Read Chapter 33: The Viscount's End

The Viscount’s sword scraped against the mud-caked steel of Thomas’s blade, and for a moment the two men were locked, breath to breath, the stink of blood and horses between them. The royal standard lay trampled beneath their boots, its torn lions and lilies smeared with dirt.

Thomas shoved hard, driving the Viscount back a step. The Frenchman’s wounded side bloomed dark against his surcoat, and his face was grey beneath the helm, but his eyes burned with the same cold fury Thomas had seen across a dozen fields.

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” the Viscount rasped, spitting blood.

Thomas said nothing. He had twelve arrows somewhere in the mud, but no time to search. He had his sword, and he had his hate. That would be enough.

The Viscount came at him again, a low cut aimed at the knees. Thomas jumped back, felt the blade whisper past his shin, and answered with a chop that the Viscount barely parried. The impact jarred up Thomas’s arm to the shoulder. The Frenchman’s guard was weakening. Each breath cost him. Each step he took left a fresh slick of red in the churned earth.

Behind them, the hornets’ nest of the field had begun to shift. The fresh cavalry Thomas had seen through the fog had not yet committed—they circled at a distance, shouting, uncertain. The English line had reformed around the King, Greyhill hauling Henry backward by the shoulder, his voice lost in the clamor. And in the gap between the armies, two men fought for a piece of cloth and the pride of nations.

The Viscount feinted high, then dropped his point and thrust at Thomas’s belly. Thomas twisted, felt the steel tear his tunic but not his flesh, and brought his own blade down in a heavy arc. The Viscount’s sword flew from his grip, spinning twice in the air before it landed point-down in the mud, wobbling like a reed in a stream.

Thomas kicked the Viscount’s legs from under him. The Frenchman went down hard, landing near the fallen standard. He lay there, chest heaving, one hand pressed to the wound in his side. His helmet had come loose, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood.

Thomas stood over him, sword point at his throat.

The noise of the battle seemed to recede. The French cavalry had turned away—whether to regroup or to flee, Thomas could not tell. A ragged cheer went up from the English line. They had seen the Viscount fall. They had seen their archer stand over him like a butcher over a hog.

The Viscount’s lips curled. He spat—a thick gob of blood and phlegm that landed on Thomas’s boot.

“This is not the end,” he said. The words came out wet, bubbling at the edge. “You think you’ve won a field. You’ve won nothing. There will be a reckoning. My house will see you hanged. Your king will be ransomed or killed. Your archers will rot in this French mud—”

Thomas drove the sword down.

The point went through the hollow of the Viscount’s throat, just above the collarbone, and punched into the earth beneath. The Frenchman’s body arched once, then went still. His eyes remained open, fixed on some distant point that no longer concerned him.

Thomas wrenched the blade free and wiped it clean on the dead man’s surcoat. Then he bent and picked up the fallen royal standard. The pole was splintered near the top, but the cloth was still whole—the lions and lilies of England, torn but defiant.

He raised it high.

A roar went up from the English line. The archers on the flank—Jack’s men, his men—saw the banner rise and screamed their savage joy. The French cavalry, already wavering, turned their horses and rode. Not in retreat at first, but in a shambling, broken withdrawal that became a rout as the English pressed forward.

Thomas stood among the dead and dying, holding the King’s banner in one hand, his sword in the other, and watched the French flee the field.

The Viscount lay at his feet, a prize of war. His surcoat bore his arms—a silver chevron on sable, the mark of a house that had tried to break England and failed. Thomas bent and cut the surcoat away from the corpse with a few swift strokes, rolling it into a bundle. He would present it to King Henry himself. Let the court see what a Yorkshire archer had brought them.

Around him, the field was a butcher’s floor. The mud had swallowed men whole, horses lay in heaps, and the cries of the wounded rose and fell like the sea. But the English held. The center had reformed. The King was on his feet, Greyhill at his side, his face a mask of blood but his eyes bright.

Thomas found Jack among the press of archers, his face black with powder and grime, his bow arm shaking from exhaustion.

“The right?” Thomas asked.

Jack nodded. “Held. The Viscount’s knights broke when they saw their master fall.” He looked down at the bundled surcoat in Thomas’s hand, then at the body on the ground. “You got him.”

“Aye.”

Jack spat. “Good.” He did not say more. There was nothing more to say.

The French were gone. The fog was lifting, and in the grey light of the afternoon, the field of Agincourt lay revealed: a slaughterhouse of knights and horses, a thousand French dead or dying, and among them, in scattered clumps, the bodies of English archers, their bows still strung, their fingers still hooked.

Thomas walked among them as the shouts of victory faded. He counted the faces he knew. There was Wat, and young Simon, and old Hob with the crooked nose. They lay where they had fallen, their arrows spent, their work done.

He stopped at the Viscount’s banner, planted now in the earth where its master had died. The silver chevron fluttered in the cold wind.

Thomas looked at it for a long moment. Then he turned and walked toward the King’s tent, the standard of England over his shoulder, the Viscount’s surcoat tucked under his arm.

His work was not done. Men needed burying. Wounds needed binding. The dead needed names.

But the field was won.