From a High Tower

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Pieter!” Rosa exclaimed, dropping the rake to grab at one of his hands. “Are you . . .”

  But Pieter chuckled. “Pieter not hurt. Pieter tough.” And sure enough, when Giselle examined his other hand, although there were scorch marks on it, he didn’t seem to have taken any real damage. Better than me . . . the skin on her face and hands felt very tender. On the other hand, we could be dead, so I think we got off easy. She was very glad Cody hadn’t been along. He probably would have tried something recklessly brave and gotten himself killed or badly wounded. Probably killed. He would have gallantly thrown himself in front of Rosa to protect her and just as gallantly been hacked to bits.

  “Let’s get those children free,” Rosa said, patting his hand.

  “Won’t they be as terrified of Pieter as they were of the Blood Witch?” Giselle asked, anxiously. But then she turned around, and saw that all of the children were now pressed up against the bars of their cages—saying nothing, but reaching out with yearning hands. The one little girl that had been free was huddled against the bars of the middlemost cage, eyes as big and round as teacups.

  Giselle ran to the first cage. “It’s locked!” she said, rattling the door angrily. “And I’ll bet that wretched Witch had all the keys on her!”

  The little girl burst into tears, but Pieter just laughed. “Pieter strong,” he pointed out, and proved it by putting a hand on each of two of the iron bars and literally bending the bars apart until the boy inside could squeeze out. He did the same with all the other cages, and the boy in the middle one fell on the girl who had been free and the two of them hugged and cried with happiness. It was so moving that Giselle felt a lump in her own throat.

  Meanwhile the other five children clustered around Pieter and Rosa and Giselle and clung to them, some laughing, some crying, some doing both at the same time. The poor things were so filthy, their clothing in rags, their hair in dirty mats, that it was impossible even to tell what sex they were.

  “Where did they come from? How did they get here?” Giselle asked, trying to figure out how to comfort them.

  “Mutti left me in the woods an’ never came back,” said one.

  “Mama and Papa died,” another said sadly. “I tried to find someone to live with, but they all sent me away.”

  And so went the tragic stories. Three, the boy and the girl who still clung together, and the first one that had spoken, had been taken into the woods by a parent and left there. Three had been orphaned and had been searching for someone to give them a place to stay. And the last had run away from a father who beat him until his bones broke. All of them had found the cottage, been drawn to it, and had been taken in by what they thought was a kindly old woman, who fed them, and put them to bed—

  —whereupon they woke up to find themselves in cages. Or, in the little girl’s case, the Blood Witch’s slave.

  “She cooked an’ ate us,” the little girl said, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. “Since Hans an’ I got here, she ate Fritz, an’ Dietrick, an’ Franz, an’ Josef.”

  “She likely ate a lot more than four,” Rosa muttered to Giselle and Pieter, who nodded. “It has been a while since someone from the Bruderschaft who was also an Earth Magician has been through here.”

  Is the light . . . going away? Giselle realized it was getting difficult to see, and glanced over at the cottage. And her jaw dropped.

  The light from the windows was fading, but more than that, the cottage itself seemed to be aging before her very eyes. Black mold was visibly growing over the walls, the plaster was forming cracks, and the thatch of the roof was rotting. Even as she looked, astonished, one of the shutters on the window nearest her started swinging by only one hinge. “What’s happening to the cottage?” she gasped. Rosa cast a glance in the direction she was looking.

  “The Blood Witch’s magic is wearing off. Or rather, her illusions are. That’s the way the cottage really looks,” Rosa said flatly.

  Any thoughts that Giselle might have had about the children staying here evaporated as the last of the light faded out of the windows and enormous holes appeared in the roof. Giselle spun up a ball of magic, set it alight, and put it to hover over their heads so they could all still see. Then she went and retrieved her revolvers from where she had dropped them, and reholstered them.

  “What are we going to do with these children?” she asked Rosa, helplessly. “We can’t take them back to the show! Even if there was a place for them in it, how would we ever explain where they came from? Or how we rescued them? Or why we went charging out into the night to do so?” It was one thing to speak openly of magic and monsters to the Captain, Leading Fox, and Kellermann. It was another entirely to do so to anyone else.

  The children’s heads all came up at once. But before they could start begging or crying, Pieter spoke up.

  “Children come stay with Pieter.” And it was very clear from the tone of his voice and the way he patted the backs of the two clinging to his legs that he meant it.

  Now the children raised their voices to plead to be able to do just that. “Children,” Rosa ordered, in a stern voice. “Hush a moment.”

  It was clear from the way that they quieted immediately that they were all too used to obeying without question. Instead, hopeful—and some tear-filled—eyes turned toward Pieter as the ultimate arbiter in this question.

  “Pieter, are you sure you want to do this?” Rosa asked. “Are you sure you can? Children need more than food, they need clothing, they need warm beds, they need to be clean—”

  Pieter chuckled. It sounded like rocks falling. “Pieter’s cave is warm. Pieter has goats. Pieter knows where many things grow. Pieter has human monies. And Pieter has Bruderschaft friends. Pieter even has books. Pieter can teach children books. Pieter can teach other things. Children will learn to tend goats, to build, to lay stones, all useful things.”

  “I can spin and sew and knit and cook,” said the little girl, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

  “I can chop wood, and I can cook, too,” said her brother. The others all volunteered things they could do, until Rosa held up her hands, laughing.

  “All right, all right! I am convinced. You can all go and live with Pieter.” She smiled as they clapped their hands and laughed. It looked as if it had been a very long time since any of them had worn a smile.

  Rosa looked up at Pieter. “After you feed them and let them sleep the first thing you must do is get them clean, Pieter,” she said, sternly.

  Pieter looked down at all of them. “Pieter must shear your heads like sheep,” he said. “You will have bugs in that hair. All except little girl. Little girl must keep pretty hair.”

  Thankfully the children all thought that idea was hilarious, and the one that looked to be the eldest agreed, ruefully, that they did have bugs in their hair. Pieter nodded solemnly. “We go home, Rosa,” he said. “Help children up.”

  By this, he meant that Rosa and Giselle were to help the children to climb up on him, for he intended to carry all of them to their destination. The biggest one straddled his neck and clung to his head; he had one on either shoulder and more cradled in his each of his massive arms. So that he could see and would not stumble—or crush something—Giselle made a second light, and sent it to float above his head until he got to his cave.

  “Good night, Yellow-hair, Red Cloak,” Pieter rumbled, his mouth turned up in a curiously charming smile. “Pieter was happy to help. Pieter is happy to have new friends. All is good again. Yes?”

  “Yes, Pieter,” Rosa said warmly. “All is well that ends well. Time to get your new friends to their new home, and put them to bed.”

  Giselle nodded. Two of the children held in Pieter’s arms were already nodding off. Pieter smiled, nodded instead of waving, and turned. The last they saw of him, he was lumbering—carefully—off into the distance, along the swath of destruction he had cut thro
ugh the forest to get here.

  Rosa looked at the cottage, which was now nothing but a ruin. She frowned, and turned to the oven. A few pieces of wood had fallen out when they pushed the Blood Witch inside and were lying on the ground, still smoldering. Rosa walked over and picked one up, blowing the end into flaming life again. Striding deliberately to the ruined cottage, she tossed it inside, where the old straw from the roof immediately caught and blazed up.

  She and Giselle stood together and watched the cottage burn. It didn’t take very long; the place must have been as dry as old paper.

  “You were very lucky, you know,” Rosa said, soberly. “An extra child, given away to someone who wanted and loved you. We of the Brotherhood hear stories like the ones those children told far too often. Except that what we see is bones, or sometimes bodies, in sheltered places in the woods. Parents who can’t feed themselves, much less their children, lead them out into the woods and leave them there. . . .”

  Giselle shuddered. “How often does something like that happen?” she asked.

  Rosa shrugged. “Once is too often. But what happens in cities can be worse.”

  “I’d rather not know,” Giselle replied faintly. “At least not right now.”

  Rosa nodded. “Let’s go home. I mean, back to—”

  “I know what you mean,” Giselle replied, “The camp feels like home, now. And . . . we saved those children and destroyed that horrid monster. I think we can sleep well tonight.”

  “What’s left of it, anyway.” But Rosa laughed quietly. “Yes, we did. We saved the children. They are not going to go work as near-slaves on someone’s farm or in someone’s inn. They are going to go have a good life with Pieter.”

  “I would say that is virtually guaranteed.” The scent of ozone and a cool breath of air was the only warning either of them had that the aether was back. “Well done, you. But let’s err on the side of caution shall we? I can carry a message for you to the Bruderschaft der Förster, Rosamund. If you like.”

  “That would be . . . unbelievably kind of you!” Rosa exclaimed, as Giselle beamed her thanks at the ripple in the air that was the aether. “Please tell Gunther what happened, and that someone needs to look in on Pieter and make sure he has everything he needs for those children. I have no idea how he thinks he’s going to get clothing for them, for instance. It might be summer now, and they’ll be fine in clean rags, but winter will be coming all too soon.”

  “Easily done. I can be there before Master Gunther goes to bed.” There was a wild wind that tossed everything around for a moment, and then the aether was gone again.

  “You must have impressed that aether,” Rosa said thoughtfully, glancing over at Giselle. “I’ve never known one to volunteer to do that much before.”

  “You also don’t know too many Air Masters,” Giselle pointed out hastily. “And neither do I. I have no idea what’s normal. For all I know, aethers are like Pieter, they like people and want to help if they can.”

  “Point,” Rosa replied, and yawned hugely. “And since we are not aethers and will have to walk back, let’s get started. I can’t see my bed soon enough.”

  14

  FREIBURG was the biggest city that Giselle had ever seen, and in many ways she was very, very glad that the show had been booked here for most of the month of October as part of Oktoberfest, because it meant she was working, and working hard, six days in the week, and didn’t have much time to think about how very big and very intimidating the city was. She could not even begin to imagine the sheer size of cities like Hamburg and Salzburg and Vienna, when Freiburg made her head spin.

  The way Kellermann chuckled over the receipts each night made her think that they were probably bringing in more money than the show had ever seen before. And certainly the show, and the tour of the camps, and the sideshows were all immensely popular. So much so that tickets had sold out for every show so far, even after Kellermann had arranged to expand the seating, and the stream of people coming through the “camps” on tour seemed endless. They really did not stop coming from the moment that the box office opened until the last of them was chased out at night. Kellermann had even been considering opening up the practice sessions to spectators! Paying ones, of course. Captain Cody persuaded him that this would be a bad idea, for which Giselle was quite grateful.

  The show was so very successful that the show enclosure was completely surrounded by other vendors, other exhibitors, and tiny shows of dancers and freaks, jugglers and magic acts, acrobats and feats of accuracy and strength, all hoping to take advantage of those who were leaving disappointed because they could not get in.

  The Pawnee were in great demand by photographers and journalists—none of which were surprised by the fact that Leading Fox was highly articulate in German. After all, wasn’t Winnetou?

  It was fortunate that in a slightly smaller city, Neustadt, back in July, the entire show had really come to understand how much the German public relied on Karl May’s works to form their idea of what the American frontier and its denizens were like.

  That had been at the point where their journey was scheduled to wend back westward, and the Captain had quickly decided after the first couple of days that he should be as much like Old Shatterhand as possible. He had quizzed Giselle long and in detail about the hero of those books, no longer treating them as a source of fun. The rest of the company had also picked up pretty much what Germans would expect of them—which really, aside from a few details, was what they had already been portraying. A bit more exaggeration of the eccentric, really; they’d added embellishments to their costumes in the form of leather pieces, animal teeth and skins, most of which were, ironically enough, bought in Germany to be added to their “rigs.” A moth-eaten stuffed bear, for instance, gotten at a secondhand dealer for a pittance, had been turned into two dozen necklaces featuring teeth and claws, and ragged fur collars and hatbands. For the rest, Kellermann, now fully acquainted with the contents of the first three Winnetou books, at least, “translated” what the others said with a “frontier” flair.

  Now the whole business ran as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, with everyone knowing exactly what the Germans most wanted to hear and see, and making certain to give it to them.

  If Neustadt had been a kind of dress rehearsal, then Freiburg was the full production.

  The show was but one part of the enormous Oktoberfest carnival, which covered an area that was itself the size of a small city. The Oktoberfest field played host to huge tented beer halls able to hold hundreds of people at a time, to vendors of every sort of food and goods, to amusement rides, and musical entertainments and exhibitions—well, anything that you could fit under a tent and make money doing, you would find here just past the two pillars that marked the entrance to the field. On their weekly day off—the Captain and Kellermann chose Tuesday, at the request of the other shows—the company really didn’t have to leave the grounds to get pretty much anything they wanted. And more often than not, they didn’t ever have to pay. If it wasn’t for the vendors themselves giving them food and drink and entertainment just for the “draw” their presence made, it was random strangers thrusting drink and food and presents into their hands. Convinced that she and Rosa were Americans, the two girls had found themselves gifted with dirndls and blouses, shawls and embroidered stockings, and urged to “wear these when you go home and think of us.” All the women in the show had been gifted with these garments, but most of them had been given to Rosa and Giselle because they were most often together outside the show environs, and people seemed to be under the impression that they were sisters. It was a reasonable assumption, being as they were both blond and rather typically Bavarian in looks.

  Carefully putting the latest of these away into storage in the morning, Giselle wondered if she would need new gowns for the next twenty years—so long as she stayed the same size! At this point, I think I have a dirndl in every color of the r
ainbow, she thought, patting the latest, a blue one, a bit flatter. If the last two weeks were anything to go on, she’d be needing room for more.

  Rosa found these gifts terribly amusing, which Giselle understood, knowing what Rosa usually wore, as well as the fact that dirndls would probably raise amused eyebrows when she spent time in the household of her patron, the Graf. Giselle could imagine . . . barely . . . the sort of outfits that Rosa probably wore. Much more stylish and fashionable than those of the good ladies of Freiburg.

  But she suspected that the ladies who gifted the two of them with these dresses fondly assumed that, for them, this would be . . . fashionable. They’d never recognize Rosa if they ever saw her in one of those gowns.

  It also would have left most of the kind ladies who pressed these garments on them fainting, had they seen what Rosa called her “armor”—a set of leather garments lined in cloth-of-silver, that were, well, tailored for her but identical to what her masculine counterparts wore.

  “I’ll never let our dear benefactors know,” Rosa had said after the fourth such gift, “But mine are all going to find a home with some of the other ladies. We aren’t that dissimilar in size, after all.”

  Rosa had already regifted most of her gowns to the other ladies and one each to the Pawnee men to take home to their wives. What the Pawnee women would make of them, Giselle had no idea . . . but then again, Leading Fox’s idea was that they should make themselves look as much like the whites as possible once they got their land bought, so perhaps the dirndls would serve that purpose.

  Certainly no one could have asked to be treated better than she and Rosa and the others were. Every gift was bestowed with real kindness and the sense that these folks were trying to offer the hospitality of their city.

  As for the way the Pawnee with the show were treated when they ventured outside of the enclosure, well, all they had to do was look at something with interest, and generally someone would find a way to gift them with it. They all had at least two brand new hunting rifles each (Leading Fox had four and a shotgun), enough handsome shawls to fill three steamer trunks, and enough silver hunting badges to gladden the heart of any of them wanting to play the plains peacock.