‘Didn’t I just!’ Melfi strutted, not noticing the mockery. ‘He hid it, but whoever cheats me can eat the devil! I tell you I know what he was planning! What drew him here to Vizima! You probably think, Jarre, that he and his miscreants came to sign up like us? Ha, well you’re seriously mistaken! Do you know what he had planned? You wouldn’t believe it!’

‘I would.’

‘He needed horses and uniforms,’ Melfi finished triumphantly. ‘He meant to steal them from round here. For he meant to go to war in disguised as a soldier!’

‘Let him end his days on the gallows.’

‘The quicker the better!’ The cooper’s son staggered slightly, stopped by the wall and undid his breeches. ‘I’m just sorry that Ograbek and Milton, those stupid village idiots, were taken in. They followed Pike, so they’re liable to meet the hangman too. Well, bollocks to them, effing bumpkins! And how goes it with you, Jarre?’

‘Regarding?’

‘Did the recruiting officers post you anywhere?’ Melfi sent a stream of piss down the whitewashed wall. ‘I asked because I’m already recruited. I’m to go through the Maribor Gate, to the southern end of the castle. And where do you have to go?’

‘To the south side too.’

‘Ha!’ The cooper’s son jumped up and down a few times, shook, and fastened his trousers. ‘So we’re going to fight together?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Jarre looked at him condescendingly. ‘I was assigned in accordance with my qualifications. To the pee-eff-eye.’

‘Well, naturally.’ Melfi hiccupped and breathed his dreadful mixture over him. ‘You’re book-learned! They probably assign smart alecs like you to important matters, not any old ones. Well, what to do. But for now, we’ll be travelling a little longer together. For our route’s to the southern end of the castle.’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Let’s go then.’

‘Let’s go.’

‘I don’t think it’s here,’ judged Jarre, looking at a parade square surrounded by tents, where a troop of scruffs with long sticks on their shoulders were kicking up dust. Every scruff, as the boy observed, had a bunch of hay attached to his right leg and a bunch of straw attached to his left.

‘I think we’ve come to the wrong place, Melfi.’

‘Straw! Hay!’ the roar of the lance corporal directing the scruffs could be heard from the parade square. ‘Straw! Hay! Even it up, for fuck’s sake!’

‘A standard’s fluttering over the tents,’ said Melfi. ‘See for yourself, Jarre. Those same lilies, what you were talking about on the road. Is there a standard? There is. Is there an army? There is. That means it’s here. We’ve come to the right place.’

‘You, maybe. Not me, for sure.’

‘Ah, some officer or other is standing there by the fence. Let’s ask him.’

It moved fast after that.