The Wine of Dreams (15 page)

The sound of Reinmar’s answering call seemed to rouse Marcilla slightly from
her waking dream. She paused for a fraction of a second, but she did not look
back. Whatever force held her seemed to tighten its grip in response to her
hesitation, refusing to release her. Blurred echoes of the two shouts lingered
in the air for a second or two, as if Vaedecker had been answered by a dozen
distant voices emanating from the darkest part of the forest, away to the
south-east.

They were now no more than fifteen paces behind Marcilla. There was no
further danger of losing her, but still Reinmar hurried on in order to catch up.
Vaedecker matched him stride for stride.

Reinmar called out again, this time addressing himself directly to the girl—but the only answer he received was from the eerie echoes. He hurried forward
even faster and soon drew level with the gypsy, but Vaedecker hissed a warning
at him.

“Don’t touch her!” the sergeant said. “Let her go where she will—and let
her take us with her.”

The instruction banished any last lingering doubt that Reinmar might have
entertained as to the sergeant’s purpose. One way or another, Machar von
Spurzheim had discovered the little that Luther Wieland knew about the source of
the dark wine, and his sergeant was not about to pass up the stroke of good
fortune that had delivered Marcilla into his care at exactly the right moment.
This was his mission, and he had an unexpected opportunity to complete it. It
was not, of course, Reinmar’s mission, and Reinmar knew full well what Gottfried would say, if and when he heard that his son had gone haring off into the
forest after a sleepwalking gypsy instead of remaining with his cargo, but he
put the thought aside. He had taken the girl under his protective wing, and he
was determined to protect her. He could not leave her to wander the forest
alone, or with none to look after her but a soldier intent on using her as a
guide to a secret place.

In any case, Reinmar’s own curiosity had been excited by tales of the wine of
dreams. What would Luther or Albrecht have given, he wondered, for the chance
that had casually been thrown into his lap? How many expeditions of this kind
must Luther have undertaken in his youth, without ever experiencing such an
outrageous stroke of luck?

Reinmar had drawn level with Marcilla again, and he could see the expression
on her face. He had expected it to be blank, but it was not. He saw that the
girl seemed deeply anxious and agitated, as if lost in an inner turmoil she
could not dispel.

“Don’t touch her,” Vaedecker warned him, again. “Whatever troubles her, it is
but a dream.”

“We don’t know that,” Reinmar muttered—but he kept his hands by his
sides.

“Where are we going, Master Wieland?” the sergeant asked him. “You know these
parts better than I. What lies beyond this wood?”

Reinmar looked about him, although he knew full well that he had not the
slightest chance of catching sight of a landmark he knew. They were travelling
roughly east-southeast, and they were travelling uphill, but he had no notion at
all of what might lie in that direction or what might lie beyond the ridge that
they would presumably attain in due course.

“I have no idea,” Reinmar confessed. “I dare say that there are farms and
hamlets hereabouts which have no access for carts. The ground is too uneven to
permit the building of roads. Even a man on horseback would have great
difficulty following deer-trails through a wood of this kind. This is territory
for walkers, and any produce brought out of it must take a long and winding
course to anything remotely resembling a market. Have you seen any sign of human
habitation since we left the cart—the markings of a woodcutter’s axe, or a
hunter’s snare?”

“None,” the soldier admitted. “But the road cannot be much more than a few
hundred paces away, and this is habitable land—or would be, were there not half-human monsters lurking in its coverts.”

“What are we to do when night falls?” Reinmar asked him, tacitly accepting the
fact that they would follow the girl wherever she led for as long as it took,
leaving the cart and its cargo to the protection of Godrich and Sigurd. “We have
no lantern. Without our packs, in fact, we have nothing but the contents of our
pouches, our blades and our sodden clothing—and yours, if you’ll forgive the
observation, is distinctly malodorous.”

“The least the rain might have done for our cause was to wash the beastman’s
stink away,” Vaedecker agreed, glumly. “But we’ve a while till the twilight
fades, and no matter what magic may be guiding her steps, the girl still needs
her eyes to tell her where to place her feet. If she doesn’t get to where she’s
going before darkness falls, she’ll have to stop and wait.”

Silence fell while they trudged on for a while, but the agitation within
Marcilla’s half-eclipsed soul was beginning to communicate itself to Reinmar,
and he did not want to be left at the mercy of its horrid uncertainties.

“Why did you instruct me to come with you?” he asked the soldier. “I thought
you didn’t trust me.”

“Why did you come?” Vaedecker countered. “I know you don’t trust me.”

Reinmar was slightly taken aback by the question, because he was genuinely
uncertain of the answer. In the end, he said: “I did not want the girl to come
to harm. Not from any source.”

Vaedecker laughed dryly, “young men fall in love too easily,” he observed.
“Show them a pretty face and a helpless form, and they’re lost. Still, better
that than the lure of the dark wine. I’d rather you were here as a hero than a
merchant—but whatever your reason, I’d rather have you under my eye. I’m a
soldier, not a fool; if this mysterious source is protected by monsters which
hunt in packs, I’d far rather that I didn’t have to face them without a friend
to guard my back.”

“A friend?” Reinmar echoed.

“Are we not friends, Master Wieland? We did not wake as friends this morning,
I suppose, but we stood side by side to fight monsters this afternoon. We’ve a
basis for friendship now, have we not?”

“I suppose we have,” Reinmar granted, although he knew that Vaedecker must
have reasons of his own for making the claim.

They were still heading upslope, with no sign of a ridge before them—but
the trees grew much taller hereabouts, with higher and more elaborate crowns. A
few of the conifers typical of the wider region could still be seen, but the
dominant vegetation hereabouts was deciduous and the leaves had already begun to
yellow on the branches. The ferny undergrowth was nourished by a rich
leaf-humus, which enabled the curling fern-leaves to grow man-high, but the
going was not so very difficult.

Reinmar realised that the trees between which they passed must be very old.
They had held dominion here for so long that not a single sapling had found
space to grow up for thirty years or more. The woods beside the roads were
extensively worked by fellers and coppicers, and always had young growth mingled
with old, but this was obviously a place where few men ever came, and to which
none brought axes.

Marcilla’s stride had begun to falter, not through any loss of resolution but
because she was near exhaustion. She had not taken a drink since the rain had
wet her lips, and she had not eaten for far too long. The blow to her head had
taken a great deal out of her.

While Reinmar hesitated, uncertain as to whether to take a hand, she stumbled—and would have fallen had he not then stepped swiftly forward to catch her.

He would have helped to ease her back into her stride if he could, but as
soon as her progress was interrupted she collapsed like a puppet whose strings
had snapped. He found himself holding her up, cradled in his arms. She was fast
asleep, but still dreaming. Her eyes still moved behind closed lids, and her
expression was by no means serene.

Vaedecker cursed yet again.

“What now?” Reinmar asked. “Do we wait until morning? We have neither food
nor water to help her regain her strength. She might have recovered if she’d
stayed with the cart, but she’s much worse now.”

“The call she has heard cannot make concessions to her condition,” the
soldier muttered. “The magic, if magic it is, cannot know or care that she had
been hit over the head and knocked silly. If we were not here, she’d probably
lie down and die, but since you’re here to carry her there’s still a chance that
she might live. Let’s hold her course while we can, at least until we reach the top of this cursed slope. Once at the top, I’ll climb into the
crown of one of these wooden giants, to see how the land lies ahead.”

Reinmar adjusted Marcilla’s position in his arms as best he could before he
moved on, this time following the sergeant’s lead. The girl had seemed slight
enough when she was moving under her own volition, but now that she was a dead
weight she seemed very heavy indeed, and Reinmar was not sure that he could
carry her far without collapsing himself.

Fortunately, the top of the slope was not so very far away—and when they
attained it, Vaedecker immediately set himself to climb a tree. Reinmar looked
around for somewhere that he might set his burden down, but the ground was
rutted with root-ridges, and the spaces in between were thick with ferns. The
vegetation was still very wet; it certainly would not dry out before nightfall,
and the same was true of Marcilla’s clothing. Reinmar looked down at the top of
her head. The wound she had sustained was very obvious from this angle.

Reinmar looked back the way they had come, trying to estimate how much
distance they had put between themselves and the wagon. There was no shelter to
be had there, but some of the spare clothing in the packs would be reasonably
dry, and there was food and water on the cart—not to mention plenty of wine.
Would it be so very bad, he wondered, if he and Vaedecker lost their one and
only chance to gain admittance to the place where the wine of dreams was
fermented? To refuse to go back, given their circumstances, might be to
volunteer for a great deal of hardship and strife.

Matthias Vaedecker dropped down from the lower branches of the tree that he
had climbed.

“Good news,” he said. “There are two clusters of buildings visible in the
valley beyond. The forest thins out, and there’s a lake. Its waters look grey
and gloomy in this light, but I dare say it’s a pleasant enough spot when the
sun shines. The buildings are grey too. The larger group is on the shore—it
seemed to me to be capable of accommodating a whole community. The other is
closer to the forest’s edge, directly in the path of anyone heading for the lake
or the larger edifice. The nearer cluster looks like a common farmhouse and its
outbuildings—two barns and perhaps a henhouse—but I could see no sign of labourers or livestock. It’s valuable shelter, if we could be sure of a
welcome there.”

“If,” Reinmar repeated, dubiously.

“Well, Master Wieland,” the sergeant said, decisively, “I suppose it’s up to
you to see that you do obtain a welcome. If you turn up on the doorstep with the
girl unconscious in your arms and near to death, they’re hardly likely to turn
you away—and if they ask you who you are and what your business is, you’re
Reinmar Wieland, grandson of Luther Wieland the well-known wine-merchant, out in
search of new stock. I believe they’ll be prepared to entertain you, whoever
they may be.”

“And what about you?” Reinmar demanded, with only slight resentment of the
manner in which the other was trying to manipulate him. He had his own plans,
after all—and he was the one in the best position to make further enquiries
and further discoveries.

“I’m a soldier,” Vaedecker told him. “I can look after myself for a while—and now we’re here, if here is the place we’ve been trying to attain, I need to
take a long look around. I’d prefer it if no one knew that I was here—all the
more so if it’s true, as rumour has it, that strangers are not supposed to be
able to find their way here without supernatural aid. Spies work best where
they’re not expected.”

“Aren’t you worried about leaving me to my own devices?” Reinmar asked,
wryly.

“I’ll be close at hand till you’re safe indoors,” the soldier assured him.
“After that, I’ll have to trust you to look after all our interests as best you
can.”

Reinmar only hesitated for a moment before nodding assent to the plan. He
might indeed be made far more welcome if he and the girl were unaccompanied by
another man. Even if his hosts were suspicious of him, they would owe him a debt
of gratitude when they realised that she could not possibly have completed the
journey on her own, and they might be pleased to hear his name. If they were
makers of dark wine, or even if they were merely agents of its distribution, the
Wielands had been their allies once, and if they knew of von Spurzheim’s
exploits in Marienburg they might well feel that they were in direr need of
allies now than they had ever been before.

He readjusted Marcilla’s position in his arms so that when he set off his
load was fairly evenly balanced. Now that he was travelling down the slope instead of up the going seemed easier, although he
had to be careful not to trip over a trailing root, or slip on a patch of mud.

The trees grew more densely lower down the slope, but he contrived to find a
path through them without losing his bearings. He hardly noticed when Vaedecker
vanished into the trees. Although he looked around from time to time in the hope
of seeing where the other man was, Reinmar could not catch the slightest glimpse
of him—but he did not assume that he was unobservable himself.

Because Reinmar was descending into a valley, the sun—which was setting
behind the mask of cloud—descended into shadow a little faster than he had
anticipated, and he began to wonder whether the twilight would last, but as soon
as he became anxious the trees began to thin out again. He was profoundly glad
when lighted windows showed ahead, giving him a target for which to aim.