Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2)

by Peter Morwood

  Not that there was anything wrong with the smell of honest sweat. No indeed; all the armour and the padding under it, and everyone else in the castle, all reeked with an unmistakable martial aroma that came of mingling sweat with the sharp tang of metal and the heavy perfume of old oil. Any fortress of the military Orders, Templars, Hospitallers and all, would have seemed strangely empty without it.

  Despite his private reservations about such effete Eastern customs, the thought of a tub filled with hot water was growing increasingly pleasant. Not so much for the sake of cleanliness, Albrecht thought sternly to himself, a certain pious sluttishness was right and proper. But the prospect of being warm right to the tips of his frozen toes without the uncomfortable chilly period that followed changing from armour back to indoor clothing was very appealing.

  More appealing at least than keeping company with the three latest visitors to Thorn, who had arrived from the Lateran Palace in Rome only the day before. Albrecht had formed no opinion as yet about the eldest and most senior of the three, other than to wonder whether the presence of an apostolic notary was really the compliment it seemed.

  Father Tommaso Giacchetti was a monk of the Order of St Benedict, and seemed, if anything, too frail to have made such a journey north across Europe. That he had done without any sign of stress and strain suggested he was far less fragile than he appeared. When one of the escort revealed that the trip had taken less than five weeks, Albrecht and every other knight in Castle Thorn looked at Giacchetti with new respect.

  If the Benedictine monk appeared a gentle if surprisingly fit old soul, his two companions were another matter entirely. They were white-cowled, black-robed Dominicans, and they carried an aura that would take as long to fade as the colour of their sombre habits. Father Willem Arnald had been appointed by Pope Gregory IX himself as joint head of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Office. That appointment, better known than his youthful secretary Brother Johann might have believed, had been confirmed on the twenty-seventh day of July in the Year of Grace 1233; no more than seventeen months past, but the reputation of Father Arnald’s office was already well established.

  The Dominican father was an inquisitor, answerable to no one but God and his Pontiff, responsible for enforcing the Pope’s often-blinkered view of the world and permitted to use everything save mercy in the hunt for heresy. No mention had yet been made of his function here, but Albrecht von Düsberg was waiting with queasy anticipation to find out. He hoped Pope Gregory had remembered to instruct the Holy Office correctly concerning the Church’s revised view of magic; otherwise matters in Burg Thorn could become…

  Very interesting.

  Albrecht considered that for a moment while his unsteady, snow-slippery hands fumbled to sheathe his sword without severing a couple of fingers. Even though it had started out the day as a blunt and relatively harmless practice weapon, two vigorous bouts with the Bavarian Schwertbruder had turned it into a crude saw, fanged with ragged teeth that would need removed with a grindstone before it could be called ‘harmless’ again.

  Once the blade was out of his and everyone else’s way, von Düsberg slung his shield across his back on its long guige-strap, and pulled off his helmet in the hope he might breathe more easily. With five pounds’ weight lifted from the leather arming-cap beneath his hood of mail, the cap’s felt-and-horsehair padding finally stopped its constant trickling of sopped-up sweat. Apart from that, he didn’t feel much better.

  He wiped the last few drips from eyebrows and nose with his sleeve, noting uncomfortably that a fabric of linked metal rings made a most inadequate towel, and comforted himself with the thought that a fully enclosed Kübelhelm would have felt much worse. Even though they were much safer in battle, the great helms always made him feel as their name suggested, that he was wearing an upturned bucket whose slots for sight and breathing were always far too small and distant to be of any use. It just confirmed that when he was wearing enough armour to avoid injury, he was unable to injure anyone else.

  That was just the sort of protection to gain Papal approval, thought von Düsberg: something useless. He smiled without much humour, knowing himself to be the most useless warrior within the castle walls, then shivered violently enough to make his teeth chatter. Dropping his own helmet to the snowy ground, he hugged both arms around himself and shuffled his feet in an attempt to regain some sort of illusory warmth.

  Now the exertion of combat had faded he was cooling fast and any heat, even that of sinfully hot and soapy water, was becoming more necessity than luxury. He wriggled his fingers out through the open palms of his mail mittens and began to fumble with the lacings of his coif. That was when the point of a sword reached out from behind to tap him lightly on the shoulder.

  “So weary so soon, Brother Albrecht?” said a muffled, sardonic voice. “It’s been plain all morning that you’ve spent too long out of harness.”

  Weary or not, out of practice or not, the tone of that voice wasn’t something any German Ritter could be expected to tolerate. Von Düsberg swung around with one bare hand already clamped on the hilt of his own sword and its blade halfway from the scabbard, heedless of the chill in the metal that burnt its way into his exposed flesh. Then he stopped, emitted a snort that in another circumstance would have been an oath worthy of several penances, and slammed the weapon back into its scabbard.

  One did not draw on the Grand Master.

  “But that,” the voice continued, “was almost fast enough to be impressive.” Inside his white-painted helm, crested with a stiff fore-and-aft fan of black feathers and with its reinforcing bars picked out in the black cross potent that was the symbol of the Order, Hermann von Salza was probably grinning. “You really are more at home with a pen and counting-frame than with a sword, aren’t you?”

  Albrecht von Düsberg hated that sort of rhetorical question. Proper rhetorical questions didn’t need answers, that was the whole point of asking them. But when asked by someone like the Grand Master – or indeed Albrecht’s own cousin the Cardinal-Archbishop of Salzburg, who had the same unfortunate tendency to want answers to his questions whether they needed one or not – there was always the feeling that whatever form the answer took, it would always be wrong.

  It was the verbal equivalent of getting fluff up your nose, a common hazard of working in elderly libraries, as Albrecht well knew. If blowing into a fine linen kerchief didn’t help, the maddening tickle could only really be relieved by the application of a finger. Except that nobody ever believed that dust, or fluff, or a leather pouch filled with silver coins, was anything other than a poor excuse for what you were really doing…

  “I’m Treasurer for the Order, Grand Master,” he said at last, very much on his dignity, “and you selected me as such. I flatter myself that being my rank and title places much more emphasis on skill in counting and arithmetic than on any supposed ability to chop things up.”

  “Ha-ha.” It wasn’t a laugh, von Salza actually spoke the sounds aloud. “And that’s chopping people, Albrecht. People, not things. The Knights of Christ don’t make war on things – at least, not yet. We’ll have to wait until the worthy Father Arnald says his piece before we know if that stays truth or not.”

  Not troubling to sheathe his sword – it was only a practice weapon, not deserving the respect due a knightly sword with man-killing edges – von Salza jabbed it into the ground and wrenched off his helm with a gesture not far removed from a drowning man breaking the surface of the water. “God damn it,” he said, sketching a hasty cross over his chest with one hand as penance for the oath even as he said it. “I could almost prefer those open iron hats that we wore in Palestine. They had the risk of letting someone’s edge at your face, but at least you could breathe easily.” It started like the beginning of a favourite rant on a favourite subject, but instead he cocked his head towards Albrecht in a quizzical gesture that was strangely birdlike, almost like one of his own hawks. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing important, Gr
and Master. Nothing at all.” Von Düsberg agreed on the matter of helmets, but he couldn’t understand how Hermann von Salza, as hot and sweaty as any of the other knights, still managed to look more neat, more elegant, more cool than he had any right to be. More like a Grand Master, was the thought that had gone through Albrecht’s head, and at the same time it wasn’t the sort of thought that made enough sense to voice aloud.

  There was more than a lack of sense about it; there was something almost magical about the self-contained, unflustered face revealed by the removal of that helm. Knowing how the man valued his appearance, von Düsberg wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there was no ‘almost’ about the magic involved, and that brought him right back to the Dominican inquisitor stalking the corridors of Castle Thorn, eyes narrowed for signs of heresy or sorcery. Perhaps a quiet word with the Grand Master about—

  “We should talk,” said von Salza.

  Albrecht started slightly within the carapace of his armour at the accuracy of the perception, as if his concerns had been printed on his face. Maybe they had. Much apparent reading of minds involved understanding how posture and expression differed from the spoken word, and it was something learned and practised by more kings and lords and powerful men than their vassals could ever know.

  “Where, Grand Master, and about what?”

  “About the Papal envoys, you imbecile!” von Salza snapped, then swore softly under his breath without even sketching anything like a sign of penance. The Grand Master shook his head, as if something more uncomfortable than his great helm was sitting on top of it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Not even my rank permits…” He didn’t kneel, that would have been still more unseemly, but he crossed his hands on the pommel of his sword and bowed his head. “My worthy Order-Brother, grant me pardon for hard words uncalled-for.”

  Albrecht looked on, startled and more than a little horrified, then gathered his wits before the stillness dragged beyond surprise and into awkwardness – and before anyone else noticed. He reached out with one hand, almost laying it on von Salza’s lowered head as he might have done to any other penitent, then flushed crimson with the near impropriety and pulled it back.

  “Grand Master…” he said. “Sir…I, I’m a knight of the Order. You’re my lord, and if hard words were used they were deserved and accepted. All else is forgotten.”

  Hermann von Salza went down on one knee and made the sign of the cross, brow to belt, shoulder to shoulder, but all done so smoothly and quickly that had any in the tilt-yard glanced towards him, they would only have thought he had dropped something in the snow. Albrecht von Düsberg, standing upright and looking straight ahead, was more embarrassed to receive the apology than to give it and the genuflection seemed to last an hour. He wondered, long afterwards on his simple bed in the still dark, if that hadn’t been von Salza’s intention all along. Then the Grand Master stood up, pulled his sword from the frozen ground and reached out with it to tap the hilt at Albrecht’s side in a manner that was anything but apologetic.

  “I said, we should talk. Out here. Since yesterday there are too many ears indoors. Especially as our guests seem done with their devotions.”

  So they were: three figures, two in black and white and one in black, were standing beneath the archway of the commandery’s great chapel. They were framed by its façade of moulded, decorated brick and the oak doors four times the height of a man; stone and wood shaped to the glory of God, and all of it diminished and insulted by the inquisitor who stood before its glory. Even two hundred feet away, Albrecht could sense the fixed look of disapproval on Father Arnald’s face. It was hard to say where that look originated: from the sight of so many knights and sergeants training in the arts of killing their fellow men, or just from the sight of the steadily deepening snow in the courtyard. To a monk who wore sandals rather than boots and hose, snow on the ground meant not just inconvenience but real discomfort.

  And maybe the disapproval came from another source entirely, one that might reveal itself in Father-Inquisitor Arnald’s own good time.

  “All his power,” said Hermann von Salza in a small, vehement voice, “comes from hurting those who can’t strike back, those who can’t argue with him, because he knows from one minute to the next what is real in the Pope’s world. Or he tells His Holiness so, at least. For the rest, Brother Albrecht, he knows less about a sword even than you.” The Grand Master grinned to take the sting from his words.

  “He also has no idea about how much a pen can hurt places where a sword can’t reach. Draw blade. While this training continues we can talk in safety. Although,” he glanced at Albrecht’s helmet in the snow and his own encumbering one hand, “we also need to hear, so no helms. Of your courtesy, try not to split my skull.” Von Salza turned his head a little and raised his voice a lot. “Günther, come here! Günther!”

  Von Salza glanced sidelong at the young man-at-arms who came slithering to a standstill behind him, and waved one hand in a peremptory fashion at the two helmets. “Take these to the armoury. Strip and clean the linings. If they’re not entirely sweet and clean the next time I put one on…”

  Günther was gone, and both helms with him, before von Salza finished.

  “Now,” said the Grand Master, and swung his shield around from his back. His mailed left forearm went through the enarmes in a single swift, smooth movement that made Albrecht envious. It was the same pang of envy that had sparked through him when he had seen Hermann von Salza all unrumpled despite his helm, and he wondered whether a man who could employ magic to preserve his personal appearance might not use it to preserve all appearances.

  Readying his own shield for use was a somewhat clumsier business. Riveted to padding and supposedly fixed in place, the enarmes had nonetheless twisted around their buckles in the way they managed seven times out of ten. As von Düsberg fought them with awkward fingers, he felt his already flushed features growing still redder at his clumsiness.

  It would have been more bearable had von Salza said something aloud, but the Grand Master’s lips stayed shut over his comments. Only the slightest tap-tap-tap of sword-point against armoured foot betrayed his feelings. It was probably just as well. By the time Albrecht successfully unravelled the cat’s cradle of leather and rammed his arm through their loops with a force that was a fair indication of how he felt, any remark would have made him lose his temper. Von Salza contented himself with a long, slow exhalation that trailed smokily from his carefully unsmiling mouth. It drifted away through the snowy air and couldn’t be interpreted as containing any words at all.

  “Take guard,” he said, “and let me see how you do it.”

  Albrecht obediently drew sword as he had been taught, extending the draw until his right hand was above his head and the sword’s blade angled down in front of his face, ready to attack or ward. He raised his shield level with his nose, then hesitated and peered with worried eyes at the Grand Master’s critical expression.

  “Passable.” Von Salza reached out a leisurely point and probed for weaknesses in the stance while Albrecht shifted blade and shield to block each one. “Very passable indeed. Just slow…”

  He leaned forward, not slowly at all, hooked the rim of his own shield around Albrecht’s and pulled backwards much harder than the Treasurer had been expecting. Suddenly the triple ply of crossgrained limewood that formed his principal defence was there no longer, and Hermann von Salza’s sword flicked like a striking snake into the gap to poke him solidly in the guts.

  “Very slow,” von Salza repeated. “But with room for improvement all the same.” He began to re-arrange the way von Düsberg wore his shield-straps and at the same time, in a much lower voice, began to talk about matters that had nothing to do with swordplay.

  “The good fathers,” he said, “took considerable pains to ensure that their escort from Rome was free of other allegiances. Their men-at-arms are Italian, with a couple of Frankish sergeants and an Englishman returning from the Holy Land.” Von Salza
paused and tugged one of the straps a notch tighter. “There was also Kuchmann from Switzerland.”

  “Who claimed he was from Switzerland.” Albrecht was on safer ground now than with swordplay. The Teutonic Knights often had reason to send their brethren from place to place without advertising the fact, and the presence of a single German-speaker among the escort suggested that this man was indeed a brother-knight. “Dangerous, though. Giacchetti the old Benedictine might not have known the different accent, but I’d expect better of Arnald and his secretary. They’re German.”

  “Arnald’s from Austria,” corrected von Salza, giving the face of Albrecht’s shield a thump with one hand to test the new fit of the enarmes. “The Hapsburg domains. Brother Gottfried knew that; he’s no fool, and that’s why he pretended to be Swiss. An Austrian wouldn’t care what a conquered people sound like, so long as they do as they’re told.”

  “But the secretary…?”

  “I doubt that pretty young man is here because of his erudition. Brother Johann’s talents seem to lie in other directions. The sergeants are already calling him Little Peachbottom…”

  Albrecht turned his head to stare at the three figures by the chapel, and opened his mouth to say something; then thought better of it and shut his teeth with a snap that stretched after only a few seconds into a wide, tight grin. “One of the privileges of the Holy Office, I suppose,” he said. “Nobody questions what they do, for fear of being accused of worse.” He laughed low in his throat. “Not exactly chaste, but certainly celibate.”

  “No matter what they do in private life, they’re both inquisitors.” The Grand Master smiled crookedly and stepped backwards, raising his own shield. “Let’s not make them suspicious. Cut to head, then to flank.” He took the first on his shield and warded the second with his sword. “Gottfried tells me that we weren’t the only Order to be blessed with such a visitation. The Templars are also entertaining an inquisitor.”