Arcanum (96 page)

“Unless it’s their plan to come at us when we’re all but spent. Who’s in charge of the east bank?”

“Master Büber. Master Reinhardt has taken the west, and the prince is leading the cavalry.”

“And is there any way the dwarvish west side can reinforce their east?”

“The river’s wide and deep – not as deep as it is in spring, but the banks are cliffs. They could swim across, but they’ve shown no sign of wanting to do so. Unless they have a spare bridge about them, no.”

“So why wait? We could concentrate all our forces on the west bank, then bring them back against the east.”

“I … I’m not in charge, my lady.” Sophia’s escort turned away from her. “I don’t have the knowledge about how these things are done or the authority to order anyone to carry them out. All I can do is trust that those who do, make the right decisions. Otherwise they’ll end up throwing my life away for nothing.”

Now she was ashamed. “Apologies, sir.”

“Groer, my lady. Oktav Groer. From Hallein,” said the man. “Whether I ever go back home is in the hands of the Norns. Whether I’m remembered as part of a victorious army is in yours and the princes.”

“If we don’t win, no one will remember any of our names, except in a story to frighten their children.”

It was almost properly dark. Light from the half-moon made the brown road appear only slightly different to the green verges. At some point, they must have passed the Flintsbachs’ old farm, but she’d not seen the boarded-up windows or the cold byre. Fortunately, the horses seemed to know where to go better than they did.

The forest was darker still, pitch black with only a slit of indigo for sky. The southern summer stars turned in that gap, shining weakly and cold.

They kept going, silent as the night demanded, and, at the point where the peaks retreated from the valley sides, a voice leapt out at them.

“Who goes there?”

“Groer, and the Princess Sophia.”

A shuttered lantern opened and, feeble as it was, the difference between the light and the dark was more than enough to show the group of four spearmen emerging from one side of the path, and another group of four stepping out from the other.

One of them held the lantern high so that it showed their faces, though none of them had ever heard of dwarves on horseback before.

“Evening, my lady. That sword of yours sharp?”

She pulled it half out of its scabbard so that it caught the yellow light. “As sharp as your wits, soldier. I suppose we’ll need both in the morning.”

Another of the guards laughed. “Pray the gods your sword’s sharper; Heinrich’s wits are as dull as brick.”

“You can’t make a home out of steel, good sirs. For that you need…”

“Brick,” crowed the first man. “You see?”

Groer’s horse stamped its hooves. “Are you letting us pass, or are you showing off to the princess all night?”

“We’ll let you pass, horseman.” The lantern and the shadows surrounding it moved aside. “Give us a blessing, my lady. For tomorrow.”

She stiffened. “But your gods are not my God,” she eventually managed.

“So I’ve heard. But if there are Jews in the line with us, perhaps he might want to protect us as well as them, seeing how we’re all on the same side.”

Sophia took a deep breath and blinked away her tears. “Yes, yes of course.” But what to say? A psalm, a fragment of a psalm. “HaShem is my light and my salvation; who then should I fear? HaShem is the fortress of my life; of whom should I be afraid? When the wicked, my enemies and my foes, came at me to devour my flesh, they stumbled and fell. Though an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should break out against me, in this I will be confident.”

The words, familiar to her, foreign to them, seemed to pass muster even though she had to take both the cantor’s part and the responses. The guards murmured, and the lantern faded from sight as the shutter closed.

They rode on a little way further. The forest ended, the fields around Kufstein twinkled into view, bright with a constellation of camp fires.

“Where’s the prince?”

“On the Kufstein crag, my lady, with Masters Büber and Reinhardt.”

There was a gap in the pattern of fires, where the black river ran, and another where the walls of the fort blocked out the light. The bridge across the Enn was marked out with lanterns and guards on both sides, and Groer guided them down to it and across.

It seemed so happy. Laughter and music drifted up with the wood smoke and the cooking smells. Lyres provided the melodies while the rhythm was maintained on marching drums or pot helmets. The lyrics were raucous and bawdy, and the atmosphere was that of a festival night in Juvavum.

“Everyone’s in good heart,” she said to Groer.

“We’ve won some small victories today, for no loss. They take it for an omen.”

“And you, Mr Groer? What do you think?”

“I’ve seen the dwarves, in their thousands and tens of thousands. I’d rather not fool myself into thinking this’ll be easy.”

Their horses wound their way around the crag and through a rough but functional gate set into an earthwork faced with a palisade. The ground inside had one large fire, and a tree-trunk bench next to it, just like the one she’d sat on with Aelinn.

Except it wasn’t Aelinn’s face reflecting the firelight, but Peter Büber’s freshly shaved head, Reinhardt’s whiskered cheeks, and, between them, Felix, with the Sword of Carinthia resting across his knees.

When it came to it, she found she couldn’t dismount. Everything, the effort of riding, the effort of appearing to be able to ride competently, the effort of not showing any sign of pain, had overwhelmed her. Her legs had locked into position, and even though she was able to kick free of her stirrups, she was quite incapable of even falling off.

“I seem to be stuck,” she said, and only Büber was tall enough to lend any sort of practical assistance. His strong hands gripped her waist and bodily lifted her clear of the saddle, then tilted her almost horizontally to slide her free.

Neither could she stand when she was on the ground, and had to be helped onto the tree-trunk. Sitting was all but impossible too; instead, she lay face-down on the ground, the Carinthian flag draped across her like a blanket.

“Hello, Sophia.”

“Hello, Felix,” she grunted into the grass. “Everything hurts.” It did, too. Quite exquisitely.

“It’ll pass,” he said. “You’ll have to do it all again tomorrow.”

Was now the right time to have that particular argument, or would it wait? She decided it would be better if she just presented it as fact in the cold light of morning, when he couldn’t afford to spare any riders to make sure she left.

“Wine or beer or water?” Felix asked. “We have some of everything.”

“Is the wine kosher? No? Then beer.”

Reinhardt went to the barrel to pour a mug for her, and she’d started to roll onto her back, as a preliminary to at least sitting upright, when she realised she’d make the banner dirty. She undid the knots that tied it around her neck, and passed it up to Felix.

“A present for you. You should fly it from the walls.”

“My lady,” said Büber, “if we don’t know who we’re fighting for by now…”

“Hush, Master Büber. It’s a fine idea. Thank you.” Felix folded the banner carefully and put it on his lap beside his sword.

Sophia propped herself up against the log with her feet splayed in front of her in the direction of the fire, and accepted the beer from Reinhardt. “So,” she said, “why aren’t we attacking?”

She could hear, rather than see, Büber and Reinhardt look at each over Felix’s head.

“We chose not to,” said Felix, taking the responsibility for the decision away from the two men. “We don’t have enough spears and swords to do that properly. Our whole army is based around spears and crossbows. Bows aren’t a melee weapon, and our cavalry is limited, so we can’t rely on them to cover our flanks. We have to let them come to us. The terrain suits that sort of deep defence, all the more so now that we have ditches and ramparts dug. We can hold this place, but if we attack, we’d always run the risk of getting caught up in a battle that might turn on us in a moment.”

“Let them make the mistakes,” said Reinhardt. “Let them get desperate so that throw themselves at our spear-points. Every step they take towards us we’ll be shooting at them. As plans go, it’s not very finessed, but I’ll take dull and slow over something flashy and risky.”

“You’re very quiet, Master Büber,” Sophia noted.

Büber rasped at his chin. He’d shaved his head, but not his stubble. “I don’t like this waiting any more than you do, and if there was a chance of breaking them and routing the whole horde, then I’d be at the front of the charge.”

“But?”

“There are too many of them, and, like us, they’re piled deep. Even if we chased the first few thousand off the field, we’d still run into just as many coming the other way, all with fight in them. And fight they will. They might not be the dwarves of old, but they can still swing an axe.”

She clicked her tongue. “Can’t we can keep engaging them at a distance, then? Keep shooting at them with crossbows all the way to Rosenheim, and beyond.”

“We didn’t know what the covered wagons were for,” said Felix. “We do now. If they get on open ground, they’ll spread out. Beyond here, after the valley widens again, they’re on the plain and they’ll have such a broad front they’ll surround us if we stop.”

“So it has to be here.”

“It has to be here. We should count ourselves lucky, because we couldn’t have chosen a better place. They’ll have to come out from under their wooden shells to engage us, and when they do, we’ll shoot them down.”

She sighed. “If only—” she started, but Büber interrupted.

“My lady, this enemy isn’t some mob with clubs. They haven’t come to take us alive, and they won’t be put off at the sight of spears and bows. This isn’t the library. Not this time.” He flicked his wrist, launching some crawling thing he’d caught into the fire. “I don’t like it either. But it seems it’s the best we can do.”

Sophia sighed again, and wondered, just for a moment, what a mess Nikoleta would have made of the oncoming army: each wagon burning brightly, dwarves spilling out, on fire, dead and dying, struggling on while bowmen crowded the top of the embankments to make sure that not one of them reached the first ditch alive.

Nothing but a bloody massacre. The Enn would have run red for a year.

And that was the temptation, the sin of covetousness. If Nikoleta had been there, it would be all so easy. There’d be no need for Felix to be in harm’s way: he could safely oversee the slaughter from the baggage train. No need for Büber to put his life in peril again in the service of his prince. No need for the Jews to be camped out at Rosenheim.

No need for her sword-arm, her prayers or her God.

She drank her beer in silence, brooding. It was something she didn’t want to consider – that this was meant to be, rather than something to be avoided at all costs. HaShem would be with her, and all the Carinthians. Their victory would be divine, not mortal. They’d build an altar here, like her people had done in the time of the prophets, and they’d sound their shofar and chant their psalms of praise so loudly that the sound would echo all the way to Ennsbruck. HaShem would deliver them.

At some point, by unspoken agreement, both Büber and Reinhardt got up and left, but she didn’t notice them go. Only when she blinked away the after-image of the fire did she realise that she and Felix were alone, and that he was sitting next to her, leaning back on the log.

“I think …” she said. She stopped and swallowed. “I think Max Ullmann killed Nikoleta Agana.”

Felix said nothing, and Sophia wondered if he’d heard her or not.

“Felix?”

“I … know.”

“You know? You know I think he did, you think he did too, or …?” She looked sideways. “You know he did?”

“I don’t know for sure,” he said quickly. “Why do you think he did?”

“His …” She still didn’t know how to describe her. “The woman he’s seeing. She works for the Odenwalds. I had a chance to talk to her. And it’s not like Nikoleta hadn’t already beaten Eckhardt. She had him trapped in his room and he was on fire: Peter told Frederik as much.”

“Perhaps Eckhardt caught her off guard.”

“But then why does Master Ullmann wake up screaming about flames?” She stared into the fire again and wondered what it must have been like. “He was there, in the White Tower, before Peter. She’d not have suspected anything.”

Felix nodded slowly.

“He said to me something, a week or two afterwards, about how her death made things more simple, and how no one would be expecting the magic to return. How we could do things differently from then on.” The prince shrugged. “He was right, of course. It was more simple.”

“Did you ever say he should kill her? Even as, I don’t know, a joke?”

“No!” He lowered his voice. “No. She was one of us. She’d pledged her allegiance to me. I wouldn’t have done that. Sophia, you have to believe me.”

“Then why is she dead?”

“I didn’t order her killed. I’d never even met Master Ullmann until that night in the library, and I was never alone with him. Master Büber and Master Thaler were there the whole time. I even gave him my dagger so he’d be armed against Eckhardt.”

She worked her jaw slowly. “And he killed her with it.”

“We don’t know that, do we?”

Sophia rolled back against the log, and banged her spine hard against the rough bark. “You’re going to have to ask him.”

“Can it wait until we’ve won this battle?”

“Don’t you want to know the truth?”

“Do you think he’s going to tell either of us he murdered the mistress? Sophia, please. I made him a prince’s man and put him in charge of my spies because I thought he was someone who could keep a secret.” Felix pulled out some tufts of grass from under his legs and threw them fluttering in the air. “I need him. I need his spies and, right now, I need his Black Company.”

“They’re your spies, Felix. Not his. Your Black Company, too.”

“Master Ullmann is loyal to me. He wants to protect me from my enemies. He wants what’s best for Carinthia. He just has a … a different way of doing it than you.”