The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories (7 page)

"I never believed that," I said sharply.
 
"I never believed there was anything for me except a grave."

McDonald shrugged.
 
"And yet here you are, Graf Falkenau.
 
Mayhap you didn't believe it, but you did it all the same.
 
You've a rare kind of stubbornness to you and a quicksilver wit behind those black Bavarian eyes.
 
I said to myself, there's a man who's lucky, so I'll stand behind him.
 
It's paid off so far.
 
But you know as well as I that fear of you is the only thing that's keeping some of those lads from torching castle and village both."
 
He shook his head.
 
"You can't turn off an army of mercenaries, Georg."

"Don't you think Wallenstein knows that?" I asked.
 
"He's twenty years longer at this game than we, and the canniest man in the empire.
 
If he's seeking terms he has a plan.
 
Perhaps we'll turn this around and attack Richelieu, give him back a bit of what he's handed out."
 
I paced over to the window again.
 
"In which case you've got the company, my friend.
 
I'll take myself out and you'll be captain.
 
And the boys can do as they wish — sign on with you or muster out."

"They'll sign on, most of them," McDonald said.
 
He gave me a gap toothed smile.
 
"You'll retire, and I'm for a field in the Elsass."

"Unless you'd rather be master at arms for Falkenau," I said.

He shook his head.
 
"Not me.
 
I'm a gambling man, Georg.
 
One more throw of the dice to make me king!"

A shiver ran down my spine, as though we had spoken of this before.
 
Perhaps we had, only I did not remember it.
 
"Sometimes it's better to leave the table when you're winning," I said.
 
"To leave off grasping for the ring of fire and be content with what you have, rather than risk all and lose all."

"Maybe so," he said, but when it came to that I thought he would not stay.

Winter came, blowing in on the heels of the storm that had followed me, a hard freeze and a light snow, just enough to coat the cobblestones in the night and give a taste of what was to come.
 
We had problems of fodder, and I sent McDonald around with Izabela's factor to see what they could buy up from outlying farms where our army had not yet been.
 
McDonald didn't ask if he could just take it.
 
After all, I was their overlord now, and stealing from my own peasants would be foolish.
 
It would be stealing from myself.

Advent came, and Christmastide.
 
The cheer was perhaps the ghost of what it would have been in a normal year, but we were settling in to some kind of truce.
 
Izabela's people did not hurry through the hall anymore without speaking, their eyes averted.
 
There were fewer crude jests and more flirtation.
 
I'd hang a man for rape, but a word here and there, a strong back to carry a heavy load of laundry upstairs, a word from a handsome fellow…
 
Some would find their Christmas cheer.

Not I.
 
Izabela spent one night in seven in my room for form's sake, lest people talk, but I had not touched her.
 
Usually we did not speak at all, merely slept back to back in the big curtained bed without a word said, our truce in force.
 
And yet during the day I thought we were not so ill-matched.
 
She was clever and quick, and if her reading had not the breadth of mine it had more method.
 
After all, she had been carefully taught from childhood, trained for the responsibilities that would be hers since she was a babe in the cradle.
 

"Of course I read Latin," she said in surprise one day when I found her bent over a medical book.
 
"And French.
 
And a little Greek, though I had not got much of that before I married."
 
Her voice sounded a little wistful.
 
"My father had no son, and I knew what I must be.
 
He saw me well settled before he died."

"And your husband?" I asked, going about the table she worked at and sitting in a chair where she could keep my hands in view.
 

"He was my cousin.
 
It was all arranged," Izabela said.
 
Her eyes evaded mine.
 
"He was a good man."

"But you did not love him."
 
The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Izabela smiled at me.
 
"What is love, Captain?
 
I was betrothed to him when I was eight and he fourteen, and we married five years later.
 
It was a good match and it kept the peace between our houses.
 
I could not rule Falkenau alone, and I was born in the twilight of my father's life.
 
He knew he would not live to see his grandchildren and indeed he did not.
 
He died when I was fourteen.
 
How should I have held Falkenau alone, a girl of fourteen with no husband?
 
I should have been prey for any hawk that wanted to stoop upon us.
 
Jindrich brought the protection of his family and his name as well as his sword arm."

"And yet you are the more talented in battle," I said, remembering the defense of Falkenau.
 
That had not been shabby for a woman still short of twenty.
 
Beneath her pretty eyes she was better than I.

"A quirk of fate," Izabela said.
 
She shook her head and for a moment I thought I saw tears there.
 
"Were I a man I could defend my people and my God and would not have to look to such as you."

"True enough," I said.
 
"But does it not stand to reason that your God has made you this way with a purpose?"

"I wish I knew what it was," she said.
 
She looked away.
 
"I see no reason in it, save to teach me humility."

"And have I humbled you so?" I asked.
 
"By God, madam, not half of what I could!"

"Well I know the threat that hangs over me," she retorted.

"Then would it not be better to do it and have done?" I asked.
 
Perhaps my pride smarted.
 
Or perhaps it was desire.
 
"Or is that a field in which you fear to face me?"

"I do not fear anything about you, captain," Izabela said.
 
Spots of color appeared on her face.
 
Her clear, translucent skin showed everything.
 

"Then come and give me a kiss," I said.
 

I expected that she would flounce from the room with a quick riposte, but she did not.
 
Izabela rose from her chair and walked around the table very deliberately.
 
I did not move.
 
I did not twitch a muscle as she bent and touched her lips to mine.
 

There was fire.
 
She was no timid thing, no trembling virgin scarce touched.
 
Her husband had got two sons on her, and she had enjoyed the making of them from the way she kissed,
consumingly
and intemperately, as though it were a challenge with trumpets and all, as though it were she who stooped to conquer.
 
It was I who was left breathless as she straightened, the color high in her face.

"I do not fear to meet you, captain," she said.

"Perhaps you might progress to Georg under the circumstances," I managed, thanking whatever demons owned my soul that I had nearly two decades on her in age.
 
Were I a boy her age I should belong to her like a lap dog.

Izabela's eyebrows rose.
 
"Should I seduce you then?
 
Wrap you about my finger and so secure clemency for my people?"

"It is a time-tested strategy," I acknowledged.

Izabela sat down on the edge of the map table, another foot between us, which was probably a mercy.
 
"You do not have the power to grant what I want," she said.

"And what is that?"

"That we should not have to convert or face the sword."
 
Her chin rose.
 
"Your Emperor will make us Catholic.
 
This is Hussite country, Georg.
 
We know what it is to lose.
 
We know what it is to be persecuted for our beliefs."

"Izabela, I care not whether you worship with priest or minister," I said.
 
"It is all one to me.
 
I care not if you light candles to the Virgin or Baphomet or that ancient fellow Jupiter!
 
Have I raised a hand to stop your pastor from preaching?
 
Even once?"

"You have not," she acknowledged.
 
"And we do know that.
 
But your Emperor will not let it remain so, and you cannot gainsay the powerful men who will require it of you."

"He is not my Emperor," I snapped.
 
"You speak as though I chose him.
 
I have no oaths to him.
 
I have not even laid eyes on him!
 
I am Wallenstein's man, and I will go where he goes."
 
And in that moment I realized I had said too much.

Izabela's eyes narrowed.
 
"By which you mean Wallenstein may yet leave the Emperor," she said quietly.

"You have said it, not I."

She regarded me solemnly.
 
"And if so, you are his man, not the Emperor's?"

"Yes," I said.

Izabela sat back on the edge of the table, her skirts brushing against my legs, but I did not think she even noticed.
 
Her face was abstracted, as though she parsed out some tactical problem.
 
"Why would you do that?
 
Why would he?"

"Because if we do not have peace we will have a wasteland," I said.
 
I did retain enough sense not to mention Richelieu.
 
"Wallenstein is Bohemian.
 
He does not wish to see this land made a desert."
 
I sat up and reached for her hand, taking her fingertips in mine.
 
"Izabela, cannot we have a truce?
 
Our interests run together, so far as they go."

"You want Falkenau."
 
Her eyes met mine solidly.

"Yes," I said, and threw the dice once more.
 
"And you cannot hold it without me.
 
You are talented and you have the tactical sense of a man, but you are right that without a husband to act in your name you will be prey for any hunter, while I need you to have any claim to that which I have taken.
 
If we make common cause, who can stand against us?"

"Only the armies of the world," Izabela said, and there was the devil's smile on her lips.

"Then let the armies of the world try us," I said.

At that she laughed, but she did not withdraw her hand from mine.
 
"You are very strange," she said.

"Am I?"

"Stern and cheerless, but when you say things like that it is almost as if there is someone else inside you, someone I might like to know."
 
She shook her head.
 
"I do not have it in me to fear you."

"Perhaps that is your temper, not mine," I said.
 
"Well, Izabela?
 
A truce between us?"

"A truce," she said.
 
"And let it serve as it may."

Winter came down in earnest.
 
The mountain roads were clogged with snow.
 
It took three days for a dispatch rider to reach Plzen, a distance that was only a day in good weather.
 
February opened, candles for the Churching of the Virgin glimmering on the snow, a hard freeze on top of snow knee deep.
 
The roads closed entirely.

For all practical purposes we were alone.
 
Falkenau might have been the only settlement of humans in a world of ice.
 
The river was frozen.
 
Snow rested on the ice like a great plowed field.
 
Beneath it, water flowed, cold and ready to swallow the unwary.

There was food enough, carefully rationed out.
 
No roaring fires or roasted boar, but endless cauldrons of soup flavored with a little ham, breakfasts of bread and cheese.
 
We did not live well, but none of us would die.
 
The world narrowed.

And yet somewhere beyond this, beyond the mountains, things were happening.
 
The occasional dispatch was unenlightening, and yet they left me oddly on edge.
 
They said too little and nothing directly.
 
I should go to Plzen myself and see what passed, but the snow was deep and I had not been ordered to.
 
And yet as the days passed, as February began to wane, a deep unease settled over me.