“One day,” said Rixa Cartafila of Fonseca, who had approached unnoticed behind Reynevan. “One day they’ll ask me, too. What can we reward you with, they’ll ask, for your toils and sacrifice? You serve loyally, they’ll say, never asking for anything; not honours, nor rewards. Ask, they’ll say, and what you wish for will be given you. I have a ready answer, do you know? I’ll tell them I want to wear only women’s dresses to the end of my days. I want only to gaze into the fire of my oven and fear only that my challah might burn. I want a husband, a decent Jew; wealthy widowers preferred. That’s what I’ll say when they ask.”

“You killed Bożyczko.”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t chase him down.”

“So how the hell—”

“—did the Hussites cross successfully, because Frederick’s army isn’t here, but at Dornau? You tell me.”

You shed your blood for us,

Redeemed us from eternal death,

Forgive us our trespasses!

Lord, have mercy!

“Reynevan?”

“Yes.”

“I was furious with you.”

“I know.”

“If Bożyczko had… If the Saxons had known the actual location of the crossing, if they had defeated Prokop at the river, if a slaughter had occurred… My first reaction was to kill you. Or if not kill you, then at least punish you severely. I decided to conceal—”

“Conceal what? Rixa!”

“I didn’t ride down Bożyczko. After that blow, my head was spinning, I threw up. And that scoundrel can use translocational spells, can travel through space. He fled without difficulty. The only thing I managed to do was to intercept his information to you. Your traitor’s payment, I thought, your Judas’s pieces of silver. I resolved to punish you. By concealing it.”

“Tell me!”

“Your Jutta is in Cronschwitz. In the Dominican convent.”

The sun set. And lit up the horizon in fiery-gold crimson.

The crossing of the Mulda had to be stopped at dusk. It was a fearful night. Barely half the army—ten thousand men with five hundred wagons—had made it to the left bank.

When night fell, the sky in the north-west was lit up by a red glow. Frederick II of the House of Wettyn, the Elector of Saxony, was burning down the suburbs of Leipzig. So they wouldn’t serve the Hussites in the event of a siege of the city.

It was the only act that the elector had the courage to carry out. Before a hurried retreat north with his army.