Eifelheim

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 Heinzelmä

“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 straightway 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, Herma

“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 attributed his failure to the want of tail feathers.”

Manfred laughed. “Needed a feather up his arse? Hah!”

“Mine Herr, there are other prisoners in need of rescue.” He explained about the Jew’s caravan and the Hapsburg silver.

Manfred rubbed his chin. “The Duke lent the Freiburgers money to buy back the liberties they sold to Urach during the barons’ war. I suspect the treasure was a payment on those loans. Mark me, one day the Hapsburgs will own the Breisgau.”

“The other prisoners…”

Manfred waved a dismissive hand. “Philip will free them — once he’s taken all they have.”

“Not having seized the Hapsburg silver. Falkenstein’s safety lies in their silence. Albrecht may assume the Jew absconded with the treasure.”

“Since you have already escaped, he gains nothing by silencing the others. And a de Medina would not be tempted by such an amount. Albrecht knows that.”

“Mine Herr, a coil of especially fine copper wire I had drawn in Freiburg for the Krenken… Falkenstein has taken it.”

Manfred raised his gauntlet and studied the kestrel, brushing her feathers with his forefinger. “This is a lovely bird,” he said. “Mark the taper of the wing, the elegance of the tail, the delightful chestnut plumage. Dietrich, what would you have me do? Attack Falcon Rock to retrieve a coil of wire?”

“If the Krenken give aid with their thunder-paste and flying harnesses and pots-de-fer.”

“I will tell Thierry and Max I have found a new captain to advise me. Why should the Krenken give a fig about Falcon Rock?”

“They need the wire to repair their ship.”

Manfred grunted, frowned, and stroked the kestrel’s head before restoring it to its perch in the rookery. “Then it is better lost,” he said as he closed he cage. “The Krenken have many useful arts to teach us. I’d fain they not leave too soon.”

When Dietrich called Hans on the mikrofoneh afterward, the Kratzer answered instead.

“He you call ‘Hans’ sits in Gschert’s dungeon,” the philosopher told him. “His sally against the Burg in the valley was not by Herr Gschert ordered.”

“But he did it to retrieve the wire you need!”

“That is of no account. What matters, matters. Quicksilver falls.”

Alchemists associated quicksilver with the planet Mercury, which was also quick, and Dietrich thought the Kratzer meant that the very planet had fallen from the sky. But he had no chance to ask, for the krenkish philosopher ended the audience.

Dietrich sat at his table in the parsonage and twisted the now-silent head harness around his fingers before tossing it to the table. The Krenken had been now for three months in the woods, and wild stories were already in Freiburger ears. And the wire they needed for flight was lost.

During the next two weeks, the Krenken barred Max and Hilde from their encampment. They were felling trees again, Hilde told him, and building bonfires. Dietrich wondered if some festival of theirs impended, similar to St. John’s Day but requiring the exclusion of outsiders. “It isn’t that,” Max said. “They’re pla

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. It’s a soldier’s instinct.”

The feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria dawned close and cold, under a sky sullen with heavy clouds and a breeze not bold enough for wind. The villagers, having celebrated the Kirchweihe in memory of the foundation of their church, crowded from the church into the morning light, eager for the foot races and other games that marked the Kermis, only to stare dumbfounded at snowy hummocks rolling white to the horizons. During the church-vigil, a stealthy snow had thickened the land.

After a moment’s awed contemplation, the children fell to with a collective shriek, and soon young and old were engaged in mock battles and fortifications. Across the valley, a troop of armsmen emerged from the castle. Dietrich thought at first that they intended to join the snowfight, but they turned and marched at the double-quick down the Bear Valley road.