The following day, the eighth of January, the rest of Prokop’s army crossed. The Orphans’ field army, five thousand soldiers under the command of Jíra of Řečice. The Orphans’ municipal militias under the command of Jan Královec. The Praguians of Sigismund Manda of Kotenčice. Finally, the rearguard, the cavalry detachment of Czech nobility supporting the Hussites. In total, a thousand and a half horse and more than eight thousand foot with wagons.

The Hussites had made it to the left bank of the Mulda. Saxony, Thuringia and Osterland were at their mercy. In their clutches.

Black smoke rose up in clouds behind the distant hills. It was the suburbs of Leipzig still burning.

“Principes Germaniam perdiderunt,” said the Wallcreeper, tugging on his snorting horse’s reins and pointing at the smoke. “The princes have brought this country to its doom, given it up for the invaders to sack. Five heretical armies are marching on Thuringia, Pleissenland and Vogtland, to transform those lands into an ashen wasteland. Indeed, the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning! That it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim.”

“Gladius foris, pestis et fames intrinsecus,” said Łukasz Bożyczko grimly, also quoting from the Bible. “The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within. He that is in the field shall die by the sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.”

“And they could have defeated them during the river crossing,” said the Wallcreeper, shaking his head. “Routed, slaughtered, drowned them. How was it possible? They evidently had information from spies about the location of the crossing. Did you not know anything, Deacon? You were reputedly close to the princes and the bishops, you came from Silesia with some sort of mission, I won’t ask what, and in any case, you won’t tell me. But you were there, weren’t you, when decisions were being considered. Tell me why they made such a bad and disastrous one?”

Bożyczko raised his eyes and brought his hands together, without untangling them from the reins.

“The will of Heaven,” he said. “Perhaps the Lord punished the princes with madness and blindness. Perhaps amentia et caecitas fell on them like a punishment?”

The Wallcreeper looked at him askance, certain he’d detected a note of scornful mockery. But Bożyczko’s face was an absolute picture of piety, sincerity and humility, the combination lending his physiognomy an air of dim-wittedness.

“Don’t you have anything else to tell me?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the deacon. “Don’t you know anything? Don’t you suspect anything? Even though you were with the princes? And perhaps you even saw the spy?”