The Beggar King

PROLOGUE

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDST OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR NOVEMBER 1637 AD

The riders of the apocalypse wore blood-red leggings, tattered uniforms, and coats that fluttered in the wind like flags behind them. Their weapons were rusty and battered from killing, and their horses nothing but mangy old nags with dull, mud-encrusted coats. Silent, hidden behind a dense line of trees, the men stared at the sleepy village to which they would shortly bring death and destruction.

There were twelve of them, a haggard, hungry dozen. They had looted, murdered, and raped, again and again. Years ago they may have been men, but now they were just empty shells. A consuming madness flashed in their eyes. Their leader, a wiry young Frank in colorful mercenary garb, chewed on a frayed blade of grass and sucked in saliva through a space between his teeth. He saw smoke rising from the chimneys of the houses nestled along the forest edge and nodded with satisfaction.

“Looks like we may have found ourselves something here.”

He tossed the blade of grass and reached for the blood- and rust-stained saber at his side. The sounds of women and children rose up from below. The man grinned. “Looks to be women, too.”

A pimple-faced youth at his side giggled. He looked like a ferret, slightly stooped, clutching the reins of his scrawny nag with long, thin fingers. His eyes darted back and forth restlessly. He was not a day over sixteen, but the war had made an old man of him.

“You’re a real bastard, Philipp,” he rasped, running his tongue over his cracked lips. “You think of only one thing.”

“Shut up, Karl!” said a stout, potbellied bearded man on the left. He had the same straggly black hair as the Frank and the youth next to him. They were all brothers, with the same empty stare, as bitter and cold as a violent hailstorm in midsummer. “Didn’t Father raise you not to speak until spoken to?” the fat man growled. “So shut your mouth.”

“To hell with Father,” the youth replied. “And to hell with you, Friedrich.”

The fat man was about to reply, but the group leader beat him to it, his hand shooting out, seizing Karl by the throat so hard that his beady little black eyes bulged out of his head like giant pinheads.

“Don’t you ever bad-mouth our family again!” replied Philipp Lettner, the oldest brother. “Never again, do you hear? Or I’ll tear your hide to shreds, until you cry out to our dead mother. Do you hear?”

Karl Lettner nodded as his face swelled up and turned bright red. The older brother let him go, and Karl fell to the ground like a sack, coughing.

Philipp’s expression changed as he looked down, almost with pity, at his brother panting and gasping on the ground. “Karl, Karl,” he said, sucking on another blade of grass. “What can I do with you? Discipline, do you hear? Discipline is everything in war. Discipline and respect!” He bent down to his little brother and stroked his pimply cheek. “I love you as if you were a part of me, but if you blacken our father’s name once more, I’ll have to hurt you-bad. Do you hear?”

Karl remained silent, chewing his dirty fingernails and looking down at the ground.

“I said, do you hear?” Philipp Lettner demanded one more time.

“Yeah, I hear.” His little brother lowered his head meekly, though he clenched his fists in tight little balls.

Philipp grinned. “Good. Now we can finally get on with it and have a little fun.”

The other riders had watched the spectacle with interest. They acknowledged Philipp Lettner as their undisputed leader. Though not yet thirty years old, he was the most ruthless of the three Lettner brothers and had enough shrewdness to keep his place at the head of this gang. When, the year before, his men had started going out on their own unofficial raids in the course of the general campaign, Philipp Lettner had always managed to keep their young sergeant from getting wind of it. Even now, while the troops were supposed to be laid up in their winter headquarters, they found a way to make little excursions into the surrounding villages, though the sergeant had expressly forbidden it. They sold the booty to women who followed the army in wagons peddling goods, so the gang members always had money for food, drink, and whoring.

Today it looked as if they’d have an especially good haul. The village in the clearing, hidden behind dense firs and beeches, seemed almost untouched by the ravages of the Great War. In the setting sun the mercenaries could make out newly built barns and stables, and cows grazing in the lush meadows near the forest edge. The sound of a child’s flute rose from down below. Philipp Lettner spurred his horse, which whinnied, reared up, and then galloped off through the copse of blood-red beeches. The others followed their leader, and the killing began.

The first person to see them was a stooped, white-haired old man crouched in the bushes relieving himself. Instead of fleeing for cover in the forest, he stumbled back down the road toward the village with his pants hanging down. Philipp Lettner caught up with him and, with a single blow of his sword, severed the man’s right arm as he galloped by. Hooting and howling, the others ran over the old man, trampling his twitching body under their horses’ hooves.

The villagers were going about their usual chores when they saw the mercenaries approach. With loud cries the women dropped their pitchers and bundles and ran away in every direction, into the fields and forest. Giggling, young Karl aimed his crossbow at a boy of about twelve trying to hide among the broken stalks of a freshly harvested wheat field. The bolt hit the boy in the shoulder, and he fell to the ground without a sound.

While the women ran off toward the forest, Friedrich Lettner and some of the other mercenaries fanned out to corral them like a herd of wild cows. The men laughed, picking up the women and setting them down on their horses or dragging them by the hair behind them. Philipp turned now to the anxious farmers who came running out of the houses to save their dear lives and the lives of their women and children. They carried flails and scythes, and some even sabers, but none was experienced in battle and all were weakened by illness, half starved from having nothing to eat but thin porridge. Perhaps they were strong enough to cut the heads off chickens, but against a mercenary on horseback they were no match.

In a few minutes the slaughter was over. The villagers lay in their own blood-in their houses amid smashed tables, beds, and stools or outside in the street, groaning, as Philipp Lettner went from one to another, slashing their throats. Two mercenaries threw a dead farmer into a well in the village square. The rotting flesh would poison the well and make the entire town uninhabitable for years to come. In the meantime the other mercenaries ransacked the houses, looking for something to eat or anything else of value. There wasn’t much to be had-a few rusty coins, two silver spoons, a few cheap necklaces, and some rosaries. Young Karl Lettner tried on a white wedding gown he found in a trunk and danced around clumsily, singing a wedding tune in a shrill falsetto. The others laughed uproariously when he fell head over heels into a mud puddle. The blood- and mud-stained dress ripped and hung down on him in tatters.

Most valuable were the animals: eight cows, three pigs, a few goats, and a dozen chickens. They would fetch a fine price from the merchant women who followed the army.

And then there were, of course, the women.

Darkness was falling, and a cool dampness settled over the clearing. To keep warm, the mercenaries threw burning torches into the ruined houses. The dry reeds on the floors and the thatched roofs caught fire in seconds, and soon the flames were shooting out the windows and doors. The loud crackling fire served as a backdrop to the screams of the sobbing women.

The men corraled the women in the village square-about twenty of them. The monster Friedrich Lettner went from one to the other, pushing aside the old and ugly. When one old woman pounded him with her fists, he threw her into a burning house. Her screams didn’t last long. In the silence following, all that could be heard from the farm women was an occasional whimper.

Finally the men picked out a good dozen women. The youngest was a girl about ten years old who stared off into space with an open mouth and bulging eyes. She seemed to have already lost her mind.

“All right,” Philipp Lettner said, walking down the line of the trembling women. “This is how it goes. If you do what we say, you’ll live to see the sun rise tomorrow. It isn’t such a bad life being a soldier’s wife. You’ll get more to eat than what your old goats gave you here.”

The other soldiers laughed. Young Karl giggled in a high, shrill voice-a falsetto in a chorus of madmen.

Philipp Lettner stopped abruptly in front of one of the girls. Her disheveled black hair was probably tied up in a bun most days but now reached almost down to her waist. She was perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old. With bushy eyebrows and flashing eyes, she reminded Lettner of an angry little cat. She trembled, but she held her head high. Her coarse brown farm dress had been ripped, exposing one of her breasts. Lettner stared at the little nipple, which had hardened in the cold air. A faint smile passed over his face as he pointed at the girl.

“This one here is mine,” he said. “For all I care you can bash your heads in fighting over the others.”

He was about to reach for the young farm girl when his brother Friedrich, standing behind him, cleared his throat. “You can’t get away with that, Philipp,” he growled. “It was I who found her in the cornfield, and she’s mine.”

“Oh, indeed?” Philipp’s voice was cold and sharp. “You found her, did you? That may be, but you apparently also let her get away.”

He stepped closer to his brother until they were standing directly face-to-face. Friedrich was obviously the stronger of the two and as big around as a barrel of wine, but he stepped back a bit nonetheless. When Philipp got mad, strength no longer mattered-that’s the way it had always been, since they were kids. Now, too, he seemed ready to explode. He looked at his brother without blinking, and his lips formed a narrow, bloodless line.

“I found that one hiding in a trunk over in the big old house,” Philipp whispered. “She thought she could scurry away and hide like a little mouse. Well, we’ve had a little fun already. She’s stubborn, and somebody will have to teach her some manners. I think I’m the best one to do that.”

All at once, the harshness disappeared from Philipp’s eyes. He smiled again and patted his brother on the shoulder.

“But you have a point. Why should the leader get the best woman, especially since I’ve already taken three cows and two pigs, right?” Philipp’s gaze wandered down the line of his men, but nobody dared contradict him. “Do you know what, Friedrich?” he said finally. “We’ll do just as we used to do back in Leutkirchen in Muller’s Tavern. We’ll let a throw of the dice decide.”

“We’ll cast dice for her?” Friedrich hesitated. “The two of us, now?”

Philipp shook his head and furrowed his brow as if he were thinking hard about something. “No, I don’t think that would be right,” he continued. “We’ll all cast dice,” he said, looking around. “What do you say? We all have a right to this juicy little tart!”

The others laughed and cheered. Philipp was a leader after their own hearts. In his eyes they were all equal-brothers as well as comrades-in-arms. A young devil, with a heart as black as the devil’s ass. Young Karl hopped around in a circle like a whirling dervish, clapping his hands. “We’ll gamble for it!” he shouted. “Just like old times.”

Philipp nodded and settled down on the ground as he took out two worn dice he had carried around with him all through the war. He tossed them in the air and then caught them deftly in his hand as they fell.

“Well, who wants to play with me?” he called out. “Who? For the woman and the cow. Let’s see what you’re willing to gamble.”

They drove the black-haired girl to the middle of the village square like a cow and sat down in a circle around her. With a desperate cry the young girl tried to flee, but Philipp slapped her twice in the face.

“Back off, whore! Or we’ll all pile on you together and cut your tits off!”

The girl crouched down in a fetal position, her arms wrapped around her legs and her head bowed. Overwhelmed with grief and pain, she could hear the dice rattling in a cup, coins tinkling, and men laughing.

The mercenaries started singing a tune the girl knew well. When her mother was still alive, they sang it together as they worked in the fields. And later, on her deathbed, her mother hummed it one more time to herself just before she passed on and was gone forever. It had always been a sad song, but hearing it now suddenly seemed strange and gruesome. As the drunken mercenaries bellowed into the dark night sky, the sound wafted to her from across the field like a veil of fog. She could almost feel cold fingers wrap around her throat.

There is a reaper. Death’s his name.

From God his power came.

His blade keen and steady

To mow us is ready,

And soon he will reap us

In swaths for to heap us.

O tender flow’r, beware!

As the men laughed, Philipp Lettner swung the leather cup around in the air. Once… twice… three times.

With a soft click, the dice fell into the sand.