There is a salvo of arrows from Somerset’s men in return.

‘Hold on to some of them fuckin’ arrows,’ Walter urges, but more shafts fly. The archery duel will last only minutes, until one side exhausts their arrows, and then they’ll retreat to let the billmen or the men-at-arms take up the mêlée. Once their arrows are spent, the lightly armed archers will fall easy prey to the horsemen with their lances, hammers, swords, axes and God knows what else. They’ll be driven into the river behind them.

‘My foot!’ Dafydd gasps. He’s spilled his bow and shafts into the water, and is stuck fast in the silt. Thomas grabs one arm, Owen the other, and they haul him out of the ooze. Swirling clouds of black mud roll under the surface as he comes free and the smell makes them retch.

Thomas surges forward. The thought that Riven might be waiting beyond the dyke makes him numb. He wishes he had the giant’s pollaxe with him now, but he’s left it at the fort. Then he stops. The giant. Of course. The giant will be there. He will be protecting Riven again. At the thought of the giant and his thumb on his eyeball, Thomas wavers. What is he doing? Why is he here? He is a canon of the Order of Gilbert. He stops. The others catch him.

‘All right, Northern Thomas?’ Red John asks. ‘Not thinking of turning tail on us now, are you?’

Thomas gathers himself. He thinks of the Dean. He hears that sound of steel in flesh. He thinks of Riven holding out Alice’s beads and something comes over him, like a glove over a hand, the same feeling that made him throw the staff at Riven in the first place. He surges forward and finds himself at the front of the men once more.

The marsh shelves into grainy mud, with patches of slick green waste to one side, its edges crusted with lichen-green, stinking slime. They slip as they scramble across the reach, two of them going down into the ooze, neither dropping his bow, both emerging with eyes white against the brown faces. They struggle to the water’s edge where it solidifies into land against the dyke.

‘Keep down,’ Richard calls.

The men are crawling out of the water and they lie gathering their breath on the side of the dyke. Thomas crawls to see what is happening, and is about to poke his head over the top when he feels them, through his knees and the palms of his hands. The horsemen have set off.

‘God’s teeth!’ Dafydd hisses. ‘They’re close!’ There is fear in his voice, echoed in the face of every other man.

‘Keep down and spread out!’ Richard calls. ‘Come on, get ready! We’ll have but one chance at this. Nock. Nock, damn you!’