Arcanum Part 65

And yet, and yet.

She steeled herself at the top of the cellar's steps and gathered her coat around her. The windows were brown and streaked. Above the door was a complicated rope knot, bent and spliced and intertwined. She had no idea what she would find inside. Drunk Jews celebrating Purim was one thing: drunk Germans despairing for their livelihoods was another.

If she was scared, she shouldn't show it. Like most things in her life at that moment, if she could act the role, she was the role.

She walked down below street level, and opened the door. The smell was distinct and unpleasant. Everybody in Carinthia smelt more than they used to the lack of running water had seen to that but this was a different level of odour.

Those men still conscious turned to see who it was who dared disturb their maudlin reflections.

Most just turned away again. A handful kept on staring, and two stood up not out of deference, but in a belligerent, resentful manner. The cellar's host put down the mug he was cleaning and flicked a damp cloth over his shoulder.

"Mistress Morgenstern? You're welcome, of course, but this isn't a place for the ladies."

"I'm looking ..." she said, surprised at how small her voice sounded, "I'm looking to hire a boat and its crew."

"Fuck off back to Jew-land," said one bargemaster, and he put his back to her, his tattooed face twisted in a sneer.

Sophia hadn't come unprepared. To the consternation of the drinkers, she parted her coat up to her waist and drew her sword. The sound was unmistakable, the soft slither of iron against the leather and brass of the scabbard, and the man who'd insulted her stiffened.

She rested the tip of the blade on his broad shoulder so he could feel the weight of it. "That's 'Fuck off back to Jew-land, my lady' to you."

She had their attention.

The bargemaster reached slowly for his mug and took a long pull. "Do you expect me to apologise?"

"An apology would go a long way to helping me forget your face and not bother to find out your name. What's it to be, bargemaster? A day in the lock-up or a grudging admission that I have a point?"

"Do you have balls under that skirt as well as a sword?"

"Not yet, but I can always cut yours off and wear them as a trophy."

Someone laughed. It gave permission to others to guffaw and snigger, but it wasn't her they were mocking. This was no harmless sport, though: reputations were being made and lost.

She held her nerve. The bargemaster finished his drink and brushed the sword-point from his shoulder. She held the weapon level. He got up, slowly, and showed her just how tall and wide he was, how bloodshot his eyes were and how yellow his teeth.

If he laid so much as a finger on her, Felix would have him pressed. He knew it. She knew it. The sword was superfluous, the law an extravagance. Had she judged the situation wrongly after all?

No. Apparently not.

"My lady," he said, dragging the words out of somewhere deep inside and refusing to look at her. His line to the door was far from straight, but it sufficed. The door closed. He'd gone. There were still two dozen or so bargemasters and bargees, and she rather hoped she wouldn't have to face down every single one of them.

She lowered her sword, and looked around the room. Several of them were still smirking, but none gave any indication they might want to talk to her. That was, in her opinion, stupid. She had coin, and it wasn't like any of them were going anywhere soon. Quite where they found the money for drink escaped her.

A few grins started to slip. She wasn't going anywhere either, they realised. They started to glance sideways at each other, to see who would break first.

Finally, a grey-haired man with a cross-shaped tattoo on one cheek and a spiral on the other ousted the clean-skinned bargee off his seat at the end of a table. He raised his eyebrow at Sophia and nodded towards the empty chair.

She could poise and swagger as well as the next man, but something told her that this bargemaster wouldn't be impressed by that. She laid her sword lengthways along the beer-soaked tabletop and, gathering up her skirts, sat down.

"Thank you," she said, "I'm-"

"I know who you are, my lady." The man had the look of a Frank about him, right down to his thin but long moustache. "Vulfar."

"And you own a barge, Master Vulfar?"

"Used to ply it from Ulm all the way to the Black Sea, and, gods willing, I will again. The thing is ... you'll know by these marks" Vulfar turned his cheeks and pushed up his sleeves "what I can't do any more."

Sophia felt herself colour up. "I wouldn't be hiring you if you could."

"Very pragmatic of you, Mistress Morgenstern." He sat back and tweaked the end of his moustache. "I think we might have had dealings with your father in the past. Indirectly, of course."

She looked at the rest of his crew, and wondered if these men didn't feel the loss of magic most keenly of all. One day, the open river and a thousand miles to navigate; the next, tied up on the quayside of a single town.

"The trip will be downstream only, Master Vulfar. We'll try and get your boat back here afterwards, or we'll buy it outright if that's what you want. And there'll be pay for you and your men. I don't believe in chiselling every last red penny, so I hope we can come to a fair price."

"A fair price for what work, exactly?" Vulfar examined the bottom of his empty mug.

"Something we should discuss in private, perhaps," said Sophia. She didn't know how much cellar beer cost, so she guessed, counting three shillings from her purse and placing them on the table in front of her. "I'm sure your crew can drink to the prince's health while we're talking."

She closed her purse and pulled her sword back along the table. Vulfar's men watched its steel simplicity withdraw and then pounced on the coins.

Vulfar led the way back outside and, with a wary look around at the street, waited for Sophia to join him.

"You don't think I should have crossed that other bargemaster, do you?"

"He was your enemy before you entered the cellar, my lady. Why should it be any different now?" He had a club at his belt, far more effective in a bar brawl than her own weapon. "I do think you shouldn't be walking the streets of Juvavum without a guard, no matter how proficient you are with that pig-sticker."

"Pig-sticker?"

"You know what I mean, my lady. I might not share either your religion or your country, but the prince's mother shared mine and I've more than a passing interest in his well-being." The bargemaster smoothed his moustache again with a pinch of yellow wax produced from a silver container. "The boy leans on you, and you need to be more careful."

She pulled her coat aside to sheath her sword. "I've lived here all my life, Master Vulfar. I know the risks."

"Do you?" He stopped for a moment. "Do you really? I was on the quayside the day your priests chased you into the Town Hall. They took a pounding from our bottles then, and ever since, whenever I've seen them, they've been in armour, and always in company. Far be it for me to point out who learnt what that day."

He carried on and made for one of the barges tied up, nose pointing upstream towards the bridge.

Sophia folded her arms and regarded the length and width of the vessel. "You're probably right. You're not the first person to mention it either."

"Oh, they're not going to take on Felix. The boy's got a good arm on him and fights like a Jotun. And he's a son of Carinthia, no matter that he's a Frankish prince too. You? The magic might have gone if just for a season but there're many that accuse you of witchery." He jumped aboard with practised nonchalance. "You've got away with it so far by being proud and fierce. It won't always be enough."

"Thank you for your concern, Master Vulfar." She held out her hand, and he steadied her as she stepped up. The boat wallowed under her. "You've a cargo already?"

"Salt. That can go back on the quay if you need the space. What's the job?" Vulfar sat astride the covers of the cargo deck and stretched his legs ahead of him.

"I need you to go to Simbach, arriving at night somewhere upstream of the town, and unloading men and cargo there. Can you navigate that far without your river-magic?"

Vulfar's eyes narrowed. "I've heard the gossip. Are you planning to kill the rogue earl?"

"No," she answered mostly truthfully. "Although if he ends up dead, then so be it. We want to give the people of Simbach something to fight with, and something to fight for. What happens after that is up to them. We're not going to mass an army and march it across the river, but neither can we ignore what Fuchs is doing."

The bargemaster drummed his heels. "If it goes wrong, I'm stuck on the Bavarian side of the river in the dark, with angry earl's men wanting to separate my head from my neck."

"If it goes wrong, you can swim the half a stadia to the other bank," countered Sophia. "I'd recompense you for the loss of your boat."

"Still a risk. I'll be straight with you, my lady; while trade isn't what it used to be, and being laid up for such a long time is hurting my purse as much as the next man's, that's no reason to throw caution to the wind and take on a job that might end up with us drowned or hacked to pieces."

"Master Vulfar, stop building your part up and name your price. We can take it from there." She looked away to the north, down the river and the steep-sided valley that contained it.

"A hundred florins."

She turned slowly back. "If I returned to that stinking pit of depravity you call a beer cellar and slapped a hundred florins on the counter, I could find half a dozen bargemasters that would follow me to Sheol and back. Why don't you try again?"

"If you went with any of those chancers, you'd still be trying to land as you passed through the Iron Gates. I'll get your men and your weapons and you, if you want to come along to the right place at the right time. A hundred florins to stop a war before it starts is cheap, my lady." Vulfar swung his feet over the far side of the hold and slid down to the deck. "Besides, it's not likely that this earl could afford to buy us out at that price."

"And, to your credit, you decided to talk to me when no one else would." She smiled at him. "Such generosity of spirit shouldn't go unrewarded."

Vulfar patted his thinning hair. "I've an eye to the few years I might have left, my lady. If I'm not to die with my hand at the tiller, I need to invest in a different business."

Sophia stamped her foot against the wooden boards. The barge was solid and heavy, and it was difficult to imagine such a vessel moving without magic. "A smaller, slimmer boat? One you could sail or row, or even pull upstream?"

"That sounds like a young man's game to me. Now, if you wanted someone to build such boats and sell them to idiots seeking their fortune ..." His voice trailed off and he faced away from Sophia, staring out at the river and the woods beyond.

"A hundred florins would go a long way to setting up a boatyard and buying timber." She relented. "A hundred it is then. To be settled in full on completion."

Vulfar looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrow already raised. "My lady-"

"You and your crew won't see so much as a red penny until we're done. I'm not having drunken bargees broadcasting our business in the brothels and beer cellars of Juvavum. Tell them as little as you can get away with, promise them money, and leave it at that. You wouldn't want Fuchs hearing about this any more than I would." She jumped across to the quay unaided. "Afterwards, they can do what they like, and probably will."

The bargemaster stroked his beloved moustache again. "A deal, then. I won't insult you with written contracts or a spit and a shake. Your word is good, Mistress Morgenstern."

"I'm still unconvinced I had the better of this bargain," she said. "Start unloading your salt, Master Vulfar. We'll need the space."

66.

The armoury wasn't empty, and there seemed to be still more rooms further and deeper that were piled with weaponry. Quantity wasn't a problem. Neither was the quality of spears being carried out in bundles of ten and twenty. The spearheads were discoloured with age, and on occasions blunt, but they could be cleaned and sharpened. The shafts were old, but of seasoned timber that could still take an impact. They'd do the job, even if they just looked the part.

Ullmann's worry was that they were handing over perfectly good pole arms to the Bavarians without any guarantee that Carinthia wasn't going to see the wrong end of them at some point.

He watched while Reinhardt closed and locked the door behind him, rehanging the key around his neck. Then they walked out into the courtyard together, where a handcart was already laden with spears. The servants fitted the extras on top and tied them on.

"This had better work," he said to himself, but Reinhardt heard him and scrubbed at the back of his neck while he formulated a response.

"I agree, Master Ullmann, but we do as we're ordered."

"That goes without saying. But I'd be happier with Carinthian weapons in Carinthian hands. The Bavarians owe us nothing." He looked up at the Hare Tower. "There's two up there who can't agree on anything except their hatred for all things Carinthian. One of them thinks we interfere too much, the other that we intervene too little. Whichever it is, it's all our fault."

"Press them, I say. We're wasting good food on them."

"My lord Felix says they stay for now." Ullmann was worried about them. Incompetent spies though they were, they could still do damage if they got away. Perhaps it'd be better for everyone if he could engineer both their escape and their immediate recapture, followed by their inevitable visit to the main square.

Later. He'd think about that later. The cart was loaded and ready to be rolled away, a man at the front and a man behind.

"If everything goes to plan," said Reinhardt, "it won't matter one way or the other. Without Fuchs, they've no reason to cause us trouble."

"You think they need a reason?" Ullmann let it pass and called to the servants. "Come on, then. Let's get going."

The cart rattled away, and once it was out of the fortress precincts, it attracted attention: there was no hiding what they were moving. A glare from Ullmann seemed to send people on their way, but he was aware that doing all this in daylight where they could be seen by anyone was a risk.

Mistress Morgenstern wanted them to leave now so that this Frankish bargemaster Vulfar could get in position by nightfall, but to his mind it seemed rushed. They weren't ready to extend their rule over other towns. They didn't even know if they could keep hold of the ones they had: what had happened in Simbach could just as easily have happened in Villach or Hallstadt or Linz with their own earls, and they'd only just be learning about it now.

They passed through the main square again, and his gaze was drawn to the house on the corner with Gold Alley. He wasn't going to be there tonight, or the night after that, or even ... and he had to admit that the thought of Aelinn was distracting him from his duties, just as she'd warned him it shouldn't.

He told the carters to take the wide road to the right of the square that led to the quays, rather than try and steer through the narrow alleys, a path that would lead right past her front door.

Vulfar was standing next to a pile of barrels, each of them as tall as his waist, and stacked two-up so that the pile looked like a wall of wood. The previous cart-load of spears was almost stowed away, the last of the bundles being threaded between the supporting struts of the hold, and overseeing everything was Mistress Morgenstern, sitting on a single barrel of salt.

She waved him over, and he inspected the barge sourly.

"Not partial to the water, Master Ullmann?"

"Far from it, my lady. The quality of the boat and the crew are more my concern."

Vulfar curled his moustache around his finger and scowled, while Sophia laughed. "Master Vulfar has assured me on both those matters. At the price we're paying, that's the least he could have done."

She stood up as the second load of spears was unloaded onto the quay and the laborious task of carrying them into the barge began.

"Gentlemen? We need to conduct a few introductions in the Town Hall." Sophia pointed the way, and the two men fell in behind her. Ullmann was a little taller and considerably younger than the Frank, but it didn't help him to feel safe in his company. A hundred florins was a huge price, five years' wages in his old job as an usher and all for two or three days' work. While it had been a wise decision to keep every last penny away from the bargees until the deed was done, the amount itself was just another worry.

He wondered if they couldn't have found a Carinthian bargemaster instead.

For his part, Vulfar seemed happy with the deal he'd struck, and why wouldn't he be? The risk was all Carinthia's.

In the Town Hall, there were men waiting for them. Master Wess, of course, as this was his lair, and three men he'd never seen before. One reminded Ullmann of his father: broad and barrel-like, with rough hands and a weather-beaten face. The other two were smaller, shorter, less used to a life of hard physical work.

Sophia gathered them together. "This is Mr Ohlhauser, a farmer on our side of the river, and these are Mr Metz and Mr Kehle: they'll all be travelling with you. Master Vulfar will let Mr Ohlhauser off on the east bank before the turn to Simbach. You know what to do when it gets dark?"

Everyone nodded, Metz and Kehle more nervously than the others.

Wess held out a sheet of parchment to Ullmann, a map of sorts, with lines and shapes. "This is roughly" and he rolled his eyes "what Simbach looks like. Spend your time on the boat wisely, Master Ullmann."

Chapter end