‘Look out!’ someone cries.

There is a sudden frenzy of noise, like a hundred hammers falling in succession, and all around him men fall, and arrow shafts are bouncing among them, cracking and splintering. The men-at-arms huddle in their shells, heads down, pushing forward, their vision blocked by their visors so that all they can see is the neck of the man in front. Speed is vital. There is no help for the wounded. To dither is to die. They keep on, charging over bodies, knocking the wounded out of the way, just trying to get through.

And all the time Thomas is nocking, pulling, loosing, three or four steps forward, nocking, pulling, loosing, three steps forward. Then he is out of arrows.

In front of them the boy in his father’s greaves writhes on the ground, splashed in his own blood, gagging for breath. He is trying to pull an arrow out of his chest, but he has one through his thigh as well and it is all up for him. One of the vintenars lowers his bow and looses an arrow into the boy’s throat.

‘Only to shut him up,’ he shouts, as if the others have accused him of something, but he too is already moving on, nocking and loosing, nocking and loosing. They scurry through the beaten-down, blood-soaked grass of the meadow, feet squelching in mud and worse. Bodies lie pinned to the ground, and the turf around them bristles with fletches. Thomas steps over a man apparently asleep in the grass, and next to him another one is screaming with an arrow in his stomach.

A hundred paces.

Sweat stings his eyes. He pulls arrows from the ground, nocking and loosing them all in one movement. He sends his shafts thumping into the faces of the men on the other side of the ditch. He is only a few yards behind the men-at-arms now, moving towards the river, moving towards that banner.

Fifty paces.

The shouts from the enemy rise into a solid wall of muffled sound as Fauconberg’s men-at-arms reach the wall. Thomas waits for the crash of arms as they meet the enemy, but the impact never comes. Instead of the mêlée, there is another sort of excitement.

After a moment of confusion, he looks up.

Men are roaring with joy.

There are others standing on the wall. Men in red livery with grey badges. They aren’t fighting. They are breaking down their own barricade. They are spilling out on to the top of the earthwork and throwing down the logs and stakes to make walkways across the ditch. Fauconberg’s men in their blue and white livery are storming up them. They are charging through the gaps in the defences and jumping down into the camp. The men in red are helping them, offering hand-ups. One of them stands on the barricade and waves them forward. He has a grey ragged staff on his chest.