Taureau de sable, a black aurochs, that’s Sir Henryk Baruth. The same Henryk Baruth who three years ago hurled abuse at me, beat and kicked me at the Ziębice tournament. Now it was his turn—a blow from the iron swipple of a flail has so flattened and twisted the armet that I’d rather not imagine what the head inside looks like. The Hussites had stripped the Bavarian suit of armour from the fallen knight, but not the dented helmet. So now Baruth was lying like some enormous grotesque, in his hose, a shirt, a mail coif, the helmet and the pool of blood that had leaked out from under the helmet.

While the three roses, trois roses, is Krystian Der, the son of Walpot Der of Wąwolnica. I played with him as a boy, in the woods near Balbinów, by the Frog Ponds, in the meadows of Powojowice. We played at being the Knights of the Round Table, at Siegfried and Hagen, at Dietrich and Hildebrand. And later, we chased the Wąwolnica miller’s daughter, rightly expecting that one of us would eventually cop a feel. Then Peterlin married Gryzelda of Der, and Krystian became my brother-in-law… And is now lying in the red mud, staring up at the sky through glazed eyes. Utterly lifeless.

He looked away.

Berengar Tauler claimed that war was a thing without a future and soldiering a thing without prospects. Drosselbart tried to prove—insincerely and because of Mammon—that a Brave New World would spring from the turmoil of war. All their hopes evaporated on the twentieth day of the month of April Anno Domini 1428, a Tuesday, in the village of Moczydło. Tauler’s regarding the future and prospects, and Drosselbart’s regarding whatever he’d hoped for. Prokop the Shaven ordered them to ride to Moczydło. To agitate. There was little chance that anyone in Silesia would try to form a peasant infantry, but Prokop preferred to be cautious. The well-agitated peasants fled from Nysa, he said, twisting his moustache, before the fighting occurred. Thus, more agitation is necessary. With a view to future engagements.

They set off in the morning, a troop of ten mounted men and one war wagon. The riders were assigned to them by Prince Fedor of Ostrog. They were, like most of the prince’s men, Hungarians and Slovaks. The wagon, pulled like all war wagons by four horses, belonged to Otík of Loza’s Nymburkians and had a standard crew: a wagon hejtman, two wagoners, four crossbowmen, four handgonners and five men armed with flails, glaives and voulges. Riding alongside them were Drosselbart as an agitator, Rzehors as the agitator’s assistant, Reynevan as the assistant’s assistant, Scharley as Reynevan’s assistant, Berengar Tauler as a hanger-on and Samson as Samson.