They turned off the high road soon after leaving Legnica; they were forced to by the extreme vigilance of troops and patrols, who were stopping to search everyone and pestering people in every possible way. The news from Lusatia caused the psychosis regarding Hussite spies, sorcerers and Jewish saboteurs to infect everybody in Legnica and overwhelm every sense. They wasted an enormous amount of time leaving the town; the Chojnów Gate was completely blocked. Only people wishing to enter the town were questioned and searched, but anyone leaving the town was still observed extremely suspiciously. The roads were teeming with soldiers. A little beyond Legnica, just after joining the Via Regia, a route passing through the whole of Europe, they chanced upon a mounted unit searching travellers. They were saved from difficulties by a row caused by a merchant from Kiev travelling home, furious that the soldiers were emptying his wagons and that they couldn’t understand anything he was saying to them. They were around a quarter of a mile from the customs house in Eibenmühl, where Rixa suspected there would be another control point; there was probably also a sentry post and blockade at the toll booth in Tomaszów. So, although the Via Regia offered the chance to travel quickly and comfortably, it would be more sensible to abandon the trans-European road and ride through the forests.

Night found them close to Chojnów, which, after the plundering raid of the previous year, was still rubble and ashes. Having looked in the morning at the charred remains of the town, Reynevan doubted whether it would ever rise from the ruins.

They continued to stick to dirt roads and rutted forest tracks, heading westwards. They passed—looking down from above—a poor little village in a valley by a bend in a winding river. And it was there that Reynevan sensed magic.

He felt it, smelled it in the forest scent of moss and resin, in the wind, and heard it in the nervous squawking of jays and magpies, in the rustling of leaves and the creaking of tree trunks. The anxiety, swelling in a violent wave, made him stop Rixa by grabbing her horse’s bridle. Before she had time to speak, it began.

“Adsumus! Adsuuumus!”

Ten Black Riders flew out and charged at them across the slope from behind a bramble-covered ridge on their left.