The Book of Earth (41 page)

“And . . . WAIT! Wait. Don’t do anything yet.”

There was a commotion in the square. Shouts and the sharp ringing of hooves on the paving stones. Erde heard voices crying Köthen’s name. She whirled back to the parapet. Hal had risen to his feet and she hauled him back down again. He shook her free but stayed low, peering over the edge, shivering oddly. Erde worried until she realized he was laughing. “I think . . . yes! It’s our friends from the forest! Come hightailing back to report there’s a dragon on the loose! You’ve got to see this!”

Erde looked. Baron Köthen was surrounded by frantic horsemen, all talking at once and jabbing their fingers in the direction from which they’d come. Brother Guillemo listened from the bottom step of the scaffold. His expression, even from fifty yards away, was a visible contest between terror and unholy glee.

Köthen bellowed for silence. The horsemen shut up immediately, but for one tardy one, whose last words floated like an echo into the hush that fell over the square.

“. . . dragon, my lord!”

The crowd leaned forward as if pulled by a string.

The men dismounted and made a try at being orderly. Josef von Alte stalked over to Köthen to hear the details, but Brother Guillemo whirled and raced to the top of the scaffold.

“A sign!” he shouted. “A sign, oh my people! These men have brought us a true sign!”

Half in, half out of the witch-cart, Margit also listened. She stood nearly forgotten, watched by one guard and
bound only by the cord that tied her hands in front of her. The throng was riveted on Guillemo as he pounded back and forth across the platform, warming to his tirade. The pale noon light dimmed as the dark clouds bunching at the horizon broke loose and sped closer. Guillemo took his cue.

“See how the heavens darken! The sun itself, God’s given holy light, will be swallowed up! This is no natural occurrence! The forces of evil are gathering, oh my people, gathering around us now!”

“Now would really be the time to do it,” muttered Hal.

And then the priest, who possessed a panoramic view over the heads of the crowd, stopped dead in the middle of a shouted sentence and stared, his face gone slack and pale.

Hal elbowed Erde hard and pointed. “Look! Over there!”

A new horseman had entered the square, a lone armored knight on a huge golden horse. His helm and breastplate gleamed with gold chasing. A closed visor concealed his face. The crowd gasped and murmured and opened a wide path for him as if expecting some new report of sorcery, perhaps even the sorcerer himself. And he did look magical, Erde thought. As he bore down on the center of the square, his sword raised above his head, she saw that his pure white tunic was blazoned in brilliant red, in the sign of a dragon.

“It’s him!” Hal exclaimed. “I’ll bet it’s him! Who else could it be? He’s decided to make the challenge official, the reckless sonofabitch! Got a real taste for theatrics! Esther didn’t say her Friend was lunatic as well as idealistic!”

Erde stared as the golden knight galloped across the square, scattering what little resistance stood in his way. She was remembering the visored, shining knight in Earth’s dream on the night of the earthquake. Could the dragon have dreamed of the Friend?

On the scaffold, the priest screamed “No! No! No!” and waved his arms as if he could make this sudden and inconvenient apparition disappear.

Hal gripped Erde’s shoulder. “Wait, Jesus, he’s coming for Margit! The man’s insane. How did he get in, with Köthen blocking the gates?” He paused for breath, considering. “And how the hell is he going to get out?”

Before the men at the scaffold knew what was happening,
the horseman had thundered into their midst. The soldiers were dumbstruck. Cursing, Baron Köthen dove at the man nearest him to grab his sword and shove him aside. Josef van Alte ran for his horse, shouting at his men to attack. Above, the apoplectic priest finally found words other than his helpless repeated denial of what was clearly a reality. He called for a sword. He raced about on the platform but did not venture down the stairs. The white-robes racing to respond and protect him blocked both von Alte’s path and Köthen’s. The two barons bellowed in frustration as the golden knight pulled up at the witch-cart, sliced the ropes binding Margit’s ready, outstretched wrists, sheathed his sword, and scooped her up and onto the back of his saddle in a single unbroken motion.

“Bravo, lad!” whispered Hal. “Done before Köthen had a weapon to hand! I like this madman!”

The knight spurred his horse forward with a victorious whoop. The crowd’s roar was ambiguous, but they cleared an escape route straight out of the square, then closed behind him, a few of them seeming to give chase.

“Bar the gates!” Köthen’s shout echoed like drumbeats around the square, though he already had men posted everywhere. “Not a soul in or out!”

Still alone on the scaffold, Brother Guillemo ceased his screeching and fell to his knees, his arms outstretched in an apparent trance of prayer. The white-robes finally reaching him stood back in chagrin, then formed a circle around him, their swords at ready.

Hal leaped to his feet, not caring who spotted him. “There he goes, out of the square! And the crowd’s blocking the pursuit! But can they get him past the gates?” He snatched at Erde’s arm, already on the move. “Quick! Back to the barn! He may need our help!”

Help? The streets would be crawling with Köthen’s men, and her father’s. Erde had no idea what help Hal thought they could be, or how he even planned to find Margit’s miraculous rescuer. Maybe he didn’t need their help. If dragons could exist, why not magical knights? But she was eager enough to be away from their vulnerable position on the rooftop. She alerted the dragon and helped him image the brickyard.

*   *   *

The dragon was precise. He materialized within the same square footage in the barn from which he had left. The she-goat emerged from hiding in the straw and did her grave little dance of welcome. Erde made sure to praise the dragon effusively. Praise so improved his mood and his confidence, especially now that he was hinting at being hungry again, after all this work. She told him a meal was a hopeless notion for a while, and the best thing to do was to take a nap and not think about it. He agreed, but not happily.

Hal sped off into the courtyard the moment his head cleared. The wind gusted through the open doors, delivering little flurries of snow. Shivering, Erde went to close the doors, then peered through the center crack. Hal was slumped at the firepit with the old man who’d shown him such respect, warming his hands over the dying embers. Their conversation was slow, unanimated, like two habituated cronies. She thought how casual it would look to the idle passerby, if there was such a person left in Erfurt. The old man had a dusting of snow on his cap and shoulders. She wondered why he hadn’t retreated indoors or, more curious still, why he wasn’t with the crowd in the market square. But watching him with Hal, she understood he’d been keeping an unofficial eye on the barn. Soon Hal rose, nodding, from his crouch and headed her way. He slowed as the sound of horsemen approached. From the barn, Erde could not see the passage under a second story that allowed access to the courtyard from the street, but she heard the clatter pass by in a hurry and breathed a sigh of relief. Hal sprinted for the doors.

“It’s as I suspected,” he whispered hastily as he shut the doors behind him. “The partisans got him in, and they plan to get him out . . . with Margit. I told old Ralf they didn’t stand a chance with all that combined force after them, but that I did.” He paced over to the sleeping dragon and regarded him with avid satisfaction. “I said if they’d bring the pair of them to me, I could get them out.” He came back and sat down beside her. “I don’t know if he believed me, or why he even should, but he said he’d carry the message. Of course I didn’t want to tell him exactly
how
I could get them out, so we’ll see. It depends on how desperate they get.” He looked down, pushing straw around with
the toe of his boot. “And on how much faith these diminishing royalists still have in an old King’s Knight.”

They waited, and no message came. Out in the street, horsemen came and went. Hal sharpened his sword some more, halting abruptly to listen each time the mule made an unusual sound outside the door. He replayed the events in the market square over and over, musing on the identity of the mysterious knight.

“He has the king’s own stature, I’ll say that much,” he muttered at one point.

Erde didn’t know how he could tell what the man looked like, under all that concealing armor. But he knew the king, and she didn’t. Plus she supposed that men of war understood such things.

Growing restive after a while, Hal went out again to talk to the old man he’d called Ralf. He came back dispiritedly. “He says he passed the word along. He also says Köthen’s men are searching the town door by door, and that we ought to look to our own safety, as they’ll no doubt be here before long.” Hal slapped his hand irritably against his thigh. “I didn’t want to leave without her.”

Outside, the mule came alert with a snort and a single loud kick against the wall of the barn. Hal sped to the door and barred it as the sudden racket of men and horses invaded the courtyard. Erde woke the dragon from his nap.

“Five, six, eight, damn!” Hal counted, squinting through the crack between the doors. “Two searching the sheds, two heading this way, three at the fire questioning Ralf . . . no!” He spun around, reaching for his sword. “Cowards! Beating a defenseless old man!”

Erde ran for him, snatched at his arm. Outside, the soldiers slapped the mule away from the doors and threw their weight against the bar. Quickly, the blade of a sword was shoved through the crack to pry the bar loose. Erde pulled Hal toward the dragon. In a dizzying split-second, they were back on the rooftop overlooking the square. Hal looked momentarily dazed and frustrated, then got his bearings and clapped Erde on the back manfully. “Good thinking!”

Ducking, he sheathed the sword still naked in his hand and scrambled toward the parapet. Erde stayed to praise the dragon for his quick response and share his palpable
excitement. To him, this spiriting around town was like a game of hide and seek. His confidence bloomed with each successful trip, and with it, his pride. It didn’t matter that he was clumsy on the ground. He was no longer a useless, wingless burden. He was the secret weapon.

But there was also a nagging worry. After the first time, escaping from the soldiers in the forest, he’d noticed that he was hungry, but he’d been recently so well fed that it hardly mattered. But after the second and third, he found himself growing steadily ravenous. This most recent trip had left him famished and weak, so much that he was unsure if he had the strength to transport anyone anywhere without refueling. Finally, hiding out on the burned-out rooftop, he laid out his predicament with irrefutable clarity.

—
But can you get us out of here?

Earth thought he could, but as his weakness increased, so did his concern. Being able to think of nothing but his hunger was distracting. He worried about maintaining the concentration necessary to transport accurately.

Erde’s own mind was crowding already with the dragon’s thoughts of food. Now that he’d begun to awaken to his true power, she found it increasingly difficult to keep his images from dominating her brain, difficult even to separate her own thoughts from his. She didn’t really know whose idea it had been to return to the rooftop. Earth did not consider this a problem. To him,
our
thought was a perfectly acceptable alternative to
yours
or
mine.
Perhaps even a superior one. Erde was not sure.

“It isn’t a sight fit for a lady,” hissed Hal from the parapet, “but you ought to take a look at this anyway.”

Erde joined him at the edge. Brother Guillemo’s white-robes, with their short thick swords now in full view, had blocked off all the streets leading out of the square. The townsfolk had been herded against the grandstand on the cathedral steps, and Josef von Alte’s horsemen stood guard over them as if they were criminals. The wailing of children was blown upward by a biting wind thickening with huge wet flakes of snow. Men stamped and hugged their arms, having given their cloaks to the women to wrap themselves and the babies in. Hal touched Erde’s arm and nodded toward the western end of the square, where the barrier of white-robes had parted to admit a stumbling group of elderly
citizens, driven faster than they could walk by several of Baron Köthen’s horsemen.

“Now it’s the sick and the infirm!” Hal exclaimed. “Not enough he’s hauled the poor nursing mothers away from their hearths in this churlish weather! This is Fra Guill’s order, not Köthen’s, surely. That priest’ll have the whole town dead of ague before he’s satisfied.” Now he pointed toward the empty scaffold, crowned by its tall stake and unlit pyre. Beside the steps, so freshly built that the wood still leaked its sap, Josef von Alte stood barking questions at a young man pinned roughly against the stair by two von Alte foot-soldiers. The sight of him sent a surge of memory coursing through Erde’s head, too quick and elusive to hold on to. Something about her father and the priest and . . . what? She wanted to look away and could not. On the scaffold, Brother Guillemo was now prostrate, flat on his face in prayer, watched over by a stout quartet of his brethren.

Köthen sat to one side, receiving the reports of the search from a velvet cushioned chair. A brazier burned nearby. His men came and went briskly. Köthen listened carefully, rubbed his hands in the heat of the flame, and every now and then, glanced at the sky, palming snowflakes from his brow.

“There’s the only sensible man among them,” observed Hal. “But he’s at a loss, for once. He’s thinking it can’t get any damn darker for just after noon. He’s thinking maybe the priest is right after all, something devilish is going on, and here he’d signed on just to take advantage of a power grab.”

Erde wondered why Hal thought he could speak so assuredly of what was in Baron Köthen’s mind. She pulled her slate out from under her jerkin. LIKE MY FATHER?