A character wearing a brigantine and carrying an armful of hay emerged from a small barn. On seeing Reynevan he dropped the hay and yelled. Another man—as similar as his twin—ran out of the barn and they both went for him, yelling. Reynevan seized the crossbow hanging from his saddle, grabbed the windlass by the crank and wound. The toothed wheel grated awfully, something crunched, the crank broke off and the lever snapped. His faithful crossbow, made in Nuremberg, smuggled from Poland to Bohemia and purchased by Scharley for four Hungarian ducats, had broken.

This is the end. The thought flashed through his mind as he spurred his horse. The end, he thought as they pulled him from the saddle. The end, he was certain, as they pressed him to the ground, seeing the flash of a curved shoemaker’s knife.

“I say! I say! Let go of him! Drop him! He’s one of us! A comrade.”

It can’t be, thought Reynevan, lying motionless and staring up at the sky. This doesn’t happen in real life. Such things only occur in knightly romances. And not all of them.

“Reynevan? Are you hale?”

“Jan Kuropatwa? Of Łańcuchów? Of the Szreniawa coat of arms?”

“It is I. Ooh, Reynevan, you look rotten. I barely recognised you.”

There were other familiar faces in the company. Jakub Nadobny, Jan Tłuczymost and the Lithuanian Skirmunt. And the ringleader of the entire band, the Ruthenian warlord Fedor of Ostrog himself. Whose small black eyes were fixed on Reynevan in a malevolent stare.

“Why are your eyes jumping so from face to face?” said the prince finally. “Are you looking for the boyar, Daniło, whom you slashed with a knife in Odry? You look in vain. The Slovaks killed him by the River Váh. Herrgott, you’re in luck, for he harboured grudges. But I don’t. Even though you fucked up in Odry, I forgive you like a Christian. I’ll release you; I won’t hold you. But first of all, let’s drink to reconciliation. Pour the mead, Kondzioł. Mikoszka, I’m talking to you. Nu, your good health!”

“Good health!”

“And where exactly are you headed, Reynevan?” asked Kuropatwa, wiping his moustache. “I ask, for perhaps you’ll ride with us?”

“I’m heading north,” said Reynevan, preferring not to be too frank.

The Pole wasn’t to be brushed off.

“Where, precisely?”

“Wieluń.”

“Oh! Why, we’re also heading that way. Ride with us, it’s more pleasant in a comitiva. And safer. Well, Fedor? Shall we take him?”

“It’s all one to me. If he wants, let him. Good health!”

“Good health!”

They rode northwards, along the green Przemsza valley.