ALTDORF (The Forest Knights: Book 1) (28 page)

He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, pretending he had a strap of leather between them. He would not give these bastards the satisfaction of hearing him scream again.

The pain lasted an eternity. When it finally subsided, he did not have the strength to get to his knees, so he remained with his cheek pressed against the damp floor and breathed through his mouth to minimize the stench of human waste.

“Come on Pirmin. Let us get you up,” Heller said softly. He placed his hands on Pirmin’s uninjured arm and tried to lift him. “You,” he said, nodding at one of the men-at-arms. “Give me a hand here. The Duke awaits.”

It took three of them to finally get Pirmin to his feet. The one-eyed soldier put a rope around Mathias’s neck and they marched the two prisoners out of the dark cell.

They went down a long corridor lit by flickering torches in metal sconces on the wall. Cells branched off on every side and faces peered out between iron slats. A few voices called out, but most knew better, and remained silent.

“Where are you taking us, Heller?”

“To the Duke. That’s all I know.”

Pirmin worked his tongue over his split lip and around the inside of his mouth. He looked at the shadows of men moving in the crowded cells.

“More men in here than a slave galley. What are you doing here, Heller?”

“They have all been sentenced to labor on the fortress. Work day is over and they are back for the night now.”

“No, I mean you. Why are you here?”

Heller shrugged, and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead down the long corridor. “I follow my lord’s orders. Is that not what we all should do?”

The hallway ended in a high wooden door, reinforced with strips of iron riveted in place. Heller fumbled with a ring full of long iron keys and unlocked it. The door swung inward on protesting hinges and light spilled into the corridor. The air pouring out of the room was thick and damp, and as Pirmin felt the moist heat on his face, a shiver ran through him.

The men-at-arms herded Pirmin and the young boy through the doorway. Torches lined the walls and a single cell occupied the center of the large room. A table with leather restraints took up one corner, a weapons rack filled with flails, hammers, and pointed poles of differing lengths took up another. But what held Pirmin’s attention, as he shambled into the room, was a large iron cauldron suspended above the ground on four sturdy iron legs. Flames from a healthy fire licked at the undersides of the metal pot. Steam rose above the cauldron and obscured the faces of four men standing on the other side.

Mathias looked at Pirmin, his face registering alarm. Pirmin did his best to calm the boy with a nonchalant nod, but he wondered what comfort he could really offer with his bloodied teeth and stringy hair. And added to that, was the fact that Pirmin was probably more terrified than Mathias, for he had a much better idea of what was to come.

The soldier leading the boy jerked on his rope and led them around the simmering cauldron to the four men. One was a cleric, who clutched a bible to his chest and chanted a constant stream of Latin. Pirmin tried to block him out.

Another man who could have been the priest’s brother, stood at a podium with quill in hand. A thick leather-bound book lay open before him. The third man wore the black robe of a judge, and standing beside him, with his hands behind his back, was Duke Leopold. He ignored the boy but watched Pirmin closely with the inquisitive eyes of a hawk. The prisoners were forced to their knees in front of the Duke.

“Pirmin Schnidrig. I am told you hail from Wallis,” Leopold said. “That is a long way from Altdorf, and beautiful I hear. I suspect you wish you where there now.”

Pirmin looked straight ahead and tried to blank his mind, but it coursed off on its own. The snow-capped Matterhorn flashed in his head, a small cloud skewered by its sharp peak, and then an image of him as a boy slitting the throat of a black-necked goat. He saw a field, and perhaps the face of his mother, but he could not be certain that it was she. Her features had faded over the years.

The priest’s intonations and the sound of sap bubbling and spitting in burning logs drove away the few memories he had.

“You may yet return there if you answer my next question wisely,” Leopold said.

Pirmin looked closely at the Duke for the first time and was shocked to see he was no older than Noll. But the similarities ended there. Noll was quick to anger, but he could be just as fast with a joke that would leave men laughing, or a smile that would have women swooning. Leopold, on the other hand, had the look of a man who had been angry his entire life. But he kept it deep, simmering, and let only bits and pieces of it out at a time. He had no light side.

Pirmin glanced at the cauldron and then met Leopold’s gaze. “I expect this will be one hell of a question,” he said.

“Where is Arnold Melchthal?” Leopold said.

“I will not fall in your hole,” Pirmin said, nodding towards the boiling water. “You think I do not know the makings of
Lex Salica
when I see them?”

“Your Latin is good,” Leopold said, and the way his face lit up made Pirmin cringe.

“As a lad, I learned enough to keep the monks and their sticks satisfied. Nothing more.”

“You truly do not know where Melchthal is, do you?”

“Ah, now, you would like me to say that. But I will not give you or your cursed priest any statement of mine to test.”

Leopold shrugged and gestured to the table in the corner. “We could simply torture a confession from you if you prefer.”

“Go foul yourself. I would rather die on that table with my guts spilling onto the floor than play your game.”

“Very well,” Leopold said, and turned to Mathias. “Boy. Did you steal from the food stores of the Holy Roman Empire?”

“Do not answer that!” Pirmin said. But it was too late. The boy’s words came out in a torrent of fear.

“No my lord, I swear. Please! Do not cut off my hands. I need them to help me mam. Without them we will both starve before the first snows…”

Leopold nodded to the boy’s handler, and the man jerked the rope and forced the boy towards the steaming cauldron.

“Bring a stool for the boy. And something to set the rock upon. The boy’s arm is too short to reach the bottom,” Leopold said to the jailer.

Heller’s face lightened to a shade of grey, but he did as he was told. Moments later he lowered a metal stand into the bubbling cauldron and dropped a round stone the size of a man’s fist into the boiling water, jumping back as he did so to avoid the splash. The rock landed on the stand, and rolled to a halt a foot below the water’s surface.

“Come now! The boy cannot even lift a stone that size,” Pirmin said. He made to stand up but three men forced him back down to his knees.

Mathias, bewildered, turned his dirty face from man to man. “Please, lords. Do not cut off my hands,” he said. “I took the wine, but I did not know it was the Empire’s—I swear!”

Leopold leaned over the boy. “A moment ago you said you did not take the wine. How can I be sure you tell the truth?”

“I swear, I did not know it was my lord’s. I would never take something belonging to m’lord. I swear it to God.”

Leopold stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. “Well that is a comfort. For God is indeed the only one who can prove the truth of your words. Perhaps you can keep your hands, and we will send you home to your mother. Would you like that?”

Mathias nodded, but his eyes narrowed. “What must I do?”

“A simple test. If you pass, you go free.” Leopold turned to the black-robed judge. “Explain the conditions.”

The judge cleared his throat and, in an officious voice, recited from memory the rite of
Lex Salica.

“You will be tried by the
Ordeal of Water
. You must reach your arm into boiling water up to your elbow, grasp the stone, remove it, and place it on the ground outside the cauldron. Twenty-four hours from the Ordeal, a priest and myself shall examine your limb. Some redness is to be expected, but if we perceive any blistering of the skin, or worse, we shall conclude you did not warrant God’s protection, and shall deem you guilty in Our Lord’s eyes, and therefore, guilty in this court. Do you understand the conditions of your trial?”

“Enough!” Pirmin shouted. All eyes turned to the man. Pirmin glared at Leopold.

“You are a snake, not a man.” He turned his head and looked at every man in the room in turn. “All of you. A nest of god damned vipers spitting and hissing, and weaving about the feet of a young lad for your own bloody entertainment.” His eyes stopped on Heller, and the jailer quickly looked away.

Leopold’s lips spread into a tight smile.

“Perhaps you would prefer to take his place? Surely a Hospitaller does not fear one of God’s trials?”

Pirmin closed his eyes and nodded once. “I will submit to the Ordeal. But the boy goes free first and all charges against him are dropped. There. You have what you wanted.”

“And why, pray tell, would I negotiate with a thieving outlaw?”

“Because you are a pox-carrying minion squeezed from the Devil’s own arse. Now let us get down to it.”

Leopold’s eyebrows arched up at the insult but other than that he showed no emotion. The man had the features of a hawk, but the blood of a snake, Pirmin thought. Trusting someone like him would be a fast road to hell.

“Bernard, make a note that the Hospitaller offered to volunteer for
Lex Salica
to spare a young boy its discomfort,” Leopold said to the scribe. He gestured to the soldier holding Mathias. “Take him outside the walls and release him.”

“No. Heller takes him or our arrangement is off. I will not have your Cyclops giving the boy a farewell bugger at the walls.”

The man holding the boy’s rope, growled and stepped towards Pirmin with his arm raised, but Leopold cut him off and stared him down.

“Very well,” Leopold said. “But remember, we can hunt him down easily enough if need be.”

Pirmin nodded. His mouth was suddenly too dry for words.

Heller loosened the rope from around Mathias’s neck, grabbed a handful of the boy’s shirt, and guided him to a door opposite the one that led to the other cells. When he opened it fresh air blew into the room and Pirmin was sure he glimpsed a far off star.

Mathias spread his arms and legs in the doorway and cast a long backwards glance at Pirmin before Heller said something and propelled him through the opening into the cool night beyond. The door slammed shut and Pirmin was once again trapped in his inferno.

The guards put ropes around Pirmin’s neck, tore the remains of his shirt off, and forced him to the cauldron’s edge. Seeing that the cauldron’s top stood at the same height as Pirmin’s navel, the judge removed the unnecessary stool. When all were ready, they took off his hand chains. The soldiers spread out like the spokes of a wheel and kept firm grips on their ropes.

Finally, the judge took a long set of tongs off the wall and used them to retrieve the stand from inside the cauldron. The polished rock fell off and came to rest on the cauldron’s iron bottom, four feet below the surface of the water.

Pirmin looked over the edge into the roiling water. Steam wafted up and flattened his wavy, blonde hair tight to his head. Through the steam and bubbles breaking the water’s surface, he could see the distorted shape of the rock lying on the bottom. The thought of refusing to go through with The Ordeal flitted across his mind, but he knew that was just fear creeping into his soul. If he backed away now, they would simply find some other method of torture. And the Devil only knew what they would do to the boy.

He stared into the swirling waters, and for the first time in many a year, mumbled a heartfelt prayer. He took a deep breath.

Sometimes you just got to have at ‘er until the job is done.

With a scream that vibrated the iron cauldron, Pirmin plunged his left arm into the boiling water.

***

Leopold watched Pirmin with rapt attention. He was an ordained member of the Hospitallers, a soldier of God, absolved of all sins in this life by the Pope himself. If anyone had a chance to survive the Ordeal of Water it was this man.

Morbid fascination gripped the room in silence as everyone watched the giant thrust his arm up to his armpit in the scalding liquid. He yelled bravely going in, but the pitch of his voice soon turned into a howling scream as he floundered along the bottom of the cauldron for the rock. Then he yanked his arm out so fast, the white-hot stone slipped out of his hand and flew straight at Leopold’s head like it had been launched from a ballista.

The Duke managed to lean his head away in time to avoid the missile, but the man behind him was not so fortunate. The steaming rock caught him flush on the side of his face, sizzling as it made contact. He went down in a heap, cradled his head in his hands and began screaming from the pain of the burn.

Pirmin too was on the ground, moaning and thrashing in agony, tossing the guards around on the ends of their ropes like kites in a windstorm. The room was in chaos for almost a minute until, finally, Pirmin passed out and the guard’s own suffering reached its climax and his uncontrollable screams changed to muttered curses and groans.

Leopold leaned up against a wall and observed the room. He tapped his foot and waited for some semblance of order to return. Everyone breathed easier when the big man’s thrashing eased and then stopped altogether.

The judge was the first to regain his composure. “Quickly now, gather straw to his arm and bind it to keep the heat in.”

As the soldiers gathered dark handfuls of straw from the floor, Leopold walked cautiously over to Pirmin and inspected his arm. At first it appeared only ruddy, and he thought God had indeed intervened on the Hospitaller’s behalf. But then the skin blackened before his eyes, and when the soldiers moved his arm to wrap it in straw, the whole outer layer of skin separated and the arm twisted inside it like a sword in a sheath that was too large.

Leopold backed away just as the first scent of burnt flesh watered his eyes. There would be no need to wait twenty-four hours. The Hospitaller had failed The Ordeal by Water. Disgusted, and more than a little disappointed, he turned and strode to the courtyard door. He threw it open and left the judge and soldiers to their pointless tasks.