FREE STORIES 2012(59)

Volker grunted as a small group of more somber, muttering youngsters pushed a produce-vendor’s handcart toward the purpling blue of the eastern horizon.

“What is it, Volker?” asked Thomas, wondering when the guard at the tower was going to get around to challenging them.

“Those kids. They’re Swiss.”

“Swiss? All of them.”

“Ja. Spring workers, down from the Alps. Usually about ten to fourteen years old. Folks send them down here along the Jakobsweg to make money. Not enough work up-country at this time of the spring, but plenty down here.”

Quinn stared, shook his head.

Thomas noticed. “Not common in your time, I take it?”

“Kids that young sent a hundred miles from home to work for someone else? That would probably have been breaking about a hundred up-time labor laws.”

Thomas shrugged. “You would perhaps have preferred them a bit older, so that the girls might be pressured to provide more than field work?”

Quinn’s voice was low and hard. “As if ‘employers’ like that are picky about age, anyway.”

Volker spoke up. “Sirs, it is not as you are thinking. The children travel in groups, and go to families they have worked with before. Mostly.” He fell silent as the officers stared at his ominous addition of “mostly.”

Quinn asked, “But you’re not from around here, are you, Volker?”

“No, sir, but a cousin from Nuremburg traded down here, knew people who had traveled the pilgrim’s route—the Jakobsweg—all the way down to Santiago de Campostela in Spain. The custom of child-workers from the Alps is traditional. It is no more subject to abuse than similar traditions.”

Thomas nodded back toward the gate: they were so close that they could make out the facial features of the single guard. “The town militia certainly doesn’t seem to be worried about trouble, does it?”

“No, indeed,” agreed Quinn quietly.

That was about the same moment that the armed worthy at the gate noticed the four armed men approaching. He flinched, pulled himself upright, and, almost as an afterthought, reached behind him and produced a weapon that made Thomas stare, and then grin. “Oh my,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth toward Larry, “they are clearly ready for all threats from any quarter.”

Quinn was silent, kept moving towards the man who was brandishing a tarnished arquebus in a poor parody of stalwart readiness. Rather than asking who the newcomers were, or their business, he nervously proclaimed, “Biberach is under the protection of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and the United States of Europe, and is garrisoned by the men of General Horn.”

Thomas shrugged. “We certainly do not dispute those facts.”

This left the gate guard—such as he was—speechless.

As Larry produced their respective papers and explained the reason for their visit to the town, Thomas continued sizing up the guard. Who, he confirmed quickly, was not really a guard at all. An ill-fitting cuirass and helmet from the prior century were the only clear military gear upon him. Although uniforms had been little known before the up-timers began to spearhead their adoption, the garb of soldiers was nonetheless distinct from that of townsmen and workers: it was generally more rugged and furnished with belts and straps from which to hang items needed in the press of combat. Gloves were not uncommon, nor were a variety of camping tools that could double as secondary weapons in a pinch.

None were in evidence on the man at the Ulmer gate. Dressed as a tradesman—possibly a weaver, from the look of him—he lacked the lean look of a soldier, and was utterly without the wary businesslike posture and tendency towards taciturnity. He was all too glad to discover that the four oddly armed men before his town’s gate were in fact legitimate emissaries of the greater powers to the north; his sudden and relieved volubility were arguably the clearest of the many signs that he was merely a townsman impressed to temporary duty as a gate guard.

Thomas nodded at the now-forgotten arquebus leaning against the gate-house wall. “You know, “ he observed sagely, “I am told those work best when there’s a lit match somewhere nearby. Preferably in the weapon itself.”

The civilian stopped, stared, and then blushed. “I am as much a guard as you men are weavers.”

Thomas frowned. “Then why are you on guard duty? Where is the town watch? Better yet, where is the garrison that General Horn left here?”

“Well,” said the fellow, leaning on the gun-rest as he spoke, “the garrison was actually put in place by General-Major von Vitinghof three years ago, although he was only in town for one day. Most of the work was done by an assistant of his, Hauptmann Besserer, who left twenty Swedes in charge. There were also thirty German soldiers: Lutherans, mostly from Ravensburg.”