Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [127]
“Then, it is at least a choice of deaths, and not the least of choices.”
Fear gripped Dietrich’s heart and the hairs on his head and arms began to curl. The Krenkish ship snapped suddenly into focus in its proper size and a wave of elektronikos passed through him and across the clearing, where corposants flickered briefly from the tips and edges of picks and poles and sundry other metal objects.
The yellow glow behind Hans’s eyes seemed to dim. “Ah, Gottfried,” he said.
The one called Friedrich turned on him with his pot de fer leveled. He clicked out some statement. Dietrich heard only the answer. “‘A small leap begins a long journey.’” Friedrich hesitated, then lowered his weapon. He said something else, but Hans did not answer him.
Without warning, Gottfried appeared in the doorway of the vessel and leapt across the open area to where Hans and Dietrich crouched. He was wearing his head-harness. “I should have asked your blessing on the twisting-device, father. Perhaps it was lacking only that.”
Hans placed a hand on his forearm. “The work fell short by only a little,” he said.
Gottfried said, “Bwa! So said the hunter at Stag’s Leap.” Then he hopped atop the metal drums behind which they crouched and, spreading wide his arms, cried out, “This is my body!”
Hans pulled him to the mud a moment before a swarm of bullets flew through the space. “Those fools,” Hans said. “If they damage the walls, the vessel will never sail. We must—We must—” His body made a noise like a concertine, for the Krenken possessed many small mouths about their bodies. “Ach. Will the warm-time never come?”
“Always summer comes,” Dietrich said. To Gottfried, he added, “You must not despair and throw your life away because of one failure.”
“His was not an act of despair,” Hans told Dietrich, “but one of hope.” Then, his momentary panic having left him, he concluded, “We must remove the Herr Gschert.”
“That saying is easier for you than for us,” Gottfried said. “You serve the Kratzer, and are not ‘oath-bound’ to the ship’s master as are we. Yet, though it grieves me sore to bring him low, it must be done.”
“How many has he brought?”
“Bwa! By the evidence, all but Zachary.”
Thereafter moved a strange and a slow combat. Accustomed to joust and melee, Dietrich found the affair most peculiar, for the combatants maintained perfect stillness for long periods. His companions behind the barrels seemed statues, but statues that moved imperceptibly. Each time he looked at Hans, the servant of the talking head had moved into a different position. Such a style, he realized, must perfectly suit a nation whose eyes were responsive to motion, for perfect motionlessness would make them difficult to see. Yet it must also put them at hazard when fighting those who attack in a rush. It occurred to Dietrich that had Gschert and Manfred fought on Kermis Day, each party would have been vulnerable to the other. For to remain still in the face of a charge were fatal; while to rush against those with keen perception of movement were equally so.
Betimes, the pop of a pot de fer signaled a careless move, and then the Krenken showed that they were indeed capable of quick movement. Bullets whined against the barrels, or barked the limbs of trees. The fighters took up widely separate positions from which to loose their shots. The quake of a bush and snapping of twigs within the dimness of the trees signified Gschert’s men doing the same. The pace unnerved Dietrich and he longed for a rush of crying rage.
With no small horror, Dietrich realized that a Krenk had appeared in the clearing itself. As still as a rock or a tree, it squatted beside a table and chairs at which the refugees had been wont to take some refreshment in warmer weather. By what imperceptible stages it had reached that position, Dietrich did not know, and when he looked again, it was gone.
Glancing then to his left, he saw a strange Krenk crouched there. Dietrich cried out in surprise and terror, and would have sprung up to his own undoing save that