The Drawing of the Dark

Footfalls crackled somewhere near him, and he breathed a curse. Surrounded, he thought. I may have to climb a tree.

Exploding abruptly out of a bush in a spray of broken twigs and leaves, a little curly-haired man with an absurdly long sword leaped at the Irishman, whirling a quick cut at his head. Not having his own sword out, Duffy leaped up and parried the cut with the heel of his boot, and the

impact flung him two yards away. The little man followed up the attack furiously, but Duffy had scrambled up and drawn his rapier now and was parrying the blows fairly easily, for the little man's two-handed sword was too heavy to be used deceptively.

I'm going to have to riposte soon, Duffy thought, exasperated, or he'll break my blade. 'What is this?' Duffy asked, blocking a hard cut at his chest. 'I've done nothing to you!'

The hunchback - for, the Irishman noticed, that's who it was - stared at him for a moment, choked with rage. 'is that right?' he yelled finally, redoubling his attacks. 'You call all that nothing do you? Watch, while I do nothing to your filthy entrails.'

First demons, Duffy thought unhappily, and now madmen. I guess I've got to kill him.

He shifted his sword to his inside line, inviting a cut at the shoulder. When he goes for it, he calculated, I'll parry outside, feint a direct riposte to his inside line, then duck around his parry and put my point in his neck.

The hunchback cocked his arm for the expected blow, but at that moment four armed men strode up through the tangled brush. 'Kill them both,' growled one of the newcomers, and they advanced with their points extended.

'God, help us,' gasped Duffy, alarmed by this escalation. 'We can finish our fight later,' he barked to the hunchback. 'Deal with these boys now.'

The little man nodded, and they turned on their four attackers. Duffy engaged the swords of two of them, trying to draw one into an advance so he could put a stop-thrust in his face, but the hunchback leaped at his pair, whirling maniacal hammer-strokes at them. The forest resounded like a dozen smithies.

Duffy struck down one of his opponents with a lucky remise that sheared across the man's throat; the other man

tried an attack while Duffywas thus occupied, but the Irishman bounded back out of distance immediately and let the blade swish through the air unobstructed. I'll cripple this one, he thought, and then grab my stuff there and run like a bastard. That crazed hunchback will just have to be satisfied with dismembering the next stranger he meets.

Beating aside a badly aimed thrust, Duffy threw himself forward in a punta sopra mano- but when his leading foot hit the ground the boot heel snapped off and he fell, twisting desperately in mid-air to keep his sword between himself and his attacker. Blows rained down on Duffy for a good ten seconds - while he lay in the leaves, parried desperately and tried to riposte at the man's legs - and then there was a meaty chunk and the man fell on him.

Duffy got his sword point up in time to spit the man under the breastbone, but when he threw the corpse aside and hopped to his feet, he saw a deep, spine-severing cleft dividing the dead man's back.

'I already got him,' explained the hunchback, wiping sweat off his forehead. 'What kind of move was that, anyway? Diving on the ground like that?'

Duffy grinned sourly. 'It would have been a damned good move if you hadn't split my boot heel a few minutes ago.' He looked past the hunchback, and saw the other two men sprawled gorily in the clearing. 'I suppose you still want to kill me?'

The hunchback frowned. 'Uh, no.' He wiped the blade of his two-handed sword and slid it into a scabbard slung over his shoulder. 'I owe you an apology for that. These weasels have been following me for days, and I took you for one of them. I'm sorry about your boot.'

'Don't worry about it. One of these lads doubtless has feet my size, and I see they were all high-class bravos, well-shod.'

'I never could have stood the four of them off alone,'

the hunchback said. 'I'm indebted to you.' He stuck out his right hand. 'I'm Bluto, a Swiss.'

Duffy shook his hand. 'Brian Duffy, an Irishman.'

'You're far from home, Duffy. Where's your horse?'

'Well...' Inquisitive little bugger, he thought. Still, he did save my life - after jeopardizing it in the first place. 'I'm afoot.'

'Just out for a stroll, eh? Well, these gentlemen had horses. They left them tethered in a clearing about a half mile back. When you've chosen a pair of boots, perhaps you'd care to select a horse.'

Duffy laughed and wiped his sword off on the dead man's shirt. 'All right,' he said, 'let's go take a look at them.'

Half an hour later the two men were riding north. Duffy allowed himself a gulp of the wine, which was running low, and offered the wineskin to Bluto.

'No, thank you,' the hunchback said. 'Not right now, or I'll get sick. You're bound for Vienna, I assume?'>A minute or so later he stood up, set his hat firmly on his gray head, and trotted away northward, following the wagon tracks in the dusty road. His relaxed, jogging pace sent the miles pounding away behind beneath his boots; toward midafternoon he permitted himself a rest stop, but within five minutes he was moving again. His breathing by this time was not as easy and synchronized to his pace as it had been when he started, but he forced himself, gasping and sweating, to cover as much ground as possible before nightfall.

The sky had already begun to glow in-.the west when he rounded a curve in the road and saw before him the narrow eastern arm of the Neusiedler Lake, gleaming like tarnished silver under the darkening heavens. An abandoned-looking ferry dock and pulley were tucked into a cove to his left. Time to rest at last, he thought, sitting down right in the road and groping for his wineskin. Nobody could expect me to try to cross the lake at this hour.

A dot of orange light waxed and waned on the north shore. That must be Yount, Duffy thought. I've nearly kept up with him, in spite of being on foot.

The ground was damp, making him think of snakes and ghouls, so he climbed an oak and settled himself in a