“Didn’t I say,” snorted Buko of Krossig, “that we’d be rescuing them and saving their arses? Very well, let’s ride. Master Huon? Those pursuers…”

“They aren’t just anyone.” The mage held a bat up by a wingtip and observed it, then transferred his gaze to Scharley and Samson. “Yes, they aren’t just anyone… I knew by the pricking of my thumbs. Well, well… You’re fascinating, fascinating… One could say: show me your pursuers and I’ll tell you who you are.”

“To hell with them,” called Paszko Rymbaba, reining his horse around. “I don’t give a fig! Let them come and we’ll give them what for!”

“I don’t think it’ll be so easy,” replied the white-haired man.

“Neither do I,” said Buko, who was also examining the bats. “Master Huon? Would you mind?”

The man addressed as Huon didn’t reply. Instead, he raised his crooked staff and a fog as dense and white as smoke began to rise from the grass and ferns. In no time, the forest was completely engulfed by it.

“That old wizard,” muttered Notker of Weyrach. “He gives me the shivers…”

“Huh!” Paszko snorted cheerfully. “Not me, he doesn’t.”

“Fog might not stop whoever’s tracking us,” Reynevan found the courage to say. “Not even magical fog.”

The mage turned around and looked Reynevan in the eyes.

“I know,” he said. “I know, m’lord scholar. Which is why it’s for horses, not men. So get yours out of here as soon as you can. If they smell the vapour, they’ll go mad.”

“Let us ride, comitiva!” shouted Buko of Krossig.

Chapter Twenty-Three

In which matters take such a criminal turn that had Canon Otto Beess predicted it, he would have shaved Reynevan’s head like a monk’s and locked him up in a Cistercian monastery without further ado. And Reynevan begins to wonder if that alternative might not have been safer for him.

The charcoal burners and tar makers of the nearby village heading at dawn towards their place of work were alerted and alarmed by the noises coming from it. The more cowardly of them took to their heels at once. The more sensible hurried after them, realising correctly that there would be no work that day and they might get a beating to boot. Only a few of the more courageous men dared to steal close enough to the tar-burning pit to peep out cautiously from behind tree trunks and see in the clearing some fifteen horses and armed riders, six of whom were in full plate armour. The knights were gesticulating animatedly, shouting and cursing. Quarrelling knights were accustomed to taking out their anger and stress on peasants. While an angered nobleman might treat a peasant to a boot in the arse or a whip across the back, a furious knight might also reach for a sword, mace or battleaxe.