by Robert Earl
“It’s a punishment, menheer,” Mihai replied to the fat man. “I have to stand like this for three hours every morning for a fortnight.”
The brewer regarded him sceptically.
“For three hours?” he repeated. “That isn’t possible. I doubt if even I could do it.”
Brock took a look at the brewer, who had all the athleticism and poise of an overstuffed sausage skin, and decided that the old braggart must have already been at his own wares. Mihai barely hesitated before replying, though.
“Perhaps not, menheer,” Mihai said, looking at the brewer, “but then, I can see you carry a lot of muscle. There’s not much more to me than skin and bone, as my aunties say.”
“Why’s he standing like that?” another Lerensteiner asked, as she came to stand beside the brewer. She was as well-padded as him, and the tone of her voice marked her as his wife, just as surely as the gold ring on her podgy finger.
“He says it’s a punishment, my love,” the brewer replied, his tone lowering and becoming conciliatory.
“A punishment, hey? Doesn’t surprise me.” She took a quick look around and then lowered her voice. “These Strigany are always up to something. What was it?”
“What was what, my love?”
“His crime, you silly old fool.”
The brewer spluttered. Mihai, despite the growing pain in his arms, came to the man’s rescue.
“Wasn’t exactly a crime, ma’am,” he told her. “It’s just that I lost my master’s money.”
“Stole it, more like,” another upstanding citizen added, and then looked around nervously.
“Thought so,” the brewer’s wife said, swelling with vindication. “Maybe we should throw something at him.”
The proposal brought a happy murmur of agreement from the half dozen spectators, and a couple of them looked around for likely missiles.
“Oh it was nothing like that,” Mihai hastened to assure them, and his left arm visibly trembled for the first time. “It was just that I lost too much money to the local lads at the last town. I’m the exhibition boxer, see, trained to it, but in that last town, well, what could I do? The further to the north we go, the stronger they seem to get.”
“That’s true,” the brewer told everybody within earshot. “It’s the climate and the ale. Makes us strong.”
He slapped the immensity of his stomach in illustration, and some of the hardness left his wife’s face as she regarded her man with something approaching pride.
“You’re probably right,” Mihai said, “but it’s like I told my master. That last town was just a fluke, an oddity. There’s no way any of the lads here will be able to match them. No offence, obviously.”
The brewer, his sense of civic pride obviously as wide as his girth, bridled.
“I can assure you, young man, that our lads are the equal to any in the Reikswald, or any in the Empire, for that matter. We are, after all, Lerensteiners.”
There was a chorus of agreement, and Brock, still hidden within the traces of a wagon, smiled. He would never understand how his son could possess both the wit to turn his punishment into a sales pitch, and the stupidity to have warranted it in the first place.
Truth be told, he could never understand Mihai at all.
“Hold on a minute,” another man said. He was as well upholstered as the brewer, although, whatever his business, it obviously didn’t involve such an immersion in his wares. He had the air of a man who was both sharp-eyed and stone-cold sober, and who didn’t care who knew it. “If this lad is supposed to be the prize fighter, why would he be punished like that? It won’t do his chances much good if he goes into the ring with tired arms.”
“That’s exactly what I said, menheer,” Mihai agreed vehemently “I told my master, just like you said. How am I going to keep my guard up properly if my arms won’t stop shaking? He wouldn’t have it, though. He’s got this idea that Lerensteiners are a pushover anyway, something somebody told him in the last place.”
A dozen or so spectators had gathered. They looked angry at this slight, and Brock wondered if Mihai might have overdone it.
“Lerensteiners are a pushover, are they?” This was the stone-cold sober one again, and Brock realised that he had made a mistake. The man obviously wasn’t too sharp to have been taken in along with the rest of them. “If that’s the case, I suppose you’ll be giving odds when the fights start?”
“Probably,” Mihai said. “We usually do.”
The questioner and the brewer turned to look at each other, and what Brock assumed was a rare moment of agreement passed between them.
“Well, then,” the brewer said, “we’ll be seeing you later.”
Mihai made sure that his arms trembled as they walked off. He hid the smirk on his face by looking away from the townsfolk, which was when he caught sight of his father lurking behind the traces of one of the wagons.
Brock turned away before Mihai could see the grudging pride on his face. This was supposed to be a punishment for his stupidity the night before.
Miserable wretch, Mihai thought, and looked angrily back out over the crowd. As the day wore on, Brock continued to prowl around amongst the shadows of his caravan. He watched the faces of the customers as they bargained, and their subsequent delight at the price they bought their wares at. He was glad to see it.
By the time the goat had started to roast on the pit another group of townspeople had come down, and then another, and as the afternoon shadows lengthened into early evening, the Striganies’ camp site was thronged, filled to bursting as it digested the people of Lerenstein and their hard-earned gold.
Brock, who had spent the day lurking, decided that it was dark enough for him to take a stroll through the main circle, without his battered appearance scaring anybody off, but, before he had so much as stepped away from his wagon, a bony hand reached out and gripped his elbow.
“Petru Engel,” Brock said, recognising the black-clad old man despite the darkness. “What’s up? Pickpockets, is it?”
The petru barked with what Brock assumed was laughter.
“Worse than that,” he said. “We’ve just had a visitor.”
“I can see at least two hundred.”
“No,” the petru said, a rare impatience sharpening his voice. He looked around and leaned closer, “I mean, a black-clad visitor, slightly built.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes.”
Brock sighed, and looked up at the first of the stars overhead. He glowered at them as though this unwelcome visitation was somehow their fault.
“Well? What news?”
“You’d better come and hear it for yourself,” the old man said, and, without waiting to see if his domnu would follow him, he turned and hastened away to his wagon.
Brock followed him, slipping away from the main fair and into the encampment. The voices and instruments of the entertainers, and the chatter and laughter of the crowd became muted as he and the petru slipped into the old man’s wagon.
It was pitch dark inside, so Engel sparked a match to light the lantern. It flared into life with a fart of sulphur, and, in the blossoming light, Brock could see the eyes of the petru’s visitor glittering like onyx beads.
It was one of the biggest ravens he had ever seen. It stood proprietorily on the back of the only chair in the wagon, its horny old claws gripping the wood as it regarded the domnu. It was as big as a hawk and, although it lacked a hawk’s talons, the great hook of its beak was as sharp as any raptor’s.
Brock wondered how many bodies that beak had dissected over the years, how many eyeballs it had plucked. He found himself touching the empty socket from which his own eye had been plucked on a battlefield. Then he put the thought from his head. It had been a man who had done this, not a raven, and anyway, it never paid to show the petru’s familiars anything other than respect.
“Close the door,” the old man told him, as the glow of the lantern lit the interior of the wagon. Brock did so, locking out the
muffled sounds of the fair beyond. Then he turned back to face the raven. Its eyes were as sharp as a wife’s tongue as it watched him, and the domnu nodded politely towards it as he sat on his haunches. It didn’t nod back.
“So, what news do you bring, most noble of bandits?” he asked. The raven cocked its head to one side at the question, almost as if it understood. Its eyes remained fixed on Brock’s, even when the petru unfurled the message that had been tied to the leather cylinder the raven still wore around its leg. The raven turned its attention to the old man and cawed, the sound impossibly loud within the confines of the wagon.
“He is hungry after his flight,” the petru explained as he ran one finger soothingly down the raven’s black mantle, “I have promised him fresh meat. As to the message, it is clear enough. It seems that the peasants’ great lords have decided to banish us from these lands. They will send us to a place by the Black Mountains.”
Brock looked at him, his face carefully expressionless. “Banish us to where?” he asked.
“We don’t know, somewhere in the mountains, maybe.”
Brock scowled, and shifted uneasily.
“The mountains,” he mused, “at this time of year? That would almost be as bad as another persecution.”
“No,” Petru Engel said, “it wouldn’t.”
The domnu looked up, confused by the tone of the old man’s voice. Then he remembered.
“Of course, you remember the last one don’t you? I’m sorry.”
The petru shrugged.
“It was a long time ago,” he said, although by the bitterness in his voice, Brock thought, it could have been yesterday. He sighed, and looked back at the raven. If ever there were creatures of ill omen, they were these black-clad scavengers.
“We owe the honourable creature a debt for bringing the message,” Brock said carefully, “but I wonder how we know it is true? Many a rumour comes to nothing, many a promise, too.”
“Oh, we know it’s true,” the petru said miserably. “I’ve known this one since he was a chick, and I’ve known his master for nigh on half a century. If Petru Viorel says we should prepare, then I believe him.”
Brock frowned.
“Prepare how?” he asked, frowning as he thought aloud. “Even if we are exiled, who will enforce the decree? Should we obey it? Maybe the danger of defying our noble lords is less than the danger of risking the mountains in winter. Think, petru, even if the weather didn’t kill us, how will we survive? Not even Strigany can live on stone.”
“That,” said the petru, “is what we have to decide. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and find my friend here some flesh. He has many more caravans to find before his task is done, and he’ll need his strength. After that we can talk.”
“Yes,” Brock said, already deep in thought, as the old man offered his bony old shoulder to the crow and carried it, hunchbacked, out into the darkness. “When we know what to do, we’ll call the council.” “Brothers and sisters,” Domnu Brock said, his tone rich with the formality of the occasion, “we are gathered here on the night of Geheimnisnacht Eve to discuss a matter that has arisen. It is a matter that is of great importance to us all.”
He paused and peered around the circle of wagon masters. They sat gathered around the embers of the watch fire, their eyes dark with unease. Even those who had been nodding with the exhaustion of another day’s trading roused themselves, woken by the gathering sense of anxiety as much as by their domnu’s words.
“Two days ago, our petru received a message from another caravan,” he continued, “the caravan of Domnu Viorel. Some of you know him.”
“I know the man’s got the luck of an elf when it comes to dice,” somebody said, and there was a ripple of laughter.
“I’ve had the misfortune to play dice with him too,” Brock answered with an easy grin, “but whether or not Viorel’s luck is all that it appears, he is a man to be trusted. He is one of us. His blood is our blood. Dice is one thing. Our survival, and the survival of our people, is another.”
The council’s good humour withered like a green shoot beneath a late frost. Brock was pleased. It wasn’t going to be easy to talk his people into the decision that he and the petru had already taken.
“Yes, our survival,” he continued, and, letting the thought hang in the air, he gazed into the red glow of the embers. “It would appear that the nobles of these lands have issued a decree, a warrant. It says that all of our people are to leave these lands and go south, to a place called Flintmar. It’s a patch of heath that lies between the Moot and the Black Mountains.”
The silence that followed this statement was broken only by the crackling of the settling fire.
“The Black Mountains,” Mihai repeated, “sounds lovely.”
There was some nervous laughter. It died as Brock scowled at his son.
“So, where exactly is this Flintmar place?” somebody asked, and it took the domnu a moment to recognise old Esku.
“It is near where the Upper Reik leaves the Black Mountains,” he told him, “south of the Black Fire Pass.”
“How near to the Black Mountains?” Mihai asked.
His father felt a flash of irritation at his son’s interrogation. Then he bit back on the feeling. Mihai was, after all, old enough to sit at council, just. He was the part owner of his own wagon too, along with the twins, who sat on either side of him.
“A couple of days’ march, we think,” he said, shrugging. “It’s nearer than I’d like, but there it is.”
“A couple of days’ march,” Mihai scoffed, “for us, perhaps. Not for the things that infest that cursed place, though. Orcs roll along at a faster clip than we ever could, and they’re not even the worst of it.”
“No need to scowl like that, domnu. He’s right,” Deaf Tsara shouted from behind the flared tube of her ear trumpet. “We’d be better off taking our chances here. Outlaws or not, it’s never made any difference to those who want to rob us, or do business with us.”
“We’ll stand on our own feet, as always,” Mihai said, and there was a ripple of agreement from the assembled wagon masters. Brock bit back the reply that sprang to mind. Things had been so much easier in the mercenary company he had served in. There, he gave an order and it was followed.
He took a deep breath, reminded himself that Strigany were no more soldiers than goats were sheep, and answered.
“First of all, you don’t have to tell me what we’ve always been, Mihai,” he told his son, his single eye bright with anger. “I know that better than you, as does every one of your elders around this fire.”
The two men glared at each other. Then Brock continued.
“Not that I don’t know how you feel,” he conceded, remembering the need to sound reasonable in front of the other wagon masters. “That is why those who would destroy us have worded their decree as they have. They know of our pride, of our strength, of our endurance. They’re counting on it, because they want us to stay.”
“I thought you said they wanted us to leave?” Mihai asked.
“What they want,” the domnu told him, “is us, dead. One of the peasants who signed this proclamation is the Elector Count of Averland. He has always been our enemy, and with this decree the entire Empire will join him in his persecution.”
“I don’t know about that,” Esku offered. “There are a few like the lunatic Averland in every town. So what? We move on and leave them to be devoured by their own hatred. There aren’t that many of them. Most of the peasantry are happy enough to see us.”
“After this decree is pasted onto every billboard in the state, they’ll be even happier,” Brock said, grimly. “With the law telling them that it’s not only their right, but also their duty to rob us? The entire land will become our enemy. Is becoming our enemy, I should say There are already stories from Altdorf of what is happening.”
“But the Black Mountains,” another wagon master said. “It isn’t just the danger that lurks within them, and we all know that’s
real enough, but how will we make a living?”
“It will be hard,” the domnu told him directly, “damned hard, but overcoming hardship is what we are born for. I don’t need to tell you that. It’s written into the charm carved into every main beam of every wagon, and taught to every child we are blessed with. We will endure.”
“Endure on what?” Mihai said. “Fine words? Fresh air?”
“Watch your tongue,” Brock snarled. Then, seeing the same question in a dozen other faces, he realised that he’d better answer it.
“We will survive as we have always done,” the domnu told him, “by trade. We make better brandy than any of the peasants. We weave better cloth, and make better jewellery. The Upper Reik is near, and it flows down into the Empire. It can carry our goods down as easily as riders can carry gold back up.”
“Who will do the carrying for us?” Deaf Tsara bellowed.
“We’ll have to hire some of the peasants, some we can trust.” Even as the domnu said it he realised how ridiculous the idea sounded.
“There are none such,” Esku said, and there was a murmur of agreement.
“We’ll see,” the domnu stalled, “and anyway, merchants will surely come to us.”
“They’ll come to us, yes,” Mihai said bitterly, and despite his irritation Brock couldn’t help feeling a flash of pride as he saw how many of the wagon masters were listening to his son. If only the lad wouldn’t argue all the time. “They’ll gather like crows above a slaughterhouse, and squeeze every ounce of profit from our work. I’d rather starve.”
“That’s your choice,” Brock told him. “You can starve, the rest of us will live until we can get the banishment lifted.”
“Do you think we will be able to?” Deaf Tsara shouted. “And how long will that take?”
“I don’t know,” the domnu shrugged, “a few months, a few years. We have the gold, and it’s a rare elector whose principles can survive the right price.”
“In other words, we could be there forever,” Mihai added, ignoring his father and looking around the circle, “rotting like animals left to die in a trap, and prey for the peasant’s merchants and the beasts of the Black Mountains. No. No, I say we take our chances.”