The Wine of Dreams (10 page)

For five or six seconds after Sigurd first cried out no one was actually
attempting to knock the remaining gypsies down, but that interval was not long
enough for them to find a route out of harm’s way—and when the mob realised
that the objects of their hatred were in the process of escaping, they still had
more than enough anger in reserve to make them stubborn.

Nobody shouted “Stop them!” because nobody had to; the curious collective
consciousness that mobs sometimes acquire restored a similar sense of purpose to
each and every one of them. Sticks, fists and boots were raised again, but this
time the fight separated out into three. One company of gypsies ran to the
right, and was pursued; another went to the left, and was also chased. The
third, unable to run, lashed out with whatever meagre force its members could
contrive.

Given the uneven distribution of the attacking force, it was inevitable that
the three-way split should be far from equal. The four gypsies who fled to the
right were chased by five foresters, the three who fled to the left—one of
them carrying the child—were pursued by four farm-hands. The four who were
left to make their stand found themselves outnumbered almost four-to-one by
various abundantly-muscled opponents. That would have been a very brief fight
indeed if Sigurd and Matthias Vaedecker had not decided that the time had come
to assert their authority in person.

Sigurd shouted again, repeating his instruction to let all weapons drop, but
he had leapt to the ground by now and the second shout had amply demonstrated
that the multiplication of his voice was not, in fact, supernatural. Vaedecker
shouted too, invoking the names of Sigmar, Magnus, the Emperor and the
Reiksguard, but any effect those august names might have had was ruined by the
cacophonous echoes, which swallowed up the sense of what he said.

Neither Sigurd nor Vaedecker made the slightest attempt to break heads or
knock men down. They were entirely content to haul their opponents back and
shove them aside—but anyone hauled back and shoved aside by the giant stayed
where he was put, and Vaedecker knew how to handle men firmly without doing them
any permanent damage. It took them less than three minutes to scatter the
remnant of the mob like ears of corn under the thresher—but by the time they
had fought their way through to the people whose backs were to the wall not one of the four was still standing. Only two were able to raise themselves
painfully to their feet as the square became suddenly quiet again.

Sigurd beckoned to Godrich, who finally consented to let go of Reinmar’s
mouth.

“Sorry, sir,” the steward murmured. “Remember, I beg you, that we do business
here, and must be careful.” Having said this, he went straight away to one of
the fallen bodies—a woman’s—whose condition was obviously causing Sigurd
some concern. Vaedecker was checking the injuries of the other fallen man, so
Reinmar went to one of those who had regained his feet.

“Thank you, sir,” the gypsy said, using the fingers of his right hand to test
the flesh of his upper left arm for evidence of a break. “They’d have killed us
for sure were it not for your arrival. You’re Gottfried the Merchant’s son, are
you not? My name is Rollo—your father would know my face.”

“What was the fight about?” Reinmar asked him.

“What is it ever about? Work and witchcraft. We brought in the vintage on the
estate south of the village, and brought it in better than it deserved, while
most of the local farms had a bad year. The chickens won’t lay and the hunters’
snares have been empty for weeks. All summer they’ve been whispering that we
bought our luck at the expense of theirs—that we’re in league with the
monsters in the woods that have ruined the hunting. We were paid off yesterday,
and thought to leave a little coin behind in their inn, as a token of our good
intent—stupid, to think that such as they could understand a generous gesture.”
While he was speaking the man moved to join his companion and Godrich, who were
kneeling anxiously over the unconscious woman. Sigurd stood aside to give them
room, and Reinmar thought it best to take a pace back—a pace which brought him
into collision with Matthias Vaedecker.

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.

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 events 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?”