How long it took Harun to finish his tale, he did not know. He felt it could not have been that long, for the attention of his listener never wavered for a second. He looked at Harun with his alert, piercing gaze and made no secret of his interest in the matter.

“So, you have appointed yourself shurta,” the recluse said thoughtfully, when Harun had finished his tale.

“Yes,” answered Harun, thankful of having found someone at last who understood the term. “Interesting. Do you plan on appointing yourself cadi as well?”

“What?”

“I mean, what will you do when you find the murderer? Are you planning to be investigator, judge and executioner in one person?”

Bertram looked at the horrified expression on the harmless, oval face of the intellectual.

“No, I see that you are not. But what are you planning?”

“I… don’t know. I have not thought about it, really.”

“You should, you know. Knowing who a murderer is may be fine, but if you really wish to do something useful in this matter, you need to go further.”

Harun nodded. “Yes, I see that now. Thank you.”

“By the way, why do you want to do anything in the matter? Did you know the murdered man?”

“No. He was only one of the people on whose back I lived, who grew the corn I ate every day. I wish I could say I did it out of moral obligation, but I don’t. You are the second person to ask me this question, and I will have to give you the same answer as I did before: Ask me again in a week.”

“I shall”, Bertram said, earnestly. “And now… Since I have taken care of you this far, it would not be fair of me to send you off alone into the forest. Shall I accompany you to the field of the bondsman Lukas? Assuming that is where you were heading. As I said, I know my way around these parts.”

“Thanks”, Harun said, meaning it. “That was indeed where I was heading.”

They determined to set out immediately. Though it was the middle of the night and he had just eaten, both things after which Harun normally would have liked nothing better than to sleep, he felt wide awake. There was a feeling in and around the forest that kept you from feeling tired, even inside the hut. A feeling of watchfulness and tenseness. Yet what did this feeling relate to: things past, or maybe things yet to come?

The recluse opened the door of the hut.

“I shall extinguish the lamp,” he said. “The moon has come out again and will light our path. A bright flame might rather give us away than help us see things, and I take it that being seen would not be desirable.”

With a small smile, Harun shook his head. “No. It is best that the peasants should not know of our presence, especially mine.”

Bertram took the scribe by the hand. Harun noticed how rough and calloused the fingers of the man were, so unlike his tone of voice. The rough hand tugged at his, and they started through the forest. Harun could see no path, just the faint outlines of trees in the moonlight. His companion however had no problems keeping his bearings, for soon the moonllight intensified, the spaces between the trees widened.

“Are we getting nearer?” Harun asked.

“No. In fact, since you have asked me to bring you to Lukas’ field, I am leading you into the opposite direction to the den of some fearsome wild beast that swallows scribes whole every day.”

“My question was simply intended to restart our conversation.”

“Well it worked, didn’t it? I gave you an answer.”

“What I really meant to ask is, whether, since we are drawing closer towards this field, you know of anything unusual about it, anything that may have made it worth killing for.”

“Why does it have to be the field he was killed for? Why not something else?” Harun could hear the frown in Bertram's voice.

“Because, as I see it, he had nothing much else to offer. A man who bows into bondage to secure a piece of land for himself and his wife to live from is not likely to have any great riches to bequeath. Besides, the only person to gain from such riches would be his wife, and she cannot have killed him, I know that.”

“But that goes for his fields as well. They too go to her.”

“As if I did not know. What do you think I have been wracking my brains about the last few days? But the fields are still the only earthly motive for murder I could see. Is there anything special about them?”

“Not that I know of. These new fields are rather more fertile than most of the older ones closer to the village of course and produce more crops, but that is so with all fields newly cleared by fire. The ash makes the ground fertile, you see.”

“So none of his neighbors could have begrudged him this advantage?”

“No. Of course I cannot be certain. I don't know that much about Lukas and his neighbors. All I have learned about the matter, I have heard from the village folk. They visit me from time to time, somebody even bring me gifts. God knows why, perhaps some of them think I am a holy man.”

“And you are not?”

Harun had spoken the question lightly, in the same tone most of the conversation had been in. But after a pause, Bertram responded with terrible weight in his cold words: “Not by most people’s standards.” After another pause, he continued, now again in a light tone: “And I myself make no judgments concerning my own person. That would be an act of pride – something hardly befitting a man who wears black.”

Harun had the feeling that there was some reason for the changes in his tone, something the recluse wasn't telling him. Whatever it was, Harun preferred not ask. Hastily, he steered the conversation back into safe waters. “So what did you learn from the villagers who visited you? Was one of the neighbors jealous of Lukas' good lands?”

“For what reason should they be? All of his neighbors were, from what I now, also bondsmen who, just as he, worked on newly cleared, fertile lands. It must be a strange man indeed that kills his neighbor because he is jealous of an advantage which he too enjoys.”

Harun nodded, depressed. “If one were to accept such a possibility, one might as well assume that the village cock skewered Lukas as part of one of his regular nightly fencing lessons.”

The recluse laughed. And then, the trees opened up before the two of them and they stepped out on a field, strewn with the last vestiges of the harvest. The ragged, cold earth sucked up the sound of laughter, which immediately ceased. This was no place to laugh. This, the field of a dead man.

In the distance they could make out a lonely cottage. Faint light filtered through the cracks in the wooden shutters of the single window.

“So this is it,” Harun said.

Bertram nodded silently.

The scribe looked around him. He did not know what exactly he had expected to find. He did know however, that he had definitely expected to find something. And so he had: damp earth, and a few sad autumn leaves here and there, trodden into the dirt. Nothing more.

“What now?” Bertram wanted to know.

“I am not sure myself, actually.”

“You thought there would be something here to help you understand this mystery?”

“Yes, I did. But… who on earth would murder anybody for this? Who on earth would murder anybody for damp earth?”

He bent down, careful not to soil his scribe robes, and picked up a few crumbs of dirt. “That is all there is here. Earth, and what comes out of it.” He flicked a broken stalk away that had stuck to his wet fingers. “Nobody would kill for that, surely?”

“Popes, kings and princes kill for it every day,” Bertram reminded him. “But for rather larger pieces, I grant you. This seems a pitiful proposition.”

Suddenly, there was a noise from up ahead. The two nightly visitors ducked back into the shadow of the forest and gazed searchingly into the direction from which the noise had come: over the field, towards the hut.

The door had opened and for a moment they could hear the faint sobs of a women. Then the firm voice of a man: “No, you can’t! Stay here. I will do all that I…” Harun thought he recognized the voice of Lukas’ brother Karl. The door closed, and there was silence again.

“A pitiful proposition indeed”, Harun repeated, his voice hoarse. “But only for some, I believe. A life for others.”

Bertram lowered his head.

“Such it always is in this world.”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence. Then:

“You want to find the man who did this to her,” Bertram said.

“Yes.”

“She will never thank you for it. In fact, would she know you to be on her property, she would call the friends of her dead husband for help, and they would chase you off the land with pitchforks.”

“Yes, presumably.”

“But you want to do it still.”

“Yes.”

Bertram looked at the tall, stooped figure beside him. He took a deep breath. “Harun the scribe – It would be an honor for me to call someone like you my friend.”

He extended his hand.

Harun looked at it, nonplussed. He had never before been asked for his friendship before, as if it was something he could bestow and withdraw like a decoration. Well, to be honest, the way most people around here thought of him, that was not very surprising. But still, this was strange.

Harun had always thought friendship was something that grew over time, something which nothing in heaven or an earth could give or take away. But that was only his way of thinking, after all. There were others. There always were. And as he looked into Bertram’s piercing eyes, he knew that this was a special case. A special moment.

He took the hand.

“Likewise,” he said.

*~*~*~*~*

Strictly speaking, Harun thought, as he made his way back to the castle in the small hours of the morning – time at which he normally would not even have dreamed of waking, let alone walking – he had not achieved anything at all this night. But did one have to speak strictly always?

For some reason he could not quite pin down at the moment, he was not inclined to consider his trip to Lukas' field a failure. He felt as if he had achieved a momentous thing. No… not one, but two. But what good was that? What had he discovered? Curse the vanity of the Greek philosophers. When they talked about coming to logical conclusions, they never mentioned this mist in front of your mental eye, which could turn even the most intelligent scholar into a dope as thick as forest thicket. Nor did they give any advice on how to get through this mental mist, and yet in all their writings they were so cocky and confident that a logical conclusion could be reached. They should have tried wearing black some times.

Harun had reached the castle gates. He knocked at the small side gate.

“Who’s there?” came an agitated voice from within.

“Me,” Harun said.

“Harun?”

The little door was flung open and Wenzel stared at him.

“God in heaven, where have you been? I told you to come back early!”

The scribe looked over his shoulder at the sun, which was just peaking over the horizon.

“It doesn't get much earlier than this.”

“I meant early in the evening, you incredible clod, as well you know!”

“What are you complaining about? You said to be back during your watch, and here I am, and you are on watch.”

“Only ‘cos you are punctually 12 hours late! Where have you been?”

“Mostly in the forest.”

“Alone? All night?”

“No, yes.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not alone, but all night.”

“And who was there with you?”

“Oh, you know, forests are not that underpopulated. There are squirrels, and woodpeckers and…” Harun had just about reached the end of his private bestiary, “…and squirrels,” he concluded.

“That doesn’t answer my question!”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Harun went passed the guard, still deeply immersed in thought and hardly paying any attention to the conversation.

“Are you at least going to tell me whether you have done what you went for? Have you been at Lukas’ field?”

“Yes.”

“And have you found out anything?”

“Yes.”

Wenzel waited, but Harun just continued to stride across the courtyard, rubbing his fingers together, now not only dirty from ink. Wenzel, forgetting for the moment that he was a guard and that being on guard required staying at one's post, followed him. “And what is it that you have found out?”

“What… oh, I don’t know yet.”

With that, Harun left Wenzel standing in the courtyard and went up the steps of the keep.

Wenzel stopped and gaped after him as Harun entered the castle.

While the scribe slowly climbed up the spiral tower staircase, he thought about his next movements. His first suppositions had been wrong, he had to admit – to himself at least, if not to nobody else. This wild idea that Lukas’ oxgang in some way had to be connected to his murder had proven to be utterly false. Whatever Harun had found out beyond the forest, or what he thought he had found out, it was just an illusive feeling: something at the back of his mind, that would not reveal itself to him. Thus, from a logical and practical point of view, it was of no use to him at all.

It was really very clear what his course was to be now: No more unfounded suppositions, but instead a logical step-by-step elimination of all his suspects. He had a list of suspects, had he not? He had demonstrated, that one of them must be the guilty one, had he not? Even if he had not found a reason for any of them to have done the deed, what did it matter? One of them had to be guilty, regardless of his reason. Reason was unimportant for a man making use of logic. Whatever the motive of one of the 3 free peasants or the smith might have been for killing Lukas, only they could have been at the sight of the murder and have acquired the murder weapon. It was logically proven that one of them was guilty.

Now was the question: Which one? Which one could have come up to the well and slain his secret enemy?

For a long time, Harun lay in his tower bed chamber, thinking. He thought about methods of acquiring further information, but not only about that. Also, he thought about Bertram, the recluse in the forest, about the distant rumblings of approaching war, and about how short this night’s sleep was going to get if he didn’t come to his senses and stopped thinking soon.

Just as his eyes gradually closed and he felt the gentle arms of sleep taking hold of him, it occurred to him that Bertram, after what the two of them had talked about during the night, knew pretty much everything there was to know about who Harun was and what he was doing, but that the recluse himself had skilfully and successfully evaded any questions about his own person.

Curious...

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My last chapter before Christmas, and I already got a Christmas present: A review of my book, and guess what? I got 8 out of 10 points! Yipieh!!

The review can be reached via the external link. Thanks so much for all the support which you, my dear fans and readers, have given me for my first english story so far. I hope you'll keep it up, as I fully intend to continue writing!!

Merry Christmas, or Nowrūz, or Chūnjié, or whatever you're used to celebrating :)

Robert