldiers in taverns and remembered more than they did the next morning. Martin met village reeves and millers.

A name emerged for the network: the Concord of Saint-Léger.

It sounded pious.

The Concord had begun as an agreement among noble estates to protect grain shipments from raiders. Over time it became a cartel. Members fixed purchase prices, controlled mills, bribed garrison commanders, and used mercenaries to punish independent traders.

At its centre stood Eustache de Marconne.

But one ledger showed someone above even him: a figure identified only as “the Prior.”

“Churchman?” Martin asked.

Matthieu shook his head. “Not necessarily. A title used within the Concord.”

“Can we trace payments?”

“Some. They pass through Bruges.”

“What does the Prior receive?”

Matthieu pointed to columns.

“A percentage of every major sale.”

Martin stared.

The sums were large enough to buy castles.

“Then Marconne is not the head.”

“No.”

Outside, bells rang for market opening.

Martin stepped to the window and watched farmers bring baskets into the square under Free Hound guard.

He had wanted only to survive after his lord died.

Now fifty men depended on his judgement, three towns depended on his patrols, and somewhere a hidden noble was turning war into a machine for manufacturing hunger.

Martin missed the simplicity of being hungry himself.

The formal muster at Auxi changed how outsiders saw the company. Until then, the Free Hounds were merely Brachet's surviving mercenaries under a new captain. After the rules were witnessed, towns began treating them as a corporate body—a dangerous one, but one capable of agreements that might outlive an individual man.

Brother Matthieu insisted every new contract bear both Martin's mark and that of two elected sergeants.

“You distrust me?” Martin asked.

“Of course.”

“I invited you here.”

“And one day you may become important enough to require restraint.”

Martin almost objected, then remembered Marconne's warehouses.

“Fine.”

The system proved useful sooner than expected. A merchant offered Martin a private payment to alter a contract after the company had approved it. Martin refused. The merchant then approached Jehan, assuming the sergeant could be bought more cheaply. Jehan took the bribe, brought it to Martin, and proposed spending it on boots.

“Is that theft?” Martin asked.

“Accounting,” Jehan said, imitating Hugues.

They returned the money publicly and charged the merchant a higher escort fee.

Stories of the incident spread.

Reputation became a strange currency. Some employers avoided the Free Hounds because they could not be easily manipulated. Others sought them for exactly that reason. Villages opened gates more readily. Armed travellers lowered weapons when they saw the broken chain.

Martin began to understand that rules were not merely moral limits. They were infrastructure, as real as roads or walls. Men could build plans around predictable behaviour.

The Concord's power depended on secrecy and unequal knowledge. The Free Hounds' power, unexpectedly, began to depend on saying in advance what they would and would not do.