At once, bodies began to fall and blood to stain the cobbles outside the gate. Reynevan didn’t take part in the fighting, but, along with Berengar Tauler and Samson, reached the gate and began sliding back the bolts. Scharley was watching their backs and cut down a guard with rapid blows of his falchion who rushed at them.

The bolts and beams clattered down, the double gate pushed from the outside opened wide and cavalrymen rode in with a thud of hooves, followed by a wave of infantry uttering battle cries. Horseshoes boomed on the cobbles and the Orphans poured into the town, straight down Ziębice Street.

“Good work, Reynevan!” yelled Jan Královec of Hrádek, reining in his horse in front of him. “Good work with that gate! I’m changing my mind about you! They were right to praise you! And now onwards, onwards! The town still isn’t ours!”

When they reached the town square, it appeared that Královec was wrong and that Frankenstein was already in the Orphans’ hands. The house of the Abbot of Henryków was in flames, the cloth hall in flames, the market stalls in flames; fire and smoke were belching from the windows of the guilds’ houses. The town hall was still being stormed, as above the battle cries of the attackers rose the high-pitched screams of the slaughtered. People being tossed from windows were falling directly onto the blades of voulges and halberds held upright. A massacre was taking place in the arcades around the town square. Shots could still be heard from the southern part of the town; the castle, under attack from the forces of Kolda of Žampach, was clearly putting up a fight. But a fire was burning fiercely in the bell tower of Saint Anne’s.

Hussite foot soldiers rushed into the town square, followed by the cavalry led by Matěj Salava. The young knight’s face was black with soot and his sword dripped blood.

“Over there!” Královec pointed with his mace, trying to bring his horse under control as it slipped on the blood. “We can cope here. You men, get over there! To the Dominican monastery! To the monastery, Warriors of God!”

“Come on, lads.” Reynevan turned around. “To the monastery. Quickly. Scharley, Rzehors…”

“Let’s go, Reinmar the Doughty Gate-Opener,” called Královec.

“Tauler, are you with us? Samson?”

“I’m here, too.”

Salava’s mounted troops, quite useless in the fighting to capture buildings, scoured the streets, leaving the storming of the Dominican monastery to the infantry. Numbering over a hundred men, it was being commanded by Smil Půlpán, the Deputy Hejtman of Náchod, a chubby fellow with a shaved head. Reynevan recognised him, having seen him before.

“Have at them!” yelled Smil Půlpán, pointing his short sword in the direction of the attack. “Have at them, Brothers! Kill them!”