Read Chapter 2: A Night's Work

The drizzle had settled into a patient, miserable rhythm by the time Thomas Barrow found the Earl of Suffolk’s pavilion. Lantern-light bled through the canvas, casting long shadows of men who were not moving—officers hunched over maps, no doubt arguing about ground they had not yet seen. The smell of wet wool and woodsmoke clung to everything. Thomas wiped the rain from his face and shoved past the sentry who tried to bar his way.

“Archer Barrow, fourth company,” he said flat. “I need to speak with the Earl.”

The sentry’s hand went to his pike. “The Earl does not receive archers without summons.”

“Then he’ll receive me without a bowstring, because that’s what his army will have come morning.”

The commotion drew a face to the tent flap. Sir John Greyhill. Thomas had avoided the man’s banner since Harfleur, and the sight of that thin, clean-shaven face now made his stomach twist. Greyhill’s eyes narrowed in recognition.

“Barrow.” Not a question. “You’ve found more trouble, or trouble has found you?”

“I’ve found a reason the front line will shoot wet powder tomorrow,” Thomas said. “Let me tell the Earl, or I’ll shout it loud enough for the French to hear across the field.”

Greyhill studied him for a long moment. Then he stepped aside and jerked his head toward the interior. The sentry looked confused. Greyhill waved him off, and Thomas ducked inside.

The Earl of Suffolk was not a tall man, but he filled the tent with the kind of presence that made furniture seem smaller. He looked up from a map weighted down by a dagger and a pewter cup, his grey beard sharp with irritation. Behind him, two younger knights pretended not to listen.

“This is the archer who raised the alarm about the arrows?” Suffolk said, not to Thomas but to Greyhill.

“The same,” Greyhill said.

Suffolk turned his gaze to Thomas. “You’ve come to tell me more arrows are broken. Is that it?”

“Not broken, my lord. Sabotaged.” Thomas laid a single arrow on the map, uninvited, pointing to the fletching. “See the cross-stitch on the binding? Plain-cross. Standard issue uses a figure-eight. Whoever did this knew enough to make it look like poor work, but not enough to copy the real pattern.”

Suffolk picked up the arrow. He turned it in his fingers, squinted at the fletching, then set it down with the careful disinterest of a man who had never drawn a bow in anger.

“It’s an arrow,” Suffolk said. “Fletching is coming loose. It happens.”

“It happens to the same lot of arrows in nine different companies?”

That got his attention. Suffolk’s eyes flickered. “Nine?”

“I checked the quartermaster’s complaints ledger. He told me it was nothing. Then I walked the lines myself while the men slept.” Thomas kept his voice level. “Nine companies, my lord. All of them the arrows set aside for the front volley. The rear-rank stocks are untouched. Whoever did this wants our first shot to fail.”

The tent went quiet. One of the younger knights shifted his weight, and the sound of mail creaking was loud in the silence. Suffolk looked at Greyhill.

“You vouch for this man’s eyes?” he asked.

Greyhill hesitated. It was a small hesitation, but Thomas caught it. Greyhill’s jaw tightened.

“He’s a fletcher’s son,” Greyhill said. “He knows his craft.”

“Then find out who did it,” Suffolk said. He turned back to his map, dismissing Thomas entirely. “I’ll have the quartermaster hanged if he’s been sloppy. That satisfies the complaint.”

Thomas opened his mouth, but Greyhill caught his arm—a hard grip, unyielding. He pulled Thomas out of the tent before a word could escape. The rain greeted them again, colder now.

“He hasn’t hanged anyone from a complaint ledger in his life,” Greyhill said low, releasing Thomas’s arm. “He’s tired and he’s worried, and he doesn’t want a panic on the eve of battle. That makes him blind.”

“And you’re not blind?” Thomas asked.

Greyhill’s eyes glinted. “I’m suspicious enough to look twice when an archer who hates my banner comes to me with a problem. You didn’t report this to your captain first—you came straight up the chain. That tells me you think it’s bigger than a quarrel between companies. Am I right?”

Thomas wanted to say no. He wanted to walk away and never look at Greyhill’s face again. But the plain-cross mark burned in his memory, and behind it, the memory of another banner, another morning, another man who had worn Greyhill’s colors and told Thomas to wait while the arrows were checked. That wait had cost lives.

“You’re right,” Thomas said. “Someone’s trying to break the volley. Not slow it. Break it.”

Greyhill nodded slowly. He pulled his cloak tighter and stepped closer, dropping his voice until it was barely more than a murmur against the rain.

“A French spy, or a man they’ve bought. Either way, I want him found before the archers wake and start pointing fingers at each other. We don’t have time for a witch hunt among our own. You have until dawn.” He glanced at the dark sky. “Six hours, Barrow. Find the man who did this, and I’ll make sure the Earl hears your name. Find him and bring him to me alive, so we can learn what he told the French. Fail, and the volley fails, and the volley fails and we’re all butcher’s meat by noon.”

Thomas wanted to ask why Greyhill trusted him. He wanted to ask what Greyhill knew about Harfleur, about the arrows that had come late, about the men who had died waiting. But the question sat heavy in his throat, and the clock was already ticking.

He nodded once. “I’ll need to see the stocks myself. Every company with the plain-cross mark.”

“Then see them. If any sentry gives you trouble, tell them you’re on Greyhill’s business.” Greyhill unclasped a small brass token from his belt and pressed it into Thomas’s hand. The metal was warm from his body heat. “I don’t have to like you, Barrow, to want my men to live.”

Thomas took the token and walked away without a word. The camp had settled into its pre-dawn sleep: the heavy silence of thousands of men trying to pretend they were not afraid. He moved through the maze of tents and picket lines, checking the stockpiles one by one. Each cart of arrows carried the same story. The front-line stocks had been worked over with the same deliberate care: bindings loosened, shafts weakened at the nock, fletching cut a hair too short to catch the wind. To the untrained eye, it was shoddy work. To Thomas, it was a signature.

He stopped at the sixth cart and knelt in the mud. The rain had soaked through his knee, but he barely felt it. He pulled arrow after arrow from the bundle, checking each one, looking for a variation. Most were the same. But one—the seventh in the bundle—was different.

The bindings were clean. The fletching was cut true. And on the shaft, just below the feathers, a small notched mark had been carved into the wood. A cross. But not the plain-cross of the sabotage. This one was deeper, cleaner, cut with a craftsman’s knife.

Thomas turned the arrow over in his hands. He had seen that cutting style before. He had seen it in his father’s workshop, on arrows that had been commissioned by a specific client. A client whose crest had changed over the years but whose preference for deep, clean cuts had never changed.

Sir John Greyhill’s personal fletcher.

Thomas looked back toward the Earl’s pavilion, where the lantern light still glowed through the canvas. Greyhill had given him a token and a deadline. Greyhill had spoken of French spies and dangling the Earl’s attention like a lure.

But Greyhill’s own mark was on this arrow. And Greyhill knew the fletching pattern well enough to name it as a plain-cross.

The question wasn’t who had sabotaged the arrows, Thomas realized. Not anymore.

The question was why Greyhill had sent him to find out.

He pocketed the arrow and stood, his mind already moving toward the camp fletcher’s tent. Six hours until dawn. And the man he should have trusted least had just handed him the key to the lock.