Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [72]
Jennets, or palfrey mules, were bred for use by women and clergy and owned a mule’s more stolid disposition. Nettled, Dietrich ignored Gunther’s cupped hands, and mounted from the stirrup. Taking the reins from the startled maier domo, he danced the horse a few paces to show it he was master, then kicked with his heels. He had no spurs—for a commoner to wear them would violate the Swabian Peace—but the horse accepted the thesis and set off at a walk.
On the road, Dietrich took his mount to a trot, enjoying the rhythm of the creature and the feel of the wind on his face. It had been a long while since he had ridden so fine a beast as this, and he lost his thoughts for a time in sheer animal pleasure. But he should not have let his pride master him. Gunther might wonder how a mere parish priest had won such horse skills.
Manfred no doubt had his reasons, but Dietrich wished he had not told Everard about the Krenken. Word would leak out in the end, but there was no point augering holes in the bucket.
AT THE place where the trees had been blown down, he spied the miller’s jennet, picketed by the stump where Hilde used to leave the food. No other mount was near, but since Max would not have abandoned Hilde, he must have ridden “the shoemaker’s black horse.” Dietrich dismounted, slipped a hippopede onto his palfrey’s hind legs, and set forth on the track that Max had blazed.
Although the day was high, he was soon enveloped in a green gloaming. Spruce and fir reached into the sky, while the more humble hazel, shorn now of their raiment, huddled naked beneath them. He had not gone far when he heard soft, womanly gasps echoing off the trees, as if the forest itself moaned. Dietrich’s heart beat faster. The forest, always menacing, took on a more sinister aspect. Groaning dryads reached to embrace him with dry, naked fingers.
I’m lost, he thought, and he looked about in panic for Max’s signs. He turned and a branch scratched his cheek. He gasped, ran, crashed into a white birch. He twisted away, desperate now to reach his horse. Coming to a swell of ground, he slipped and fell. He pressed his head against the ancient leafy mat and musky earth, waiting for the forest to grab him.
But the expected touch did not come, and he grew slowly aware that the moans had ceased. Raising his head, he saw below him, not the clearing where his horse awaited, but the brook where he and Max and Hilde had paused that first day. Tied to a spindly oak that twisted from the bank of the stream stood two rouncies.
Max and Hilde were there, lacing a codpiece in place, tugging a skirt back down. Max brushed leaves and dirt and fir needles from Hilde’s coverslut, squeezing her breasts while he did.
Dietrich crawled backward, unseen. Max had been right. Sound did carry in the forest. Then, rising, he scrabbled back among the spruce, blundering from clearing to copse until fortune showed him the blazes, and he followed them to where he had left the palfrey.
The jennet he had seen there earlier was gone.
SINCE MAX was returning already to the village, Dietrich headed his mount also homeward, happy that he need not proceed to the lazaretto. But, coming to a bend in the trail, the beast balked. Dietrich clamped the barrel with his thighs until the horse had bolted a few paces back toward the kiln. At that, it calmed somewhat and Dietrich spoke soothingly. The palfrey rolled wild, round eyes and whickered nervously.
“Be still, sister horse,” he told her. Fitting the head-harness in place, he said, “Hans. Are you on the kiln trail?”
Only the rustling of pine needles and dry branches fell upon his ears. That, and the inevitable, distant chitterings of the Krenken, which, being so natural a sound, seemed more a part of the forest than had the amorous cries of Hilde Müller in the arms of Max Schweitzer.
“Come no nearer,” said the voice of the Heinzlmännchen in his ear.
Dietrich remained still. The sun was visible through the iron-gray lacework of trees, but stood already lower than he wished.