Chapter Seven

Reinmar would rather have gone with his father to see Albrecht than mind the shop, but he knew that it was useless to protest. Godrich had better things to do than stand at the counter, and Reinmar knew that it would take far more than a mere witch hunt to make Gottfried Wieland consent to close his shop during business hours.

As it turned out, though, Gottfried’s was a wasted trip. Albrecht was not at home, because Machar von Spurzheim had sent soldiers to arrest him and confine him in the town jail. They would have arrested his housekeeper too, but she had fled. The rumours that flew around the town were divided as to whether she had merely run away for her own safety or had gone to warn the secret vintners that trouble was on its way. As soon as Gottfried returned he threw himself into making urgent preparations for Reinmar’s imminent buying trip.

As Reinmar had anticipated, Gottfried delegated Sigurd to serve alongside Godrich as his protector on the expedition. Sigurd normally worked on the quays loading and unloading barges, in which service he had built up an impressive set of muscles. Whenever the stevedores engaged in tug-o’-war competitions against the local land-labourers, Sigurd was the anchorman who tipped the balance, and in any local contest of individual strength he was the certain winner. He had never been trained in swordsmanship but he could wield a staff with terrific force and cunning, and his fists were as powerful as clubs. He was the kind of man in whose company any lesser mortal would feel safe, and Reinmar was glad to see him waiting with the wagon when he brought his own pack down from his room, not long after first light on the following day.

He was not so pleased, however, to find Matthias Vaedecker waiting alongside Sigurd, with a pack of his own. He was not wearing his military colours, although he was carrying a crossbow.

“What are you doing here?” Reinmar asked, in frank astonishment.

“I’ve been ordered to travel with you,” the sergeant said, airily. “Herr von Spurzheim is anxious for your safety. There are rumours of monsters abroad in the hills.”

Reinmar’s eyes flicked back and forth between the squat sergeant and the massive Sigurd. “There are always rumours of monsters in the hills,” he said. “Wise men know better than to take them seriously.”

“The truly wise man is the one who knows when rumours that are not usually to be taken seriously begin to carry evil import,” the sergeant informed him, coolly.

It seemed perfectly obvious to Reinmar that Vaedecker had actually been commissioned to spy on him, or at the very least to use the expedition as a cover enabling him to spy on the vintagers they intended to visit and any other travellers who might be abroad. He knew, too, that Vaedecker must be aware that it was obvious—but that was not a licence to say the words aloud. All Reinmar said, instead, was: “Where’s your horse?”

“I’m an infantryman,” the sergeant replied, mildly. “The horses on which I and my companions arrived in Eilhart were hired, time being short while we still hoped to catch the man we were following before he disembarked. I shall be quite content to ride in the cart with you.”

When Godrich joined them, Reinmar asked whether his father knew about the sergeant’s orders, but it was the sergeant who answered. “He is perfectly agreeable,” Vaedecker assured him—and Godrich confirmed it with a discreetly sullen nod.

Gottfried came out of the shop a few minutes later to bid them all farewell, and he made a show of thanking Vaedecker for lending his services to the party. “These are troubled times,” he said, blithely overlooking the fact that the only symptom of trouble so far visible in Eilhart had been von Spurzheim’s arrival, “and I shall feel much better knowing that Reinmar has a seasoned soldier with him. The combination of Godrich’s wisdom, Sigurd’s strength and your fighting skill should ensure his safe return and the profitability of the expedition.”

“I shall do my very best,” the soldier promised, “to ensure that the journey is as profitable as anyone could hope.”

Not until the cart was loaded and Godrich had the whip in his fist did Gottfried hand over the purse containing the coins which Reinmar was to use in purchasing new stock. “Remember,” he said. “Be patient and clever in striking your bargains. Try not to seem so hard as to cause resentment, but always bear it in mind that we have an effective monopoly. Maintain an appearance of generosity—but make sure that it is only an appearance.”

“I shall do my best,” Reinmar promised. “If anyone tries to take advantage of my youth and inexperience, I’ll tell them that I’m so terrified of my father that I dare not offer them a penny more than the meanest figure I can calculate, lest I be flogged within an inch of my life when I return with a wagon half full and an empty purse. They will easily believe it, will they not?”

“They will,” Gottfried assured him—but his smile was not as broad as it should have been. “Good luck, my son, and come back safe.”

Ordinarily, Reinmar would have chattered away to Godrich and Sigurd as the cart rolled out of town, but the presence of the sergeant was a powerful inhibiting factor. The only topic of conversation within the town that morning would be the arrest of Albrecht Wieland and its likely import, but that was not something that could be safely discussed in front of Vaedecker and Reinmar was not sufficiently desperate to cast about for a harmless substitute.

The road on which they left town was a good one, but their progress was slowed somewhat by the fact that there was considerable traffic in the other direction. Although it was the day before the principal market day, the flow of everyday produce like eggs and milk was swelled by the movement of heavier produce in preparation for the weekly orgy of buying and selling. The further they drew away from the town, in fact, the more traffic of that kind they encountered and the narrower the road became. Theirs was the uphill route, which made their progress even more difficult.

At first, they followed the course of the river, which flowed relatively smoothly for a league or so above Eilhart pool, even though it was not considered navigable by cargo-boats. There were plenty of rowboats on the water, and flat-bottomed ferries bringing carters and foot-travellers from the further bank, where the tracks were less comfortable. When they came to the first confluence of the Schilder with one of its lesser streams, they swung away south-westwards and the way became steeper. The peaks of the Grey Mountains were visible even in Eilhart, although the intervening hills supported the bleak horizon with a rich band of green, but the further they went into the forested slopes the more grey became visible from every ridge, and the true mass of the mountains became far easier to judge.

By midday they had left the best farmlands behind, having progressed into drier land better suited to vines than to grain or root vegetables. In the depths of winter, Reinmar knew, the sun could scarcely raise itself above the distant peaks and all this land seemed bleak and derelict, but when the sun was high and shone benignly down upon them the valleys seemed much richer. The best vines grew on southern-facing slopes, and were always on the farther side of their particular hills, so the faces to which the cart first came usually looked wild and unpromising. They were grazed by flocks of ragged goats. When the cart had moved around to the better side, the vineyards nestling into the hillsides were revealed, each one dominated by a grey stone house surrounded by labourers’ cottages. A few such clusters were large enough to be reckoned villages, with their own inns, shrines and burial-grounds, but most were set some way apart from the dwellings that clung to the banks of streams and the coverts where fruit trees grew and foresters gathered.

Reinmar made his first purchases as dusk approached, and they lodged that night with the wine-grower. Reinmar offered no explanation of Vaedecker’s presence and the grower assumed that he was present at Gottfried’s request to afford extra protection for his son. This enabled Vaedecker to ask some subtly searching questions about possible difficulties they might face as they went higher into the hills.

“None that I can vouch for,” the grower assured them. “There is a lot of talk of monsters and black magic, but such talk is always produced in quantity when settled folk want an excuse to harass the gypsies. The summer has been an awkward one—some farmers have had a mediocre but satisfactory harvest while others have seen their crops utterly ruined by fierce storms. That has lowered the demand for casual labour, leaving more travellers to roam the land in search of whatever pickings they can find, and the situation has inflamed the jealousies that always fester among such folk. Why me? the unlucky always say in such circumstances. Why me and not him? Who has cursed me with this foul misfortune? Any violence bred by such talk tends to be suffered by the gypsies as well as blamed on them—I doubt that anyone will trouble you.”

This sounded to Reinmar like good common sense, although Vaedecker did not seem entirely satisfied.

What they saw in the course of the next three days seemed to Reinmar to confirm his judgement. The higher hills were often subject to violent but localised storms, which could batter fields and buildings with hailstones even in the hottest months, and such visitations could blast the fruits of one man’s yearly labour to smithereens while leaving his neighbour’s crop untouched. In good years the neighbours would rally round, alleviating the disaster with a portion of their own surplus, but in years when their yields had not lived up to their own hopes the neighbours were less generous and resentments accumulated. The pent-up anger usually erupted in ways that would not threaten permanent relationships, rebounding on strangers and scapegoats. Whenever he saw groups of gypsies Reinmar noted clear signs of tension between them and the settled folk.

Reinmar had always been instructed by his father to make it a point of principle to treat gypsies no less politely than anyone else, because the seasonal labour provided by the nomads was vital to the production of good vintages. This was partly because time was so much of the essence in harvesting and processing the grapes and partly because many gypsies were not only skilled men and women but people with an instinctive feel for the art of wine-making. Without the contribution of the gypsies, Gottfried had often told Reinmar, the products they sold would be poorer, and the greatest loss would be suffered by the finest vintages.

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.