Read Chapter 31: Will's Return

The thunder of hooves faded into the distant screams of dying men, and Thomas allowed himself one breath—one single, shallow breath—before the fog spat out a lone rider.

The horse came at a gallop, neck lathered white, nostrils flared red. The man in the saddle slumped forward, one hand tangled in the mane, the other pressed against his side. Even in the grey half-light, Thomas knew the shape of those shoulders.

“Will,” he breathed.

He ran. The mud sucked at his boots, pulling him down, but he ran, past the wedges of his archers, past the staked palisade, into the open ground where the arrows had fallen thick as October rain. The horse shied as he approached, but Thomas caught the bridle and hauled it to a stop.

Will let go of the mane and toppled sideways.

Thomas caught him before he hit the mud, lowering him onto a patch of churned grass. The boy’s face was pale as candle wax, his eyes glassy with pain. A dark stain spread across his tunic, just below the ribs, and when Thomas tore the fabric free he saw the wound: a crossbow bolt had punched through the mail at the hip, carving a furrow through flesh and muscle. Not clean. Not shallow. The kind of wound that killed a man slow if the fever found him.

“What happened?” Thomas demanded, ripping a strip from his own sleeve and pressing it hard against the gash.

Will winced, a sound like a kicked dog, but his hand shot out and caught Thomas’s wrist. “Message,” he rasped. “From Greyhill. The French—they’ve broken off from the main line. A force of horsemen, maybe three hundred, riding wide to the left.”

Thomas’s blood went cold. “The left flank is thin. We pulled half the stakes from that line to reinforce the center.”

“I know.” Will coughed, and a speckle of blood appeared on his lips. “Greyhill says it’s a trap. They mean to roll the line and come at the King from behind.”

“Then why are you here?” Thomas snapped, the words sharper than he meant them. “Why didn’t you send a runner? You were meant to be at the King’s side, boy.”

Will’s eyes fluttered. “I was. But the Viscount—I saw him, Thomas. He was on foot, moving through the trees on the far side of the baggage train, with a dozen men. He wasn’t retreating. He was gathering. And when I rode to warn Greyhill, a crossbowman on the ridge took his shot at me.”

Thomas’s jaw tightened. The Viscount. Even wounded, even unhorsed, the bastard was still moving, still plotting. And now he’d used the baggage raid and the burning arrows as a feint—a way to draw English attention to the right while the true blow fell on the left.

“Where is Greyhill now?” he asked.

“The center. He sent me because he knew you’d move faster than any message. Said you’d know what to do.”

Thomas looked down at the boy in his arms. Will’s breath was coming short and shallow, and the stain on his tunic had spread past Thomas’s makeshift bandage. The boy had ridden hard, wounded, through fog and enemy ground, to bring him this.

“You did well,” Thomas said. “You did better than well.”

Will tried to smile. It came out as a grimace. “I dropped my bow when I fell. Lost it somewhere in the mud.”

“I’ll find you another.” Thomas looked up and bellowed: “Jack!”

Jack Lambert materialized from the fog, bow in hand, face set in a scowl that aged him twenty years in a day. He took one look at Will and dropped into a crouch beside them.

“He needs a physician,” Jack said.

“He needs to live,” Thomas replied. He lifted Will’s shoulders and eased the boy into Jack’s arms. “Get him behind the lines. Find a surgeon—there’s a Welshman near the baggage train who knows how to dig out a bolt. Tell him it’s from Thomas Barrow, and he’ll oblige.”

Jack nodded, but his eyes were already moving to the left flank, where the sounds of fighting had begun to swell. “And you? You’re going to the left.”

“I’m taking twenty men. You have the company. If the French come at the wedges again, you hold them. Don’t give ground, no matter what you see.”

“And if you die?”

Thomas stood, his knees popping, and looked out through the drifting fog. The battle had become a broken orchestra: isolated clashes here, screaming volleys there, the ugly grind of steel and bone somewhere beyond the treeline. The left flank was the quietest part of the field, and that silence was a knife at his throat.

“If I die,” he said, “you make sure Will gets that surgeon. And you tell Greyhill I kept my word.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed his bow from the ground where he’d laid it, checked the string, and felt the familiar weight of the yew settle into his hand. Twelve arrows in his quiver. Twelve arrows to stop three hundred horsemen.

He’d made do with less.

The twenty archers he selected moved without orders, falling into place behind him as he jogged along the rear of the line. They were his best—men who’d shot with him at Harfleur, who could drop a rabbit at sixty yards in a gale and a man at a hundred in a rainstorm. They carried spare stakes and hammers, and they moved fast.

The mud slowed them. Deep, sucking, hoof-churned mud that pulled at their boots and stole their strength. Thomas pushed through it, lungs burning, bow clutched against his chest like a talisman. Behind him, he heard the rhythmic thud of steps, the clink of arrow shafts in quivers, the ragged breath of men who knew they were running toward their own funeral.

They came to the left flank just as the first French horsemen broke through the line.

It was worse than he’d imagined. The stakes had been stripped, pulled up and carted off to reinforce the center, leaving nothing but a shallow ditch and a thin screen of archers who were already falling back. The French had sent their best—heavy cavalry, men-at-arms in full plate, lances couched and banners flying. They rode three abreast through the gap, and behind them came more, an endless river of steel pouring through the breach.

Thomas didn’t stop to assess. He didn’t call for a formation. He simply dropped to one knee in the mud, nocked an arrow, and drew.

“Flank volley!” he shouted. “All shafts into the horsemen’s side! String line—now!”

The twenty archers around him spread into a ragged line, boots sliding in the mud, but they were practiced hands and they anchored fast. Thomas loosed first.

His arrow took the lead knight in the armpit, piercing the gap between pauldron and breastplate. The man twisted in his saddle, clawed at the shaft, then slid sideways, dragging his horse into the path of the men behind. A collision rippled through the charge. Horses screamed, stumbled, went down in a tangle of flailing legs and steel.

Then the rest of the volley struck.

Twenty arrows, fired at close range into the flank of packed horsemen, was a slaughter. They skipped off plate and mail, but the horses weren’t armored, and the men at the edges weren’t perfect knights. Screams cut through the fog. Horses stumbled and fell, pitching riders into the mud where the disordered ranks trampled them. The charge buckled, folded in on itself, and came to a grinding halt fifty yards from the English line.

“Again!” Thomas shouted, already nocking his second arrow. “Give them another taste!”

The second volley broke them. The horsemen who could still ride turned, scattered, fled back toward the treeline. The ones who couldn’t died quickly, cut down by archers who had discarded their bows and drawn their daggers.

Thomas stood in the mud, chest heaving, and watched the last of the French retreat into the fog. His hand found his quiver, counted the arrows by touch. He had six left.

The left flank was saved. For now.

But he could see it from here, across the field, through the thinning mist: a banner rising above the center of the English line. Azure and gold, a chevron and three mullets—the arms of a French viscount who had lost his horse but not his hate.

The Viscount was moving toward the King.