“As for you, accursed apostate,” said Gebhard Ungerath, pointing a finger at Reynevan, “we will turn you over to the Bishop of Wrocław. We happen to know that the bishop is dreaming of getting you into the torture chamber. And it shall be a service to the Church—”

“We also know,” said Urban Horn, raising his head, “that this is all in the name of service. This deceitfully hatched trick, this entire hawker’s swindle. Not even devised by you, although you are a hawker. Your upstart papa hoped by doing so to gain fame and land himself a knighthood. The noble Sir Hawker of Ungerath, with a broken farthing in his coat of arms. But instead of a coat of arms, you’ll have shit, Gebhard. For your plan is worth shit.”

“I’ll have you flayed alive for those words, heretic,” Gebhard Ungerath spat furiously. “You’re done for! Can’t you see you’re ensnared?”

“It is you who is ensnared. Look around.”

In the utter silence that suddenly fell, fresh soldiers had appeared on both banks of the Olza. Numbering at least a hundred. They quickly hemmed the bridge in. From both sides.

“They are…” said Gebhard, pointing a shaking hand at the large red standard with a silver Odrowąż. “They are the knights of Lord Kravaře! Catholics! Our allies!”

“Not any longer.”

Ungerath’s stunned and bewildered mercenaries were disarmed without any resistance. Reynevan saw Paszko Rymbaba gazing around him with eyes wide open, unable to understand why Hussites decorated with the Chalice who had suddenly allied with armed knights bearing battleaxes in their crest were confiscating his weapons. He saw Eberwin of Kranz, as pale as a ghost, unable to comprehend why he was being disarmed and why Moravians fighting under the Odrowąż were being taken captive.

A moment later, they were all on the left bank of the Olza. While Horn was wordlessly shaking the hands of Reynevan and the Poles, the Moravians were driving into a small group and putting under guard their recent oppressors, now themselves prisoners. Standing with lowered heads, still dumbfounded, were Kranz’s mercenaries, Gilbert Ungerath, and the young knight with the cherubic face. And Gebhard, with his contorted gnome’s face, goggling at the incident’s chief architect, a magnate dressed in splendid armour with a swarthy face and a bushy black moustache. A magnate Reynevan had seen once before.

Indeed, he thought, it’s a very small world.

Commanding his hejtmans and knights, beneath the standard of the Odrzywąż, the crest of the Beneš family, rode up before them Jan of Kravaře, Lord of Nový Jičín, Fulnek, Bílovec, Štramberk and Rožnov, a magnate, a mighty lord, the ruler of a dominium covering an immense swathe of the north-west part of the Moravian margraviate.