Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (43 page)

The sound of wind ran all through her dreams, becoming a color eventually, like the flows through which she and Diun had moved. Then, she could not have named the color: now it was dark and light together, water with moonlight on it, and beyond that, the roughness of woodland under the westering moon. She gazed at the town by the lakeshore. Brunnen, it was, with its waterside warehouses for the goods shipped  through the valley between the northern lakes and the Forest Lakes. Many boats lay tethered, bobbing, at the piers jutting into the lake. One of them was a big sixteen-oared boat, clinker-built. All but three of its oars were missing, its mast was a stump, and its ruined sail hung over the side like a soiled washcloth....

Mariarta smiled at the sight as the wind swept her past the town. She was borne over thebranches of the trees, toward a long dark mass of upward-jutting land northeast of the lake. This was the Rigi rise, which lay on the northeast side of the upper reaches of the Forest Lake, separating it from the Lake of Zug further to the north. The westering moon glinted on the white dust of the road which led from Brunnen to the Zugersee, then bore south to where an upreaching finger of the upper Forest Lake came within two miles of the Zugersee’s shore. There, where the white road passed the lakeshore, crouched a great dark shape from which the moonlight slid away, only its shadow across the road betraying it: a mass of encircling wall, and square towers jutting up like stumps of broken teeth. Kussnacht it was, the heart of the power of all the
vogten
in these parts, and now Gessler’s home, the prison of his enemies, the fortress of his allies.    

The moon stood high, paling: dawn was coming. Mariarta  saw how the trees bent in toward the road at one point, how the road dipped into a gorge there and ran along it, coming within a half-league of Kussnacht. Down the wind she rode came a sound: marching feet. Back along that road she saw a little troop of men, several of them on horseback. On one of them she could see the glint of armor. The man had borrowed a hat from someone. It was too large for him, and had no feather in it.

Mariarta bent closer, seeing, in the woods, something the men who marched could not see. In the low growth between the trees, in one clear spot above the road as it ran through that gorge, a man crouched. The paleness of his white linen herdsman’s shirt gave him away, seen from above. The shirt was not as white as it had been earlier, though: an evening’s and night’s march without pause from the Axenegg shore to this forsaken spot had left it torn and muddied from steep hills climbed, shrubbery plunged through, muddy mountainside tracks slid down. Mariarta saw the man cock his ear to the sound of men and horses approaching. He reached into his quiver. Only two bolts were there. Silently he spanned the bow, put the first bolt in the nock: looked at the other. Thoughtfully, and with a terrible smile, he stuck the remaining one in the neckband of his shirt, the hunter’s old habit.

It was the worst time for shooting. There was little light, and  no shadow. The morning mist that dwelt by all the lakesides hereabouts in spring was beginning to rise. The man’s lips moved: in prayer, Mariarta thought.

She prayed too, and heard no laughter, or any other comment.

Leaf-plate,
  she heard him think.
I’ve never shot at plate before. I wonder, will this work?....

The sound of feet and hoofbeats echoed in the gorge. The man lifted the bow, sighted, waited. The armored shirt he was most interested in came toward him on the sauntering horse at the lead of the group. The man pulled the trigger.

The snap of the string was loud. Gessler turned in the saddle, just in time for the bolt to catch him fair in the middle of the chest—not the side-shot that the archer would have been quite contented with. The bolt buried itself in the plate-shirt right to the pheasant-feather fletching. Gessler’s mouth worked: he stood in the saddle. Then with a crash like a tinker’s load coming off a horse, Gessler fell.

The other horses in the group reared and shied. The soldiers with their spears stared around them, got only the briefest look at a ghostly figure in white who vanished into the undergrowth. A few tried to chase him, but they didn’t know the land, and soon enough it occurred to them that, from behind any stone or tree, that unerring bow might be trained on them too. As quickly as they could without looking completely craven, the soldiers got back on the road, and made off towards Kussnacht.

The wind was passing, the last of yesterday’s
föhn
breathing itself gently over the lake as the sky went from colorless grey to the beginning of delicate shades of pink and gold. Mariarta gazed at it with a fierce joy and thought of the old story in Luzi’s book, that dreams which come at dawn are true. Weary still, even in the dream, Mariarta told the wind to take her back to Altdorf, to bed.

But she yearned for the morning.

Cur ils noss velgs buns Pardavonts    

When our good forbears in their wards

vanginen fig d’ils lur Tirauns

grew weary of their tyrant lords,

sin beras furmas mal tractai,

who treated them in shameful wise,

tras chi ean els vangi spindrai?

through whom did their salvation rise?

Tras Tei, o Deus! Halleluja!
           

Through Thee, O God!  Halleluja!

(“Concerning the Goodness of God

Toward Our Country”, anonymous)

Mariarta told Walter and Werner and Theo what she had seen, but they said nothing about it. The next morning, the people gathered in fear and hope along the lakeshore saw one tired, footsore man trudging up the road, with a crossbow over his shoulder and an empty quiver. They welcomed him like a hero and brought him into the Lion to hear the tale of his escape: but it wasn’t until he finished the story that they realized what his return meant.

The town went wild: winekegs were broached, and people came out in the street to drink, pledging God like just one more drinking-companion, thanking Him for the death of the tyrant, who would oppress them no more. Even Walter Furst was able to watch his beerkegs rolled out into the street with tears of joy rolling down his face, instead of the usual complaints that it wasn’t ready. Arnold von Melchtal came out of hiding at last and was reunited with his old father, who, blind as he was, danced the
gilgia
in the middle of the marketplace, shouting “Revenge! Revenge!” and alternating the shouts with creaky singing of the old psalm-hymn about the just God who punishes the evildoers in His time.

There were a few who smiled and drank the wine or beer, but were not quite so merry. “They’ll appoint another bailiff right away,” Werner Stauffacher said to Walter Furst. “But first they’ll send the army to punish us...”

“We’d better distract them,” Walter said.

“Einsiedeln,” Wilhelm Tel said softly.

The others nodded. “I don’t think the councilors in the other Lake countries will disagree,” Theo said. “We’ll send word quickly. But what will you do now, Gugliem?  It’s your hide they’ll be after.”

“That’s the way things have been for a while,” Tel said. “Me...I think I’ll go home to the Schachental. I want to be with Edugia and the children, by my own hearthside. It’s been too damned long.”

“They’ve gone up behind Attinghausen,” Walter said, “but we’ll send a messenger to bring them home.”

Tel nodded, grasped each man by the hand. Mariarta smiled at him as he took hers, and said, “That was a mighty shot, sir.”

“The wind helped,” he said, looking at Mariarta thoughtfully.

“Duon Gugliem,” she said, “I don’t think the wind made any difference at all.”

He nodded wearily, and went off toward the Schachen bridge. People cheered him, followed him, shouted praise: but Mariarta noticed that they also left a slight space around him, a distance of respect, almost awe.

Messengers left for the lakeside towns by boat that afternoon. Each messenger bore with him two things. One was a call for a meeting of the councillors of the Lake Countries, at Altdorf, in two days’ time. The other was a spear. It was of a new sort that one of the smiths of Schwyz had heard about from a German traveller, a mustered-out foot soldier of the Austriacs, and had reconstructed with slight improvements. The spear was not merely a spike with a socket, to be clamped onto a scythe-shaft or other pole. This one had a narrow spearhead, but halfway down its length the spearhead sprouted outward gracefully, toward one side, into a straight, flat, razor-sharp edge, a sort of elongated hatchet, while the rest continued into a spike. The weapon was called a “halberd”. It was quick to make, and good at punching through armor, the German traveller had told the Schwyzer smith. It must have been very good at that indeed, since the Austriacs were trying to get it banned, like the crossbow, as a weapon of mass destruction. The messengers carrying the spears were to take them to smiths, in any village without an Imperial presence of troops or bailiffs, and have as many of them made as swiftly as could be.

Then, until the meeting with the other councillors of the Forest Countries, there was nothing to do but wait.

•

When the news of Gessler’s death reached the rest of the towns around the lake, the response was instantaneous, and shocking, even to those who had greatly hoped for something of the kind. Everywhere the Lake people rose and rejoiced at the death of the chief tyrant—then started taking care of business closer to home. Bailiffs were dragged from their houses, flogged, driven out of the towns where they lived, often killed. At Schwanau, an island on the Lauerzer lake west of Schwyz where the
landvogt
of Arth and Goldau lived, silent boatmen landed at the island’s piers late in the evening of the day that news of Tell’s shot reached Schwyz town. The
landvogt’
s bodyguard were killed in their beds. The
landvogt
of Schwanau himself was tied back-to-front on a horse and ridden at a hand-gallop to Arth, where he was dragged to the top of the tower in which he had imprisoned and starved the maiden Gemma, and was thrown down to break his bones on the same jagged rocks that had met Gemma when she leaped from her window in despair. Up in Unterwalden, by Kussnacht town, the small towns around—Udligenswil, Haltikon, Greppen, Weggis—could not do anything about Kussnacht fortress itself, which had promptly shut its doors in panic at Gessler’s death. But the Unterwaldners massed near Immensee the night after the news of Tell’s shot came, and marched north to the site of the half-built new fortress, Zwing-Uri. They fell on the barracks near the place, freeing the Lake Towns people who were being held there. Then they destroyed the Urners’ Prison—burnt the scaffolding, pulled down every stone that didn’t fall, and shot or hacked to death the Austriac soldiers who guarded the site.

Elsewhere in the Unterwald, west of the Forest Lakes, in Sarnen, the people there, long oppressed as badly by their
landvogt
Beringer von Landenberg as the Uri and Schwyz people had been by Gessler, gathered together what weapons they had—not many, then: scythes, and a few longbows and crossbows. They killed their bailiff and the Austriac soldiers quartered in the village, and marched on Landenberg castle. Beringer, much incensed by this outrageous behavior, but unwilling (having heard the news from Kussnacht) to put his nose outdoors, caused some catapults to be brought onto the walls, and started bombarding the castle’s attackers, and their town, with burning missiles. Many houses burned, and some people from Sarnen were killed. But early on in the evening, it seemed that God had noticed the basic injustice of the situation. Tales are still told of the terrible storm that came out of the south that evening, howling up the Sarner Lake like some huge black beast. Some claimed they saw a four-footed beast’s shape striding menacingly through those dark roiling clouds, roaring as it came. Lightning lanced down and lashed the hill; three great bolts broke as many breaches in the walls of Burg Landenburg. The people, poorly armed as they were, did the rest. Over a matter of some days, this castle too was pulled apart. The streets of Sarnen town were paved with it, and the burned houses were swiftly rebuilt in grey Landesburg granite. Beringer’s charred body was pitched into the lake.

From all around the lakes the stories made their way to every town, and the rejoicing at the Forest Countries’ liberation went on for days as that liberation spread. Songs began to be sung of Tell’s shot and the castles’ fall. The other music mostly heard during that time was the ring of hammers on anvils, and the softer music of axes in the coppices around many small villages, where saplings that might have been harvested for firewood or charcoal were felled and smoothed for another use.

The rejoicing was not unalloyed, for everyone knew the Austriacs’ rage was growing. Not long after Tell’s shot, a group of about a thousand men gathered from Altdorf and Schwyz and Kussnacht town, from Brunnen and Sarnen and Zug, from Luzern and Vitznau and Bauen. They met in the darkness at Brunnen, and then softly marched through the narrow pass at Morgarten, northeastward toward the lake of Sihl. There beside the lake, atop the Amsel hill, they looked for a long time at the shadowy walls and towers of Einsiedeln. It was an ancient holy place, built on the site where old Sankt Meinrad of the Ravens had lived in his tiny cell, and where he had been killed by robbers five hundred years before. The Emperor Otto had made the monastery founded there the first recipient of immediacy. That promise of direct rule by the throne was the only one in all these parts which had not been revoked...most men said, because the Empire and the Austriacs did not care to risk the Pope’s enmity. The monastery had been spared the lifetime of increasing tyranny that its neighbors had suffered. Standing on that hill, the silent thousand who gazed at Einsiedeln crossed themselves, prayed God to forgive them the sacrilege, and started downward to see to it that the monastery kept up with its neighbors. Hours later, a pillar of fire rose from the lakeside, and in the dawn, a pillar of smoke. Eastward, across the Tyrol and into Austria, the smoke was seen.

For weeks all things seemed to hang suspended about the Forest Lake, waiting. Work in the fields went on: there was plowing to do for the autumn vegetables—though some people were borrowing their neighbors’ plowshares, their own having been beaten into what seemed more necessary shapes. Cattle-fights had to be held to sort out the leadership of the herds, and the
pugnieras
had to be gotten in shape for them. There was cheese to be made for the winter, butter for the summer. The only thing missing from the usual late summer scene was the bailiffs, and few found it in their hearts to complain. But still, everyone worried: all through the summer, all through the beginning of the fall.

And when it happened at last, it happened so quickly there was almost no time to react.

•

Mariarta was sitting with Theo and Arnold von Melchtal and Arnold’s old father by the fireside in the Lion. The fire was welcome, for November had finally rolled around, and they sat there safe from the sleet outside, toasting themselves and discussing cows. Arnold was insisting that the brown ones, the Saanens, gave the best milk: Theo was holding out for some pale-colored kind that came from France, supposedly good for both milk and meat, and better for cream than the Saanens.

For this I gave my power to a mortal?
  Diun Glinargiun said from the back of Mariarta’s mind.
Where is the travel you promised me, the excitement?  I did not come back into the world to study its cows.

You eat their cheese readily enough,
  Mariarta said silently, sipping wine.
What about that one the other night that you were so fond of?  You made me eat nearly the whole thing. Lida was scandalized, said she was never letting me in her kitchen again.
I
never thought goddesses with the wisdom of the ages in them would lose their manners so. What a pig—!

Diun laughed, unconcerned. Mariarta stretched and saw Lida come through the open door.  
Now here she is to scold me again,
  she said, 
and serve you right to have to listen to it—

Then Mariarta broke off, for the breeze was blowing past Lida, and scolding was not in her mind. She was alarmed. She came straight to the four of them, and said, “Quickly, come back to the house. There’s a messenger.”

They went out, Theo taking Arnold’s father’s arm. “What is it?” Mariarta said to Lida.

“Someone from the north,” Lida said. “Come on.”

In Walter Furst’s kitchen they found the messenger, eating and drinking—no surprise, Lida had been at him—and talking to Walter. Werner Stauffacher was there, with a mug of the Furst ale—and so, to Mariarta’s surprise, was the Knight of Attinghausen, drinking and looking concerned.

“Here they are,” Walter said. “Start again, Uli.”

“Early yesterday morning,” the young man said, swallowing the piece of bread he was working on, “someone shot an arrow over the Arth city wall, into the window of one of the councillors. The arrow had a piece of parchment wrapped around it, with the words,  ‘Beware the morning of Sankt Othmar’s Eve, at Morgarten.’”

“Sankt Othmar’s—” Theo looked at the Knight. “That’s the day after tomorrow!”

Attinghausen nodded. “The rider went northeast. We have at least one knight in the court who is in a position to know when Duke Leopold moves.”

“Your son....” Mariarta said.

Werner of Attinghausen nodded. “Doubtless Arnulf will be riding with them. This is bitter to me, but there’s nothing to be done. Leopold is our immediate liege-lord under the Emperor.”

“They’ll be coming with a large force,” Walter Furst said. “There would be no point in a small one. I wish we knew for sure how many armored knights will be there.”

The Knight of Attinghausen frowned. “As far as I know, rarely more than a thousand or fifteen hundred knights are doing knight-service in all of Austria at any one time. The Emperor wouldn’t dare try to levy more than that at once—he would have a rebellion on his hands.” He frowned harder. “There might be as many as five or six hundred ‘lances’ of knights. Six men to the Austrian lance, counting each knight’s squire, page, armorer and a couple foot.... Maybe twenty-four hundred horse, and of those, two thousand or so will be armed and able to fight.”