A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (27 page)

Hasselt-on-the-Dootlen is not far. Even in the worst weather, provided it is not actually the midst of a blizzard, it can be reached in just a few hours. It is only necessary to follow the river ‘which for the next several months would be frozen nearly solid and now is recognizable only as a broad, flat, meandering depression in the snow). But for a traveler on snowshoes and well bundled, it would provide a sure, level highway to the town. The fjord itself, she learns, is also frozen throughout the winter. Whether the town nevertheless maintains communication with the open sea beyond, her hosts are unable to say for certain.

Bronwyn succeeds in convincing the elderly couple that she has to get at least as far as Hasselt. They feel strongly that she ought to remain in bed for at least another week or two, and indoors even longer, but the girl is adamant. She reluctantly compromises, however, by agreeing to stay two more days.

Burgos and Melfi have friends in the town, as they seem to have friends everywhere. If the journey makes her ill, Bronwyn promises, she will stay with one of the people there. The couple will write a letter of introduction for her to take along. But, she insists, nowhere are they to reveal who she really is.

Burgos, for his part, insists on accompanying the princess as far as the town, it would be impossible, he told her, for him to let her go on her own.

Bronwyn admits that she enjoys the next two days, she has not felt so much at home in weeks. She carefully keeps from herself the further admission that much of her comfort comes from having two kindly people eagerly waiting upon her, a luxury she has not enjoyed in a very long time. She likes them very much, far more so than she had any palace servant, and would be very put out if someone were to suggest that she is simply allowing them to let her use them. But much of that anger would be engendered by the realization that it is in fact true, and that someone had the tactlessness to agree aloud with her own awakening conscience.

On the evening of the second day, Bronwyn notices Melfi doing something that puzzles her.

“What is the bowl of milk for?” she asks.

“Pardon?” Melfi replies, rising from the hearth, dusting ashes from her knees. The princess points to the bowl of milk and plate of small cakes that the woman has just set on the stones.

“I’ve noticed you do that nearly every night. Do you have a cat or something?”

“Oh, no,” answers Melfi, pinking a little with embarrassment. “I suppose the princess will think us very silly.”

“Of course not,” says Bronwyn earnestly, prepared for something quaint and homely.

“Well, it’s for the Kobold...”

“Kobold?”

“Yes, Princess, a Kobold is a kind of big fairy that lives in the ground...”

“I know what a Kobold is.”

“You do?”

“Believe me.”

“Well, it’s just a silly superstition, I suppose. Every house has its Kobold, especially a house made from the earth, like this one is. It’s just a symbol, maybe, to remind us to thank the earth for what we’ve taken from it. I should have grown out of it years and years ago, but you get into the habit, you know? And, I’ll tell you, there are moonless nights and wet, misty mornings when you feel that you just don’t want to take any chances...”

“I know what you mean.”

“I was afraid you’d laugh at an old woman’s notions, Princess, you’re very kind.”

“Don’t mention it. But what happens to the milk and cakes?”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens to them? What do you do with them in the morning?”

“Why, nothing. They’re always gone.”

Bronwyn has much to think about that night. She lays awake as long as she can, listening. Her mind filters out all the familiar sounds, one by one: Burgos’s rumbling snore and Melfi’s squeaking one, the faint hiss of the embers in the fireplace, the muffled ticking of the clock’s wooden gears, the murmur of her own heart. Nothing else.

In the morning, the food is gone.

Bronwyn surprises, and pleases, Burgos and Melfi by announcing that she will concede to their arguments and stay for another day or two. That night, after the couple had gone to bed, Bronwyn lays awake until she is certain they are soundly unconscious. Lighting her candle and shielding its light with the cup of her hand, she goes to the fireplace. The bowl of milk and plate of cakes are in their usual place. She slips a folded piece of paper between two of the latter, a paper she has surreptitiously prepared earlier. She creeps back to her nook, extinguishes the candle and tries to sleep. In spite of her efforts, she is soon dreaming, albeit fitfully and of terrible revenges.

In the morning, she is up even before the early-rising couple. The bowl and plate on the hearth are empty. The paper is gone.

That day and the following night are very long. She awakens when the clock softly chimes three times. She is puzzled for a moment, because that sound had never before disturbed her. Then she realizes that the sound of the chime is only a coincidence, something
else
has roused her. Something standing over her bed.

“Burgos?” she asks, for the round face, barely visible in the darkness, looks like his.

“Come with me,” is the whispered reply, and Bronwyn knows this is the answer to her message.

She rises from the bed silently. The big figure has retreated into the gloom, until it is only a darkness within the dark. It takes only a moment for her to dress in the homespun garments Melfi had given her, to which she adds gloves and a fleece-lined leather coat and hat. She still has her boots. She goes toward the hearth, which looks like the black mouth of a tunnel. The word “Hurry!” enters her ear, though she can’t see its source in the dark. She steps onto the flat, broad stones of the hearth. She still can not see the back wall of the fireplace, even though a bed of embers glows redly at her feet. She steps over them, and keeps on going. After two or three paces she stops. She realizes that she must, somehow, be beyond the fireplace yet she also knew that the thing was built of massive stones several feet thick, and that beyond is the outside, or in the present instance, a deep snowdrift. Here is neither, only a blackness that seems to press against her eyes, enveloping her as though she were imbedded within black marble, like a fly in amber, or, perhaps better, an antediluvian leaf in a chunk of coal. And she is not about to take another step without knowing what is in front of her.

“Close your eyes,” instructs the whisperer.

“Where am I?”

There is no answer. She waits another moment, then follows the instruction. No sooner has she done so than the voice whispers, “Open your eyes.”

She hasn’t realized they were closed. She opens them and cries out in alarm and pain. There is light, everywhere, and the surprise and shock of it is frightening and hurtful. She squeezes her eyes shut again, wringing tears from them. She reopens them, after a moment, in a careful squint, shading them with her fingers. Gradually, like a photographic plate developing its image, the enormous figure of a Kobold coalesces amid the pearly brightness. It is King Slagelse.

“We received the princess’ message,” he says, “and we are not pleased.”

“You must help me reach Blavek,” Bronwyn pleads.

“Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“Where is Thud?”

“Thud? You mean the man you sent with me?”

“Yes, of course. The human the princess agreed to take to Londeac.”

“I have no idea.”

“She does not know? What of our bargain?”

“It can’t be helped! What was I supposed to do?”

“She was supposed to take him to Londeac!”

“Well, he’s big enough to take care of himself! I have myself to think of!”

“Then she can take care of herself now. There will be no further help from us until she fulfills her part of our bargain.”

“But you
must
help me!”

“Why?”

“My brother and Payne Roelt are going to destroy this country!”

“And what is that to us?”

“You won’t help, then?”

“Fulfill the bargain.”

“Now?”

“When she has fulfilled the bargain, she can ask our help again. Not before.”

“
No
!” she cries, but the figure of the king is lost in a flood of incandescent fluid that washes over her, blinding her, and when it recedes there is nothing around her but the darkness of her bedroom. The next morning her resolve to get to Hasselt by any means at all is firmly established. All of Burgos’s and Melfi’s arguments are to no avail: she will listen to them no longer.

“But you can’t get to Hasselt yet,” pleads Burgos.

“Why not?”

“It’s fourteen miles from here!”

“So what? I can walk that in three hours; how much can the snow slow me?”

“You don’t understand!” The poor man is close to tears.

“What’s there to understand? The snow’s stopped; it looks firm enough. Why can’t I use snowshoes?. You’ve told me that the river is practically like a highway. And Hasselt’s so close, I don’t have to take anything with me. You know people in the town; why don’t you just write a letter for me, asking for their help, and let me go on my way?”

“But...”

“I’ll go with or without your help or approval.”

“Oh...Musrum help me!...All right, Princess, I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, Father!” wails Melfi.

They pack in silence. Though the journey might be one of only fourteen miles, the charcoal-burner is taking no chances. In fact, the degree to which he is preparing begin to engender disturbing thoughts in the princess, particularly thoughts casting doubts on the wisdom of her impatience. Perhaps, she ponders, in sixty-odd years of experience Burgos has learned more about the conditions that lay awaiting them than she does.

While Melfi is busy stuffing a pair of bags with enough food for a polar expedition, snuffling back tears all the while, Burgos begins preparing an exit. An open door exposes only a blank wall of snow. Digging away at this with a fireplace shovel and a bucket, he creates a ramp leading to the surface. Since she has not been in the outside air for weeks, Bronwyn eagerly scrambles up the slope. The sky is low and a featureless grey. All around her is a landscape of rolling white, punctuated only by pyramids of buried trees. Behind her the cottage is only another hummock, distinguished solely by its smoking chimney. The air is intensely cold and the gale-like wind sucks the warmth from her body...the sensation is vivid: she can actually feel her body heat escaping through her skin like water oozing through a sieve. The wind seems a supernatural force; it razors through her heavily layers clothing as though she were standing there naked.

She had wound a scarf around her face and her breath is freezing on the outside in sparkling crystals. Her eyes tear in an effort to keep them warm and the overflow glazes her cheeks. Each inhalation fills her chest with pain as the razor-sharp metallic air tries to congeal her lungs. Too deep a breath and her glottis closes spasmodically, making her feel as though she was going to smother.
This is impossible! I would never have believed that such cold was possible!

She feels Burgos beside her.

“Come back in!” came his muffled voice.

She can’t answer, but turns to go back down into the house. However, the perception of a strange sound stops her.
Are my ears ringing from the cold or am I really hearing bells?

“Wait!” she manages to shout.

She pulls the old man around to face her. All that is visible of him are two twinkling, worried eyes buried deeply within folds of wool and fur. She points to her ears with mittens hands.

“I hear something! Do you?”

“Of course!”

“What is it?”

“Basseliniden! “

“What?”

“Wait! You’ll see!”

Wait? Fifteen more seconds and pieces of me will start snapping off like icicles.
But the strange ringing sound is rapidly getting louder. Burgos takes her by the shoulder and gestures to one side. Turning, she sees a dark object rushing over the snowfield. It is more than strange: it is uncanny. Until her senses of depth and proportion adjust, all she is aware of is a tall, triangular shape rising and falling with the billows of ice and snow. It looks like a ship rising and falling with the waves at sea, and it is with that perception that she realizes what she is seeing. It is indeed a boat, as insane as that seemed. A long, sleek hull with a mast supporting a bellying sail. The body is held a foot or so above the snow by outrigger skis that made the craft look something like a waterstrider. The wind in its rigging sings like an aeolian harp. It approaches rapidly and Burgos waves to it. The iceboat’s sail immediately furls and it coasts neatly to a stop only a few paces from the house. The charcoal maker shuffles across the intervening space on his clumsy snowshoes and, after a moment’s uncertainty, Bronwyn follows. As they approach, a figure drops from the boat. Burgos and the stranger embrace like a pair of friendly bears.

“Come on in!” the old man shouts, and all three descend into the cottage. Once back in the warmth, Bronwyn allows Melfi to cluck over her. If anything, the heat from the fire makes her feel colder at first as her gradual thaw tingles and stings.

“Look who’s here, Mother!” says Burgos, as he and the other begin the laborious process of deinsulation.

“Why, it’s Basseliniden!” shouts Melfi, rushing to the stranger, who, his disrobing reveals, is a tall, thin man with a distinguished and equally distinguished whiskers. “What in the world were you doing outside, Burgos?” he asks, accepting a cup of tea from Melfi. “Thanks! Didn’t expect to see you outside your burrow before Spring.”

“Well, we have a guest, Bassel...”

“So I see!”

He turns to the girl and offers his hand.

“I’m Basseliniden. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

In spite of his rather serious mien, there is a sarcastic sparkle to him that she likes.

“I’m Bronwyn Tedeschiiy. It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

“Tedeschiiy?
Tedeschiiy
? Why does that sound so familiar?”

“She’s the Princess Bronwyn, that’s why!” explains Burgos, ignoring Bronwyn’s glare.

“What? What in the world are you talking about, Burgos?”