Eifelheim

Gerlach Jaeger stood to the side and watched the assembly with no small displeasure. He was a short, thickset man with a wiry black beard and many years of the forest in his face. His clothing was rough and he carried several knives in his belt. His walking staff was a thick oak limb, trimmed and whittled to his pleasure. He stood now with both hands cupped over the top of it and his chin resting on his hands. Dietrich spoke to him.

“Will they fare well, do you guess?”

Jaeger hawked and spat. “No. But I’ll do what I can. I’ll train ’em up in makin’ snares and traps, and there’s one or two might know which way the bolt sits in the crossbow’s groove. I see Holzhacker has his bow. And his axe. That’s good. We’ll need axes. Ach! We don’t need a casket full of klimbim! Jutte Feldma

“They have grief and tragedy in their heads, hunter.”

Jaeger grunted and said nothing for a time. Then he raised his head and took his staff in hand. “I guess I count myself lucky. I’ve no woman or kin to lose. That’s luck, I s’pose. But the forest and the mountain, they won’t care about grief, and you don’t want to hie into th’wilderness with half a mind. What I meant is that they don’t need to take everything with ’em. When the pest has gone, we’ll come back and it will all be here waiting.”

“I’ll not be coming back,” Volkmar Bauer snarled. “This place is accursed.” And he spat for good measure. He was pale and unsteady yet, but stood among those leaving.

Others took up Volkmar’s cry and some threw clods of dirt at Gottfried, who had come also to watch them go. “Demons!” some cried. “You brought this on us!” And the crowd growled and surged. Gottfried snapped his horny side-lips like a pair of scissors. Dietrich feared his choleric nature coming to the fore. Even in his weakened condition, Gottfried might slay a dozen attackers with his serrated forearms before sheer weight of numbers brought him down. Jaeger lifted his staff and brandished it. “I’ll have order here!” he cried.

“Why did they stay when their countrymen left?” shouted Becker. “To show us our doom!”

“Silence!”

That was Joachim, employing his preacher’s voice. He strode onto the green, threw back his cowl, and glared at them. “Si

He gestured toward the Krenkl. “They stayed to die!” He let the words echo from the surrounding cottages and Klaus’ mill. “And to give us succor! Who among you has not seen the sick comforted, or the dead buried by them? Who, indeed, has not been nursed by them, save by your own obstinancy? Now you are invited to a greater adventure than any mi

There was a ragged, subdued cheer and a few amens, but Dietrich thought they were more cowed than convinced.

Jaeger took a breath. “Right, then. Now that everyone is here… Lütke! Jakob!” With a great deal of profanity and one or two swipes of his staff, he started his flock moving. “’Children of Israel,’” he muttered.

Dietrich clapped him on the shoulder. “Those were also a fractious lot, I have read.”

As the others filed past, Joachim came to Dietrich and embraced him. “Fare well,” Dietrich told him. “Remember, listen to Gerlach.”

The hunter, at the wooden bridge cried out, “Heaven, ass, and welkin-break!”

Joachim smiled wanly. “To the peril of my soul.” The others had gone back to the village and the two were alone. Joachim looked back toward the village and a shadow seemed to pass across his features as he took in the mill and the oven, the mason’s yard, the smithy, Burg Hochwald, St. Catherine’s church. Then he brushed at his cheek and said, “I must hurry after,” and shifted the blanket-bundle he wore around his shoulder. “Or I’ll be left, and…” Dietrich reached out and pulled the monk’s cowl up over his head.

“The day is hot. The sun can strike you down.”

“Ja. Thank you. Dietrich… Try not to think so much.”

Dietrich placed his palm on the other’s cheek. “I love you, too, Joachim. Take care.”

He stood on the green watching the monk depart; then he moved to the bridge to catch a final glimpse before they vanished between the shoulders of the autumn fields and the meadow. They bunched up there, naturally, where the way was narrow, and Dietrich smiled, imagining Gerlach’s profanity. When there was nothing more to be seen, he returned to the hospital.

He moved Hans that night out into the open so that the Krenk could gaze on the firmament. The evening was warm and moist, having the characteristics of air, being moved to that state from the corruption of fire, for the day had been hot and dry. Dietrich had brought his breviary and a candle to read by, and he was adjusting his spectacles when he realized that he did not know the day. He tried to count from the last feast of which he was certain, but the days were a blur, and his sleeping and waking had not always matched the circle of the heavens. He checked the positions of the stars, but he had not noted the sunset, nor had he an astrolabe.

“What seek you, friend Dietrich?” Hans said.

“The day.”

“Bwah… You seek the day at night? Bwah-wah!”

“Friend grasshopper, I think you have discovered synecdoche. I meant the date, of course. The motions of the heavens could tell me, had I the skill at reading them. But I have not read the Almagest since many years, or ibn Qurra. I recall that the crystalline spheres impart a daily motion to the firmament, which is beyond the seventh heaven.”

“Saturn, I think you called it.”

“Doch. Beyond Saturn, the firmament of stars, and beyond that, the waters above the heavens, though in a form crystallized to ice.”

“We, too, find a belt of ice-bodies girdling each world-system. Though, of course, they turn on the hither side of the firmament, not the farther.”

“So you have said, though I understand not what then keeps the ice-water from seeking its natural place here in the center.”

“Worm!” Hans replied. “Have I not told you that your image is wrong? The sun sits in the center; not the earth!”

Dietrich held his forefinger in post. “Did you not tell me that the firmament… What did you call it?”

“The horizon of the world.”

“Ja-doch. You say its warmth is the remnant of the wondrous day of creation; and beyond it no one can see. Yet this horizon lies in every direction at the same distance, which any student of Euclid can tell you is the locus of a sphere. Therefore, the earth lies truly at the center of the world, quod erat demonstrandum.”

Dietrich smiled broadly at having determined successfully the question, but Hans stiffened and emitted an extended hiss. His arms flew up and across his body, presenting the serrated edges. A protective gesture, Dietrich thought. After a moment, the Krenkl’s arms slowly relaxed, and Hans whispered, “Sometimes the dull ache sharpens like a knife.

“And I conduct a quodlibet while you suffer. Are there no more of your particular medicines?”