‘Up now, sweetness.’ Wesley Lewis Jr laughed. ‘Plenty of time for sleeping when we’re dead!’

Mr Hendrik saw the length of wood in the American’s hand. He frowned and began to lift his head, tucked his elbows in close to his body in the effort to get up.

‘On second thoughts . . .’

Wesley Lewis Jr put a boot to Mr Hendrik’s chest and pushed him back flat. He swung the length of wood up high and then grunted and brought it down as hard as he could on the Negro’s hamstrung leg.

DEBUT

The sound of it, the way Wolfie bit into the sausage, the way the skin around it popped in his teeth and then the chewing with his mouth open, all of it turned Johannes Meyer’s stomach.

‘Eat something,’ Wolfie said. ‘It’ll do you good.’

Johannes looked away. They’d left Posen and marched across eastern Prussia and then they’d marched across Poland. Endless days, endless weeks of marching. Along the way, Johannes had practised and practised, the March, the Quickstep, the Charge, but the fifer boys still kept their distance.

There was the boom of cannon fire all around and the drum rattled beside him on the ground.

‘They said he came through the night before,’ Wolfie said, meaning Bonaparte. He was trying to distract the boy, get him talking and not thinking about the battle. He bit into the sausage again, spoke with his mouth full. ‘Wonder if we’ll see him?’

‘I have to go,’ Johannes said and picked up the drum.

‘See you for breakfast, boy,’ Wolfie said after him. ‘We’ll have us some good Russian kolbasa!’

Johannes smiled nervously, nodded, and walked off. He went in search of the fifers but couldn’t find them anywhere.

The Battle of Heilsberg began that night, at ten o’clock. Johannes drummed the orders, standing on a hill not far from a line of officers, all of them mounted on jittery horses, boots shiny black and silver-spurred, reins in gloved hands. They said Bonaparte was on the next hill along. The Emperor spoke through Johannes’s hands, in rolls and raps and rat-a-tat-tats.

The sky flashed with cannon fire, the ground rumbled, shards of iron exploded through the flaring darkness. Infantry and cavalry clashed. Within an hour, the brave but headstrong Maréchal Jean Lannes, Duc de Montebello (who should have waited and held the attack but simply couldn’t restrain himself) lost over two thousand of his men. The battle ended by petering out, a mess of bodies and horses, each side exhausted and without honour, flaying blindly through the morning, until the Russians retreated and the French gave chase.