The man with the pistol paused and took aim. A crack sounded, accompanied by a bright powder flash. Hawkwood ducked and felt the wind from the ball as it tugged at his collar. There were only the two pursuers, as far as he could see. Three, including the sergeant. Everyone else was mesmerized by the fire.

Lawrence had reached the horses. Untying them, he hooked the musket strap over his shoulder, grabbed the reins of the nearest one and vaulted into the saddle. “Hurry!” he called.

The pikeman had made up ground and drawn ahead of the second trooper. As his attacker ran in, it struck Hawkwood that the pike looked ridiculously long and unwieldy and not the ideal weapon to grab in the heat of the moment. Presumably this was one of Colonel Pike’s men, and he’d been trained to reach for his pike the same way a rifleman was drilled: when reveille or the alarm sounded, it wasn’t your breeches or your boots or even your cock you reached for. It was your “BLOODY RIFLE, you idle bugger!”

That would certainly explain why this particular trooper had on his breeches and his boots and an under-vest, but no shirt or tunic. Not that his attire was of any interest to Hawkwood, who had his hands full trying to avoid being spitted like a hog on boar hunt.

In a three-rank advance and as a defence against cavalry, the pike was moderately effective. But when it came to close combat, if you didn’t incapacitate your target with your first thrust, you might as well be armed with a warming pan. As his enemy rushed at him, pike held in both hands, Hawkwood did the one thing his opponent didn’t expect. He attacked.

The trooper was already committed and it was the pike’s length that was his undoing; that and the fact that Hawkwood had reached the trees. The closeness of the trunks left no space to manoeuvre such a cumbersome weapon. As the pike-head jabbed towards him, Hawkwood darted inside his attacker’s reach, clasped the weapon with two hands – one either side of the trooper’s leading grip – and rotated the shaft downwards, away from his opponent’s hips. Caught off balance, the pikeman’s only recourse was for his left hand to let go, allowing Hawkwood to gain control of the weapon, twist the shaft out of the pikeman’s right hand and drive it back up into the trooper’s throat.

As the pikeman went down, Hawkwood heard Lawrence yell. He turned to see the second man had caught up and was charging in, his pistol raised as a club.

He was less than ten paces away when Hawkwood hurled the pike.