Read Chapter 29: The Battle Plan

Dawn came gray and wet, and Thomas stood with his company in a line that stretched across the muddy field like a scar on the earth. The ground squelched beneath his boots, sucking at every step, and he felt the cold soak through the leather. Around him, five hundred archers stamped their feet and blew on their fingers, waiting.

The seventh horn had sounded an hour ago. Since then, the English host had moved into position in near silence, a host of shadows shifting through the mist. Thomas had marched his men to the right wing, where the ground sloped gently toward the French line and the mud deepened until it would pull a horse's leg down to the hock.

He looked down the line. Greyhill's banner hung limp on the far left where the men-at-arms clustered around their knights. The King's standard stood at the center, bright against the gray sky. Somewhere beneath it, Will would be standing with the other bodyguards, his stolen bow held ready.

Thomas pushed the thought aside.

He turned to face his men. They were Yorkshire men, most of them, and Derbyshire men besides—shepherds and tanners and one former bellows maker who had claimed he could hit a crow at two hundred paces and then proved it. Their faces were pinched with cold and hunger, but their eyes held a hard, waiting look that Thomas knew well. It was the look of men who had marched twenty miles on an empty belly and been told there would be battle at the end.

He walked along the line, speaking as he went.

"The French have knights," he called out, pitching his voice so the nearest files could hear and pass the word. "They have armor that gleams and horses that prance. They have banners enough to make a proper flagpole."

A few men laughed.

"They also have mud up to their arses," Thomas went on. "And they have us."

He reached the end of the line and turned, walking back along the second rank. His men watched him, and he watched them back. He found the wedge leaders—the men he'd drilled in the fields of Picardy for the past three days—and gave each one a nod.

"Wedge formation," he said. "You know it. Deep point, three ranks thick. You'll stand at the front with your stakes planted at an angle, foot down hard, the point facing up-field."

He'd had them cut stakes the day before, sharpening each one to a point and hardening the tips over the fires. A hedge of them now bristled along the front of the English line, waiting for the charge.

"You'll see the horses coming," Thomas said. "You'll hear them first. They'll sound like thunder moving over the ground. And you'll want to run. Don't. Plant your feet. Set your shoulders. Let the French break themselves on the points while the mud takes their footing."

He picked up a sheaf of arrows from one of the four remaining crates—the ones the Viscount's fire hadn't touched, though its smoke still hung in the air from the baggage train raid. Thomas handed the sheaf to the nearest wedge leader.

"Best arrows," he said. "The ones with the gray fletching, that's what you put on top. Straightest of the lot. Want the first volley true."

The wedge leader nodded. He was a broad-shouldered man named Cade whose face had been burned in the baggage fire. He took the arrows and began sorting through the crate, setting aside the half-dozen best shafts.

Thomas crouched beside the crate. Only four remained. That was likely a hundred and fifty arrows total, counting what his men had in their own quivers and belt loops. He did the math in his head. A full volley from five hundred archers would empty the crates in a single exchange. They'd need to be selective.

He looked up across the field. The French line stretched out before them, a crawling mass of steel and color that seemed to cover the entire horizon. Banners snapped in the wind. Horses pawed the ground and tossed their heads. The French had formed into three main battles, with cavalry on their flanks and foot knights at the center, waiting to advance over the churned ground that separated the armies.

Thomas rose and walked to the front of his company. He stopped where the stakes stood, their points gleaming dully in the first light. He looked for the Viscount's banner.

It took him a moment to find it. The fog had thinned, but a pale mist still hung low over the French position, and the banners at the far end of their line were only half-visible. Then the wind shifted, and he saw it: a black device on a blood-red field, a wolf's head with a dagger through it. The Viscount's standard.

The man was out there. Wounded. On foot. Somewhere in the French host.

Thomas let his hand rest on the bow that hung at his side. He still didn't have his own—that fine yew stave with the horn tips and the silver mountings, the one he'd carried from Yorkshire to Harfleur and all the way to this muddy field. He'd traded it away in a moment of desperation. But he'd claimed a replacement from the baggage before they'd marched, a solid war bow that drew sixty pounds and would do the job. It wasn't the same. But it would do.

He'd have to make it do.

The Viscount was out there, hunting him. No horse now. But that didn't matter. In a few hours, the field between them would be thick with killing, and one way or another they would meet.

A sound rippled along the English line. Thomas turned to see the King's standard bearer spurring his horse toward him across the muddy ground. Behind the bearer came Greyhill, his armor newly polished and his visor up. Greyhill reined in near Thomas and swung down from the saddle.

"Orders from the King," Greyhill said, his voice flat. "You're to hold the right wing. The French will strike here first—their cavalry is massed opposite your position."

Thomas nodded. He'd expected that much. A knight's pride demanded he aim for the most obvious weakness, and the mud was deep on this side.

"The King wants a first volley at maximum range," Greyhill went on. "Then you fall back behind the stakes. When the cavalry breaks, the foot will advance into your killing ground."

Thomas looked at him. "And when we run low on arrows?"

Greyhill was quiet for a moment. He glanced back toward the baggage line, where the burned crates still sat smoking. "Make every shaft count," he said.

Thomas turned back to examine the field, the crates. Four crates of arrows. Two burned. The fire had beaten out before it got the lot, but on inspection they had found the burned ones mostly ruined—the shafts warped, the fletching scorched to nothing. A salvage party had stripped a handful of usable points from the ash. It wasn't much.

They would have to be precise. Each arrow would have to do the work of three.

"Send me runners from the King," Thomas said. "I need to know where the line breaks. I'll push men to wherever they're needed."

Greyhill nodded. "That's what I came to tell you. The King's giving you permission to shift the wedges at your discretion. He trusts your judgment."

The words surprised Thomas. He looked past Greyhill toward the center of the line, where the royal standard stood motionless in the thick air. The King was a boy of twenty-eight, and he'd asked for peace terms that he knew would be refused. Now he was trusting a Yorkshire archer with the wing.

"You see your banner?" Thomas asked, gesturing across the field.

Greyhill squinted. "The Viscount's wolf's head."

"He's out there," Thomas said. "Wounded. No horse. Hunting me."

"Or waiting for you."

Thomas turned and looked along his line of archers. They stood in their wedges, stakes planted, arrows laid out on the ground before them within easy reach. Their fingers were cold. Their bellies were empty. But they were ready.

"I'll finish him," Thomas said. "And then I'll worry about the rest of the French."

Greyhill nodded slowly, pulled the visor down over his face. "Make sure you're alive to do it."

The sound of horses came from across the field. Thomas's head snapped up. A small group of riders had separated from the French line—perhaps a dozen horsemen moving slowly through the mud. They rode without armor, and at their head went a man who carried no lance, only a white banner.

A herald.

"The French are sending their terms," Thomas said quietly.

Greyhill turned his horse. "I'll inform the King."

Thomas watched him go. Then he walked back along his line, pausing at each wedge to check the stakes and the arrows, to look each man in the eye and make sure his hand was steady on his bowstring.

"Hear that?" he said louder, as the herald approached the English line. "That's the French offering us their mercy. You'll forgive me if I don't take it."

A few of the men laughed. The sound was thin in the cold air, but it was something.

The herald reached the English line and dismounted. An officer from the King's household came forward to meet him. They spoke quietly, and then the herald turned and rode back across the mud.

Thomas watched him go. When the herald reached the French line, there was a stir of movement. Banners lifted. Horses stamped. The French had chosen.

A page ran up the line toward Thomas, gasping. "You're to hold, sir. The King refused the terms. The French are preparing to advance."

Thomas looked out across the field. The mud lay thick and dark between the armies. The French knights were mounting, their armor flashing in the gray light. He looked over his shoulder, back toward the forest that bordered the field. He could see the treeline, dark and deep. No one had gone there yet.

He turned back and looked at the French line, at the Viscount's banner snapping in the wind.

"Quiet now," Thomas said to his men. "Let them come."