With the advantage of surprise and determination, they stopped the pursuers in their tracks. For a while. But it had been, in fact, a suicidal attack. They were facing a larger force, and more heavy cavalry was arriving to aid the lancers and bowmen. The Cherethites and Pelethites fell from the saddle one by one. Stabbed, hacked, pierced, Dunnock, Beetle and Bag—or perhaps Dunnock, Ostrich and Pea-Muncher—tumbled into the water and the bloody mud, one after another. The last to fall was the valiant Mořic the Scrapper, who was knocked from his saddle by the battleaxe of the knight with a cross and stonemason’s pliers on his breastplate.

Reynevan and Samson, naturally, didn’t wait for the predictable outcome of the engagement. They fled up the hillside. Samson was carrying the still-unconscious Tauler. Reynevan was carrying a crossbow which he’d had the presence of mind to pick up. Sensibly, as it turned out.

They were being chased by two riders—esquires, judging from their armour, steeds and trapping. When the esquires were almost upon them, Reynevan raised the crossbow to his shoulder. He aimed at the rider’s body but, mindful of the lesson once given him by Dzierżka of Wirsing, changed his mind and sent a bolt into the horse’s chest. The horse—a fine pale grey—dropped as though poleaxed and the rider turned a somersault that an acrobat would have been proud of.

The second esquire reined his horse around, pressed his head to the mane and galloped away. It was the correct decision. Cavalry flooded out of the wall of trees. At least four dozen armoured riders, most with the red Chalice on their chests or the Host on their shields.

“They’re ours!” yelled Reynevan. “Ours, Samson!”

“Yours,” Samson Honeypot corrected him, sighing. “But I must admit it’s a welcome sight nonetheless.”

The cavalrymen with the Chalice rode down the slope en masse with a yelling, clanging and thudding resounding above the river. The esquire, the youngster whose horse Reynevan had shot, leaped to his feet, looked around and ran away on unsteady legs. He didn’t get far. One of the riders caught up with him and struck him on the back of the head with the flat of his blade, knocking him down. He then reined his horse around and walked over to Reynevan, Samson and the still-unconscious Tauler. He wore a coat of arms with crossed truncated boughs on his chest, partly obscured by a red cloth Chalice.

“Greetings, Reynevan,” he said, raising the moveable visor of his sallet. “How go you?”

“Brázda of Klinštejn!”

“Of the Ronovic family. Good to see you, too, Samson.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

There were about a dozen bodies lying in the ravine, in the river and on the banks. It was difficult to guess how many the water had carried off.