and carrying me across the void, my direction unknown, without focus or purpose. I found myself drifting, hanging in the blackness with the sounds of lost souls echoing around me. I wavered in and out of consciousness, without sense of direction
“Something I have to do…” I heard a voice say, then recognised it as my own. I watched my out-flung hand; blue fox-fire was dancing from my fingertips. “…have to focus.”
Groaning with effort, I pulled myself through the emptiness, searching for a way out. Shadows drifted near me, edging away into the blackness as soon as I faced them. Suddenly space and gravity returned and I found myself falling forwards in complete darkness onto a hard stone floor. I remember the cool of the hard paving, the rough texture under my cheek, just before I passed out.
The square was large and open, dominated by the huge church at one end. It looked like a medieval pageant, except that the horses, the coaches and the people standing around watching were beyond what anyone would wear outside of a film set. The buildings gave the lie to that, though. These were half-timbered, but clean, with bleached wood beams and whitewashed plaster. The bells in the campanile were tolling and calling the faithful to prayer, but those answering the call weren’t just any faithful. It was a procession, the wealthy of the city gathering to make their peace with God. People were held back by ranks of men, while those in open-topped coaches and on horseback progressed slowly past. I looked around, finding the architecture uncharacteristically grand and flamboyant, at odds with my impression of the time.
At that moment I heard horsemen coming into the square – not the gentle walk of horses but an urgent clatter of hard-shod hooves on the cobbles. There was a change of mood in the crowd, a murmur that grew into alarm as the crowd scattered before mounted men. They pushed into the square – between fifty and a hundred hard men with lined faces and grizzled beards, their mouths set hard and eyes narrowed. Their weapons were undrawn, shields slung from saddles and swords sheathed, but the impression that this could suddenly change and turn into a massacre was in the forefront of my mind. Is that what I was here to witness? A slaughter?
The arrogance of the wealthy came to the fore as they turned to see these interlopers, watching them as one might watch a spectacle or a sporting event. Footmen moved in to seal the gap between the horsemen and their patrons. They had spears raised in defiance and their ranks were well-disciplined, but they might as well have stood before a tidal wave. The horsemen rode easily through them, the screams of the fallen echoing in the square, as spears were swept aside by swords that were suddenly bared, and axes hefted in battle-scarred hands. The footmen were not prepared for a mounted assault and either stood aside or were run down by the horses. Anguished cries came from the men, as unease spread through the wealthy. Suddenly their assurance was undermined, but they had nowhere to go.
The mounted men pushed into the open square in loose formation, their horses disciplined, their movements ordered. They halted twenty feet from the procession, their horses champing, shaking their heads, excited at the prospect of action. They edged into a long row facing the nobles, and halted. Questions were called from the coaches, but the line of horsemen remained tight; the silence of grim-faced men only broken by the whinny of the horses or the cries of the trampled footmen as they were carried away behind them. The crowd was silent, expectant and waiting. No one knew what would happen. They only knew they would be witnesses.
Behind the line of horsemen, a man dismounted. He was big, broad-shouldered, his face hard and his muscles lean. He carried no sword or axe, but without a word the silent horsemen parted before him, edging sideways as if his mere presence were enough to move them. He walked through the line of men and across the space between the procession and the line of horsemen.
As he approached, a footman leapt down from a carriage to protect his charges, and then stopped. The big man looked at the servant and then looked back at the line of horsemen. Along the line were several mounted archers. Bows ready, arrows nocked, they stood ready to draw, eyes focused on the footman.