There is no one left standing. There is only a single white horse, galloping into the distance, stirrups flying. The road is filled with the dead bodies and the stink of shit and blood and ruptured guts.

A horse is still trying to get up, but has lost the use of its back legs, and is dragging them behind as it crawls on, screaming with the pain. Geoffrey raises his bow and looses an arrow that fizzes across and catches the horse behind the jaw. It collapses. Another lies wheezing, its chest rising and falling, its eye suddenly enormous. Blood spreads from an arrow that is buried up to the fletch in its shoulders. The horse’s black lips vibrate as it gasps for air. It seems this is the only thing left alive. Walter takes three paces from the top of the dyke, down into the road, steps over a dead man and smashes the animal’s skull with a lead maul.

No one says anything. Everyone is breathing heavily. Owen turns away from what he has done. Dafydd puts his arms about his brother and holds him as he sobs. He soothes him in a language only they can understand before breaking into English.

‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s all right. It’s over now.’

One of the Johns vomits.

Another horse shudders and whinnies. It is trapped under the body of another horse. It raises its head, its neck arched, and stares at them. It is looking to man for help. Walter crosses to it, bends down, lets his hands drift over the heaving chest, down to where the animal’s foreleg is trapped under the dead horse. It is bent where it should have been straight. Walter shakes his head sorrowfully, then stands and crashes the maul down again. The animal subsides. Walter peers over to look at the rider the horse has pinned to the ground.

He laughs. ‘Like a bloody hedgehog.’

Richard is silent, pale-faced, unmoving on the bank.

Thomas feels weighed down with regret.

One by one they step down and into the road. Blood leaks from between armoured joints, clots in mail. Are any of the men alive? Does that one move? Does this one raise his gloved hand in a gesture? There is a gentle scrape, like a man breathing out, and a grate of steel on stone.

Each archer is drawn to the rider he killed first. Thomas stands frozen. Then: Christ! A man has caught his ankle. He can hardly see him for he is pinned by the weight of a horse.

Thomas pulls free.

The man’s fingers go slack.

Walter steps past, over the bulk of the horse, peers down at the man. He bends and lifts the man’s visor. He smiles. It is almost tender. Then he raises the maul and brings it down with a gristly crunch.

Walter tucks the maul under his arm and begins undoing the man’s chinstrap.