And Reynevan moved to the next phase. After the psychological ruse à la Scharley, it was time to use other methods learned from other teachers.

The first character wasn’t expecting either an attack or that the medical satchel would be slammed straight into his festering nose. A kick to the shins made the second one stagger. The third, the thickset one, was astonished to find his cleaver slicing air and he himself tumbling onto a pile of rubbish, having tripped over a dexterously positioned foot. Seeing the others coming for him, Reynevan dropped the satchel and swiftly drew a dagger from his belt. He ducked under a knife-thrust and twisted the knifeman’s wrist and elbow, exactly as explained in Hans Talhoffer’s Das Fechtbuch. He shoved one opponent into another, dodged and attacked from the side using a feint recommended for such situations in Chapter One of the volume devoted to knife fighting in Fiore of Cividale’s Flos Duellatorum. When the thug instinctively parried high, Reynevan stabbed him in the thigh, as instructed in the second chapter of the same manual. The thug howled and dropped to his knee. Reynevan dodged, kicked the assailant getting up from the rubbish heap as he passed, side-stepped another thrust and pretended to stumble and lose his balance. The grey-haired thug with the dagger had clearly not read the classics or heard of feints, because he made a sudden, uncontrolled lunge, thrusting at Reynevan like a heron jabbing with its beak. Reynevan calmly knocked his arm up, twisted his wrist, caught him by the shoulder as recommended in Das Fechtbuch and shoved him against the wall. The thug, trying to free himself, swung a violent left hook—which landed straight on the point of the dagger, positioned according to the instructions in Flos Duellatorum. The slender blade penetrated deep and Reynevan heard the crunch of severed metacarpals. The thug gave a piercing scream and dropped to his knees, pressing his hand, squirting blood, to his belly.

The third assailant, the thickset one, was on him quickly and slashed diagonally with the cleaver from left to right, very menacingly. Reynevan jumped back, parrying and dodging, expecting a textbook stance or position. But neither Meister Talhoffer nor messer Cividale were much use to him that day. Suddenly, something very grey, dressed in a grey hood, grey jerkin and grey hose, appeared behind the thug with the cleaver. A truncheon turned from pale wood whistled and a dull thud announced its powerful contact with the back of his head. The grey man was extremely fast. He managed to land another blow before the thug fell.

Flutek and several agents entered the backstreet.

“Well?” he asked. “Still think there’s no reason to keep tailing you?”

Reynevan was breathing heavily, gasping for breath through his open mouth. The terror had only just kicked in and his vision went so dark he had to lean against a wall.