Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  * * *

  Dietrich watched for a time as the four Krenken attached wires and touched them with sundry talismans — perhaps to bless them with some relic? Once or twice they seemed to argue, and consulted illuminated manuscripts of the “elektronik circuit.” He tried to discern which of the other two was Mechtilde, obviously a Krenkerin, but though he studied them closely, he could spy no marked difference.

  Growing bored, he walked about within the vessel and came to the room that the Kratzer had once named the pilot room, though there was no window to show the pilot how the vessel lay, only panels of opaque glass, several of them darkened as if by fire. One of these flickered briefly to life, accompanied by a clatter of krenkish voices from farther below.

  A padded high-seat in the center marked the captain’s throne, from which he had issued orders to his lieutenants. Dietrich wondered what might have happened had that worthy survived.

  The captain might not have failed so badly as Gschert. Yet, being more competent than Gschert, might he not have, in typical krenkish choler, rid himself of the risk of discovery by ridding himself of the discoverers?

  God worked all things to an end. What purpose was served by the events that had so joined a reclusive scholar-priest with a bizarre creature that instructed talking heads?

  Dietrich left the pilot’s room and went to the outer door, where he breathed the fresh air. A distant cry echoed through the surrounding trees, and he thought at first that it was a hawk. But it was too prolonged and insistent, and it suddenly came clear: the whinny of a terrified horse.

  Dietrich spun about and ran to the stairwell, nearly tripping on his robe as he hurried down the steps. “Gschert comes!” he cried, but they looked at him not at all and he realized that a human voice was to them no more than a sound, as their chittering was to him. So he grabbed Hans by the forearm.

  Reflexively, the Krenk slung him aside. Hans turned and Dietrich could think of nothing better than to point toward the stairwell and shout, “Gshert!” hoping that the creature had heard the name often enough to recognize it without translation.

  It must have worked, for Hans froze for a moment before unleashing a stream of chatter at his comrades. Friedrich and Mechtilde put aside their tools and sprang for the stairwell, pulling pots de fer from their scrips as they did. Gottfried looked up from his work with the magic wand and, first waving away the vapors with his hand, made the tossing motion toward Hans. Hans waited a moment longer, then tilted his head as far back as he could before he, too, ran up the stairwell.

  Dietrich found himself alone with Gottfried, his first convert — unless one counted the alchemist’s cryptic embrace of the words of Consecration. Gottfried continued to affix wires to the minute posts with his solidare-metal, but Dietrich thought him aware of being watched. Gottfried put the wand aside on a pad that appeared woven of metal fibers and, using a screwtwister, removed a small box from the “circuit.” This, he tossed to Dietrich, who perforce must catch it, and put in its place a somewhat larger device that appeared built from odds and ends.

  Examining the device removed, Dietrich saw that instead of copper wires there depended from the device sundry fibers so fine as a hair and which seemed to trap light within themselves.

  Gottfried clacked his mandibles and gestured to the device Dietrich now held and the more schlampig device he had installed in its place. He spread his hands in a very human gesture, and tossed his head several times, by which Dietrich understood that Gottfried doubted the elektronikos would flow through the copper wires with the same efficacy as — light? — had once flowed through the hairlike fibers.

  Having thus pantomimed his doubts, Gottfried made the sign of the cross and, bending once more to the task, dismissed Dietrich with a wave of his arm.

  * * *

  Dietrich found Hans outside, crouched with the other two Krenken behind some metal barrels. Hans seized Dietrich’s robe and pulled him too behind the barrels, where the sodden earth soaked his garments and chilled his limbs. The Krenken, he saw, were shivering, although the day was but moderately cool to Dietrich’s senses. He unfastened his cloak and hung it around Hans’ shoulders.

  Hans cocked his head to look at Dietrich straight. Then, he handed the cloak to the Krenk squatting beside him. This one — Mechtilde, Dietrich thought — took it and wrapped it tight around her, clenching it close about her throat. The third Krenk squatted partly upright, peering over the tops of the barrels. Where a man might scan the surroundings, he held his head so motionless as a gargoyle. The better to apprehend motion within the woods, Dietrich supposed. From time to time, the third Krenk absently fingered his neck.

  The horse had stopped her whinnies, by which Dietrich thought the beast had fled — unless Gschert had slain it. He raised his head to look toward the woods and a sound like a bumble-bee flew past him, followed a moment later by a sharp crack from the edge of the woods and the slap of a stone against the vessel behind him. Hans yanked Dietrich once more to the dirt and snapped his mandibles a thumb’s-length from his face. The message was clear: make no sudden moves. Dietrich glanced at Friedrich and noticed that his left antenna had bent slightly to point toward a spot in the surrounding forest. Hans crossed his antennae and, ever so slowly, eased his pot de fer into position to sling a bullet at his attackers.

  Hans raised a great clatter with his horny side-lips, and was answered by similar buzz from the concealing forest. Dietrich pulled the head harness from his scrip and shook it at Hans before strapping it into place.

  “I told him,” Hans announced when he too had donned the harness, “that his bullets would damage our only means of escape. But he worries less over our escape than over my obedience. When a man can accomplish nothing, such pride is all that is left him.”

  Because his private canal had been interdicted, Hans had spoken on the common canal, no longer concerned with being overheard. Gschert answered, saying, “I command, heretic. Your place is to serve.”

  “Truly, I was born to serve. But I serve all on this voyage, and not you alone. You so fear risking one of us, that you would lose all of us. If you command here, your command is that we die. You were our captain’s left hand, but without the head, the hand knows not what to grasp.”

  In answer, another bullet was flung at them. This time, it made no slapping noise, but instead a sound like planting a foot into deep mud. Dietrich looked over his shoulder and gasped, for the krenkish vessel glowed with a soft, internal, sourceless light, through which Dietrich could see the trees on the other side of the ship! Hastily, he crossed himself. Could the inanimate have ghosts? As he watched, the vessel seemed to shrink, as if it were moving away.

  Hans and the others had seen as well. Friedrich and Mechtilde buzzed, and Hans said, as if to himself, “Take care, Gottfried… Keep it plumb…” Then, to Gschert: “Where is our pilot? He ought to be here to take the helm!”

  “Your heresy has sundered the web. Zachary would not come. Would you trust your life to such patchwork? Even should it drop into the Other World, will it climb forth again?”

  “Then, it is at least a choice of deaths, and not the least of choices.”

  Fear gripped Dietrich’s heart and the hairs on his head and arms begin to curl. The krenkish ship snapped suddenly into focus in its proper size and a wave of elektronikos passed through him and across the clearing, where corposants flickered briefly from the tips and edges of picks and poles and sundry other metal objects.

  The yellow glow behind Hans’ eyes seemed to dim. “Ah, Gottfried,” he said.

  The one called Friedrich turned on him with his pot de fer leveled. He clicked out some statement. Dietrich heard only the answer. “’A small leap begins a long journey.’” Friedrich hesitated, then lowered his weapon. He said something else, but Hans did not answer him.

  Without warning, Gottfried appeared in the doorway of the vessel and leapt across the open area to where Hans and Dietrich crouched. He was wearing his head harness. “I should have aske
d your blessing on the twisting-device, father. Perhaps it was lacking only that.”

  Hans placed a hand on his forearm. “The work fell short by only a little,” he said.

  Gottfried said, “Bwa! So said the hunter at Stag’s Leap.” Then he hopped atop the metal drums behind which they crouched and, spreading wide his arms, cried out, “This is my body!”

  Hans pulled him to the mud a moment before a swarm of bullets flew through the space. “Those fools,” Hans said. “If they damage the walls, the vessel will never sail. We must — We must -.” His body made a noise like a concertine, for the Krenken possessed many small mouths about their bodies. “Ach. Will the warm-time never come?”

  “Always summer comes,” Dietrich said. To Gottfried, he added, “You must not despair and throw your life away because of one failure.”

  “His was not an act of despair,” Hans told Dietrich, “but one of hope.” Then, his momentary panic having left him, he concluded, “We must remove the Herr Gschert.”

  “That saying is easier for you than for us,” Gottfried said. “You serve the Kratzer, and are not ‘oath-bound’ to the ship’s master as are we. Yet, though it grieves me sore to bring him low, it must be done.”

  “How many has he brought?”

  “Bwa! By the evidence, all but Zachary.”

  Thereafter moved a strange and a slow combat. Accustomed to joust and melee, Dietrich found the affair most peculiar, for the combatants maintained perfect stillness for long periods.

  His companions behind the barrels seemed statues, but statues that moved imperceptibly. Each time he looked at Hans, the servant of the talking head had moved into a different position. Such a style, he realized, must perfectly suit a nation whose eyes were responsive to motion, for perfect motionlessness would make them difficult to see. Yet it must also put them at hazard when fighting those who attack in a rush. It occurred to Dietrich that had Gschert and Manfred fought on Kermis Day, each party would have been vulnerable to the other. For to remain still in the face of a charge were fatal; while to rush against those with keen perception of movement were equally so.

  Betimes, the pop of a pot de fer signaled a careless move, and then the Krenken showed that they were indeed capable of quick movement. Bullets whined against the barrels, or barked the limbs of trees. The fighters took up widely separate positions from which to loose their shots. The quake of a bush and snapping of twigs within the dimness of the trees signified Gschert’s men doing the same. The pace unnerved Dietrich and he longed for a rush of crying rage.

  With no small horror, Dietrich realized that a Krenk had appeared in the clearing itself. As still as a rock or a tree, it squatted beside a table and chairs at which the refugees had been wont to take some refreshment in warmer weather. By what imperceptible stages it had reached that position, Dietrich did not know, and when he looked again, it was gone.

  Glancing then to his left, he saw a strange Krenk crouched there. Dietrich cried out in surprise and terror, and would have sprung up to his own undoing save that Hans grabbed him firmly by the shoulder. “Beatke is with us,” he said, and Hans and the newcomer touched each other gently on the knees.

  The woods seemed filled with locusts, for the two sides attacked with words as well, though Dietrich heard only those diatribes that passed through the Heinzelmännchen. Gschert’s words were like honey placed before a fasting man, appeals to the heretics’ inborn hunger for obedience.

  “You have used your power, Gschert,” Hans called out, “beyond what is just. If we are born to serve, and you to command, then your commands must be for the good of all. We do not deny our place in the Web. We deny your place in the Web.”

  Another Krenk, also one with a head-harness, though not one that Dietrich knew, said, “We who labor will be heard. You say, ‘do this’ and ‘do that,’ while you yourself do nothing. You take your ease on the backs of others.”

  Suddenly Dietrich became aware of more than a dozen Krenken now arrayed with Hans. None had pots de fer, but carried instead a variety of tools and implements. They perched in trees or behind rocks or in the gully that ran beside the clearing. “But Shepherd said that obedience was like a hunger,” Dietrich said.

  His plaint was carried by the common canal, and someone — which, he did not know — answered, “So it is, but a hungry man may still smite the purveyor of rotten food.” Whereupon a ferocious chatter grew in magnitude from Dietrich’s side of the clearing. All about him were statues which, at each glance, had altered their posture — and suddenly Dietrich was small beside his mother in the Köln Minster watching the gargoyles and the stern-faced saints slowly turn toward him. The Armleder had returned, born anew amongst the Krenken.

  Between two armies is a dangerous place to graze your flock, Gregor Mauer had said.

  Dietrich ran from the protection of the barrels out into the clearing that separated the two warring factions. “Stop!” he cried, expecting any moment to be stoned to death by a dozen pots de fer. He raised both arms. “I command you in the name of Christ Jesus to put down your weapons!”

  Surprisingly, no bullets were slung in his direction. For a time, nothing stirred. Then, first one, then another Krenk rose from concealment. Hans tossed his head back and said, “You shame me, Dietrich of Oberhochwald.” And he dropped his pot de fer to the ground. At this, the Herr Gschert emerged from the woods. “You have right,” he said. “This matter is between the Hans and me alone, and it is to the neck.” He stepped forward; and Hans, after a moment in which he and Beatke touched, loped across the clearing to meet him.

  “What does it mean, ‘to the neck’?” Dietrich asked.

  “It makes true,” Gschert said to Hans, “that finding ourselves on such a world we resort to the ways of our forefathers.” And he stripped himself of his clothing, worn and faded sash and blouse tossed to the ground, and stood shivering in the March afternoon.

  Hans had come to stand beside Dietrich. “Remember,” he said, “that it is better for one man to die than a whole people, and if this will restore concord…” Then, to Gschert, he added, “This is my body, to be given up for many.”

  To the neck. Dietrich realized suddenly that Hans would not defend himself from Gschert’s jaws. “No!” he said.

  “Has it come to this, then?” Gschert asked.

  And Hans answered, “As Arnold always knew it would. Galatians 5:15.”

  “Have with your thought-lacking superstition, then!”

  But before Gschert could spring upon the unresisting Hans, Dietrich heard the arresting tones of a trumpet, the sound that was better than all the echoes in the world.

  * * *

  “It was simple enough,” Herr Manfred said while Max and his soldiers led the now compliant Krenken back toward Oberhochwald. “Before even I reached the village, the field hands told me that you had like a madman galloped toward the Great Wood, and that, shortly after, the Krenken followed. I pushed my men to the double-quick. We must naturally leave our horses behind the ridge, but we were clad in half-armor for the road and so the march was not difficult. I heard some of what befell over the common canal. What was the cause of it?”

  Dietrich gazed out over the clearing, at the clutter of furnishings, at the lack of order. “The Krenken hunger for obedience,” he said, “and Herr Gschert has served them bad porridge.”

  Manfred threw his head back in laughter. “If they hunger for someone to obey,” the lord of Oberhochwald said, “I will serve out that porridge myself.”

  * * *

  And so later, in the great hall, Hans and Gottfried pressed their hands together and Manfred enclosed them in his own, and they foreswore their oaths to Baron Grosswald and accepted Herr Manfred as their liege. In recognition of his valor in the battle at Falcon Rock, Manfred placed a ruby ring on Hans’ right hand. Gschert was not content with this arrangement, but agreed in a Nicodemian manner that it resolved the problem of disobedience.

  Shepherd accepted also when two of her pilgrims asked
to be settled on the manor and to be baptized. “Those who tarry in strange lands often take up rude customs of land. We have term for it, which would ‘overset as walk in steps of native-born’. They think their cares to throw over. Later, they regret; but must be later-time in which regrets may come. You clever, priest, and have lift Hans and his heretics of one burden; but leave me with mine own.” And the leader of the pilgrims studied the Herr Gschert from across the hall. “Yet, I think Hans may not be lift of all. I think your Herr Manfred not permit us to depart and that, above all things, what Hans wishes.”

  “Do not you all wish that?”

  “Vain to will impossible.”

  “The word is ‘hope,’ my lady. When Gottfried was repairing the ‘circuit,’ he gave me to understand that his repair fell short of the standards of the original craftsmen. Yet he applied himself to the task with a will, and I could not help but admire him for that. Any fool can hope when success lies plainly in view. It wants genuine strength to hope when matters are hopeless.”

  “Thought-lacking!”

  “If one presses on, God may grace the effort with success after all, and that end despair will never achieve. My lady, what would you, had you thrown Baron Grosswald over?”

  The pilgrim-leader smiled the krenkish smile, which always seemed to Dietrich half-mocking. “To order Hans to do as he has done.”

  “And yet you blame him for having done it!”

  “Without orders? Yes.”

  Dietrich turned to face the Lady Shepherd fully. “You sent Gschert into the Great Woods.”

  “In my country,” the Lady answered, “we play game of placing stones within array. Some stones remain in place and these we call… Heinzelmännchen says ‘hives,’ but I say ‘castles’ is better. From these, warrior-stones sally, and move place to place by certain rules. Game played by three opponents.”