Further north along the west bank of the Svitava river a dirty barge pulled by a large knackered horse ground alongside a rotting pier pilled high with oakum and rags. Hidden from the men waiting in the rotting buildings, the watchman slouched down the creaking planks and maneuvered the barge close to a hitch. He cautiously looked up and down the river before pulling the tarpaulin aside and beckoning to the rows of heavily armed soldiers sitting on the benches that ran all along the sides.

Following their Zugsfuhrer, the soldiers gingerly climbed out of the barge, stumbled along the rotting pier and assembled within one of the large buildings next to the lane. Sentries were quickly posted at each of the obvious openings in the building, but this was only a precaution against accidental discovery, not an attack.

"You have your orders, Sergeant," the civilian dressed in a black frock coat and matching fur hat asked of the NCO, but it was not a question. "You will wait here until we are sure that the Hussite meeting is in progress, then you will surround the building with your men and capture all the traitors. It is vitally important that you kill or capture the woman Novotna. She is the ringleader of this group and the one responsible for all the recent sabotage. Make sure she does not escape".

With a grunt, the Zugsfuhrer acknowledged the instructions while at the same time making it clear that he disliked being under the orders of a civilian, even one of rank in the Staat Polizei. But the police officer chose to ignore the implied insult and moved away to one of the windows. "Have you seen her yet?" he asked the second man, who had been waiting and watching the lane.

"These Hussite rabble are very cautious," the second man responded, spitting on the floor. "Our informers were certain that the saboteurs would meet here today, right over there," he pointed at the building opposite, across the narrow lane, "and that Novotna would be speaking to them. But so far we have seen nothing, and we have been here all night".

The taller officer chewed on his fingernail and kept his reply to himself. He did not enjoy being in this part of Zabrdovic, even protected by a half company of infantry, but the information on which they were acting came from an impeccable source and the opportunity to catch a major Hussite leader, such as Katerina Novotna, was too important to be missed.

His thinking was interrupted by the sounds of a man walking along the lane. This new arrival appeared to be taking a lot of precautions, and so immediately attracted the attention of the watchers. He paused for a moment beside the meeting house, then stooped down and quickly vanished through a low archway that led to an inner courtyard.

"Did he see us?" hissed the senior officer.

"It is very unlikely," he was told, "but they much have lookouts so we cannot move until we are sure they are all inside".

The new arrival slipped into the open courtyard that occupied the center of the building in which the suspected meeting was taking place. He whistled softly before exposing himself, and then, on receiving the go-ahead, ducked into an even smaller opening in one wall. No lights guided his way along a totally dark passage, and if he had not been thoroughly familiar with the position of every rusty nail sticking out of the various batons of wood along the corridor, he would not have made his journey undamaged.

He was checked once more by a small dwarf of a man waiting at the end of the corridor and a wickedly sharp knife was pressed to his throat until his identity was fully confirmed. "Come in brother," a voice from inside the room said in the Czech language, and he was finally admitted to the gathering.

"What is happening?" he was immediately asked.

As his eyes accustomed themselves to the light coming from a single candle placed on the floor of a large room, he saw that sitting around the flame were about 10 men and one woman. She was a redhead and even in this dim light her eyes flashed with an extraordinary brilliance. The newcomer could see little of her body, which was covered by a peasant shawl against the damp drafts, but she appeared to be about 30 years of age and under much better circumstances, quite attractive.

"It's a bad business," the newcomer reported, taking a seat in the circle and helping himself to a knedilky dumpling from the pile in the bowl, "Devet has not been seen in two days, his family have no idea where he is and Ctmact says he bought a horse from him last week using gold! Kolik je hodin? - What time is it?".

"Almost dusk," was the reply.

"About two hours ago a half company of soldiers was seen leaving the Desaty barracks looking particularly serious. We lost track of them at the river, but they could be coming here. We should end this meeting soon and scatter out of the city".

"That would be wise," grunted one of the bigger men sitting on the floor, "what have you to report, Katerina?".

The woman spoke for the first time. Her voice and accent were not, however, in keeping with the dialects spoken by the rest of the gathering. She was clearly an aristocrat, or had lived most of her life with them. Her voice held a low, burning intensity, and she spoke with passion. "Organizers will be coming from Prague next week. They will speak to us first and then help us organize our own 'Union of Labor' amongst the workers in these textile mills along river. Grunewald's place, right next door, will be first and we strike as soon as we are strong enough and have collected enough followers.

"Our people work twelve hours a day at the rate of one Heller (penny? - ed.) per hour, and even this labor is mortgaged to the owners of the tommy-shops. When will this end? Where and when can we begin to fight back, and using what weapons? Knives against rifles, stones against bullets? That is crazy. Our only weapon, and the only one to which the mill owners will listen is our labor. Take that away from them, and their mills will fail, no cloth will leave this place and their profits will wither and die along with the pernicious system that creates them.

"My native village is surrounded by woods and fields, here I live like an animal trapped in a filthy sewer. So why am I, and the thousands of others like me, living here in this degradation? The Capitalists have supplanted the dignity of our labor with the misery of service to their machines. Once, my brother was an artisan who owned his own loom and made fine cloth in his cottage under the trees, now he is a watcher; every day, 12 hours a day, he watches a machine and if he fails to stay alert he loses a finger in the flying shuttles.

"If our society, which was built and grew on the backs of its laborers, is not to sink lower and lower into debt and despair, while the Capitalists wallow in their immense wealth, we must act now, before it is too late. We must take back our labor and deny it to those who will not pay us a living wage.

"The organizers from Prague will show us how. With proper advice we will unite the men, women and children who are now slaves, and make them into free citizens once more. Once united, we will march away from these manufactories and leave their enslaving machines idle and without their watchers. Brothers, the Nobility of France, less than 70 years ago, were humbled and thrown down by men less organized and less determined than we are now. We will sink no lower. We will strike. We will strike!".

"Sister, lower your voice," one of the men said urgently as Katerina Novotna's volume had risen with her passion. "We are all with you and we will all join you in making this possible. Without labor, the mills will fail and we will triumph against the Capitalists and the Germans who support them. Already we are organized in the tenements, but it is the skilled workers who rule them there, and without their blessing I fear that few will willingly walk away from a paying job".

At this statement of fact there was a general murmur of agreement. Few in the tenements would support a Hussite rebellion, or even a strike of labor, without the explicit agreement of the skilled workers who ruled the vstup zakazan, and the tommy-shop owners who fed them.

But at that moment a loud scream was heard from the corridor and the dwarf with the knife rushed in. "Soldiers!" he yelled and scuttled off towards a trapdoor in the floor.

Katerina Novotna kicked over the candle and dived after the dwarf, but some instinct warned her before it was too late. The knife flashed past her throat, missing her skin by inches and ripping the shawl from her shoulders. "Traitor," she hissed as she kicked out with her boot, and grunted with satisfaction as her foot landed on a soft part of the one who had betrayed them.

Shots were now coming from the exterior corridor, where the first of the invaders were being impaled on the rusty nails. Katerina turned away from the trapdoor and flung herself in the direction of the back corner of the room where, hidden in the deep shadows, was a step ladder propped against the wall. In two bounds she was up the ladder and onto a beam, high in the ceiling.

From there she inched carefully to a concealed opening in the false wall, just as the first of the soldiers burst into the room below and started jabbing their bayonets at the disorganized Hussite Czechs. Screams, curses and the occasional flash as a rifle was fired created total confusion and gave her enough time to rip a panel out of the wall and crawl into the space beyond.

Ignoring her strong instinct to slip down the tight space between the outer and inner wall, Katerina climbed, up and across to a glimmer of light she could see above her. This light proved to be coming from a gap in the roof left by a missing tile, and she broke all the skin on her fingers as she tore away at the surrounding tiles, making the opening big enough for her to crawl through.

Out on the roof the edge of the sun was just touching the horizon beyond the distant hills of Brno, but the Hussite leader had no time to admire it's beauty. She scrambled across the roof southwards, in the opposite direction to the noise coming from the lane below. She could hear cries in German coming from the Sergeant to his men, and she froze as one voice called out, "Have you got her? Is the woman Novotna taken?"

They knew who she was and that she had been at the meeting. There was a serious traitor in their ranks, and she swore that one day she would find out who it was and take her revenge. But for now, all her efforts were directed towards her escape.

At the edge of the building were a series of ledges onto which bales of wool had once been raised and lowered when this building had been a warehouse close to the river. Now all the pulleys and winches were rotten and decayed, but there was enough strength left in one of them to lower Katerina to the ground, where, for a moment she crouched and listened.

Considerable noise was still coming from the old warehouse and now it looked as if a fire had started in the rubbish by the courtyard. At the far corner, the lane was packed with armed men, and, to her horror, she saw that a grim lines of soldiers were purposefully spreading out along the riverbank and moving steadily across the open space between her and safety.

The trap had been sprung, and now the net was being drawn tighter and tighter. Clearly the raid had been carefully planned, and the soldiers inside the warehouse had no other function than to flush out the plotters into the arms of the men stationed outside. There would be no escape to the wharves and piers along the river, or across the open wasteland next to it. There was only one way to go, seemingly straight into danger; the walled textile mill next door, the one owned by her arch enemy - Otto Grunewald.

Time was short, so she did not hesitate. Creeping at first, and then running at top speed, she covered the distance along the back wall of the warehouse in a few seconds, and paused only to catch her breath and check if she was being followed. The noise behind her was growing louder, and she only had a few seconds left before she would be discovered.

Next to the mill wall was a pile of rubbish and debris cause by the collapse of an old storage shed. Without waiting Katerina flung herself up the sloping stacks of wood that had once been a wooden wall, across a dangerous pile of beams and slates and the hurled herself at the sharp glass that was embedded into cement along the top of the brick, mill wall. Her hands caught on what had once been an old bottle, and he pulled herself up and over the top, sobbing with the pain of her lacerated hands.

Within an instant she was on the ground inside the mill, and the chasing soldiers could be heard closing in on the other side. It was growing dark, and soon the lamp lighters would be coming round the outside of the mill lighting the gas fixtures that Grunewald had installed to prevent thieves from gaining an un-noticed access.

To anyone less familiar with modern industry, it would have felt like the mill was groaning, or at least emitting a low, deep rumble of constant noise, but Katerina knew enough to realize that the sound she heard was coming from the hundreds of power looms inside, that, in times of good business, never stopped moving.

These were not the best of economic times, so only one twelve hour shift of work took place each day, and in winter that shift usually ended with the onset of total darkness. Why pay for light, if it was not necessary? Soon the workers would be leaving, and Katerina hoped to slip out amongst them and vanish into the alleyways of the tenements beyond.

She moved around the long side of the mill, passed the tall, two story high windows and edged slowly to the point where she could see the main gate. The front courtyard was large, paved in cobbles and now bathed in bright gas light. It would be very hard to try and get across such an open space without being seen by the guards at the gate, or by the horse handlers outside the stables that lined one side of the yard.

Even as she watched, her situation got worse. Under the command of a Korporal a detachment of soldiers arrived at the main gate, spoke with the mill guards, and some of them were admitted into the courtyard. The rest remained outside and began patrolling the open space beyond the gates and in the direction of the tenements. It looked as if the trap was being drawn tighter and tighter.

While she wrapped a rag around her bleeding hands, Katerina considered her options, none good. But she did not have to think long. One of the double stable doors almost behind her crashed open and a groom led out a fine carriage equipped with a set of matched horses. These he led almost directly towards her, and she was just about to scurry away, when she saw that visitors to the mill were about to leave, and this was the way they were going.

Almost without thinking about the consequences, she dived between the wheels of the carriage, grabbed one of the front springs with her damaged hands and swung her feet onto the rear spring that held up the rear axle. She knew she could not hold this position long, her strength was draining fast, but perhaps she could remain out of sight under the carriage, for just long enough to get out of the gates.

It seemed like an eternity of pain before the visitors leaving the mill said their good-byes, boarded the coach, collected their whip-man and other servants and set off out of the gates. Although the carriage was briefly stopped, the soldiers did not prevent it from leaving, and Katerina was only a few hundred yards from safety when ... she fainted from the shock and loss of blood.

With a crash, she let go of the carriage springs, and fell into the dirt.