Into The Fire by Manda Scott

they cite as their proof that she can’t be consorting with the devil. Tomas thinks that if she’s consorting with anyone, it’s d’Alençon, whose pretty wife beggared herself – and him – for his ransom only two months ago.
    The Maid’s attention appears to be entirely on the damage being done to Jargeau, but she says, ‘Good my lord, don’t stand there. You will be hit by the enemy’s next shot. Move back.’
    He looks at her queerly, but grasps his horse and does as she says.
    And the next shot kills the gunner’s boy, who might be a little deaf, or just doesn’t listen to the conversations of his betters and, accordingly, has taken three steps sideways and is moving through the spot d’Alençon just vacated.
    The guns pause in their havoc. All around, men are crossing themselves. Tomas finds his own hands moving in sympathy, brow to heart, shoulder to shoulder. Of course, it was a lucky guess. Or she knows more about artillery than anyone except Jean-Pierre. Possibly more than Jean-Pierre. He does not believe it to have been magic.
    D’Alençon is grey-green from chin to his receding brow line. ‘My lady …’
    She looks unmoved, but Tomas is coming to think that there is little of which she is not aware.
    She nods. ‘The English are not coming out. We can attack. Call the men into order. Three columns. One to each gate on my signal.’
    Here is his chance. Tomas feels it in the pit of his stomach, in the sweat soaking the back of his tunic. With Ogilvy as his shadow, he follows her into the thick fighting at the walls, pressing for the gates.
    Here are ladders, men with pikes, others with crossbows trying to pick defenders off the top of the walls. Truly, this is just like Orléans. The Maid and her vicious horse are in the midst of it, her knights in a ring around her. Tomas is one step further away, just beyond kicking range, watching her, close as any guardian.
    He sees the moment when she decides to go forward on foot and calls for help to dismount and he’s there ahead of anyone else, holding her reins, keeping his fingers out of the way of the grey’s snapping teeth, offering his knee for her to step down on to, handing her to the ground.
    He did this once for Bedford and he thought he’d never walk again after the crush of an armoured man on his leg. The plate alone weighs sixty pounds, and what does Bedford weigh? It doesn’t bear thinking.
    The Maid is more lightly made, or she takes more care. She grasps his outstretched hand and swings down.
    Now!
But his good, one-handed hammer that he brought from Orléans is in his belt and he has one hand on the horse and the other … she grips it, squeezes, just a little.
    Their flesh does not touch. Her gauntlets and his gloves separate them, but, truly, it might as well be that her naked palm burns into his. His bones become as candle wax, soft of an evening. His blood surfs in his ears. His world halts.
    He kneels on the summer-hard dirt, offers no speech, no thoughts, no offence against her person, and she steps on him so lightly he barely knows she’s been there. There’s a shared glance, full of humour – is she laughing at him? Or with him? Neither? Both? And she is past, looking to the walls, and his hammer is still in his belt and La Hire is there and d’Alençon, God rot his sycophantic soul, and she lifts off her helm and runs a mailed hand through her scandalously short hair and something mellow and meaty twists in the nether portions of his belly.
    He is nothing to her. She no longer even knows he’s there. Looking right, looking left, she says, ‘We need to get to the south tower. Bring the ladders,’ and his chance is missed and gone.
    Men run to her order. Tomas Rustbeard rises from his knees, reeling. In time, his hands close again on the haft of his hammer. The wood is planed to his grip, smooth, cool. He gathers himself, takes a breath. Another. Presently, he follows her to the foot of the wall. Here they walk on