“Have you marked their picket?” Thomas growled behind him.
“Marked, sir,” answered Lieutenant Hastings, who passed a second set of binoculars along the line to the unit’s best marksmen: Volker and Templeton.
Schoenfeld was met and brought into the abbey by two armed men. Thomas relayed the key information as he saw it: “One wheel lock, one flintlock. Or possibly a snaphaunce. Can’t tell at this range.” Assessing the firearms they were up against was crucial tactical intelligence, gathered more easily when the members of the garrison came out from the walls and shadows of the abbey. Or leaned out the window in amused curiosity, as several others did now. “A pretty even mix of wheel locks and flintlocks throughout,” Thomas added, based on the new appearances. “Are you marking their positions, Hastings?”
“They are marked, sir.”
Quinn produced his own binoculars. “I want to get my own close look at how this next part goes down,” he explained. Thomas lay elbow to elbow with the up-timer and watched.
After some delay, Schoenfeld appeared in a high-ceilinged upper-story room, made commandingly expansive by its several wide windows. They had heard about this room from locals. It had evidently been, at different phases in the abbey’s history, a chapel, a library, and a convalescent sun-room. It was hard to tell what it had been most recently, given the chaos of pompery that had been pushed into it. An ornate chair was on a makeshift dais. An altar had been pushed off to one side, serving as a combination side-board and weapons-rack. Prum appeared from the dark at the back of the room, wearing a red cape—a cardinal’s?— and began walking in a circle about Schoenfeld, asking short questions. The answers he received seemed to instigate long responses, replete with grandiose gestures.
“Damn: poor Johann,” muttered Quinn. “Trapped in the court of the Crimson King.”
“Eh? What?”
“An up-time reference Thomas. Just a way of saying that Prum is completely out to lunch.”
“Don’t use up-time idioms to explain up-time idioms, damn you. But if you mean that Prum is mad, well—no, I don’t think so. I’ve seen a lot of this kind of behavior, particularly once the wars became perpetual and the armies started to become desperate and disorganized. Little men, having lived a life beneath the boots of their ‘betters,’ suddenly come into a moment of power. It’s an intoxicating opportunity to play the part of those whom they have hated—and envied—for so long, and to exact vengeance from all who are too weak to resist, as they themselves had long been. But Prum does not stand to gain anything by killing Schoenfeld—not right away, at any rate.”
“So you say. But after he’s questioned him thoroughly, which might eventually include torture—”
“—Prum might indeed kill Schoenfeld and drop the body down some convenient well, where it won’t be found for several months.” Thomas shrugged. “Frankly, if you’re trying to find a lunatic in this whole dance macabre, I nominate Schoenfeld. Granted, civilians often completely misread situations like this one, but Johann seemed sensible enough up until he did this.”
Quinn sighed. “Thomas, you heard Schoenfeld the first night we met him. He’s wracked by guilt, by not being here when the shit hit the fan. This isn’t just about having a plan to save the girls; it’s about the expiation of what Johann considers his sins, of not being in Biberach when his family and town needed him. Johann stated quite clearly that he holds himself responsible for his father’s death. Feels guilty to have fled before the approach of war. And now, he’s probably convinced himself that if he’d been here, he’d have been able to do something to stop this.”
“So he goes to present himself for evisceration by renegades while also inadvertantly providing Prum with a tactical update on our departure.”
Quinn shrugged. “Yes, but if pressed, he’ll probably also point out that we’ll be back.”
“Yes, which will only lead Prum to wrap up his extortion racket in a month or two, while the coast is still clear. Which means that the usefulness of the hostages will end sooner, rather than later.”
“Listen: Johann doesn’t understand our line of work, but he has a good heart—” Larry stopped and stared intently through the binoculars. “Damn, is Prum making Johann get down on his knees?”
North looked, nodded. “Yes. I think he’s making him swear to something. Probably giving him his parole.”
“Hmm.” mused Quinn. “That’s interesting. A military habit Prum’s retained. Probably to give his captives—which is to say, his eventual victims—a false sense of security while he decides what to do with them.”