‘Andy, mate,’ called Dominic, ‘is that you with the shotgun?’

‘Yeah,’ called Andy from inside. ‘The bastards are trying to get in the back.’

Double flash, two blasts close together, the sound of plate window glass shattering.

‘We’re coming in the front,’ yelled Dominic. ‘Don’t you dare fucking shoot us.’

‘Right-oh,’ called Andy, almost casually.

Dominic went in first. It was his idea, after all.

We found Andy flattened against the wall by his kitchen door, shotgun at the ready.

‘I tried to call you lot,’ he said when we joined him. ‘But all the phones were buggered.’

‘Where’re the kids?’ asked Dominic.

‘Upstairs with Joanne,’ said Andy.

I peered around the doorframe. The kitchen light was off and half the windows blown out. The upstairs lights spilled down into the garden, illuminating the swing set, the rotary clothes dryer and a gleaming shape – like a horse spun out of glass. It snorted and its great head swung back and forth – looking for an opening.

Andy meekly handed over the shotgun when Dominic asked for it.

‘Out of shells anyway,’ he said. Nonetheless Dominic cracked it open and checked. I wondered if Andy had a shotgun licence, but decided now was not the time to ask. Dominic laid it carefully down and kicked it into the living room.

‘Andy,’ I said. ‘I want you to go upstairs, pick the most secure room and barricade yourself, Joanne and the kids inside.’

I expected him to argue, but he seemed to have a touching faith in the police and did as he was told.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Dominic once Andy was safely upstairs.

‘We go forth,’ I said. ‘And we de-escalate the situation.’

Dominic nodded. ‘De-escalation,’ he said. ‘One of my favourites.’

Peacocks, Nightingale had said.

I squared my shoulders, hefted Hugh’s staff and walked into the kitchen, fixed the beast outside with my eyes and said, ‘Oi, sunshine! Cut it out.’

The unicorn turned in my direction, the moonlight flashing on the ridges of its spiral horn, and for a moment we stared at each other through the smashed window of the kitchen door. Then, faster than I would have believed possible, it lowered its head and surged towards me.

Its head fit through the broken window, but its shoulders smashed into the frame, ripping it out of the brick work with a noise like a JCB ram-raiding a DIY store. Between the kitchen units and the table I had no room to dodge, and turning my back on half a metre of spike did not strike me as a good idea.

But I wasn’t some terrified peasant, I was an apprentice and I had been trained by the man who led the rearguard at Ettersberg. And we were about to find out how good that training was.