Releasing the Devil
May 10, 1429 — Afternoon
The French Camp, Beaugency
"You are handing them the keys to our throat."
Dunois stood in the center of the command tent, his face flushed with anger. Outside, the sky was turning a bruised purple, heavy with unshed rain.
"Lord Talbot is not just a prisoner, Sire," Dunois hissed. "He is the best general England has left. He has seen your Twelve Apostles break the walls. If you release him now, he will tell Fastolf exactly how to counter our heavy guns."
Napoleon sat calmly, peeling an apple with a small knife. "He is not a general today, Cousin. He is a carrier pigeon."
"A pigeon with fangs!" Dunois retorted. "Why? For the ransom?"
"Because I need him to tell the English exactly what I want them to hear."
Suddenly, the tent flap burst open. Jean Bureau rushed in, looking frantic. He didn't even notice the tension in the room.
"Sire! The humidity!" Jean waved a clump of gray powder in his hand. "It's rising! The saltpeter is absorbing moisture from the air. If it actually rains, the Twelve Apostles will be useless! They will just be expensive bronze tubes for catching water!"
Napoleon looked up sharply, his eyes signaling a warning, but it was too late.
The guards were already marching John Talbot into the tent. The English Earl had heard every word.
Talbot's eyes flickered to the damp powder in Jean's hand. So, he thought. The magic fire has a weakness. Rain.
Napoleon cleared his throat, masking the moment. He turned to Talbot with a polite, cold smile.
"Lord Talbot," Napoleon said. "I apologize for the delay. The paperwork for your release is finalized."
Talbot straightened his tunic. He didn't expect a trial—the treaty was clear about ransoms—but he hadn't expected to be released right before a major battle.
"You are making a mistake, Frenchman," Talbot said, his voice dripping with arrogance. "I will be back on the field before your horses are saddled."
"I count on it," Napoleon replied dryly.
As Talbot turned to leave, Jacques Cœur stepped out from the shadows. The Treasurer was dressed in a velvet doublet that cost more than a knight's armor, holding a piece of parchment.
"One moment, My Lord," Jacques said, his voice smooth as oil.
He extended a hand.
"What is this?" Talbot snapped.
"Your receipt, My Lord," Jacques beamed, flashing a smile that was all teeth. "Stamped and signed. We wouldn't want you to be charged twice by your own King, would we? We run an honest business here."
Talbot snatched the paper. His face turned crimson. He wasn't a noble enemy to them; he was a transaction. A sack of wool to be sold.
"And My Lord?" Jacques added, bowing deeply. "Do come back soon. We always have a cage ready for a customer of your... value."
Talbot let out a roar of fury, crumbled the paper, and stormed out of the tent into the gathering gloom.
Dunois watched him go, his hand on his sword. "He will kill hundreds of our men because of this mockery."
"He will kill no one," Napoleon said, his voice dropping the theatrical tone. He looked at Jean Bureau. "Good performance, Jean. Even if it was accidental."
He turned back to Dunois.
"He is going to tell them that we are terrified of the rain. That we only have heavy siege guns. That we are merchants and cowards."
Napoleon leaned in close.
"And Dunois? I let him go because I don't want a mere Earl. I want a Duke. I want someone worth enough to trade for your brother."
Dunois froze. He looked at the King, the anger draining from his eyes, replaced by a sudden, fierce hope.
"You think... you can catch Suffolk? Or Fastolf?"
"I think," Napoleon said, looking north, "that tomorrow, the fish will jump into the boat."
The Fatal Confidence
May 11, 1429 — Morning
The English Assembly Point, near Patay
"They are coming. And they are careless."
Talbot slid off his horse, breathless. He stood before Sir John Fastolf, the commander of the English relief force.
Fastolf was a different breed. He was older, grayer, a veteran who had stood in the mud at Agincourt fourteen years ago. He looked at the terrain around them—a narrow strip of open ground near the village of Patay, flanked by dense woods and hedgerows.
"Tell me," Fastolf said, scanning the horizon.
"It is the Bastard and the Witch," Talbot reported, spitting on the ground. "They are drunk on victory. But I saw their camp. Their artillery master is panicking. Their powder is wet. Without those heavy siege guns, they are nothing."
"Siege guns..." Fastolf muttered. "They are heavy. Slow. They cannot move them in this mud."
Fastolf looked at the ground. It was soft, turning to sludge under the light drizzle.
He looked at the woods on the flanks.
Then he looked at his longbowmen, who were tired, hungry, and scared of the rumors of French victories.
"Mud," Fastolf whispered. "Narrow ground. An arrogant French charge without cannon support."
A slow smile spread across the veteran's face.
"It is Agincourt," Fastolf said. "God has given us another Agincourt."
He turned to his captains. "Stop the retreat! We fight here!"
"Talbot!" Fastolf barked. "Organize the archers. I want stakes. Thousands of them. Plant them deep. Point them forward. If the French want to charge, let them skew themselves like pigs."
Talbot grinned, clutching the crumbled receipt in his pocket. "I will make a wall of wood and iron. They will die before they reach us."
The English army, previously on the verge of rout, suddenly found a purpose. The memory of 1415—their greatest glory—surged through their veins.
Axes chopped into the nearby trees. Thwack. Thwack.
Within hours, a deadly forest of sharpened stakes began to rise from the mud, aimed directly at the south.
Waiting for the French.
The Ghost of Agincourt
May 11, 1429 — Noon
The Edge of the Patay Plain
The rain began to fall harder. A cold, gray curtain that washed away the colors of the world.
The French vanguard stopped.
It wasn't an order from the commanders. It was an instinct. The horses simply refused to go forward into the muck.
Ambroise de Loré pulled on his reins, staring at the field ahead. The road was a river of mud.
And across the field, lined up in serrated rows like the teeth of a shark, were the stakes.
Ambroise's breath hitched.
Suddenly, he wasn't in Patay. He was twenty years old again. He was in a field in Picardy. The years melted away, and the ghost returned.
He saw the arrogance first. The French knights jostling for glory, charging into the trap. The first line hitting the mud and the wood.
He heard the sound of bones snapping as horses crashed into the stakes, maddened by pain, trampling their own riders.
Then came the squeeze. The terrible, suffocating pressure of thousands of men pushing from behind. He remembered the man next to him, his face purple, screaming silently as his ribs were crushed by his own comrades. Men dying without a scratch on them, simply pressed into the mud until they stopped breathing.
And then, the butchers.
He saw the English archers putting down their bows. They were light, unarmored. They danced over the mud while the French knights drowned in it. They held lead hammers and long daggers.
Clang. Crack.
Like opening a can. They smashed the helmets. They slid daggers through the visors of trapped men. It wasn't war. It was an abattoir.
"Mother of God," Ambroise whispered, his hand shaking so hard his armor rattled against his saddle. "It is happening again."
Around him, other veterans were pale. They stared at the stakes. They stared at the mud.
"The powder is wet," a soldier behind him murmured, panic rising in his voice. "The guns won't work. We have to charge... into that?"
Ambroise looked up.
The rain beat against his helmet. Tap. Tap. Tap.
But in his ears, the sound changed. It wasn't rain anymore.
It was a hiss.
The terrible, ripping hiss of five thousand arrows falling from the sky. Like tearing silk.
Shhh-Thud.
Shhh-Thud.
The sound of the rain merged with the memory of the arrows, growing louder, and louder, until it was the only thing in the world.
Darkness fell over the French army, and the ghost of Agincourt stood before them, waiting to feed.