Grey smoke trailed over the monastery garden and there was a smell of burned weed. The old monk chronicler dipped his quill in the inkwell.
Anno Domini MCCCCXXVIII feria IV ante palmarum Viclefiste de secta Orphanorum cum pixidibus et machinis castrum dictum Cladzco circumvallaverunt, in quo castro erant capitanei dominus Puotha de Czastolowicz et Nicolaus dictus Mosco, et ibi dictis pixidibus et machinis sagittantes et per sturm et aliis diversis modis ipsum castrum conabantur aquirere et lucrare; ipsi vero se viriliter defenderunt…
The quill scratched. There was a smell of ink.
“Onwards!” yelled Jan Kolda of Žampach, shouting over the bangs and shouts. “Onwards, Warriors of God! Up the walls! Up the walls!”
A stone—probably shot from either a catapult or a mounted crossbow—slammed into the barricade with such force it would have knocked it down, along with Reynevan and the rest of the garrison hiding behind it, had Samson not been with them. The giant staggered under the impact but remained on his feet, holding on to the barricade’s support. That was fortunate, because missiles were showering ceaselessly down from the walls. In front of Reynevan’s eyes, a bowman leaning out from the next pavise was hit straight in the forehead, the ball smashing his skull into pieces.
A wild yell resounded from the Czech Gate—the Orphans had managed to put ladders and branched boughs against it and were now climbing up them and being decimated by the fire from above. Boiling water and molten pitch were poured on them, along with a hail of rocks and spiked timbers. The companies of Jíra of Řečice attacking the section between the Green Gate and the Bathing Gate were faring no better. Twice they had put up ladders and twice been repelled.
Tauler and Samson pushed the barricade forward again. Rzehors cursed as he fought with the jammed lever of a crossbow. Scharley and Bisclavret, having loaded a harquebus, poked the barrel out from cover and fired at the same moment as a wagon-mounted twelve-pound cannon was fired from behind the next barricade. Smoke enveloped everything and Reynevan was deafened for a few seconds. He couldn’t hear anything, not bangs, not shouts, not blasphemous oaths or the howling of the wounded. Before he was struck in the arm by the handle of a scourge, he hadn’t even heard Hejtman Jan Královec, who had ridden up on horseback, showing crazy disregard for the bolts whistling around him.
“…’s sake!” Reynevan finally heard. “Can’t you fucking hear? You were forbidden from joining the attack! I forbade you from playing at war! We need you for other matters! Away, to the rear! Everybody to the rear! We’re falling back!”
Kolda’s soldiers at the wall couldn’t hear Královec’s order, but they didn’t need to. Casting down the ladders, they retreated. Some retreated in orderly fashion, in array, hiding behind pavises and harrying the defenders on the battlements with heavy fire from handgonnes. But others simply fled, flying in panic, just to get away from the walls and the death raining down on them. From outside the Green Gate, Reynevan saw the Orphans of Jíra of Řečice also retreating towards Zarzecze and Neulende. The defenders on the walls yelled triumphantly, brandished their weapons and waved pennants, ignoring the incendiary missiles, balls, bolts and round shot that the attackers were unremittingly shooting at them from below. From the gate tower, the white and blue pennant of Půta of Častolovice and a large processional crucifix were raised and the people roared and sang, crowing in triumph. Although a quarter of the town was in flames, they were exulting.
Bisclavret attached the hook to the edge of the barricade, took aim and brought the fuse to the touch-hole. The harquebus fired with a roar.
“May it fly straight up Sir Půta’s arse!” growled Bisclavret through the smoke. “Direct my ball, Our Lady!”
“We’re falling back.” Scharley wiped his face, smudging soot. “We’re falling back, lads. The fun’s over. Kłodzko has repelled the attack.”
“Jesuuuuuus!” yelled Parsifal Rachenau at the top of his voice as he lay on the floor of the hoard. “Jesuuuuuus! Chriiiist!”
“Stop it,” hissed Henryk Baruth, called Starling, leaning over him. “Behave yourself! Don’t be a wench!”
“I am…” Parsifal sobbed. “I am a wench now! Chriiiist! It tore off… It tore everything off! Oh God, oh God…”
Starling stooped over, his nose almost touching his friend’s bloody buttock, and expertly examined the wound. “Nothing’s been torn off,” he stated firmly. “Everything’s in its place. The ball’s just buried in your arse, and not even that deep. It was shot from distance, had no power…”
Parsifal howled, sobbed and burst into tears. From pain, shame, fear and relief. For he had already imagined, clearly and in detail, a truly infernal and hair-raising scene: there he was, speaking in a high falsetto, transformed into a capon like Peter Abélard, like Peter Abélard sitting and writing idiotic treatises and letters to Ofka of Baruth, and Ofka meanwhile indulging herself in the bedchamber with another full-blooded man with everything where it was meant to be. War, the boy realised in horror, was an awful thing.
“Everything’s… there?” he asked, swallowing back tears. “Starling… Take another look to be sure…”
“Everything’s there.” Starling calmed him. “And it’s almost stopped bleeding. Hold on. A monk’s hurrying here with bandages, he’ll soon pluck the ball out of your backside. Wipe away your tears, folk are watching.”
The defenders of Kłodzko weren’t watching, though, weren’t interested either in the tears or the bloody wound in the bottom of Parsifal of Rachenau. They were busy raising triumphant cheers on the walls. Sir Půta of Častolovice and Prior Vogsdorf were being carried aloft.
“But I wear a blessed gorget with Our Lady around my neck,” Parsifal suddenly groaned. “I bought it from the monks… It was meant to protect me from enemy bullets! How can that be?”
“Shut your bloody mouth—”
“It was meant to protect me!” the boy howled. “How can it be? What kind of—”
“Shut it,” Starling hissed. “Shut your yap, or woe on us.”
The quill scratched.
The witnesses of the dicebatur, like Kralowycz, capitaneus Orphanorum, enraged by the doughty resistance of the defender, ordered special criers, called Stentores, to shout loudly beneath the walls and threaten the defenders with foul torture if they didn’t surrender the town, trying to strike terror in them by that clamour. Seeing how vain were their efforts, he ordered a length of white canvas measuring a dozen cloth-yards and painted on it in great letters: SURRENDER OR DEATH and demonstrare to those defenders on that section of wall which Prior Henricus et fratres canonici regulares had defended and could read. Howbeit, Prior Henricus, the Hector of Kłodzko, being valiant of heart, felt not fear. He ordered the brothers to take a cloth of a dozen cloth-yards also and paint on it in contempt of those Wycliffites: BEATA VIRGO MARIA ASSISTE NOBIS.
“What?” growled Jan Kolda. “What have they daubed?”
Brázda of Klinštejn snorted. Jíra of Řečice chortled.
Painted in large letters on the canvas hung on the walls by the yelling and cheering defenders were the words: