They burst into the elongated town square and in front of them rose up the stone shape of a church and a lofty tower, shrouded in smoke. Before they had time to think, the tower spat fire and iron. Reynevan saw around him balls and bolts churning up the ground and men falling. The screams were deafening.
He knelt down. He applied pressure to the carotid artery of one wounded man, hit in the neck by a bolt. Beside him, another man whose leg had been torn off below the knee by a handgonne ball was rolling around and howling. A third was squirming, blood spurting from his belly. A fourth was only twitching.
“On your feet, Reynevan! Onwards, to the tower!” shouted Scharley.
Reynevan ignored him, busy trying in vain to stem the bleeding. When the wounded man choked on his own blood and died, Reynevan moved to the one who’d lost his leg. He tore his shirt into strips, dressed the wound and bound the leg. The casualty wailed.
A man with a spear rushed out of a blazing house and behind him a youth with charred clothes, carrying a small dog. The man’s head was crushed with a flail at once. The youth was run through with a pike and pinned to the ground along with the dog. As the youth drooped on the pike, the dog thrashed about, yelping, forepaws flailing.
Reynevan tended to the wounded. Attackers teemed outside the church, which was veiled in smoke and belching fire. They were still being shot at from the tower, balls and bolts whistling through the air.
“Have at theeem!”
Covered in soot and black as devils, Orphans poured out of a side street, driving in front of them and mowing down the townspeople fleeing in panic from them. Scharley tugged Reynevan by the arm. He left the man he was bandaging and ran, jumping over corpses.
The fighting had ceased outside the church in the town square, however. The defenders of the tower—including plenty of women and children—were being dragged from the building and made to stand by a wall. Jaroslav of Bukovina was there, issuing orders. The sounds of slaughter coming from the southern side of the town drowned out his voice, but the gestures he made left no one in any doubt. Once the prisoners were crowded together and pushed against the wall, people were hauled from the crowd in ones and twos. Thrown down on their knees. And killed. Blood poured, flowing in a foaming river, washing chaff and muck from the gutters.
“Mercy! I beg you!” howled a townswoman in a dull grey skirt thrown down onto her knees. “What have I done? Why? For God’s sake—”
The blow of a club split her head in two like an apple. She slumped without a sound.
“Because when I called, ye did not answer,” explained Prokop the Shaven, who was standing nearby. “When I spake, ye did not hear. But did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not. Therefore, will I number you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter.”
“Brethren! Warriors of God!” yelled Královec. “Give no quarter! Let no one go, put all to the sword! Kill them! And burn down the town! Burn it to the ground! May not even couch grass grow here for the next hundred years!”
Fire shot above the roofs of Chojnów with a roar. And the screams of the people being killed soared even higher. High above the billowing smoke.
“After burning down Chojnów,” the monk continued his account, “and killing all its residents, the Hussites turned back again, heading towards Bolesław along the Zgorzelec road. On hearing their approach, the people fled into the forests, setting light to the town with their own hands.”
“Jesus Christ…” The Wrocław merchant crossed himself, but his face brightened up at once. “Ha! If Prokop has set off for Bolesław along the Zgorzelec road, it means he’ll leave us alone! He’s going towards Lusatia!”
“A vain hope,” countered a Minorite to sighs from the others. “Prokop will turn back from Bolesław towards Silesia again. And attack Lubin.”
“Christ, be merciful,” sounded voices. “Gott erbarme…”
“Lubin was still holding out yesterday.” The monk put his hands together. “The cottages outside the city walls were in flames and the town was ablaze because the assailants were firing burning missiles onto the roofs, but the folk valiantly resisted, repulsing the attack. The news from Chojnów must have reached them; the Lubin people know what awaits them if they surrender, so they are holding out.”
“Moat’s deep there,” muttered an elderly soldier, “walls seven ells high, more than ten towers… They’ll hold out. If they don’t lose heart, they’ll hold out.”
“God willing.”
Elencza trembled and moaned in her sleep.
Dzierżka, despite her superhuman efforts, must have dropped off again and was shaken out of sleep. The man tugging her turned out to be her own man, Sobek Snorbein. Snorbein was commanding a group of stablemen, on Dzierżka’s order riding all over the vicinity, both on and off the roads, searching for lost and ownerless horses, particularly pedigree stallions and destriers which were good breeding stock for the stud in Skałka. On hearing the instructions given to Snorbein, Elencza had goggled and looked outraged, at which she was told curtly and bluntly by Dzierżka that wasting godsends was a sin, that selfless magnanimity was admirable, but only during holidays, and, generally speaking, the horses would be returned if the owners could be found and could prove their rights. Elencza hadn’t asked any questions. Particularly since soon afterwards, Dzierżka had established a refugee camp, wholly dedicating herself to it both on working days and holidays.
“M’lady.” Sobek Snorbein leaned towards the horse trader’s ears. “Things are no good. The Czechs are coming. They’ve put the outskirts of Ścinawa to the torch. They are also burning down Prochowice. The Hussites are marching on Wrocław… So they’ll pass this way—”
Dzierżka of Wirsing came to her senses at once and sprang to her feet.
“Saddle our horses, Sobek. Elencza, get up.”
“What?”
“Get up. I’m just going to talk to the monks and when I return, you’re to be ready. We are fleeing. The Hussites are coming.”
“Is such haste necessary? To Prochowice it’s only—”
“I know how far it is to Prochowice.” Dzierżka cut her off. “And haste is necessary. A Hussite troop may appear here any moment, believe me. Some of the Czechs—”
She cut off and glanced at Snorbein.
“Some of them,” she muttered, “have damned good horses.”
“Jesus,” sighed Jan Královec. “Is that town in the middle of the very sea?”
“That’s the Odra and a branch of it.” Urban Horn pointed to the broad expanse of water. “And that’s the Oława, which surrounds the town from the south.”
“And well protects access to it,” said Jíra of Řečice, “as though it had no need of walls.”
“But it has them,” said Blažek of Kralupy, “and sturdy ones at that. It’s not short of towers, either… Never mind church spires! It’s almost like Prague!”
“The first,” said Horn, flaunting his knowledge and pointing, “is Saint Nicholas’s in Szczepin, and over there, that’s Nicholas’s Gate. That large church with the tall tower is Saint Elisabeth’s, and the other one, just as imposing, is Saint Mary Magdalene’s. That tower is the town hall. And that church there is—”