A Wind From the South

by Diane Duane

  Mariarta moaned just at hearing the town’s name. “Theo, forget it. My head still hurts from rushing it so. That lightning was inside.”

  “It was worth it. If I were you, I’d get ready to do it again...if you’re serious about being here.”

  “Of course...”

  “Come on,” Theo said, starting downslope. “Our watch is over. Let’s go get some of that sheep.”

  “In a few moments.”

  Theo went ahead. Well, Glinargiun, Mariarta said, what are we going to do? We can’t simply blow them away with a big wind: our own people would go too. And lightning’s as bad. Too big a weapon for this small space—

  Your enemies are miles away yet, Diun said promptly. Lightning there will not trouble you here. Blast them now!

  No. Killing them before they come to this battle won’t work. The Austriacs must know us willing to fight...and able to beat them...or we’ll never have any peace.

  A moment’s silence. It is strange, Diun said. How you mortals hamper yourselves with ‘ifs’ and ‘ors’ and ‘buts’...when the world offers you none such in return: only its old ‘is’. Such hindrances would hardly matter to a goddess. She sighed too, but it was an unconcerned sound, and Mariarta knew Diun Glinargiun’s thought: that eventually, after enough years in her company, it would not matter to Mariarta either.

  Not just yet for me, Glinargiun, she said. I must find another way.

  Well, you have all the winds and storms and lightnings to work with from the beginning of things until now, Diun said, unconcerned. I dare say you will come up with something by morning. Meanwhile, what about that sheep? She looked down the slope with Mariarta’s eyes, sniffed with her nose. It has been a while since I had a decent burnt offering....

  Musing, Mariarta went after Theo.

  ***

  That night they kept things quiet in the pass. Others were not doing so. Around the time Mariarta went for a piece of the roasting mutton, the Austriac army had started arriving in Hauptsee, the small town northward at the bottom of the Ageri lake. A scout was dispatched, and came back about an hour later with a grim smile on his face to report to the Forestlake leaders.

  “Are they coming here to secure the pass?” Walter Furst asked immediately. It was the fear on everyone’s mind.

  The scout, the young man Uli, laughed. “Not tonight. They’re getting ready to have a party. They’ve drunk the inn dry, and some of them have already gone out to ‘requisition’ people’s beer barrels from their houses.”

  Werner Stauffacher frowned. “And the Duke is making no move to stop them.”

  “Oh, no, on the contrary, he’s been saying how this is only the first part of his ‘correction’ of the Lake people. A long nasty revenge to teach us who our lords are. That’s what the few townies left in the inn are saying, anyway.”

  “How many knights?” Walter said.

  “I make it four hundred.”

  This was better news than anyone had hoped for. “Are they crazy?” Arnold von Melchtal said. “Or do they think we’re worth so little in a fight? It’s insulting.”

  “Let the good God send us more insults like this,” Theo said, “and our enemies more of this kind of intelligence. How many foot, Uli?”

  “It’s hard to tell, everything’s so stirred up. Nobody in the inn seemed to know for sure. But I counted tents and did some reckoning. Maybe five thousand?”

  “Daylight will give us a better count,” Werner said. “As soon as everything’s in place, we’d better set the watch and get what sleep we can.” He smiled. “I hope they find every beer barrel in the village. We may have justice on our side, but I wouldn’t mind having their hangovers there as well.”

  ***

  Nerves got many people up before the time set, an hour before dawn. Many of the Confederates gathered around the one small fire, stamping and blowing on their cold hands, in that grey hour. Mariarta was there with Theo and Walter and the others, silent, nervous, waiting. While they stood around the fire, for the first time the three battle-standards of the Forest Countries were unwrapped and set up—the red square above a white square of Unterwalden: the plain red square standard of Schwyz: and the newest, the standard that the Uri men brought with them. The banner-bearer was one of the horn-bearers that Mariarta had met in the Rutli meadow, the man who had told her the way to the Maiden. Rather shyly he showed her the banner: yellow, with painted on it in black a big bull’s head, a ring through its nose, its eyes red with menace. “Since we have the horns,” he said to Mariarta, “it seemed like a good idea to have the banner, too. I heard somebody else down south had one, so I made this.”

  Mariarta nodded. “By the way, you gave me good advice—about that mountain.”

  The young man smiled. “Theo said so, but you can never tell with Theo. Did you see all the dead people?”

  “Heard them. A noisy lot.”

  “Did you find treasure?”

  Mariarta sensed someone listening inside her with odd wistfulness, waiting for the answer. “Nothing I can spend,” she said. “But I found what I went looking for.”

  The young banner-bearer smiled again. “Haarus,” he said—the war-cry, the luck-cry, of Uri men to one another on the battlefield. Then he went to where the other banner-bearers were standing.

  Mariarta saw the great signalling-horns, the harsthorner, brought out and softly tested, making smothered hoots. Some of the men of Unterwalden brought out what they used instead of horns—small sharp-voiced drums, and fifes so shrill they would scrape the insides of your ears. “We got them from some people who came from northern parts,” one man said to Mariarta, showing her the big wooden snare drum he was carrying and the huge heavy drumsticks for it, while his mate cleaned out his five-stopped fife. “Basel, I think. They use them at Carnival.” The drummer looked around with a scared, grim smile. “Different kind of carnival today....” Some of the fifes were briefly used for imitating bird calls, and Mariarta heard someone very softly playing a love song on one. Other than that, there was little noise: no shouts, little talk, just men walking around restlessly, or standing in groups of varying size and looking north.

  An hour after dawn, another scout came in. “They’re packing and getting in order. Not battle order, though. Just marching order.”

  “The foot in front?” Walter Furst said.

  The scout shook his head. “The knights and their lances. The foot are trailing after. About five thousand of them, we make it.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Werner Stauffacher. “Call everyone in for the order of battle.”

  It took about ten minutes to get everyone assembled. When they were there, and quiet, Walter Furst said, “All right. Eidgenossen, remember the oath you swore! Schwyz must be defended from these invaders—if they once break through, we will never be rid of them. Let us kneel and pray God for His help: and then go about our business.”

  Thirteen hundred men and a woman knelt and prayed, though not necessarily in the same directions. Glinargiun, Mariarta said, are you with me in this?

  You’ll live through it, Diun said from her seat in the marble house. It was shadowed there, and Mariarta could not see her expression clearly; but there was the slightest smile in her voice.

  That’s not what I asked.

  Do you ask for my help, sister-daughter?

  Mariarta breathed out. Goddess and my lady, she said, I do. And how the One, as you call Him, will feel about it, I have no idea.

  In my day, the One tended to help those who helped themselves. Have you seen evidence that this has changed? But Diun was definitely smiling. Let us go forward, she said. You will have the help I promised you...if you can think what use to make of it.

  People were standing now. “Everyone to your places,” Walter said. “You, the third group, get behind that ridge and make sure you’re not seen, whatever happens, until the second group has moved.” He walked slowly to stand with the standard-bearers, with the men carrying the harsthorner and the fifes and drums
.

  Mariarta would have liked to be with them, but that was not her job. She barely knew what to do with a halberd—but a crossbow was another matter, so she was with one of four groups of snipers stationed on the southern slope, halfway down the pass. In company with some of the other marksmen, she climbed the slope. Heading upslope east of her, she caught sight of a white linen shirt, and laid over it, matter-of-fact as if the man were strolling in to market in the morning, a crossbow. Mariarta paused a moment, watching him fade into the underbrush: then wished a blessing on his aim, and took her own place among four other archers behind one great cracked stone that had been too big to uproot for their purposes.

  And then they waited.

  Silence fell over everything, except for the birds, which were singing in earnest now. Mariarta closed her eyes and let her vision slip onto the wind, riding it. It was cooperative, the usual morning onshore wind from the Forestlake behind them, and it bore her swiftly to the northeastern end of the pass, where the road bent near the shore of the Ageri lake. There they were, a long slow column trundling along as if riding on a holiday: two thousand horse. Not all the riders were wearing metal armor, by any means—only the knights and their squires, and a few favored pages. The other riders were in leather or linen armor, hardly better at stopping a crossbow bolt than a linen shirt would be. After the unarmed riders, the armorers, the butlers, the personal valets and the other servants, came the drummers and trumpeters who would give the signals during a fight—playing desultorily, and with restraint, the way men play noisy instruments when they have headaches. After the drums and trumpets came the footmen, straggling along in an untidy column as wide as the road, winding away out of sight around the edge of the Ageri lake.

  Up at the front of the column, two standards stirred in the breeze: the two-headed, two-haloed black eagle on gold of the Empire, and smaller, the horizontal white stripe between two red ones of Austria—once the mark, some said, left where a belt kept clean a white surcoat elsewhere stained completely with blood. Armor glittered in the early sun on the first fifty or sixty men, knights of high stature, counts and such following Duke Leopold. Mariarta tried to pick him out, but too many banners and bannerets were scattered among the knights immediately following the Austrian standards. It didn’t matter. As they approached the mouth of the Morgarten pass, Mariarta watched the head of the column slow to a stop, saw knights and their retainers pointing, arms waved, heads turned to ask questions. A scent of disagreement and annoyance came to her on the wind. The main pass-road was blocked in front of them. Massive tree-trunks and boulders were sown across it from side to side. At first it looked like a landslide, but landslides are rarely so thorough.

  The knights muttered, laughed. Plainly this was somebody’s desperate and abortive attempt to keep them from going where they intended. Pretty bad, really: untidy, not a proper sort of palisade. Though there was no way the horses were going to get through it.... But it didn’t matter. What about this side road that goes leftwards and up the slope? It parallels the main pass road and misses this blockage entirely. Stupid peasants, really thought a few rocks and tree trunks would slow us down. We’ll go this other way....

  Mariarta watched them turn up the smaller road. It was rocky, and could take no more than two or three riders abreast. With apparently no further thought given to the matter, the knights went along it, three by three, and all their people followed them.

  Mariarta opened her eyes, said to her companions, “They’re coming.” They gazed down at where the track wound into sight on the slope on their side. A tiny village stood there, five houses and a smithy: Schafstetten, it was called. The people who lived in the houses were not there. The houses had other occupants this morning.

  The snipers made sure of their bows and their view toward those houses. Mariarta swallowed, thinking, It might be that nothing else will be needed, here. This plan was well made. The Austriacs are doing just what we thought they would. Maybe....

  She checked her bow, crouched there with the others, and waited. Waited....

  A flash of color could be seen through the trees where the upslope track bent around the side of the hill toward them. Gold and black: then red and white: then many others. The first forty or fifty knights started to come in sight now, below them, on the road where the five houses of Schafstetten lay.

  In an arolla pine near where Mariarta crouched, a puppentschiertschen, one of those small pert red-breasted birds that lives on worms and bugs, sat on a branch and sang his morning song with piercing volume and great sweetness. Mariarta glanced at him sidelong, for she knew that bird from her childhood, and it was not his mate to whom he sang. There was another cock puppen somewhere around here, and the meaning of those lovely lilting notes was Mine, this is where I eat, this is where I live, this is my patch of ground, get off it or I’ll kill you!

  From up the pass, echoing back and forth between the slopes, came the sound of drums, and the trumpets of the Austriacs, faint and unconcerned. The last of the knights were now in the pass. Suddenly, in answer to the trumpets and much closer, came the drumbeats of the men around the Oath-confederates’ standards, and the pure, clear, piercing notes of about twenty fifes, all singing the same tune in a major key, slow, measured and defiant. It was the beat to which a man might march to his wedding, or another’s funeral. Not much to choose between us and the birds this morning, Mariarta thought, and spanned her bow. Around her, the others did the same.

  Her priorities, and the others’, were simple. First shoot anything wearing armor: in the head, if possible—no use holing good harness. Second, shoot the horses. After that, any useful target. Mariarta’s thoughts suddenly went back to the buttatsch, and she found herself wondering disjointedly, as she took aim at her first knight, held her breath, and waited for the sign, whether it would have been considered “useful”....

  Below them the Schwyzers, who had insisted on being the first to attack, leapt out from among the now-empty houses of Schafstetten with crossbows and halberds. Knights’ horses reared, and some knights managed to draw their swords, not that it helped them. The first thirty or so were pulled out of their saddles by halberd-hooks, and they and their horses slaughtered within moments. More knights rode up, some with crossbows. A few Schwyz men fell, but not many, and their comrades came roaring behind them, the harsthorner blaring the attack. Mariarta took aim at a shirt of overlapping plates, let the wind roar past her, showing her the life at the other end of the wind, waiting to be set free. She let the shaft go, bore the dreadful influx of power from the knight’s death, and then chose another target.

  More knights were riding up, but they were unprepared, their weapons not even drawn. In the pass, something rumbled like thunder. Up rode more knights, and they had no choice about the riding up now: they were being forced forward by their mates behind them, and their mates in turn were forced forward by the impetus of the riders behind them. It was going exactly as Werner and Walter had hoped it would, and it was terrible to behold the confusion, and the slaughter. Mariarta knew that behind the knights, the Oath-confederates toward the mouth of the pass were rolling downslope the stones and tree trunks they had spent all night preparing. The knights were now cut off from their footsoldiers by a barrier that none of their horses could pass. The Oath-confederates hidden in the mouth of the pass would be falling on those foot-soldiers now. There would be no help for them from the cavalry. And as for the cavalry—

  From behind trees and stones on the slope east of Mariarta, and west of her, the shout, “Haarus, haarus!” went up, and the trees and the stones came down. Many of the trapped knights had half ridden, half slid from the track to the main pass road to find time to breathe and room to fight. They did not find it. The boulders crashed among them, crushing heads, terrifying horses. Shortly there was barely room for a horse to turn around, and the horses began to fall, shot by the crossbowmen, or killed or maimed by their own terror that made them throw their riders, trample fallen ones, break their
legs crashing into one another. Some knights managed to dismount and get their swords or bows out, but “Haarus!” came the shout from the hill again, and the third group of Oath-confederates came with their halberds and went to work among the dismounted enemy. Mariarta thought she had been watching a slaughter until now, but soon saw otherwise. This was mere butchery, armored men lopped like trees, cut to pieces. She turned her mind to her shooting, and tried to see only armor, not the faces—

  Down the pass road some few Austriac knights were gathering, not thrashing about like most of the others. They seemed to be about to charge eastward at a large group of the Oath-confederates who were concentrating on another group of knights. Mariarta wondered how the supply of stones was, upslope, and stared upward hopefully, but saw none coming down. It may have to be the lightning after all, she thought bitterly. She picked a spot on the road, among the lesser knights’ banners. Now then, she said to the sky and the wind, uncertain how well this would work. —Not too much: keep it confined—

  —and suddenly saw a banner that she knew, sow and piglets, the canting arms of the family who lived on the Schweinberg, the Knights of Attinghausen. It was small, a banneret, charged with the crescent, the difference-mark for the younger son.

  Arnulf—!

  Mariarta went cold with fear. Above her, in the clear sky, the lightning was building, hunting a path to the ground, with her permission or without it. She had called, and now it would come—

  Diun!

  You called it! the goddess said. It can’t just be sent away like a dish of meat you don’t like the look of!

  Frantically, Mariarta cast around for somewhere to divert it. Down beneath her, the knights were charging, and falling: her comrades’ bows were busy. If she didn’t think of something, Attinghausen’s son would shortly be one more bleeding lump. Tears burst from Mariarta’s eyes as she closed them in bitter irony, hunting a solution, any solution. Get rid of the lightning, have it hit anything, the mountaintop. Then find some other way to be of use. But what use is having all the storms of a world when you can’t—