Chapter Twenty-Six

As soon as he had eaten a hurried meal, Reinmar set off for the burgomaster’s house in search of Machar von Spurzheim. He had only to step outside the door of his father’s shop to understand what Marguerite meant about the carts that were bringing farmers’ families and their possessions into town while the local inhabitants were packing up to leave.

The exchange was not as nonsensical as logic might suggest. A town full of soldiers was a far safer place than a hamlet, if there really were an army massing in the surrounding hills, but that army was bound to need provisions and if the worst rumours were true, its officers were not the kind to pay their way or to hold back their troops from looting. From the viewpoint of a farmer who had already harvested and sold his crop, Eilhart would appear to be a haven simply because it offered the meagre safely of numbers; the townspeople, on the other hand, would be thinking in different terms. Many of them would have relatives or trading-partners in Holthusen, and the larger town must seem to them a very desirable haven by comparison with one that had no protective wall or local garrison and was likely to be stripped of the greater part of its wealth. Eilhart would have to be defended, if the need arose, by soldiers who had no local relatives or property to shape their priorities, who would undoubtedly become more desperate as time went by in their requisitioning of food, weapons and manpower.

Reinmar was stopped three times on his way to the square by people who knew that he was recently returned from an expedition into the foothills of the Grey Mountains. They all wanted to know if he had actually seen monsters. When he told them that he had, and that Sigurd and Matthias Vaedecker had even contrived to spill the blood of beastmen, they nodded grimly. They were not surprised; what he had to say merely set the seal on their anxiety. Two of the three also knew that he had been closeted for some time with Machar von Spurzheim, and they asked him what the witch hunter intended to do. He told them that he did not know, but that the decision might be taken out of the witch hunter’s hands if the attack began too soon. It was the enemy, Reinmar conceded, who would determine the time and place of the conflict to come. He ended by echoing yet again the assurance that however monstrous the forces arrayed against the town might be, they were not invulnerable—but he was not surprised when his questioners could take no comfort from it.

No one asked after his great-uncle, or even his grandfather.

When he reached the burgomaster’s house, Reinmar was immediately sent on to the blockhouse, where he found von Spurzheim in the company of the town constables, carefully examining a map. The witch hunter broke away from his conference as soon as Reinmar appeared, and took him to one side.

“There’s no further need to keep your great-uncle in a cell,” he said, “but he insists on returning home. I’ve told him that his house is too far out of town, and that we can’t possibly extend our defensive perimeter that far, but he is adamant. If you could persuade him to come to your father’s house you might save his life.”

“That’s a task better suited to my father,” Reinmar pointed out.

“Aye,” said von Spurzheim, “but your father was as reluctant to see Albrecht as Albrecht is to see him, while both seem happy to let you serve as go-between. For his own good, I hope you can persuade him—but if you can’t, I wish that you would at least see him safely home. I still have two men watching the house, but I intend to withdraw them before nightfall.”

This speech rang slightly false, and Reinmar had no difficulty understanding what von Spurzheim really wanted of him. He had refused to go to Holthusen as a spy, but the witch hunter still thought that he might be useful in some such capacity. Von Spurzheim did not seem inclined to give him a formal commission, but would certainly demand a full account of any conversation that took place as Reinmar guided Albrecht home—and of any contact that Albrecht might subsequently make with his elusive son.

Even so, Reinmar thought, I have enough reasons of my own to comply. “I’ll need two horses,” was what he said aloud to von Spurzheim. “Albrecht is too frail to walk home, and if I’m to come back alone I’ll need to come quickly.”

Von Spurzheim nodded. “I’ll have two horses saddled,” he said. “You’re wise to wear your sword, but such intelligence as I can gather from the farm folk suggests that the enemy forces are still fairly widely scattered. If anything happens tonight it will probably be little more than a skirmish.”

One of the constables took Reinmar down to the cells and unlocked the door to Albrecht’s.

“Will you come home with me, great-uncle?” Reinmar asked. “We are a little crowded now, but we can set down a pallet for you in my room or Luther’s, as you please.”

“I can’t,” was Albrecht’s reply.

“If you suppose that your past adventures in Marienburg will guarantee you immunity from the forces ranged against the town,” Reinmar said, soberly, “I fear that you may be sadly mistaken.”

“I don’t,” the old man said. “The gratitude of princes is a bounteous thing compared to the gratitude of the darker gods. If you suppose that I would be any safer in your father’s house than in my own then you’re sadly mistaken. Granted that I am lost, I would rather be lost in my own place.”

“In that case,” Reinmar said, “I’ll come with you. I’ve sent for two horses, if you’re well enough to ride. If not, I’ll find us a carriage.”

Albrecht lifted a grey eyebrow. “Is that wise?” he said.

“Why not?” Reinmar countered. “If there’s no safety for you in my father’s house, there’s none for me either.”

Albrecht gave in, evidently grateful for the favour of his nephew’s company as well as a horse to ride. As von Spurzheim had promised, the two mounts were saddled and waiting by the time the two of them emerged blinking into the late morning light.

As soon as he had mounted his horse, Albrecht craned his neck to look at the cloud-clad peaks of the distant Grey Mountains. “Tonight will be clear enough,” he judged, “but tomorrow won’t. When those clouds come scurrying northwards, bearing icy fogs and thunderstorms, worse things will follow in their train.”

“What things?” Reinmar wanted to know, as soon as they were out of earshot of the busy square. “Where are these monsters coming from, great-uncle?”

“Who knows?” was Albrecht’s reply. “The mountains hereabouts were never host to dwarfish settlements, so far as history and legend can inform us, but you seem to have found that they are hollow nevertheless—and the fact that we know of no passes which lead conveniently to Bretonnia does not mean that none are known to unhuman beings. Then again, we are not so very far from the Cursed Marshes that lie beyond Marienburg. If von Spurzheim’s forces have come so far since they began their campaign, their adversaries might easily have moved in parallel. What matters is not where these creatures came from, but how many have arrived. Six by six they will come, and thirty-six by thirty-six, while the witch hunter’s men form up in tens, but we shall not know how the balance lies until the battle is actually joined, and perhaps not until it’s ended.”

“Von Spurzheim seems to be assembling a considerable force,” Reinmar said. “He has abundant support from the Reiksguard as well as men under his direct command—and if the fight is brought to us, the farmers and the townspeople will all take up arms to defend what is theirs. Eilhart will not lack for passionate defenders.”

“I dare say,” the old man replied, pensively. “But I have drunk the wine of dreams, and I have heard the testimony of those who have probed its deeper secrets. The attackers will likely use mercenary troops, just as the defenders will, but those who are more fully committed to the cause will take such pleasure in the fury of battle as merely human beings can hardly comprehend. I have sipped darker wine than the wine of dreams, and I drew back from its grip, but as your new friend reminded me last night, I have known those who were only avid for more—and I have glimpsed the pleasure that such people take in torment and murder. You can have no conception of the ecstatic quality that some minds find in the furthest excesses of bloodlust. If you imagine that the strength men gain from defending home and hearth is the most powerful motive there is, you’re mistaken.”

By this time Albrecht’s house was in view. The surrounding woods gave such ample shelter that Reinmar had not expected to catch a glimpse of the spies von Spurzheim had set to watch it, and he did not. He was, however, startled to see that a thin plume of smoke was curling from the chimney. Although Albrecht had not been home for several days and his housekeeper was supposed to be long gone, someone had lit a fire that morning. Given that the late summer weather was more than warm enough, it had to be a cooking fire.

Reinmar’s first thought was that the witch hunter’s spies must have been uncommonly careless to let someone take up residence—but his second was that he himself had been unwary. Von Spurzheim probably knew full well that the house was occupied, and by whom, but he had decided that Reinmar might serve him better as an informant or agent provocateur than any company of constables and men-at-arms.

Albrecht had seen the smoke too. “Wirnt?” he murmured, half in expectation and half in trepidation. The old man rode a little way ahead so that he might dismount and go to the door before Reinmar had quit the saddle, and he hurried inside while Reinmar took his time about tethering the two horses. Reinmar did not bother to take the animals round the back of the house to the stables, because they had not come far enough to need the water-trough.

When Reinmar went inside he expected to see the man whose visit to the shop had been the trigger of this whole affair, but what he actually saw was a woman. The quality of her clothing testified that she was not a housekeeper, although she did indeed have a kettle and a frying pan set upon the stove. She was not young, by any means, but she was handsome enough and her eyes were bright with intelligence.

“It’s good to see you, Albrecht my love,” she was saying, although Reinmar took note of the fact that Albrecht had made no move to embrace her. He leapt immediately to the conclusion that this was Wirnt’s mother, fled from Marienburg in Wirnt’s wake and hastened on her way by the pursuit of Machar von Spurzheim’s zealous witch hunters.

“Are you mad, Valeria?” Albrecht asked her. “The house is watched—and if it were not, it might be more dangerous still.”

“I doubt that,” she replied. “Yes, the house is watched, by more than one man. If the soldiers were to try to seize me, they might find me more dangerous than they imagine. The weight of the years has begun to weigh on me for want of the wine of dreams, but I am not without resources. Who is the lovely boy?”

“Luther’s grandson, Reinmar Wieland.”

“One of us?”

“The Wielands have not traded in dark wine for many years,” Albrecht told her. “I suppose I must take the blame for that, at least as much as Luther—but Reinmar has been to the source, it seems, and has escaped with his life.” Reinmar noticed that he had not actually answered the question he had been asked.

Answer or not, this news intensified Valeria’s interest remarkably, and she stared hard at Reinmar, as if her eager eyes were avid to drink every detail of his face. He could not guess exactly how old she was. The flesh that sat upon her bones seemed on close examination to be almost as thin as Luther’s, and her greying hair almost as filmy, but she had a kind of hauteur that somehow preserved her beauty in spite of such reductions. If she had come on horseback she must have changed after stabling her animal, because her gown was no riding-dress. It was pale blue in colour, with crimson embroidery, and the swirling design of the ornamental threads put him strangely in mind of the moths that he had seen in his dream.

“Did you bring wine away with you?” she asked him, abruptly.

“No,” he said, though the lie pricked his conscience slightly. “But I saw something of how it was made, and how the plants were nourished whose nectar is its base.”

“They grow in human flesh,” Albrecht put in, as if to save Reinmar the embarrassment of explanation.

“Of course they do,” the old woman said, although Reinmar could not believe that she knew the truth in any detail. “To what finer purpose could human flesh be put? What greater luxury can there be than to serve the cause of luxury itself—to become pure pleasure. What higher hope can the soul have than to be distilled into the elixir of life? Are you sure that you did not bring a little of it with you? Why else, I wonder, would you have been called? And why else would you have been sent home to us?”

“I was not sent to you,” Reinmar told her, hoping that it was true. “I will concede that I might have been led to the source of the wine of dreams in order that a trap might be set, but if I was returned to anyone, it was to the witch hunter. The trap, if trap it was, went badly awry when I took the opportunity to pollute the purity of the wines that were in store. When you say that you have resources with which to protect yourself against capture, do you mean that you are a sorceress?”

Valeria clucked her tongue at that. “I am a scholar,” she told him. “Sorcery is magic worked for evil ends, but I have only been interested in knowledge—which is, in itself, the highest good of all. Scholarship is my resource, and my vocation, as it was Albrecht’s in the days when he was my lover.”

Albrecht might or might not have muttered “One of them”—Reinmar’s eyes were still fixed on the old woman’s rouged lips, and could not discern the words by sound alone.

“I know many men who would disagree with you,” Reinmar said evenly, “and think themselves fully entitled to do it.”

“You know many fools and country bumpkins who would disagree with me,” Valeria replied, matching his level tone satirically. “You know men who are fearful of knowledge itself, lest it threaten the ignorant empire of their stubborn beliefs. You know men who have tasted knowledge and have drawn back from it, terrified that they might forfeit the good opinion of their stupid neighbours merely by becoming wise. Perhaps you even know witch hunters, who are avid to destroy everything that threatens their cowardly confidence in the simplicity of goodness. But you do not know anyone who is entitled to disagree with me.”

“You should not have come here, Valeria,” Albrecht said. “It isn’t safe.”

“I did not come here because it was safe,” Valeria retorted, tartly, “but precisely because it is unsafe. Were I safe, I’d have naught before me but the grave and naught but dreams to haunt my slow passage thence. I’d rather take a risk and have a chance to answer my need. Have you seen our son?”

“No.”

“No?” Valeria seemed genuinely surprised. “Well, doubtless you shall. It will be a pleasure and a privilege, will it not, to be together again? A family reunited in its cause. Do you know where my son is, Reinmar, by any chance?”

“No,” said Reinmar. “I have seen him, but he seems to have vanished. I gave him directions to this house, but he never arrived. Perhaps he has gone to find a flask of dark wine for his beloved mother—not realising that there is none left to find.”

“Is there not?” Valeria countered, still staring at him curiously. “You have the odour of a liar about you now, for which I don’t blame you in the least. You’ve tasted the wine, have you not? You’ve savoured its promises.”

“The merest sip,” Reinmar assured her. “I got nothing from it but bad dreams.”

“Poor boy,” she said, sarcastically. “Your left hand hardly knows what the right is doing—but you would do far better to throw in your lot with us than with von Spurzheim. Perhaps you have, but don’t quite know it yet. Are you in love, perchance?”

Reinmar had no idea what reply he ought to make to this, although he was determined not to give way. He glanced at Albrecht, hoping to judge the old man’s opinion, but Albrecht had sunk into his rickety armchair and already seemed lost to the world, save for the hungry expression that came into his eye as he contemplated the kettle and the frying-pan. In the end, Reinmar was saved the trouble of answering by the sound of a thunderous knocking at the door, which must have been made by the hilt of a sword rather than a mere fist.

“That will be von Spurzheim’s men,” Reinmar said, jumping effortlessly to the conclusion. “They must think that I have had time enough to judge the situation, and have come to arrest you.”

So saying, he went to the door and opened it, although it would have been perfectly adequate to shout an invitation to enter, because he had not barred it when he came in.

He threw it open gladly—but the gladness shrivelled and died on the instant when he saw who it was that had knocked.

Brother Noel stood on the threshold, accompanied by Brother Almeric. The knocking had indeed been made by the hilt of an unsheathed sword, which Noel still had in his hand. It was stained with blood.