Read Chapter 22: The Dawn Approaches

The baggage wagons sat in a long, dark row like sleeping cattle, their canvas covers gleaming with the first pale sheen of false dawn. Thomas moved among them with the silence of a man who had spent his youth poaching deer in the king's own forests, though the weight of Greyhill's sword at his hip felt foreign and wrong.

He'd sent Will ahead to the archers' position with orders to rouse the lads and check every bowstring. The boy had protested, of course—still smelled of French rope and fear—but Thomas had gripped his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise.

"You want to help? You help. You find Jack and you tell him what we found. Every man checks his own string. Every man counts his own arrows. And you tell them to keep their mouths shut about why."

Will had run. Thomas hoped the boy had the sense not to start a panic.

Now he stopped before the third wagon from the end. Canvas, heavy timber frame, wheels caked with the mud of a hundred miles of French roads. It looked the same as the others. But the ground beneath the rear wheel was disturbed—a fresh scrape of boot leather that had nothing to do with horses.

Thomas drew the sword. It felt wrong in his hand, too long, too heavy, but it was what he had.

He reached for the canvas flap and yanked it open.

A face stared out at him. Then a knife blade flashed in the dim light.

Thomas threw himself sideways as the blade cut through the air where his throat had been. He hit the ground, rolled, and came up with the sword held before him. A wiry man in a driver's smock scrambled out of the wagon and ran.

Thomas didn't chase. He watched the man sprint toward the eastern hedge, and he smiled grimly.

Wagon drivers knew the roads. They knew the countryside. And running toward the French lines at this hour meant only one thing.

He let the man go. A runner could be caught later. But the wagon behind Thomas held what mattered.

He climbed into the wagon bed and pulled back the canvas. Inside, stacked in neat rows like cordwood, were fifty longbows—unstrung, their waxed linen wrappings still intact. And beneath them, bundles of arrows wrapped in oilcloth.

Thomas pulled one bundle out, cut the cord, and drew an arrow. His fingers moved to the nock.

His heart stopped.

No notch. No groove cut into the wood for the string to seat. Just a smooth, rounded taper that would slide clean off the bowstring the moment he loosed.

He checked another. Same. Another. Same.

Fifty bows. Six hundred arrows. All of it useless.

"God's teeth," he breathed.

He sat back on his heels, mind churning. The sabotage was deeper than even Ashworth had admitted. Not just the arrows in the forward supply—the entire reserve was dead weight. If Thomas hadn't come here, the second volley at Agincourt would have been a puff of sticks falling short of the French line.

A sound. Barely a whisper. The creak of a wagon wheel two rows over.

Thomas went still. Whoever it was thought they were being quiet. They weren't.

He lowered himself from the wagon and moved along the row of vehicles, keeping low, one hand on the sword hilt. He made his way toward the sound, past empty harnesses and cold cook-fires, until he reached a wagon with a canvas cover that had been tied differently. The knots were crisp, military. A soldier's knots, not a driver's.

The false floor creaked under his weight as he stepped inside.

The wagon was stacked with grain sacks. But Thomas had grown up in a fletcher's shop in York. He knew when a floor sat too high by the way the frame bulged at the sides.

He shoved a sack aside and ran his fingers along the floorboards until he found the recessed iron ring. He pulled. The board lifted with a groan, revealing a hollow space beneath—carefully built, just tall enough for a man to crawl through.

Inside sat a wooden case. Thomas dragged it out and cracked the lid.

Arrows. Rows of them, nestled in straw. He pulled one out and turned it over in his hands. The shaft was straight-grained ash, the fletching clean and tight, the head properly fitted. And the nock—

His thumb found the notch, cut deep and clean into the horn inset. A real nock. A weapon that would hold.

He counted. Two hundred arrows. Not enough for a full volley across the whole line. But enough for one volley. One volley if it was aimed true and loosed at the right moment.

Thomas let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

Behind him, boots scraped on earth.

He spun, sword at guard. A tall figure stood in the opening of the wagon, silhouetted against the greying sky.

"Easy, archer." The voice was rough, tired. "I saw you from the picket line."

Thomas squinted. Recognition came a moment later—it was the old wagoner who had driven the reserve ordnance from Harfleur. A sour man with a limp, named Croft, who complained about everything and everyone and had never once raised his voice to a Frenchman.

But Croft had also been the one to suggest the wagon be parked here, near the eastern hedge, "so the horses wouldn't spook with the wood so close."

Thomas had heard him say it to the quartermaster two days ago.

"You know what's under this floor?" Thomas asked.

Croft's jaw tightened. "I know what men pay for when they're desperate. I know coin buys better than loyalty when a man's crop failed last year and his wife's sick."

"You're taking French silver."

"I'm taking enough to leave this bloody war behind." Croft stepped into the wagon, blocking the exit. His hand rested on a cudgel at his belt. "Now, I didn't want to hurt no one. But I can't let you take that wagon."

Thomas looked at the sword in his hand, then at the old man. The cudgel was ready. The eyes were desperate.

"Your wife," Thomas said slowly. "What's her name?"

Croft blinked. "What?"

"Your wife. The one who's sick. What's her name?"

The old man's mouth opened, then closed.

Thomas took a step forward. "You're a liar. Not about the coin—I can smell that on you. But about the wife. There's no wife. You've got a French whore in a village outside Rouen, and she's promised to warm your bed if you see this army fall."

Croft's face went red. "You don't know nothing—"

"I know you've been leading French scouts through the wood line for a week. I know you dug that tunnel with your own hands." Thomas raised the sword. "And I know you're going to tell me where the other caches are hidden, or I'll put your head on a stake at the camp gate and call it justice."

Croft's gaze dropped to the case of arrows. His tongue darted across his lips.

"There's more," he said finally. "Under the tool wagon. Cut strings, laid out flat. Fifty sets."

Thomas's chest tightened. Cut strings. Of course. A bow without a string was a stick. If the French hit them at dawn and every spare string was severed—

"How many in total?"

"Enough for half the archers." Croft's voice was small. "The rest of the strings are whole. The conspirators—they didn't have time to get them all. But they knew you'd check the arrows first."

Thomas closed his eyes. A long breath escaped him.

"One volley," he murmured. "One volley of good arrows, and half the bows with working strings. That's what we have."

He opened his eyes and looked at Croft. "You're going to help me load this case onto a horse. Then you're going to sit quiet while I decide whether to hang you."

Croft nodded frantically. "Anything. I'll do anything."

"One more thing." Thomas leaned close. "Where's the Viscount? The French knight who calls himself Jean. Where is he now?"

Croft hesitated.

Thomas raised the sword.

"Agincourt!" Croft blurted. "He's already ridden to Agincourt. He's got a force waiting in the wood past the eastern hedge. He said—he said the signal would come at first light, and then they'd strike the baggage train while the army marches into the trap."

The words hit Thomas like a fist to the gut. The muster horn had already sounded four times. The army was forming even now, preparing to march the final miles to Agincourt. And the eastern hedge stood unguarded, its gate unbarred, an open door for the French to fall on the English rear while the vanguard stumbled blind into the valley.

Thomas grabbed Croft by the collar and dragged him from the wagon.

"Get the horses. We ride for the archers."