Afterwards, there were half-naked lasses with hair flowing behind them, flying on brooms across a sky lit by the glow of fires, among flocks of cawing crows. A wallcreeper scurried over a building’s façade, silently opening its beak, and a force of hooded knights galloped in the fields, yelling incomprehensibly. There was a turris fulgurata, a tower hit by lightning and falling apart, with a person falling from it. Another person was running over the snow, on fire, engulfed in flames. Then a battle, the roar of cannons, the firing of handgonnes, the thudding of hooves, the neighing of horses, the clanking of weapons, the cries…

He was awoken by the thudding of hooves, the neighing of horses, the clank of weapons and cries. Just in time, Samson covered Reynevan’s mouth with a hand.

The courtyard of the grange was swarming with foot soldiers and riders.

“We’ve landed ourselves in it,” muttered Scharley, observing the parade ground through a slit between the planks. “Like a hedgehog falling into shit.”

“Is it the search party from Ziębice? After me?” whispered Reynevan.

“It’s worse,” Scharley replied. “It’s a bloody council, dammit. I can see a great crowd of people, some of them magnates and knights.”

“Let’s do a runner while we can.”

“Regrettably,” Samson gestured with his head towards the sheepfold, “it’s too late. The whole area’s staked out to stop the uninvited from entering. And I doubt they’ll want to let anybody out, either. We woke up too late. It’s a wonder we weren’t roused by the smell, they’ve been roasting meat since dawn…”

Indeed, the smell of roast meat drifting from the courtyard was getting stronger and stronger.

“Those soldiers bear the bishop’s livery,” said Reynevan, now looking through his own knothole. “It might be the Inquisition.”

“Marvellous,” muttered Scharley. “Fucking marvellous. Our only hope is if no one looks in here.”

“Regrettably,” repeated Samson, “that’s a vain hope, because they’re heading here right now. Let’s bury ourselves in the hay. If they find us, we’ll pretend to be idiots.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Reynevan dug down through the hay to the planks that formed the ceiling of the space below the hayloft, found a crack and put his eye to it. He saw pikemen flooding into the barn and—to his growing alarm—searching it thoroughly, even plunging their glaives into sheaves of corn and the straw in hay-racks. One climbed the ladder, but contented himself with a cursory glance around rather than a full search.

“Praise and thanks,” whispered Scharley, “to eternal soldierly ‘couldn’t-give-a-fuckery.’”