Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [83]
“Quickly,” said the voice in the head harness. “I must carry you. Do not lose your grip.” The Krenk entered the cell and, with a swift motion encircled Dietrich with a girdle of some sort that snapped onto an eye on his harness. “Now we see if the weight exceeds the craftsman’s boast.” The Krenk sprinted toward the hole in the wall and leapt into the sky. Dietrich had one glimpse of terrified faces along the battlements, then the winds had him, and his rescuer soared through a hiss of arrows.
When Dietrich looked down, he learned the terror of the first Falkenstein riding lion-back across the inmost sea. Houses, fields, castles had become as children’s blocks. Trees were shrubs; forests, mere carpets. Dietrich’s head spun. He thought the ground was above him. He vomited out his stomach, and darkness had him.
HE AWOKE on the edge of the stubble field, by the Great Woods. Nearby, a yearling pig, its winter nose-ring in place, rooted under a decayed log. Dietrich sat up suddenly, causing the pig to squeal and flee. Hans sat just within the forest, with his knees above his head and his arms wrapped around his legs. Dietrich said to him, “You came for me.”
“You had the copper wire.”
Dietrich shook his head. “Falkenstein has it.”
Hans made the tossing gesture with his arm.
“I could ask the coppersmith to draw more from what remains of the ingot, but that was his payment. He’ll want another.”
Hans’ mandibles stuttered. Then he said, “The copper is all. It needed every effort to work that one small seam.” He stood and pointed. “You can walk from here,” he said through the Heinzelmännchen. “To fly you closer would show myself.”
“You showed yourself to the guards at the Burg.”
“They died. Those who did not fall when the wall collapsed, fell to my … pot de fer.”
Max’s fabled weapon, revealed at last. Dietrich did not ask to see it. “What of the other captives?”
“They are nothing.”
“No one is nothing. Each of us is precious in the Lord’s eye.”
Hans gestured toward his bulbous eyes. “But not in ours. You alone were useful to us.”
“Even without the wire?”
“You had the head harness. With that, we could find you. Dietrich …” Hans pried a piece of bark off a fir and crumpled it between his fingers. “How much colder will it grow?”
“How cold …? It will likely snow soon.”
“‘Snow’ is what?”
“When it warms, it becomes water.”
“Ach.” Hans considered that. “So, how much then this snow?”
“Perhaps to here.” Dietrich marked his waist. “But it will melt again in the spring.”
Hans stared statue-like for a time; then, without another word, he bounded into the forest.
DIETRICH WENT straightaway to Manfred and found the Herr in the rookery with his falconer, examining the birds. Manfred turned with a hoodwinked kestrel on his fist. “Ah, Dietrich, Everard told me you had lingered in Freiburg. I had not looked for your return so soon.”
“Mine Herr, I was taken prisoner by Falkenstein.”
Hochwald’s eyebrows climbed. “In that case, I would not have looked for your return at all.”
“I was … rescued.” Dietrich glanced at the falconer, who stood nearby.
Manfred, following Dietrich’s glance, said, “That is all, Hermann.” When the servant had gone, he said, “Rescued by them, I take it. How?”
“One came in his flying harness and spread a paste around the slit window. There followed a thunderclap and the wall collapsed, whereat my rescuer gathered me up and flew me here.”
“Ha!” Manfred made a gesture with his free hand. The kestrel shrieked and flexed her wings. “Thunder-paste, and a flying harness?”
“Nothing supernatural,” Dietrich assured him. “In Franconian times, an English monk named Eilmer fastened wings to his hands and feet and leapt from the summit of a tower. He rode the breeze the distance of a furlong.”
Manfred pursed his lips. “I saw no English birdmen at Calais.”
“The swirl of the air, and his own fright at being so high, caused Eilmer to fall and break both his legs, so that ever after he limped. He