Free Eifelheim by Michael Flynn Page A

charge of his master’s estate. Klaus, who was
maier
for the village, stood beside him with an indifference that betokened either an innocent heart or one more confident in its misappropriations.
    Max had drawn the castle guard up in two lines, and sixteen men presented their arms in a shout and a clash of metal as their lord rode between them. Even Dietrich, who had seen more splendid displays than this in towns and cities far more grand, was stirred by the spectacle.
    The herald dismounted and planted the Hochwald banner—
vert, a boar passant below an oak tree, all proper
. Manfred reined in before it and his horse reared and pawed the air. The harvesters, who had rambled up the hillside, cheered the horsemanship, but Theresia whispered, “Oh, the poor beast, ridden hard.”
    If the horse had been ridden hard, so had the men. Dietrich noted the signs of a forced march beneath the brave show. Weary eyes; tattered livery. There were fewer than had marched forth, and some strange faces had been added—the discards and left-behinds of some battlefield, hungry for a lord to feed them. Hungry enough, indeed, to leave their homelands behind.
    Eugen, the jung-herr, dropped to the ground, staggered, and grabbed hold of the snaffle rein to steady himself. The horse shied and pawed the ground, tossing up a clot with his foot. Then Eugen stepped smartly to his lord’s stirrup and held it while the Herr dismounted.
    Manfred touched knee to ground before Dietrich, and the pastor placed his left hand on the Herr’s brow and drew the sign of the cross over him with his right, announcing public thanks for the troop’s safe return. Everyone crossed themselves, and Manfred kissed his fingers. Rising, he said to Dietrich, “I would pray a while in private.”
    Dietrich could see creases around the eyes that hadn’tbeen there before, a greater and more pallid gray in the hair. The long, lean face framed sorrow.
These men
, he thought,
have come a long, hard way
.
    Passing to the church, the lord clasped hands with his steward and with Klaus and told them both to come in the evening to the manor house for the accounts. His two daughters, he embraced with much feeling, removing his gauntlets to stroke their hair. Kunigund, the older, giggled with delight. Each one he greeted—priest, steward, maier, daughter—the Herr studied with deep concern; and yet it had been Manfred absent and unheard from these two years.
    The Herr paused at the church door. “Good old Saint Catherine,” he said, running a hand along the curve of the saint’s figure and touching a finger to her sad smile. “There were times, Dietrich, when I thought I would never see her again.” After a curious glance at Joachim, he strode inside. What he told God, what boon he asked or thanks he gave, he never afterward said.
    T HE
HERRENHOF
, the lord’s manor house, sat within its curial lands atop a hill across the valley from the church, so that lord and priest oversaw the land from their separate perches and warded the folk between them, body and soul. There were other symbolisms behind the separation, playing—in miniature—dramas that elsewhere had shaken thrones and cathedrals.
    Upon the crest, Burg Hochwald warded the Oberreid road. The outer wall was a small affair, embracing
curia
as well as castle; but it and the moat were meant only to keep wild animals out and domestic ones in and so was of no military significance. The inner wall, the
Schildmauer
, was prouder and of more warlike intent. Rearing behind the shield-wall was the tower of the
Bergfried
, the redoubt which had anciently housed the lords of the high woods when Saracen and Viking had roamed at will and each dawn might see a Magyar horde lining the horizon. The castle was a machine designed for defense and could beheld, like most, by only a small garrison; but it had been tested only once, and then not to the limit. No army had marched from the Breisgau since Ludwig the Bavarian had bested