by Diane Duane
“We’d better distract them,” Walter said.
“Einsiedeln,” Wilhelm Tel said softly.
The others nodded. “I don’t think the councilors in the other Lake countries will disagree,” Theo said. “We’ll send word quickly. But what will you do now, Gugliem? It’s your hide they’ll be after.”
“That’s the way things have been for a while,” Tel said. “Me...I think I’ll go home to the Schachental. I want to be with Edugia and the children, by my own hearthside. It’s been too damned long.”
“They’ve gone up behind Attinghausen,” Walter said, “but we’ll send a messenger to bring them home.”
Tel nodded, grasped each man by the hand. Mariarta smiled at him as he took hers, and said, “That was a mighty shot, sir.”
“The wind helped,” he said, looking at Mariarta thoughtfully.
“Duon Gugliem,” she said, “I don’t think the wind made any difference at all.”
He nodded wearily, and went off toward the Schachen bridge. People cheered him, followed him, shouted praise: but Mariarta noticed that they also left a slight space around him, a distance of respect, almost awe.
Messengers left for the lakeside towns by boat that afternoon. Each messenger bore with him two things. One was a call for a meeting of the councillors of the Lake Countries, at Altdorf, in two days’ time. The other was a spear. It was of a new sort that one of the smiths of Schwyz had heard about from a German traveller, a mustered-out foot soldier of the Austriacs, and had reconstructed with slight improvements. The spear was not merely a spike with a socket, to be clamped onto a scythe-shaft or other pole. This one had a narrow spearhead, but halfway down its length the spearhead sprouted outward gracefully, toward one side, into a straight, flat, razor-sharp edge, a sort of elongated hatchet, while the rest continued into a spike. The weapon was called a “halberd”. It was quick to make, and good at punching through armor, the German traveller had told the Schwyzer smith. It must have been very good at that indeed, since the Austriacs were trying to get it banned, like the crossbow, as a weapon of mass destruction. The messengers carrying the spears were to take them to smiths, in any village without an Imperial presence of troops or bailiffs, and have as many of them made as swiftly as could be.
Then, until the meeting with the other councillors of the Forest Countries, there was nothing to do but wait.
***
When the news of Gessler’s death reached the rest of the towns around the lake, the response was instantaneous, and shocking, even to those who had greatly hoped for something of the kind. Everywhere the Lake people rose and rejoiced at the death of the chief tyrant—then started taking care of business closer to home. Bailiffs were dragged from their houses, flogged, driven out of the towns where they lived, often killed. At Schwanau, an island on the Lauerzer lake west of Schwyz where the landvogt of Arth and Goldau lived, silent boatmen landed at the island’s piers late in the evening of the day that news of Tell’s shot reached Schwyz town. The landvogt’s bodyguard were killed in their beds. The landvogt of Schwanau himself was tied back-to-front on a horse and ridden at a hand-gallop to Arth, where he was dragged to the top of the tower in which he had imprisoned and starved the maiden Gemma, and was thrown down to break his bones on the same jagged rocks that had met Gemma when she leaped from her window in despair. Up in Unterwalden, by Kussnacht town, the small towns around—Udligenswil, Haltikon, Greppen, Weggis—could not do anything about Kussnacht fortress itself, which had promptly shut its doors in panic at Gessler’s death. But the Unterwaldners massed near Immensee the night after the news of Tell’s shot came, and marched north to the site of the half-built new fortress, Zwing-Uri. They fell on the barracks near the place, freeing the Lake Towns people who were being held there. Then they destroyed the Urners’ Prison—burnt the scaffolding, pulled down every stone that didn’t fall, and shot or hacked to death the Austriac soldiers who guarded the site.
Elsewhere in the Unterwald, west of the Forest Lakes, in Sarnen, the people there, long oppressed as badly by their landvogt Beringer von Landenberg as the Uri and Schwyz people had been by Gessler, gathered together what weapons they had—not many, then: scythes, and a few longbows and crossbows. They killed their bailiff and the Austriac soldiers quartered in the village, and marched on Landenberg castle. Beringer, much incensed by this outrageous behavior, but unwilling (having heard the news from Kussnacht) to put his nose outdoors, caused some catapults to be brought onto the walls, and started bombarding the castle’s attackers, and their town, with burning missiles. Many houses burned, and some people from Sarnen were killed. But early on in the evening, it seemed that God had noticed the basic injustice of the situation. Tales are still told of the terrible storm that came out of the south that evening, howling up the Sarner Lake like some huge black beast. Some claimed they saw a four-footed beast’s shape striding menacingly through those dark roiling clouds, roaring as it came. Lightning lanced down and lashed the hill; three great bolts broke as many breaches in the walls of Burg Landenburg. The people, poorly armed as they were, did the rest. Over a matter of some days, this castle too was pulled apart. The streets of Sarnen town were paved with it, and the burned houses were swiftly rebuilt in grey Landesburg granite. Beringer’s charred body was pitched into the lake.
From all around the lakes the stories made their way to every town, and the rejoicing at the Forest Countries’ liberation went on for days as that liberation spread. Songs began to be sung of Tell’s shot and the castles’ fall. The other music mostly heard during that time was the ring of hammers on anvils, and the softer music of axes in the coppices around many small villages, where saplings that might have been harvested for firewood or charcoal were felled and smoothed for another use.
The rejoicing was not unalloyed, for everyone knew the Austriacs’ rage was growing. Not long after Tell’s shot, a group of about a thousand men gathered from Altdorf and Schwyz and Kussnacht town, from Brunnen and Sarnen and Zug, from Luzern and Vitznau and Bauen. They met in the darkness at Brunnen, and then softly marched through the narrow pass at Morgarten, northeastward toward the lake of Sihl. There beside the lake, atop the Amsel hill, they looked for a long time at the shadowy walls and towers of Einsiedeln. It was an ancient holy place, built on the site where old Sankt Meinrad of the Ravens had lived in his tiny cell, and where he had been killed by robbers five hundred years before. The Emperor Otto had made the monastery founded there the first recipient of immediacy. That promise of direct rule by the throne was the only one in all these parts which had not been revoked...most men said, because the Empire and the Austriacs did not care to risk the Pope’s enmity. The monastery had been spared the lifetime of increasing tyranny that its neighbors had suffered. Standing on that hill, the silent thousand who gazed at Einsiedeln crossed themselves, prayed God to forgive them the sacrilege, and started downward to see to it that the monastery kept up with its neighbors. Hours later, a pillar of fire rose from the lakeside, and in the dawn, a pillar of smoke. Eastward, across the Tyrol and into Austria, the smoke was seen.
For weeks all things seemed to hang suspended about the Forest Lake, waiting. Work in the fields went on: there was plowing to do for the autumn vegetables—though some people were borrowing their neighbors’ plowshares, their own having been beaten into what seemed more necessary shapes. Cattle-fights had to be held to sort out the leadership of the herds, and the pugnieras had to be gotten in shape for them. There was cheese to be made for the winter, butter for the summer. The only thing missing from the usual late summer scene was the bailiffs, and few found it in their hearts to complain. But still, everyone worried: all through the summer, all through the beginning of the fall.
And when it happened at last, it happened so quickly there was almost no time to react.
***
Mariarta was sitting with Theo and Arnold von Melchtal and Arnold’s old father by the fireside in the Lion. The fire was welcome, for November had finally rolled around, and they s
at there safe from the sleet outside, toasting themselves and discussing cows. Arnold was insisting that the brown ones, the Saanens, gave the best milk: Theo was holding out for some pale-colored kind that came from France, supposedly good for both milk and meat, and better for cream than the Saanens.
For this I gave my power to a mortal? Diun Glinargiun said from the back of Mariarta’s mind. Where is the travel you promised me, the excitement? I did not come back into the world to study its cows.
You eat their cheese readily enough, Mariarta said silently, sipping wine. What about that one the other night that you were so fond of? You made me eat nearly the whole thing. Lida was scandalized, said she was never letting me in her kitchen again. I never thought goddesses with the wisdom of the ages in them would lose their manners so. What a pig—!
Diun laughed, unconcerned. Mariarta stretched and saw Lida come through the open door. Now here she is to scold me again, she said, and serve you right to have to listen to it—
Then Mariarta broke off, for the breeze was blowing past Lida, and scolding was not in her mind. She was alarmed. She came straight to the four of them, and said, “Quickly, come back to the house. There’s a messenger.”
They went out, Theo taking Arnold’s father’s arm. “What is it?” Mariarta said to Lida.
“Someone from the north,” Lida said. “Come on.”
In Walter Furst’s kitchen they found the messenger, eating and drinking—no surprise, Lida had been at him—and talking to Walter. Werner Stauffacher was there, with a mug of the Furst ale—and so, to Mariarta’s surprise, was the Knight of Attinghausen, drinking and looking concerned.
“Here they are,” Walter said. “Start again, Uli.”
“Early yesterday morning,” the young man said, swallowing the piece of bread he was working on, “someone shot an arrow over the Arth city wall, into the window of one of the councillors. The arrow had a piece of parchment wrapped around it, with the words, ‘Beware the morning of Sankt Othmar’s Eve, at Morgarten.’”
“Sankt Othmar’s—” Theo looked at the Knight. “That’s the day after tomorrow!”
Attinghausen nodded. “The rider went northeast. We have at least one knight in the court who is in a position to know when Duke Leopold moves.”
“Your son....” Mariarta said.
Werner of Attinghausen nodded. “Doubtless Arnulf will be riding with them. This is bitter to me, but there’s nothing to be done. Leopold is our immediate liege-lord under the Emperor.”
“They’ll be coming with a large force,” Walter Furst said. “There would be no point in a small one. I wish we knew for sure how many armored knights will be there.”
The Knight of Attinghausen frowned. “As far as I know, rarely more than a thousand or fifteen hundred knights are doing knight-service in all of Austria at any one time. The Emperor wouldn’t dare try to levy more than that at once—he would have a rebellion on his hands.” He frowned harder. “There might be as many as five or six hundred ‘lances’ of knights. Six men to the Austrian lance, counting each knight’s squire, page, armorer and a couple foot.... Maybe twenty-four hundred horse, and of those, two thousand or so will be armed and able to fight.”
“And then the unattached footmen,” Arnold’s father said.
“For what they have to be considering,” the Knight said, “they’d be fools to bring less than six thousand or so. If the Austriacs are wise, they’ll be intending to push through the pass and resecure Schwyz and Kussnacht: garrison them: then divide the forces in two. One side goes for the Kernwald, up to Luzern and across the top of the Lake, securing the access routes. Then the two forces work their way down both sides of the lake at once, converging on Altdorf. Afterwards they could deal at their leisure with the westward countries—Sarnen and so on.”
The messenger nodded. “So they said in Schwyz. The town itself is well protected by palisades and earthworks, but such things won’t last forever. Konrad Hunn says the only way to stop the attacking force is at the pass—and someone else thinks so too, to judge from the warning of when the force will be expected.”
Theo smiled. “Konrad, that old fox, he knows that part of the country better than anyone. What’s his plan?”
“To block the lakeward end of the pass,” the messenger said. “Try to trap the knights in it, then come around the lakeward side and deal with the footmen. But, sirs, they’ve small time. They need your men to start marching now if they’re to be with us in time to do any good.”
“We can send about three hundred now, I’d say,” the Knight said. “Is that right, Walter?”
“That’s every able-bodied man,” Walter Furst said, looking bleak. “Yes.”
“How soon can you march, sirs?” the messenger said. “The muster is at Sattel, just south of Morgarten pass.”
“Tonight,” Werner Stauffacher said. “We’ll be there by...” He thought. “Tomorrow afternoon, late. Two hours before sunset.”
The messenger nodded, stood up. “Don’t fail the meeting, sirs. Schwyz can only send thirteen hundred men, and about a hundred are coming from Obwalden. No more.”
He went out. “Well,” the Knight said, “there we are. I cannot go with you, obviously. But many of my people will. Let’s blow the muster...there’s much to do.”
***
From where they stood on the hilltop, Mariarta gazed down on the southern end of the Morgarten pass. It was a narrow defile between two wooded ridges: one sloping up to the nearby mountain, the other to the marshy shores of a spit of the Ageri lake. She could see people working on the far slope, though in this dim light, under cloud and just after sunset, it was hard to see what they were doing.
“There are so few of them,” she said. “Of us....”
“You’d be surprised what a few men can do when their minds are set,” Theo said.
Mariarta wasn’t so sure. All she could think of was the terrible number of Austriacs heading for them. “What if they’re early?” she said.
Theo, leaning on his halberd, laughed at her. “If you seriously believe that a force of three thousand horsemen and nine thousand foot can be early for anything, you’ve never seen an army move before.”
“I have never seen an army move before,” Mariarta said, annoyed.
Oh, indeed? said the calm voice from inside her. Mariarta shut her eyes—she had found this worked best during these exchanges—and saw a long slope leading down to a mountain pass. That slope was black with men in strange clothes: they covered it like ants, crawling along slowly, and the sun above them winked balefully on the pale polished gold of bronze-bladed swords and spears.
The Persians, Diun said.
Mariarta looked at the throat of the narrow pass. There were a very, very few men there. The vanguard? she said.
No. The enemy.
Mariarta gulped.
A place called Thermopylae, Diun said. Her memory was oddly approving. One of the places where we were not prayed to. Honor and necessity meant more to those men than gods did.
How long did they last? Mariarta said.
A long time. Forever, you might say...for they are immortal now.
“If you’re going to fall asleep while I’m talking to you,” Theo said, “I’ll go get something to eat instead. They’re roasting a sheep down there.”
“No, no,” Mariarta said, opening her eyes. “Sorry, Theo. Just herself. She was remembering another battlefield.”
Theo eyed Mariarta oddly. “Does she fight?”
“It has been a while since I went to war,” Diun said aloud, “but I have not forgotten the art. I don’t miss my aim in the excitement, if that’s your concern: and I am not afraid of death.”
Mariarta swallowed: it was strange to have her throat used like that. Theo raised an eyebrow. “Not afraid of death, huh. Watch out for her.”
“I have been...”
For a while they watched the work going on beneath them. Mariarta had already spotted the biggest of the rocks which had been lever
ed out of the far hillside and carefully poised on other rocks to be dropped at the chosen moment. Other boulders had been let fall already. They were scattered about the southwestern end of the pass, and piled among them were many trunks of trees.
“Better hope they don’t send the footmen in first,” Mariarta said.
“They won’t,” Theo said, laughing his saw-in-log laugh. “They’ve got armored knights. The knights will come first, because they know they can hack a way through any force of peasants...and their own foot can come in and finish us off.” Theo grinned like a man looking forward to seeing the trick tried. “Then the knights will go have dinner, they think, and relieve Kussnacht the next day, and start working their way around the lakes. I don’t think so, somehow....”
Mariarta looked down the gorge and tried to see it with Theo’s certainty. A force of horseman would come here, hit those rocks and boulders— “They’ll be trapped,” she said. “Some of us will be here as snipers, others will drop those rocks and trees they’re stockpiling up the slope. Then we attack—” She shook her head. “Theo, they’re still going to outnumber us five or six to one.”
“I guess we’ll each have to kill five or six of them then,” Theo said, and laughed again. “Mati, the least that will happen is that the vanguard will get trapped in the pass. What do you think the footsoldiers are likely to do then? When their armored support can’t protect them, and we break out and take them in the sides?”
“I’d leave.”
Theo nodded. “I bet they will too. This isn’t their fight: they’ll run away and save their skins. Their masters expect them to do that—that’s why the knights have to go in first and present them with an easy fight. So... Six hundred knights or so, but certainly no more than a thousand. Seventeen hundred of us, with halberds and crossbows. With rocks, with trees, with the marsh and the lake hemming them in on the other side, with the land fighting for us. And with you—” He grinned. “I was thinking of Sarnen.”
