Eifelheim (42 page)

Betimes, the pop of a
pot de fer
signaled a careless move, and then the Krenken showed that they were indeed capable of quick movement. Bullets whined against the barrels, or barked the limbs of trees. The fighters took up widely separate positions from which to loose their shots. The quake of a bush and snapping of twigs within the dimness of the trees signified Gschert’s men doing the same. The pace unnerved Dietrich and he longed for a rush of crying rage.

With no small horror, Dietrich realized that a Krenk had appeared in the clearing itself. As still as a rock or a tree, it squatted beside a table and chairs at which the refugees had been wont to take some refreshment in warmer weather. By what imperceptible stages it had reached that position, Dietrich did not know, and when he looked again, it was gone.

Glancing then to his left, he saw a strange Krenk crouched there. Dietrich cried out in surprise and terror, and would have sprung up to his own undoing save that Hans grabbed him firmly by the shoulder. “Beatke is with us,” he said, and Hans and the newcomer touched each other gently on the knees.

The woods seemed filled with locusts, for the two sides attacked with words as well, though Dietrich heard only those diatribes that passed through the
Heinzelmännchen
. Gschert’s words were like honey placed before a fasting man, appeals to the heretics’ inborn hunger for obedience.

“You have used your power, Gschert,” Hans called out, “beyond what is just. If we are born to serve, and you to
command, then your commands must be for the good of all. We do not deny our place in the Web. We deny
your
place in the Web.”

Another Krenk, also one with a head-harness, though not one that Dietrich knew, said, “We who labor will be heard. You say, ‘do this’ and ‘do that,’ while you yourself do nothing. You take your ease on the backs of others.”

Suddenly Dietrich became aware of more than a dozen Krenken now arrayed with Hans. None had
pots de fer
, but carried instead a variety of tools and implements. They perched in trees or behind rocks or in the gully that ran beside the clearing. “But Shepherd said that obedience was like a hunger,” Dietrich said.

His plaint was carried by the common canal, and someone—which, he did not know—answered, “So it is, but a hungry man may still smite the purveyor of rotten food.” Whereupon a ferocious chatter grew in magnitude from Dietrich’s side of the clearing. All about him were statues which, at each glance, had altered their posture—and suddenly Dietrich was small beside his mother in the Köln Minster watching the gargoyles and the stern-faced saints slowly turn toward him. The Armleder had returned, born anew amongst the Krenken.

Between two armies is a dangerous place to graze your flock, Gregory Mauer had said.

Dietrich ran from the protection of the barrels out into the clearing that separated the two warring factions. “Stop!” he cried, expecting any moment to be stoned to death by a dozen
pots de fer
. He raised both arms. “I command you in the name of Christ Jesus to put down your weapons!”

Surprisingly, no bullets were slung in his direction. For a time, nothing stirred. Then, first one, then another Krenk rose from concealment. Hans tossed his head back and said, “You shame me, Dietrich of Oberhochwald.” And he dropped his
pot de fer
to the ground. At this, the Herr Gschert emerged from the woods. “You have right,” he
said. “This matter is between the Hans and me alone, and it is to the neck.” He stepped forward; and Hans, after a moment in which he and Beatke touched, loped across the clearing to meet him.

“What does it mean, ‘to the neck’?” Dietrich asked.

“It makes true,” Gschert said to Hans, “that finding ourselves on such a world we resort to the ways of our forefathers.” And he stripped himself of his clothing, worn and faded sash and blouse tossed to the ground, and stood shivering in the March afternoon.

Hans had come to stand beside Dietrich. “Remember,” he said, “that it is better for one man to die than a whole people, and if this will restore concord …” Then, to Gschert, he added, “This is my body, to be given up for many.”

To the neck
. Dietrich realized suddenly that Hans would not defend himself from Gschert’s jaws. “No!” he said.

“Has it come to this, then?” Gschert asked.

And Hans answered, “As Arnold always knew it would. Galatians 5:15.”

“Have with your thought-lacking superstition, then!”

But before Gschert could spring upon the unresisting Hans, Dietrich heard the arresting tones of a trumpet, the sound that was better than all the echoes in the world.

“I
T WAS
simple enough,” Herr Manfred said while Max and his soldiers led the now compliant Krenken back toward Oberhochwald. “Before even I reached the village, the field hands told me that you had like a madman galloped toward the Great Wood, and that, shortly after, the Krenken followed. I pushed my men to the double-quick. We must naturally leave our horses behind the ridge, but we were clad in half-armor for the road and so the march was not difficult. I heard some of what befell over the common canal. What was the cause of it?”

Dietrich gazed out over the clearing, at the clutter of furnishings, at the lack of order. “The Krenken hunger for
obedience,” he said, “and Herr Gschert has served them bad porridge.”

Manfred threw his head back in laughter. “If they hunger for someone to obey,” the lord of Oberhochwald said, “I will serve out
that
porridge myself.”

A
ND SO
later, in the great hall, Hans and Gottfried pressed their hands together and Manfred enclosed them in his own, and they foreswore their oaths to Baron Grosswald and accepted Herr Manfred as their liege. In recognition of his valor in the battle at Falcon Rock, Manfred placed a ruby ring on Hans’s right hand. Gschert was not content with this arrangement, but agreed in a Nicodemian manner that it resolved the problem of disobedience.

Shepherd accepted also when two of her pilgrims asked to be settled on the manor and to be baptized. “Those who tarry in strange lands often take up rude customs of land. We have term for it, which would overset as
‘walk in steps of native-born’
. They think their cares to throw over. Later, they regret; but must be later-time in which regrets may come. You clever, priest, and have lift Hans and his heretics of one burden; but leave me with mine own.” And the leader of the pilgrims studied the Herr Gschert from across the hall. “Yet, I think Hans may not be lift of all. I think your Herr Manfred not permit us to depart and that, above all things, what Hans wishes.”

“Do not you all wish that?”

“Vain to will impossible.”

“The word is ‘hope,’ my lady. When Gottfried was repairing the ‘circuit,’ he gave me to understand that his repair fell short of the standards of the original craftsmen. Yet he applied himself to the task with a will, and I could not help but admire him for that. Any fool can hope when success lies plainly in view. It wants genuine strength to hope when matters are hopeless.”

“Thought-lacking!”

“If one presses on, God may grace the effort with success after all, and
that
end despair will never achieve. My
lady, what would you, had you thrown Baron Grosswald over?”

The pilgrim-leader smiled the Krenkish smile, which always seemed to Dietrich half-mocking. “To order Hans to do as he has done.”

“And yet you blame him for having done it!”

“Without orders? Yes.”

Dietrich turned to face the Lady Shepherd fully.
“You
sent Gschert into the Great Woods.”

“In my country,” the Lady answered, “we play game of placing stones within array. Some stones remain in place and these we call …
Heinzelmännchen
say ‘hives,’ but I say ‘castles’ is better. From these, warrior-stones sally, and move place to place by certain rules. Game play by three opponents.”

Dietrich understood. “You are playing at stones, then.”

Lady Shepherd closed her side-lips with measured delicacy. “One occupy one’s time as best as able. Game’s intricacies help me forget. ‘Because we die, we laugh and leap.’”

“Na,” said Dietrich, “Hans is out of the game now. He is Manfred’s vassal now.”

The Krenkerin laughed. “Also, four-sided version.”

XVI
MARCH
, 1349
Lent

W
ITH MARCH
had come the New Year. Serfs and villagers trimmed grapevines and cut posts for fences damaged by the winter’s snow. Since the truce imposed by Herr Manfred, humors had cooled, and many Krenken returned to their former guesthouses in the village. Hans, Gottfried, and a few others encamped by the shipwreck. The weather
was warming, and Zimmerman and his nephews had built a shed for them heated by a stove of flagstones. This enabled them to work more hours on the repairs and, not incidently, minimize encounters with their recent foes. Gerlach Jaeger, who often ranged far hunting wolves, reported that, at eventide, he would sometimes spy them attempting their odd leaping dance “in concert.”

“They ain’t real good at it,” the hunter replied. “They forget, and then each of ’em just does what he wants.”

Dietrich often visited their camp, and he and Hans would walk the now well-marked forest paths while discussing natural philosophy. The trees had begun to green again, and a few impatient flowers spread their arms to pray for bees. Hans wore a sheepskin vest over leather-hose, his particular Krenkish clothes having long since worn out.

Dietrich explained that, although the French began the Year of the Lord already at Christmastide, the Germans took the Incarnation as the proper time. The civil year began, naturally, in January. Hans could not understand such inconstancy. “On Krenkheim,” he said, “is not only the year standard, but so too the hour of the day and even to one part in two hundreds of thousands of the day.”

“The Kratzer divided your hour into a gross of minutes, and each minute into a gross of eyeblinks. What task can ever be done so quickly as to need an ‘eyeblink’ to mark it?”

“‘Eyeblink’ is your term. It ‘signifies’ nothing to us.”

Could a man see humor in golden-faceted globes; laughter in horny lips? Above them, he heard a colored woodpecker rap against a branch. Hans clacked back at it, as if answering, then laughed.

“We find such intervals useful,” he continued, “for measuring the properties of the
‘elektronik
sea,’ whose … tides … rise and fall countless times during an eyeblink.”

“Ach so,” Dietrich said, “the waves that ripple in no medium. What is by you this ‘eyeblink’?”

“I must consult the
Heinzelmännchen.”
The two proceeded in silence beneath a choir of woodleafsingers and
acorn-jays. Dietrich stooped by a patch of woods-masters by the trail. He plucked one of the pale pink flowers and held it close to his eyeglasses. The underground parts made a good red dye and Theresia could use the remainder in her remedies, save that she would not walk the Great Woods so long as the Krenken were there. Reason enough for Dietrich to dig a few up for her and place them in his scrip.

“An eyeblink,” Hans announced at last, “is two thousand and seven hunded and four myriads of the ripples of unseeable light from … a particular substance which you do not know.”

Dietrich stared at the Krenk for a moment before the absurdity overwhelmed him, and he burst into laughter.

A
S THEY
returned to the camp, Hans asked after the Kratzer. Dietrich told him of his many quodlibets with the philosopher over points of natural philosophy, but Hans interrupted. “Why has he not come to our camp?”

Dietrich studied his companion. “Perhaps he will. He complains of weakness.”

Hans suddenly stilled and Dietrich, thinking he had seen something in the forest, stopped also and listened. “What is it?”

“I fear we hold the Lenten fast too seriously.”

Dietrich said, “Lent is a demanding season. We await the Lord’s resurrection. But the Kratzer is not baptized; so why does he also fast?”

“From fellowship. We find comfort in that.” More, Hans would not say, but passed the remainder of the walk in silence.