Owen holds up a flask. Thomas shakes his head, carries on.

‘Bloody hell!’ Dafydd shouts. He drops the dead man’s hand, slings his bow and pulls Owen after him. Henry follows. He is out of arrows anyway. Along the path they can see the King’s tent, a coat of arms on the canopy, banner flags drooping from both poles. In the clearing before it, over the ashes of last night’s watch fire, a crowd of Fauconberg’s billmen are gathered around five or six knights in harness, hacking and chopping at them, wearing them down as dogs bait bears.

These are the lords, the dukes and the earls, those too well known to need to bother with livery coats, and they are differentiated only by the decoration on the crowns of their helmets. They have been deserted by their retainers, or perhaps they are all that are left alive of their household men, and their billmen – in red and black livery coats – are being beaten back by Fauconberg’s men. Behind them, watching with pale faces that remind Thomas of the monks at the priory, are the royal heralds in their quartered tabards.

And then there is Riven.

He is unmistakable, even in his ornate harness, a long black hand-and-a-half sword in both hands, parrying, twisting, feinting, ducking the thrusts of the billmen with well-practised moves. Thomas is rooted for a moment, watching. Riven steps aside to let a bill glance off his thigh, then grabs it, pulls the billman forward on to the point of his sword and then thrusts him backwards to die on the ground with blood frothing at his throat. Riven never looks at the man again, but hurls the butt of the bill at another one of Fauconberg’s men, distracting him for the moment it takes one of the other knights to reach forward and smash his mace into the man’s face.

‘Christ on His cross,’ Dafydd mutters. ‘I’m not having anything to do with that.’

But Thomas takes his place in front of Riven. He stares into the dark slits of Riven’s helmet. He expects some sort of reaction. He gets it in the form of a lunge. The tip of the sword, flat and round like a tongue, hums past his eyes as he throws himself back. He rolls away and gets to his feet. Then he moves in again and ducks and swipes the pollaxe at Riven’s right side.

Riven steps aside, dodging the blow, but the axe’s spike catches and runs down his side, rippling over the buckles of his cuirass. It breaks the bottom leather strap and the cuirass sags. Riven feels the change and pats it with his steel-ringed fingers. There is nothing he can do about it.