Chapter Eight

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.

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.