Read Chapter 39: The Archer's Oath

The winter wind cut across the dales with a bite Thomas had nearly forgotten. Months of French damp, of mud and blood and the endless reek of burning, and now here he was stood atop the rise above his village with the frost crunching under his boots like the shells of the dead. Below him, smoke curled from chimneys in thin grey ribbons, and the distant sound of a blacksmith's hammer rang steady as a heartbeat.

He could see the green where he'd learned to loose his first shaft at six years old, a stubby child's bow of yew his father had carved for him. The same green where, a lifetime later, the village elders had gathered to send him off to war. They'd all been so sure he'd die. Some of them, no doubt, had hoped it. Thomas Barrow, the fletcher's son who spoke too plainly and trusted too little. He'd spent his youth fitting feathers to shafts while other lads practiced their swordplay and dreamed of knighthoods. He'd known even then that it would be the arrows that won the wars. The knights just got the glory.

The letter in his hand was creased and stained from rereading, and the wind plucked at its edges as he smoothed it flat once more against his chest.

*Thomas,*

*The arm is mended, mostly. I can grip a tankard well enough, though I fear my days of holding a bow are not yet done—they will have to be, with as slow as I was to learn it the first time. Greyhill's shoulder pains him when the weather turns, which is ever present here in Calais, and I've told him he should have his squire fetch him warmer cloth, but he will not listen to a former thief. He listens, I think, but he pretends not to. We're to ship home in a fortnight if the wind holds. The King has sent word that the company will be reformed properly, with new levies from the north marching to join us before spring.*

*I know you do not ask to be remembered, so I will not say I remember you. But when I think of the field at Agincourt—and I think of it often, in the dark hours—I think of you standing in the mud with your bow, not because you were the best archer there, though you were, but because you were the only one who saw what I could not. You saw the trick before it was played, and you stopped it, and you made them pay. I would have died on that field with the shame of a thief if it were not for you. I would have died twice over, once in name and once in body.*

*The King has been kind. He has his faults, as all men do, but he learns. I watched him speak to the common archers after the battle, not at them, the way the Viscount would have. I saw him look at the wounded and the dying and I saw in his face that he understood what was owed to them. I think, of all the lords I have known, he is the one who knows what men like us are worth.*

*But I will not serve a king forever. Greyhill has spoken of returning to his estates in the north, and he has asked me to come with him, to serve as his man-at-arms and, he says, to keep him humble. There is land enough there, and I think—and I will not have you laugh at the idea, Thomas—I think I might be a man of worth in a place like that. When I was a boy I dreamed of things that now seem very small. But Greyhill says that a quiet life, honestly kept, is its own kind of honor.*

*I want to know you have one too. I want to know that when I ride south through Yorkshire, I can find you at the Fletcher's Oath, raising your cup to me, and that you will not be somewhere out in the cold keeping watch for enemies that no longer exist.*

*You did your duty, Thomas. The field is won. Come home.*

*Your friend,* *Will*

Thomas folded the letter and slid it inside his tunic, against the warmth of his chest. He looked down at the village, at the tiny figures moving between houses, at the smoke that promised hearth fires and stews and the comfort of ordinary things. He had come home three weeks ago, to a house that had stood empty through the winter, to neighbors who had looked at him with something between awe and wariness. The story had preceded him, as stories did, carried by men who had marched home before him. The archer who had stopped the sabotage. The man who had saved the army. The commoner who had turned down a knighthood.

The village had not known what to make of him. He was still Thomas from the fletcher's cottage, the one who had always been too clever for his own good, but now he was also something else. Something they could not quite name. They brought him bread and pies, as they would to a returning soldier, but they spoke to him carefully, as if they were not sure what would come out of his mouth.

He could have told them. He could have sat by the fire at the tavern and spun stories of the battlefield, of the arrows darkening the sky, of the screams and the mud and the brilliant, terrible moment when the French line broke. But that was not his way. He had never been one for tales. He had been one for doing, for watching, for waiting until the right moment and then loosing his shaft true.

He had done what he had done. Now he was home.

Thomas shouldered his bow, the great weapon the King had given him, and began his walk down the hill. The bow was a thing of beauty, carved from the finest yew, the tiller perfect, the string of Italian hemp waxed and cared for. It was a king's gift, a symbol of honor that any man in England would have given half his years for. And it had sat in the corner of his cottage for three weeks, untouched.

He had not shot it. He had not even strung it. He had cleaned it, yes, oiled the wood, checked the string, but he had not drawn it. He had not been able to bring himself to it. The bow reminded him of the field. The field reminded him of what he had seen. And he had told himself that he was done with such things now, that the war was over, that he had given enough.

But standing on the hill above his village, with Will's letter pressed against his heart, he understood that he had been wrong.

He was not the kind of man who could put his bow in the corner and forget it. He was not the kind of man who could tend sheep and mend fence posts and watch the world without seeing the shadows. The saboteur was dead, the Viscount was dead, Roger was God knew where with Thomas's silver and his silence.

And the lesson Thomas had learned, the very worst of it, was not that enemies existed—he had always known that. The worst of it was that the enemy had been inside. The enemy had been a lord of England, a man sworn to the same King, wearing the same colors, marching in the same ranks. The enemy had broken the arrows because he trusted that the archers, good English archers, would follow orders.

Thomas had followed orders, in those weeks before the battle, and the arrows had broken in his hands.

He would follow orders again, when the King called. He would march again, when England needed him. But he would never trust again. Not alone. That was what the Viscount had not understood. He had thought that unmaking a man's arrows would unmake his will. He had thought that the archers would be nothing more than angry, powerless men with splintered shafts.

He had not understood that the splintering was the thing that bound them together.

Thomas reached the bottom of the hill and turned toward the green. A handful of village boys were there, whittling sticks, bullying each other as boys did. When they saw him, they went quiet, and one of them nudged another, and they stood staring as he approached.

Thomas looked at them for a long moment. Fair-haired and dark-haired, sturdy and thin, farm boys and tanner's sons. They would be men soon, and England would need them, and they would stand in the mud of fields they had never heard of, with bows in their hands that Thomas or his fellow fletchers had made. And if there was another Viscount among them, another man who thought he could break their arrows and break their spirit, Thomas would be there to see it coming.

He walked past the boys without a word, but as he went, he pulled the bow off his shoulder, and he drew the string into its nock with a smooth, practiced motion. The wood creaked under the tension, a sound Thomas had known since before he could speak. He carried the bow to the end of the green, where the village kept its straw butts for the archery practice that was still required of every man by law.

The boys followed at a distance. He could feel their eyes on him.

Thomas set his feet in the dirt, feeling for the familiar ground. He reached into the quiver at his hip, drew out a single arrow with grey goose fletching, and nocked it.

The world went quiet around him. The wind died. The distant hammer stopped.

He drew the bow, feeling the full power of the king's yew, feeling the strain in his shoulders and back, the familiar ache that was as much a part of him as his heartbeat. The arrow stood steady. The string kissed his cheek.

In his mind's eye, he saw the field at Agincourt. He saw the mud and the dead and the broken shafts. He saw Roger's face, weary and broken, confessing that he had done it all for love of his family. He saw the Viscount, proud until the end, believing that his scheme had worked.

He saw his comrades. He saw the ones who had died with the truth of it hidden in their hands.

And he loosed.

The arrow flew true, straight as a thought, and struck the center of the far butt with a solid thunk that echoed across the green. The boys let out a collective breath.

Thomas stood still, watching the shaft quiver in the straw.

He was not haunted by the saboteur anymore. He understood, finally, that he never would be. What haunted him, what would always haunt him, was the knowledge that he could not be everywhere. That there would be other fields, other battles, other young men standing in the mud hoping that the arrows they held would not betray them.

He would not let it happen again. He had sworn it on the field, and he would swear it here, at the green of his home, before the boys who would soon be men.

Thomas Barrow took a slow breath, tasting the cold clean Yorkshire air, so different from the smoke and muck of France. He looked up, past the village, past the fields and dales that had shaped him, to the ridge where he had stood such a short while ago. The snow was melting on the high ground, and in the distance, he could see the line of the road south, the road that led to London, to Calais, to all the places where the next threat might fester.

He reached up and touched the wooden bow. It was more than a weapon. It was a promise.

Staying would be the easy thing. Staying would be the safe thing. But Thomas had never been safe, and he had never been easy, and he had learned that the price of peace was this: a man with good eyes and strong hands who would not look away.

He would send word to the King. He would offer his service, not as a soldier in the ranks, but as what he had always been. A watcher. A man who understood the arrows, the wood, the fletching—and the ways they could be bent, twisted, and broken before they ever took flight.

He would mend the ones he could.

He would catch the ones who broke them.

Thomas slung the bow over his shoulder once more. The village smoke rose in the cold air below him, and the green bells began to ring for evening prayers. He looked at the boys, who had crept closer and were staring at him with wide eyes.

"You," he said to the tallest, a lad of perhaps twelve. "What's your name?"

"R-Robin," the boy stammered.

"Robin, come here. I'd like a word. I think you might want a trade." And he smiled, though it was a quiet thing, and began to walk toward the cottage with the bow on his back and his oath in his heart.