From a High Tower (6 page)

“Pieter—” Mother said, looking at him with wide eyes.

“Well? It's how we taught you, Annaliese,” Pieter said, unrepentant. “And it's easier to explain to the constable how a blackguard ended up with a cracked skull from a broom handle or a knife in his liver than it is to explain how he was lightning-struck inside a building! The first is understandable. The second is witchcraft.”

Slowly, as they talked, and told her what they were going to teach her, the terrible, fear-filled tightness inside her ebbed. There were no remonstrations, no accusations that she had brought the attack on herself. Or rather, the only remonstrations were from Mother, who accused
herself
of failing to prepare Giselle adequately for the dangers of the world.

They talked for hours and hours . . . through two meals that Giselle had been sure she would never be able to eat, yet managed to devour once she got the first bite past the lump in her throat. She told them everything that had happened. They assured her again and again that nothing was her fault, until at last, she finally believed it. They talked until she was yawning and couldn't keep her eyes open.

She took her leave of them then, and slowly climbed the stairs to her bedroom. But as she reached the second floor, she heard something that made her heart nearly stop.

“Do we tell her the bastard disappeared?” Pieter asked.

“What would be the point?” Mother replied, and said a bad word that Giselle had never heard her say before. “He won't be back. My Elementals will see to that. Why make her live in fear?”

“Good point,” said Joachim. “I just—wish we knew where he'd gone.”

T
HE
small church was simple, very dark, and very quiet. The altar had been decorated for St. Walburga's Day, but of course it was the far less Christian celebration of Maifest had the attention of the citizens of Mittelsdorf and the surroundings, and who could blame them? Food, drink, dancing and music and contests were far more attractive than a Mass.

She put a pfennig in the charity box, took a candle, and lit it for Mother. Not that Mother had been in any sense religious—in fact, Giselle didn't know if Mother had even been
Christian,
let alone Catholic—but Pieter and Joachim, and many of the Bruderschaft were, and some of that had rubbed off on their student.

Besides, she doubted that Mother would have objected to having candles lit for her.

She knelt for a moment in a prayer, although she was altogether certain that, whatever her beliefs had been, Mother was certainly in some sort of Heaven. The loss of her still ached, even though she had been stricken with pneumonia and carried off within days a year and a half ago. Pieter and Joachim had been with her, or she was not sure how she would have borne the grief. One of the last acts of Mother's Earth Elementals had been to make her a grave in the abbey yard and cover her over; when that was done it was only the brownies that tended the house, garden and chickens, and the faun that watched over the goats that remained. It was only at that graveside farewell that Giselle had learned how old Mother really was—
at least
a century, according to Pieter. That had been almost as much of a shock as Mother's death.

She rose and turned to go, to find there was a priest coming up behind her, an inquisitive look on his face. “Is there anything you need, my son?” he asked. Giselle smiled.

“No, thank you, Father,” she replied. “I just wanted to light a candle to my mother's soul.”

The priest peered a little more closely at her—no doubt because she was a stranger to his church—and then his face lit with recognition. “Ah! You are young Gunther von Weber, who won the shooting contest! That was most impressive. One of the finest exhibitions I have ever seen!”

Giselle laughed a little. “I suspect my dear mother had a hand in my victory, Father. And perhaps the dear Virgin too, although I would never be so blasphemous as to pray to win.”

The priest beamed his approval of such sentiments. “Well said, as well as well done. But you are very young to be so skilled.”

Again, Giselle laughed. “I learned to shoot my rifle as soon as I was able to hold it to my shoulder,” she replied—which was close to the truth anyway. The rifle that now seemed like an extension of her arm had been heavy enough to unbalance her when she began under Pieter's tutelage. “Mother and I were alone, and knowing a single bullet stands between you and a bear that wishes to kill your goats or root up your garden is powerful incentive to become skilled.”

Not quite true, because Mother didn't need mere
bullets
to safeguard her property from animals, but it was an answer that made the priest nod with more approval.

“Well, I will not keep you from your well-earned celebration,” the priest said, and sketched the sign of the cross between them as Giselle bowed her head for his blessing. “Go with the good God, my son, and prosper.”

Giselle left the church, blinking a little in the sunlight, and made her way through the Maifest crowds slowly, having to pause every now and then to accept the congratulations of one or another of those who had seen the shooting contest. Mittelsdorf was too big to be called a village anymore; “town” was more appropriate, so the Maifest was fairly large, and the shooting contest prizes well worth competing for. Of course she hadn't signed up for the contest as “Giselle”; no one would ever have allowed a female to enter. She was disguised as a young man with her hair cut short, and ironically, in her typical hunter's gear of worn loden green wool, she could have been the younger brother of the hunter “Johann Schmidt” who had attacked her six years ago.

Or perhaps not. Her attacker had been dressed in a much finer and far newer version of her own hunting gear. The shabby, bastard cousin, perhaps.

She called herself Gunther von Weber, and what brought her here to Mittelsdorf was what had brought her through a string of five towns and villages so far this month: the prize money for the shooting contest.

Right now there were a lot of stall owners trying to tempt her to part with some of that money. The town's only inn was overwhelmed with customers, far too many to feed, and there were plenty of stall owners taking advantage of that. The scents of grilling sausage, of hot pretzels, of roasting chicken, and of fresh pastry assailed her on all sides. And if she'd been inclined to indulge herself in other ways, there were drink tents set up with Maiwein and Maiboch, and plenty of peddlers with temptingly pretty things. She could even have bought some of those pretty things without anyone blinking an eye as long as she invented a sweetheart she was buying them for! But she was determined to keep her money in her pocket . . . and she was just glad that it was tradition for the villages and towns hereabouts to stagger their Maifests all through the month so that she could take advantage of as many shooting contests as possible.

When Mother had died, suddenly, leaving her with no idea of where the money had been coming from that had kept them supplied with the things they could not grow for themselves all these years, she realized she had taken all that for granted. Mother had merely gone off with the horse and empty cart and returned with everything they needed several times a year. Nor had Pieter and Joachim any notion of where that money had come from. When they'd all sat down together to discuss Giselle's future, both the old men had scratched their heads at the question.

“Obviously she was well enough off to buy that house and then just give it to your family,” Joachim had said, doubtfully. “But where that money came from, where she hid it, and what you're to do now, I haven't a notion.”

“You could come move to the Lodge and join us,” Pieter had offered.

But she had shaken her head vehemently at that. She'd visited there enough times to know that living in the old, tree-shadowed building, with its many tiny, dark rooms and small windows, would quickly drive her mad. She needed air and light, and plenty of both. The Lodge of the
Bruderschaft der Förster
was not for her.

“Then we must think of a way for you to have some money,” Joachim had said firmly. And although they did not think of it then, they did hit upon it fairly soon.

Although not all Air Masters were expert marksmen, all Air Masters
could
be—in a way. The flight of an arrow or a bullet to its target was easily influenced by movements of the air, and that, after all, was what an Air Master was in control of. With sufficient cooperation from one's Air Elemental allies, even a poor natural marksman could hit marks that experts would have difficulty with.

And a good one, as Giselle was—well, she could be unbeatable. And so far this month, that was exactly what she was.

Joachim had opined that if she was careful, and never worked the same festivals at the same towns without at least a year between, she could continue to carry off the crowns and the prizes. He cautioned her that, at the largest contests, she must take care never to take first prize too often—and the largest contests provided very, very generous prizes for second and third place. And she had two opportunities a year to do so: Maifest and Oktoberfest. For Oktoberfest she might even venture into one of the big cities and take the shooting prizes there; they were substantial, and second or third place would more than suffice.

Right now, though, well, the crowds in their colorful festival clothing—the loden green wool of hunting costume, the bright dirndls and embroidered aprons, the lederhosen and embroidered bracers, and Sunday best suits—were making her uncomfortable and claustrophobic. If she hadn't been constrained by custom, she probably would have gone straight to the inn, claimed her horse and ridden off. But she couldn't do that. No, part of the prize for winning the shooting contest was a full barrel of Maibock. And the winner was expected to share it with all of the other contestants.

So Giselle was making her way to the open field where all the tables and benches had been set up for eating and drinking, heading for the section near the beer stall of the barrel's donor. The Maypole was in the center of the field; a group of children were unbraiding the ribbons so they could have a dance, and there was a little brass band tuning up to provide the music for it. There were appetizing aromas coming from all over the field, and once again, she reminded herself that she needed to keep as much of her prize money in her pocket as possible.
After all, beer is food, right? It's made from grains . . .

As Giselle approached, her fellow contestants got up and greeted her with congratulations and backslaps. They were a mix of all sorts, about two dozen all told, from young men in their late teens to grizzled old fellows with ancient, tarnished hunting badges on their wool hats. She accepted both congratulations and backslaps with modest thanks and veiled relief; although it hadn't happened
yet,
there was always the potential for someone who took losing badly. She took her place on a stool placed at one end of a trestle table, the rough equivalent of a “high seat,” and nodded to the tender of the beer stall, who made a great ceremony out of knocking in the spigot on the special keg on the counter and starting to pour the brew.

She was rather pleased that she hadn't needed the help of her Elementals all that much, which made the victory feel thoroughly earned. It had been a bit grueling; she'd needed every bit of her concentration.

She actually didn't remember anything much except the shots that she had taken; when she was participating in a shooting contest, she concentrated on her targets to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. This had been one of those contests with clay plates strung up on a framework and an allowance of a single bullet for each plate; that was a good bit easier than actual targets. She was the only one who had cleared her frame of every plate, every time. The last contest had been a sort of shooting gallery with an actual target pulled across the field by a clockwork mechanism. All of her shots had been grouped in the center; her opponent's had been in the first ring.

She settled down at the table with six of the other marksmen, who had watched eagerly while the keg was tapped and the enormous steins filled and handed round. She knew better than to just sip at hers; no man would ever take anything but hearty gulps, and she needed to make sure every one of her mannerisms was masculine. So she feigned to drink twice as often as she actually swallowed, and no one noticed because they were too busy enjoying themselves.

She turned to a polite tap on her shoulder. “Gunther, lad! It was a damn good thing for you that each round was twenty shots!” said an older man in a well-worn hunter's gear, with a badge of a boar's head and a tuft of pheasant feathers on his hat. The grin on his face said that he really wasn't being serious, which was fortunate; other marksmen bested by “Gunther” had muttered darkly about pacts and haunted clearings.

Giselle chuckled. “What, did you think I was a
Freischutz?”
she asked, referring to the old legend of the hunter who makes a deal with a devil to cast seven magic bullets—the first six would hit whatever the hunter wanted, but the seventh was under the devil's control. . . . “Well, at my eighth plate, I proved you wrong, eh?”

“So you did!” The old man lifted his stein in a toast. “Well, aside from having an eagle's eyes and the steadiest hand I ever saw, how
did
you become such a good shot so young?”

Giselle thought about the hours and hours she had spent, not only practicing her marksmanship combined with her Air Magic, but learning to defend herself with knife, staff, club, and far more exotic weapons. Mother had insisted on that, and as it turned out, there were many Earth Elementals more than willing to serve as trainers. Satyrs in particular thought everything but pistol and rifle practice were great fun, and were expert archers, staff-fighters, and just as skilled with sword or club. And they were not in the least inclined to treat her gently on account of her sex.

But obviously she couldn't mention any of this. So instead, she just shrugged. “I am poor, and have been all my life,” she pointed out. “If I miss, I don't eat.” And certainly, the worn condition of her own clothing testified to that poverty. Her gear was actually secondhand, passed down from one of the younger fellows of the Bruderschaft. It certainly lent credence to her story of poverty.

“Ah, well then, I am glad to have lost to a fellow who is in need of the prize,” the older hunter replied, clapped his hand on her shoulder and went to get himself a refill.