Šternberk Castle turned without a moment's rest, like one enormous machine.
In the food stores, emergency provisions gathered by János piled up neatly: wheat and beans, salt-cured meat, and the like.
At the smithy the sound of iron rang out day and night. While Tomáš the blacksmith threw himself into building the catapults, his assistants beat out dented armor and sharpened notched blades without pause.
In the courtyard the soldiers learned how to handle 'Ulrich's Wrath'.
"This is not like a sword or a spear! The moment you lose your nerve and drop it, not only you but the comrade beside you will be roasted whole! Understood!"
"Yes, my lord!"
I drilled them until their ears were sore, repeating everything from the trick of lighting it, to throwing with the wind at their backs, to the precautions for not harming our own men.
The soldiers who at first nearly dropped it on their own feet grew, as time passed, quite skilled at drawing a proper arc.
I conscripted additional defenders as well. At the promise of bread and weapons, thirty able-bodied men from the town below the castle volunteered.
They were raw recruits who knew nothing but how to jab with a spear, but once they were put into the old armor stacked in the storehouse they took on a fairly soldierly look.
Of course I knew that a slight increase in numbers would not dramatically change this unfavorable situation. Even so, I did everything I could do to survive.
Despite those desperate efforts, the ominous air of war hanging over the castle grew steadily thicker.
The soldiers constantly looked out at the distant fields from atop the wall and swallowed dryly. The servants inside the castle flinched and hunched their shoulders at the smallest sound.
The mood in the town below the castle was more troubling still. There were those who stayed on trusting their lord, but there were more who quietly packed their things each night and left the domain.
There was even a grim rumor going around that some had sided with the Hussites and promised to open the gate for them.
And at last, that day came.
A scout covered in dust arrived at the castle gate gasping for breath and shouted the moment he got there.
"My lord! They are... they are coming!"
I looked out beyond the horizon without a word.
Far off, at the boundary of earth and sky, an enormous cloud of dust was rising. And at the center of it, chalice banners as red as blood rippled like waves.
The expressions of the soldiers on the wall hardened as though they were stone statues, and the sound of dry swallowing came from here and there.
But the first to reach the castle were neither peasants with axes and scythes nor knights in armor.
"My lord! Save us!"
"Please open the gate!"
A procession of hundreds of refugees running toward the castle.
The villagers who had confirmed the Hussite advance had fled to the castle staking their last hope on it.
The space before the gate filled in an instant with a din of weeping, pleading, and screaming.
"Open the gate."
No sooner had my order fallen than Konrad, the chief attendant, stepped in front of me with a hardened face.
"You must not, my lord. I beg you to judge this coldly."
"What do you mean by that?"
"The moment we admit all of them, the food we have stockpiled will not last even a week. Not only is there no space in this cramped castle to accommodate so many people, but if by any chance an epidemic breaks out it will be impossible to contain. And..."
Konrad chose his words for a moment, then added the fact that worried him most.
"...there is a very high likelihood that enemy spies are mixed in among them."
"......."
Instead of answering I looked down below the wall.
'If I think about it coldly, Konrad is right. There is not one good thing about letting those people inside.'
Below the wall it was pandemonium in the truest sense. Old women shouldering hastily tied bundles, mothers covering the eyes of frightened, crying children, people out of their wits with terror.
Every last one of them was calling my name and begging to be saved.
'But if I abandon them here, is there any meaning in it even if I win this battle? A lord who abandons his own people in danger. Could soldiers trust and follow a commander like that?'
I gripped Konrad's shoulder firmly.
"Konrad. The dishonor of turning away while my own people are butchered before my eyes is greater than the risk that spies may be mixed among them."
"But my lord, your own safety...!"
"My mind is already made up."
I shouted down below the wall in an even louder voice.
"Open the gate! Let all the refugees into the castle!"
RUMBLE!
When the gate opened with a heavy grinding of iron, the people of the domain poured into the castle, weeping.
"Aaah...!"
"The gate is opening!"
"Thank you! Thank you, my lord!"
They prostrated themselves on the ground as if collapsing and gave me their thanks.
"János, take them to the church. And keep them under control so no one wanders about freely."
"Yes, my lord. ...But you know, don't you? We have nowhere near the numbers to control this many people."
Just as János's worried words suggested, the mood inside the castle turned chilly in an instant.
The people of the domain who had fled here in desperation, and the soldiers looking at them coldly.
The discontent at having to share food and space that were already insufficient was plain. There was also unease drifting about that Hussite spies might be mixed in among them.
Watching all this, János asked carefully.
"...Did we really have to let them inside? Some of them are surely Hussite sympathizers. Surely peasants would not harm their fellow peasants?"
"On a battlefield, naive thinking like that is the first thing to throw away, János."
I answered coldly.
"Whether they support the Hussites or not, to the enemy this village is nothing but the property of a Catholic lord. Which means they have more than enough pretext to plunder it."
Just then a sentry's scream burst out from the watchtower.
"They're here! They're... they're here!"
The eyes of everyone on the wall shot to the far end of the horizon. Beyond the thick dust, along with a heavy rumbling that shook the ground, an enormous shape was slowly revealing itself.
Sir Kuno crossed himself with a trembling hand.
"God in heaven..."
Dozens, hundreds of wagons linked together with iron chains were approaching, forming an enormous wall. Like a centipede writhing along the horizon.
Atop the wagons stood soldiers armed with flails, crossbows, and hand cannons, and above their heads hundreds of red banners fluttered in the wind.
"Wa... wagenburg! It is the Hussites' wagenburg!"
As though recalling a nightmare they had forgotten, the soldiers cried out in voices trembling with fear.
'So that is the rebel army's mobile fortress I had only heard of... the wagenburg.'
The wagons forming their array and approaching before my eyes were close to a moving castle wall.
At the sheer weight of it, I swallowed hard.
***
The wagenburg.
The moving fortress created by the peerless strategist Jan Žižka.
When Sigismund's crusaders first faced this strange wagon array, they burst out laughing.
Not even a proper fortress, merely a structure made by linking farm wagons together. They took it for a clumsy trick only poor peasants would think up.
But that arrogant complacency soon turned into ghastly screams.
The charge of the heavily armored knights, reckoned the strongest in Europe at the time, was rendered helplessly powerless before the wagenburg's solid barrier.
The enemy, thus pinned in place, became nothing but easy targets for the hand cannons and crossbows pouring out of the wagons' firing ports.
Around the time the knights were floundering in confusion under the raining fire, the doors between the wagons opened and Hussite infantry with war flails poured out and smashed their skulls to pieces.
On the foundation of these brilliant tactics, Jan Žižka's peasant army, which had been nothing but a rabble, began to write a legend of invincibility.
At the Battle of Nekmíř that opened the war, they fought a successful defensive action against an overwhelming enemy, and at the Battle of Sudoměř they smashed a crusader knightly force five times their own number.
At the Battle of Vítkov Hill, on which the fate of Prague hung, they worked the miracle of holding off a thousand crusaders with a mere thirty soldiers including Žižka himself.
That very wagenburg, which had delivered hell to the crusaders and the imperial faction, was now encircling Šternberk Castle in order to bring it down.
On a hill facing Šternberk Castle.
Two men had halted their horses side by side and were observing the castle from a distance.
One was a fierce commander who was among the Hussite leaders, Mikuláš of Hus.
The other was a moderate noble leading the Prague allied army, Hynek Krušina of Lichtenburg.
They were two great figures of the Hussites who had crushed Sigismund's crusade at Vyšehrad together with Jan Žižka, yet their views as they looked at the same castle were utterly different.
Mikuláš spat out his words with contempt in his eyes.
"A truly magnificent castle. Fit for the den of filthy Catholic bastards who piled up ill-gotten wealth by squeezing the peasants."
To him, a man of peasant origin, the noble's castle before his eyes was nothing but a symbol of an old age that had to be smashed.
"There is no need to drag this out. The number of soldiers visible on the wall is pitiful beyond words, so we shall be able to hang that greenhorn lord's head at the highest point of the wall before the day is out."
Mikuláš spoke confidently. But Krušina's opinion was different.
"Brother Mikuláš. Shedding blood is not always the answer. The master of that castle is a young boy who has only just inherited his house. To trample him without even giving him a chance to repent would not be the justice the warriors of God pursue."
"Justice? Are you saying it is justice to show mercy to the child of a heathen?"
"No, I am speaking of practical gain."
Krušina's eyes shone coldly.
"Šternberk is a house of long standing in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Rather than killing that boy and seizing the castle, sparing him and drawing him over to our side is a far greater political victory. It would make a good precedent for shaking the other imperial-faction nobles."
"Hah, I know nothing of politics. All I know is cutting the heads off corrupt priests and noble bastards."
At Mikuláš's blunt retort, Krušina answered with a dry smile.
"...Are you aware that I am one of those nobles myself?"
"I am well aware."
The scar hanging at the corner of Mikuláš's mouth twitched.
"Is that not why your head is still attached to your shoulders? Had we not served the same cause, your neck too would have been hung on that wall long ago."
"Ha ha, in that case your own neck would not have come through unharmed either, brother."
Krušina was laughing, but a chilly light hovered in his eyes.
"Because our noble league and the Prague allied army would not have sat by and watched."
The two men's gazes collided in midair.
On one side, the head of the moderate faction of the noble league, the Utraquists, who argued for compromise with the Church in order to protect their own vested interests.
On the other, the fierce commander of the peasant-centered radical faction, the Taborites, who sought to destroy not only the rotten authority of the Church but the feudal order along with it.
They were bound together under the same name of Hussites, but they had formed an uncomfortable alliance for one reason only: a common enemy in Sigismund.
"...Very well. Do it in your fine lordship's way, then."
Mikuláš did not care for the way of the noble bastards, but he could not simply ignore the words of Krušina, the moderates' commander.
Besides, taking the castle without shedding a drop of blood was not at all a bad thing for the Taborites either.
Krušina answered with a gentle smile.
"Thank you, brother. Then I shall write a letter advising their surrender."
Krušina spread parchment on his saddle and wrote out the terms of surrender without hesitation. Then he handed the finished letter to Mikuláš.
Having read the contents of the letter, Mikuláš let out a hollow laugh.
"Hah! You put on the whole show of mercy yourself, yet the contents of this letter are more vicious than a blade. It is nearly enough to make me, who would kill them with a single stroke, look the gentler man."
Krušina smiled faintly.
"If they do not kneel even after seeing this force, that is not courage but stupidity. There is no need to show mercy to stupid heretics."
"Ha ha ha! That is true enough."
Moderate or radical, it was only a difference of method; in the end they were all the same Hussites. On the point that the enemy had to be thoroughly crushed while it could be done, there was no disagreement.
Mikuláš gave one last warning.
"But if the answer is slow, or if a refusal comes back, then I shall wash that wall in blood in my own way."
"Then I too shall gladly take up my sword."
A short while later.
A single messenger rode out from the Hussite camp, making his way toward the firmly shut gate of Šternberk.