Frank Schätzing - Death and the Devil

T he wolf stood on the height, its gaze fixed on the ring of the great wall bathed in the gold of the evening sun.

Its breathing was steady. Its powerful flanks quivered slightly. It had been running all day from the castles of Jülich over the hills and down to this spot where the trees ended, giving a clear view of the distant city. Despite that, it felt no tiredness. As the sun behind it slipped below the horizon in a ball of fire, it threw back its muzzle to take stock of its surroundings.

The odors were intense: the river water, the mud of the banks, the rotting wood of ships’ hulls. It sucked in the scent of animals mingling with the smells given off by humans and their artifacts: fragrant wines and excrement, incense, peat and flesh, the salt on sweaty bodies and the fragrance of expensive furs, blood, honey, herbs, ripe fruit, leprosy, and mold. It smelled love and fear, terror, weakness, hatred, and power. Everything down there spoke its own pungent language, telling the wolf of life inside the stone walls, and of death.

It turned its head.

Silence. The only sound the rustling of leaves.

It waited, motionless, until the gold had gone from the walls and all that was left was a shimmer on the topmost battlements of the gate towers. In a short while that would be gone as well, leaving the day to oblivion. Night would come, clothing the valley in new, dull colors until those too gave way to a darkness in which the gleam of its eyes was the only light.

The time was close when wolves would appear in the dreams of men, a time of change, a time of hunting.

With lithe steps the wolf padded down the slope and disappeared in the tall, dry grass.

Here and there a bird started singing again.

“I’m cold.”

“You’re always cold. You’re an arrant coward, that’s your problem.”

Heinrich drew his cloak tighter around him and shot his companion an angry glance. “You don’t really mean that, Matthias. It is cold.”

Matthias shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, then. If you insist—it’s cold.”

“You don’t understand. I feel cold inside.” Heinrich threw his hands out in a theatrical gesture. “That we have to stoop to such means! As God’s my witness, there’s no man less inclined to violence, but—”

“God’s not your witness,” Matthias interrupted.

“What?”

“Why should God waste his precious time on your whining and moaning? To tell the truth, I’m surprised you managed to get on your horse at this time of the night.”

“Now you’re going too far,” Heinrich hissed. “Show a little respect, if you please.”

“I show everyone the respect they deserve.” Matthias steered his horse around an overturned oxcart that suddenly loomed up out of the darkness. The light was fading rapidly. It had been sunny, but it was September and the days were growing shorter, the evenings cooler. Mists rose, shrouding the world in enigmatic gloom. By now the walls of Cologne were almost half a mile behind them and all they had were their flickering torches. Matthias knew well that Heinrich was almost soiling himself with fear, and that fact gave him a grim satisfaction. Heinrich had his good points, but courage was not one of them.

He decided to ignore him and urged his horse forward.

In general no one would think of leaving the city at this hour, unless they had been thrown out. The area was unsafe. There were bands of thieves and robbers everywhere, despite the Pacification proclaimed by the archbishop of Cologne together with the lords of the surrounding district. That was in 1259, scarcely a year ago. It was all drawn up in a document plastered with seals. If you believed it, travelers and merchants could make their way across the Rhineland without being robbed and killed by brigands. But promises that were more or less kept by day, especially when the merchants’ contributions toward the rather sparse protection was due, did not extend to the night. Only recently the body of a girl had been found, raped and strangled, in the fields not many yards from the Frisian Gate. Her parents were reputable people from a family of armorers who had lived for generations at the sign of the helmet opposite the archbishop’s palace. One rumor had it that the Arch-fiend himself had cast a spell on the girl to lure her out, others suggested that the farmer in whose field she had been found should be broken on the wheel. It was not so much that they thought he was the murderer, but how did the daughter of respectable burghers come to be lying dead on his land? Especially since no one could explain what she was doing out there so late. Once the first wave of indignation had died down, however, it turned out that it was common knowledge she had been going around with minstrels and worse, lardmongers from Grease Lane and scum that should never have been allowed into the city in the first place. Her own fault, then. It was better not to rely on the Pacification.

“Wait!”

Heinrich was a long way behind. Matthias realized he had given his Arab steed his head and slowed it down to a walk until his companion caught up. They had passed several farms now since leaving the city and reached a small wood. The moon cast only a faint light on the land around.

“Shouldn’t we wait somewhere here?” Heinrich’s voice was trembling almost as much as his hands.

“No.” Matthias was peering through the first trees of the wood. The path disappeared into the darkness. “We have to go to the clearing. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go back?”

“What? By myself?!” Mortified, Heinrich bit his lip, but too late, it was out. For a moment anger overcame his cowardice. “You keep trying to provoke me. As if I’d turn back! As if the thought would even occur to me, here in the darkness with a puffed-up peacock at my side who’s always shooting his mouth off—”

“Talking of mouths,” Matthias hissed, reining in his horse and grabbing Heinrich by the shoulder, “you’d do better to keep yours shut. If I were the man we’ve come to meet and heard your wailing I’d have taken off long ago.”

Heinrich glared at him in a mixture of fury and humiliation, then pulled himself away and rode on through the trees, crouching low in the saddle. Matthias followed. The shadows of the branches danced in the light from their torches. A few minutes later they reached the clearing and stopped. Apart from the rustling of the wind through the leaves there was nothing to be heard but the monotonous hooting of an owl somewhere above.

They waited in silence.

After a while Heinrich began to twist and turn restlessly in his saddle. “And if he doesn’t come?”

“He’ll come.”

“How can you be so sure? People like that are nothing—here today, gone tomorrow.”

“He’ll come. William of Jülich recommended him, and that means he’ll come.”

“The count of Jülich knew nothing at all about him.”

“What one knows about these people is not important. It’s what they do that counts and this man served William well.”

“I hate not knowing who other people are.”

“Why? It’s easier like that.”

“Nevertheless. Perhaps we ought to go back and think everything over again.”

“And what will you tell the others? That you pissed your pants and your horse with fear?”