in some other realm (you are waiting for me)

by eldritchcow

Summary:

Hans dies at Suchdol and wakes up at Rocktower Pond.

Notes:

This came to me in a dream Stephanie Meyer style, and now I'm posting on ao3 for the first time in a decade. My fandom muscles are rusty, and this game is the first thing that's brought me joy in months as I trudge through the PhD thesis trenches, so please be nice to me !

Chapter 1: Last Rites

Hans Capon’s death is quick and quiet, on the ramparts of Suchdol fortress.

He has never been the kind of person to wonder about the circumstances of his own death. Henry, he knows, thinks of death often. This is a byproduct, Hans supposes, of the forge that made Henry who he is today. Skalitz, and then everything that came after.

But Hans has only really started to think about death recently. After Trosky, when he was sure that he’d never live to hear a bell toll for the thirteenth time. And then Maleshov, when he was sure that even if he did make it out alive, it would be to a world without Henry. The question of his death has sometimes slipped into his mind in the darker moments of the night, especially during these long days of hunger. Sometimes, when his world is at its quietest, he swears he can hear the bell ringing still, or feel the hunger at the pit of his stomach beginning to eat the rest of him whole, from the inside out. But these thoughts, he is always quick to push away.

I will die when I am old and content, he tells himself in these moments. With my belly full of food and the finest wine, and a wench sitting astride.

But Hans Capon dies young and quick and quiet, on the ramparts of Suchdol fortress.

One moment, he is alive. Sore, his muscles aching with the fatigue of battle and hunger and last night’s boozing, and his shoulder still stinging from where the arrow has just been wrenched, but viscerally and vibrantly alive all the same. His blood is singing as he watches the glint of the hundreds of men in armour descend upon the camp outside the fortress.

“He did it,” he shouts to Godwin, who is otherwise preoccupied, locked in a clinch with a soldier armed with an axe and shield a metre away. “He actually did it. I should never have doubted you, Hal!”

In the next moment, he is gone.

At the very end of every good battle, there is a horrible hour that follows. While the commanders and lords and kings sing their songs of victory, tired soldiers are tasked with ending the suffering of their foes. The truth is that most men don’t die cleanly as they fall. For the most part, dying in battle means watching one’s brothers-in-arms fall to the ground around you, helpless to offer comfort or aid as the darkness takes you. Or, it means crying out like a child until someone comes back to finish the job. Hans, being both a commander and a lord, has never hung around for the majority of these moments. Regardless, he has felt the heavy weight of it while he sings, always glad to put distance between himself and this horrible hour with drink and sleep.

Hans is granted the small mercy of a quick death. At least, the first time around. When he thinks back to this moment, he will be unable to recall exactly what happened. There’s a quick, sharp pain in his back, and then his chest. His hands, forgetting purchase on his sword in an instant, grasp up towards his chest, and find the cold point of a blade just as it begins to withdraw from the warped metal of his cuirass. It’s not painful, really. It feels more like a burning, and then like nothing at all.

He looks up to search for Godwin in the mess of fighting men before him, and finds his friend turned away, fighting another enemy soldier. It isn’t as though the priest could do anything in this moment. He will pray for Hans’ immortal soul later, after his body is transported back to Rattay and buried alongside his father’s. Hans is overcome with a foolish irritation that nobody is looking at him. If he is to die in battle, it should be a valiant death recalled by his comrades over ale, when all of the dust is settled. His life is not small enough that he should leave it silently and unnoticed. He also has the time to be vaguely irritated that he would not get the chance, later, to tell Henry, or Godwin, or anyone about the great big bloody sword that’s gone and lodged itself through his back.

Hans doesn’t utter any last words. He doesn’t cry out or struggle, or even pray. His death is quick and quiet, on the ramparts of Suchdol fortress. As he falls, he doesn’t think about all that he has done or failed to do. Instead, he thinks about Henry. Henry, whose presence has been a constant anchor in those moments of uncertainty in the past months. Henry, who will win this battle, and then call it a loss when he finds Hans amongst the dead. That thought alone puts a fire under him, briefly, for just a moment, to try and stay alive.

But Hans is not long for this world. Death comes to him in a thick, dark blanket. It’s almost comforting. But mostly, he feels indignant - like a child fighting the weight of his heavy lids, and the inevitable call of sleep.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Hans comes to with an armoured thunk to the ground, and a desperate, painful gasp for breath as his body forgets and then promptly relearns how to breathe. His ears are ringing, but not with the clanging and shouting of battle. Rather, a peaceful quiet echoes around him, dauntingly, shocking his system like a trough of ice-cold water. The fight must be over. Henry must have come with reinforcements. No. Henry definitely did. Hans remembers seeing the flash of armour over yonder, and the shock of Rattay yellow and Skalitz red in the banners. He remembers-

He breathes another deep gasp of air. His lungs feel as though they are swimming in oil. His hands reach blindly up his chest of their own accord, searching for the scrape of twisted metal, only to find the smooth surface of his cuirass. Smooth, despite a lingering burning sensation. A phantom blade withdrawing through his ribs, slipping under his fingers. All of the places the blade touched ache. It doesn’t feel like how Hans has always imagined a stab wound would feel. It feels at once like an old scar and an open wound with jagged edges, or a torn muscle recently healed but still tender. He wonders, eyes closed, rubbing the smooth metal with his palm, if he took a blow to the head in battle and dreamed up a mortal wound as Henry and the others swooped in for the miraculous rescue.

“Are you alright, my Lord?” a familiar voice asks him from above, equal parts teasing and concerned. “I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

Hans squints, flinching at the brightness of the day. His eyes try to adjust to the light, and then fail. He blinks a couple of times and sees Henry, blurry and haloed in bright light, his arm outstretched in an offer of assistance. Like some kind of bloody angel. He blinks again and places a palm above his brow to cast a shadow over his eyes. It is Henry. But something's not quite right. It’s unmistakably him, but a version of him that Hans hasn’t seen in weeks, with cheeks round with the comforts of a daily meal, and skin clear from mud and blood and bruising. Jesus Christ, he thinks to himself. What kind of miracle working healer does Jobst have on hand? Hans’ head throbs. He closes his eyes again, pushing his palms into his eye sockets and massaging. He doesn’t bother trying to sit up.

“I…” he begins, and then gives up, finding that he can’t quite cobble together a sentence right now. He takes another deep and painful breath and tries again. “Henry? Is it over? Did we win?”

He attempts once more to look up at Henry and sees the blurred outline of his friend drop his arm. He says, bemused, “I’m not sure that we can win a duel, sir. But you definitely didn’t win, I’m sorry to say. That’ll be two hundred groschen when we hit Trosky.”

Hans tries to let out a laugh, but it turns into a winded cough. Christ, but his chest hurts. “Trosky? When we… Why in Jesus Christ’s good and holy name would we go back there?”

“I’m… sorry sir?” Henry says, puzzled. And then, dropping the pretence of formality, says, “Hans? Are you okay? Seriously, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

It’s at this point that Hans starts to notice his surroundings. He lets his hands fall from around his face, finding purchase not on the cold stones of Suchdol’s ramparts, but on damp blades of grass and cool mud. He blinks once more, and sees the wooden fence of a fighting ring, and the fuzzy outlines of a handful of men. His eyes finally begin to adjust to the sunlight, and he blinks through the pain that lances through his skull. An idyllic pond stretches out before him, reflecting the sunlight of golden hour on its surface. And behind Henry–

“You’d best have a seat and some grub in your belly, sir,” says Oats, gesturing back towards the broth bubbling over the fire pit. “Fighting on an empty stomach ain’t good for nowt, least of all your Lordship.”

There is a long beat of silence. Hans gapes in open confusion at the men in front of him. Oats is here. And at the camp, the fuzzy outlines clarify into familiar faces. Tankard and Konrad are playing a lazy game of dice, Nicholas watching on in earnest. Henry is looking down at him, worry colouring the edges of his easygoing smile. Hans stares, open-mouthed, at Henry, and then at Oats, and then at the lake, and then back at Henry. Words struggle to take shape in his mouth. He tries to speak, and then abandons his efforts.

Henry, watching his mouth open and close like a fish, adopts a look of more serious concern. He squats before him, grabbing at one of his arms to pull him up. “You were out of it a minute there, sir. I’m sorry I was so rough with you. I don’t know the strength of my own swing sometimes, and I’m not as precise a swordsman as you. Some bodyguard I’m turning out to be.”

Henry watches him expectantly, waiting for Hans to respond. It’s usually easy bait for Hans to make some lighthearted jape about nobility and station, or some suchlike. Hans struggles for another moment, and then is finally able to spit out a single word.

“No,” he says, although he’s not been asked any questions.

“Sir?”

Hans pulls his arm from Henry’s hand, and tries to push up onto his feet. He stumbles, his legs wobbling like a newborn deer, and then is able to hold himself upright. Henry straightens with him, a hand held out as if to catch him if he falls. Hans murmurs, more to himself than anything: “This isn’t right. Must be some kind of nightmare.”

Henry raises an eyebrow and smiles, although the worry doesn’t wholly leave his gaze. “I hardly think losing to me is that much of a bruise to your ego, sir Hans.”

But Hans isn’t listening. His armour is suddenly far too heavy. It feels as though it’s shrinking tight to his skin. He pulls his helmet and coif off quickly, dumping them onto the ground at his feet. Then he’s pulling at his cuirass straps unceremoniously, and prying at the hardened metal. He doesn’t wait for his men’s assistance, instead yanking at the seams of the metal plate with shaking hands, and letting it fall from his chest and back with a metallic thud. The chain shirt still weighs heavily on him, and he starts pulling uselessly at the fabric. Henry, sensing the urgency of Hans’ shaking hands, jumps into action, pulling the shirt up from its bottom hem and over Hans’ head unquestioningly. Hans doesn’t unbutton the entire pourpoint, instead harshly pulling the buttons apart to just below his sternum. He slides his hand across his own chest, searching for puckered skin or blood or anything. But there is no open wound, or broken skin. No sharp blade. Not even a bruise. Just the lingering sensation of torn edges and burning. What the everloving fuck?

Then, there’s the warm weight of a hand on his shoulder that is gentle but gruff enough that it could only belong to Henry. He glances up to meet Henry’s blue eyes, suddenly very serious. Meeting Henry’s gaze pulls him back from a steadily mounting full-scale conniption.

“Hans,” Henry says steadily. “I‘ll ask again: are you okay? What’s going on?”

He glances at the rest of his party, who are watching with caution. He finds the skin over his own heart, feeling for the anxious flutter. He keeps his voice quiet enough that it won’t carry outside of the fighting ring. “I’m– I’m not quite sure. I’m confused. Where exactly are we, Henry?”

This isn’t the question that he wants answered, though. It’s more along the lines of: Have I gone and fucking died? And for what reason does the Heavenly Garden of the Lord look like fucking Trosky?

“You know where we are, sir. We’re close to Trosky,” Henry also keeps his voice low, probing with unspoken questions. “We’re camping here for the night. Before we meet with Von Bergow tomorrow, remember?”

But that can’t be right. Von Bergow isn’t in Trosky. He’s somewhere in the camp outside of Suchdol, waiting for Hans and his friends to keel over and die. And the last time Hans checked, Oats and Konrad and Tankard and Nicholas were all six feet under. The last time he checked, he was about to be six feet under. “Henry,” he says, his voice trembling. “I think we should leave.”

”Leave?” Henry asks, a little incredulous. “Where is this coming from? We’ve been riding for three days straight. My arse is sore.”

“I… I’m not sure how to explain this. But I think that if we stay here, we’re going to die.” Saying it aloud almost feels like a curse – like he’s daring the ambush to happen himself. “Or, at least, they will. Oats, and… It’s not safe here. I don’t think.”

Henry is quiet for a long moment. Then he speaks very softly. Almost pitying. “Look, I know that you’re nervous about all of this. You’ve been very nonchalant about this whole thing the entire ride here. Ohdentees Fortuna You-Fat, and all that. But I know what this trip means for you-”

“This is not about my nerves, I– You fucking said it wrong, you yokel. ”

”–and you don’t have anything to worry about. That’s why I’m here. To protect you from harm, and advise you, and to talk you down after I beat your arse with a wooden sword.” Henry’s eyes are a calming force, calling him back to the moment and away from the mounting panic rising in his stomach. He looks around the camp again. He’s fine. He’s safe. His men are alive.

Except, there is an ache in his chest and between his shoulder blades. His mouth waters like a man who has starved for a month, and he remembers the taste of that stew that has yet to finish cooking.

“I think… I think something is seriously wrong. I– I died, you see. Today. Or, not today? Not now. But, I think, in the future, I might…” When he says it aloud like that, it sounds altogether quite silly. Ridiculous. He can hear with his own ears that he’s talking absolute nonsense.

Henry is scanning him now, he sees, for injury. He goes digging in his belt pouch for something, and pulls out one of the marigold decoctions he’d spent an hour brewing before they set out. “Look, I think you need to sit down. I must have hit you mighty hard. I’ve gone and given your head a commotion.”

He all but herds Hans over the fence of the fighting ring. Hans’ men watch hesitantly as he is sat down on the log by the fire pit, and the phial planted in his lap. “You said that I was out for a minute?”

Henry nods, and jokes, “Out cold. I was worried for a minute that I'd have to carry you back to Rattay and explain to Hanush that rather than guarding you, I’d gone and fucked you up myself.

Hans weighs up this information, and downs the herby phial in one go. It tastes like shit, and does little to quell the ache in his chest, but he decides to hold back on saying as much for Henry’s sake. “I’ve had the strangest dream of my life. Is that normal? To dream when you’re knocked out cold, like that? I’m not sure if that’s normal. It feels as though I’ve lived this day before.”

Henry shrugs. “False memoraie, I’d reckon. I’m not sure what your dreams have convinced you is going to happen, but I promise it’s all a result of my clumsy swordsmanship. You’ve gone and dreamed up a storm because of a wooden stick.”

Right, he thinks. I’ve had a great knock to my head, and everything is fine.. “Okay. Jesus Christ be praised for that. It really was a dreadfully real dream, Henry.

“Aye,” Henry says, shoulders sagging with relief as the tension in the air starts to dissipate. “I know them well enough myself, sir. But even the worst dreams can’t touch us when we’re awake.”

Hans dazedly lets Henry place a bowl of the freshly ladled stew into his lap, and a wineskin into his hand. The other men take Henry’s confidence as assurance and join them by the fire.

“So who won, gentlemen?” Oats asks them. Everyone looks at Hans, expectantly. He gawps at them like a startled fish, not quite ready to don the usual bravado they expect from him.

Henry comes to his rescue. “I think we’ll call that one a draw, Oats. Sir Hans might have landed on his behind, but he also landed a few good hits. I’ll be bruised from it tomorrow.

Hans spoons some of the stew into his mouth, and feels relief wash over him. He couldn’t remember the taste of the stew, after all. In his false memoraie, it was bordering on inedible – a stew cobbled together from the last of their supplies, favouring practicality over taste. But this stew is bloody fantastic, the flavour bursting on his tongue, and settling warmly in his empty stomach. Empty, of course, from a long day of riding, and not a long month of starving.

Hans clears his throat, daring himself to be fucking normal, and pulls his usual boldness to the surface. “You just got lucky with that whack to my head, Henry. Just as you got lucky in Rattay. It’s not often a blacksmith’s boy has the honour of drawing in combat with his Lord.”

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

The water is cold as all hell, but the feeling is marvelous. An image flashes in his mind – the month-old trough water outside of the Suchdol stables. But Hans Capon has never been to Suchdol in his life. He wades a little deeper, letting the cold water kiss the skin on his chest and back that still smarts.

Someone clears their throat – Henry, announcing his presence as he wades into the water behind him. Hans turns to face him, and sees Henry looking at him questioningly. “Are you feeling any better, sir?” he asks.

“I’m fine, thank you, Henry,” he sighs, muscles groaning as he stretches them under the water. “Though, next time, try to refrain from knocking me out cold, if you can.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.” Henry says, but looks like he has a question on his lips.

“What is it?”

“I was just wondering. Now that you are feeling better: What exactly did you dream that had you so shaken?”

Hans laughs, but the sound of it is hollow, even to his own ears. He tries to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his skull that screams: you need to leave this pond and go home right now. “Honestly, Henry, it was so ridiculous that it’s not even worth mentioning. Bandits and silver and death, and the like. That’s all.”

There’s something hard in Henry’s eyes as he nods in response, and then averts his gaze. “Sounds an awful lot like my dreams. Of home. Of Skalitz.”

“Well. I’m sorry, then,” Hans says. “For bringing them up.”

“Them?”

“Your parents.”

“I didn’t say that I dream of my parents.”

Hans hesitates. Because in another life, he knows that Henry dreams of his parents. He dreamed of them as Hans carried him, half-dead, towards Bozhena’s hut. And during the nights in their shared room in the Devil’s Den, when Hans would feign sleep as Henry awoke in the night, calling out for his mother. But all of that had been a figment of Hans’ startled imagination. Something his injured head made up for him.

He bites the inside of his cheek and settles on, “You didn’t have to tell me.”

That, it seems, is enough for Henry. “Well. You don’t have to be sorry. I only mean to say that I understand why a dream like that would rattle you.”

And now this conversation feels a little too intimate, too kind for the Hans before the noose. So he shrugs, flashing his most noble smile. “I’m not rattled, Henry. I’m fine. Now, if my ears don’t deceive me, I believe there are females somewhere nearby. So, be a good bodyguard and guard my body while I find them, will you?”

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

When Hans Capon dies for the second time, he’s in his underwear.

The two of them push their way through the reeds of the pond, crouched low enough that the women don’t see them. They’re singing together, and it puts Hans on edge when he hears it. It’s a familiar melody, one that he swears he’s heard a hundred times before, hummed under Katherine’s breath as she treats the wounded in the courtyard. But that’s impossible. Katherine is, after all, a figment of his annoyingly overactive imagination. He reassures himself that he’s probably heard it at home in Rattay. It’s probably one of the songs the bath wenches sing as they wash and wring his clothes. There is no Katherine.

Except, sure enough, as they creep closer to the singing at the edge of the pond, there she is. Unmistakably Katherine, crouched at the water’s edge like some kind of vila that has sprung whole and hale from his dazed mind and into the swaying cattails before him. Hans draws a sharp breath in, and takes a step backwards, his back colliding with Henry’s chest briefly, before Henry steps back too.

“Oh God,” Hans says, and his voice sounds very far away. “Oh God.”

Because if Katherine is here, then something has indeed gone very wrong. He has known most of his company for years, barring the exception of Henry. It makes sense that they would appear in his dreams. But if he has never set eyes on this woman before in his life, why does he know her name? Why does he know what her hands feel like on his skin as she cleans and dresses his wounds? How would her likeness have appeared in his unwaking mind?

Henry pulls at his wrist, turning him on his heel to face him. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

Taking another step away from the women, Hans grabs for Henry’s shoulder with his hand, finding warm, wet skin. “Henry, this is going to sound like I’ve lost my mind, but I think I know that woman. The one in the blue.”

“Jesus Christ, Hans,” Henry groans, but there’s amusement in his voice. “Do you have an old conquest waiting in every town?”

Hans is not in the mood for jokes. He tightens his grip. “I am being quite sincere right now. Her name is Katherine, and her being here is a very bad sign. We need to leave.”

“What are you talking about? What could you possibly have done that you’re that fearful just to see her here? You didn’t try to woo this one with poetry, too, did you?”

“Fucking hell, Henry. Listen to me. I’m not entirely sure what is happening, but something is very wrong. I need you to trust me. We need to leave.” Hans hates the whine he hears in his voice, reminding him of the veritable temper tantrum he had in the stocks at Troskowitz, and Henry’s scathing assessment of his person.

Henry searches his face for a sign of humour, and finds nothing. “What exactly did you dream, Hans?”

In the distance, they hear the sudden clash of fighting. The sounds of slaughter, really. Hans knows these sounds well. They have haunted his sleep for weeks. He doesn’t need to look to know what he’ll see, but he looks anyway. He watches as his men are struck down in seconds, and bandits swarm their little camp. Beside him, Henry is on high alert, watching the violence happen with wide eyes, and reaching for an absent sword at his naked waist.

“We’ve got to do something,” Henry whispers.

Hans knows this part, and pulls Henry down to a deep crouch. “Stay down, Henry. For fuck’s sake.”

“But–” his protest dies in his throat as he watches. Hans turns away as old Oats is struck to the ground, and catches Henry’s face as it contorts in anger and frustration. When the slaughter is done, there is quiet. Henry still watches the camp, his eyes narrowed.

“Is that–”

Then, there’s another familiar sound. Katherine is held tightly between two men, hands twisted at her back as she struggles and protests. Henry’s attention is diverted, and Hans follows his gaze. This time around, he can’t bring himself to discourage Henry’s shout. Because that’s Katherine, after all, being backhanded violently. His friend, in a way. The Devil’s Pack are, or were, always tolerant of Hans, but he gets the feeling that it’s more that they tolerate him on account of Henry. Regardless, the sentiment still stands. Henry shoots to his feet.

“Hey!” He yells. “Hey! Hands off her, you brute!”

The men turn towards Henry, and Hans, who is crouched low in the water still. The four men freeze, facing one another. The air between pulls briefly taut, as if they are daring each other to move and give them an excuse to start swinging. The sound of a knight on horseback approaching, silver bascinet flashing in the setting sun and mace drawn, cuts through the tension like a loosed arrow. Holy fuck, Hans thinks, as relief washes over his entire body. It’s fucking Zizka. In his panic, he’d forgotten who exactly directed the assault on his company in the first place.

“What the hell’s going on over here?” Zizka shouts, as he races toward the scene of their standoff. Hans is too far away to see his eyes, but he knows they are cold and zeroed in on the man still clasping Katherine’s hands together. Hans straightens up from where he has been crouching in the water. “Let her go, you pigs!”

One of the men obfuscates, stepping back from Katherine, and pointing his finger to where Henry and Hans stand in the pond. “Them bastards are with them!”

That’s when Hans remembers. Oh. That’s right. Zizka is the opposite of an ally. He thinks that we’re with Von Bergow. Fuck.

“Do you believe me now, Henry?” he asks, and his voice doesn’t sound like his own. Or rather, it does. But it sounds like a Hans Capon that knows what it’s like to starve. “It’s happening again. Everything is happening again. We should have left.”

Henry, either having not heard him speak, or having chosen to simply ignore the question, despite Hans knowing fine that Henry doesn’t know how to swim, pulls him a few steps deeper into the lake. “Sorry, sir, but we really need to go now.”

But Hans doesn’t budge. He’s frozen between two friends as his world ends for a second time. He can’t bring himself to begin swimming. His ears are ringing again, and it’s the sound of Trosky’s bell reverberating around his skull. He’s held in place. He’s the doe that spots the arrow a second before it pierces her side.

Or, apparently, a second before it pierces his good friend Henry of Skalitz. There is a thwap as one of Zizka’s men looses an arrow towards Hans. When it doesn’t hit him, a motionless target, he thinks quite immaturely, proudly, that they really are rather shit archers. But then he hears Henry let out a strangled hiss, and turns to see the feathered wood sticking obscenely out of his thigh. Well, fuck. That certainly didn’t happen the first time around. He barely has time to process this thought before another arrow whizzes through the air and finds purchase in Henry’s right pectoral. He hears it lodge deep within Henry’s lung, and the sound makes him taste bile. Henry’s hands are still on him, pulling gently. His eyes, big and watery, search Hans’ face wildly. His wet, gasping breath rattles through his teeth. The shock of the arrows’ impact pulls Hans from his downward spiral momentarily.

“Fuck, Henry. We need to get you away from here.”

Henry looks down towards the arrow in his chest, blood weeping from the wound, and then back up at Hans. He has the gall to look apologetic. “Hans.”

“I’ll not hear it, Henry. Bozhena isn’t far from here. We need to–”

And then an arrow lodges itself in Hans’ throat, ending his sentence for him.

Chapter 2: As It Was in the Beginning

Summary:

Hans has a crisis of faith, a confession, and dies for a third time.

Notes:

fellas is it gay to conduct the sacrament of reconciliation for your homie who is definitely having a mental break?

Saying that Hans Capon has never been the kind of person to wonder about the circumstances of his own death is actually an out-and-out lie.

It must have been when he was ten or so, in the lazy summer before the news of his father’s passing was heralded from Moravia and the subsequent lengthy winter requiem. It was to be a summer that he’d look back on fondly as a proper summer. The kind of summer that was largely spent idling in his daily lessons, daydreaming during mass, and sitting pollen-drunk in the grass with the other boys in the town rather than practising his combinations.

This is not to say that his life as a young Lordling was free from worry that fateful summer. These were, after all, foreboding days, during which most conversation between Hans’ handlers was punctuated with remarks of his father’s advanced years, ill-health, and seemingly impending expiration. Hans, of course, didn’t know the man well. He knew – had learned on his handful of trips to the Moravian estate that his father had chosen to spend his retirement residing in – that he was a proud man. A great Lord, in his time. And nice enough to Hans’ face, although nice in the same way that Hanush was to a well-bred dog. But Hans was under the impression that once his father died, something would be different for him. Over for him, even. Although it wasn’t clear what exactly that something was. And so, although he’d go on with his idling and meadow-lounging, the remarks would come to set something within him on edge.

One particular summer afternoon during his daily lessons, he’d inquired about what exactly would happen after his father’s passing. He had meant this question in a purely practical sense. He wondered if, after his father’s death, his lessons would come to an end. He would be, insofar as he could understand, the new Lord of Rattay. And surely a young Lord of a town such as Rattay wouldn’t have to waste time drilling his Latin. But his teacher, the old Friar, who would pass away only a handful of years later, had opted (as a Friar would, he reasoned) to interpret Hans’ question spiritually.

“As your father is a good and just man,” he had said, “I would imagine that he will find his way into the Kingdom of God in good time. He did order the construction of our own St. Michael’s Church, which is a substantial plenary indulgence by its very nature, and in his time here attended regular confessionals.”

“In good time?” Hans had asked, sidetracked from his original question by the Friar’s response. “Forgive me, father, but is ordering the building of a church not essentially a guarantee that my Lord father be expedited into the Kingdom of God?”

“Ah, and this is how I know that you don’t pay attention during Sunday mass, Lordling,” the old Friar had remarked, although not unkindly. “Most souls on this earth will not find themselves taken immediately into the Garden of the Lord. That is a privilege only for the Saints amongst us. No, young Master Capon. Like all of us, your Lord father will first know the Purgatorial Fires, where his mortal sins shall be cleansed.”

Hans had heard of Purgatory, obviously. He might daydream during the Friar’s homilies, but he paid attention enough to know what Purgatory was in theory. Only, it was in just this moment that it occurred to him that Purgatory may be a reality that he would have to wrap his head around. “You have to be set on fire to get into Heaven?”

“Perhaps, young one. We cannot know for certain what awaits us once our mortal lives have ended,” the Friar conceded. “When we die, our souls cast off our earthly bodies, and only those who have already passed beyond the veil can know if the fire of purgatory is a spiritual or physical burning. But scripture tells us that our lives are built, like houses, on a foundation of Christ. If we live our lives in accordance with His will and build from stone and silver, then we shall be rewarded. And if we sin, and build from wood and straw, we will burn. Yet in the holy flames, our souls will be saved, and we shall be granted life eternal with the Lord our God.”

Hans was, to put it simply, horrified. Not two weeks earlier, he had dared to spend an hour too long in the blistering heat of the summer, and had burned his face as pink as a ham. If that was anything to go off of, he wasn’t going to hold up very well against the holy fires of Purgatory.

Following that conversation, he thought of his own death often. Or, to be more precise, he thought about what would come after his own death. During that wonderful and terrible summer, he would dream of fire and wake up with his heart thundering in his chest and sweat lashing down his brow. And on Sundays, he would take extra care to listen to the liturgy and drop a few groschen into the indulgence box at the end of mass.

His father’s death came a handful of months later, as the seasons started to grow cold again. First, a herald had arrived astride a beautiful black stallion, bringing news of his father’s passing in the night like one of the Horsemen. For a very short while Hans felt quite sad indeed. The passing of his father was a reality he had grown used to hearing about, but when it happened, he was surprised by the loss that had washed over him. He was mourning something that he’d never had, but now could never have.

The body – his father – arrived in a fine wooden coffin loaded onto the back of a well-made cart a handful of days later. It (or, he?) was received immediately to rest overnight in St. Michael’s Church. The vigil was well attended by the people of Rattay, as his father was always a well-respected lord, but lacked a distinct sense of actual grief. Hans’ mother hadn’t even bothered to travel from Polna for the service, which shouldn’t have surprised him but did all the same. There was a kind of cosmological horror to it, ten-year-old Hans had thought. On the Friar’s accounts, his father was currently being slow roasted in holy fire like a pig on a spit. And there wasn’t anyone in St. Michael’s that evening – including himself – who cared enough to shed a tear.

The coffin would rest in the Church until the morning, and then be buried in the cemetery outside. When Hans arrived in St. Michael’s after the sun had risen, the whole chapel reeked with the horrible sweetness of a butcher's. The lacquered lid of the coffin had remained closed as his body had travelled five days along the corpse roads, and he was deemed unfit for viewing. Yet the smell of bloat announced its presence insistently. Hans had tried to mourn properly that morning, as a good heir to Rattay would. But the sweetness cloyed at his throat, making it difficult to think of anything else at all. Here he had been worrying so devoutly about the abyss of Purgatory that he’d forgotten that flesh rots.

Death, he decided that morning, was a thing that animals do. And he was no animal.

Hans Capon wouldn’t spare another thought for the Purgatorial Fires for another decade.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Hans comes to with an armoured thunk to the ground, and a painful gasp for air. Pain blooms from his throat, rippling out like a drop of blood in clear, still water. He coughs and splutters, trying to clear his throat of the pooling blood that is inexplicably no longer there. It burns like someone has lit a fire in his windpipe, and all Hans can think of as he feels around for the feathered end of the arrow and finds nothing, is the sickly sweet smell of his father’s rotting corpse.

“Are you alright, my Lord?” a familiar voice asks him from above, equal parts teasing and concerned. “I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

Hans squints, flinching at the brightness of the sun flooding his vision. His eyes try and fail to adjust to the light. He blinks a couple of times and sees Henry, blurry and haloed, his arm outstretched in an offer of assistance. Henry, cheeks round with the comforts of a daily meal, skin clear from mud and blood and bruising; Henry, his armour still strapped firmly to his body, no arrow anywhere to be seen in either chest or thigh.

Hans’ vision twists and blurs at the edges as he rolls over despite his aching body’s protests and dry heaves into the grass.

“Sir Hans,” Henry exclaims, sounding suddenly quite alarmed. He crouches beside Hans, and he can sense his bodyguard’s hand hovering over his back hesitantly as he retches. “Christ, Hans, are you okay?”

Do I look bloody okay? he might ask under any other circumstances. Regrettably, he finds himself otherwise too preoccupied at this moment. He retches again, the muscles of his stomach and poor burning throat contracting painfully. His face flushes, and his eyes pool with unshed tears. But all that comes out of his mouth is acrid spittle. Despite the stew he has just eaten not an hour ago, there’s nothing in his stomach anymore. Because, it dawns on him, he’s not actually eaten that stew yet at all.

He glances over his shoulder and sees the still blurry outline of Henry. He blinks the tears from his eyes, and Henry’s face clarifies into an unsettled grimace.

“Henry,” he managed, his voice raw, like he’s just swallowed a mouthful of sand. Like he’s just gone and been shot through the throat, almost! “Henry, we need to find a priest.”

Which, much to Hans’ chagrin, sends Henry (and subsequently, the rest of Hans’ men, who have apparently gathered round to watch him wretch like a drunkard) convulsing with ungovernable laughter. He spits a mouthful of bile into the grass.

“Stop laughing, blacksmith’s boy,” he says petulantly. “I’m being serious.”

Henry acquiesces, but he’s still smiling at Hans as he says, “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. But I hardly think that a wooden stick has you so close to death’s door that you need a priest.” Then, rubbing salt in the wound, he adds, “By the way, that’ll be two hundred groschen when we hit Trosky.”

Hans lets out something like a pained sob.

Because there’s only one explanation for all of this: he’s gone and died, and this is the Purgatorial Fire that an elderly Friar had once warned him about. The very same Purgatorial Fire that he’d decided to never think about again. Because dying is for animals, or some such stupid child logic like that. And he’s lied and cheated, and spent his evenings boozing and whoring, and he’s coveted plenty of other men’s wives, and he’s taken the fucking godforsaken Lord’s name in vain, and he can’t remember the last time he went to confession, and … Christ. Well, he’s killed people, hasn’t he?

Seeing no other option, Hans Capon pushes himself up onto his aching knees, makes the sign of the cross, and begins to pray.

“Deus meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccator–”

“Sir Hans. Are you… what are you doing?” Henry is looking at him as though he’s sprouted two heads and a tail.

“Not now Henry, I’m busy –peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando–” he continues, and then decides to cut to the chase. “Oh, you know what? Fuck it. Lord, I’ve killed people. In war, mostly, but I’ve killed them all the same. And I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing skirts, and I wasn’t even that sad when my father died, really. I’ve stolen, and I’ve lied, and I’ve cheated. And gambling is occasionally a problem for me. And–”

“Is that– Hans, are you trying to make confession?” Henry asks and glances behind him as if he might find a rogue priest in their midst. Seeing only their company, he reaches out to pull at Hans’ arm, unclasping his praying hands. Hans shrugs him off and reclasps them. Henry starts to rummage in his pouch, and Hans knows he’s looking for that bloody marigold decoction. “Look, maybe you should have something to eat. I must have hit you mighty hard. I’ve gone and given your head a commotion.”

“If you think for a moment I’m going to drink that herby piss-water again, Henry, you’ve another thing coming. I shan’t.” And then, continuing his prayer, he adds, “And I’ve been told that I’m impatient and immature, and prone to fits of wrath.”

“Seriously, sir. Sometimes I don’t know the strength of my own swing, and my swordsmanship isn’t as precise as yours. I’m sorry, but I think I might have really injured you.”

Hans ignores him. “Anyway, I’m sure that you can see that I’m really quite sorry for all of the sin. So, if you don’t mind, you could forgive them now, and we can be done with all of this, and I can pass into your Heavenly Garden with my good Lord father.”

Henry glances once again back at their company, and Konrad shrugs. “Er… Okay, my Lord. I’m not entirely sure that you’ll get an answer. From God. That doesn’t tend to be how things work with Him, in my experience. But if you come over by the fire, and have some food, maybe He’ll answer you later.”

Oats chimes in, predictably, with, “You’d best have a seat and some grub in your belly, sir. Fighting on an empty stomach ain’t good for nowt, least of all your Lordship.

Right.

Hans performs another sign of the cross and pushes himself to his feet. He crosses the fighting ring in a few wide paces and vaults himself over the fence, ignoring the sensation of an invisible injury pulling taut in his chest and back. “There’s no time to stop and eat, lads. We must be on our way. We’ve a priest to locate.”

“A priest to– Hans. What are you talking about?” Henry asks. He follows Hans to the fire pit, where he has begun busying himself gathering their things.

“It’s difficult to explain, Henry, but I seem to have found myself in a situation. One that I fear only a man of the cloth can help me get out of.”

“What situation, sir?”

“Let’s just say that I’ve built my house out of straw alone, and now that house is on fire.”

“I’m not following.”

“Well. Nothing to be done about that, I’m afraid.” He throws his belongings into his saddlebag and begins to resaddle Atheon. “Everyone, get your shit together. We’re going. If we stay here much longer, we’ll all be slaughtered like pigs. Godwin won’t arrive in Trosky for a few weeks yet, so we’d best find the nearest parish we can.”

He turns back to face his company, but they’re all standing still and staring at him like he’s just delivered a particularly tricky riddle.

“Godwin? Hans, I genuinely can’t understand what you’re talking about.” Henry closes the distance between them, and speaks gently, in the same tone that he murmurs to Pebbles when she’s been spooked. “Look, I know that you’re nervous about all of this. You’ve been very nonchalant about this whole thing the entire ride here. Ohdentees Fortuna You-Fat, and all that. But I know what this trip means for you–”

Hans makes the executive decision that he doesn’t need to hear Henry’s pity for a second time, and cuts him off there. “Yes, yes. Very understanding of you, Henry. Although you are still saying it wrong, you yokel. Now, we have to go.”

“But– Well, we’ve already set up camp for the night, sir.”

“Who,” Hans asks pointedly, his edges fraying, “is the leader of our little expedition here? Because the last time I checked, I was the one giving the orders. And I am ordering you to gather your things and mount up.”

There’s a flash of irritation in Henry’s eyes, and Hans knows he’s prodded an old, sensitive nerve. He watches his friend almost imperceptibly push down his anger and adopt a mask of collected rationality in a way that he’s not seen Henry – his Henry – do since before their fight in Trosokowitz. Hans has the wherewithal to feel a twinge of guilt. He’s suddenly all too aware that he knows where all of Henry’s buttons are and what it takes to press them.

“You might be the leader. Sir. But apparently, being hit on the head with a practice sword has made you lose all of your wits.” Henry’s words are careful and gentle, but there’s an unspoken warning in them. “So, as your bodyguard, I really think you should sit down and have some stew, and we can have a physician check you over when we get to Trosky tomorrow.”

Hans is at his wits’ end. “For fuck’s sake, Henry. You’re not listening to me. Nobody ever bloody listens to me! Not you, or Hanush, or fucking Zizka. I don’t need a physician. I need a priest, and I need everyone to do as I say for once in my life.”

“With respect, sir,” Henry says, his tone biting, “Maybe people would do as you say if you didn’t behave like such a spoiled brat.”

Hans can’t help it. He really can’t. It’s just a little too close to what he said to him that day in the stocks in Troskowitz. It’s been long enough now that the insults that Henry had speared him with that day no longer sting. But Hans has died twice today, and the insult is enough to send his fist swinging. His body acts without his permission, and the next thing he knows his fist is colliding with Henry’s jaw with an audible a crack. Henry stumbles backwards, clutching at his jaw, eyes wide with shock.

“Thanks a lot, Henry. Now I’ve got to start my confession all over again. I’m not very well going to get into heaven if my best friend forces me to go around punching him, am I?”

And then Henry is throwing fists straight back at him.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

In the end, it takes the whole company to restrain him. He hasn’t the natural capacity for muscle that Henry has, nor the years of building them at the forge, nor the months of chasing bandits around Sassau. But he does have a decent amount of fight, and the tutelage of Captain Bernard on hand. And there’s the desperation. Naturally.

Alas! He is but one man, and his company are four men and a dog. So, as his men eat by the fire pit, Hans watches on like a partially feral animal, tied to a tree stump with a freshly bruised cheek, ego, and a nip to the leg. He glares at Mutt, who lies at Henry’s feet, chewing on a piece of discarded sausage. In another life, I might have eaten you , he thinks with a good helping of spite, before adding wishing death on a dog to his list of sins to confess. Hans protests his restraint throughout their meal, and his men avoid his gaze like he’s a madman.

At the end of supper, Henry regards the rest of the company with an annoyingly calm countenance. “Oats, you should take the lads for a dip in the pond. It’s warm, and it looks inviting. I’ll take care of his Lordship in the meantime.”

Oats glances over at Hans, worried, and Hans feels a surge of affection, and then grief, for the older man. “Alright, lad. But you just call me over if you need me for anything.”

“Thanks, Oats.”

After his men have awkwardly taken their leave, Hans resumes his protests. “You need to untie me, Henry,” he demands, for the umpteenth time. “Do as I tell you. You’re going to wish you’d listened to me.”

Henry ignores him, but stands from his seat on the log. “Are you sure you’re not going to have any stew, sir?”

“Of course I don’t want any of the stew,” he spits, although his stomach grumbles, betraying him. “I’ve already had a bowl of the stew, and it’s disgusting.”

“You haven’t tried it yet, sir.”

Hans’ eye twitches. He can still feel the hunger of Suchdol, and the weight of his last meal, all at once. “I have. But you wouldn’t understand that. So.”

“Right. Of course you have,” Henry says dubiously, the way that you might while humouring a particularly amusing child.

“Oh, fuck off.”

Henry chooses not to react to his expletives and says sympathetically, “Look, what’s going on with you? I’ve never seen you like this. I’ll try my hardest to understand, but you need to actually tell me what’s happening first. Why are you so desperate to find yourself a priest?”

Hans glances out at the pond. The sun is beginning to set, but he reckons he’s got some time yet before Zizka and his men are due to show up. He watches as Konrad and Tankard strip off into their braies and begin tugging a squirming and fully-clothed Nicholas into the water. Oats has rolled his hose up to his knees, but looks back up at where Hans and Henry remain by the fire pit. He bites at the skin of his lip and tastes blood. ”It’s difficult to explain. And you won’t believe me.”

“I’ll try,” Henry shrugs. “Hans, I’ve seen some pretty unbelievable shit the past couple of months. You’d be surprised at what I’d be willing to believe.”

Hans tests the tension of the rope tied around him, and humphs. “Fine. But you have to untie me.”

Henry smiles like he’s just rolled a full straight. “And you have to eat a bowl of stew. And drink a marigold decoction. For your head.”

“Alright.”

After carefully untying the rope, Henry grasps his hand and pulls him to his feet. Hans sits far more comfortably down on the log next to Henry as his friend ladles the last of the stew into a waiting wooden bowl. The bowl is plonked down in his lap, and then Henry looks at him expectantly.

“Go on then.”

Hans wonders where to start. “Well … I need to see a priest.”

“I meant go on and drink the marigold decoration.” Hans rolls his eyes, and downs the phial. It doesn’t taste any better the second time around. “Right. So you need to see a priest. Because you’ve found yourself in a situation.”

“Quite.”

Henry appears to think for a second. “You know, I did technically join a monastery. I know it was under a false name, and I was only a novice. But I took a vow! That’s got to count for something.”

”What are you saying? That you’ll witness my confession?”

“Is that why you want a priest?” Hans nods, affirmative. “I mean… I can’t promise I’ll do a very good job of it. But I did conduct mass for Father Godwin in Uzhits once when he was… Hmm. Otherwise indisposed.”

“He was hungover.” He doesn’t mention that he knows all about Henry’s stint on the pulpit on account of father Godwin having since been removed as the parish priest of Uzhits for that exact incident. Because, naturally, that hasn’t happened yet.

“Well, yes. Kind of. He was still drunk, actually.”

“Hmm.” Hans considers Henry. He’s not exactly the most morally upstanding person, either. Hans has watched him booze, and whore, and kill. More often than not, side-by-side with Hans himself. But he supposes that he’s right, and a monastic vow does have to count for something in the Purgatorial Fires. And Henry is also always consistently and impossibly good. He’s stopped keeping count of the times that the man has saved him from certain death. And Hans doesn’t think he’s going to find another priest hiding in the bushes. ”Okay. I suppose that you’ll do. For now.”

“Right. Okay then.”

“I won’t be calling you father, though.”

Henry makes a face. “I’d certainly hope not.”

“Well,” he says, cringing inwardly. “Then. Forgive me, Henry, for I have sinned. It’s been… a lifetime since my last confession.” He pauses, and looks at Henry, who gestures for him to continue. “I seem to have found myself in… a scenario. That is, I’ve been thinking about the Purgatorial Fires. And I think I need you to forgive all of my sins, and then I can be out of my scenario.”

“All of them? Hans, we’ll be here an age,” Henry laughs.

Panic floods once more in Hans’ chest, and he feels the urge to heave into the grass again. Instead, he lifts a spoonful of the stew to his lips. It tastes as he remembers it, and it fills a hungry void inside of him. “That’s not funny, Henry.”

“Well, I suppose you’d best start listing them all if you want to get done before the lads are back from the pond,” Henry responds, more gently. “Pretend that you’re talking to the Friar.”

“I can’t very well pretend I’m talking to the Friar. You know my sins well enough yourself. You witness them, half of the time. I booze and whore better and more erroneously than any man I know. I’ve lost and stolen a small fortune in dice games. I’m proud, and I’m spiteful. And I’m selfish.” Henry makes a face like he wants to disagree. “What? What is it?”

“It’s just… isn’t confession supposed to be reserved for things you’re actually sorry for?” he suggests. “I’m not saying that those things aren’t true. It’s just that they’re kind of hollow things to atone for.”

“I’ve sinned, and I’m confessing. That’s what confession is for.”

“Sure,” Henry says. “But do you actually feel bad for doing any of those things? Do you think God actually cares about how many wenches you’ve taken to bed? And if you’re lying about actually feeling sorry about your sins, then that’s just another sin, isn’t it? But, well, worse this time, because you’re lying to Him, right?”

“You’re a regular philosopher,” Hans deadpans. “What do you suggest I confess, then, Novice Henry?”

“It’s Brother Gregor, actually.” Henry says, flashing a smile. “I think maybe you should say sorry for things that you actually feel bad about. Is there nothing, really nothing, besides boozing and whoring, which you definitely don’t feel bad about by the way, that keeps you up at night?”

Hans thinks about it. The sun is getting lower in the sky, and the water of the pond is like liquid gold. Oats has removed his cap, and is watching the other lads as they continue to playfight. Hans’ heart twinges again. “I let people down all the time.”

“Hanush?”

“I mean, yes. But letting down Hanush isn’t what I–,” Hans declines. “I told you– this isn’t about my nerves, as you put it.”

“What’s it about then?” Henry asks. “Who is it that you’ve let down?”

“Some friends of mine. I couldn’t help them when they were in a tricky situation. And they got hurt.” He watches as Tankard motions to the other men to be quiet and begins to sneak through the reeds to some unknown bank of the pond. Katherine’s singing resonates in the back of his mind.

“And do these friends blame you? ” Henry asks, brow furrowed.

Hans hears another version of Henry, locked into those stocks in Troskowitz, tell him you know full well the ambush was your fault. Oats looks back up at them again and, seeing Hans sitting with a bowl in his lap, smiles. “They bloody well should.”

“You know,” Henry says, “I think about them every single day. Letting them down. And I think to myself; if I could do it again, I’d save them. I’d cut that bald cunt down where he stood, and I’d send Ma and Pa into the castle before me. Or, I’d not even let it get that far. I’d take my father’s sword right through Toth’s heart before he even got the chance. And I’d not run. I’m done with running.

“I think what I’m trying to say is that feeling that way is normal. It’s proof you’ve things, people, worth caring about. Guilt is where compassion is, too. And I’m no priest, Hans, so I won’t set you to a decade of the rosary and a Glory Be. But I’d suggest, as your best friend – which, you’re forgiven for the punch, thanks for asking – that you treat this guilt as a reminder of how to treat those people going forward.”

“You know,” Hans says, “Maybe you would make a good priest. You missed your calling when you left that monastery, blacksmith’s boy.”

“Shut up,” Henry says, but he’s properly smiling now, much of the apprehension in his voice and in the air dispersing.

“I am sorry for punching you, though.”

“That’s alright,” he says. “I didn’t know I was your best friend, though.”

“Henry, not all friends are created equal. And we did share a bath wench, that one time.”

“You mean, you sent me flower-picking like some lackey so that you could bed a married woman.”

“Oh, don’t remind me, Henry. I can still feel the water up my nose. Bloody Arse-and-balls.”

Henry looks as though he’s about to make another joke about the ill-fated night in the bath house, but a low growl from their feet interrupts him. It’s Mutt, who has been quietly dozing in the grass. He’s baring his teeth, hackles raised, at something behind Henry. Hans and Henry both follow his gaze. Ah. Well. Fuck.

Zizka’s men descend on their camp like flies on a corpse. Hans has the benefit, this time, of still being dressed in most of his armour, barring his helmet, coif, and gauntlets. He glances over at the pond and sees that while Konrad, Tankard, and Nicholas have waded farther into the reeds, presumably following Katherine’s song just as Hans had done himself, Oats still stands there, mouth agape. Hans moves quickly, grabbing one of the long swords sitting by the edge of their camp.

In his mind, he hears Henry say if I could do it again, I’d save them.

“Henry, we have to save them,” he calls out. He doesn’t wait to hear if Henry follows, launching himself into action. He fields a blow from a man with a mace, and ripostes, slashing him across the face and sending him staggering backwards. Zizka has a lot of men, and they’re relatively well-equipped, but Hans has the benefit of having spent the last however many weeks training with their captain.

He twists his body towards the pond to catch the blade of a short sword headed straight for his head in a clinch, before knocking his opponent back. He pommel strikes the lad in front of him, and recognises him as Peltzel from Nebakov Fortress. He feels guilty for a moment as the lad stumbles, dazedly, but the memory of Oats’ slaughter echoes in his mind, and he realises that he does not have the time to feel guilty.

“Oats!” he shouts over to the older man. “Wade deeper into the water. They can’t follow you. Their armour would drown them. Henry and I will hold them off!”

But Oats is wide-eyed and stricken, staring at something past Hans’ shoulder. Hans turns to where his attention is fixed, and his heart drops. Because for the second time today, Hans watches his best friend take a killing blow.

Henry is on his knees, back arched obscenely as if in pleasure or exaltation. It is neither of these. He is skewered to the ground. A sword, a large, beautiful sword, has been driven through his middle with such hateful force that it has slid clean out the back of him and into the dirt. It is a well-forged blade that Hans knows, without being near, is engraved in Latin: PER MORTEM ET SEPULTARAM TUAM. LIBERA NOS. DOMINE. Henry’s eyes are large and childlike as he stares up at the man whose hands have driven his father’s sword through him.

Hans feels a pressure in his ears, hears nothing, but watches Istvan Toth’s mouth move as he murmurs something to Henry’s pale upturned face. Toth straightens, trying to draw the sword out of Henry’s chest. It doesn’t go. He tugs again, and Henry is jostled like tender meat on a skewer, mouth open and gasping. Brow furrowed in irritation, Istvan Toth places his boot on Henry’s chest and pushes. Henry slides down and off the sword and crumples to the ground like a heap of offal at the butcher’s. Folded backward on himself, eyes still wide. Unseeing.

It doesn’t take much for Zizka’s men to finish Hans off.

Notes:

happy chapter notes for all those who celebrate

- Thank you to @tulipfinch for beta reading xoxo
- Because this game has conflicting records of when and where Hans' father died, I've opted to take some creative liberties in terms of their relationship and general timeline.
- Although big Jan Ješek Ptáček was nobility, I don’t think that he would be considered nearly important enough for his body to be put through the process of mos teutonicus (wherein a person’s body is boiled to strip the flesh for their bones to be better transported and preserved) so I just stuck him in a coffin and called it a day.
- In a similar vein, I don't know how commonplace corpse roads were specifically in Bohemia, but given they were a pretty common thing in a multitude of cultures, I've chosen to include them.
- I used Isabel Moreira's article 'Purgatory in Historical Perspective' (2023) as a point of reference for this chapter. It's a really interesting article if you fancy reading it !
- I know (and Hans knows) that Henry is in fact not qualified to conduct the sacrament of reconciliation according to the catholic church. Alas, sometimes desperate times (being stuck in a death loop) call for desperate measures (have your friend who LARPed as a priest one time deliver confession).

Next chapter will be incoming, although torturing my boys must be briefly put on hold for a couple of days this week because of: a) presenting a paper at a very intimidating conference, and b) my birthday.

Chapter 3: Within Thy Wounds

Summary:

Hans tries to save his company five times, and five times he fails.

Notes:

Accidentally wrote a five + one. I love you, I’m sorry.

Hans tries to save his company five times, and five times he fails.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

Thunk. Gasp.

“Are you alright, my Lord? I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

Hans comes to in the fighting ring of Rocktower Pond with a fire lit under him. The burning is a network now; strings of fire sprawling forth from each place that life has left him. The sun – that dreadful golden light – lashes through his skull like a spark to black powder, buzzing and tingling at the back of his head, where a phantom mace collides with bone still. Hans keeps his lashes wrenched open stubbornly, tears pooling in protest, commanding his eyes to adjust to the light. Everything is white, gold, and green, and Henry is looking down at him, haloed in it all like a stupid bloody angel, arm outstretched in an offer of assistance.

Confession, it seems, is not the immediate solution to the Purgatorial Fires.

“Fuck,” he spits. He pushes himself up, leaning back on his arms. As he does, the world spins, his vision doubles, and he digs his fingers into the soil to brace himself. Dirt burrows its way under his fingernails.

“Sir Hans? Are you okay?” Henry asks but withdraws his hand, seemingly satisfied with Hans’ return to consciousness.

Hans touches where he’d felt the hardest of all of the blows hit, on that buzzing spot on the back of his head, and his metal-covered palm comes back clean. He blinks several times, waiting for the light to stop flooding him, the tears from his stinging eyes wetting his cheeks.

“I’m atoning for my sins currently, Henry. Thanks for asking.”

“Oh, come now, my Lord. I hardly think that losing to me is that much of a bruise to your ego,” Henry smiles, and his features begin to sharpen into focus in Hans’ vision.

He’s smiling at Hans now, amusement tinged with concern colouring his features. On instinct, Hans’ eyes dart down to his chest, where the sword had skewered him to the ground, although knowing that he won’t find anything out of place. Then, back up to Henry’s eyes, clear and blue and focused. Hans forces the image of the light leaving them out of mind, lest the bile threaten to rise in his throat all over again.

Henry shows no pain — only the light fatigue of a friendly duel. The wounds of their deaths, it’s clear, are a burden that Hans must carry alone.

If I could do it again, I’d save them.

Right. It’s perhaps some sort of trial, he reasons. If the purgatorial fires aren’t any kind of literal fire, then maybe they’re a test, and reality has twisted itself all up in knots just so that Hans can right his earthly wrongs. He is a Lord, after all, by divine right. Bellatores. He must fight his way to the pearly gates, one way or another.

Hans begins to collect himself, glancing around at the camp. He sets his mind back and tries to reorient himself. Before he died for the first time, he’d been unable to afford a Trosky region map. Not until he’d hefted a handful of bucks to the back entrance of the Troskowitz butcher’s a few times. But he’d spent enough time in the woods before the Semine wedding that he thinks he can recall the fastest route from Rocktower Pond. They could go immediately to Bozhena, although her hut is deep in the woods on the opposite side of the pond. Or, if he can convince the company, they might make it to the Zhelejov Wagoners Inn before it’s truly and properly dark. It seems silly, in retrospect, that they had listened to Captain Thomas’ assertion that I’m not sure Your Lordship would like it very much. He likes the prospect of Zhelejov, despite its bucolic mediocrity, a hell of a lot better than his company rotting in the ground.

“Lads,” he says, as cool and rational as he can, as he pushes himself to wobbling legs. “Get all of your shit together and mount up. We cannot, under any circumstances, camp here.”

But it seems that Hans can’t really be cool and rational in his current state. Henry is looking at him with frustratingly familiar worry. “But, sir. We’ve already set up camp for the night. Are you actually okay? I’m sorry I was so rough with you—”

“Yes, yes, I know, Henry. You don’t know the strength of your own swing, or some suchlike,” he says, and Henry looks mildly taken aback. “I really am fine, though. Thank you ever so much for your concern. It’s only, it now occurs to me that we’ve set up camp in quite a stupid bloody spot, haven’t we?”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Well,” he says, a hint of hysteria bubbling under the surface, “It’s just not very defensible, is it? We’re right out in the open here, surrounded by woods and rocky crevices, in a region we’re just after being told has bandits running amok, in the middle of a war, whilst carrying an important letter. It just seems a touch foolish of us, is all.”

There is a beat of quiet amongst Hans’ men, but they’re not looking at him as though he’s spontaneously sprouted extra limbs this time, so he quietly counts this as a win. Henry seems surprised by this sudden judgement, but appears to be considering Hans’ words carefully.

“Aye, sir, we are a touch exposed. But we’ve seen no sign of bandits on our way here, and tea is almost ready, and … well, we’ve been riding for three days straight, sir. My arse is sore. Anyway, where is this coming from, exactly?”

“Oh, nowhere,” Hans says, in an attempt at sounding breezy and casual. “I was just recalling, as we fought, an old map of the region I looked at … one time. In Hanush’s study, I think. I’m sure that there’s an inn not far from here, just through the woods to the north-west. We could be there before midnight if we ride out now.”

Oats chimes in at this point from behind Henry, calling out, “You’d best have a seat and some grub in your belly, sir. Riding through the night on an empty stomach ain’t good for nowt, least of all your Lordship.”

“Thank you for making food, Oats,” he says with a strained smile, willing himself to be patient with the very men he’s trying to save. “But I fear we’ll have to ride out as soon as we can. We don’t want the inn to close on us now, do we?”

“But, sir,” Konrad says. “We’re hungry.”

Konrad, of course, does not know the meaning of hungry. He doesn’t know what it’s like to go a month on starvation rations, and doesn’t know what the sole of a shoe boiled until tender feels like chewed between molars. An admittedly unreasonable anger stews in Hans’ stomach, aching like the very wretched hunger itself. He breathes through the sudden red film that clouds his vision and tries to keep his countenance as even as he can.

“Well, Konrad,” he says, and he’s sure that only he can hear the shake in his voice. That is, until he catches Henry alone narrowing his eyes a fraction. “You can eat when we get to Zhelejov. That’s where the inn is. Nicholas, start re-saddling the horses, would you?”

“Now, hang on, my Lord,” Henry says. “Let’s not be too hasty. I think your worries about our security are sound, even if raised suddenly. But why don’t you let the lads eat their tea, and I can scout the area. To ease any nerves that you have.”

“If I have to hear you harp on about my nerves one more time, Henry, I swear I’ll be driven to madness.”

“And you should eat, too, sir. I gave you a nasty whack with that wooden stick, and you were out for a moment.” Henry starts fishing in his pouch for that blasted marigold decoction, and were they indoors, Hans fears he may have started trying to scale the walls by this point. “Drink this, to be safe. I think I might have gone and given your head a bit of a commotion.”

Hans’ head is throbbing, this time around. That he is unable to deny. He takes the marigold decoction from Henry and drinks the bitter liquid down. Much as before, it does nothing to quell the burning. The combination of the herby flavour and the utter lack of relief it offers has him hissing like one would after swallowing down a phial of moonshine.

He takes a deep, uneven breath and looks to Henry with an expression that he hopes comes across as calm and rational. “I appreciate the decoction, Henry. I do, truly. But you need not worry about my head. I am perfectly well, although keen as ever to move out as soon as we’re able. Securing the area just won’t cut it. I am the leader of this expedition, and I command that we leave this pond.”

“Er, sure, sir,” Henry says. “I’ll tell you what; while the lads eat, we can scout the area together. And as soon as they’re done eating, if you still want to leave, we can get on the horses and be gone.”

Hans weighs his options. He has the striking impression that if he continues to push his men to leave, things may escalate, and he may very well find himself once more tied up against a tree stump, which would do him and his men no good whatsoever. But if they stay much longer, Zizka’s men will undoubtedly arrive like the plague and wipe them out — and then he has no option but to die or to swim.

He sucks his teeth and addresses his men. “Lads, you have ten minutes to finish everything in your bowls. No more, and no less. If you’ve anything left by the time Henry and I return, you’re to empty it into the grass. Are we quite clear?”

“Yes, sir,” they chorus, although they glance at Henry with uncertainty.

“Good. Come along then, Henry,” he says, and swaps out his wooden sword for one of the steel longswords resting at the edge of their camp. Henry follows suit.

The two of them, followed by an excited Mutt, who lobs his way through the long grass behind them, begin to walk a wide perimeter around their camp. They slowly walk north, towards the thick treeline above the stone wall at the back of their camp. Henry waits until they’re out of the earshot of their company before he speaks, low and even: “Hans, what’s going on? Why are you so on edge? Am I missing something here?”

Hans sighs, because he and Henry have only known one another for a handful of months, but somehow the man has learned his idiosyncrasies like a lectionary, and seems to be able to sense the tension boiling under Hans’ skin. Hans feels, all of a sudden, far too noticed for comfort. He decides that Henry is too observant to lie outright at this moment and opts for a half-truth.

“I’m anxious. It was a foolish idea for us to come here.”

“To this campsite? Or to Trosky?”

Hans laughs bitterly, cursed by foresight. “Both, actually.”

“Right,” Henry says. “I’m just not following why. You were excited about this adventure of ours not an hour ago. What is it that you said? That you intend to make the most of this trip, one way or another? Ohdentees Fortuna You-Fat, and all that.”

Hans bites down on the correction that threatens to escape his lips. Yokel. “It’s difficult to explain. Maybe I’ll tell you later, once we’re safe on our straw mattresses at Zhelejov.”

“And that’s another thing — Since when do you know anything about the lay of the land here in Trosky? Where in God’s name is Zhelejov, and why do you suddenly want to go there so badly?”

“I told you. I’ve seen it on a map. There really is no need to question your Lord on this, blacksmith’s boy.”

They break past the forest line, and Hans looks up into the endless stretch of trees upon the slope in front of them. He knows these woods well. He’s hunted in these woods. But they hang over him now, trees like spectres in a night of broken sleep, shadows dark and elongated in the setting sun. He thinks of Thomas’ words, months ago (or, impossibly, an hour ago). These bandits create mayhem, then vanish like ghosts.

As they walk, Henry breaks the relative quiet of the woods, speaking softly, as though breaking bad news. “Look, Hans, you don’t have anything to worry about. I know what this trip means to you, and I understand why you might be … worried. Anxious. But that’s why I’m here. To protect you from harm, and advise you, and—”

“And who,” Hans challenges fiercely, surprising himself with the intensity of his own voice, head whipping around to meet Henry’s gaze, “protects you from harm? And Oats, and the lads. When the sun sets, and they’re dead and gone, who is to blame? Whose failure are their deaths?”

Henry’s eyes widen, and Hans is unable to prevent the image of that sword sliding through the cavity of Henry’s chest from boiling over in his mind. Henry’s eyes. Wide, unseeing, and blue. Hans is overcome with the momentary urge to touch his palm to Henry’s cheek. To run a thumb over the soft skin just under the eye and feel the heat of the blood beating under the surface — a divine testimony to the life still pumping through his veins. A strange thought. An absurd one. He looks away.

“I—” Henry stammers, fleetingly taken aback before stopping and clearing his throat. “You don’t need to worry about me, sir. Or … er, or the lads. We can handle ourselves well enough, and we’ve all survived up until now. That must count for something.”

“You’ve survived a great deal, Henry. But that doesn’t make you infallible.” An image of a hundred men in glittering armour, the second before descending on Suchdol. “The blade may pierce your back even in a moment of victory.”

“Sure enough, my Lord,” Henry concedes.

There is a pensive quiet as they continue to walk through the thicket of the wood’s boundary. Hans scans his eyes over the bark and bracken. He thinks he sees the flash of something out of the corner of his eye, but when he turns, he finds only quiet woodland.

“I don’t see anything, sir. We should return to the camp. Get a bowl of that stew.”

“No. We leave. For Zhelejov.” And then, yielding control, he implores, “You said we could, if I still wanted to. Trust me, Henry.”

And, like a miracle — like a dream — Henry acquiesces. “Aye. As you say, Hans.”

Hans smiles, a genuine and proper smile, as relief surges through him.

A wildfire explodes in the soft bend of his knee, and he buckles forward with a breathless bleat of pain. An arrow has struck fast and true, and deep into the joint of his right leg. It’s a shot he’d be proud of himself, were he the marksman behind the bow, and were the target a prize stag.

“Hans,” Henry cries out, stricken. He immediately moves to bend down, hefting Hans onto his own shoulder. Mutt growls at their feet protectively, hackles raised and facing northward. “Fuck. You were right, my Lord. Hang on, I’ll carry you to the horses. We need to go fast.”

“No,” Hans gasps through the flames that lick up from his knee. “It’s too late. I’m — fuck — I’m fucked, Henry. I’ll slow you down.”

“Well, I’m not bloody well leaving you here, am I? I’ll carry you. Like I did in Talmberg.”

“This isn’t like Talmberg, this is—”

Another arrow zips towards them and hits the thicket behind Hans, and he can see them now. A half dozen men peeling out from behind trees and bushes up the steep slope ahead of them — Zizka’s men, of course. Lying in wait since perhaps before Hans and Henry had even crossed practice swords in that ring.

He tries to move his leg, but everything below the knee is dead weight, and everything above is not much better. Hans swears and grasps for Henry’s hand. Pressing his friend’s calloused fingers into his palm, he spits, “Henry, please. Go and help the others. Take them to Zhelejov, and in the morning, take them home. Not to Trosky, but back home to Rattay.”

“But—”

“When the sun sets, Henry, who is to blame? Are you listening to me?”

Henry glances down at the arrow protruding from Hans’ knee, and then up towards the quickly approaching band of men, barrelling their way down the hill. “Fuck, Hans. I can’t.”

“You can, and you must. I’m bloody well ordering you to, Hal.”

And if there’s one thing that Henry has grown used to since the razing of Skalitz, Hans knows, it’s the reality of loss in battle. Henry is no commander yet, and he won’t be until the desperation of Suchdol, but Hans can see the outline of it in Henry’s silhouette. Striking to think Hans ever thought him merely a blacksmith’s boy. Henry bows his head toward Hans and begins retreating down to the left, towards their camp, shouting for their men to mount up as he goes. Hans, in the meantime, pushes himself up onto his useless leg, reaching back to steady himself on the rough bark of a nearby tree. He draws his longsword as Zizka’s men draw closer.

Hans would like to think that he holds the men off long enough for his company to get away, but he knows in his heart that he doesn’t. There are too many of them, and only one of him, hamstrung by his injury. All it takes is a couple of clean swings from a shortsword to bring him to the ground. It’s a slower death this time, as the men abandon his useless body on the ground and advance towards his camp. As he lies there, the light beginning to fade, he listens to the hasty beat of hooves on the ground. One, two, three, four, he counts. Four sets of hooves hammering away from the camp, along the banks of the pond, and then out of earshot.

He expects a quiet death, and then nothing, as he bleeds out on the forest floor. His company is saved, and he has surely righted his first wrong. He wonders if his father will be waiting at the gates for him, or if he, too, is burning in the Purgatorial Fires still.

And then, there’s the sound of fighting. Impossibly close.

One, two, three, four sets of hooves.

He shouldn’t be surprised, really. Henry has made a bad habit of rescuing him. There’s a horrible part of him that dares to feel flattered by it, before he remembers the duty of it all. And then all he feels is guilt. There is the clanging of blades and, somewhere out of his eyeline, the ugly sound of metal meeting soft flesh. A sickening gurgle. Hans dies to the sound of his own name being called out in Henry’s death rattle, and the sound of Zizka’s men hot on his own company’s heels.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Thunk. Gasp.

This time, he makes for the water.

Zizka’s men are in the woods. He can feel their watchful eyes on him as soon as he wakes. And now he’s quite sure that no matter if he manages to convince his party to ride back towards Rattay, or on towards Zhelejov, Zizka’s men will be hot in their pursuit. But, he thinks as he hauls himself to his feet – and Christ’s Wounds does his knee burn like something boiled – perhaps he can convince his men to retreat another way. Perhaps, with all of the mismatched armour that Zizka has his men decked out in, the only thing they’ll have on-side to reach Hans and his company are those blasted arrows.

Granted, said arrows have admittedly done some serious damage, but maybe they’ll be cushioned by the shield of the water.

The plan goes as follows: After reassuring Henry that he is in fact okay, and that his clumsy swing has not in fact given Hans’ head a commotion, he’ll suggest that all of them (after having a quick bite to eat, lest they all cramp and drown) strip down to their braies and get into the pond. A relaxing swim in the setting sun! Whatever is there to protest? And they’ll all swim right across the lake (and Hans will carry Henry over on his back if he has to), and by the time they get to the other side, Hans can herd them all towards Bozhena’s under the cover of twilight.

Alas, the plan does not go as he initially conceives.

After much cajoling, he finally manages to herd everyone, stripped off as much as he can convince them to be (although Oats insists on keeping his hoes rolled up to his knees, and keeps his hat clasped in his hand) into the water. He even manages to bother Mutt into a paddle.

Only, his plan hasn’t quite taken into account the quality of his company’s swimming experience. Henry, he knows, can’t swim unless under significant duress. A fact that Henry isn’t aware of, yet. Hans is confident enough that he can create some significant duress, should the need occur. But now that he’s watching, it’s clear that the rest of his men aren’t as familiar with the water as he is, either. Konrad and Tankard are paddling in much the same fashion as Mutt, and Nicholas appears to be outright fearful of the damn water as he stands, unwilling to advance far enough into the pond that his legs might lift from the ground. Oats, stubbornly, is even refusing to let the water go past his knees.

“Come now, lads,” he says, trying to sound very normal. The cold water makes the fire in his body burn angrier. His knee aches. “Come into the water! It’s warm and inviting as a bath in the bathhouse. Oats, come and wash my back, and I’ll wash yours in return.”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather keep close to the shore. I never had no fondness for water, on account of the water goblin I saw once in the Sassau River.”

“On account of the— Oats, your Lord is ordering you to get into the water, and I rather think my word is more pressing than your superstition. Water goblins? Really?”

“Aye, sir. I saw it with mine own two eyes one night as I was walking back to Rattay from over yonder. The thing was as pale as a drowner, with teeth like a dog’s, and all crouched in the water like a demon on a maiden. Tried to get me to join it, so it did. My legs never moved so fast as that night.”

“I haven’t heard anything so ridiculous in my life, Oats. I’d sooner believe you’d had too much wine, and it really was some poor drowned sod that you saw.”

“Well, sir,” Oats shrugs, “If I wade any deeper I might be the poor drowned sod myself. So near the land I’ll stay, thank you kindly.”

Henry has at least waded in with Hans, the water kissing the skin of his chest. He smiles a well-humoured half-smile in Hans’ direction and says, “Oh, I don’t know, sir. Oats might have a point. Although I think you might be the water goblin of this domain, what with how desperate you are to have us all in the water. Why the sudden urge for the swim, anyway?”

“Henry. Look at your surroundings. Trosky’s ponds are beautiful. Idyllic. As I said, not an hour ago, I intend to make the most of this journey. And it would be a damn shame not to enjoy a dip as the sun sets.”

Somewhere in the distance, there is a girlish laugh, and then the familiar sound of singing. They’re too far for Hans to hear her voice individually, but Hans knows it’s Katherine. The sound catches Tankard’s attention, too, and he grabs Konrad’s arm to alert him to the sound.

“You talk of making the most of things. Do you hear that, sir?” Tankard asks. “I hear womenfolk. Maybe you can have them wash your back, instead of employing Old Oats as your bath wench. Eh, sir?”

But this is Hans’ signal that he should have his men start moving as far from this camp as he can get them. If I could do it again, I’d save them. He ignores Tankard’s suggestion and instead says: “Lads, I have a proposal for you. A race! I challenge you all to a race across the pond. The first one to make it across to the other side gets a reward.”

They all look at him with an expression that he’s grown used to seeing, but has only begun to recognise over the past few months — a look that he now can think back and say he’s been on the receiving end of for most of his life. It’s the same look that Henry gave him that night they’d fought in the tavern in Rattay, that wenches give him when he asks if he’s the best they’ve had, that Zizka gives him when he repeatedly instructs Hans to stay behind on dangerous missions. It’s the look that’s given to a trivial young Lord after being asked to entertain his frivolous whims and fancies. His men all glance once again at Henry. Like he’s Hans’ bloody handler.

“Er,” Henry begins. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, my Lord. But the lads and me … we’re not the strongest of swimmers. A paddle in the shallows is all well and good, but I’m afraid we really will end up drowners if we go much deeper.”

“Nonsense, Henry. You’d swim well enough if an army were at your backs. That much I promise.”

“Maybe, sir, but there isn’t an army at our backs.”

Hans wants to scream yes there damned well is, but knows that won’t go over well, on account of him sounding like an actual madman. Instead, eye twitching, he looks to his men and dares them. “Six hundred groschen. I’ll give the winner of the race six hundred groschen. And a night with the most experienced wench in the nearest bath house.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” Henry asks, dumbfounded.

“You’re forgiven, my good man.”

“No, I mean– Sir. Why would–”

But Hans’ offer hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. Tankard, pockets emptied from his stint at dice at the last tavern they’d visited (and Henry’s more recent win before the practice fight), straightens to attention, and then begins paddling, childlike, deeper into the water. “Better not to ask questions, Henry. Or our Lordship might rescind his very generous offer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get a head start.”

“Now wait a moment,” Konrad says, following after his friend. “I should think that six hundred groschen mine.”

Nicholas, frozen where he stands, looks between his two older friends, and his Lord, and then begins uneasily treading water behind them, his head helplessly tilted upwards towards the sun.

“Hang on, fellas,” Henry implores, but the three of them are – mercifully, although very slowly – off. Henry looks at Hans sternly, worry marring his features. “I hope you have a plan for fishing them out from the bottom of the pond when they sink like planks, sir.”

“Don’t be silly, Henry. They’ll swim well enough and be rewarded twofold for it. A heavy coin purse, and their lives to boot.”

“Their lives. What on earth are you saying? You always do this – order folks about like this. They’re here with you in order to assist you, not to entertain you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Henry. Sincerely. Now, I suggest the three of us get to following. Perhaps I won’t have to part with my groschen, looking at the way they crawl through the water.”

“Oh, no, sir,” says Oats. “Not for me. I’d sooner give up all the groschen in my pockets than tempt a waiting water goblin. The missus would never forgive me if I were pulled under and drowned.”

Hans glances up towards the tree line, his nerves set on edge. “Come on, Oats. What would tempt you to get to swimming?”

“I couldn’t say, my Lord. I’ve gone eight and sixty years on our God’s good earth without having to swim, and I should say I don’t plan to start now.”

Hans has a feeling he’s about to lose face quite drastically. “Dear God, why in Heaven’s name must you test me like this? How is it possible that the only safe way out is in water, and all of my men are so inexplicably averse to water?”

“Erm, Hans,” Henry says, having stopped paying attention to Hans’ mounting tantrum, and looking towards where Tankard, Konrad, and Nicholas have swam. “I think we have a problem.”

Hans follows Henry’s gaze and watches as Nicholas has begun to flail about in the water, struggling to keep his head above the meniscus, calling out for help like a child in crisis. Henry pushes off towards Nicholas. Only, there is no army at Henry’s back. And now his friend is struggling in the water himself. Good god above.

“It’s the damned water goblin!” Oats calls out. “I told you we’d best watch out, sir!”

Hans directs his eyes towards the sky and looks daringly into the sun's burning glare, letting his eyes prick with the pain of it. “Why must you curse me like this, Lord? Surely my sins can’t be quite this bad.”

As if on cue, the arrows begin to rain down upon them. Fucking typical. He wanted to get his men to the other side of the pond, but he’s lined them up in the water like ducks, like target practice for Zizka’s archers to take them down one by one.

In the time before Hans’ first death, before that lazy afternoon when Henry had found him lounging in his makeshift cot in his hunting camp, Hans had once returned to Rocktower Pond on his own. He told himself that it was to scavenge for any of his possessions. Groschen, a sword, or the rosary from his bedside chest at Pirkstein. In truth, what he wanted was proof. To see if his men had somehow miraculously survived, and had dragged themselves to the safety of some nearby town or mill. But their graves were dug neatly and marked with a simple wooden cross. He didn’t know — still doesn’t know — who buried them. It may have been Von Bergow’s army. The ones who supposedly found their camp decimated and reported Hans as dead. Or, it could have been Zizka himself. Not a Christian burial, true. But a decent one, all the same. Hans had stopped for an hour or so at the graves — prayed a decade of the rosary, counted on fingers like a peasant, an eternal rest, and an act of contrition. He’d thanked God that there had been someone decent enough to return his men to the dirt, rather than letting them be ripped apart by wolves.

This time, when Hans and his men are inevitably filled with arrows, it’s the water that kills him first, the taste of murky pond scum filling up his mouth, throat, and lungs. There are no graves for drowned men but the water. Maybe Henry will wash up on the shore in two days, pale and blue and waterlogged, half-eaten by fish, and stuffed with arrows like a target circle. And for that, Hans damns himself a thousand times over.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Thunk. Gasp.

Henry doesn’t speak of Skalitz often. At least, not to Hans. Everything he knows about that day is a shattered fragment of a far larger picture that he’s not sure he will ever get to see. Henry speaks of his father, of the sword, of Toth and Von Aulitz, and of revenge. He doesn’t speak of his life before. He cries out for his mother in his sleep. He says things like If I could do it again, I’d save them.

And above all else, he doesn’t run. He is, as it were, done with running.

The third time that Hans tries to save his men, he decides not to run. As ever, there is the burning. This time, a ghost of molten liquid sloshing about in his chest. There is the blasted sun. There is Henry and his halo, his eyes soft with concern. There is Oats and his stew. There are watchful eyes in the woods. And there is the promise of Zizka’s attack.

Zizka. Henry’s friend and Hans’ tentative comrade-in-arms. His Captain. In the time before Hans’ first death, Zizka had called him a commander, had he not? Alongside Henry and the Dry Devil, he had named Hans a trusted enough ally to command his soldiers. So, rather than run, Hans reasons, perhaps he can bargain. He’ll explain the situation; that his party are here not to join Sigismund’s forces, but to broker peace. That they’re friends of Wenceslas, and that they have a common enemy. Zizka is as hotheaded as a bull, but he’s smart enough that perhaps Hans can bring him onside.

So. He assures Henry that he’s okay, and that his head has not been given a commotion, although he accepts the marigold decoction nonetheless. He instructs his men to sit around the fire pit and eat their stew. They talk about the duel, and their journey, and Theresa, the mill wench. After the last of the stew is gone, and its absent taste eases Hans’ phantom hunger pangs, he stands and faces towards the wood above their camp. Without giving his party any warning, he calls out.

“Hey! Jan of Trotznov. Zizka. Captain! Do me a favour and order your men to stand down. This really would be a lot easier if we could all talk civilly and avoid any needless bloodshed, don’t you think?”

Silence. He feels the sudden alarm of his men behind him, their eyes pricking the back of his head. He waits, listening for the sounds of footsteps or movement in the brush. There isn’t a sound.

“Er … sir? Who are you talking to? Are you okay?” Henry asks for what feels like the thousandth time. “Who is Jan of Trotsnov?”

Hans ignores Henry’s questions, keeping his eyes trained on the wood north of them. “It would benefit us both to parley rather than to attack, Captain.”

Another unsure beat of silence passes. And another. And then, all at once, Zizka’s men descend from the wood above the camp’s wall.

In the previous attacks, Zizka held back, one of the last to enter the fold astride his horse. This time, he emerges with the others, on foot, at the mouth of the wood. His bassinet is still closed over his face, pale eyes piercing through the visor of the helmet. He draws and readies his mace as he makes his way down towards their camp, his men swarming around Hans’ own. Hans hears cries of alarm from his own company. The clang of metal as Henry snatches up the hilt of one of the longswords at the edge of camp.

Hans, on his part, remains unarmed, waiting for Zizka to descend patiently. He feels a blade drawn up under his chin, a figure slotting in from behind. Strong and large. Adjutant Michael, Hans guesses, from before the tower fell in Nebakov. He hears the sound of struggle briefly behind him, the clunk of a hilt on flesh, and the clang of a sword hitting the ground. His bodyguard swears gruffly as he, too, is presumably held in place.

“Don’t fight them, Henry,” he calls. “I’ve got this.”

The sword at his throat scrapes against his stubble.

“Who,” Jan Zizka asks him, “are you? And why do you know who I am?”

Hans feels crazed, like a starving dog over the promise of sausage. He can’t help the laugh that bubbles from his throat like a lunatic. Because it’s gone and fucking worked. And then, as the edge of the blade is pushed more tightly against his throat, he says, “I am Sir Hans Capon, Lord of Pirkstein, heir to Rattay, and it’s an actual genuine pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.”

“And why, Hans Capon of Pirkstein, is it such a pleasure to meet an armed enemy whilst held on the tilt of a blade?”

“Why, that’s exactly the thing, Zizka. We aren’t enemies. I’m afraid there’s been a great misunderstanding here. We – my good friends and I – are no friends of Lord Otto Von Bergow.”

“And yet you cosy up with the Captain of his guard.”

“As I say, a misunderstanding, my friend. We are envoys of peace in Trosky. We’ve been sent here by Margrave Jobst, and my uncle and guardian, Hanush of Leipa. Myself and my men, here, are only to deliver a message to the Lord of Trosky, and then be on our merry way back to Rattay.”

Zizka scoffs. “I wouldn’t screw my fate to men like Margrave Jobst if I were you, young Capon. Good men are rotting in Sigusmund’s jail on account of Jobst’s treachery. Your association with him, if you tell us the truth, doesn’t exactly make us allies. And you haven’t explained yet how you know my name, boy.”

“Well … That is a terribly long story, I’m afraid. And a complicated one. One that I cannot explain with a blade at my throat, Sir.”

Zizka regards him with even thoughtfulness, eyes narrowed through the opening of his bascinet. And then, still cautious, he says drily, “Try your hardest.”

Hans hesitates, contemplates trying to scrounge up a believable cover story, and the blade bites at his skin. “Er … well. Word of your exploits here has travelled far and wide!”

“Don’t lie, boy. For every lie you tell, a throat of one of your friends here will be slit.”

“No,” Henry calls out, struggling audibly against whoever has him held. “Hans, what are you doing?”

“Not to worry, Henry,” he calls out, his confidence suddenly wavering. Then, to Zizka, he says: “Fine. No lies. You have my word. Please don’t harm my men. But you must be open-minded and withhold any harsh judgment if I tell you.”

Zizka nods his agreement silently and looks at him expectantly.

“I know who you are, Captain, because I’ve met you. In another life. Or, another version of this life? I’m not sure how this works, really.” Hans tries to keep his voice even and reasonable. Like Henry. But he feels as though he is watching the fuse on the Finger of God draw shorter and shorter. “You see, I find myself in a bit of a predicament. I’ve spent a number of weeks fighting alongside you and a handful of your old friends. Sir Hynek of Kunstadt and Jaispitz, and his band. The Devil’s pack. And Peter of Pisek. And an awful French cunt by the name of Brabant, although he turned out to be a traitor. And … and … fuck, who else? And Katherine. Yes, I know her too.

“Only, I died in battle. And now I keep reliving this dreadful fucking day, and watching you slaughter my men over a ridiculous misunderstanding. So if you could stand down, and we can be done with all of this petty nonsense, then I might be able to right some of my wrongs, and finally pass over to the Holy Kingdom of the Lord.”

Now, Hans knows how he sounds. He sounds nothing short of insane. But as the silence stretches over their stalemate, Zizka meets his gaze with a burning intensity, and he thinks for a moment that he’s managed it.

A sickeningly familiar voice breaks the silence from somewhere behind him.

“It appears we’ve found ourselves a spy, Captain. And a lunatic, at that,” Istvan Toth laughs. Toth edges forward to where Hans can see him, that flashing sword held tenderly to the delicate skin of Henry’s throat. “I’ve met these men before, you see. They are indeed from Rattay – that much is true. But they’re turncoats. This one,” he hefts Henry’s weight forward, “sold out Silver Skalitz to Markvart Von Aulitz, himself. Didn’t you, lad?”

“Toth,” Henry spits, the reality of his own father’s sword being held at his throat registering. “I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll–”

“You bastard,” Hans cries out. “Let him go, you conniving prick.”

“Captain?” Toth asks Zizka with a satisfied smirk, his eyebrow raised.

It’s difficult to tell if Hans’s words have made any sort of impact under the heavy cover of Zizka’s bascinet. His eyes are narrowed, zeroed in on Hans. And then, he nods his approval.

Like a horsehair bow across the strings of a vielle, Toth’s blade cuts decisively across Henry’s throat.

There is so much blood. It springs thick and fast as though from a waterfall, streaming down Henry’s chest in heavy rivulets. Toth mutters something, inaudible, into Henry’s ear, and then releases him. Henry gasps and splutters in pain, searching for a breath that won’t ever reach his lungs, and falls to his knees, hands coming up to his neck to uselessly press at the wound.

“Are you out of your mind?” Hans cries out, pushing himself from Michael’s grasp, letting the edge of the blade draw a shallow scratch across his skin. “I didn’t lie to you! Not once! I asked you not to harm my goddamned men, and you’re out here letting Istvan-bloody-Toth do whatever the fuck he wants!”

Hans collapses to the ground beside Henry, pressing his hand over Henry’s as they hold the gushing neck wound. Henry’s eyes are big and glassy like they were when Hans had carried him to Bozhena’s hut. He tries to say something, and then coughs in agony.

“Hush, Henry,” he says, pathetic tears rising. “It’s okay. I have you. We’ll get you a … a marigold decoction, or something. And I’ll clean that wound with schnapps and dress it good and proper and– Just hold on for me, okay?”

“Well, young Lord Capon,” Zizka says, approaching the two younger men on the ground. “Perhaps you lied, or perhaps you didn’t. But as it stands, you have volunteered my name and the names of my comrades, as well as the nature of my business, without my having ever met you, all while one of my own men attests to your being a foe and turncoat.”

“But,” Hans says. His hands are warm and sticky with Henry’s blood. “But I’m telling you the truth. I’m–”

“And maybe you are,” Zizka shrugs. “Maybe you’re not an absolute madman, and you’re about to relive this day. But know, if you do, that you won’t find assistance from me. And especially not with Katherine’s name in your mouth.”

And then, Zizka wraps Hans’ skull around his mace.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Thunk. Gasp.

Everything is bright again. Painfully so. A white and gold and green blur, shining through the translucent skin of Hans’ eyelids. And yet, all he can feel is red. A vibrant, impossible red. The red-hot pain in his skull and everywhere else. Like metal heated and then left to cool. The red of Henry’s blood, warm and sticky in his hands. The soft edge of his wound like frayed wet fabric against Hans’ fingertips. Hans’ heart thrums in his chest like the wings of a sparrow with a hawk at its tail. He’d be sick again, now, if he weren’t frozen in place on the ground of the Rocktower Pond fighting ring.

“Are you alright, my Lord? I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

One time, when he was a child, Hans had attended a summer festival outside of Rattay’s walls, and the village girls had spun him as they danced so hard that his head had kept spinning for quite some time after his body had stopped. After, he’d been sick with the motion of it, and had to return home to Pirkstein early. His world spins like that now, but worse. Zizka swings a mace like a fucking monster. His stomach twists and his eyes roll, unable to find purchase on one thing in particular.

“I– I’m quite alright, Henry,” he says, his voice not his own. He blinks, and again. He lets his eyes zero in on the man above him.

The red is worse when he looks to Henry. He’s standing there, halo at the ready, like a bloody angel. His throat cleared of blood, his breathing even and calm. His eyes are warm and blue and full of life. Hans lets the routine take over, lets his impossibly alive friend fix him a seat by the fire, some food in his belly. Hans musters a smile through the pain, the anxiety, the nausea. He averts his gaze to quell the hammering in his chest, stares out the pond’s edge.

“Seriously, sir,” Henry says. He digs through his pouch and drops the marigold decoction into Hans’ lap. “I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

“I’m fine,” Hans manages, eyes still turned to the water. “I am. I need … I need to …”

The water. The song, like a lightning strike. Aleluja Domine sailing on the ripples of the pond. Especially not with Katherine’s name in your mouth.

Of course, it’s Katherine. Because if there’s one person who will get through to Zizka, outwith Henry and the Dry Devil, who are both otherwise a tad preoccupied, it’s surely Katherine.

Hans has wondered about them – Katherine and Zizka. In his time at the Devil’s Den and Suchdol, he’d observed the way that Zizka would soften for Katherine when he thought nobody was watching. He’d heard the comfortable familiarity of her shortened name, Kate, in Zizka’s mouth. And he’d wondered if … But he’d never seen them so much as brush hands. And then Katherine would flirt so openly with Henry, and Hans had never seen a lick of jealousy in Zizka’s eyes. Their relationship was – and remains – an enigma.

But Zizka will listen to her, he’s sure of it. And she’s here. Now. Wringing out a basket of clothes just down the pond.

He starts to cobble together a plan in his mind. It’s simple, really. It’s amazing that he’s only thought of it now. After he assures Henry that his head really is commotion-free, despite the throbbing and the blurred vision, he’ll skip dinner and jump straight in the pond for a dip. On his own. And he’ll find Katherine, and explain the whole situation to her, and surely with her on side, Zizka wouldn’t dare touch his men.

But as Godwin would say: Man makes plans and God laughs.

Because Henry is still hovering over him like he’s worried he might keel over any second. So, Hans takes the marigold decoction and it tastes like shit, and he eats the stew and it tastes like nothing. He listens to Henry and his men talk about the duel, and their travels, and Theresa, the mill wench. Hans sits through it, listless, feeling as though he’s floating somewhere outside of himself, the pain in his head and throat and chest and stomach and knee buzzing like a hive of angry bees. And he finds, quite frustratingly, that he can’t bear to look at Henry for longer than two seconds without feeling as though his world is caving inwards.

When their bowls are empty, and Hans’ stomach is full, and his world has stopped spinning, he practically begs Henry for a dip in the pond. And it’s only after Henry has once more checked him over for injury that Hans is allowed to begin stripping down to his braies. He feels a flash of indignance at the thought that perhaps his men are correct in their supposition that Henry is, in fact, his handler.

The water is cool as ever against his skin, and the bees buzz more furiously still under it. Regardless, he wastes no time, wading up to his waist, and then pausing to listen for singing.

Someone clears their throat – Henry, announcing his presence as he wades into the water behind him. “Are you feeling any better, sir?”

“I’m going for a swim. On my own.”

“I’m sorry, sir. But I’m not letting you go off on your own so soon after a knock to the head.”

Hans doesn’t turn to face him – can’t bring himself to – but responds, “I told you that I’m fine, Henry. Now hush, I’m trying to listen for–”

“Yes, you say that, sir,” Henry says gently. “But you didn’t see the way you looked when you came to over at that fighting ring. You looked … I don’t know. Like you’d seen a ghost, or something.”

“Well. Perhaps I did.”

“Sir?”

“Hush, I told you,” Hans replies, and then hears a burst of girlish laughter and the beginning of a chorus. “Do you hear that, Henry?”

“I– Yes, my Lord. But–” Henry hesitates. Hans finally turns to look at him. Forces himself to look, despite his nerves screaming at him to look away. Henry’s eyes are soft with something like worry. Or maybe regret. His armour removed, the absence of the blood streaking down his front should be a relief, but feels like a warning instead. A threat, even. Hans’ throat feels dry. He absently wrings his hands in the water. “Before you go off chasing skirts, or whatever it is you intend to do, can I just– I wanted to say that I’m sorry, sir.”

“Whatever for? Will you damned well listen to me when I tell you that I’m fine, Henry?”

“It’s just that … Hans. You looked scared. Like you did at Talmberg when you took that arrow to your arse. Only, you were looking at me.” Henry rubs a wet hand through the short hair on the back of his head. “And I know what this trip means to you. I’m meant to be here to protect you, and I’ve gone and fucked it up already. All because I don’t know the strength of my own swing.”

“Henry, I promise, you’ve fucked nothing up. I’m totally fi–”

“I just don’t want to see that again. Fear in your eyes. And especially not because of me.”

“Hal. It’s not because of you. It’s because …”

And that’s a lie, isn’t it? A charge of images assaults his mind. Henry, an arrow in his chest. Henry, skewered to the ground. Henry, falling in battle because of him. Henry, pale and bloated at the bottom of the pond. Henry, blood flowing from his neck.

If I could do it again, I’d save them.

Hans swallows the pain and the anxiety, rallying his most courtly smile. “I’m fine, blacksmith’s boy. I took a knock to the head, sure enough. You’re lucky we’re not at home in Rattay or you might go a spell in the stocks, I should think. Lucky for you, we’re here in Trosky, and you have a very understanding Lord. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and charm the tits off some lovely wenches. It’s really quite imperative.”

Henry rolls his eyes, and Hans can tell he’s not entirely satisfied but is willing to leave it alone. At least for now. “Alright, sir. If it’s really that important to you. But as your bodyguard, I’d prefer to come with you. I can’t guard you very well if you’re nowhere to be seen.”

Katherine is exactly where Hans expects her to be, crouched at the water’s edge as ever before, between two wenches in various states of undress, singing that melody that he knows so well. And Hans hasn’t any time to lose, so he grits his teeth, swallows his pride, and announces his presence.

“Ladies!” he calls out, putting on his most charming smile. The girl on Katherine’s left, whose underthings stick to her skin with the dampness of the pond water, screeches and attempts to cover her body with her hands. “Please do forgive my intrusion. My name is Sir Hans Capon, and my good friend Henry and I are here on official business. We need, quite desperately, to speak with your friend there.”

“Hans?” Henry asks, embarrassed. “What angle are you going for here?”

“Bloody pervert,” the girl on Katherine’s left says, abandoning her laundry and hiding her own body behind Katherine’s crouched form. Katherine, ever the pragmatist, appears unalarmed, pushing the girl squarely behind her. Her eyes, though, are narrowed at Hans and Henry as they stand in the water before them.

“What is it that you’re wanting, sir?” She asks, a warning on her tongue. “Surely nothing that the bath wenches at Zhelejov can’t help you with? They charge a fair enough price, from what I hear.”

Hans raises his hands in submission, attempting to dissuade any tension in the air. “We’re not looking for that sort of assistance, my good lady. As I say, we’re here on official business.”

“And what sort of business would that be, Sir Capon?”

“We’re peace envoys, from Rattay. We’ve been sent here to deliver a letter of peace to Lord Von Bergow. And we have some friends in common. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Aye. That’s what we need your help with, I’m afraid. Those friends don’t know yet that we’re their friends. And you, Katherine, can help us persuade them of that.”

Katherine, stiffening, glances at the girls around her and juts her head at them, motioning for them to leave. Hans turns his eyes away to respect the girls’ dignity as they put on their dresses. He catches Henry’s eye, who is mouthing what are you doing at him. After they’ve started to make their way up the road toward Zhelejov, Hans turns back around.

Katherine is staring squarely at him, eyes defiant, her mouth turned down in a scowl. She’s fished a dagger out from under the blue skirt of her dress. “Alright. I didn’t tell you my name, so who are you actually, and what is it that you’re wanting?”

“Ah,” Hans says. “Right. I did say your name, didn’t I? Stupid of me.”

“I’m sorry about him, miss,” Henry says, hands raised in his best attempt to de-escalate. “He’s just taken a nasty knock to the head, and he’s not quite himself.”

Katherine ignores him and points her dagger toward Hans. “Answer me.”

“Er, well. We’re friends of Zizka. We know about your whole … mission. At Trosky. And, you see, right at this very moment, his men are planning a vicious assault on our camp.” Hans can hear the hysteria from earlier creeping back into his voice, and his eyes feel terribly warm and wet. Like Henry’s blood on his hands. “And … And if you don’t do something to help us, all of them will die. And they’re good men, Katherine. I’ve known Oats all my life, and Nicholas hasn’t even seen his twentieth summer, and-”

“As I say, my lady,” Henry says, voice hollow, “he’s taken a knock to the head. You really need to pay no attention to him. But, if you know where I can find a good physician, then–”

In the distance, the sudden clang of slaughter rings out. Henry’s head whips around like that of a hunting hound catching a scent. Hans groans and begins marching forward to the shore. “Please, Katherine,” he begs, reaching for her arm. “I know that I’m a stranger to you yet, but–”

“Sir Hans!”

Henry pulls him backwards, stepping in front of him, and Hans falls with a splash into the shallow pond water. He’s confused at first at what’s just happened, and then he sees red dripping into the water ahead of him. Katherine drops the dagger, hands shaking. She seems conflicted, caught somewhere between defensive and apologetic. Henry’s back stiffens, and then he stumbles backwards, falling into the water beside Hans. His hand surfaces to hold the wound in his side, from which blood pours.

“I–” Katherine begins, and then glances towards the sounds of the fighting. “I’m sorry, boys. It’s nothing personal. Self-preservation, to be honest. I’m sorry about your friends. I hope … I hope it’s quick for you.”

He holds Henry’s wound. He stays with him until Zizka’s men arrive. The blood spills from the gaps between his fingers, pooling into the pond, eventually blending with the clear water in the light of the setting sun. And when Zizka’s band arrives, he welcomes the strikes of their blades with relief.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Thunk.. Gasp.

The final time that Hans tries to save his company, it’s a shot in the dark, and it’s over quickly.

When he wakes up at Rocktower Pond, the pain is insurmountable. He wonders if this pain will really kill him, this time around. If it will eat away at his insides.

When he’d ridden with Henry to the outskirts of Skalitz that day, to pick up Sir Radzig from the field where Toth had dumped him, Hans had seen the skeleton of a town. The foundations, beams, and sometimes the walls of houses remained, although left charred and blackened from the inside out. He’d never visited Skalitz in its prime, when it was bustling with life. With Henry’s life. The one before Rattay, and the blade, and Hans. He’s only known Skalitz to be a gravemarker – a gash in the landscape not yet healed over.

He thinks of those charred houses now as the burning lashes through him like a fever. He wonders if he, too, will be left hollow. An ambulatory shell where life used to be. An unhealed gash.

“Are you alright, my Lord? I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

Ah, Henry. Hans doesn’t need to open his eyes to see the halo. It burns, too, like a brand through his eyelids.

If I could do it again, I’d save them.

Hans doesn’t doubt that Henry would. Or, at least, that he would try. He sees the intention in Henry now, an invisible string tied around his sword arm. It’s in every life spared, every miscellaneous good deed. Henry’s confession to him makes something of his character, makes his goodness, click into place. But, Hans wonders, if Henry were granted his wish, and he were able to go back and do it again, if he might find Henry in Skalitz still. Those blue eyes, the heavy slope of his brow, the curve of his mouth, all misplaced on the rotting corpse of a stranger strung up outside of Skalitz.

But then, Henry is a far braver man than he. And fortune favours the brave.

Well, maybe that’s it. Maybe the mere attempts of Sir Hans Capon won’t solve his problem. Maybe this is a conundrum better suited to his good friend, Henry of Skalitz. He wonders what Henry would do faced with this situation, and then immediately knows the answer to his own question.

I’m done with running, Henry had said. But then he’d also said I’d cut that bald cunt down where he stood, and he’d said I’d take my father’s sword right through Toth’s heart. And it’s a damn near impossible fight, and Hans knows how it will end, but when he opens his eyes to see Henry, Oats, and his men, all alive once more, he knows he wants to at least say that he tried to fight his way out once.

It’s a difficult task convincing Henry of his health and vitality in his current condition. There are no visible marks on him, but his head spins and his limbs are heavy and drag as he moves them. He accepts the marigold decoction, and it doesn’t do anything. He eats the stew, and after his belly is full again, his eyelids threaten to close on him. But he steels himself, pushing up onto unsteady feet.

“Lads,” he says soberly. “I have appreciated your company on the road these past days. Truly, you’re all good Christians, and should you go from this life early, I do not doubt that the Lord will welcome you into his Kingdom in earnest.”

Henry raises his eyebrows at him and laughs easily. “One whack to the head, and you’ve turned awfully pious, sir. Remind me not to knock you out again, else you join a holy order.”

“And if something happens, and everything goes very badly,” Hans continues, and although he addresses all of his men, his eyes keep coming back to Oats. “I want you to know how sorry I am. I can be – have been – an arse. Sometimes. A downright terrible Lord to serve, at the worst of times. But know that I’d give the world to be able to stop this from happening. And if it happens again. I mean, if it all goes tits up, I want to ask for your forgiveness. Not … not God’s. But yours.”

Oats gives him a soft and reassuring (although vaguely confused) smile. “That’s … that’s alright, sir. Not to worry a bit. But if I might ask– What is it you’re worried will happen?”

“Sir, what do you mean stop this from happening?” Henry asks, those heavy brows furrowed.

“Right,” he says, “I suppose we’d best crack on with things. I don’t wish to alarm you all, but I think that it’s quite time we arm ourselves.”

Hans is beginning to get used to the looks that they give him, as if he’s lost his marbles. But it’s the way that they all look to Henry immediately for guidance that stings him like a knife in the ribs.

“Er,” Henry begins, and then familiar words begin to fall out of his mouth like clockwork. “Sorry, sir? Are you feeling okay? I know I hit you–”

“Please, Henry,” he implores, cutting off the spiel at its inception. “I believe that something bad is about to happen. That we – that is, our camp and our men – are about to be attacked. Ambushed. And I can’t explain why exactly I think that right now. But think about it. We’re exposed, surrounded by wood and rocky crevices, in a region we’ve just been told bandits are running amok, and … Well. I trust you with my life. But I need you to trust me with this, too.”

Henry is dubious. “We’ve seen no sign of bandits, sir.”

“Well, yes. That’s why I said we’re about to be ambushed, Henry. They’re hiding. Waiting for us to be at our most vulnerable. Please do try to keep up,” Hans bites, and then regrets it. “No, sorry. That’s not fair. I’m being snippy. Please forgive me. Again. It’s been a long day. Days. Hmm.”

Henry levels his eyes at Hans, scanning his person carefully for injury or something else out of place. He glances at the other men, and then lowers his voice, as if speaking quietly will erect a confessional curtain in the middle of their camp. “Sir. Hans. I know what this trip means to you, and–”

Hans loses his cool. “For fuck’s sake, Henry. Do as your Lord commands, and prepare for combat. Please. Trust me on this. Should it turn out that I’m wrong, and that all that awaits us in the wood is game, then I’m the fool, and we can all laugh about it on our way to Trosky in the morning. And if I’m right, you’ll all thank me for commanding the steel into your hands.”

“But– Look, I’ll tell you what. We can scout the area together, and–”

Hans ignores him, picks up one of the longswords, drags it across the camp, and thrusts it into Henry’s hands. “Take the sword, Henry. If … good Lord. If you could do it again, you’d save them. Right? Right?”

Hans watches a series of emotions flash across Henry’s face.

When Henry had first arrived in Rattay, Hans had found the way that Henry wears emotions confounding. There was something so terribly open in his expressions that at first, Hans had found him difficult to look at. Henry had charged into his dining chamber that morning in Pirkstein with grief and rage so fresh that it filled up the air in the room and soured Hans’ tongue. Eventually, somewhere between the hunting trip and the night at the bath house, he had concluded that there was a well-natured honesty to Henry’s face, and watching it twist and change like the wind had grown into a pastime that he was fond of. But still, there were expressions that he hadn’t been able to catalogue, when Henry’s face would grow still and even, his eyes aloof and appraising. And the openness of his expressions would make these moments more confounding to Hans still.

Like now. First, there’s a flash of surprise. Like, Hans has reached into his mind and pulled something out, like pulling a loose thread from fabric. Then, there’s suspicion. Then, there’s that expression that Hans doesn’t know what to name. Henry’s eyes rake over his face, calculating. Then, he grasps the sword with more grip. “The last time I ran away, I lost everything. I’m never going to do that again. If there’s an ambush as you claim, we’ll fight.”

“Oh, thank the Lord. Thank you, Henry.” Hans’ shoulders sag in relief, and he crosses the camp once more to pick up his own sword. As he goes, he calls out to his men. “The rest of you, too. Arm yourselves.”

Glancing between Hans and Henry, his men gather and muster their weaponry hesitantly. Tankard arms himself with his mace, and Konrad with his shield and shortsword. He appraises them. The two of them are soldiers by trade, although they haven’t seen much combat outside of the siege of Talmburg. Hans has drunk with them many a night in the Rattay taverns, but has only seen the clumsy swinging of their weapons a couple of times. Neither of them grew up with Bernard’s drills between Latin lessons and elocution, but they can handle a rowdy tavern scrap. Nicholas picks up his shortsword – he is less fluent in swordsmanship than any of them, and he holds it like a farmer’s hoe. Hans sighs.

Then, there’s Old Oats. He holds a sword and his shield – the one with that yellow Rattay emblem. An emblem that Hans has historically been very proud of. But it burns bright and angry in his vision as a reminder of whose fault all of this is. The yellow is the colour of Hans’ shame.

Hans reaches inside of himself for the version of him that commanded men in Suchdol.

“Okay, men. We are moments away from an ambush. Soon, a dozen or so men will come from the thicket above our camp. There are more of them than us, and they’re well captained. I don’t know if we’ll come out of this fray, but I’d like you to know that in this life alone I’ll do everything I can to stop your blood from being spilled. And if you do fall, and I get the chance to live again, I’ll carry you with me. Your loss will mean something to one person, at least.”

When Zizka’s men attack, his men go down quickly. He and Henry are by far the best armoured of their group, and the heft of their cuirasses and helmets keep them standing for longer. But this loss is set in stone. It plays out in front of him like it always does. Nicholas takes a mace to the side of his head, Tankard a spear in the gut, Konrad a hammer to the neck. Down they fall, meeting the ground as inevitably as rain. When Oats takes a blow to the temple, the Rattay yellow discarded to one side, meeting the rest of their company in the darkness of death, only Hans and Henry remain.

Side by side, and sometimes back to back, their longswords flash in the brilliant orange of the setting sun. As steel meets steel, Hans wishes for death to find him first, and to be spared the wound of watching Henry die once more. But Henry moves around him like an angry wind, fielding blows that would take Hans down one by one.

That halo – an angel is right. Hans’ bloody guardian angel, moving like he was spared in Skalitz to fulfil this purpose alone.

Henry takes a fair few of their opponents out before death finds him – this time, a blow from the sharp spike of a war hammer in the neck. And Hans, his fate sealed, dies with the weight of his own failure.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Hans Capon has never been good at prayer.

Ten Hail Marys, an Our Father, and a Glory Be at the direction of a priest, here. An Act of Contrition, there. In recent weeks, he’s become more familiar with the Eternal Rest. But he’s never found prayer – daily practiced prayer, like his nursemaids had always recommended when he was a child – to be an easy feat. He gets in his head about it, without the structure and padding of a mass. God sees all, he’s been told, for God is contained in no place, but whole everywhere in himself. And in those silent moments where ungoverned prayer should be, Hans falters under the weight of God’s eyes.

He’d attempted to pray in the desperate moments of the past weeks. Before the final bell in Trosky, they’d sent Father Nicodemas in to anoint him and deliver his last rights, and he’d followed along with the prayers obediently as his execution had loomed overhead. And at Maleshov, he’d held a one-man vigil for Henry and Godwin, thinking them dead, or on their way to being dead. He’d dug up every prayer he could remember being uttered at his father’s funeral from the recesses of his mind, and he’d written them all out like a child drilling his Latin. But eventually, he’d run out of prayers, the vigil had come to an abrupt end, and he’d joined Brabant for a solemn game of dice.

All of this to say that Sir Hans Capon is not a pious man by any stretch of the word – nor a man with whom prayer finds an easy rhythm.

Yet, when Hans awakens for the eighth time on the ground of Rocktower pond, there is a prayer echoing around his head, stuck like a bawdy rhyme.

His mind is transported back to St. Michael’s Church. It’s Good Friday, although he’s not sure which year. Maybe it’s every year rolled up into an amalgamated memory. On Good Friday, because it is a day of mourning, the bread is not broken, and the wine is not spilled. Instead, the good people of Rattay queue to kiss the scratching wooden surface of the cross, and the priest recites Intra tua vulnera absconde me. Ne permittas me separari a te.

They are words that Hans hasn’t spared a second thought for.

Christ’s Wounds has become a throwaway expletive for him, picked up in all of its variations from Bernard. But now, he turns the words over in his head, and thinks of the blood and water pouring from Christ’s side, and Thomas’ fingers buried in the wound.Within thy wounds, hide me. Separated from Thee let me never be.

He wishes he could pry open his own skin, dig his fingers, like Thomas, into the seams of every place the fire burns now, and stow his men, stow Henry, inside of himself for safe keeping. And that wish feels like the closest thing to prayer – real, actual prayer – he’s ever managed.

But Hans cannot keep his men from Harm. He knows that now, as he blinks blearily up at a sun-blurred Henry, halo fixed in place, hand outstretched. At least, he cannot keep Oats, and Konrad, Tankard, and Nicholas from harm. Their deaths are set in stone as the crow of the rooster.

Henry, though. Henry, he can save. He can hold Henry inside of the ache – the one that radiates from his back to his chest, from that first killing blow in Suchdol – and carry him to safety. He’d done it once before, the very first time around. And he’ll do it again. In fact, he’ll do it even better this time.

“Are you alright, my Lord? I didn’t beat your noble arse that hard, did I?”

“I’m fine, Henry. Help me up, will you?”

This time, he lets everything play out as it had the first time around. He accepts the marigold decoction that Henry offers, although he stows it safely away in his own belt pouch, along with a phial of schnapps, a carefully rolled bandage, and a hundred groschen. They sit around the fire pit and share a final meal together, and it tastes like blood. They talk about the duel, their travels, and Theresa, the mill wench. And after all of the food is gone, he strips off into his braies, ties his belt pouch and a dagger to the waist-band (“Just in case”, he tells Henry, who furrows his brow as he attaches them), and wades into the water of Rocktower Pond.

The guilt does not – and perhaps will never – leave him. It is another burning wound in the soft flesh of him. But this is not a wrong that he can right.

So, Hans Capon marches into the future, Henry at his heel, towards the arrow and the water and the fall.

Notes:

Chapter notes:

- Ok, first things first, thank you to @birds_of_a_feather18 for making this fic audibly accessible with their wonderful podfic! Please do go and give them love ~
- Thank you also to @sixthruin for beta reading this chapter (and making me cut the word count bc Good Lord)
- Finally, thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday and good luck with my conference. I had a lovely medieval costume gaff, and presented a paper on fat vampires, and it was all a great success!
- In this chapter, I opted to use the Scots word “outwith”. If you’re from outside of Scotland, you might not have heard this word before. I am aware that neither of our main characters are Scottish. However, reader, I am. And I truly believe that outwith is a word that everyone should incorporate into their vernacular. All of this to say: fuck you! You can pry outwith from my cold, dead hands.
- While I’ve chosen to keep Katherine and Zizka’s relationship relatively up to interpretation thus far, let it be known that I am a Katherine/Zizka truther till I die.
- I have pulled a quote on the omnipresence of God from St. Augustine’s 187th letter in this chapter. The translation I accessed was from ‘The Works of St. Augustine: a Translation for the 21st Century’ (2013).
- This chapter makes reference to the medieval prayer, the Anima Christi. This prayer is a reflection on the 5 wounds of Christ, which I felt numerologically fitting, given the 5 + 1 format, and how often KCD characters use “Christ’s wounds” or “God’s wounds” as an expletive. Earl Jeffrey Richards in ‘The prayer Anima Christi and dominican popular devotion: Late medieval examples of the interface between high ecclesiastical culture and popular piety’ (2016) claims that it was “Written some time before 1315, but first attested only from around 1340” and that “the prayer was initially recited as a post-Eucharist prayer in the mass, but rapidly experienced a socially and linguistically heterogeneous transmission independent of this original context.” I am, reader, not a theologian, so I don’t know how likely it was that this prayer in particular was popular in 15th-century Bohemia. Alas, this is my fanfiction, and I decided that Hans knows it. So.
- Lastly, sorry. For the wait. And for the length of this chapter. And for the death.

Chapter 4: From All Ill Dreams

Summary:

Hans wakes up in Bozhena's hut, tends to an injury, and the boys talk about what comes next.

Notes:

new quest just dropped.

Hans is alive.

Sore. His muscles aching with the fatigue of battle and hunger and last night’s boozing. And something more, which he cannot place or name. His shoulder is still stinging from where the arrow was wrenched. But he is alive. Viscerally and vibrantly alive. His blood is singing as he watches the glint of the hundreds of men in armour descend upon the camp outside the fortress.

Beneath the cries and clang of battle, something familiar hisses. Like the quiet warning of a snake in the long grasses toward Neuhof.

“He did it,” he shouts to … someone. Godwin? Oats? Whoever he calls to, they are otherwise preoccupied, locked in a clinch with a soldier armed with an axe and shield. “He actually did it. I should have never doubted you, Hal!”

A sharp sensation unravels in his back and then his chest. It’s not painful, really. At least, not at first. The cold point of a blade under his fingers, withdrawing from the warped metal of his cuirass and the soft flesh of his body. A burning, spooling forth through his veins, and radiating out through him, towards his extremities. And then he feels it everywhere, tingling under his skin in the very tips of his fingers and toes like contained lightning.

He looks up to search for someone – for a flash of blue eyes in amongst the mess of fighting men before him, or in the murky water of the pond, or in the steep slope of bark and bracken. And all at once, quite suddenly and without any warning at all, he finds himself in a familiar wooden chair in the dining chamber of Pirkstein Castle. The world tilts on its axis. His fingers rest on old notches made in the wooden arms with the sharp nails of a bored child. The wound in his chest spits blood defiantly onto the table. Somewhere beyond the chamber, the hissing continues, taunting him through the hallways and under the gaps of the heavy wooden door.

And then, Hans is not alone in the room. There is the hissing. And there is Hanush.

“Your Graces, I have to tell you in all seriousness that this land of ours is in the shit … deep fucking shit. Don’t you agree?” Hanush’s wide frame stretches across the rondel window panes as he gazes at the world outside.

“I might not have put it as elegantly as you, Hanush,” says Sir Radzig Kobyla, who is suddenly sitting next to Hans at the dining table, his goblet filled with Hans’ best wine. “But I’ve been driven out of my own castle, so I’m hardly going to disagree.”

Hanush rounds the table and lays a hand heavily on Hans’ shoulder. The movement jostles him more than it should, as though he is a child being jolted on the back of a horse. It aggravates the wound, and the blood pours heavier still in protest, flooding Hans’ breakfast plate like a thick gravy. There is an impossible amount of it, staining the yellow of his fine pourpoint crimson. Hanush speaks easily, unperturbed by the blood. “Indeed. But Pirkstein is yours for as long as you need it. There’s room enough for you and your men here in Rattay. And I’m sure my ward won’t have any objection to me lending you his castle.”

“Uncle?” Hans asks, befuddled. “Uncle, I’m injured. Somebody help, I-”

“Just as well you have another castle at the other end of town, eh?” Radzig says, as though Hans is not bleeding out in front of him - as if Hans gives a single shit about how many castles he owns in technicality while his heart’s blood is leaving him so eagerly. Radzig looks at Hans, but his familiar blue eyes (how did Hans never piece it together before Vranik?) stare right through him, as though he, too, is staring through a window. “At any rate, I’m beholden to you, Sir Hans, and to you, Sir Hanush.”

Hans gapes between his uncle and Sir Radzig, gesturing down towards his ruined chest as he says, “Sir. I’m bleeding. I need … I need a physician. Or a priest. Will somebody please-”

But Radzig and Hanush don’t acknowledge the gore pouring forth from Hans’ chest, pooling on the table, the seat, and around his ankles on the floor. They’re not listening to him, because nobody ever fucking listens to him. Hans strains to hear their conversation as the hiss gets louder, drowning out the voices as they meander into conjecture about Sigismund and war. Hans holds onto the wound on his chest, and it reminds him of something. Warm and sticky, like frayed wet fabric. Thomas’ fingers buried in Christ’s wound. The room smells like smoke and sulphur. The walls draw closer to him, the length of the room somehow shortening.

The door, now only five feet or so away, is pushed open. In walks a boy with grief and rage written so plainly across his face that Hans finds it difficult to look at. Like a crack in the heavens heralding the oncoming of a summer storm.

Henry’s come to see us, he thinks, absurdly.

A disembodied voice belonging to a guard whose face Hans’ mind cannot recall rings out as he enters. “What are you doing? You have no business here. Clear off!”

“Wait, it’s Henry,” Radzig interrupts. Hans can hear affection in his voice, despite the disapproval in his tone. God, Hans had been so angry that night. He’d lain awake for hours thinking, begrudgingly, of the warm welcome that Radzig had given this unexceptional peasant boy. In spite of himself, that anger flares within him now. “Henry, who disappeared after I clearly ordered him to remain at Talmberg.”

Henry doesn’t respond to Radzig. Henry’s eyes, contrarily, have trained themselves on Hans; on the blood that beats evenly down his front. It strikes Hans that this isn’t the Henry who had arrived in Pirkstein that day, in his worn green scraps, with that lost look on his face. This Henry is his Henry – filled out from the months errand-running for nobles and saving Hans’ arse. He wears a flashing silver cuirass and dons a familiar sword on his belt. The anger subsides into something like pride – or, maybe something closer to a possessiveness that Hans can’t really begin to explain. It’s silly, because Radzig is Henry’s bloody father and Liege Lord, but Hans thinks himself victorious over Radzig in his claim over Henry. Hans’ squire. Hans’ man. And he’s come here to see Hans, not Radzig.

Henry’s eyes are big and wet when he glances down at Hans’ chest, and then back up to his face. He begins digging in his belt pouch for something. And then he says – God Almighty, he says: “Are you alright, my Lord? I didn’t hit your noble arse that hard, did I?”

Before he died, and then lived and then died, Hans had thought of life as something quite sequential. Life was a series of moments before and after change. Before and after his mother had left for Polna, and never returned. Before and after his father died, and left him in Hanush’s care. Before and after he’d discovered the warmth of a wench’s cunt, and the joy of a quiet hunt spent deep in the Rattay woods. One day, there would be a before and after inheriting his divine right, and he would serve as a Lord properly. This was the way of things.

And then, Henry had arrived in Pirkstein.

Before Henry, he’d been quite satisfied with his place in Rattay. Frustrated sometimes, yes. But he was the heir. With the promise of not one but two bloody castles, just as Radzig had so eloquently attested, for fuck’s sake. Then Henry had blustered about Rattay and Sassau with such impossible freedom of movement that the walls of Pirkstein had rather quickly dulled into rusted prison bars. Hans might be a Lord – an heir – but Henry had the freedom to be and do whatever he wanted. Later, Henry would rescue Hans a dozen times over. But this, Hans can recognise when he looks back, was the first moment that he became aware of the bars of his gilded cage.

It was selfish of him, probably. To feel jealous of a boy who had just lost everything, become nobody’s son, nobody’s lover, nobody’s friend. Who had just been made, through the worst kinds of violence and bloodshed, nothing to anybody. But then, that was before they knew about Henry’s parentage.

And before Henry had been made someone to Hans, never mind everyone else.

The spark finally finishes its retreat up the body of the fuze, and the hissing relents to silence. Hans feels a wave of old, vile resentment roll through him as Henry, marigold decoction retrieved from his belt pouch, crosses the room in two easy strides. Hans’ heart stutters, the blood stream dries to a trickle, and then stops.

“Henry-”

The Finger of God brings the walls of Pirkstein down on top of them.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Hans wakes with a start on the floor of Bozhena’s hut, heart thrumming and chest aching. His hands grasp at it, but the bare skin is unmarred. He slips from his dream like a fly caught in honey and vinegar, and eventually, finally, he takes in his surroundings.

The fire on the hearth crackles gently, and the morning chorus sings outside. Thin ribbons of light shine into the hut from beyond the branchy walls. On instinct, he glances at Henry, who lies still and bruised and bloodied on the bed across the room. He’d been mumbling in his slumber earlier as Hans had succumbed to exhaustion himself. His brow is unfurrowed, whatever dreams had then plagued him now gone.

Hans needs a piss. And a drink.

He damns himself to hell for uncorking the schnapps from the pond, and emptying it onto Henry’s shoulder wound. He’s never been a schnapps man, far preferring a rich red over the sting of spirits. But, Christ alive, he’d take the burn of a spirit now. Even if just to fight the fire still waging war inside of him with another, softer, burn. The schnapps hadn’t really done anything for his squire, anyhow. It might have cleaned out that arrow wound well enough, but there’s only so much a phial of schnapps and a marigold decoction can do for a fall from a cliff. Everything had gone perfectly to plan until Henry had forced Hans down between the rocks ahead of him. Hans huffs scornfully.

Careful not to wake Henry or Bozhena, who snores loudly from the hut’s loft, he rises from his makeshift cot and excuses himself into the morning light of the garden. In the very early morning, the woods around the hut are preternaturally beautiful - sunlight filters through gaps in trees, illuminating the blue morning fog golden. In the shadows, the tardiest fireflies glint and glimmer lazily above the flowered snatches of ground. One might think the sight otherworldly, if not for the corpse still laden unceremoniously in Bozhena’s waste heap.

Hans pisses in the rotting wooden outhouse, and then, feeling filmy eyes watching him, regards the stranger’s body. Enough hours have passed that the man has turned a sickening white, the red of his blood a shock across the skin and the dull grey fabric of his clothes. Hans says a clumsy Eternal Rest, and then begins stripping the body off – the worn grey gambeson had fit Henry well enough the first time around.

“Sorry,” he tells the man as he rids him of his clothes, pulling fabric briskly down rapidly stiffening limbs. “We’re actually on the same side, you and I. Terrible misunderstanding, all of this is.”

The man stares back at him, his still open eyes white-cast in death. Hans shudders and closes them. The skin is cold and rubbery against the pads of his fingers.

“Anyway, I had to kill you.” He pulls the unbuttoned gambeson down the man’s arms. Below his sternum, there is a horrible red gash where Hans had stabbed the man with his dagger. It has long since stopped weeping, but the dried blood stains the skin around it the colour of wine. Hans pauses, and he and the wound stare at one another in the quiet. He’s struck with a sickening thought; that this man, struck down by Hans’ own hand, lives on in some other life, fire sprawling forth from below his sternum, trying to find some way to escape his own Purgatorial Fire. Hans’ chest feels tight, and he could swear that the burning inside of him redirects itself to form a cluster below his own sternum.

Pushing down nausea that tingles at the back of his throat, he continues with his task. “You were trying to kill me. And Henry. And for all I know, you were the one to land the killing blow on Oats. It’s still a mortal sin, I know. But I hardly think you’d have stopped for a civil conversation, would you?”

The corpse doesn’t respond. Its eyes seem to stare at him through its closed eyelids.

“Stop bloody looking at me like that,” Hans bites. And then he's all too aware of how mental he’d sound to anyone watching on. He thanks Christ for the privacy of early morning, when only the animals are around to hear his mad raving. “Fuck. What am I doing? You’re hardly going to respond. And if you did, I think that would be it for me. Fucking hell.”

Hans gathers the bundle of clothes into his arms, and gets started on washing them in the trough. But before he does, embarrassingly, he pushes the corpse’s head so that it stares out at the marsh rather than towards him.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

He’s almost done washing the ratty fabric of the gambeson when he hears Henry mumbling inside the hut, and freezes. He waits to hear if Henry will quieten, or if his unconscious mumbling will escalate into something loud enough to wake Bozhena.

The first time that Henry had woken him up with his sleep-talking was maybe three days into their joint stay at the Devil’s Den. Hans had been deep in his cups that evening and had fallen asleep quickly when he returned to their room. He’d grown used to the sounds of Brabant’s light snores in the weeks he’d spent at Maleshov, but sharing a room with someone else still felt quite foreign. And with his reluctant engagement hanging over his head, and the rowdy ambience of his new abode, sleep had been a more difficult task to achieve than normal. So, at least for the first week or so, he’d punctuated his days with the acrid wine of the Devil’s Den and a healthy dose of lullaby.

His sleep had been deep and dreamless, and then suddenly there had been a shout, and he’d been wrenched back into consciousness on the small straw mattress. There had been an awful moment when he thought they were being raided. But then he’d taken in the still of the room, the quiet of the night, and Henry, writhing about on his mattress as though someone were dragging a blade across his skin. Hans had hesitated. Wondered if he should wake his friend. But then he’d watched Henry’s face – open as ever, and completely unguarded in his sleep – twist in a sorrow that felt intrusive to witness. And he’d decided that the best course of action would be to turn over and face the wall, and give Henry the dignity of not having his unconscious distress observed by his Lord and superior.

Inside Bozhena’s hut, another wounded whine rings out from Henry’s cot. More mumbling. And then, louder, “Ma! Ma!”.

Hans swears under his breath.

He re-enters the hut as quietly as he can, swinging the frail wooden door open just enough to slip inside. A bright shaft of morning lights up a thin strip of Henry’s face, and the sweat beading on his friend’s brow twinkles. Hans pauses to listen for movement in the loft, but hears only soft snores.

Henry whines, louder again, and Hans flinches at the way it cuts through the quiet of the morning. He makes an executive decision and tiptoes towards Henry’s bunk. He reaches out a hand to shake him awake. But as he’s about to touch his arm, he feels the vulnerable human heat of sleep beating from his friend’s body, and his hand falters in its path. He hesitates, and withdraws.

“Henry,” he whispers softly, instead. “Henry!”

Henry’s face scrunches and his expression screws into a rage that Hans has only seen when they’ve been in the midst of battle. “Bastard.”

“Oh,” Hans says. “Well. I should have you whipped for that, blacksmith’s boy, but you are asleep, so I suppose I’ll forgive you this time. Now wake up, you lug.”

Henry tosses and turns where he lies, and the movement pulls at his bandages. They’re wrapped tighter around his torso than the first time around. Shaken from his fight, but uninjured, Hans had been able to offer Bozhena a hand in wrapping Henry’s wounds. But still, Hans is no practiced healer, and when Henry moves, Hans sees fresh red blooming under the fabric. He swears.

“Where … sword,” Henry slurs.

Hans sighs. “Of course you’re dreaming of that bloody sword. We’ll get your sword back, Hal, I promise. But you need to wake up. Your Lord commands it.”

Henry is, annoyingly, as unresponsive to Hans’ words as the corpse in the waste heap.

Well, there’s no other thing for it, he thinks, and once more reaches his hand out to press against the warm, sweat-dappled skin of Henry’s arm. Not sure whether to squeeze or to shake his friend awake, his hand remains still in place. Hans searches Henry’s face for signs of reaction. Surprisingly, Henry’s tensed muscles seem to relax where Hans’ hand rests, and slowly, the night terror seems to ebb away from his features. Hans is in half a mind to let him keep sleeping, but the staining on the bandage begs attention, so he ever-so-gently tenses his hand around his friend’s bicep.

Slowly, Henry’s eyelids begin to flutter, and then long eyelashes blink unwillingly into consciousness.

“Hans?” he asks, his voice rumbling with sleep. “Are you okay, sir?”

“Ever the martyr, Henry. I’m fine. You were dreaming. And what’s more, you’ve reopened your wound.”

Henry blinks, and Hans gets the idea that Henry hasn’t taken in a word of what he’s just said. “I … Sorry. What, sir?”

Hans sighs. “Sit up, Henry.”

Sleep-addled as he is, Henry follows his direction. He lets Hans unwrap the damp bandages from his skin, flinching as the fabric sticks to the moisture of his wound. He rouses more evenly into full consciousness when Hans dabs at the edges of the wound with the water-damp corner of a cloth, sucking air in sharply.

“Sorry,” Hans says. “I’m not as good at this as …”

As Katherine, as Musa, as Henry himself.

“S’fine. Sir. Where, er–”

“In the woods, a while away from the pond. Do you remember what happened?”

“We were ambushed. Swam across the pond. And then– I fell?”

“Off a bloody cliff, no less. You disobedient wretch.” Hans begins unrolling a fresh spool of bandage.

Henry snorts and then tenses at the sensation. Hans stretches the fresh bandage from his shoulder, across his back, and around towards his chest. Henry lifts his arms without being asked. “What, you’d prefer to have taken that fall yourself, sir?”

“I told you to go on ahead of me.”

“Aye, and if I’d have listened, you’d be the one lying in this bed. Some bodyguard I’d have turned out to be.”

Hans doesn’t say anything, but harrumphs to himself. Henry is probably right, he supposes. Knowing his fate, he’d have toppled off that cliff and found himself waking up once more on the banks of Rocktower Pond. Henry has survived too many impossible situations to count – Skalitz, Pribyslavitz, Vranik, Trosky, Kuttenberg. A fucking fall from a cliff. He pulls the bandage tight, and Henry barely suppresses a gasp.

“You were dreaming,” Hans tells him. “I’d have let you keep sleeping, but you were talking in your sleep, and I was afraid you’d wake Bozhena – that’s the herb woman who took us in last night. And then you started bleeding again.”

The mention of his dream darkens Henry’s expression, but he doesn’t respond.

“I dreamed too – about you waltzing into Pirkstein and ruining my breakfast,” Hans offers, omitting the details about the blood and the death and the Finger of God.

“I fall from a cliff and all you can think about is food and fine wine, my Lord?” Henry’s hand finds Hans’ on the second loop of the bandage, and he takes the spool into his own grip, easing the tension. “Like this. Tight, but not too tight, or it’ll irritate the wound.”

Hans takes back the bandage, silently following Henry’s instruction.

“You fall from a cliff, and all I can think about is your insolence. Disobedient from the start, Hal.”

Henry laughs again, despite his injury. “Sure, Sir. Next time, I’ll be sure to let you take the fall. You saved my life, though. Carrying me through those woods.”

Hans shudders. The walk to Bozhena’s had been as awful as he remembered.

“I wouldn’t have had to save it if you’d have just done as you’re told,” Hans says without malice, begrudging the smile curving onto his face. He finishes wrapping the wound and sits back on his heels. Henry remains propped up on the straw mattress, but relaxes his posture slightly, trying not to bother the freshly wrapped bandage. “There. That should do. At least, until Bozhena wakes. I’ve, er, washed you some clothes, but they’re still wet through from the trough.”

“You washed me some clothes? Maybe I should make a habit of falling from cliffs.”

The truth is that Hans has grown quite accustomed to washing Henry’s clothes. At the Devil’s Den, sometimes Henry would arrive in their shared room in the middle of the night, returning from whatever Godforsaken quest Zizka had sent him on this time, covered head to toe in mud and blood. He’d collapse into bed absolutely shattered down to his bones, and not wake until dawn the next day. And if Hans didn’t want his living quarters to smell like a farm or a butcher’s workshop, he’d simply have to at least soak Henry’s abandoned clothes. The first time he’d done it, he’d admittedly made a great fuss about the whole thing. But then, he’d been so bored at the Devil’s Den, and it gave him something to do that wasn’t wandering the nearby fields alone, looking for small game, or shagging the daylights out of the same three bathhouse wenches day in and day out.

And then at Suchdol, everyone took their shot of laundering the muck and blood from their company’s clothes. At least, until they’d run clean out of fresh water.

He’d never admit it aloud, but he doesn’t actually mind it much.

Heny taking a great fall off another cliff, though. That, he’d mind. Hans’ eye twitches. The blaze under his skin flares. He grits his teeth into a smile. “Please don’t. I’d rather not have to dirty my hands for you ever again.”

Henry chuckles, “Of course, sir. I’m only joking, of course. Where did you get the clothes from, anyway?”

“From the corpse in the yard.”

“Ah. That part wasn’t a dream, then. I’ll have to bury the poor sod before he attracts wolves,” Henry says, apparently already penning himself a list of errands before he’s even able to sit up without wincing in pain. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

Hans has a couple of scrapes, and a sore spot on his left thigh that aches like the beginnings of a bruise. None of this, naturally, holds a candle to the burning. “I’m quite alright, Henry. He was just one man – and untrained rabble, at that. If there had been less of them, back at the pond …”

“It’s not your fault they died,” Henry says without hesitation. “Don’t blame yourself.”

Hans remembers Henry saying this for the first time too, over an oily meat broth in the tavern in Trosky, not an hour before contradicting the sentiment himself. You know full well the ambush was your fault rings in his mind once again. He wonders which statement is the lie, and then decides he’d rather not find out.

“It doesn’t bear thinking about right now. Not while you’re still practically on your deathbed yourself. Rest, and we’ll worry about the dead when you’re better,” Hans rises, preparing to clamber back into his own cot and will some of his own pain to go away.

“Wait, Hans,” Henry says, and his hand catches on Hans’ wrist. “I … Before I do. Rest, that is. There’s something you should know. I have a hunch that one of that band that ambushed us at the pond was … Istvan Toth.”

Oh. It strikes him like the bright clang of a church bell. He’d thought Henry mad, back then. He’d thought his friend’s fever had conjured up the apparition of Toth on the journey to Bozhena’s, and had been quick to brush it off. But Hans has seen Istvan Toth too, usurping their very place at Zizka’s side, and plunging that sword through Henry’s chest, and pulling it cleanly across Henry’s neck. He’s filled with the sickening realisation that perhaps Henry’s desire for revenge against the man is now his own desire, too.

“Sir Hans?” Henry asks, interrupting his spiralling thoughts. “I know it sounds mad but–”

“I believe you, Henry.”

“Oh.”

“I saw him too. And I promise you that when you’ve healed, we’re going to find him, and get that letter back. And then we’re going to kill the bastard. In perpetuity.”

Notes:

Hello chapter note enjoyers!
- This chapter was beta-read by @tulipfinch.
- Finally, we give Hans a break from being every single skeleton in the game over Danse Macabre! <3 <3
- Sorry for the wait! I had to force myself not to work on this for a few because life got so busy. Since the last chapter, I have had a nine-day-long migraine, accidentally dyed my hair and eyebrows fire engine red, redrafted a thesis chapter, attended a wine tasting festival, and gone karaoke-ing! Life is joy!
- The chapter title is from ‘Te lucis ante terminum’, a prayer or hymn for the ending of a day and the coming of sleep. This prayer is old as fuck, dating back to at least the 7th century. It isn’t referenced directly in the chapter, but as this chapter is much concerned with dreams, I thought it a fitting title!
- I realised I’ve mentioned Hans’ mother in Polna a couple of times - this fic is working from KCD1 canon, where she is mentioned as being alive and living in Polna. I know that Hans talks about her having died when he was young in KCD2, but when we’re presented with two canon choices, I have chosen the one I think is a bit more interesting. So do with that what you will.
- In the last chapter, I received a comment mentioning the title of the fic, and I realised I’ve not yet mentioned that it’s pulled from Sarah Kinsley’s song, ‘Realms’, from her debut album, Escaper (2024). This album is generally what I’m listening to when writing this fic, if not Gregorian chants, or house DJ sets on youtube dot com lol. I’ve done a lot of wistfully looking out the window of the bus to and from work to this album ✊😔

Chapter 5: Beast of the Earth

Summary:

Henry wants to find his dog, and Hans has reservations.

Notes:

Man who has never had a friend before: the simmering carnal desire I have for my best friend is normal and entirely platonic.

Rating has been updated. Here be dragons (mild explicit content).

Sometimes, when his will is stretched thin by lethargy or intoxication, Hans’ thoughts linger for a little bit too long on the incident in the woods outside of Rattay.

The Cuman soldiers — or, deserters, as he assumes them to have been on account of their small company — had made rather swift work of dismounting him from his horse. All it had taken was one whistling arrow to the gelding’s rear, and Hans had been thrown violently to the forest floor. It hadn’t been the fall that had knocked him out. Nor had it been the blood loss, as although he’d been cut up in the scuffle when Henry had clumsily and altogether quite unstealthily untied his hands, the Cumans had seen the finery of his attire, and had thought better than to cut indiscriminately, presumably lest they miss out on a nobleman’s ransom.

No, the thing that had really hurt that day had been the blow to his head. It might have been the hilt of a sabre, or the blunt edge of a shield. Whatever it was, his head had been turned away, and his vision had been knocked into darkness without warning. When he’d awoken, the fear, along with an unholy helping of spite and a desire to piss his Cuman captors off had kept him awake until the danger had passed.

It was only after Henry had hoisted his arm over his shoulder and carried him all the way home to Rattay that the darkness of sleep had closed her maw shut around him. And there he had remained, he learned later, for three whole days. While Henry had galavanted around Neuhof, hunting bandits in the very same forests they’d hunted for hares and boar, Hans had slept like the dead.

This would be the first time that Henry would rescue him. The first bead of a rosary Hans hadn’t known he’d go on to count.

When he’d eventually been shaken into consciousness by the physician on the morning of the third day, it was to the chirping of the morning chorus, the mumbled prayers of the friar, and to the news that his rescuer had already been given another command outside of the city. Not simply an attack, he’d been informed, but a massacre. Horses and men alike had been gutted in the barns. And then the servant who had told him as such had been ushered from the room and scolded for exciting his humours.

The days that had followed had been dreadfully dull. Confined to his chamber, which was not really his chamber (he personally thought it rude that Sir Radzig had not vacated his loaned chamber on account of Hans’ ill health, but that is neither here nor there), he’d been subject to both a ban on interesting visitors, and to near constant visits from the priest. Which was quite silly. It was clear that he was well on his way to a full recovery. The physician had said as much during his last visit on the fourth day. Yet, the friar had insisted that the fastest route to a healthy body was daily prayer and God’s holy intercession. So, day in and day out, for an entire week, Hans had listened to private masses on the healing hand of God. And when the priest finally left him to his own devices, the only book he had to read within reach was the bloody Bible. It goes without saying that the only things that he’d had to entertain himself had been his right hand and his imagination.

It is this particular, cursed combination of circumstances that had led to the thought entering his mind.

It was the fifth day of his being sequestered, and having already endured individual lectures on each of the fourteen holy helpers, the priest had moved on to reading him a hefty translation of a treatise on the suffering of St. Roch. Hans had heard the story before — the tales of St. Roch treating a great pestilence, and then sequestering himself in the wilderness when that same pestilence taken hold of his own body. And when he called out for God’s comfort, God had sent a hound to bring him bread, and to lick the open wound on his thigh until it was healed.

It had been a particularly warm day, and the rising heat of the chamber, the still-crackling fireplace, and the slow and familiar recitations of the priest were weighing down his eyelids like stones in water.

“And there as he might he made him a lodge of boughs and leaves, always giving thanks to our Lord,” the priest read aloud. “Saying: Oh Jesus, my Saviour, I thank thee that thou puttest me to affliction like thine other servants, by this odious ardour of pestilence, and most meek Lord, I beseech thee to this desert place, give the refrigery and comfort of thy grace.”

And Hans’ eyes had begun to close.

He hadn’t slept, but he’d entered that between place, wherein the reality of the room still echoed in his ears, but his mind was transported elsewhere. Suddenly, he could imagine that he was Roch. Alone in the woods, far from where the help of any physician or priest could find him. Yet, not enclosed in a lodge of boughs and leaves, but tied tightly against a tall, thin tree, his left leg bared and his wound a stark red against the pale milk of his skin.

And then, the wet heat of breath on his leg. The heavy caress of a tongue licking a length slowly up the flesh of his thigh. The prickle of hair standing on end.

But when he looked down, expecting to see St. Roch’s hound, he found instead the familiar blue eyes of Henry of Skalitz.

The thought had shocked the sleep from him.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

It isn’t that Hans doesn’t like Henry’s damned dog. On the contrary, he’s grown fond of the mongrel over the past however-many months.

On occasion, he’s even had the goodwill to let the dog sleep at the foot of his bed while Henry’s been away on missions for Zizka, even though he wakes almost every time to find that the stinking thing has clambered its way under the covers. This is more than can be said for the half dozen hunting hounds that Hans has called his own companions over the years.

It’s simply that, in the grand scheme of things, after everything that he’s gone through to keep himself and Henry alive and breathing, it feels like there are far more important matters that beg for his attention than searching for the blasted canine.

“I promise you, Henry. When we find those bandits and retrieve our letter, I’ll personally locate your dog and return him safely into your possession,” He tells his squire. Between them are matching plates of bread and sausage; a far cry from the mystery meat broth they’d been served the first time they’d reached Troskowitz. Hans privately marvels at what a handful of groschen and not being covered in human shit will do for the spirit. The spectre of Suchdol’s hunger haunts his stomach irritatingly, and his body aches all over like one big freshly lanced blister, but at least the innkeeper isn’t demanding that he pay for his meal with fucking sack-hauling this time.

“But we have to keep our priorities straight for now,” he continues. “We can’t be sidetracked for the sake of your four-legged companion, no matter how loyal a beast he is.”

“He saved my life,” Henry says matter-of-factly, stubbornly tearing at a piece of the bread with his teeth. It’s a little bit stale, and he has to properly tug at it with his canines.

“It was a joint effort, really.”

“And now he’s probably out there in the cold — alone, without food, and in the middle of the woods. He’ll be wondering where I’ve gotten to,” Henry continues, his speech muffled through the mouthful of food. “Maybe he even thinks I’m dead, and he doesn’t even know that he saved me.”

“I will remind you, Henry, that it wasn’t the fucking dog that carried you to the herb woman.”

“And he could be useful.” Henry gulps ale into his mouth and washes down some of the bread. “I mean, Mutt’s a very smart dog. He’s helped me track countless bandits, and he can hold his own in a fight. He could make things a lot easier. For us, I mean, sir.”

“I do so wish you’d finish chewing before you speak.”

Henry rolls his eyes without malice and exaggeratedly chews and swallows the remainder of his food before he continues. “And I heard some of the locals talking about wolves in these parts. He’s probably in danger!”

“That mad dog would more likely join with the wolves than be put in any real danger by them, and we both know it,” Hans retorts. He recalls his Henry saying something about a wolf pack and Rocktower Pond. “The thing is a half-wild beast itself — I’m quite sure that it’ll survive well enough on its own while we direct our focus to the matter at hand.”

“He shouldn't have to survive on his own, as you say,” Henry tells him indignantly. “He’s already survived enough.”

Hans feels a stab of pointless, half-baked guilt. Henry hasn’t entrusted him with the particulars, but he gathers from the way that he talks about the dog as though it were a peer, rather than a pet, that Mutt had originally belonged to someone else. It’s the only reason that Hans has held back on ripping the shit out of Henry for naming the hound such a stupid, provincial name.

Truthfully, when Henry had started showing up around Rattay with Mutt, Hans had felt something embarrassingly close to jealousy. This was back when their friendship was an uncertain thing — a fragile thing that Hans was still carefully feeling out the edges of and learning how to operate within. And all of a sudden, Henry was strutting about, escorted everywhere by a dog with whom he shared a kinship it was impossible for Hans to possess, unless he were willing to invite Markvart Von Aulitz and his forces to plunder Rattay.

Which was a ridiculous, selfish thought.

Perhaps one of the most selfish thoughts — to wish tragedy upon himself and the city he was born to govern, all just so he could possess more of his friend than a dead man’s dog.

He thinks about his Henry now. About the noose, and the Finger of God, and the five and a half weeks spent at Maleshov, and the Italian Court, and the month they spent branding the sensation of starvation to their stomach linings together. And even though Henry sits across from him now — no, precisely because he sits across from him now — unmarred by the injury of the past few months, he mourns.

Christ, but he mourns.

Hans knocks back a mouthful of tavern wine, and is sent spluttering out of his own head. The wine is harsh and bitter, and yet somehow also far too sweet, and sediment pools around his gums. “Jesus Christ. They really shouldn’t advertise this as ‘wine’. It tastes like the Devil’s piss. Backwater shithole.”

Henry laughs at him good-naturedly. “You can have some of my ale, if you’d like, sir. Or wait, Bozhena gave us some schnapps for our travels. You could always-”

“In what world would schnapps brewed by an old woman in a shack be better than even the worst wine, Henry?”

“To be fair,” Henry argues with a tilt of his head, “isn’t most wine brewed by old men in monasteries? There really can’t be that much of a difference, I’d wager. And anyway, it was Pavlena who brewed it, I think. She gave me the recipe.”

“Not all wine is brewed by monks, and I can assure you that this wine is not a monastic one. It’s more likely brewed in the innkeeper’s privy, by the taste of it. But keep your schnapps. I shan’t drink it. I have too refined a palette.”

What he doesn’t tell Henry — can’t tell him, unless he wishes to risk his friend once more calling the health of his mind into question — is that the last time he’d drunk schnapps had been with Godwin, the night that Henry and Samuel had slipped from the ramparts of Suchdol fortress. A night that he would really rather not think about, if he can help it.

The fortress walls are too thick and too close. Alone, he counts each breath and each uneven clang of his heart. And then again. And then again. After he loses count for the tenth time, he’s sure that they must have left.

On the ramparts, Godwin’s knowing gaze meets his own in the quiet left behind in Henry’s absence.

“What? Did you want to say farewell before they die?

He raises the tankard to his mouth and gulps once, twice, three times. He coughs, and his eyes water at the taste. “Not that schnapps would be much worse than this. I mean, it tastes like a farmer’s bath water. Selling this genuinely might be considered a crime. Somebody should really tell Von Bergow so he can do something about it.”

“Speaking of which.” Henry looks past Hans’ shoulder, up toward the two-headed castle in the near distance. “You’re sure that you don’t want to try our luck at the gate?”

“Oh, I’m sure. At least, not while we’re still dressed like vagrants.”

Truthfully, Hans wants to stay very far away from Trosky Castle. He recalls something he’d overheard Chamberlain Ulrich saying once; that there are whispers and old wives' tales that tell of the castle being built upon the jaws of Hell itself. And there was all of that trouble Henry had with the demon infestation. He shudders. No. He’ll avoid Trosky like a leper.

“So, what is the plan then, my Lord?”

“Preferably, to purchase a change of clothes and to have a bath at the hands of the closest and loveliest bath wench I can manage.”

“I meant about the letter, sir.”

And, well. This, Hans hasn’t worked out the details of yet. Their entire journey from Bozhena’s to Troskowitz, he’d been turning it over and over in his head. He keeps coming back to that moment by the pond — when, for just a moment, he was sure that Zizka had believed him. If he could just get a moment alone with him, isolated from Istvan Toth, maybe he could have at least one person take him at his word. But they can’t very well just walk through the front gates of Nebakov. He wouldn’t even be able to explain his knowledge of Nebakov to Henry, for goodness’ sake. And he really would prefer it if his cunning plan also incorporated the swift and glorious ending of that Hungarian shit.

Henry is looking at him expectantly.

He frowns. Clears his throat. “To be honest with you, I … I've not gotten that far ahead in planning. But I swear that after I’ve had a nice long bath, a good swive, and am in fresh and clean clothing, I’ll be a far more efficient planner.”

“Right.”

“I’m glad that you agree, Henry.”

“Of course, sir. It’s only that. Well. It’s as you said: we must ‘keep our priorities straight’, right? So, we really haven’t the time for you to get your pizzle wet, do we?”

Hans sniffs. He had said exactly that. He sighs wistfully. “I suppose I can forego a trip to the baths for now. But I at least need to stop by the tailor’s. And get my hands on some soap.”

Having chosen to forego their venture to the gates, Hans’ clothing remains blissfully free of human shit, but there was only so much grime from their fumble through the woods that he was able to wash from his skin in the trough at Bozhena’s. And while they’ve arrived at the nearly empty tavern with plenty of time to spare before the lunchtime crowd, the thought of Svatya Thrush once again seeing him in rags, and thinking himself above Hans’ station, has an old flush of humiliation climbing steadily up his neck.

“I can make you some soap, if you’d like,” Henry offers. “I just need to collect some thistle and dandelion, and buy some charcoal from the apothecary. You can go to the tailor, I’ll sort your soap, and then …”

“And then what?”

“And then we can go look for Mutt?”

Hans groans, “No, Henry-”

“No, listen to me, sir. You haven’t got a plan, but maybe I do.”

Hans sighs. “Go on then. Tell me your brilliant plan.”

“Okay, so we go back down to the pond to look for Mutt — wait, sir, please hear me out. We look for Mutt, and while we’re there, we look for any sign of those bandits. If there aren’t any of their actual band still in the area to question, then I’m sure they’ll have left behind something that Mutt can track.”

“And then what, Henry? We walk up to the bandits and ask them nicely for our letter back? Please, kind bandits, pretty please, can we have our letter back?” Hans laughs without any humour — he’s tried talking nicely with Zizka’s band already, after all. “Or perhaps we don’t change out of these rags, and we charge them and hope that the stink knocks them out, eh?”

“Very droll! I was thinking more like once we find their camp, we sneak in stealthily. We find out where they keep the letter, grab it, and vanish before they even know we were there. And if Toth is there, we can, er, deal with him while we’re at it. ”

“Are you dreaming? What kind of chance do you think we’d have?” Hans questions. He thinks about Nebakov fortress — the sheer magnitude of the horses on the grounds, the number of men they could be talking about camped out there. Henry doesn’t have a clue.

Henry thinks about it for a moment, and then says hesitantly, “A decent one, maybe.”

“Maybe, he says!”

“Well, what other suggestions do you have? Other than soap, and a night with a bath wench?”

Hans worries at the skin on his lip. It’s an old habit — one he’d developed in childhood lessons, before he’d learned where a well-groomed face could get him with the local wenches. It had started back up with a vengeance at Maleshov, but the girls at the Den didn’t seem to mind much at all. He tears at the skin with his front teeth and tastes blood.

Perhaps, he considers, he should let Henry take the lead — it’s Hans’ plans that always seem to find them half-dead (and completely dead, more recently) or captured.

“Well … I suppose I haven’t got any better ideas. But we must freshen up before we set out. How in God’s name do you know how to make soap, anyhow?”

“Us shit-shovelers and turnip pickers need to be able to wash up, my Lord. On account of the shit and the dirt.”

“You’re hysterical, blacksmith’s boy,” Hans deadpans.

“I live to please, my Lord.”

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

As the hour stretches lazily past midday, a shimmering haze of heat descends and ripples over the still mirror surface of Rocktower Pond.

It’s turned into a very hot day indeed, and a very still day to boot. No wind bends the trees or disturbs the water’s surface. No merchants or brigands brave the warmed dirt roads. The frogs croak, and the crickets rattle on, and the birds sing, and the summer has truly begun to arrive undisturbed in the wilds of Trosky.

In the camp on the banks of the pond, Hans and Henry once more find themselves together in the wretched golden light of the sun. The camp has been emptied out. There isn’t a sign of Zizka’s men past the mess of the quickly crumbling footsteps left behind from the scrimmage, and the hastily covered graves. Their equipment, too, is gone. All of Hans’ fine pourpoints, Henry’s collection of decoctions and brews, their armour and weaponry, and all of their groschen. They’ve combed the camp twice over, and all they’ve found are trodden-over bandages and Oats’ wedding band, dropped into the grass around the dice table.

Hans is bent over the wrecked blankets inside the canvas tent, searching for any previously unnoticed traces of their attackers. A bead of sweat trickles from his hairline, lighting a glistening trail of fire across his skin as it drips down into the collar of his brand-new forest-green coat. It’s probably all in his mind, but his body hurts more here — the memories of each wound, so visceral that they threaten corporeality, hang over him like gossamer.

“Mutt!”

Henry’s sudden shout cuts through the heavy quiet of the day, making him flinch. The trees shake as surprised birds launch themselves from their nests. The shout echoes its way right around the pond, unsettling the stillness in the air like a strong blow to a dusty surface.

“Christ, Henry!” Hans scolds, holding a hand to his chest as his heart, already racing, drops like silver ore into the pit of his stomach. “You might have thought to bloody warn me.”

“Sorry,” Henry apologises bashfully. “I didn’t think.”

“Well, if there were any bandits around, you’ve sure as hell alerted them that we’re here,” he complains, glancing up into the woods to where Zizka’s men had descended from.

“Nah,” Henry shrugs. “I reckon they’ve scattered to wherever they’ve set up a base camp.”

Hans scans the trees for movement. Nothing. But then, he’d seen nothing before. The dull burning in his knee flares as though stoked. He chews at his lip again. “You’d best hope you’re right. I don’t know how long we’d last against that lot with only a blunt hunting sword and a dagger between us.”

Henry waves off his concern noncommittally and motions to call out to Mutt again. Hans knows it’s coming. He flinches all the same.

“Tell me, is this how you expect to find that dog of yours? You call, and he’s summoned out of nowhere like some forest spirit?”

“That tends to be how things go with dogs, sir.” Henry shrugs. “Or, at least, how things go with Mutt. He’s a very loyal dog. Did you know he waited two full weeks outside of the monastery for me? He’d howl just outside the doors at dawn every single morning until my friend Johanka would give him sausage to shut him up.”

“I’m sure the monks loved being woken up like that.”

“Oh, we’d already be halfway through morning mass before he got started, sir. We rose before the sun did. Sometimes, it sounded like he was trying to sing along with the Latin.”

“He’d make a terrible monk.”

Henry snorts. “Brother Mutt. He’d not last a day with the gruel they serve. He’s been spoiled for choice with sausage since he was a pup. Before me, he was with the butcher in Skalitz.”

Ah. The butcher. “That explains his never-ending appetite. I must say, though — I’m surprised that you lasted. In the monastery, that is.”

Henry hums. “I don’t know. It was nice. Some of it. The routine of it all. No worrying about not meeting some Lord’s expectations, because the only Lord you’re serving is. You know. Him.”

Hans raises an eyebrow and tries not to feel genuinely insulted, “Oh, because serving some Lord is such a hardship.”

“Oh, hush. You know what I mean. Anyway, I wouldn’t have lasted.”

“The chastity and obedience thing?”

Henry laughs, and his eyes light up with mischief. “You can be plenty disobedient in a monastery, Sir Hans. You just have to make sure the Circators don’t catch you.”

Hans tssks. “And what of the chastity?”

It’s a silly joke, but a wash of guilty discomfort flows through him at the insinuation. Henry answers him with a snicker anyway.

“The same principle applies,” he laughs. And then, a few seconds later, “I’d imagine.”

“Right.”

“But, no. Not obedience and chastity. It would have been the chores that would’ve done me in. They had me copying manuscripts for hours, and I kept messing up and having to start all over again.”

Hans knows the feeling.

“Well. If you were as poor a monk as you are a houndmaster, I’m sure it’s no loss to them. I don’t see a single sign of that mutt of yours.”

“He’ll turn up. Trust me, Sir Hans. We just need to keep calling for him, and eventually he’ll come running.”

And keep calling, Henry does.

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

In the end, it’s Mutt that finds them, and not the other way around.

They’re in the woods to the west of the pond. It’s mid-afternoon, and Henry has given up on shouting for Mutt quite so often, on account of having shouted his throat halfway raw. The high points of Hans’ cheeks and the back of his neck tingle with the promise of a mild sunburn come nightfall, and he hopes that Henry will be able to pull together some chamomile decoction to soothe it.

He’s part of the way through telling Henry as such when they hear it.

The sound of talking up ahead — two voices grumbling to one another through the buzz of the afternoon heat. Henry shushes Hans and crouches low in the forest bracken. Hans, never having been as natural a sneak as Henry appears to be, follows suit, and together they edge closer to where they hear the voices.

“I mean all I’m saying is,” says one of the voices, “if the captain wanted someone to come here and play lookout, he could have sent fucking Hertel or Peltzel or some shit. I’m fucking wasted on this job.”

“Oh, aye,” the other voice agrees, uninterested, “you’re a proper hardman, you.”

“Shut up, Zdeněk,” the first man complains, “back in my village, I was the toughest fighter around. Pa used to say I could take a bear in a fight if I tried.”

“A bear? You’ve gone daft.”

As they get closer, the source of the voices comes into view — a small camp on the very edge of the woods, overlooking the pond. The bright sunlight is mostly blocked by the thick canopy of trees that grows over the top of the camp, but the two men are still visibly overheated, a thin layer of sweat covering each of their brows as they lounge drowsily around an unlit fire pit. One of them — the larger of the two, a man in his fifties or so, with a shining bald head — lies back on his elbows, eyes shut loosely.

Behind them, leaning against a tree, two well-made longswords glimmer in the light.

Hans recognises the crossguards.

“Henry,” Hans whispers, “Look, they have our-”

Henry digs his elbow into Hans’ side and gives him a look that urges him to be quiet. He glances at the swords and nods in confirmation that he’s seen them too.

“I have not,” the younger and smaller of the men says, taking a long swig from a wineskin. “It’s really what my Pa used to say. And I’d wager that he was right. I could take on a bear. Easy. And then the captain would see I’d be better utilised somewhere out there, and not bored on my arse in the sweltering heat.”

“I’m not being funny, Tomáš”, the bald man, Zdeněk, retorts bemusedly, keeping his eyes closed, “but like fuck could you fight a bear. You’d lose a fight with a fucking cat, you melt.”

Tomáš screws closed the lid of the wineskin and lobs it over the fire pit at Zdeněk, hitting him square in the face. “And you couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if it had instructions on the bottom. Prick.”

Zdeněk snorts, opening the lid of the wineskin and gulping some of it down, in spite of Tomáš’ protests, before closing his eyes again. “Aye, I’m a prick. Better than being a fucking fud like you, though.”

Tomáš whines. “Give me my wine back, Zdeněk.”

“No. It’s mine now.” The bald man opens one eye and narrows it at his companion, challenging him. “Unless you want to fight me for it, oh Great Bear Wrestler.”

“Forget it. I’m going for a piss,” the smaller man spits, and pushes himself up onto his feet.

“Oh fuck, Henry,” Hans whispers as the bandit, grumbling under his breath, walks away from the camp and deeper into the forest, loosening the fastenings of his gartered hose. No … Now that he’s looking closer, Hans recognises them. “That man’s wearing my fucking hose.”

“Shh,” Henry urges him under his breath, eyes still trained on the camp, where the larger man reclines with his eyes closed. “I’m going to- Hans, can I have your dagger?”

“What? No. Get your own.”

“So, will you kill old Zdeněk for us, then?” He asks dubiously.

“Will I … Henry, he has his eyes closed. Isn’t that a bit? I don’t know. Unchivalrous?”

“Right. That’s what I thought. Give me the dagger, Hans.”

“Fuck. Okay. Fine. But I want it back after.” Hans draws the dagger from its sheath at his side and hands it to Henry. “What should I do?”

“Just stay there, sir. This won’t take long. Keep lookout for me.”

Henry stalks forward like a wolf on the prowl, edging closer to the resting man. Hans knows how lightfooted Henry can be. He’s seen it before, on the walls of Talmberg, right before he’d taken that arrow in his arse. But he’s grown used to seeing Henry in the centre of the battle, longsword drawn high into the air, eyes fierce. Knightly. This version of Henry, he only really sees from a distance — from the windows of Maleshov fortress, as he watched Henry draw his dagger across the throats of the guards at the gate.

Henry kills Zdeněk quickly.

The bandit opens his eyes right as Henry cups his left hand firmly over his mouth and plunges the dagger down into his chest with the other. There’s a horrible hollow sound as the blade impacts. A thunk, and then a gurgle. A couple of wet, desperate rattles as Zdeněk instinctively tries to suck in air and fails, drowning in the blood pooling in his lungs. Coppery hands grasp at Henry uselessly. And then, the bandit falls still, succumbing to death.

Hans thinks about Henry’s blood on his hands. His own name being called out in Henry’s death rattle.

“Christ,” he mutters to himself, hands shaking.

Henry has pulled the dagger out from the bandit’s — the corpse’s — chest, and wipes it across the man’s gambeson to clean off the blood.

Red. Springing thick and fast as though from a waterfall. Spilling from the gaps between his fingers and pooling in the pond. A shock of red across sickening white. The fortress walls, too thick and too close. Samuel’s lifeless body, strung up like a puppet outside of the Praguers’ camp. Godwin’s knowing gaze meeting his own in the quiet left behind in Henry’s absence.

”What? Did you want to say farewell before they die?”

“Not another step, or this one dies,” Tomáš hisses in his ear as he brings a blade up to press against Hans’ throat. Fuck.

Henry has his hands raised, dagger still clasped in the right, the remaining blood glinting ruby in the light of the sun. “Now, let's not be too hasty. Tomáš, right? If you let go of my friend, we can talk things through.”

“What, like you did with my friend?” Tomáš asks with what sounds like genuine anguish. “Drop the fucking dagger. And the sword.”

Henry acquiesces, dropping the blades onto the ground in front of him, side-by-side. “I’ve done as you’ve said, so will you release my friend? Be reasonable, Tomáš.”

“Don’t say my name,” Tomáš hisses back at him. The blade is warm from the heat of the day, a strangely pleasant sensation against Hans’ neck. “Who are you?”

“My name is Henry, and that there is Hans,” he says slowly and calmly. “We won’t try and fight you if you put the blade down. We’re just looking for information.”

Tomáš laughs. “You think you’re in the position to ask me for information right now? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“L-Let me go,” Hans stammers. “And I’ll make sure you’re paid thrice whatever daily rate that captain of yours is paying you.”

“Hans-” Henry protests.

“And how the fuck do you plan on doing that?” Tomáš asks. “You some kind of noble, or something?”

Henry’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head at Hans almost imperceptibly. “Er- No. Definitely not.”

There’s a pregnant pause as Tomáš glances between them, studying Henry’s face, and then twisting Hans’ face around to study his features too. He gives a low whistle, and laughs. “Well, I’ll be. It’s the fucking Lordlings who ran away from us down at the pond the other day. Almost didn’t recognise you without your finery, my Lordship.”

“I-” Hans stutters. “Well- Well, yes. That was us by the pond. So I’m sure that you’ll understand that, as I am noble, you’ll fetch quite a decent ransom for me if you keep me alive.”

“Maybe I should. Maybe if I drag you back to Nebakov, the Captain would reward me with a more fucking interesting job.” The bandit hums contemplatively against his ear, and it sends a shudder down Hans’ spine. “But then again, he did want you dead. I reckon that bringing him your ears would be enough for a reward.”

“Don’t,” Henry warns.

“And why shouldn’t I?” Tomáš asks. “Consider it payback for Zdeněk.”

Hans is sure that this is it — that it’s happening again, and he’s about to land with a thunk and a gasp in their camp by Rocktower Pond. He feels the warm metal of the blade begin to sink into the flesh of his throat. It’s a blunt blade, but Tomáš applies enough pressure to draw a stinging line across his skin. Hans shuts his eyes, and prepares for the blinding light of the sun.

But before the bandit can finish the job, a growl sounds from beyond the tree line. A cacophony of barks echo, growing ever closer. Hans blinks his eyes open to a flash of white and brown fur, and the canines of Mutt are sinking fast into the bandit's leg.

Things happen quickly after that. The blade is pulled away from Hans’ throat, and swung toward the dog now tearing viciously at the bandit’s leg. Henry, across the camp, snatches up one of their stolen longswords, and launches himself into action alongside his dog. It happens almost as fast as with Zdeněk. All it takes is a couple of well-timed hits — Bernard has trained Henry well, and this bandit is no dueller. Soon, he lies still and dead next to his friend on the ground as Henry catches his breath.

And all Hans can think to say is: “See, Henry. I told you we ought to find your dog.”

 

✸ ✸ ✸

 

Back in Rattay, Hans had hastened to shoo the priest from his chambers.

His own words floated back to him through the fog of his languid mind like a curse spat from the mouth of a vengeful divoženka: Well, you’ll just have to trot behind me like a good dog.

He’d meant it as both a playful jape and a reminder of their respective stations. But then. Henry, at his feet, wet mouth open, tongue eager. It revealed to him the vulgarity of his insult.

In his braies, his cock swelled hard and heavy from the shame of it.

It was the damned heat of his chambers. Hans always had run hotter and drier than most men, and the heat of the room and the fire and the Springtime would send him erupting soon enough. When they let me out, he’d decided then, I’ll take myself right to the bathhouse, and pay for a long night with their most experienced wench.

And then, taking himself in hand, he’d thought about anything other than the imagined sensation of his unlikely rescuer’s tongue on his thighs until he’d come undone.

Notes:

Here ye, here ye! Chapter notes (they’re long and I’m sorry) :)
- Thank u @thesixthruin for the beta read this chapter, and forcing me to not touch editing until after my thesis chapter deadline passed lol xoxo
- I offer my humble apologies for the delay in uploading this chapter. I fear I fell victim to the AO3 curse, and I have been enduring the horrors. BUT, the end of the horrors is within sight. Swings and roundabouts, or something.
- The title of the chapter is pulled from the book of Genesis 1:24-26, which discusses the creation and division of man and beast through domination.
- This chapter references the 14 Holy Helpers. These were a collective of Saints who were venerated together from the 14th century onwards, particularly as a method of intercession against pestilence, illness, and injury.
- Not included within the 14 Holy Helpers are Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch (also heavily referenced in this chapter!), who were also considered Plague Saints™. Aside from the plague, Saint Roch’s patronage includes knee problems, Istanbul, grave-diggers, and, most importantly, dogs!
- I pulled quotations on St. Roch from Golden Legend, a 13th-century text that provides biographies of some Saints from the Middle Ages. Slight historical inaccuracy: the entry on St. Roch was added in a later edition of the Golden Legend (in 1483). YES, this means I quote a text that was released technically 80 years post-canon. Also, from what I gather, the details of the dog curing Roch’s wounds by licking them were added in later or oral versions of his biography. However, I decided that as Saint Roch was probably already a well-known and venerated Saint, and because this is my silly fanfiction that I can do what I want with, it’s really fine, actually.
- This chapter also makes reference to medieval theories about gender and humours. Namely, it talks about Hans, as a man, running “hot and dry”, and the necessity of his accessing sex work. This was informed by Dr. Eleanor Janega’s episode of the Gone Medieval podcast, where she discusses sex, sexual impropriety and sex work.
- A bunch of the bandits of KCD2 are inexplicably Scottish, so I’ve made one of the two bandits Hans and Henry encounter in this chapter use some Scots words. None of the Scots words I’ve used here are massively inaccessible or impossible to pick up from context clues, but regardless:
Calling someone a “hardman” is a bit like mockingly calling someone “tough guy”.
A “melt” is someone who is particularly cowardly or pathetic
A “fud” is a Scots term for a vagina or a rabbit’s tail, but is more often than not used in place of “idiot”.
- Lastly, as ever, thank you everyone for the lovely comments - they genuinely spur me on to keep writing even when I’m enduring the horrors <3

Notes:

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