Eifelheim (38 page)

Manfred’s
palefridus
was raven-black and speckled over with white dots, as if lately bathed with soap. Its thick mane was parted on the left side of its neck, and its headgear splendidly decorated with the Hochwald colors. Hardly had Manfred mounted than it reared from joy, delighted at its master’s weight in its saddle. Two of Manfred’s hounds came running—behind the horse, ahead of it, behind it once more—leaping with excitement. They were trackers and they thought that this would be a hunt.

Manfred had covered his armor with a surcoat bearing his arms. His helm, slung behind his saddle for the journey, shimmered in the sunlight. His sword hilt was covered with gold. Around his neck he wore a strap with a horn shaped like a griffin’s talon that measured nearly half an arm-length. Its thicker end flared into a bell and, where it tapered toward the tip, the device was decorated with pure gold and held in place with deerskin thongs. It was
lustrous, like a precious stone, and when he blew on it, “it sounded better than all the echoes in the world.”

His body servant was less splendidly mounted and, for saddle, he used an old feedbag. Over his right shoulder he carried the Herr’s travel-bag, packed with the sundries of camp, and over his left, his lord’s shield, slung in piggyback fashion. With the quiver also in his right hand and the spear tucked under the shield, he seemed more fearsomely armed than the man he served.

“It pleases,” Manfred said to Dietrich, who stood beside the black horse in the trampled muck of dirt and melting snow. “The Duke had called on me for six-and-a-half men, and I dislike choosing which to send home early. They maneuver for the privilege, y’know, but never openly. Whoever receives the grace earns the enmity of his peers, and more often than not overstays his obligation rather than be thought cowardly. Now I can add the Duke’s half-man to the Markgraf’s half-man and so obtain a whole one.” He threw his head back and laughed, and Dietrich mumbled some response. Manfred cocked an eye at him.

“You think a jest unseemly? What else might a man do marching toward possible death?”

“It is no light matter,” Dietrich answered him.

Manfred slapped his gauntlets against the palm of his left hand. “Well, I’ll pray my penance afterward, as a soldier must. Dietrich, much as I would tend my manor in peace, peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war. I swore an oath to protect the defenseless and punish peace-breakers, and that includes peace-breaking Herrenfolk. You priests say to forgive your enemy, and that is well, or revenge follows revenge until eternity. But between a man who will stop at nothing and one who will hesitate at anything, the advantage is generally to the former. The pagans had right, too. It is a false peace to be overforgiving. Your enemy may read forbearance as weakness and so be drawn to strike.”

“And how do you determine the question?” Dietrich asked.

Manfred grinned. “Why, that I should fight my enemy—but fairly.” He twisted in his saddle to see whether his corps was yet assembled. “Ho! Eugen, to the fore!” The junker, astride a white Wallachian, galloped past the cheering assembly with the Hochwald banner planted in his stirrup.

Kunigund ran to Eugen’s horse and, having grabbed the check reins, cried, “Promise me you’ll come back! Promise!” Eugen begged a kerchief from the girl to wear as a favor. This, he tucked in his girdle, declaring that it would keep him from harm. Kunigund beseeched her father. “Keep him safe, Father! You won’t let anyone harm him!”

Manfred leaned to touch Kunigund on either cheek. “As safe as my arm and his honor permit, sweetling, but all lies in God’s hands. Pray for him, Gundl, and for me.”

His daughter ran to the chapel before any could see her weep. Manfred sighed after her. “She listens overmuch to the minnesingers, and holds all farewells as in the romances. If I should not return,” he added, but the sentence dangled. Then, more quietly, “She is my life. I mean for Eugen to wed her, once he has won his spurs, and that he should protect Hochwald in her name; but should he … Should neither of us return … If that befalls, see that she weds well.” He turned his gaze on Dietrich. “I entrust her to you.”

“But, the Markgraf …”

“Graf Friedrich would keep her unwed, the longer to milk my land for his own pocket.” His face clouded. “Had the boy lived, and Anna with him … Ach! There’d be none to gainsay that woman were
she
my burgvogt!
There
was a wife worthy of a man! Half of me died when I heard the midwife’s wail. These past years have been empty.”

“Is that why you went off to the French wars?” Dietrich asked. “To fill them?”

Manfred stiffened. “Mind your tongue, priest.” He yanked on the bridle reins but, looking up, checked his turn. “Ho! What have we here?”

A clamor had gone up from the waiting knights and their attendants. Some in the encampment were pointing
to the sky and cheering. Others shrieked in terror as five Krenken in flying harnesses settled like fallen leaves from the sky onto the horse-pawed field. They carried handheld
pots de fer
strapped round their middles and long, slim tubes slung over their shoulders. Dietrich recognized Hans and Gottfried—and thought it passing strange that the Krenken had once seemed so alike to him.

Wails rose from those who, having come from remote holdings, had not yet seen a Krenk. A camp-follower from Hinterwaldkopf waved in the air a reliquary she wore round her neck. Others slipped off with fearful backward glances. Franzl Long-nose slapped some of the retreating camp-followers with his staff. “What, would ye run from a handful of grasshoppers?” he laughed. Some knights half-drew their swords, and Manfred called out in his battle-voice that the strangers were travelers from a distant land who had come to lend their aid with their cunning weapons. Then he added
sotto voce
to Dietrich, “My thanks for persuading Grosswald.”

Dietrich, who knew how ineffective his pleas had been, said nothing.

The familiarity with which the local garrison greeted the fresh arrivals quieted many. Some muttered about “welcoming demons,” but none of the country knights dared gallop off while their brothers from the Burg stood fast. When Hans and Gottfried knelt before Dietrich, drew the sign of the cross upon themselves, and prayed the priest’s blessing, the murmurs faded like water sucked into the thirsty earth. Reflexively, many of those who had shouted the loudest alarms also crossed themselves, and took heart, if not ease, from this sign of piety.

“What means this?” Dietrich asked Hans amidst the commotion. “Has Grosswald then consented?”

“We shall recover the copper wire stolen by von Falkenstein,” Hans said. “It may perform better than that which the blessed Lorenz drew.” One of the three unfamiliar Krenken tossed his head back and made some buzz of
comment; but as the creature lacked a head-harness, Dietrich did not understand him and Hans silenced the fellow with a gesture.

Manfred, having donned his own harness, approached and inquired after their corporal.

Hans stepped forward. “We have come to honor Grosswald, mine Herr. By your grace, we will fly before the column and call back reports of Falkenstein’s doings through the far-speaker.”

Manfred rubbed his chin. “And be out of sight of the faint-hearts among us … Do you have the thunder-clay?” A Krenk stroked the satchel he wore strapped across his body and Manfred nodded. “Very well. It pleases. You shall fly a vanguard.”

Dietrich watched with mixed feelings the Krenken recede into the distant sky. The objections were two. The army would carry gossip on its breath, exciting a terrible curiosity; but a glimpse of Hans or his companions would give body to the whispers.
On the contrary
, Hans might recover the wire and so speed the Krenkish departure.
Ergo …
The question would be determined by a race between the arrival of the curious and the departure of the Krenken. In answer to the first objection, rumors were surely abroad by now, so that the gossip of this army would add but little. But to the second objection, Dietrich saw no ready answer.

On the way to Church Hill, Dietrich passed by Theresia’s cottage and marked her face in the window opening. They locked gazes, and he saw again the numb, tearless ten-year-old he had carried off into the woods. He stretched an arm out and perhaps something stirred in her features, but she pulled the shutters closed before he could ascertain what that something was.

Slowly, Dietrich let his arm drop and he took a few more steps up the hill, but, suddenly overwhelmed, he sat upon a boulder and wept.

L
ATER THAT
afternoon, Dietrich and Joachim fed the milch cow and the other animals pertaining to the benefice. The shed was warm from the heat of the beasts and rich with the odors of dung and straw. “It will please me,” Dietrich said as he forked silage into the manger, “When the Krenken have gone and Theresia resumes her duties.”

Joachim, who had taken the more noisome task of the chicken coop, paused and wiped the curls off his brow with the back of his hand. “Dietrich, you cannot grind a sausage into a sow.”

Dietrich frowned and leaned upon his pitchfork. The cow lowed. Joachim turned and scattered feed to the chickens. There was a distant sound of banging pots in the outbuilding.

“She was always like a daughter to me,” Dietrich said at last.

Joachim grunted. “Children are a father’s curse. My father told me that. He meant me, of course. He’d lost a hand in the Barons’ War, and it embittered him that he could no longer chop other men to pieces. He wanted me to take his place and be my uncle’s heir, but I wanted God to live in me, and butchery seemed an uncertain path to the New Age.” Dietrich twitched and Joachim nodded. “You taught Theresia charity, but when tried for the greatest charity of all she was found wanting. I have written it so in my journal. ‘Even Pastor Dietrich’s ward was tried and found wanting.’”

Dietrich shook his head. “Never say such a thing. It would hurt her. Say rather that ‘Pastor Dietrich was tried and found wanting,’ for I have always fallen short of the marks I have set.”

The Kratzer burst into the shed, buzzing and clicking and shaking a cook’s ladle. Dietrich jumped at the sudden intrusion and braced the pitchfork before him, but when he saw it was the philosopher, he pulled the head-harness from his scrip and woke it.

“Where is Hans?” the Krenk demanded. “It is past time and my meal is unprepared.”

Joachim opened his mouth to answer, but Dietrich lifted a hand to still him. “We’ve not seen him since morning,” Dietrich temporized. At this, the Krenk slammed a fist into the doorpost, said something that the
Heinzelmännchen
did not translate, and bounded from the shed.

Dietrich removed his head-harness and carefully put it to sleep. “So. He doesn’t know—which means that Grosswald did not send them.” He worried. Gschert had imprisoned Hans for snatching Dietrich from the dungeon of Schloss Falkenstein. What retribution might follow this new transgression?

B
Y TIERCE
the next day, Baron Grosswald had learned of the matter and barged into the parsonage, shoving the door so hard that it banged and recoiled from the wall. Dietrich, who was praying his office at the time, jumped from the prie-dieu, dropping his book of hours so that the pages bent on themselves.

“He will show me his neck when he returns!” Grosswald cried. “Why did Manfred allow it?” Shepherd and the Kratzer pushed into the room as well, the pilgrim-leader pausing to close the door against the March chill.

“My lord baron,” said Dietrich. “The Herr did not question your men’s presence at the muster because he had called upon you for your duty, and presumed, when they presented themselves, that it was at your will.”

Grosswald paced before the glowing fireplace in a curious springing step that, to Dietrich seemed much like skipping and yet which clearly signified great agitation. “Too many lost already,” he said, though not entirely to Dietrich, for Shepherd answered.

“Three to cold, and one of them child, before you even stir to …
enter
village. And since—”

“The alchemist,” added the Kratzer.

“Speak not his name,” Grosswald warned his chief philosopher. “I will not see another life thrown away—and in so futile a gesture!”

Shepherd said to him, “If Hans gesture futile, why we
husband our lives?” Grosswald swung at her, but the Krenkerin fended the blow with a deft motion of her arm, much as a knight might parry a sword cut. The two then controlled themselves, but stared at each other in the offcenter, sidelong manner their peculiar eyes allowed.

“Did you expect to eat of my lord’s largesse,” insisted Dietrich, “with no obligation in return? Has he not granted you food and shelter through the winter?”

“You mock us,” said Grosswald, shrugging off the hand that the Kratzer placed on his arm.

“I did not know that Hans
could
act contrary to your orders,” Dietrich said. “Is not obedience to one’s sitting written into the atoms of your flesh?”

The Kratzer, who had thus far showed his agitation by shaking in place, threw his arm to bar Grosswald. “I will answer this, Gschertl.” Dietrich noted his use of the diminutive. Among grown men, it signified either endearment or condescension, and Dietrich thought the Krenken incapable of endearment.