“And now we’re taking part of this meager harvest away from them,” Lukas replied, scowling. “Is that fair?”
Eberhart shrugged. “This has been the custom for ages. The church receives one portion, the castle another.”
“Leaving the farmers to starve?” Lukas protested.
“My young lord,” Eberhart sighed. They’d discussed this topic many times before. “The servants at the castle need to eat, too. And we have expenses. Restoring the castle costs money, and now a summer storm has ruined our vineyard in the Palatinate as well.” The old man shook his head. “I’ll have to travel there tomorrow and look into the situation myself. And I pray to God that—”
“Good Lord, is this worrywart talking your ears off again?” a bearlike voice growled behind him. “Come on over here instead, and help us get this monster ready for dinner.”
Lukas glanced toward the castle gate. It was tall, broad-shouldered Paulus, standing there grinning at him along with Lukas’s other friends, Giovanni and Jerome. The three of them were carrying a massive wild boar tied to a rod, its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
“Feel free to help,” Giovanni groaned as they hefted the burden off their shoulders for a moment. “This beast weighs at least as much as the fat innkeeper at the village tavern. We carried it all the way up from the river.”
“You mean I carried it,” Paulus growled, flexing his powerful biceps. “You two held the ears at best.”
Seeing his friends lifted Lukas’s spirits a little. They’d met two years ago and performed as fencers in a group of traveling artists. The four of them had survived quite a few adventures since then, and had even joined the ranks of the legendary Black Musketeers, an elite troop under the command of General Wallenstein. Lukas’s friends had been living here at Castle Lohenfels for a good six months now and had become like brothers to Lukas—not least because they occasionally quarreled and scuffled like brothers.
“We found this fine specimen down at the ford,” Jerome said in his French accent. He laughed. “I suppose it was looking to buy passage to Heidelberg!” As always, Jerome was wearing the finest clothes—in his red velvet doublet, he looked like he was headed to a ball rather than returning from a hunt. A long ash bow dangled from his shoulder. “And you?” He winked at Lukas as they carried the heavy animal to one corner of the courtyard. “Catch any rabbits? From the look on your face, I’m guessing not.”
“I nearly shot a fine buck,” Lukas snapped. Then he lowered his voice so that Castellan Eberhart couldn’t hear. “But Elsa cast a spell on it.”
“A spell?” Giovanni looked up, sounding annoyed. “Malissimo! We expressly forbade her to do that.” Although he was already fifteen, Giovanni was scarcely any larger than Lukas. What he did have, though, was the mind of a learned man, and he sometimes used such prim language that they all had trouble understanding him, especially their strong friend Paulus. “Upon my soul, if Elsa persists, every farmer in the region will soon know that a witch resides at Lohenfels again,” Giovanni whispered. “And I need not quote the infamous Book of the Inquisition to make you understand what they do with witches around here.”
“I think you know as well as I do that forbidding Elsa to do something doesn’t stop her,” Lukas replied. “What am I supposed to do, tie her up in the library?”
“Maybe not such a bad idea.” Jerome whistled through his teeth. “Mon dieu, your sister can really drive a person crazy sometimes. You know I like girls, but she can sure be an intolerable, know-it-all beast.”
“An intolerable beast that can do magic, unfortunately,” Paulus added grumpily. “So watch what you all say, or she’ll make our noses grow, and shrink another important part of ours.”
The others laughed, and even Lukas forced himself to smile. “It’s true,” he admitted. “Elsa is truly insufferable sometimes. But she’s still my younger sister. I’m responsible for making sure that nothing happens to her.” His face grew serious. “Giovanni is right. What if other people find out that she can do magic? Just think about what happened to my mother! They’d burn Elsa at the stake.” He clenched his hands into fists. “Damned witchcraft. If only we’d never found that book.”
“I’m starving,” Paulus grunted, pulling out his knife. “Let’s forget about Elsa and witchcraft for a moment and take care of this boar, or we’ll be having dinner at midnight.”
The four friends ate in the great hall, which was always cool and damp. There was a small fire burning in the fireplace, though it was giving off more smoke than actual heat. Elsa didn’t join them. The castellan had informed Lukas that his sister had returned to Lohenfels some time ago and had shut herself away in the library.
The castle library was Elsa’s favorite place. She went there to flip through the Grimorium and read the many books that had once belonged to their mother. Elsa had always been a bookworm—unlike Lukas, who preferred a good fencing match over a book any day. Besides, his Latin was awful, and most of the books in the library were written in that ancient, hideously boring language.
Paulus bit into his leg of boar with visible relish. It was already his second. Sometimes Lukas could scarcely believe how much food sixteen-year-old Paulus could put away. Of course, Paulus also had the strength of three men. He washed down the boar with a swallow of beer and belched loudly. “God knows what Elsa spends all that time doing up there,” he muttered, pointing up at the ceiling. “Well, let her eat her books, then, if she’s got such an appetite for them. More boar left for us and the servants.”
“All you think about is eating and fighting, fat man.” Giovanni smirked. “Books really can be filling, though. Back when I was a novitiate, I once read for two days and nights without stopping to eat.” Giovanni was the third son of a minor noble from the Verona area. His parents had shipped him off to a monastery, which he fled. But he still had the wealth of knowledge he’d acquired in the monastery library—and had helped his friends many times with it.
“A scrawny little herring like you can manage that, maybe,” Paulus retorted, grinning, as he took another steaming slice of meat from the platter. “People like us need something more solid.”
“Eat while it’s there.” Jerome dabbed his lips with his lace handkerchief and glanced around solemnly at his friends. “It might be our last piece of meat for some time.”
“What do you mean?” Lukas asked.
Jerome shrugged. “Word has it that war is returning to the Palatinate. Just two weeks ago, there was another large battle in the North, somewhere near Hamelin. I imagine we’ll soon see towns and villages burning again around here. Merde!”
Jerome had fled Alsace as a child; his parents, traveling jugglers, had been murdered by mercenaries. He often sought comfort in the arms of beautiful girls, who seemed to fall for his good looks by the dozen.
“The war is still far away,” Paulus assured him.
“Not far enough.” Jerome furrowed his brow. “You all know how quickly an army like that can march. The mercenaries could be here in a couple of weeks. And the castle isn’t sufficiently fortified yet.”
All at once, Lukas’s appetite vanished. Jerome’s news made him uneasy. It was more or less peaceful here at the edge of the Odenwald Mountains, but that could change from one day to the next. Practically the entire Reich had been in flames since Lukas’s birth. Everyone was fighting—it seemed like half the world had been battling on German soil for an eternity. People were freezing to death in the hard winters, starving from the poor harvests, and succumbing to the plague. More than a few regions were so thoroughly deserted that only wolves and bears wandered through the desolate villages.
And then, somewhere out there, there was an evil magician who had sworn eternal vengeance upon them.
“Where do you suppose that rat Schönborn has crawled off to?” Paulus asked, as though reading Lukas’s thoughts. “To be honest, I’m more worried about him than about a few Swedes.”
Giovanni pushed his plate aside, having apparently los
t his appetite as well. “The last we heard was that he had gone to Rome to collect his strength again, and that he was likely to be named a cardinal there.” He shook his head. “A magician as cardinal. If only the Pope knew! Alas, Schönborn is an adept pretender and has him fooled.”
“Somehow, I have the feeling that we’ll be hearing from him again soon,” Lukas said quietly.
After what became a very monosyllabic meal, Lukas took a couple of pieces of cold roast boar, a jug of cider, and half a loaf of bread upstairs to the library. He knocked softly on the door.
“Elsa? I know you’re in there. Open up.”
“I don’t want to see any of you idiots!” Elsa called from inside. “Go back to your stupid friends with their stupid swords and crossbows!”
“I brought you something to eat. Meat and bread and . . .”
Abruptly, the lock clicked, and the door opened a crack, revealing Elsa’s face. She winked at her brother. “Well, that’s a different story. I . . . ah, I actually am a little hungry.” She accepted the food eagerly, hurried over to a table piled high with books, and began stuffing her mouth with roast.
Lukas grinned. Their earlier argument had apparently been forgotten. “A little hungry?” he echoed teasingly. “You’re eating like a starving wolf!” Then he looked down at a plain little book on top of one of the piles. It was bound in worn black leather, with no title or decorations. “That’s it, isn’t it?” he whispered, as though someone could hear them. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.”
Until a few months ago, the Grimorium had been safely tucked away in a box in the cellar, but then his sister had insisted upon hiding it here in the library.
Elsa nodded to the door. “Better lock that,” she said between bites. “Just to be safe.”
“Why?” Lukas asked, laughing. “Are you afraid the Grimorium will fly out and attack Paulus?”
“Who knows? I don’t know enough about its power yet. But you’ve seen yourself what the Grimorium is capable of, so best just to lock the door.” Elsa’s tone was absolutely serious, and suddenly Lukas wasn’t in the mood for jokes anymore, either.
He slid the bolt into place, and then sat back down at the table and stared at the book.
The Grimorium Nocturnum was the most powerful magic book in the world. After remaining well hidden for centuries, it had come into their mother’s possession. Inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn had tortured the countess in an effort to seize the book for himself, but Sophia von Lohenfels had kept her silence until the end, never revealing its hiding place. Lukas, Elsa, and Lukas’s friends had been the ones who ultimately found it.
Lukas shivered in the dark, cold library. This book lying unassumingly on the table before him was the most dangerous object he knew—more lethal than any sword, more destructive than any cannon.
And it had made his sister into a sorceress.
Lukas had often toyed with the idea of destroying the Grimorium, of simply burning it or tearing it into a thousand pieces. But he knew Elsa would never forgive him. “Listen,” Lukas said. “I know you were only trying to help me hunt earlier, but I really feel like you shouldn’t use the book’s power too often. Not only because people will start spreading rumors about a possible new witch at Lohenfels, but also . . .” He hesitated.
“Also what?” Elsa wiped her greasy mouth.
“Because the book is changing you.”
Elsa laughed. “How do you mean? Because it’s making me older? Wiser, more mature?” She shook her head. “How often have I used this to help you in the past few months? Just think about those robbers I drove away.”
“You set two of the men’s hair on fire,” Lukas replied quietly. “One of them didn’t make it to the river in time and died miserably.”
“Rightful punishment.” Elsa nodded, looking dour. “They would have killed us like they killed the chickens, otherwise.”
“And the kitchen maid with the red pustules on her face?”
“She was rude to me. I thought the pustules suited her.” Elsa giggled, taking another piece of cold roast.
“She was crying when she left the castle. We have no idea what she told people in Heidelberg. Besides, it was unnecessary,” Lukas said. “What next?” He gestured to the book. “Are you going to turn the cook into a slimy toad for burning the barley porridge?”
“Idiot. You know I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. I haven’t studied the Grimorium long enough. All the signs and runes in there—sometimes they speak to me, like little black angels.” Elsa abruptly went completely still. After a moment, she shook herself as though clearing a bad dream from her mind. “You’re right, I should be more careful with the book.” She rose to her feet and lifted the tome with two fingers, as though handling a sachet of explosive gunpowder, and carried it over to a heavy, iron-studded box on a shelf. She locked the book inside the box using a key that hung on a chain around her neck. “I sense that he still wants it,” she whispered. “And he wants me, too”—her voice cracked—“because I’m his daughter.”
Lukas drew her in and hugged her tightly. Elsa hated Schönborn—but he was still her father. She was the child of a white-magic witch and a wizard of black magic, a discovery that now made her seem far older than eleven sometimes. She was only his little sister, but at those moments, Lukas felt like he was looking into the eyes of an old woman.
“Let’s forget the book for a while,” he said, comforting her. “What do you say we go up to the tower and look at the stars? The way we used to, when our parents were still alive.”
Elsa smiled gratefully. “Yes, like before. Let’s just be brother and sister again. That’s what we are, aren’t we?” She gave him a tight squeeze, and then the two of them tiptoed out into the hall, sneaking across the courtyard and up the stairs to the top of the tower—like two perfectly normal children on a nighttime excursion.
But Lukas knew that they were no normal children.
Neither of them was normal.
II
“Keep your guard up, damn it! Otherwise the enemy will bore holes in you like sacks of flour. Wrath cut, feint, lunge, thwart cut! God in heaven, I said thwart, not stroke and tickle!” Paulus was sitting on the edge of the well in the courtyard, his broad arms propped to either side of him as he watched two dozen farm boys laboriously practice stick fighting. It was early the following morning, and although the sun was just coming up behind the keep, it was already as hot as an oven outside.
The boys were standing in two rows, facing each other. Lukas, Giovanni, and Jerome had interspersed themselves among the young fighters. Lukas stood across from a skinny twelve-year-old named Jonathan from the neighboring village. The boy trembled in awe as he held his ash stick in the air. Lukas had developed a reputation as a fencing legend, particularly over the past few months.
“You need to pay more attention to your legs,” he told his scrawny training partner. “Your legs are just as important as your arms. Every fight is like a dance. See? Like this.” Lukas took a few steps forward and then to the side as the boy followed his lead. Then Lukas feinted to the right with his sword hand, before swiftly lunging left. The boy’s stick clattered to the ground.
“S-sorry, my lord,” the farmer’s boy stammered, lowering his eyes. “I’ll probably never be a good fencer.”
“Sure you will! It’s all a matter of practice. Practice, practice, practice, every day! And stop calling me ‘lord,’ or next time I’ll smack you in the fingers so hard that you can’t hold a spoon for two weeks.” Lukas winked. “And now, retrieve thy sword, noble squire,” he said, gesturing at the stick. “The battle against the dragon continues. Into position!”
They returned to their starting stances, and the fight began again. This time, the boy made more of an effort. He danced back and forth, prancing nimbly and carefully watching Lukas’s movements. Finally, he went for a lunge of his own.
At the last second, Lukas stepped aside, dodging the attack.
“Much bett
er already,” Lukas praised the panting boy, clapping him on the shoulder. He thought back to how his father had practiced with him every day. Lukas’s hands had often been black and blue afterward.
Paulus interrupted Lukas’s thoughts. “Damn it, if you keep fighting like that, we can only hope that the Swedes will die laughing,” he thundered from the edge of the well. As the son of a Cologne weaponsmith, he was the one in their group who most knew his way around weapons. Paulus leapt to the ground, snatched up a cudgel, and began thrashing two of the boys with it at the same time, until they nearly fell into the well. “Ox, low cut, follow after . . . like that!”
“Stop it, Paulus!” Giovanni scolded. “You’re going to beat them to a pulp, and then the Swedes will be victorious for sure.”
Paulus lowered the cudgel, grinning, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He had been practicing nearly every day with the farm boys for a good two months now. A few of them were genuinely gifted, but most could barely tell a mace from a pitchfork. Even so, the four friends had made it their goal to turn the boys into a regiment fit for battle, so that if the Swedes or some other band of mercenaries attacked Lohenfels and its villages again, they would be in for a nasty surprise this time around. With the battle up near Hamelin, however, they were in danger of running out of time.
“When I think back to how we fought with the Black Musketeers,” Paulus snarled. “Commander Zoltan and his men would have eaten these whelps for breakfast!”
“The Black Musketeers are trained soldiers, they’ve been practicing for years,” Lukas said sternly. “These are farmers, and I think they’re doing pretty well, considering.”
“Pretty well isn’t enough. They need to be better. Better than the Swedes, the Danes, the Spaniards, or whatever other brood of vipers shows up here in the Odenwald.” Paulus clapped his hands. “Back to work! Everyone find a new sparring partner!”
Sword of Power (The Black Musketeers Book 2) Page 2
