Scharley, Samson, Tauler and Baťa had arrived at White Mountain on Saint Ursula’s Eve, the day after the departure of Flutek, who had set off for Kolín, having been summoned by Prokop the Shaven. Red-haired Marketa, they reported, had remained in Prague, successfully billeted in the house on the corner of Saint Stephen’s and Na Rybníčku Streets with Mistress Blažena Pospíchalová. Mistress Blažena took in the girl, for she had a warm heart, a heart Scharley additionally appealed to, admittedly, with the sum of a hundred and twenty groschen in cash and promises of further funding. Thus Marketa—the girl clearly preferred not to reveal her surname—was tolerably safe. The two ladies, Samson Honeypot assured them, had taken a liking to each other and ought not to tear each other’s eyes out during the next few months. And afterwards, he concluded, we shall see.

The fact that Berengar Tauler and Amadej Baťa had remained with the company was somewhat astonishing, frankly; Reynevan hadn’t expected to see them after they parted. Tauler often conferred with Scharley, quietly and secretly, so Reynevan suspected that the penitent had tempted him with some fibs, the confabulated prospect of imagined loot. When asked directly, Berengar smiled mysteriously and declared that he preferred their company to Prokop’s Taborites, whom he had abandoned because war was a thing without a future, and soldiering a thing without prospects.

“To be sure,” added Amadej Baťa, “shoemaking has a real future. Everybody needs footwear, don’t they? My father-in-law is a shoemaker. I’ll just save up a few pennies, let order return to the world, then I’ll go into business and expand my father-in-law’s workshop into a manufactory. I shall manufacture poulaines. On a large scale. Soon the whole world will be wearing Baťa poulaines, you’ll see.”

It had stopped raining and begun drizzling. Reynevan stood up in the stirrups and looked back.

The Cherethites and Pelethites, wet and gloomy, were following them. They hadn’t got lost in the pouring rain and the fog.

Unfortunately.

As it turned out, Flutek had been behind the gift of that hideous company, that motley and foul-smelling rabble. Indirectly. The pleasure was directly due to Hašek Sýkora, the deputy head of the propaganda department.

“Ah, good day, good day,” Hašek Sýkora greeted them when Reynevan appeared before him with Scharley and Tauler. “Ah, I know. The expedition to Podještědí. I’ve received my instructions. Everything is prepared. First, I must finish these woodcuts… Ah! I must finish, for the emissaries are waiting—”

“May I take a look?” asked Scharley.

“Ah?” Sýkora clearly loved that interjection. “Ah! A look? By all means. Go ahead.”