Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [181]
“Thought-lacking!”
“So it is; but it is what folk do.”
Dietrich took a step down the path, hesitated, then continued unsteady to the bottom. Coming first to Theresia’s cottage, his call was answered by a shrill voice he barely recognized.
“Go away! Your demons brought this on us!”
The charge was illogical. The pest had wasted regions that had never seen a Krenk; but Theresia had never been swayed by keen reason. He continued to the smithy, where he found Wanda Schmidt already speaking with Joachim.
“You did not have to come,” Dietrich told the monk as the two proceeded on either side of the high street, but Joachim only shrugged.
And so they went, house by house until, at the far end of the village, they reached the gärtners’ huts. Entering the Metzger cottage, Dietrich assured himself that Trude suffered no more than the murrain. The black streaks on her arm showed that the poison was spreading in her. Trude will die, he thought, keeping the belief from his face and lips as he prayed a blessing on them.
He returned to the cusp where Church Hill and Castle Hill met, where he awaited Joachim, who crossed the meadow from the miller’s cottage. Sheep baa’ed at the Minorite as he passed among them. “Are they well?” Dietrich asked, indicating the cottages that lined the other side of the meadow, and Joachim nodded.
Dietrich let out a gust he hadn’t known he held. “None other, then.”
Joachim kicked a dead rat from the path and looked up Castle Hill. “There is yet the curia—and there is where the pest first showed itself.”
“I will ask among Manfred and his folk.” Impulsively, he embraced the monk. “You had no need to expose yourself. Care of this flock is mine.”
Joachim studied the sheep dying in the meadow, as if wondering which flock Dietrich had meant. “The vogt is derelict in his business,” he said. “Dead sheep ought to be burned, or the murrain will destroy the flock. My father’s sheep were once afflicted so, and two of the shepherds died with them. It was my fault, of course.”
“Volkmar has now other worries than the village sheep.”
Joachim grinned suddenly. “But I do not. ‘Feed my sheep,’ the Master said, but not all food is bread. Dietrich, that was a hard journey down that high street, but a journey is made lighter with a companion.”
In the end, Everard alone was ill, and he seemed to be resting now peacefully. Dietrich dared hope that it might go no further. Hans clicked his mandibles at this, but said nothing.
GOTTFRIED AND Winifred Krenk took two of the flying harnesses and flew to the lower valley to bury the unfortunate folk of that place. There were so many corpses that they used the thunder-paste to dig the graves. Dietrich wondered if that were a proper way to dig a grave, but then reflected that a grave dug all at once might be proper for a village that had died all at once. He spoke the words over them using the far-speaker that Heloïse had taken with her.
Afterward, Hans replenished the fire barrels of the talking head by unfolding a triptych made of glass. This glass converted sunlight into the elektronik essence. Philosophically, one sort of fire might be converted into another sort of fire, but the practical alchemy eluded him.
“Why has the pest come here?” Dietrich asked suddenly.
Hans watched the sigil on the body of the Heinzelmännchen that signified how full the fire barrels were. “Because it has come everywhere else. Why not here? But, Dietrich, my friend, you speak of it like a beast that goes and comes with a purpose. There is no purpose.”
“That holds no comfort.”
“Must there be comfort?”
“Life without purpose is not worth living.”
“Is it? Listen, my friend. Life is ever worth living. My … You would say, my ‘grandsire.’ My ‘grandsire’ spent many—months—huddled in a broken nest—a town—wrecked by … by an aerial assault. His nest-brothers were gone down in flames. His nurse had died in his arms from a violent expression worse than that of black-powder. He did not know where he would find his next meal. But his life was worth living, because