The Drawing of the Dark

A tubby old gentleman had begun to recite a long poem about the Emperor Maximilian lost in the Alps, when the front door of the hospice banged open. A moment later a burly man in the heavy boots and coat of a guide strode into the room, impatiently brushing snow out of his moustache.

'A cold night, Olaus?' asked the monk, getting up to pour a cup for the newcomer.

'No,' said Olaus, gratefully taking the liquor. 'The winter is packing up and returning north.' He took a long sip. 'But there are monsters out tonight.'

Duffy looked up, interested. 'Monsters?'

The guide nodded as he sat down by the fire. 'Aye. Griffins, snake men, demons of every sort.'

'Did you see them, Olaus?' the monk asked, giving the other guests a broad wink.

Olaus shook his head gravely. 'No. Damn few men see them and live. But today on Montasch I heard them singing choruses in the mountain, and coming here I crossed in the snow several tracks of unnatural feet. I wonder what it is that's got them roused.'

'Oh, I don't know,' the monk said airily. 'It's probably some monster holiday today. They've opened their casks of Spring beer, I'll bet.'

Olaus, aware that he was being ribbed, lapsed into sulky silence.

That reminds me, Duffy thought - I wonder how the Herzwesten Bock beer is coming. I trust this Gambrinus fellow knows his business, and hasn't let it go bad. Duffy yawned. The brandy, on top of the day's exertion, was making him sleepy. He stood up carefully, so as not to wake the dog.

'I believe I'll turn in, brother,' he said. 'Where would I find a bunk?'

The monk turned to the Irishman with a smile Duffy had seen before on the faces of old nuns attending to wounded soldiers - the easy grin of one who has pledged neutrality, and can afford to be courteous to all sides and factions. 'Through that door,' he said, pointing. 'Breakfast is at dawn.'

A little puzzled, Duffy nodded and walked to the indicated door, wondering briefly, and for no reason at all, whether the monk's incredulity at Olaus' statements might have been feigned. It was a pointless thought, and he threw it away.

There were twenty bunks in the next room, mounted in the walls like bookshelves. Duffy left his boots on the floor and climbed up into a high bunk. A blanket lay on the boards, and he stretched out on it, pulling his cloak over himself and using his knapsack for a pillow. In the next room he could hear the low mutter of the other guests saying a prayer. Got out just in time, he thought with a grin. He rolled over and went to sleep, dreaming of a Viennese girl named Epiphany.

It snowed during the night, and when Duffy went out to the stable next morning to saddle his horse, the air was so cold that his teeth hurt when he inhaled. The horse shook his head and snorted indignantly, unable to believe he was expected to work at this hour.

'Wake up, now,' Duffytold him as he climbed into the saddle. 'The sun's up, and it'll burn off this damned mist before ten o'clock. By noon we'll have forgot what this was like.'

The fog hung on with tenacity, though, as if its wispy fingers were curled resolutely around every rock outcropping. Duffy was into the Predil Pass now, and to his right the precipice edge of the path dropped away as sharp and clean as a knife cut, giving the mist the illusion of a glowing wall to complement the dark stone wall at his left. Once, to test the depth of the invisible abyss, he pulled a stone out of the mountain face and tossed it out past the lip of the path. There was no sound of it striking anything.

At what he estimated was midmorning, the path widened as it curled over the broad shoulder of the Martignac ridge. Travellers' shrines, cairns and 'stone men' marked the way clearly, even in the fog, and Duffy sat back comfortably and began to sing.

'Has aught been heard of the Fulgory

Bird in the isles to the west of Man?

For hither the gilded galleys of men

have sailed since the world began.

With painted sails and mariners' songs

We come with trumpets and brazen gongs

To procure that for which His Majesty longs,

The remarkable Fulgory Bird.'

Dimly through the vapors, Duffy had been seeing for some time a ridge paralleling his own, and now, glancing at it, he saw riding across it the silhouette of a vast horse and rider. 'God preserve us,' Duffy gasped, snatching instinctively at his hilt. That man is twenty feet tall, at least, he thought. Olaus was right.

The dim giant had reached for his own sword, so Duffy whirled his rapier out and brandished it - and the giant did exactly the same. The Irishman relaxed a little,- skeptically. Then he resheathed his sword. So- did the giant. Duffy now stretched out his arms and flapped them slowly, like a ponderous bird, and the shadowy rider simultaneously performed the same action.

Duffy laughed with relief. 'No need to be scared, horse,' he said. 'It's simply our shadow on the mist.' The horse flapped his lips disgustedly.

The milky brightness of the air was too dazzling and disorienting to stare into, and the Irishman kept his eyes on his hands, the path and the markers that jogged past. When he glanced at the shadow rider again, he was astonished to see a whole parade of silhouettes pacing along. He peered uneasily at the gray forms, and then stiffened with real fear.