The Last Fire, Part 3
Konrad’s stomach rumbled. She’d quickly learned they were going to rely entirely on their packed provisions to make it to Prague. Every town was ashes, or had driven their livestock inside, closed every gate, and refused to open requests, profanity, or Nicolaus’ invoking their Prince Elector Maximilian. Any city large enough to be noteworthy had French scouting parties a mile out.
Standing in a trampled field on the ninth night, she could see snow-capped peaks shining in the moonlight. Their beauty was tarnished by the stench of rotting wheat wafting up from the mud and flattened brown stalks all around.
The road steepened as they reached the border between Bavaria and the neighboring Kingdom of Bohemia, where Prague was located. Snow-capped mountains stared at Konrad from her left. The route climbed through their rugged foothills, then turned dead east and made a beeline straight to Prague.
Soft footsteps approached, and a slender hand squeezed her shoulder.
“My duke?” she said.
“There’s a light on in the farmhouse behind us,” he whispered.
She spun around. Two fields over, the farmhouse with the collapsed roof had a yellow glow flickering in its windows. Too large to be a mere candle, someone must have started a fire in the hearth. She’d poked around outside a few hours earlier and found nothing of scavenger value. This was a new development.
“We shouldn’t investigate, right?” he said.
“Definitely not. Let’s get further away.” They packed up the horses and retreated. They passed an old plow, the skeleton of an oxen still slumped in its harness. They kept going until they clambered over the farm’s stone border wall and set up tents again in its cover.
Once down, Konrad measure out a double portion of salted beef, biscuit, and dried fruit for each of them.
“Why are you being so generous?” Nicolaus said. He dove into the food anyways, piling it into his mouth.
“Tomorrow we’re climbing a hill and we need the strength,” Konrad said.
Nicolaus swallowed properly before speaking. “That mountain?” he spun and pointed at the last snow-capped mountain in line, towering over them.
“Not to the top. We’re swinging around its western shoulder,” she said.
“Think we can do the hike in one day?”
“Maybe. Depends on if the ground has dried from the winter melts,” she said. “Now sleep.”
He did so. Only then did she stalk back over the wall and relieve herself in its cover. The farmhouse light still glowed in the distance. Whoever had lit was being foolish.
If she didn’t have the lordling hanging on, she’d light a fire actually. So many things had tried to kill her, might as well enjoy a roaring spring fire and something freshly killed, dressed, and roasted over a spit.
By dawn they were off, both having slept poorly due to eating a much larger dinner than they’d gotten used to. Konrad half-slept in the saddle for the first two hours, until the sun crested the mountain slope and shined straight in her eyes.
Despite the sun, the air only got colder the further along they went. Until they crested a ride and hit a vast mountainside of tangled forest. It sloped heavily downwards before rising to a ridge on the far side. On the right, the two ridges rose until they converged in a snowy peak.
“Straight across?” Nicolaus groaned.
“Yes, but on foot,” she said and clambered down. She grabbed her horse’s bridle and tugged him forwards. He snorted in frustration, then began the horse equivalent of tiptoeing down. Rocks dislodged at his hooves and tumbled past her, bouncing off tree roots and larger rocks. She heard them clattering all the way down.
“Where’s the border? I want to piss into Bohemia,” Nicolaus said.
Konrad burst into laughter, and only stopped when she started coughing.
As she stopped, she heard someone else’s voice, and stopped short. The wind picked up, diluting any possible conversation.
“I’m serious. You’re welcome to join me,” Nicolaus said as he smiled.
“Shush, I think I heard someone,” she said.
The wind died down and voices whispered through.
“I hear them too,” Nicolaus said and hurried off the road, dragging his horse with him.
Konrad followed and stepped down into the rocky mountain soil. “My Duke, I’ll scout ahead.” She loosened the cords around her montante and yanked it free. She stepped forwards. A branch snapped under boots and she jumped like a gunshot had went off.
She crept forward.. Anyone listening would find them, a silly landsknecht leading a horribly out of place lordling and their horses.
No one did, and she soon realized the voices were German. She counted four or five, before she made out their words.
They came into view at the bottom of the valley; four ragged men and a woman. Two of the men wore multicolored clothes scavenged and sewn together from a dozen places. Landsknechts. The others were in peasant’s loose shirts and baggy breeches. They picked through a wagon, while its unfortunate owner sat on the ground, next to his freshly butchered oxen and panicking donkey. There was plenty of food in the pile.
A meager pile lay beside them. The old man had a bald head and leathery skin. He let loose a string of something she couldn’t hear. The looters all burst into laughter.
“Are those deserters?” Nicolaus whispered.
“Probably. If they were still in the Emperor’s pay they’d be wearing more jewelry,” she said.
“Perhaps we can sneak around them,” he said.
She stared at him. The remark had come innocently off his lips. “I was expecting an order to save the poor traveler.”
“No, he’s a jew who was probably hoarding all that food. Better to take advantage of this distraction,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder at him. He was worriedly scanning the trees, not caring about the robbery going on before them. “My duke, you were giving thalers to poor maids in Munich.”
She looked back and saw the five of them had circled around the shopkeeper, backs to her. The biggest man said something and tapped the bald man’s head with the tip of his short sword. The others laughed. She saw one handgun on the hip of the peasant bandit to his right. That was it for obliterating firepower.
The shopkeeper gave the big man a wave that was rude with how nonchalant it was in the face of death. Konrad found respect for the old man.
“They were poor maidens. The jews are never poor and never desperate after all the banking they do.”
T’was a line she’d heard many times before.
Konrad seized his shoulder and pressed her lips to his ear. He tensed at her touch.
“My duke, may you never learn your lessons in the same brutal way I did.” She pushed him away and strode down the dirt road.
“Wait.” He hissed.
The shopkeeper saw her approaching, sword raised. His eyebrows arched. She quickened her pace, before the old man could tip the bandits off accidentally.
He leapt to his feet and started shouting. Not in German, but what sounded like Hebrew. The bandits burst into laughter around him, and the big one pointed his sword into that old throat.
The woman saw her. She leaped back so fast her hat toppled from her head, and she screamed.
Konrad sliced diagonally upwards, raking the big bandit from left hip to right shoulder and splitting his spine on the way. She transitioned straight into a full-bodied thrust that caught the next bandit in his right breast as he spun around. Her sword was so big it punched straight through his ribs and out between his shoulder blades. The man gasped once and his legs folded. The handgun dropped from his fingers.
The woman beside him screamed. Instead of fighting, she threw herself to his side and wailed so loud it stabbed Konrad’s eardrums.
Konrad planted a boot on his quivering form and wrenched her sword free as she spun around to face the remaining two. She twirled her sword before her.
The pair of them leapt back. One was a holding a logger’s axe before him. The other, a former Landsknecht like her, brandished his short sword and retreated slowly. He pushed the peasant right, then went left.
Except the old merchant exploded to his feet and buried a knife in the peasant’s pale throat.
The landsknecht turned to run. Except turning was too slow and she crossed the gap and cut his legs out from under him. He shrieked as he fell and went silent with her next slice.
She wheeled back around. The woman was on her hands and knees, cradling her man in her arms as he died.
She would run for help, to the rest of their gang, to the French, or to anyone else who wanted to loot some wealthy corpses. Or she’d stalk them through the woods and murder them in their sleep. That was what Konrad would do. Any way to look at it, the young woman was a danger.
She threw her arm over her head as Konrad approached. Her other crept towards the handgun.
“Please, mercy good soldier!”
Konrad took her head off, and she slumped over her man’s body. Nicolaus screamed and sprinted out of the trees. He came to a stop as he saw the dead around him. Konrad wiped her sword off on the dead woman’s dress and then hefted it back over her shoulder.
“You alright?” she said, to the merchant.
“No,” he said. “I was going to cut the big one’s throat and die content with that. You’ve given me more years I didn’t want.”
“Better a few more breaths of fresh air than the sulfurs of hell,” she said and shrugged.
“I’ve got you there, because we don’t have a hell in the way you Christians believe,” he said.
“Wish someone had told me that before my mother baptized me,” she said.
“Never too late for new beginnings, good soldier,” he said and winked.
Nicolaus seized her shoulder. “I did not order you to kill five people.”
“Bandits,” she said.
He pointed at the dead woman. “You killed a maiden begging for mercy.”
“She was going to run for help,” I said.
“She was enraged that you killed her lover,” Nicolaus said.
“And then what? Were going to fall to your knees and offer her gold?” Konrad said.
Nicolaus answered with hot coals of a glare. His lips twisted as he kept trying to speak, but nothing came.
“We need to go, we have to be in Bohemia by night fall,” she said.
“The French have set up a watch tower and barricade at the bottom of the mountain. Anyone who tries to pass, they kill you and pile your body outside,” the shopkeeper said. “In the meantime, you’re welcome to anything in my shop.” He pointed at the cart. “Not like Reamus and I are carrying it all, now that the big fellow murdered good old Daisy.” He kicked the big bandit’s corpse. His donkey trampled on the big man.
“We are leaving,” Nicolaus said. “Konrad, I command you to leave.”
He didn’t give orders well. His voice was scratchy and thin, like he didn’t believe he should have that authority.
“Yes my duke,” Konrad said and dipped her head. She leapt back on her own horse and waited for Nicolaus to clamber onto his.
Soon as they were out of earshot, he rode over to her side. “If this was Bavaria, you’d be put on trial for committing five murders. No one would care you were defending a merchant.” His voice dropped into an accusatory whisper.
“I know, my duke” Konrad said. She suddenly felt incredibly tired. Her eyes slid shut, and she let them stay that way for a few seconds.
“That’s it? The jew has no rights in Bavaria. That was a robbery, but no one would investigate. They’d care far more about the five dead, god-fearing people.”
“They were clearly deserters and brigands. I’d be rewarded for killing them first,” Konrad said. She closed her eyes again and let the horse walk on.
“Those were still five god-fearing folk.”
“Who’d slit your throat and strip your body of all that valuable silk and velvet and gold,” Konrad said. “Think they’d pray over you first? I learned this lesson a while ago.”
“Learned what?” Nicolaus burst out. “What could you learn to make you kill five people for a jew?”
“I remember when we took the city of Hamburg nine years ago. I served with the Spanish tercios then. Before we entrenched ourselves for the siege, the protestants threw all the jews out of the city. We spared none. When we took the city six months later, we sacked it like the Spanish are good at. I think at the end of the day, ten times the amount of protestants died.”
“That is horrible, but what is the lesson but death is cheap and free?” he said.
“All these differences in Europe between us, the protestants, the jews, are made up by lords and preachers, they don’t matter once the sack begins.” She held up her hand, giving him a good look at her slender, feminine fingers and the drops of blood staining them. “All just blood at the end.”
“I recall the archdeacon of our good cathedral in Munich warning us about lies from-”
“Lucifer?” she said. “That’s the archdeacon talking because Maximilian ordered new taxes on the jews. That’s not Lucifer himself. Tell me when Lucifer himself starts talking.”
“You’d be judged as heretical. The deacon would say Lucifer was speaking through you,” he said.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’ve killed so many people. Men, women, and children. Jew, Protestant, Catholic, even Turkish soldiers once upon a time. It stops mattering after a while. Just where the money’s coming from. Right now, I am your bodyguard. You are getting to Prague.”
“You are destroying my confidence in your ability to do the task if you don’t have faith in anything more than money,” he said.
She shook her head. “I do have faith in God, and man. I don’t have faith in anything in between anymore.”
Nicolaus was silent for a while. Konrad was too tired to press her point.
They crested the mountain top and she pulled up her reins. From there, she studied the steep slopes of the mountainside. A stream burst forth from a cave and flowed alongside the row with whitecaps and spray permanently dampening the dirt.
“There’s a French outpost.”
The fleur-de-lis flapped in the mountain brreze. The French hadn’t set up camp. They’d built an actual guard tower and stationed a man up high.
Konrad saw no route down the mountain. Even if she found one, the French would surely see them picking their way down the slope.
“Fuck,” Nicolaus said. He turned and spat into the dirt. “We’ve got to go back.”
She nodded and wheeled her horse about. Before descending, she took a final look back. No movement from the outpost. They hadn’t been spotted.
On their return, the merchant had piled the looted wares around his dead oxen.
“Has the French guard tower grown legs and sauntered off?” he said without looking up.
“Mind your tongue,” Nicolaus said.
“Afraid not,” Konrad said.
“You’re welcome to all my stuff. I packed the valuables I can carry. I was going to use the rest as a funeral pyre for good old Daisy, but you can go through it first,” he said and pointed.
Konrad stared at Nicolaus until he decided not to give up such an opportunity. He nodded without a word, and she leapt down to have a look.
She refilled their nine days of eaten provisions fairly easily, and snatched some candied apple slices too. The tools in the pile were redundant but there was a fine leather coin purse she swapped out with her ragged one. She looted the dead brigands first. Their coins had already been taken, but she snapped up the handgun and some powder and shot, plus a spare belt from one of the skinnier men.
Then the merchant poured a small keg of lamp oil over the whole ox and pile. His fingers shook as he produced the flint.
Konrad let him strike it over and over, until finally he generated a spark.
Nicolaus came down beside her with a thud. The donkey Reamus rested his head on his owner’s shoulder and snorted.
They stood together and watched the oxen and cart burn.
“Where are you headed?” Konrad said.
“Prague. To my in-laws,” he said. Her spirits rose at the opportunity.
“How do you get there?”
“I’ve got to swing around north past the alps now, instead of just going straight through them to Bohemia. It’s going to add an extra week to the trip,” he said.
Konrad looked to Nicolaus. The lordling remounted his horse in silence and stared straight ahead.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Isaac Nohlberg,” he said.
“I’m Konrad. Do you have family of your own?” Konrad said.
“Nay. I told my relatives that staying in the quarter of Prague was unhealthy. That I could raise a family much healthier out in the countryside. So, I took the wife and kids out in my cart. Daisy’s father was pulling then. Then this war started, and…” he shook his head. “What about you, soldier?”
“Same,” she said.”
The merchant winced. “Seems these times kill anything beautiful and strong from all the peoples of Germany. It leaves us twisted stumps behind.”
She mounted up. To her amazement, Isaac strapped a small saddle to Reamus and clambered aboard.
Her horse whinnied and turned hard. She yanked the reins and pulled him back into line. Nicolaus’ horse cried out and both horses twisted against their reigns.
She looked around, while Nicolaus complained about horses misbehaving.
A cloud of dust rose to their right. Seconds later, the ground shook.
“Move,” she said. “Move. Riders!”
They kicked their mounts at the same time and took off at a sharp canter. Only when she crested the top of the mountain, did she look back.
A column of horses trotted up the valley. They reached the road and turned right, flowing around the burning pyre. A few heads turned to look at the ox burning like some pagan offering of the Old Testament years. Some more dismounted and carried the dead bandits off the road, so the column would not trample them.
To her surprise, they were not French. They wore a medley of ragged peasant clothes, mismatched armor, and brilliant colors of the Landsknecht.
“That’s the rest of their gang,” Konrad said. “They’ve spotted us.”
They kept up the canter until they reached the bottom of the hill. Konrad turned back. The bandits crested the top. They were led by a short man wearing a metal helmet with plume of feathers almost as tall as he was. He pointed at them with a pike, and the column surged forward, stretching out on the road as each line of riders kicked their horses in the ribs.
“Just run,” Konrad said. She jammed her heels in her horse’s ribs. The beast snorted and took off. He stretched his neck out as he strained forwards. Konrad bent over his shoulders in pantomime as low branches whipped overhead. She was not a natural rider, and she wasn’t truly in control.
Ahead, the trained rider Nicolaus opened distance. He hunched low but kept a tight hand on the reins. Beside her, the poor donkey struggled to keep up.
She looked back and saw the entire column gaining. They weren’t carrying three week’s supply of food, and they must not have spent the past few days climbing mountains. Someone blew a trumpet in the group.
The ground sloped steadily. She felt her horse stumbling as it tried to maintain footing. When she looked back, she saw her pursuers whipping their mounts onwards, howling drunk as they drove them without fear for bodily harm.
Then she saw salvation a mile, maybe a little more ahead; a sharp bend in the road, lined by forest.
“My duke!” she yelled.
He twisted in his saddle and nodded back.
“At the bend ahead, I’ll continue straight into the trees and lead them on. You turn right,” she said.
Nicolaus nodded and put his head down in time to duck a low branch still holding rotting apples from last fall.
They hit a break in the trees, and across the meadow to the left, Konrad saw salvation.
A Fleur-de-lis flapped in the breeze. French light cavalry were bivouacked, eating lunch as their horses grazed and drank.
She yanked the handgun from her saddle, pointed it straight up, and pulled the trigger.
The handgun coughed as the priming powder ignited, then roared a quarter second later as the flash caught the main powder in the barrel. It left her ears ringing and a cloud of white smoke drifting in its wake.
The French cavalry all turned to look. Isaac and Nicolaus stared at her incredulously, but she didn’t waste time explaining. Konrad frantically pointed behind them, at the cloud of dust and fleeing birds closing in.
Trumpets sounded and the French trotted forth, rapidly accelerating into a gallop as they made a single, massive cavalry charge. She saw it was not a mere patrol, but an entire cavalry detachment in the dozens of horses.
The bandit horde saw them at the last minute, as they left the trees and entered the meadow. The front ranks shrieked and yanked on their reigns hard as they could. Their horses stumbled and wheeled about into the following ranks, who bowled them over. Horses fell and riders pitched into the dirt. All the momentum they’d built up got its legs yanked out from under it.
The French hit them at that exact moment they were stationary. It was not a battle but a slaughter as horses were thrown by the force of armored riders. Konrad saw men falling into the trees and wrapping around the trunks at broken angles. Blood flew through the air and through all of it the horns blared.
Then she almost rode into a ditch and had to yank her reigns hard away.
None of the French followed, but they didn’t slow down until their horses were blown and stumbling with exhaustion.
They picked a bridge over a bubbling river and pulled up hard. Konrad dismounted and led her beast towards the water.
“Is that a move you learned fighting in the war?” Nicolaus said. He leapt nimbly from his saddle and stroked his horse’s nose.
“It was a most astute use of Frenchness. They never question where they’re charging,” Isaac said and snorted.
Konrad was satisfied with their appreciation. She’s made a scheme the devil himself would be proud of, in under a second.
“I take it you need a guide to Prague?” Isaac said.
She looked at Nicolaus. His brow furrowed. Then, he nodded at her.
“Yes, we do.”
“Just follow me. You don’t need to pretend you know me when we reach any settlements, just stay in sight.”