Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [82]
Philip von Falkenstein was dark complexioned, with hair that fell in ringlets to his shoulders. He wore an ankle-length, dark green dalmatic cinched at the waist and, over that, a brocaded surcoat bearing the falcon crest. He wore his beard narrow and it seemed to Dietrich that his face had the pinched look of an empty man.
“What do you offer for freedom?” said Philip. “What is your most precious possession?”
“Why, my poverty, mine Herr. If you would take that from me, I will endure.”
The guardsmen lining the great hall shifted their feet. The castle stone was damp and cold and smelled of niter. Falkenstein looked at him sharply and slowly a red crescent split his beard. At that signal, subdued chuckles rippled through the room. Herr Phillip said, “Who is your master and what will he do to ransom you?”
“My master is Jesus Christ, and he has already ransomed me with his blood.”
This time Falkenstein did not smile. “I grant each man one jest. Two mark you as clever. Now answer straight. Who do you serve?”
The guards stiffened a little when Dietrich reached inside his scrip, but his knife had been taken from him along with the copper wire. Only the Krenkish head harness, mistaken for a sacramental of some sort, had been left him. He pressed the sigil, as he had done repeatedly since being captured. “Mine Herr von Falkenstein,” he said distinctly. “I am Dietrich, pastor of Oberhochwald, a village in fief to Herr Manfred von Hochwald.”
“Will he pay to have you back? Does he like clever priests who make jokes at his expense?” He turned to his clerk and whispered some instruction.
“The Duke will not take kindly to this theft,” Dietrich suggested.
Philip’s head snapped up. “What theft?”
“It requires no subtlety of thought to suppose that the casket contained material of some value to Albrecht. Silver, I suppose.”
Philip nodded and one of the guards stepped forward and slapped Dietrich across the face. “Freiburg is rightly mine,” Philip told him. “Not Urach’s; not Hapsburg’s. I’ll have my dues.”
After that, he sent Dietrich back to his cell.
BY FLORENTIUS’ Day, the sky beyond the window had turned sullen, and a bitter wind pressed its way into the cell. In the distant sky Dietrich marked the lazy jot of a raptor. Dark clouds gathered in the southwest. He could taste the metallic crispness of the air. A formation of storks flew south.
Falkenstein was a greedy man and that often meant a stupid man, but Philip did not lack for cunning. The silver would be missed in Vienna, and the Hapsburg Duke, with vassals spread from the East-reich to the Swiss, was not to be trifled with. Falkenstein’s hope must be that suspicion fall upon the Jew. None who knew otherwise would ever leave Falcon Rock.
Dietrich leaned through the balisteria and peered down the sheer walls of the keep to the ragged bedrock of the precipice. Not that Falkenstein need fear anyone leaving.
The distant bird had come closer and Dietrich saw now that it lacked wings. Before he had quite grasped that, the apparition swooped toward his window, and he saw that it was a Krenk wearing a peculiar body harness. Hovering, the creature packed a sort of earth to the slit window, into which he pressed a small, shining cylinder. Dietrich heard a shout from above and the clatter of hobnails on stone. He yanked the head harness from his scrip and strapped it on.
“… away from the window. Move away from the window. Quickly.”
Dietrich ran to the far corner of the cell just as thunder clapped and the air hurled him against the door. Shards of masonry pelted him; pebbles stung his cheeks. His ears rang and his arms and legs went numb. Through the dust he saw that the slit window had become a gaping portal. As he stared, a portion of the balustrade