It still seemed impossible, yet the evidence was there beneath him as he rode. Poles had been raised to either side, strung with rope made from Tithansi hair to mark the edges. A little over ten feet wide – what was surrendered in width was made up for with the relative swiftness of crossing the more than four hundred paces to the other side. The ford’s depth was no more than two and a third feet now, and had clearly proved manageable for both livestock and refugees.

The dust thinned ahead and the historian realized they were approaching the river’s west side. The thunder of sorcery reached him. This battle’s far from over. We’ve temporarily outrun one army, only to charge headlong into another. All this, just to get crushed between two rocks?

They reached the shallows and a moment later rode upslope twenty strides, emerging from the last drifting shrouds of dust.

Duiker shouted in alarm, he and his companions frantically sawing their reins. Directly in front of them was a squad of soldiers – Engineers – who had been running at full speed towards the ford’s landing. The sappers now scattered with foul curses, ducking and dodging around the stumbling, skidding horses. One, a solid, mountainous man with a sun-burnished, smooth-shaven, flat face, flung his battered helm off, revealing a bald pate, and threw the iron skullcap at the nearest Wickan rider – missing the warrior’s head by scant inches. ‘Clear out, you flyblown piles of gizzards! We got work to do!’

‘Yeah!’ another growled, limping in circles after a hoof had landed full on a foot. ‘Go fight or something! We got a plug to pull!’

Ignoring their demands, Duiker spun the mare around to face the ford. Whatever sorcery had held the dust over the water was now gone. The clouds had already drifted fifty paces downstream. And Coltaine’s Road was a mass of armed, screaming peasants.

The second sapper who’d spoken now scrambled to a shallow pit overlooking the muddy landing.

‘Hold off there, Cuttle!’ the big man commanded, his eyes on the surging thousands – the lead elements now in the middle of the crossing. The man anchored his huge hands on his hips, glowering and seemingly unaware of the rapt attention his squad held on him, as well as that from Duiker, List and the half-dozen Wickan horsemen. ‘Got to maximize,’ the man rumbled. ‘Bastard Wickans ain’t the only ones who know about timing.’