Eifelheim

Dietrich found himself alone with Gottfried, his first convert — unless one counted the alchemist’s cryptic embrace of the words of Consecration. Gottfried continued to affix wires to the minute posts with his solidare-metal, but Dietrich thought him aware of being watched. Gottfried put the wand aside on a pad that appeared woven of metal fibers and, using a screwtwister, removed a small box from the “circuit.” This, he tossed to Dietrich, who perforce must catch it, and put in its place a somewhat larger device that appeared built from odds and ends.

Examining the device removed, Dietrich saw that instead of copper wires there depended from the device sundry fibers so fine as a hair and which seemed to trap light within themselves.

Gottfried clacked his mandibles and gestured to the device Dietrich now held and the more schlampig device he had installed in its place. He spread his hands in a very human gesture, and tossed his head several times, by which Dietrich understood that Gottfried doubted the elektronikos would flow through the copper wires with the same efficacy as — light? — had once flowed through the hairlike fibers.

Having thus pantomimed his doubts, Gottfried made the sign of the cross and, bending once more to the task, dismissed Dietrich with a wave of his arm.

Dietrich found Hans outside, crouched with the other two Krenken behind some metal barrels. Hans seized Dietrich’s robe and pulled him too behind the barrels, where the sodden earth soaked his garments and chilled his limbs. The Krenken, he saw, were shivering, although the day was but moderately cool to Dietrich’s senses. He unfastened his cloak and hung it around Hans’ shoulders.

Hans cocked his head to look at Dietrich straight. Then, he handed the cloak to the Krenk squatting beside him. This one — Mechtilde, Dietrich thought — took it and wrapped it tight around her, clenching it close about her throat. The third Krenk squatted partly upright, peering over the tops of the barrels. Where a man might scan the surroundings, he held his head so motionless as a gargoyle. The better to apprehend motion within the woods, Dietrich supposed. From time to time, the third Krenk absently fingered his neck.

The horse had stopped her whi

Hans raised a great clatter with his horny side-lips, and was answered by similar buzz from the concealing forest. Dietrich pulled the head harness from his scrip and shook it at Hans before strapping it into place.

“I told him,” Hans a

Because his private canal had been interdicted, Hans had spoken on the common canal, no longer concerned with being overheard. Gschert answered, saying, “I command, heretic. Your place is to serve.”

“Truly, I was born to serve. But I serve all on this voyage, and not you alone. You so fear risking one of us, that you would lose all of us. If you command here, your command is that we die. You were our captain’s left hand, but without the head, the hand knows not what to grasp.”

In answer, another bullet was flung at them. This time, it made no slapping noise, but instead a sound like planting a foot into deep mud. Dietrich looked over his shoulder and gasped, for the krenkish vessel glowed with a soft, internal, sourceless light, through which Dietrich could see the trees on the other side of the ship! Hastily, he crossed himself. Could the inanimate have ghosts? As he watched, the vessel seemed to shrink, as if it were moving away.

Hans and the others had seen as well. Friedrich and Mechtilde buzzed, and Hans said, as if to himself, “Take care, Gottfried… Keep it plumb…” Then, to Gschert: “Where is our pilot? He ought to be here to take the helm!”

“Your heresy has sundered the web. Zachary would not come. Would you trust your life to such patchwork? Even should it drop into the Other World, will it climb forth again?”

“Then, it is at least a choice of deaths, and not the least of choices.”

Fear gripped Dietrich’s heart and the hairs on his head and arms begin to curl. The krenkish ship snapped suddenly into focus in its proper size and a wave of elektronikos passed through him and across the clearing, where corposants flickered briefly from the tips and edges of picks and poles and sundry other metal objects.

The yellow glow behind Hans’ eyes seemed to dim. “Ah, Gottfried,” he said.

The one called Friedrich turned on him with his pot de fer leveled. He clicked out some statement. Dietrich heard only the answer. “’A small leap begins a long journey.’” Friedrich hesitated, then lowered his weapon. He said something else, but Hans did not answer him.

Without warning, Gottfried appeared in the doorway of the vessel and leapt across the open area to where Hans and Dietrich crouched. He was wearing his head harness. “I should have asked your blessing on the twisting-device, father. Perhaps it was lacking only that.”

Hans placed a hand on his forearm. “The work fell short by only a little,” he said.

Gottfried said, “Bwa! So said the hunter at Stag’s Leap.” Then he hopped atop the metal drums behind which they crouched and, spreading wide his arms, cried out, “This is my body!”

Hans pulled him to the mud a moment before a swarm of bullets flew through the space. “Those fools,” Hans said. “If they damage the walls, the vessel will never sail. We must — We must -.” His body made a noise like a concertine, for the Krenken possessed many small mouths about their bodies. “Ach. Will the warm-time never come?”

“Always summer comes,” Dietrich said. To Gottfried, he added, “You must not despair and throw your life away because of one failure.”

“His was not an act of despair,” Hans told Dietrich, “but one of hope.” Then, his momentary panic having left him, he concluded, “We must remove the Herr Gschert.”

“That saying is easier for you than for us,” Gottfried said. “You serve the Kratzer, and are not ‘oath-bound’ to the ship’s master as are we. Yet, though it grieves me sore to bring him low, it must be done.”

“How many has he brought?”

“Bwa! By the evidence, all but Zachary.”

Thereafter moved a strange and a slow combat. Accustomed to joust and melee, Dietrich found the affair most peculiar, for the combatants maintained perfect stillness for long periods.

His companions behind the barrels seemed statues, but statues that moved imperceptibly. Each time he looked at Hans, the servant of the talking head had moved into a different position. Such a style, he realized, must perfectly suit a nation whose eyes were responsive to motion, for perfect motionlessness would make them difficult to see. Yet it must also put them at hazard when fighting those who attack in a rush. It occurred to Dietrich that had Gschert and Manfred fought on Kermis Day, each party would have been vulnerable to the other. For to remain still in the face of a charge were fatal; while to rush against those with keen perception of movement were equally so.