“They are not!” said the duke. “Bielawa didn’t betray us. He could not have! He’s a coward and a weakling! He knows we have him by the balls, that I can crush him under my heel, him and his harlot… He wouldn’t dare… Královec, I swear, knows nothing about us, he wouldn’t have set up a wagenburg, he’s pitched a regular camp. Our advantage has grown! We’ll arrive before dawn, fall on them in the darkness as they sleep, scatter and slaughter them. They won’t withstand the charge; we’ll tear them apart! God is with us! Midnight has passed, it’s the twenty-seventh of December, the holiday of Saint John the Evangelist, my patron saint! In the name of God and Saint John, onwards, gentle knights!”

“Onwards!” shouted Wenceslaus of Opava.

“Onwards!” repeated Mikołaj Zedlitz, Starosta of Otmuchów. Possibly a little less boldly.

“Onward! Gott mit uns! ”

Two and a half thousand Warriors of God were waiting in readiness on, between and under the wagons of the wagon fort. More than a thousand were waiting in reserve, ready to replace the dead and wounded. An assault detachment of Orphans, two hundred light cavalrymen, were crammed in the centre of the square.

The campfires had been put out. Cauldrons of embers glowed red by the wagons.

“They’re coming!” the returning hlidkas reported. “They’re coming!”

“Ready yourselves!” Královec commanded the hejtmans. “Reynevan, to me.”

“I want to fight on a wagon. In the front line. Please, Brother.”

Královec was silent for a long time, biting his moustache. It was impossible to make out his expression in the moonlight.

“I understand,” he finally replied. “Or rather I can guess. I refuse your request. You’re staying by me. When the time comes, we shall enter the battle with the cavalry. A thousand horse are coming for us, my boy. A thousand horse. On the wagon, in the field… anywhere. Believe me, the chances of fulfilling your death wish are equal.”

The wagenburg stood ready and silent. The silence was deathly, barely interrupted by the snorting of a horse, the clanking of a weapon or the coughing of one of the warriors.

The ground began to tremble perceptibly. At first slightly, and then more and more powerfully. The dull thud of hooves striking the frozen ground reached Reynevan’s ears. The Orphans began to nervously cough, the horses to snort. The flames of fuses glowed and flickered on and under the wagons.

“Wait,” Královec repeated from time to time. The commanders passed the order down the line.

The thudding of hooves grew. Intensified. There was no doubt. The heavy cavalry, invisible in the darkness, had passed from a trot to a gallop. The Orphans’ wagon fort was their goal.

“Jesus Christ,” Královec suddenly said. “Jesus Christ… But it cannot be! They cannot be so stupid!”