Quade stared down at the mess that, only seconds before, had been a man’s face. It was unlikely, he thought, that anyone would look fierce with holes in the front and back of his skull, be they white man or Indian. He looked away as someone unleashed a shot at a fleeing shape and saw a scalp-locked figure throw up its arms and pitch forward.

Like ninepins! he thought, but turned back when he heard the corporal say, “Ah, Jesus,” in a mixture of anguish and disgust.

The corporal was nudging something away from the dead warrior’s belt with the muzzle of his gun. A bloody strip of skin with hair attached. The hair was sandy-coloured with streaks of grey running through it.

The corporal said bleakly, “I think it’s Sergeant Carmody, sir.”

Part of him, at any rate, Quade thought.

Carmody had been the sergeant in charge of the van, one of the soldiers who hadn’t made it back across the bridge.

“Murdering bastards,” the corporal muttered. He turned. “What should we do, Major?”

Quade assumed the corporal was referring to the scalp. It was on the tip of his tongue to reply that there was little they could do as the late Sergeant Carmody had no further need of his hair. Instead, he said, “We exterminate them, Corporal; as many as we can. That’s how you deal with vermin.”

As he followed Tewanias’s weaving figure, Hawkwood counted the number of warriors running with them.

Some of Tewanias’s men had managed to lay down covering fire as they’d made their escape, but with the troops closing in behind, not everyone had had time to reload and so their shots had soon petered out, leaving their backs vulnerable to their pursuers. What had begun as an ambush had fast become a desperate rearguard action and Hawkwood didn’t have to look back to know that their trail was so obvious that a blind man could follow it.

All told, they appeared to be four men down; a sizeable toll, and not just for their party. Gaanundata was a small village. Even the loss of four fighters would leave a scar; one that would take a long time to heal. Born into a culture where, notwithstanding their expertise, adult males were, by tradition, full-time providers and only part-time warriors, it said a lot for Tewanias’s authority that the survivors had decided not to cut their losses and leave Hawkwood to face the column on his own – though they would have been within their rights to do so.