Stealth was no longer a factor, for either the hunters or the hunted. While Quade’s men might not have been banging drums or blowing horns, their intention was clearly to flush their prey, like boar from a thicket, towards the road and into the path of the advancing column.

A sucking sound came from the back of Cageaga’s throat. “If you carry me, you cannot outrun them. You will all die or you will be captured. To become a prisoner of the Yan-kees would be worse than death.” Cageaga’s fingers found Hawkwood’s wrist. “I will be dead before they take me. Your war is yet to be fought. Go now!”

“No,” Hawkwood said again.

About to respond, Cageaga coughed. Another droplet of blood broke from between his pressed lips.

Kodjeote and Tewanias looked at Hawkwood in mute appeal. While foliage could provide temporary concealment, it was no protection against musket fire. They had to move, before the jaws of Quade’s trap closed upon them.

Or, failing that, find somewhere to make a stand.

But to make a stand, you needed something solid at your back and Hawkwood couldn’t see a damned thing that came close to fitting that category.

Except …

He stared. There was something there, through the trees. What it was, he couldn’t make out exactly, but it had caught his eye in the same way the chimney of the ruin where he and Lawrence had warmed themselves had trapped his attention: by not quite fitting in with its surroundings.

And then an image arose of another time and another place – a small hilltop village in Portugal called Vimeiro and the defences placed across the narrow roads leading to it – and he realized what he might be looking at. Quickly he drew Tewanias’s attention. The war captain frowned and then saw what Hawkwood was alluding to. His chin lifted. “Ea!”

In the next instant Tewanias was calling his remaining warriors to him and they were half-running, half-stumbling – not away from the edge of the wood, but towards it.

They were one hundred paces ahead of the column’s front markers when they broke from the trees.

Close to, the abattis looked less like a defensive wall and more like a stockade that had collapsed under the weight of snow piled upon it. But right then, Hawkwood would have settled for an upturned rum cask if it helped provide cover.

It took a second for the troops in the column to react, possibly because some in the first rank had thought they might be Quade’s men and so had not opened fire immediately. This gave Hawkwood and the Mohawk the few extra yards they needed. It also gave Effa – the decoy – the opportunity he had been waiting for to rejoin his fellow warriors. Bursting from the trees on the other side of the road, he sprinted towards them, carbine in hand.