Read Chapter 27: The Lull

The fog had begun to thin, lifting off the fields in long grey fingers that curled and dissolved against the lightening sky. Thomas reined in the Viscount’s horse—a fine bay gelding with a white star and a temper to match its former master—and slid from the saddle at the edge of the English line. His legs ached. His shoulder throbbed where a French crossbow bolt had grazed him during the skirmish. He ignored both.

The French had pulled back. He could see them now, a dark stain on the ridge beyond the plowed ground, their banners hanging limp in the still air. They were forming up, but slowly. Deliberately. They had all the time in the world.

We don’t. Thomas spat onto the mud and led the horse toward the baggage line, where a knot of archers were already tearing through the scorched crates.

Will was among them. The boy had a smear of soot across his cheek and his hands were blackened to the wrist, but he moved with a purpose Thomas hadn’t seen in him before. He was pulling arrows from the least damaged crate, checking each shaft and stacking the good ones in a worn leather quiver.

“How many?” Thomas asked.

Will looked up. “Half, maybe. The fire caught the oiled cloth first. The outer arrows are warped—string grip’s burnt through on near all of them.” He held one up. The shaft was blackened at the nock. “But the ones underneath, where the cloth held, they’re sound.”

“So we have two crates’ worth, not four.”

Will nodded.

Thomas crouched beside the boy, running his fingers over the salvaged shafts. French fletching—goose, not grey goose like home, but serviceable. He’d have preferred his own. He’d have preferred a bow.

“What about the other two crates? The ones the Viscount didn’t reach.”

“They were at the head of the line. Marching order.” Will’s face told Thomas he already knew what that meant.

Thomas did too. The quartermaster’s burial detail could dig his grave later. Right now, the two remaining crates would be moving with the van when the army marched, and if the quartermaster’s body was still lying where it fell, it would stay there until God Himself sorted the dead from the living.

“Listen,” Thomas said, keeping his voice low. “Before the line moves, I want the men cutting stakes. All of them. Any wood that’s not nailed to a cart or holding up a tent—strip it, shave it, point it. We need what, eight hundred? A thousand?”

Will’s eyes widened. “That’s near three hours of work.”

“We don’t have three hours.”

“Two, then.” The boy set his jaw. “I’ll get the lads started.”

He was gone before Thomas could answer, threading through the press of men and carts with the easy confidence of someone who had finally found where he fit. Thomas watched him go, remembering the terrified boy he’d first found lurking at the edge of camp, all elbows and apologies.

That boy had shot a horse out from under a Viscount this morning.

A messenger came through the ranks, voice hoarse: “Sir Greyhill summons the archer Thomas Barrow. To the King’s pavilion.”

Thomas’s stomach tightened. He handed the bay’s reins to a passing groom and made his way forward through the churned mud of the camp. Men were moving everywhere—men-at-arms buckling plate, archers checking bracers, priests muttering prayers over soldiers who crossed themselves and tried not to listen. The smell of woodsmoke and horse sweat and unwashed men had grown thick enough to taste.

The King’s pavilion was a patchwork of repair—new canvas stitched over tears, hastily replaced guy ropes, a splintered pole that someone had bound with iron bands. The blast of a distant French trumpet sounded as Thomas approached, and he counted the notes.

Third call. Still time. Barely.

Greyhill met him at the tent flap. The knight’s face was grey with fatigue, and blood had soaked through the binding on his forearm—a wound from the baggage raid that Thomas had watched him take without a sound. He looked like a man who had been awake for three days.

He probably had.

“The King will receive you,” Greyhill said.

Thomas frowned. “I’m not dressed for court.”

“You’re dressed for a battlefield. That’s all he cares to see today.” Greyhill lowered his voice. “He’ll offer terms. Herald’s already gone out, riding the lane toward the French lines. It’s a formality—he knows they’ll refuse, and he knows we know. But the Church requires that a prince offer peace before he spills blood.”

“Peace.” Thomas spat. “They’ve been burning our baggage and murdering our quartermaster all night.”

“And they’ll pay for it. But not before we’ve made the gesture.” Greyhill’s mouth twitched, something almost resembling gallows humour. “You’ll not be asked to kneel. Just to answer his questions honestly and keep your counsel tight when he speaks of the night’s work.”

They went in together.

Henry was not wearing a crown. That was the first thing Thomas noticed, and it struck him as a deliberate choice—a king without ornament among his captains, all of them in muddied harness. He was seated at a campaign table covered in maps and dispatches, a cup of wine at his elbow and his chaplain standing behind him with a psalter clutched against his chest.

“Thomas Barrow,” Henry said. The voice carried despite its volume. “I owe you an apology.”

Thomas blinked. “Your Grace?”

“I questioned your word. More than once.” Henry’s eyes were dark-ringed but sharp. “You told me of a saboteur. I doubted you. You showed me proof. I doubted the proof. You brought me the merchant, and I doubted the merchant.” He allowed himself a thin smile. “I am slow to trust, Barrow, but not so slow that I cannot recognize the cost of my caution. You have paid it. I will not forget.”

Thomas felt the weight of Greyhill’s gaze, the subtle nod. Think carefully. Say only what needs saying.

“Your Grace,” Thomas said slowly, “I seek no apology. My men are fed and armed—mostly. The treason is exposed. That’s what matters.”

“Mostly armed.” Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

So Thomas laid it out—the burned crates, the salvaged arrows, the shortage that meant his own company would go into battle with fewer shafts than he’d like. He made it plain and brief. He did not add that half of what remained carried French fletching, because that was a truth the King didn’t need on his mind before a fight.

Henry listened in silence. When Thomas had finished, the King nodded slowly.

“The Viscount of Fauquembergues,” Henry said. “He was among my father’s hostages. I remember him. Proud man. Impatient with the sheep of England.” He looked up. “You put an arrow through his horse.”

“His horse, yes.”

Henry held his gaze. “The next one will have his name on it.”

“That’s the intention, Your Grace.”

The King’s smile returned. It had teeth in it. “See that it does.”

They were dismissed. Greyhill walked with Thomas toward the edge of the pavilion, and once they were out of earshot, the knight let out a long breath.

“You handled that well.”

“I handled it the only way I know.” Thomas stopped and turned. “You vouched for me. Before the King, in front of your brothers-in-arms. That puts a mark on your name if I fail.”

“Then don’t fail.”

“It’s too late for that. I can’t promise victory.” Thomas looked out across the field, where the French banners were shifting, thickening, beginning to descend the ridge. “I can promise I’ll do what I’m here to do.”

Greyhill watched him for a long moment. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

“There’s much I’m not saying.” Thomas turned back. “You know what I mean, though. You carry my debt now. I’ll carry yours where I can. But if it comes to a choice between a promise to a knight and the lives of the men who draw their bows beside me…” He shook his head. “I need to be on that field, Greyhill. With my archers.”

“No one’s asking you to sit it out.”

“No. But they might.” Thomas didn’t explain further. He clapped Greyhill on the arm, a gesture that was more intimate than he meant it to be, and walked back toward his men.

The light had changed. What had been grey was now gold—the first true dawn breaking low and brilliant over the French host, turning the dew on the plow their battlefield to a glittering blanket. Thomas found Will directing a line of archers who were splitting logs with hand axes, shaving green wood into crude but serviceable stakes.

Will looked up, face streaked with sweat and dirt. “King going to talk?”

“He’s going to try.”

“They’re not going to listen.”

“No, they’re not.”

Will nodded, accepting this with the hard pragmatism of the young who have already learned the cost of foolish hope. He handed Thomas an axe. “Then we’d best get sharpening.”

Thomas took the tool and set his feet. Around him, the hedgehogs were growing—stakes driven into the earth at angles, tightening into bristling lines that would give his archers a wall of wood to shelter behind when the cavalry came.

He hadn’t planned the formation over an hour or a week. He’d planned it over a lifetime of woods and winters and the quiet arithmetic of men who know they will be outnumbered.

One shaft apiece for a line of eighty bows. He’d make it work.

He swung the axe. The blade bit deep into the log, and the sound of it—sharp and final—rang out across the camp, past the fires and the prayers, and out into the thinning fog where the French were massed and waiting.