Read Chapter 10: The Stream's Secret

The stream ran cold against his calves, numbing his boots as he followed the churned bank north. Thomas kept his eyes down, reading the mud the way his father had taught him to read a deer trail—pressure points, drag marks, the scuff of a heel where someone had slipped. Two sets of boots, he’d said. Now he found a third. Smaller. Dragging.

Will.

The boy’s heels had dug furrows in the soft earth, toes pointing backward. Someone had carried him by the shoulders. Thomas pushed on, the water murmuring past his knees, and the forest pressed in dark and close on either side. Dawn was a pale smear above the treeline, not yet light enough to burn off the mist that hung over the stream. The army marched within the hour. He had less than that.

He rounded a bend where an alder had fallen half into the water, its roots clutching a shelf of bank like fingers. And there—tucked under the root mass, covered with cut branches and bracken—he saw the careful arrangement of broken greenery that was no accident. A cache.

Thomas waded to the bank, drew his knife, and lifted the branches one by one. Beneath them lay a shallow pit lined with oiled cloth. Inside, a dozen sheaves of arrows. New shafts. New heads. Fletching of gray goose feather, bound with twine that gleamed faintly in the half-light—fresh wax. He pulled one free and held it up, turning it in his fingers.

The fletching was split at the base. Every feather. A tiny cut where the binding would hide it, invisible to a glance, fatal at two hundred yards. The arrow would fly true for forty feet, then the feather would peel and the shaft would wobble, lose its spin, drop short or veer wide. He’d seen it done to crows as a boy, and it was the same devil’s work here. Whoever had made these knew archery—knew it well enough to kill with a whisper instead of a blade.

He tucked the arrow into his belt and moved to dig deeper in the cache, hoping for names, for letters, for anything. His hand closed on cloth.

A torn strip of wool. Brown. The color of a page’s tunic—the same dun-brown cloth Will had worn when he’d helped Thomas carry the arrow carts at midday. The edge was ragged, stained with something dark. Blood, dried and flaking. Thomas pressed it between his fingers and felt the weight of it. He did not speak the boy’s name. He didn’t have to.

Voices. Low, carrying through the mist. Coming downstream.

Thomas shoved the cloth into his jerkin, kicked the branches back over the cache, and dropped to his belly in the reeds at the stream’s edge. Water closed over his shoulders, cold as a grave. He pressed his face into the mud, tilting just enough to keep his mouth clear, and held still.

Two shapes emerged through the mist twenty yards off. One walked with a brisk, familiar stride—the neat, compact step of a squire who had learned to move through camp without drawing attention. Roger. The other man moved with a heavier gait, armored boots crunching on the stones, and as he came into view Thomas saw the glint of a sallet and the dark curve of a breastplate. French. The man stopped at the fallen alder, arms folded.

Roger stepped past him, toward the cache. “It’s here.”

“It should be deeper in the wood.” The Frenchman’s accent was thick, his English clipped and angry. “You said hidden.”

“Hidden means close to where it’s needed.” Roger knelt, pulled back a branch, and checked the oiled cloth beneath. “The archers draw from the carts at dawn. The carts roll past this bend. A man with a knife in the night—no one would think to look here.” He stood. “It’s secure.”

“The arrows must fire true enough to pass inspection and fail in battle. You are certain the cut is correct?”

“I made it myself,” Roger said. “Every feather. I know what I’m doing.”

Thomas froze. He knew that voice. Not Roger’s usual cadence, the careful deference he’d used at Greyhill’s side, but the tone underneath—the one he’d heard in the darkness near the arrow carts two nights ago. A low voice, almost casual, muttering to a companion as they worked by lantern light. “Two more shafts and we’re done.” He’d thought it was a carter checking his load. Now he knew. It had been Roger. Or rather, the man wearing Roger’s face.

The Frenchman shifted, weight creaking in his armor. “The payment is half now, half when the battle is done. The Viscount does not pay for failure.”

“I’m not failing.” Roger’s voice sharpened. “The boy is handled. The archer is still loose. He’s been sniffing around the camp all night—Greyhill’s pet, the one from Harfleur. He’s too close. We need to silence him.”

“Then silence him.” The Frenchman’s hand dropped to his sword hilt. “Do not bring your problems to me. I am here for one purpose. When the English march, they march into the field prepared by the Viscount. The ground, the rain, the arrows—all will turn against them. Your only task is to keep the sabotage secret until the battle joins.”

“He has Greyhill’s ring. He passed through the watch. He was taken before the Duke and walked away.” Roger spat. “I saw him coming out of York’s pavilion. The Duke let him go. The man has more lives than a cat.”

“Then take one of them.” The Frenchman turned, boots grinding on the stones. “Quietly. Tonight. Before the archers form their line. If he speaks to anyone else, the plot unravels and you will answer to Faulquemont, not to me.”

Thomas felt the name land in his chest like a stone. Faulquemont. The same name hidden in Jean’s letter. Not a place, then—a man. The Frenchman’s threat was not abstract. It was a chain of command, and Thomas now stood beneath its shadow.

Roger laughed—a short, ugly sound. “He’s already marked. A few of York’s men know his face. If he comes near the carts again, I’ll have him taken as a French spy. No one will question it. The Duke thinks he’s a coward already.”

The Frenchman nodded. “See that it’s done.” He stepped back toward the treeline, then paused. “And the boy. You handled him?”

Roger wiped his hands on his tunic, a gesture that seemed almost absent. “He’s sitting at the bottom of a quarry pool, a stone tied to his feet. No one will find him before the harvest.”

Thomas’s blood went cold. He pressed his face deeper into the reeds, fighting the urge to rise, to sprint at them both with his knife drawn. But he had no blade that could reach them across twenty yards of open water, no bow in his hands, no way to take them both in the half-dark before one raised an alarm. He forced himself to lie still, to breathe through his nose in shallow, silent pulls.

Roger turned to follow the Frenchman, then stopped. He looked back at the stream, eyes scanning the reeds. Thomas held his breath. The water moved past his ears. A bird called somewhere in the wood.

Roger’s gaze lingered a moment longer, then he shook his head and walked on, vanishing into the mist with the Frenchman.

Thomas counted to fifty before he moved, lifting his head from the mud and dragging himself onto the bank. His hands were shaking—not from cold, though the chill had settled deep in his bones. Will was dead. The boy was dead, sunk in a quarry with a stone at his feet, silenced for what he’d seen. And the man who had killed him wore the face of Greyhill’s squire, moved freely through the English camp, and now had orders to kill Thomas before dawn.

He pulled the torn cloth from his jerkin and pressed it once against his chest, a promise he could not speak aloud. Then he turned and began the long, careful walk back toward the camp, keeping to the tree line, watching every shadow.