Morgarten (Book 2 of the Forest Knights) (25 page)

Maybe tomorrow he would figure out a way to
distinguish between the two of them, but for now, Ruedi’s system
seemed to be working fine.

Seconds later, he came running back with the bolt in
hand. Thomas jumped down and took it from him, then he and Anton
looked it over in the light of a nearby torch.

“You think it might be a whistler?” Anton asked.

Thomas nodded, and held the bolt up to the light.
“One that failed to whistle. Maybe a hastily constructed one.” He
found what he was looking for; he twisted the iron point and the
head came off. The shaft of the bolt was hollow, and inside was a
piece of parchment. He fished it out carefully with the tip of his
dagger and held it under the torch. Now Ruedi and the two brothers
also crowded around, craning their necks to get a better look.

The characters were slanted, the penmanship
unskilled. Much like his own, really. It took him a couple of tries
to fully understand what it meant. And when he finally did discern
its meaning, he prayed he was wrong.

By the blood of Mary.

“What does it say?” Anton asked.

“Rubin! Bring Noll here. Now.”

The two brothers looked at each other. “Which one of
us, Sir?”

“Both! Carry him here if you must, but bring him
now.”

While he waited for Noll to show up, Thomas began
arranging several lanterns and torches so that they bathed a wide
circle of dirt in light.

“Someone get me another—”

“Lantern?” Gildas said. He held one out to Thomas on
the end of his walking stick. “Will this one do?”

Thomas took a step back, and blinked. “Gildas? Where
did you come from?” He immediately cast his eyes over the area
behind the old man.

“She is not there, Thomas Schwyzer. You might as
well stop looking.”

Thomas was about to ask who he meant, but something
in the old man’s eyes would not let the words come out.

“Where is she?” Thomas asked.

“Safe. Is that not enough?”

A thousand questions burned in his mind, but they
would have to wait. For just then the boys came back with a
puffy-eyed Noll Melchthal lagging behind.

“Sleep did not find me easily, this day, ferryman.
But I was finally dreaming of soft hands and the most beautiful
woman I have ever seen, and the next thing I know, Sepp and Marti’s
callused paws are shaking me like an apple tree.”

Noll looked around and seemed to notice Gildas for
the first time. “Who is the old fellow?”

“Some names are worth knowing, Arnold Melchthal. But
mine is not one of those,” Gildas said.

Noll glanced at Thomas.

“He is right. Ignore him for the time being. We have
more important things to worry about,” Thomas said.

Gildas nodded. “Agreed. Now, read us the
message.”

With everyone gathered around, Thomas unrolled the
small parchment. “First, let me say that I believe this to come
from a man well-known to all of us that served in Outremer. And
while we have not always seen eye to eye in the past, I trust that
he would not lead us astray. We must heed his words.”

“Someone from the Levant? Who?” Anton asked.

“Sir Henri of Hunenberg,” Thomas said.

Ruedi let out a whistle. “Henri? Is he still
alive?”

Noll scrubbed his face with his hands. “Very much
alive. And he rides against us under Leopold’s banner. Go on. Read
the note. Then we can decide whether or not to trust the man.”

“It is direct and wastes no time, much like the man
himself,” Thomas said. He read it out loud then, though he had read
it so many times to himself already, that he could have recited it
from memory.

Thomas,

Beware the paths of Morgarten.

H.H.

Thomas looked first at Noll and then at Gildas.
Noll’s face was suddenly pale. Gildas stared at the moon and shook
his head.

“Where
exactly
is Morgarten?” Thomas asked
them both.

Noll cursed, and since he seemed to be the first to
recover, Thomas turned to him. “It is a mountain range. Far to the
east.”

Thomas held out a long stick and pointed at the
ground bathed in the orange light of lanterns. “Draw it,” he said.
“Mountains, roads, rivers, hills, and forests. I need to know
everything.”

Noll snatched the stick from Thomas’s hand. “And you
will. I may not understand the scrawl of monks, but I can read the
lay of the land better than a man’s face.”

I believe you can. But whether or not it will be
of any use, only God can decide
.

The more Noll scratched in the dirt, the clearer
Leopold’s plan of attack became.

“Where is the last of our palisades?” Thomas
asked.

“Here,” Noll said, drawing an ‘X’. “Just west of
Lake Aegeri. To the east, on the other side of the lake, stands
Morgarten. Leopold will march his army south, between Morgarten and
Lake Aegeri. Here,” Noll put his stick in an area south of the
lake, “lies the town of Sattel. Just before Sattel the trees thin
out and the land opens up. It would be the perfect location for
Leopold to spread out his men and form up ranks.”

Anton shook his head more with every scratch of
Noll’s stick. “From there he will be able to storm Schwyz, while
bypassing every one of our defenses.” A knife found its way into
Anton’s hand and he threw it at the palisade wall. It hit with a
thump and quivered in the wood. “All these walls we spent months
building, all our drills—useless.”

Ruedi shrugged. “Gave us something to do, I suppose.
Better than standing around waiting.”

Noll pointed at the southern shore of the lake.
“Normally, this area would be too marshy to march an army
through—,” he said.

“But not in late fall,” Thomas said, finishing
Noll’s thought.
Leopold had put off his attack until now because
he had been purposely stalling. Waiting for his bridge to
form.

Noll nodded. “The ground has already begun to freeze
some nights. It will be hard and dry.”

They had all been deceived, but none felt the blow
harder than Thomas.

Leopold had disguised himself as a brash,
overconfident general who favored a direct assault, where his
overwhelming numbers would give him the advantage. And Thomas,
seeing no further than Leopold had wanted him to, fell for it. He
clung to his first impressions of the Duke as a young man of
privilege, with little military experience, because that was the
only advantage he could find in a hopeless war. He had eagerly
accepted the notion that the Austrian army’s weakness was its
leader, when, in truth, Leopold was its greatest strength.

Thomas had underestimated the enemy. And now all
those that depended on him were about to pay the Devil’s toll.

As Noll kept adding to the landscape around the
mountain of Morgarten, Gildas placed his hand onto Thomas’s
shoulder.

“You could not have known,” he said, his voice
carrying no further than Thomas’s ears.

He refused to look at the old druid, or even
acknowledge his words, but something in them, or his touch, quieted
his fears enough for him to think. While staring at the dirt map,
he felt a slim hope emerge. He took the stick from Noll’s hand.

“We must attack them as they are stretched along the
shore of the lake, where they have no room to maneuver. If we hit
them hard enough, we could drive them into the waters where their
own armor will do most of our work for us,” Thomas said.

Anton crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow at
Thomas. “Charge an army that will most likely outnumber us
seven-to-one? And that would be seven
soldiers
to every
farmer.
”

“It could work,” Ruedi said. “If we come down off
those hills and hit them in the flank like that.”

The Rubin brothers perked up and glanced at one
another. Thomas could feel the hopelessness, which had surrounded
them all only seconds before, begin to lift like a morning fog.

“I have to kill that plan before it goes any
further,” Noll said. He held out his hand and Thomas surrendered
the stick. “Lake Aegeri is very small. And very far. Leopold will
march from Zug at first light, meaning even if we leave right now,
the bulk of Leopold’s army would already be well past the shores of
the lake by the time we arrived.”

He made one last, definitive ‘X’ between Schwyz and
the lower end of the lake. “They would catch us here, out in the
open, with not a rock to hide under. Leopold’s knights would ride
over us like a field of wheat.”

Noll put the tip of his stick into the flame of a
torch. He pulled it out and watched it burn. “There simply is not
enough time,” he said. He blew out the tiny flame and a delicate
column of smoke rose into the air.

The fog was back. Someone cursed.

But Thomas was not yet ready to give up on his plan.
“What is this here?” He pointed to a mark on Noll’s map.

“A fork in the road,” Noll said.

“Where does this other road go?”

Noll drew again with the stick. “It is the old road
to Sattel. No one uses it much any more because it is in such poor
shape and takes twice as long to reach the town.”

“Is it still passable?” Thomas asked.

“I believe so,” Noll said. “A small hamlet, called
Schafstetten, is located here, so I imagine they still use it. But
they would be the only ones that I can think of. At any rate, it is
little more than a rough path, so we will only lose time by taking
it.”

“But how much would it slow down a large army?”
Thomas asked. “If we blockade the main road and force Leopold to
take the old one, would it give us enough time to get our men into
position on the slopes above the lake?”

“Possibly, but we do not have the time or the
numbers, Thomas. First, we would need to create an impassable
barricade, which is no easy matter. Then we would need to get a
sizable force to Schafstetten to hold back the Austrian advance
until the rest of our army can get into place. They would be on
open ground and unprotected.”

Gildas stepped into the lantern-lit circle and stood
right on top of Noll’s map. He spoke directly to Thomas, as though
he were the only one present.

“The plan is a good one. But no need to waste your
men creating a barricade. Leave that to me.”

The men cast questioning glances all around.

“Uh, you are standing on my stick…” Noll said.

“The time for scratching in dirt is over, Noll
Melchthal,” Gildas said.

“Who the Devil are you?” Noll asked, raising his
voice.

“He is a friend of Seraina’s,” Thomas said.

“Oh. Well, that explains a few things, but—”

“Can you really do it?” Thomas asked Gildas. “Erect
a barricade by yourself?”
I am mad to even be asking.

The old man nodded.

“Are you sure? I need to know for certain.”

“Trust. That is all you truly need, Thomas Schwyzer.
Nothing else,” Gildas said.

Thomas let out a deep breath and stared at Gildas.
Five thousand more men is what I really need, he thought.

Seraina climbed in total darkness. Eventually, the
sun appeared upon the horizon, but its presence provided little
comfort. In fact, she felt the lightening landscape was only time’s
way of mocking her.

She resisted the urge every few steps to twist and
look over her shoulder far below in the direction of Zug. She knew
she was too far away to see the Austrian army’s base, but that
certain knowledge did little to lessen her need to look. They would
march soon, and weave their way through the mountain roads on their
way to rid the land of the Helvetii. How many of her people could
possibly survive?

She drove the thought from her mind, and instead
focused on putting one foot in front of another. Her thighs burned,
her calves cramped, and the elevation change was proving a
challenge for her lungs. But she knew she must press on, for the
others would be waiting. They would need her strength.

Finally, after what seemed like two eternities,
Seraina stood upon the summit of the Greater Mythen. She sucked in
full mouthfuls of the thin air and turned in a slow circle, gazing
in awe at the land below, with all its secrets revealed through the
majesty of the mountain.

A tremor ran through her body and her eyes glistened
with tears. There was power here; ancient and undisturbed for
hundreds of years perhaps, but nonetheless it was here. She could
feel it in the air, smell it in the thin layer of dirt dusting the
solid rock beneath her feet.

Unlike the Greater Mythen’s neighboring mate, this
mountain had no trees on its summit; only rocks and scrub, and in
its center a lone Christian cross three men tall. It was formed
from two peeled logs, as thick around as her waist, notched and
lashed together with cracked leather straps.

Seraina marveled at the willpower of whoever had
hauled the logs up from the tree-line. It must have been a grueling
and dangerous trip. But Christians were never ones to back down
from the impossible. Thomas had taught her as much. They would have
sensed the natural power in this place, just as the druids did
thousands of years ago.

There were only a handful of the Old Religion’s
sacred sites left in the world, to the best of Seraina’s knowledge,
that did not have a church or cross built upon some ruins of a long
forgotten people. Why should the fate of this place play out any
different?

But those were concerns for another day. Another
time. As of this moment, the past was not yet dead. The Helvetii
were not just another memory, like so many others had become.
Seraina swore that she would not let her people be washed away by
the sands of time. Not while she yet lived.

With that vow upon her lips, Seraina walked toward
the cross, and the twelve white-robed figures that surrounded
it.