“Fear not…” Reynevan panted. “I won’t—”
The creature—a forest kobold, a waldschrat—interrupted him with a loud and strangely scornful-sounding croaking. It was answered by a chorus of similar squawks. Coming from all directions. Before Reynevan realised what he was mixed up in, about twenty of them attacked.
He kicked one, felled another with a punch and then found himself on the ground. The kobolds swarmed over him like lice. Reynevan yelled, kicked out, punched blindly, even bit, ineffectively. Each time he threw one off, two more took its place. The situation was beginning to become perilous. Suddenly, one of the kobolds dug its claws into his hair and ears and another landed on his face, stopping up his nose and mouth with its hairy behind. He began to suffocate and panic seized him. He felt teeth clamping onto his thighs and calves. He kicked out clumsily, but the kobolds clung on tightly to his legs. Reynevan jerked his head out from under the hairy backside smothering him and howled. Desperately and inhumanly.
And just like in a fairy tale—help was at hand. The track suddenly resounded with shouts, neighing and the thudding of iron-shod hooves. Something swept the kobold from his face and the weight on his legs also vanished. Reynevan saw above him a horse’s belly and an iron sabaton in a stirrup, caught sight of the flash of a sword and watched blood gush from the severed doglike head. Right beside him, another waldschrat was thrashing about and squirming, pinned to the ground by a bear spear. Hooves were thudding all around him, spraying wet sand. He heard cursing, laughing, guffawing. As though there was a reason for merriment.
“Get up,” he heard from above. “We’ve driven the devils away.”
He got to his feet. He was surrounded by armoured men on horseback. Among them was the knight who had told him to stand up, wiping the blood from his sword blade. Reynevan saw a moustachioed face shaded by a raised hounskull helmet. It was strangely familiar.
“In one piece? They didn’t bite anything important off?”
The armoured men guffawed when he involuntarily ran his hands over his now ragged trousers. The knight removed his helmet. Reynevan recognised him right away.
“So it was worth it,” said Janko Schaff, Lord of Chojnik Castle, resting a fist on the pommel of his saddle. “It was worth hanging around here for a few days. I felt you’d abscond from Trosky, Reynevan of Bielawa.”
They made a stop close by the track, under a grove of large oaks. Several of the soldiers had set off on a pretty hopeless pursuit of the kobolds. The rest spent some time looking in amazement at the corpses and talking. Finally, the remains of four of the dead waldschrats were hanging by their legs from branches, and the esquires and servants had begun to skin them as trophies and proof of the victory. Reynevan watched gloomily. He wasn’t sure if they wouldn’t start skinning him, too. Jan Schaff’s apparently benign but at the same time mischievously cunning expression didn’t bode well. Reynevan didn’t let the feigned cordiality delude him.
“Lucky for you that you were yelling and we heard you,” said the Lord of Chojnik, “otherwise you’d have been in deep trouble. We know those shaggy beasts, there are plenty of them in the wilds of the Karkonosze. In winter, hunger drives them nearer to human homesteads. They attack in packs and eat people alive, stripping the flesh to the bone. Some say the local highlander women give birth to them after mating with dogs, yuck, foul idea. Others that they are simiae, foreign beasts once bred by the Knights Templar. Yet others think they are devils that have emerged from hellholes. Right, Zwicker?”
“What is evil comes from the Devil,” responded the priest walking alongside and casting Reynevan an extremely venomous glance from under his hood, “and every sin demands punishment.”
“Idiot,” commented Schaff in hushed tones. “I say, m’Lord Bielawa! The danger has passed yet you’re still downcast. Fed, in fresh raiment, yet you’re still out of sorts. Why’s that?”
“You planned to buy me at Trosky.” Reynevan decided to make things clear. “You meant to spend two thousand four hundred Prague groschen, no doubt in order to sell me on at a profit. Whom, I wonder, had you chosen as a buyer, m’lord? The Inquisition? The Bishop of Wrocław?”
“Damn the bishop.” Schaff spat. “The Inquisition, too. I wanted to buy you out of the goodness of my heart. Out of affection.”
“Affection for what? We don’t even know one another.”
“We know each other better than you think. Your brother Piotr, may the Lord keep him, was a decent man. He never refused anyone in need of help. Or a loan. When we, the Schaffs, were in need, who helped us? Piotr of Bielawa!”
“Aha.”
“And who now has it in for Reinmar, Piotr’s brother? Who seeks his downfall? The bishop? Damn him, I said! The Sterczas? The Sterczas are common brigands. Jan, the Duke of Ziębice, irked that Reinmar bedded his lover because she preferred a younger and a more red-blooded one? And finally, Jan Biberstein of Stolz. Said to be a most gentle lord, but what does he do? Sets a bounty for the capture of a nobleman as though for a fugitive servant. And for what? For seducing his daughter? Jesus Christ! Why, that’s what maidens are for, the Good Lord created them to be seduced, and in order for them to yield to seduction he gave them a whorish nature. Am I right?” Without waiting for agreement, Schaff continued, “After you were recognised at Trosky, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll rescue that lad, I won’t give him to the Six Cities, I won’t let the executioners torture Piotr of Bielawa’s brother on the scaffold for the mob’s pleasure. I’ll buy the poor wretch,’ I thought to myself…”
“Many thanks. I’m in your debt, m’lord—”
“Two thousand four hundred groschen.” Janko Schaff appeared not to have heard. “Not such a great sum, I thought. The late Sir Piotr loaned us much more in days gone by. And m’Lord Reinmar, plucked from the clutches of the Lusatian murderers, I thought to myself, will be able to return the favour. For Master Reinmar has five hundred grzywna which he robbed from the tax collector two years ago. He’ll be able to repay it. And share it out.”
“Oh, Lord Schaff.” Reynevan sighed, apparently nonchalantly. “Do you believe rumours? You’ve just said that those men have designs on me, that they’re using underhand methods. That they don’t shrink from slander and calumny, that they spread vile rumours about me in order to denigrate me. For it’s a calumny and an untruth that I robbed the tax collector. A calumny and an untruth, do you understand? I’m grateful for the rescue, I shan’t forget you, m’lord. But now, if you don’t mind, I must bid you farewell. I have to find my companions, who—”
“Not so fast.” Schaff glanced at his men and gave a signal. They moved in at once. “Not so fast, Lord Bielawa. You wish to bid me farewell? So swiftly? Where’s your gratitude? I didn’t buy you out at Trosky, agreed, though good intentions count. But I did save you from the wild monsters, you can’t deny that. If not for me, you’d be dead. So when we divide up the tax collector’s grzywnas, you take three hundred and I’ll take the rest. That’ll be fair.”
“I didn’t rob the tax collector and don’t have that money!”