Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [160]
“Proteios,” Dietrich croaked. “Proteioi.”
“So. It puzzles me why you use different ‘tongues’ to speak of different matters. This Greekish for natural philosophy; the Latinish for matters touching your lord-from-the-sky.”
Dietrich seized the Krenk by his forearm. The rough spines that ran its length pricked his hand, drawing blood. “That makes nothing!” he cried. “What of this protein?”
“Without this acid, the protein cannot be formed, and lacking it, our bodies slowly corrupt.”
“Then we must find it!”
“How, my friend? How? Arnold spent sleepless nights searching for it. If it eluded his keen eye, how may we discover it? Our physician is skilled, but not in the arts of the laboratory.”
“So, you chewed upon the roses near Stag’s Leap? You robbed the monastery at St. Blasien?”
A toss of the arm. “As if one could know by tasting! Yes, some of our folk try this or that. But the best source of the protein lies at our journey’s end. The missing acid lies within our own particular food, which we eke out to supplement that which your people have provided.” Hans turned away. “Our ship will sail before the hunger grows acute.”
“What is in the broth that the Kratzer will not eat?”
Hans did not turn around, but his voice whispered in Dietrich’s ear as if he stood by his side. “There is one other meat that has this protein, and the supply of it is not yet exhausted.”
Dietrich did not understand for a long moment. Then Gottfried said, “This is my body, to be given up for us. Your words have given us hope,” and the full horror of the stranger’s situation fell upon him, nearly crushing him with its weight.
“You must not!”
Hans turned once more to face Dietrich. “Would you have all die, when some might live?”
“But—”
“You have taught that it is good to offer one’s body for the salvation of others. We have a sentence. ‘The strong devour the weak.’ It is a sign, a metaphor, but in times of great hunger in our past, it has befallen in fact. But you have saved us. It is the offer and not the eating that saves, and the strong too may offer themselves to save the weak among us.”
DIETRICH RETURNED to Oberhochwald numbed. Could he have mistaken the Krenken? It was not beyond reason. The Heinzelmännchen did not understand the significances of words and associated the signs only from usage. Evidentia naturalis, he thought.
Yet clearly the Kratzer was distressed by the thought. So much so that he would not even taste the broth. Dietrich shuddered anew at the memory. Of whom had that broth been distilled? Arnold? The children? Had any of them been hurried to their deaths to prepare the broth? That thought was most horrid of all. Would the Krenkish instinctus move them willingly to the stewpot?
Arnold had given his own life. “This is my body,” he had promised the other Krenken in his death-note. A terrible parody, Dietrich now realized. Having failed in his search for the elusive acid, he had despaired and quit the struggle. And yet he had retained, like the legendary casket of Pandora, one last tenuous hope—that Hans and Gottfried might repair the ship and sail the Krenken back to their heavenly home. Anything that extended the needed foodstuffs would add that many days to the effort. Unwilling himself to follow the path he saw necessary, the alchemist had taken the only path he could, for the sake of others.
And so he had died a Christian after all.
THE RIDER wore the livery of the Strassburg Bishop and Dietrich watched his approach from a crag overlooking the Oberreid road. Hans, who had warned him of it, perched beside him, clinging somehow to the very rock so that, although he leaned far beyond the precipice, he did not fall as a man might. A different center of gravity, he had explained once to Dietrich, showing him a trick with straws, a pfennig, and a cup. “Does