PART I — THE HAMMER
April 29, 1429 — 06:00 AM
The Fortress of Saint-Loup
Lord Talbot stood on the battlements. He was not eating breakfast. He was watching.
The sun rose over the Loire, long shadows scraping across the plain. Eight hundred yards away, the French army stood perfectly still.
"No siege towers. No ladders. No trebuchets," Talbot muttered. "What is he doing?"
Sir William Glasdale narrowed his eyes. "He's lined up carts. Twelve bronze tubes mounted on wheels."
Talbot scoffed, but his hand tightened on the parapet. "Cannons? At this range? They might as well spit at us."
He spoke with the confidence of a man whose world had always obeyed him—Agincourt, Crécy, Poitiers. A world where English longbows ruled, and French toys failed.
But Talbot was looking at the past.
He didn't see the screw-elevators adjusting by degrees. He didn't see the pre-measured powder cartridges. He didn't see the greased axles.
He was seeing the future, and mistaking it for a toy.
At the base of the tower, a young longbowman felt the earth tremble. Not from siege stones. From something alive. He whispered the oldest English prayer:
"God willing, the Frogs break first."
He didn't know God was about to resign.
The Battery
Napoleon sat beneath the Royal Standard of France. Three-knot wind. Favorable.
Jean Bureau stood pale at his side.
"Range?"
"Eight hundred yards, Sire. But we've never—"
"Physics does not miss, Jean." Napoleon gestured to the cannons—twelve bronze Apostles, sleek and lethal. "Grand Master. Battery fire. All guns."
Bureau looked down the line of gun crews.
They had been terrified peasants yesterday. Today, they were technicians.
He raised his arm. "READY—!"
"FIRE!"
CRACK—BOOM!
The world convulsed. Smoke swallowed the battery.
It was a geological event.
Napoleon raised his telescope.
Four shots wide. Five too high. Three struck home.
Three was enough.
The tower's rotted base convulsed under impact.
"Reload! Tight powder! Aim for the footing!"
This was not one bombardment—it was a process. Volley after volley, the guns chewed the earth and hammered the ancient foundation.
Five minutes. The earth pulped.
Eight minutes. Mortar burst and stones groaned.
Twelve minutes. The tower's base buckled like wet bone—but the gate and sally-port remained intact, a wolf's mouth waiting to disgorge Talbot's knights.
Exactly as Napoleon intended.
On the ridge, Jeanne felt every blast travel up her bones. This was not thunder. Thunder warns. This… unmakes.
She clutched her banner.
Lord… is this Your hand? Or his?
She feared both answers.
Phase Two
"Advance to three hundred yards—trot!"
Gun teams surged forward.
Inside Saint-Loup, Talbot froze. "He's using them… like field guns."
"Archers! Form line!"
On the French side—
"Unlimber! Stakes out! Load—CANISTER!"
Talbot saw the equation forming: arrows ready. Cannons nearly loaded.
"LOOSE!"
Arrows blackened the sky. A gunner fell.
Napoleon did not move. He sat exposed on his white stallion, ignoring the death hissing past his ears.
"Hold your nerve, Jean."
"FIRE!"
RRRRRIP!
Thousands of iron pellets erased the longbowmen. The wounded tower—cracked by earlier volleys—shuddered, leaned, and slid into the moat with a geological groan.
Talbot stared at the ruin. "That… was impossible."
The King's Bait
Blood trickled down Talbot's cheek. And then he saw it—the Royal Standard moving forward, not back.
Napoleon rode with it.
"The Dauphin… he is here."
A savage thought formed in Talbot's mind: If I fall, he falls...
"Signal Glasdale! Raise the Black Flag! Tell him the King is on the platter!"
He drew his sword.
"OPEN THE GATES!"
"FORWARD! TO THE LAST MAN!"
PART II — THE ANVIL
The Tragic Symphony — 06:18 AM
The gates of Saint-Loup groaned open.
A trumpeter blew—the note cracked, screamed.
English knights spilled from the smoke. Talbot rode at their head, dragging chaos into order.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"He's coming for the King!"
The French infantry's "Crash-Course" discipline shattered. Men stumbled. Spears lowered. A gap opened—
The Banner That Would Not Break
Jeanne saw the line collapsing. For a heartbeat, she froze.
Lord… they will break. He will reach the King.
Then she spurred forward, slammed her banner into the mud like an anchor.
"HOLD! In God's name—HOLD THE LINE!"
Men flinched. Not from fear—from obedience.
"LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT THE BANNER! GOD WALKS WITH US!"
The gap closed.
Talbot saw it—too late. He was already inside the funnel she sealed. No turning back.
The Crisis — 06:20 AM
Talbot smashed through the tightening ranks.
"Sire! He's coming straight for ye!" bellowed Patrick Ogilvy, Captain of the Scots Guard. "Alba gu bràth!"
Forty Scots threw their bodies into the line, bracing the peasants.
Napoleon's eyes remained fixed on Talbot.
"He sees what I want him to see."
Ogilvy didn't look left—toward the smoke-choked flank where Gamaches and the Sword in the Scabbard waited like a cocked spear.
Talbot thundered closer.
Forty yards. Thirty. Twenty.
"I HAVE YOU!" Talbot roared.
Napoleon raised his hand.
Ogilvy swallowed.
"NOW."
The Royal Standard dipped—twice.
For a heartbeat—silence.
Then—the world answered.
A metallic roar from the flank. Steel hooves. Sunlit armor. Fifty heavy cavalry erupting from smoke.
"MONTJOIE! SAINT DENIS!"
Gamaches' line hit the exhausted English knights like a divine hammer.
Gamaches' destrier—a 1,000-pound monster—drove straight into Talbot's exhausted horse. The collision was catastrophic. Talbot's mount folded inward with a crack like breaking timber.
The English commander was hurled into the air, crashing into the mud so hard the ground itself seemed to recoil.
Gamaches threw himself off his horse while it was still moving. He landed in a roll, boots skidding through blood-wet soil.
Talbot tried to stand. His leg buckled.
Gamaches slammed him down with a mailed forearm across the chest, pinning him like a predator pinning a stag.
Talbot wheezed, armor bending under Gamaches' weight. He looked up. Not at the sword killing him, but past Gamaches—at the small figure in the grey coat sitting perfectly still amidst the carnage.
"Not... a knight..." Talbot gasped, blood bubbling from his lips. "A... monster."
Gamaches raised his dagger to finish it.
"Glasdale..." Talbot choked out, a cruel smile touching his dying face. "Glasdale... is... here..."
Gamaches froze. For the first time, he heard it.
The distant thunder of hooves.
Not French. English.
PART III — THE HARVEST
April 29, 1429 – 06:25 AM – The Double Kill
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.
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.