Read Chapter 18: Captured

The tent erupted into chaos. Steel rang against steel as the King's guard surged forward, but Ashworth was faster than a man his size had any right to be. He knocked aside the first guard's blade with a brutal backhand, sending the soldier sprawling, and bolted for the tent's rear flap.

“Stop him!” York bellowed.

Thomas moved before thought. He swept a fallen guard's sword from the trampled earth and hurled it—not at Ashworth's back, but at the flap's tie-down peg. The blade thudded into the ground, pinning the canvas shut. Ashworth crashed into the barrier, snarled, and spun to face the converging guards.

Three of them hit him at once. He went down hard beneath their weight, but his hand still clawed for a dagger at his belt. York's boot came down on his wrist. Something cracked. Ashworth screamed.

“Hold him,” York ordered.

The guards hauled Ashworth upright. His face was a mask of blood and hate, his eyes fixed on Thomas with murderous intent. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth—a pierced lung, Thomas guessed, from the first guard's desperate thrust.

“You've killed your own cause, Barrow,” Ashworth rasped. “You think this ends with me?”

The King had not moved from his place at the council table. He watched Ashworth with cold assessment, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of a man who had ordered thousands to their deaths.

“Captain Ashworth. You served my father. You fought at Shrewsbury. And now you sell your oaths to France?”

Ashworth spat blood onto the tent floor. “Your archers will die all the same. The arrow was meant for the archer—and it has flown.”

The words hung in the still air. Thomas felt his blood run cold. *The arrow was meant for the archer.* Not Edward. Not a knight. Not a noble lord who had wronged the captain.

*An archer.*

“Who?” Thomas moved forward, fists clenched. “Who did you send it for?”

Ashworth's lips curled in a bloody grin. “Jean has his own masters. I merely opened the gate and let the wolves in. The whole flock is marked, Fletcher. Every man with a bow and a calloused hand—all of you. The French don't just plan to break your flank. They plan to end your kind. No more archers for England. No more longbows.”

His eyes rolled white. The guards lowered him, but his hand shot out and seized Thomas's wrist with startling strength. “Jean. Maison de Valois. He knows the tunnels. He knows—” Ashworth coughed, and blood sprayed across Thomas's tunic. “He knows where the boy is. Your boy. The one who slipped away.”

Thomas went rigid. “Will. Where is Will?”

Ashworth laughed, a wet gurgling sound. “God's teeth, you really don't know. There was never one signal. There were two. The archer's arrow is meant for any bow that brings down a French knight—but your Will carried something else. A message. The one thing Jean needed most.”

“What message?”

“The signal. For the flank attack.” Ashworth's gaze slid to the King, and something like satisfaction flickered in his dying eyes. “You're too late, Majesty. Your left flank will break before the sun touches your banners.”

His grip went slack. The guards let him fall, and Ashworth's body hit the trampled earth with a dull thud. The tent fell silent, save for the distant sound of the muster horn—the third call, Thomas knew. The army was forming. The march to Agincourt would begin within the hour.

King Henry moved at last. He stepped around the table and stood over Ashworth's body, his face unreadable. Then he turned his cold gaze on Thomas.

“You claimed one traitor. A second has revealed himself.” He gestured at the letter still lying on the table. “But you also claimed a French plan against the left flank. If this man's dying words are true, that plan is already set in motion. Your bowman—the one you seek—was carrying their signal.”

“Will wouldn't betray us,” Thomas said. “He's loyal. If he's missing, they took him.”

“Then they may have taken the signal from him by force. Either way, the danger is the same.”

York stepped forward, his voice low. “My liege, the army needs to march. We cannot hold formation if we delay on this. Every hour costs us ground.”

The King ignored him. He was studying Thomas now, and Thomas felt the weight of that gaze like a physical thing. This was the man who would lead them into a battle he had already chosen to fight. A man who needed no council, only confirmation.

“I will give you until dawn,” the King said. “Until the first light touches the field. Find the boy. Find the second signal. Clear my camp of French spies, or root out whatever else moves in the dark. But when the sun shows itself, we march. With or without you.”

Thomas's throat was dry. “Majesty, the archers need me. If the flank breaks—”

“Then you had best make sure it doesn't, hadn't you?” The King's expression softened by a fraction—almost imperceptible. “You have a bow. You have your oath. And now you have my permission. Go.”

Greyhill stepped forward, pressing a blade into Thomas's hands—the same sword Thomas had carried through the night, retrieved from the chaos. “Find the boy. I'll keep the King's counsel warm.”

Thomas took the blade without looking. His mind was racing, churning through everything he knew. The French had planned a strike on the left flank. Ashworth had been their man in the camp. But Ashworth had spoken of *two* signals—one for the left flank, one that Will had carried. And the arrow? *Meant for the archer.* What archer? What arrow?

Then the pieces clicked with a sickening jolt.

He was the archer.

He'd left his name and his arrow in Ashworth's tent—a challenge, a warning. And Ashworth's dying words had turned the warning back on him. *The arrow was meant for the archer.* Not a threat against the ranks. A threat against *him*. The single most dangerous bowman in the camp who had discovered the plot. Kill the man who knows the truth, and the plan survives.

But then why take Will?

Thomas stopped at the tent entrance. The night air hit him like a wall, cold and damp with the coming dawn. The camp sprawled before him—thousands of men, horses, wagons, fires burning low. Somewhere in that chaos, Will was either dead or held hostage. And somewhere beyond the eastern hedge, the French were waiting, their plan already in motion.

He thought of the unbarred gate Thomas had found earlier. He thought of the mustering archers, shouldering their bows, ready to march into a slaughter they couldn't see coming.

But the archers could see death coming if someone warned them.

Only a fool trusted to a King's mercy, Thomas thought grimly, strapping the sword to his belt. The King had given him until dawn to save his own kind. That was mercy enough, for now.

He needed to find where Will had gone. Samuel had said Will slipped away with some message, no one knew to whom. And if Ashworth knew about it, that meant the captain had been watching—or had been told.

Told by who?

Thomas's blood ran cold again. *Jean.* The French knight who had escaped at the mill. The man who had seen Thomas's face. The man who knew his name.

Thomas turned to Greyhill, who had followed him to the tent's threshold. “The mill,” Thomas said. “Jean escaped through the back. Where would he go?”

Greyhill's face tightened. “The eastern wood. The forest line skirts the camp's flank—a man could move unseen to the French lines by dawn if he knew the paths.”

“And if he had a hostage?”

Greyhill didn't answer. They both knew what happened to prisoners who slowed a retreat.

Thomas looked toward the eastern hedge, where the first pale gray of false dawn was beginning to creep across the sky. Somewhere out there, his boy was running out of time.

He set off at a run.