The Drawing of the Dark

Taking a deep breath, he plodded unsteadily back down the Via Dolores.

Two hours later he was stepping out of a steaming tub and rubbing his head vigorously with a towel. 'How's my breakfast coming?' he called. When there was no answer he padded to the door and opened it. 'How's my breakfast coming?' he bawled down the hail.

'It's on the table waiting for you, sir.'

'Good. I'll be there in a minute.' Duffy took his newly dried woolen trousers from a chair by the fireplace and pulled them on. He'd got them in Britain many years ago; and though they now consisted more of patches than of British wool, and the Italians laughed at the garment and called him an ourang outan, he'd become accustomed to wearing them. And in a late winter Alpine crossing I'll be glad I've got them, he nodded to himself. He flapped into his twice-holed leather doublet, jerked on his boots and tramped out to breakfast.

The innkeeper had laid out a bowl of some kind of mush with eggs beaten into it, black bread with cheese, and a mug of hot ale; 'Looks great,' Duffy said, dropping into a chair and setting to.

Four other guests sat nibbling toast at the other end of the table, and peered curiously at the burly, gray-haired Irishman. One of them, a thin man in a baggy velvet hat and silk tights, cleared his throat.

'We hear you are crossing the Julian Alps, sir,' he said.

Duffy frowned, as he was wont to do when strangers expressed interest in his plans. 'That's right,' he growled.

'It's awfully early in the season,' the man observed.

Duffy shrugged. 'Too early for some, perhaps.'

The innkeeper leaned in from the kitchen and nodded to Duffy. The boy says he's got all the rust out of your mail shirt,' he said.

'Tell him to shake it in the sand a hundred more times just for luck,' said Duffy.

'Aren't you afraid of the Turks?' spoke up a woman, apparently Baggy-hat's wife.

'No, lady. The Turks couldn't be this far north this early in the year.' And I wish I could say the same about bandits, lie thought. Duffy busied himself with his food,

and the other guests, though whispering among themselves; asked him no more questions.

They're right about one thing, he admitted to himself; it is early. But hell, I'll be prepared, the weather's good, and the Predil Pass is certain to be clear. It'll be an easy crossing - not like the last one, coming south in September and October of 1526, half-starved and with my head bandaged up like a turban. He grinned reminiscently into his ale. That's probably how I-made it alive through the Turk-infested wastes of Hungary - Suleiman's boys, if they saw me, must have seen that bandage and figured I was one of their own.

The innkeeper leaned in again. 'The boy says if he gives it a hundred more shakes it'll come apart.'

Duffy nodded wearily. 'He's probably right. Okay, have him beat the sand out of it, gently, and oil it.' He stood up, nodded civilly to his fellow guests, and walked to his room.

His rapier lay on the bed and he picked it up, sliding his hand into the swept-hilt guard. The worn leather grip had become contoured to his fingers, and drawing the blade from the scabbard was like pulling his arm out of a coat sleeve. He had buffed the old sword and oiled it, and the blade gleamed shiny black as he sighted along it and then flexed it a bit to get rid of an annoying recurrent curve. He whished it through the air once or twice. Take that, Turkish infidel.

A knock sounded at the door. 'Your hauberk, sir.'

'Ah. Thank you.' Duffy took the dispirited-looking garment and stared at it judicially. Why, he thought, it doesn't look that bad. Some of the iron links had broken away here and there and been replaced with knotted wire, and the sleeves were uneven and ragged at the wrists, but on the whole it was still a valuable piece of armor.

A little wooden box lay on a chair, and Duffy opened it and looked at the collection of threads, dust, lint, feathers and shredded wood. He poked his finger in it -good and dry, he noted approvingly. Under it all was a small, round piece of glass, which he made sure was not broken. He closed the box and slipped it into the inside pocket of his doublet.

Time to go, he told himself. He took off the doublet, put on two rust-stained cotton undershirts and pulled the hauberk over them, ignoring the rattle of a couple of links falling to the floor. He shouldered on his doublet, belted on his rapier and dagger, and, picking up his fur cloak and hat, left the room.

'Landlord! Here.' He dropped several coins into the innkeeper's palm. 'By the way, where can I buy a horse?'

'A horse?'

'That's what I said. A horse. Equus. You know.'

'I guess I could sell you one.'

A hardy beast? Able to carry me over the Alps?'

'Certainly, if you treat him right.'

'He'd better make it. Or I'll come back here and do something awful.'