Free 1356 by Bernard Cornwell

be brought here. And when it is, my lord, we shall let you go.’
    ‘Let me go?’ The count was surprised.
    ‘What use are you to me?’ Thomas asked. ‘It would take months to raise your ransom, my lord, and in those years you’d consume a greater value than the ransom in food. No, I shall let you go. And now, my lord, when you have sent for the coins you might permit my men to take that arrow from your thigh?’
    A man-at-arms was summoned from the prisoners, given a captured horse and sent south with his message. Thomas then called Brother Michael. ‘You know how to take arrows out of flesh?’
    The young monk looked alarmed. ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Then watch as Sam does it. You can learn.’
    ‘I don’t want to learn,’ Brother Michael blurted out, then looked abashed.
    ‘You don’t want to learn?’
    ‘I don’t like medicine,’ the monk confessed, ‘but my abbot insisted.’
    ‘What do you want?’ Thomas asked.
    Michael looked confused. ‘To serve God?’ he suggested.
    ‘Then serve him by learning how to extract arrows,’ Thomas said.
    ‘You’d better hope it’s a bodkin,’ Sam told the count cheerfully. ‘It’s going to hurt either way, but I can get a bodkin out in an eyeblink. If it’s a flesh arrow I’ll have to cut the bastard out. Are you ready?’
    ‘Bodkin?’ the count asked faintly. Sam had spoken in English, but the count had half understood.
    Sam produced two arrows from his bag. One had a long slender head without barbs. ‘A bodkin, my lord, made for slipping through armour.’ He tapped it with the second arrow that had a barbed triangular head. ‘A flesh arrow,’ he said. He drew a short knife from his belt. ‘Won’t take a moment. Are you ready?’
    ‘My own physician will treat me!’ the count shouted at Thomas.
    ‘If you wish, my lord,’ Thomas said. ‘Sam? Cut the shaft off, bind him up.’
    The count yelped as the arrow was cut. Thomas rode away, going to where the Lord of Villon lay in his cart. The man was curled up, naked and bloody. Thomas dismounted, tied his horse to the shafts and called Villon’s name. The count did not move and Thomas clambered into the wagon, turned the man over, and saw he had died. There was enough congealed blood in the cart to fill a pair of buckets, and Thomas grimaced as he jumped down, then wiped his boots on the pale grass before going to the caged cart where the Countess Bertille watched him with wide eyes. ‘The Lord of Villon is dead,’ Thomas said.
    ‘Why didn’t you kill the Lord of Labrouillade?’ she asked, jerking her head towards her husband.
    ‘I don’t kill a man for owing me money,’ Thomas said, ‘but only for refusing to pay it.’ He drew his sword and used it to snap the feeble lock of the cage door, then held out his hand to help the countess down to the grass. ‘Your husband,’ he said, ‘will be free to go soon. You also, my lady.’
    ‘I’m not going with him!’ she said defiantly. She stalked to where the count lay on the grass. ‘He can sleep with the pigs,’ she said, pointing to the two carcasses on top of the cage, ‘he won’t know the difference.’
    The count tried to get to his feet to slap his wife, but Sam was binding his wound with a strip of linen torn from a corpse’s shirt and he yanked the linen tightly so that the count yelped with pain again. ‘Sorry, my lord,’ Sam said. ‘Just stay still, sire, won’t be but a moment.’
    The countess spat at him and walked away.
    ‘Bring the bitch here!’ the count shouted.
    The countess kept walking, clutching her torn dress to her breasts. Genevieve touched her shoulder, said something, then approached Thomas. ‘What will you do with her?’
    ‘She’s not mine to do anything with,’ Thomas said, ‘but she can’t come with us.’
    ‘Why not?’ Genevieve asked.
    ‘When we leave here,’ Thomas said, ‘we have to go to Mouthoumet. We might have to fight our way there. We can’t take useless mouths that will slow us