Jean-Claude Mourlevat - Winter's End

“Aren’t you singing?” asked Gerlinda.

“No,” she replied, with a lump in her throat. “I’m listening for once. I have a right to listen too.”

A horse-child of about twelve, short and sturdy, red-faced and breathless with running, suddenly plucked Bartolomeo’s sleeve. “Mr. Jahn wants you. With your lady.”

“With my lady?”

“Yes, your lady Milena.”

“Where’s Mr. Jahn?”

“At the bridge. I’ll take you.”

“I’m coming too!” said Dora, and without waiting for any reply, she fell into step with them.

“And me!” cried Gerlinda, starting to follow.

First they had to make way through the crowd, using their elbows and shoulders. Then the child suddenly went off to the left at a tangent, and after a little way they found themselves miraculously alone, going down a sloping path.

“I see you know some shortcuts!” called Bart.

“Yes,” said the child. He was going ahead of them, kicking pebbles out of his way. “I live here!”

“Where?” asked Milena. She couldn’t see a house anywhere near.

The child ignored this question and quickened his pace. They were at the bottom of the hill now, skirting coppices that sparkled with frost. The frozen grass crunched under their feet.

“Wait for me!” called Dora, already lagging behind with Gerlinda. “That lad must be wearing seven-league boots!”

But the small messenger didn’t turn. He forged straight ahead at high speed. From behind, he now looked light and graceful, as if he had grown taller. Soon Milena was out of breath herself.

“I can’t go on at this pace!” she told Bart. “I’ll catch up with you down there. You go ahead!”

The young man made off in pursuit of the child, who ran nimbly on as if airborne. He was almost level with the boy in a few strides. “Not so fast! We can’t keep up with you.”

As the sky turned pink and blue in the east, the sharp sound of their footsteps echoed over a long distance like a crackling fire. The two figures, one tall and one shorter, hurried on their way, leaping down slopes and over ditches. Bartolomeo had never in his life covered so much space in such a short time. The cold morning air whistled around his ears. He was stunned by the noise of his own breathing.

“Is it much farther?” he asked after a while, intoxicated with emotion.

“No,” said the child, suddenly stopping. “We’ re here!”

He stood motionless, hands on his hips, and there was something angelic about his ingenuous face. Bart was astonished to see that the boy was hardly out of breath and, above all, that he looked so changed from when they had first seen him. He might have been a different child.

“Incredible!” said Bart, disconcerted. “You must be some kind of magician!”

“Yes,” replied the child, and he pointed to a tumulus on their left. “Climb up there! I’m not allowed to go any farther.”

Rather perturbed, Bart began clambering up the mound on all fours. He turned when he was halfway up, and saw that there was no one else near him. He looked in vain for his strange little guide and then, sure that the child had disappeared, he went on climbing. When he reached the top of the tall mound, he found himself less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the Royal Bridge. And what he saw there made him freeze with horror.

On his side of the river a staunch troop of horse-men, armed with pikes and clubs, was trying to cross the river. A dense cloud of vapor hovered in the air above the crowd. On the opposite bank, invisible in a hundred covered trucks parked at an angle to the bridge, soldiers armed with guns were firing to prevent them from crossing. The bridge was littered with about a hundred large bodies, lying dead. But the worst of it was that the horse-men in the front line were doing all they could to mount an assault, ignoring the bullets decimating them. Bart saw two young men running forward together, brandishing clubs. They hadn’t reached the middle of the bridge before shots rang out. One of them was hit in the chest, performed a grotesque little dance, flung his arms in the air, and fell headfirst. The other, wounded in the leg, went limping on for ten more yards before he too was shot down. As he fell, he furiously threw his club toward the soldier who had just fired the shot that killed him.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, horrified.

But a compact formation of ten more horse-men was already going into the attack. They held all kinds of objects in front of them as makeshift shields: wooden planks, pieces of rusty sheet metal. In spite of their strength and energy they didn’t get much farther than their comrades. A murderous burst of firing mowed them down. Only two of them, gigantic figures, were left on their feet. They staggered as far as the first truck and seized its undercarriage to tip it over. The soldiers must have let them get as far as that to amuse themselves, because it took only the two shots that now rang out to finish the unfortunate men off.

“Stop!” shouted Bart, and he raced toward the bridge.

He was immediately drowned in a sea of arms, backs, and powerful torsos, but it was far from the soothing sensation he had felt a few days earlier when he and Milena walked through the crowd of horse-men, with Gerlinda as their guide. This time anger distorted the heavy faces that were usually so tranquil. Tears of rage were running down their cheeks.

“Jahn!” Bart shouted. “Anyone know where Mr. Jahn is?”

“Here!” roared a voice, and the huge figure of Jocelin suddenly appeared in front of him, an expression of dismay on his face. “Quick! He wants to see you!”

In spite of the cold, Jahn was bathed in sweat. He took Bartolomeo by the collar of his coat and shook him. “Stop them, Casal, for God’s sake! They won’t listen to me anymore! They won’t listen to anyone!”

“What about Faber?”

“Faber wanted to go and speak with the soldiers. He was shot down. That maddened them! They’re all going to get themselves killed!”

Bart left the stout man and shouldered his way through the crowd toward the bridge. The closer he came, the denser the crowd of bodies. He just managed to get through, and when he was finally on the other side of them, he realized that the horse-men were preparing for a mass attack. A bearded young man in shirtsleeves, with Herculean shoulders that reminded him of Faber, had appointed himself their leader, and he was haranguing his men.

“All together this time!” he urged them. “We’ll show ’em what we’re made of!”

Bartolomeo planted himself in front of the man and spoke sharply. “Shut your mouth! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

Although he was much less broad than the other man, he was almost as tall, and his voice echoed forcefully. “Don’t do it!” he went on, turning back to the horse-men as they prepared to charge. “Don’t cross the bridge! They’ll shoot you down one by one! They’re just waiting to pick you off!”

Anyone else in Bart’s place would have been swept aside by the furious giants, but his name was Casal — and they listened to him.

“They killed Faber!” cried a high voice.

“And they’ll kill you too if you charge them,” replied Bart. “ You’re not cattle going to the slaughter!”

“I don’t care if they kill me!” said the last speaker, a boy of hardly sixteen.

“I forbid you to go any farther!” thundered Bartolomeo. His black eyes were darting flames as he raised his fist in front of the lad’s face.

“If your father was here —” someone else began.

“My father would tell you exactly the same!” Bartolomeo cut him short. “I speak as he would!”

As the fighting horse-men saw his determination, doubt crept into their ranks.