Villeneuve-la-Hardie, outside Calais

There was a chill breeze coming off the sea as Berenger Fripper squatted on his haunches near the fire. It was dusk, and although the weather was dry enough now, it had been spitting all day from clouds the colour of old steel. The sort of weather to make a man want to be home again, in a tavern with a roaring fire and a quart of good ale in his fist.

Yet the weather suited his grim mood.

His vintaine had changed much since they had set off from England. The long march to Crécy had taken its toll. Many of his original sixteen men had died. Jon, Gil, Luke, Will, even Geoff, who had always seemed impervious to weapons. By the time they reached Crécy itself, most of his and another vintaine had been so badly mauled that there was scarcely enough to make one understrength vintaine from the remnants of the two. Jack was still with him, and the boy Ed, nicknamed ‘the Donkey’.

Sadly, Clip had succeeded in whining his way here, although the day Clip died, Berenger would forswear ale and women and instead take up Holy Orders. The scrawny runt’s constant complaining seemed to give him strength and vigour. When he stopped, the world would end.

Now he had new recruits, though Berenger eyed them without enthusiasm as they stood or knelt around the fire. He caught Jack’s eye and the two men grimaced. They were both professional soldiers, and they knew how much work they had ahead of them to turn these into a fighting vintaine. At six-and-thirty, Berenger was feeling too old to start again. His thinning hair was already showing more grey than brown. This lot would turn it all white.

They were a mixed bunch, it was certain.

Over to the left there was the bulk of Aletaster. He was almost as fat as Grandarse, their centener, with a belt that could have encompassed Berenger, Jack and the Donkey simultaneously with ease. Red hair and small, dangerous blue eyes that never quite seemed to relax. Beside him sprawled the whey-faced, skinny little fellow the men had finally called Dogbreath, for the plainest of reasons. He had a whining voice and the appearance of a cur that’s been kicked into abject submission; rather like Clip, but with more viciousness. There was the man they had named the Earl, for his fair hair and affable demeanour, listening politely with an expression of amused bafflement as Jack Fletcher tried to explain a fighting manoeuvre.

And finally, there were the others. The scum that always floated below the top of Berenger’s pot of humanity when there was a little heat turned onto them: the fellows who wouldn’t fit in, no matter what. Turf, so named for the colour of his face during the Channel crossing; Horn, the man who was almost as wide as he was tall, rather like a drinking horn; Pardoner, named not for his untrustworthiness, but for his habit of apologising every few moments; Wren, who was so small and dainty, he could have been a maid; Saint Lawrence, who seemed too good and kind to be here. Men wanted to stay near him. He carried himself like a priest, tall and elegant as an abbot, but with a certain anxiety, as though he constantly feared being exposed as an imposter.

What of it? Berenger thought to himself. They were all impostors here. That was why they were all content to be given a new nickname when they joined the vintaine. Whether they had arrived to win money and renown, or to escape a demanding wife, debts, or a length of rope, they were all welcomed. Their King had need of them all.

And Berenger felt a surge of affection for them. He would live in their company, teaching them, helping them, and in the end, no doubt, burying many of them, if God didn’t call him first.

These were his men. His archers.