It took that long for the letter from Firenze to find him. Giancarlo sent word that letters to him should be sent to a certain merchant company in Köln. But that instruction had taken some time to reach home, then the letter took its time to ride north with a caravan to the Empire. And Giancarlo was gone from Köln for months chasing Erich.
Still.
Erich’s wives were likely still alive, but surely now suffering horrors no woman should ever face. And Giancarlo’s wife was dead. Who was he to suggest this was not justice?
Giancarlo ordered another mug of ale, and the barmaid kept her distance as best she could.
2.
ERICH VON JÜLICH-BERG was in fact at that moment making love to his wives, and if they were suffering, it was a sufferance of perhaps one too many spells intended to enhance an experience that was normally enjoyed on its own merits.
Their passion spent for the moment, Erich disentangled himself from behind Ariel and Astrid and fell onto the bed beside them. Ariel crawled across him to lay on his other side. As was usually the case, she had begun things that afternoon, pulling Erich to the bed when they had returned from eating lunch.
Astrid rose and got dressed. He watched as she pulled on the leather breeches and long shirt he had convinced them to wear in place of their dresses now that they were on the road with him.
“We really need to get moving tomorrow,” he finally said. “We are risking the winter snows before we reach Wittenberg.”
Ariel lay there nuzzling him. “I like it here.”
“As do I,” Erich replied. “But if the snows begin, it will be a hard trip.”
“I’m ready to go,” Astrid said. “We’ve wasted enough time here.”
“I don’t think it’s been a waste,” Ariel replied, grinning.
But Astrid rolled her eyes. “Yes, you have made your priorities on this trip quite clear. I suppose we need go no further. There is a bed here just as there must be in Wittenberg. What difference could it make?”
Ariel’s face darkened, but Erich interrupted the nascent quarrel. “Enough, please. There is time for love and time for travel. But we need to balance the two, and it is time to move on.”
Ariel glared at Astrid briefly, but said nothing.
After leaving Weilburg and Walther behind, the three of them made it no further up the Lahn River than the Imperial town of Wetzlar before another fall thunderstorm arrested their journey. But the rains ended several days before, and they remained at the pleasant inn along the river where they had taken refuge the first day. Most of the time they had spent in their room doing much the same things as they had just been doing.
The spell his wives had cast to modify Erich’s anatomy on their wedding night, which allowed him to make love to both Ariel and Astrid at once, also made for some interesting complications. The experience had not yet lost its novelty for him—and he hoped it never would—but making it work required some positions he had never quite envisioned. The girls, though, knowing nothing else before this, seemed to have taken things as they were and enjoyed it.
But they also discovered that Ariel’s suspicions about why they had to do things this way—as a result of the complications of their conjoined, tripartite flows—were correct. One evening Ariel had taken the initiative with him, and Astrid, a bit tired and not paying attention, had not joined them immediately.
The moment they began, all three of them sensed a strange turbulence of energy, an uncomfortable resonance that Erich and Ariel later realized was exactly what they felt that night the two of them had destroyed Walther’s resonance cube. It rapidly became uncomfortable, and Ariel threw herself to the side.
The moment she and Erich separated, the resonance disappeared. Thereafter, they were very careful never to do anything except together.
ERICH, ARIEL AND ASTRID packed up the following morning and prepared to resume their trip. They returned briefly to the main room of the inn for breakfast. The innkeeper sold Erich a loaf of black bread, a chunk of hard cheese, and a round of small ale, and they sat down to eat.
“How long do you think it will take from here?” Astrid asked.
“If the weather does not interfere, perhaps two weeks,” Erich replied. “If it does, well . . . we will see.”
“Have you ever been to Wittenberg?” Ariel asked.
“Once. It was some time ago.”
“What is it like?”
“Not terribly different from Weilburg, if a bit larger,” he said. “There is a university there, but nothing like in Köln. It has grown in importance since Frederick made it his seat. But I have not been there since this business with Friar Luther began.”
“Are you sure we should be serving Frederick under such circumstances?” Astrid asked.
Erich shrugged. “Work is work. There will be plenty. You wanted to see the world. Trust me, you will see a great deal of it this way.”
“People are saying Friar Luther is a heretic,” Ariel said.
“That is for the Church to decide, not me. My skills begin and end with the sword.”
Ariel giggled. “They do not.”
Astrid smirked, and Erich laughed at the two of them. Then he grew serious again.
“On that point. I’ve been meaning to ask the two of you . . .”
“What?” Astrid asked.
“That night we matched, in Köln, you mentioned a spell that would prevent you from conceiving a child. Are you certain it works?”
Ariel and Astrid glanced at each other.
“It stopped our monthly bleeding,” Astrid replied. “We have not bled for two years, almost.”
“When women conceive, their bleeding stops,” Ariel said.
“I am aware of that,” Erich said. “But the rest of it?”
“I asked Father about it, after we returned home,” Astrid said. “He told me Mother used the spell. She had no children after us. They did not want any more. She gave birth to us within a year of their marriage, and nothing after that. I can only assume it worked.”
“All right. Because a child would bring a swift end to this trip. At the very least, it would greatly complicate things.”
“We know,” Ariel said.
“I am not saying I do not want children. But that is a thing for when we are settled and no longer wandering.”
The girls nodded, but said nothing. Erich stood.
“Let’s go.”
THEY FOLLOWED the river east before it turned north at the town of Gießen. There were small farms here and there close to the water, but toward either side, densely wooded hills rose around them.
Shadow the wolf loped along beside their horses, pausing occasionally to sniff something or cock her ears at the sound of a rabbit or squirrel. But she knew they were headed somewhere and so kept her attention mostly on the road.
Her memories before the wedding night were nothing but a fog of instincts and smells, but since then, she found that she remembered things in ways she never could before. She knew that whatever had happened that night had opened up her mind in some way, that it was related to the bond she felt with the man and the two women, this strange compulsion that pulled her along with humans she had once avoided.
She did not mind this, though. The feeling of being one with a pack was comforting and reassuring, even if her packmates were not wolves. Though she could not remember why precisely, this felt new to her. Before this was only vague loneliness and pain.
The day or so when they had been separated, when the other men had attacked her pack and taken the man and women away, had been a time of great stress, but Shadow somehow sensed that they were unharmed even after the men took them into the castle. She waited outside, not knowing what else to do. The next day they emerged, and her pack had reassembled.
Shadow knew the man and the women were mates, as befitted the alpha members of a pack. Indeed, they seemed to mate with great frequency. The smells of it were alien to her at first, but she had grown used to them.
But Shado
w also knew that, being human, they were nearly as blind to their environment as newborn pups, unable to smell and hear things that fairly shouted to her. She soon sensed that this would be her role, keeping watch in ways her human packmates could not. They in turn could fight off danger in ways Shadow could not, but she would need to make sure such dangers did not surprise them.
So when she caught the smell of troll as the woods drew close to the river as it went around a bend, she immediately stopped and cocked her ears toward the trees. She could hear nothing, but the smell was there.
“What is it?” Ariel called to her a moment later.
Though the words meant nothing to her, Shadow could understand her meaning through the magic of the familiar bond. But she had no way of answering directly. Instead she tried to think of what she smelled.
“She smells something,” Astrid said.
“What?” Erich asked.
“I can’t tell. It’s not human.”
No, it is not, Shadow thought wryly to herself. At least they understood that much.
But overlaid with the smell of troll was something else. The smell of an open wound. This troll was injured.
Shadow’s primal wolf instincts tugged at her. Injured prey was easy prey. She had never eaten troll, but meat was meat, and after several hours on the road, she was hungry.
But she stood still. She would not hunt without her pack.
“There’s something in there she wants us to see,” Ariel said.
“Dangerous?” Erich asked.
“I’m not getting that sense,” Astrid replied.
“Neither am I,” her sister said.
Erich turned his horse into the field. “It can’t be far. Let’s have a look, then.”
With Shadow leading, the pack moved into the trees. Erich loosened his war knife in its scabbard.
The smell was stronger here. Shadow loped up the hill between the trees, and the others followed her. The trees had started to drop their leaves as the fall progressed, but the group was soon out of sight of the road.
They found the troll a few minutes later where a stream cut through the hill. He was tall and fat like an ogre, but unlike the ogres they had killed on the road to Köln, he was dressed in fancy clothes, with leather breeches held up by suspenders and a green velvet waistcoat. His nose was the size and shape of a summer squash and his red hair stuck out of the sides of his head like a bristle brush.
But his face was pale and sickly, and Shadow could see why. It was what she had smelled. The creature had apparently stumbled coming down the hill to the stream, slipped on something, and broken his leg between a pair of large rocks. The sharp edges of the bone protruded through the leather of his breeches.
The troll appeared to have tried to bind his wound with shreds of cloth, but in his weakened state could no longer move. He saw the group approach and rumbled weakly.
“Come to finish me off, humans?”
Shadow paused, waiting to see the man and women would do.
“You are injured,” Ariel said.
“You have a masterful command of the obvious, little one,” he replied.
“How did you come to be here?” Erich asked.
“These woods are my home. I have no business with your kind as long as they stay out of here. I slipped and fell coming down to fish this morning.”
He indicated a pole and basket by his side.
“We could heal him,” Astrid said.
Shadow watched the man considering this suggestion. She was still hungry, but she could see now this was not prey, whatever they did here.
The troll’s mood improved slightly. “You are healers?” he asked.
“We are,” Ariel said. “Though I am not sure our skills extend to trolls.”
“Bones are bones,” he replied, “and I have little choice in the matter.”
The women looked at Erich.
“If we help you,” he asked, “can we trust you will pose no threat to us?”
He rumbled again. “I am a forest troll, not a mountain troll. I have no desire to see human soldiers flooding these woods to drive me from my hill.”
Erich nodded, and the women dismounted. They had the troll lay on his back and attempted to straighten his leg.
“The break is clean, at least,” Ariel said. “But the wound is serious.”
She and Astrid took his foot in their hands. “This will hurt,” Astrid said. “I am sorry.”
The troll grunted in pain and pounded the earth with his fist as they repositioned the broken bone. Then they rested their hands over him and closed their eyes.
As she always did when the women cast spells, Shadow could sense the energies of the Flow swirling around them, could sense it as they gathered the currents and focused them, sending the magic into the wound.
The troll grunted again, growling through his clenched teeth. But then he let out a long breath.
“The bone is set,” Astrid said to it. “But we must heal the flesh now.”
Shadow watched as the torn skin over the now-mended bone knitted itself back together. In a few moments it was done.
Ariel and Astrid leaned back, exhaling. Even Shadow could see what the healing had taken out of them. Their normally pale skin had gone a shade whiter.
“How do you feel?” Erich asked the troll. Shadow noticed his hand was resting discreetly near his war knife.
The troll sat up slowly. He looked down at his leg and flexed it gingerly, feeling the vanished wound. Then he turned to the women.
“I am in your debt, humans. Thank you.”
Ariel and Astrid stood uneasily. Erich came down from his horse. “Are you all right?”
Ariel braced herself on his arm. “The wound was grave, and we are not used to healing trolls.”
“We need to eat,” Astrid said. “And rest for a bit.”
“How far is it to the next town?” Erich asked.
“I have not left these woods in many years,” the troll replied. “But there is a human town to the north, along the river. Is that where you are headed?”
“If that is Marburg, yes.”
“It is. You may have difficulty reaching it before dark now. I am sorry to have delayed you like this.” He regarded Erich for a moment. “I can offer you dinner and lodging for the night, if you wish. I have no fish, I regret, but I could make a fine squirrel pie. I owe you something for healing my leg.”
Erich glanced at his wives, then down at Shadow.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Erich did not often speak directly to Shadow, but she could understand him as easily as the women and knew what he wanted of her now. She sniffed at the troll.
She smelled nothing but normal forest scents on the creature. Roots and berries, squirrels and pine martens, the lingering odor of fish in his basket. No human blood. There was no threat here.
She looked back at Erich and twitched her ears. He nodded.
“Dinner it is,” he said.
3.
THE TROLL lived near the top of the hill. His house was so cleverly constructed inside a copse of trees that they were almost on top of it before they saw it. Inside, it was a comfortable woodland cottage, though sized for a troll rather than humans, which meant the furniture was several sizes too large.
“I regret that I do not get many visitors,” the troll said, “and humans almost never. But let me see what I can set up for you.”
He rustled around in the storeroom at the back of the house before emerging with three sacks and several boards. He set up set up the boards into a makeshift table and stuffed the sacks with random furs until he had three soft chairs for the humans to sit in.
“Thank you,” Erich said. “Can I ask your name?”
“My name in your language is Bertrand. In Trollish, it would likely injure your ears.”
“I am Erich,” he said. “These are my wives Ariel and Astrid. And this is Shadow.”
The troll rumbled. “Two wives, eh? That is a trollish th
ing to do, though I have not seen humans doing it much.”
“There is a story there.”
“Well, let us save the stories for dinner,” Bertrand said. “Will you take some ale? I brew it myself from acorns I gather from the hillsides. It is a bit of an acquired taste, but you may find it to your liking.”
“How do you brew ale from acorns?” Ariel asked.
“Boil them ’til the water turns black to leach the bitterness, roast them well, press them to remove the oils, then grind what is left into a flour. The flour can be used for brewing or baking, and the leftover water from the boiling has other uses. The ale must be aged for a time, but that done, it is quite tasty.”
“That would be fine, then,” Erich said. “I wish to try this.”
Bertrand returned with three enormous steins of foaming black ale. Erich took a sip. As the troll had warned, it was strong, with a distinctly nutty—almost sweet—flavor, but the three of them found that they enjoyed it.
With his guests thus served, Bertrand stoked up his fire and set about preparing dinner.
“Where are the three of you headed?” he asked. “You do not strike me as merchants.”
“We are not,” Erich said. “I am a freesword. We are heading to Wittenberg, where I believe there should be reliable work.”
“I do not know that town. Where is it?”
“A week or two to the northeast.”
“Surely there is work for such as you nearer than that?”
“There likely is, but that is part of our story.”
“All right, then. Let me get this pie prepared, and you can tell me more.”
As Erich and the girls watched and drank their ale, Bertrand mixed up a batch of acorn flour and rolled out the dough, which he laid into a pie tin as broad as a beer barrel. Then he skinned and boned at least a dozen squirrels and tossed them in along with an assortment of roots and vegetables. Finally, he sprinkled everything with more flour, topped it off with a measure of ale, and laid a sheet of dough over the top. Thus assembled, the pie went into the stone oven over the fire.
The Witches' Covenant (Twin Magic Book 2) Page 2