Morgarten (Book 2 of the Forest Knights) (10 page)

“My money is made from pepper, believe it or not. I
thought turmeric would have been my future, but it seems the noble
households cannot get enough of plain black pepper. Apparently,
nothing hides the flavor of rotting meat better—”

Ruedi cut him off by introducing Thomas to the woman
sitting beside him.

“This here is my sister, Margrit Burkhalter. That
damn Norseman knew what he was talking about.”

Perhaps five years younger than Ruedi, she had dark
hair and gray eyes.

Thomas bowed his head.
Burkhalter… was that
Ruedi’s last name?
Thomas realized he had no idea what his true
name was. Ruedi
Schwyzer
was all he had ever known him as.
And the same went for Max. They were all
Schwyzers
.

“Pleasure to meet you, Captain,” Margrit said.
“These two boys have been talking non-stop about you and your
friend Pirmin. Enough to make a lady blush. If one happened to
overhear, that is.” She was a handsome woman, and she looked Thomas
straight in the eyes when she spoke. He had no doubt Pirmin would
have found her attractive.

Max and Ruedi fidgeted when she mentioned Pirmin’s
name and she caught their sidelong glances to one another.

“What,” she said. “A friend leaves this world and
suddenly you have to stop talking about him? You think he would
like that?”

Max grinned. “No, he most assuredly would not.”

“Well then,” Margrit said. “I look forward to
hearing more stories about the man. But another time. Got to get
home to the family. Some people may be able to waste their day with
their head in a mead barrel, but I am not one of those.”

So Burkhalter was most probably her husband’s
name.
Maybe someday Thomas would ask Ruedi what his real name
was. But then again, maybe not.

Once Margrit had left, Thomas managed to flag down
one of the inn’s women. Tired and bored, she listened to Thomas
while juggling a tray in one hand and three pitchers in the other.
He asked her to bring him wine and whatever food the kitchen was
serving that night.

With Margrit gone, the three men sat in silence for
a moment, not quite sure where to begin. Max was the first to
speak.

“Glad to see you made it out of that mess, Thomas.
Ruedi told me what Gissler done.” He shook his head. “Never would
have believed it.”

“And I would be in a prison cell in the Aargau if it
were not for Ruedi,” Thomas said.

“I doubt that,” Ruedi said. He turned away and
examined something crawling up the wall.

“You will be glad to hear I still have your Genoese
war bow,” Thomas said.

This got Ruedi’s attention and he turned to Thomas.
“Well, do you now,” he said, twirling one of the braided ends of
his forked beard between his fingers. “Did not expect to see that
one again, to be honest.”

“What are your plans, Thomas?” Max asked.

Thomas shrugged, but said nothing.

“People are scared in Zug,” Max said. “The Habsburgs
have tripled the soldiers in town and they been building barracks
and supply houses.”

“Is that why you came?” Thomas asked. “To warn us
that the Habsburgs are going to invade? That is old news around
here I am afraid.”

“I been up to the fortress and I saw what Melchthal
and Stauffacher are doing up there.” Max shook his head. He leaned
over the table and lowered his voice. “They have no idea what is
coming for them, Thomas. Zug is being turned into a base camp for a
real army. Judging from the structures so far, I would say upwards
of eight or nine thousand men.”

Ruedi also leaned in. “I asked Max to help me get
Margrit and her family out of Altdorf. You should come with
us.”

As soon as he heard Ruedi say he intended to leave
Altdorf, Thomas let out a breath. Tension slipped away from his
shoulders and he reached a hand behind his head to rub his neck.
The moment he first heard Max was in Altdorf, a gnawing fear had
begun to fester inside him. He was worried Max and Ruedi had
decided to join Noll’s army and was relieved that they had made
more sensible plans.

“Travel on the roads is restricted, these days. Even
to merchants,” Max said. “But I have made arrangements to get a
small group of people safely to Berne. We have room for another
three or four people if there is anyone you would like to bring
along.”

Before Thomas could answer, the inn woman dropped
three cups of mead on the table and a bowl of something that could
have been brown porridge, with chunks of black meat in it.

“Armin says he is too busy to water down a new cask
of wine right now. So mead is all we got,” she said.

“That will do,” Thomas said, grateful for the
interruption.

She turned and was about to leave, but Thomas
touched her arm. She spun on him and all three men swayed back on
their bench seats.

Thomas pointed at the bowl of food. “What is
this?”

She leaned over and peered at it like she was seeing
it for the first time. “Porridge. With meat. What do you think it
is?”

Thomas nodded. That was good enough for him. The
woman leaned her wooden tray on one hip and stared at Thomas.

“I was there, you know. The day you bled those
Habsburg boys up on the hill.” She nodded in the direction of the
Altdorf fortress. “Some people talk and say how you best not have
done that. How we will all pay for what you did. But I was there,
and I seen how you tried to help Seraina. She pulled out my first
baby, you know.” Her voice lost its calloused edge for just a
moment. “You did a good thing that day.”

A waving customer caught her eye. “Finish what you
got, first!” she shouted across the room. She started walking away,
but after a few steps she called back over one shoulder, “Just
wanted you to know why you got extra meat. But do not expect it
every night.”

Max wisely waited until she was out of earshot
before he laughed. “Now that is a woman,” he said. “But I am afraid
she would chew a man like me up and spit me out like so much
gristle.” He scratched his beard with one hand. “But Margrit on the
other hand, now she might be more my taste. Just how good does she
get along with her husband these days, Ruedi?”

Ruedi took a sip of his mead. “I been working on a
new crossbow bolt,” he said, ignoring Max and looking only at
Thomas. “It has two, side-by-side, rusty broadheads on its tip. I
call it the
plum-picker
.”

“Have you tried it out yet?” Thomas asked.

Ruedi shook his head. “Just waiting for the right
time.”

Encircling the four Venetians, nearly five hundred
men sat on the ground. They were silent and attentive, perhaps some
of them nervous, for none of them knew what to expect from a
training session lead by the flamboyant outsiders. It was a
cloudless, late autumn morning, and though the ground frost had
retreated under the morning sun, the air still had the bite of
winter to it.

Thomas sat on a stack of stone blocks at the
sunniest end of the courtyard, far away from the center ring. He
pulled his cloak tighter over his shoulders, and then abruptly
changed his mind and took it off. He folded it several thicknesses
deep and sat on it.

How did they do it?

He shook his head at all the men lounging about on
the half-frozen ground, many wearing thin, sleeveless shirts, and
watched the man called Giovanni Pomponio put on a display of
swordsmanship. Thomas had lived with the men of the valleys and
mountains for almost a year, and though they kept their feelings to
themselves for the most part, Thomas felt he could often read them
now. A wince here, a shake of a head there, the complete silence in
the square; these were all indicators of a crowd in awe.

Today was the official start of training for the
“Confederate Army of Free Men” as Noll had officially named his
volunteers. The local judge named Walter Furst, and old Werner
Stauffacher of Schwyz, known more for being the husband of Gertrude
of Iberg than for any particular doings of his own, had opposed the
idea. They wanted to simply call the army the “Eidgenossen”, an old
way of referring to those who had sworn
The Oath
.

Thomas had learned in the last few days, that the
oath they referred to was some written pact made twenty-five years
previously between the people of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Each
member community swore to uphold their ancient laws and to come to
the aid of one another if they were threatened by an outside
force.

Thomas suspected that they had envisioned that
threat would more likely be from bandits, or some minor lord
looking to take advantage of unprotected peasants. But Noll had
pulled out the original document and had inflamed the passions of
the locals by claiming
The Oath
may have been drawn up
before his time, but there was no doubt it was created for just
such a moment as today. Now, he said, was their one chance to throw
off the yoke of their Austrian overlords, and with the support of
Walter Furst and Werner Stauffacher, the three communities rallied
to his words. Word spread quickly, and men began to trickle in to
Altdorf, and the
Confederate Army of Free Men
was born.

An appreciative murmur shot through the crowd.
Pomponio had just demonstrated a disarming technique on one of his
men, and now basked in the crowd’s attention.

The Venetian was a man of excess. He wore a red vest
over a cream-colored blouse of silk, and breeches that fit so well,
Thomas had no doubt they must have been tailored. But, as grand as
his clothes looked, especially compared to the simple farmers and
foresters seated before him, Thomas noted the fabric was thin in
places and the colors faded from too many washings. Though he was
far from an expert in fashion, Thomas had been around enough nobles
and high-born merchants to recognize the outdated styles of
yesteryear. However, when looking at the Venetian, most people
would never notice these things, for they would inevitably find
their eyes drawn in by Pomponio’s outrageous hat.

It was a blue, wide-brimmed piece that could have
been cut from half the felt. With several brightly dyed feathers
thrust through its green and turquoise hat-band, it flopped around
like a living thing, yet somehow managed to remain on his head
while he lunged, parried, laughed, and mocked his opponent.

Pomponio dismissed his current adversary and
beckoned to another one of his men, a dark-haired, younger man with
a smooth complexion and wide shoulders set atop a narrow waist
encircled with a purple sash. His long, oiled hair was pulled back
from his face and gathered behind his head with a length of white
lace.

“Salvatore. Lend us your strength for a moment if
you would.”

Salvatore took his mark across from Pomponio and
raised his sword in front of his face in a salute.

Pomponio raised his own long, narrow blade. It was a
fencer’s weapon, with a basket guard that served to protect his
hand.

“Attack,” he said.

Salvatore immediately bellowed out a loud war cry,
which induced flinches from the first few rows of onlookers, and
then he thrust straight ahead at Pomponio’s mid-section. Pomponio
stepped forward and met the attack with his own hair-raising yell,
and smashed the young man’s sword away with a powerful, straight-on
block. Then, he drove Salvatore back the way he had come with a
strong series of thrusts and attacks. The young man back-pedaled
furiously, parrying as best he could, until he stumbled under the
assault and fell to his back.

Pomponio put a foot on the man’s chest and gently
rested the tip of his sword under his chin. He looked into the
crowd. “The man is dead, no?”

The comment produced some chuckles from the crowd.
They were beginning to warm up to the Venetian.

“Although my technique was effective, it was ugly.
Very ugly.” Pomponio stepped away from his opponent. He leaned over
and placed his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “You see how
tired I am? You see what ugly technique can do to a man? If I must
fight like this all day, like the common soldier is taught, I am
soon exhausted.” He removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the
sleeve of one arm. “Come evening, even if I survive the day, my
bella
waiting for me at home, she will be very disappointed,
no?”

The laughter came much easier from the villagers
now.

“If a man practices swordplay solely with the
intention of besting an opponent, that man is missing the point. A
dancer must train hard to make his craft appear effortless. Should
it not also be so with a master swordsman?”

He smoothed one of the feathers from his hat and
then carefully placed it on the ground behind him. “Seeing is
believing. Let us try.”

Without being asked, Salvatore bounced up to his
feet and slashed the air with his sword. The other three Venetians
drew their own weapons and spread out.

“We have you now, you Venetian fop,” Salvatore said.
His voice rang out clearly, easily carrying to every set of ears in
the courtyard. A few men laughed, some only smiled, but all sat up
a little straighter to get a better view.

Pomponio waved his sword arm in a graceful circle
and carried the motion through into a bow. Then he straightened up,
and with another arc of his sword, settled into a relaxed, upright
fencing stance.

“Very well,” he said. “Please, attack.”

As one, the four men screamed and charged Pomponio.
He deflected the nearest man’s sword and slid behind him, while
ducking under another’s wild swing. He reached out with the flat of
his blade and tapped the first man on the back of his head.

“Dead!” he shouted. The man cursed, gave a quick
bow, and retreated out of the circle where he sat cross-legged on
the ground. He rested his chin in both hands, looking more than a
little dejected.