by Diane Duane
“I wouldn’t go to him for it,” Theo said, looking sidewise at bab Vintgegn. “Here, dil Alicg, I’ve no skill with these things. You take it.” He handed Mariarta’s father the dead man’s crossbow. “And you might want to put this about your person somewhere, considering how well you hid a bulky thing like that,” he said to Mariarta, and handed her the dead man’s long steel knife in its sheath. “Where did you have that?”
“In with the cheese and sausage,” Mariarta said, and then was distressed to think that her father’s favorite sausages were scattered on the stones. “Oh, bab, I dropped them—”
He and Theo burst out laughing. “You never mind,” Theo said, “just go sit under those trees—we’ll make a fire and camp here. Sausages—!” He walked off to start picking up wood. “Anyone who can shoot like that won’t lack for sausages in life! And more—”
Mariarta sat against the rock her father showed her, and straightway fell asleep.
***
When she woke, the sky was clear, showing morning twilight already. Mariarta saw her father sitting with his back against another of the rocks, the dead man’s crossbow in his lap.
“Bab?” she said.
“We saved you some sausage,” he said, and his voice was smiling. A great weight lifted off Mariarta’s heart, for her dreams had been troubled by the fear that he would be angry at her about the shooting after all. And there had been another trouble. No words, but the sense:
Did I not tell you how it would be?
You did.
Was it good?
Yes. There was no lying in the dream. Strong, fierce. But terrible.
It will not be for long. The good...grows better with practice. But why did you not strike both targets as I desired you to strike them—to kill?
They were men, Mariarta said desperately.
The cool voice seemed not to care. Men. Life is not so dear that one or two lives may not be lost for my purposes, which are great. Was there a thread of threat running through those words? But a moment later something like a kindly hand stroked her brow. Never mind. You will see how it is soon enough. You did well. You will do better yet....
“You’re not hungry?” her bab said.
“Oh, yes!” Mariarta said.
He brought her bread, and cheese, and some sausage toasted on the embers of the fire. Mariarta ate ravenously. When she was finished, she sat back sighing. She was sore all over, but contented, as she glanced around. In one direction, though, she would not look.
“We buried him,” her bab said. “We’ll send a priest back this way when we get to Reid. At least,” and he looked over his shoulder, “one who hasn’t been out playing robbers’ tricks on people.”
Mariarta glanced that way. Tied to a tree was “Bab” Vintgegn, the bolt still in his shoulder. Dozing against another tree nearby was Theo, with a knife in his hand and a smile on his wrinkled face.
“He drove off the buttatsch in Realp, then,” Mariarta said, “only as a man will drive off his own dog.”
“Yes. And how many other villages in Uri and the Grey Country has he bilked that way? Well, we’ll see he gets to Aultvitg to be judged.”
Mariarta dozed until the light of day opening more fully in the sky awakened her again. So did Theo’s voice, indulging in one-sided raillery with their captive as he fed him. Mariarta got up and made her way to the river to wash and take care of necessities. When she came back, Theo was putting away the food and undoing the rope. Bab Vintgegn, or whoever he was, glanced at Mariarta coming across the road, winced and turned away.
“Doesn’t want to look at the pugniera that gored him, there’s a good one,” Theo said, laughing. “Don’t moan at me, ‘bab’, there’ll be enough time for that in Amsteg, at the barber’s. Go on with you!”
Theo had rope among his baggage: he haltered the false priest, fastened the other end to his saddlebow. “We won’t hurry,” he said. “Di Alicg, are you all packed up?”
“All but Mariarta’s things,” said her bab.
“They’re all away but this,” Mariarta said, and started to pack the crossbow.
“No,” her bab said. “You carry that.”
She looked at him curiously. Theo was nodding, looking thoughtful. Bemused, Mariarta just clambered into the saddle again. Her bab led the way as they rode back onto the stony road. Mariarta went second, her bow spanned and loaded. Theo came behind, singing something shocking about dogs, and leading Bab Vintgegn on his leash.
An odd procession we’ll look, Mariarta thought as they followed the road downhill toward the village of Ried under its high cliffs. As they went through the first part of town, people turned out into the road to stare at the cursing, leashed man with the monk’s tonsure. They jeered at him, and the children threw stones.
Mariarta sat her horse quietly as their party stopped to borrow another horse. She was fighting with something inside her. Every time she saw a person—housewife, townsman, small dirty child—all she could see, in her mind, was that tunnel of light, down which each person’s heart beat. The thought would not go away: if I were to shoot another of them, would it be as good? For she could not deny the horrible pleasure of the moment when she shot the second attacker—the flow of dreadful power, the jolt of satisfaction.
And these awful thoughts kept coming up. Would a bigger man, or an angrier one, have felt better? Would a woman have felt different? She shuddered and crossed herself.
Shortly a horse was brought out; they went their way again. They made Amsteg after noon, and stopped for a bite at the inn there, conveniently close to the barber’s small stone house. Her father delivered “bab” Vintgegn to the barber, came back smiling. “A relief to be rid of him,” he said. “Even tied up as he was, I kept feeling his knife in my back...”
The road eased downward from Amsteg without any more loops. They followed it at an easy pace, seeing, between the heights of Attinghausen and Burglen which framed the valley below them, the shining slate roofs and pointed green-capped towers of Altdorf in the slanting afternoon light. Altdorf covered maybe five times the area of Ursera; its roofs seemed as many as pebbles in a scree-slope. Above the city the castle of Attinghausen perched like a thoughtful hawk on the eastern heights. Down through the valley, under the shadow of the hill, the Reuss wound, wide and blue-green, its cold color mellowed by the burning summery blue of the sky. The river seemed bound by the bigness of the town, fastened there by the arches of its bridges.
They rode past the Schattdorf hill on the right, and took the bridge over the Schachen river, which flowed into the Reuss. The bridge was commanded by towers which protected it from unwanted crossers—Mariarta saw one of the tower guards leaning on the stone. She lifted her crossbow to him: he nodded, uninterested—then took another look, surprised. Mariarta smiled.
The road from the Schachen became hemmed in by high stone houses, opened out into the noisy market, narrowed again. Finally they came to the street by the Reuss where the Lion Inn rose. It had a great gravelled courtyard that faced the river, over low walls and stairs leading to a terrace. Large stables stood off to one side, and three wings of rooms. Mariarta dismounted, handing her horse to a waiting groom. Theo was already having a genial argument with a tall, dusty man in faded dun hunting clothes, who had been standing by the terrace wall. The tall man kept pushing the fair hair out of his eyes, laughing at everything Theo said.
Mariarta and her father paused by him on their way in. Theo laughed and waved them on. “An old hunting partner,” he said, “can’t you tell from the mud on him? Can’t get him off the Schweinsburg. I’m surprised to see him here at all.”
“Hark to you, dil Cardinas,” the man said, laughing, “with your wandering ways, who’s seen you in your own town for a month?—” Smiling, Mariarta followed her father into the inn.
The innkeeper was in the common room which had so astonished Mariarta when she first saw it. The ceiling was thirty feet high, supported by big stone pillars that ran its length. Iron bracket
s on the walls and pillars held pairs of torches: a candelabrum hung from the center of the ceiling, its candles unlit by day. Big scarred wooden tables were set in the middle of the room. Around the edges of the common room were smaller tables seating fifteen or twenty, with stonework and wooden screens around them so people could be private.
After talking to the innkeeper, they found the room meant for them—little more than a closet with two beds wedged in—then unpacked the few bags they had brought with them, and went for a meal to while the time away until the evening and the meetings.
Mariarta fell easily enough into the role that she and her father had worked out between them for such occasions. She became his shadow, seeing him seated and cared for, then seating herself nearby, with quill, ink and parchment ready. Last time, when some of the councilors had first seen her, some annoying remarks had been made about where one or another of the men thought Mariarta should be: kitchens were often involved. Most of those remarks she ignored. Only a few, the rudest, had made her frown them into silence as her mother had taught her. “They may be idiots,” her mother had said, “but they all had mothers, and they’ll react to you the same way as to their mams if you don’t give them time to think about it.”
Meantime, Mariarta was busy with her spare bag and some thin rope from their pack, rigging them into a soft quiver that would sling over her back— she was not going to leave her bow in their room. Mariarta shrugged the bag-quiver on to test it, slipped in the stock of the bow: it went in and settled there... mostly. The bow end stared most satisfactorily over her shoulder. And the reloading hook hung at her belt, from the same eyelet where a housewife’s keys would have hung. Mariarta saw the men at the nearest tables watching her, and the bow, with a whole spectrum of expressions—unease, too-obvious amusement, scorn. She smiled gently at them, careful to miss no one. It was amazing how interesting their wine or their food suddenly became to them. Over their heads, she saw her father coming with a pitcher and cups. Mariarta rose and bowed him into his seat, took the pitcher for him, filled his cup. She was the only one close enough to see the slight flicker of smile pass across his face as their eyes met and he bade her sit.
Mariarta smiled, reached into her other small bag, came up with a small knife and sharpening stone and a handful of quills, and began cutting fresh pens.
***
The afternoon drifted by, and the early councillors began to settle around one of the big tables at the end of the common room; Mariarta and her father went to join them.
Some she knew—Walter Furst from Altdorf itself, a big white-haired man, blunt-faced but subtle of tongue: Konrad Hunn from Brunnen, lean and dark, with a face that never changed: Konrad von Yberg, an unprepossessing-looking small man, white-blond from beard to eyelashes, with his pale eyes and big smile—which Mariarta did not trust, for she knew it could mean anything: and the Cellarer of Sarnen, with his soft persuasive voice. Theo was there as well, halfway down another pitcher of wine as usual. There was one northern townsman—Werner Stauffacher from the city Schwyz, all sarcasm and dark jokes on the surface, but always with some anger burning underneath, fire to the smoke. Mariarta saluted these men, then seated her father and herself, and put her quills and parchment ready.
The men gradually started their discussion (or rather argument, since that was what it always turned into). At the moment, it was about the Pope’s behavior. The argument went on while shadows began to fall in the courtyard, and lamps were lit inside. Two years ago King Conrad had gone on the Romagirada, arriving in Rome eight months later, around Christmas. He was there yet, arguing with the Pope about his coronation. The Pope refused to crown him until Conrad admitted that all his authority as King came from the popes: but Conrad, with all his chief knights waiting on him, would not make the admission. He said no, loudly, while his people dickered with the Pope’s representatives in the Curia, quietly. Meanwhile, the Pope began bribing Conradin, Conrad’s son, with money and promises of land. Conradin, being greedy but not a fool, accepted the bribes, but did nothing, temporizing as the Pope did. There they all sat in Rome, no one doing anything conclusive—while the knights of the King of Rome either sat there with him, or got bored and went home to run their fiefs as they pleased.
“Rudolf von Hapsburg being one,” growled Konrad von Yberg.
There was a mutter from the others. Von Yberg said, “They and their bailiffs grow bold. But their master the King is a long way from home, his power is still limited, and even if it weren’t, news of what’s happening here is easy to control...”
“And would he care?” said someone behind Mariarta. Those sitting on her side of the table, looking more toward the window, glanced up with surprise, and everyone stood. Mariarta stood too, turning. Beside her stood the man Theo had been arguing with outside the inn. He had changed his clothes for better ones, dark-dyed linen and leather, and a fine woolen tabard: a sword was belted at his side.
“How long does it take you to take a bath?” Theo said from the other side of the table. “I thought you’d have been here by now.”
“Figlia,” her father whispered in her ear. “Down low.” Mariarta curtsied to the man until her face was down against her skirts. “Noble sir,” her father said, “my daughter Mariarta. Child, do honor to the Knight of Attinghausen.”
She held the curtsey, then reached up to kiss the Knight’s hand. He raised her and smiled. “Sit, maiden: I greet you. Here, dil Alicg, let’s pull that other table over—there are more coming, aren’t there? I’ve sent for more wine—”
After some rearranging of furniture, Mariarta found herself sitting between Theo and the Knight. Werner was his name—she knew that from her father—but none of the councilors called him that, though they chaffed him about his hunting. It was surprisingly casual treatment from mere civilian councilors for the man who was the lord of Altdorf, under the Hapsburgs, master of the land for thirty miles around. But as lords went, the Knights of Attinghausen were not considered bad. They came of a local family who had gained the King’s favor two centuries back, and had chosen to take their own birth-country as lordship, rather than someplace richer. The Urseren councilors considered the Attinghausen family to be people of their own sort—ennobled, yes, but at least not foreign lords foisted on them. All the same, the councillors treated the Knight with caution. Should an Emperor be crowned, this man would be the sword in his hand in this part of the world.
“I came as soon as I could,” Attinghausen said, grinning at Theo. “Bath indeed, you old scoundrel, when did you last have one? But I come now,” he said, taking the winecup that Mariarta’s father passed him, “because I cannot really come later. Can I, gentlemen?”
Everyone looked away. “You mean, sir,” Mariarta said softly, “that a knight of the Empire cannot be seen to be supporting those who are beginning to be, in some sort, in league against it.”
A mutter of protest went around the table, but Attinghausen lifted a finger; it went away. He eyed Mariarta with interest. “At the time,” he said, “I meant more that I know things must be said among the councilors which would be unwise for me to hear: things which would not be said if I were in attendance...but must be said.” Mariarta bowed her head to that, agreeing. “And I also know the men of the Forest-lake cities intend to reclaim old rights and protections that the Empire has already guaranteed—not throw over those protections. So be at peace, gentlemen.”
“Sir,” said Konrad Hunn, “do you then say that you feel the old Emperor’s right of exclusive protectorate of Ursera still stands?”
“If you mean, should the Crown do as it swore to do, and administer Ursera and the road south over the Devilbridge directly,” the Knight said, “well...I stand by the law as it is written.”
“Oh, come on, Werner,” said Theo, “speak plainer!”
“But I have to stand by the law, Theo. It may have changed: who knows what messenger will arrive tomorrow, making the sunset’s good intentions the next dawn’s treason? Do you want that young
blackguard Gessler here?”
Looks were exchanged around the table. “Oh, yes,” the Knight said, “the Hapsburg’s young landvogt would love an excuse to add a southern castle to his collection. So, by your leave, gentlemen, I will be seen to uphold the law. The Old Emperor made Ursera a Crown protectorate. But he is dead...and his successor the King of the Romans is not crowned Emperor yet. So those to whom the old Emperor delegated the protectorate will use it as they will.”
No one said anything. “So,” said the Knight, “let us pass an hour pleasantly. Then I can go about my business, and when Gessler, or Lord Rudolf, asks me whether I knew of your meeting, I can say yes, I was there: and when he asks whether I heard anything treasonous, I can say no, on my faith not.” He raised his cup.
They all drank with him, and after the hour, when night was fallen, the Knight took his leave. All rose to bid him farewell.
Then food was called for, the fire was lit, and for a while there was not much talk. Meat pies came, more wine, fried porridge and a loaf of sweet dried-pear bread. The shutters were closed against the windy night. The lamps and torches smoked gently, their light wobbling in the drafts as the food vanished and the talk went on.
It started to be about matters that Mariarta’s father would want notes of; she took up her pen. Taxation was most of it—taxes rising everywhere, not enough money to pay them. Mariarta sighed. Hearing everyone else’s troubles, it was hard to feel that Tschamut’s were so terrible by comparison....
The wind gusted, moaning down the chimney, scattering sparks. The back of Mariarta’s neck prickled. On the far side of the fire was an inglenook seat. In the shadow of its carved headpiece, she could see the gleam of eyes—gone a second later, the eyes hooded. Mariarta pursed her lips, thinking. In answer, the wind blew hard down the chimney. Smoke came down, the fire flattened and went dim. In the dimness she could see that shape more clearly—a man, not large, dressed in old dark clothes, booted, dark-haired. Something lay in his lap, a darker shape. The fire burned up again.