by Simon Morden
“I don’t know, I’m afraid. I simply don’t know.” Reinhardt looked behind him at the spearmen he’d brought from Kufstein. “Everyone is tired and angry and not a little hopeless. We haven’t lost yet, but gods, we’re close to it. Unless Büber can win five battles like the one he already has, then that’s it. The dwarves could even choose to ignore us, and there’s little we could do to hurt them.”
“We haven’t lost yet? Well, that’s good, surely, because it means we can still win.” Thaler pulled himself together. “I’m sure we can sort something out in due course. It sounds like most of our army is still intact, yes?”
“Yes—”
“And you’ve made it back to the muster-point without incident, so there’s no reason to suppose that others can’t do the same.” Thaler smiled uncertainly up. “Courage, Master Reinhardt. Despite our tragic loss, we can still leave him a legacy to be proud of.”
“We need to rest. The field south of Rosenheim should still have tents. Bring your wagons.” Reinhardt sat back up and frowned. “What exactly do you have in them?”
“Gunnhilde and her three sisters, five pots of various sizes, ammunition, a great deal of black powder, and, frankly, whatever else we could find.”
“Not food, or crossbow bolts, or anything useful then.”
Thaler stroked his chin. “I shall take that as a reflection of your grief, Master Reinhardt. Lead your men into Rosenheim, and I shall join you shortly.”
Reinhardt ground his teeth together, but rather than saying anything more, he dug his heels in his horse’s flanks and slowly plodded on towards the bridge over the Enn. Thaler raised his stick at Morgenstern and jabbed it in the same direction, then walked back to his cart.
“Nothing useful indeed,” he muttered to himself over and over again, and he was in a sour mood when he climbed back up next to Kaleb. “A change of plan,” he announced. “To Rosenheim.”
“What news?” asked Tuomanen.
“Felix is dead,” he said baldly.
“Does that mean …?”
“No, it does not. Perhaps with lesser peoples it would, but not Carinthia. We can still put an army in the field, and we will still fight.”
Tuomanen dragged her fingers through her sleep-squashed hair, and left it spiky. “So who’s …?”
“Sophia.”
“A woman.”
“Well, she was the last time I looked.” He turned in his seat and narrowed his eyes at her. “I would’ve thought you’d approve of this development.”
“Felix was nice,” she said. “I liked him. He seemed very concerned about doing good.”
“He was. He’ll be greatly missed. Not least by Sophia.”
Tuomanen shuffled forward on her knees and leant between Thaler and Kaleb. “Will you dissolve into civil war now, with two or more claimants for the throne? Or will you take a Jew as your queen?”
“This isn’t the time for such singularly inappropriate talk, Mistress. We narrowly avoided one civil conflict. I trust that whatever solution we arrive at, we do so peacefully. Such transitions from one ruling house to another have happened before, as our histories testify.” He turned to the front again, and folded his arms.
Tuomanen whispered in his ear. “Except that you’ve got rid of all the earls, and now every man and woman is allowed to own their own land. Who’d want to rule a palatinate like that?”
“Someone who doesn’t aspire to be a despot, perhaps.” He huffed. “There are other forms of government, you know. Just because you’ve lived half your life under a tyranny.”
The cart in front jerked forward, and after a suitable gap had widened, theirs started to follow.
“The strong rule, the weak are ruled,” she said. “It’s natural law.”
“For an educated woman, you do speak all kinds of nonsense sometimes.”
“Prove it’s not so.”
Thaler puckered his lips as he thought. “Well, then. Perhaps you can explain why you’re here to debate such matters with me? Were you forced? Were you obliged? Or did you choose to come of your own free will and be among a company of free men and women, to fight for something that is little more than an idea?”
She laughed, tossing her head back and showing her teeth.
“Well played, Master Thaler, very well played indeed.”
“I thought so too,” he said, and allowed himself a certain smugness. “Oh, for certain, tyranny is our natural state – you’ll have no argument from me there – but it’s a mean, brutal and unstable state for both ruler and ruled. Civilised people will always aspire to greater things, and here we are, on the cusp of change again. Do we go on or do we fall back?”
“It’ll be interesting to watch,” she said.
“Watch? Watch? Good gods, Mistress. You’re as much part of this as I am.” He turned to look at her again. “All kinds of nonsense, I say.”
Kaleb just shook his head and concentrated on getting the cart wheels between the bridge parapets.
95
Sophia was determined to lead them in with something approaching dignity, but all she could manage was a bone-weary limp. The rush of battle had been one thing, but once its numbing effect had worn off, she’d hurt: all over for certain, her right ankle in particular, where she’d tried and failed to extract her foot from her stirrup as the horse fell underneath her. She’d ending up wrenching it free, and it gnawed at her like the everlasting worm.
They hadn’t been followed: Peter Büber’s intuition was proved right when the dwarves had refused to enter the forests after them.
And she’d killed Max Ullmann, who’d tried to kill her.
It hadn’t even been hard. A flick of her wrist, barely aimed. One moment he’d been next to her, and then he wasn’t.
Then she’d been in the trees, crashing through the undergrowth, putting as much distance between the dwarves and herself as possible, climbing up the valley-side and only stopping when she was all but pulled down by several bowmen.
She’d wept after that, and none of them had dared comfort her, though they consoled each other well enough as they cried their own public tears of loss.
Hidden by the forest, they turned north, and here they were again, at Rosenheim.
Across the river, she could see the camp fires Reinhardt had raised, and the reflection of the flames against the white canvas of the tents. She hoped that there’d be food and rest for her men, even while she knew there’d be precious little for her. She was in pain, inside and out.
Sophia saw the first wagon, sitting on the road, and wondered what it was doing there. She didn’t recognise it, and what it carried just looked like supplies. She passed the second one, and on a whim, lifted up the waxed canvas cover that was tied down over the goods. It was too dark to see anything. Barrels perhaps? Beer? Sauerkraut?
When she got to the third one, and saw that there were more ahead of her, she started to grow suspicious. She told her centurions to take the men down to the camp, while she dragged herself up onto the wagon bed to take a closer look. Her hands found rough, unplaned wood turned into packing crates, and her probing fingers cold, hard, metal balls the size of her fist.
“Frederik?”
She scrambled back and overtook half her army, limping ridiculously and growling at anyone who got in her way. When she reached the camp perimeter, she spoke to a weary guard.
“Is Master Thaler here?”
“He’s” – and he pointed – “over there with Master Reinhardt.”
“Have you eaten yet?”
“My lady?”
“It’s a straightforward question, man. Have you eaten?”
The man stopped leaning on his spear and looked alive for the first time in hours. “Yes, my lady.”
“Good. Just making sure. Now out of my way.”
She was almost to the point of dragging her right leg behind her through the camp when she came across Thaler, Reinhardt, the witch Tuomanen, and –
“Father?”
; “Ah, my girl. You’re safe.” Morgenstern smiled broadly at her. “I was worried for you.”
“I’m safe,” she echoed. “Yes. Father, what are you doing here?”
“Helping?”
She managed to convey that the emotion boiling up inside her wasn’t over-brimming joy. “Master Thaler, what have you done?”
Thaler hastily put down the bowl of stew he’d been ladling into his mouth, and got up off the little fold-up chair that he was somehow failing to break. “If I might explain,” he said.
“You’ve brought my father into the middle of a battlefield. Why are you here? Why are any of you here?”
“My lady,” ventured Reinhardt.
“Shut up. I’m not talking to you at the moment. I’m talking to my fool of a father and this great tub of lard that masquerades as a librarian.” She was vaguely aware that she shouldn’t be behaving like this, that her voice was carrying across the camp and that conversations were drying up like sheets in a gale all around her. But she’d had enough.
“Your father can calculate angles and distances more accurately and faster than any of us,” said Thaler. “And he wanted to be where we were.”
She turned on Thaler. They were more or less the same height, and his face was well within spittle-flecking distance. “Then why didn’t you all stay at home?”
Thaler didn’t answer straight away. He got out his handkerchief and dabbed at his face. “My condolences for your loss,” he said, then went back into his voluminous pockets for something else. “You may have my immediate resignation as master librarian. We’ll turn around in the morning and head back to Juvavum.”
He pressed something into her hands, and walked out of the firelight.
She looked down at what he’d given her, and angled it to the flames to see it better. It was the library seal.
“Master Thaler?” she called after him. “Frederik?”
He didn’t answer, and both Tuomanen and Reinhardt stood.
“I’ll—”
“Go.”
They looked at each other. “Why don’t we both go?” suggested Reinhardt, and the witch clearly agreed with him, because a moment later Sophia was alone by the fire with only her unexpected father for company.
He patted the vacated seat next to him. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it?”
She gnawed at her lip. “Will you use sarcasm?”
“Oh, I expect so. Irony, too. Later, though. Sit with me, my daughter.” He tapped the chair again, and she gave up trying to fight everyone. She sat, still holding the library seal in her writhing fingers.
“I lost him,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Frederik told me.”
“They—”
“I know that too. It’s a bad business, Sophia.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Morgenstern rested his hand on her shoulder. “I know.”
“You shouldn’t even be here.”
“That? I also know. Your father is very wise and knows everything.”
She leant into him. He was bony and small and uncomfortable, and she didn’t care. She was his. He even smelt of home. “What do I do now?”
He rumbled deep in his chest. “How about you listen to your old tateh for a while?”
She nodded, and he continued.
“Felix was a good boy, and he was a friend to us. That was your doing and I’m proud of you, whatever that fool doctor says. And look, you stayed strong when it mattered, you led the Germans into battle – my girl, Sophia Morgenstern.”
“We lost, Father.”
“Hush. You don’t know what you’re saying. What would you do differently? Your army’s intact, and all you’ve lost is ground. HaShem made plenty of it, so why should we care?” He gave a little grunt of satisfaction. “And this Ironmaker, you suppose he’s sitting comfortably on his throne with half his soldiers dead and little to show for it? If he counts that a victory, then he’s an idiot and we’ve nothing to fear. So far, you’re better than Joshua, David and Gideon.”
“But Felix is gone.”
“Yes, but why are all these Germans around you? Why is Cohen – Cohen, of all people – following that goy Peter Büber through the forests? Do I have to spell it out for you like when you were a little pitseleh? Things will sort themselves out one way or another, but don’t you think today has enough worries of its own? Why make more of them by insulting your friends and your own flesh and blood? They put you in charge, Sophia. It doesn’t have to be forever, but it does have to be for now: don’t make them curse the Jews all over again.”
“I can’t even sit Shiva for him.”
“We’ll get him back, and we’ll … well: they’ll put him on a boat and set fire to it like the heathens they are, but we can mourn the way we know how. And we can say the Kaddish later. After you’ve eaten.” He moved her aside and collected Thaler’s half-eaten dinner. “Here.”
She took it from him, and frowned at both it and him. “This is treif.”
“Listen to the ungrateful girl. I made it myself. It’s as kosher as you’re going to get out here, and besides, you look like you need a meal or two.”
“You made this? You?”
“Oy, what did I do to deserve this daughter? Yes. When Frederik devised this plan to get us all here – and that’s something that mamzer Ullmann never heard about – he knew he couldn’t get Germans to drive his wagons, because they were all busy catching up with good Jewish farming practice. So he went to the shtetls, and they came when we called. Jews grew this food, cooked this food, served this food. All you have to do is eat it.” Morgenstern folded his arms and waited.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then I’ll give it to someone who is.” He made to take it away from her, but, despite everything, she hung on to the edges of the bowl. He relented and let her keep it. “They need you to be strong,” he said.
She was still eating – thirds, by her counting – when a spearman came running.
“My lady, horses.” He took a shuddering breath. “Lots of horses.”
She put the food down by her feet and glanced at her father. “It can’t be the dwarves. Do they have a banner?”
“It’s too dark to see what’s on it, my lady. They’re coming from the west.”
“Call the muster, sir. I won’t be caught asleep.” She patted her hip to check she still had her sword. “Pray it’s not Teutons,” she said, then half ran, half walked towards the black outline of Rosenheim’s roofs, feeling the bright pain in her ankle with every jarring step she took.
She gathered as many as she could as she passed through the camp and they followed her out onto the Rosenheim road. Some carried lanterns with them, and the sparks of light they shed drew a shout from the distance.
She approached warily, making sure that her men were close behind her. With the lantern-light at her back, she could just about make out the outlines of Thaler’s borrowed carts and the shadows of mounted figures.
“Who goes there?” Her voice was swallowed up by the night, but, after a delay, it was answered.
“Prince Clovis for the Franks, Mistress. We’re looking for Carinthia.”
HaShem be praised. It wasn’t more foemen, but friends.
“You’ve found it, my lord. Welcome.”
“I was under the impression that Carinthia lay further to the east, beyond the Enn. My native guides have failed me.” He laughed, and the sound was both kind and generous. She could hear him dismount, and his horse shake out its mane.
“Horst? Manfred?”
“Here, my lady. But what are you doing out here?”
“I … the situation is complicated, sirs, and I’d much rather only explain once.” She squinted into the night. “How many have you brought?”
“Two hundred horse,” said Clovis. His blond moustache glittered with forming dew as much as his mail shirt and horse-head cloak clasp did.
“Two hundred.” She felt numb. Th
ey couldn’t have found two hundred horses, let alone two hundred riders, across the whole of Carinthia. “You are very welcome.”
Clovis dragged his half-helm off and bowed. “You must be the Lady Sophia, My father, King Clovis, sends his fraternal greetings to his cousin Felix. Surely you didn’t come out all this way to meet us, though.”
“We’ve fought two battles today, and we’ll be fighting a third here tomorrow. That, I think, will decide the fate of Carinthia one way or the other.” She bowed her head briefly, then realised what she was doing and how she must look. She raised her chin again. “We’ve killed perhaps a third of the dwarves so far, and it maybe as many as half by the time they reach us. We’re not defeated yet, but we are still outnumbered.”
Clovis pulled at his moustache. “I see. I came with experienced men to help train your armies. I didn’t expect to be in one.”
Sophia looked to heaven for inspiration. “My prince, I’d say that a man skilled in teaching others should be an expert in what he taught.”
“All the same,” said Clovis, shifting his weight and looking past her and her spearmen at the camp stretching out across the fields of Rosenheim, “I have no authority to go to war. The King of the Franks takes his responsibilities seriously, and our land borders Farduzes. I’ll need to speak to Felix about this.”
Her stomach shrinking to a knot, she steeled herself. “Felix is dead.”
Clovis thinned his lips and stared for a moment at the reflections in his burnished helmet. “Then who leads?”
“I do,” she said. “I am strategos and war-leader of Carinthia, by divine fiat and popular acclaim. Does the prince have to inspect my sword for battle damage, or will he accept my command on my word?”
The Frank struggled to contain his surprise. “Your command?”
“My lord Clovis, I’ve no time for fine words, an exchange of gifts or other diplomatic niceties. I have a battle to fight in the morning, with or without you. I’ll just say this: would you rather be known by your subjects as Clovis, Hammer of the Dwarves, or Clovis Pissbreeks?”
He reached for his sword, and so did she. The spearmen behind her lowered their spears around her, forming a wall of defensive blades.