In which, in a certain inn at a crossroads, the entertainment industry flourishes and prospers. The dice are cast, as a result of which something—apparently unavoidable and inevitable—occurs. Anyone who thinks it must all mean the start of quite major difficulties will be right.

The inn at the crossroads was the only building left from the village once located there and which signalled its existence with several black stumps of chimneys, the meagre remains of charred joists and a still-perceptible smell of burning. It was unclear who had put the village to the torch. Most of the evidence pointed to the Germans or Silesians, since the village lay on the route of the crusade which King Sigismund of Luxembourg had led to Prague in June 1420. Sigismund’s crusaders had burned down anything that could catch fire but endeavoured to spare inns. For obvious reasons.

This inn was quite typical—low, squat, with a thatched roof that contained as much hard, old moss as it did straw, with several entrances and tiny windows in which the light from cressets and candles now flickered in the darkness, as unsteady and fleeting as will-o’-the-wisps over swamps. Smoke crept out of the chimney, trailed over the thatch and drifted across the meadows. A dog was baying.

“We’ve arrived,” said Scharley, reining in his horse. “According to my information, Mr. Fridusz Huncleder has temporarily settled here.” Although no one had asked a question, the penitent continued, “Fridusz Huncleder is a man of affairs, an entrepreneur. He ingeniously fills the gap that, as a result of certain non-economic reasons, has opened up in the relationship between supply and demand. He supplies certain… what we shall call ‘services’ that are in demand—”

“He runs a travelling whorehouse,” interrupted Samson Honeypot, as quick-witted as ever. “Or gambling den. Or possibly the former and the latter.”

“Indeed. The military statutes introduced by Žižka are strictly observed in the Hussite army. Drunkenness, gambling and debauchery are prohibited and punished severely, even by the death penalty. But the army is the army, and the men in the camps want to booze, play cards and go whoring. But nothing doing, it’s forbidden. To everyone. Žižka’s statutes are horribly democratic—they punish everyone regardless of position and rank. It has its benefits, too: it doesn’t result in the weakening and loss of combat readiness. The hejtmans understand it, approve of the statutes and severely and ruthlessly execute them. But what’s for show is for show… A halberdier, flailman, crossbowman, wagoner—he, indeed, should be flogged or hanged for dice, whoring or theft; that is right and proper and has a good effect on morale. But a hejtman or a captain—”

“We’ve come, to put it bluntly, to an illicit establishment serving to sate the illicit cravings of senior officers,” guessed Reynevan. “How risky is it?”