“God triumphed!” Piotr the Pole raised his bloody sword. “We, the Warriors of God, have triumphed! The arrogant German knighthood is lying here in the dust! Who will stop us now?”

“We have avenged Kratzau!” yelled Matěj Salava of Lípa, wiping blood from his face. “God is with us!”

“God is with us!”

It appeared that the triumphant yell from more than a thousand throats of the Warriors of God had finally dispersed the gloom and fog. Piercing the smoke rising from campfires, the day dawned and became brighter. Dies illucescens.

“I must ride,” repeated Reynevan, using all his willpower to stop his teeth chattering. “I must ride, Brother Jan.”

“We broke them,” repeated Jan Královec of Hrádek. “We cut off the horn of Moab. Jan of Ziębice killed, Świdnica and Wrocław decimated. No one can stop us now. We shall take advantage of the victory. Silesia is at our mercy. Do you want vengeance? Come with us.”

“I must ride.”

The sun had broken through the clouds. The day promised to be frosty. The twenty-eighth of December 1428. The Tuesday after Christ’s Mass.

Královec breathed heavily.

“Ha, if you must, you must… Then ride. God be with you!”

A crow sat on the head of the hanged man.

The day, although frosty, was beautifully sunny, almost completely windless. The hanged man only swayed slightly and turned around on a creaking cord, which appeared not to bother the crow at all. Having dug its talons into what was left of the corpse’s hair, the bird was methodically and calmly pecking out what there was to peck out.

The tiles on the towers of Ziębice gleamed in the December sun. A column of refugees was heading towards the Town Gate. News of the approaching Hussites had clearly spread fast.

Reynevan patted the horse’s frothy neck. He had covered the six miles between Stary Wielisław and Ziębice in a truly remarkable hour and a half. The result was that he had absolutely exhausted the horse. It barely plodded the last stretch of road. And that was with breaks.

The crow flew up from the hanged man’s head and away, cawing, in order to alight a little higher, on the horizontal beam of the gibbet.

“Reinmar of Bielawa, I believe?”

He had no idea where the man who asked the question had appeared from. It was as though he had simply materialised. He was sitting on a small piebald horse and dressed like a burgher. His face was ordinary, his accent Polish.

“Reinmar of Bielawa, of course.” He answered his own question. “I’m waiting here for you, m’lord.”

Rather than answer, Reynevan reached for his sword. The man with the ordinary face didn’t even twitch.

“I’m waiting without any evil intent,” he said calmly, “only to pass on some information. Important information. May I speak? Will you listen calmly, m’lord?”