Chapter 1 : The Confessions of Hans Capon

It had been a long hard ride all day on their diplomatic mission to the League of Lords members Otto of Bergow and Heinrich of Rosenberg, to see if they were willing to renounce their support for Sigismund and his hordes of marauding Cumans.

Convincing Otto of Bergow had been a surprisingly easy matter with Henry just sweet-talking him into returning to the right side of the fence and Hans had the distinct feeling that Otto’s support for Sigismund had been more out of fear of the other rebel Lords than any sort of conviction. Just a day and a half of negotiations had yielded a writ that pledged Otto’s renewed fealty to King Wenceslas IV.

The Rosenberg’s however would perhaps be a harder task, if nothing else because Henry had had prior dealings with them, dealings that had apparently put one of their knights six feet under somewhere near Sasau. There were just too many people who didn’t know that crossing Henry was a deadly endeavour, a lesson that no less than five Bandits and three Cumans had learned during the day.

His musings were interrupted by a barking dog from a nearby village. No doubt someone was attempting to use the cover of the night to rearrange the ownership of some possessions, which the canine was loudly objecting to. He stirred the fire with a stick to keep it alive while sitting watch.

Henry had insisted they made camp here, close to a village, but not close enough to be immediately noticed by the locals. According to him that was the least likely place in which they would run into bandits or marauding Cumans.

“My Lord, if I may?”

Hans Capon looked up from his place beside the campfire to see Nightingale, the head of the town watch, approach him with a look that left no doubt that the man had some questions to ask.

“Sit, Jaroslav, and ask what’s on your mind.”

Jaroslav, or Nightingale as he was called by anyone for no readily apparent reason, took the seat Hans had indicated and the young Lord could see that one of the most senior men on the guard was quite obviously puzzled about something. Given the day’s events on their way toward Krumlov Castle, he had a fairly good idea what kind of question would be coming.

“Let me guess,” he pre-empted the older man’s question. “You are wondering why I let Henry fight the Bandits alone and held you all back.”

“Indeed, my Lord. I don’t mean this as a criticism of you, I merely wonder. I’m not sure Sir Radzig would take it kindly if Henry was injured and we hadn’t done anything to help him.”

Lord Capon let out a small laugh, trying not to wake up the other men, including aforementioned Henry, or Henry Kobyla of Skalitz as of the latest announcement, when Sir Radzig had finally managed to publicly acknowledge Henry as his son.

“Don’t you worry, Jaroslav. I know what I’m doing. Had I let you intervene, there is a good chance you or one of your men would have been injured or would even be dead now. And besides, any of us faffing about in the fight would have been more of a hindrance than of any help.”

“Hard to image that this is the same fresh-faced kid who came in half-dead on a cart and went on his first ever patrol with me.”

“Don’t remind me of that day,” Hans Capon replied to the man’s wistful musings. For added effect he held and moved his chin as if he had just taken a right hook. Speaking to any other town guard this would have been the end of the matter, after all he was supposed to become their Lord in god-knows-what time in the future. But the head of the town guard was the closest beside Henry he had to a friend, Jaroslav being the guard who had more than once helped him to escape Lord Hanush’s strict surveillance in his childhood.

“Did you know he beat the crap out of me three times that day? And two times he did it literally.”

Hans had to grin at Nightingale’s open-mouthed surprise.

“It was Henry you brawled with? I had heard rumours that you got yourself into a fight that night, but I never found out with whom.”

“It started early that day,” Hans begun his recollection. “I went out to ask Captain Bernard for permission to use the archery range. My hand had gotten heavy from when that horse had thrown me off. And I saw him training with Henry. I got permission and perhaps half an hour later, Bernard and Henry showed up at the range too, for training.”

“Let me guess, my Lord. You challenged him and lost?”

Hans could clearly hear the well, but not entirely, hidden sarcasm in Jaroslav’s question.

“You know me too well”, Hans confirmed. “So after he had embarrassed me on the archery range I challenged him to a revenge – a sword fight in the arena. Well, that didn’t end well either, at least not for me. For someone who had had exactly one lesson, he was surprisingly good and cut me up something fierce.”

“I hope you weren’t injured too badly?”

“Obviously not, I’m still here after all,” the younger man answered with a chuckle. “But my ego was badly dented, so I decided to drown my woes in the tavern in the evening while you two were patrolling the town.”

“I wonder what he did all day,” Jaroslav mentioned. “He was supposed to meet me in the afternoon and didn’t show up until four o’clock.”

“Well, I do know. He went back to Bernard for more training. By the time I left for the tavern at three in the afternoon, they were still at it, and Captain Bernard looked a lot more second-hand than Henry did. Seeing what he had learned in a single day should have made it clear that I better not get on his wrong side, but alas, I’m not good at thinking when I have 8 tankards of ale sloshing around in my head.”

“I take it, that was the third loss of the day.”

Instead of being offended by Jaroslav’s barely suppressed laughter, Hans couldn’t help but laugh too.

“There was I, three sheets to the wind already,” he explained in between laughing about himself. “I don’t think the fight lasted much longer than two minutes. He beat the raw crap out of me. And then Hanush caught us and ripped us a new one.”

“I would never have thought you’d tell that story to anyone, ever.”

Both Hans and Jaroslav looked up to see where the obviously amused reply had come from.

“We didn’t mean to wake you, my Lord,” Nightingale stuttered, but Henry waved away any unnecessarily forthcoming attempt at an apology.

“It would have been my shift in a few minutes anyway, and Nightingale, don’t even start to get into the habit of calling me Lord. I don’t give a damn about the announcement. I’m still Henry the blacksmith for all it’s worth.”

“The blacksmith who is Bailiff of Pribyslavitz, Master huntsman in Talmberg and has single-handedly slain more Bandits and Cumans than the entire garrison of Rattay. Sure, totally normal blacksmith.”

Henry ignored Hans’ sarcastic reply and helped himself to a swig of wine from his waterskin.

“Well, you certainly don’t look like a Lord,” Hans probed further. “Not in that tatty armour you don’t.”

“That’s a point of it,” Henry explained. “When you toil about in that expensive tin shit of yours they can hear the rattle from three miles out. You could never jump on a waggon in that and on a sunny day they can see the glimmer from two villages away.”

Normally Henry would be careful about speaking this forthrightly with Hans lest he damaged his friend’s future authority, but he knew that Nightingale wasn’t the garden variety guardsman in relation to the future Lord of Rattay, and the younger guardsmen were all sound asleep.

“I see your point,” Hans conceded. “But you have to admit it doesn’t look half as protective as mine or even Jaroslav’s.”

“That’s because it isn’t. It’s enough to stop a cheap arrow or two, but a bandit with an axe can become a problem quite quickly. But I don’t rely on defence.”

He heard both Hans and Jaroslav snicker about his dead-pan statement.

“Well, so much is obvious,” Hans agreed. “You’ve killed what – three hundred of them? And if the rumours are true, the Ledechko blacksmith and your armoursmith in Pribyslavitz both became quite wealthy men in the process.”

“I don’t keep an exact count, but I suspect two hundred fifty bandits and about a hundred Cumans, not counting those we killed in the large battles. And of course I’m not leaving any good kit lying around when I’m done with them. Sold most of the stuff to the traders in Ledechko and later in Pribyslavitz. Mind you, they had a lot of repairing to do before selling it on.”

Hans couldn’t help but laugh. “I suspect most of your kit are ‘kind’ donations then?”