Arcanum (109 page)

The remaining thane that might have stopped him was dragged down by Clovis before he could drive his axe between Büber’s shoulders, and was swiftly run through by an ordinary Carinthian spearman.

Ironmaker beat at Büber’s hands, then started to claw at his face. Büber ignored him, concentrating on crushing the hard lump of windpipe. There’d be more scars, more damage, more ruin. His blood dripped down into the king’s beard, his mouth, his nose. The scratching and gouging grew weaker. It was now like the batting of bird’s wings against his skin.

Büber pushed, and, at last, something gave. Ironmaker’s hands fell back. His chest heaved, once, twice. Then he shuddered and was still.

The dwarf stared out of his white, lined face with eyes of deepest brown, and Büber let go only with difficulty.

He felt himself undo, an unravelling of such profound completeness that it was all he could do to roll off Ironmaker’s body into the torn woodland undergrowth. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, resting his savaged cheek against his bloody breeks.

A hand rested on his shoulder for a moment, mailed and heavy. Clovis’s moustache had lost all of its former grandeur and now resembled a pair of rats’ tails hanging down the sides of his mouth. His own face, from the brow of his helmet to his chin, was speckled with drying scabs.

“It’s done,” said the prince.

Büber nodded mutely. If he never had to do it again, it would be too soon. Men drifted past him, touching his back, his shoulders, as they carried on to the via and the marshes beyond to watch the remnants of the dwarvish army fall and splash their way through the open pools and mires of mud, then topple into the river.

Someone – several someones – found Felix, and pulled the sharpened poll from under his chin. A Frankish sergeant took off his surcoat and wrapped the head in it before resting it on the ground at Büber’s feet.

Büber looked up sharply, and stopped gnawing at one of his finger stumps.

“It would be better coming from you, Master,” said the man, and Clovis, still standing beside Büber, agreed.

“This is a Carinthian grief. We can only watch.”

Everything ached. He hurt. His face, his hands were cut and bleeding from wounds he didn’t even remember receiving. Nevertheless, he got to his knees and slowly picked up the blue-wrapped bundle.

It was surprisingly heavy, and he had to hold it close to him while he steadied himself to stand. Willing hands came down and pulled him up, and he acknowledged their assistance with a grunt of pain.

There was barely anywhere he could tread that wasn’t on one of the dead, and it took him time to pick his way into the open. The ditch was full – he had no option but to step on the bodies there – then it was up to the via, its stone surface ripped up and thrown aside. Sophia’s spears were strung out along the road, leaning on their weapons or sitting. Sophia herself was viewing the dwarves’ progress into the river with concern.

“Get Clovis’s cavalry across the bridge to Master Thaler’s position,” she shouted, and Aelinn took off towards the woods, past Büber.

When she saw what he was carrying, she faltered, then ran on. Perhaps she was glad she’d not be present when he handed Sophia the head of her dead prince.

Sophia grew deathly still as Büber approached her. She knew what he held, he could see that. At least he wouldn’t have to explain to her. Her spatha, notched and bent, slipped from her fingers to rattle on the stones.

She was cut, too. Nicks on her forearm, a gash on the side of her head that ran from eyebrow to ear. The side of her face was as bloody as his.

There was no protocol for this. He simply didn’t know what to do, and it was clear that neither did she. He had Felix’s head clutched to his chest as though it were a newborn baby, his arms cradling it, his hands wrapped around it to protect it from further harm.

They met like that, in the middle of the via. She put her arms around Büber and held him, put her face against his neck, pressed the head between them and wept for the child they had both lost.

Agathos was shouting something from his rickety tower, but Thaler was too deaf to hear him.

“Curse the boy, can’t he be clearer?” He waggled his little finger in his ear, and Tuomanen frowned at him.

“He’s perfectly clear. He’s saying ‘nanoi’, and pointing at the river.”

“Nanoi? Little … dwarves. Coming this way?”

“Yes, Master Thaler, and we’re almost completely unprotected.”

“Who knew they could swim?” he muttered and set off at a lumbering run toward the tower and Morgenstern’s table. He put one hand on his hat, the other waved his unicorn-horn stick. “Agathos, Aaron. Come away from there at once.”

Morgenstern was calmly closing his books and stacking them in the crate at his feet, while the boy waved manically at Thaler and jabbed his finger at the near bank.

“Despotis! Nanoi!”

Thaler, red-faced and sweaty, strode up and struck the table with his walking-stick’s brass ferrule.

“Yes, yes. I can see that. Down off there now.” He pointed firmly at the ground. “Aaron, leave that.”

Morgenstern ignored him and carefully laid another book in the crate. “I have spent literally weeks of my life tabulating these figures, and I will not leave them behind.”

“Gods, man. They’ll kill us if they reach us, and neither of us is likely to outrun one of them.”

“I don’t have to outrun them, Frederik,” said Morgenstern, picking up his calculating circle, “I just have to outrun you.”

“Oh nonsense, man.” Thaler banged on the table even harder. “I insist you come with me at once. What would Sophia say if she were to lose you as well?”

Agathos swung himself down the tower, making it sway alarmingly as he climbed, and Morgenstern managed to stop thinking about his books for a moment. Thaler took the distance-pipe from the boy and trained it on the marshy ground inside the bend of the river. Those dwarves who had made it across the open water flapped and flopped like stranded fish. Those that hadn’t gained the bank had simply sunk under the weight of their armour, plunging into the sluggish brown Enn as if they didn’t know that it would drag them down to their deaths.

“How many?” asked Morgenstern.

“A few hundred. More than enough if they’re determined to take their revenge.” Thaler snapped the tube shut and brooded. “Our forces are too far away to make a difference to us. Our fates are in our own hands.”

“But my books…”

“Bugger your books, Aaron Morgenstern. You are more important – we are all more important – and we should simply leave, now, at once.” Thaler took hold of Agathos’s collar and pulled him in the direction of the emplacements. “You too, Aaron. Bring the disk if you must, but we must go.”

The first of the dwarves had made dry land, about a stadia away. He was a filthy, dirty thing caked in gelatinous mud from the waist down, and he levered himself upright only with the greatest of effort.

Thaler thought he didn’t look much of a threat, but, on the other hand, he didn’t have much of an army. They had no ball or shell left and they’d used their experimental case-shot very early on. The bottles filled with powder and tacks they’d given to Sophia. They had half a dozen charges of powder remaining, the tools they used to rake and tamp the barrels, and some crowbars.

His firing crews assembled around the closest pot.

“I think we should retreat,” Thaler said to them. “There are too many of them and too few of us.”

Bastian, already grasping one of the spike-ended scraping rods, disagreed. “No,” he said without elaboration.

“No? We’ve won, apparently. What good would it do to let them kill us?”

“None,” said Tuomanen, “but the smith’s right. The field’s ours, and there’s no reason why we should fear them.”

“I’ve already lost six people to the exploding Gunnhilde: that was unfortunate, but at least it was in battle, and the Valkyries will take them as surely as they would any warrior. This? This is idiocy, and I won’t lose any more of you.”

“No part of our army has run today.” Bastian spun the rod with its heavy iron head as though it were a drumstick. “You think we should be the first?”

“Your army?” Thaler turned on the giant of a man. “Your army?”

“It’s as much mine as it yours, Carinthian.”

“And mine,” said Tuomanen, unhelpfully. “And his.” She pointed at Agathos.

“Gods, you’re all as contrary as each other.”

“We want to hold our heads up when we get home,” said Morgenstern. “No matter what we did here, all they’ll remember is a few drowned rats chasing us off.”

“But—”

“They’re beaten, Frederik. Beaten by us.” Morgenstern waved his hands to cover all those still standing. “Beaten by you. They’re nothing any more. We don’t have to run from them.”

Thaler turned around. The dwarves were massing on the dry ground, and yes, there seemed to be a couple of centuries’ worth of them, compared with his barely forty.

“Right then,” he said. “Since you all seem determined to get yourselves killed and me with you into the bargain, I suppose we’d better get on with it. Pick something heavy up, and follow me. And for gods’ sake, Aaron, stay behind Bastian and shout encouragement or something.”

He took a deep breath and started to stride the way he’d come, back towards the tower, swishing at the grass with his walking-stick. Across the river, the cavalry were beginning to form up at the north end of the ridge, but there were only half a dozen of them so far. It would take a while to reach them, even on horseback: up the via, across the bridge, then down the western bank.

Thaler was by Morgenstern’s table, and he stopped briefly to lay his hat down. No point in that getting damaged. Then he faced the dwarves again, purpose in every step.

As he walked, he stopped using his stick to bruise leaves and played with the catches in the handle. It twisted and clicked, then he unscrewed the ash-wood pole from the horn. The two separated to reveal a thin triangular blade.

He made a couple of practice swipes with it, then a lunge that was not so much threatening as comical. All the same, the point was sharp and the blade long: in the hands of someone who knew how to use it, it would be lethal.

The dwarves would have no idea whether Thaler was that someone or otherwise.

Tuomanen, crowbar in hand, unwound the still-smouldering long fuse from around her shoulders and shrugged it off. “You came prepared,” she said.

“I thought it prudent. Who could tell what madness might descend and cause us to close with an enemy, armed with little more than a few sticks?” He sucked his teeth. “You realise this is almost the very definition of hubris?”

“The gods won’t destroy us, Master Thaler. If there are any gods left who depend on magic rather than prayer, that is.” She brushed her hair behind her oddly pointed ears. “We carved out our own destiny here. We spent our blood and our treasure, and look: most of us get to go home. Isn’t that the real victory?”

“Except you, Mistress. You don’t get to go home, do you?”

She looked down at the ground, at the bright green grass and the water meadow flowers turning to seed beneath her feet, then at her arms black with patterned ink beneath her skin. “Home is where you decide it is, Master Thaler. And I’ve been away a very long time.”

They were where they needed to be. The dwarves were no more than a well-thrown stone away, and Thaler slowed and stopped. His crew drew up behind him, and he took an extra step forward.

The dwarves looked at them. Those sitting or lying down slowly stood, until all were staring. Thaler’s people were soot-marked, flint-reeked, tired but unbowed. The dwarves were simply pitiable: half drowned, mud-coated, defeated.

Thaler chewed the side of his tongue. He wondered what to say, if anything at all. He had no guarantee that anything he said would be the least bit comprehensible to the dwarves. He could try his Latin and his Greek, but he’d have to send back to the library for anyone able to speak even a few words of Dwarvish.

No matter: he had
to do something, so he raised his sword and levelled it at the dwarf closest to him. He had no reason to assume this was a leader of any sort. These bedraggled things were merely the remnants, the random sweepings from the horde that had been brushed together one last time. So one was as good as another.

“Can you understand me?”

The dwarf looked blankly at him, blinking.

“Does anyone on your side speak German? Latin? Ellenikos?”

Nothing. Why were they suddenly so passive?

“What else can we try? Aaron?”

“Ebrit?” he offered. “Parsi? Aramaic?”

“Donsk tunga,” said Tuomanen, and there was an immediate reaction. Heads turned and re-centred on her.

“Mistress? The old language of the north it is, then. Can you tell these gentlemen …” Thaler tailed off. He still didn’t know what to say. Morgenstern squeezed through to tug on his sleeve.

“Frederik, the cavalry’s on its way.”

Thaler nodded. “Thank you, Aaron. Mistress, can you tell them that if they surrender to me, I’ll save them from the Frankish horse.”

“Before I do that,” she said, “do you think you can do that?”

“I’m the master librarian and a prince’s man. That has to carry some weight, even on a battlefield. So yes, go ahead. Make them understand.” He turned to face his own people. “Does anyone here have any problem with asking them to surrender, or do you think we should have some more slaughter to end the day with?”

There were few sceptical faces, but if any had concerns, they kept them quiet.

Tuomanen cleared her throat. “Gefast upp, eða hestamenn vilja drepa þig
.
”

The dwarves seemed to experience a collective shudder, and whispered to themselves. The ground began to sound with the beating of hooves, and Thaler looked over his shoulder to see horsemen, their blue and white pennants fluttering, gallop over the bridge and towards the emplacements.

“What are they saying?” he asked Tuomanen.

“Discussing your offer. There’s more shame in defeat than there is in death.”

“They can stick their shame up their arses. I’m willing to let them live, not as slaves, but as free men.”