He was caught by a group of ten riders, who encircled him, dragged him from his horse and bound him. His protests fell on deaf ears. They said nothing, and when he continued to protest and demand explanations, they quietened him with punches. They took him back to the Orphans’ camp and tossed him, still bound, into an empty pigsty, where during the night he almost expired from the cold. They didn’t respond to his shouts. The next morning, they hauled him out, quite numb with cold, and shoved him roughly to the headquarters of the Chief Hejtman. Jan Pluh and several other Orphan commanders he knew were waiting for him there.

And it was what Reynevan had suspected. And feared.

Inside, on the pallet, almost in the same position he had left him after operating on him and applying the dressing, lay Smil Půlpán. Except he was stiff. Absolutely defunct and absolutely dead. His face, as white as chalk, was horribly distorted by his goggling eyes, which appeared almost to be popping out of their sockets. And by the grimace, the lips twisted into an even ghastlier smile.

“And what do you say, physician?” Jan Pluh asked hoarsely and ominously. “How will you explain this kind of medicine to us? Can you explain it?”

Reynevan swallowed, shook his head and spread his arms wide. He approached the pallet with the intention of lifting the blanket covering the corpse, but the iron hands of the captains held him back.

“No, laddie! You’d like to destroy the evidence of the crime, but we won’t let you. You killed him and will answer for it!”

“What are you talking about?” He struggled. “Have you gone mad? Killed him? That’s absurd! You were all present at the operation! He was alive after it and doing well! Excising a carbuncle cannot possibly cause death! Let me examine him—”

“You miscalculated, sorcerer,” Pluh interrupted him. “You thought you’d get away with it. But Brother Smil came round. He cried that he felt a burning in his lungs and guts, that the pain was making his head burst. And before he died, he accused you of magic and of poisoning.”

“That’s impossible!”

“And I would say it was possible. You hated Brother Smil; everybody knows it. You found a way and poisoned the poor wretch.”

“You were present! You were, too!”

“You beguiled our eyes with witchcraft! We know you’re a sorcerer and a wizard. There are witnesses to it.”

“What witnesses? Witnesses to what?”

“That will come out at your trial. Take him away!”

The Orphans were crowded like sardines, like a swarm of locusts, on the parade ground.

“Why have this trial?” somebody shouted. “What the hell is this pantomime for? Waste of time and effort! String up the poisoner! Hang him from a wagon shaft!”

“Sorcerer! To the stake with him!”