They were saved from death by the Cherethites and Pelethites, Mořic the Scrapper et consortes. They hadn’t fled but stopped at the edge of the ravine and now released a salvo from their crossbows. They fired accurately. Horses and riders splashed into the water. The Cherethites and Pelethites rode down the slope, yelling, brandishing swords and maces, and fell on the lancers.
With the advantage of surprise and determination, they stopped the pursuers in their tracks. For a while. But it had been, in fact, a suicidal attack. They were facing a larger force, and more heavy cavalry was arriving to aid the lancers and bowmen. The Cherethites and Pelethites fell from the saddle one by one. Stabbed, hacked, pierced, Dunnock, Beetle and Bag—or perhaps Dunnock, Ostrich and Pea-Muncher—tumbled into the water and the bloody mud, one after another. The last to fall was the valiant Mořic the Scrapper, who was knocked from his saddle by the battleaxe of the knight with a cross and stonemason’s pliers on his breastplate.
Reynevan and Samson, naturally, didn’t wait for the predictable outcome of the engagement. They fled up the hillside. Samson was carrying the still-unconscious Tauler. Reynevan was carrying a crossbow which he’d had the presence of mind to pick up. Sensibly, as it turned out.
They were being chased by two riders—esquires, judging from their armour, steeds and trapping. When the esquires were almost upon them, Reynevan raised the crossbow to his shoulder. He aimed at the rider’s body but, mindful of the lesson once given him by Dzierżka of Wirsing, changed his mind and sent a bolt into the horse’s chest. The horse—a fine pale grey—dropped as though poleaxed and the rider turned a somersault that an acrobat would have been proud of.
The second esquire reined his horse around, pressed his head to the mane and galloped away. It was the correct decision. Cavalry flooded out of the wall of trees. At least four dozen armoured riders, most with the red Chalice on their chests or the Host on their shields.
“They’re ours!” yelled Reynevan. “Ours, Samson!”
“Yours,” Samson Honeypot corrected him, sighing. “But I must admit it’s a welcome sight nonetheless.”
The cavalrymen with the Chalice rode down the slope en masse with a yelling, clanging and thudding resounding above the river. The esquire, the youngster whose horse Reynevan had shot, leaped to his feet, looked around and ran away on unsteady legs. He didn’t get far. One of the riders caught up with him and struck him on the back of the head with the flat of his blade, knocking him down. He then reined his horse around and walked over to Reynevan, Samson and the still-unconscious Tauler. He wore a coat of arms with crossed truncated boughs on his chest, partly obscured by a red cloth Chalice.
“Greetings, Reynevan,” he said, raising the moveable visor of his sallet. “How go you?”
“Brázda of Klinštejn!”
“Of the Ronovic family. Good to see you, too, Samson.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
There were about a dozen bodies lying in the ravine, in the river and on the banks. It was difficult to guess how many the water had carried off.
“Whose men were they?” asked the commander of the relief, a long-haired, moustachioed youth as thin as a rake. “They sped away too fast for me to identify them. You saw them close up. So? Brother Bielawa!”
Reynevan knew the man asking the questions. He had met him in Hradec Králové two years before. It was Hejtman Jan Čapek of Sány, who was advancing rapidly through the Orphans’ ranks. The cavalry bearing Chalices on their chests who had come to their aid were Orphans. The Warriors of God thus christened themselves after having been “orphaned” when their beloved and revered leader, the great Jan Žižka of Trocnov, died.
“Reynevan! I’m talking to you!”
“Apart from the foot soldiers, there were eight more armoured men,” he calculated. “Two knights and six esquires. That’s one of them, over there, being bound. The commander had a cross on his armour, and pliers or pincers on his shield… Black on a silver field…”
“As I suspected.” Jan Čapek of Sány grimaced. “Bohuš of Kováň, the Lord of Frýdštejn. A brigand and traitor! Oh well, pity he managed to escape… I’d have flayed him… And what are you doing here? Where did you come from? Eh? Brother Scharley?”
“We’re travelling.”
“Travelling,” repeated Čapek. “Well, you were fortunate. If we hadn’t arrived in time, you’d have travelled vertically for the last leg of your journey, dropping from a branch with a rope around your necks. Lord Bohuš likes to trim trees with hanged men. We have scores to settle with him, oh yes—”
“Does this Lord Bohuš,” Reynevan suddenly recalled, “by any chance trade in people? Slaves? Is he what they call a martahuz?”
“A queer name.” The Hejtman of the Orphans frowned. “It’s true that Bohuš of Kováň shows no mercy to folk of our faith. Anyone he catches alive he strings up at once from the nearest tree. If he manages to catch one of our priests, he burns him at the stake, publicly, as a terrible warning. But I’ve never heard of him taking slaves. You, let me tell you, were lucky. You escaped with your lives—”
“Not everyone.”
“That’s life.” Čapek spat. “In a moment we’ll make a burial mound. How many can that be? The Czech lands are so full of burial mounds and graves, we’re beginning to run out of space… That one there? Also dead?”
“He’s alive,” replied Amadej Baťa, who was kneeling beside Tauler with Samson, “but each time he opens his eyes he closes them again…”
“A horse kicked him.”
“Well,” said Čapek, sighing, “that’s his misfortune. And we don’t have a medic.”
“We do.” Reynevan unfastened a bag. “I’ll tend to him.”
Although he didn’t usually, Reynevan fell asleep in the saddle. He would have fallen had Samson, who was riding beside him, not held him up.
“Where are we?”
“Almost there. There’s a castle tower up ahead.”
“What castle?”
“A friendly one, I think.”
“How’s Tauler? Where’s Scharley?”
“Scharley’s riding at the head with Čapek and Brázda. Tauler’s unconscious, slung between two horses. And you’d better wake up now, Reinmar. It’s no time to doze.”
“I’m not dozing. I wanted… I wanted to ask you something, friend Samson.”
“Ask away, friend Reinmar.”
“Back in the gambling den, why did you step in? Why did you stand up for that girl? And please don’t serve me empty platitudes. Tell me the real reason.”
“I found myself within a forest dark…” The giant answered with a quotation. “What a prophetic phrase. As though the master Alighieri had sensed I would one day find myself in a world where one can only communicate using lies or deceit and the pure truth is taken as an empty platitude or evidence of mental deficiency. You’d like to hear the real reason, you say. Why right now? You’ve never before asked me to explain my actions.”