Contention
an excerpt

1
Broken
Vienna, November 1529

Favouring his left leg, the peasant hobbled around the ruins of his former home, turning over the rubble of walls and fallen-in roof. The small building had been set ablaze, he could see, but the fire had never seriously taken hold, because the thatch had been damp from autumn rain. Black soot lay thick on the ground near where the door to the yard had been.

Where he stood had been the communual room, where the three families which shared the dwelling had cooked together, and recovered from the labours of the day. Nothing remained of their possessions, not a single pot or pan. Everything had been stolen or willfully destroyed. The same was true of the room in which he had slept each night with his wife and three children. Everything was gone; everyone was gone.

It was a cold, still morning, with frost on the ground and low clouds folded about each other across the sky. The peasant limped to the front of the shack, and down to the gate which gave onto a narrow track. To the north, dark and sullen in the valley below, lay the city, and the peasant looked upon it and his whole body shook. Barely a few months ago, he would not have been able to see Vienna from here, for a thick stand of trees had masked the view, but these had been cut down, and the rich farmland of the valley had been picked clean so that barely a blade of grass remained. The peasant, along with the rest of his village, had driven their livestock away from the village, hoping to hide them in the forest, but they had been caughty by fleet horsemen and every beast had been taken. The village’s stores and barns had been ransacked and burned. The peasants had been spared immediate massacre, but they had been left with barely the clothes on their backs. It was all the man could do to keep from weeping.

He leaned wearily against the splintered gatepost, which sagged and leaned over as it felt his weight upon it. Standing upright once, more, he tried aimlessly to fix the post, but it had been split down its length and had cracked at the base. He was reminded for that moment that this was the measure by which he had been taxed and assessed all his life. One gate equalled one household, and that was why three familes crowded into one shack, so that they might share the burden of the many taxes they were forced to pay. Long before the Ottomans came to ravage the countryside, the agents of the Archduke of Austria had hammered upon their doors to demand coin with which to pay for an army to defend Vienna. The Turks, thase gentlemen had said, would destroy everything unless they were stopped. As far as the peasant could see, he had paid his dues, and the money of a hundred villages had been swallowed up by the great city of Vienna, and the Turks had come anyway, to steal everything they had left.

There was a broken hoe upon the ground - the blade and six inches of handle. He picked it up.

The peasant had sent his wife and children to the city for protection. Before the siege had been wholly closed, the commander of the city had ordered that all such dependents be sent back out beyond the walls, so that supplies in the city would be extended for the fighting men within. Four thousand of the old, women and children had been marched out of the Schottentor in the north-west of the city. Some miles to the west, the peasant had heard, they had been attacked by Transylvanians and Bosnians in the service of the Ottoman emperor, and every last one of them had been slaughtered. In his heart, the peasant knew his wife to be a smart, resourceful woman, who would have hidden anywhere she could find. In his head, he knew she was as dead as all the others.

Lights in the distant city glowed yellow; and a church bell rang dolorously.

Lost in thought, he almost didn’t hear the riders approaching, and when he did turn at the sound of their horses’ plodding wearily through the mud of the lane, he saw that they had seen him already. Or that they could have, if men like he ever existed in the eyes of their kind.

They were four in number, led by a big brute on a dark chestnut stallion. He carried the imperial crest on the breast of a thick black surcoat, worn over chain mail, and wrapped around in a fur-trimmed cloak of the deepest night. He wore heavy woolen hose and long cavalry boots and, on his head at a jaunty angle, a landsknecht’s cap, three cockerel feathers hanging limply from its crest. The man himself was pale-skinned, with black hair, and a forked beard. He was talking incessantly as the riders approached.

At his side, looking off to the east, where the fields had been used for the burning of thousands of dead beasts from the besieging army, the second man was taller and well-built, older and less comfortable in the saddle. He too had a beard, thin and grey across a narrow chin. His clothing was unremarkable, save for a simple white shirt, the kind the peasant wore himself, but which was richly embroidered in reds and greens. He wore muddy leather trousers and shorter boots, and his hands were gloved. Everything was swallowed by a blood-red cloak which the rider wore swathed about him like a shroud.

The peasant could not see too much of the other two riders, save to see that they were young, and that one was dressed clearly as a soldier. These two rode in slow silence, as did the grey-haired man; all three subjected to the continued opions of the black-garbed imperial soldier.

“Look, there is the city now. Another hour and we can warm our bones in front of a warm hearth, or maybe warm a lot more in a real bed. That is if there is any wood for the fire, or any whores the Bohemians haven’t taken, now that they have finally arrived, damn them. Can you imagine that? They miss the siege, but they have been paid and no man in the garrison has seen a silver penny. Cock-suckers. If I was the Archduke, I would kick them out and make them walk back to Prága2, and good riddance. But he fears there may still be trouble from the damn Mamelukes3 and so the army is to be kept intact for a while longer. Well, why not? We have taught the Turk a lesson, and I am not the only one who says let us strike back at them now and see if we cannot drive the heathen from Hungary.”

While he lectured his comrades, the large German - there could be no doubt that was what he was, by his dress, his manner and the clean tones of his accent - had barely looked around him. As the big chestnut came up alongside the peasant, it stopped of its own volition, as if the peasant was a groom. It dropped its head and snorted, and the landsknecht looked around and down, realising that his progress and his oration had been interrupted.

“Who is this? A serf! Few enough of your kind around these dark days, fellow. Do you farm here?”

The peasant felt the weight of the broken hoe in his fist, and looked out over the despoiled and trampled fields. Ground might be tilled and ploughed again, fences made good and stores rebuilt, but there was no money for seed, no food to get through the winter. And there was no hope. His sweet Maria was slaughtered - or worse - and his children lost forever.

“I have no farm,” he whispered.

“As long as there is mud, and as long as animals crap, there will be a farm, fellow. Be thankful you are alive and the Turks are gone. Everything else can be restored.”

The peasant looked up into the dark eyes of the landsknecht, and realised that although he had heard the words spoken, he had not listened to what the horseman was saying at all. His own eyes were filling with tears.

“A great victory has been won, good man - be assured of that. Thousands of the enemy slain and his army in full retreat. My comrades and I - these men are from the east, but they can understand most of what we say - we have ridden far out into the lands south and east of here, and not a single Turk remains west of the Leitha4. Be thankful, and give praise to -”

There was a single shot, which echoed around the bare hillside. Crows squawked and took off in alarm from ground behind the peasant’s looted dwelling. A blue cloud of smoke drifted across in front of the nervous horses, which were quickly brought under control by the four riders.

“What the devil?” cried the German.

The peasant had fallen to his knees, and the broken hoe fell to the ground from his nerveless hand, which had briefly lifted to shoulder height. His dark jerkin was smoking at the breast, and a dark stain spread slowly from shoulder to belly. The peasant watched it widen, and saw rich, hot blood bubbling through a rent, a small hole in his breast perhaps as wide as his thumb. His numb heart quivered, and fell silent, and the man pitched forward into the mud beneath the hooves of the German’s horse.

“In the name of all that is Holy, Johannes...”

The taller man with the grey hair wiped a small ember of spent powder from his brow and replaced the wheellock he had discharged back through the crossbelt across his breast, seating it carefully. He shrugged his shoulders to settle the blood red cloak more firmly around his body, then sat in the saddle with his gloved hands crossed on the pommel, the reins wound around his left fist. His cold grey eyes settled on the German.

“If you were not so given to boasting of how we saved this man’s lands from the Turk, you might just have seen that he was about to reward you by driving that hoe into your guts.”

“What is that you say? How can you possibly - ?”

“It was in his eyes. He was no longer hearing a word you said, just a voice in his mind that told him you were to blame for all this. His fingers were turning white, he was gripping that tool so hard. It was only a matter of time.”

The German looked down at the pathetic corpse, as if it might somehow confirm what the other man had said. He wiped spittle off his lips, adjusted the fit of his cap, and glared at his taller companion.

“Why would he do that?”

His companion shrugged, and leaned to one side to spit onto the ground.

“I know - it seemed like he had so much to live for.