Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.
Two Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. Ultimately, they are hunted down by a group of old, armed home-guardists.
Upon returning home from an official party, a Czech government official and his wife discover it bugged and surveilled by mysterious figures, driving them to paranoia and intensifying their discontents with one another.
