Reynevan’s premonition was confirmed when Pimple-Face gestured a greeting at Hejtman Vojta Jelínek, glanced at Reynevan and eyed him up appraisingly and repulsively. Hejtman Vojta Jelínek also looked at him with a scornful grimace, which said all too clearly: “There’s one born every minute.”
Reynevan pretended to be adjusting a stirrup and suddenly spurred his mount and dashed into the forest. They were expecting it. They barred his way with their horses, kicked him down from the saddle and held him on the ground. And then bound him. Jelínek, the scoundrel, watched, smiling, from the height of his saddle.
“It’s someone of note,” he said to Pimple-Face. “Somebody important, not just any pipsqueak. You’ll give me six hundred groschen for him, Hurkovec.”
“Like hell,” retorted Pimple-Face. He had pimples everywhere, even on his eyelids, even on his lips, why, he even had pimples on his pimples. “Important, indeed! Judging from his dress, he’s some fucking minstrel. How much will I get for him? God only knows. I’ll give you a hundred and twenty. Well? Too little? Go fuck yourself, Jelínek. Have his throat slit and toss him into the bushes—”
“Give me five hundred, at least! He’s a high-ranking fellow, I tell you!”
“Two.”
“You make plenty of money thanks to me! I keep up a good supply of people for you. I’ve rounded up whole villages for you, you skinflint!”
“Three hundred.”
“Ha. It’ll be my loss. Hey, why’s he thrashing about? Choke him a little! Just gently!”
Reynevan tried to break free. Vainly. A strap was thrown around his neck. He was choked gently and kicked gently in the belly a few times. Then struck on the head. He lost consciousness. For a long time.
They heard the screams and sobs of the boy being raped beyond the palisade, by the campfire. The one that had been raped earlier was groaning and whimpering.
“What will they do to us?”
“Sell us,” whispered back his neighbour, the one who had earlier quietened and warned him. “They’ll sell us to our deaths. They’re martahuzes, sire. Man traders.”
At dawn, Reynevan used all his strength to press himself against and cuddle up to the others crowded on the dirt floor in a moaning and trembling swarm. He had no inhibitions. What mattered was every little scrap of warmth. Even if it stank. In any case, he wasn’t worth any more than the stinking rest.
For he was only worth three hundred Prague groschen. Or around ten Hungarian ducats. Or about as much as two cows, with a sheepskin and a gallon of beer thrown in.
At daybreak, there were shouts, curses, foul insults, kicks and blows of whips. The people crammed into the enclosure were driven out one by one through the gate in the palisade and then put into wooden yokes with holes for their heads and hands. They were driven, blows of whips raining down on them, into a marching column.
Reynevan’s yoke stank of vomit. No wonder. It bore the dried remains of it.
Pimple-Face, in the saddle of the shaggy piebald, whistled through his fingers. Whips cracked. The column set off. The captives were praying aloud. Whips cracked again.
The nightmare had its good side. Urged by blows to trot, he began to feel warmer.
Judging by the sun, they were heading east. The pace was easier than it had been at daybreak; they weren’t being forced to trot, but not owing to mercy or compassion. Two people—an older man and a woman—had fallen and couldn’t stand up, even though the man traders hadn’t spared blows or kicks. The column was driven on, so Reynevan didn’t see what happened to the pair, but he had his forebodings. He heard Pimple-Face angrily calling Hejtman Jelínek every name under the sun for supplying him with “cadavers” and cursing his men for “damaging the goods.” The result of the incident was that they were allowed to walk more slowly. And were flogged more seldom.
Reynevan was limping, had bruised a heel; he hadn’t walked such a distance for a long time. To his right, a young man, his equal in years, panted under the weight of the yoke. In the night, being decidedly less numb than the others, he had introduced himself in snatched sentences as a carpenter from Jaroměř on his journeyman years, moving from village to village perfecting his craft. He’d been assailed on the way from Jičín to Žitava and captured. Through sobs, the journeyman begged Reynevan that if by some miracle he should escape to inform Alžběta, the daughter of master Růžička, a Jaroměř tailor. He declared that if he got away, he would inform anyone Reynevan wanted. Reynevan didn’t suggest anyone. He lacked trust. And didn’t believe in miracles.
They walked along ravines, through forests following tracks between shady spruce, among groves of sycamore, ash and elm. They passed slender, autumnal roadside birches, as beautiful as queens attired in cloth of gold. A sight indeed to please the eye and fill the heart with joy. But there was no pleasure. And no joy.
The sun had already tracked a long way across the sky when men shouted and horses neighed at the head of the column. Reynevan’s heart leaped in his breast at the sight of soldiers in kettle hats, pointed hoods and cherry tunics. Which made the sight of Pimple-Face shaking the hand of the corporal commanding the soldiers in an effusive greeting all the more unpleasant and painful.
The meeting of obvious comrades took place at a crossroads from which the now enlarged escort drove the column towards the south. The forest soon ended, the trees thinned out and the sandy track began to wind among fantastically shaped rocks. The sun, high in the sky, shone behind fluffy clouds gliding across the blue.
Suddenly, their destination came into view. Clearly visible. Leaving no doubt.
“Is that…” groaned Reynevan, trying to move the edge of the yoke away from his chafed neck. “Is that…?”
“Aye…” confirmed the journeyman carpenter. “Aye, indeed it is…”
“Trosky…” groaned someone behind them. “Trosky Castle… God, have mercy on us…”
A lone, bizarre, two-horned rock, like a devil’s head, like the protruding ears of a crouching wolfhound, stuck up from a sparsely tree-covered hill. The rock—Reynevan didn’t know and couldn’t have known—was made of hardened magma, an exposed outpouring of volcanic basalt. The magnificent rock towering over the surrounding area had, not unsurprisingly, appealed to somebody as the obvious foundation for a stronghold. That person—as Reynevan knew, since he had acquired some information before the expedition—was the celebrated Čeněk of Vartenberk, the Burgrave of Prague during the reign of King Wenceslaus. The builders employed by Čeněk took advantage of the volcanic formation: they set the castle in the saddle between the basalt horns and built towers on the actual horns. The taller of the two, built on the eastern horn, slenderer and four-sided, bore the name of the Maiden. The western, lower, squat and five-sided one was called the Old Woman.
In 1424—when the castle’s lord was Otto of Bergow, the sworn enemy and cruel tormentor of adherents to the Chalice—the castle was besieged by furious Taborites. A lengthy assault by catapults and bombards achieved nothing, however, with the storm ending in failure and the Warriors of God having to withdraw. From then on, Trosky was considered unassailable. Thus, Lord Bergow felt invincible and went on tormenting the neighbouring Hussites with iron, fire and the noose.