Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Dietrich, who knew how ineffective his pleas had been, said nothing.

  The familiarity with which the local garrison greeted the fresh arrivals quieted many. Some muttered about “welcoming demons,” but none of the country knights dared gallop off while their brothers from the Burg stood fast. When Hans and Gottfried knelt before Dietrich, drew the sign of the cross upon themselves, and prayed the priest’s blessing, the murmurs faded like water sucked into the thirsty earth. Reflexively, many of those who had shouted the loudest alarums also crossed themselves, and took heart, if not ease, from this sign of piety.

  “What means this?” Dietrich asked Hans amidst the commotion. “Has Grosswald then consented?”

  “We shall recover the copper wire stolen by von Falkenstein,” Hans said. “It may perform better than that which the blessed Lorenz drew.” One of the three unfamiliar Krenken tossed his head back and made some buzz of comment; but as the creature lacked a head-harness, Dietrich did not understand him and Hans silenced the fellow with a gesture.

  Manfred, having donned his own harness, approached and inquired after their corporal.

  Hans stepped forward. “We have come to honor Grosswald, mine Herr. By your grace, we will fly before the column and call back reports of Falkenstein’s doings through the far-speaker.”

  Manfred rubbed his chin. “And be out of sight of the faint-hearts among us… Do you have the thunder-clay?” A Krenk stroked the satchel he wore strapped across his body and Manfred nodded. “Very well. It pleases. You shall fly a vanguard.”

  Dietrich watched with mixed feelings the Krenken recede into the distant sky. The objections were two. The army would carry gossip on its breath, exciting a terrible curiosity; but a glimpse of Hans or his companions would give body to the whispers. On the contrary, Hans might recover the wire and so speed the krenkish departure. Ergo… The question would be determined by a race between the arrival of the curious and the departure of the Krenken. In answer to the first objection, rumors were surely abroad by now, so that the gossip of this army would add but little. But to the second objection, Dietrich saw no ready answer.

  On the way to Church Hill, Dietrich passed by Theresia’s cottage and marked her face in the window opening. They locked gazes, and he saw again the numb, tearless ten-year old he had carried off into the woods. He stretched an arm out and perhaps something stirred in her features, but she pulled the shutters closed before he could ascertain what that something was.

  Slowly, Dietrich let his arm drop and he took a few more steps up the hill, but, suddenly overwhelmed, he sat upon a boulder and wept.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Dietrich and Joachim fed the milch cow and the other animals pertaining to the benefice. The shed was warm from the heat of the beasts and rich with the odors of dung and straw. “It will please me,” Dietrich said as he forked silage into the manger, “when the Krenken have gone and Theresia resumes her duties.”

  Joachim, who had taken the more noisome task of the chicken coop, paused and wiped the curls off his brow with the back of his hand. “Dietrich, you cannot grind a sausage into a sow.”

  Dietrich frowned and leaned upon his pitchfork. The cow lowed. Joachim turned and scattered feed to the chickens. There was a distant sound of banging pots in the outbuilding.

  “She was always like a daughter to me,” Dietrich said at last.

  Joachim grunted. “Children are a father’s curse. My father told me that. He meant me, of course. He’d lost a hand in the Barons’ War, and it embittered him that he could no longer chop other men to pieces. He wanted me to take his place and be my uncle’s heir, but I wanted God to live in me, and butchery seemed an uncertain path to the New Age.” Dietrich twitched and Joachim nodded. “You taught Theresia charity, but when tried for the greatest charity of all she was found wanting. I have written it so in my journal. ‘Even Pastor Dietrich’s ward was tried and found wanting.’”

  Dietrich shook his head. “Never say such a thing. It would hurt her. Say rather that ‘Pastor Dietrich was tried and found wanting,’ for I have always fallen short of the marks I have set.”

  The Kratzer burst into the shed, buzzing and clicking and shaking a cook’s ladle. Dietrich jumped at the sudden intrusion and braced the pitchfork before him, but when he saw it was the philosopher, he pulled the head harness from his scrip and woke it.

  “Where is Hans?” the Krenk demanded. “It is past time and my meal is unprepared.”

  Joachim opened his mouth to answer, but Dietrich lifted a hand to stll him. “We’ve not seen him since morning,” Dietrich temporized. At this, the Krenk slammed a fist into the doorpost, said something that the Heinzelmännchen did not translate, and bounded from the shed.

  Dietrich removed his head-harness and carefully put it to sleep. “So. He doesn’t know — which means that Grosswald did not send them.” He worried. Gschert had imprisoned Hans for snatching Dietrich from the dungeon of Schloss Falkenstein. What retribution might follow this new transgression?

  * * *

  By tierce the next day, Baron Grosswald had learned of the matter and barged into the parsonage, shoving the door so hard that it banged and recoiled from the wall. Dietrich, who was praying his office at the time, jumped from the prie-dieu, dropping his book of hours so that the pages bent on themselves.

  “He will show me his neck when he returns!” Grosswald cried. “Why did Manfred allow it?” Shepherd and the Kratzer pushed into the room as well, the pilgrim-leader pausing to close the door against the February chill.

  “My lord baron,” said Dietrich, “The Herr did not question your men’s presence at the muster because he had called upon you for your duty, and presumed, when they presented themselves, that it was at your will.”

  Grosswald paced before the glowing fireplace in a curious springing step that, to Dietrich seemed much like skipping and yet which clearly signified great agitation. “Too many lost already,” he said, though not entirely to Dietrich, for Shepherd answered.

  “Three to cold, and one of them child, before you even stir to… enter village. And since—”

  “The alchemist,” added the Kratzer.

  “Speak not his name,” Grosswald warned his chief philosopher. “I will not see another life thrown away — and in so futile a gesture!”

  Shepherd said to him, “If Hans gesture futile, why we husband our lives?” Grosswald swung at her, but the Krenkerin fended the blow with a deft motion of her arm, much as a knight might parry a sword cut. The two then controlled themselves, but stared at each other in the off-center, sidelong manner their peculiar eyes allowed.

  “Did you expect to eat of my lord’s largesse,” insisted Dietrich, “with no obligation in return? Has he not granted you food and shelter through the winter?”

  “You mock us,” said Grosswald, shrugging off the hand that the Kratzer placed on his arm.

  “I did not know that Hans could act contrary to your orders,” Dietrich said. “Is not obedience to one’s sitting is written into the atoms of your flesh?”

  The Kratzer, who had thus far showed his agitation by shaking in place, threw his arm to bar Grosswald. “I will answer this, Gschertl.” Dietrich noted his use of the diminutive. Among grown men, it signified either endearment or condescension, and Dietrich thought the Krenken incapable of endearment.

  “Our flesh-atoms,” the Kratzer said, “write for us an… appetite… for obedience to our betters. But as one who hungers may fast, so may we temper our hunger for obedience. We have a proverb that reads: ‘Obey an order, until you are strong enough to disobey.’ And another: ‘Authority is limited only by reach.” He bowed, a human gesture, toward Shepherd, who had gone to a corner of the room by herself.

  “And much depends,” Shepherd said, “on man who give order.” Gschert stiffened for a moment, then bounded suddenly from the parsonage, the door banging on its hinges as he departed.

  Dietrich said, “I understand,” as he went to close the door.
>
  “Do you?” said Shepherd. “It wonder me. Could man fast forever, or would hunger in end move him to desperation?”

  * * *

  The next day, on the feast of St. Kunigund, a riot broke out among the Krenken. They raged against one another on the high street and on the muddy green, to the amazement of villager and garrison alike. Fist and foot and forearm dealt terrible wounds and raised a clatter like swordplay with dry wooden sticks.

  Frightened Hochwalders took refuge in church, cottage, or castle, so that work languished. Dietrich cried Truce to the mob on the green, but the combat swirled about him like a stream around a stone.

  Pursued by four others, Shepherd bounded past him and up Church Hill. Dietrich hurried after, and found the pursuers pounding upon the carved oaken doors of the church, scarring the figures with their serrated forearms. St. Catherine had sustained a wound never delivered by her Roman tormenters. “Stop, for the love of God!” he cried and interposed himself between the mob and the precious carvings. “This building is sanctuary!”

  A terrible blow laid open his headskin and he saw sudden dark and pinprick constellations. The door opened behind him and he fell backward onto the flagstones of the vestibule, striking his already aching head against the stones. Hands seized him and dragged him inside. The door slammed, muffling the clamor of the mob.

  How long he lay dazed, he did not know. Then he sat upright, crying, “Shepherd!”

  “Safe,” said Joachim. Dietrich looked around the dim-lit church, saw Gregor lighting candles illuminating Shepherd and a number of villagers. The villagers had edged away from the Krenkerin, deeper into the building’s shadows. Joachim helped Dietrich to his feet.

  “That was well-said,” the monk told him. “’Stop for the love of God.’ You did not debate your dialectic.” The pounding on the door had ceased and Joachim went to the peep-hole and pushed the shutter aside. “They’ve gone,” he said.

  “What madness has seized them?” Dietrich wondered.

  “They always were an ill-humored lot,” Gregor said as he raised the lamplighter to touch a candle high on the wall. “As arrogant as Jews or nobles. That’s twice they’ve beaten you.”

  “Forgive them, Gregor,” said Dietrich. “They did not know what they were doing. I put myself between their fists and their target. Otherwise, they ignore us.” It was the estimative power of instinct, he guessed. From deep within the atoms of their flesh, the Krenken did not esteem humans as friend or foe.

  Shepherd squatted upon the flagstones with her knees thrust over her head and her long arms wrapped around them. Her side lips clicked rhythmically, much as a person might hum to herself. “My lady,” Dietrich said to her, “what means this riot?”

  “Need you ask?” the Krenkerin said. “You and Brown-robe cause it.

  Joachim had torn a strip of cloth off the hem of his robe and tied it ’round Dietrich’s brow to staunch the blood. “We, the cause?” Joachim asked.

  “Were it not for your native superstition, Hans does not turn natural order over.”

  “My lady,” said Dietrich. “Hans acted for the common good — to recover the wire from Falkenstein. It is the nature of men, of all creation, to pursue the good.”

  “It is ‘nature of all creation’ to do as told — told by authority, or told by nature herself. That is what ‘good’ man does. But Hans decides for himself what end is good, not in course of duties, not by orders from betters. Unnatural! Now, some say he act on orders — from your lord-from-sky, ‘whose authority exceed even Herr Gschert.’”

  Joachim cried out. “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” Dietrich hushed him with a brusque gesture. “All authority is ‘under God’,” he told Shepherd, “else authority would have no limits, and justice would be only a Herr’s will. But, say on.”

  “Now, is discord among us. Words run every way, like highspringers from pouncing swiftjaw, when they ought run in orderly channels from those-who-speak to those-who-listen. As you cannot imagine… celebration-inside-head… of knowing that one toils in one’s besitting, touching upward, downward, all sides, linked in Great Web, neither can you know lacking-within-us when Web is broken. The Kratzer compared it to hunger, but hunger is small thing…” She paused and buzzed softly. “…which one may bear with ease until it grows unbearable. But this lacking is to sit on bank of flood-swollen river with… with… your word is love-mate… with love-mates unreachable on farther side.”

  “Heart-ache,” said Joachim unexpectedly. “The word you want is heart-ache.”

  “Doch? Heart-ache, then.”

  Gregor the mason had come to stand with them and, when he heard what Joachim had said, remarked, “They feel heart-ache, do they? It’s little enough they show it.”

  “We have heart-ache for Web-wholeness,” said Shepherd, “and would swim angry river to restore it. We have heart-ache for nurseland — you say Heimat — and… and its foods.”

  “But there are now heresies among you,” Dietrich guessed. “Grosswald says one thing; Hans says another. Perhaps you,” he suggested, “say a third thing.”

  Shepherd raised her mask-like face. “Hans go against Gschert words, but fault is Gschert that he fail to speak those words. Gschertl make it seem that I too defy natural order, and mob, high and low, set upon me for that sin. But when two in discord, both may be wrong, Gschertl and Hansl alike.”

  “Those who hold the middle ground,” said Gregor, “are often attacked by both camps. Between two armies is a dangerous place to graze your flock.”

  “Discord,” Dietrich said, “is a grave wrong. We must strive always for concord.”

  Joachim laughed. “’I come not to bring concord,’” he quoted, “’but discord. Because of Me husband will leave wife, children will leave parents.’ So do philosophers, playing games with words, lose sight of their plain meanings, which can be found always inscribed in the heart.”

  “A bit of discord here, too,” said Gregor mildly.

  Dietrich said to Shepherd. “Tell your folk that any who come to the church, or who go to Manfred’s court, may not be attacked, for it is the Peace of God that warriors may not attack women or children, peasants, merchants, artisans, or animals, nor any religious or public building, and by law and custom both, no one may strike another in a church or in a lord’s court.”

  “And does this Peace serve?”

  “My lady, men are by nature violent. The Peace is a sieve, and much falls through — though perhaps not as much as might otherwise.”

  “House-wherein-no-blows-may-fall…,” Shepherd said in a voice which might have meant cynicism or wistfulness. “New thought. This building to grow crowded sure.”

  * * *

  Dietrich asked Thierry to put down the fighting, but the burgvogt declined. “I have here only the garrison,” he explained. “Five knights, eight sentries, two gatekeepers, and a towermaster. I will not expend them to pacify those… those creatures.”

  “Why have you been left here, sir,” Dietrich demanded, “if not to preserve order?”

  Thierry bore impertinence less patiently than Manfred. “Von Falkenstein is no man to idle while his enemies attack, and though he cannot strike Freiburg or Vienna, he is perfectly able to ravage the Hochwald. If he sallies, I will need every man hale, alert, and under arms. Should any Krenk flee here for sactuary, he will have it, but I will not police the fighting. That is Grosswald’s besitting, and I will not stand between him and his disobedient vassals.”

  Discontent with this ruling, Dietrich borrowed a horse from the stables, and set off toward Falcon Rock, where he hoped to obtain Manfred’s intervention. The urge to press on warred with the need to pick his way carefully down the switchback along the side of the Katerinaberg and through the thickets and other obstacles in the gorge. He was still deep within the shadowed gorge when he heard a dull thump of thunder and saw a plume of dark smoke rise over the far end of the valley.

  * * *

  He arrived at Falcon Rock after nones, le
ss weary in body than anxious in mind, and sought the Hochward banner in a sprawling camp of no particular order or arrangement. Noble emblems waved on all sides like the flags on a festival tree. Here, the double-eagle of the Hapsburgs; there, the golden sash of the Markgraf and the red and white bars of Urach. Elsewhere, each at its own bastion: the arms of the weavers, the silversmiths, and the other Freiburger guilds. Von Falkenstein had badly misjudged how long the guildsmen would tolerate his impositions. Now, the mechanics and shopkeepers had risen from their benches to pull the pebble from their shoe.

  The camp servants were in great celebration and Dietrich saw the reason for it when he reached the head of the camp. The gates to Burg Falkenstein hung loose and the portal had collapsed, as if Sigenot had smashed it with his club. The clash of weapons and the shouts of men drifted faintly from above. The krenkish thunder-paste had forced an entry into the schloss, but the way was narrow and, notoriously, the “gap of danger” could be held if stoutly defended. Indeed, the rubble mound below the breach had gleamed in the late afternoon sun with the armor and fittings of men and horses.

  Dietrich found the Hochwald tents at last, but the Herr’s pavillion was empty, his body servant nowhere in evidence. Manfred’s honor would have propelled him into the gap of danger and he might even now sleep among those gleaming dead. Dietrich re-entered the tent and, finding a divan crafted in the Turkish style, set himself to wait.

  * * *

  As evening deepened into night, the battle-sounds faded, signaling that the last of the “diehards” had been slain or taken captive. Arms and armor fell to the victor, so many knights fought to the death, less for love of his lord than to escape penury and shame. Attackers trickled back into camp, chivvying prisoners to be ransomed, and carrying the loot with which years of highway robbery had filled Falcon Rock.