Arcanum Part 95

"And mine," said Tuomanen, unhelpfully. "And his." She pointed at Agathos.

"Gods, you're all as contrary as each other."

"We want to hold our heads up when we get home," said Morgenstern. "No matter what we did here, all they'll remember is a few drowned rats chasing us off."

"But-"

"They're beaten, Frederik. Beaten by us." Morgenstern waved his hands to cover all those still standing. "Beaten by you. They're nothing any more. We don't have to run from them."

Thaler turned around. The dwarves were massing on the dry ground, and yes, there seemed to be a couple of centuries' worth of them, compared with his barely forty.

"Right then," he said. "Since you all seem determined to get yourselves killed and me with you into the bargain, I suppose we'd better get on with it. Pick something heavy up, and follow me. And for gods' sake, Aaron, stay behind Bastian and shout encouragement or something."

He took a deep breath and started to stride the way he'd come, back towards the tower, swishing at the grass with his walking-stick. Across the river, the cavalry were beginning to form up at the north end of the ridge, but there were only half a dozen of them so far. It would take a while to reach them, even on horseback: up the via, across the bridge, then down the western bank.

Thaler was by Morgenstern's table, and he stopped briefly to lay his hat down. No point in that getting damaged. Then he faced the dwarves again, purpose in every step.

As he walked, he stopped using his stick to bruise leaves and played with the catches in the handle. It twisted and clicked, then he unscrewed the ash-wood pole from the horn. The two separated to reveal a thin triangular blade.

He made a couple of practice swipes with it, then a lunge that was not so much threatening as comical. All the same, the point was sharp and the blade long: in the hands of someone who knew how to use it, it would be lethal.

The dwarves would have no idea whether Thaler was that someone or otherwise.

Tuomanen, crowbar in hand, unwound the still-smouldering long fuse from around her shoulders and shrugged it off. "You came prepared," she said.

"I thought it prudent. Who could tell what madness might descend and cause us to close with an enemy, armed with little more than a few sticks?" He sucked his teeth. "You realise this is almost the very definition of hubris?"

"The gods won't destroy us, Master Thaler. If there are any gods left who depend on magic rather than prayer, that is." She brushed her hair behind her oddly pointed ears. "We carved out our own destiny here. We spent our blood and our treasure, and look: most of us get to go home. Isn't that the real victory?"

"Except you, Mistress. You don't get to go home, do you?"

She looked down at the ground, at the bright green grass and the water meadow flowers turning to seed beneath her feet, then at her arms black with patterned ink beneath her skin. "Home is where you decide it is, Master Thaler. And I've been away a very long time."

They were where they needed to be. The dwarves were no more than a well-thrown stone away, and Thaler slowed and stopped. His crew drew up behind him, and he took an extra step forward.

The dwarves looked at them. Those sitting or lying down slowly stood, until all were staring. Thaler's people were soot-marked, flint-reeked, tired but unbowed. The dwarves were simply pitiable: half drowned, mud-coated, defeated.

Thaler chewed the side of his tongue. He wondered what to say, if anything at all. He had no guarantee that anything he said would be the least bit comprehensible to the dwarves. He could try his Latin and his Greek, but he'd have to send back to the library for anyone able to speak even a few words of Dwarvish.

No matter: he had to do something, so he raised his sword and levelled it at the dwarf closest to him. He had no reason to assume this was a leader of any sort. These bedraggled things were merely the remnants, the random sweepings from the horde that had been brushed together one last time. So one was as good as another.

"Can you understand me?"

The dwarf looked blankly at him, blinking.

"Does anyone on your side speak German? Latin? Ellenikos?"

Nothing. Why were they suddenly so passive?

"What else can we try? Aaron?"

"Ebrit?" he offered. "Parsi? Aramaic?"

"Donsk tunga," said Tuomanen, and there was an immediate reaction. Heads turned and re-centred on her.

"Mistress? The old language of the north it is, then. Can you tell these gentlemen ..." Thaler tailed off. He still didn't know what to say. Morgenstern squeezed through to tug on his sleeve.

"Frederik, the cavalry's on its way."

Thaler nodded. "Thank you, Aaron. Mistress, can you tell them that if they surrender to me, I'll save them from the Frankish horse."

"Before I do that," she said, "do you think you can do that?"

"I'm the master librarian and a prince's man. That has to carry some weight, even on a battlefield. So yes, go ahead. Make them understand." He turned to face his own people. "Does anyone here have any problem with asking them to surrender, or do you think we should have some more slaughter to end the day with?"

There were few sceptical faces, but if any had concerns, they kept them quiet.

Tuomanen cleared her throat. "Gefast upp, ea hestamenn vilja drepa ig."

The dwarves seemed to experience a collective shudder, and whispered to themselves. The ground began to sound with the beating of hooves, and Thaler looked over his shoulder to see horsemen, their blue and white pennants fluttering, gallop over the bridge and towards the emplacements.

"What are they saying?" he asked Tuomanen.

"Discussing your offer. There's more shame in defeat than there is in death."

"They can stick their shame up their arses. I'm willing to let them live, not as slaves, but as free men."

"I'll tell them." She composed the phrase in her mind, then spoke it. "er mun ekki vera raelar. er vilja hafa frelsi. I'm sure I'm getting all this wrong: it's been a long time, Master Thaler."

"You're doing your best. But please tell them to hurry."

"Veldu nu," she said to them. Her voice was dispassionate, but the horses were almost on them.

Thaler was as desperate as she was calm. It made no sense, since he'd spent all his time previously trying to kill the dwarves, but suddenly it mattered a very great deal to him whether these poor benighted creatures lived or died.

One by one, they made their choices. Those who were willing to be taken captive, to trust Thaler's word, knelt among the tall grasses and flowerheads. There were some, even then, who would not yield. Half a dozen broke out of the main mass and started to run south, towards the notch of the valley and the forest between the mountainsides.

The first of the Franks thundered by, and those six never made it anywhere near the tree line. The other riders circled the remaining dwarves, spears down, ready.

"They've surrendered," called Thaler. "They've surrendered to me and they're my prisoners."

Clovis wheeled about in front of Thaler and Tuomanen. "Master Thaler, isn't it? For a bookish sort, you seem surprisingly martial."

"I had expert teachers, my lord. Homer, Pliny and Caesar himself." Thaler slipped his sword into its ash sheath. "How did it go across the river?"

"How did it go? Grimly well. There was no artistry to it: your low-born commanders live, while King Ironmaker and his lords are dead, his army destroyed and his ambitions as cold as his grave will be." He sniffed. "Your engines of war, Master Thaler. I would like to discuss them with you later. Over a cup of wine, perhaps."

"If you'll call your sergeants off, I'll happily agree."

Clovis turned his attention to the surrounded dwarves. "They raised their arms against you with no warning or reason. Why you suffer some of them still to live is beyond me. Say the word, Master Thaler, and my men will use them for spear practice."

"I don't think that'll be necessary." He screwed his walking-stick back together, and released the catch to turn the hilt back into an innocuous grip. "I have other plans for them."

"Ah, the mines," said Clovis. "Be sure to chain them well, and sweat the labour out of them."

"Something like that," said Thaler, who had no intention of going back on his word. The water courses and drains beneath Juvavum could still do with some expert attention, and yes, the mines, too, which were always in danger of flooding. But only if they wanted to work there. That was what Felix had wanted all along: a few dwarves to pass on their knowledge. It would be a legacy, of sorts.

"I'll leave some of my men to escort your prisoners to their pen." Clovis kicked his heels and his horse trotted away, tail up. "Hah. Beaten by a woman and caught by a librarian. These are dread dwarves indeed."

Thaler watched him go. "I suppose he didn't have to stay and fight with us."

"I don't think the Lady Sophia gave him much choice. I understand she was really very rude to him." Tuomanen smiled. "So what do we do now, Master Thaler?"

"We pack up and we ... well, carry on as we were before." Thaler shrugged. "Perhaps we can get back to some proper work instead of blowing holes in things. There really is an awful lot to be getting on with."

"And who will lead Carinthia?" she asked.

"I don't know." He looked across the river, more pensive than he had been before. "I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow."

"Why not you?"

He baulked. "Good gods, no. Give it to someone else: I'm far too busy for that sort of thing. I have a library to run."

She smiled again.

101.

Seeing the mountains covered with snow was a relief that was fresh every morning. Winter was here, at last. The passes to the south were closed by deep, dense drifts, and there was no way through for either the Doge or his old sparring partner, the Duke of Milano.

Wien had collapsed under a mountain of its own: debt. The Protector had fled, and Carinthia had subtly suggested that he keep away from their palatinate. The people of Wien continued their flight from the city. Some would move into Carinthia and learn how they ran things there. After they'd overwintered with their kin, they might take their new ideas back home. That would be interesting.

And Bavaria? Standing before Kossler, Lord of Munchen, had been more than a little embarrassing, given that he'd so nearly met his end at the point of a dagger wielded by one of Ullmann's agents. Her apology had been heartfelt, and she'd assuaged the man's anger and turned away the possibility of a war that neither of them wanted by telling him that she'd killed Ullmann herself. It had become quite beery after that, and Kossler had drunkenly agreed to Carinthia keeping both Rosenheim and Simbach.

When he'd sobered up, she'd reminded him of his promise. She would remind him again when she saw him later.

Carinthia was safe for now, until next spring at least. They'd had a harvest, good enough to last them through, even with the extra mouths to feed, and with some to spare for their neighbours.

All of this, everything from affairs of state to the fullness of a pig farmer's stomach, was now officially going to be her concern. It served her right, really, for being so competent.

She could have refused. She'd talked it over with Thaler, her father, and Wess, and they'd all urged her to accept, though she hadn't been able to tell whether Thaler was encouraging her to do so to ensure that no one would ask him.

She hadn't talked to Peter Buber. She didn't have to. She knew what he'd say.

There'd be no coronation. She wasn't nobility, and her father was vague enough as it was about his genealogy without trying to work his way back to King David. Knowing her luck, she'd be related to Herod Antipas instead.

So she wouldn't be their queen, nor their princess. Some might have hoped for that, but their prince was gone, and that was the end of it. They'd burnt his head, and what she'd been assured was the rest of his body, on a barge in the middle of the Salzach.

In the end, picking a title had proved more difficult than picking the person to fill it.

Thaler had suggested all sorts of impractical names based on offices from Athenian democracy. She was not, absolutely and definitely, going to be an archon, no matter how much sense it made in an Athenian context. She pointed out, and pointedly stuck to the idea, that this was Carinthia, and Athens had flourished and dwindled some two thousand years before them.

Instead, they were going to install her which made her sound like a piece of furniture using the title of provost. She would be someone who'd been placed in charge of the palatinate. She hadn't inherited it, or seized it. She'd been given it by the only people qualified to do so: the Carinthians themselves. And she wouldn't be ruling on her own. There'd be an assembly in the spring, after the snows melted, and two in summer, and, oh, everything would be fine: she'd hardly ever have to make a decision on her own, though she'd kept the title strategos. Just in case.

Her spatha, old and battered when she'd worn it, had been retired to over the fireplace in the solar. She turned around to see it held against the stonework by two wire brackets, thin enough so it looked as if it was floating there. If she ever needed it, she knew where it was. Today, they'd present her with the Sword of Carinthia: Felix's sword, and Gerhard's before him, along with all the others who'd wielded it since it had been forged and enchanted, and disenchanted again.

She turned back to the windows, and the snow was still there.

They'd survived. The Germans thanked their gods with more equivocation than she thanked hers. Then again, HaShem had never promised them magic.

There was a knock at the door. She was used to that: the knock, the creak, the unnecessary bow or curtsy, the fumbling conversation and almost always the entirely obvious answer. The door stayed closed this time, and she was distracted more by that than by an announcement that Clovis, King of the Franks, had arrived, or some other dignitary.

"You can come in," she said, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door.

The latch clicked, the door creaked, Buber stepped in.

"I ... hello. Is this a good time?"

"Peter. It's always a good time."

"I can come back later," he said, halfway out of the doorway.

"Peter. Come in. Close the door."

He did so, albeit reluctantly. He looked as if this room was the last place on earth he wanted to be, and she the last person he wanted to be with. She sympathised with that, and wondered if he knew just how much she shared those sentiments.

He'd scrubbed up. If it hadn't been for the scars, the part-missing ear, the shaved head and the stubbled cheeks, he'd almost be handsome. Not that she cared any more, but she cared on his behalf, because he was always so painfully aware of how he looked. Of course, she had her own scar now, a reminder of a time that could have ended so very differently. His clothes were clean, if tired, and she wondered if he'd ever owned anything new.

"You look-"

"Like a pile of shit," he said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to say that."

"I was going to say respectable. They whoever they are seem to believe I have to wear something suitable for the occasion. I should, perhaps, have let them fight to the death as to what suitable means." She raised her arms to show that her sleeves were slashed to show the material underneath, and her intricately embroidered cuffs were shot with gold thread. "Black and yellow really isn't my colour."

She let her arms fall back, and he shuffled his feet. She seemed to blind him, and he looked away.

"I won't be there when they, you know..."

"Make me provost?" She nodded, and almost choked on the dryness in her mouth. "I'd guessed you might not be. You can change your mind, whenever you want. Up to the moment they do it, of course. After that, it's too late."

"I ..." he said, and he appeared to be having as much difficulty with his words as she was. "I'm not a ceremony sort of man."

Chapter end