Read Chapter 32: The King's Standard

The horn call came not as a command but as a scream, ripped raw from a hundred twisted throats somewhere beyond the fog. Thomas heard it, felt it in his chest like a second heartbeat, and knew before the messenger ever reached him that the center had broken.

He had been mid-stride between his wedges, checking the mud-packed stakes one last time, when the cry went up. He turned. Through the grey veils of morning, the English center was a chaos of steel and screaming horses. The French knights had found the gap—the one Thomas had warned Greyhill about, the one the Viscount had engineered with his burning arrows and his careful, patient cruelty.

“Jack!” Thomas bellowed, spinning to find his second. The boy—no, the man, the archer—was already facing him, face pale beneath the grime. “Hold the wing. Do not move a single man unless I tell you. Hold it.”

“Thomas—” Jack started.

“Hold it!” Thomas was already running, his boots slipping in the churned mud. He had no bow. Twelve arrows. A sword that had seen better days and a man who had never loved it. But he had legs that had carried him across every shire in England and a heart that had not yet learned to quit.

The fog swallowed him.

Shapes emerged and vanished. A fallen standard, its pole snapped and trailing cloth like a dead bird’s wing. A horse without a rider, eyes white with terror, galloping past him into the grey. Cries in French, sharp and triumphant. Cries in English, cut short.

He found the King’s guard just as the Viscount’s knights found them.

The royal standard still flew—gold and leopards, stained but upright—and beneath it Henry stood with his back to a cart, sword drawn, Greyhill at his shoulder and the remnants of the bodyguard forming a ring around them. Will was among them. Thomas saw his red hair, his too-thin frame braced against the press, and a prayer he had not spoken since France tore through his mind.

There were twenty of them. Maybe fewer. And coming through the gap in the line, mud-splattered and baying like hounds, rode the Viscount’s knights.

“Thomas!” Greyhill’s voice cut through the din. The old knight was bleeding from a gash along his forearm, but his sword was steady. “You picked a fine time for a visit.”

Thomas did not answer. He was counting. Eleven knights, maybe twelve. It was a knot of armored fury, coming fast.

“Form the phalanx!” he roared, and the archers of the King’s guard—good men, trained men, but not his men—looked to Greyhill.

Greyhill did not hesitate. “You heard him. Form up.”

Thomas did not wait for them to obey. He drove his boot into the mud, planted himself at the front, and pulled an arrow from his belt. His fingers found the fletching—goose, his own work, or near enough—and he drew.

The first knight died with an arrow through the slit of his visor. He fell backward off his horse like a sack of grain, and the man behind him swerved, losing a stride. Thomas had another arrow already nocked. He did not think. He did not pray. He breathed with the rhythm of the draw, and he let the string fly.

Three knights down before the charge reached them.

“Shields!” Greyhill bellowed, and the men-at-arms braced, the remaining archers stepping behind them. Thomas found himself beside Will, whose face was a mask of terror and determination. The boy’s bow was shaking.

“Breathe,” Thomas said, not looking at him. “Fletch another. Find your mark. Let the string do the rest.”

Will nodded. His draw was steadier.

The knights crashed into the phalanx. It was chaos, iron and mud and screams. Thomas slipped past the shield line, using the press of bodies as cover, and came up on the flank of the knight in front of him. He did not have a sword drawn. He had an arrow in his hand, and he drove it through the gap at the knight’s armpit, where the mail gaped. The man howled and toppled, and Thomas took his sword from his dying hand.

He did not look at what he had done. He found his next mark.

And then he saw the Viscount.

The man was on foot, as the threads of memory had said. He had lost his horse to an English arrow, and his armor was crusted with mud and blood not his own. He moved through the chaos with a terrible purpose, shoulders squared, sword low, heading for the knot of men around the King. He had shed his helm somewhere, and his face was bare—pale, gaunt, lit from within by a hate that Thomas recognized. He had seen that hate in his own mirror, after the fire, when he had lost everything.

“Viscount!” Thomas shouted.

The sound stopped him. The Viscount turned, slow and deliberate, and his eyes found Thomas.

Recognition. And then a smile. A thin, awful thing.

“The fletcher,” the Viscount said. “Still carrying another man’s sword?”

“Still carrying my aims,” Thomas said. He stepped forward. The fighting was a wild river around them, but here, in this small pocket of slaughtered ground, there was only space and mud and the Viscount’s smile.

“You burned my shop,” Thomas said. “You killed my father.”

“Your father was a stubborn fool who would not sell,” the Viscount said, as if that settled it. “You are the same breed. I will strip the fletching from your corpse and make arrows of your bones.”

Thomas’s hand found the string of his bow. He had no bow. He had left it to draw faster with the rifle—no. He shook the thought free. He had twelve arrows. Five were gone. Seven remained.

“Your knights are dying,” Thomas said. “Your King is not coming. This field is done for you.”

The Viscount’s smile did not waver. “Then I will take the English King with me, and write my name in the histories.”

He moved.

Thomas did not have time to nock an arrow. He did have time to step.

The Viscount’s sword came down, and Thomas was not there. He had moved forward, inside the blow, sword up to catch and bind. The Viscount was stronger—stronger by half a lifetime of training and cruel purpose—but Thomas had spent his youth bending yew and drawing a hundred pounds of weight, and his arms were iron cables. He held the bind, and he twisted.

The Viscount’s sword went wide. Thomas drove his pommel into the man’s jaw. There was a crack. The Viscount staggered, his eyes losing focus for a moment, and Thomas stepped back, pulling an arrow from his belt.

“You wanted this score settled,” Thomas said. “Here it is.”

He drew.

He had no bow.

But his arms knew the motion anyway. He could feel the yew in his imagination, the string against his fingers, the whisper of feathers. It was a memory, and it would not serve him.

He dropped the arrow, and he went forward with the sword.

But the Viscount had recovered. He was wounded, his shoulder hanging at an angle that spoke of a crack and a tear, but he was not done. He came at Thomas with a snarl, and Thomas learned what it meant to face a man who had nothing left but hate.

They fought over the King’s fallen banner.

It had fallen—when, Thomas did not know. The standard lay in the mud, gold and leopards soaked with blood, and Henry was being dragged backward by Greyhill, screaming something Thomas could not hear. Will was there too, his bow suddenly in his hands, and Thomas saw the boy draw and release, and a French knight fell.

The Viscount came at Thomas with a low cut, and Thomas barely parried. The impact rumbled down his arm. He was not young. His body was a ledger of scars and old aches, and the Viscount was faster.

But Thomas had been a fletcher.

He knew how things broke.

He caught the Viscount’s blade on his own, held it, and stepped inside, driving his shoulder into the man’s wounded shoulder. The Viscount screamed—a raw, animal sound—and his sword dropped. Thomas did not stop. He swept his blade across the Viscount’s legs, taking him out at the knees, and the man fell into the mud, gasping.

Thomas stood over him.

The battle raged on around them, but here, in this pocket, there was only the sound of the Viscount’s breathing.

“Finish it,” the Viscount rasped.

Thomas looked down at him. He had no arrows left. He had only this blade, and the man who had taken everything from him.

He raised the sword.

A horn sounded. Not French. Not the muster. A different note, sharp and defiant.

The King was still alive.

Thomas held the blade, and he did not bring it down. Not yet.

Behind him, in the fog, he heard the thunder of hooves—many hooves, coming hard.

He turned, just enough to see shapes emerging from the grey. Lances. Banners.

French.

They were not retreating.

They were rallying.