Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (24 page)

“Don’t tell lies, Gunt’, you don’t either,” said the bushy-bearded man in the white shirt. “Giachen Mello from the townlands supposedly brought back that cow of his, and he was born on Tuesday.”

“Whatever, Baseli,” said Gunt’, “he had to find the key, and get the door open. Once you get it open, in the very mountain there’s a big room all hollowed out, piled with gold and gems: and there’s a dwarf who guards it. And a beautiful maiden, too, enchanted, from the olden times. You have to tell the dwarf your choice. You pick the gold and jewels, or else this golden cowbell that’s there, or else the maiden. And depending on which you pick, you either get incredibly rich, or the dwarf gives you the most beautiful cow in the world, or else you get to be lucky in everything for the rest of your life.”

Mariarta looked thoughtfully at the soldier Gunt’. “It’s a strange tale. I don’t know what day I was born on: but I’m bold enough to go to this mountain-ring and seek the wall and door, to tell if the story’s true. What about you, Flisch?”

They all looked at him. “Why, certainly,” he said, stammering, “I’ll go see as well.”

“Tomorrow morning, then,” Mariarta said to the soldier Gunt’. “If the weather holds. Does the story say how you’re supposed to find this golden key?”

The soldier shook his head with a smile. “Doubtless you’ll tell me when you come back.”

Everyone drank to Flisch’s and Mariarta’s boldness; Mariarta drank too, but not as much as she saw Flisch was drinking. That suited her well, for if Flisch had somehow come upon her secret, she preferred he tell it to people while dead drunk. Anyone who heard it would be that much less likely to believe him.

The talk went around for a while. After an hour or so, as darkness fell, Mariarta found herself bereft of even Flisch’s unnerving company: he had fallen asleep in his chair, wine-sodden. She found the bushy-bearded soldier, Baseli, looking at her. “Your companion,” he said, “seems weary from his travels.”

“He’s not usually my companion,” Mariarta said, “but yes, he seems to have come a long way.”

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

“I am mountain-bred, and always did find it hard to mind other people’s business.” She smiled, to take the sting out of her words. “But if I’m right, that
is
part of your business: so I’ll say you ask courteously.” And she looked at the leather cuirass underneath his shirt.

Baseli laughed. “You are no danger,” he said, “so I think: but it’s my business to notice people. I am a Captain of the Bishop’s guard, and of the watch; these are some of my men.” He glanced at Flisch, who was now snoring open-mouthed. “You know each other well?”

“Not well. We met in Mustér.”

“And he followed you here. Do you have a quarrel?”

“No. At least, I can’t think of one.”

“That’s well,” Baseli said. “I advise you not to have quarrels here: my master looks harshly on such, especially when blood is drawn. He feels it reflects badly on the peace of his town.”

“We will be away tomorrow,” Mariarta said, “if Flisch here doesn’t lose heart.”

Baseli nodded. “Out of sight of the town walls, out of our fields, you can do as you like.”

Mariarta had another drink of her wine. “Why was it you started to talk to us when you heard of the white chamois?”

Baseli laughed. “I heard something else that interested me more than what my men were saying,” he said. The far door opened; on the draft that came down the room past Baseli, Mariarta heard, 
The sound of anger—

Mariarta nodded.  “It’s a strange old story,” she said, finishing her wine. “If I’m to find the truth of yours, it’s an early start for me. And him.” She got up.

Baseli’s eyes were on her. Mariarta said, “Thank you for your hospitality. It’s good to know there’s a welcome here, even if it’s a careful one.”

“Cities are good places to be careful,” Baseli said. “But so are the mountains. Have a care for your companion.”

Mariarta nodded and went off.

•

Sleep came late and hard. Plainly Flisch knew her secret; all Mariarta’s desire now was to get away from him. She would be able to manage that tomorrow, or once they got into the mountains. She could even leave early herself, lose him now—  But Mariarta had said, in front of men of the town, what she was going to do. Breaking her word now might give credence to any tale Flisch might tell.
And what if he does tell?  Everybody will know—
 

She shivered. The fate of a woman discovered alone among men was certain—the only reason most mountain people knew for a woman to be on the roads was that she was “no better than she should be”. At worst, if caught, she would be considered fair game to be dishonored; at best, she would be packed off home—  Either way, she would lose her freedom.
It will never happen,
  Mariarta thought. Her hands itched for her crossbow, remembering the feeling of power that came with her first shooting of a man.
How pleasant,
said something in her, an oddly caressing voice,
to have the chance to do that again; and to be justified in it—

Mariarta ground her teeth. It did not have to happen that way.
But why did Flisch follow me?
  She didn’t believe Flisch’s tale of “just feeling like it”....

Yet the soldiers’ tale of the mountain valley above Arosa kept coming back to mind. “A beautiful maiden, enchanted from the olden times...” And the Old one, what was his name, Tor, had said one of the old goddesses was in a mountain near Chur.  
I’ll  find what she wants of me at last.....

Dawn came, and the bells of Chur began wrangling with one another. Chur had about ten churches, each with a bigger bell than the last. One after another they began to ring the Angelus, first the big deep-noted single bells, then the smaller bells that rang in pairs, one high, one low. The melodious jangling racket went on for half an hour, and when they stopped there was no question of anyone in Chur still being asleep.

The last bell, the big one in the cathedral near the Bishop’s house, was still bonging away when Mariarta got to the common room for a hot drink before leaving. She found Flisch sitting in a corner, holding his head. “What do they put in the wine here?” he muttered.

Mariarta called one of the kitchen girls to bring them hot apple-draft and their reckonings. Both came together; Mariarta paid for both. The innkeeper stood counting the money obviously, while Mariarta grinned. “Afraid we won’t be back to pay you anything you’ve missed?”

The innkeeper grunted at her, turning away. “Donkey’s outside.”

Mariarta helped Flisch fetch his baggage. Outside, the day had gone grey. A soft mist was falling from low cloud that drifted among the city’s heights, hiding  the tops of the church towers.

“Which road are we taking?” Flisch said.

“Out the far side of town. A road goes up the Schanfiggtal as far as a town called Peist. Then—around the corner of the mountain  into the Arosa valley. Twelve miles: we’ll be there tonight, if we waste no time.” Mariarta smiled. “You don’t have to go if you’ve changed your mind—”

“Don’t be foolish. We’ve said what we’ll do; let’s do it.”

“Indeed,” Mariarta said softly, “what man would do otherwise?” And she tugged at Catsch’s rein and started walking.

Silently they passed under the walls of the Bishop’s house, the Hof, making their way to the tower at the upper corner of the city’s “arrowhead”, the Schmiedenturm. It was a smaller gate than the Obertor Gate; the soldiers there looked even more bored. Flisch hurried past them without a word, but Mariarta nodded at the two men standing there—then swallowed, for one of them was Baseli, the guard captain. She had hardly known him under the helmet, and the armor, not leather but bright steel, with the Bishops’ ibex-and-gateway device on the tunic over it. He saw her, said nothing.

Mariarta shouldered her crossbow with the air of one who has no concerns, and went after Flisch.

The road degenerated quickly to a rutted dirt path after it turned a corner in its climbing and got out of sight of the great grey Hof. Mariarta was glad: the dark windows in the blank grey walls made her nervous. There was something else to be nervous of, though—Flisch. He proved a silent companion, as the hours passed, and he walked with a frown on his face not caused by the road or the climb.

“You might at least tell me what your real name is,” Flisch said suddenly.

“That’s my business, I should think. The one I wear suits me well enough.”

“It
is
your real name, then.” That sly, malicious look Flisch had worn last night reappeared. “Let’s see: what kind of girl’s name might turn into ‘Matti’?  Matilda—Madleina, maybe—”

Mariarta merely shifted her crossbow to the other shoulder. “What
were
you doing in that pass in the middle of the night, I wonder?” she said. “Hunting in those parts is poor this late in the year. But then—those houses. All empty. Plenty of things still in them. Perfect for a little sneak-thieving....”

Flisch turned red. “I would never have stolen anything!”

“Then it was bad judgment that led you there,” Mariarta said, “and kept you there when you’d seen how the place looked. Then when the wind started to rise, and you heard the voices—”

Flisch turned his back on Mariarta, hurrying ahead.

Two can ask questions,
  she thought, with some satisfaction.

But what am I going to do about him?  One way or another, he knows. No matter what we find here, sooner or later he’ll go his way, I mine.
And Mariarta could not believe that sooner or later, Flisch would not tell someone.

They kept walking, Flisch ahead, Mariarta and Catsch following, always upward. Passing through through the hamlet of Maladers, they saw new snow covering the sides of the mountain-ring that held Arosa; chief among those peaks was the upreaching antler-prong of the Whitehorn, hardly to be seen against further layers of pale grey-white cloud behind it. At Peist, less a village than a collection of autumn-houses built by the same herding family, they stopped and ate. Here, to Mariarta’s relief, Flisch seemed less angry, looking around him with interest. “Never been this way.”

“Neither have I.”

“It seems as if you like that, though.”

She nodded. “I like new places.”

“Where was your old one?”

Mariarta frowned at him. Flisch said, “You’ve got an Urner accent.”

“Is that what it is?”

Flisch shrugged.

“So where’s your old place, then?” Mariarta said.

“Berschis,” Flisch said, “north, over the mountains; by the big lake.”

“Family there?”

“My father and mother. A sister.”

Mariarta noted the look on his face; and the wind was blowing. “You quarreled with your parents.”

“Yes.” Flisch looked at the snowy ground. “I always wanted to shoot and hunt, but they wanted me to be a blacksmith. So—”

“Well,” she said, dusting snow off herself—it had begun sifting down at last, that fine light snow that always means feet of it before it stops.
Always wanted to shoot....
Mariarta pushed her pity aside. Flisch had already caused her too much trouble. “Let’s go,” she said. “We want to make that hut in the Arosa valley before dark.”

They turned eastward with the road. The snow kept falling gently on them from greyness that seemed to start right above their heads.

There were no more villages after Peist. The road was now well up the encircling mountains. At the foot of the cliffs to the left-hand side, the Plessur and its other smaller tributary-streams could be heard shouting along among the stones, far down in the gorge. Mariarta and Flisch kept well to their right, hugging the upslope side.

After two hours, the road finished rounding the Langweis spur of Piz Pratsch and bent back on itself, southeastward. Mariarta leaned against a boulder on their right, breathing hard; they had finished a section of path that was steep, and the fear of missing her footing was strong. Flisch was walking on ahead. She called after him, “How is it up there?”

He simply fell sideways and vanished. Mariarta ran up the slope, dragging Catsch after her, stopping short of the spot where she had lost sight of Flisch. The path looked normal, except for a half-circle of snow—and path—suddenly missing on the left-hand side. And below that, something dark, grunting and struggling—

Mariarta pulled the reins off Catsch’s bridle and wound them around her right arm several times, then threw herself on the snow before the crumbled-away part of the ledge, dangling the loose end down. The dark shape flailing around down there caught at them, cried out in despair. “I can’t—”

“Do it!” Mariarta shouted. She saw Flisch grab at the end of the reins, catch them, lose them again, catch them once more. One foot lost its purchase and kicked air, but not before Flisch managed to wind the reins a couple of turns around his wrist. Something cold and wet nuzzled Mariarta’s neck. Bless him, it was Catsch, trying to graze as he always did when she took him off the rein for any period of time. Mariarta caught his bridle, then threaded one loose rein-end through the bridle ring by his neck. Catsch squealed at the sudden added weight, backing hurriedly away from the edge. Stupid he might be, but he was strong: he hauled Mariarta back with him. Flisch’s head and shoulders appeared at the edge of the path. Mariarta grabbed the sleeve of his jacket: with the other hand, still wound in the reins and pinched tight, she whacked Catsch about the head so that he backed further. A few moments later, Flisch was sprawled on the path, beet-red in the face and gasping. Mariarta sat and undid her bruised arm from the reins, her heart drumming in her ears.