Arcanum Part 73

Sophia stood up on the stirrups to relieve the pain in her back, then started along the via. The tower was deserted, and close to she could see it was missing some of its limestone dressing, at below head height, the rock having been taken for building.

The bridge was Roman, too, its parapet foxed, and she dared not look under it in case the mere act of investigation collapsed the arches. The water ran cold and deep, the same water that flowed past Simbach, from where word had reached them that Fuchs was dead and the future was both more hopeful and uncertain.

Gretchen caught up with Sophia. "My lady, wait. I should ride with you when we go into town. They know me, and they don't know you."

"Do they still throw stones at Jews in Rosenheim then?"

The girl looked away, then looked back, and Sophia recognised her confusion. She was both a princess and a Jew. How did that work?

"Ride with me," she said, and they went side by side down the main street.

It was muddy and it smelt, and anxious, dishevelled people stepped out of their houses to watch them pass. Two women on horses, followed by five men, four of them soldiers: it would have been difficult for the townsfolk to tell who the important travellers were. If they recognised Gretchen as one of their own, they didn't show it. Their suspicion extended to her just as much as it did to Sophia.

"Did you use much magic?" asked Sophia.

"Bits and pieces. For trade we had boats and carts: that's what hurts the most. Everyone we buy and sell from now feels further away and more likely to forget about us."

"But up on your farm?"

"We had a plough, which doesn't work any more. At least the animals do mostly what they've always done, and we can eat, at least until the next winter."

"And after that?" She knew the answer already. If farmers didn't plant enough for themselves, they'd starve. If they didn't plant enough for everyone else, the towns and cities would starve.

Gretchen shrugged. Despite her youth, she could tell what the future might hold. "We'll see."

"You and your family should visit a Jewish farm to see how they do it. Use cattle to pull a plough, the wind or a donkey to turn a millstone. Oil for light." Sophia wanted her to accept the offer, wanted her to persuade the girl's father it was something worth doing. "I can write a letter of introduction if you want."

"We'll see," said Gretchen again.

They were Bavarian. Perhaps when they saw what was happening in Carinthia they'd come around, if it wasn't too late.

A track threaded its way between two houses, heading south towards the mountains. Gretchen steered her horse, more expertly than Sophia perhaps it was being around animals that made her more confident up the track, with a call of "This way, my lady."

Sophia almost overshot the turning, allowing the gap to close between her and that wicked old doctor. The horse finally realised it was supposed to be following the one ahead, and shuffled its hooves sufficiently to complete the manoeuvre.

On her left, there was marshy ground between her and the river, with standing water and last year's reeds rattling in the wind. Ahead of her, there were fields and trees, then trees with a few clearings, then only trees.

Five miles later, the trees parted, and the Enn valley opened out like a flower. Mountains rose up distant-blue either side of the river plain, and cold air fell from the gap like a reminder of the weather a month past. A steep-roofed alpine house sat above the river, and a curl in the bank made a natural harbour of sorts. The fields were tiny, and grass grew and flowers danced on top of the high protecting walls infilled with soil.

Gretchen casually took her feet from both stirrups and swivelled on her saddle until she sat sideways. From there, she jumped lightly to the ground and ran on.

"Dad, Mum, they're here."

Her horse, free of its slight burden, looked around at Sophia, and kept on walking up to the farmhouse.

Sophia found that dismounting gracefully was something she wasn't good at, along with all the other things she wasn't good at on or near a horse. She ended up on her back, one hand still holding her reins.

One of the guards made to rescue her, but she growled, "I'm fine", with such venom that he remained mounted. Slowly, she reached up the nearest wall, jammed her fingers in between two pieces of stone and hauled herself up.

It would be miracle, she thought, if she ever walked again without bow-legs.

Kuppenheim slipped wearily from his own horse and started unlacing his surgeon's box from the back of the saddle. It gave time for Sophia to adjust her clothing, straighten her sword, and walk the last few feet to the farmhouse door.

She was about to knock, when a round-faced farmer with no hair on his head but plenty on his face opened it to her.

"Mr Flintsbach?"

"You'd better come in," he said. Naturally dour, he gave nothing away.

It was dark and warm in the kitchen the warmest place in the whole house, no doubt, because they'd made up a mattress of straw and sacking right there in front of the deep fireplace, and Buber was lying on it, propped up on one elbow.

"He wasn't like this when I left," said Gretchen, breathlessly. "He was near death, and now look."

Strange that she was breathless again, but perhaps the sight of Buber's lean, muscled torso, showing every scar he'd ever won, might have been enough reason.

Sophia moved around the table to see him better, and smiled.

"Hello, Peter."

Buber tried to cover himself up. "Sophia. I mean, my lady. When they said they'd brought help, I-"

"Peter, shut up." She knelt down beside him, scabbard clattering against the floor. "How are you? I wasn't certain we'd ever see you again."

"There's something I need to tell you," he said, ignoring the question. "In private."

She reached out and pressed her hand against his forehead. He pulled back, and she frowned, then firmly applied her palm to his head once again. Warm, which, given his closeness to the fire, was reasonable; and he was neither dry nor excessively sweaty.

"Can it wait?"

"No," he said.

"Peter, what happened to you? You should be miles away from here, drinking Frankish wine in the sun and eating olives straight from the tree." She pulled at his blankets, and he only half resisted. There were fresh roads across the map of his chest. "Some of these wounds are new."

"Clear the room and I'll tell you," he said.

"Is that really necessary?" she started, but it was her turn to relent. "I'm sorry about this, Mr Flintsbach. Affairs of state."

After they'd all reluctantly left, and she'd issued instruction for the guards to keep everyone away from the walls, windows and doors especially Kuppenheim she sat cross-legged by Buber's feet, sword across her lap.

"Talk to me, Peter. Tell me good things."

"Wish to the gods I could." He scratched at his chin, making his stubble rasp. "I did as I was asked. I took Felix's letter to the dwarves. Except I met the dwarves coming down the valley towards me. They've closed the passes, and told the people of Ennsbruck to leave. They're changing, Sophia. Growing. We were attacked by giants, too, and they're shrinking. It's all going wrong."

"The letter, Peter. What happened to the letter?"

"I handed it to King Ironmaker myself, deep in the halls of Farduzes." He looked around him. "My clothes are somewhere around here."

She got up stiffly and searched them out, bringing them to him and laying them on his lap.

Buber rummaged around until he found a crinkled wodge of vellum. He lacked the fingers to open it carefully, so he handed it to Sophia.

"This was part of Ironmaker's reply. The rest of it was a box that would have killed Felix, and probably everyone else in the room at the time."

"Oh," she said. "I take it you decided to leave that part of the message behind."

"They insisted I took it. We fought. I escaped. I made it as far as Ennsbruck, where they'd laid an ambush for me. They killed my horse. I managed to refloat a boat with no bottom, and the Flintbachs fished me out of the river just outside here, more dead than alive." He stared into the distance for a moment, before his attention snapped back to the present. "They're coming, Sophia. They're coming out of their stronghold and they'll take whatever they can. The Enn valley is just the start of it: they want to carve out a kingdom above ground, because they can't bear to be under it any longer."

She examined the vellum, and began to tease apart the layers of skin joined together by blood and water. She worked carefully, and eventually was able to press the sheet against the floor; the ink had been damaged in places, but most of it was legible despite the smears and deletions, if only she could read Dwarvish. She knew better than to ask Buber.

Rather than refolding the parchment, she rolled it up. "Will they parley?" she asked.

"When I gave Ironmaker Felix's letter, he asked me if Felix meant what he said. What was the invitation he gave them?"

"That as many who would come were welcome." Sophia settled back down, and reached instinctively for her sword again, dragging it across her knees.

"He was asking me if Felix could have meant all of them. I said yes."

"You said yes?" Her voice rose sharply.

"I did, because it was what Felix would have done. He wouldn't have changed his mind." Tired of sitting up, Buber lay back down with a grunt. "And the dwarves still wanted him dead and our land for themselves. They don't mean to share Carinthia with us. They mean to drive us out."

While he stared at the ceiling, she stared at the floor. "How many of them are there?"

"I don't know. They kept their strength hidden. You know I'm not good with numbers. Thousands, tens of thousands, they're just words to me. I don't know what they mean. They'll fight, though. They'll be cruel and tenacious, and that I do understand." Buber looked at his few-fingered hands, holding them up in front of his face. "Gods, they'll fight."

"So will we," she said.

"It'll be the hardest thing we've ever had to do. For a thousand years. It'll make Obernberg seem like a squabble between two drunks." He turned his head to look at her. "Even if we win, chances are that you, me, Felix, everyone we know, will be dead by the end of it."

"Yes, there is that chance." She lifted up his blanket at the feet end. Some of his toes were blistered and the skin on his hard soles was peeling off in sheets. "I've a doctor with me. He won't kill you. I might kill him, but that's a different story."

Sophia lowered the blanket gently over his feet again, and made to stand, but Buber reached once more into his clothing and pulled out a small metal case.

"Take this," he said, and pressed it on her. "They use this to light fires."

"What do I do with it?" She rehung her scabbard and opened the little box. She sniffed it and made a face.

"Give it to Frederik Thaler. He'll ... know what to do with it." The effort of talking to her had worn him out. "Gods, I'm tired. I'm tired, and there's so much to do."

"Get well, Peter. We'll get you home somehow. And then" she shifted her shoulders, as if squaring up to the enemy "prepare. How long do you think we have?"

"It'll be over, one way or another, by winter."

He sounded more than tired. She nodded slowly and, taking the scroll and the case, she left, closing the door quietly behind her. Outside, the soldiers were keeping the Flintsbachs and Kuppenheim at a discreet distance from the house.

Sophia went straight to her horse and stowed the items Buber had given her. She collected the purse and held it out to Mr Flintsbach without subtracting from its contents.

"Take this," she said. "You'll need every red penny of it."

"Why?" he asked, even as he closed his fingers around it.

She thought about lying, or at least of not telling him the truth. "You're going to need to buy another farm, a long way from here. There's a war coming, and this little house and these fields are going to become our battlefield. That river will run red and the first snows will bury the dead."

She fastened her saddlebags again and, reluctantly, awkwardly, raised one foot to the stirrup.

75.

He always seemed to end up back in the refectory when something significant happened: some setback, some triumph, some event large enough to shake him, and he'd suddenly find himself at one end of the long table, drinking or eating, or both.

To explain the size that he was, his whole world had to be changing daily.

Take now, for instance. The princess consort, or Sophia to give her the name that Thaler had known her by all her life, had ridden ridden, mind: she'd barely sat on a horse before all the way to Rosenheim and back, just to press a small box of grey-black powder on him.

The box sat on the worn and scrubbed table in front of him, right next to a cup of short beer and some middling cheese he'd managed to procure. What he wanted was a good thick slice of sausage, and preferably several thick slices of sausage, some bread, and perhaps some sauerkraut. It was too early for anything like that, so beer and cheese had to do.

"She said I'd know what to do with it," growled Thaler. He liked his sleep almost as much as he liked his food. "Or rather, Peter said I'd know what to do with it."

He drank his beer and cut himself a generous slice of cheese. While he was still chewing, he snagged the box and inspected it for what felt like the tenth time that morning. This time was no different to the others, so why should it yield any more information than before? It was lighter in the hall, certainly, and there were hopeful sounds beginning in the kitchens, but the box was just a box: silver, finely made, carefully carved with dragon-things looping in and out of their own coils, clearly dwarvish. Nothing but a container for the powder.

So it had to be the powder itself that was special.

The lid was tight fitting, like Thaler's breeks, and had to be dragged free by opposing motions of fingers and thumbs. It struck him that perhaps the box was intended to be water-tight. The powder inside wasn't really a powder, more a grit, like sand. It smelt ... odd. Of anvils and the cloud of dust made by the strike of a mason's chisel.

He took a pinch of it, felt its coarseness between his fingertips and made a little pile of grains on the table. He peered at them. If the case was designed to keep out water, what would happen if he deliberately got the powder wet?

Thaler still had dregs of beer in his cup, and he dribbled them onto the pile. It turned to mush, and nothing obvious happened, even when he poked it with his finger. The mixture ran up inside his carefully clipped nail and stained it black, and he was left rubbing and smelling his fingers. The odour of broken stone grew strong.

"Master Thaler?"

He turned, expecting to see a cook because it was a woman's voice.

"Mistress."

The Order wore white, the library wore black. She'd chosen to dress in grey, all in grey, as if she'd taken the robes of her former profession and washed them with ink.

He'd also learnt that she was a changeling, an elf-girl who'd been left in a newborn's cradle. Felix hadn't known what to make of that, and neither did Thaler.

He remembered his manners long enough to stop staring and wave at the space next to him.

"Please, sit. I don't think breakfast will be long."

Chapter end