Thaler steadied himself on his stick. "Oh."
"He died bravely, charging the foe repeatedly, but ..." he looked down sadly "you'll hear this from others, so I may as well tell you first. The dwarves mounted his head on a pole and carried it in their vanguard."
Thaler rummaged in a pocket for a handkerchief, and dabbed at his eyes. "Are we lost, then?"
"No," said Reinhardt, "and no one's more surprised than I am at that. We held firm. We changed our tactics. Master Buber won a famous victory against their left flank, destroying it utterly with few losses, but their main force managed to overwhelm our defences each time, no matter how many of them we killed. What you see here is a planned retreat. Master Buber still has a large part of our forces in the field, and will skirmish with the dwarves' rear as they try to advance down the valley."
"So are you ..." Thaler struggled to find the words "in charge now?"
"The Lady Sophia is our war-leader. Assuming she's still alive. And can make her way back here. She has the bowmen and Master Ullmann's Black Company with her, so our hope's not without foundation." Reinhardt leant forward onto his saddle's pommel. "Gods, Master Thaler, it's a mess. We're scattered to the four winds and no one knows where anyone is any more. After chasing us off, they may well have turned around and crushed Buber's forces, and we won't know until they come howling at us again and burn Rosenheim down around our ears."
Thaler blew his nose. "Sophia. I mean, Lady Sophia: was she there when they paraded Felix's head?"
"She had one of your distance-pipes. I imagine she'd have been among the first to see it."
"And?" wondered Thaler.
"She held. She held like a true Carinthian. I was never for her, Master Thaler, not like some. I'd entertained thoughts of Felix choosing a German bride when the time came, and shooing these Jews out of the fortress and back into their own alley." He shook his head. "But the woman has steel in her heart as well as in her hand, and as irregular as it might be to have a Jewess lead us into battle, I can't think of anyone else from among our number more suitable than her."
Thaler was lost for a moment. There'd always been one of Alaric's sons on the throne, no matter how tenuous the genealogy had sometimes been. "What will become of us?"
"I don't know, I'm afraid. I simply don't know." Reinhardt looked behind him at the spearmen he'd brought from Kufstein. "Everyone is tired and angry and not a little hopeless. We haven't lost yet, but gods, we're close to it. Unless Buber can win five battles like the one he already has, then that's it. The dwarves could even choose to ignore us, and there's little we could do to hurt them."
"We haven't lost yet? Well, that's good, surely, because it means we can still win." Thaler pulled himself together. "I'm sure we can sort something out in due course. It sounds like most of our army is still intact, yes?"
"Yes-"
"And you've made it back to the muster-point without incident, so there's no reason to suppose that others can't do the same." Thaler smiled uncertainly up. "Courage, Master Reinhardt. Despite our tragic loss, we can still leave him a legacy to be proud of."
"We need to rest. The field south of Rosenheim should still have tents. Bring your wagons." Reinhardt sat back up and frowned. "What exactly do you have in them?"
"Gunnhilde and her three sisters, five pots of various sizes, ammunition, a great deal of black powder, and, frankly, whatever else we could find."
"Not food, or crossbow bolts, or anything useful then."
Thaler stroked his chin. "I shall take that as a reflection of your grief, Master Reinhardt. Lead your men into Rosenheim, and I shall join you shortly."
Reinhardt ground his teeth together, but rather than saying anything more, he dug his heels in his horse's flanks and slowly plodded on towards the bridge over the Enn. Thaler raised his stick at Morgenstern and jabbed it in the same direction, then walked back to his cart.
"Nothing useful indeed," he muttered to himself over and over again, and he was in a sour mood when he climbed back up next to Kaleb. "A change of plan," he announced. "To Rosenheim."
"What news?" asked Tuomanen.
"Felix is dead," he said baldly.
"Does that mean ...?"
"No, it does not. Perhaps with lesser peoples it would, but not Carinthia. We can still put an army in the field, and we will still fight."
Tuomanen dragged her fingers through her sleep-squashed hair, and left it spiky. "So who's ...?"
"Sophia."
"A woman."
"Well, she was the last time I looked." He turned in his seat and narrowed his eyes at her. "I would've thought you'd approve of this development."
"Felix was nice," she said. "I liked him. He seemed very concerned about doing good."
"He was. He'll be greatly missed. Not least by Sophia."
Tuomanen shuffled forward on her knees and leant between Thaler and Kaleb. "Will you dissolve into civil war now, with two or more claimants for the throne? Or will you take a Jew as your queen?"
"This isn't the time for such singularly inappropriate talk, Mistress. We narrowly avoided one civil conflict. I trust that whatever solution we arrive at, we do so peacefully. Such transitions from one ruling house to another have happened before, as our histories testify." He turned to the front again, and folded his arms.
Tuomanen whispered in his ear. "Except that you've got rid of all the earls, and now every man and woman is allowed to own their own land. Who'd want to rule a palatinate like that?"
"Someone who doesn't aspire to be a despot, perhaps." He huffed. "There are other forms of government, you know. Just because you've lived half your life under a tyranny."
The cart in front jerked forward, and after a suitable gap had widened, theirs started to follow.
"The strong rule, the weak are ruled," she said. "It's natural law."
"For an educated woman, you do speak all kinds of nonsense sometimes."
"Prove it's not so."
Thaler puckered his lips as he thought. "Well, then. Perhaps you can explain why you're here to debate such matters with me? Were you forced? Were you obliged? Or did you choose to come of your own free will and be among a company of free men and women, to fight for something that is little more than an idea?"
She laughed, tossing her head back and showing her teeth.
"Well played, Master Thaler, very well played indeed."
"I thought so too," he said, and allowed himself a certain smugness. "Oh, for certain, tyranny is our natural state you'll have no argument from me there but it's a mean, brutal and unstable state for both ruler and ruled. Civilised people will always aspire to greater things, and here we are, on the cusp of change again. Do we go on or do we fall back?"
"It'll be interesting to watch," she said.
"Watch? Watch? Good gods, Mistress. You're as much part of this as I am." He turned to look at her again. "All kinds of nonsense, I say."
Kaleb just shook his head and concentrated on getting the cart wheels between the bridge parapets.
95.
Sophia was determined to lead them in with something approaching dignity, but all she could manage was a bone-weary limp. The rush of battle had been one thing, but once its numbing effect had worn off, she'd hurt: all over for certain, her right ankle in particular, where she'd tried and failed to extract her foot from her stirrup as the horse fell underneath her. She'd ending up wrenching it free, and it gnawed at her like the everlasting worm.
They hadn't been followed: Peter Buber's intuition was proved right when the dwarves had refused to enter the forests after them.
And she'd killed Max Ullmann, who'd tried to kill her.
It hadn't even been hard. A flick of her wrist, barely aimed. One moment he'd been next to her, and then he wasn't.
Then she'd been in the trees, crashing through the undergrowth, putting as much distance between the dwarves and herself as possible, climbing up the valley-side and only stopping when she was all but pulled down by several bowmen.
She'd wept after that, and none of them had dared comfort her, though they consoled each other well enough as they cried their own public tears of loss.
Hidden by the forest, they turned north, and here they were again, at Rosenheim.
Across the river, she could see the camp fires Reinhardt had raised, and the reflection of the flames against the white canvas of the tents. She hoped that there'd be food and rest for her men, even while she knew there'd be precious little for her. She was in pain, inside and out.
Sophia saw the first wagon, sitting on the road, and wondered what it was doing there. She didn't recognise it, and what it carried just looked like supplies. She passed the second one, and on a whim, lifted up the waxed canvas cover that was tied down over the goods. It was too dark to see anything. Barrels perhaps? Beer? Sauerkraut?
When she got to the third one, and saw that there were more ahead of her, she started to grow suspicious. She told her centurions to take the men down to the camp, while she dragged herself up onto the wagon bed to take a closer look. Her hands found rough, unplaned wood turned into packing crates, and her probing fingers cold, hard, metal balls the size of her fist.
"Frederik?"
She scrambled back and overtook half her army, limping ridiculously and growling at anyone who got in her way. When she reached the camp perimeter, she spoke to a weary guard.
"Is Master Thaler here?"
"He's" and he pointed "over there with Master Reinhardt."
"Have you eaten yet?"
"My lady?"
"It's a straightforward question, man. Have you eaten?"
The man stopped leaning on his spear and looked alive for the first time in hours. "Yes, my lady."
"Good. Just making sure. Now out of my way."
She was almost to the point of dragging her right leg behind her through the camp when she came across Thaler, Reinhardt, the witch Tuomanen, and "Father?"
"Ah, my girl. You're safe." Morgenstern smiled broadly at her. "I was worried for you."
"I'm safe," she echoed. "Yes. Father, what are you doing here?"
"Helping?"
She managed to convey that the emotion boiling up inside her wasn't over-brimming joy. "Master Thaler, what have you done?"
Thaler hastily put down the bowl of stew he'd been ladling into his mouth, and got up off the little fold-up chair that he was somehow failing to break. "If I might explain," he said.
"You've brought my father into the middle of a battlefield. Why are you here? Why are any of you here?"
"My lady," ventured Reinhardt.
"Shut up. I'm not talking to you at the moment. I'm talking to my fool of a father and this great tub of lard that masquerades as a librarian." She was vaguely aware that she shouldn't be behaving like this, that her voice was carrying across the camp and that conversations were drying up like sheets in a gale all around her. But she'd had enough.
"Your father can calculate angles and distances more accurately and faster than any of us," said Thaler. "And he wanted to be where we were."
She turned on Thaler. They were more or less the same height, and his face was well within spittle-flecking distance. "Then why didn't you all stay at home?"
Thaler didn't answer straight away. He got out his handkerchief and dabbed at his face. "My condolences for your loss," he said, then went back into his voluminous pockets for something else. "You may have my immediate resignation as master librarian. We'll turn around in the morning and head back to Juvavum."
He pressed something into her hands, and walked out of the firelight.
She looked down at what he'd given her, and angled it to the flames to see it better. It was the library seal.
"Master Thaler?" she called after him. "Frederik?"
He didn't answer, and both Tuomanen and Reinhardt stood.
"I'll-"
"Go."
They looked at each other. "Why don't we both go?" suggested Reinhardt, and the witch clearly agreed with him, because a moment later Sophia was alone by the fire with only her unexpected father for company.
He patted the vacated seat next to him. "Why don't you sit down and tell me all about it?"
She gnawed at her lip. "Will you use sarcasm?"
"Oh, I expect so. Irony, too. Later, though. Sit with me, my daughter." He tapped the chair again, and she gave up trying to fight everyone. She sat, still holding the library seal in her writhing fingers.
"I lost him," she said.
"I know," he said. "Frederik told me."
"They-"
"I know that too. It's a bad business, Sophia."
"It wasn't supposed to be like this."
Morgenstern rested his hand on her shoulder. "I know."
"You shouldn't even be here."
"That? I also know. Your father is very wise and knows everything."