Read Chapter 30: The First Volley

The seventh horn still hung in the air when Thomas heard it—a low rumble building beneath the fog, the sound of hooves finding purchase in mud. Not a thousand yards away, the French line shuddered and came apart. Cavalry. Hundreds of them, banners streaming, lances couched, armor glinting dully in the half-light.

He had fought enough battles to know fear by its proper name. This was it, standing at his shoulder like an old comrade.

"Wedges!" Thomas shouted, his voice cracking through the morning like a whip. "Steady, lads. Let them come. Let them find the mud first."

His company spread into the arrowheads he had drilled into them through a dozen wet afternoons. Four hundred men, each with a bow in hand and a quiver's worth of death at their hip. Not enough. Never enough.

The cavalry closed. Five hundred yards. Four. Thomas could see the horses straining, their riders leaning forward with lances leveled. Heavy horse, the best of French chivalry, coming straight for the right wing. His wing.

Three hundred yards. The mud slowed them, but not by much.

"Not yet," Thomas muttered. He had his own bow now—a spare pressed into his hands by a boy barely old enough to shave, taken from a dead man's kit. Twelve arrows. Twelve only.

Someone on the French right raised a banner. Thomas's gut twisted. He knew that sigil—the silver falcon on sable. The Viscount. He was there, in the second rank of the charge, his wounded arm strapped tight against his chest but his sword held high in his good hand, screaming something Thomas could not hear but could imagine well enough. A personal promise, shouted into the wind.

Two hundred yards.

"Hold!"

One of his men, a weaver from York named Cuthbert, broke. He loosed early. The arrow arced, fell short, and stuck in the mud twenty yards from the French line. Thomas didn't shout at him. There was no time, and the damage was done.

"NOW! LOOSE!"

Four hundred bows bent. Four hundred strings snapped forward in near-perfect unison. The air above Thomas's head turned to a hiss, then a shriek, as the arrows climbed into the grey sky and fell like the hand of God.

The effect was immediate. Horses screamed. Men toppled. The first rank of the charge simply vanished—horses collapsing, riders thrown, the momentum of the charge broken against the sudden wall of flesh and falling steel. The second rank tried to leap the fallen, and many did, but they landed in chaos, their lances tangled, their formation shattered.

Thomas had already nocked his second arrow before the first volley stopped falling.

"Loose!"

Another swarm. The French broke. Not the whole line—no, those knights had steel in their spines—but the charge faltered, wheeled, and pulled back to regroup a hundred yards off. The mud had claimed as many as his arrows. Horses floundered, men struggled to rise, and the English archers kept shooting.

Thomas scanned the retreat. Where was the Viscount?

There. Not retreating. The silver falcon moved forward, cutting through the chaos of his own broken charge. He had traded his wounded warhorse for a fresh mount—a grey stallion, lighter, faster. Behind him, a knot of a dozen knights followed, their lances discarded, swords drawn. They were coming straight for Thomas's wedge.

He counted his arrows. Eleven now.

"Will—" Thomas caught himself. Will was with the King. Will was safe. "Jack! Take the right side. Keep them shooting."

Jack Fletcher—no relation to Thomas's own name, but he had earned it nonetheless—grunted and moved down the line, shouting orders. Thomas stepped forward, out of the wedge, into the open mud.

The Viscount saw him. Even at this distance, Thomas could feel the hatred across the field. He nocked an arrow, drew to the cheek, and held.

The grey stallion was fast. Too fast, kicking up clots of mud as it closed the distance. But Thomas had shot running game since he was seven years old. He let his breath out halfway, felt the string settle against his lips, and loosed.

The arrow flew true. He saw it strike—

A flash of steel. One of the Viscount's knights, riding on his right, had swept his sword across his chest in a desperate, instinctive parry. The blade caught the arrow's shaft and shaved it, sending it tumbling harmlessly into the mud. The knight lost his own sword in the process, but he had saved his master.

"Shit," Thomas breathed.

He had ten arrows left. He nocked again, but the Viscount was already wheeling away, taking his knights with him, retreating toward the safety of the French main body. Not retreating more than fifty yards—just far enough to stay out of bow range.

"I'll see you again," Thomas said, though the Viscount could not hear it. "And next time, there won't be a knight between us."

The battle settled into its rhythm. Volley after volley. The French cavalry charged again—this time at the center, where the King's position lay. Thomas's wedge kept shooting, but the angle was wrong. They had to shift, shuffle sideways through the mud to find the range, and by the time they did, the French had pulled back again.

Hours passed. Or felt like hours. The light never seemed to change—the fog held the morning in a grey amber, neither day nor night. Thomas's shoulders burned. His fingers were raw from the string. He had lost count of his volleys, but not his arrows.

Two left.

"Jack!" Thomas waved him over. "How many?"

Jack's face was streaked with mud and sweat. "We're down to the last bundle. Maybe three arrows a man."

Thomas looked down the line. His company had held. The dead numbered only four, the wounded maybe a dozen—but those were losses that could be absorbed. What could not be absorbed was the arithmetic of his quiver.

He remembered the two crates, burned by the Viscount's torch. He remembered the half-cache, buried in the forest beyond the baggage train, hidden by Greyhill's men against just such an emergency. He had meant to retrieve it himself. There had never been time.

"Jack, hold the wedge." Thomas grabbed the shoulder of a runner—a boy named Simon who had carried messages between the positions all morning. "Find the King's guard. Find a young archer named Will Barrow. Tell him—" He stopped. "Tell him, if he wants to earn his keep, there's a story hidden where the trees drink the water. He'll know the place."

Simon looked blank. Thomas cursed himself. Too clever by half. "The spring. The one we passed before dawn. Tell him: a hundred paces north of the spring, there's a dead oak, split by lightning. Under the roots, wrapped in oilcloth. Two crates."

Simon nodded and ran.

Thomas walked back to his wedge and stood at the point of the arrowhead. He had two arrows left, and somewhere in the grey field, a Viscount was waiting. He nocked one of them, not to shoot, but to have it ready.

He hoped Will was fast.