“We’ll lock you up separately,” suggested Reynevan, who was helping Horn to stand up, with Samson’s assistance. “Or perhaps you prefer to be with Schilling? You could talk. Time doesn’t drag so much when you can talk.”

Horn glared at him through rapidly swelling eyes. Reynevan shrugged.

“Your men will release you when they return. By then we’ll be far away. And incidentally, for your information and to reassure you: I’m hastening like Lancelot to rescue Guinevere, abducted by the evil Maleagant. Other issues, including your plans, are of no interest to me just now. I don’t intend—in particular—to thwart them. And I shall keep the secret. So farewell. And don’t think badly of me.”

“Go to hell.”

In the courtyard, Scharley gave Houžvička, Smeták and Zahradil a leather package he had torn from under his saddle. It was twenty Hungarian ducats in gold, the second payment, promised and due on completion of the job. Scharley wasn’t so foolish as to pay them in full up front. The Moravians leaped into the saddle without delay and galloped off into the distance.

“Their haste is understandable and advisable,” commented Scharley, watching them ride away. “Their next encounter with Urban Horn might end badly. In the best case by hanging, for I can’t rule out a slower death. Which I swear reminds me that we ought to get away as soon as possible.”

“Rather than talk, let’s ride. On we go!”

The horseshoes echoed loudly under the vault of the gatehouse. And then they were fanned by the wind, a warm wind from the Oderskie Wierchy mountains.

They set off at a gallop across the steep hillside along a track running into a valley. In the valley they rode into woodland, into a dark and musty tree-lined ravine. The ravine led them out onto a scree slope.

Where their way was barred by fifty horsemen.

One man, astride a grey, rode forward.

“Reynevan? I’m glad to see you,” said Prokop the Shaven, known as Prokop the Great, the most senior hejtman of the Tábor, director operationum Thaboritarum. “I’ve been looking for you. I need you urgently.”

Chapter Seven

In which we leave our heroes in Moravia for a while in order to travel—through both space and time—to the city of Wrocław. Which, as it turns out, can be a dangerous place.

“The Antichrist,” the scribe, bent over a parchment, read with feeling, “shall come from the tribe of Dan.”

He cleared his throat and glanced at the bishop. Konrad of Oleśnica, staring at the sunlight glinting on the slightly open window, sipped from a goblet. He gave the impression of not listening and of being quite uninterested in the prepared text. The scribe knew that was by no means true.