She has a chance.

She went to the tethering post and took a pitchfork forgotten there. Held it in her arms, hefting.

And, stepping forward heavily, stabbed the rider in his side with all her strength.

“B-bitch!”

The rider, stunned with the sudden impudence of the woman, nevertheless contrived to turn his horse and to beat off with his long broadsword. The heavy blade struck at the pole of the pitchfork, cutting it down and aside; the bodyguard groaned when the sharp jags ploughed up his leg. “You beast! You!..”

“...stop it.”

The margrave Siegfried, having walked out of the tavern, was looking attentively at the ugliness that was going on. The glance of the Maintz lord was affable and kind. Especially warm it would become when touching Skwozhina. Loving, one might say. The woman felt how her body under the caress of Siegfried’s still eyes turned into a March snowdrift – loose, spongy. A black crust under which there’s rot and water. But she didn’t lose hold of the pitchfork. Thus she was standing over the body of her hated brother – silent, holding the ludicrous pitchfork at the ready.

The wounded bodyguard, afraid to groan, was limping aside.

A stream of blood was staining his tracks.

“When a dog bites, its master should be punished,” said the margrave in a didactic tone. It seemed that except for him and Skwozhina there were no people remaining on the Earth. “You’ve mistaken, avenger. Here’s the pitchfork. Here I am, the master. Punish!”

“Stop it! Stop it, you foolish broad! My lord, she’s crazy! She’s...”

Not listening to the taverner’s screams, biting her lip and becoming alike the bull Hles when it would see something red, Skwozhina stroke. The clear eyes of her dead brother Stanek, the scoundrel of scoundrels, were looking at her back. The hot eyes of the margrave Siegfried, a man whose soldiers had done Skwozhina the long desired favour, were looking in her face. She was tearing away between these two glances. God bless you, kind lord! Stanek, wish you were dead! Well, dead you are ... what am I doing? Why am I doing this?!

...I’m doing.

She had time to lift the pitchfork for the third time, when the blade of a dolchmesser – a flat dagger with one-sided, knife-like sharpening – flashed under her chin.

“An assaulter cannot be a man or a woman,” said Siegfried von Maintz in a didactic tone, cleaning his blade over the skirt of the murdered woman. On the rough linen, dyed with onion peels and celandine, blood stains looked ordinary. “An assaulter cannot be your equal or not. He can be only an enemy – or dead. This is the main thing. Everything else is hypocrisy. Get ready, in an hour we set out for Osobloga.”

And added, narrowing his eyes: “Don’t burn down the tavern. I was pleased here.”

Later on, when the dust settled after the Maintz men went away, the taverner Jas let everybody out of the hideout. Little Karolinka didn’t cry. She sat near her mother’s body, rocking in her hand a piece from the “Triple Nornscoll”, singing “Hoy, clover of five leaves”. Having finished singing, she put the image near the deceased.

An unused, senseless pawn.

A carved soldier.

“What happened here?” asked Martzin Oblaz in a quivering voice.

It took some time until he got an answer. 

The kitten that felt warm on the vagrant’s knees turned in its sleep in a funny way. Seized its muzzle with its paws, started purring louder. Peter stroked it absentmindedly. The touch of the soft fur was nice and somewhat unreal.

“I didn’t know,” said Peter. “I’ve...”

“You’ve,” muttered the taverner without anger. “You’ve, we’ve, torn a sleeve... That is, odd-even, you didn’t need to know about it. There’s nothing to know there. You’re alike – he and you, so I started pealing like an old bell...”

With the corner of his eye Peter Sliadek noticed the scanty smile of the mage in the corner who had been sitting still throughout the taverner’s story – and suddenly he understood with piercing clearness whom he was like with and who that stern staff-bearer was.

The door opened wide. A serving girl, about twelve years old, ran into tavern: sturdily– built, sunburnt. On her plain face strangely shone dark eyes, like two cherries. “Uncle Jas! Uncle Jas! The coach with mister Seingalt rode on. He’s ordered to tell he’ll wait near the graveyard, as usual! Let the rest go! He’s already so old, our Jacom, he’s sick from travel...”

“I’m going,” said the mage, getting up. “Jas, tell Jendrich and Lukerda to go after me. I have a presentiment: today, with the God’s help...” He halted, as if he doubted his own words or was afraid of jinx. “Let’s go, Karolinka. Let’s not keep Giacomo waiting.”

“Oh, let’s go, meister Martzin!..”

When the door shut, the lute under the table suddenly echoed with plaintive ringing. As if it had awakened. Or wanted to say something.

“You go,” said the taverner, trying not to look in Peter’s face. It happens when you’ve babbled too much, in a journey or in your cups, and you want to take leave of your accidental fellow traveller as fast as possible, to depart forever. “You go your way, lad. There’ll be no people here in the evening, whom will you sing for? Go to a crossroad, near Rahovez there’s the tavern of Zbych Proksha – on Saturdays it’s piled in! You’ll get your bag full of groshes! And I’ll give you some bread. Go, go, I have a lot of work to do...”

“Thank you,” said Peter.

Jas Misiur smiled wryly: “For the porridge? Or for my babbling?”

“For the porridge too.”

Soon, having left the tavern behind his back, Peter Sliadek slowed his path. I had to leave at once, he thought. I had to... To cheer himself, he started whistling his beloved ballade about the battle of Osobloga – but it didn’t do.

The song made his mouth sore.

He recollected how, a sixteen year old boy, he was standing in the Home Guard on the slope, with the spear he had been given. Miserable, trembling. Below, the cavalry of the margrave Siegfried was crossing the Wench ford. It was clear they wouldn’t hold the shore. The iron flood was ploughing through the river, the plumes of helms were swaying like white surf, and the shaft of his spear became disgustingly wet. Across the river, on a hill overgrown with willow thicket, surrounded by his bodyguards, the margrave himself was watching over the moving of his troops. While struggling with his fear, Peter didn’t understand at first what was going on. Nobody did. Where had the furious riders come from?! None other than the Devil himself must have brought them, because the nearest oak wood was combed thoroughly by the Maintz men beforehand. Seven horsemen, getting in wild galloping to Siegfried’s rear, showered the margrave with arrows at full speed. The bodyguards habitually covered their lord, moving their shields together, but one of them slipped, groaning from the pain in his leg, apparently recently wounded, – in the wall of shields there glimpsed an open space, and the last arrow shot by the horsemen’s leader stroke the neck of the margrave who had been late to put on his helm. Later on the prince Razimir would forgive the skilful marksman all his former sins, changing him from the chieftain Dry Storm into the frontier guard Jendrich Kionka, giving the brave man honour and a coat of arms; but then it didn’t matter, because one of the raiders, dismounted, was already fighting with the bodyguards, trying to make his way through, fight his way through to, reach wounded Siegfried, and the experienced warriors were retreating under the pressure, burning out like hay in fire. The fighter was wearing strange armour – it seemed he had gathered it part by part in the den of a looter or a fence. Because of the ridiculous bulky spaulders the assaulter would be nicknamed the Stooped Knight – but this would also happen only later. And then the cavalry halted at the ford, a terrible rainstorm with hail big as pigeon eggs whipped the usurpers – as if Byarn the Pensive himself, the good mage from Holne, came back from the dead, deciding to stand up for Opolie! The rain was washing out the oozy shore, and the horses stumbled, throwing their riders down. The cry: “Siegfried’s dead! Hit the foreigners!” rolled over Osobloga, and the prince Razimir ordered to sound the attack. Peter was running, choking on water and his own shouts, poking his spear into someone’s belly, shouting again, and came to himself only in the train, where it was hot, he was thirsty, and imps in his head were dancing fiery kozeryika.