Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [124]
He shook his head. According to Virgil, the Dog Star portended death and disease. Dietrich watched it until it had dropped safely from sight, or until he fell asleep at last.
XV
MARCH, 1349
At Sext, Ember Wednesday
DIETRICH PASSED through the spring fields on his return, and was surprised to see the tenants and serfs engaged in their customary labors. Some called out greetings; others leaned on their spades and watched him. Herwyg One-eye, working a strip close by the roadside, asked for a blessing on his plot, which Dietrich delivered perfunctorily.
“What news of the Krenken?” he asked his tenant. From the village came sounds of mallets and the smell of fresh bread in the oven.
“Naught since yestere’en, when they quieted some. Most are hiding in the church.” Herwyg laughed. “I suppose that monk’s preaching hurts less than being beaten.”
“Then nothing was done to those Krenken who set out with the Herr?”
He shrugged. “They’ve not returned.”
DIETRICH RODE to St. Catherine, where he found a score of Krenken in uneven rows in the nave. Some were on their feet, others in their characteristic squat. Three perched in the rafters. Joachim was in the pulpit while a thick-set Krenk wearing a head-harness translated for those who lacked one.
“Where is Hans?” Dietrich asked into the silence that greeted his entrance.
Joachim shook his head. “I’ve not seen him since the army left.”
One of the squatting Krenken buzzed and the thickset one said through the mikrofoneh, “The Beatice asks whether Hans lives. It is,” he added with the Krenkish smile, “a weighty matter to her.”
“His band performed valiantly in the conflict,” Dietrich told him. “One alone was slain and Hans avenged him in a most Christian manner. Please excuse me, I must find him.”
He had turned away when Joachim called, “Dietrich!”
“What?”
“Which of them was killed?”
“The one called Gerd.”
This announcement, when translated, caused a great deal of clicking and buzzing. A Krenk began sawing his arms violently and repeatedly. Others reached out in quick, tentative touches, as if tapping his shoulder for his attention. Joachim, too, descended from the pulpit, and imitated the Krenkish gesture. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Dietrich heard him say, “for they shall be comforted. Sorrow is a moment, but joy is joy forever in God’s presence.”
Outside, Dietrich remounted and tugged the reins around. “Come, then, sister horse,” he said, “I must call on your service this one last time.” Kicking the horse in the ribs, he rode for the Great Woods, sending up urgent clots of mud from the sodden Bear Valley road.
HE FOUND Hans in the Krenkish vessel. The four surviving Krenken clustered in a small room lined with metal boxes on the lower level. The room’s walls were scorched, and no wonder. Each box had rows of small, glass-filled windows, within which small fires burned—bright red; dull blue. Some changed colors while Dietrich watched. Other windows were dark and the box itself marred by the fires that had wrecked the ship. One box was ruined utterly, its panels bent and twisted, so that Dietrich could see that inside were many wires and small items. It was on this box that Gottfried labored with his magic wand.
He must have moved, for the Krenken turned suddenly. The Krenkish eye, Dietrich had learned, was especially sensitive to motion. When Dietrich pulled his head-harness from his scrip, Hans sprang across the room and slapped the mikrofoneh from his hands. Then, gripping Dietrich’s wrist, led him up the stairwell to the room where they had first met. There Hans activated the “speakers.”
“Gschert controls the waves-in-no-medium,” the Krenk told him, “but this head talks only in this room. How did you know to find us here?”
“You were not at Falkenstein, nor seen by any in the village. Where else might