I woke the next morning weary-eyed and with a fresh acceptance of my situation. I tried to think about what my father would have done in my situation, and realised that he would have tried to do the best thing for his family. In my case, that was me. As such, I tried to keep my mind on the present rather than the past, and decide how I was going to handle my situation. It was simple after all.

My father was dead. He had been killed, murdered even, but while his death had been terrible yesterday, today it was just a fact. I was sad, but I focused on how I was going to deal with that fact. The best thing for my family – for me – to do, I decided, would be to stay with Godke. My father and aunt were dead, and by now people would have gone into my home and taken anything of value, including the silver kreuzers I had foolishly left on the table. If I did return, I had some friends, but there was a risk of being shunned for being the blood-kin of a witch and the son of a man who had defied the law and the will of John Sigismund. He was, after all, the ruler of Bielefeld and the lands surrounding it. Godke seemed to bear me no ill will, and though he had murdered my father I was eager to find a new place to belong before I ended up stabbed or starved.

That is why, when he came to talk to me that day, I responded truthfully. My anger had subsided, and though sadness still remained I restrained it. There was no room for indulgence as I was relying on the generosity of strangers to survive. If I decided that there was another way for me to survive at some point in the future then I could consider yielding to anger or depression, but until that point I had to either go with the tide or be caught in it.

Godke approached me after the others had left our room that morning. Only the blond man, Gunnar, remained, wiping his blood-stained hammer clean on the far side of the room. Godke smiled and sat on the bed beside me. ‘My name is Godke Bresch,’ he said, as if I could have forgotten his name. ‘Do you know who we are, Karl?’ I nodded, so he continued. ‘Do you know what witches are?’

This time I nodded. ‘They have a pact with the devil. They make poison.’

Godke smiled and Gunnar laughed. ‘That’s right, though each witch is different. Your father raised you well.’

That stirred an anger in me, an anger frustrated by the emotional turmoil of the previous day and my pained attempts to restrain it. ‘You killed my father,’ I said, rather unwisely considering my company.

Gunnar laughed again, but Godke sighed. ‘That was regrettable,’ he said. ‘We had a duty to perform, and so did he. Unfortunately, our duties were in opposition.’

‘Why didn’t you leave me at home?’ I asked, and I was thankful that Gunnar didn’t laugh at that.

‘You had no life there,’ he responded, and though he had no way of knowing that my mother was long dead I soon came to realise that he had no great regard for life and probably didn’t care whether I’d left anyone behind or not. ‘But you can have a life with us. How would you like to be my acolyte?’ He waited a moment before continuing, even though I clearly could not answer the question with the information that he’d given me. I was angry that he’d even asked it, but it had been obvious from our brief conversation the previous day that he had meant for me to replace his fallen acolyte. ‘I hunt witches. We all do, though we all have our own ways of doing things. You’d be able to learn from all of us.’

I had the sheltered innocence of a child and my mind was straining from the effort of that day. Mainly, I was fearful of becoming an orphan or a victim and so I replied to Godke. ‘Yes.’

I was a child and I was heavily out of my depth. I was also fascinated by the diverse array of weapons carried by the group and part of me was excited to become a warrior, a witch hunter, like them. Anything to get away from the misery of Bielefeld. I knew that my anger regarding the death of my father would not remain buried for long, but for now I had to be shrewd.

Eventually Godke said to me, ‘you have to promise me one thing, Karl: you need to do whatever I tell you.’

I agreed to those terms, which were no different than the terms my father had presented to me whenever he let me assist him in weaving linen. And with that Godke left the room, presumably to fetch the horses. Gunnar looked at me and I considered offering to help clean his hammer, but he was very large in both height and shoulder breadth and I didn’t want to even try to communicate with him for he was so fearsome.

The choice was taken out of my hands when he spoke first. ‘Karl, was it?’

Stolen story; please report.

‘Karl Bauer,’ I said. I remembered how he had rendered a man’s face concave with a single powerful blow from his hammer.

‘Gunnar Florisson,’ he said. He spoke with a strange accent, which I now know as Swedish. I wondered if that was why his hair was so long and flowing: Germans usually liked to cut their hair short. ‘You stick with us, you’ll have a life.’

I nodded, looking at his feet. He was right, and I was realising that having a life was better than indulging in depression until I met my end out of apathy. They were throwing me a lifeline because they needed an acolyte, but if I didn’t accept it out of anger or self-pity then they’d just as easily find another.

Eventually Godke arrived back with the rest of the group – or warband, as they seemed to refer to themselves – so we collected our things and left the tavern. They were not eager to stick around for fear that more of the townspeople of Bielefeld would come seeking vengeance, and so we mounted our horses and began to trot through the streets of Herford. A church bell rang and one of the men – the elderly man who had not participated in the fight – protested regarding the time of our departure.

‘It’s time for the morning service,’ he said. He wore a white cloak which concealed most of his body other than his wide brown eyes. It was laced with gold thread, which reminded me of the priest back in Bielefeld.

‘I don’t think we should risk it, Hurland,’ Gunnar said.

Both men looked to Godke to resolve their dispute, and he tilted his head quizzically for a moment before nodding. ‘We must not neglect God,’ he said at last, and he and three of the warband immediately handed the reins of their horses to the black robed man beside me. They walked down the road to the nearby Catholic Church. I thought to join them but indecision gripped me and it was easier to make no decision at all than to follow the witch hunters into the alien church. They seemed to have forgotten me anyway, and there were five horses and a carriage in need of guarding. Despite my tender age – or perhaps because of it – I decided that it would be best if I were to remain behind to guard the horses.

The man mounted beside me sat in awkward silence for a moment. He was possesed of sad, deep-set brown eyes and his face was scarred with worry lines. He carried no weapons, though a metal case emblazoned with a crucifix clipped to his horse’s saddle indicated the presence of a Bible. He seemed safe, even harmless, so I introduced myself.

‘I’m Karl Bauer,’ I said.

‘Jacob Mohn,’ he replied. He had a heavily embellished iron or silver cross around his neck, and I wondered why he hadn’t joined the others at morning service.

‘Are you a Protestant?’ I asked him. It was a surprisingly fair conclusion, but it was proven incorrect as Jacob shook his head. ‘Then why didn’t you go to Church?’

Even though I got the feeling that Jacob’s face was scarcely capable of conveying any emotion other than despair, at that moment his face took on a particularly depressed hue, and I regretted asking the prying question. We had barely met, after all. It was clear that there was more to these witch hunters, and it’d take time for them to accept me.

Thankfully the service was short and Godke rescued me from my encounter with a Godless but God-fearing man. Perhaps he sensed my curiosity, for as he mounted me on his horse before him, he spoke to me. ‘Don’t worry about Jacob,’ he said, fiddling with his horse’s saddlebags. ‘Jacob is a penitent. He rides with us to please God, for he has sinned more heavily than most. Or at least he thinks he has.’

Godke may not have known it, but that only served to pique my curiosity and I began to wonder what he might have done. What could cause him such obvious mental turmoil that he would refuse to talk about it and even avoid going to Church? It didn’t really make sense to me – wouldn’t a sinner seek the Church’s redemption in the Confessional? – but I was only twelve, and I had limited experience outside of the life of a linen weaver in Bielefeld.

Once the warband had mounted up, and the elderly man was atop the carriage, Godke led the group out of Herford at a trot.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked him, as the town faded into the distance.

‘We’ve received a request for assistance from a Bohemian burgher. It seems that a witch poisoned the town well, and we’ve been asked to extract a confession and, if necessary, execute the witch,’ Godke responded with practised ease. I got the sense that this was how the normal day to day operations of witch hunting were handled, at least by Godke.

Godke took the warband onto the road, and soon we left Westphalia and Ravensberg for the first time in my life. I stole a number of glances behind me to see if I could catch a glimpse of my hometown, but it was too far away and we were heading southeast, away from it. I cried as everything that I knew disappeared into the distance and I recalled all that I’d lost, but Godke lay a hand on my shoulder in support and soon the tears subsided. I decided to think of myself as an adventurer, like in one of the books I’d been learning to read with. This was made easier by Hurland von Brandt, the old man, who would pass the travelling time with tales of his own and from the Bible. Sometimes he and Jacob would argue about what had actually happened in some of these holy stories and we would have to stop on the road for Jacob to read through his Bible.

Eventually the land of John Sigismund – the man who arranged my aunt’s execution – passed into memory, and sadness was replaced by bewilderment. I rubbed the bump on my forehead. I was excited, but I was young and knew not what lay ahead.