Eifelheim

He shook his head. According to Virgil, the Dog Star portended death and disease. Dietrich watched it until it had dropped safely from sight, or until he fell asleep at last.

XV. March, 1349

At Sext, Ember Wednesday

Dietrich passed through the spring fields on his return, and was surprised to see the tenants and serfs engaged in their customary labors. Some called out greetings; others leaned on their spades and watched him. Herwyg One-eye, working a strip close by the roadside, asked for a blessing on his plot, which Dietrich delivered perfunctorily.

“What news of the Krenken?” he asked his tenant. From the village came sounds of mallets and the smell of fresh bread in the oven.

“Naught since yestere’en, when they quieted some. Most are hiding in the Church.” Herwyg laughed. “I suppose that monk’s preaching hurts less than being beaten.”

“Then nothing was done to those Krenken who set out with the Herr?”

He shrugged. “They’ve not returned.”

Dietrich rode to St. Catherine, where he found a score of Krenken in uneven rows in the nave. Some were on their feet, others in their characteristic squat. Three perched in the rafters. Joachim was in the pulpit while a thick-set Krenk wearing a head-harness translated for those who lacked one.

“Where is Hans?” Dietrich asked into the silence that greeted his entrance.

Joachim shook his head. “I’ve not seen him since the army left.”

One of the squatting Krenken buzzed and the thick-set one said through the mikrofoneh, “The Beatice asks whether Hans lives. It is,” he added with the krenkish smile, “a weighty matter to her.”

“His band performed valiantly in the conflict,” Dietrich told him, “One alone was slain and Hans avenged him in a most Christian ma

He had turned away when Joachim called, “Dietrich!”

“What?”

“Which of them was killed?”

“The one called Gerd.”

This a

Outside, Dietrich remounted and tugged the reins around. “Come, then, sister horse,” he said, “I must call on your service this one last time.” Kicking the horse in the ribs, he rode for the Great Woods, sending up urgent clots of mud from the sodden Bear Valley road.

He found Hans in the krenkish vessel. The four surviving Krenken clustered in a small room lined with metal boxes on the lower level. The room’s walls were scorched, and no wonder. Each box had rows of small, glass-filled windows, within which small fires burned — bright red; dull blue. Some changed colors while Dietrich watched. Other windows were dark and the box itself marred by the fires that had wrecked the ship. One box was ruined utterly, its panels bent and twisted, so that Dietrich could see that inside were many wires and small items. It was on this box that Gottfried labored with his magic wand.

He must have moved, for the Krenken turned suddenly. The krenkish eye, Dietrich had learned, was especially sensitive to motion. When Dietrich pulled his head-harness from his scrip, Hans sprang across the room and slapped the mikrofoneh from his hands. Then, gripping gripped Dietrich’s wrist, led him up the stairwell to the room where they had first met. There Hans activated the “speakers.”

“Gschert controls the waves-in-no-medium,” the Krenk told him, “but this head talks only in this room. How did you know to find us here?”

“You were not at Falkenstein, nor seen by any in the village. Where else might you have gone?”

“Then Gschert does not yet know. The voice-canals falling under interdict forwarned us of trouble. And we had Gerd to bury and the wire to install.” Hans tossed his long arm. “It is cold here, but… I understand now what your people mean by ‘sacrifice.’ You went to the battle field?”

“Your countrymen fought over your actions, and I thought to warn you. I feared you would return to imprisonment, or worse.” He hesitated. “The Herr said you forgave the man who killed Gerd.”

Hans tossed his arm. “We needed the wire, not his death. This wire, drawn by a true copper smith, may prove meet to the task. No blame to the blessed Lorenz. Copper was not his duty. Come, let us return below. Remember, only Gottfried is with us in all things. Friedrich and Mechtilde have joined only from fear of the alchemist, not from next-love.”

Dietrich watched for a time as the four Krenken attached wires and touched them with sundry talismans — perhaps to bless them with some relic? Once or twice they seemed to argue, and consulted illuminated manuscripts of the “elektronik circuit.” He tried to discern which of the other two was Mechtilde, obviously a Krenkerin, but though he studied them closely, he could spy no marked difference.

Growing bored, he walked about within the vessel and came to the room that the Kratzer had once named the pilot room, though there was no window to show the pilot how the vessel lay, only panels of opaque glass, several of them darkened as if by fire. One of these flickered briefly to life, accompanied by a clatter of krenkish voices from farther below.

A padded high-seat in the center marked the captain’s throne, from which he had issued orders to his lieutenants. Dietrich wondered what might have happened had that worthy survived.

The captain might not have failed so badly as Gschert. Yet, being more competent than Gschert, might he not have, in typical krenkish choler, rid himself of the risk of discovery by ridding himself of the discoverers?

God worked all things to an end. What purpose was served by the events that had so joined a reclusive scholar-priest with a bizarre creature that instructed talking heads?

Dietrich left the pilot’s room and went to the outer door, where he breathed the fresh air. A distant cry echoed through the surrounding trees, and he thought at first that it was a hawk. But it was too prolonged and insistent, and it suddenly came clear: the whi

Dietrich spun about and ran to the stairwell, nearly tripping on his robe as he hurried down the steps. “Gschert comes!” he cried, but they looked at him not at all and he realized that a human voice was to them no more than a sound, as their chittering was to him. So he grabbed Hans by the forearm.

Reflexively, the Krenk slung him aside. Hans turned and Dietrich could think of nothing better than to point toward the stairwell and shout, “Gshert!” hoping that the creature had heard the name often enough to recognize it without translation.

It must have worked, for Hans froze for a moment before unleashing a stream of chatter at his comrades. Friedrich and Mechtilde put aside their tools and sprang for the stairwell, pulling pots de fer from their scrips as they did. Gottfried looked up from his work with the magic wand and, first waving away the vapors with his hand, made the tossing motion toward Hans. Hans waited a moment longer, then tilted his head as far back as he could before he, too, ran up the stairwell.