Into The Fire by Manda Scott Page A

wood.
    There was a ditch, which is now full of faggots. This is how she got close to the Tower at Orléans: wood in the ditch to walk on. Here, near the wall, is chaos. He thrives on chaos. It is his milieu. He flexes his fingers.
    A ladder is flung up beside her. Nobody hurls it down. He says, ‘Lady, let me go first.’
    Him up, her behind, there’s his chance, but, ‘No. I’ll go first. The men need to see me go up.’
    She can climb in full plate. You’d think she was born in it, raised in it. She swarms up to the place where Jean-Pierre’s guns have taken down the top third of the wall. Tomas follows her up.
    Nobody on the walls makes any effort to stop her. The defenders are all at the gate where another ram is breaking down those parts that Jean-Pierre’s guns have not destroyed.
    She’s within three rungs of the top, sword out, climbing half-handed when he hears a shout. ‘She’s there! Get her!’ and –
finally!
– stones start to fall. The fools inside don’t have oil or water or sand in a vat on a fire (how long have they had to prepare? Over a month? They deserve to lose), but they have pieces of their broken town in abundance.
    Thus, the sky rains rocks; small ones that a child could lift in one hand and great boulders the size of half a sheep that must have taken three men to lift.
    Tomas grasps the sides of the ladder and slides straight down, fast. And then the Maid falls after him, uncontrolled.
    She has been hit by something big, and falls without caution. He is her cushion, her straw-filled mattress, a beetle, crushed flat by the weight of her armour. She’s not light as thistledown now, and he is smashed beneath her, the breath stunned from him, his whole chest bruised.
    ‘My lady!’ D’Alençon, of course, bends over, all solicitude. And then La Hire, d’Aulon, her squire; little Louis de Coutes, her golden-haired page. They’re all gathered round, patting at her, stricken. Nobody attends to Tomas Rustbeard.
    He squirms out from under her and pushes up, fighting for breath. Croaking, he asks, ‘Is she dead?’
    His question sparks a wildfire; men hear the one word they fear and spread it.
    ‘She’s dead …’
    ‘The Maid is dead …’
    News flashes outward as oil across a millpond and the entire French army stops in its tracks for one heartbroken breath; a gap, with a world of grief pressing around it.
    What follows when that breath ends is a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a bull erupting in a catastrophe of rage. The noise! Sword hilts pound on shields, axes clash on blades, men scream their hearts out in a fury such as Tomas has never heard, not at Agincourt, not in the siege of Orléans, not anywhere.
    Just with the power of their anger, the French could smash the walls of Jargeau. Those inside are buffeted to silence. No rocks fall. No man will dare to stand against them now. Here, in this moment, five thousand men and boys swear a lifetime’s vengeance and know that they can win. This is not a bluff. This is the certain promise of victory.
    And this is new. It didn’t happen when Tomas’s arrow hit her at Orléans, but she hadn’t won a battle then, not a big one. She hadn’t led a charge from the front. She was admired, she was different; she was a novelty and a source of hope. Now she is adored, and will be avenged.
    It’s a long time since Tomas Rustbeard has been afraid of the power of an army, not one he’s notionally part of at any rate.
    The shade of William Glasdale appears to him, solid under the afternoon sun; plated, wry, dry of eye and leaking weed and river water from the hinges of his harness.
Did I not tell you? Killing her is not enough. You must destroy her. And for that, you have to find out who she is.
    Matthieu knew and Matthieu is dead.
    There are others who know. What about the men who brought her to France? Find them! Question them!
    Tomas eases his hammer from his belt, swallows on a throat gone dry, looks to where he can insert himself into the