Axis mundi, Andreas had said of the tree when he had last visited the tiny shelter. It is the pillar of your world, he had explained. He had reached up and touched the highest branch of the stunted tree. Though it has some growing to do before it can hold up Heaven, don’t you think?
Andreas was dead. But the tree still lived. He still lived. Hans wrapped his arms around the tree and pressed his cheek against the rough bark. Only then would he let himself cry.
But he had no tears. He was as dry as the tree.
“Hans.”
He jerked upright at the sound of his name, and instead of fleeing he only hugged the tree more tightly. When his name was spoken a second time—the tone of voice filled with compassion and tenderness—he dared to look around for the speaker.
His uncle, Ernust, peered under the dirty tarp that hung over the narrow entrance to the tree’s tiny enclave. Ernust’s face was streaked with dirt and soot and a stain of something darker—blood? Hans’s brain offered an idea—and then refused to speculate further—about the source of the smear.
“Boy,” Ernust said. “Are you hurt? You came running in here so fast, it was if the Devil were...” He dismissed the rest of his observation. “Are you hurt?” he repeated.
Hans shook his head.
“Yesterday...” his uncle began. The portly man sighed, at a loss for how to finish his thought, and ran his hand across the rounded dome of his head. His eyes flicked over Hans—head to toe and back—and the boy read all the unspoken words in his uncle’s restless gaze. “It is time to go, Hans,” he said. “There is nothing left for us here, and the Mongols won’t wait for the mob to find its strength. They’re going to ride out—soon—and kill all the knights. Not just the Rose Knights—though they will be first—but every man who can possibly lift a sword. It will be just like—”
“A Livonian killed him.” Hans barely recognized his own voice—flat, echoing with exhaustion. He wanted to lie down beside the tree and cover himself with one of the dusty blankets used by the Rats. He wanted to lie down and let the bleak despair of his words flow throughout his body. Let it fill him until he drowned. “Not one of the Mongols. He was killed by one of us.”
“No, boy,” Ernust said sadly. “They’re not like us. None of them are. They fight for their own causes, for their lords and at the whims of their lords. Never for us. We are nothing to them. We board their animals. We feed them. We give them shelter. We care for them, and they do not think of us. They think only of themselves.”
“Andreas didn’t,” Hans countered.
Ernust shook his head. “The others are preparing to leave. There will be no one left to drink our brews—no one who will give us coin for it, anyway. We have to go with them. Back to L?wenberg.” He let loose a hollow laugh. “Not that we’ll be safe there for—”
“I’m staying,” Hans said, tightening his arms around the tree. His fervor surprised him, as did his certainty.
His uncle’s face lost its doughy softness, and he fixed Hans with an intent stare that was supposed to be intimidating. “He’s dead, Hans. I know he offered to take you with him, but he can’t. And the rest won’t keep his word. If they even survive. We have to survive, and that has little to do with waiting for a hero to rescue you.”
Hans flinched at his uncle’s words, but his initial reaction passed quickly, and he stared silently at his uncle. Ernust sighed, and ran a hand across his head again, looking down after at the smear of dirt and blood on his palm. Neither said anything, and the narrow sanctuary filled up quickly with a portentous silence.
His uncle was a prudent and savvy man, the sort who could see past the tragedy of the Mongol invasion and realize the opportunities present in the ragged tent city of Hünern. During his short stay with Ernust after his mother’s death, Hans had heard stories about why his uncle had left the family enclave in Legnica for the untrammeled landscape around the new settlement of L?wenberg. The forest needed to be cleared, fields planted, and houses built: all thirst-making work. The same was true for Hünern, albeit work of a bloodier sort. And what his uncle said was true: the brewers—as well as the carpenters, millers, smiths, leatherworkers, cooks, whores, and all the rest—served at the whim and mercy of the knights. When the knights were gone, the rabble dispersed as well.
Think of the living, boy.
Why wait? This was his uncle’s sensible suggestion. There was no shame in leaving. They weren’t combatants. They were merchants, brewers of ale and spirits. The market in Hünern was drying up. Why wait to be the last to leave?
Andreas’s face came to Hans. Not the gap-mouthed rictus nailed to arena wall, but the calm visage that the Rose Knight had worn as he had walked onto the sand. The knight had not been afraid. He knew his duty, and he approached it with honor. In the end, when he had turned his back on the Livonian to throw his spear, he had not hesitated. He had not fled. He had not turned away from his true purpose.