He was dead. The man in front of me fell on top of me and I stepped back. He slid to the ground and was suddenly replaced by a vicious looking archer. I tried to move away, but there was nowhere to go, only more men periodically pushed closer together by another Knight, riding through the mass of men towards then enemy. Towards the enemy: it was the only way. So I picked up my shield, tried to look dangerous, and lunged. I felt the spearhead slide between a pair of ribs, saw the look of shock in his face as a man who, seconds before, had been franticly looking for escape killed him. Seconds? Surely it could not be, for I would be dead if it were seconds. Everything seemed to be slower than before. Me included. It was odd, but this must be what the veterans talked about around the campfires. The place where seconds were replaced by heartbeats, minutes by seconds.
My thoughts were interrupted as an infantryman pushed the corpse – my spear still in it – aside. Lacking a weapon, I slid my arm from the shield straps and grabbed the narrow end in both hands, beating down on my opponent with the heavy wood. The man was temporarily stunned, and in that split second, I tried to pull my spear from the archer (still groaning on the ground), found it was jammed, and grabbed the spear from the man who had stood front of me. My chain mail held against a stinging blow to my chest and I swung the spear as my opponent did the sword, leaving a neat red line across the man’s throat, the neatness instantly ruined by a spray of blood. The man was dead and, in the suddenly silent streets I looked up at the moon. We had won. I was Roger Malter. I was a soldier. I was a Templar. I was alive.