‘No,’ he said, fighting to get a word out of his tight throat. ‘I won’t allow it…’

Pike slowly opened his coat and displayed a long knife shoved into his belt, clearly as sharp as a razor.

‘Out of the road, scribbler,’ he lisped malevolently. ‘If you respect your neck. I thought you’d fit into our company, but no, your temple, I see, has made you overly sanctimonious. You stink overly of pious incense. So out of the way, for otherwise—’

‘And what’s going on here? Eh?’

Two strange shapes emerged from behind the stout and spreading willows which flanked the highway and were the most common feature of the Ismena valley’s scenery.

The two men wore waxed and upwardly twisted moustaches, colourful puffed breeches, quilted short jackets decorated with ribbons and huge, soft velvet berets with bunches of feathers. Apart from the sabres and daggers hanging from their broad belts, the two men carried on their backs double-handed swords, probably two yards long, with hilts measuring two feet and large, curved cross guards.

These landsknechts were hopping up and down, and fastening their trousers. Neither of them made even a movement towards the hilts of their terrible swords, but in any case, Pike and Okultich immediately became more docile, and the huge Klaproth shrank like a deflated goatskin.

‘We’re… we’re doing nothing…’ lisped Pike. ‘Nothing we shouldn’t…’

‘Just pranks!’ squealed Melfi.

‘No one’s been harmed,’ unexpectedly piped up the stooping trader. ‘No one!’

‘We,’ Jarre quickly interjected, ‘are going to Vizima, to join up. Perhaps you’re going the same way, noble sirs?’

‘Indeed we are,’ the landsknecht snorted, realising at once what this was about. ‘We head for Vizima. Whoever wishes may go with us. It will be safer.’

‘Safer, I swear,’ added the other one, knowingly, eyeing Pike up and down. ‘It behoves me to add, indeed, that not long ago we saw a mounted patrol in the vicinity of the Vizimian bailiwick. They are most inclined to hang, and miserable will be the fate of any marauder whom they catch in the act.’

‘And it’s most good—’ Pike had regained his aplomb, and grinned a gap-toothed smile ‘—my lords, it’s good, gentlemen, that there is law and punishment for rogues, that is the correct order of things. Thus let us set off to Vizima, to the army, for our paterotic duty summons us.’

The landsknecht looked at him long and quite contemptuously, then shrugged, straightened his great sword on his back and set off down the road. His companion, Jarre, as well as the merchant with his donkey and cart set off after him, and at the rear, some distance away, shambled Pike’s rabble.

‘Thank you, sir knights,’ the merchant said some time later, driving his donkey with a withy. ‘And thank you, young master.’

‘It’s nothing.’ The landsknecht waved a hand. ‘We’re accustomed to it.’