NaNoWriMo '09

The Hussar & The Vampyre

Summer, 1808

 The reach of the alpine peak masked the moon and set the horse's path to deepest darkness. She walked, head down, as she had for many hours, picking her way up the winding roadway. Atop the grey steed, the uniformed rider rocked back and forth, half asleep. Despite the summer season, the soldier shivered and kept his hands beneath the cloak where they held leather reins with a practised light touch. The only noise in this seeming empty woodland was the regular sound of shoed hooves on hard packed dirt and the creak and clatter of the packs and packages secured to his squeaking saddle.

 The forest about the horse and rider was as black as black could be. It was only by keeping his gaze skyward to watch the bending, winding stream of stars that the rider could be sure of keeping his mount upon the trail. To his right, the man knew, the drop away was sharp and should the mare misstep; he would need to be alert to aid her in recovering before they fell away. He had heard tell of avalanches being started by such things and he had no wish have the tall tales verified by his death. There is some truth to every legend, he believed.

 The traveller would never learn to like the mountains nor even appreciate them. He was no Romantic to find spiritual exultation in their majesty. They were but land, tall land that had to be crossed. Since becoming a soldier for the Emperor, Henri Darlon had passed four times over the Alps between France and Piedmont but these Tyrolean peaks were unlike those. These just seemed to go on an on, higher and higher, deeper and deeper into unknown lands. This time he was with no army. He was utterly alone in a foreign, unknown land. Such is the price of peace. Such is the life of a soldier on leave.

 That was why, Henri told himself, he was still on the road this late. The village of Pfunds had no Gasthof. He couldn't claim the right to shelter and besides, the locals had said, had lied it now seemed, Ippenhof was only a few kilometres up this trail. Surly, they had been at Pfunds, and suspicious. That comes, he knew, from living on the side of a mountain, isolated from the world, and only getting your news weeks and months after events had passed. He shook his head with sadness for the backwardness of these people.

 Fools!

It took less than a moment for his mind though to ask the obvious question: If they were the idiots, why was the fool riding cold and alone in the darkness. Henri laughed then and over a chuckle said to Rivoli, "This is not the first time, and it will not be the last time, that we find ourselves cold and alone on some desolate road."

 It cheered him to speak and to laugh. This meandering steep corridor of black forest was somehow less hostile, less filled with unseen threats.  It was less silent.

 "Though it does no good to talk to oneself" he said to the silence. Did anyone hear him? Was anyone listening in?

 And still Rivoli picked her way up and along.

 It was not long after that Henri found himself singing verses of The Drum Major's Daughter. There are no enemy outposts to be alerted. No saboteurs. There is no war. He gave the song certain inflections as he found reflection in the lines to his own ribald adventures. He was a veteran Hussar, afterall.

 The singer tried to improvise a verse, remembering a pair of seamstresses from Montreuil but it did not come off. As the forest began to thin and break out onto an angled meadow, he was trying a fifth time to get his rhymes for Marguerite.

 When Rivoli suddenly stopped, and raised her twisting ears high, Henri quickly fell silent and spun about in the saddle alert and aware. An ambush? No! There was peace. Rivoli backed up, uncertain. Henri put a hand on the curved grip of his pistol where its holster hung high on the saddle.

No birds countered the heavy silence. No moon though had found a cloud and was reflecting the dimmest of grey lights now. There was something on the path. Something that had brought Rivoli to a halt. It might be just the sort of trick that an enemy might use. There was no enemy, he told himself and commences to unwrap himself from his cloak to manage a dismount. Rivoli seemed relieved when the soldier had swung himself to the ground but one hand kept a sure grip on the reins. He was not about to lose her to nervous skittering.

 First then, in the faint light, he strove by peers to pierce the darkness at the edge of the forest but it remained silent and still. It surrendered no clues. If bandits or partisans lurked in there, they were patient. They were hid.

 The wary soldier bent to see what obstacle lay across the narrow path. It was no felled tree.

 It was a dead man.

 Henri was late to another fellow's ambuscade. He swore a curse to bandits everywhere, fumbled to find the scruff of the corpse's collar and then dragged the obstacle off to the side of the path. He gave a stern look to Rivoli that must have penetrated the darkness (for she did not bolt), and then applied both hands to the labour. There was no point in pilfering the body. The bandits would have taken anything and if they hadn't, he had no wish to wander into the next Tyrolean village wearing the distinctive coat of their missing Burgermeister.

 In these conditions, there were little clues to who this man might have been. Slightly portly with an overcoat, blood on the back of his head at least (for such blood was now on the back of Henri's hands) and good boots that were discovered as the soldier hauled the last of the dead man's legs off the trail. Very good boots. The bandits made an oversight and for an indecisive moment. Henri allowed his hands to fumble over the leather and soles, running a finger along the stitching. These were not the shoes of a man that did much marching. They might fit the Hussar.

 The Hussar shook his head abruptly though and left the discarded man to remount Rivoli. First though he took time to wipe his hands on his horse's hindquarters. Blood or no, he would be rid of the death.

Behind, twigs snapped. He spun.

 Someone… something was running in the darkness. He found his pistol and held it at the ready, muzzle pointed up, of course. How anyone could run in this black… somewhere through the trees. It was difficult to tell. Was it running toward or away? Away. Pursuit was no option. It kept on running. Why had they waited?  Had they watched?

In his mind, Henri tried to map out the scenario. He and Rivoli could swing east around the tree line, on the high side of the trail, and look to find the fleeing man when he broke out onto the meadow. There would be more light. He could ride him down. The Hussar shook his head though. Stupid. He had no idea of the ground. One does not go off pursuing into darkness. He would be magnanimous and let the scared fellow escape tonight.

How far to Ippenhof now? It surely can't be far. It doesn't get any closer standing here.

 Swinging back into the saddle, Henri gave a smile at the reassuring creak of leather. He always liked that particular sound. It made him feel at home.

 As Rivoli and he broke from the trees, a cool glacial breeze blew from the east. The light was better now and wide expanse of meadow could be discerned beneath the hulking great peak that pushed up toward the heavens on his left. He could not entirely deny a twinge of the Romantic at that moment but he gave Rivoli's ribs a little kick and his tongue gave a little click.

 "Let's get somewhere." he urged.

 Within five minutes, the rider was delighted to come across a signpost, lonely at an intersection. 'Thoughtful locals', thought Henri as he traced out the chiselled grooves in the wood with his fingertips.

 Up the mountainside they went then, up toward Ippenhof. Isolated farmhouses, dark and silent, were passed but not long after, above, Henri could discern the glow of a light from a pair of windows. There, despite the grey gloom of the moonlight, the clustered houses of this hamlet were easily seen, each of them painted so white while contrasted with dark supporting timbers.  

Creaking, groaning down the path in the dark toward Henri then was a wagon. As surprised by this peculiarity as he was, the Hussar did not hesitate but took his horse off the path to make way.  It was, he would like to think, only instinct that brought his hand once again to the handle of his pistol. The wagon rumbled past with the driver, seeming like nothing more than a bobbing lump of black canvas, making no recognition of the Hussar's presence. Even when Henri called out a 'Halloo', the drover make no acknowledgement, perhaps maybe even hunching himself up tighter into his coverings. Little more could be seen of the contents of that transport but that it was loaded and covered. With a shrug, Henri looked back up the hillside to the lights from whence the wagon had come. He hurried toward it, hoping to get there before the residents went to bed. As he pondered the visual effect of the driver of that wagon, Henri made a point of removing his own bulky cloak.

 The Hussar reached the window before the lights were doused and, leaning from horseback to peer through the glass, saw a stout Tyrolean within administering to some bookkeeping. He gave the pane a loud rap with as cheerful a greeting as he could summon in the German tongue, "Good night, good sir!" Henri gave a wry and satisfied grin as the fellow jumped half out of his skin. Rivoli's ears might have twitched appreciably. "Do not be alarmed."

  But the storekeeper, Gustav, could only be alarmed. Where did this strange moustached giant come from, pressed against his window in the middle of the night? That he was a soldier could be seen immediately by the sky-blue uniform that he wore but it gave no instant indicator as to threat or intent. His accent betrayed him as a foreigner. His tone was less than hostile so the heavy merchant closed up his books and beckoned the Frenchman to come around to the entrance. Gustav brushed his hands across his brown apron. His whole costume was of dry, baggy, earthen tones. It was an old habit that had him gesturing to brush his hair back despite his near full baldness.

In the light of the open doorway, the dismounted Hussar's splendid uniform could be fully appreciated. From black Hungarian boots to the saucily angled French shako, Henri looked a dashing figure. His azure tunic and trousers, marked by white and red trim, clung tight to his fit body. Over his left shoulder hung the black-fur trimmed pelisse of the same light blue colour and the man fairly swaggered while standing there. The wide grin that pushed his elaborate moustache up was brightened by sparkling, friendly eyes. He did not allow the local to take the initiative but swiftly tipped his hat by way of greeting and said again, "Good night! I hope that you can help a weary traveller."

 Now Gustav determined him to be a Frenchman. It was in his accent and also his élan. He could not mirror the effusion of this newcomer and had no wish to. Still, he was a businessman, was he not? A quick glance back over the room assured Gustav that all was in necessary order and then he took a step back to gesture to allow Henri to enter the storage room.

"I hope to be of aid to you. What sets you upon the road this late?"

 Henri answered so swiftly that he might have prepared for this question saying, "Impatience for Ippenhof!" His efforts earned him a merry smirk and the German joined in the banter.

 "Well, of course. We are world famous for our … for our … cheese?'

 A quick scan of the shelves of the shop confirmed for Henri that there was indeed much cheese in the village. He lifted a finger to assert the point. "Precisely. I was in Paris yesterday when an urge for Ippenhof cheese overcame me. I hurried."

 Gustav grinned. "How can I help you? " There was no mention of any desire to retire.

"That wagon…" began Henri's question, and suddenly he had become a symbol of authority, and soldier in the conquering army interrogating a subject. Three years before, following the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon had wrested Tyrol from the Holy Roman Empire and put it firmly under the thumb of the King of Bavaria, who was but a puppet of the French.

 Gustav did not need to hear the remainder of the question. "That was just a customer. We sell when they wish to buy. It is good business and … " here he paused and noted the wrinkling of Henri's nose. "It is what good neighbours do. Can I sell you something? Do you require shelter for the night?"

 "You have a Gasthof?" It was such a tiny community.

 "No. I have a stable."

 Henri grinned wide then. There was no insult offered or taken. "I will use your stable. Thank you. It has been a long day."

 "Good. In the morning, not too early, my wife will have breakfast for you and then I will take you to the Agent."

 Henri knew better than to allow anyone to know what he knew absolutely nothing about. "Excellent." he replied, "We'll have plenty to talk about but it can certainly wait until morning." Still, to keep things clean, Henri withdrew to Rivoli and, with the help of Gustav, soon found his way to a reasonably comfortable night's sleep. He even got a handful of cheese. Henri decided that he liked Ippenhof as he curled up among the piles of straw and manure.

 The morning was even better. Bare-chested to shave his jaw line, Henri gazed out over a magnificent view of the Alps rising over brilliant green meadows. Fields of wheat dotted the sloping plateau and into the distance, individual and clustered houses could be seen until suddenly there were sheer rocks where nothing at all tried to survive. The shopkeeper's pleasant wife, Eve, did indeed bring him a hot breakfast after the soldier had helped her to pluck the warm eggs out from under her chickens. No bugler sounded reveille. No troopers were lined up outside his bivouac to be interviewed or inspected. Henri Darlon had absolutely nothing to do today until the shopkeeper arrived to escort him to the aforementioned Agent. At this point it was curiosity that propelled him. The Hussar set his uniform to rights to make as fine and martial an appearance as he could and followed after Gustav, on foot.

 The largest house in the hamlet was that of the Burgermeister. The exterior was decorated, as nearly all the houses were, with woodcraft flourishes and painted simple pictures. The sharply angled rooms were aligned ever to ensure that snow would not pile on the high side or dump on the entrances. Henri was surprised to note how the residences each had second story entrances as well as one on the first floor.  The Burgermeister home had a lower story set-aside as a common gathering room. There were, within, a few heavy tables of rustic simplicity and tall benches. There was no bar but a stack of kegs by the entrance to a back room and kitchen. The thickness of the beer odour had Henri noticing that there were no windows.

 Seated around the largest of the tables were three men and they looked up from their breakfast with some astonishment at the arrival of Henri Darlon, Captain of the first Hussars of France. The cavalryman was quick to size up the three gentlemen and make his assessments. The one in the center was healthy, dressed in traditional Tyrolean garb, and appeared to be the most wary of Henri. This would be the Burgermeister. To his left, dressed in sombre browns with the impractical cut of a bureaucrat's uniform and a little green hat that no man would wear by choice was a fellow with the pallor and fingernails of an officer clerk. He was certainly from a distant city but more, his clothes fit so poorly with the décor that he was likely not even Tyrolean. He would be a Bavarian, thought Henri, and was likely some decoration attached to the side of the third man, the Agent. That man, the third, was thin, older, and wearing an arrogance and confidence that he could likely never remove. He wore a double-breasted tunic of French blue velvet with fashionably wide lapels, which marked it as ridiculous in the village of Ippenhof. Alone among the three, the Frenchman wore his hair long, in the style of a revolutionary but so clean and cultivated as to be an affectation. While the Burgermeister and Bavarian leaned back to consider the newly arrived French Hussar, the French Agent leaned forward and clasped his hands. He was the first to introduce himself and he did so in smooth German.

 "I am Guy Vaconne. I understand that you are looking for me. You have something to report?"

 Henri shrugged even as he was tucking his shako under his arm. "Nothing. I am here on personal business, I am afraid." His German was less smooth.

 Burgermeister Fassbinder visibly relaxed so much as to smile and invited the Hussar to join them at the table. He introduced the Bavarian as Lothar Mann, Criminalinspektor from Munich. Lothar pushed his spectacles up his nose after a nod of greeting.

 "August company," said Henri, impressed. "I am honoured and never would have anticipated such personages this out… this high in the mountains."

"And you," answered Vaconne, "we had no expectation of finding one such as you … a captain… here." Henri could see Vaconne casually looking over the Hussar's costume as though to find some emblem or mark that would signify precisely which regiment it marked. Civilians! Every soldier knew the uniform and reputation of The First. Generously, Henri reached down to the sabretache bag that depended from his left side and gently twisted it about so that the large number embroidered there could be seen by the Agent.

 "I am here on leave: My first leave in a good many years. I have come in search of the family of Mickel Schaefer. I hope…"

The Burgermeister flashed sober. "I am afraid that Herr Schaefer was lost in the war."

 Henri nodded. "Yes. I know. It was my sabre that felled him. I have come…"

 "To gloat?" It was Lothar Mann, the Bavarian that sneered this out.

 Vaconne waved off the rudeness though and returned the floor to Henri.

 "I have come to return a letter and a keepsake to his widow. I know; it has taken me too long. Three years I have carried his memory, his watch, and this mission with me. It is overdue."

 Vaconne was honestly curious, asking, "You feel guilty for doing your duty? You have come for forgiveness?"

 Fassbinder though once again spoke on behalf of the Hussar. "Do not assume the worst of this man. His intentions appear entirely honourable."

 "Appearances…" began Vaconne.

 Henri stood with a swiftness and decisiveness that left no doubt as to what the effect would be if Vaconne continued his sentence. There was no humour in his iron gaze at Vaconne. Behind him, the wooden chair clattered and the sound echoed over the extended silence of the four men.

 Only the Hussar wore a sword.

Vaconne sat back and slowly raised his palms. "The appearances …" he began carefully, "…of this man inspire absolute confidence for me." The French Agent and his Bavarian companion shared an inscrutable look.

 With a similarly slow gesture, but one intended to appear calm and settling, Fassbinder encouraged Henri to retake his seat. The soldier turned to reclaim his discarded chair and took a seat then. He gave a nod to the Burgermeister to recognize his assistance in the matter.

 "The widow?" asked Henri.

 "She is dead" said Fassbinder.

The Bavarian perked up. "Is this the same Eve Schaefer?" asked Lothar and he took out a notepad to check for something. "so she may not be yet dead." 

Fassbinder's nod was uncommitted, "I believe her dead." 

"She may have simply wandered off," added Vaconne "Some have said she was that type of woman."

 Henri watched the conversation run off without him. 

"I do not believe that. I knew her. You did not," responded Fassbinder. 

Lothar tried to find a middle ground, "We are uncertain as to what happened to her."

 Vaconne raised a finger to his chin and wondered aloud, "How long after the news of her husband's death did she vanish?" His eyes narrowed as unspoken ideas broiled behind them.

 "Some months," said the Burgermeister. "She was the first to disappear."

 "Yes. We have that," said Lothar, pointing at his notebook.

 Henri waded in, repeating, "The first to disappear…"

 "It is a problem we have here," replied Fassbinder.

  "Which is why a police Inspektor and a French Agent are here in an isolated village," suggested Henri, putting things together. "And three years on, people are still disappearing."

 Fassbinder held up five fingers as Lothar answered, "Five women."

 Henri sat back and used both hands to indicate six fingers. He was on the point of explaining when suddenly the door to the house burst open and a crowd of Tyrolean peasants burst in, shouting in a panic. Henri spun in his chair to face the rush. Vaconne sprung from his seat and put his back to the wall. His face paled before the angry mob.

 "Someone has killed Nicholas and Rena!"

 Fassbinder was still getting to his feet when he was trying to control his people. "What have you heard?"

 Everyone tried to speak at once but one lanky fellow tugged off his green cap and spoke firmly to his Burgermeister, silencing the others. "Unger found them… their bodies. They are both dead. Murdered."

 The dozen or so people behind him could not restrain themselves and echoed the cry of, "Murdered!" Henri saw the look in the eyes of these angry and frightened people. He saw accusations begin to form in their minds when they looked at the people at the Burgermeister's table, and in particular when they recognized what was a French soldier newly arrived. He saw in those terrified faces a need avenge, a need to find a fiend, any fiend, and get their justice. The Hussar knew that he could have stood up and faced the yapping pack before those accusations were made but he made the decision to trust to this man Fassbinder, and so Henri turned his back on the scene and focussed his attention entirely on the tabletop before him. With the doorway being an impossibility and a complete lack of windows, there remained but two exits if the mob moved against him: the stairs up behind Fassbinder and the side door to the kitchen. That would be a difficult dash, but furniture might be used to slow pursuit.  It would be a hope that there was an exit from the kitchen. Of course there would be… there would have to be.

 Vaconne was making himself look as small as possible but Lothar Mann was remarkably confident, watching the stirred villagers with a clinical, spectacled eye. Fassbinder did all that he could, through a display of calm and confidence, to calm things. "Show me," he said and advanced toward the exit through the crowd. They parted or withdrew but there were long, lingering and entirely suspicious looks for the Frenchmen. There was a silence while the three waited for the last of the villagers to depart.

 Lothar spoke first for Vaconne was still atremble, "You were about to say, Captain, that you knew of these murders."

 That question helped to focus the agent, "Yes. You were about to say. I saw that!"

 Henri Darlon lifted a single finger and stood up while he gave his answer. He explained how last night he had come across what was apparently the body of a fellow named Nicholas. He knew nothing of any woman's corpse. As he spoke, he walked across to the kitchen doorway and confirmed the presence of a door. 

"I would have reported it earlier if I had known it was important," he said, returning to the table. He adjusted the placement of a chair or two as he crossed the floor, freeing up a path.

 Vaconne was astonished, "If it had been important? It was a dead man!"

 The veteran soldier defended his perspective, "I'm a soldier… I've seen too much death. You have to understand, we see the dead everywhere." 

"But Herr Schaefer," suggested Vaconne "His death must have been special. What was special that brought you here, to this village, on this day?"

 Lothar pushed his glasses up his nose and turned to get a fresh page in his notebook. Captain Henri Darlon had his name noted thereon.

 "Nothing that I expect you to appreciate. He fought well. He fought honourably… nobly. More though, he died well. I hope I die so well."

 "But you killed him still."

 Henri's fingers pressed hard against the tabletop. He sucked on the lower edge of his dark moustache.

 "He would have killed me. We were soldiers. He knew… I am not ashamed of what I did," he said and then turned a powerful glare to the agent Vaconne. "I am here to pay my respect. That is all."

 The Hussar bristled at this interrogation. He had to turn the tables before he lost his temper. Suddenly, he shifted his demeanour and threw a concerned look to Lothar. "You say that five women have vanished. But then this new… these two new murders are not like the others." He waved a finger now as though he was pursuing a stroke of genius. "I heard someone run off. Maybe I scared him before the bodies could be hidden this time."

 Lothar smiled, "Yes! He was startled by your arrival."

"Such murderers frighten easily," added Vaconne with a dry tone but he did not appear convinced. Still, Henri had an unsettling feeling about how the agent knew such a thing with such confidence.

 A new thought sprung to Henri's mind. "Perhaps the wagon!" he exclaimed.

 The expression on the faces of his two tablemates effectively asked "What wagon?" so Henri continued.

 "As I was arriving at the village last night, a wagon rolled past me in the dark. There was something in the back of it. I couldn't see what. It seemed as though the driver was trying not to be recognized, not that I could recognize anyone. He had been at the store. Perhaps we should speak to Gustav about it."

 Vaconne appeared astonished by Henri's presumption. "My companion and I may interrogate him. We have been sent here by our governments to investigate this. It is our responsibility and you will not stick your moustache into things."

"But we are working so well together. We are making progress." 

"We are interrogating you," was Vaconne's answer. 

"I have little more knowledge. I only just arrived here." 

"You will not leave here until we have finished our investigation of last night's murders. You understand, of course, that you remain a suspect." There was a thin smirk upon Vaconne's visage though he might have been trying to conceal it.

 Henri hopped his chair backward, leaned back with a bright grin upon his face, and swung his booted feet up onto the tabletop with aplomb and a bang. His hands went wide and open to show that he had nothing to conceal.

 "Investigate away. Ask me anything."

 The agent and the inspector once again exchanged various looks. Lothar sat poised with his pencil to take note of every question that his partner would ask. His eyes appeared exaggerated wide through the glass. Vaconne pushed his thumbs against one another and fidgeted. "Have you anything else to add?" he asked.

 The Hussar's shrug was comical, his grin yet wider. "Nothing."

 With that, Vaconne reached down to retrieve his hat, a weathered bicorn,  and tugged it onto his skull. "Come, Herr Inspektor. Let us investigate."

 Lothar gave an amiable nod to Henri behind Vaconne's back and then followed after.

 **********

Albrecht Fassbinder led his small band of villagers down the hillside. Taller than most, his strides were confident and long so that a pair of older women were running to keep up. From the village they could see the edge of the woods where another small cluster of people were gathered. Otto was down there trying to keep his dogs away from something and Gustav was huffing up the meadow toward Fassbinder's group. 

"You've seen them?" asked the Burgermeister of the struggling shopkeeper.

 "Yes. Nicholas and Rena. Both dead. I'm getting my cart." 

The Burgermeister placed a reassuring hand on Gustav's shoulder and bid a young man in his company to go with the shopkeeper before they returned to their rapid descent down the side of Mount Wildspitz. The brilliant sky was dominated by the heights of the blue and white alpine peaks, making the chaos at the edge of the forest seem small and insignificant but for the party of villagers marching across the bright green fields, indeed the entire village, it was the only thing that could now matter. Everyone had dropped everything to hurry to the scene of this tragedy.

 Standing out among the gaggle that was scurrying around the scene was the martial figure of a one-armed man. He did not scurry or scamper but stood there erect, watching his companions and occasionally giving commands in a brisk, decisive tone. Dressed entirely in tight, white clothes with a military cut, he was starkly contrasted with his fellows in their green and brown Tyrolean costumes of short jackets and lederhosen. The figure in white was Konrad Kliever  and he appeared to have control of the situation but Fassbinder first made for the tight cluster that was Nicholas' family, clutching tight to his sobbing mother. The Burgermeister stayed with them a moment and gave tender condolences before he turned to Konrad and looked to get an update.

 "They are both dead then?" asked the Burgermeister.

 Konrad nodded and reported. "Murdered. Come," he said and then commanded the crowd to "Step away!" 

The broken corpse of  a man was still in the ditch, sprawled between thin trees, where Henri had dragged it the night before. He had not been a slight fellow but he was a young man when he died. It had obviously been a violent murder. The young man's neck had been snapped and the head, beaten and bloody, lay at an abhorrently unnatural angle. Through the ruin of the boy's face it was clear that one eyeball had been crushed in.

 Fassbinder sighed. "He is well dressed." 

Nicholas' father spoke up then, "It was to be his wedding suit. What has happened to him? Why? Why?" 

"We are trying to find out," said the mayor with a calming tone. "Please, take your family. We will bring your son to you very soon. Take care of his mother. Someone cover him up. Gustav is fetching his cart."

 Many then partook of consolation, assistance, mourning, and gossiping. Speculation ran rapid through the gathered villagers and more were arriving at every moment. 

Konrad directed Fassbinder's attention to something in the trees on the high side of the road. "The girl."

 The wood was starved and without undergrowth. The trunks of the coniferous were thin and the deciduous sparse. Fassbinder and Konrad picked their way up the hillside, stepping over gnarled roots and ducking under errant branches. What was once Rena was now a pale and bloodless corpse, sprawled rudely upon the forest floor with her raiments ripped and twisted. The black of her dress was stained with the blood that must have erupted from the horrific hole in her throat where the killer, or some beast, had torn the life from the young woman. The eyes, without shine, stared horrified up to the canopy of colourful trees.  

"He for a wedding. She for a funeral," mused Fassbinder. He turned when he noticed that Konrad was no longer there at his side. Instead, the one-armed man  had gone to intercept the stumbling arrival of a young girl. She was distraught and terrified, determined, as she tried to push her light weight past Konrad.

 "Rena!"

 She wept for her friend, this young girl and it was all that Konrad could do with his handicap to restrain her. He whispered quiet, consoling words though and Berthe Schaefer collapsed against Konrad and then fell to her knees. She pressed her sobbing face into his white chest.  

"You should not look upon that thing. It is no longer Rena. Rena is safe within your heart if you are strong." spoke Konrad with a soft tongue.

 The Burgermeister placed his jacket over the face and gashed throat of the dead girl and also knelt. He said a private prayer over the body while a breeze set the trees and leaves about the scene shivering with horror. 

Berthe pulled back her distraught visage to say to Konrad, "Poor Nicholas. He must have found her."

 "Her disappearance had broken him" said her protector.

 "He loved her so."

 Fassbinder gently lifted the dead girl's body in his strong arms and turned to carry her to the road. "It was a tragic end…"

 Pressing her face once again into the stalwart Konrad's white chest, Rena cried, "When will it end?"

 ***********

In the morning sunshine, Lothar followed after the agent Vaconne. He fell behind as he consulted his notepad.

 "Herr Vaconne, that Rena that was killed. That would be Rena Metz…she was the last girl to go missing."

 "Of course. You'll find notes on Nicholas also, her fiancé."

 "Of course," Lothar scurried after to catch up to his partner. Vaconne had sighted the shopkeeper leading his cart out of the stable

 "Should we be going to see the bodies?" the Inspektor asked with a horrified quiver in his voice.

 "No. We have other work to do and one must always avoid an angry mob."

 "I suppose so…"

 Vaconne hailed Gustav before the barrel-chested, pink cheeked man could make his escape. "Good morning Herr Gerber."

 "Good morning. I cannot stay. I need to… this."

 "Oh, we won't keep you long," said Vaconne and Lothar was getting a good page to start writing on. "You had a late customer last night," continued the agent.

 "The Frenchman. The Hussar, yes. I brought him to you."

 Vaconne fairly sneered, seeing the shopkeeper's poor deception, "So you did but I mean the wagon that was at your place just before Captain Darlon arrived."

 The pink left Gustav's cheeks. "There was no wagon."

 Vaconne tilted his head and Gustav stammered, "There was no wagon, no customer. No one. I swear!' He tugged at the lead on his carthorse, hoping to get her underway to make his escape.  Vaconne reached forward and grasped the bridle.

 "Hold, Sir! A moment."

 "There was no visitor."

 Just then a boy came running out from the stable but stopped in his tracks to stare at the scene. Gustav saw an opportunity and quickly exclaimed, "Max! Hurry to the Burgermeister. Tell him that I am arrested!"

 Just as swiftly though Vaconne released the steed and said. "No! You are not detained. Go. Go about your business." He then spun on his heel, stumbling slightly in the mud, and faced Lothar. "Come. Let us walk."

 There was the briefest moment where Max and Gustav seemed to hover on the edge of action and then the two groups parted from one another in silence but for the creaking wheels of the cart and a snort from the plodding workhorse.

 He pointed out the way to walk, around the corner of the stable, and then Vaconne grabbed Lothar's elbow and hurried him away. He started at a whisper but then lifted his voice, knowing that there was no chance of the words being overheard with the village distracted, "He has betrayed himself. Pressing him would get us nothing but a mob. We must be clever."

 Lothar nodded without full understanding. "What should I write down?"

 "Wait… first, read out everything that we have so far. We must review."

 Lothar leaved back through his notebook and fumbled with the pages, sorting through what was important and what was not. He recounted back for his companion how over the past three years, five women from the local area had vanished, including three from this particular village (Eve Schaefer, Mathilde Heffner, and Rena Metz). The victims had ranged in ages from sixteen to forty and had vanished at various points in the year, without any apparent pattern. He recounted how the families of the girls had sworn how they were all good people and would never have just run away but, Vaconne had noticed, there was a sense of melancholy noticed in both Eve and Mathilde in the months before their disappearance. Lothar read back over all the notes that the pair had gained over the week of their investigation and several useless interviews with residents. Some suspect a certain forester known as 'Strange Edgar' who keeps to himself on the mountainside. He lived alone and never spoke to anyone. Vaconne had Lothar make another note to check more into this obscure fellow sometime and then said, "And don't forget to put down what we learned just now."

 "But what should I write down?"

 The agent's face darkened and he advanced a pace closer to the Inspektor who backed himself up against the wooden wall of the stable warily. Vaconne pointed at the notebook as though it might make the work of his accomplice better, "Write that Herr Gerber was visited last night, just after the murders took place, by an individual with a wagon and that Herr Gerber was afraid of revealing whom that customer was." His finger then was raised up to make a point that he believed to be a mark of genius, "You see, that means that someone regularly comes to his shop in the dead of night and he is keeping it secret. It is smugglers!" 

"I write that Herr Gerber is a smuggler…"

 That raised finger began to spin and weave. "No. No. There is nothing to smuggle here. Nothing normal. So what is he hiding?" 

"Weapons perhaps?"

 Vaconne was pacing now and turning quickly, "No. No. Not weapons. These are no rebels or they'd have been more nervous about our presence. Well, maybe rebels, clever rebels."

 "And the murders?" Lothar's point seemed a good one.

 "Hrm?"

 "Does the secret… the smuggling have something to do with the murders? Is Herr Gerber in league with the murderer?"

 Then the agent yanked off his bicorn and beat it against his blue trouser leg. "I don't know. I mean… it has to all fit together. What is he hiding?"

 Lothar Mann could only shrug and push his spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose.

 There was a snap of his fingers as Vaconne almost shouted, "Nicholas and Rena are where we find our answer!"

 "I thought they were the question."

 "No. No. You see; they are different. In the difference we will find the common! The villagers return. Come, let us walk."

 Inside the rustic stable, Henri nodded to himself and secured Rivoli's saddle. He brushed a hand against her powerful speckled-grey flanks. He certainly had a newfound disrespect for the investigative techniques of the pair of them. You can't learn anything simply wandering about talking to people. That, thought Henri, is the difference between a spy and a scout: spies rely on someone standing nearby doing something foolish. With the final loading of his gear onto the back of Rivoli, the Hussar reflected on his own eavesdropping. It didn't make him a spy afterall.

 One last look at his bed space confirmed for the soldier that he had left nothing behind amid the straw and filth.  He was coming back, he still had something to do here but Eve Schaefer needed to be found and that was something that he could do. It might be that he was undertaking this on behalf of the memory of Lieutenant Schaefer of the Number 6 Dragoons but Henri knew well that there was another reason that he was now mounting Rivoli and riding off across the meadow: here was an adventure.

 Here was a reason to explore. 

Rivoli and her rider started by leaving the pathways and aiming, by gentle rises, for higher ground. They would see how high they could get for by heights they would get better vantage. It was more awkward though due to the steep drops and sharp rises that were the landscape. The bright sunshine lent warmth to the ride and, without a cloud in the sky, Henri was delighted to be able to stow his uncomfortable shako. His black hair was, as ever, bound back into a ponytail while the braided hair that depended from his temples (his Cadenette) bounced free about his cheeks. This morning, he allowed his mount to trot and walk as she desired, riding as much for the exercise and the joy of it as to get anywhere but all the while Henri was alert to his reconnaissance duties. Whether it was overlooking an outlying farmhouse or inspecting a trail for wagon tracks, he used his training and expertise to read the details of a landscape for the manner in which it was being traversed and trammeled.

 As the horse and rider got further from the village, the Tyrolean folk that were sighted from a distance could be seen going about their daily chores, be it tending to the fields or addressing the needs or their flocks and herds. It was not a fertile land, these Alps, but what good land could be found was well employed and industriously maintained. Henri found himself pausing to look down on one domestic scene where children played with their dog as the mother and father looked on fondly. The people all through this idyllic land seemed honestly happy. They were not rich but they seemed free of the march of armies and destruction that was wrought by war. Thinking on it, the Hussar realized that most of Europe must be like this but so often, traveling with the army, he only saw the land and its people in crisis. He, too often, was the herald of war to these people and here was no exception. The villagers at Ippenhof had instantly assumed that he was guilty of the murders. They had instantly distrusted him. They, of course, considered him to be in league with the French Agent and Bavarian Criminalinspektor. If he were to ride down to greet that family, immediately he would spoil the scene. No longer would they be without a care but instead would fear what his arrival would portend. The father would become defensive; the mother frightened. And would it be that way ever? It had been three years since he had been in France. Would they too begin to see the army that way? They had been free from war. Only the Germans and Italians had had the ravages of armies brought upon them. In France, when all the wars were over, he would be able to find peace. He sighed though for he felt an emptiness that he could not find peace here, now.

 With a kick, he got Rivoli moving again. Eventually the meadows were brought to an abrupt end by tall, grey, and sharp cliffs and as he followed their contours he was brought back once again to the environs of Ippenhof. The villagers would be back to their houses by now, back to their fields and their chores. They would be started to try to find their normalcy. Some, the families, would remain in mourning but they would strive on. This kind of people always did. But that wasn't quite true. They know that they must tend to the land in the same way that a soldier continues to load and fire his musket even as his friends are dying around him, but they do not forget. People that live lives like these, among the same people day after day, in the same lands that their grandfathers' grandfathers had worked and lived and died upon, they have long memories. Long memories and deep anger toward those who trouble them. They never want to disturb the outside world. None think of impressing their wills upon the world but should any try to step into their world, on their mountain, their defiance would be legendary. No, thought Henri, it was not prudent to return to Ippenhof just yet. There would be too much anger toward him. He would come when he had found something.

 And there was something for them to hide. Vaconne was correct. The whole village had to know about the wagon that made midnight purchases for stores. They were hiding something and French and Bavarian overlords were the last people that they would reveal it to. But as Inspektor Mann had so wisely asked, what would this have to do with the murders... the disappearances?

Rivoli and Henri went thundering down the hill, toward the roadway. Her hooves pummeled the green earth and mud, keeping her balance well, but moved with enough pace to give Henri an adrenalin rush. He stayed in the saddle and Rivoli kept her feet, and when the pair of them reached the widest roadway that spanned that green and flowered meadow, he laughed with delight at the bit of fun. 

It was the faintest road of hard-packed, dry earth, little more than a trail. There'd be no hope of tracking one wagon going in either direction, unless perhaps it had been heavily laden. It appeared not. At least, no such vehicle had rutted this road recently. That did not rule out anything though. 

Henri rose up in his stirrups to scan the terrain again. That wagon had to have come at least to the intersection with the signpost. From there though; left or right? Right would take it to the forest and past the site of the murders.  From there back down to Pfunds. Unless the fiend was smuggling cheese between Pfunds and Ippenhof, that seemed unlikely. Rivoli was turned about to the left. 

The path ahead went straight for some ways but the slope increased its angle rather abruptly. Subsequently, there'd be little in the way of farms or forests. Eventually, over many days, the road might lead through toward the Italian Tyrol but that seemed, as desolate and isolated as it was now, improbable that it might be a mountain pass. No, it was more likely that it would wind its way around the mountain, past a few more hamlets and houses, perhaps a monastery or hunter's cottage, and then fade away or complete the circuit of Mount Wildspitz. The path was travelled but it was no highway.  

Speculation did not win wars. The Hussar set his course up the trail 

The pleasant ride went on for an hour or more and the terrain shifted little in that time. There were places where the road became steep inclines and deep descents. There were few houses at all and so few side roads. Looking to the right, overlooking expansive deep valleys, the view was vast. Henri could not help himself from pausing from time to time to speculate on how this sort of vantage might affect the perceptions of a scout. One could see whole armies moving through vistas such as the one laid out beneath him. You might be able to see an enemy while they were still two days distance. The difficulty, at this distance, would be identifying anything down there. Perhaps if one was fortunate enough to be fighting redcoats... 

To the left then, the scout noticed a path ascending sharply up the side of the mountain. Too steep for a wagon? Apparently not, for to the side of the side track, there were clear tracks of a wagon cutting the corner repeatedly. Some grooves were deeper than the others but, after dismounted to better inspect, Henri was certain that the axle width would match that of the transport he had encountered the previous night.

 Up wound the path until it disappeared over a rise and into a dark forest. On either side of this wood, sheer black cliffs rose up to great height. As he turned to pursue this new course, Henri raised his level of alertness. If this was a smuggler's cave, they might be protective of it. 

At the top of the rise, at the edge of the wood, the Hussar's keen eyesight caught hold of a wooden ladder going up the side of one of the taller pine trees. It was a hunter's hide. He maneuvered Rivoli into a patch of cover and then dismounted as quietly as possible. There was a brief pause then as he checked the load on his pistol. It should do. Henri also took the time to unfasten his belt to discard his the sabretache bag and sabre that normally depended from his hip. These tools, well placed for a rider, would be noisy and entangling for footwork. He did not though abandon the sabre, bringing it drawn in his right hand. Prepared for a fight, the Hussar began to creep as silently as he could toward the base of the ladder while keeping his eyes toward the canopy of the trees. As he neared, the bottom of the hunter's perch became visible. It was well constructed and wooden, exactly where he expected it. That wasn't going to make this easy. Still, he got to the base of the ladder and still no movement or challenge had come form above. 

Henri was surprised. He was no woodsman and it was certain that he had been clumsily obvious in his stalkings. He shrugged though and considered the ladder and then his hands. He sighed, too loud, but still there was no alarm sounded. Pistol or sabre? He always hated having to decide. Stuffing his pistol into his wide white waist belt and stabbing the point of his sabre into the dirt, Captain Darlon began his ascent up the sturdy wooden rungs.

 Even in that final dreadful moment when Henri popped his head up over the perch, Henri was expecting at any moment to be in a fight for his life but it was not to be. It was, of course, empty. Such hunter's blinds usually were but he had suspected smugglers or bandits or rebels. None. Whatever he was dealing with was not afraid of being found.

 Hauling his body onto the wooden floor, Henri spent a moment catching his breath and examining the new view. It was a splendid vantage point for the road up to the position. Had someone been here, he'd have seen a rider approaching even before he turned off onto this trail. It might have been useful as a hunter's hide (Henri was no experienced hunter) but he could not imagine much game on that barren green hillside. Spinning about though, Henri saw that there was a remarkably good view from here through the trees to what was beyond and what was beyond startled the Hussar.

 Some short distance further in, the forest ended and the ground rose to a deeper cleft in the mountain but there, white and stark and startling, was a Tyrolean palace. It was splendid, with a few towers that were at least five stories high and ornamented with exotic peaked roofs. There were spires of dark wood that were more stylized than practical. The windows of this mansion were narrow and even at this distance Henri could see the extensive crafted details in the woodwork that trimmed and shuttered the manse. A hidden summer palace of some kind... and it would not be empty.

 Henri shifted and turned to begin his descent. He would have to get a closer look. Just as he was putting his first leather boot onto the top rungs of the ladder though, a scent hit the nostrils of the Hussar: tobacco smoke. Indeed, when he inspected the floor he was satisfied and concerned to find ash caught between the timbers. Hot ash.

 "Damn! Spotted!"

 He hurried down, took up his sabre, and ran back to Rivoli, ducking and dashing, putting no heed to stealth any longer.

 But then, as he recovered his belt and buckled back his accoutrements, Henri was plagued by indecision. To ride back to Ippenhof would be the prudent thing to do. He could get reinforcements.

 There were no reinforcements. What good would those two do?

 The village was more enemy than friend, though Fassbinder and Gustav had both demonstrated all friendliness and courtesy. That was just their pretense though, perhaps. If they were in league with rebels...

 By nightfall, he was sure, all of Ippenhof would know that he possessed their secret and he could not be safe there. Even so, to tell Vaconne and Mann would only endanger them as well. To return then to Ippenhof was foolhardy. The choice was then to ride away, to ride north to Innsbruck and then get back to his Regiment at Magdeburg or it was to go deeper into this mystery. He could go on. 

What good would it do to report to anyone that he had found a house in the mountains? And there was Eve Schaefer to consider. It might be, all the evidence supported the notion... there was no evidence. The only place that he knew of that might be a place that might know something of the lost girls would be this place. He had to go on. He had to go in.

 And already, Henri and his horse were moving up the winding path through the deep green forest, following the trail of everything. The trees seemed to close in around him, darkening away the early afternoon sunshine. The floor of the wood, carpeted in dead leaves, was without undergrowth and so each tree stood alone like a pillar or a bar in a cell. Jagged, cruelly sharp rocks, wholly black, stabbed up from the mountainside to break up the even carpet. It would be treacherous in the night. The angle of the earth here, so high in the alps, make the climb slow. Finally though Rivoli came to the edge of the darkness and before Henri was laid out a narrow, barren flat meadow and then there was the palace. It was larger than he had imagined it from that perch in the trees but also, it was less well kept than he'd imagined it.

 Where the white walls had once been painted with scenes of hunting game, they were now faded and vaguely vandalized. Where the wide, carved doors had once had a bright green paint, it had flaked away to reveal only a dark and stained wood.  Shutters, imported from the finest craftsmen at Salzburg, were broken and hanging unhinged.  There might once have been a tended garden before the mansion but now it was but tangled, unfamiliar weed-like things that were wild and ugly.

 Henri reined in before the grand house. He paused there , oblivious to potential dangers. He was, for too long, brought to a halt by the immense incongruity of this petite palace in the wilderness. He would not have seen any musketeer in the tallest tower. He would not have seen blinking, watchful dark eyes. The Hussar would have been oblivious to any stalking ambushers that might have been encircling his position. He was startled to awareness though by the emergence of a dark cloaked figure through the front portal. This figure was draped from shoulder to floor in a cloak of midnight back. No hands, no arms were in evidence. Atop his bald skull there brimmed a cylindrical hat of peculiar stature and slight diameter. He stopped, stark and still and silent, in the open doorway and studied the mounted Hussar. Henri watched him in kind. Each was waiting for the other to advance the contact.

 Henri could wait no longer though. He would take the silence as an invitation. First though he dismounted for, in past dealings with various local populations, he had learned that questions posed by mounted soldiers always carried the weight of the steed as an implication of violence. His dismount was thoroughly graceful for if there was some lord in residence, it was important to appear as refined as possible. They, and their domestic servants, always appreciated displays of refinement.

 With Rivoli following behind, Henri strode to the wide wooden stairs and mounted them two at a time and then hopped to a halt before the black clad stranger. Rivoli remained at the base of those stairs.

 "Good day, sir!" announced Captain Darlon and then introduced himself.

 "Doctor Wahreit." His tone, just through these simple words, was slowed and extended, almost drawled, for effect, as though the weight of the words was intended to have some import to any and all that would hear them. Hussar was unimpressed.

 "You are the master of this estate?"

 "I am not. I represent... the owner." The man's eyes were concealed behind rounded, smoked spectacles but by the depressed, hairless brow and the clenched corners of the man's mouth, it was clear that he was maintaining as cold an aspect as he might. 

In any other circumstance, Henri would have countered this doctor's manner with disarming warmth and congeniality. There was something though about this man and this house, this haunting, oppressive sense of decay and discordance that left the Hussar disarmed.

 From behind Wahreit, a muffled echo commenced to sound. The meter foretold the approach of an old man, something near to invalid, pained and with cane. The doctor did not turn. He did not respond to the advance to his rear but kept his piercing focus upon the French soldier.

 Finally, from the shrouded shadows behind the doctor, there emerged a figure of startling presence. Clad in dark raiments of finest cloth and cut, this nobleman wore his black hair long and oily, unkempt and frayed. The shuffling, patient gait of the apparent aristocrat had suggested that he would be of ancient years but what now stood at the top of the steps wore the3 refined, fair features of a youth in his early twenties. The black of his tossed hair contrasted starkly with the paleness of his near transparent flesh. The man's flesh, stretched and almost glistening with oil or sweat, was near to white in hue except around the figures lips which had the haunt of a pale blue and the green eyes, which were circumscribed with a grim red, the colour of which suggested sleepless nights spent weeping or else that the skin about his orbs was simply too thin to discolour the blood that those eyeballs were seated in. Indeed, as the pale man stopped at the doctor's side to consider the Hussar, Henri felt as though he could see the roll and shift of that man's eyes beneath half-closed lids.

 When he spoke, it was with a voice that was weak, that seemed to crawl, scratching and clawing, at the walls of his blood-gorged lungs. The voice made Henri imagine some desperate soul crying for help from within the belly of a dying beast.

 "Doctor, who is this new guest of ours? Why did he stand here on my step, looking lost?"

 Henri made as though to speak but a slight gesture from the doctor encouraged him to surrender the voice.

 "He is," said Doctor Wahreit, " a French soldier, a Hussar, sent from Ippenhof." 

"I am sent by nobody," answered Henri to the charge but as soon as he saw the doctor make the thinnest of smiles, he knew that he had erred.

 The Wahreit did not let the opportunity pass, "He has been sent by no man. He has but wandered of his own free will into our garden. None know of his presence here."

 The pale aristocrat nodded and then turned, using his cane for support as he did so. In that raspy, faint voice he directed, "Invite him inside, Doctor, and then introduce me. Send the Bulgarian to see to his horse."

 And then the bent youth shuffled back into the shadows. It seemed to Henri, watching him fade that there were vague grey silhouettes of other creatures hovering back in the entranceway but they hid themselves as phantoms.

 Though acting now as a domestic, beckoning for Henri to advance, he made no bow and showed no deference. It was evident that this gentleman saw the soldier, even a junior officer, as his inferior. Wahreit made no move to remove his tall top hat even as Henri tucked his own shako under an arm to enter.

 The interior of the Tyrolean palace was in no better repair than the exterior. Wallpaper, once probably warm and welcoming, was now faded and weathered from dampness. Discoloured stains marked where furnishings had once passed years pressed back against the walls but they were now gone. A breeze, bearing the alpine chill, breathed past Henri to set the torn corners of the pale wallpapers to rippling but then, with an abrupt decisiveness, Henri's guide behind slammed shut the grand double doors, as noise some as a knell. Light fled with the closure, for a moment, and then a single dim lantern glowed at the far end of the hall. Unprotected, it flailed against the resulting rush of wind. It did not fail though and Henri's eyes could make their adjustment.

 "Come," fair whispered Wahreit and he advanced like some sinister Virgil into the infernal.

 "It could be brighter," noted Henri.

"The Prince prefers the gloom."

 "The Prince?"

 "I am commanded to confess: He is Prince Rambert Sturmholt, sole remaining son of Prince Justus III, and thereby  rightful heir to the Principality of Drachen and all of its sovereign lands and possessions.

 "...of which this house is one..."

 "Castle Drachenvolt has been in the family for three hundred years, or should have been. The Prince, in these circumstances, has returned to reclaim it.  

 Henri was not impressed by this slight catalogue of titles and lineages. To he, the Prince's isolated destitution was a sign that the revolution still had some small way to go yet in this corner of the world.  

Doctor Wahreit paused before a pair of grand doors on the left side of the hall. There, he took the opportunity to appropriately delay an opening of the doors by reciting a long history of the Principality of Drachenholt and the Sturmholt Princes. He spoke of their status within the Holy Roman Empire, their territories in Hungary and Styria, and then descended to the tragedy and unwarranted insult that was their being stripped of all of their titles and lands by the Treaty of Pressburg three years earlier, but the soldier paid no attention. he was growing bored. 

With a shrug, Henri turned to the double doors and pushed them open on his own. A squealing hinge and a protesting doctor announced him to the Prince and his entourage. 

The grand chamber that opened up for Henri, capable of being a ballroom, had its fullest dimensions lost to shadow for only two dim candles championed the light. What might have been wide windows opening out in to the brilliant summer's sunlight were shuttered and curtained off. The centerpiece of this near to empty space was, shockingly, a simple four-post bed filled with a host of clothed creatures that clambered over the bedclothes with indolence and idleness.  

 The Prince, with pride of place, lay stretched out upon a mound of silken, stained pillows, his torso raised to still survey. He yet wore his formal costume and was careless that his booted feet were on the bed. 

Fawning and petting this Prince was a pair of dishevelled women. One still wore her maiden looks while the second was in her waning years. They might be beautiful but their hair was wild and disarrayed, the clothing, only black bedclothes, filthy, torn, and plain, and worse, their manner was entirely without decorum or refinement. Sycophantic, the Nereides tended, like seductresses in a seraglio to their prince. The elder caressed the pale young man's brow and cheek as a mother might her fevered child. The young girl, perhaps a maiden yet by years, rested one tiny white hand in the lap of her young Prince.

 Prince Sturmholt, through half-lidded eyes,   watched the arrivals and smiled at the shock that registered on the Hussar's visage.

 "Welcome," spoke the languid Prince in that same rasped voice that seemed to slither across the gulf between them.

 Henri advanced, walking though but tentatively, across the bare wooden floor. His left hand rested upon the top of his sheathed sabre but it was not at all threatening, only distinguished as a good military man ought be in the presence of nobility. It was all wretched, thought Henri, wretched and false but still, for the sake of propriety, and thereby for the sake of earning the trust and good will of this creature, he would put on all pretense of accepting the status of this 'Prince'. He bowed too, when he was that appropriate distance away from his superior. In response, the Prince twirled a hand at the wrist. It was a gesture more lazy than disdainful. On the faces of the two women, what little of those that could be seen amid the tangle of their hair and the flickering shadows cast by two failing candles, Henri detected no awareness of his presence at all. They did not smile. They did not smirk. They did not appraise his merits.

 "It is an honour to be welcomed into your home..." Here Captain Henri Darlon paused as he considered the form of address to use. It was more than just a question of Highness of Majesty, but rather, could he recognize this man's titles. Wahreit had told him, for Henri had never before heard of Drachen or Prince Sturmholt or even Prince Justice before, that he had been stripped of any such title by the treaty of Pressburg. France being a signatory to that treaty and Henri being a soldier of France and thereby a representative of France, there were international implications to his choice. In principle, he ought not recognize this man's incorrect titles. Vaconne would perhaps know what to do in such a situation. Certainly he would have been briefed on all such important matters of state. It seemed clear though that Vaconne would have no knowledge of the presence of this pretender. This was the secret that the village was protecting: they were harbouring their beloved former Prince. They were in defiance of the terms of the treaty. With this new realization, Henri's mind quickly went in to transports of imagination, wondering about the strength and military capabilities of the Principality of Drachen. He began to conjure crude maps into his mind, trying to picture what the strategic implications of this rebellion might be, which roads could be blocked, which garrisons would be endangered, and how many men it might take to suppress it. All of this chaotic maelstrom of half-conceived ideas sprang to Henri's mind in seconds as he stood there before the self-proclaimed Prince, and the room waited for the Frenchman to speak and declare himself. It was too much and the indecisive set the Hussar's brain spinning. As he grasped desperately for some adage or axiom that would guide him in this moment of crisis, he chanced upon the crux of the problem: ought he play the part of the fool or the fox?

 "I am honoured, your Highness, to be so welcomed to your home, despite the differences that our two nations have had in the past."

 The Prince long pondered the Frenchman at the foot of his bed and behind Henri, the doctor, with hands clasped behind his back, paced near silently to close the distance (having first closed the doors).

 The youngest girl squeezed her Prince's thigh and then proclaimed aloud, "I think he lies."

 "As do I," voted Wahreit with his peculiar Hungarian accent.

 The Prince raised a hand to the outspoken girl and gently used it to pet her cheek affectionately. His tone was soft as he addressed her with his pained voice, "Your moonlight, my love, burns off the clouds of night and sees everything with such clarity. You are my guardian. You are my love."

 The older woman, continuing to caress the translucent flesh of the Prince's noble face, spoke out, saying "He is of a thieving, murderous people. It is his people that have wronged you so grievously."

 Now Wahreit commenced to walk a circuit about the Hussar. Still keeping his hands clasped behind his heavy cloak, the doctor's posture, as he peered at all aspects of the Hussar, took on such as aspect that his foolishly tall top hat angled itself near to toppling from its pedestal.

 As quickly as he could calculate the surety of its success, Henri discarded the notion of drawing his sabre and cutting the two men down. There was no danger from these characters and there was opportunity to gather intelligence.

*********

The Schaefer house was bathed in brilliant sunlight, bouncing off of the white walls, bringing shine to the ceramic painted plates  that decorated the wood shelves of the kitchen.  

Berthe, mistress and sole resident of this farmhouse, stretched her hands out across the checkered tablecloth to cover the smaller hands of her friend. Warmth passed between them but too, the shivering, and the shaking that resulted from the girl Karla's sobbing was passed from one to the other sympathetically.

 Karla, her eyes distraught, found the strength to smile for her friend. She thanked her for the support and then asked

"Do you think she was in great pain? Did she suffer horribly?"

 Berthe belied her belief, saying, "I'm certain that she died... quickly... swiftly. She could not have known..." and she knew, even as the words tumbled from her, that there could be no consolation for Karla or herself.

 "It was terrible... terrible," uttered the younger girl. 

"Karla, Rena and Nicholas would want us to be strong, to be watchful."

 "Watchful?"

 "Whatever happened to them must not take us."

 "But what happened to them?"

 In the pause before Berthe could attempt some failed answer, there came a rapping at the windowsill behind her.  The stained eyes of the girls swung to the figure of Konrad Kliever, resting his remaining arm in the open window.

 ***********

"I could walk from shore to shore, unsinking atop the thick ocean of stupidity that is this house."