A Wind From the South

by Diane Duane

  Mariarta blinked hard and turned away.

  ***

  The next morning there was outrage in the soldiers’ barracks, and an increased presence of them in the market square: for last night, in the dreadful blowing snow, someone had got at the Governor’s hat. The cock-pheasant’s tailfeather that had been stuck in its band was gone, and in its place, shining blue-green in the sun, was a fine long feather from a peacock’s tail. People came from all over town to bow to the hat, smiling, and walked away smiling harder. The soldiers gripped their halberds and glowered.

  Mariarta left town without going through the marketplace. Her hides she had disposed of: she had nothing to do but start on her way. She felt blithe, knowing that Grugni would see she completed her errand in good time.

  Her path took her along the track under Attinghausen castle, past the door of the church beneath the castle walls. Mariarta paused there, remembering Arnulf telling her of his ancestor’s image there on his tomb. Curious, she went in.

  The church was small and dark: this time of year, the fortress would shadow it most of the day. “Except for feast days, we mostly use the chapel in the castle,” Mariarta remembered Arnulf saying. “At least that way we can see the priest.”

  Arnulf, Mariarta thought as she moved forward, seeing in her mind the sun through green boughs, hearing a young man’s laughter. There were two small side altars, to right and left, even plainer than the main one. The left-hand one had a plain-carved statue of Songt Giusep on it, and nearby, the tomb of the first Knight of Attinghausen, a hundred years dead now. On the stone lid lay the blackened bronze effigy of a stern-faced man in a surcoat and mail, hands folded, head pillowed on a pointed helmet. The resemblance to Arnulf was surprising: except that by no stretch of the imagination could she picture him as looking stern. Mostly she thought of him as wearing that look of concealed amusement as the village council of Tschamut handled his sword....

  Mariarta turned away from the tomb and glanced at the other altar. A statue of the Virgin stood there, carved from plain pine-wood like that of Songt Giusep. Mariarta was about to leave when she saw a gleam of something pale above the statue. Curious, she went to the other altar. Behind her the church door opened: a glance backwards showed her the local priest, bowing to the altar as he came in.

  Mariarta stood gazing at the pale thing. It was a white wreath of flowers gone dry with mountain air and age, muddied, bloodied, hanging over the Virgin’s statue, trailing stained and yellowed ribbons. She swallowed as the priest came by. “What’s that?” she said.

  “Why, that’s a great relic hereabouts,” he said. “It’s the bride’s wreath of the niece of the Knight of Attinghausen, who saved the people in the south country from a black bull-monster that sprang from a haunted alp, somewhere over by Ried, I think. It ravaged all the country about, and caused many men’s deaths. They say the girl had to raise and lead a great white bull to fight the black one. In their battle, all dressed in her bride's array, she died: but without her courage there would have been no victory, so they hung her wreath here to thank God for her sacrifice.”

  “Indeed,” Mariarta said softly. How strange, she thought; go away for a year or three, and the world rewrites your life story without so much as a nod to you. ‘Niece’... Mariarta stood silently wondering who in Tschamut had sold this ‘relic’ north: in how many mouths the tale had been, and become confused, before coming to rest here....

  “Are you troubled for the maiden?” the priest said gently. “You should not be, for the lords of Attinghausen have masses said every month for the repose of her soul. And surely such a sacrifice has won her a place in heaven.”

  “Surely,” Mariarta said. She reached into her purse, fumbling. “Take this, please. And pray for her.”

  Mariarta pressed the coin into the priest’s hand and went out of the church at a great speed—for she knew she was about to either laugh or weep. Hurriedly Mariarta made her way into the woods. In a while, after she had found Grugni, the laughter won, and the woods rang with it until the snow started, sifting down to hide their tracks under a carpet of silence.

  ***

  Mariarta went swiftly about her errand, hurrying the stag. House after house she visited, always at night, always under cover of snow, when she could cause it. Part of the problem was that she didn’t know exactly how she was doing it, and the results were uneven. I must find my Lady, Mariarta thought, and settle matters somehow or other: for if this power is her gift, like the shooting, it’s no good to me as it is, sometimes working, sometimes not. I must become its mistress if it’s to do me, or anyone else, any good. I only hope the price isn’t more than I can pay...

  She and Grugni worked their way sunwise around the Forest Lake—not a simple task, since the lake is actually four small lakes joined head-and-tail together by narrow straits. Mostly Mariarta and the stag stayed in the mountains, approaching the towns and villages directly from the heights above them.

  The stories she was told made Mariarta ever angrier as she delivered her message. Her errand grew as she went, for each of the householders to whom she was sent, influential farmers or townsmen, had more tales of the insolence and tyranny of the vogten. From the Cellarer of Sarnen she heard the rest of the tale of Arnold von Melchtal’s father—how the old man, Heinrich, had a beautiful pair of oxen that the Landvogt Beringer coveted; when Arnold, enraged, had attacked the servant sent to take the cattle, the landvogt seized the old father and demanded he turn his son over to him for punishment. Heinrich, having told his son to flee, had no idea where Arnold was: but the landvogt said that on second thought, the father would do as well as the son—and had the old man’s eyes put out. All the Unterwald country was seething with rage over the deed: but the Landvogt sat invulnerable in his castle above Sarnen, and laughed, while his men hunted for Arnold everywhere.

  It was the same elsewhere: lands stolen, young brides carried off and old women slaughtered as a joke, houses burned, crops stolen. Always the excuse was that the people of the Forest countries were to be “taught a lesson”: the lesson being that they must conduct themselves like other serfs—or die. In each place Mariarta told the other stories she had heard, and watched the faces of her listeners, men and women both, grow grimmer.

  Mariarta was two days done with her errand—having delivered the last message, to the senior townsmen of Vitznau on the main part of the Forest Lake—and was making her way back to Altdorf, when she got a fright. She had left Grugni to wander for a day or so under the shadow of the white peak of the Fronaltstock. At its feet, in the village of Morschach, she was sitting quietly in a corner of its inn, drinking spiced wine, when the soldiers came in.

  They were loud, which was typical, and they sat down and demanded wine and food, which was understandable. It was astonishing to see how the whole common-room of the inn went tense and quiet. The soldiers noticed this, congratulated themselves on having caused it, and got louder.

  Mariarta sat in the corner, busily being a grubby hunter worthy of no one’s notice. The door swung open after a while, to admit another of the locals. The usual icy blast came howling in through the ineffective door-curtains. Mariarta, without moving, leaned forward in thought to catch what that wind might bring.

  —out of here and north again, to catch the big ones—

  There was more, a sort of inner grumbling about the weather and the food and the mud; but what upset Mariarta was a clear image, windborne, of the Axenstein. This was a valley road some miles distant, which ran through land too steep to farm, too poor to graze; the bones of the earth stuck through it in granite ribs and ridges. There was no reason for anyone to be there, which made it a good place to gather. Except when someone knew you were coming—

  She held still, praying God and her Lady to have someone open that door again. It hardly mattered which of these soldiers’ thoughts she had overheard—she only wanted to hear more. Who talked? Who betrayed us? What should I do?! Down the chimney, she could hear the wind beginning to
howl. Yes, she begged it, for pity’s sake, bring me the word I want to hear!

  Something howled outside: not the wind. Mournful, thoughtful-sounding, it wound down the chimney with the wind-moan and matched it, a third higher, in harmony as sure as any mountain-singers’ who sang the alp-blessing to call the cows home. Not a person in the common-room did or said a thing until that howling stopped. Even the soldiers looked unnerved. Mariarta sat remembering something about her lady from Songt Luzi’s book: “—when She stands at the meeting of three roads, hark! hear Her children baying—”

  Talk resumed eventually. Shortly the innkeeper went out to see that the beasts in the stable were all right—for knockings and bangings could be heard out there, a response to the howls—and as he opened the door, the blessed draft came screaming in again. Mariarta closed her eyes and leaned back, tasting the wind.

  Quite clear, this time, the image of many men at arms, coming from all over, to lie in wait for those meeting at the Axenstein in a week. The captain’s own men knew nothing of it: only the various troop captains knew, so that the men wouldn’t have a chance to blab to the locals.

  I’ve got to get out of here, Mariarta thought. When the soldiers’ attention was turned to their arriving food, she staggered to her feet, “drunk”, and lurched out the inn’s back door, ostensibly to pee, then went around toward the stables. The door was open: the innkeeper was there. “Miki,” she said, “I’ve got to be away early: let me pay you now.”

  “Two and one, was it?”

  “It was two,” Mariarta said pointedly, holding out the small copper pieces.

  The innkeeper shrugged, took them, smiled. “Sleep well, then.”

  “I will,” Mariarta said. But not here! She climbed the outside stair to the rooms, got her bag, and five minutes later was heading for the woods.

  Morschach had a bannwald behind it, a forest planted dense to break the fall of avalanches. Mariarta fled into its shadows, to see something white come melting through the dimness. “Oh, am I glad to see you,” she gasped, throwing her arms around his neck. Grugni nuzzled the back of her neck affectionately while she tried to think. “Back to Walter’s,” Mariarta said. “He has to be told; this is his game and Werner’s. Altdorf—” She swung up onto Grugni. “Come on, we have to hurry!”

  Mariarta had never hurried Grugni very hard, preferring to let him set the pace. But now he went through the bannwald in a rush, and when out into more open ground, he went like the wind. The wind flowed about them both, cold, shifting until it came from the south: and slowly, as the first hour of their travel passed, snow began to fall. Mariarta rejoiced. It came in big flakes, a wet snow, difficult to move through while newfallen—the kind of snow that would make a treacherous crust if it froze.

  They came to the hills above Altdorf about an hour before dawn. Mariarta slid off Grugni, stiff and sore and weary to the bone. She hugged him again. “Bold one, fine one,” she said, “oh well done—but stay here, don’t go far, we’ll be away shortly—”

  He nuzzled her, snorting: a good-natured, cheerful sound. Go on, then, don’t stand around; I’ll be here.

  Shortly Mariarta was sitting at Walter Furst’s kitchen fire, drinking vinars and shivering with reaction to the ride. Walter and his daughter were there too, listening in wonder, and in Walter’s case some skepticism, as she told them what she had discovered.

  Walter was shaking his head. “It’s all strange,” he said. “How can you be sure—”

  “Walter, a man may lie to others, but not to himself, not inside his head,” Mariarta said, starting to feel annoyed. “I’m telling you, there are going to be about a hundred soldiers waiting for your people at the Axenstein. You swore to bring down these tyrants?—well, you’d better listen to me, because otherwise all of you are going to be dead, and the valley people are going to be in as bad a state as they are now. Worse, for Gessler and Beringer and the rest of them around the Lake are going to take your treachery out on the survivors.”

  Walter sighed. “All right. I’m sorry, young Mariarta; it comes hard to me, this magic. So long the priests have said it’s all bad—”

  “Only the ones who can’t do it,” Walter’s daughter said. “Look at the Capuchins.”

  Walter nodded slowly. “I suppose. But this still leaves us in danger. Those coming to the meeting must be warned—”

  Mariarta squirmed; her backside was protesting bitterly. “I can do that. I know the way. My mount—” She told him about Grugni. “He’s swift, but so far the only test of his endurance has been what we did tonight, and I won’t risk pushing him too hard. We can warn everyone in three days—I think.”

  “Very well.” Walter frowned and leaned back in the chair. “But the meeting must still take place—just not where it’s expected to. On the other side of the lake is the meadow I told you about, underneath the Seelisberg peak. Rutli, it’s called. It should be safe enough, especially with all Gessler’s people expecting us somewhere else. Tell the confederates we’ll meet there, the same time as was scheduled.”

  Mariarta finished her wine. “I’ll go right away.”

  “You’ll go tonight,” Lida said, filling Mariarta’s cup and putting a plate of sausage in front of her. “People will say we’ve quarreled....”

  Mariarta grinned and started to eat.

  ***

  The next three days were a blur of haste through wilderness land, the occasional warm hour spent in a kitchen or offered bedroom, then the cold again. From the evening of the second day to the morning of the fourth, Mariarta did not sleep. Many a householder was startled by the sudden appearance of a messenger they had seen before as a calm young man, now pale as a wraith, tottering with weariness, delivering a message of dreadful urgency in a voice flat as a ghost’s.

  It ended at last with Mariarta standing beside the stag, holding onto it with the last of her strength, while it stood under cover of trees and stared mistrustfully at a low wooden building not far away. It was the inn under the Oberbauenstock peak, not far from Rutli. Mariarta went in and slept a day and a night, to the surprise of the innkeeper, whose food she had always told him was too good to sleep through. The next day she had three dinners, by way of apology.

  The night after that, Mariarta was away again, riding Grugni through the woods that paralleled the road along the west side of the lake. Dusk was coming on; a faint golden light behind the mountains on the east side of the lake spoke of the moon coming up, full, in a clear sky.

  Mariarta stayed east of the north-running road, Grugni picking his way among the great stones fallen from the Seelisberg. Ahead of her, a wide clear space showed through the trees. Together Mariarta and Grugni came out from under the eaves of the forest. She slipped off his back, patting him, and leaned against a tree, looking the place over.

  The Rutli meadow was a rough half-ellipse of green, the “cut” half of the ellipse bordering the lake, dropping quickly to it in a string of little cliffs two or three ells high. From the lakeside the meadow sloped upward to the edges of the forest, and the forest in turn sloped up sharply, flattened out into meadowland, and then sloped more steeply yet to the peak of the Brandegg mountain. Only one sennen’s hut stood in the meadow. The snow lay lightly, this low; there were a few patches where it had melted entirely.

  Mariarta found a stone near the forest-eaves, brushed it off, sat down to wait. The moon finally showed itself in the dusk over the mountains of the east side of the lake, its light reflecting golden from the uprearing peaks of Fronalpstock and Rotstock. Mariarta looked from them to the dim ground off to northward, where the Axenstein lay.

  She began to whistle to herself. The darkness deepened. After a while, as her eyes rested on the shoreline of the east side of the lake, she saw something: a tiny point of light, showing only for a few moments—someone’s lantern, in a boat.

  Mariarta waited. Grugni made himself scarce under the trees. Shortly Mariarta saw the first men coming from the northern side of the meadow, and heard Theo’
s laughter.

  She went to meet him. Ten others were with him, one or two of whom Mariarta knew, having carried messages to them—Winkelried the councillor of Stans, and the Cellarer of Sarnen. Among them, looking less subdued than by Walter Furst’s fireside, was Arnold von Melchtal. Greetings and introductions were made. Theo said, “You want to be somewhere early, stay with Unterwald men: they can’t bear waiting. First in, as always.”

  “It’s cold as a witch’s kiss here,” the Cellarer said, “let’s make a fire.”

  “Keep it small,” Winkelried said, cautious as always. The fire was made, and everyone stood close about it, as much to hide it as for the warmth. The Cellarer had a skin of vinars—“Depend on you to push your wares even at a time like this,” Theo said—and this was passed around. Shortly, looking out across the lake at the moon’s golden track, Arnold said, “It’s the Schwyzers.” A black shape cut the moon’s track, ruffling it: a largish boat, broad in the beam, big oars stroking gently.

  The Cellarer produced another skin as the men from Schwyz came through the meadow from the rough landing-spot on the lake. Werner Stauffacher was with them, and Konrad of Yberg and Konrad Hunn; six others came as well, farmers from the northern valleys around Schwyz.

  They stood around the fire and were given drink. Mariarta heard a lot of good-natured jesting and gossip. People inquired about each other’s cows, how that new piece of tillage was working out, had Hendri got that screaming ghost in the ravine to shut up yet?—and other such everyday matters. It all had a nervous sound to it, though.

  “Look,” said Konrad Hunn. The tiny light of a torch shone by the boat-landing. The dark shapes of the Uri men came into the meadow, one by one; Walter Furst, after him the Miller of Silenen, and five more men of Uri. These joined the others at the fire, but they were tense and quiet. One last figure was still behind them, cloaked as they were. He cast the cloak back as he came to the fire, and the hilt of the sword slung beneath it glinted red-golden. It was Werner, the Knight of Attinghausen.