They were Whitehall-bound. The cloudburst, which had begun as soon as they’d left the tavern, had stopped after just thirty minutes. Unfortunately it had done its damage, turning the already muddy road into a fetlock-deep sludge that threatened not only to suck the shoes from the horses’ hooves but the hooves themselves from the horses’ legs. The going had not been easy.

There were two ways of getting to Whitehall from Fort Edward, the boy at the livery stable had told them. The first was to stay on the post road as far as Kingsbury then turn east at the Whitehall sign. The alternative route was to take the fork to Fort Ann and join the Kingsbury to Whitehall road there. As the latter promised to shave at least four miles off their journey, it had seemed the sensible option, but Hawkwood was now wondering if the shortcut was worth the bother, because he was staring at the object that had caught Lawrence’s attention.

The road between Fort Edward and Fort Ann was military in origin, as evidenced by its construction, which in several stretches consisted of hundreds of cut-down trees laid side by side to form corduroy causeways. It was a means by which vehicles and cannon could be transported over soft soil and marshland and one with which both Hawkwood and Lawrence were very familiar. Unfortunately, these causeways had succumbed to the ravages of time and it didn’t take a genius to understand why coaches preferred to take the long way round. Many of the logs had rotted away, leaving chasms wide enough to swallow wheels and break the axles of even the stoutest wagon or gun carriage. And vehicles weren’t the only casualties: discoloured bones littered the underbrush at the side of the road, the remains of beasts of burden that had suffered broken legs.

It was a horse’s skull, complete with a bullet hole where the animal had been put out of its misery, that had prompted Lawrence’s comment. The skull was resting on a shattered wagon wheel and the image was so symmetrical it had obviously been placed there as a warning to others. Both men dismounted.

“Bloody engineers.” Lawrence shook his head in mock disgust. “Couldn’t build a chicken coop if their lives depended on it, never mind a road.”

“It’s done well to have lasted this long,” Hawkwood said. “It must be sixty years since these logs were laid down.”

“You think it’s going to be like this all the way to Whitehall?” Lawrence frowned pensively as he surveyed what had started out as a sturdy, solid surface but which now resembled a wooden jetty that had lost an argument with a mud slide.

“We’ve come too far to turn back. We’ll have to walk them.”

“It’ll slow us down, which is a bugger.”