“Damned priest…” Moser choked on the steam and smoke and coughed. “Damned priest can still do us some mischief beyond the grave…”
“Help us, I’d say,” said Gwido Buschbach, disagreeing, giving an intrusive goat trying to nibble his boot a kick. “For if somebody has it in for us, they’ll easily guess which way we’re headed. They might waylay us on a mountain pasture below Szrenica. They might be waiting for us at Borówczane rocks. They might plan to catch us near the upper reaches of the Szklarka, before we ride down into the Wrzosówka valley… But in a raging blizzard, God willing, we might slip through somehow… Pass me the blood pudding…”
“I’ll have some, too,” Schaff said. “By Saint Maurice, patron saint of knights… Delicious. Is there none left?”
“There is, m’lord, there is.”
“There you are, good fellow, another penny… I say! Where are you going, Bielawa?”
“I have to go behind the barn.”
“Go with him, Moser. So he doesn’t get any foolish ideas.”
“But I’m back in the warm,” the burgman protested. “Where can he go? In a snowstorm, in the winter? Among wolves and monsters? To a certain death? He’s not a fool, after all!”
“Go, I said.”
Snowstorm or not, wolves or not, Reynevan didn’t care. He had to escape and this was the only chance. Now, at night, when Schaff and his men were sated, indolent and drowsy. While Moser was exchanging a few words and coarse jokes with Dorfinger as they passed each other in the dark of the hallway, Reynevan grabbed his sheepskin. And a heavy weight from a set of scales standing there.
In the courtyard, they were greeted by cold air and a snowstorm. And darkness. They almost groped their way behind the barn.
“Beware,” warned Moser from the front. “There’s a plough here somewhere…”
He stumbled and fell over. When he raised himself onto his hands and knees, swearing vehemently, Reynevan was already swinging the weight towards him, intending to slam the poor wretch in the back of the head. At that moment, swift shadows flashed against a snow-covered manure heap, a dull clatter resounded and Moser grunted and fell flat on the ground. The next moment, a hundred candles flared up before Reynevan’s eyes and a hundred thunderclaps boomed in his head. The courtyard, the cottage, the barn and the manure heap spun around and turned a somersault, and the earth and sky changed places several times.
He didn’t fall, for he was being held up by several pairs of strong arms. A coarse sack was pulled over his head. His arms were bound. He was dragged. He was tossed onto the saddle of a snorting, stamping horse. The horse set off immediately at a gallop, hooves striking the stones. Reynevan’s teeth snapped and rang under the sack and he was afraid he would bite his tongue off.
“On we go!” commanded somebody with a hoarse, hideously evil voice. “Ride, ride! Gallop!”
The gale howled and whistled.
Chapter Twelve
In which Reynevan returns to Silesia. Facing the perspective of a life as long as a mayfly’s but armed with more reason for revenge.
When the sack was violently tugged from his head, Reynevan cowered and cringed, screwed up his eyes and grimaced as the sparkling whiteness of the snow painfully and completely blinded him. He smelled smoke and horses’ sweat, heard their stamping, snorting and neighing, the clank of tackle and murmuring, and understood that he was in the midst of a large group of men.
“Congratulations,” he heard, before he began to see. “Congratulations on a successful bag, Master Dachs. Difficult job?”
“Seen worse,” replied from behind his shoulder a familiar voice, the evil and hoarse one, now with a note of obsequiousness. “I’ve known worse, honourable Sir Ulrik.”
“Were any of Schaff’s men injured? Did they come to any harm?”
“Nothing a dab of ointment won’t put right.”
Reynevan cautiously opened his eyes.
They were in a large village; a church tower rose up above the thatched roofs of cottages, barns and granaries. The streets were full of horsemen, at least forty of them. Among them were mounted knights in white plate armour. There were pennants, including a golden one with a single red stag’s antler. Indeed, before he even saw the crest, Reynevan had already guessed who had caught him this time.
“Head up!”
Ulrik of Biberstein, Lord of Frydland and Żary, the uncle of Nicolette, loomed over him on a war horse.
Rather than being frightened, he was relieved. Not to see Birkart Grellenort.
“Do you know who I am?”
He nodded stiffly, for a moment unable to utter a word, which was read as insolence. The man with the evil voice punched him in the region of the kidneys. Reynevan had also seen him at Trosky. Mikuláš Dachs, he recalled. A client of the Bibersteins. The burgrave of some castle or other. I forget which.
“I know… I know who you are, Lord Biberstein.”
Ulrik Biberstein sat upright in the saddle, in so doing appearing even taller. He rested a fist in a steel gauntlet on the faulds of his Nuremberg armour.
“You will be punished for what you have done.”
Reynevan didn’t answer, in so doing risking another thump. But this time Mikuláš Dachs let it go.
“Prepare him for the road,” ordered Biberstein. “Give him some warm things so he won’t expire. He’s to arrive at Stolz in one piece and sound in body.”
Three knights rode slowly over from the group near the cottage and came closer. Two were wearing full plate armour, modern and white, with large reinforced left pauldrons and rerebraces, allowing them to do away completely with shields. The third, the youngest, wasn’t wearing plate armour; all he had on under his wolfskin coat was a quilted, slightly grubby doublet. Reynevan recognised him at once.
“The wheel of fortune turns!” Nikel of Keuschburg, the former prisoner at Michalovice Castle, snorted contemptuously. “You had me and now I have you! How do you like it, m’lord heretic? I’m free today, bought out of captivity. And you’re in fetters! With a rope round your neck! Soon to meet the hangman!”
Making his steed take short steps, the youngster rode closer. He clearly intended to force his horse between the Lord of Frydland and Reynevan, but Mikuláš Dachs barred the way.
“What right do you have to take this prisoner, Lord Biberstein?” cried Keuschburg.
Ulrik of Biberstein pouted his lips, with no intention of answering. The squire flushed with anger.
“Yours is a poor example!” he yelled. “An example of private interest! You put the country at risk for some obscure family feud, for personal vengeance and self-seeking scores. It is a shameful deed! Shameful!”
“Master Foltsch,” Biberstein interrupted in a calm voice. “You are a serious fellow, known for your consideration and famed for your good advice. So advise this young pup to shut his trap.”
Keuschburg reached down to his side, but one of the riders caught his arm in an iron gauntlet and squeezed so hard the youth cringed in the saddle. Reynevan guessed who it was; he remembered the stories heard at Michalovice. Hans Foltsch from Roimund Castle. A mercenary from Zgorzelec.