About a dozen combat wagons were arrayed near the town hall with cannon barrels protruding from them. Among them was the hejtman’s staff wagon. It was conspicuous since its sides were upholstered and the inside lined with stolen priests’ chasubles. The Hejtman of the Tábor’s field army, Jakub Kroměšín of Březovice himself, dressed in a short jacket decorated with gold embroidery and red leather high boots, was standing beside the wagon. He was accompanied by Otík of Loza, Mikuláš Sokol of Lamberk and Václav Carda, the commander of the Prague municipal militias. And the gaunt-faced preacher Smolík, whom Reynevan remembered from the previous year’s plundering raid.

The officers’ guard let them through. They walked closer. Reynevan cleared his throat.

“Hejtman—”

“Not now!” said Kroměšín, recognising him and clearly surprised, but gestured him away. “Not now, physician!”

The municipal delegation emerged from the town hall. Councillors and burghers, led by a fat priest in a cassock and a tall bearded man in a voluminous cloak with many folds like a toga and trimmed at the bottom with beaver fur. The cloak caught Reynevan’s attention: its blue was the unique shade that his murdered brother Peterlin had obtained from woad and bilberry juice at his dyeworks.

The bearded man and the fat priest stopped in front of Kroměšín and bowed. The bearded man began to speak. He spoke so softly that Reynevan, Scharley and Samson, who were standing ten paces away, could only make out every fifth word. But everybody, even those standing further away, understood what was happening. Bolesławiec was surrendering. Offering a ransom, as long as the Tábor would spare them. Them from the sword, their houses from fire. Everybody, even those standing further away, also suddenly saw Kroměšín’s ferocious expression. And heard his voice. His lion’s roar.

“Now? Now you want to pay a ransom? When we are already in the town? When you are at our mercy? Too late, Bolesławiec, too late! Yesterday, when I called on you to surrender, you shouted back proudly from the walls! Do you recall what you shouted? Something about Kratzau, by any chance? I’ll give you Kratzau now! You’ll remember me, wretched dogs!”

The bearded man retreated a step and paled. The fat priest, on the contrary, looked as though he would fly at the hejtman’s throat.

“I knew there would be no point talking to them!” he crowed. “Excoecavit eos malitia eorum! Damn you, heretics! Iconoclasts! Criminals! You will roast in Hell! God’s punishment will fall on you!”

At a sign from Kroměšín, the Taborite soldiers surrounded the delegation, pushing the councillors against the wall. The hejtman of the field army stood before them, resting his fists on his hips.