After several weeks locked in Gunnar’s separate tavern room, the redhead was finally allowed outside and, perhaps because we were so close in age, she approached me first. I was sitting idly in the tavern perusing one of Bohdan’s books; it turned out that a couple of them had been written in German and I was trying to teach myself to read. My father had begun to teach me my letters and I wanted to continue the effort before I forgot everything he’d taught me. It wasn’t fun or interesting, but the image of Hurland giving Bohdan the document to sign had stuck in my mind and I wanted to be able to read and write similar documents in the future so I persevered, usually without much success.

She introduced herself as Sabina and I told her my name. She had small scars on her fingertips, presumably from attempting to scratch her way out of Gunnar’s room.

‘I’m Karl,’ I said, trying to be open and friendly. ‘Karl Bauer, from Bielefeld.’

‘I’m from Pilsen,’ she said unnecessarily, but I gathered that she was struggling with the language. I had picked up a few Bohemian phrases but we were speaking in German, and as far as I knew the only German she could possibly have picked up were the grunting sounds made by Gunnar when he humped her.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

She nodded and I ordered something. Godke had given me a fair portion of the Pilsen money, perhaps in an attempt to delay my next assassination attempt, and I used some of this to pay for a meal for Sabina.

As we waited for her meal to arrive I looked at her. She was very pretty and looked quite different to the other Bohemian girls. In fact, with her soft cheeks and brow she looked more like the girls back in Bielefeld, and perhaps it was this vague relation to my old life that caused me to take pity on her.

‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’ I asked her, and she looked at me with cold, hurt eyes of olive green.

‘I want the Swede to leave me alone,’ she said and I averted my gaze. There was nothing I could do on that front; it was doubtful that even Godke could make Gunnar release Sabina from her servitude. I briefly remembered what had happened outside of the Pilsen city gates. I didn’t know whether slavery was legal in Bohemia at that time. Today, slavery exists mostly on the Mediterranean and the enslavement of Christians is illegal in most of the Protestant states, but even if it was illegal in Pisek when we were there it is doubtful that anyone would have spoken for Sabina, especially while any family she may have had was trapped by Mansfeld in Pilsen.

‘You’ll just have to hope that he gets bored of you,’ I said. I was by no means willing to cross Gunnar, and if Thies had been unsuccessful in challenging him then I certainly had no chance of changing his mind.

Sure enough, by the time winter fell upon Bohemia Gunnar had found new Bohemian women to pursue and Sabina was required increasingly sparingly. Soon she was released from Gunnar’s possession and she stopped by to talk to me before she left Pisek.

‘Thank you for showing kindness to me,’ Sabina told me and I felt guilty for I had done nothing to help her. But I was now thirteen years old and I had begun to realise why Gunnar had chosen Sabina to be his reward from Pilsen. I was surprised that Gunnar’s piety didn’t prevent him from taking advantage of Sabina.

Despite this, I said nothing and let her go on her way with a brief farewell. However, the encounter had served to remind me that despite the company of the warband, I was lonely. They were all much older than me and I was reaching the age where little else would substitute for a woman’s company.

Shortly after Sabina left Pisek, word arrived from Pilsen that Mansfeld had taken the city. Apparently, with God’s grace, his artillery had breached the city’s Hussite-proof walls and his army had entered the city and taken it almost immediately. The three month siege was ended by the execution of the governor and the payment of an enviably large sum of gold. We’d been in Pisek for over two months by that point and a part of me thought that it was good that Mansfeld and his men would have a city to shelter in over the coming winter.

Godke made the decision that the warband was to stay in Pisek through the winter, and if no new witches required slaying in Bohemia during that time then, come spring, we would head west. The only person who disliked the town was Jacob, and though he listed its heretical Protestant faith as the reason I’d come to believe that he was simply upset about anything and everything, including himself.

I spent much of our remaining time in Pisek learning how to use wheellock pistols and swords. Godke was teaching me, and when he was busy I learnt how to ride a horse under Hurland’s instruction. It was on one of these days he brought up the time that I had drunkenly attached Godke with a utensil.

‘Karl,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t bear a grudge against Godke. Your father’s death was unintentional.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t murder, Karl. It was a battle,’ Hurland continued, but I was having none of it. The turmoil of my combined need and hate for Godke was the main reason that I had managed to survive the loss of my father and my old life and I wasn’t about to let go of it.

‘One day I will challenge him to fight me, and I will defeat him, and I will make good my father’s memory,’ I said, and Hurland sighed.

‘Did I ever tell you the tale of Prince Albert?’ he asked me. I shook my head and he continued, ‘Prince Albert was the son of the King I once advised.’

‘You advised a King?’

‘Did I not tell you that? Anyway, Prince Albert was heir to the throne but his younger brother was fond neither of soldiering or of the priesthood, and so he challenged Prince Albert to a duel for what he claimed was his rightful position as heir to the kingdom.’

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‘What happened?’ I asked. The tale was not entirely analagous but I was a child and I liked listening to Hurland’s stories.

‘The two Princes fought a duel and Prince Albert killed his younger brother,’ Hurland said.

‘You mean that if I challenge Godke he’ll kill me?’ I asked.

‘No, Karl, I mean that if you don’t challenge Godke you’ll be able to live a long and hopefully happy life and maybe Godke will die of his own accord one day and you can take his place. But if you challenge Godke you may die.’

I rolled my eyes, fully intending to ignore his advice. I relied on my anger just as much as I relied on my fondness for Godke so I buried Hurland’s words alongside my father’s death and Sabina’s pleas for help and Jaromil’s pierced tongue. I was only a child in a dark, dangerous world, and I had to do what I could to keep my sanity. If that meant clinging on to a goal that might very well be suicidal, then I’d cling on to it. At that age, I had little choice.

With Hurland’s tuition I became a competent horse rider, which was good because I was suddenly growing rapidly and soon Godke’s horse would be unable to carry both of us over long distances. When spring came and we finally thought to Pisek, Godke purchased a pony for me. I called him Grane after the horse of the gods my ancestors once worshipped. Grane was a strong pony, and Godke felt that he would be able to carry me well into adulthood if I didn’t overburden him with heavy items. For several days I would take Grane out into the fields surrounding Pisek and synchronise our actions until I could ride the beast almost as an extension of myself.

Eventually the lack of witches led the warband to restlessness and poverty. Godke had no choice but to lead us elsewhere in the hope that opportunity would be more plentiful abroad. He took us through Bavaria to the city of Metz, a relatively autonomous Republic on the French side of the border between France and the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire. His logic was that we would be well-placed to hear about any witches in either France or Germany by staying in a city that straddled the border. It was my first excursion out of the Empire and I was excited to hear French mingling with German as the common languages spoken in the city.

On the road from Pisek, it occurred to me that we had left the city rather peaceably compared to our departure from Pilsen. I asked Godke why we didn’t take any valuables or women from the city as we had in Pilsen.

‘Because we have provided no service to the people of Pisek,’ he said. ‘We are due payment from towns that we assist to compensate us for services rendered, especially if the witch possessed little wealth of his own. I asked the ruler of Pilsen to pay us and he refused, so we were entitled to extract our payment from his town.’

I pondered that on the road to Metz. I wasn’t sure that townspeople would be so eager for us to execute their witches if they knew that in doing so their harvest and their daughters would be forfeit. I knew that Thies and Jacob preferred to steal from those who enjoyed plenty, and that Thies took issue with the theft of human beings, but that hadn’t stopped anyone from enjoying the spoils of Pilsen. Nonetheless, that was the way of things and I’d long come to terms with it by the time that Grane first stepped hoof in Metz.

The city surprised me as I was expecting it to be more French in character, but it had spent most of its life in German hands. It was only in 1552 that it had passed to the French crown, albeit with some autonomy to keep its residents content. Now, several generations later, the French language was commonplace, but German influence was strong as the city straddled the crossroads between the two dominant cultures of continental Europe. It had a strong and healthily-manned garrison which could often be seen patrolling the streets and entrances to the city. As in Pisek, there were a lot of ancient structures about, mixed with more modern buildings of French design, but I wearied of architectural sights and set my mind upon more real tasks.

I think that the warband had completed a number of witch hunts in a short time period just prior to coming to Bielefeld for they were not eager to start again. We stayed in Metz for even longer than we had stayed in Pisek, and Godke stepped up my weapons training as I reached my fourteenth birthday. We would fight in the cul de sac in which our residence was situated for several hours most days of the week, and though I was usually bruised and sore at the conclusion of these bouts I was also faster, stronger, and more experienced. I didn’t mind the injuries as training with Godke was more fun than the time I spent with Hurland. Wanting to feel useful now that I had learned to ride a horse, Hurland had purchased some German books and began to teach me to read and write. My attempts to teach myself had failed as I found it difficult to do more than maintain the low level of reading competency that my father had imparted upon me. Hurland usually had to ambush me as I was about to leave the house, or returning to it, in order to convince me to learn my letters. In retrospect I appreciate his patience and his determination.

On one occasion after I had tolerated Hurland's teachings – and he had tolerated my disinterestedness – for a sufficient length of time, I left the house and stepped onto the road. My intention was to leave the city and hide in the brushland outside the city gates until dusk. It was something I did often as a young lad; I liked to see the comers and goers and make guesses about their professions, their histories, their personalities. Sometimes the soldiers who manned the gates through the city wall would prevent me from leaving if it was close to sundown or they were of a bad sort, but on that day I was met by the captain of the town guard. I had seen him about town and knew that he was the top-ranking soldier in the city, though I was aware of little else about him. I didn't even know his name.

He stood beside half a dozen soldiers, most of whom I recognised as being the regular guards. I put on my best nonchalant face as I approached the soldiers, but the captain put a hand out to stop my passage regardless. 'Where are you going, little man?'

'I just want to leave the city,' I said.

'On foot?' he asked me.

'I do not seek to travel far, just to visit the woods.'

He scratched his medium-length beard. It was shaved at the side so that it didn't meet with his sideburns or moustache. Like all the town guard, he bore the vertical black and white crest of the Republic of Metz over the broad shoulders that topped his short, stout frame. 'You have no guardian.'

'I'll be back before sundown,' I promised, but he was having none of it.

'My standing order is that no child shall leave the city unaccompanied,' he replied. He put his hands on my shoulders with a roughness that surprised me. He then spun me around, so that I was facing back the way I had come, and gave me a shove in the back to start me in the way. 'Run on home!' he called out as I stumbled.

I stopped walking as soon as I could halt my momentum, and turned back to face him. He had already turned away from me and was confronting his subordinates. 'Have you been letting this boy out of the city on his own?'

'Melchior, he's always back before sundown. Just like he said,' one of the soldiers, a man with thick arms but less core strength than his captain, offered.

'You're on half-pay for the next week, Konrad,' Melchior told him. And then, to the others, 'if I hear that anyone else is breaking my orders on this, I shall be much harsher.'

'Yes, sir,' a few of them mumbled. Konrad downcast his brown eyes and thrust his jaw forward. I had planned to argue with Melchior, but upon seeing how his own men were cowed by his display of authority, I decided better of it and made myself scarce.