by Simon Morden
85
The whole town was hurrying, as if it was an ants’ nest and had been kicked hard. The dwarves were on the march, and thus, by necessity, so were they. There was no time for drilling, or reflection. The Lady Sophia had rung the Bell Tower’s bell and those able to pick up a spear and wear a helmet, and who were willing to do so, were collecting by the West Gate.
Messengers had gone further into Carinthia, and up to Simbach. The message Ullmann had been sent had spoken baldly of the odds: they were outnumbered seemingly ten to one. He stared out of the window and over the roofs. Everything he’d worked for: his parents owning their own farm, his brothers and sisters equal before the law with some lordling’s issue, their – his – ideas spreading out like ripples, subverting the former order from within and without: it was all in danger of being swept away by a bunch of bastard dwarves too stupid, too hidebound to the past, to negotiate with reasonable people.
Nothing yet from München, either. A thousand, two thousand spears could make all the difference. Another message had been sent, but Ullmann still secretly hoped that his own, earlier message would be acted on. With one Bavarian pretender dead, the Earl of Augsburg would be much more likely to throw his lot in with Felix, if only to protect his recent gains.
His sword was on his desk. He reached out and picked it up, weighing it in his hands, surprising himself as to how light it really was. He drew it from its scabbard, looked at the way the light shone down its edges, then resheathed it.
He turned at a knock on the door, and a man was there. “The Black Company are assembled outside.”
Ullmann nodded. “I’ll be down in a moment.”
The man left again, leaving the door slightly open. Voices drifted up to him, indistinct and echoing. Ullmann scanned his desk for anything that really ought not be left out in the open. He’d locked his code books away, along with his lists of agents and their reports. No, everything was as it should be: he’d been thorough.
Would he see this place again, this tower room in the fortress wall? He hadn’t made it homely, because that hadn’t been the effect he’d wanted, but it had become his space all the same.
He strapped on his sword. It didn’t feel so light now. Then, taking one last look, he closed the door behind him. Down the stairs, across the drawbridge to the courtyard beyond. Forty men in the Black Company, dressed like him, with no insignia of rank or identification. They looked like ushers, but instead of carrying canes, they had steel, and under their robes, they wore chain.
As Ullmann approached, they formed up, and, without ceremony – that was how lords and ladies acted – they marched off through the Chastity Gate, and into town.
The people they passed stood aside for them, even as they were organising coats and capes and boots, and food and drink for themselves. Down Stable Street, where the last of the horses – anything that could be ridden – were being turned out and tack hoisted onto them; then into Coin Alley, where the smithies had fallen silent but the hammers were still in the hands of those who wielded them.
The Black Company collected on the muster field. Sophia was already there, with two centuries of Jews, and companies of builders, carters, boatmen and farmers keeping nervously to their guild banners. None of them were ready for a twenty-mile hike to Rosenheim, let alone what faced them there.
Where were the gods? Had they left Carinthia at the same time the magic faded? In which case, it was Ullmann’s own hand that had finally brought them down. Max Ullmann, Max Godslayer, Max Hexkiller. What name would he have when all this was done?
Then he spotted Aelinn in the crowd. He slipped between the boat hooks and cudgels of the bargees, and into the midst of stable boys, messengers and maids. He tried to find her: surely she wasn’t thinking of marching on Rosenheim? The thought made him queasy, but, try as he might – calling her name, asking after her – he was unable to spot her again.
Had he imagined it? A fleeting glimpse of a bob of blonde hair in the mob, and perhaps he’d jumped to conclusions. Aelinn was brave for sure, but she must have more sense than this. Let others take the risk and either win the glory or suffer the defeat: Aelinn had to be kept safe.
If she was here, he vowed to send her home, back to the Odenwalds’ house on the main square. He returned to the Black Company angry and troubled.
It was obvious that Sophia, now mounted on her comfortable old nag, wanted to be off as soon as possible. She rode back and forth impatiently, counting heads, and didn’t – for once – look like she was going to fall off.
It was close to midday by the time she decided that their ranks were large enough to make it worthwhile setting off. Ullmann would have gone sooner, but with Felix absent, it was clear that she was deemed to be in charge: not Thaler, not Wess, and not him. Someone brought her out a banner, a fine yellow cloth with a black leopard. She lifted it up and received a ragged cheer, her name being shouted along with Felix’s.
Then she wrapped the cloth around her shoulders as if it were a shawl. The leopard rose up her spine, paw extended out the way they had to go.
She twisted in her saddle as her horse walked slowly out onto the München road, and she appeared to be smiling and crying at the same time. If anyone else noticed, they didn’t say, but Ullmann had. She wheeled about at the head of the column to face them. She looked down from her height, and she most definitely caught sight of him at the head of his company, which was at the head of the host.
Her mouth pursed. If she had been going to address them, she decided in that moment not to. She turned the horse again, and started up the road. Other riders trotted up the sides of the road, some of them showing off, others deadly serious, to gather around her.
The Black Company was still waiting for his word. Him, a farmer’s son from Over-Carinthia. He’d achieved his position not because he’d been born to it, but because he’d won it for himself.
Ullmann pointed to the sky, then at the east. “Move out,” he called. His company started walking, and everyone followed: the guilds, the trades, the Jews in the rearguard, and everyone in between.
After a while, Sophia left the vanguard and rode down the line. She smiled at him as she passed, but it seemed forced. Then a long time later – they were stretched out over a couple of miles – she rode back on the other side, still wearing the Carinthian banner as a cloak. Now she looked at him differently again. Her cheeks were white, and her jaw was set hard. An argument, and the only ones who’d dare do so were her own; they would talk and argue and call each other names from sunrise to sunset, and still they seemed content to live together all on one street and cram shoulder to shoulder into their temple to worship their god.
“My lady,” he said as she ground her teeth. She was so distracted that she looked through him for a moment, before blinking and realising that she was being addressed.
“Master Ullmann.”
There was something else, more than having just argued with her rabbi. Gods, the rules they lived under. “My lady, do you want to talk in private?”
Her face underwent an unexpected number of contortions. “Not now, Master Ullmann. After we’ve secured the safety of both Carinthia and Felix, then we’ll talk.”
What was this? “My lady, if we need to discuss matters of state—”
She cut him off. “Not. Now.” She drew in a deep breath. “There’ll be no distractions. We have one goal, and one enemy. Nothing else matters for the moment.”
She jabbed her heels into her steed’s flanks, and it picked up speed. She only slowed when she was well ahead of the other riders, alone, the banner of yellow and black fluttering like an angry wasp.
“Master Ullmann?” asked the man to his right. “Is there anything that needs doing?”
Ullmann wasn’t sure. Sophia was their lord’s consort, but she was ultimately only a figurehead. Felix was the source of all authority, and he was at Rosenheim.
“I’m going to talk to Cohen. If he’s been causing problems, I’ll get him to butto
n it. My lord Felix decides whether his lady’s behaviour is proper, not some funny-hatted priest.” He glanced behind him. “We need to pick up the pace and keep together. We’re scattered; more a festival crowd than an army.”
He dropped out of the line and and attempted to move back against the flow. It was all but impossible, so he jumped a ditch and strode through the grazed grass until he could see the back of the column.
The Jews were in their town-guard garb, a mixture of swords, spears and maces, shield and helmet styles, shirts of mail, scale and leather. They walked together as if they were still squashed in one of Juvavum’s narrow alleys, their braids and tassels swinging in time with their steps. They were a jostling, happy crowd that had brought its own ram’s horn trumpets.
Ullmann jumped the ditch back to the road, and fell in with them. Cohen, his beard striped with grey, welcomed him.
“Master Ullmann, to what do we owe this pleasure?”
He got to the point. “My Lady Sophia.”
“Oy,” said Cohen, and pushed his helmet back far enough to wipe his forehead. “One moment she’s chasing us to battle, the next she’s chasing us away. The woman can’t make up her mind.”
“Please explain.”
Cohen gestured to the people around him. “We had a good shake-out of Jew’s Alley, shaming those who’d rather have stayed in bed. Every man of fighting age is here, a century and more, and Sophia’s worry is that, having saved ourselves from the mamzer Eckhardt, we’ll throw ourselves away on the blade of a dwarvish axe. No Jews left in Juvavum except widows and orphans.”
Telling part of their army to abandon their duty was, what? Treason? She’d rather Germans die than Jews? Ullmann had to get to the bottom of this. “And still you march?” he asked.
“Gehenna isn’t as bad as the way to it. And our father Abraham promised we’d be as numerous as the stars in the sky. The world’s not going to run out of Jews any time soon.”
“Perhaps,” said Ullmann, looking at the empty road behind them. “What did she tell you to do? Stop and turn around?”
“Just the boys. Those under their sixteenth year. They refused, of course. HaShem is with us, and we all want to be there when He hands us our victory.” Cohen nudged the man next to him, who raised his horn and let off a long two-tone blast. “O Israel, trust in HaShem; He is their help and their shield.”
And those around him answered: “O House of Aaron, trust in HaShem; He is their help and their shield.”
“The ones fearing HaShem, trust in HaShem; He is their help and their shield.” Cohen tugged at his beard. “You see, Master Ullmann? We make common cause with you, our neighbours and our friends. This is our fight too.”
Ullmann frowned. Would that the Germans were as enthusiastic. “She still shouldn’t have said what she did.”
“She feels responsible for us, our Esther. She needs to trust HaShem for our deliverance instead.”
“I understand,” said Ullmann.
He didn’t really. He didn’t understand at all. He could see why Sophia would want to protect the small Jewish population, but to do so at the expense of the German one? To try and deny Felix the iron and the blood they’d bring to battle was most certainly treasonous. They couldn’t have too many soldiers; only too few. The Jews themselves were fanatics. How could he have not realised they had a warrior god and no fear of death? Hadn’t they used to meekly complain when the German children threw rotten fruit and vegetables at them, and the adults tried to cheat them in business?
“I’ll rejoin my men now, rabbi.”
Ullmann trotted forward a few paces, then began to walk briskly, overtaking the carpenters with their adzes and axes, then the bargees, a rough and unreliable company. By the time he was level with the farmers and woodsmen from north of Juvavum, he was starting to tire, but suddenly, up ahead, he caught sight of a flash of blonde hair again, moving in exactly the same way that Aelinn’s did when she walked. Determination sped him up, and he started to close on the rag-tag band who walked with her.
It was her. She didn’t even have a weapon, not even her broom, and she was marching to war. This was surely madness, and he had to put a stop to it.
Except. Except he’d be doing the same thing as Sophia had done. Preferring that someone else should take her place in the line, perhaps to die, just as long as the person most important to him was out of harm’s way.
Of course he’d prefer that. He’d have to be an unfeeling monster to think otherwise.
And Aelinn would argue with him, in exactly the same way that Cohen had argued with Sophia, and in exactly the same way as Cohen had, she would win that argument simply by refusing to turn around. He couldn’t make her go back. He couldn’t order her. There was nothing he could do. He didn’t own her or have any hold over her.
He could beg. But what did he imagine Sophia had done? And with what result?
Gods, if the armies at München didn’t come over to them, then she’d – eventually – have to fight. She wouldn’t run. Aelinn was brave.
With treasonous thoughts all of his own, he ran past her group. He didn’t try and speak to her, nor did he turn round once he knew he’d overtaken her. He ran all the way to the front of the column, tasting bitterness with every footfall.
86
Agathos came running onto the practice field, waving his hands around and shouting. Thaler stood up from behind his desk, remembering to place a weight on the loose papers, and called him over.
“Master Thaler,” he said, “they gone. They all gone.”
“Good,” said Thaler, “well done, boy.”
“Do you still intend to go through with this ridiculous idea?” asked Morgenstern, looking up from his calculations.
“The idea is not ridiculous, Aaron. What else are we doing here, if we can’t make a difference?” Thaler turned back to the Greek boy. “Tell everyone to get ready.”
“I should have told Sophia,” said Morgenstern. He blew on his freshly inked work and held it up to the sun to make sure it was dry before he closed the book. “She would have forbidden this…”
“Yes, yes, I know. But you didn’t, did you?” Thaler put on his secret smile, the one he wore when he knew he’d won an argument.
All across the field, people were emerging from inside huts and behind screens, carrying all manner of paraphernalia. Iron tools and barrels, buckets and long cleaning rods, brass sextants and coils of slow fuse.
From the woods, Bastian emerged at the head of a caravan of ox-pulled carts, empty now but not for long.
“Mistress?”
Tuomanen was by his side like a grey mist, her sleeves rolled back almost to her shoulders. Her tattooed arms were long and lean, and her patterned hands carried a rough wooden crate. “Master.”
“Put it with the powder kegs, then can you supervise the loading of the pots? They’re not going to break if we drop them, but the carts most certainly will.”
She walked over to where the powder barrels were piling up and gently lowered the crate next to them. They’d all had to learn how to behave around the stuff, which they’d been accumulating in increasingly large amounts. “Carefully” was a word that was repeated often, and meant seriously.
Tuomanen gathered a group of workers and they started to dig out the pots from their emplacements. Carved wooden cradles appeared from behind a screen, and the ironware was lifted onto them, one by one.
Morgenstern was watching him rather than helping, and Thaler frowned. “What?”
“You’re not too old, you know,” said Morgenstern, “and she’s not too young.”
“What are you talking about?” Then he realised and spluttered. “Good gods, man. I don’t … I can’t … I mean … a man in my position?”
“Oh, stop your kvetching. You stare at her tusch as it sways.”
“I do not. It’s simply preposterous. I’m the master librarian. Librarians don’t marry.”
“You mean like Thomm? Or like the Jewish men you took
on.” Morgenstern tucked his book under his arm. “You’ve thrown all the old rules in the midden, Frederik. Jews, women, old men, foreigners, they’re all welcome in the library now. When all this is over, I could get the matchmaker to introduce you.”
“I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous, Aaron Morgenstern: this conversation. We have far more important matters at hand, as do you. Now, hand over that book: our crews will need your tables.”
Morgenstern looked at the book, and crossed his arms over it, holding it to his thin chest. “You’ll just use it wrong, and waste all the work I’ve done. I’ve a mind to come along too.”
“Gods, man. Are you determined to make my blood boil today? I’ll get Bastian to rip it from your cold, dead hands if that’s what it takes.” Thaler took a step forward, and Morgenstern took one back.
“As you say, there are far more important matters to worry about. I’ll sit on a cart. I don’t weigh much.” He took himself away, and pointedly climbed up next to the teamster on the lead wagon. They were using Jewish carters, and he fell into conversation quickly.
Thaler balled his fists and grunted with frustration. If the old man wanted to put up with the hardships of travel, and to rough it in a tent at the other end, then who was he to dissuade him?
The first of the pots was hefted into the waiting cart, and the loaders took time to make sure it was positioned centrally between the two axles. Nothing broke, so Thaler assumed they were competent to load the others, and went to help with stacking the powder.
His powder team seemed more than capable, too. They lifted the kegs one by one, made sure that the metal bands around the barrels were padded with scraps of canvas, and listened to the rattle they made, before moving onto the next.
The fuses, both slow and quick, and the tools and buckets, were loaded with equal care. And the long-barrelled iron pot they’d named Gunnhilde was already safely lashed to the flat of another cart, next to one of Bastian’s new bronze castings. There were two more of these in a different wagon.