All Noelle could do was nod. Looking down, she saw that she still had the pistol in her hand. She'd forgotten all about the gun, and the fact that it was still armed and cocked.
Dan Frost would have words to say about that, if he ever found out. Carefully, Noelle disarmed the weapon.
By the time she was done, she heard familiar voices in the corridor. Then Emma and Meyfarth were coming through, and she was able to shake off the horror of the past minutes.
"You're all right?"
Emma nodded, as did the pastor.
Noelle turned back to the blacksmith. "What's happening in the rest of the castle?"
The blacksmith grinned. "Die Neideckerin has everything well in hand. The Schloss now belongs to the ram."
"The soldiers?"
Amazingly, the grin widened. "Die Neideckerin reminded them of what happened at Mitwitz. At some length. I do not foresee any problems."
Fuchs von Bimbach noticed that at the edges of the field, some of the people in the crowd were beginning to move, turn their heads.
No danger, though, he was sure. There couldn't be. Margrave Christian's troops were here—a guarantor that the uptimers would not be sending any more men through Bayreuth than the number to which von Bimbach had agreed. In any case, people were looking toward the Schloss, not away from it. Pride prevented him from turning his head around.
The captain of von Bimbach's mercenaries did look around. There was chaos at the castle gate. Not people trying to force their way in. People trying to force their way out, it looked like. He was dismounted; someone had led his horse back to the paddock area. He started to run, clumsy in his high-heeled riding boots on the dry hummocks of sheep-grazed grass.
Ableidinger smiled. The gawkers and onlookers at that end of the field were breaking toward the castle gate, far faster than the captain was moving. Meeting the party that was forcing it way out. Fifteen to twenty people there, if they hadn't lost anyone when the servants and staff seized the castle. Not experienced fighters, any of them; mostly women. But it hardly mattered, as Ableidinger had known it wouldn't—especially with that somewhat peculiar but very capable and determined young American woman set loose in their midst.
It could not have been that hard, really. The Freiherr was not the world's most popular employer. Sixty-three points still held the record for specific grievances from any Franconian lord's subjects, as far as he was aware.
Ableidinger would have liked to run toward the castle also, but he had to be a model of discipline. He held himself steady. Wearing uptime clothing, hair short, closely shaved, inconspicuous within the small knot of officials behind Anita Masaniello's chair.
There was a ring of his people, now, around those who had come out of the castle.
About half the onlookers were running away. Uninvolved. Real spectators. Prudent people. The rest, his own, were starting to turn toward the end of the field behind him.
Yes. The right livery. Margrave Christian's men. Reinforcing the few troops of the Franconian administrators; interposing themselves between von Bimbach's mercenaries and the uptimers; ringing the party coming out from the castle, a second defensive perimeter around the people in the center.
Von Bimbach had risen from his camp chair, drawn his sword; one of the margrave's men was on him, too, holding a pistol, telling him to sit back down; two more of the margrave's men there, standing at that side of the table.
No shots, so far. No blood.
The party from the castle reached the table. Frau Thornton and Herr Pastor Meyfarth, on their own feet. Frau Masaniello, Salatto's wife, running to embrace them. Herr Thornton following her. Two menservants, liveried, their hands crossed to make a chair, carrying an old woman. Die Neideckerin. Both of her legs splinted. The uptime EMT, the medic they called him, running to her.
A well-dressed woman; far too well-dressed to be a servant. The Freiherr's mistress, then. Sent from Bamberg to his estates, six years ago, for safety. The old woman's daughter. Von Bimbach's leverage against die Neideckerin. Holding a copy of Robert's Rules of Order in one hand; a book in the other. The Book of Mormon. Judith Neidecker had not been so cowed as to accept her mother's abduction and torture meekly. With Fräulein Murphy, she had organized the servants; even, according to the Fräulein, had said that if the ram would send her an ice pick, she would save them all a lot of trouble by putting it through the Freiherr's eardrum and into his brain while he snored.
Ableidinger shivered. The female of the species. Martha Kronacher, who now seemed to consider Pastor Meyfarth to be her property. Ableidinger smiled to himself; Meyfarth had not noticed yet. His own deceased wife. Every man would do well to remember that his wife was one of them. Judith Neideckerin. Judith with the head of Holofernes.