The Book of Earth (40 page)

They slipped into the unlit streets with the she-goat in tow, the peasant laborer and his goat-boy once more. The town was not entirely asleep. Erde guessed that a town this big, nearly a city, probably never was. It was big enough that she could imagine getting lost in its narrow twisting streets. She wished Earth could be along to see it. Instead, she stored up images to bring back to him. Erfurt was the king’s seat, the Royal City, she reminded herself, though
she didn’t think it very grand at the moment. It looked closed up and in retreat, the aftermath of Baron Köthen’s coup. But now and then, a loaded cart passed by, and behind glazed windows, the bakers were already hard at work. And down some narrow alley or at the end of a darkened court, lamps burned and voices murmured around the thin warmth of dying embers. Men sat hunched over mugs of ale and argued. Hal left Erde crouched at the door of a few of these establishments, mostly the ones with no fancy painted sign overhead. Men came and went, quietly, paying no heed to the boy dozing with his arm slung across his goat’s withers while his father got drunk inside. A few times, despite the cold, she did actually fall asleep, and then she’d feel Hal’s hand on her shoulder, rousing her to move on.

“Not so many faces I recognize any more,” he complained finally. “Or who’ll admit they recognize me. About half the population either fled with the king or have sneaked away to the Friend’s encampment. No further details about him, since none who made it out have come back to report. They could be alive or dead, for all I know. Only the barest bones of the underground are still in place.” He shook his head irritably. “Come on. Let’s see what all the noise is.”

They followed the sound of sawing and hammering to Erfurt’s huge market square. Erde halted in astonishment as they cleared the corner and faced the giant twin-towered cathedral and the ranks of fine houses to either side. Hal pushed her onward. “Don’t stare. Supposedly you see this square every day.” But he did let them pause to watch the joiners work by torchlight. His face was grim.

“My sources say Köthen’s got the town surrounded, extra men at every gate, checking everyone who goes in or out. Noon today is the appointed hour, and no one can tell me where they’re keeping her. In the church, is my guess. Köthen’s declared a general holiday to welcome Fra Guill and your father, who are camped two miles out of town with an army of five hundred fighting men that the townsfolk are calling, at his own suggestion, the Scourge of God. Guillemo always did have a neat turn of phrase.”

Her father and Fra Guill, at this very moment, merely two miles away. Erde shivered and pulled her cloak up
around her nose. She hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d derived from putting all that distance between herself and those two men.

She followed Hal along the long side of the square, past the shuttered four-story houses of merchants and guildsmen, away from the bustle of men and fresh-sawed wood in front of the cathedral, and away from the three or four white-robes who stalked among the workmen, barking orders and keeping up the pace.

“A very fancy affair Köthen has planned,” Hal growled. “The stake raised on a scaffold, altarlike. That ought to appeal to Fra Guill. A viewing stand on the cathedral steps for the privileged guests. I wonder if he’ll be serving refreshments? The last dregs of the town’s larders.” His face twisted. “Isn’t it a lovely burning? Do you like the quality of the screams? Louder? You want louder? Can I offer you some wine and cheese?”

Erde slipped her hand into his and squeezed it tightly. He put an arm around her shoulder and held her close.

“Well, we’ll do what we can.” He sighed, letting his glance trail slowly around the big square, searching the doorways and balconies of the tall expensive houses where the king’s court had so recently lived. “We need a place to wait, a launching point as it were, where we can see but not be seen.”

Erde found herself searching the rooftops, recalling how the dragon had eyed the height of the cliff. But most were sharply peaked to shed rain and the weight of winter snow. One particularly tall one, however, seemed to have partly burned or collapsed, exposing the attic floor beneath. Builder’s canvas hung from the skeletal rafters, billowing and snapping in the chill wind.

Hal followed her line of sight. “That was a beauty. Old Baron Schwarzchilde’s house. One of the best wine cellars on the square. He would have stayed loyal. I hope he made it out alive.”

Impatient with his nostalgia, Erde pointed to themselves and then at the roof.

He understood quickly. “Ah! Good idea. If it’s a holiday, the repairmen won’t come to work. Besides, all the joiners in town are working on Fra Guill’s little celebration. We’ll have the roof all to ourselves. Study it carefully, milady.
Memorize each and every detail. You’ll have to bring the dragon up there and then right to the base of the scaffold if we’re to have a chance at getting away with this.” He grinned nastily. “And ah, if we do, I don’t care what Rose says, I hope the hell-priest is standing next to me when we land, so I can spit in his face!”

At dawn, they returned to the brickyard. A few workers sat yawning around a smoldering firepit in the yard, sharing a jug and a loaf of bread, and rubbing their hands briskly over the fire’s dim heat. They nodded as Hal passed. The oldest looked him straight in the eye and touched his cap respectfully, then made as if he was only adjusting the fit.

Hal left Erde in the barn and returned to the streets, saying there was something he’d sensed, something stirring that even his few sources wouldn’t talk about. He promised to be back soon with more news and breakfast. The dragon welcomed her gladly, complaining of particularly vivid nightmares. When she lay down with him to rest, the voice of the Summoner was immediately ringing in her ears.

*   *   *

She woke at mid-morning to the sound of Hal sharpening his sword. When he heard her stir, he laid his weapon down and went out, returning with fresh bread and a small bowl of soup still hot from the brick makers’ fire. “It’s all they could spare—there wasn’t much to go around, but at least it’ll warm your stomach.” He’d stripped down to his red jerkin and buckled over it the leather breastplate he’d brought from Deep Moor. Beads of moisture dotted his shoulders. “Dress warmly, milady. It’s snowing out there.”

She blinked at him, but actually, the mad weather had ceased to surprise her. It had come to seem an appropriate metaphor for the state of the world. The broth was watery and its contents well past their prime but she wolfed it down appreciatively, meanwhile rehearsing her memory of the broken rooftop and the market square.

“Not much other news to be had, bad or good, though I swear there’s something going on that they’re not telling me.” Hal went back to work on his sword, his tense aura of anticipation touched with dry amusement “I’m glad you’re not one of those anxious types who can’t eat before a battle.”

A battle. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but then,
it was not for nothing that the knight was honing the edge of his already well-sharpened blade. They were about to drop into the middle of a town square full of white-robes and soldiers, and snatch away the reason for the gathering. Erde decided to get nervous.

*   *   *

The first leg of the journey went well, though Erde worried for the strength of the joists as the dragon’s full weight settled onto the attic floor. The roof was deserted, dusted with a fine layer of wet snow. Earth stilled immediately and vanished. Hal and Erde ducked behind the charred front facade and peered over the edge of the stone parapet.

Their view of the square and the scaffold was unobstructed.

“You’d think it was May Festival,” grumbled Hal disgustedly. “Pennants and banners, silk drapings on the viewing stand, everyone decked out in their most colorful best. But then there’s this snow.” He glanced at the lowering sky. Huge black clouds were bundling on the western horizon. “Or maybe something worse.”

The square was full—men, women, and children, thickly wrapped against the sudden cold—but strangely hushed for so great a number crowded into one space. Even at a distance, Erde could see their faces were pale and tired, their mouths tight, their eyes narrow and anxious. A few stragglers were still arriving, escorted by small parties of foot-soldiers.

“A command performance,” Hal noted bitterly. “Every able body left in town.” He canvased the crowd, chewing his lip. “Not a lot of swords out there, though. A few of Köthen’s personal guard on foot, the rest holding the gates. I guess he’s feeling confident. Fine. So much the better for us. Though if I were him, I wouldn’t bring Fra Guill into my town without the men to stand against him. I wonder if he’s actually yet met the man face-to-face. He might not be so eager to . . . Ah, here we go!” He pointed diagonally across the square. “Speak of the Devil, and lo . . .”

Brother Guillemo made his entrance from the side of the square opposite the cathedral, a long stately progress on foot through the crowd with his phalanx of hooded white-robes in lock-step behind him. The throng drew away from him as he approached, like the Red Sea parting. As he
drew near the scaffold, he glanced up at the sky, and Erde saw him brush snow from his robe. In his wake came a small party of armed horsemen wearing the black and gold of Tor Alte. To see her family crest and colors again was like a shock of ice water thrown full in her face. Erde ducked behind the parapet as she recognized the rider in the lead, her father decked out in his baronial finest.

My father! My father is here in Erfurt!
She didn’t want him there, didn’t want to see him. Seeing him made her feel like a child again, yet she had to stare at him, his broad velvet-swathed chest, his ruddy face and prematurely silver hair. Perhaps seeing him would repair the gaps in her memory of those last days at Tor Alte. But there came no lightning bolt or revelation. It was only him, her father as she remembered him, though seeming a bit thinner, less robust. But perhaps that was only the effect of distance, diminishing him in her eyes. She was sure that no one else in the square could see beneath his show and swagger to the anxiety beneath. Josef von Alte. Her father. She had thought she would never see him again, yet here he was in Erfurt, her past and present lives commingling for the first time. Her old self-image, the one he’d helped form with his rage and his constant challenge, bubbled to the surface like air out of melting ice. Her newfound confidence drained away. She cringed against Hal’s side, shaking uncontrollably.

“Easy, girl,” Hal murmured. “They’re only men. As mortal as any of us.”

Erde wished she could snap back at him:
But one of them is my father!

“Can’t let them rattle you.” The knight had put his nerves aside. The nearer it was to the moment of truth, the cooler he became. Erde drank up his calm like a draught of wine and let it soothe her. Then she felt his body tighten. “Here now, girl. Get up and pay attention. Here comes Margit.”

The witch-cart came from the opposite corner, drawn by four foot-soldiers, blazoned in blue and yellow. They followed a single rider, a stocky bearded man, blond and bareheaded but wearing darkly glimmering mail beneath his tunic. He wore no other ornament but his own blue and yellow crest. His sheathed sword hung on the pommel of
his cloth-draped saddle. He carried his feathered helm in the crook of his arm, clasped in his mailed fist.

Hal pointed. “That’s Köthen in the lead, looking the fine figure of a man as usual and doing his humble act.”

She thought Hal stared at Köthen with a particular intensity, perhaps giving him special study as the one clearly in charge. And this in itself was interesting, because Baron Köthen was much younger than she’d expected, barely into his thirties, making him at least ten years her father’s junior, which she knew must be particularly annoying to Josef von Alte. Plus, Köthen was impressive, even handsome in a coarse, worldly sort of way. Square-jawed and serious, he
looked
like a leader. Erde decided that for all his youth, Köthen could easily eat her father alive. She worried for Josef, despite all he’d done to her. And despite the way he stared so obviously at the woman in the witch-cart. Köthen hardly gave her a glance, though she wore the usual clinging white shift, sure to arouse the lust and envy of the men, and the pity and envy of the women. Erde recognized the twins’ red hair and slim, muscular build. She wondered if these witch-hunting men ever considered it worthwhile to burn a woman who wasn’t beautiful.

Köthen and Brother Guillemo met in the middle of the square, in front of the scaffold. Josef von Alte reined in some yards away. Both riders dismounted and bowed to the white-robed priest, then submitted to having their hands joined by him with great ceremony. Köthen stood back as soon as his hand was released.

“Ah, good.” Hal’s grin was feral. “They hate each other. That may prove useful. Now. We should get her while they’re taking her up the steps, which could be any minute now. Are you ready?”

Erde nodded, though there seemed to be a lot of men and horses in the way. Plus her father, so close . . .

“Alert the Dragon, then.”

She tore her eyes away from the square to concentrate on the dragon, but Earth was already prepared. He’d found a hiding place that provided a view of the scaffold. One corner of it was obscured by a charred rafter slung with canvas, but Erde could offer detail where it was lacking. And this time, she did not have to provide motivation. For
the moment, not a thought was in his mind about the Summoner or his own particular quest. A subtle outrage was brewing in the dragon’s depths. His sense of justice was awakening.

“Köthen’s signaled his men to take her out of the cart.” Hal drew his sword and reached for Erde’s hand. “Listen carefully, girl, and do exactly as I say. Stay close to the Dragon. If they get me, don’t worry about Margit. You get out of there. You have more important things to do, you and him. Go back to Deep Moor. They’ll understand.” His grip tightened, then released. “All right. Ready?”

Erde gathered the image in her mind and joined forces with the dragon. Poised together, they awaited Hal’s signal.