Read Chapter 12: The Mill Plan

The mill sat a hundred yards off the track, its wheel silent and moss-eaten, a black tooth against the grey pre-dawn. Thomas circled it once, low and quick, arrows nocked. No smoke from the chimney. No horses tethered. The door hung crooked on its hinges, and the smell of rotting grain rolled out thick as a shroud.

He slipped inside and went straight for the ladder to the loft. The rungs groaned under his weight, but the sound was nothing against the creak of the mill's old bones. He settled himself in the rafters above the main floor, where the shadows pooled thick and the beams were broad enough to hide a man’s outline. Then he waited.

His thighs ached from the march, from the crouched runs through the marsh, from the hours spent watching Roger’s tent from behind a baggage cart. Jack had taken his place at the watch rotation, given him a nod and a leather flask of something strong. Thomas had drunk it in three swallows and felt the warmth spread thin against the night’s chill. It was not enough. It was never enough.

The door scraped open below. Thomas went still, his hand closing around the grip of his bow.

Roger entered first, moving with the easy confidence of a man who owned the ground he walked on. The impostor’s squire’s tunic was gone, replaced by a plain dark jerkin that would not catch lamplight or memory. Behind him came a second man—shorter, broad-shouldered, walking with the careful step of someone who did not trust the floorboards.

The Frenchman. Jean, Roger called him, but the name sat wrong on the man. He moved like a knight, not a prisoner. His hands were clean, uncalloused at the palms. The cut of his coat was fine beneath the mud smeared across its hem.

Roger struck a flint to a lantern. The flame caught, yellow and small, and threw their faces into hard relief.

“We should not be here,” Roger said. He set the lantern on the millstone and turned, arms crossed. “The archer is still loose. The one who took the bill of lading. He saw me at the Viscount’s warehouse. He knows my face.”

Jean waved a hand, dismissive. “He knows a page’s face. He does not know the name beneath it. And he will not find us here.”

“He found Voss.”

“Voss was a merchant. Merchants talk. Knights—we hold our tongues until it suits us.” Jean leaned against the wall, his arms folded. The lamplight caught the pommel of a sword half-hidden beneath his cloak. A good sword, English-forged, but the man wore it like a Frenchman. Thomas had seen enough of both to know the difference. “The arrows are done. Ten full sheaves, buried where they will be found by the quartermaster’s own detail. The damage will not be visible until the strings are drawn. By then, your archers will be dead in the mud or running for the trees.”

“That was the plan before. Now there is more.” Roger’s voice dropped. “The Viscount’s men reached me at noon. The Duke marches within the hour. The attack comes with first light.”

“I know the plan.”

“Then know the rest of it. The gate on the eastern hedge—the one the patrols pass every half hour. It will be unbarred at the fourth watch. Your men will come through in silence. Not a trumpet, not a shout. If the sentries raise an alarm, we all hang.”

Jean smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “You are nervous, boy.”

“I am not a boy. My father—” Roger’s voice cracked, and he stopped. When he spoke again, it was quieter, harder. “My father burned at Harfleur. Burned in his own house while the English celebrated their victory in the square and drank his wine. You want to know why I do this? That is why. For the gold, yes, and for the reckoning. The English took everything from me. They can march into Agincourt with broken bows and tangled guts for all I care.”

Thomas shifted in the rafters. The wood groaned, a whisper of sound, and both men froze.

Jean’s hand went to his sword. Roger’s eyes tracked to the ceiling.

For a long moment, no one moved. Thomas held his breath, his body pressed flat against the beam. The dust settled around him. A rat skittered somewhere in the dark.

“Old timber,” Jean said, his hand relaxing. “This place has not been worked in years. It creaks like a dying priest.”

Roger’s jaw was tight. “We should finish this somewhere else.”

“We finish it here. The contact comes at the fifth hour. You will give him the gate signal—three taps on the east palisade, then a stone thrown over. He will pass it to the Viscount’s men. After that, you go back to your tent and you wait. You are a squire serving the Duke himself. No one will question you.”

“The Duke,” Roger said, and something ugly curled the corner of his mouth. “The Duke thinks I am the son of a Devon lord who died at Shrewsbury. He showed me his own family’s arms yesterday and told me they would be mine when I earned my spurs. The old fool.”

“The old fool will be dead by midday, and so will his precious longbowmen.”

Thomas’s fingers tightened on the shaft in his hand. He had enough. The bill of lading, the sabotaged arrows, the Frenchman’s own words in his own voice. This would not save the army—not if they marched within the hour and the attack came at first light. But it could still save the Duke. It could still save Jack, and the other archers who trusted him, and the whole miserable enterprise that Greyhill had sent him to protect.

He shifted his weight, preparing to drop. The beam caught the edge of his boot and scraped.

Jean’s head snapped up. His hand moved for the lantern.

“There is a rat in the rafters that has grown very bold,” he said softly. He drew the lantern up, and the light crawled across the beams. Thomas pressed himself back into the shadows, but he knew it was too late. The Frenchman’s eyes had already found a shape where no shape should be.

Roger followed his gaze. His face went pale.

“It’s him.”

Jean did not wait. He swept the lantern in a wide arc, and Thomas saw his chance. He dropped, not onto the floor, but onto the Frenchman himself, his weight driving Jean backward into the millstone. The lantern spun, glass shattering, and the flame died against the damp stone.

Darkness. Thomas rolled, came up with his knife in his hand.

“Run, then,” Roger hissed. “Run, and I will swear you were a ghost. There is nothing you can prove.”

Thomas heard the scrape of boots on the floor, the rustle of a cloak. Jean was moving toward the door. In a moment they would both be gone, and with them the only chance he had to stop the plot before dawn.

“I have the bill of lading,” Thomas said, loud enough to carry. “I have the French knife from the stream. And now I have your faces and your words. You can kill every archer in this army and it will not matter, because you will have hanged by noon the next day.”

Roger laughed, but the sound was thin. “You think anyone will believe an archer over a squire of the Duke’s household?”

Thomas stepped forward in the dark, his voice low and even. “I think the Duke will believe the man who saved his life. And I think you will be in chains when the sun crests that hill—if the Viscount’s men don’t put a blade in your back first. Men who pay for your father’s revenge will not weep at your funeral.”

This time, when Roger spoke, the confidence was gone.

“Take him,” he said to Jean. The word came out sharp as a command.

Thomas heard the sword clear its sheath. He braced, but before the Frenchman could find him in the dark, the mill’s door crashed open and torchlight flooded the room, throwing long monstrous shadows across the stone.

Thomas’s heart stopped.

The Duke’s guard captain stood in the doorway, a dozen men behind him in blue surcoats. The captain’s eyes swept the room and settled on Roger, frozen mid-retreat, guilt written plain across his face.

“Well,” the captain said slowly. “What have we here?”