The Nail was on him. Hit his shield with his axe, staggered him with the force of it, chopped with his sword and it caught the rim, struck a spark, jolted in his hand, a lovely jolt. The breath sawed at his chest, ripped up his throat, hissed through his fixed smile, his clenched teeth. He hacked away, drove the man back into a crouch then caught his leg with his sword and made him howl. Blood spattered.

The Nail dodged his desperate spear-thrust, hooked his wobbling shield down with his axe, stabbed with his sword, stabbed in the open face of his helmet. He fell back, blood pouring from his split mouth. He was trying to say something but all he could say was blood and that was eloquence enough, in its way. The eloquence o’ the battlefield.

“Kill ’em all!” screamed the Nail, since there was no need for surprise any longer, just for fury, and he stomped on that warrior’s head as he ran on, trampled him into the mud. Others around him, swinging, hacking, shrieking, laughing, dodging between the wagons, springing around the snorting, tramping horses. Flowing through the baggage like a red flood. All drunk on battle. All mad on it.

He slipped past a cart up on blocks to have its wheel changed and a mud-covered man came slithering out from under it, sobbing and whimpering. Must’ve been hiding there, flushed out by someone else.

“Hello,” said the Nail, already swinging as the man twisted about, wet eyes staring. Caught his neck just right and took his head spinning off and it clonked against the side of the cart. Blood sprayed the horse half-harnessed in the traces and it bucked, kicked out and set off at a wild, straining canter, dragging the cart jolting after on one wheel, barrels and boxes bouncing from the back, catching a tent and ripping it up, dragging it after like the train on a bride’s dress, torn clothes and dented pots and bent spoons tumbling out and scattered in its wake through the ripped-up grass.

Good plunder here, good takings. A tent went up in flames as it fell in a fire. Stink of smoke and fear. The Nail watched a boy run a few steps, off balance, fall, scramble up and totter a few steps, fall again, get up, fall again. Calder’s men had been lazy, foolish, weary from their march and fixed on the city ahead. Now they scattered like a flock of crows and he was the hawk among ’em.

The Nail hacked someone in an apron in the back with his axe, made him scream, knocked him on his face, one of his boots flying off. Someone smiled as he smashed a man’s head against the corner of a cart. He slashed another across the backs of the legs and brought him down, rolling over and over. Someone was bashing a wooden chest open with a hammer, joyful splinters flying. He hacked his axe into the back of a man’s head and left him staggering around with a big piece of his skull hanging off, and bounded on with a delighted whoop, past some woman sat limp and staring in the grass, shocked tears tracking her blood-streaked face. Someone laughed as they stomped another’s face into the mud. He could hear his brothers, his cousins, his men, whooping and hacking and cheering. He dodged a desperate swing of a sword, hacked at the arm that held it, blood flying, hacked again, barged the man out of his way, hacked at him again as he fell, missed and stumbled on, not caring.