The soldier, his head lowered, was about to turn away, when from northward, by the road that led to the lake, came an unusual sound: a merry call from a hunter’s horn. The soldier’s head came up, and a nasty grin spread across his face as he grabbed Tel by the arm. “Tell him yourself,” the soldier said.
His mate came and took Tel’s other arm. The crowd moved in. “No,” Tel said. People stared, shocked. Tel said, “If I wanted to get away from this, I would. Let be!”
Mariarta, standing to one side with Theo, let out a held breath, found she was shaking. “Theo—” she whispered.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ve got to go get Walter. It can’t happen now—! But listen, Mati—did you—?”
“Yes,” she said. “Go on!”
He went. The horn-call came closer, and from the street leading north to the lake, horses’ hoofbeats could faintly be heard. Mariarta glanced at Tel’s wife, who stood to one side, the basket dropped at her feet, looking up the street in plain terror. Mariarta thought of Walter’s daughter telling her how they had been hiding out in some cabin in the mountains, where Gessler couldn’t find them, after Wilhelm had saved the man who was being chased by the bailiff’s people. The wind breathed through the marketplace, though, and Mariarta, looking at Tel’s wife, caught something else: a terror that had nothing to do with her husband, but was for herself, and which shamed her. A memory of someone looking at her under veiled eyes, desiring her, so that she fled—
Into the marketplace came the tramp of booted feet, sixteen men in mail and surcoats, on foot, carrying spears. Following them were five men on horseback, armed with swords and bows: and last, on a big chestnut destrier, armed in metal from throat to feet, a man who had to be the landvogt Gessler. He needed that huge horse to carry him, for he was tall and broad-shouldered, a big man. Had Mariarta known nothing about him, she would have liked him on first sight. Gessler was handsome in a broken-nosed sort of way, blond-haired, a man whose face had an easy-going look. He was riding along with insouciant ease, eating an apple from a bag that hung at his horse’s withers. Not a winter-stored apple, either, but a new season’s one, impossible except for a man rich enough to have early fruit shipped from Talia. On his head, Gessler wore a hat with a green peacock’s feather in it.
That made Mariarta wonder. He doesn’t mind acting il Giavel’s part, or seeming to, if it serves his purpose—
Gessler took a last bite of his apple, pitched the core away. “Summer is here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “How good to come down the lake in this fine weather to see my town looking so prosperous. The marketplace full, people going about their business....”
He glanced around him, smiling. The townspeople turned their faces away, or simply stared at the effrontery of the man. Gessler was plainly enjoying their discomfiture. “And here are two of my trusty men,” he said, seeming to turn his attention to the soldiers, and the man they held, for the first time. The soldiers blanched. “He wouldn’t bow—!” one of them cried, panicked.
“Unarmed,” Gessler said. “Where are your spears?” The two men looked helplessly around. “Where are they?” Gessler demanded of the crowd. People looked blankly at one another, as if struck idiot.
Gessler smiled more broadly. “Take them away and have them whipped,” he said to one of the retainers riding with him. “Loss of expensive weapons, can’t countenance a thing like that. Have the town searched: I want them back.”
Armed men started fanning out through the crowd: the two soldiers were hustled off. “But now,” Gessler said, looking at Tel with interest: and ten spears were leveled at Tel for the two that were gone. “It’s Master Tel, indeed. A while now since we’ve seen or heard of you. It seems a winter on the mountainside hasn’t taught you any more respect for law.”
“It’s a law I never heard of until today. I was surprised—”
“Ignorance is no excuse,” Gessler said cheerfully. “The law is the law, and you have trespassed it. I can put you to death if I like—that’s the law too.”
Mariarta became aware of Theo behind her. Walter Furst came up beside her, staring in anguish at the scene in the middle of the marketplace. He started to push forward, but Theo caught him, muttering, “Don’t, Walter. He wants an excuse. For pity’s sake, master yourself—”
“Theo, he’s my son—!”
“Shut up, Walter. You know why. Keep still!”
The wind whipped the banners and awnings in the marketplace, and Mariarta knew ‘why’. The oath-confederates’ plans were ready. Soon they would move. But if revolt broke out prematurely, and the Austriacs moved against them before everything was in place—
Ride the moment, Diun whispered. See what can be done.
Tel stood before the landvogt, and slowly hung his head. Mariarta saw how deliberately it was done: she wondered whether Gessler did. “Sir,” Tel said, “forgive me. But you cannot wish us to do reverence to an empty hat. We are free men.”
Gessler’s smile did not waver, but his eyes changed, and the character of that smile changed entirely as well, at the word free. “So you would seem to think,” he said. “For look at you, standing there armed. You Uri people have thought that privilege a right for too long...ignoring the fact that I have not confirmed you in it. Never mind what your fathers did or had. You have me to deal with now. I enforce the law, and the law says subjects do not go armed without their governor’s express permission. Hunters may hunt...but not in town. You’ve no excuse for carrying that except to make yourself look big in the townsmen’s eyes. Well, we’ll have no more of that.” He glanced at another of his armed retainers. “Go get that bow he’s so fond of,” Gessler said. “Put him—” He glanced around. “Oh, under that linden tree there. Then take his bow and shoot him with it.”
The crowd moaned. “It’s only justice,” Gessler said reasonably. “He who lives by the bow will die by the bow.”
Hard hands pulled Tel to the linden tree, pushed him against it. “No!” cried a woman’s voice, and all heads turned as Tel’s wife rushed to Gessler and knelt on the cobbles in front of his horse. “Please, Lord, I beg you—he won’t do it again—”
“Frau Hedwig,” Gessler said, his voice suddenly soft: and the smile softened too—but again, the eyes did not change, and the effect was horrible. “Or Duonna Edugia, as the old barbarous tongue would have it. Well, it has been awhile since I rode away from your father’s door with your words ringing in my ears.” He shot a sideways glance at Walter Furst. “You were going to marry someone better, nobler, than a bailiff, you said. But the world changed, and positions shifted. And now look at what you could have had, and look what you married instead.” Gessler shook his head in feigned sorrow. “A ragged beast-hunter, and a lawbreaker as well. Still...for the sake of old friendship, I should have mercy, I suppose. What will you offer me for mercy, Hedwig?”
Hedwig’s face was white: she opened her mouth, but no words came out. “But no,” Gessler said, still feigning sorrow: “the law must be enforced. That bow must be used to punish your husband one way or another.” Gessler considered. Tel, under the tree, stood with his face turned away.
“I know,” Gessler said. “Justice shall still be served. Take Tel out from under that tree. Put his faithful wife there instead.”
“No!” Tel cried as the soldiers pulled him away, as others laid hands on Hedwig and pushed her to stand where her husband had. The crowd stirred and muttered. Beside Mariarta, Walter Furst went white.
“What,” Gessler cried, “will you defy the Emperor’s representative to his face? I thought you were all loyal folk, the Emperor’s liege people.” Mariarta saw how his eyes fixed on Walter Furst, and Werner Stauffacher, and Theo. He knows, she thought, horrified. But how much—?
The crowd quieted, stunned: they were loyal—but it had never occurred to them that their loyalty would bring them to this. “Now then,” Gessler said, “give Tel there back his prize bow.” He rummaged in the bag at his saddlebow, picked out a handsome rosy
apple of the South, shiny and perfectly ripe. “There,” he said, tossing it to a soldier. “Put that on her head.”
Everyone stared in amazement. “We’ve heard about Tel’s marksmanship, even right up the lake,” Gessler said, sounding good-humored again. “That competition in Ursera, what was it, two years ago now? No, three. Won every prize. Let’s see if a winter hiding on the mountainside makes any difference. What’s a good distance? Eighty paces? Meinhard, pace it out.”
One of Gessler’s retainers dismounted, went to stand under the linden tree beside Tel’s wife, and began pacing the distance across the marketplace. “I saw you strike the gold at eighty paces, oh, ten or fifteen times at least,” Gessler said to Tel. “Today you only have to do it once. Shoot me that apple off your wife’s head, and you go free. If you miss—” He shrugged. “It would be cruel to leave you living. And anyway, the law would require that you be put to death. Murder with a forbidden weapon....”
Tel looked at Gessler with no expression at all. The wind blew Mariarta’s way from him, and the rage inside Tel struck her with such violence that she actually staggered, bumping into Theo: he braced her, staring past her, as stricken as the rest.
Tel took back the bow from the soldier who offered it to him, looked at it as if he had never seen it before. Gessler was not watching him, but Hedwig, under the tree: and though his face stayed set in that jovial, expectant look, Mariarta could feel, on the gusting wind, his growing discontent. Hedwig had given her husband only one long glance: silent, he returned it. Now Hedwig stood there tall and still, balancing the apple perfectly, meeting Gessler’s eyes with an expression of utter disdain. Mariarta scented down the wind that this was not what the landvogt wanted. Not enough fear, something said inside him, cool and reasonable: the victim must show more fear. Terror, and the fear of more terror, is the only way to control this rabble.
The retainer pacing the distance off had come to a stand almost underneath the pole with the hat on it. Soldiers pushed Tel to the spot. He stood there, not aiming, looking at his wife.
“Now then,” Gessler said abruptly, “truly I cannot bring myself to this solution, either, even in the name of justice. How should any man force another to aim a weapon at his wife of many years, his own dear love? It is too cruel. I have changed my mind.” He beckoned to another retainer. “Take Frau Hedwig out from under that tree,” he said. “Put him there instead.”
He pointed at Tel’s six-year-old son, who was holding his grandfather Walter’s hand.
Even the soldiers stood momentarily taken aback. Horrified, the crowd stirred and muttered again. “Oh, come now,” Gessler said. “This is Tel, your prize archer. He will not miss. And if he does—well, wives may be few, but you can always make more children.”
The crowd was shocked into silence. Tel’s face did not change. “The same conditions,” Gessler said. “Get on with it. I burn to see your archery.”
Tel stood still. Then he knelt on the stones. “Sir,” he cried, so as to be heard down the distance, “I am a simple man. I did not trespass against your law from ill will. I beg you, forgive me, and let me go. I will not offend again.”
His voice was under harshest control: there was no edge of pride left in it. To Mariarta, though, the man’s anguish and terror for his son came down the wind, unbearable, like knives.
Walter Furst came forward, slowly, limping: his arthritic knee was troubling him again. Right on that knee he knelt before Gessler’s horse, and said, “Lord, I beg you also, if an old man’s pleas have any strength: spare this man. You will have all our gratitude.”
“Will I indeed,” Gessler said, eyeing Furst. Walter raised his eyes to meet Gessler’s. The gazes held.
“Carry out my orders,” Gessler said softly to the soldiers. They hurried to take the child from where he still stood near Mariarta, though they did not drag him: one of them, a man whose face suggested he would rather do anything else, hoisted the child up piggyback and carried him to the linden tree. Tel’s son stared around, his expression confused, but excited. Down the wind Mariarta could taste his mind’s mood, fresh and young and largely unconcerned. He was worried that his father was in some kind of trouble, but had no fear for himself.
The soldier set the boy down under the linden. The child looked up into the branches, then at Gessler in his shining armor, as the apple was put on his head.
Gessler, to Mariarta’s surprise, looked away. “We must be fair about this,” he said. “The child’s fear must not be the cause of an accident. Find something to cover his eyes with.”
The soldier who had brought Tel’s son came up with a soiled linen headband such as a longer-haired man might use to keep his hair in place under the helm. He knelt and started to fasten it on the child, but the boy pushed his hands away. “No,” he said, clear-voiced and interested. “I want to watch my bab.”
The landvogt nodded, looking suddenly bored. “Let’s get on with it: I have other places to be today. Tel—make your shot.”
Silence fell over the marketplace: only the wind flapped the banners and the awnings. Tel stood and spanned his bow. He raised the bow to take experimental aim—then let his arms fall again, and knelt. “Lord,” he cried, “it is my son. I cannot do it!”
“You can’t?” Gessler said, cheerful again. “But you can do all kinds of other things. You can refuse to give that hat the honor my law requires. You can row murderers away across the lake from the law officers seeking them, and hide rebels from their punishment! You’re quick enough to ‘help’ other people—now let’s see you help yourself. Otherwise you both die, here and now.” He signed to one of his other armed retainers, who rode forward, crossbow at the ready.
Tel swallowed, raised the bow again, and reached into his belt-quiver for a bolt.
We have to help him! Mariarta cried inwardly to Diun Glinargiun. Can’t I, can’t we give him something—the aim that doesn’t miss—
Me give my gifts to a man? Diun’s voice was cool. Never. And anyway, impossible. Those gifts are yours: they cannot be loaned away. You have what I promised you: the wind, the storm and the lightning. Use them as you may.
Mariarta looked around her at the flapping awnings and banners. Tel pushed one bolt into the crossbow’s nock, another through the buttonhole at the neckband of his shirt, the hunter’s old habit: then glanced at the ground. On the bare cobbles there was not so much as a fistful of dust for him to throw in the air to judge the speed and direction of the wind.
Enough, Mariarta cried inside her. Down!
The wind whined once like a disciplined hound, and went still.
People blinked at the abrupt flat calm, while Mariarta stood surprised at how quickly she had been obeyed. She winced at the sudden pain between her eyes.
Nothing without price, Diun said silently, even when a goddess rides you. The power was not free for us, either.
Tel blinked at the sudden calm as well—then, wisely unwilling to waste the moment, swiftly brought the bow up and aimed.
The sound of the string snapping home was as loud and final-sounding as the smashing of a jar. Everyone stared at the boy.
He moved abruptly, slumping sideways—then turned his head up to look at the bolt stuck flight-deep in the linden. The apple was impaled on it. Only the pheasant-feather fletchings had kept it from falling off entirely. The child, interested, pulled the apple off, twisted it apart along the bolt-seam, and bit into one half.
The crowd’s roar of triumph would have drowned out an avalanche. People hugged each other for joy, and turned to shout taunts at Gessler and his people. Some of the soldiers had the sense to look worried. They gave way left and right to the many people who broke through their lines to Tel and carried him into the middle of the marketplace and the main body of the crowd. Beside Mariarta, Theo grinned, a feral expression. Walter Furst ran to the tree, seized his apple-munching grandson, and carried him off in his arms, weeping with relief.
Mariarta could hear a faint moan of complaint from t
he wind she had stilled. She turned it loose, and it blew about the awnings with vigor a moment later, gusting in all directions, so it was hard to catch anyone’s thought, including Gessler’s. He simply sat his horse, smiling.
The landvogt gestured to his men to push the townspeople back from him. A little later, when the crowd had quieted, and a clear space hedged with spears lay around him, Gessler said, “Tel, that was a master-shot. Your fame is earned, and you and your son are free.” He smiled a conspiratorial smile. “But tell me something: what was that second bolt for?”
Tel, among his friends, with his wife by his side, smiled back as conspiratorially. “Lord, it’s only a habit...any mountain archer does that. You wouldn’t want the chamois to get away after the first shot, while you were fumbling around in your quiver.”
“Tel,” Gessler said. “You’ve won your life for today. Or are you afraid to say what’s on your mind?”
Tel stood there, and saw as well as everyone else the malicious glint in Gessler’s eye. The sane thing to do with such a man, Mariarta thought in disgust, the rational thing, was to make some excuse, turn and go away....
“Lord,” Tel said—and though his voice was quiet, the marketplace suddenly went dead still at the tone of it: rarely had the word “lord” been such an insult. “That second bolt was for you. If I had missed that apple and killed my son, your heart would have been my next target. And, small and withered though it be, that I would not have missed.”
Gessler went pale, though the smile stayed. He laughed heartily: the sound of it fell dreadfully into the silence. Then he took off one mailed gauntlet to wipe his eyes.
“Take him,” he said to his soldiers. “Siegmund, do we have some chains? Of course we do. Here, put some on this man and let’s take him north while we have the free time. We can easily come back this way tomorrow and finish our other business.”
The soldiers stormed the crowd, pushing them back with their spears, and grabbed Tel. Fetters were quickly fastened on him. Tel stood quietly, looking toward his wife and son, and Walter Furst, who stood with his arms around them.