Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “Hello, Sophia.”

  “Hello, Felix,” she grunted into the grass. “Everything hurts.” It did, too. Quite exquisitely.

  “It’ll pass,” he said. “You’ll have to do it all again tomorrow.”

  Was now the right time to have that particular argument, or would it wait? She decided it would be better if she just presented it as fact in the cold light of morning, when he couldn’t afford to spare any riders to make sure she left.

  “Wine or beer or water?” Felix asked. “We have some of everything.”

  “Is the wine kosher? No? Then beer.”

  Reinhardt went to the barrel to pour a mug for her, and she’d started to roll onto her back, as a preliminary to at least sitting upright, when she realised she’d make the banner dirty. She undid the knots that tied it around her neck, and passed it up to Felix.

  “A present for you. You should fly it from the walls.”

  “My lady,” said Büber, “if we don’t know who we’re fighting for by now…”

  “Hush, Master Büber. It’s a fine idea. Thank you.” Felix folded the banner carefully and put it on his lap beside his sword.

  Sophia propped herself up against the log with her feet splayed in front of her in the direction of the fire, and accepted the beer from Reinhardt. “So,” she said, “why aren’t we attacking?”

  She could hear, rather than see, Büber and Reinhardt look at each over Felix’s head.

  “We chose not to,” said Felix, taking the responsibility for the decision away from the two men. “We don’t have enough spears and swords to do that properly. Our whole army is based around spears and crossbows. Bows aren’t a melee weapon, and our cavalry is limited, so we can’t rely on them to cover our flanks. We have to let them come to us. The terrain suits that sort of deep defence, all the more so now that we have ditches and ramparts dug. We can hold this place, but if we attack, we’d always run the risk of getting caught up in a battle that might turn on us in a moment.”

  “Let them make the mistakes,” said Reinhardt. “Let them get desperate so that throw themselves at our spear-points. Every step they take towards us we’ll be shooting at them. As plans go, it’s not very finessed, but I’ll take dull and slow over something flashy and risky.”

  “You’re very quiet, Master Büber,” Sophia noted.

  Büber rasped at his chin. He’d shaved his head, but not his stubble. “I don’t like this waiting any more than you do, and if there was a chance of breaking them and routing the whole horde, then I’d be at the front of the charge.”

  “But?”

  “There are too many of them, and, like us, they’re piled deep. Even if we chased the first few thousand off the field, we’d still run into just as many coming the other way, all with fight in them. And fight they will. They might not be the dwarves of old, but they can still swing an axe.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Can’t we can keep engaging them at a distance, then? Keep shooting at them with crossbows all the way to Rosenheim, and beyond.”

  “We didn’t know what the covered wagons were for,” said Felix. “We do now. If they get on open ground, they’ll spread out. Beyond here, after the valley widens again, they’re on the plain and they’ll have such a broad front they’ll surround us if we stop.”

  “So it has to be here.”

  “It has to be here. We should count ourselves lucky, because we couldn’t have chosen a better place. They’ll have to come out from under their wooden shells to engage us, and when they do, we’ll shoot them down.”

  She sighed. “If only—” she started, but Büber interrupted.

  “My lady, this enemy isn’t some mob with clubs. They haven’t come to take us alive, and they won’t be put off at the sight of spears and bows. This isn’t the library. Not this time.” He flicked his wrist, launching some crawling thing he’d caught into the fire. “I don’t like it either. But it seems it’s the best we can do.”

  Sophia sighed again, and wondered, just for a moment, what a mess Nikoleta would have made of the oncoming army: each wagon burning brightly, dwarves spilling out, on fire, dead and dying, struggling on while bowmen crowded the top of the embankments to make sure that not one of them reached the first ditch alive.

  Nothing but a bloody massacre. The Enn would have run red for a year.

  And that was the temptation, the sin of covetousness. If Nikoleta had been there, it would be all so easy. There’d be no need for Felix to be in harm’s way: he could safely oversee the slaughter from the baggage train. No need for Büber to put his life in peril again in the service of his prince. No need for the Jews to be camped out at Rosenheim.

  No need for her sword-arm, her prayers or her God.

  She drank her beer in silence, brooding. It was something she didn’t want to consider – that this was meant to be, rather than something to be avoided at all costs. HaShem would be with her, and all the Carinthians. Their victory would be divine, not mortal. They’d build an altar here, like her people had done in the time of the prophets, and they’d sound their shofar and chant their psalms of praise so loudly that the sound would echo all the way to Ennsbruck. HaShem would deliver them.

  At some point, by unspoken agreement, both Büber and Reinhardt got up and left, but she didn’t notice them go. Only when she blinked away the after-image of the fire did she realise that she and Felix were alone, and that he was sitting next to her, leaning back on the log.

  “I think …” she said. She stopped and swallowed. “I think Max Ullmann killed Nikoleta Agana.”

  Felix said nothing, and Sophia wondered if he’d heard her or not.

  “Felix?”

  “I … know.”

  “You know? You know I think he did, you think he did too, or …?” She looked sideways. “You know he did?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” he said quickly. “Why do you think he did?”

  “His …” She still didn’t know how to describe her. “The woman he’s seeing. She works for the Odenwalds. I had a chance to talk to her. And it’s not like Nikoleta hadn’t already beaten Eckhardt. She had him trapped in his room and he was on fire: Peter told Frederik as much.”

  “Perhaps Eckhardt caught her off guard.”

  “But then why does Master Ullmann wake up screaming about flames?” She stared into the fire again and wondered what it must have been like. “He was there, in the White Tower, before Peter. She’d not have suspected anything.”

  Felix nodded slowly.

  “He said to me something, a week or two afterwards, about how her death made things more simple, and how no one would be expecting the magic to return. How we could do things differently from then on.” The prince shrugged. “He was right, of course. It was more simple.”

  “Did you ever say he should kill her? Even as, I don’t know, a joke?”

  “No!” He lowered his voice. “No. She was one of us. She’d pledged her allegiance to me. I wouldn’t have done that. Sophia, you have to believe me.”

  “Then why is she dead?”

  “I didn’t order her killed. I’d never even met Master Ullmann until that night in the library, and I was never alone with him. Master Büber and Master Thaler were there the whole time. I even gave him my dagger so he’d be armed against Eckhardt.”

  She worked her jaw slowly. “And he killed her with it.”

  “We don’t know that, do we?”

  Sophia rolled back against the log, and banged her spine hard against the rough bark. “You’re going to have to ask him.”

  “Can it wait until we’ve won this battle?”

  “Don’t you want to know the truth?”

  “Do you think he’s going to tell either of us he murdered the mistress? Sophia, please. I made him a prince’s man and put him in charge of my spies because I thought he was someone who could keep a secret.” Felix pulled out some tufts of grass from under his legs and threw them fluttering in the air. “I need him. I need his spies and, right now, I need
his Black Company.”

  “They’re your spies, Felix. Not his. Your Black Company, too.”

  “Master Ullmann is loyal to me. He wants to protect me from my enemies. He wants what’s best for Carinthia. He just has a … a different way of doing it than you.”

  “Nikoleta Agana wasn’t your enemy.”

  “She would have become one.”

  “Is that you or Ullmann talking, Felix, because I can’t tell the difference any more.” There was no doubt that having a hexmaster around would have complicated everything they’d done in the short spring and long summer. In that, Ullmann was absolutely correct: Nikoleta’s dying with Eckhardt had meant that the age of magic was clearly over, and the Germans had no choice but to leave it behind. And for her people, they’d no longer had to watch their taxes going towards the upkeep the Order. But what if Ullmann had killed her? “No one’s above the law. That’s what you said. That’s what you wrote. I want him investigated.”

  Felix pulled his knees up and rested his chin on them. “Who’s going to do that?” he asked. “Who could I possibly ask who’d say yes?”

  “It has to be you, Felix.” She slumped against him. “Ullmann’s too powerful already. We should – no, I should – have realised something like this might happen at some point. Spymasters.”

  Felix picked up a twig and flicked it towards the fire. It fell between the logs with a puff of flame. “Once the huntmaster finds out, well: I imagine Master Ullmann’s innocence won’t count for much.”

  “When this is done,” she said, “there will have to be a reckoning. Nikoleta Agana was a loyal Carinthian, and she died defending the ordinary people from a great wickedness. Her blood cries out to us for justice, and we’ve been deaf for too long.”

  She felt Felix’s shoulders drop from a tense knot of bones to something more at ease. “When this is done,” he agreed.

  88

  Pre-dawn mist had settled over the fields and ran damp streamers between the tents. Büber, wrapped in a blanket, had slept out under the stars and fallen asleep to the sound of men talking low and late into the night. The music and singing had eventually died away, and more serious discussions had taken place: who would take care of whose family, who would inherit newly acquired land, or tools or a business. Fatherless children were apprenticed, widows were taken in, brothers were made.

  He couldn’t remember falling asleep, and neither could he remember waking up. He was simply aware of the glimmer of light above him, and the last of the stars fading away. He lay there for a while, watching the light creep across the sky, listening to the snores and the coughing, the river running by and the wind in the trees, smelling the faint drift of ash as a breeze stirred the white embers of the cook fires and the stronger scent of pine and crushed grass.

  It was time. He pulled the blanket aside and made his way quietly to the gravel bank to splash water on his face and pour it over his head. He could eat something, drink something else but water: he had a knot in his stomach that would be found in many a man that morning. If they won, then there’d be feasting and drinking. Today, that morning, better to go hungry and keep keen.

  A rider trotted over the bridge, and he went to meet him.

  “What’s the news?”

  “They’re on their way, Master Büber. Started moving just before first light.”

  “Same as before. Harass them, but don’t get caught. Do they know where we are yet?”

  The rider shrugged. “Unless they’ve spies in our camp, they’ll come at us blind.”

  “Let’s make it a surprise, then. Don’t stop just because you’re almost on our own lines, otherwise they’ll get suspicious.” Büber lifted his hand up to the rider, and the rider reached down to grip the huntmaster’s forearm. “Good hunting. When you get back to the col, my lord Felix will take command. Look after him.”

  “It’ll be our honour, Master Büber.” The rider turned and headed back the way he’d come, and Büber turned to the guards. “Sound the horns. Everyone needs to be up. Send word to Rosenheim: if they’re not already on their way, they’ll miss all this. If anyone needs me, I’ll be with the prince.”

  He walked behind the first earthwork and round to the gates. The guard stood aside for him, and he found Sophia sitting on the tree-trunk, Felix asleep at her feet under the banner of Carinthia.

  “My lady,” he said quietly.

  “Good morning, Master Büber.” She looked down sadly at the huddled form under the yellow and black. “If we can call this morning good.”

  “Ask me tonight,” he said, and then the slow ululation of the war horns breathed out across the camp, low and insistent. “The pickets say they’re on their way. We should get ready.”

  “Ready? Ready? Give us a year, two years, then we’d be ready.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, and only released it when she thought she could trust herself. “Sorry. Do you remember that night in the library? When you found Felix asleep next to me and you called me ‘my lady’?”

  Büber nodded. “And you said you were a lady of nothing. I disagreed.”

  “We’ve been desperate before, and we’ve come through. We’ll come through this, and we’ll earn ourselves some peace.”

  Felix stirred at the second blast of the horns. Perhaps he’d thought he was dreaming them, or that he was already strapping on his sword and fastening his helmet.

  “Pray to your god, my lady. Even I’m afraid.”

  He almost ran back to the gate, but checked himself. He was a berserker. When the battle lines met, he would lose all sense of himself and throw himself at the enemy. Sweet darkness would fall on his mind and he would either come to surrounded by the dead, or open his eyes to the roof beams of Asgard. Perhaps the gods had been kind to Nikoleta; she would be the first face he’d see, and she’d bring him a silver-rimmed horn of honest beer to share with her.

  So be it.

  The Carinthians were mostly awake. He watched them from the top of the earthwork as they struggled into their armour and picked up their weapons, then he went down to meet his men.

  The leader of one of his spear centuries was called Taube. He’d been a carpenter – apparently quite a good one. Then he’d had a diagonal cross cut into his face by Felix, and been sent to work in the salt mines as an alternative to being pressed. All the other men of Taube’s century could tell a similar story.

  Their scars looked ugly, uglier than Büber’s own. He’d won his honestly and each was a badge of something other than murderous intent: some would call it bravery, but he preferred simply to call it life.

  “Mr Taube. Line them up.”

  He had another century of spears – regular militia he was going to use to screen his crossbowmen. Three centuries against the whole eastern column of dwarves. He was to throw the enemy into such confusion that they were to believe there were ten times his number in the woods. Then he was supposed to push them into the Weissach, or hang them from the trees, whichever was more convenient.

  The Crossed, those who Felix called the damnati, could win their freedom – but only if Büber lived. Their liberty was down to his good report, so they had to fight. That was the bargain: otherwise it would have been too easy to kill him first, then escape.

  It still might be a choice they made. But they weren’t brigands, hardened by years of living outside of the law. They weren’t mercenaries, either, selling their skills to the highest bidder. They were ordinary people who’d made a poor decision, had paid the price for that, and were still paying.

  If they played their part today, they’d have paid in full.

  They were ready. So were the other centuries.

  Büber took delivery of a crossbow and a quiver full of sharp black quarrels. He slung them over his back, and there was nothing else left to do. “Let’s move out.”

  He led them – in loose order, because marching didn’t seem right for the war he wanted to wage – across the fields and pasture at the back of the Kufstein crag. Ahead was the narr
ow gap between the two steep hills through which the Weissach passed on its way to the Enn. Both hills’ sides bristled with trees, dense and dark. It was almost too perfect a place for an ambush, for a few to hold out against many.

  The track met the tributary, and followed it into the foothills. The trees closed around and over them. They were hidden from view, and Büber forged ahead to the rickety wooden bridge that crossed the river.

  It was summer, and the water was low. The banks were still sharp and deep, though, carved by the spring melt. Once they’d crossed, they’d knock the bridge down; not that it would take much effort. It would serve as another ditch, another obstacle, and one they hadn’t had to dig with their hands.

  He crossed it and stepped off the path, into the forest and up, along the flanks of the hill, moving from trunk to trunk, feet barely whispering on the needle-rich ground, brackens and grasses bending before him and springing back behind.

  Now he could hear them: a steady chop-chop of an axe at the base of a tree, the rattle of their wagons, their voices calling to each other. A few paces more and he could see them, edging forward. A tree fell away from the side of the track, and the line of wagons rolled on. There were perhaps as many as ten on clearing duty, if Büber had marked them off on his fingers and stubs right.

  They’d be the first to die. Then he’d set about the lead wagon. He’d been told there were a hundred such wagons, stretched in a long line up the valley, and still he wondered why. They were so ungainly and slow. They gave protection against bow fire, but, at some point, they had to come out and fight. Perhaps they feared the sky, and a vault over their heads gave them comfort.

  Büber wasn’t there to give them comfort.

  He pulled back and met his troops at the bridge, telling his Crossed to destroy it, while he led the other two centuries up and over the hill before spreading out along it. They knew to move as quietly as they could, not speaking. They knew to form up, crossbowmen behind on the slope with a clear view of the track, spearmen in front, crouched down and weapons ready.