I was still armed with my pistol but now that we were to duel it would have been inappropriate to use it so I tossed it to Godke to rid myself of its weight. I was cold and wet from my time in the hay wagon but I let the battle-hunger take over. I tightened my grip on my sword and stood in a fighting stance.

Jaromil was only a few metres away now, and he stopped where he was.

‘I’m going to finish what should have been finished in East Frisia,’ he sneered. ‘And put my sword through your head. After I find the leader of your little band, my brother will be avenged.’

This time, I did not respond. Words beyond juvenile insults were beyond me at that moment and I didn’t want to give rise to an intense anger. In fact, though my ability to fight with a sword had become increasingly automatic and though I was in emotional turmoil, part of my brain was speeding through various duelling strategies and maneuvers that I could use to fight Jaromil. Being in a life or death moment can do that to a man.

He was bigger and heavier than me, so I could not allow myself to become locked in a contest of strength as I had in Leer. That would serve only to tire me and to that end I ridded myself of my leather armour, placing it on the ground beside me rather than betraying Godke’s position now that Jaromil was closer. The armour had not been particularly heavy, but I needed all of the agility and nimble-footedness that I could muster to defeat Jaromil and so I rendered myself free of such burdens other than my clothing, boots and sword.

‘Time to die, German,’ Jaromil spat and the fight began.

The brutish Bohemian came at me at full speed and instead of parrying his blow as I had in Leer I darted to the side and let him charge at nothing. For a second I was behind him and I slashed Joyeuse into his back, and though most of my strength was sapped by Jaromil’s armour I drew the first blood of the duel.

Jaromil roared in anger and charged me once more, and again I jumped aside at the last moment, this time taking a slice at his upper arm. Rather cannily I had targeted just below where his armour protected his shoulder and I cut deeply into the man’s left arm. He turned to face me.

‘Nice tricks, German,’ he said. He was attempting to belittle me, but I knew that I had won the first round of our duel. That said, Jaromil was much too fearsome to be stopped by the twin cuts I had given him and when he came at me for a third time, he moved with greater care and purpose.

Jaromil had no momentum to exploit and so I was forced to parry his blows. He struck again and again and again, and each time I was fast enough to block his sword from reaching me but this style of fighting would sap my strength if I let it continue.

With that in mind I waited until he had overstretched somewhat in an attempt to strike me and I jabbed Joyeuse forward at his chest. He moved to parry effortlessly but I revealed my feint and slashed his thigh before retreating out of the range of his angry retaliatory strike.

That was the way I could win, I realised. If he was going to move slowly then I could strike between his strikes and feint as quickly as I could manage to prevent him from blocking me with his sword. The only issue was that it would take dozens of such scratches to bring Jaromil down. He was not a weak man, and I doubted if in his lust for revenge he could even feel the pain that Joyeuse had inflicted upon him.

But I stuck with that strategy. I had no alternative with even a small chance of success so I continued to feint with my lighter sword and faster build and I nicked him several more times before he finally exposed a fatal weakness.

Just as had occurred several times previously, I had lingered at the edge of Jaromil’s range and he had lunged for me. I had sidestepped the blade and swung for one part of his body to draw his sword and then swung quickly for another before he could parry my blade. It was effective in allowing me to give him small cuts, but this time the cut was across the back of his right ankle.

I cut Jaromil Lanik’s Achilles tendon.

The Bohemian screamed and crashed to the ground, landing on his knee. He slashed frantically around him in an attempt to keep me away and I stayed away, knowing that he could not chase me.

‘You’re dead, Bohemian scum,’ I told him, but he would not concede his loss and nor should he have. Even immobile and bleeding from half a dozen light wounds he could still defeat me. His strength was such that if a single blow connected with my body I would likely die. If not from the blow, then from the successive finishing strike.

I heard commotion behind me, from the direction opposite the city, and I turned to see Fleur and Karsten. Karsten had an arm around Fleur and was helping her walk and as such she had managed to leave the hay wagon and follow me here.

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‘No!’ I screamed. I did not want Fleur to watch me fight Jaromil. This was a battle of honour, between men. Fleur would not understand, and I did not want her to see me fall which was still a distinct possibility.

In fact, Fleur had a hand in making it one. In my moment of distraction Jaromil used his good leg to lunge from the ground at me and his sword sliced open the side of my abdomen. My guts did not come spilling out, but a large amount of blood did and I felt immediately light-headed.

I was thankful that my battle-rage allowed me to continue despite the pain because Jaromil had truly given his all to that strike. He had gambled that it would kill me and it had not, and he had lunged in such an uncoordinated manner that he now lay on his front. He was outstretched like a man on the rack and I deftly kicked his sword out of his hands before he could recover.

I allowed him to roll onto his back so that he could see Joyeuse coming, and I thrust her point into Jaromil’s throat with such force that it buried itself in the dirt under the fading Bohemian.

‘Go to your brother,’ I willed him, not out of mercy but out of hatred. They would both reside in Hell for eternity.

Jaromil spluttered and struggled for a few seconds as I drained the life out of him. I looked onwards, holding my wounded side awkwardly with both hands until Jaromil became motionless. I kicked his torso to check that he was dead.

‘It is over,’ I said to Godke, but it was not true.

The wound that Jaromil had inflicted upon me was grievous. I was losing blood at a dangerous rate and the risk of infection would be massive even if I lasted the day. And that wasn’t the worst of it.

The Cologne city guard, upon seeing Joyeuse enter Jaromil’s throat, had begun shouting insults at me. Now, even as I pulled my sword out of the dirt, four horsemen rode out from the city to seek justice for their fallen patron.

But they did not know that I was not alone.

Godke burst out from cover with my wheellock pistol on one hand and his in the other and he immediately felled two horsemen. One of the survivors faltered and fled, but the remaining horseman approached me and appeared ready to separate my head from my body.

Instead, he was forced to raise his hand to cover his face as Karsten began pelting the mounted soldier with rocks. He had laid Fleur on the ground and gathered some medium-sized stones and was throwing them at the horseman.

Realising that there were three of us and that he was alone, the horseman fled, battered and bruised.

I fell to my knees. The vitality with which the duel had imbued me was now rapidly fading as the sounds of battle became absent. Godke came to me.

‘We have to go,’ he said with some urgency. ‘The foot soldiers will come.’

He was right, but I thought I was dead. Any attempt to flee from the men of Cologne would have been hindered by my condition.

‘Leave me, save Fleur,’ I told him.

Godke shook his head. ‘These forests are thick and vast. We do not need to travel far to be free of the Prince-Bishop’s men.’

I did not respond. My vision was swimming and blurring and fading and a few seconds later I blacked out. My last thought was regret: I knew I should not die, for I had left one matter unresolved.

I had not fulfilled my oath to kill Godke.

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I awoke many hours later in a small clearing to the south of Cologne. I do not know how many kilometres Godke carried me, but he must have done so alone for Karsten had remained at Cologne with his family and Fleur was in no condition to help due to her miscarriage.

It was nearing nightfall despite the fact that my duel had taken place early in the morning and yet we had no campfire to warm us.

‘Hello there,’ Godke said to me upon seeing that I was awake. He smiled. ‘How are you feeling?’

I tried to sit up but a stabbing pain in my side rendered me unconscious again and it was another few hours before I awoke for any decent length of time.

Godke was sleeping under a tree and Fleur was sitting at the top of a small nearby hill with her hands around her bent knees. She was facing away from me and so my awakening was unnoticed by both of my companions.

The only lighting came from the sky and so when I went to examine my wound my results were inconclusive. I knew that it still hurt, but I did not know the extent of the damage. There was a lot of dried blood on the ground near me which I assumed was mine, but my light-headedness had been replaced by an irritating heat to the extent that I was glad that our proximity to Cologne had prevented us from lighting a fire.

I thought about calling out to Fleur or Godke. No doubt they would both have comforted me if I yelled for them, but I did not want to be selfish. Godke had also lost Gunnar and Thies, and Fleur had also lost our child. I figured it best to let them worry about their own problems for I doubted there was anything they could do for me anyway.

There was also an element of shame. As the father of her child and her saviour one of my duties was to protect Fleur and the life within her womb from coming to harm. I had failed in that duty and I did not feel that I deserved Fleur’s sweet solace when I had provided her with none.

I stayed awake for twenty or thirty minutes, trying to stay conscious of my medical situation. I feared that my wound had become infected for I felt feverish. I wished that Thies were still alive for he would have been my best hope for survival if that were the case, but as things were I was without proper aid. I was hungry but I could not move and so I let myself sleep once more and hoped that Godke would hunt or purchase something for us to eat in the morning.