"Teach me, eh?" Hans climbed over him, leveraging his weight to press Henry's body further into the ground and planting his lips against Henry's brow as he spoke. He traveled lower, a loving assault that ended just below his chin.
Commission Based on 'amor et virtus' by Nerdybirdnerd on AO3
|01062026
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Fanart of Henry of Skalice (Tom MacKay) from Warhorse's Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
I have been working on this drawing while finishing my second playthrough of KCD 2, and ended up finishing both on the same day. Well, a drawing is never really finished, and I do still have the painter and monastery DLCs to go through (I can't wait, I am starting this afternoon), but I did finish the main story the day I finally put down my pencils on this. I cried again when the parents left him under the linen tree. I never cry. This is insane. Again, good job, Warhorse's writers.
As for the drawing itself, I didn't prepare my colors this time; I just went for it, and it kind of shows on the paper where I corrected multiple times, but I am still glad I just let loose, for once. Sometimes you just have to let go and see what happens. It's okay if you fuck up; at least you might have learned something.
This illustration was actually inspired by the Hansry fanfiction I am currently writing. What was supposed to be a short novel turned into a three-part project, as it always does. I can never just go small; if I am not stopped, I just keep going. Thank god sheets of paper have edges, and I can't just draw in the air, or I would be in trouble. But, as for writing... yeah, it's a problem. Anyway, in this part of the story, Henry leaves on the eve of the wedding without explanation. The readers find him traveling alone accross Bohemia and Moravia, fighting for coin, haunted by nightmares, with no one to wake him by his side, and longing for a presence he is trying to forget. Until he hears troubling news from Rattay.
*cue dramatic pause* Tuduh duh duh.
I used a screenshot by @playpausephoto as a reference, so don't hesitate to check out their account if you like what you see and are looking for high-definition KCD screenshots; they're doing an amazing job.
Time spent on this project: Too long to count, to be honest. I finished Luke Dale's stream on KCD 2, started watching Tom MacKay's stream after, and around part 12, I started Luke's stream on Detroit: Become Human. Pencils take time, is my point.
@asyapambouc really took my photo to the next level in this drawing. The reflection of Hans in the water makes my heart melt. It's so lovely 🫠 Now I'm curious about this fiction...
Here's the photo. (And fun fact: the previous social media manager of official KCD used this photo as her wallpaper for quite some time 🤭)
It's hard to describe how strange it was to spend a day in the valley below Rotstein. After everything that happened in Hearth and Kin, it felt like returning somewhere I had always belonged. Walking the paths Henry and Hans rode, through the forests where Lukas and Pavel hunted — I kept expecting them to step out from behind the trees.
But enough of my sentimental nonsense. If you'd like, come with me for a short walk through some of the places from our story, as they exist today.
Do you remember when Hans and Henry first saw the valley in winter — and that vast wall of rock? There it is. A small part of it, at least. Six hundred years have grown a great deal of forest around it, but it remains what it always was.
Not much remains of Rotstein castle. Most of the masonry is long gone, and even parts of the rock towers it once stood upon have collapsed. And yet — looking up from below, the stone still commands respect.
The castle was built upon the rock — and to a great extent, carved directly into it.
Some of the masonry has survived, though. Let's climb higher — toward the courtyard, and the castle keep where the great hall once stood, and the lord's chambers.
Unfortunately nothing remains of the castle palace. But it stood exactly where this photograph was taken.
The rock tower on the right — that is where the watchtower stood. The one from which Henry strained his eyes toward Kozakov when Hans wasn't returning from hunting the Black Rider. The one from which Godwin looked down upon the burning rooftops of Klokotsch.
And yes, you are seeing that correctly. Those towers on the horizon are Trosky. These two castles were neighbours.
Trosky viewed from Rotstein.
And there is Kozakov. Because of the gentle rise in the middle of the valley, the foot of the mountain would not have been visible from the manor itself — which is why Henry climbed to the castle whenever he needed a clear view, as in this photograph.
The manor stood on the meadow somewhere beyond the right edge of this photograph. And to the left — Klokotsch.
Do you remember the rock ledge where Mutt, Pavel and Lukas rested during the hunt — where the two young men talked about girls, about the future?
The forests around Rotstein can be dense and dark. Somewhere in here, Pavel caught a glimpse of the Black Rider between the trees.
And we cross into Klokotsch — today a quiet, unremarkable village. Though it does have this roadside shrine with a statue of Saint Wenceslas. Built some four hundred years after our story.
Time to head for Kozakov — the great hill that looms over the valley, impossible to ignore from anywhere in it. The path takes us through Vesetz, which today has more inhabitants than Klokotsch.
The slopes of Kozakov are covered in rich forest — rocks, beautiful trees, strange ones.
Kozakov is, it must be said, a bit of a beast. A few kilometres, four hundred metres of elevation. On a hot day, without horse — something of a challenge.
The summit of Kozakov is today a favourite destination for paragliders. On a clear day — which this was not entirely — a quarter of Bohemia is said to be visible from here. And of course, Trosky. Noticeably far below.
That forest to the right of Trosky, almost at the edge of the frame — somewhere in there, Erik ambushed Hans and Pavel.
And does anyone remember those great snow-covered mountains in the distance, the ones Hans and Henry saw when Vatzek first brought them up here in winter? There they are. Almost a kilometre higher than Kozakov, and still watching.
Time to head back down. The steep descent brings you out onto the meadows above Loktusch — full of wildflowers, just as they were in our story.
And we approach Loktusch — along the same path Hans and Henry took that winter, coming down from Kozakov, after they had... lingered in the forest.
Do you remember the pond where they bathed on that hot May day — much like this one?
And you will remember that Henry began building a mill just below this pond. Did he ever finish it? Perhaps there will be a story that answers that. In the meantime — a mill stands there today.
And you can also find all the places on the map here.
"He only brushed his hand gently down Henry’s back — and stayed there with him, on the hillside, beneath a golden sky already beginning to pale." - @jandrichov
Hi Malin!
Just want to drop by to say thank you so much for the tutorial it helps me a lot to get some pics that I want! (Although I mostly just keep it for myself for drawing reference lol)
I wonder can you share to me the Graphic Card or Advance Graphic Card setting that you use? I always love how they looks so crispy on you zoom in pictures. Also if you use any Reshader can you share to us what did you use and the setting?
Thanks in advance!
Hi there!
Glad you found the tutorial helpful. I'll try to make more ones I have more time, if there's interest.
I have a GeForce RTX4090 card, which makes the game look amazing even without any alterations.
I use a variety of different Reshade setups (cudos to @angelwhispersunknown who taught me how to use Reshade lol), but I usually adjust them for each photo. If you're willing to spend some money I can recommend Marty's mods.
Two heavy logs, and the flames moving across them with the patience of something that knows it will have its way — not urgent, not fierce, only steady and certain, the way warmth fills a room not all at once but layer by quiet layer.
Through the window, light. Golden, soft at the edges — still carrying the morning's uncertainty, still blurred by the last of the mist dissolving slowly in the first real warmth of the day. Outside, the world was weighing its options: summer's last generosity against the first cool patience of autumn, and the light itself seemed to belong to neither quite yet, hanging between the two like something not yet spoken.
It moved across the room unhurried. Across the floorboards. The chest. Two swords leaning against it. And then across the bed — and across what the bed held: the smooth curve of bare shoulders, bare back, the firm round of backside, a body half-swallowed by the quilt, warm and still and entirely unconcerned with the morning's indecision.
Quiet. Heat. The slow rise and fall of breath.
Henry leaned down.
The beard of his chin found bare skin — lightly, deliberately — and drew itself downward along the line of the spine. Slowly. With the focused attention of a quill moving across paper that does not yet know what will be written upon it, and the hand that holds it does.
Hans's body answered at once.
Gooseflesh ran from his shoulders all the way to his hips and back — small, helpless candour of skin that cannot pretend indifference when indifference is no longer true. In that shiver, in that instant of giving way, everything was present.
His hand moved without his eyes opening. Found Henry's palm in the blind and certain way of something that has made this journey so many times it no longer needs to see the road. Fingers laced through fingers.
Henry followed with his lips. Slower now. The back. The hollow of the spine. The small of it — skin there finer, warmer, quicker to know, and still faintly salt from their lovemaking, still alive with it — and beneath those lips Hans's breathing changed. Deepened. Confessed itself.
He smiled into the pillow. Eyes still closed.
Then — weight. Careful and warm and certain of its welcome. Henry's body covering his, the way something comes home after a long road and finds the door still open. Hans felt his lips at the soft place beneath his ear. And against the curve of his arse — Henry's wanting. Plain. Unapologetic. Simply and entirely there.
Hans turned his head.
Opened his eyes.
Henry, a few inches away, looking back at him — a smile at the corner of his mouth that was not quite innocent and had given up pretending otherwise.
Henry leaned in and kissed him — slowly, with the full warmth of it — and his hips moved, gently, nearly without intention.
Hans let out a sound that couldn't settle between a laugh and something else entirely, and turned his face toward the pillow.
"We've only just —"
Henry pursed his lips slightly. Considered.
Lifted one shoulder.
"Blame yourself," he murmured against his neck. "Not me."
Hans turned beneath him — one long, unhurried motion, fluid as a river finding a new course — and his arms came up around Henry's neck and drew him down. Chest to chest. Hip against hip. Henry onto Hans.
His mouth found Henry's.
And held.
The church door closed behind Godwin with a quiet, hollow sound.
He got three steps.
Then stopped, rubbed his forehead, muttered something private and dissatisfied, and went back. Opened the door. Disappeared for a moment into the cool half-dark that smelled of wax and old wood. Came out again. Closed the door. More carefully this time.
The wind came off the fields and brought with it the smell of straw and stubble and morning dew — the smell of a season turning, of summer releasing its hold field by field without ceremony.
Godwin's gaze stopped.
On the road between the meadows — a horse, a fine courser, moving at an easy pace. And in the saddle, straight-backed, lean and broad across the shoulders, moving with the horse the way a man moves when horse and rider have long since stopped being two things.
Something eased in Godwin's face.
He walked on — passed the inn at a brisk pace, eyes ahead, moving with purpose — and turned toward the manor.
At one of the outside tables a young man sat watching him go. Dark-haired, strongly built. He had the look of someone whose thoughts had gone somewhere his body hadn't followed.
After a moment his eyes dropped to his bowl — empty, with only a thin ghost of soup left on the bottom — and then across the table to the boy, who sat opposite working through his own with the focused, unswerving dedication of someone for whom a meal is a serious undertaking.
Martin looked away from the road. Down to the ditch's edge, where cornflowers moved in the light air — back and forth, back and forth, entirely at ease with themselves.
Blue. The blue of eyes that hold the whole sky in them.
Martin said nothing for a while. His thoughts were somewhere else. Some other time.
He drew a breath.
"Vashek."
His younger brother looked up from the bowl. Questioning. Mildly reluctant.
Martin rose from the bench.
"I'll be back directly."
He walked — straight, no hurry, no hesitation — and Vashek watched him for a moment with the mild curiosity of someone who has learned that his brother's "I'll be back directly" covers considerable ground.
Then lifted a shoulder.
Put his spoon back in the bowl and returned to the only thing that mattered.
"And who is this fine little lord?"
Katherine leaned over the child in Jitka's arms — eyebrows up, eyes wide, wearing the expression women wear when something small and round and entirely perfect has been placed within reach — and Heinrich studied her with grave attention.
A moment. Another.
And then his mouth opened slightly and curved to a smile — slowly, with a faint air of surprise, as though he too was discovering for the first time what he was capable of — and from his lips came a small, soft sound. A coo, warm and soft, like something trying out its welcome in the world.
Jitka laughed quietly.
Settled herself more comfortably against the bench.
She looked across the well toward the old tree, heavy with small red apples that caught the soft light and glowed like little lanterns hung there by someone who cared about such things.
Mutt, who had been lying at her feet providing warmth with the dedicated purposefulness of a dog who takes his responsibilities seriously, stirred.
He sat up. Fixed his gaze on the child — eyes intent, ears lifted, every part of him gathered into a single point of absolute importance that demanded his full attention.
Heinrich looked back at him.
For a moment they simply regarded each other — dog and child, each belonging to a world that had not yet found the measure of the other — and then Heinrich extended his hand. Small fingers spreading open, offering themselves to the air.
Mutt tilted his head.
Without taking his eyes off the child.
"Ooo," said Heinrich.
Katherine laughed — a light, clear sound, like a small bell struck once and left to ring.
From the yard came the sound of hooves.
Voices. Then steps — quick, direct.
Thomas appeared in the garden entrance. His eyes wide.
"My lady." He caught his breath. "Sir Hynek."
Jitka looked at him for a moment without speaking.
Then turned to Katherine.
"Would you —"
She settled Heinrich into her arms — a sure, practised motion — rose from the bench, and set off toward the yard at a quick walk.
By the time she passed through the garden gate, she was running.
Dry Devil stood in the middle of the yard.
Road-worn armour, dust on his shoulders. Planted wide, with the easy self-possession of a man who doesn't need to occupy a space because the space arranges itself around him regardless.
When he saw Jitka, something in his eyes softened — quickly, almost imperceptibly, the way a door opens just far enough to let the light in before the hand remembers itself.
Jitka reached him.
For the briefest moment she stopped — only that single hesitation, that single breath — and then held him tight.
Dry Devil's arms came down across her back.
Slowly — the way a man performs a gesture he knows well but has not used in a long time and wants to be sure he still remembers it properly. Then he held her. Drew his hand across her back — once, twice — slowly, carefully, with the gentleness of something that has no precise name but arrives anyway, because it knows where it belongs.
Jitka raised her bright eyes to him.
Smiled.
Then turned.
Katherine was coming from the garden at an easy pace, the child in her arms.
"Uncle," said Jitka, and touched her fingers to her eyes. "Allow me to present Heinrich Capon."
Dry Devil raised an eyebrow.
Drew a breath.
And at that moment — from above, from the stairs — came Hans's voice:
"Except that his mother calls him Hynek, and has done from the start."
Hans was coming down the stairs a step behind Henry, both of them smiling.
Dry Devil looked at them for a moment without speaking. Then at Jitka. Then at the small one.
He cleared his throat loudly. Blinked — as though something had got into his eye.
"That'll be a bloody fine lord."
The fingers holding the needle moved with quick, practised ease. In, out, in, out, thread by thread — her eyes down on the work. But her ears. The ears of Johanka's mother were straining, carefully and without any appearance of doing so, like leaves turning toward light, toward the bench outside the cottage.
Pavel shifted a little.
Moved his weight from one side to the other. Let his eyes travel across the old stones by his boots, across the grass pushing up between them, and then, from the corner of his eye, to Johanka.
She was sitting beside him.
Far enough that the gap between them remained visible — that particular gap which is neither distance nor indifference but a performance. A thing displayed for the mother sewing in the shadow and for the neighbours passing on the road.
In the girl's hands — a red kerchief.
New, entirely new — the colour still loud, the cloth yet to soften. Johanka turned it gently in her fingers — folded, refolded, worked quietly between her palms — and looked down into her lap.
"Every week I set something aside — from the wages Lord Hans pays me," Pavel said quietly.
He looked at her.
Johanka dropped her eyes shyly to the kerchief. Drew her thumb across it — once, slowly.
Pavel glanced toward her mother.
The mother was sewing. In, out, in, out.
Wearing the expression of a woman to whom none of this is of the slightest concern.
Pavel looked back at the girl beside him.
At the red kerchief in her hands, which he had bought at the fair a few days past.
He drew a breath.
"When I have saved enough," he said — quietly, but with a steadiness that was not volume but decision — "I will ask your father for your hand."
In the shadow by the wall, the needle paused.
Only for a moment.
Then went on — in, out — as though nothing had happened.
Gravel shifted and crunched at the gate.
"Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ."
Hynek let out a short, rattling laugh without turning.
"Of course," he said, "every devil gets his priest eventually, come to save his soul."
He laughed and turned to meet Godwin coming across the yard.
Forearm to forearm.
Godwin looked at him — with the expression of a man somewhere between a smile and a long-suffering acceptance of the world as it is — and nodded.
"Word has reached us even here," he said, "of how Sigismund finally withdrew from Znaim."
"Indeed," said Henry. "That was welcome news."
Hynek grinned.
"Withdrew?" He laughed. "The way I heard it, that ginger cunt shat himself all the way up to his fancy curls."
The rattling laugh rang across the yard.
Hynek crossed to Katherine.
Looked down at Heinrich in her arms.
Turned to Hans.
"What did Hanush say — about the boy?"
Hans lifted a shoulder.
"Nothing yet," he said. "I sent word, but no answer has come."
He shook his head.
Then smiled.
"Though Katherine came."
Katherine, in the act of settling the child back into Jitka's arms, smiled — without turning, the smile of someone who knows they are being spoken of and has no objection to it.
"When the happy news came," she said, "I knew I was needed here more than in Rattay."
Hans spread his arms wide. "I suppose there is nothing for it but to gladden my uncle with a visit in person."
Henry scratched his temple and smiled sideways.
"This time I ride with you."
He turned to Dry Devil and looked at him for a long moment.
"And you, Hynek?" he said. "Where does your road take you now?"
Dry Devil drew his palm slowly across his jaw.
His gaze moved across the yard — across the stone walls, across the castle rock rising above them, across the walkway where the watch paced its eternal back and forth.
Then he looked at Henry.
"Is my chamber still up there in the castle?"
A shadow fell across the grain of the wood.
Vashek's finger — which had been travelling the rings of the table without much thought, tracing their arcs back and forth as though looking for a path in them, or simply giving his hand something to do — stopped.
He raised his head.
Looked into his brother's face.
Martin smiled at him, a little. A little sad.
"Finished?"
The boy nodded.
Martin drew a slow breath. He looked around the village — across the cottages, the road, the well in the square, the fence past which someone was walking without raising their eyes — and breathed out.
"Up you get, then," he said. "Time to move on."
The wind passed quietly through the apple leaves in the garden.
Through the courtyard.
Stirred the forge door on its hinges.
Crossed the wall.
The meadow.
The roof of the bailiff's cottage.
Lifted the red kerchief and let it fall.
Slipped past the dark clusters of elderberries hanging heavy on the bush by the inn.
Raised the canvas of the wagon standing nearby.
Moved gently through dark, wavy hair.
Turned around the church tower.
Brushed the bunch of cornflowers beneath the iron cross.
A year. It has been exactly a year since the first chapter of Further came into the world.
A year since I stepped beyond those first uncertain vignettes and committed to something different. Something larger. A series. And though Further seems, in hindsight, such a small and tentative thing – oh, how I hesitated, how I dreaded binding myself to something like that – here we are, a year later. Fifty-two chapters and somewhere around 450,000 words later. And all of it feels at once so distant and so close.
Henry is a lord now. Hans is a father. Jitka is family. We have walked so far with all of them – and not only with them, but with Godwin and Dry Devil, with Pavel, Zizka, Katherine, Lukas (yes, that still hurts), Thomas, and the rest.
It has been a remarkable journey. One along which I have, from a great distance, met many wonderful readers. Some have said their farewells as the story moved on; others joined somewhere along the way. But every single one of them – every single one of you – I have held in great regard and gratitude. The story that grew across this year was for Henry and Hans. For me. For you.
And near the very beginning of that journey, there was one extraordinary encounter – one that has marked not only the story itself, but me as a person. I would never have imagined that this tale would lead me to someone so kindred – in how they see and feel this story, in their humour, in their love of the natural world. In who they are. And someone so remarkably gifted, someone who creates genuine art, who carries real and serious talent – and yet remains so warm, so unassuming. Someone I humbly allow myself to call a friend.
And it was the very @playpausephoto who asked me, some time ago, whether the saga had a name.
Which gave me pause. Because – well. When I began writing Further a year ago, it would never have occurred to me that any of this would grow to such proportions. And yet, in that moment, I understood that the saga does have a name. It always had one.
Our Kingdom Come.
Because if this entire story is about one thing above all others, it is about finding one's own kingdom. That state of simple human happiness. Hans's. Henry's. Jitka's. Perhaps others'. Perhaps even ours.
Thank you for everything, @playpausephoto – for the dozens of beautiful and devastating photographs that have accompanied this story, for helping give shape to the words, for being a steady presence in moments of doubt.
Thank you for who you are.
And thank you to everyone who has walked this long road alongside Henry, Hans, me, and the rest.
As for whether this is the end of the saga – the end of Our Kingdom Come – the short answer is: no, it is not. And I do not mean merely the epilogue to Hearth and Kin, which will arrive soon (as you know, every series has had its epilogue).
What comes after that – that remains to be seen. It will depend on energy, on time, and on whether there is still an appetite among you, the readers, for another journey through this saga.
But something will come. One way or another.
The saga has an ending. A final chapter that has lived in my head for this entire year. One I have spent this entire year trying not to think about too much.
But it must be written.
Because everything must have a beginning. And an end.
Still here. Still them. Witnessed by Morning Star — and the eye and heart of @playpausephoto
Hearth and Kin – Part XX
Morning Star
Part 3/3
(Continued from Part 2 — please read that first if you haven’t yet.)
—
Godwin's lips were moving.
Quietly. Without sound. Word by word.
On and on.
Again and again.
The candle flames trembled faintly.
As though fire had its own breath, its own restless inner life, which had no need of wind to set it going.
Stone beneath his knees. Hands folded. Eyes closed. And behind his lids — nothing but dark and those words, repeated so long they had ceased to be words and become movement. Rhythm. Breath.
From far away — a cry.
Worn through. Deep. The whole body in it — and the knowledge that it must go on, and it went on.
Godwin did not move.
His lips moved on.
Candlelight. The silent faces of the saints.
Quiet.
Candles.
Faces.
Lips.
And then —
It cut through the silence like a blade.
Clean. Unmistakable.
A sound that had nothing of the dark in it, nothing of the stone or the night — only itself, only that first moment, only that first breath of the world breathed back out as a cry, as a demand, as a declaration.
A child's cry.
Godwin went still.
His lips did not move.
He simply was — kneeling — and the sound came to him through the stone walls — and he let it come. All of it. Without moving. Without a word. Without a single gesture.
He raised his eyes to the face of the Virgin.
Crossed himself slowly.
Rose.
And smiled. His eyes bright with tears.
Henry was looking at Hans.
Wide-eyed — at the dried blood on his temples, at his shirt, at Erik's slack body lying behind him — and at the dark red pool that was slowly, patiently drinking itself into the sand and ceasing to be a pool and becoming earth.
Hans breathed heavily.
As though only now — only in this moment, in the silence after everything — he had fully understood what had happened. He turned his head back. At the body. At the knife. Then back to Henry.
"Henry."
Quiet. Rough.
"The knife."
Henry hesitated for a moment — his eyes still on Hans's face — and then rolled onto his side. He began to move across the ground. Elbows, hips, knees — a slow, laboured progress across cold stone — and the scrape of metal and the hiss of cloth spread through the cave.
He stopped before the red pool.
Only for a moment.
He looked at it — at that quiet, spreading, fading red — and then pushed off with his feet and went on. Through it. Cold now. Thickening. Dead.
Hans watched him without a word.
Henry made it past him. To the body.
Erik's eyes — open. Empty. Settled.
The eyes of a man who had finally stopped fighting something he had fought too long.
Henry reached out his bound hands.
His fingers touched the hilt — and the knife slipped from his grip. Blood on the handle, slick, cold. Henry swore quietly — just the one word, just one exhaled breath — and breathed in. Tried again. Slower. More deliberately.
His fingers closed.
He had it.
He turned to Hans. To his hands bound behind his back. He worked quickly but carefully — the blade between the fibres, not catching the skin — and Hans felt the rope pulling. Tension. Resistance. Then —
The last fibres gave.
Quiet. Like something released from a long hold.
Hans moved his arms slowly.
His shoulders cried out — deep, from every muscle at once — and he drew air in through clenched teeth. He looked at his hands. Ran his thumb across the raw, rope-burned wrists. Moved his fingers — once, slowly — and turned.
Henry was lying on the ground behind him.
Hans nodded. He took the knife from his hands — cut quickly through the rope at his own ankles, then turned to Henry, knelt, and freed his hands. Then his feet.
The knife rang on the stone.
They both straightened.
Kneeling, each facing the other, in the trembling torchlight, in the smell of blood and old stone.
Without words.
Without breath.
Then Henry reached out and held him.
Hans hissed.
Henry stopped — his arms releasing at once — and Hans smiled, almost apologetically. A tired smile.
"Ribs," he said.
Henry closed his eyes for a moment.
He raised his palm and drew it slowly, carefully across Hans's bloodied face — across the temple, the cheek, the place below the ear where the dried blood had hardened into a rough crust. Hans did not move beneath the touch. Only closed his eyes.
Henry pressed his lips to his.
Carefully. Simply. Quietly.
For a long time.
As though his lips were confirming something. That they were here.
Still here. Still together. Still each other's.
Then Henry drew back.
He looked toward the mouth of the passage — that dark opening leading to the forest, to the rocks, to the stars, to the outside.
"Can you stand?" he asked quietly.
Hans nodded.
"We need to get out of here."
Godwin was crossing the great hall.
At a slow pace. Hands folded behind his back. His steps even — as though they were cutting the night away piece by piece and leaving it behind him.
"Father?"
He turned.
Hata stood in the doorway.
Her eyes tired — with the deep, honest exhaustion of work that had ended as it should — but content. Settled. On her apron, traces of blood dried into dark streaks.
"Lady Jitka is well."
The midwife smiled — plainly, without ornament, the smile of a woman who has seen much and knows well when there is cause for joy and when there is not.
"She has brought a healthy and strong boy into the world, Father."
Godwin drew a long, slow breath.
"A son," he whispered.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Then opened them and smiled.
"Praised be Jesus Christ."
Hata crossed herself.
"I'll go back to them," she said. "Lady Jitka has finally fallen asleep."
She turned and was gone through the door — quiet steps, then nothing.
Godwin stood where he was.
He looked toward the window — the dark rectangle of glass, beyond which the night was slowly, almost imperceptibly, growing lighter somewhere at its edge.
Only a suggestion. Only a promise.
He smiled faintly and gave a small shake of his head.
He opened the door and stepped out into the night.
Outside he all but walked into Stibor.
The castle captain was standing just beyond the threshold — as though he had been waiting there, or had just arrived and not yet had time to knock.
"The village has stopped burning," he said.
Godwin watched him in silence.
Stibor shook his head.
"But we don't know what happened down there." A short pause. "Or what may still be happening."
Godwin glanced back over his shoulder — at the keep behind him, at the stone walls, at the torchlight trembling along the walkway. Then back to Stibor.
"The child has come," he said.
Stibor nodded.
"The castle stays sealed."
Even. No room in it for doubt.
Stibor nodded again — brief, soldierly.
Godwin looked out into the dark.
"And we shall see," he added quietly, "what the daylight brings."
In the dark, light flared.
A trembling reflection of flames — a torch — lit the mouth of the stone passage. Henry's face. A step behind him, Hans.
They came out.
Stopped.
Around them rocks, pines, scrub — a world that had gone on without any regard for what had taken place in the stone behind them. Henry looked out between the trees.
"That way," he said quietly.
They moved off together.
Hans stopped after a few paces.
He laid his hand on Henry's shoulder — a light touch, but certain — and Henry turned. Hans gave a nod of his chin to the left, toward a light coming from behind a rock. Faint, trembling.
Hans moved forward. One careful step at a time, without sound, his back to the rock face. Henry behind him.
Hans came around the rock.
Stopped.
Henry came up beside him.
Beneath a wide stone overhang, the flames of a dying fire flickered — small, spent, but still alive. Around them five pallets of canvas and pine boughs, a soot-blackened pot, a discarded skin, a pile of wood. The smell of smoke, resin, and wet stone.
Henry stepped closer and raised the torch.
Something gleamed in the dark.
Steel.
He crouched quickly, reached out — and straightened. Turned to Hans.
His sword was in his hand.
Hans took the torch from him. He looked deeper under the overhang — to where instead of rock there was only darkness, dense and deep and without a floor. He took a few steps. Henry followed.
The light fell across a small cave in the rock.
"Hans."
A hiss — quiet, but sharp.
Hans stopped.
Henry took hold of his arm lightly — the one with the torch — drew it back a little, and nodded downward. At the ground. At several wooden barrels leaning against the wall.
"Black powder," he said quietly.
Hans stood without moving.
Henry stepped closer and crouched beside the barrels — dark, heavy, ominous.
And beside the barrels — a chest.
Large. Heavy. Dark wood banded with iron, the lock solid and sure. Henry crossed to it, ran his fingers across the lid — rough timber, cold metal — and tried to lift it.
Nothing.
He breathed out.
"Pity I haven't got a lockpick on me," he muttered.
He turned to Hans. His eyes moved — searching, ranging — and then stopped. One eyebrow rose slightly.
He began feeling through his satchel.
At length. Fingers working through contents half-known and half-forgotten — and then —
Brass caught the torchlight.
Henry turned to the chest. Drew a breath. Set the key in the lock.
A quiet click.
Then another.
Henry lifted the lid carefully.
"Hans!"
The word came out somewhere between surprise and relief.
"These are your things."
He began pulling them out quickly — armour, sword, doublet, saddlebag, hood — laying everything on the ground beside the chest. Then he stopped.
Turned.
In his hand, several papers.
The fire crackled quietly, encouraged by a fresh log.
Hans was carefully working his way into his doublet — every movement paid for in greater or lesser pain, back, ribs, shoulders — and Henry leaned toward the fire and looked at the papers. Small letters, arranged into lines with care, quiet and precise, putting him a little in mind of Vatzek's meticulous records.
Zhel. s. Ant. Hen. Cap.
Zhel. 2d. p. s. Agn. Hen. Cap.
Zhel. 3d. p. s. Val. Hen. Cap.
His eyes ran down the lines to the last.
Zhel. 1d. p. s. Joh. Cap. et al.
"Hans."
He rose. Hans was at that moment making an awkward attempt — jaw set, breath careful — to pull his hood over his head.
"Wait," Henry said quietly.
He crossed to him and helped — a slow movement, without any sudden pull — and Hans gave him a grateful, tired smile.
Henry held out the papers.
"What is this?"
Hans looked. His eyes widened — slowly, as the letters and numbers arranged themselves into meaning — and stayed wide.
"He knew —"
"About every journey we made," Henry said quietly.
Hans looked at him.
And gave a quiet nod.
He turned the page over. His eyes fell on another — a different hand, broader, more assured — and he read. Then stopped.
He held the paper out to Henry.
Henry looked at it.
The last letter arrived well. Hold to the plan for the present. Until the necessary time I remain at Chlumetz. Means enclosed herewith. No further word before it is done.
"Henry —"
Hans's voice. Quiet. A frown settling between his brows.
"That letter is from —"
Henry looked at the paper. Then raised his eyes to Hans.
"Von Bergow."
Silence.
Henry folded the letter. Carefully, as one folds a thing that has weight.
"I'll take this with me."
Hans nodded.
"Shall we go?"
They both looked around once more — at the fire, at the pallets — and then set off carefully. Between the rocks, along something between a path and a trail worn by animals, narrow and winding.
The night in the forest remained dark, dense, alive — the trees on either side silent, the branches above running together into a vault beneath which there were no stars, no sky, only darkness and movement and their own footsteps.
After a while the trees parted.
Before them rose the dark mass of Devil's Hill.
Henry stopped.
"Not over that hill," he said quietly, but without any room for doubt.
He turned away from it.
They moved slowly through the sparse trees along the foot of the slope — Henry ahead, Hans a little behind — and there was something in that silence which was not only exhaustion and not only dark. A narrow piece of the present between them, in which there was neither past nor future, only a step and a breath and a step.
Henry felt as though an eternity had passed.
And then —
A tree.
His horse was grazing quietly beside it — tethered, patient, head hung down into the grass.
Henry breathed out.
With relief — from the full depth of his chest — and turned to Hans.
"He'll carry us both," he said. And smiled, a little.
Hans dropped his gaze.
"I was afraid," he said after a moment, quietly.
A short pause.
"That I would not see you again."
Henry watched him in silence for a moment.
Then held him carefully — the way one cups a fledgling that has fallen from its nest — and drew his palm slowly across his hair. Once. Slowly.
"As was I," he whispered.
On the paling sky — there where the night had begun to yield and give itself up, piece by piece, without argument —
The Morning Star appeared.
A gleaming jewel above the dark tips of the trees.
A shining witness.
To ending and beginning both.
The horse walked at an easy pace.
Along the edge of the forest — carefully, steadily, without hurry — as though beyond the weight of two riders it could feel what they carried. What had attached itself to them over the course of this night and would not be shaken off so easily.
The sky was slowly growing light.
First only a suggestion — a thin strip of grey where before there had been only ink — then more, then more still, as the dark began to surrender without a struggle, quietly, with calm inevitability.
In the trees, the first birds were beginning to stir — tentatively, uncertainly.
One. Then another. Then silence. Then again — checking with each other whether it was safe to begin.
Hans was sitting in the saddle before Henry.
Henry felt him leaning back more — slowly, little by little, the warmth of a body spent by exhaustion pressing against him. The weight of a head resting against his shoulder. That faint, steady pressure.
After a while he understood that Hans was asleep.
Warm quiet breath against his neck. The occasional faint twitch of muscles.
Henry tilted his head a little closer.
He caught the smell of his hair — dirt and blood and sweat and beneath all of it, deep down, like the foundation beneath everything else — something that was Hans's alone.
He let him sleep.
Reins in his hands. The horse beneath them. Step. The fall of a hoof. Step. Fall. Steady, reliable, certain as the striking of a clock that neither this night nor any other will stop.
His man in his arms.
They rode on.
Above Kozakov in the distance to the left — above that great, silent ridge — the light was slowly beginning to come. First only a translucence, then a golden tremor, then a line of light drawing itself along the horizon like a name being written.
Hans stirred.
Opened his eyes.
For a moment he looked ahead — still, quiet — needing to assemble the world and find his place in it.
"I must have fallen asleep," he said quietly.
Henry smiled a little. He pressed his lips into his hair.
"Only for a while."
The horse walked on.
"We'll be in Klokotsch before long," Henry said.
His expression darkened.
He breathed out — slowly, like a man taking his time with what he wants to say, because he knows he must say it and does not know how.
Hans turned to him with a question in his eyes.
"When I rode out for you in the night," Henry said, "I saw four black riders."
Hans's eyes widened.
"Heading this way," Henry said quietly.
Hans turned forward. Was silent for a moment.
"Five pallets," he said after a while. Quietly.
He turned to Henry.
"Those were Erik's men."
Henry nodded. Drew a breath.
"Jitka is safe. In the castle."
Hans frowned.
"What — Henry, why —"
Henry's eyes went wide.
"I never told you!"
Hans looked at him.
"Jitka has begun her labour!"
Silence.
"Already?" Hans breathed.
Henry nodded.
"When Pavel came with word of your ambush," he said, and looked toward the brightening horizon, "we judged it safer to move Jitka to the castle. With Godwin."
Hans gave a quiet nod.
He looked ahead — at the road, at the trees, at that pale sky which still seemed undecided about whether it would be morning or not, but was slowly making up its mind.
"God willing she will be well," he said quietly.
After a moment he turned.
"And Pavel?"
Henry smiled a little.
"He'll mend. Battered, but he's got a tough root in him."
Hans smiled — tired, worn.
Henry looked aside. Then back at him.
Shook his head.
"But those two men-at-arms — Slavek and Ondra —"
He didn't finish.
His eyes fell.
Hans bowed his head. Crossed himself slowly.
Henry drew back on the reins.
The horse stopped.
They both looked ahead.
The outlines of buildings. The cottages of Klokotsch beyond the meadow, quiet and dark, still half-submerged in the grey before dawn — and against the brightening sky, from two places, thin threads of smoke were rising.
Straight. Grey. Still.
They rode through the village slowly.
Klokotsch was waking — but it was a waking unlike any other morning. Not slow and drowsy and ordinary, but heavy, disbelieving, the waking of a man after a fever.
Of two cottages, only smouldering ruins remained.
The blackened timber still gave off heat — dull, persistent, as if the fire were unwilling to concede it had lost. Ash and charred wood and the remnants of walls stood in the morning light like bones. The smell of smoke lay over the whole village, thick and heavy, soaked into every stone, every fence, every limp blade of grass.
Henry looked at one of the burnt-out shells.
His eyes wide. Absent.
For a moment somewhere else. Some other time. Where also only walls and timbers had remained like bones and something hung in the air that did not disperse for a long while.
A family was picking through the ruins of their cottage — a man raking at the ash with a stick, a woman standing a little behind him with a child pressed to her side, her eyes empty and yet present in the way the eyes of people are present who have lost the place where there was warmth, and now stand in its place and do not know what to do with their hands or their lives.
Others were helping clear the wreckage. Voices were muted, worn through — words only where they were needed, elsewhere silence.
Several roofs part-eaten by the fire before it was beaten back. One collapsed entirely. Two with dark gaps torn in them, as though the night had driven its fingers in and left its marks there.
Hans and Henry rode on.
Faces turned toward them.
Lit by the first morning light, some smeared with soot, others bearing the dried traces of tears — tired, open, searching. They found Hans. His face covered in blood, the dried streaks of red running from his temple to his jaw.
Hans met their gaze — grave, quiet, directly. Henry too.
No one spoke.
Thomas was standing in the village square.
He was pointing out something to a pair of guards — brisk, matter-of-fact — they nodded and went. Thomas turned.
And stopped.
He dropped his eyes to his hands — only for a moment, brief and heavy — and then raised his head.
Henry drew back on the reins.
Hans dismounted. Henry after him.
"What happened here?" Henry asked quietly.
Thomas looked at him.
"They fired the village, Henry." His gaze moved across the square, across the smouldering ruins. "Four black riders. In the night." He glanced back over his shoulder. "And they hit the manor. Black powder."
Henry looked at Hans. Then back at the captain.
"Erik's men," he said.
Thomas gave a slight shake of his head.
"We don't know —"
"I know," Henry said. "Erik is dead."
Thomas dropped his eyes.
A silence — brief, but full.
"And ours?" Hans asked.
Thomas looked at him.
"We lost several men," he said quietly.
Henry rubbed his eyes slowly with the fingers of one hand. Breathed out. Looked around — at the square, at the people, at the smoking ruins — and turned back to the captain.
"Where is Vatzek?"
Thomas looked him directly in the eye.
"He's at the manor," he said quietly.
He hesitated for a moment.
"Henry."
Henry's gaze settled on him.
"Lukas fell."
Henry stared at him.
His eyes blank. His mouth slightly open. Like a man who has heard the words but not yet let them in.
"How?" he said, after a moment.
Thomas swallowed.
"He saved Pavel from one of the black riders," he said quietly. He looked at his hands, then back at Henry. "Pavel killed the bastard himself after. Brought down two of them."
Henry drew a long breath.
Let it out — slowly, unevenly — like a man who must release the air or it will break him.
He was still for a moment.
"Jitka?" he said at last. "Godwin?"
Thomas shook his head.
"No word from the castle."
Henry turned to Hans.
"We ride," he said quietly.
The manor gate opened with a quiet, heavy sound.
Henry and Hans rode in slowly. The horse beneath them walked at a pace — carefully, as though it too understood that this place carried a different kind of silence than it had before.
Hans's gaze moved across the timbers of one of the gate wings. A long black scorch mark — soot-dark, running the length of the beam — like a scar that does not heal overnight.
They stopped in the yard and dismounted.
The manor was quiet.
Not the quiet of peace — that kind had always been full and content and alive beneath the surface. This was something else. As though the whole place had held its breath and was waiting to find out whether it was safe to let it go.
Movement in the shadow by the stables.
Pavel raised his head.
He ran.
"My lord!"
The cry came across the yard — sharp, scraped raw with relief — and both Hans and Henry turned. The boy was running toward them — eyes red, face dirty, everything at once in his face.
"Pavel," Hans breathed.
The lad reached them. Stopped just before him — shaking, catching his breath.
"I am so glad you are back, my lord," he said. "That you are alive."
Hans nodded. He laid his hand on his shoulder — firmly, quietly, without words — and Pavel went still for a moment, as though the hand had anchored him to the ground.
Then he looked at Henry.
His face crumpled — from within, beneath the skin — with a grief that had spent all its tears and now remained only as a shape. A hollow thing.
He drew a breath through his nose.
"My lord," he said. "Lukas —"
He turned his head.
Henry looked toward the lean-to.
He walked slowly in that direction. Step by step — across the yard, across the shadow, across the silence.
On a wide bench lay a body.
Covered with snow-white linen — straight, carefully laid.
And beside it — hunched, smaller, head bowed — sat the bailiff Vatzek.
In one hand he held his son's hand. With the other he stroked it slowly. A movement without end, without purpose, without knowing — the movement of a body doing the one thing it knows how to do when the mind has ceased to know anything at all.
Henry came closer.
Stopped.
He crossed himself quietly.
Said nothing.
The bailiff slowly raised his head.
His face was wet with tears — not dried, still living, still coming, not yet become the past. He looked at Henry.
Henry met his eyes.
Stepped one pace closer.
Bowed his head.
"It is —" he began quietly.
His voice gave way — mid-sentence, without warning — and Henry shook his head. Breathed out.
"A most grievous loss," he said.
He looked at the bailiff. At the palm still holding his son's hand, as though releasing it might mean losing him a second time.
"When his mother left us," Vatzek said quietly, "he was braver than I."
He breathed out — unevenly.
"I never told him," he whispered, "how proud I was of him."
Henry looked aside — at the wall, at the shadow — and drew a breath. Then back to Vatzek.
"Allow me to arrange the burial, Jakub."
The bailiff looked at him.
For a long moment. Like a man hearing words from behind glass — real, but distant.
Then he nodded, without a word.
Henry turned.
He walked toward the stables — quickly, directly, like a man who knows that if he stops he may not be able to set himself moving again.
After a while two fresh horses stood ready in the yard.
Hans and Henry swung into the saddles.
They rode out through the gate.
Silence. Only hooves falling soft into the earth.
Meadow. Rock. Gate.
It began to open before they reached it.
As if the castle knew. Or as if someone on the battlements had sharp eyes and a better humour than they'd had all night.
They rode into the lower bailey.
A little way inside the gate stood Godwin.
His face had the look of a man after a night that had taken more than it offered — tired eyes, a grey cast to the skin, his back carrying the slight stoop of a long watch. But through all of it, through all that exhaustion — a genuine smile. Warm as a hearthfire at the end of a long road.
Hans and Henry dismounted.
Godwin crossed to Hans and embraced him — firmly, without reserve — and Hans's face tightened slightly. Godwin noticed at once. He released him. Drew back and looked him over with careful eyes.
"I am glad you are alive and standing," he said.
He looked at Henry.
"Both of you."
"Jitka?“ Hans cut in.
Impatient. His voice level, but beneath it — an undertow that would not wait.
Godwin smiled at him.
"She is well. She is sleeping."
He tilted his head slightly. Looked at Henry, then back at Hans.
"And you —" he said. "You have a son, Hans."
Silence.
Hans stood where he was.
Mouth open. His eyes — still, fixed somewhere on the middle of Godwin's chest, but seeing nothing, because behind them what had just been said was still sounding. Like a bell that has been struck and has not yet fallen quiet.
Henry looked at him. With a quiet smile.
"Hans?"
Hans blinked.
And walked forward.
Quickly — sharply, without hesitation, pain or no pain — up the path. Henry was at his heels at once, Godwin behind him. The guards on watch turned to look after them. The upper bailey was waking to its morning business — voices, movement, the clink of metal — Hans heard none of it. He walked on. On the wooden bridge he was nearly running.
The door to the hall flew open.
Zdislava standing by the table startled. She turned — one hand to her heart — and collected herself in a moment. Bowed.
"Lady Jitka is sleeping, my lord," she said.
She hesitated.
"I will fetch Hata."
She hurried out.
Hans sat down on a chair.
He stared ahead — without a word, without moving — not knowing what to do with his hands or his breath or everything that had been stirring in him since the moment he heard those words, shapeless, without name.
Henry sat down beside him.
He drew his palm slowly across his back.
Hans turned and looked into his eyes.
His expression still caught somewhere between shock and joy. Like a man crossing between two worlds who has not yet had time to arrive in the second.
The sound of a door.
Hata in it.
And in her arms — a small white bundle with a tiny head at one end. So small. So impossibly small — like a thing that cannot be real, and yet is, and yet breathes, and yet is here.
Hans rose slowly.
"My lord," said Hata. "Your son."
Hans watched her without breathing.
The midwife crossed to the table. Behind her helper appeared — and spread clean soft linen across the surface. Hata set the newborn down carefully and began to unwrap the swaddling with practised fingers — slowly, surely, the way a woman does who has done it so many times her hands do it of their own accord, and yet each time with the fullest attention.
And then —
On the table before Hans lay a tiny naked little thing.
Slowly stretching its small arms and legs — each movement entirely its own, new to itself, clean as the first day of the world. As though it were discovering what limbs were, and finding the whole business mildly astonishing.
Hans could not look away.
His gaze still. Without movement. Without breath.
Then he looked at Hata.
"Is everything —" he managed.
The midwife gave a small nod.
Hans leaned down.
Carefully — so carefully, as though taking into his hands something that had not yet had time to take firm hold of the world — he lifted the child. Raised it. Settled it against his arm.
And looked at it.
The newborn returned his gaze.
With calm blue-grey eyes — grave, considering, the eyes of one who does not yet know what to fear or what to hope for. A small frown crossed the tiny brow. As though a thought were moving through it somewhere — what manner of large strange thing is this, looking down with those trembling eyes — and then the thought drifted away again, because what use are thoughts when you are only a few hours old.
Hans turned to Henry.
His eyes were bright.
Henry reached out his palm slowly toward the child. It closed its fingers around his forefinger — firmly, with that extraordinary strength newborns have — and held. For a moment it held. Then let go.
Henry smiled.
"He has your nose, my lord," said Hata, with a smile of her own.
Hans looked at her. Then at his son.
Henry nodded.
"He does indeed."
Hans drew himself up with pride — without knowing he did it, the way a tree straightens after a storm.
"He is my son," he said.
Hata breathed out with relief and smiled.
Henry leaned toward Hans's ear. The corners of his mouth twitching.
"And what a man he is,“ he whispered low. "Like his father."
He drew back with an expression of complete innocence.
Hans looked at him — with a mixture of disbelief, amusement, and pride.
"He is a Capon!" he said, with great dignity.
"Hans."
Godwin's voice behind them — warm, steady.
"We should have him baptised."
Hans nodded.
He turned to Hata and passed the child back carefully — a slow movement, a little reluctant, like returning something you are not yet certain you wish to let go. Hata received it with the sureness of long experience and looked at Godwin.
"If Father would prepare the chapel —"
Then she looked at Hans.
"And the godfather?"
Hans looked at her.
Then turned.
"The godfather will be the lord of Rotstein."
The chapel smelled of wax and old stone.
Hans blinked.
The vaulted ceiling. The ribs of pale stone. The two candles at the altar, their flames barely moving — standing so still they seemed to be listening rather than burning.
And in that light, faces looked down.
The saints behind the altar — painted in pigments long since cracked and faded, and yet in that swaying gold, somehow present. As though the centuries had worn away everything except what mattered. Witnesses. Guardians. A silence with eyes.
Stibor stood to Hans's left. Straight-backed, motionless, his gaze above the altar — the posture of a man who has left his weapons at the door and changed nothing else about himself.
Godwin stood across from them.
He had pulled a plain white shirt over his gambeson, and across his shoulders lay a strip of heavy red cloth — roughly cut, its folds darkening in the candlelight toward the colour of old wine. Hans was fairly certain he had seen it on one of the hangings in the castle hall. It suited him, somehow, better than vestments might have.
And across from Godwin — Henry.
Hans looked at his face.
At the set of it. The steadiness. The eyes of a man who knows the weight of what he is about to say and has decided to be equal to it.
Henry felt the look. He raised his eyes to Hans — briefly, the way two people acknowledge each other across a threshold — and then both turned back to the priest.
Hata stood quietly at Henry's right, the child in her arms. She had the stillness of someone for whom this moment, however sacred, was also simply her work. The newborn lay in white linen — sleeping, or nearly, or simply gathering itself.
Godwin looked at the child.
Only looked, for a moment.
The chapel held its breath.
"Do you renounce Satan?"
The words filled the space entirely — wall to wall, vault to floor — leaving no corner untouched.
Henry opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Godwin's eyes moved to him.
The candle flames swayed.
Henry swallowed.
"I do renounce him," he said.
Godwin nodded, almost imperceptibly.
"And all his works?"
"I do renounce them."
"And all his pomps?"
A pause — brief, but with something in it.
Then, simply:
"I do renounce them."
Hata drew back the linen.
The small body emerged — tiny back, tiny hands opening and closing with no purpose but their own newness, the fingers still learning what they were for. The candlelight settled across the bare skin like something careful.
Hata extended her arms over the font.
Henry's palm came beneath the small back — fingers wide, a cradle without weight — and something in the gesture drew him forward and downward, as though the child's smallness had its own gravity, pulling him toward the stone, toward the earth, toward whatever lies beneath both.
Into the stillness came Godwin's voice.
"Quo nomine vocaris?"
Henry looked at him. Then let his gaze travel — slowly, across the altar, across the flames, across the watching faces of the saints — until it found Hans.
He looked at him.
Only the two of them, and this moment, and the long road that had led to it and the longer road that lay beyond — all of it present in the space between one glance and the next.
Then he turned back to the priest.
"Heinrich."
Godwin drew breath.
"Henricus —" Clear. Steady. Filling the vault.
"— ego te baptizo in nomine Patris —"
Water — cold, clean — ran across the small head. Drops found the temples, the cheeks, and fell into the font.
The newborn opened its mouth.
And the chapel filled.
A sound without restraint, without apology — from lungs that had only today discovered what they were built for. Not distress, exactly. Something more fundamental than distress. A voice announcing itself to the world, and the world had better listen.
Godwin did not blink.
"— et Filii —"
Another pour — the cry rose higher, gathering conviction — and then the third, the words half-swallowed by the noise.
"— et Spiritus Sancti."
He reached for the vessel.
Chrism — fragrant, golden — gathered on his thumb. He leaned over the child, still crying, touched the crown of the small head, and spoke quietly into the sound rather than over it.
"Deus omnipotens — ipse te linit chrismate salutis —"
The crying rose, crested — and then Hata wrapped the child without a word, one smooth motion, a rocking that was older than thought — and slowly, not at once, the crying changed. Softened. Became something that was finding its way toward quiet.
The chapel settled.
Fuller than before.
As though a new voice had taken up residence in its stones, and the stones had made room.
Godwin straightened.
He lit the prepared candle and turned to Henry.
Looked at him.
Reddened eyes. Rope-burned wrists. The armour still on him — all of it, the whole night, worn and not yet put down.
He held out the candle.
The fire in the hearth had burned down to an easy, undemanding warmth — not the fierce thing it had been in the night, only steady now, patient, the contentment of a fire that has done its work and settled into the afterglow of it.
The bed curtains were drawn back a little, and through the gap a bar of morning light lay across the chamber — clean, unhurried, not yet carrying the weight the afternoon would bring.
Jitka stirred.
She shifted the pillow — slowly, carefully, still relearning the map of her own body — and pushed herself up against it. She looked up at the canopy above her. The grey cloth stretched between the bedposts, its folds, the place near the top where the fabric gathered like a brow raised in quiet thought.
She breathed out slowly.
Turned her head.
Through the gap in the curtains — across the chamber, to the window — the sky. White clouds drifted across the blue, each on its own course, all moving the same way.
Jitka watched them.
A knock.
Soft. Twice.
She turned.
The door opened — and Hata's voice rang out, clear and bright as a bell struck in an empty room.
"We carried out a pagan — we bring back a Christian!"
Behind Hata, child in arms, Hans and Henry appeared in the doorway.
Jitka smiled — wide, without reservation.
The midwife came to the bed. She settled Heinrich beside Jitka.
Jitka turned to him. Drew him close — gently, with a tenderness that had something almost reverent in it — and breathed in. She closed her eyes. For a moment, only that.
Then opened them.
Hans was still standing in the doorway.
As though crossing this particular threshold were a different thing from crossing any other — looking at Jitka with an uncertain smile. Then his gaze moved to the child. To the small head at Jitka's side, the closed eyes.
He glanced at Hata.
Took a step toward the bed. Laid his hand lightly on Heinrich's head — gently, almost shyly — and stayed like that for a moment.
"This is Heinrich," he said. Clearly, steadily. "My son and heir."
He turned to the midwife.
Hata gave a small nod. She withdrew toward the door — quiet, without a sound, the movement of a woman who knows when her moment is and when it is not — and the door closed behind her with a soft click.
Henry, who was still holding the lit candle from the baptism, crossed to the table by the window and shielded the flame from the draught with his palm. He set the candle in its holder. The flame shivered, then straightened.
He turned.
Hans leaned carefully toward Jitka.
Kissed her forehead, lightly.
Jitka raised her head.
She looked past Hans to Henry.
A small nod.
Henry took a few hesitant steps toward the bed. The steps of a man coming into a space where he is not certain of his place — and coming anyway, because there is nowhere else to go.
Jitka smiled at him.
"I knew," she said quietly, "that you would both come back to me."
Hans took her hand. His fingers closed around hers — warm, real.
Jitka looked down at the child.
Heinrich's face moved faintly in sleep — his mouth opening a little, then closing, his brow creasing for a moment with some unfathomable infant business.
"Heinrich," she said softly.
The word belonged to her more than to anyone else in the world.
Then she raised her eyes to Hans.
And stopped.
She looked across his face — temples, cheek, the place below the ear — and her brow slowly gathered. Through the quick wash of water, the traces remained: dried blood in the creases, a brownish line drawn from temple to jaw, faded but undeniable.
"Are you hurt?"
Hans gave a slow nod.
"Erik is dead," he said quietly.
Jitka watched him without speaking. Then her gaze moved to Henry.
Henry drew a long breath.
Let it out — slowly, the breath of a man who knows these words, once spoken, cannot be called back.
"The village was attacked in the night."
Jitka pressed her palm to her mouth. Her eyes widened.
Henry dropped his gaze.
Shook his head slowly.
"Lukas —"
He stopped.
He raised his eyes to Jitka — and in hers, calm and braced, was the knowledge that she already knew. Or suspected. Or feared that she suspected.
"Lukas saved Pavel," he said. Each word lifted and set down like something with weight. "But —"
He didn't finish. Shook his head.
Jitka's eyes filled.
Henry drew a long breath. He looked at Hans — briefly, just a moment — and back to Jitka.
"I'll go and tell Godwin," he said.
Silence.
"Today he will have to lead a burial as well."
The water in the basin was lukewarm.
Henry lowered the cloth into it slowly — the linen drank it in at once, sank, grew heavy — and he watched the small ripples spread outward, meet the sides of the bowl, and return, one after another, until the surface stilled and forgot they had ever been.
Behind him — the soft sound of cloth.
Hans was taking off his shirt.
Slowly. Carefully — every movement of the arms costly, every lift of an elbow dearly bought. The shirt — more red and dark than white, as though the white had simply conceded the field — slipped over his head, and he set it quietly on the edge of the table.
Henry stood bent over the basin.
He wrung the cloth — a quiet trickle of water — and turned.
Froze.
Midway through the motion. His hand still closed around the wet linen, his step arrested.
His eyes widened.
They moved across Hans sitting in the chair in only his smallclothes. Across his shoulders. The arms. The chest — where one great dark bruise began somewhere below the right collarbone and showed no intention of ending where it should, only spread further, crossed the ribs, ran down into his side, blue-black and quiet and vast as a field under floodwater. In two places, blood — dried to dark crusts.
Water dripped from the cloth in Henry's hand onto the floor.
One drop. Two. Three.
Hans dropped his gaze.
Henry collected himself.
He crossed to him — three steps, four — and knelt on the wooden floor. Raised his hand. Took Hans carefully by the chin — thumb against his cheek, fingers resting lightly — and lifted his face.
Looked into his eyes.
Then leaned in.
He kissed him — softly, briefly, the kind of touch that does not need to last to leave its mark — and drew back only a little.
With slow movements — as careful and as even as he could make them, with the patience of a man who has one task and means to do it properly — he drew the wet cloth across Hans's face. From the temple. Along the cheek. Below the ear.
He repeated the movement.
Again. And again.
Hans held.
Only now and then — a barely visible tightening along the jaw, a brief suspension of breath — betrayed where the pain had found him. He did not make a sound. He only held.
Henry moved to the other side. The forehead. The brow — where the cloth caught slightly and Hans turned almost imperceptibly and Henry eased the pressure without a word, less, less still.
The water in the basin was colouring.
Pale red. Then darker. Henry rinsed the cloth, wrung it, laid it back — a motion that repeated itself until it ceased to be a thought and became only a hand and cloth and the face it was tending.
At last he set the cloth aside.
He looked at Hans's side.
With the careful, reluctant attention of a man who sees something clearly and would rather not name it, but must.
He raised his eyes to Hans's.
„Now it will hurt,“ he said quietly.
Hans nodded.
Henry laid his fingers against the ribs — gently, but with purpose — and began to feel along them. Slowly. Softly. Hans closed his eyes. His jaw tightened. From beneath his closed lids tears came quickly, unbidden, without sound — running down his face, across the places Henry had only just washed clean.
Henry straightened.
Breathed out — slowly, all the way.
"Nothing broken," he said.
He rose. Crossed to the shelf. His fingers moved across the small jars and linen pouches that smelled of forest and meadow — and he came back with a small clay vessel.
"Comfrey salve," he said quietly.
Hans gave a silent nod.
Henry took salve on his fingers.
And began to work it in.
Slow, circular movements — the salve cold at first, then drawn into the warmth of the skin — and Hans sat without moving, only breathing, only holding, only being.
Henry set the salve aside and reached for the bandaging. He laid it on — carefully, not too tight — and wound it, layered it, tied it.
Then drew back.
Looked into Hans's eyes.
Took his hand into both of his.
Drew his thumb slowly across it — over the back of the hand, the knuckles, the bones of the fingers.
Hans looked at him in silence. Without moving. Only looked.
Then his eyes fell.
"Henry," he said quietly.
He raised his gaze. Looked directly at his face — steadily, with a sorrow that had moved past despair into something quieter. Something that had made its peace.
"My left ear."
A short pause.
He shook his head — slowly, with a kind of surrender.
"It hears nothing."
Henry watched him without speaking.
A moment. Two.
"It will heal too," he said.
He leaned closer — and kissed him on the cheek. Lightly. He didn't draw back at once, only looked at Hans from that nearness where a face ceases to be a sight and becomes a feeling.
He smiled.
A tired smile. Warm.
"And if it doesn't," he said, "I'll spend the rest of my life whispering into the right one."
Hans smiled — a small, slow thing.
He half-closed his eyes — for a moment only that, only the smile — and then leaned forward. Rested his head against Henry's shoulder — heavily, with his full weight — and breathed out. A long, slow release.
Henry's warmth against his temple.
Henry drew his palm slowly through his hair.
Then drew away and looked at him.
"You should rest," he said. "Try to sleep a little."
Hans gave a quiet nod.
Henry drew a breath.
"Before —"
He caught himself. Let the breath out — short, quiet — and his gaze moved away. To the table. The shelf. Anywhere else.
Hans watched him.
"You should rest too, Henry," he said quietly.
Henry looked toward the window.
Beyond it — early afternoon. The light had begun to lean down from its midday height — not fading, only changing its angle, taking on a different weight, the way the day does when it has passed its summit and begun the long descent toward evening.
He shook his head, faintly.
"I still have to —"
He turned to Hans. Smiled — tired, without apology.
"To bed with you, my lord."
The forge door opened.
A blade of daylight slipped in — sharp, clean — and drew itself across the floor and up the opposite wall. Then the door closed, and it was gone.
Henry stopped.
His eyes moved across the room.
Tools on their hooks — hammers, tongs, punches, everything in its place, everything still and waiting. Steel rods leaning against the wall. The forge cold, its ash pale and silent.
The anvil in the centre — dark, certain.
Heart. Altar.
He breathed in quietly.
He crossed to the forge. His fingers touched the ash — cold, fine, the dust of things that were once fire and then were not — and he began to lay the kindling. Shavings. Coal. Flint and steel.
A spark. Two. A third — and then a small flame, hesitant at first, then finding itself, then full.
Henry rose. He stood over the forge and watched the fire wake. Watched it move across the coal, watched the dark mass begin to glow — in one place first, then two, then everywhere at once — and the air above the forge trembled and twisted into its own transparent dance.
He looked into the flames.
For a long time.
Then turned.
He crossed to the wall. Both hands moved along the steel rods — cold, heavy — and he drew out two. One he set beside the anvil. The other he took in the tongs.
And put it into the fire.
He watched the metal.
The way it changed — woke, came alive — the red creeping from the end of the rod upward, moving into orange, into yellow, into the colour of straw in full noon sun. The way iron ceased to be metal and became light.
He carried it to the anvil.
Hammer in hand — heavy, certain, cold at the grip — and struck.
The metal answered with a dull sharp sound that rang through the forge and sank into the walls. Henry struck again. And again. Without a word. Without whistling.
He folded the metal. Reheated it. Struck again.
In the forge there was only that sound.
Godwin looked up at the sky.
Grey and white clouds moved across it — overlapping, passing, some hurrying and some dawdling — like a flock driven before a wind that had no intention of stopping, without order, without destination, only that forward motion which is the one thing fleeing things know how to do.
His gaze came down.
His eyes moved quickly over the black vestments, his fingers brushing a speck from the sleeve. He looked around the yard — at the men moving in small groups, at the faces heavy with a night that had taken more than it gave, at the particular way people carry themselves after such a night, as though the weight of it hasn't yet decided where to settle.
And then — above the forge — a thin thread of smoke.
Straight. Grey. Rising slowly into that crowded sky.
Godwin looked at it for a moment.
Then walked toward it.
He stopped before the door.
His hand on the wood — warm, rough — and he opened it carefully.
Henry was sitting on the bench.
Elbows on his knees. His face in his hands.
Beside him on the bench, a plain forged cross.
Godwin stepped in. Closed the door quietly behind him.
He stood.
Henry raised his head.
Looked at Godwin.
Grief in his eyes. Pain.
Guilt.
He swallowed slowly.
"Henry," Godwin said quietly.
The forge gave a small crack — the fire relinquishing its last coal — and then silence again.
"All is prepared. The rite may begin."
Henry watched him without moving.
Then rose slowly from the bench.
Took the cross.
He looked at it — at that plain line of metal, at the crossing at its centre — and then at Godwin.
And gave a quiet nod.
The funeral procession moved slowly away from the church.
Footsteps in the grass — muffled, soft. One dark shape after another, drawing away toward the village square, toward the manor, toward the life that continued and had to continue.
Pavel stood where he was.
Head bowed. Eyes closed.
The wind moved through his hair.
He drew a quiet breath through his nose.
Raised his head.
Opened his eyes.
The procession was moving away — and it seemed to hold all of Klokotsch within it. Women with children pressed to their sides. Old men walking slowly with their eyes on the ground. The garrison soldiers — straight-backed but quiet, with a quietness that does not belong to soldiers but belongs to people. And at the head — Godwin. Vatzek. Henry. Hans.
Pavel watched them go.
He followed the bailiff's back — hunched, smaller than usual, as though grief had taken up the space that uprightness once occupied — and then his gaze moved away. To the tree at the edge of the churchyard. To the sky.
Then his eyes fell.
Down. To the earth. To four fresh graves in a row — the soil still dark, still damp, still new to what it held — and to the crosses above them. Three of wood. One of iron.
He stopped before it.
The fingers gripping his cap — curled, clenched — tightened further. His knuckles went white.
His lips pressed together.
A quiet, ugly grief moved across his whole face and left it different from what it had been.
His eyes grew bright.
He breathed in.
And breathed out — unevenly, in pieces, the kind of breath that falls apart before it has fully left the throat.
A hot tear ran down his cheek.
Pavel shook his head.
Slowly. Once.
"You never failed me," he whispered.
His voice — raw, barely there.
"Never."
A trembling breath out.
Another tear, not waiting for permission. The first drop fell into the grass at his feet. Then a second.
Pavel bowed his head.
He stood over the grave and looked at the earth and the cross and the grass around it.
The wind passed again.
Through his hair.
Then —
Warmth on his face.
Sudden, quiet, real. A shaft of light — drawn through a gap in the grey clouds like a thread pulled through the eye of a needle — and it fell across him.
Warm. Gentle.
Pavel stood still.
A moment.
And it was gone.
The clouds closed.
Pavel raised his eyes to the sky.
Only clouds. Only that slow movement.
Passing and yet, in its way, permanent.
He stood for a while.
Then drew a breath through his nose.
Wiped his eyes with his sleeve and breathed out. Steadier this time. From the full depth of his chest.
Crossed himself.
And walked after the procession.
The hearth muttered and whispered to itself.
The firelight moved across the chamber slowly, as though the fire too was tired and swayed and trembled only from long habit.
Hans sat on the bed, his back against the headboard.
The quilt drawn to his waist. His hands loose in his lap. His eyes following Henry with unfocused attention — his thoughts only half in the room — watching him stand at the chest and undress with the movements of someone who has run out of reserves and is now drawing on something beneath them.
"We should help those poor souls as soon as we are able," he said, half to himself.
Henry stilled.
Hans gave a quiet nod toward the window. "Those who lost people. Those who lost a roof."
Henry's hands moved again. The doublet from his back, from his shoulder, set aside.
"You're right," he said. "Vatzek has already raised it."
He let out a long breath.
"I think the work — and the duty — are what hold him upright now. What keep him going."
Hans gave a quiet nod.
Henry's fingers found the laces of his shirt.
The shirt over his head.
On bare skin — firelight. It moved across his back, his shoulders, the scar below the shoulder blade. It played among the shadows of muscle, shifting with every breath.
„Ought you not send a messenger to Rattay?" Henry said, into the cloth of the shirt.
He glanced back over his shoulder at Hans.
"And to Kunstadt."
Hans stopped. His brow rose.
"Of course," he said. "And to Prague. Come morning."
He dropped his gaze.
"It’s... only now— only now does it begin to come home to me."
Henry set the shirt over the back of the chair.
Hans raised his eyes to him.
"Henry." His voice — quiet, somewhere inward.
Henry turned. His fingers still working slowly at the laces of his hose.
Hans looked into his eyes.
"In Rattay —" he began.
He stopped. Drew a breath. Let it go.
"Hanush and Zizka." A short pause. "They would have you provoke von Bergow. Keep him occupied. Draw him off."
Henry looked at him in silence.
The hose dropped to his ankle.
"I know," he said.
Hans frowned.
"How?"
Henry bent, pulled his foot free.
"Father told me it was likely what they intended."
Hans straightened.
"Radzig?" he breathed.
Henry nodded.
"He was here." A brief pause, the second leg of the hose. "A few days ago." It fell to his ankle. "He told me what is afoot in Moravia."
Hans's eyes moved slowly across the chamber — across the walls, across the dance of shadows, across the dark window behind which the night lay waiting — and came back to Henry.
"So you know," he said quietly.
Henry stepped out of his smallclothes.
Barefoot, bare-skinned, he padded the floor — the wood warm under his feet — and slipped beneath the quilt. Into Hans's warmth. Bare skin against bare skin.
His lips found Hans's neck, lightly.
"And what did you tell them?"
Hans turned to him. Lifted a shoulder.
"That it is your decision to make.“
Henry drew a breath.
He looked into his eyes — in silence, for a moment — and then, quietly:
"Ours, Jendo.“
Hans leaned toward him.
He kissed him — simply, briefly, like any other kiss and yet not — and then looked up at the ceiling. At the beams, at the shadows passing back and forth across them like thoughts with nowhere to be.
"It seems to me," he said, tiredly, "that every time we climb out of one pile of shit —" He paused. "— there are two fresh buckets waiting just around the corner."
Henry gave a quiet snort.
He turned. Pressed his lips to Hans's shoulder — to the warm, living skin — and took his hand. Laced his fingers through his. Lay like that for a while.
The flames in the hearth went on lazily feeding on the log.
"This valley has already paid a high enough price," he said after a moment.
Silence.
"And we have rather different concerns on our hands now."
Hans gave a thoughtful nod. Still looking at the ceiling.
His chest stilled in the middle of a breath.
"And what if —"
His eyes still on the beams.
A breath out.
He turned to Henry.
In his eyes — small bright points of light. One corner of his mouth barely lifted.
"What if word were to spread," he said, and paused, letting the thought find its shape, "that von Bergow's man — von Bergow's own man — had committed murder. Attacked an estate."
His eyes searched Henry's face.
"And laid hands on a nobleman. Two,“ he added. A short pause, in which the smile grew somewhat. "In league with the devil."
Henry looked at him.
The way a man turns a thought over on all its sides — front, back, edge — and searches for where it holds and where it gives.
He shook his head slightly.
"Lord Otto will deny it."
Hans's eyes narrowed.
The corners of his mouth lifted a little.
Without a word he pushed back the quilt. Crossed the chamber bare-skinned and spent a moment going through the things on the table. Fingers leafing, searching.
Then he turned.
In his hand — the written page from Erik's chest. Folded, the corners slightly creased.
"Or perhaps he won't."
He set the paper carefully back. Returned to the bed and slipped under the quilt.
Henry held him carefully.
Warmth. Weight. Breath.
"Very well, then," he said quietly.
He drew a breath.
"If only for Hynek's sake."
Fires.
Dark. Night.
And fires everywhere.
Small ones, large ones, burning well and burning poorly — pressing together and drawing apart, flickering and standing steady, as though each had its own temperament and its own opinion about this particular night.
From above — from the city walls where the sentries stood and measured the flood with their eyes — it would have looked like the night sky brought down to earth. Heaven inverted. Heaven alive, reeking of timber and smoke and sweat and horse and boiled meat and shit — the smell of thousands of people eating and sleeping and waiting and not sleeping and sleeping and waiting.
And over everything — a roar.
Not noise. A roar.
The kind of sound that does not come from one throat or ten or a hundred but from thousands at once — laughter, talk, coughing, retching, the creak of wheels, the knock of hammers, a distant song, a nearer curse — all of it running together, blending, building into a single unbroken presence, heavy and alive as the breathing of a sleeping giant.
And Znaim held.
And waited.
Heavy drops fell into the grass, into the mud at the foot of the wall.
One. Two. More.
Then a stream.
A soldier chewing a piece of bread raised his head and turned his dirty face toward the top of the wall. He blinked. Let his eyes travel along the battlements above him — across the stone edge of the crenellations, across the dark sky behind them.
High on the wall stood Dry Devil.
Legs planted wide. One hand holding a wineskin to his lips. The other hand occupied with his manhood.
The empty wineskin hit the stone with a soft slap.
A voice came down from the wall.
Rough and rattling, the sound of iron-shod wheels grinding over gravel.
"Well then, you ginger cunt?! Ay?!"
Several heads below turned toward the battlements — slowly, with surprise, then with rather less of it.
Hynek’s lips pulled back into a humourless grin.
He ran his tongue slowly across his teeth.
Looked down into that flood spread across the land below like mould across bread.
"Come and take me then!" he roared into the night. "If you've got the balls for it!"
⭐️
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