Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Matthias Vaedecker helped Reinmar down from his horse on the edge of Eilhart’s market square Reinmar found himself on the outskirts of a seething crowd. The anxiety in the air was palpable, but he did not see the cause of their consternation until he had pushed his way through the crowd to the focal point of its attention.

Laid out in open view on the steps of the corn exchange were six corpses. Not one was fully human. All of them had two arms and two legs, but in all cases but one of these limbs were brutishly thickened and shortened. Three of them had only one hand, the other being replaced by a claw, and two of these had feet like massive taloned paws. Their heads were the worst parts, not one of them being even approximately human. One had a head like a bull with heavy horns, another like a bison and a third like a monstrous cat. The fourth head was wolf-like, more hideous than that of the beastmen that he, Godrich, Sigurd and Vaedecker had fought; the remaining two were like snakes save for their awful compound eyes.

Reinmar had no need to ask why these bodies had been put on display, but his neighbours, seeing that he had only just arrived, were more than enthusiastic to tell him.

“Creatures like these are pressing forward from Holy Hill, west of the Schimel Farm,” Aloys Walther the baker’s son informed him. “They’ve attacked Vitway and Konigmuell. The town is cut off to the south and west, and at least two of the locks on the river have been smashed. Barges can no longer get to Eilhart Pool, and any rowboats that contest the river’s faster flow are deluged with arrows at the Heiligergap. An army of monsters is massing, pressing forward all the while, and they say we’ll get no more reinforcements for at least two days. It’s too late for anyone else to flee, though—we all have to report for assignment to the defences.”

“We’ve strength enough,” Reinmar assured him. “I’ve fought the beastmen once, and they’re far less powerful than they are horrible.”

Long queues of men were already winding halfway around the square, waiting to be interrogated as to the weapons they possessed and the training they had had in their use. Although they were orderly they were far from silent; rumours were flying in every direction. Reinmar had only to walk back to the stable to which Vaedecker’s men had taken their horses to hear half a dozen more reports like the one Aloys had poured into his ear. The place-names were sometimes different, but the import was always the same. The town was cut off, or would be within a matter of hours. The flow of military reinforcements had slowed to a trickle, and Eilhart was certain to be attacked before another contingent of the Reiksguard could be mobilised to reinforce its defenders.

All of this had seemed to be a relatively distant prospect when Reinmar and Albrecht had left the town, but it was palpably imminent now and it no longer seemed so odd that the enemy had come to Albrecht’s house. Any outlying dwelling, it seemed, was ripe for invasion now. Thanks to the flood of refugees flocking into the town with tales of horror, and the similar flood whose northward routes would soon be cut off, there could be no one within twenty miles of Eilhart who did not know that the town was effectively under siege, and that it would soon have to be defended against a fierce and massive assault.

The town crier was busy in front of the tower that housed the market bell, but it was not his job to put out the call for conscription. Reinmar paused to listen to him, but only for a minute. The proclamations that he was repeating, probably for the tenth or fifteenth time, were to do with the conservation of water—the waters of the river had apparently been fouled and were unfit to drink even after boiling—and the powers of requisition that had been granted to the Reiksguard and the followers of Machar von Spurzheim for the building of barricades.

When Reinmar rejoined Matthias Vaedecker he asked the soldier whether he ought to join one of the queues to await the attention of a recruiting sergeant. He was told that he had already been assigned.

“To you?” Reinmar asked.

“Aye, but don’t thank me for my generosity,” Vaedecker told him. “We’re at the upper neck of the river, commissioned to stop and sink anything that comes down.”

“The river above Eilhart is supposed to be unnavigable,” Reinmar observed, although he knew perfectly well that whatever the enemy cared to set upon the waters would float well enough. They would not come in heavily-laden barges but in skiffs and rafts—and they would be very difficult to stop. Vaedecker’s men would undoubtedly cast nets and booms across the watercourse, but such barriers could be cut or broken, and while they were being hacked, sawed and smashed the enemy vessels would pile up, discharging missiles to either side. It was impossible to guess which of the many barricades placed across the roads into the town would be the most heavily beset, but one thing that was perfectly certain was that the neck of the river would see fierce and crucial fighting. Once that entry-way was breached, the enemy forces would have a vital artery to carry their assault deep into the town’s heart.

“Don’t be afraid, either,” Vaedecker added. “You’ll have some of the best infantrymen this side of Middenheim around you, and many of the townsfolk in the rank will be men who know their business. The crossbows and pikes will do the donkey-work at first. Your people will not be forced to go hand-to-hand unless and until they storm the shore, and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure they can’t outnumber us.”

“What time shall I report?” Reinmar asked.

“You’ve already reported,” Vaedecker told him. “You’re under my command now, though I’ll have to trust you to go to von Spurzheim and tell him everything you can about what happened at the house. When he’s satisfied, you must come back to me so that I can show you your position. After that, you can go home to eat and gossip—but the moment you hear the clamour of the bell you must come running, and if no clamour sounds you must listen for the hours. Even if all is quiet you must be at your post by six o’clock, and you must keep watch till two in the morning. If nothing has happened by then… well, we’ll know that when it does, it’ll be even worse than it would have been had they come more hurriedly.”

Reinmar nodded, then set off to look for the witch hunter while Vaedecker went to see to the organisation of his men.

Von Spurzheim was by no means hard to find, having stuck hard to his base in the town hall, but he was busy with his maps and surrounded by men, including four Reiksguard knights. Von Spurzheim’s estimate of the likely time of the attack had been hastily revised, and everything was now being organised in haste. The knights and the witch hunter’s lieutenants all seemed to be busy quarrelling, although Reinmar assumed that they would have preferred to describe their argument as a tactical discussion. He had to wait for an opportunity to signal his presence to the witch hunter, and then had to wait far longer for von Spurzheim to find an opportunity to break away. When he did manage to disengage himself, the witch hunter immediately took Reinmar into another room and closed the door behind him.

“If they only spent as much energy in fighting the enemy as they do in trying to secure and increase their own authority,” von Spurzheim said, “the banks of the Reik would be a better and happier place. They all know full well what the situation is, and how urgent it has now become. They know that I have the warrant of the Grand Theogonist himself, but even if they were kneeling before the War Altar and the Staff of Command they would be bickering over trifles. When the fighting starts they will be heroes all, but they do not know how to be single-minded about anything but violence. Who injured the sentry I could ill afford to lose, Reinmar?”

“Two monks from the valley—the two who tried to sell me dark wine while I was there. They probably had others with them, but it was Brother Noel whose sword was red with blood.”

“Why did they come? Surely not for the housekeeper?”

“The woman in the house wasn’t Albrecht’s housekeeper,” Reinmar told him. “She was a sorceress by the name of Valeria.”

Von Spurzheim looked up at the ceiling, annoyed that no one had been able to tell him that while he still had time to react. “The lady scholar!” he exclaimed. “I thought she’d be half way to Middenheim by now. What a thirst she must have to make her put her head into the lion’s mouth! Did she exercise power of command over the monks?”

“It certainly seemed that she did,” Reinmar said. “There might have been a fight had she not told them to leave me be. I doubt that was for mercy’s sake. They brought her wine, and she grew young after drinking it—but she did say that the gathering army was nothing to do with her, and that her business was of another kind.”

“She doesn’t care about Eilhart,” the witch hunter muttered. “It’s Marienburg that’s uppermost in her mind. She may not mean to lend her power to the fight, but she’ll use it in one way or another. I’m sorry, lad—I had no idea that I was sending you into a viper’s nest. What did your great-uncle do?”

“Nothing,” Reinmar reported, economically. “He refused to go with them, and they seemed to think him irrelevant to their present concerns.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Reinmar said, again. “I had no chance to draw my blade, and had no reason to think that help would come if I called.”

“But the monks must have recognised you, and they could hardly be of the opinion that you were irrelevant to their concerns,” the witch hunter observed, shrewdly. “They did not know what you had done when they met you with Matthias as you made your escape from the valley, but they must know now. They let you alone, even so.”

“Because they had more pressing matters to attend to,” Reinmar insisted—but von Spurzheim knew that there had to be more, and Reinmar had to provide a further explanation. “Albrecht and Valeria were lovers once, as you obviously know, and they had a child. Valeria asked Great-Uncle Albrecht if I were one of them. He implied that I might be, although it was a lie, and it was on that account that she told the monks to leave me alone.”

Von Spurzheim looked at him long and hard before saying: “And what was the attitude of the monks?”

“They were bitterly angry,” Reinmar told him, uneasily. “They told her what I had done in the underworld, offering it as proof that I am a dangerous enemy. She would not listen.”

Von Spurzheim might have interrogated him further had he not been in such a hurry, but he shrugged his shoulders then, as if dismissing the matter until a more convenient time. “Your charmed life may be a more valuable asset than I imagined,” he said wryly. “Do you know where to report to Sergeant Vaedecker?”

“Yes.”

“Then you had best go. By nightfall, every able-bodied man in town must be thoroughly certain of what his role is to be in the coming conflict. It seems to be coming sooner than I hoped, but we can still win it. We must.” Reinmar opened the door to go out, but von Spurzheim decided that he had not quite finished, adding: “We are fighting for our lives, Reinmar. Every one of us. No one here can make a private arrangement with destiny. No one.”

“I think my Great-Uncle Albrecht knows that,” Reinmar said, deliberately misunderstanding the real implication of the witch hunter’s warning—but the last darkly quizzical look von Spurzheim directed at him before the door closed told Reinmar that the witch hunter knew well enough that his threat had not fallen on deaf ears.

The streets through which Reinmar walked to the neck of the river were very crowded, and everyone he passed was urgently busy. Some were carrying provisions home, or bringing weapons out; others were boarding up windows or strengthening the slots that would hold the bars securing their doors. There were no children out of doors; those who had not been sent away were being kept inside, probably banished to cellars and attics.

Reinmar had never seen so many unsmiling people, or witnessed such a flush of collective anxiety overlaying the pallor of fear.

The docks and warehouses of Eilhart’s port were clustered a furlong below the neck of the river, where the waters had been artificially broadened to form a deep pool. The “neck” qualified as a neck because it had two huge storehouses to either side of a narrow gap, through which the water was forced to flow more rapidly, but there were no quays for unloading. Goods were sometimes lowered into boats from the wide and glassless windows of the storehouses, using block-and-tackle systems strung from jutting beams, but the traffic was one-way. The storehouses were used to stockpile grain, turnips and beets from the surrounding farms, almost all of it for local use. Each had three storeys, with holes cut in each floor through which long ramps extended, also equipped with hauling gear. By the time Reinmar arrived, there was at least one crossbowman at every window—and Reinmar had no difficulty in judging that those at the highest would be least likely to get hurt, always provided that the buildings were not fired. Although the shell of each storehouse was brick, the floors and ramps were wooden.

The windows on the ground were, unfortunately, low-silled and broad. They had been built for the convenience of moving goods out, not keeping invaders at bay. Grain-sacks filled with sand and earth had already been piled up to make the defences higher, and criss-crossed planks had been nailed in place to make the apertures less inviting, but these measures were makeshift at best.

Matthias Vaedecker showed Reinmar which of these openings was to be his station. It was the middle one of three, neither the furthest upriver nor the furthest down, but Reinmar could not see that its position would make much difference to the safety of his situation.

“Any boats moving through the narrows will be easy targets for the bowmen,” the sergeant said, addressing a gathering of all the men assigned to the ground floor of the westernmost storehouse, “and they are highly unlikely to have as many bows as we have, or any great skill in using them—but they will have clubs and spears, which they will wield with very considerable strength if they get close enough. We have put our best net at the head of the gap and our strongest hawser just behind it, and I don’t doubt that we shall wreak havoc among them until those defences are breached—but once the head of the passage is clear of obstruction we have only one more net and two more booms.

“The second net is placed two yards ahead of this middle window, so that those it interrupts will be vulnerable to fire without being able to make overmuch use of their weapons. We must make the most of that vulnerability, because the tide will turn their way if the second net is breached and the entire race fills up with crowded boats.

“Don’t become too confident if the fight goes our way at first—the longer it goes on, the harder it will become. The first kills will be ours, but this is not an enemy much given to retreat and they will keep on coming. We must keep on killing, and killing, and killing, until there is nothing left to kill. Whatever happens, we may not retreat.

“The barricades across the roads are tactical positions that might be abandoned if necessity presses, but this gap and these two storehouses are vital to the defence of the town. We do not give way. Whatever happens, we hold our positions to the last man. We may hope for reinforcements if the attack is concentrated here to the exclusion of other vulnerable points, but if no reinforcements come we must fight until we die. Is that understood?”

Looking around, Reinmar could see that it was fully understood by the men wearing colours, who had been in such situations before, but that it had caused great consternation among the townsmen and the farmers who had been assigned to support them. Even so, there was not a man among them who did not want to put on a brave face. They had all heard tales of what had happened to the farms that had been attacked, and they had all seen the bodies in the market place. No one wasted time wondering about the possibility of negotiation or mass evacuation.

“Right,” the sergeant went on, as soon as he had left a decent pause. “I want every man who has never used a pike or blade for fighting educated to the limit of what can be achieved. My corporals will sort you out into groups, according to your training, and they’ll do everything in their power to advance your capability in the time that remains to us. No one is excused, except to take an hour’s leave to eat, which we shall do in strict rotation. If any of you have been trained with sword or staff, you’ll help with the education of the others.”

There was a deal of confusion then, while all of this was sorted out, but Vaedecker took Reinmar to one side so that he could speak to him confidentially.

“You can take your last leave soon,” the sergeant said, “but I want you back by six, as I told you before. Pikes and half-pikes will be far more use than swords to begin with, but we haven’t enough of them and it will come to swordplay sooner or later. I’ll give you two or three willing lads now, while some time still remains to teach them something worthwhile—but whatever you fail to teach them, at least make sure that they don’t hurt themselves or one another, and don’t leave them exhausted.”

Reinmar promised to heed all this advice, and did so, although it was obvious to him the farmhands given to him for instruction had far more strength than skill. He judged that they would be able to do better with the scythes and pitchforks they had brought than with the rusty swords they had exhumed from long storage, but he tried to educate them anyway. If he accomplished nothing else he showed them how best to balance themselves while they thrust, and how to minimise the target they presented to an enemy.

As soon as he was given leave to go, Reinmar hurried off home. He was hungry and thirsty, but he was also anxious about what Albrecht had said to him before he went to meet the sergeant.

The shop was closed but the door had not been barred; Reinmar obtained entry readily enough. He called down to the cellars but obtained no reply; there was no sign of his father, or Godrich. That was not in the least strange, given that they must have been ordered to report for assignment exactly as he had. He ran upstairs and went immediately to Marcilla’s room. He found her alone there, but she was as fast asleep as she had been before he left, and seemingly quite tranquil. He knelt beside her pallet and took her hand in his own, but he was gentle because he did not want to wake her. He made certain that there was fresh water by her pillow, and a piece of bread, before he tiptoed away.

It was possible, Reinmar supposed, that Ulick had gone with Godrich and his father to claim a role in the defence of the town, but he dared not make that assumption. He closed the gypsy’s door as quietly as he could before making his way to his own room. He wanted to make sure that the phial he had stolen from the underworld was still where he had put it before he went to find something to eat.

He realised as soon as he opened the door that something had gone badly awry. The odour that filled the room struck him dumb and motionless.