For his own part, Reinmar had always been fascinated by the gypsies who came
to the market in Eilhart, especially by those who attempted to earn coin by
various kinds of exotic performance: fortune-telling, playing musical
instruments of their own design and manufacture, and dancing. He had always felt
that there was a little magic in gypsy music, which was as intoxicating in its
own way as good wine.
With all this in mind, Reinmar made a particular effort to be courteous and
friendly towards the gypsies the cart encountered on the road, and was slightly
hurt by the fact that their responses were often curt and suspicious. At first
he was inclined to attribute this entirely to the legacy of insults hurled at
them by other prosperous folk, but he realised eventually that Matthias
Vaedecker’s presence was an additional factor. Without his colours the sergeant
was supposedly in civilian dress, but that only made his possession of a
crossbow more remarkable, and his attitude to the gypsies was not ameliorated by
the conditions that modified the manners of his companions.
Eventually, Reinmar took Vaedecker to task for this while the cart was making
its way through a particularly gloomy wood.
“You should not stare at them with such frank hostility,” he said. “They are
people like you or me, who will respond to a smile and a kind word as well as
anyone. How would you feel if you were greeted everywhere with stony looks and
signs supposedly designed to ward off the evil eye?”
“The nomad tribes are breeding-grounds for evil,” Vaedecker assured him. “I
do not say that they are all magicians, but I do say that any who are
enthusiastic to sell their souls can readily find recipes for self-destruction
and tutors in witchcraft. Their culture is corrupt—and if your father is to be
believed, they are the ones who know where the dark wine is made.”
“If that were the case,” Reinmar informed him, unable to hide his irritation,
“a wise spy would make every effort to be friendly, helpful and cheerful.”
Somewhat to his surprise, Vaedecker seemed to take this observation
seriously. “You are right, of course,” the sergeant said, with a sigh. “This is
not the kind of work for which I was trained. I’m a fighting-man, not a secret
agent. I’m used to meeting the enemy head-on. I’m a Reiklander through and through, but once a
man has done a long tour in the north, where life is hard for everyone and evil
clearly manifest, the south comes to seem like a land becalmed in a dream.”
“What do you mean?” Reinmar asked him, taken aback by the sudden rush of
confidentiality.
“The people who live ordered and comfortable lives in towns like Eilhart
assume that theirs is the way human life should be lived,” Vaedecker observed.
“They think that if only people everywhere were like them—hard-working,
businesslike and scrupulous—the whole world would be like Eilhart, as
prosperous and as happy as any community has any right to be. It isn’t so. There
are places in the world—places not merely on the borders of the Empire but
actually within its bounds—where the wages of hard work and a businesslike
attitude is an early and ignominious death, which end can only be postponed by
fighting the enemies of order with every last fibre of strength and ounce of
courage a man possesses.”
“So all travellers’ tales say,” Reinmar remarked.
Vaedecker did not take offence at his scepticism. “You hear tales of monsters
in the hills, Master Wieland, and your automatic reaction is to say, laughing,
that there are always tales of monsters in the hills. Well, Reinmar, I have
fought whole armies of monsters, with darts and arrows, swords and clubs—and
sometimes, in the end, with nothing but my bare and bloody hands. Monsters have
come so close to tearing out my throat that I can never laugh when I hear the
word. I have seen them so awfully arrayed in their hundreds before the pikes of
my fellows and the lances of the guard that it sickens and disheartens me to
hear men like yourself casually assuming that only fools could believe such
things dangerous. I am a traveller of sorts, but I can assure you that the tales
I have to tell are true, and even nastier than they sound. The world is not like
Eilhart, my friend—and if the state of affairs that pertains elsewhere in the
world of men ever spreads to Eilhart, you might find yourself awakening from
that lovely dream in which you have lived your entire life, into nightmarish
reality.”
Had these words been spoken while the cart was bathed in warm sunshine, or
while the four men with it had been sat around a blazing fire in a grower’s
well-stocked hearth, they might not have seemed so threatening. In fact, the sky that was
all-but-eclipsed by the branches of the looming conifers was blue only in the
north. The mountaintops to the south were immersed in a thick blanket of grey
cloud, whose trailing edges extended over them like an ominous awning.
In such circumstances, Reinmar could hardly suppress a shudder as the
sergeant’s words cut through him and penetrated his heart. He could find no
adequate reply.
“So you will understand,” Vaedecker added, “that I cannot look upon the gypsy
folk with the same generous and trusting eye as you. I do not doubt that you are
right, and that many of them are good and honest souls who mean us no harm—but
the knowledge that even one in a hundred is not is quite enough to make a man
like me uneasy. Still, I will follow your advice and try to suppress my
feelings, not because it is polite but because it is politic. I am, as you have
kindly reminded me, a spy—and I must do my very best to watch the folk we
encounter as closely as I am watching you.”
The last sentence, with its veiled accusation, helped Reinmar overcome his
embarrassment. He saw Godrich’s head turned, and took note of the warning in the
steward’s eyes, but he ignored the silent advice.
“It must be an indignity for a fighting man like yourself to be reduced to
spying,” Reinmar observed. “Indeed, it must be a sickening come-down for a bold
hero used to fighting legions of monsters to be chasing liquor-smugglers through
the happiest lands in the realm.”
“Must it?” Vaedecker countered. “I have stood face-to-face with beastmen and
ogres and wished that I might be anywhere else in the world, about any other
kind of work. Duty does not always compel us to spectacular exploits. I have
always used my strength in the service of virtue, however menial my task
-although I cannot expect that to impress men whose notion of hard labour is
entirely determined by their experience of lifting and moving casks of wine.”
Even Sigurd frowned at that, but Sigurd was not the kind of man to react to
slights. If he did not intend to move with crushing force he did not move at
all.
“Peace, friends,” Godrich said, turning in his seat. “The cart is not half
full and we have a long way yet to go. The time will pass more easily if we can
keep from quarrelling. We are not adversaries. In this matter of the dark wine we are all on the same side.”
Are
we?
Reinmar thought, but he held his tongue. He forced himself to
nod, and to soften his expression. It was not an apology, but it was a gesture,
and Matthias Vaedecker—who probably felt that he had spoken far too freely—was prepared to do more than match it.
“Aye,” he said. “Your man is right. I’m not used to being set apart from my
own kind like this, and I have become fretful. I meant no offence.”
“Nor I,” Reinmar felt bound to add. “I have been here before, but always with
my father to guide me. I suppose I too am a little uneasy—and I do not like to
see those clouds gathering about the mountain-peaks. It is thunderheads of that
kind which spit out the storms that cause so much consternation hereabouts.”
“We’ll be fine till nightfall,” Godrich assured him, quick to take advantage
of the change of subject. “There’s a village ahead with an inn and a blacksmith
to see to the horses, so we’ll be warm no matter what. With luck, the sky will
be clearer in the morning.”
And without it, Reinmar thought, some of us may be looking for someone to
blame for any hail that falls upon our luckless heads.
As ill luck would have it, things began to go wrong long before nightfall.
The village that Godrich had welcomed as a potential haven did indeed have an
inn and a forge, and even a market square of sorts between the inn yard and the
town pump. When the cart pulled into that square, however, it seemed to be
anything but an outpost of Reikish civilisation.
The conflict that was in full swing on the cobbles probably seemed to be a
mere casual brawl to the battle-hardened sergeant, but it seemed bloody and
bitter enough to Reinmar. No weapon was being wielded more deadly than a
pitchfork, but he knew that cudgels could do an enormous amount of damage if
plied with sufficient vigour, and there was no doubting the enthusiasm of the
foresters and farm-hands who were laying about them with a fine fury.
The object of the local men’s ire was a party of gypsies, no more than a
dozen strong—including three women and two small children—whose even greater
ardour was not nearly enough to make up for the deficit in their numbers. The
fight had presumably begun in the middle of the square, but the gypsies had
already been forced back against the wall of the inn. They had so little room
for further manoeuvre that their attempts to stay together in a square formation, in which they could make
some attempt to guard one another’s backs, were futile. They were being forced
into a thin line, with no space at all for retreat. Two had already gone down,
one of them a boy no more than twelve years old. Now that their adversaries had
them trapped it seemed that they would all go down one by one, each to be beaten
black and blue by staves, boots and rake-handles.
Reinmar did not suppose that the gypsies’ attackers intended to murder them,
but it required no more than a glance to see that they were highly unlikely to
be particular in judging the exact extent of the punishment they were handing
out, even to the women and children.
Rising impulsively to his feet, Reinmar filled his lungs, ready to shout an
order to desist at the top of his voice, but Godrich was too quick for him.
Keenly aware of his own duty, the steward grabbed his master’s son hard and
jammed a gauntleted hand over the lower part of his face, with the fingers
splayed to choke off his shout. Reinmar spluttered, but could not deliver his
challenge. Furiously, he reached up with his own hands to drag the cloying glove
away from his mouth, but the steward was strong as well as determined. Godrich
was, however, sufficiently sensitive to the diplomatic necessities of the
situation to round on Sergeant Vaedecker.
“Soldier!” he said. “You have much to say of duty, and of the necessity of
keeping order. Exercise your powers of discipline!”
Vaedecker was obviously reluctant, but his expression showed clearly enough
that the appeal to his sense of duty was not misplaced. While he hesitated,
though, Sigurd acted.
The giant did not jump down from
the
cart immediately, perhaps judging
that the extra elevation would make his immense height seem positively
supernatural at first glance. To emphasise the point even further he raised his
massive arms above his head, holding his six-foot staff horizontally, before
howling: “Stop! In the name of the law!”
He had, of course, no real authority to speak for the law, but the village
was by no means large enough to possess a constable, so there was hardly likely
to be anyone in the crowd in a position to dispute his entitlement.
The loudness of Sigurd’s cry was remarkable, but it was not nearly as
remarkable as the echoes which fired back and forth from the walls of the inn and its stables, from the forge and from the
opposite barn—and seemingly, though it must have been an illusion, from the
peaks of the Grey Mountains.
The immediate effect of the command was as impressive as Reinmar could
possibly have wished. The entire fracas was abruptly stilled, as every single
combatant paused and looked around to see who had spoken.
Had they only seen four men in a half-laden cart drawn by two exhausted
horses the foresters and farm-labourers might have returned to their work
without delay, but Sigurd did not look like any mere man. Striking a pose in the
blue twilight, with his arms upraised to the lowering sky, he must have seemed
to anyone with imagination like Sigmar Heldenhammer reincarnate.
“Drop your weapons!” Sigurd shouted, following through his advantage.
Half a dozen staves and axe-handles clattered to the ground, all of them
dropped by members of the attacking force. The gypsies, by and large, were not
quite so startled and not quite so impressed—and that gave them a fraction of
a second to reconsider their options.
“Run!” shouted one of their number—a man whose booming voice echoed almost
as impressively as Sigurd’s.
It was a wise decision. Any violent advantage the gypsies might have taken of
the disconcertion of their attackers would have been very brief, and would have
called forth a much stronger reaction. Flight, on the other hand, prompted no
reflexive response.
Had the gypsies had more room they might have managed to contrive a safe
retreat, even pausing to pick up their fallen. Even as it was, the man who had
shouted the order contrived to snatch up the fallen child and managed to jostle
his way clear, while five or six of his companions also managed to slip sideways
from the battle-line before anyone thought to wonder whether it was worth trying
to stop them. Unfortunately, the four gypsies who were furthest away from the
edges of the inn-wall had no obvious escape-route available. Because they were
in the centre, their adversaries were gathered more thickly in front of them,
and whichever way they turned their path was blocked by bodies.