by Simon Morden
He’d better start ordering the firewood now.
He glanced at the witch. Former witch. She was studying him.
“As you wish, my lord,” she said.
“Are you an elf?” he blurted.
She laughed again, and once more the edge was there, a catch of a blade at the back of her throat.
“Who says I’m an elf?”
“I …” No, no names. Master Ullmann would be left out of this. “I wondered. You’re from the north, you have a northerner’s name, but you’re dark.”
“Inside and out, my lord?”
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Mistress.”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Look at you: you haven’t even learnt guile yet. Your statecraft is sadly lacking, Prince Felix, and from what I know of the Jews, with their strange notions of sin and judgement, it’ll stay that way. You have to learn to lie, and lie well, or you’ll lose your life and the palatinate to someone who can.”
Felix raised himself to his full, insignificant height and tried again. “Are you …?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a changeling.”
Ah. “What happened to your human parents?”
“My differences eventually became too obvious to ignore when I turned from being a child to a woman. They wanted me to stay – I was their daughter – but the rest of the village had other ideas. They chased me out, into the forest, where there were wolves and bears and worse. I was about the age you are now.”
Had it always been like this, then? Had the Order been no more than the greatest collection of the most damaged souls in Europe? The greater the hate, the greater the power?
“What did you do?”
“Do? I cried. A lot. I cursed the wind and the trees. I walked south, expecting to be eaten every time I sat down to rest. Eventually, I reached the coast, and found a fisherman. He took me across the Skagerrak, and, on the journey, he told me of what he’d heard about the Order of the White Robe.”
“Lucky,” said Felix.
“Or not. I could have had a normal life, somewhere, if he hadn’t put the idea in my head that, one day, I might break down the doors of Alfheim and demand my inheritance. So I don’t know whether to find him again to thank him, or to kill him for it.” She looked momentarily morose, as if she was remembering her loss for the first time. “And now, wherever the land of the Elves is, I’ll never get there, and even if I did, there’d be nothing there for me.”
“I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have asked.” Felix pulled the key out of his shirt, feeling the warmed iron in his grasp. “I hope you decide to stay in Carinthia.”
She looked at him differently. Still studying him, but less like a hovering hawk eyeing a rabbit.
“I thought,” she said, “you were going to add: because Carinthia needs people like me. Rootless. Stateless. Violent. Expendable. But that’s not right, is it? It seems I need Carinthia more.”
She bowed, and Felix didn’t quite know what to make of it all.
“If there are still gods, may they keep you safe, my prince,” she said. “If there are none, and we have to rely on our own hands and courage, then you have mine. If there’s nothing more, then Master Thaler has more book-work for me.”
Felix nodded and, when she’d gone, made one last sweep of the room. There was nothing she could do, and nothing he could do.
She was right. Better to send them to the fire than leave them like that forever. And he’d see to the task himself, no matter what his father would or wouldn’t have done.
70
At times, it was almost pleasant: the land either side of the Salzach was in its full flush of green, and cows were contentedly chewing on the fresh grass. It was much like home, and he looked at the beasts as a farmer’s son would have done, judging their worth, their meat and milk and hide.
At other times it had been more a farce, as the drifting barge appeared to be inexplicably attracted to the river banks. The prow of the boat would slew across the channel, and as fast as Vulfar’s crew scrambled to steer it away from overhanging trees and stands of closely packed reeds on one side, they’d have to scramble back to use their long poles on the other.
For his part, the bargemaster barked out orders in his barbarian tongue and swung on the tiller as though it were a child’s toy. He’d convinced Mistress Morgenstern to part with a sack of cash, using his honeyed words and Frankish ways, but if she could have seen him now, cursing and swearing, she’d have refused to pay him so much as a penny.
Ullmann sat in the open hold with Horst and Manfred, who seemed enormously amused by the bargees’ antics and shouted sarcastic encouragement to them at every opportunity. Ullmann wasn’t the slightest bit amused, though. If Vulfar couldn’t get the barge under control, then the crew would soon be exhausted. A tired man pushing against a pole would make a mistake, slip, fall in, and then there’d be a stupid rush to get him back on board, creating nothing but delay.
The only thing holding him back from leaping to his feet and wresting the captaincy from the Frank was that he knew even less about steering an unpowered barge down a river in spate than Vulfar did.
Bundles of spears weren’t the comfiest perch, either. He gave up and swung himself out onto the barge-boards.
“Hey, Max: going to give the bargemaster a piece of your mind?” Horst grinned up at him.
“If I thought it’d do any good, I’d have done it while we were still in sight of Juvavum. As it is, we’re going to make the best of it, and do our duty to Carinthia. If that means we have to walk to Simbach with two hundred spears, that’s what we’ll do.” Ullmann held on to a strut and viewed the scene on deck. The barge was more or less mid-stream, although it was slowly turning to the right. The men on the starboard side plunged their poles in, and at the stern Vulfar steered hard.
“Master Ullmann, I think I’ve got it!” As Vulfar hung on to the tiller, sure enough, the bow came slowly around, and he applied a correction the other way. He shouted to the bargees: the poles on the right came out, while the ones on the left dipped in, briefly. They’d managed to avoid both banks.
Ullmann edged along the boards until he could step onto the stern section. “We’ve lost time, Master Vulfar,” he barked. “Will we still make it to Simbach this evening?”
“Have some faith, Master Ullmann. I might not be able to will my ship where I want any longer, but godsdamn, I can still point it in the right direction.” Vulfar shouted down the length of the hull again, because there was a bend in the river they needed to negotiate.
“You’ve spent most of the journey pointing it in any direction but, Master Vulfar. The coin isn’t yours yet.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Watch me fail and lose my prize?” Vulfar held the tiller in the crook of his elbow and tightened the twists in his moustache.
“No, actually I wouldn’t. What I’d really like is to get to Simbach at the right time, unload the weapons, find enough Bavarians willing to carry them, and chase Fuchs out of town.” Ullmann gripped the stern rail. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”
“That’s why we’re all here, yes?” said Vulfar. He hauled hard and watched the direction of the bow intently. It started to swing into the slacker water on the outside of the bend. “No, no, no!”
He dragged on the tiller, mindless of where Ullmann was standing, and yelled full-throated instructions to the crew. Vigorous poling ensued, and slowly, slowly, the stern followed the bow into the curve.
“Do you have the hang of it now, Master Vulfar?” Ullmann rubbed his sore ribs. “Only, me and the other passengers would rather not have to get out and push us off a sandbank.”
Vulfar muttered something under his breath, which, to Ullmann, sounded suspiciously like a threat to drown him sooner rather than later. He guessed, though, that any dislike the bargemaster held for him was more than outweighed by the prospect of a sack of silver coins.
“We’ll get there, and in good order,” sa
id the Frank. But he was sweating and straining, his face a mass of lines; tension, concentration and concern all wrapped up in one fixed grimace. Ullmann clambered back to the hold and sat brooding for a moment.
“Everything all right up top, Max?”
“I wish I could say it was,” said Ullmann, worrying at the ball of his thumb, “but Master Vulfar has no more control over this heap of shit than I do. We may have to change our plans.”
Horst leant forward. “Can’t he land us where we need to be, then?”
“Land us? We’ll be lucky if we make it the next mile downstream without getting stuck sideways and overturning.”
“Well, at least that’s a mile we don’t have to walk.”
“Shut up, Horst. I don’t doubt that Fuchs is nothing but a coward and a blowhard, ripe to be chased away by honest Carinthian courage” – Ullmann kicked the weapons he was sitting on – “but it’ll be a whole lot easier if we can put these spears into the hands of friends rather than leave them at the bottom of the river.”
“So what are you going to do, Max?” said Manfred. He opened his satchel and fetched out a long sausage and his paring knife.
“We have to be ready to act at any moment,” Ullmann said quietly. He took Manfred’s knife from him and leant down to cut the first of the cords that tied the nearest bundle of spears together. “If you count Vulfar, there are five of them, and only three of us, but if we can get Ohlhauser and the two Bavarians with us, that makes six. I’ll have my sword, and you’ll have spears – they only have clubs and their fists.”
“They’ve got those long poles, though.” Manfred watched as his knife travelled the length of the spears to the second restraining cord.
“Those are too long to be a threat,” said Horst, “too unwieldy. Just step inside their reach. But are you serious, Max? I mean, these are a bunch of hard bastards who’ve fought and whored their way up and down the Donau for years.”
“Yes, I’m serious: our duty’s to Carinthia. These mummers might look the part, but without their magic they’re just playing at being bargees. I don’t want to end up on the wrong side of the river as we sail past Simbach, unable to do anything but wave at Fuchs as we pass by.” Ullmann slipped his sword out of its scabbard and inspected it for rust spots. “If they can’t get and keep control of this tub soon, we’ll have to put them off and take it for ourselves.”
Manfred frowned, even as he took back his knife and started slicing rounds of sausage for them. “I don’t know. Perhaps we should leave it to them. A hundred florins is a big incentive to get it right.”
“Which is what we hope. But, like I said, we have to be ready to act: we can’t just assume that because someone has a title of master it follows they know what they’re doing. Not any more.” Ullmann looked at Horst’s sceptically raised eyebrow. “I got my title after the change. That’s the difference.”
Manfred chewed, and used the point of his knife for emphasis. “But doesn’t it make Vulfar as much of a chancer as you, Max? You took your opportunity when you saw it, and I’m not begrudging you your promotion in any way – you’re sharper than I am, and you’ve always put yourself forward for stuff. This bargemaster saw his opportunity too – he’s looking to retire on the reward he’ll get for this, and you can’t deny that he’s trying to keep his end of the bargain, can you?”
Ullmann hunched over. “It’s like this: why did anyone get called master in the first place? It’s because we weren’t hexmasters and could never be hexmasters, but we still wanted the authority the title gave us. You could be a huntmaster like Peter Büber, or a guildmaster like Master Emser, but we all knew who the real masters were. No one questioned a hexmaster, not if you valued your life: we did what we were told or else. They’re gone now, and there’s no reason for us to call ourselves Master this or Master that any more.”
“Especially not Master Vulfar, eh?” Horst licked his fingers. “He might know the river, but what good does that do him?”
“Exactly my point. Bargemasters might be tattooed with all the spells under the sun, but they’ve no magic to back it up.” Ullmann looked at the brightness of his sword and tested its edge with his thumb. Not as sharp as it should have been; he really ought to have had it reground before setting off. “All Vulfar is good for is knowing the name of the sandbank or reed-bed we’re going to crash into next.”
“Steady on, Max,” said Manfred. “You’ll be saying next that princes and earls don’t have a right to rule over their lands.”
Ullmann caught sight of his warped reflection in the flat of his blade. No reason why a farm boy from Over-Carinthia shouldn’t believe that he wasn’t every bit as good as any earl. However, to say so would be dangerous, for now at least. Waiting until the grand council had abolished the position of earl and revoked their privilege would be much wiser.
So he sheathed his sword and affected a look of concern. “Someone has to be in charge, Man. We don’t want chaos.”
Horst scrabbled free of the hold and stuck his head out the side of the hold to check their progress. He looked like a farm-dog getting a ride on a cart. All he needed was his tongue lolling out.
“We’re a bit close to the left bank, but at least we’re going straight.” Horst twisted around. “There’s a lot of river on the other side of the boat.”
Ullmann pursed his lips and picked his way over to Ohlhauser. “A word, if you please.”
“Master Ullmann.” Ohlhauser leant closer. “Is the barge supposed to do this?”
The farmer indicated a yawing motion with the flat of his hand, and Ullmann shook his head slowly.
“Do you recognise the land? Any idea how much further we have to go?”
“Difficult to say,” said Ohlhauser, “this low down in the water. Let’s climb up and take a look.”
A plank’s width of boardwalk ran the entire length of the barge on top of the hold, from the cabin to the bow. Ullmann scrambled up and dragged the older man up behind him, who then used Ullmann’s head to steady himself as he stood on the narrow strip and faced eastwards.
“I know where I am,” he said, and pointed. “See that shoulder of land, where the wooded hills dip out of sight? That’s south of Simbach, on the edge of the plain where the Enn joins the Salzach. Simbach is another mile further than that, where the river turns and the bridge used to be.”
“How far is that altogether?” The bargees were looking at them, wondering what they were doing. They certainly weren’t concentrating on where they were going. The fast water was to their right; lazy was the only description of their progress.
“Fifteen, twenty miles?” Ohlhauser wobbled on his perch and gripped Ullmann’s head even harder. “I don’t come this way often, but you can see where the via runs. If I had keener eyes I could read the milestones.”
“You’d better come down from there, Mr Ohlhauser. We’re heading towards the bank yet again.” Ullmann prised the farmer’s hand from the crown of his head and started to help him down.
The bargees poled hard again as Vulfar yelled his obscure cant, and the barge pivoted about its midships: the bow struck out for the centre, while the back slewed further towards the tall cliff of brown soil knitted together with tree roots.
“I think we should take cover,” said Ullmann, but it was too late. They could only hang on to the plank and to each other.
The barge shivered as it hit, and something cracked. Unable to tell what it was immediately because he had his face buried in Ohlhauser’s armpit, Ullmann emerged to see the Frankish bargemaster slump to the deck, finally free of the tiller arm that had pinned him to the stern rail.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Ullmann climbed over Ohlhauser’s shoulders and started along the centre board at a shuffling run. “Vulfar’s down.”
The back of the boat rattled free of the overhanging branches and into clear water. Ullmann leapt down onto the deck next to Vulfar, crouching to stop himself from pitching over the side. Grabbing the tiller, he found there w
as no resistance to his touch.
They’d lost the rudder, and from the look of Vulfar, who was gagging and gasping, eyes bulging and fingers clawing at the smooth wet wood of the deck, they’d lost their captain too.
Now they were heading into the middle of the river, with even less to steer with than before.
“We need to stop this thing!” shouted Ullmann. “Anyone got any ideas?” He looked at the bargees at the far end of the barge, who looked blankly at him. “Tell me one of you can speak German.”
The barge was wandering across the river again, towards the Bavarian side.
“Horst? Manfred? On deck now.”
They popped their heads out. Ohlhauser was still clinging to the top of the hold, looking desperate.
“Max?”
“We’re adrift, and we can’t afford to be. Get those bargees to pole us towards the bank. I’m going to see what I can do back here.” He looked around for anything he might use. There were coils of rope piled up, already wound in a tight figure-of-eight around two bollards. If he could attach the other end to something solid on the bank, the front end would come into the side too.
Only if they were facing the right way, though. As the bow entered slacker water, the stern started to turn, and slowly but surely they started to go broadside down the river.
The bargees appeared incapable of doing anything except watch helplessly, and there seemed nothing that Manfred or Horst could say to make them do anything different. Ullmann realised it was his responsibility to salvage something from this disaster, yet his experience of boats was limited to the rowboat in which he’d crossed to the White Tower.
There was only one thing he could think of. He kicked his boots off, undid his belt, and wrestled out of his shirt. Taking one end of a length of rope, he tied it around his waist as quickly as he could, then pitched himself backwards over the side.
Gods, the water was cold. It wasn’t long since it had been winter snow up in the high passes, and the chill took his breath away as the water closed over his head. He sank down until the pressure increasing on his chest reminded him that he had to break surface and breathe again.