Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [115]
Manfred had covered his armor with a surcoat bearing his arms. His helm, slung behind his saddle for the journey, shimmered in the sunlight. His sword hilt was covered with gold. Around his neck he wore a strap with a horn shaped like a griffin’s talon that measured nearly half an arm-length. Its thicker end flared into a bell and, where it tapered toward the tip, the device was decorated with pure gold and held in place with deerskin thongs. It was lustrous, like a precious stone, and when he blew on it, “it sounded better than all the echoes in the world.”
His body servant was less splendidly mounted and, for saddle, he used an old feedbag. Over his right shoulder he carried the Herr’s travel-bag, packed with the sundries of camp, and over his left, his lord’s shield, slung in piggyback fashion. With the quiver also in his right hand and the spear tucked under the shield, he seemed more fearsomely armed than the man he served.
“It pleases,” Manfred said to Dietrich, who stood beside the black horse in the trampled muck of dirt and melting snow. “The Duke had called on me for six-and-a-half men, and I dislike choosing which to send home early. They maneuver for the privilege, y’know, but never openly. Whoever receives the grace earns the enmity of his peers, and more often than not overstays his obligation rather than be thought cowardly. Now I can add the Duke’s half-man to the Markgraf’s half-man and so obtain a whole one.” He threw his head back and laughed, and Dietrich mumbled some response. Manfred cocked an eye at him.
“You think a jest unseemly? What else might a man do marching toward possible death?”
“It is no light matter,” Dietrich answered him.
Manfred slapped his gauntlets against the palm of his left hand. “Well, I’ll pray my penance afterward, as a soldier must. Dietrich, much as I would tend my manor in peace, peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war. I swore an oath to protect the defenseless and punish peace-breakers, and that includes peace-breaking Herrenfolk. You priests say to forgive your enemy, and that is well, or revenge follows revenge until eternity. But between a man who will stop at nothing and one who will hesitate at anything, the advantage is generally to the former. The pagans had right, too. It is a false peace to be overforgiving. Your enemy may read forbearance as weakness and so be drawn to strike.”
“And how do you determine the question?” Dietrich asked.
Manfred grinned. “Why, that I should fight my enemy—but fairly.” He twisted in his saddle to see whether his corps was yet assembled. “Ho! Eugen, to the fore!” The junker, astride a white Wallachian, galloped past the cheering assembly with the Hochwald banner planted in his stirrup.
Kunigund ran to Eugen’s horse and, having grabbed the check reins, cried, “Promise me you’ll come back! Promise!” Eugen begged a kerchief from the girl to wear as a favor. This, he tucked in his girdle, declaring that it would keep him from harm. Kunigund beseeched her father. “Keep him safe, Father! You won’t let anyone harm him!”
Manfred leaned to touch Kunigund on either cheek. “As safe as my arm and his honor permit, sweetling, but all lies in God’s hands. Pray for him, Gundl, and for me.”
His daughter ran to the chapel before any could see her weep. Manfred sighed after her. “She listens overmuch to the minnesingers, and holds all farewells as in the romances. If I should not return,” he added, but the sentence dangled. Then, more quietly, “She is my life. I mean for Eugen to wed her, once he has won his spurs, and that he should protect Hochwald in her name; but should he … Should neither