Reinmar apologised, but the soldier had already forgiven him his clumsiness. “The boy will be all right,” the sergeant opined, referring to the other seemingly serious casualty. “The clubs knocked the wind out of him, and he’ll have some ugly bruises, but there’s nothing broken so far as I can tell. Perhaps as well—I don’t suppose there’s a bone-setter nearer than Eilhart, or even a barber, and letting the smith have at him would be likely to do more harm than good, by accident if not by design.”
“I dare say that you can set a bone, if you have to,” Reinmar said, his mind still on the other casualty. “If not, Godrich can turn his hand to most things.”
“Never met a steward who didn’t fancy himself a swordsman and a surgeon,” Vaedecker muttered, ungraciously, “but they serve best of all when they only stand and wait.”
The gypsy who had spoken to Reinmar obviously had more faith in a steward’s judgement, for he was anxiously begging Godrich for a verdict on the girl’s condition.
“Not good, I fear,” Godrich said. “She’s taken a bad blow to the head. We ought to move her into the inn and make her comfortable on a mattress. There’s not much we can do thereafter but wait.”
“Wait!” Rollo exclaimed. “We cannot wait here! Not after this.”
“You’ll come to no harm tonight,” the steward said. “You’ve nothing to fear while we are with you. In the morning… we’ll consider our options again.”
Rollo and his unhurt friend immediately removed themselves by a couple of paces from their rescuers and went into a huddle. After a couple of minutes they re-emerged, the spokesman saying: “Tarn and I must find the others, tell them what is happening and find out what they want us to do. I’ll be back as soon after daybreak as I can. If you’ll look after the boy and the girl till then, we’ll be grateful—but after that, we’ll have to be gone. Those louts may still think they have a score to settle.”
“We’ll keep them safe tonight,” Reinmar promised, speaking swiftly lest Sergeant Vaedecker had other ideas. “We’ll wait for you in the morning, before we move on to sample the vintage you’ve brought in.”
“Thank you, sir,” the gypsy said. “It’s a fine vintage, all things considered, and I’m glad you’ll be getting the benefit of it. I’ll see you in the morning—but you needn’t wait. We’ll find you easily enough wherever you may be, and I’d as soon not have to come back here.”
In the meantime, Sigurd had gone to the door of the inn, which had been firmly closed and barred while the fight had raged, and had begun to hammer upon it.
The innkeeper must have been watching from a window, as would anyone else in the village who possessed a window, but when he opened the door he pretended to be astonished by what he saw.
“Godrich!” he exclaimed, in the manner of a man greeting a long-lost cousin—or perhaps more generously than that, Reinmar thought, having recently seen the greeting his father had given to an actual long-lost cousin. “You’re early this year. Come in, come in!”
“Help me with the girl, Sigurd,” Godrich said. “We must lift her very carefully, supporting her head, and we must lie her down as gently as we can. If you and Sergeant Vaedecker would care to bring the boy, Reinmar, it will save time.”
The innkeeper did not extend his act so far as to ask what had happened or who the injured people were; he merely stepped aside to let his unexpected guests convey their own unexpected guests into his sitting-room.
“I’ll send a boy to take care of the horses and the cart,” the innkeeper offered, when both burdens had been safely laid down.
“That’s very kind of you,” Godrich said, “but Sigurd and I will see to that. You know how anxious we always are to see that no harm comes to our cargo.”
“Of course,” said the innkeeper. “I’ll see what I can find in my own cellar—but the food’s poor, I fear. The hunting’s been terrible all summer, and it’s hardly been worth holding a market. I’ll probably have to import supplies from the lowlands to see us through the winter—and that won’t sit well with the people hereabouts.”
“We’ve supplies of our own,” Godrich assured him, with a slightly contrived sigh, “which you’re welcome to share for tonight, of course.”
“Very kind,” said the innkeeper. “Very kind.”
“Too kind by half,” Matthias Vaedecker muttered in Reinmar’s ear. “Considering the number of friends you’ve lost by breaking up that fight, slipping our host a slice of ham won’t even begin to make amends.”
“Too late now to disapprove,” Reinmar observed, dryly. “When the fight was on, you did the right thing.”
“I did,” the sergeant agreed. “But did you? I’m just a soldier passing through, but you’re a wine merchant. It must be difficult, though, feeling obliged to support both sides in a dispute like that.”
“It’s easy enough,” Reinmar assured him, “if you stick to the principles of common sense and decency.
He expected Vaedecker to scowl, but in fact the sergeant smiled, and clapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Enough for one day, friend,” he said. “Let’s get some rest, and some food. There’s nothing like a good fight to build an appetite—and that farce out front was certainly nothing like a good fight.”
Reinmar looked at him suspiciously, but he could not see any hidden meaning within the feeble joke so he eventually condescended to smile and nod. Then he went to the pallet beside the fireplace, where Sigurd and Godrich had laid the girl down.
He had not realised before how beautiful she was, but now the lamplight shone full upon her face he realised that she was quite exceptional. She was of the same general type as the girls he had often seen dancing for pennies in Eilhart’s market square, with glossy jet-black hair, a dark complexion and soft full lips, but she seemed more delicate and exquisite than the robust and slightly coarse dancing girls. Although she was unconscious her facial muscles did not seem relaxed. She was, in fact, wearing a troubled expression, as if her sleep had delivered her into a disturbing dream.
Far from making the girl seem less appealing, the troubled expression awoke a fervent pity in Reinmar, and he yearned to be able to dive into her dream and rescue her from its nightmare threats. While he watched he saw her lips move, and for a moment he thought that she was about to wake, but whatever words she was trying to form remained inchoate and soundless.
Reinmar knelt down beside the nomad girl and bowed low over her head, but there was nothing more to hear. From this angle, though, he could see the blood matted in her hair where she had been struck by a cudgel, and he could make out the contours of the ugly bump swelling up beneath the bloodstain. If her skull was split, he supposed, she would certainly die—but human heads were notoriously hard and resilient, and she was probably far less frail than she seemed. At least, he hoped so.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “No harm will come to you. I swear it.”
“Don’t promise too much,” Godrich murmured. “She’s in a bad way.” Reinmar was afraid that he might be right. Even so, he was prepared to promise anything within his power.
Chapter Nine
As was usual, Godrich instructed Sigurd to sleep on the wagon. Because the innkeeper’s barn was separated from the inn itself by a considerable space, and because he judged that the risk to the stock was far greater than it was on most nights, the steward decided to join his labourer. He apologised to Reinmar for leaving him alone with the soldier to take care of the two wounded gypsies, but assured him that he would be ready to come to their aid at a moment’s notice—as Vaedecker would doubtless be ready to come to his.
When Reinmar demanded extra pallets so that he and Vaedecker could sleep beside the stricken pair the innkeeper shrugged his shoulders and sent his boy to stuff a couple of linen sacks with straw. He did not apologise for the quality of the straw, nor did he assure them that he would be ready to answer any further whims at a moment’s notice. This failure of customer service presumably reflected his suspicion that the evening’s e
vents might leave an awkward legacy of bad feeling festering in some of his regular clients.
“We had to break it up,” Reinmar said, defensively, when he and Vaedecker had been left to their own devices.
“Agreed,” the sergeant said wholeheartedly. “I’m not such a stickler for propriety as to say that fighting should be reserved entirely for soldiers, but I can’t stand to see people going at it without the least semblance of military discipline. Reminds me of the unruly creatures we sometimes have to face on northern campaigns. If people like us can’t do our bit to keep order, who can?” His tone made the words sound less than wholly serious, but Reinmar suspected that he meant every word.
“You talk of creatures, monsters and ogres,” he said. “Don’t you ever have occasion to fight men when you’re off on your adventures?”
“Oh yes,” said Vaedecker. “Mostly men—but the distinction isn’t always as clear as you’d imagine. Men can be marked, you see, when they turn against the ideals of civilisation, order and empire. It’s as if they begin to become creatures as soon as they forsake the discipline of being human. The further they go in opposition to the ideals of order and harmony, the more bestial they become—and in the end, there’s nothing left of them but monsters. Some liken it to sliding down a slippery slope, but a businessman like you might find it easier to imagine it in terms of finding the obligations of human society too taxing, and the evasion of that tax slowly compounding into full-scale fraud.”
“You don’t like businessmen very much, do you?”
“Never think that, lad,” Vaedecker said. “I know as well as anyone what rewards the Empire reaps from healthy trade along the Reik. What I worry about is that such folk often come to consider themselves immune from the threats and temptations that afflict the rest of us, and they’re not. People like your grandfather and his brother think they can dabble in black magic the way they might dabble in tax evasion, but they have no idea what they’re playing with. They don’t realise that the risks they run aren’t just borne by them but by the rest of us. It’s bad enough when nomads and gypsies dabble in magic, but at least they’re on the fringes of society, not really part of its fabric. In his prime, Luther Wieland was at the very heart of society in Eilhart, and his corruption could have been a direly serious matter. You can’t imagine how great a debt you owe to your father’s strength of mind. Had he not purged your business of the dark wine the whole of Eilhart might now be as sick, frail and mad as the old man.”
“He’s not mad,” Reinmar protested. “He’s just old.”
“Older than he would be if he’d never taken a sip of the wine of dreams,” Vaedecker opined. “But the false youth he’d have obtained had he continued to drink it would have been bought at a terrible price, paid by everyone with whom he came into contact—including you.”
“So you say,” Reinmar countered, the criticism calling forth his natural stubbornness. “But I hear talk of that kind all the time, and none of it ever matches my reality. There are monsters in the hills, I hear—but the only monsters I have seen have been brutes attacking women and children with clubs, rakes and pitchforks. The north has so many monsters that they gather into armies to harry the Reiksguard and the knights of every other order, so you tell me, but the only military action of yours that I have observed was the search of my father’s cellars. The tales that are told of the Empire’s glorious history ramble on about the great war against the skaven, the great war against the Vampire Counts of Sylvania and the legendary victory of Magnus the Pious over a monstrous horde at the gates of Kislev, but are there skaven or Vampire Counts in the world now? And what is Kislev but a neighbour state with which we trade? Do you see my difficulty, sergeant?”
“Only too well,” Vaedecker agreed. “But you do not see mine. I do not know for certain whether there are vampires in the world now, but I believe it. As for skaven—if that is the name for men-become-beasts who take their stigmata from the common rat, then yes, there are skaven in the world now and I have spilled their blood myself. Now Kislev, it is a state of sorts, where men struggle hard to do what men must do to retain their manhood, including trade, but it is a state under perpetual siege by every kind of evil, after a fashion that you cannot seem to grasp. I suppose I should hope that the scales of innocence never fall from your eyes, but I cannot. If you were my son, Reinmar Wieland, I would want you to understand what kind of a world it is in which you live, however harsh the lesson was.”
“Bravo,” said a weak voice. “Might I have some water?” It was the gypsy boy, who had obviously recovered consciousness some time before, and had been waiting for an opportunity to make himself heard.
Reinmar filled a leather cup with water from a jug which the innkeeper had left for them on the table.
It was not until the boy had drunk it, wincing at the slightest movement of his head, that he noticed the second casualty. “Marcilla!” he said, angrily. “What have they…?” He could not finish the sentence.
“She’s still alive,” Vaedecker was quick to say. “She’s taken fewer bruises to the body than you have. When she’s slept off the head-blow that knocked her out she’ll probably be fine.” He was promising far too much, but he obviously did not want the boy to become too agitated. By way of further distraction he added a question. “Is she your sister?”
The boy made as if to nod, thought better of it, and whispered: “Aye. We’re twins, but not alike—like enough, though, that I might have been felled by the blow that hit her, without even taking a bruise to my own skull.”
As he spoke the boy used his arms to drag himself across the floor, without even attempting to crawl, let alone to walk. When he arrived beside his sister he touched the back of his hand gently to her forehead.
“I knew it,” he said. “She has a fever. Half of this ache in my head is hers. I can feel the fury of her dreams, and…” He broke off abruptly.
“And what?” Vaedecker asked, mildly.
The boy did not answer. In response to his touch, however, the girl roused slightly. If, as the boy said, her condition was compounding his, the slight alleviation of his condition must have echoed in her own. Her eyeballs were moving rapidly from side to side beneath closed lids, and her lips trembled. A few muttered words escaped them, too ill-formed to be comprehensible, except perhaps for one.
Reinmar was at first perfectly certain, although it took no more than a couple of seconds for profound doubts to return, that one of the words she spoke was “call”.
Even if it was, he told himself, sternly, it might mean nothing. The word has a perfectly ordinary everyday meaning. And she might not have said “call” at all; the syllable might have been conjured up by my own imagination, primed by what my grandfather told us on the eve of our departure.
He might have told himself more, but he was not given the opportunity. Matthias Vaedecker had seized his arm and was gripping it hard. “What did she say, Master Reinmar?” he demanded. “What did she say?”
He knows, was Reinmar’s reflexive internal response. He knows what it means for a gypsy to hear a call. But what he said aloud was: “I don’t know, sergeant. My ear was only a little closer to her lips than yours.”
“What did she say?” Vaedecker asked the boy.
“She’s dreaming,” was all the boy would say. “She’s hurt—but you’re right. She cannot die. It won’t be allowed.”
Reinmar saw that Vaedecker’s first impulse was to demand a further explanation of the last remark, but he saw the sergeant clamp his mouth shut, as if in response to a reminder that he was now a spy, duty-bound to play a long and careful game.
When the sergeant released his arm Reinmar reached out to touch the boy, as reassuringly as he could. “If your twin is as sensitive to your condition as you are to hers,” he said, “would it not be a good idea to rest your bruises and to try to sleep?”
The boy turned to him, evidently surprised by his perspicacity, or perhaps by his concern. “Aye,” he whispered. “Is my
father hurt? Why are we here?”
“Your companions were wise enough to retreat in the face of far superior numbers,” Vaedecker told him. “They were pursued, but I suspect they’re fleet enough and clever enough to make good their escape. One man had to pick up and carry a young boy—might that have been your father?”
The boy nodded warily, although the gesture was obviously painful.
“The fight would have gone much worse for you had we not come along,” the soldier added. “We broke it up, saving a few hundred bruises and perhaps a life or two. Two others who remained—they named themselves Rollo and Tarn—judged that we were fit people to look after you, and defend you from any further harm. They promised to return in the morning. You’ll be quite safe until then. You have my word on that. I’m no knight, but I am a soldier—and I am sure that your father would know this man, even if you do not. He is Reinmar Wieland, son of the wine merchant Gottfried Wieland, whose stock you help to produce and refine.”
The boy was nodding more easily now, and it did not seem to be causing him too much discomfort. “I have heard of you, Master Wieland,” he confirmed. “I may have seen you, also, when we were both too young to take note of it. My name is Ulick.”
“I will see you safe, Ulick,” Reinmar promised. “Your sister too. Now, will you take my advice?”
The boy nearly nodded again, but this time felt that even mild discomfort was uncalled-for. “Aye,” he said. With some effort, he managed to raise himself to his knees and crawl back to his own pallet. He laid himself down with a deep sigh, seemingly satisfied that he could trust his companions to keep their word.
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