by S. A. Swann
“Good.” He laughed. “I don't think I could manage that with my dad.”
Lilly nodded, even though, deep down, she knew there was no adequate explanation for how she felt, or what she was doing. “Uldolf?” she whispered.
“What?”
“It was fun.”
“I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't mean to.”
“I know.”
After a few minutes, Uldolf said, “Well, I'm dry.” He stood up, gathered his clothes, shook them out, and began getting dressed. Lilly watched him, trying to memorize every part of him—every part of this day. She never wanted to lose a moment of it.
He turned around. When he saw that she was still sitting naked by the boulder, he turned his face away from her. “I might be able to come tomorrow.”
“I'd like that.”
“Do you live out here?”
“No. I'm just waiting.”
“For what?”
“For my master to call on me.”
Uldolf nodded. “You'll have to go away then, won't you?”
“Yes.”
“I wish you could stay.”
Lilly closed her eyes. “So do I.”
“See you tomorrow.” She listened as he splashed off along the creek bed. After his footsteps faded into the woods, Lilly sat naked, cold, and alone, trying not to cry.
None
Anno Domini 1239
Usquequo, Deus, improperabit inimicus?
Irritat adversarins nomen tuum infinem?
O God, how long shall the adversary reproach?
Shall the enemy blaspheme thy name forever?
—Psalms 74:10
Chapter 21
The wagon with Gedim and his family arrived in Johannisburg a little after sundown. The Germans drove the wagon up to the castle where they were faced with a few hundred other Prûsan residents of Johannisburg and the surrounding area. Other than a large canvas shelter that extended over half the crowd, and a column of hastily erected privies, there were no other accommodations made for the Germans' “guests.” Armed and armored men guarded the perimeter of the crowd, none wearing the characteristic black cross of the Order.
Gedim saw a graphic demonstration of the seriousness of these men when a local man broke from the Prûsan crowd as Gedim's wagon arrived. The man was dressed as a farrier and still wore the smock of his trade, as if he had come fresh from a stable. He was a fair distance from the noise of the wagon, so Gedim did not hear the words he spoke as he broke ranks from the mass of his fellows.
Whatever grievance the man had, it was answered by the butt end of a guard's ranseur. The guard brought the shaft of the polearm to connect with the side of the man's head. The farrier dropped as quickly as if the guard had used the bladed end of his weapon, and he did not move afterward. And as Gedim was unloaded with the rest of the wagon's occupants, a trio of guards came to carry the fallen man away.
“Mama,” Hilde whispered from behind him. “They hurt that man.”
“Shh,” Burthe told her.
It's happening again, Gedim thought. They're going to split us between the “good” Prûsans and the “bad” Prûsans.
And somehow he got the sense that the dividing line this time was going to amount to more than a sprinkle of water and acceptance of a foreign god.
Gedim remembered how eight years ago the Order had gathered all the survivors of Mejdân. Those who had been baptized regained their homes—if they still stood—and their lands—if they had any. Those who refused ...
The old priests had been burned in Perkunas's own holy fire, before the perpetual flame was extinguished and the sacred oaks cut down to make crosses for the new god's church. Warriors like Gedim had been executed. Women and children had been taken away for slaves.
Eight years ago, knowing the consequences of refusal for him and his family, baptism had not been a hard decision for Gedim. He was not a particularly spiritual man, and it didn't matter to him whom he was supposed to pray to. The Christians won, in a bloody and final way, and Gedim accepted that his family would then pay homage to the winner's god.
But as he led his family to a less crowded part of the bailey, he wondered what price the Christians would ask of him now.
***
Shortly after the call for Vespers, a trio of men entered the crowd wearing white linen surcoats bearing the black cross of the Order. They carried baskets, and methodically handed out bread. Gedim was insulted at being placed in the position of a beggar accepting alms from the Germans, but not enough to refuse when the knight held out half a loaf to him. He had a daughter, and that took precedence over his pride.
He passed the bread to Hilde after taking it from the knight. Something about the man looked vaguely familiar.
“Tell the man thank you, Hilde,” Burthe told their daughter.
Hilde stepped up, looking at the ground, and said, “Thank you, sir.”
“You are welcome, child,” the man said. He looked around at Gedim and Burthe. There was an expression of contemplation on his face, and Gedim suddenly recognized the man. This was the same knight that had come to his farm earlier, looking for Lilly.
Of all the ill luck it was possible to have ...
The knight looked at Burthe and asked, “How fares your sick daughter? I do not see her here.”
“She passed away,” Gedim said, before anyone else could respond. Please, by Christ your god, take that answer and go your way.
“You have my condolence, I pray then she did not suffer, and she went to her Lord in peace.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I recall you,” the knight said, “but forgive me, I do not recall your names.”
“I am Gedim, and this is my wife, Burthe.”
The knight nodded but showed no sign of walking away. Also, when Gedim glanced around, he saw that the other knights seemed to have taken note of this one's pause.
“Well met.” The knight lowered himself to one knee in front of Gedim's daughter. “And what's your name, child?”
She edged toward Burthe. “H-Hilde.”
“That's a good name.” He smiled. “Can you tell me your big sister's name?”
Hilde grabbed Burthe's arm and shook her head. “Sir,” Burthe said, “she's still upset over our loss.”
“I understand. But it is a simple enough question.” The knight reached out and cupped Hilde's chin. “You can tell me her name, can't you?”
“L-Lilly. Her name's Lilly.”
The knight let go of Hilde and stood. “God loves children most of all, I think, because they are so free of guile.”
The other knights were now approaching them, weaving through the crowd. The knight looked at all of them in turn. “Lilly is an unusual name, don't you think?”
Gedim stepped between the knight and Hilde. “Please,” he whispered, “let nothing happen to my daughter.”
The knight looked at Gedim. “She's been the most truthful among you. I would worry less for her than for yourself.” In a moment, four knights of the Order surrounded them.
***
Hilde had never seen Papa scared before. She didn't understand what happened when Papa stepped between her and the big man with the bread, but she was suddenly afraid that she had said something wrong. When the man grabbed Papa's upper arm, Hilde cried, “Leave him alone.”
She ran at the man. Behind her, she heard Mama call her name, but all she could think about was that Papa was scared of the man, and it was because of what she had said. “Leave him alone!” She struck the man's leg as hard as she could, hurting her fist.
The basket he carried fell to the ground, scattering crusts on the ground around her. She attacked the man, biting her lip, tears streaming down her cheeks. She heard Papa yell, “Hilde, no!”
A large hand grabbed her arm and yanked her away. She looked around and yelled, “Papa!” when she realized it wasn't Papa who had grabbed her. The man who held her hoisted her up off of the ground, wrapping his mail-covered arm around h
er chest so snugly it hurt. “You will respect your elders, child.” The man was hard to understand. He spoke his words so thickly that Hilde would have thought him funny if she wasn't so scared.
The man turned and started carrying her away. Behind her she heard the other man yelling something at her parents. Papa yelled something back, but he was interrupted by a loud thump.
“I'm sorry,” Hilde whispered as she cried. “Please don't take me away.”
The man carrying her didn't listen.
***
Burthe tried to grab her, but Hilde moved too fast. Burthe watched in horror as her daughter attacked the knight who had taken hold of Gedim. Fortunately, for all its ferocity, Hilde's attack raised little more than an expression of bemusement on the knight's face. Burthe ran forward, hoping to end things before Hilde was hurt.
But one of the other knights scooped up Hilde before Burthe reached her.
“No!” Burthe yelled at the man as he muttered something in an incomprehensible German accent.
The knight with Hilde turned and walked away.
“Give me my daughter!” Burthe tried to follow the man, but another knight blocked her way. Behind her, the knight holding Gedim said something.
In response she heard Gedim yell, “You damned German bastards, give her back!” She turned to see Gedim striking at the knight holding him.
She gasped, her chest now so tight that her voice was completely gone.
Unlike Hilde's attack, Gedim's blow had some force and skill behind it, and it inspired more than bemusement from its target. Burthe saw the knight's head turn aside slightly, a trail of blood on his cheek.
The knight drew his dagger, and Burthe found her voice. “No! Don't hurt him!” She dove at them, but mailed arms restrained her from behind.
The knight slammed the hilt of his dagger into the side of Gedim's head. The force of it dropped her husband to his knees.
“Stop!”
The knight's boot came up, striking Gedim in the face. “You bastards—”
“Mind yourself, woman!” The knight leveled the blade of the dagger in her direction, pointing at her throat. “Do not compound your sins. Your daughter is unharmed, and your husband will live. Do not act or speak thoughtlessly now.”
Burthe stared down at Gedim. His face was covered in blood, and one eye was already swollen shut. Bile rose in Burthe's throat, and she had trouble catching her breath.
The knight gestured to the keep with his dagger. “Take her to a cell.” He pointed at one of the other soldiers who had been guarding the edges of the Prûsan crowd. “And you, help me with her husband.”
***
As he woke up, Gedim thought, That wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.
“Burthe? Hilde?” The words hurt. His lips were swollen, split, and partly clotted together. Moving his jaw ignited pains all across the right side of his face, and the sound of his own voice fed into a stabbing headache behind his temples.
Most painful, of course, was the fact that he didn't receive an answer.
He tried to open his eyes, but only his right eye responded. The light, dim as it was, fueled the throbbing in his head. Above him, a stone vault reflected flickering orange light from a lantern.
He pushed himself into a sitting position, despite the protests from inside his skull. As he sat up, he heard chains rattling. He looked down and saw that his legs were manacled to a heavy chain at the ankle. He reached up and touched his face. The left side was swollen and crusted with blood.
He was on a straw mat on the floor of a small room. The light came from a lantern outside, shining through a small square window in the door.
He got the feeling that they were going to want more than baptism from him this time.
***
Günter opened the door on a cell only a few hundred paces from where the beast had escaped seventeen days before. He still felt uneasy down here,
even though he knew the man he was about to visit. He stepped inside and Gedim turned to look at him. The man was a mess.
His shirt was coated with blood, the left side of his face misshapen and swollen.
Günter sighed. “Why would you do something so stupid?”
“The bastards took my daughter.” Gedim spat up a small bit of blood when he spoke. It rolled over a swollen lip and trailed down his chin. He reached up to wipe it off, but he only smeared it over his face before he winced and pulled his hand away.
“That isn't what I am talking about.”
Gedim stared at him with the eye that wasn't swollen shut.
“You need to tell us where she is.”
“Where who is?”
Günter rubbed his forehead. “Stop with the games, Gedim. Your own daughter told them her name. Do you even know what Lilly is?”
“Who's Lilly?”
“That's enough!” Günter reached down and grabbed Gedim by his shirt and dragged the man to his feet, slamming him against the wall of the cell. “You think this is just about you and your family? Bad enough that this ... this thing you're protecting slaughtered sixteen of my men. You want me to describe it? How she tore Manfried's arm from its socket, or ripped Jacob apart, or tore Uli's jaw free from his skull?”
Gedim stared at him, his right eye wide.
“Any night, you understand, this thing could have feasted on your family's entrails. But that's not the worst you've done, sheltering this creature. Why do you think they've gathered all the Prûsans left from Mejdân?”
Gedim shook his head.
Günter let the man go and stepped back. Gedim slid to his knees.
“The Order is no longer in charge here. We have a bishop from Rome now —a bishop who believes that the Order was not thorough enough in Christianizing the pagans. A bishop who is already convinced that this monster, Lilly, was freed by a Prûsan insurrection.”
Gedim shook his head. “No.”
“You gave him just what he was looking for, you arrogant fool. Did you think they sent out knights of the Order to search for someone—something— trivial? You better start thinking of what you're going to say when the bishop's inquisitor questions you, because if you say the wrong thing, you will grant him an excuse to wipe out every last Prûsan in Johannisburg.”
Chapter 22
In the boarding room in Johannisburg, Uldolf sat on a chair next to the bed, watching Lilly sleep. There wasn't really room on the bed for two people, even if Uldolf could sleep.
“Don'tyou remember?” she had said.
“Remember what?” Uldolf whispered. He reached up and rubbed the hollow where his right shoulder ended. He remembered what she had said in the cave when he had asked her about her own past: “It's bad to remember.”
He thought about that phrase, and how he had felt about her since she had said it. Her body might be whole, but he couldn't help imagining that their wounds were very similar. Maybe that was why his nightmares and the flashes of memory were becoming worse; maybe something in him knew that he couldn't help her if he still couldn't face his own past.
What he did know was that she faced demons as painful as his own, and from the way he had found her, they were much more recent. Thinking about it in those terms made her recovery, and her personality, all the more amazing. Less than a month from finding her mute and injured, and she was more talkative now than he had been a year after his own injury.
He balled a fist into his shoulder socket and moved his thoughts away from his own wounds.
Ulfie's not that brave. Not yet...
He needed to think of his family. That was his concern right now. The Germans had taken them. If Lankut was right, they were looking for signs of some sort of insurrection.
What if what all they really wanted was Radwen Seigson's son? Maybe if he offered himself, they would let his family go.
But what about Lilly?
He would have to get her out of Johannisburg, then try and parlay himself into a trade for his family. If he slipped her out the gate at dawn,
he could lead her through the woods ...
His thoughts were drifting too far toward desperation. He couldn't just lead her to the woods and leave her. He knew that his father would want him to make sure she was safe. She was their responsibility.
That could take days.
“What do I do?” He sat, clutching his shoulder, feeling nothing but a dark sense of despair that threatened to engulf him.
After too long like that, he thought he heard something. He lifted his face and looked around.
Singing?
The sound was soft, barely audible. The sound so faint that at first he thought it might be coming from outside.
Then he realized that it was Lilly.
He leaned forward and heard her softly singing a lullaby to herself. “Mother will protect her child. Should any nightmares come.”
Uldolf shook his head. Where had he heard it before? The words ran a chill through his entire body. The voice, he had heard that voice, those words ...
The girl, he remembered. The girl right before ...
“Her name was Lilly,” Uldolf whispered, staring at the curve of Lilly's face.
How could he have forgotten her? How could he have forgotten the strange girl he had played with in the woods? It was the best memory he had before his life had been torn apart.
Why would he have forgotten that?
He reached over and brushed the hair off her cheek. “Why did you come back?”
Lilly blinked and looked up at him. “Ulfie?”
“Lilly.” He smiled down at her. “I remember you now.” Her eyes widened and she sat up. “It was you, the girl in the woods.”
Lilly's eyes glistened, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She shook her head, as if she was denying it.
“Is that why you were at the pool? Were you looking for me?”
“I—I—” Her hands balled into fists, knotting into the bedding. She sucked in breaths, her back shaking.