Blackstone stepped forward over the fallen and watched the remnants of the army determined to kill him scatter in disarray. The distant flags and pennons of the French lords and that of the Breton commander were also turning away. But then the lowering sun caught the glint of mail and spear tip as an army of shadows crept across the distant hillside and rallied them. The French raised their banners and turned to face Blackstone’s survivors once more. They would come again. The creeping darkness was Hugh Calveley and his thousand men, who swept across the broad expanse on the opposite bank. They formed up with Hugh Calveley at their head.

‘Well, lads, we’re done for now,’ said Will Longdon.

Meulon turned from where he stood with his men. Blood dribbled down his neck into his congealed beard from a head wound. ‘You must have left your brains in the shit pit, you fool. Did you think we would live through this?’

‘You were never going to die drunk in a whore’s bed with your hand on your cock trying to keep it up,’ said Killbere. He wiped blood from his face and spat the foul taste from his throat.

A murmur of humour ran through the men.

‘At least I would have had one to get my fist around. Now it’ll be fed to the crows,’ Longdon answered.

‘Crows look for a meal not a morsel,’ said Meulon.

They fell silent as Blackstone turned to face them. ‘See here, lads. Calveley rides forward. He’ll ask for our surrender. The Spanish and the French will have sport with us but if my head is to go on a spike outside Paris or Burgos then I reckon they must earn the right to take it.’

‘I’ve not fought these bastards over the years to end up in a cage and be torn limb from limb for the entertainment of a mob of pig-shagging peasants. I’ll not surrender to that,’ said Killbere.

A cry went around the survivors. ‘No surrender, Sir Thomas! No surrender!’

‘Then so be it,’ said Blackstone.

Hugh Calveley’s horse had picked its way through the dead and waited at the far side of the bridge. Despite his aching body and gnawing wounds, Blackstone stepped over and around the corpses bristling with arrows and strode towards him.

He stopped ten yards from the mounted veteran whose side he had fought alongside at other battles in another time.

‘Thomas, you should have taken my offer to join me after Auray.’

‘I had other matters to attend to,’ said Blackstone.

Hugh Calveley looked across the field of dead. ‘Your banner still stands but few men left around it. Henry of Trastámara is king; we came for Don Pedro.’

‘Then you’re too late.’