“Reynevan. Do you know what one can do to a person using red-hot pincers and burning brands? I’ll tell you: one can scorch the sides long enough for the internal organs to grow visible behind the ribs.”

“No.”

“A hero, eh?” Jan of Ziębice tilted his head. “Won’t turn traitor, eh? Not even if you’re taken to the torture chamber? But what will happen if it’s not the hero who is taken there? What if they scorch someone else’s flesh? While the hero is made to watch?”

Reynevan, anxious and utterly paralysed in horror, knew before the duke beckoned with a hand. Knew before the servants dragged Jutta into the room. She was pale and didn’t even resist.

Duke Jan gestured to have her brought closer. If Reynevan had previously deluded himself with the hope that the lord wouldn’t dare to imprison and disgrace Apolda’s daughter, that he wouldn’t harm a noblewoman, a maid from a knightly family, now the duke’s expression and eyes dashed his hopes and dispelled them like dust. A repulsive and cruel smile on his face, Jan of Ziębice touched Jutta’s cheek and the girl jerked her face away. The duke laughed, stood behind her and with a sudden movement tore from her shoulders her cotehardie and blouse. Before the eyes of Reynevan, who was struggling in the grip of the servants, he squeezed her naked breasts. Jutta hissed and thrashed around, but in vain. She was being held too tightly.

“Before we begin scorching these twin beauties,” said Jan, laughing as he brutally groped the girl’s breasts, “I’ll take this maiden to bed with me. And if you continue to play the hero, the maiden will be taken to the town hall cell. Let the fellows there also have their pleasure. For know you, Bielawa, those same warders and guards are still there, that same fraternity who were there when the Burgundian had the misfortune to wind up in the cell. The fellows will get another wench that the duke has grown tired of, ha, ha. And I’ll have you thrown into the adjacent cell, that you might hear and picture it. And then… Then we’ll bring out the red-hot irons.”

“Let her go…” Reynevan softly groaned. “Let her go… Get your hands off her… Don’t you dare… Have mercy on her… Your Grace… I’ll do what you ask.”

“What? I didn’t hear!”

“I’ll do what you ask!”

The horse he was given was skittish, nervous and anxious—or perhaps it simply sensed the rider’s anxiety. He was escorted to the road beyond the Town Gate by a detachment of knights, including Borschnitz, Seiffersdorf and Risin. And Duke Jan in person.

It was cold. Frozen stalks, covered in frost, crunched under the horses’ hooves. The sky to the south darkened, heralding a snowstorm.