Read Chapter 34: After the Battle

The roar of the field had died to a moan. Thomas stood over the Viscount's body, the stolen banner heavy in his fist, its fabric slick with mud and blood. The French cavalry had broken—not charged, but shattered, streaming back toward their lines like water through a burst dam. The fog ate them. The English archers, those who still stood, did not cheer. They were too spent. Some knelt in the mud, hands on knees, gasping. Others simply sat where they had fought, staring at the ground as if the earth might offer some answer.

Thomas let the banner fall. It pooled at his feet, a gaudy splash of ermine and azure against the brown ruin. He did not look at it again. His sword was still in his hand, though he had no memory of sheathing or dropping it. He shoved it home and began to walk.

The field was a ledger of the morning's cost. He stepped over a young boy—no more than sixteen, a pikeman from the left flank, his face turned to the sky with the blank surprise of the newly dead. Thomas knew him. He had drilled with Thomas's company the week before, borrowed arrows when his own cracked. Thomas paused, bent, and closed the boy's eyes with a thumb. Then he walked on.

He found his own fallen in clusters. The wedge he had placed at the right angle had held, but held meant dead. Halbert, who could string a bow in the dark and sing a filthy song in French. Dead, an arrow through his throat—French make, Thomas noted with a distant anger. Owen the younger, who had joined at Harfleur and wept the first night. Dead, his chest caved by a warhammer. Thomas counted twelve of his company among the bodies he passed. There would be more. He did not stop counting. He simply stopped feeling the numbers.

A voice called his name. Weak, cracked. "Barrow."

Thomas turned. Greyhill lay propped against a dead horse, his left arm slicked black to the elbow, a bolt buried in his shoulder. His face was the color of tallow, but his eyes were open and sharp.

Thomas crossed to him, knelt. "You should not have carried the King."

"He fell. Someone had to." Greyhill tried to grin, but it became a grimace. "You killed him. The Viscount."

"I did."

Greyhill nodded slowly, then winced. "The King will want to hear it from you." His head lolled against the horse's flank. "I'll live. Tell Henry I'll live."

Thomas looked at the bolt. It was ugly, barbed, angled down. He had seen such wounds before. A man could survive them, or die of the fever three days later. There was no way to know.

"Your debt is paid," Thomas said.

Greyhill blinked. "What?"

"To me. For what you did at the ford. For carrying the King." Thomas's voice was flat, deliberate. "I told you once I would not forget. I have not. But I will carry it no longer. You are clear of me."

Greyhill stared at him a long moment, then closed his eyes. "That is a heavy gift, archer. Heavier than the bolt." His voice was barely a whisper. "I will try to be worthy of it."

Thomas rose. "See that you live. That will be enough."

He moved on. The field stretched before him, a patchwork of fallen men and horses, broken carts and scattered banners. He found Will near the baggage line, sitting on an overturned barrel, his face scraped and his left arm wrapped in a bloodied sling made from a torn surcoat. He was alive. Thomas felt something unclench in his chest.

Will saw him coming and lifted his good hand. "I got my shot in," he said. "One clean shot. Then a horse fell on me." He gestured at the arm. "Broke it. But I got my shot."

Thomas sat on the ground beside the barrel. He did not speak for a long while. Neither did Will. They watched the stretcher-bearers move among the wounded, the priests kneeling over the dying, the occasional shout for water or a surgeon.

"I thought you were gone," Thomas said finally.

Will shook his head. "Too stubborn. You know that." He paused. "Greyhill?"

"Alive. Wounded."

"The King?"

"I don't know." Thomas looked toward the royal standard, which had been raised again, a fresh pole and a new banner—a spare, not the original, but it flew. The King was not beneath it. Thomas could not see him in the press of knights and men-at-arms.

A herald found him an hour later, when the light had begun to soften and the dead were being stripped of anything useful. The man was young, clean, his tabard crisp. He looked at Thomas with a mixture of awe and confusion—a mud-crusted archer, blood on his face, a dead nobleman's banner tied to his belt.

"The King commands your presence," the herald said.

Thomas rose. He untied the Viscount's banner and walked.

King Henry held court in a farmhouse a quarter mile from the field. The roof was intact, the walls solid, and the hearth burned hot. The King sat on a plain wooden chair, a fur-lined cloak over his shoulders. His face was drawn but his eyes were fierce. A handful of lords stood about him: Greyhill's cousin, a man Thomas did not know, and Sir John, who looked at Thomas with something approaching respect.

Thomas knelt. He laid the Viscount's banner before the King.

"Thomas Barrow," the King said. His voice was low, hoarse from shouting. "You saved my standard. You killed the man who sought to take my crown and my life. You held the right wing until you could not, and then you left it to save me. There is no higher service."

Thomas said nothing.

The King leaned forward. "I would make you a knight. Land, a title, a coat of arms. Your own men, properly equipped, under your own banner. You have earned it a hundred times over."

Thomas looked at the banner on the floor. Ermine and azure. He thought of Halbert, dead with a French arrow in his throat. Of Owen, who had wept the first night. Of the boy whose eyes he had closed.

"My lord," Thomas said, "I am an archer. I have been an archer since I was twelve years old, when my father put a bow in my hand and told me to earn my bread. I am good at it. I understand it. I do not understand courts, or titles, or the making of war by committee." He paused. "I would not be a good knight. I would be a poor one, and I would resent every hour I spent learning to be less poor at it."

The King's eyes narrowed. "You refuse a knighthood?"

"I refuse it, my lord. With all respect that a man may refuse a king." Thomas kept his voice level. "But I would ask a boon."

"What boon?"

"My men fought today. They fought until they had no arrows left, and then they fought with swords and stakes and fists. Those who live will bury those who do not, and then they will march again. They are owed something. Not land—they would not know what to do with it. But wine. A double ration of wine tonight, for every man who stood in my company and every man who stood beside them in the line."

The small lords muttered. The King held Thomas's gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he smiled. It was a thin, tired smile, but it was real.

"Double wine," the King said. "For every archer on the field tonight. See it done." He nodded to the herald. "And bring the Viscount's banner to my tent. I will send it to his widow. It will be a comfort to her to know her husband died bravely, if not honorably."

Thomas bowed his head. "My lord."

He rose and walked out. The air outside was cool, damp with the coming dusk. The field lay dark before him, dotted with the small fires of the living. He found his way back to Will, who had not moved from the barrel.

"Double wine," Thomas said.

Will looked at him. "You turned down a knighthood for wine?"

"Double wine for the men."

Will shook his head slowly. "You are a strange man, Thomas Barrow."

Thomas sat down on the earth beside him. He did not answer. He watched the fires flicker across the field, the shadows moving among them as the living tended to the dead. Somewhere a man was singing—a low, broken song, in a dialect Thomas did not know. The wine would come. The dead would be buried. The morning would come, and with it the march, and after that, whatever God and the French had in store.

He was tired. Bone-tired, the kind of tired that settled into the marrow and did not leave. But his men were alive. His friend was alive. The King was alive, and the standard flew.

The rest could wait until dawn.