The Crystal Empire (3 page)

“No, Wilhelm, you can’t.” Steadying himself against the window casement, Emil looked into his brother’s eyes. “You see, I’m hoping—for I’ll no longer pray—that they’re safely
dead!
”

Wilhelm stepped backward, aghast. “May god forgive you, Emil! Why?”

“Because”—Emil peered up the corridor and down, left hand reac
h
ing for the crescent pommel of his basilard—“your friend Clement’s correct. ’Twas a near thing, my making it here. An assassin’s indeed come with the intention of silencing you.

“God be damned!”

In a single fluid motion, Emil thrust his broad-bladed dagger upward, to the bar-guard, through the arch of his brother’s lower jaw. Wilhelm was almost relieved when the blow fell
.

Emil spoke to one who could no longer hear him. “You see, Willi, ’twas his own messenger, this assassin. Jeannette and our babies’re pri
s
oners of his enemies, threatened with torture.”

Tears streaming down his face, Emil gave one more cough, spat blackened blood.

He fell across his brother’s body and was still.

It was the
last
Year of Our Lord, 1349.

**

“..
.so let those who go against His command beware,
lest a trial befall them....”
—
The
Holy Koran,
Sura XXIV,
Light

“Prosperous are the believers who in their prayers are humble...and who pr
e
serve their trusts and their covenant....Those are the inheritors....”
—
The Koran
, Sura XXIII

"I
won’
t
!
”

The boy stood half inside the rowboat, one bare foot within
the green translucent hull, the other on the dampened planking
where the little craft lay canted. Scattered about him on the
dock were his father’s tools. Like a qua
r
terstaff clutched in his hands—one anchored at his left hip, the other ou
t
thrust before
him—he wielded the long sculling oar he’d hoped his idea
might make unnecessary.

The still air smelled rich with salt and iodine, the spicy stench of m
a
rine decay. The sun was hot, for a summer
morning with the dew just off the sparse sand grass. Skipping from unrippled water, it assaulted unprotec
t
ed eyes. The boy’s
fair skin was reddened by it, lightly blistered and pee
l
ing, as
seemed natural to him.

Better than the fish-belly pallor of this foul-odored old man who co
n
fronted him.

Answer there came, crack-voiced and wheedling: “Here, boy, stay thy hand! Too young thou art to pay the penalty thou beg’st for!”

The speaker was an undersized, wizened individual, his bony figure draped in unbleached fabric. His narrow-crested skull, with its ink-and-needle imprints at the temples, was scraped smooth. Where his simple garment left a shoulder bare, a crosshatch of ancient scars offended the eye. Two others, likewise swathed, tattooed, and shaven, stood behind him. They were younger, differing in their greater bulk—as well as in the lesser number of their scars.

Their leader leaned forward, stretched out a ropy-veined hand. “Give me that oar!”

Overhead a gull wheeled, mocking them both with its squeals.

Sedrich Sedrichsohn was big for a boy of eleven. He complied with the order—after his own fashion—thrusting the blade-edge into his to
r
me
n
tor’s solar plexus. Making retching noises, the small man folded, staggering backward, his hands clutched over the insulted portion of his anatomy.

The man’s companions each took a threatening step forward.

Sedrich recovered from the thrust, assumed a firmer stance straddling the gunwale.

He let the oar whistle in a defiant circle over his head.

They stopped.

Still doubled, the man looked up, hatred burning in his yellow eyes. “Why,” he gasped, “you young—”

Behind them, heavy footsteps vibrated through the pier.

“What in the name of Exile d’you think you’re about, Oln Woeck?”

It was a rich, rasping bass which interrupted them, followed by the whispery ring of hammered steel leaving a brass throat. Making more noise with his moccasin-shod feet than necessary, a giant form strode past the corner of the village boatshed. The wolfhide shoulder band of an empty half-scabbard crossed his shaggy chest.

From one huge fist he swung a length of polished metal, high as a tall man’s breastbone, broad as a big man’s hand, sharp-edged as an old man’s memories of yesterday.

Beside him trotted a pair of huge black curly-pelted dogs.

Scar-backed Oln Woeck straightened with visible effort.

“I greet thee, Sedrich Owaldsohn, renowned slayer of Red Men,
and
thy greatsword
Murderer
. This contraption of thy son’s devising”—he ind
i
cated the boat, upon which young Sedrich had begun to work some alter
a
tions—“is forbidden by the mandate of His suffering.”

Ignoring the formal salutation, Old Sedrich ran a free hand through his curly gray-blond mane, where a pair of eagle feathers, bound at their bases with bright thread, replaced the warrior’s braid he’d once worn. His nose was a great sunburned hook, his eyes the color of the frozen hearts of icebergs which sometimes passed this coastline in the sprin
g
time.

They flared, now, at the robe-draped man.

“What pigshit nonsense is this, skinny one?”

Like his younger namesake, he wore only a leather breechclout with matching vest, the latter decorated with buttons fashioned from the points of deer horn.

“Forbidden? Tell me where you see its fire-burning machinery, Oln Woeck!”

Both canines sat, tongues lolling, their faces curiously intelligent and ironic. Keeping a wary eye on the animals, as well as the end of Sedrich’s makeshift weapon. Oln Woeck stepped toward the boat.

He pointed at a black iron shaft which lay among the clutter of tools and parts.

“This was fashioned in thy forge, was it not, blacksmith, by
fire
?”

Owaldsohn laughed. “As well you know! Each moon-quarter I pay fire-tithe for the privilege! You ignorant dung-ball, there’s no more fo
r
bidden art in this thing than’s to be discovered in a cart-axle!”

He slammed the greatsword back into its half-scabbard, a
gesture more i
n
timidating than its unsheathing.

One of the dogs gave a good-natured bark.

“Be hush, Willi! Leave the boy to his tinkering, Oln Woeck—or, by my forge,
you’ll
pay a tithe, in bone and blood!”

“How darest thou speak to me thus!”

Oln Woeck’s face flushed red, veins standing out upon his forehead. Foam formed upon his lips, whence sprayed small
gobbets.

“I care not a whit that this be no combustible machine,” he
spat. “Ask the boy thyself, Owaldsohn—what is it for, boy,
what purpose doth it serve?”

Still braced, Sedrich looked down at the boat, perplexity
wrinkling his fe
a
tures. Across the gunwales stretched the iron
bar which seemed to be the f
o
cus of the older man’s
objections, bent at right angles in four places to pr
o
duce a two-
handed crank. Where it passed outboard, at the previous
locations of the rowlocks, small wooden paddle wheels of four
blades each were attached.

“Why, no more than to make the rowing easier, Oln Woeck.”

The old man grinned as if this were a confession, looking
back over his disfigured shoulder at his companions, then at
Owaldsohn.

“And why should rowing be made easier, young Sedrich?”

Perplexity turned to exasperation.

“So more can be accomplished in a given time, that the
livelihood of fisherfolk—”

Oln Woeck stamped a callused, naked foot.

“Thou’st no calling to make life easier, impious brat! ’Tis
the purpose of our lives to ease His suffering in Hell, by sharing it with Him on this earth!”

“So you say,
priest
!” the boy retorted.

One of the great hounds growled.

The three robed figures stepped backward, mouths agape,
eyes widened at the insult.

“This new idea is
mine
, old man, not yours to dispose of!” the boy continued. “Before I let you interfere, I’ll smash this boat and burn the spli
n
ters!”

Oln Woeck eyed first the fearsome father, then the brace of
war-dogs, then the boy. He peered down at the rowboat with its
half-finished inn
o
vations.

“
Thy
new idea, eh? What makest thee think we want new ideas? ’Tis new ideas’ve brought on every calamity a sinful mankind’s suffered for a thousand years!”

Wry humor danced in Sedrich’s eyes, the image of his father’s.

“All the better to ‘ease the suffering’ of your precious...”

The boy let it end there, feeling he had gone too far.

Indeed, the word “blasphemy” had begun to form upon Oln Woeck’s lips, but he silenced it.

A calculating look appeared in the old man’s yellow eyes.

“Tell me, boy, who first thought of rowboats? Who first thought of iron cranks? Who first thought of thee? This idea of thine resteth upon the i
n
ventions of others. It belongeth to the community who made boats and iron and thyself.

“Destroy it, thou committest theft, since thou’ve invented naught!”

Once again the boy was puzzled. He remembered well conceiving of the idea, persuading his father to help him with it at the forge, testing it for the first time across a barrel in the shop.

Unable to answer, he let the oar drop, until its blade-end rested on the pier.

Owaldsohn laughed, thrusting Oln Woeck’s companions aside. Dogs trotting behind him, he covered the distance between him and his son in an easy stride. Bending, he took hold of the paddle-crank at its center, strained, and, iron straps and nails flying, wrenched it from its attac
h
ments to the gunwale. Straightening, he gave it a casual toss.

It sailed far out upon the mirror-surfaced estuary and disappeared with a splash.

“Now,” the big man declared, “Sedrich’s dangerous idea’s gone fo
r
ever from your ‘community.’

“Gather up the tools, boy—if we’ve your permission, Oln Woeck. Willi! Klem! Let’s be going.”

As he followed his father’s instructions, the boy watched Oln Woeck’s hands clenching into fists, the veins of his forehead threatening to explode. The boy knew what was going on in his mind. Sedrich Owaldsohn was a hero of the western wars, a pillar of the community. He was even famous for a new idea of his own—folding two grades of steel under the hammer to create a sword unequaled elsewhere in the New World.

They daren’t make trouble with him.

At present.

As the two Sedrichs left the end of the dock, setting foot on solid turf, Owaldsohn laid a gentle hand upon his son’s shoulder.

“You did well with that sculling oar. You’ve learned the lesson well, that aught about you is a weapon.

“Howe’er...”

“Yes, Father?”

The older man ruffled the boy’s dark hair, bleached at the ends by exposure to sea and sun.

“If that muttonhead upon Master Thee-thou’s right hand had brought his wits with him, you’d be fishbait. Children’re too rare and valuable to waste by neglecting their instruction. And you’re too right-handed. You must put some work into your off-side.”

Sedrich grinned up at the shaggy giant. “Yes, Father.”

There was a long pause. “Father, about my idea being lost...”

Owaldsohn growled. “I’ll speak a word with Hethri Parcifal. A good idea’s rare and valuable, too. The village won’t permit the Cult to have its way in this.”

“’Tis all right, Father.” The boy smiled craftily. “I needs must start all o’er again, anyway.”

The big man stopped, stared at his son, a puzzled expression on his broad, bearded face.