The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

I pinned her with my weight, bending her knife hand further and further back.
    "Do I have to break your wrist?" I said, jerking her by her long hair with my other hand and turning up her face to mine.
    Her knife hand unclenched, and I grabbed the dagger, throwing it back over my shoulder toward the fireplace.
    She bit my wrist hard enough to draw blood, and I hit her open-handed in the side of the head as she kicked and writhed beneath me.
    "I will not have this, madam," I panted.
    She looked up at me and I thought it was the moment where she would either spit in my face or burst into tears.   Izabela did neither.   She just looked at me with an expression that was quizzical and completely unafraid, her long slim legs wrapped around my body.   I was not prepared for what I wanted, and there were no knives in it.
    I stood up, jerking her to her feet, all disheveled hair and torn nightdress.   "Go to your chambers, madam," I rasped, and turned my back on her.
    For a moment there was silence, then the sound of the panel closing.   I went to the fireplace and retrieved the dagger, but I did not put the clothes press in front of the secret door.
    On the morrow she was cool as ice, but in the next days as our business brought us together, as it often did, I would catch her watching me warily and curiously, as though I were some strange beast she had not seen before.
    Five days after two of my men killed a farmer and his wife who would not tell them where their money was hidden.   Naturally the first I heard of it was from Izabela.   She came upon me in the great hall before two dozen of my men as I was hearing the reports of the sentries I had placed.
    "Captain Von Marianburg!" she demanded, striding into the hall in a movement of dusty black velvet, her bailiff at her elbow.   "There is a matter which requires your attention most urgently."
    I turned a little impatiently.   She had two of my men with her, a sergeant, and half a dozen peasants.   Izabela's eyes were snapping.   She gestured to the two men under the sergeant's guard.   "These men killed one of my farmers and his wife.   Here are the witnesses."
    The men scowled as her peasants began the story in their own tongue, not a word of German between them, but I had been long in Bohemia.   When they finished I asked the sergeant, "Is what they say true?"
    The sergeant shuffled his feet.   "As far as I know.   This one admitted to knifing the old man."
    I nodded.   "Take them out into the courtyard," I said to McDonald.   "And hang them."
    He took them out while Izabela watched with unholy joy.  
    "Come, madam," I said quietly.   "You can watch what is wrought in your name."
    "With a great will," she said.
    One of them begged for mercy and the other did not.   I stood and watched while the ropes were put around their necks, while they dangled kicking as they strangled, and smiled all the while not because I wished to but because I must seem the kind of man who took pleasure in such things.
    When they were dead and cut down I went back inside.   A courier had come with a dispatch from Wallenstein in Plzen.   It was direct and to the point, commending me in the name of the Emperor for the capture of Falkenau and instructing me to use the castle and its lands for winter quarters.   It wasn't until I reached the last page that my blood ran cold.
    "In reward for your good service, and to strengthen your base of operations in the area, you are instructed without delay to marry the Lady Izabela of Falkenau."

    Izabela took the news with surprising calm.   She sat sewing in her rooms, the children's nurse nearby with her charges lest it be thought I planned to consummate it forthwith.   Izabela laid the fragile embroidered rose aside as I read Wallenstein's letter, and I did not look at her face, only at the white rose picked out in silk on damask.
    I finished the letter and put it away.   "Believe me, madam," I said.   "This was not my idea."
    "I believe