Arcanum (82 page)

“Carinthian?” The wet slap was spit hitting the floor. “Since when did we need Carinthia to dig us up out of the pit we’ve made for ourselves?”

“Since our Bavarian neighbours started hiding in Carinthian barns.”

Bastian had massive fists. They looked even bigger when clenched.

“You need to leave,” said the smith.

Ullmann shook his head. “Why did no one tell me that coming in here was a stupid idea?”

“Because we didn’t know Bastian slept with his anvil these days,” was the hasty reply.

“We’re here to pick a fight with your earl, not you. If you support him, there are still thirteen of us and one of you. If you don’t, then you won’t mind us borrowing your forge until after he’s ridden past.” Whether Ullmann would have been so bold without the others was something he wasn’t going to think about too deeply. “There’ll be no harm done, and your fellow Bavarians will be grateful.”

“Grateful? Grateful? They’ve never been grateful yet.” He took another step closer to Ullmann, who swore that the ground shivered. “I’ve asked you to leave. Do you want me to make you?”

“What is that you value, Master Smith?” Ullmann was aware of Horst’s increasingly frantic gestures. He could hear horses. Fuchs was on his way. “If it’s not the gratitude of Simbach, what else? Wealth? Love? Fame?”

Bastian bent low and breathed schnapps-flavoured breath over him. “If it were any of those, I would have had them by now. What I want, Carinthian, is a challenge. Something equal to my skill.”

There were pots and pans and horseshoes and tools and hammers and vices and bars of raw iron all around; country-town fare, all of it. How often had Bastian moved his forge looking for his match?

“Very well,” said Ullmann. “I’ll find you your challenge. In exchange, let’s all shut up, right now.”

Horst shrank back from the window and pressed his back to the wall. Ullmann was very still, and the shadows flickered past the shutters. He counted them, each moment of darkness, reaching six before the light returned to constancy.

Everyone held their breath. Horst leant forward slightly, and gave them the nod. It sounded momentarily like a windy night on an alp.

Ullmann shifted from his perch.

“Thank you, Master Bastian. Expect to hear from us soon. Men? Remember your spears.” He moved to the door and opened it a crack. The road was clear, and he tiptoed out.

He ushered his group out and made sure they were all armed and facing the right way. The corner houses emptied rapidly once the men there saw the first phalanx forming up. Down the road, Fuchs and his troop were idly clopping along, unaware of what was happening behind them.

“Tight packed,” he hissed, “shoulder to shoulder.” He pushed the spear-carriers forward, and let the stone-throwers arrange themselves behind. “Not,” he warned them, “until I say so.”

When he’d finished, he found that the knot of spears weren’t advancing as he’d hoped – they were still fixed at the junction, looking severe but static. The trap would only work if they were moving.

He turned himself sideways and eased through them, snagging Manfred’s collar as he went. The two of them popped out the far side, and he just kept walking. Horst nudged his immediate neighbours, and, slowly, the Bavarians caught on. They clattered and rattled, less a column and more of a rabble, but at least they were moving.

Still neither Fuchs nor any of his entourage looked in their direction. But the townspeople’s now purposeful marching was faster than the ambling of the riders’ horses: they were catching them up.

The trailing horseman glanced over his shoulder, looked back, pulled hard on his reins and wheeled around. His eyes were wide and white.

Ullmann stared at the man, while Manfred lowered the point of his spear. Neither of them stopped their advance, and after a few broken steps of uncertainty, the Bavarians’ spears dropped to form an impenetrable, still-moving, barrier.

“My lord,” shouted the man, “an ambush.”

All six riders looked their way. The horses were big, and snorting, and they filled the street just as much as the spears did. If they’d have charged them there and then, it could have gone terribly wrong.

“Stones!” called Ullmann. He raised his sword, and inaccurately thrown cobbles arced over his head, accompanied by grunts and cries of effort. Most of them missed their targets, falling short and clacking against walls and the road, but hitting Fuchs wasn’t what they were for.

The effect was almost instant. The ground was covered in loose, spinning cobbles, and the one or two that covered the distance so rattled the rearguard rider’s horse that it bolted. And where one went, so did the others with only slightly more control.

The spear wall started to break as some at the front started to run after them. Ullmann didn’t want that at all. “Hold. Keep the line. Think as one. Act as one.”

They fell into line again, and were ready.

“Forward.”

The horses were regrouping at the end of the street, just where it joined the market square. They were wondering what had happened to the men they’d left behind, because they rode backwards and forwards, shouting names and getting no response.

Fuchs – the man that had to be Fuchs, because he wore a polished breastplate and the fanciest red cloak, his hair in a Roman cut and his cheeks smooth – fought to keep control of his nervous, high-stepping horse. He looked straight at Ullmann, and the Carinthian felt a thrill.

Even earls feared him now.

There were four ways out of the square: one ended up in the river, leaving just three. They took the Passau road, and vanished out of sight, hooves sparking on the cobbles.

Abruptly they were back, streaking across the square, stones flying after them, heading for the road that led to München. Fuchs, in the lead, pulled up hard, horse rearing up at the crowd facing him. He cast about wildly for somewhere, anywhere, to run to. The groups from the east and west burst into the square, and Ullmann aimed his vaguely disciplined spears at them, to press them from the north.

More stones came over the top, and the throwers were so close now, they couldn’t avoid hitting something. One rider went down, caught on the crown of his head, and his horse backed away down the street towards the wharf.

The Bavarians were spear-point to spear-point. Fuchs drew his sword, but did nothing with it but hold it high.

“Do you surrender?” called Ullmann.

Fuchs searched the faces for the one who addressed him. “Surrender? Your lives, your families, they’re all forfeit. I am your lord.”

“The time of earls is over, Mr Fuchs, and the gods know you haven’t been an earl to these people for a while now.” Ullmann had Manfred by his side, spear angled, foot on the butt to brace it. “Put down your sword and order your men to do the same. There’s no help coming for you today. Just us and those you’ve been robbing.”

Fuchs’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a fucking Carinthian,” he said; then, louder: “You’re following a Carinthian spy.”

A spear drove into his side, between breast and backplate, under his sword-arm. The leaf-shaped head went in halfway.

“This is a Carinthian spear, so I’m told,” said the woman who’d thrust it there. “But this arm is all Bavarian.”

She jerked the blade out, and blood welled up, down Fuchs’s side, staining his undershirt and the top of his breeks. His expression was not just of surprise but of incredulity. Perhaps he’d deluded himself that he could go forever.

The sudden silence that followed his initial grunt of pain stretched on. Fuchs lowered his sword and pressed his forearm against the wound, staring with total concentration into the distance. It looked for a moment as though he might rally: the cut wasn’t deep and nothing vital had been pierced. Then a cobblestone smashed into his face. His nose broken, blood in his mouth and eyes, he lost his grip on both his saddle and his sword. He rolled off backwards with one foot still in the stirrup.

There was no shortage of people to finish him off, and while they did their savage work, Fuchs’s men were dragged down screaming off their panicked mounts and butchered where they lay; trampled, stabbed, stamped on and crushed.

Arms and feet rose and fell in a perverse parody of a wine press, rhythmic and deliberate, and it was over a long time before they stopped.

Ullmann withdrew, along with Manfred and Horst, and stood a way off.

“Gods, Max,” said Horst. “Gods.” He was at a loss for what to say.

A loose horse skittered past, and Manfred hooked its bridle. He distracted himself with the act of calming it down. “What happens to the poor bastards we’ve got on the barge?”

“It’s not up to me, is it?” Ullmann shrugged. “Whatever, it’s not like they don’t deserve it. You can’t go around kicking in people’s doors, beating them up, stealing their things, day after day, and expect there not be retribution at some point.”

“You don’t feel the least bit sorry for them?” asked Manfred. He held the horse’s head close to his own.

The residents of Simbach were starting to back away from the bodies, forming a circle around the scene, spears no longer directed at the ground but at the sky. They were regarding what they’d done, weighing its significance and meaning.

“I think we should go,” said Horst. “We don’t need to be here any longer, right?”

Max Ullmann sheathed his sword. He hadn’t had to use it once, and yet they’d taken the town. There was a lesson there, somewhere. “Back to the boat,” he said.

Sophia had sworn never to get back on a horse, and absolutely never to go any distance on one. Necessity dictated otherwise.

It might have been the quickest way to get from one place to another – always had, probably always would – but she’d still have preferred to have walked. It wasn’t far to Rosenheim: a day, sunrise to sunset, if taken at a brisk pace and no stops. She’d almost begged Felix to allow her to make the journey that way; almost, because it was clear that he wouldn’t countenance a noble lady going on foot.

What he meant, of course, was that she was
his
noble lady, and it’d make him, and by extension, Carinthia, look bad. So they emptied the stables for her and for what he called her retinue, which was ironic since it consisted of an elderly Mr Kuppenheim and the four out of the newly recruited fortress guards who could actually ride.

Mr Kuppenheim, being the Jewish doctor, was the best horseman of all of them. Used to turning out in all weathers to one remote shtetl or another, he managed to look both assured and relaxed, while she winced and groaned with every jolt.

She’d have done better in the back of a horse-drawn hay cart. Unfortunately, that had also been deemed not lady-like.

There was another rider with them: Gretchen, older than Felix but a girl all the same, from the upper reaches of the Enn where it ran out of the steep valley and onto the plain. She’d turned up at the fortress breathless, holding out Peter Büber’s seal and asking for someone to come. Breathless, because she claimed to have run all the way, which was quite a feat if she had, and wild exaggeration if she hadn’t.

Even the Rosenheim farm-girl was a better horseman than she was, thought Sophia, which didn’t improve her temper.

She was sure that part of the reason Gretchen had come directly to Juvavum was in the hope of a reward. A Carinthian seal denoted a prince’s man, and giving aid to its bearer would earn gratitude of a spendable kind. The bag of coins Sophia carried would be used to express various permutations of that gratitude, depending upon whether Büber was alive, whether he’d been cared for well, whether he’d received treatment from the local doctor, whether he could be moved, whether his belongings were still together and not stolen.

It was three days since Büber had been found, two days since the girl had left her river-bank farm, half a day since they’d set off back down the road. When Sophia had asked what state the huntmaster was in, Gretchen had remained grimly mute.

Would HaShem be merciful to this gentile, who was His servant whether he knew it or not?

Büber was tough, and, like the forests he loved, he bent before the wind without breaking. At least, he always had done before. But even a bruised reed might eventually snap. Perhaps they were hurrying because Büber might die.

“How far?” she asked.

“Not far,” came the answer, which was progress of sorts, because the last time she’d asked, it had been “a way yet”. There weren’t any milestones on this road, and it was certainly no via with free-draining surface and wide ditches. What they had was a green lane, with ridges and puddles between the ridges. The land itself served as waymarkers: the rivers they crossed, the lake they passed, the steep alpine hills that yearned to be mountains.

Sophia wasn’t used to the openness of the sky, the darkness of the forests, the roughness of the road. She was a child of the city, the polis. She could bargain in the markets, navigate the alleys, use the tools and skills of her culture. She didn’t recognise this place, which was not just beyond the walls but out of sight of them completely: over the horizon, the place where magic was wild and untamed.

Or, at least, it had been. Now it was just the mundane that was wild and untamed. That should have meant there was less to be frightened of, but she wasn’t so sure.

She could see a square stone tower in the distance, an old Roman one faced in white stone.

“Is that it?” she asked Gretchen.

“Yes, my lady. The tower’s before the bridge, and the town’s on the other side.”

“And how far from Rosenheim do we have to go?”

The girl squinted as she thought. “Five miles south?”

She had the blondest hair and bluest eyes Sophia had ever seen. She was young, strong and capable. And one day she would grow up and know pain and become frail and old.

The wise man, no less than the fool, must die.

No matter that her zitser hurt with an agony beyond description. Life was short, and a sore arse wouldn’t kill her.

“We should try and go faster,” said Sophia.

Old Kuppenheim smiled. “My child,” he said. To him, everyone younger than him was “my child”. “Is there a reason for our haste other than your pride?”