“Do you know what, Bielawa?” said Jan Kolda, standing beside him. “I think he’s had enough now.”

Reynevan released the bear spear, barely able to straighten his fingers. He took a step back. He was trembling slightly. He controlled himself. Kolda hawked at length and spat.

“He’s had enough,” he repeated. “Quite enough.”

“Aye, I believe so,” said Reynevan, nodding. “I believe he has.”

That was the end and epitaph of Jan, Duke of Ziębice, a Piast of the Piasts, a direct descendant of Siemowit and Mieszko, blood of the blood and bone of the bone of Bolesław the Brave and Bolesław the Wrymouth. He fell on the twenty-seventh of December 1428, or as the chronicler said, vicesima septima die mensis Decembris Anno Domini MCCCCXXVIII. He fell in a battle fought outside a village called Stary Wielisław, a mile or so to the west of Kłodzko. As some chroniclers have it, he died like his great-great-something-grandfather, Henryk the Devout: pro defensione christiane fidei et sue gentis. Others say he was killed by his own stupidity. In any event, he died.

And the male line of the Ziębice Piast Union with him.

The battle raged on. Some of the Silesians, unable or unwilling to flee, put up fierce resistance. Having herded themselves together into a ring, they fought back ferociously against the attacking Orphans. Some fought alone, like Jerzy of Zettritz, the commander of the Wrocław men. Two horses had already been killed under Zettritz, the first right at the beginning of the battle, by the wagenburg, and the second in the flight, so he had no way of fleeing. Helmetless, with bloodied hair, Zettritz was also wounded in the leg; a Hussite gisarme had stabbed him in the thigh, piercing his Nuremberg-forged cuisse. Blood now poured down the plates of the cuisse. Resting against a willow tree on a baulk, Zettritz was unsteady on his feet, barely standing, but still valiantly wielding a bastard sword, driving away the attackers surrounding him, hacking more stubborn ones with powerful blows. He was already encircled by a ring of the men he had killed when one of the Czechs finally managed to stab him through the cheek with a glaive, the blow breaking his teeth. Zettritz staggered but stayed on his feet. He spat onto his breastplate, cursed foully, and forced back the attackers with sweeping blows of his bastard sword.

“’Pon my word, m’Lord Zettritz,” called Brázda of Klinštejn, riding up. “Perhaps that’ll do?”

Jerzy of Zettritz spat blood. He looked at the ragged staffs on Brázda’s breast. And breathed out heavily. Jerzy caught his sword by the blade and raised it as a sign of surrender. And then fainted.

“God triumphed,” said Jan Královec of Hrádek in a weary voice. “God wished it so,” he added, quite without pathos. “The horn of Moab is cut off and his arm is broken.”