Disgusted, Parcifal sat upon a worn, tilt-legged wooden stool. There was no fire, not even a hearth for it, such being forbidden by several stringent doctrines of the Cult, nor was any other hospitality offered the visitor—who’d no reason to appreciate the outrageous profligacy the single candle represented.
He reflected upon the leader’s earlier, peculiarly cordial greeting, finally replying, “As long as you get what you want—what you extort from me!”
“What’st thou say? Ah, yes, I recall.” Oln Woeck made clucking sounds with his tongue. “Now, now, Hethri Parcifal, the price of silence is high. Wouldst thou liefer face the open wrath of our Brotherhood in this affair, or continue reaping thy illicit benefits—benefits I’ve not e’en asked thee to share—”
“Yet!”
“—yet, with us?”
Old anger flared within the younger man, squeezing his eyes shut against his will. For a moment, he wished he could feel the blood-haze which sometimes possessed warriors such as Owaldsohn, rendering them omnipotent, invulnerable.
Alas, when he opened his eyes again and looked down, all he saw was himself.
“I recall no teaching which forbids trade with foreigners!”
Oln Woeck chuckled. “With the Invader, Hethri, with the Invader. Nor do I, in God’s truth. But wouldst thou like it common knowledge? We’ve been o’er this before. In the end, thou reckoned it worth the price. How is thy little daughter, anywise? I see her—and thy grandchild-to-be—that seldom these days.”
A father’s outraged horror swept through Parcifal, but the diplomat within him stifled it.
“E’en now I fail to understand what you want with her. Would you sire offspring in your dotage you couldn’t before now—”
“Silence, thou base hypocrite!” Oln Woeck rasped, his yellow eyes afire, the markings standing out upon his shaven temples. Abruptly he mellowed. “Thou speakest aright, good Hethri. I’m an old man, with an old man’s craving for a woman’s warm young body. Though my usage with her shall be the same—exactly the same—as for these”—he indicated his companions, slouched against the earthen wall, with a contemptuous flip of a veiny hand—“who pleaseth me no longer.”
He shook his head. “At one time in my life I thought it well to have their temperament, shall I say, ameliorated—why, thou appearest puzzled, friend Parcifal. Could it be I’ve let a little secret of our Brotherhood slip by to an unbeliever? But look’st thou upon them, upon the sigil of our order.”
Controlling his unease, Parcifal bent aside upon his stool, examining the Sacred Heart tattoo upon the left side of the companion’s head. The blue dye concealed a small, deep, circular scar.
He turned to Oln Woeck, a terrifying suspicion growing within him, “What does it signify?”
“Compliance.” Oln Woeck chuckled. “Pure, disminded compliance, to the Brotherhood, to my e’ery whim.”
Parcifal sprang up, knocking the stool over. “You’d do this to my daughter?’”
Oln Woeck made patting motions at the air in front of him. “Sittest thou, merchant. And what if I intended so? We’ve a bargain, haven’t we? Yet be not afraid. E’en that chirurgical improvement will not be foisted upon her. I should prefer her, um, somewhat resistant—at least in the beginning.”
“But what excuse can I offer the village, Oln Woeck, for giving her wholly to you? You can’t father children upon her, and in any case, young Sedrich—”
“Aha! Now thou perceivest, dost thou not, the reason for my recent tolerance? Get thee home, Hethri Parcifal. Upon the morrow wilt thou make announcement that I and my betrothed have conceived a child and are in haste impetuous but seemly to be wed.”
3
As the single smoky candle flickered, scattering grotesque shadows, the men at the battered table spoke a while longer, in particular concerning young Sedrich Sedrichsohn and his warrior sire. Oln Woeck had given the matter much thought.
After a time, a reassured Hethri Parcifal burrowed back out into the night, no longer fearful of the naked steel-edged wrath of the Owaldsohns. As he latched the door behind the unbeliever’s back, Oln Woeck rubbed his bony hands together before he caught himself at it. Likewise he fought—and defeated—a look of unrestrained glee which had threatened to settle itself upon his taut-stretched features.
“So mote it be!”
From a corner, one of his young companions looked up in dull incomprehension.
Oln Woeck nodded. “It beginneth. Let the parasite attribute my designs upon his tender youngling to the stirrings of senescent lust. The wisest lie hath yet an admixture of truth; the wisest conspiracy is a conspiracy of one—ne’er forgetting thee, of course, who shareth my every thought.”
Bringing the candle-stub, Oln Woeck took the young man by the hand, bidding him arise. He led him over to the pallet where the other young man dozed now, blew the candle out, and settled himself between the two warm bodies.
“‘But what of the Sisterhood?’” he mocked Parcifal, more to himself than to companions incapable of understanding. “’Twas aught that simpering craven could ask about, did we no sooner dispose of the question of the stripling father. As well he might.”
Flesh slapped naked flesh.
There were other noises.
‘“A boy-baby,’ reasoneth our mendacious merchant, ‘can someday be sealed safely unto the Brotherhood.’” Oln Woeck caressed a scarred and tattooed temple. “Doubtless he contemplated thy decorations with some comfort. ‘But a girl-baby’d be of special interest to that witch-woman Ilse and thus constitute a threat.’”
Staring at the unseen ceiling in the dark, Oln Woeck addressed the night: “Hethri Parcifal, e’er I use what I will of her—if there be aught left—I’ll pass thy little Frae on to many well-deserving others. She is but a step-stone toward fulfillment of my strategies.”
Among the three there was some squirming, grunting rearrangement.
Oln Woeck took a sudden breath.
“But observest thou: B’time her bawling calf becometh problematic—should it survive the uses I make of its mother—there’ll be no Sisterhood to threaten anyone!”
VIII: The Fiery Cross
“Surely We will try you with something of fear and hunger and diminution of goods and lives and fruits....”—The Koran, Sura I
"I won’t!”
“Your will in this,” replied Frae’s father, weariness slurring his voice, “shall be without question to behave as I bid, in cheerful obedience, and now.”
Late as he had been arriving from the compound, he’d awaited hours before his daughter had crept home. His body trembled with humiliated fury. Still, in a corner of his mind, he took pride that he’d not raised his voice to her.
Nor yet his hand.
Frae answered, “You’re mistaken, Father.”
Dawn brushed pale color, brightened by the snowfall, across their whitewashed ceiling. Standing across the room from one another, neither was warmed by it. In this house, not otherwise unlike the one next door, no fire glowed in the hearth. No candle had been lit. It seemed to both as if nobody lived here. Frae’s heart was with the Owaldsohns. Parcifal’s plans lay elsewhere, as well.
“I’m a woman.” She spread her hands upon her belly. “Tell me I’m not! My life belongs to me! I’ll do with it as I—”
“Your life belongs to me!” He took an angry step forward, she, a step back, until her heel met a wall. “Afterward, to whomsoe’er I should deliver you unto!”
Hot tears sprang forth unbidden in her eyes. Hating the weakness they betrayed, she made fists of her small hands, regaining the half-pace she’d given up.
“Do I belong to anyone beside myself, ’tis to my love, Sedrich Sedrichsohn, and to this child of his I carry.”
Parcifal strode forward of a sudden, seized his daughter’s upper arms in both hands, bruising her. Between clenched teeth he whispered, “’Tis Oln Woeck’s child you carry! ’Tis what everyone will believe. What everyone believes is the truth.
“As for Sedrich Sedrichsohn...”
Frae looked up, terror in her eyes. “He’ll come for me! He’ll take me away!”
Releasing her, Parcifal snorted. “When your betrothed finishes with him, he’ll rescue no one. Not e’en himself!”
2
The late-afternoon light was beginning to fail as Sedrich looked upon his handiwork. It was the smallest arrow he could fashion, half the length of his little finger, the shaft of bronze, tipped with razored steel and fletched with tiny copper vanes. With a grunt of satisfaction, he tried what he’d begun calling the shoe—a half-cylinder of resin-impregnated softwood, grooved upon its flat diameter for the little arrow. It was the second such he’d fashioned with painstaking care. Together they encased the small projectile, only the tip of its lethal broadhead projecting beyond their rounded ends.
Sedrich breathed.
It was time for testing.
Rummaging in the spiderwebbed spaces behind the forge’s hardwood pile, he extracted a doeskin bundle, obtaining from it an iron tube the length of his forearm, closed at one end with a plug of steel—which had itself been pierced through with the finest twist his father possessed. Halfway along the tube, at right angles to its long axis, he’d fastened the handle of a block-plane, using castoff metal strapping.
He glanced over his shoulder.
In the forge lay a length of iron wire, its end glowing red in the coals. From the leather bundle he took a small resin container of irregular granules, gray-black, foul-smelling. Sedrich unstoppered it, poured out a measure in his palm, tipped it into the open end of the tube. He started the softwood cylinder in behind it, taking care that the two carved pieces stayed in place along the tiny shaft. Using the brass rod, he rammed the cylinder home over the granules.
It was, he thought to himself, now or never.
The front end of the tube was equipped with a crude sight, like that of a shoulder-bow. At the rear, the double peaks of a shoulder-bow’s rear sight had been attached. Taking aim upon the largest log-end in the pile, Sedrich reached for the coiled “handle” of the wire in the forge, plunging its hot end, now glowing yellow, into the small hole behind the rear sight.
The tube moved in his hand with an orange flash, a soft boom!
Casting it aside upon the bench, Sedrich hurried to examine the log. As he’d planned, the wooden shoes lay upon the floor between him and the target, stripped off by air resistance. The arrow itself was buried past its vanes in the hard wood of the log.
He’d improved, he told himself, upon the old fletcher’s idea. Better to let the explosive push the arrow than to carry the substance to the mark. Now to install the flint-striker which had been the most difficult portion of this project to conceive. In this wise, his new weapon would be free of the forge or some other source of fire.
“Sedrich!”
The anguish in Frae’s voice clamped a cold hand about Sedrich’s insides. He threw the tube aside, along with his musings. Running the muddy pathway toward her, he watched the girl tear through the snow-covered hedge at the margin of their properties, her face red-blotched, streaming with tears. At her wrists, blood dripped.
“Sedrich!” Throwing her arms about his neck, she buried her face in his shoulder. “They’re going to steal our child!”
“What?”
Pulling back a little, she looked up at him. “My father. Oln Woeck. They’re going to say our baby’s his!”
The cold hand was replaced by a burning one. Placing an arm about Frae’s shoulders, he led her back to the warmth of the forge. “It makes a demented sort of sense,” he told her. “But I promise you, they’ll not get away with it.”
In the shed, he swept the clutter off a low bench. “Here, you must calm yourself, and not only for your own sake.” He placed a gentle hand upon the girl’s swollen abdomen. “What’s wrong with your wrists?”
Frae glanced down, as if just aware of the injuries which covered her hands with blood. “Father tied me in my room.” She shook her head. “I got loose.”
Sedrich thought, did his fury build higher, he’d die of it. Taking his own advice, he breathed deep several times, then fetched the water jug with which he and his father were used to refresh themselves in the forge-heat. He was washing the girl’s wounds, which were superficial, when she looked up at him. “Sedrich, what is that noise?”
Outside, far away, the young man heard the drumming of feet. He had heard its kind before. It was not long before his first, most dismal guess was confirmed.
“We believe— (Clash! Clash!)
We believe— (Clash! Clash!)
We believe in the Father,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Who hath turned His face away. (Clash!)”
“The Botherhood of Man, love.”
Striding across the shed, he retrieved the dagger he’d put aside. Thrusting it through his belt, he proceeded to charge his iron tube with granules once again. He’d another arrow to spare, and the spent shoes lay easy to hand upon the floor. “I’d wondered why your father didn’t pursue you. He’s Oln Woeck’s Brotherhood to do it for him.”
“We believe— (Clash! Clash!)
In Jesus Christ His only son,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Crucified, dead, and buried....
He descended into Hell. (Clash!)
There he shall suffer
Till he be redeemed,
And sitteth on the right hand
Of God the Father Almighty,
Whence shall he come— (Clash!)
To judge the quick and the dead! (Clash!)”
Just as Sedrich completed his preparations, they arrived in full panoply, surrounding the forge with a wall of robe-clad bodies. The air stank with their presence. Awaiting their shouts for him to show himself, Sedrich was surprised to see Oln Woeck’s companions drag some burden onto the property, struggling it into an erect position. It was a pole, the thickness of a man’s thigh, wrapped with burlap about straw ticking. Across the pole, set perhaps a quarter of its length from the top, was a shorter spar. It was a cross, he realized, symbol of the martyr they worshipped.
But why the straw and burlap?
In the growing shadows, Sedrich could feel Frae behind him, one hand at his hip, the other at her throat. Wondering where his mother and father were, he tightened his grip upon the handle of his tube, watching as Oln Woeck put torch to the cross. Soon, in the failing light, the yard was full-illumined with its burning.
“Sedrich, son of Sedrich who is called Owaldsohn! Surrender thyself to the justice of Him who burneth for thy sake in Hell!”
Sedrich stepped into the roaring light of the cross. “Go there yourself, Oln Woeck! I’ve no truck with your cross-god, nor has he with me. Leave us alone!”
With his bodyguard, Oln Woeck strode forward. Light glared from the ring of robes surrounding the yard.
“Thou’st no right to be left alone, boy. Not when thou’ve kidnapped my bride, nor in any case at all! Give thyself over! Cast off thy iniquities. Surrender thyself to His mercy!”
Sedrich raised his tube, aligning it upon Old Woeck’s shaven head. “She’s not your bride, you vile, scum-sucking—”
There was an orange flash, a soft boom!, just as one of the bodyguard stepped into the arrow’s path. The bronze projectile took him in the base of the throat. He screamed, spewing blood, and fell convulsing to the muddy ground where he kicked himself silent.
Two tubes, Sedrich was amazed to find himself thinking. I should have fashioned two of these things, lashed side by side.
He’d just drawn his dagger when a dozen of the Brothers, rushing forward, seized him. An overwhelming press of bodies descended upon him. The dagger was torn from his hand. Sedrich was aware they’d taken Frae. She called his name but wouldn’t scream. They held him against the wall. Others took her outside into the firelight. Like a dog, they dragged him through slushy snowmelt into the yard. When he attempted to regain his feet, a sharp blow in the small of his b
ack pinned him to the ground.
Looking up, Sedrich could see Oln Woeck, one hand buried in Frae’s hair as, upon her knees, she struggled against his grasp.
“’Tis my pleasure to announce I’m about to be a father!” the old man shouted, mouth-fog making his vile words visible against the torchlight. “My betrothed is with child!”
Once again Sedrich attempted to struggle erect. Once again the foot upon his back held him helpless in the mud. Where was his father?
“You’re a liar, Oln Woeck,” the young man shouted. “The child is mine! Ask its mother!”
Frae opened her mouth. Oln Woeck released her hair for a moment. As she staggered, he struck her with all his strength, backhanded, across the face. To keep her from falling further, he seized her hair again.
“Best,” the old man suggested, “ask her father!”
From between two of the Brothers ringing the property Hethri Parcifal stepped forward, holding his cloak clear of the sodden ground. “’Tis so,” he answered. “All the formalities have been observed. The child is of Oln Woeck. This insane kidnapper must be punished.”
“More,” Oln Woeck shouted at the world, “he dabbleth in the forbidden! His parents both have tutored him in the fiery arts mechanic.”
Several Brothers pushed Sedrich’s land-boat from the shed. Its wheels cut deep furrows in the snow.
“Here be the first indication,” Oln Woeck shouted, waving a skinny arm in the vehicle’s direction, “and here”—he pointed toward the motionless body of the Brother Sedrich had shot—“is yet the worst! Firearms! He’d bring the Death upon us again!”
He looked down at the mud-bespattered girl.
“By the power of our Lord who suffereth for our sake, I declare this woman and myself to be lawfully wed. Let him who dareth speak now or fore’er hold his peace!”
Sedrich shouted, “I speak against it, you scabrous—”
“Hearing no one fit to speak—” Oln Woeck began. He was interrupted by a cry from Frae.
“No! Do not leave me with this creature! I beg—”
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