The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  * * *

  It is one thing to foresee disaster— or believe that you foresee it. It is quite another matter to actually confront it, to hear an alarm bell clanging frantically in the midst of a wedding feast, almost unnoticed at first over the laughter and the revelry. Then the clatter of overturned chairs, the pounding of feet, the sight of a blood-spattered soldier stumbling into the feast hall.

  “Enemies! Enemies, my lord, we are attacked!”

  We all remembered the omens then, the promise of Ravensbruck’s doom. Even Arnulf must have done so, reeling to his feet, pale as I had never seen him. The soldier was almost by his chair, and the silence around them was deathly.

  “My lord….”

  How had the man shouted? He had almost no voice left, and no strength. He held onto the table to keep from falling.

  “What enemies?” Arnulf thundered at him. “Spit it out, man, what’s happening? Who are they?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. But they’re inside. They’re coming over the walls.”

  “Coming over the walls?”

  We stayed to hear no more. We ran for arms and armor. Some cursed the drink in their bellies, and some cursed the invaders, whoever they might be. I did not wonder who they were. I knew— or rather,I thought I knew. And I cursed myself for having dared to think there was ever such a thing as a disempowered sorcerer.

  May God preserve me from ever again seeing what we saw in that courtyard! Even now, I cannot think of it without shuddering. Some of the attackers had already scaled the outer wall and were leaping down among us, landing lightly on their feet, as though their bodies were made of air, and their armor was only torchlight in a mirror. They looked like men, but they were not men. Their faces were empty and haunted, lit with a dim and horrid light. Nothing resisted them. Whatever they themselves were, their weapons were real; the men they cut down did not get up again.

  For themselves, it was different. Spears pierced through their armor, and they laughed and plucked them scornfully away. One took a blow which should have severed his head from his body; the sword swept unresisted as through air, and the man who wielded it threw himself fatally off balance with the force of his blow.

  In minutes the enemy had cleared the gates and swung them wide. The drawbridge came down with a mortal crash, and hundreds more of them poured in, mounted and headlong.

  Karelian was with them.

  Like everyone else I was afraid, I was appalled, I was all the things a man must be when in a single glance he sees both death and the fiends of hell coming at him. Yet for one frozen moment I saw only Karelian. Moonlight silvered his helm and flared on the trappings of his horse, moonlight and torchlight together, and for all my fear and his damnation I thought only of how magnificent he was. Outriders raced by his side, an honor guard of darkness and fire, with flaming brands in their hands and bottomless death in their eyes. I knew he would defeat us all, and a small, unpardonable thing inside me smiled.

  So I stood breathless in my folly, a folly I think only a German could be guilty of, with our ancient and corrupting love of tragic heroes. So I stood, and a dead man came from the shadows and drove his sword into my back.

  I remember falling, and barely understanding why. A horse leapt over me, another struck my shoulder with its hoof. Barely conscious, I tried to crawl towards the darkness, towards the shadows of buildings where there was no battle, no rearing beasts to trample me. I looked up once, and the sky whirled around me as though a child spun it on a rope, and I knew nothing more.

  I could not have been unconscious very long, for when I saw the world again, the battle was still raging nearby. Someone had dragged me to safety. I was in a dark, wretched building where everything smelled of wetness and rot.

  I tried to get up, and could not, and a woman’s voice said quietly:

  “You’re safe here, lad; lie still.”

  I sobbed something and dragged myself to my knees, looking about for the door. Gottfried’s men needed me; I belonged in the battle. I saw light, and stumbled towards it, and fell. I crawled closer, and saw it was only a wide crack in the wall, left by a rotting timber which no one had troubled to replace.

  It was all I could manage, crawling those few feet. I was done fighting for today, and for some time to come. Perhaps I wept. I know I laid my head against the broken wall, wondering why God had brought us to this hour, wondering how we had failed him.

  Then I heard a cry which would have rung clear through any battle, a voice I knew as well as I knew my own. Karelian’s voice, fierce with triumph and raw with sorcerous power.

  “Now, dog of von Heyden, it is over!”

  I looked out. Theodoric stood among a scattering of fallen men. They had defended their prince, twenty of them or more, until the last one was felled by the creatures of Helmardin. Theodoric looked around, and saw that he was alone. The few remaining men of Ravensbruck were surrendering, or were backed into lofts and corners from which none would emerge alive. Somewhere to the left, among the storehouses, a flung torch caught a roof; flames were already shimmering through the windows of Arnulf’s great hall.

  Karelian rode slowly towards him.

  “Over?” Theodoric cried savagely. “You think it’s over? You’ll never defeat my lord father! You’re nothing but a damnable sorcerer—!”

  “Yes, I’m a sorcerer. It’s the one thing your lord father and I have in common.”

  “You dare?”

  “We’re cousins, Theodoric, have you forgotten?” As he spoke, Karelian began to circle his prey, slowly, riding deosil around him, as witches danced around their cauldrons, weaving spells. And nothing, not the fire or the butchery or the vulnerability of the prince horrified me quite as much as his strange, triumphant ritual act.

  “A mere six or seven generations,” Karelian went on grimly, “and we’re both back among the witch priests of Dorn. And you don’t even need any secret parchments dug out of the cellars of Jerusalem to prove it. It’s a much simpler explanation for his lordship’s remarkable gifts, don’t you think? Simpler than counting grandfathers all the way back to Jesus Christ? Didn’t that ever cross your mind?”

  It had crossed Theodoric’s mind. Even from here I could tell, in the way his body sagged for a moment, the way he snarled back an answer too outraged to be coherent, and almost stumbled as he turned, trying to follow Karelian’s circling hatred.

  God, how I wished for my crossbow then…!

  “You’re nothing, Theodoric von Heyden. You’re no god and no prince, you’re not even halfway a man. You’re the shabby get of a cold-blooded, power-drunk trickster.”

  He reached, and took the javelin he carried on his saddle, and leveled it in his hand.

  “God damn you!” Theodoric shouted. “God damn you for a coward! Won’t you even fight me?”

  “No. I’ve fought good men and bad. I’ve fought pirates and thieves and lunatics. I even once fought a wolf. But you I will not fight. I offered you your life for my lady’s honor, and you shamed her and trampled her. I will take your head for it, villain, and I will take it now!”

  His arm swept back. The javelin flew, with all his own strength and all the sorcerous power he could give it. Theodoric brought his shield up quickly, blocking his head and upper body from the blow. He did not see in the burning darkness that the aim was low. The javelin shattered his leg like a piece of willow, just above the knee. He cried out, and faltered, reeling on his feet. Karelian rode at him with a howl of rage, crying something, the witch’s name perhaps, and drove his sword into the side of Theodoric’s neck, just below the helmet rim, piercing through mail coif and all, into his throat.

  And he waited so, motionless on his horse, holding the prince on his sword, while Theodoric twisted and clawed at his neck. He held him so, until he was still, until he hung limp like a sack of meal from a nail. Then he wrenched away the prince’s helmet and coif, and seized him by his pale hair, and cut his head off. And rode across the courtyard to where the undead were gat
hering in triumph to offer him their homage.

  I sank to the floor and buried my face against my arms.

  I did not want to live that night, but I did, for I was in the scrub house of the slave Sigune. All day she had soaked it down with tubs of fouled water, inside and out. Except for the stones, it was the only thing in Ravensbruck which would not burn.

  She had water left. She poured some into my mouth, and over my hair. I recognized her then, in the small bit of firelight dancing through the broken wall— or rather, I recognized the scars on her face, the smashed cheek-bone, the watchful, malevolent eyes.

  “It’s over, Pauli,” she said. “Don’t fret yourself, your lord is safe.”

  My lord is safe…? Dear Christ, I thought, what mockery was this? And then I understood. I wore no colors. Like most of the others I had run out of the feast hall with naked armor over my tunic. She was isolated now from the court. She had not seen me among Gottfried’s men; she thought I was still with Karelian.

  That was why she dragged me to safety. For his sake, not for mine.

  “He is a lord among men, that one,” she said. “Though when he came here the first time, I didn’t think much of him. Nor of you, either, if you want to know the truth.”

  I lay still and let her tend my wound. She talked steadily; half the time I think she was talking to herself, rather than to me.

  “Strange, lad, isn’t it, how things turn out? All the years I waited for this, twenty years or more, to see that beast go down. I thought his wars would do it for him, but he survived them all. I thought his sons or his vassals would do it for him, but they all fell in line, and the ones who didn’t, died.

  “And then I tried, and it was still the same. I crippled his body, but he didn’t die. I broke what was left of his rotten heart, but he didn’t die. Rudi died. Adelaide nearly died. And then I began to die… and he was still here. Still laughing, still rutting, still conquering the world.”

  “It was you?” I whispered. “The accident? It wasn’t Lady Clara?”

  She laughed. “Lady Clara? That arrogant sow? No, Pauli, she picked on the weak, that one, not on the mighty. Like they all do in the castles.

  “I thought it was over, all my hope of vengeance. And I grieved. It was the hardest thing of all to bear, thinking he might outlive me. I forgot he had other enemies. The whole of Europe must be peopled with his enemies. It’s worth remembering, Paul of Ardiun. Men like Arnulf always have another enemy— the one they never counted on.”

  I grew colder still inside, listening to her babble. As far as she was concerned, none of this had anything to do with Theodoric or Gottfried or the fate of the world— only with Arnulf of Ravensbruck. With her petty slave’s grudges and her bottomless hunger for revenge.

  “After I saw how it would be, I didn’t grieve any more. I just waited. They would all die, Arnulf and his sons and all his fine allies—”

  “You knew?” I whispered, before I could stop myself. “You knew your own castle would be destroyed, and you did nothing?”

  “And what should I have done, my pet, even if I’d wanted to? Go up to him and tap him on the shoulder? Excuse me, my indestructible warrior lord, but I’ve just had a vision of your most unpleasant end? Try it yourself sometime, and see what it gets you.

  “Besides, one doesn’t mess with the justice of the gods.”

  She stroked my hair. She hadn’t noticed the horror in my question. She thought I admired her for keeping silent. “It wasn’t hard to be silent, lad,” she went on softly. “I have nothing whatever left to lose.”

  I shuddered. I suppose she thought I was in pain.

  “Easy,” she said. “I’d fetch your master for you, but the draugars are still out there. And grateful as I am for their coming, I don’t like them much.”

  I told her no, there was no need. Karelian could not take his wounded with him now; I’d catch up with him later. And even as I spoke I thought of telling her the truth: Call him then, God damn you, call the draugars, tell them you have the last of Theodoric’s loyal men! I have no wish to live because of a lie…!

  Like a thousand other times, I was silent. She finished binding my wound, and pressed a piece of bitter foliage between my teeth. I took it, but the first chance I had I spat it away. After a time we heard a great clamor of hoofs, and then slowly, a great silence gathered over Ravensbruck, broken only by the sounds of burning.

  She helped me to my feet, and shoved open the door of the scrub house. Karelian and his myrkriders were gone. We were quite alone in the courtyard. And yet she stood beside me staring, not at the flame-wrapped world of Ravensbruck, but beyond it, into the night and the wilderness, as though a king’s procession marched there, or a legion out of hell.

  “They will meet,” she said. “Take care, Pauli, take good care, for they will meet.”

  I only half heard. I was hurting, and tired of her talk.

  “What?” I said.

  “Fenrir is riding from the south,” she said. “They gather the cords of linen to bind him, and the cords of leather, and the cords of iron, and he will break them all. But the cord of magic he will not break.”

  “What are you talking about, woman?” I demanded. And then I wished I had been silent, for she would only speak more madness.

  “The world eater,” she said. “I see him at the hazelstangs.”

  Her face was awful in the shifting light, as though the scars she bore had come alive, and were moving and whispering among themselves.

  “At the hazelstangs, Pauli. The wolf will open his mouth, and the hunter will thrust his hand between his teeth. And then it will be for the gods to judge between them.”

  “There is only one God,” I said.

  “We shall see,” she replied, and made some gesture of magic against the burning night. “We shall see.”

  There were fewer dead in the ruins of Ravensbruck than I expected. A few of the servants had resisted, and some had merely gotten in the way. But most had hidden themselves from the first onslaught, and then fled once the gates were opened. Either the fiends had not cared, or else they had been commanded to let them go. Karelian was after finer prey: the princes of von Heyden, and all their retinues; the Iron Count and his sons; the knights of Ravensbruck who were loyal to their lord.

  All those were dead, and little Helga too. We found her in the great hall, amidst a stench of smoldering tapestries and blood. An old servant woman crooned over her, stroking her hair. “Poor little thing, poor little thing….”

  The servant looked up. If she saw me at all, I do not know. Her eyes fastened on the Wend slave.

  “He came back, Sigune. The lord of Selven. Just like you said he would. He came back and he killed them all. Poor little thing, she was so pretty….”

  “She was pretty,” Sigune said. “But she had no heart. She was her father’s child all through.”

  I stared at her, appalled. She did not even glance at the dead bride. She walked over to where Arnulf lay beside his chair.

  He had not died easily, nor quickly. I found it hard to look at what was left. She did not. Yet to my surprise she did not smile. She looked sad.

  “All gone now, my lord,” she murmured. “A quarter century of conquering. More dead men than you could count, and dead women, too, Wends and Vikings and Frisians and Slavs. My life, and yours, and all your sons. All gone, and this to show for it. Was it worth it, my lord? Would you do it all again? But of course you would. How else could you prove you were a man?”

  She paused, and her eyes turned to ice.

  “May Hel find you a cold place, my lord; a cold place and an empty one. Farewell.”

  * * *

  Three others of Theodoric’s men survived the slaughter, all of them like myself by being wounded and having the good fortune (or bad fortune, perhaps, depending how one judged it) to fall somewhere secret, where the fiends did not notice them and the fire did not come.

  I did not tell them what I had seen after I was wounded. There wa
s nothing I could have done for Theodoric, or for anyone else. I could not have left Sigune’s hut except on my hands and knees. Yet how could I admit the truth — that I had sheltered behind a scrub house wall and watched my own lord slain — my own lord, and the crown prince of the empire? I said I had been struck unconscious and did not revive till morning; and they told me stories more or less the same. We were all, I think, ashamed of having lived.

  Two were too injured to travel, and we left them with peasants outside the ruined castle. Myself and the other, after a few days of recovery, disguised ourselves as common folk and picked our way back through Karelian’s territories to Stavoren. It was a long and difficult journey, made worse by the fact that we dreaded our arrival.

  Then the news came from the south, and we began to live again.

  Gottfried had met the army of Prince Konrad near the town of Saint Germain, in Thuringia, and beaten him. Only the heroism of the Thuringian duke prevented a rout, and saved young Konrad from being taken captive. Thuringia himself was badly wounded, and had lost an eye. Konrad was retreating to what was now the safest place in the empire for himself and his men: the Reinmark.

  We reached Stavoren at the end of October. Like ourselves, the ducal fortress was torn between joy at Gottfried’s triumph and blank horror at the fate of his sons. The news of the massacre had traveled faster than we had, and dreadful as the truth was, the stories were often worse. We were the first to come to Stavoren who had actually witnessed the attack, and we were taken at once to see the empress.

  She looked at the two of us for a long moment, and I wished again that I had died in Ravensbruck. I know she blamed us in her heart — how could she not? — but in her mind perhaps she understood. War was chaotic. A man might easily be wounded and have a battle pass him by, and his liege lord killed, with no fault owing to himself.

  We knelt to her and spoke our grief. She did not answer. Her own grief was enough to drown the world. But beneath her grief I saw sternness, and unyielding resolve. This was a woman whom no amount of grief would ever break.