Read Chapter 25: After the Turn

The King’s tent flaps had barely fallen behind him before the din of the camp swallowed Thomas whole—horses whinnying, armorers hammering, the low thunder of hundreds of men moving in ordered chaos toward the muster ground. He moved against the tide, shoulder-first, until the lane opened and the archers’ row came into view.

The baggage had been ransacked, though not by the French. His own men had gone through it, pulling out waxed cloaks, spare bowstrings, whatever they could carry, driven by the horn that blew a fourth time somewhere beyond the treeline. A fire pit smoldered at the edge of the tents, half-banked, and Thomas paused to warm his hands.

He was unarmed but for Greyhill’s sword, and the weight of it felt wrong at his hip—a knight’s blade, balanced for a longer arm, with a grip that had never known his callouses. He had spent his life with a bow in his hand, and the absence of it itched at him like a missing tooth.

Inside his tent, the wind had pulled one corner loose and the canvas flapped like a wounded bird. A small bundle lay on his cot, wrapped in oiled cloth and tied with a leather thong. Thomas dropped to one knee and undid the knot with fingers that were trembling, though whether from cold or exhaustion, he could not say.

Arrows.

A dozen of them, fletched with fresh goose feather, the shafts straight as a plumb line. He picked one up and turned it over, and the light caught the head—a bodkin point, finely forged, with a slight taper he had not seen in English work. French work, then, lifted from the captured stores. He ran his thumb along the shaft, feeling for a flaw, a warp, a splice that might betray a hidden weak point.

Nothing. They were clean.

He reached for the second, then stopped himself. A dozen arrows. It was not enough to hold a flank, not nearly enough for a battle, but it was more than he had a moment ago. He laid the arrow back in the bundle with the reverence of a man handling scripture.

A shadow filled the tent opening.

“You looked like a man who needed a gift,” Greyhill said.

Thomas did not rise. He held the bundle up instead, turning it so the light caught the French fletching. “These came from the depot.”

“The quartermaster found them in the bottom of a cart. The French were clever enough to bury them under salted meat. We were clever enough to check the casks.” Greyhill stepped inside, ducking under the low flap, and took a seat on a chest near the tent wall. The knight looked haggard, his cheekbones sharp in the lamplight, but there was a lean satisfaction in his eyes that had not been there before. “The King was pleased with your testimony.”

“The King is pleased with anything that keeps him from being killed in a ditch by noon.” Thomas rose, weighing the bundle in his hands. “This is goodwill, or guilt.”

“It is lead.” Greyhill’s mouth crooked. “I told him you were the finest archer in the northern host. I would not have him fielding a bowman without arrows, or the lie becomes plain.”

“You vouched for me.”

“I did.”

Thomas looked at the knight for a long moment. They were not friends—they had been enemies, near enough, when Greyhill had dragged him before the council on suspicion of sabotage. But the knight had seen the truth, and he had stood beside Thomas when the Viscount’s plot was laid bare, and that counted for something in the ledger of a hard world.

“Thank you,” Thomas said.

Greyhill nodded, then his face darkened. “You asked for news of the Viscount.”

Thomas felt the air change. “He’s gone.”

“Into the fog. He broke through our pickets on the eastern road with two of his men. A patrol gave chase, but the horses foundered in the mud and the French struck off into the wood where we could not follow.” Greyhill paused. “He shouted something as he rode. A promise.”

“He means to kill me himself.”

“He blames you for the ruin of his plot.” Greyhill’s hand rested on his sword hilt, a gesture Thomas recognized as unease. “He has a poet’s sense of vengeance, this one. He’ll come for you at the moment of greatest harm, not the moment of greatest ease.”

Thomas set the bundle of arrows on his cot. “He’ll wait for the battle.”

“He will wait until you are out of arrows, with your back to a cart and your friends bleeding in the mud.” Greyhill stood. “He knows you are the one who saw through his masks. He will want to prove it was a fluke—to kill you in a way that reinforces his own legend.”

“Then I will have to disappoint him.”

The knight studied him a moment longer, then pulled the tent flap aside. “The muster horn sounded again. Fifth time. The King wants us moving within the hour.”

He left, and the canvas sagged back into place, sealing Thomas in a dim quiet that felt borrowed, stolen from a war that had not yet fully begun.

Thomas knelt by his cot and laid the arrows out in a row. Twelve shafts. He counted them again, then again, as if numbers might change the outcome. He had seen battles decided by a single arrow, true—a horse fall at the right moment, a knight unhorsed in a bog, a banner toppling. But he had also seen battles lost for want of three dozen shafts, men clawing at empty quivers while the French cavalry broke through the stakes.

He would not waste these.

He heard footsteps in the lane outside, quick and running. The flap was torn back, and Will stood there, his face flushed, his eyes too bright.

“They gave me a bow.”

Thomas looked up. Will’s hands gripped a nine-foot yew stave, English in its curve, waxed and strung. A quiver hung at his hip—a light one, with perhaps eight arrows in it. He held the weapon like a thing he had been handed on a dare.

“Who gave it to you?”

“The King’s own armorer. Greyhill told him I had been with you since the palisade.” Will stepped inside, and the tent suddenly felt smaller. He was man-height now, or near it, though his shoulders had not yet filled out. His grip on the stave was wrong—too tight, fingers wrapped over the belly instead of the back—but his posture was good, his arm steady.

“You’ve never shot in anger,” Thomas said.

“I’ve shot at stags. And at that outpost last night.” Will’s chin lifted. “I hit what I aimed at.”

“A stag doesn’t shoot back. Neither does a sentry.” Thomas had meant it as a warning, but the boy’s jaw set even harder.

“I held my bow when the Viscount’s men rode down on us. I drove when the French were in the trees. I can loose a shaft as well as any man you march with.” Will paused. “Better than some.”

Thomas wanted to argue. He wanted to tell the boy to find a horse, a wagon, anything that would carry him away from the field before the arrows started flying. But he looked at Will’s face and saw something that stopped the words cold: he had seen that look before, in the mirror of an English winter, when he had been sixteen and had held his father’s bow for the first time, with the French war already a bloodstain on the horizon.

“Show me your grip,” Thomas said.

Will stepped forward and held the bow out. Thomas turned it in his hands, running his palm along the tiller to feel the balance. The armorer had not given the boy a conscript’s stave—this was a proper longbow, almost a war bow, the kind a man spent years learning to draw. Will’s arms were lean enough that Thomas doubted he could pull it to his ear more than a dozen times before his chest seized.

But the boy had marched. Fought. Carried a mail shirt across a ditch while the French shot at him. There was iron in him, forged in a single night, and Thomas knew better than to temper it now.

“Draw it,” Thomas said.

Will took the bow, fitted the string to his fingers, and drew. The wood creaked and bent, the string coming back to his cheek, holding there with a tremor that was mostly discipline. He held it for a long five-count before letting down, and his breath came out in a sharp plume of white.

“Good enough for a volley,” Thomas said. “Maybe two. Then you fall back behind the stakes and let the men do the killing.”

Will nodded, saying nothing. He grounded the bow and looked at Thomas with a gaze that had aged thirty years in a night. In the corner of the tent, where the lamplight didn’t reach, there was an empty spot where his brother had been questioned, where a man with a torch had held a knife to his throat. Will looked at that dark corner, then back at Thomas.

“You’ll need me,” Will said. It was not a question.

Thomas found no words to contradict him. He felt the weight of Greyhill’s sword at his hip, the bundle of a dozen arrows at his feet, the cold air gusting through the tent flap as the horns sounded again—sixth time, closer now, a long brazen howl that rolled across the marsh and shook the dew from the grass.

He took the bundle of arrows and tied it to his belt. He checked the string on Greyhill’s sword, though he had little use for it. He would need his bow for what lay ahead, and he had none.

But the only way to protect the army, the only way to match the Viscount’s game, was to find a bow that would not break and arrows that would not fail.

He looked at Will, and for a moment he saw what the boy would be in an hour, when the French line crested the ridge and the arrows began to fly.

“Come with me,” Thomas said. “We’ll find you a bow that fits. And put that at my side.”