The Double Kill — 06:25 AM

  Eight hundred yards away, Sir William Glasdale crested the rise with four hundred exhausted English knights. His arrival should have saved the day.

  Instead, he saw Talbot lying motionless in the mud.

  Glasdale froze. His breath hitched. The color drained from his face.

  "Halt! HALT!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "Form line—FORM LINE!"

  It was the worst possible command.

  His knights reined in on the Crater Zone—the churned, waterlogged hellscape ripped apart by Jean Bureau’s bombardment.

  SQUELCH.

  Horses sank to their fetlocks, then to their knees, whining in panic as they slid into sucking mud.

  "Sir! The ground—"

  "Hold formation!" Glasdale barked, fear overriding judgment.

  He had stopped them. He had killed them.

  The Execution

  Sire de Gamaches saw everything from the ridge.

  Saw the hesitation. Saw the trapped horses. Saw the second English banner—Glasdale’s burning cross—struggling to rise above the sludge.

  He tasted blood in his mouth. Not his—Talbot’s. It excited him.

  He swung onto his warhorse, whose flanks still steamed with unused strength.

  "RAOUL!" his surviving sergeant shouted. "You’re bleeding!"

  Gamaches didn’t even look down. The cut on his thigh pulsed with heat, but he felt nothing except a savage clarity.

  "Ignore the rabble! CUT THE HEAD!" he roared.

  His fifty remaining knights slammed down their visors.

  "MONTJOIE! SAINT DENIS!"

  They thundered onto the hard-packed road—while the English line sat motionless, stuck fast.

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  It was Kinetic Energy vs. Static Friction. It wasn’t a charge. It was an execution.

  The French cavalry hit like a battering ram from God. English horses toppled backward. Riders were thrown. Lances snapped. Men screamed as hooves crushed ribs and mud swallowed bodies whole.

  Gamaches drove straight for the banner.

  There—Glasdale. Trying, desperately, hopelessly, to yank his horse free.

  "Face me!" Gamaches bellowed.

  Glasdale did. With a roar, he tore his sword free and swung upward at the charging French lord.

  The blade bit into Gamaches’ ribs, punching through plate, finding flesh. Blood sprayed Gamaches’ visor.

  Pain tore through him. He welcomed it.

  He seized Glasdale’s sword with his gauntleted left hand, locking the blade in place even as it pushed deeper into his own body.

  "Got you," Gamaches hissed.

  Glasdale’s eyes widened.

  But before Gamaches could deliver the finishing blow, a shadow passed over him.

  One of Gamaches’ own household knights—young Henri de Vauvilliers—leaped from his saddle, landing behind Glasdale.

  "FOR THE MARSHAL!" Henri cried.

  He drove his arming sword down, straight through Glasdale’s exposed collar, severing spine and artery in one brutal thrust.

  Blood geysered. Glasdale convulsed and fell into the mud that had doomed him.

  The kill was Henri’s. Not Gamaches’.

  Gamaches sagged in the saddle, furious at himself for needing the help, furious at the wound burning in his side—yet somehow relieved, too.

  Victory was his. But not clean. Never clean.

  Henri turned to him, breathless, smiling. "My lord, are you—"

  THWACK.

  An arrow from the collapsing English line struck Henri in the throat.

  He fell without a sound.

  Gamaches stared at the boy’s body, trembling.

  There was no joy in conquest. Only cost.

  The Aftermath

  With Talbot captured and Glasdale dead, the English army shattered like rotten stone.

  Men threw down weapons. Horses bolted. Captains fled. There was no command structure left—only panic. The survivors ran for the river, drowning in their heavy armor as they tried to escape the demons in silver.

  Gamaches slid from his horse, nearly collapsing beside the bodies of the two English commanders. Three wounds bled freely. He felt cold. Too cold.

  But the battlefield smelled of iron. Of steam. Of mud and death.

  And it filled him with a terrible, intoxicating pride.

  Napoleon arrived on his white mare. He dismounted and knelt beside him.

  "Raoul," Napoleon said softly.

  Gamaches raised a shaking finger toward the corpses. Then, his trembling hand drifted to the right, pointing at the massive, motionless heap of armor lying in the mud—Lord Talbot, bound and breathing, but broken.

  "Two..." Gamaches rasped. Blood bubbled from his lips. "I… took… two…"

  Napoleon nodded, looking at the captured legend and the dead captain.

  "Yes. The ledger shows your name beside both."

  Gamaches coughed, pain wracking his body. He looked at the dead squire nearby. "Henri… he should've… lived."

  Napoleon placed a hand on Gamaches’ helm. "I will remember his name."

  Then Napoleon rose, face turning to steel as he gazed toward the towers of Orléans.

  "Pack the guns, Jean," he ordered, his voice like winter iron. "The rent is collected."

  "But Sire," Jean Bureau whispered, seeing the carnage, the dead boy, the broken knights. "The cost…"

  Napoleon did not look back.

  "The cost is paid. Now we move to the next account."

  Jeanne’s Dread

  From the ridge, Jeanne watched the smoke drift like mourning cloth. She smelled iron, mud, and burned flesh.

  She smelled sulfur.

  Lord… this victory… is it Yours? Or his?

  She feared she knew the answer.

  France, your Emperor has arrived.

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