Eric Flint: 1634: The Ram Rebellion

“You are not hurt?” he asked. She shook her head.

He looked over at the body of the torturer’s assistant. “Saved us some work, I see. Very good. Where is the swine himself? And the prisoners?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t know where the prisoners are.” She pointed at the still-open door through which the torturer had fled. “He ran through there.”

The blacksmith headed for the door.

“Be careful,” Noelle cautioned. “I missed, when I shot at him.”

The blacksmith’s answering grunt made it crystal clear that he was not especially worried. Given his own size, and that of the three journeymen following him, that wasn’t perhaps surprising. Especially since all four of them were carrying heavy hammers.

A few seconds later, she heard him call out. “In here, Fraulein Murphy!”

When she passed through the door, with Eddie on her heels, she found herself in a corridor. Several heavy doors lined it on the left. Finally, something that looked like it was supposed to! Those were cell doors, she was quite sure. Leaving aside their heavy look, the hinges faced into the corridor.

But she didn’t give them more than a glance. Her eyes were drawn to the figure sitting against the far wall, over whom the blacksmith and his journeymen were hovering.

It was the torturer. He was moaning, and had his hands clasped over the ribs on his right side.

“Apparently you did not miss with one of the bullets, Fraulein,” the blacksmith said cheerfully.

He reached down, seized the torturer by the scruff of his coat, and jerked him roughly to his feet.

“Up, swine. I have business with you.”

The torturer shrieked. The blacksmith ignored him, turning instead to one of his journeymen. “Start prying the hinges off the doors, Hans. Easier than trying to break the locks.”

The younger blacksmith nodded.

“You have a chisel with you? If not, you can use mine. When I’m done with it.”

The journeyman reached into the big pouch on his work belt and drew forth a heavy chisel.

“Good,” the blacksmith said. “Mine might be a bit slippery.”

He moved toward Noelle, hauling the torturer with him. “Come with me, Dieter and Axel. You can help Hans in a moment. Please be so good as to stand aside, Fraulein.”

She and Eddie stepped away from the door. After the blacksmith and his two assistants passed through, they followed.

“This will do,” the blacksmith said. He slammed the torturer against the heavy chair. The man groaned again.

“Grab his hair, Dieter. Axel, press his head against the wood. I want the neck braced.”

Before Noelle could quite grasp what they were doing, the two journeymen had the torturer’s head and neck pinned against one of the thick wooden legs of the chair. The blacksmith drew out a chisel. It was very big, perhaps an inch and half across the blade.

He placed the chisel firmly against the man’s neck. Right against the spine. Then, lifted his hammer.

“Jesus,” Noelle whispered.

The blow was hard, sure, craftsmanlike. The torturer jerked once. Then his body became slack. The unmistakable stench of urine and feces filled the air.

The two journeyman let the body slide to the floor. The blacksmith stooped and took the time to wipe off the chisel blade on the dead man’s coat, before rising to his feet.

The look he gave Noelle seemed as hard and solid as the metal he worked with. “The ram has taken Halsgericht now. This swine”-he gestured with the hammer-“once executed one of my apprentices. For a theft so petty he should not have been more than flogged.”

All Noelle could do was nod. Looking down, she saw that she still had the pistol in her hand. She’d forgotten all about the gun, and the fact that it was still armed and cocked.

Dan Frost would have words to say about that, if he ever found out. Carefully, Noelle disarmed the weapon.

By the time she was done, she heard familiar voices in the corridor. Then Emma and Meyfarth were coming through, and she was able to shake off the horror of the past minutes.

“You’re all right?”

Emma nodded, as did the pastor.

Noelle turned back to the blacksmith. “What’s happening in the rest of the castle?”

The blacksmith grinned. “ Die Neideckerin has everything well in hand. The Schloss now belongs to the ram.”

“The soldiers?”

Amazingly, the grin widened. “ Die Neideckerin reminded them of what happened at Mitwitz. At some length. I do not foresee any problems.”

* * *

Fuchs von Bimbach noticed that at the edges of the field, some of the people in the crowd were beginning to move, turn their heads.

No danger, though, he was sure. There couldn’t be. Margrave Christian’s troops were here-a guarantor that the up-timers would not be sending any more men through Bayreuth than the number to which von Bimbach had agreed. In any case, people were looking toward the Schloss, not away from it. Pride prevented him from turning his head around.

* * *

The captain of von Bimbach’s mercenaries did look around. There was chaos at the castle gate. Not people trying to force their way in. People trying to force their way out, it looked like. He was dismounted; someone had led his horse back to the paddock area. He started to run, clumsy in his high-heeled riding boots on the dry hummocks of sheep-grazed grass.

* * *

Ableidinger smiled. The gawkers and onlookers at that end of the field were breaking toward the castle gate, far faster than the captain was moving. Meeting the party that was forcing it way out. Fifteen to twenty people there, if they hadn’t lost anyone when the servants and staff seized the castle. Not experienced fighters, any of them; mostly women. But it hardly mattered, as Ableidinger had known it wouldn’t-especially with that somewhat peculiar but very capable and determined young American woman set lose in their midst.

It could not have been that hard, really. The Freiherr was not the world’s most popular employer. Sixty-three points still held the record for specific grievances from any Franconian lord’s subjects, as far as he was aware.

Ableidinger would have liked to run toward the castle also, but he had to be a model of discipline. He held himself steady. Wearing up-time clothing, hair short, closely shaved, inconspicuous within the small knot of officials behind Anita Masaniello’s chair.

There was a ring of his people, now, around those who had come out of the castle.

About half the onlookers were running away. Uninvolved. Real spectators. Prudent people. The rest, his own, were starting to turn toward the end of the field behind him.

Yes. The right livery. Margrave Christian’s men. Reinforcing the few troops of the Franconian administrators; interposing themselves between von Bimbach’s mercenaries and the up-timers; ringing the party coming out from the castle, a second defensive perimeter around the people in the center.

Von Bimbach had risen from his camp chair, drawn his sword; one of the margrave’s men was on him, too, holding a pistol, telling him to sit back down; two more of the margrave’s men there, standing at that side of the table.

No shots, so far. No blood.

The party from the castle reached the table. Frau Thornton and Herr Pastor Meyfarth, on their own feet. Frau Masaniello, Salatto’s wife, running to embrace them. Herr Thornton following her. Two menservants, liveried, their hands crossed to make a chair, carrying an old woman. Die Neideckerin . Both of her legs splinted. The up-time EMT, the medic they called him, running to her.

A well-dressed woman; far too well-dressed to be a servant. The Freiherr ’s mistress, then. Sent from Bamberg to his estates, six years ago, for safety. The old woman’s daughter. Von Bimbach’s leverage against die Neideckerin . Holding a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order in one hand; a book in the other. The Book of Mormon . Judith Neidecker had not been so cowed as to accept her mother’s abduction and torture meekly. With Fraulein Murphy, she had organized the servants; even, according to the Fraulein, had said that if the ram would send her an ice pick, she would save them all a lot of trouble by putting it through the Freiherr ’s eardrum and into his brain while he snored.