I say! But look through the window, m’lords! Do an old man’s eyes deceive him? Am I mistaken or is the sun at last breaking through the clouds? Great God, yes! It marks the end of this foul, rainy weather. Indeed, just look at the light flooding the world, shining down from the skies in a bright beam. And the radiance fills the world…

Lux perpetua.

That’s how you’d like it. Eternal. You could like that…

What are you saying? That since the foul weather is over it’s time to leave the inn and be off? That since it’s so, instead of blathering on I should quickly finish the tale? Say what happened next to Reynevan and his beloved Jutta, to Scharley and Samson at that time, a time of those cruel wars, when the lands of Lusatia, Silesia, Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria ran with blood and were blackened by flames?

Right away, m’lords, right away. I shall tell you, for my tale is also coming to its natural ending. Though I must also tell you that if you ready yourself for a happy or joyous ending to the tale you will be sore disappointed… What? You say I frighten you again? I croak? But how, do tell, may I not croak? When such dreadful things do happen in this world? When throughout Europe all one can see is the tumult of battle?

At Paris the blood is not yet dry on the swords of Frenchmen, Englishmen, Burgundians and Armagnacians. Ever is there killing and fire on the French sod, war is ever waged. It will last a hundred years, will it?

England foments with revolt, Gloucester quarrels with the Beauforts. Some evil will come of it, indeed, mark my words, between the houses of York and Lancaster, between the White and the Red Roses.

Cannons roar in Denmark, Eric of Pomerania clashes with the Hanseatic League, wages a vicious war with the Counts of Schleswig and Holstein. Zurich is in conflict with the cantons, threatens the unity of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Milan battles with Florence. On the streets of Naples mercenaries from Aragon and Navarre wreak havoc.

Sword and fire rage in the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Vasily clashes in virulent skirmishes with Yury, Dmitry Kosoy and Dmitry Shemyaka. Vae victis! The defeated weep crimson tears from their bloody eye sockets.

The valiant János Hunyady subdues the Turk. The children of Árpád have the upper hand! But the shadow of the Crescent hangs—like the Sword of Damocles—over Transylvania, over the valleys of the Drava, the Tisza and the Danube. The Magyars are doomed to suffer the same sorry fate as the Bulgarians and the Serbs.