The closer the church's heavy oak door came, the clearer the noise leaking out from within grew.
It was not the reverent voice of prayer being offered.
The crying of children, the murmuring of frightened adults, the pained groans that broke out now and then.
The ominous sound made by hundreds of people's terror gathered in one place.
I stopped Sir Kuno as he moved to open the door first.
"I shall open it myself."
CREEEEEAK—!
The old hinges shrieked.
In that instant the noise inside stopped as though it had all been a lie, and hundreds of eyes turned toward me at once.
The inside of the church was chaos in the truest sense. Before the altar the wounded lay groaning, and between the long benches the terrified people of the domain were packed in tightly, clutching their bundles.
All sorts of emotions were mixed in their eyes. Fear, resentment, resignation, and a thread of hope.
I went not to the altar but to a woman trembling in a corner with a child held in her arms. As the lord approached, she took fright and clutched the child more tightly.
I asked in the gentlest voice I could manage.
"Do you have water to drink?"
The woman only shook her head slightly and could say nothing.
I unfastened the waterskin at my waist and handed it to her.
"Give it to the child first."
"Ah... th-thank you, my lord..."
The woman took the waterskin with trembling hands. I could feel that with that one small act, the frozen air inside the church loosened just a little.
I did not head for the altar. I had no intention of preaching from a high place like a priest. Instead I walked down the central aisle that crossed the church.
With every step, the people of the domain filling the church opened a path as though by the miracle of Moses.
I reached the center of the church and stopped. Then I slowly took a deep breath.
'Can I persuade these people?'
...No, weak thinking like "can I" would not do. I simply had to do it.
Otherwise the only road left was death.
I called out in a voice clear enough for all of them to hear.
"Raise your heads! My people!"
The murmuring spread like a wave.
"We have won! Did you see it! How those arrogant heretics burned before us, and screamed, and fled! God is with us!"
The expressions of the people brightened, and hope gradually surfaced on their faces. But I raised a hand to stop the cheer that was about to break out.
I had given them hope; now it was time to show them reality again.
"But this is only the beginning! Those heretics, enraged by today's defeat, will climb this wall tomorrow bearing even greater hatred!"
The church was seized once again by a frozen silence. The small spark of hope that had risen a moment ago died away as though cold water had been poured on it. The terror of death spread across the people's faces.
I went on shouting.
"If the wall is breached, the men will be slaughtered, your wives and daughters will be dragged off like dogs and violated, and your children will be made slaves! Is that what you want?"
I struck my chest with my fist, THUD, and shouted.
"I do not want it!"
"From now on there is no distinction between soldier and subject! All of us are the shield and the sword of Šternberk! If we do not fight and win, then all of us will simply die beneath those fanatics' blades!"
I pointed toward the altar where the wounded lay.
"Women, tend to the wounded! Boil clean water to disinfect their wounds, and prepare cloth for bandages! Your warm hands can save a dying soldier!"
Next I looked at the able-bodied men who stood trembling without weapons.
"Men, help the soldiers repair the wall! Move the fallen stones and mend the broken palisade! A single stone you set in place will stop an enemy arrow!"
Last I looked at the children hiding in fright behind their parents' clothes.
"Even those children have work to do. Becoming messengers to carry news through the castle, and simply carrying water to the soldiers, will be a great help!"
The look in the people's eyes was gradually changing. A faint light began to return to eyes that had held helplessness and resignation.
Pointing at the church's thick walls, I shouted loudly.
"Tear down this castle if you must and bring the stones! Rip off the roof and split the tiles! Bring out every cauldron there is and boil whatever you have, water or piss and shit! And when the enemy clings to the wall, pour everything we have down onto their heads! We must fight to the very end! Because only then can we live to see tomorrow!"
Finally, looking at all the people of my domain, I shouted.
"I, Ulrich von Šternberk, swear that I will fight at the very front of you all and defend this place to the last moment! So you too, fight alongside me, your lord!"
When the speech ended, a suffocating silence flowed.
In this era the people of a domain were the lord's property, and if the lord ordered, they simply obeyed. If a lord wanted something, he had only to command it.
It was the first time they had ever seen a lord appear before them in person like this, asking his people to fight alongside him and appealing to them with such passion.
That was when it happened.
An old farmer in the corner thrust a tightly clenched fist toward the sky. And then he shouted with all the voice in his throat.
"For our lord!"
That shout was the signal. In the eyes of hundreds of people who had been pale with terror, flames began to kindle one after another.
It was the flame of rage and madness burned by those with nothing left to lose.
"For our lord!"
"Let us kill the Hussites!"
"Whoaaaaaah!!"
The old men took up their canes, the blacksmith his hammer, the women held their children and took up whatever came to hand, and they let loose a roar.
I answered that voice.
"Let us fight! For Šternberk!"
"For Šternberk!!"
The church was covered in an instant with shouts full of rage and resolve.
That night, Šternberk Castle did not sleep.
The children carried stones in their small hands and stacked them neatly along the wall, and the women boiled water in every cauldron and changed the wounded soldiers' bandages.
The men melted down farm tools to make hastily improvised spears, and even tore down their own houses to raise a defensive palisade along the wall. Even the wounded swallowed their groans and rose from where they lay, saying they would at least carry stones.
The boundary between soldier and civilian vanished. What remained here now was a single, unified Šternberk.
The retainers, János among them, were dumbfounded. However great the threat of an outside enemy, it was the first time they had seen the people of a domain move so readily and by their own initiative at their lord's word.
But this flame would not last long. The last of the food went to the soldiers and the able-bodied men, and the rest soothed their hunger with boiled water.
In the enemy camp too, the sound of hammers echoed through the night.
Burning with a desire for revenge, they were building new siege weapons.
***
The camp of the Hussites, driven back from the walls of Šternberk, was chaos in the truest sense.
The pained groans of the wounded did not let up from any direction, and the medics moved ceaselessly among them binding wounds and setting broken bones.
But despite their efforts, the soldiers whose whole bodies had been burned by that fire of unknown origin were dying with nothing to be done for them.
The screams that burst out amid the horrific agony of flesh melting away seemed to bore into the very bones of the surviving soldiers.
Acrid smoke still rose from the wreckage of the burnt-out wagons, and the smell of burning flesh and the reek of blood mingled nauseatingly in the air.
Mikuláš's command tent.
The mood inside it had settled even heavier than outside.
Mikuláš paced the tent like an enraged beast, unable to work off his fury. The scar on his face was twisted with anger and looked more hideous still.
Hynek Krušina, by contrast, sat in a chair with a composed face, stroking his beard. It was the look of a man coldly calculating the losses of the battlefield.
BANG!
Unable to hold back, Mikuláš struck the table with his fist.
"Damn it all! What is this disgrace before a fortress held by a single greenhorn! For the army of God to be toyed with by a heathen's sorcery!"
Unbearable rage and humiliation were mixed in his voice.
Krušina opened his mouth quietly. Unlike Mikuláš's passion, his voice was cold as ice.
"Brother Mikuláš, calm yourself. Anger will not resolve the situation. Now is the time to grasp the situation coldly."
"Coldly? You are telling me to stay cold in a situation like this, Sir Krušina? Our brothers burned alive beneath that wall! Not ordinary fire, but the devil's fire, cursed magic!"
"Magic, is it...."
Krušina did not deny Mikuláš's words. He too had clearly witnessed flames that could not be understood by common sense.
Fire that explodes when it meets water. It was the sort of thing that appeared only in the old books of alchemists.
"Whether it is magic or a new form of weapon, what matters is the fact that we have taken losses far greater than we anticipated. The dead well exceed a hundred, and the wounded are twice that. Above all... the soldiers' morale has fallen to the ground."
Krušina's gaze turned outside the tent. Out there the groans and cries of the soldiers could still be heard.
"The spirit in them is no ordinary thing. The force inside the castle was a mere few dozen, yet their resistance was as though we faced hundreds of elite troops. And if the domain's people who took shelter inside join them as well..."
"The domain's people? What can a pack of farmers do!"
"Desperation makes the scythe in a farmer's hand sharper than a knight's sword, Mikuláš. Those people will do anything now to survive. Because we left them no route of escape."
Krušina paused for a moment and set out his opinion carefully.
"In my judgment, forcing the attack through as we are would be reckless. For now we should pull the troops back, reorganize our ranks... and it would be wise to send a messenger to General Žižka and request reinforcements."
"What did you say?!"
Mikuláš's eyes widened as if he could not believe it.
"Do you call that talk? You are telling me, Mikuláš, that I cannot handle a single greenhorn and must shamefully request reinforcements from General Žižka?!"
"It is not a matter of pride. It is a strategic judgment. Or there is also the method of besieging the castle as we are and waiting for them to wither and die. The food inside the castle is certainly finite, so time is on our side."
The moment he heard that, Mikuláš's patience finally hit bottom.
He clenched his teeth and seized Krušina by the collar.
"Sir Krušina! Is it because you are a noble that you think of war as some haggling between merchants! We are waging a holy war! We are in the midst of judging those filthy heathens in the name of God!"
Mikuláš's eyes filled with bloodshot veins.
"So how can a warrior of God tuck his tail before the enemy and simply wait for them to starve! That is not a warrior's way! It is a coward's way!"
"Take your hand off me, Mikuláš."
Even with his collar seized, Krušina spoke coldly without the slightest waver.
Mikuláš let go of Krušina's collar roughly. He paced the tent again, seething.
"The general is concentrating all his attention on taking Plzeň at present. We cannot bring disgrace on the general's great undertaking over one small castle on the frontier!"
Mikuláš gave a chilling order to his adjutant outside the tent.
"Tomorrow morning, we launch a full assault as soon as the day breaks."
At those words Krušina sprang up from his chair and objected.
"Are you in your right mind? The soldiers are exhausted, and we have not even grasped what the enemy's weapon is! By what means, in a single night..."
"Tonight we will build a new siege tower. High enough that their cursed fire cannot reach it, and layered with wet hides so that it will not catch! And tomorrow morning we go over that wall behind that siege tower!"
Mikuláš's plan was simple and reckless. But his will alone was as hard as rock.
"This is an order, Sir Krušina. Your Prague allied army will take part in this attack as well. If you do not obey, I shall regard you as a filthy noble who has betrayed the warriors of God."
Krušina said nothing further. He simply rose from his seat without a word and left the tent.
Looking into Mikuláš's mad eyes, he had realized that any further persuasion was meaningless.
Left alone, Mikuláš took up his war hammer.
Wiping the hammer, caked with blood and grease, with a cloth, he murmured quietly.
"Tomorrow, I shall smash that greenhorn's skull with this hammer myself...."
Into the cold night air, the murderous vow spread with a chill.