Peter & Max

by Bill Willingham

  “The Empire already has sorcerers aplenty,” Diederick said. “Every horde has a company of them, to enchant hardness into our blades and armor, courage into our troops, and true flight into our arrows.”

  “And can any one of them also make an opposing army surrender en masse,” Max said, “or cause them to simply die in the field, without a single blow being struck, or an arrow fired?”

  “Of course not. No one can.”

  “Except me,” Max said.

  “Nonsense! I’ll hear no more of this!” Diederick was ready by then to have Max thrown into the streets — or better yet, the city dungeons — along with whoever played a part in allowing him to get this far. But something in Max’s eyes made Diederick pause. Mayor Wenzel seemed to sense it too, because he spoke up for the first time.

  “Perhaps if you could prove your extraordinary claims,” Wenzel said.

  “Name it,” Max said, “and I will accomplish it.”

  “Impossible,” Diederick said. “I can’t send an untested sorcerer out on a military mission.”

  “Then choose something less martial for my first task,” Max said. “What do you need done? What dire problem needs fixing?”

  “There’s always the rats,” Wenzel offered, in his customary cringing and wincing way, as if he expected to be struck for the simple impudence of proffering one of his ideas. But he didn’t get struck. In fact Lord Diederick seemed to brighten at the suggestion.

  “True,” Diederick said. “Get rid of Hamelin’s rats. Those vermin are everywhere, spreading filth and disease. Even with a generous bounty offered on every one, we still can’t make a dent in the problem. They breed faster than we can kill them.”

  “They fight the dogs and kill the cats,” Wenzel added. “And bite the babies in their cradles.”

  “An easy task,” Max said. “By the power of my smallest charm, I’m able to draw after me all creatures living beneath the sun, that creep or swim or fly. By breakfast tomorrow, there won’t be a rat in all the town.” Max rose to his feet. His fingers seemed ever to stray over the length of his wooden flute, as if he were constantly eager to be playing it. “And in return I’ll expect at least a thousand silver marks.”

  “Only that?” Wenzel said. “Do all that you say and we’ll give you fifty thousand.”

  “Then we have a deal,” Max said. Tipping his colorful, feathered cap, he left.

  When it was clear that Max was safely gone from the building, Diederick said, “I do believe you let your enthusiasm run away with you, Mister Mayor. Just where do you expect to conjure up the fifty thousand marks you promised that man? Your salary, combined with your office’s entire annual budget, doesn’t come to that much.”

  “But the treasury —” Wenzel began, his face a sudden study of despondence.

  “The treasury isn’t available at your whim,” Diederick said. “You’d better hope the man turns out to be the charlatan I suspect him to be.”

  “But —”

  “After all,” Diederick continued, “You were the one who proposed the rat-clearing task. I didn’t. I can hardly be expected to pay for your unsanctioned exuberances.” Diederick thought he could hear almost inaudible keening and moaning from the fat old mayor, as he ponderously removed himself from the Baron’s suite of rooms, clutching his ermine-lined robe of office tightly, almost protectively, around himself as he went.

  THAT NIGHT, WHILE PEOPLE LAY ASLEEP in their beds, the sound of music drifted like a fine mist through Hamelin’s countless alleyways and thoroughfares. The enthralling tune seeped everywhere, through shuttered windows and iron sewer grates, over each rooftop, around each garden wall, and under each stone footbridge. Slowly at first, in ones and twos, and then more rapidly, in great, undulating carpets of filthy, wet fur, the rats began to appear. They swarmed up out of basement and sewer, and into the cobbled streets. Down out of every attic and loft they came, frantic in their need to find the source of the music and follow it.

  A young thief in the night, out at his prowls, spotted the vast, swarming miracle that filled every street, and he marveled at it. He was called Cort and was one of King Erwin’s secret brotherhood of cutpurses. He sat atop one of the high walls surrounding the grounds of the Cathedral of Saint Nicolai, watching the endless parade of rats and listening to the soft tune that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It reminds me of Master Thief Peter’s playing, he thought, except that Peter’s music always makes me feel glad to be alive, whereas this tune makes me feel odd and wary.

  A peddler boy named Till Eulenspiegel, who was too poor to afford a roof to cover himself, was sleeping in the street, under his pushcart, from which he sold rolls of bread baked into the shapes of monkeys and owls. His deep slumbers were abruptly and violently interrupted, when an army of rats overran him. They scampered across his body in wave after wave. Not a one of the vermin paused to take so much as a nip out of him, but still young Till screamed and screamed, for an hour or more, until long after the last of the rats had come and gone.

  The rats swarmed southward and eastward, along every avenue and byway, filling each street by the tens of thousands, until they congregated in the great open square where three major avenues converged at the Western Gate. That was where Max stood, in the very center of the open gateway, playing his compelling tune on the pipe named Fire. A vast and wriggling pile of rats was forming around Max, as the ones in the rear scrambled and surged forward, to be nearer the source of the commanding music, while those in the front kept a respectful distance of at least three feet all around the sorcerer. Small mountains of living beasts kept forming and collapsing around him, until Max finally turned and led the way through the city gate and out onto the broad stone bridge that spanned the mighty Weser River.

  The rat army followed Max out onto the bridge and then midway across the wide Weser, they felt compelled to hurl themselves over the low stone railing and into the dark waters down below. Rats great and small gladly killed themselves, all at the musician’s command. Brown, black and grey rats eagerly jumped to their doom. Lithe young friskers leapt over grave old plodders, in order to drown all the more quickly. It took hours for the last of the rats to jump to its destruction.

  When it was all done, and he could finally stop playing, Max was tired, as tired as he’d ever been. He thought briefly about turning back into the city, to magically force someone out of his home and hearth, so that he could collapse into the commandeered bed. But the thought of even that much extra expenditure of Fire’s powers was beyond his will to contemplate. Instead he continued across the rest of the bridge and into the forest that girdled the far bank. It’s the full flush of summer, he thought, and I’ll be warm enough in the open. As soon as he was just a few paces into the woods, where he was sure to be unobserved by any passerby, he dropped like a stone into the underbrush and fell fast asleep.

  Eighteen days and nights passed before Max woke and presented himself once again at Hamelin’s City Hall.

  “GONE?” MAX SHOUTED. “What do you mean my money’s gone?”

  Mayor Wenzel fairly quivered with fear, but somehow summoned the courage to answer the mad-eyed piper. “When you never showed up to collect it, the money went back into the city treasury. Since then it’s been spent on other vital necessities of the community.” Baron Diederick sat silent in the room, behind his big oaken desk, perfectly content to let Wenzel spin his web of lies and impromptu fabrications. In fact he almost admired the old man’s alacrity at being able to create so many reasonable-sounding falsehoods so quickly. Then again, Diederick reminded himself, to keep this moment in mind the next time Wenzel came to him with his usual excuses and prevarications for things not done.

  “But I’m here to collect my reward now!” Max yelled.

  “Too late,” Wenzel whimpered in reply. The documents have already been filed and the accounts closed. You should’ve been more prompt, young man. There’s simply nothing we can do. If you still feel you have a grievance, it’s a matter
for the courts now. But of course you’ll have to wait for an opening in their schedule, which is always quite full. I think early November is the soonest they might possibly fit you in.”

  “I’m supposed to sue you?”

  “Not me personally. It’s the City of Hamelin you need to contest against, which of course is part of the Weser Mountains Region, which is part of the Greater Southern Saxony Administrative District, which — well, your lawyer will explain all of that to you. Basically it’s the Empire you have to sue, but I caution you to proceed most carefully, young man, because those who undertake legal actions against the Empire tend to wind up in dank dungeons — or worse.” Wenzel’s voice dripped with sincere concern over Max and his dilemma.

  “I have no intention of suing you!” Max said.

  “As unfortunate as this situation is, I think that’s the wisest choice.”

  “I intend to destroy you!”

  “Now see here! There’s no cause for that sort of talk! We’re all civilized gentlemen and —”

  “Wrap this up, Mister Mayor,” Diederick finally interrupted. “I have other appointments waiting.” And when Max turned his evil glare towards him, he said, “And you’d better watch what you say. Threats against public officials are a crime against the Empire, even those directed against useless ones like our dear mayor. And see that you don’t darken my door again. This trick you did ridding our town of rats was sweet enough, and you should be commended for it. But I don’t see that it has any military applications. So, in short, we’ve no further business with each other.”

  Max was silent for a long time. Then he said in a low voice, almost imperceptible, even in a room as quiet as this, “You too, Baron So and So. You don’t escape blame in this mattet. After tonight you’ll both regret the despicable way in which you treated me today, for I realize now that it’s high time to enact the witch’s vengeance after all.”

  “Get out now, or I’ll call my guards!” Diederick fairly screamed.

  “Call whomever you wish,” Max said. “It makes no difference to me.” But he left all the same.

  Wenzel was surprised to see the usually bold Baron Diederick do nothing but tremble behind his desk for some time — whether from fright or rage was beyond his powers to discern. Something in that odd boy’s eyes though, he thought. There was definitely something troubling there.

  THAT NIGHT, LOW, SORROWFUL MUSIC played again in Hamelin, filling the enraptured air. But this time no rats responded to it. This time it was the town’s children who were affected. Before the third note sounded, a child stepped out of his mother’s house, into the street. Then another. And another.

  There was a rustling throughout the city as first one door and then another creaked open. There was the slithering sound of leather slippers sliding over the hard surface of the streets, and also the sharp “tock” of wooden shoes against the cobblestones. Tallow-haired boys and rosy cheeked girls walked serenely, or scampered excitedly, or even skipped merrily. The smaller ones ran to keep up with the larger ones.

  Till Eulenspiegel rose up from under his pushcart and joined the throng. Once more out and about on his nightly rounds, the young thief named Cort hopped down from a rooftop and skipped along with the others. And by extra special invitation, woven into the drifting notes of the piper’s tune, the children of the three former knights of the road stepped out to join the eerie parade. Here were Beatta and little Ulrich, who were the Baron Diederick’s children. And there walked Thorben, the proud falcon knight’s only son and heir. In little enough time they were joined by Alban, Erich, Frauke and Gretchen, the gryphon knight’s two sons and twin daughters. Finally, darling little Erna, the old mayor’s only granddaughter, took her place in the ever-growing procession.

  The same magic that compelled the children kept everyone else frozen asleep in their beds, undreaming and unaware of the evil deed that was occurring just outside of their doors and hearths.

  In all, one hundred and thirty boys and girls followed the piper out of town. They were never seen again, unto the end of days.

  “LEAVE TWO OF THE YOUNGEST here with me,” the Black Forest Witch told Max. “I need to put them under my knife, to keep my powers strong through the coming year. The rest are yours to do with as you will.” Max had marched the children out of the city and down mile upon mile of winding forest roads, until they’d arrived here at the witch’s cottage in the deep woods. The sun had risen high in the sky by the time they’d come this far. Max had played the entire time, leading the company of doomed children ever onwards.

  “I intend to take them far away,” Max said, “to lands beyond the fields that we know. I have old debts to pay among the principalities and powers of other worlds, for the things they helped teach me during my years in the forest. Our journey will take some time — years perhaps — for I must rest often and make them sleep when I sleep, and I must play always when they march.”

  “And will you ever return?” she said.

  “Once and once only,” Max said. “To learn of Frost’s location from you. After that we need never see each other again.”

  The witch could only hope that turned out to be true.

  In which a humble

  churchman’s home

  is invaded,

  Peter meets a dark

  figure from out

  of his past, and then

  writes a letter.

  A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR LATER, THE good folks of Hamelin were still in a collective misery from the horror of their stolen children. The town’s military occupiers, some of whom had also lost sons and daughters that night, were also stricken and resolved to do something to insure future safety and security. Rules that had been relaxed were strict again, curfews were rigidly enforced, and punishments for even the most trifling of crimes were both draconian and severe.

  The public outcry, once people had woken up on that fateful morning to find more than a hundred of their children missing, was directed at both the town’s puppet government and at the actual military rulers, who preferred to work behind the scenes, but whom everyone knew really pulled the strings. Riots were barely averted, but only through the dual practices of a rigid and brutal crackdown, accompanied by profuse promises of widespread government reform at every level.

  Prior to the invasion ten years ago, Hugo the Charitable was the Bishop of Saint Nicolai’s Cathedral, and official shepherd over all of the souls of Hamelin, the Weser and of Lower Saxony. And like most high-ranking ecclesiastical fellows of his time, his interests weren’t limited to the spiritual realm. He was knee-deep into every aspect of secular politics, pulling the strings of the mayor and his cronies back then, much the way their occupiers did now.

  Since the invasion, Bishop Hugo had been kept a prisoner in his own house, not allowed to set foot outside the doors of Saint Nicolai’s, against the promise of instant arrest. This was deemed necessary by the town’s new rulers, at least until such time as the Empire decided its official policy regarding the Hesse’s predominant religion. But when the tragedy of the Pied Piper occurred, and Hamelin’s beleaguered townsfolk turned away in disgust from the mayor and his foreign masters alike, it was only natural that they would turn once again to the repressed church with renewed vigor. And even though no final word had come back from the worlds-distant capital of the Empire, it was obvious to Baron Diederick and the other local military rulers that something had to be done quickly to avert a disaster.

  Secret meetings were held. Negotiations were undertaken. Plans were hatched. Agreements were reached.

  Two months after the night of the Pied Piper, all of the closed and abandoned churches throughout the town were approved to be reopened and rechristened, causing more than one set of illegal squatters to have to vacate those places in an awful hurry. Priests and churchmen who’d been imprisoned over the years of the occupation were released, free once again to take up their holy vestments. And then, miracle of miracles, Bishop Hugo was once again allowed to step outside o
f the cathedral and openly walk the streets of his city. He appeared in all his finery, and such a grand procession it was that formed behind him! The impromptu parade lasted all day, and noble Hugo looked like one of the mighty kings of ancient legend surveying his realm.

  A month later town criers wandered through Hamelin, announcing the Occupational Government’s official apology for those church officials who never survived to reach their prison cells, due to the overly enthusiastic nature of some of the sword- and ax-wielding troops sent out to capture them.

  In succeeding weeks other announcements were made. From now on, church attendance would not only be tolerated, it would be encouraged. All enforced labors, even for convicted prisoners, would cease on Sunday. The promised reforms were proceeding apace.

  Finally, just a few weeks ago, the big announcement came. In a month’s time, on the one-year anniversary of the Night of the Pied Piper, all of Hamelin would gather in the cathedral square, to remember and mourn the lost children. And then, at the conclusion of the solemn observance, the mayor and officers of the Occupying Government would officially hand over the reins of local rule to Bishop Hugo. In return, or so it was widely rumored, Hugo would immediately decree that Hamelin Town, its environs, and all of its people were now, and would forever be, loyal subjects of the Empire, whose existence had been approved and ordained by almighty God Himself.

  PETER PIPER CELEBRATED his twentieth birthday only four days before the big event. The party was held in the underground hall of the Brotherhood’s new headquarters, since they’d recently lost their old home to the citywide restoration of the church. After the toasting and feasting, and after Peter had gifted them all with a wild and raucous concert on his flute, Erwin, king of all thieves, took Peter aside for a private chat.