by Diane Duane
“Yes indeed. Thing started showing up in the evenings, when people were walking home from the field-meal. Pretty soon no one wanted to go haying, and the weather was about to turn, we could have lost the whole crop—”
“What did you do?” Mariarta said.
“Got the priest in from Hospental, that’s what; these things, they don’t like the three holy Names. Bab Vintgegn, he went there with his cross and whatnot, and took three other men with him, with spades. He told ‘em the cold iron would do for it if the church-magic didn’t. They saw the thing come rolling and glowing and howling along, and didn’t poor Gion di Plan just run straight off down the hill to hide under his bed, took donna Eulscha half the night to get him out again.” Theo laughed, drank again, and said, “Bab Vintgegn, he throws holy water at the buttatsch, says a strong saying and the three Names, and juhe! the thing lets out a howl and flops down on the ground, all the voices and life gone out of it. He wouldn’t let ‘em touch it, made ‘em dig a hole for it and lift it on their spades and bury the thing. Grass won’t grow there now.”
“But you got the hay in all right.”
“Oh si, we did that at last.” Theo drank, looking sidewise at Mariarta. “What do you think of that, duonna?”
Mariarta thought that no one acting so drunk and slurred should have eyes so bright and seeing. “Was that the first thing you tried?”
“No. A traveler through town suggested it, said this Bab Vintgegn had done something similar in Ried. So we sent for him and paid him a silver penny for masses and services rendered.”
“Before or after he did away with the thing?”
“After, do you think we’re crazed?”
“But he did it straight away.”
“That he did. Must still be a few good priests out there.” Theo took the remaining wing off the roasted chicken. “All these wandering Capuchins and whatnot, you never can tell. Thank you for the snack, duonna Mariarta.”
“Bun perfatscha,” she said, thinking that his appetite hardly needed wishing well. He had eaten a third of their bird.
“Tomorrow early, signur mistral di Alicg?” Theo levered himself drunkenly from the table, making it look like he was bowing to Mariarta’s father.
“Not too early, signur dil Cardinas, if you please. It’s been a long day. An hour after dawn will be fine.”
“Till then,” Theo said, and lurched away, carefully taking the wine pitcher with him.
Her father’s mouth twisted in dry amusement. “We could have worse company on the road,” he said. “Don’t look so glum, buobetta, I saved the skin from him, and there’s more meat on this bird that he didn’t get. Let me show you these good bits underneath—”
***
They rose at dawn, and went to pay the bill. Their horses were waiting in the flagged courtyard of the inn, along with one so splendid that Mariarta had to stare. It was no plowhorse, but a fine-boned, narrow-legged, dancing creature, black as night, with four white socks and a white blaze on his face. He was gelded, but had a wild, mean eye, and Mariarta was careful to admire him from a distance.
Old Theo came wobbling out of the inn door and down the steps, followed closely by the innkeeper. “Till next time!” Theo roared, and the innkeeper winced and turned away. Theo lurched past Mariarta, and those quick eyes glittered at her as he muttered, “Damned skinflint, it’s not like I don’t tip him a king’s ransom every time I’m here—Which is too damn often, damn beds are full of bugs,” he added at the top of his lungs. The inn door slammed.
Theo chuckled quietly and leapt into the horse’s saddle. It immediately began bucking. Mariarta and her father pulled their horses back to watch this performance, while Theo occasionally banged the creature between its ears with the butt of a riding-stick. Eventually the horse stopped bucking and stood looking sullen. Theo smiled at Mariarta. “He’s high-strung, and he knows it,” he said: “he thinks he has to do that. He bites you, you just hit him here,” and the horse jumped again. “Good boy,” Theo said, patting the horse’s neck affectionately, “good Camegio. Come on, di Alicg, you going to admire my beast all day?”
They got on their horses and followed Theo out of town. Once they were on the road leading south, the morning went from grey to sunny as the cloud burned off. Very soon they came to a long smooth span of stone that seemed to leap from the cliff on their side straight across to the other—a beautiful arch with no supports of any kind.
“There it is, the wretched thing,” Theo said.
“The Devilbridge, yes,” Mariarta said. Her mind was on the night she had last heard the story told, the shadows under the table, the pictures in a book.
The three of them passed over, the Reuss loud beneath them, and followed the road that wound precariously around Piz Tgilutta. The road wound down in tight switchbacks, littered with fallen stone, under the shadow of the great scraped-out scree-slope of Spranggi. This was the first of the places where the names began to change: from here on, the further north they went, the more the names were in Daoitscha. The travellers went softly, for whether you called it Spranggi or Currider, the height had earned its name, “the jumper”; rocks would move at a breath of wind. Several times slides happened just in front of them, or just behind. Mariarta frowned and said silently to the wind, This is no time for playfulness—quiet ! And it obeyed, as for short periods it often did these days.
Two hours more on the road saw them into the Caschinutta valley, which the Tudestg-speakers called Göschenen. At one point, near a slope covered with pine trees and sheltering an old ruined house, the road kinked around a huge boulder that seemed to have been dropped there on the stony ground. “Glaciers,” Theo muttered as he rode past it, “untidy things.”
“I thought il Giavel did it,” Mariarta said.
“What? The glacier? Most likely he did, the old beast. This was probably all good alp, before the ice came. Now look at it.” Theo glanced around in disgust. “The only thing that grows here now is millstones. But at least the giavetschen ice has pulled back. Aha!” he said suddenly, as the upper side of Caschinutta town came into sight around another bend of the road. He kicked Camegio in the flanks; the horse jumped a foot or two in the air and took off for town.
Mariarta watched him go, amused. “I don’t think he believes in il Giavel, bab.”
“He may have seen enough people in his time not to need to, figlia.”
Mariarta smiled. Odd to be called daughter instead of little girl: but her father had done this last time, too, when they came among strangers, and she was no longer merely the mistral’s daughter, but his assistant.
“He’s been mistral in Realp for a long time?”
“Fifty years.” Mariarta opened her eyes wide at that. “He saw the Tudestgs, the new ones that is, come into the mountains the first time, when I was born. He went down there, learned Daoitscha, came back to Realp and started to teach it. He was wise, I suppose...you can’t deal with your conquerors if you don’t understand their tongue and their thinking.”
“Conqueror” was a word Mariarta had never heard her father use before: she glanced at him sidewise. “I told you the last time,” he said, “be careful what you say here. This part of the world has seen a lot more of the Tudetsgs than ours. Some people here like them, because they’ve been made to feel secure from invasion. But our language sets us apart. The further north we go, the more likely we are to be seen as ignorant rustics—or disobedient rebels who insist on trying to govern ourselves when there are already perfectly good governors ready to do it for us.” He snorted softly.
“‘Ich verstehe,’” Mariarta said.
Caschinutta was not as large as Ursera, but richer and more sedate. Its market place was as noisy as Ursera’s as they made their way through it, following the trail of disruption caused by Camegio’s passing. After a few minutes they came to a gateway that led into the courtyard of Chesa dil Alb’Cavagl, or “zum Weissen Rössli” as the Daoitscha had it. The white horse painted on the stuccoed wall of t
he inn looked plump and smug, and doves cooed under the eaves: flowers grew from crannies in the walls, and a fountain bubbled in a basin in the middle of the cobbled yard. Theo was already off Camegio, heading for the front door. “Enjoy it,” he shouted, as he disappeared from the afternoon sunshine into the shadows of the common room: “last inn until Aultvitg. You’ll be dreaming about it tomorrow night on the stones!”
Mariarta thought this likely enough, and ate well that night, so that her father teased her, and Theo bought a second chicken, presenting it to her with much flourish. She laughed and made him eat as much as she did. The three of them were up late, chatting by the fire, picking the old hen’s bones, while Theo maligned pitcher after pitcher of white wine, and emptied every one.
They were away early in the morning. Mariarta wondered at a man who could drink the way Theo did, and still have a clear head so early after bedding down so late. “Bad habits, my dear,” he said, as they rode out of town on the road northward. “We’re vintners—my father, and his bab and his tat and basat and heaven knows how many generations back. Milk and cheese we had to get from the neighbors, but wine we had from the time we were babies. You get used to it. Sometimes that comes in useful,” he said, abruptly lurching in the saddle and leering at her, his voice gone slurred in an instant.
Mariarta laughed. “But you don’t smell of it.”
“Easily remedied, my dear. I always have a flask about me. A moment’s work, no more.”
She nodded, wondering how many confidences had been betrayed in front of him while the apparently oblivious Theo lolled in a corner and sang shocking songs. Seeming what you’re not, she thought; there may be something in it...
They rode on for most of the day beside the Reuss, which paralleled the road. The river was growing wide, this far into the lowlands: still white-bottomed with glacial gravel, and icy cold, but more sedate. Afternoon was only half over when the sun slid behind the white scree-slopes of the Mutschen mountain to leave the Reuss valley all in shadow, only the eastern peaks shining in the afternoon light—first golden, then rose-red as the unseen sunset began to flame behind the Intschaialp.
After Wassen were no more villages until Gurtnellen and Ried, and no place to stay until Amsteg, the next market town north. “We might as well make for Ripplis-tal,” Mariarta’s father said to Theo. “There’s an old herd’s hut there.”
About an hour more they rode; it grew dark and still. Mariarta got nervous. It was one thing to watch sunset coming from inside a house with a door that could be barred. Another matter entirely, though, to watch the stars coming out without a door to shut behind you: without even the sound of church bells anywhere near, ringing with the sunset to remind the demons that night would not last forever, and there would be a dawn....
The clop of the horses’ hooves went on: Mariarta felt sleepy with the repetitiveness of them, even while so unsettled. It’s silly, she told herself: there’s nothing to be nervous of—
The wind whispered in her ear, an uneasy, warning mutter. Mariarta gulped, looked at her father and Theo. Theo had paused, was looking ahead of them. “Did you hear something?” he said.
Her father sat silent, listening. The only sound came from the horses’ shifting hooves. He shook his head. “Gone now, whatever it was.”
Mariarta swallowed again. Her father and Theo each had one of the long herdsmen’s knives popular in the gray-wool country, but— This time she heard it too, a rustle ahead. Not the wind in the pine trees, though these clothed the slopes above them on all sides. The Reuss wandered by, too wide to make much sound, too wide to cross easily, especially in the dark. Whatever had made that noise was off to the left, on the same side as they. Mariarta strained to see through the swiftly falling twilight. The sound came again. She saw something glowing—
Mariarta’s mouth went dry. Rolling among the trees, slow, moaning, it came. A light clung about it, pale green, and flew from the dreadful loose udders that flapped around the buttatsch as it rolled toward them. She saw her father and Theo exchange a glance, moving together to keep Mariarta behind them as they pulled their knives. The moaning got louder as the buttatsch rolled out from under the trees, onto the scree: a splotched bloody hide like something new-flayed, all shining in the witchlight it left behind it like a trail—
Her father and Theo backed as it got closer. The thing was slowing. Mariarta made up her mind.
Her bab’s horse shied, tossed him. His knife went flying, and he grunted with pain as he fell to the stones. The buttatsch howled, an awful wailing noise, moved toward him again. Mariarta came around in the saddle with her bag, whipped it off so that bread and cheese fell bouncing to the stones—then shook the wrapping free from the spanned crossbow, nocked a shaft, lifted it to aim. The wind roared amusement in her ear and poured along from behind her, filling her, pushing her— She fired.
The bolt went true. Mariarta heard a long squeal of pain. The buttatsch came no closer, just hunched down and wailed, more and more faintly. Mariarta threw herself from the saddle, pulled free the hook that she had been wearing under the leather of her belt ever since they left home, and bent hurriedly to span the bow again, for the wind was still roaring. Hoofbeats came from among the pines, where Mariarta could see a track reaching upward. One horse: but footsteps too, and closer. Just as she straightened, she saw the man, in dark clothes, running at them fast, with something long and pale in his hand.
Mariarta swung up the crossbow, sighting on his chest. The wind roared encouragement in her ears, pouring past her so that she could feel it, see it, making a path or tunnel for the bolt. In the darkness there seemed actually to be a faint glow to this pathway, but not like the nasty light of the buttatsch. This light’s color was unnameable. At the end of that corridor of pallid light she could see straight to the dark man rushing at them, straight to something hot and leaping inside him. His heart. The wind howled—
Mariarta jerked the crossbow aside, aiming for the shoulder instead, fired. The wind screamed in frustration, but the bolt flew true. The man shrieked, went down clutching and tearing at himself, rolled and howled on the stones.
Mariarta bent to span the bow, then straightened and put the bolt in place. The horseman came galloping at them from the pines. She tracked with him, the wind in her ears roaring. Down that path of light she saw twin patches of faint light and movement, the hearts of man and horse. The wind pushed her bow into line with the man’s heart and screamed fit to deafen her. She was about to wrench the bow out of line when she saw the rider had a bow too, was lifting it, pointing it at the easiest target, the man kneeling on the stones over the stricken one—
She shot. The wind shrieked triumph, the bolt went infallibly home—and Mariarta staggered, gasping, at the wave of dreadful power that went into her as the bolt struck the rider heart-high, as he tumbled from the saddle and the horse thundered off among the stones. He fell, and she felt him dying, for something of his went away on the wind, moaning silently, as the wind did: his soul? Mariarta couldn’t tell. She crumpled to her knees with the horror and pleasure of it, for the shooting, the striking, were everything she had been promised. But the aftermath, the feeling of the soul gone flying, astonished—
“Buobetta, get up, get up, you’re not hurt?” Her father was shaking her, staring into her face.
“No, bab,” she said, and with his help stood again.
He stared at her, and the bow, and her again, for a few seconds’ worth of silence. “You know, your mother used to tease me, for never giving you an answer about this—”
She was suddenly too weary to even begin dealing with this moment, which she had dreaded for years. Her father shook his head, turned away from her. Theo had dismounted and was dispassionately examining the dead man. “Well shot,” he said, and turned to look at the buttatsch.
That Mariarta was interested in, weary and shocked as she felt. She went to it with her father. It was just a cowhide, almost flat now. But it still glowed. That Mariarta thought un
canny until Theo knelt, took a stick and scraped at the hide. Some of the glow came away on the stick. He sniffed it, made a face. “This is something like that old Greek fire in the books,” Theo said, “but made to give light, not flame. And this—” He took the stick, prodding what was left of the buttatsch. It made a low moan that made both Mariarta and her father step back hurriedly: but Theo laughed, poking it again. Moaning more faintly, the thing went flatter yet. “Pig bladders inside. And a cow’s bladder, the biggest one. Reeds and such to make it squeal, I’ll bet.” He kicked the thing—it let out one last pitiful wail and went completely flat—then turned his attention to the wounded man, still lying on the stones moaning. Theo peered closely at him. “Why, Bab Vintgegn, what are you doing out on a night like this? You said you were going to make a pilgrimage. But you’re a long way from the holy shrine at Einsiedeln—”
Bab Vintgegn only held his shoulder and moaned. “I suppose we’ll have to pull that out,” Theo said, getting up. “Or maybe safer to wait till we get to the next town. Better leave you as is. This one,” he glanced at the dead man, “we won’t have any choice about leaving. Damned if I’ll carry him.”
Mariarta’s father eyed the false buttatsch. “This was meant to frighten us off our horses. We were to run away—the ones who waited in hiding, holding the other end of that thing’s leash, they were to get our beasts and whatever was in our packs. If we were bold and stood our ground—there was our friend there with his bow—”
“Bab,” Mariarta said, feeling wobbly, “I didn’t want to kill him. But he was going to shoot at you.”
Her father put his arms around her and hugged her as if she were still a little girl. “Indeed he was, figlia. Never mind. If I gave you life once, then you’ve returned the favor. Not many men can say that to their sons or daughters.” He frowned. “Though you’ll have a shriving and a penance to do.”