The Drawing of the Dark

After a moment Duffy grinned and tossed the cresset clattering away. 'That's right. On the field of Villalar in 'twenty-one, when we kicked the stuffings out of the Communeros. And a four-pound ball shattered off a rock as we charged, and sprayed four or five of us with metal and stone.

'Damn right! But did that stop us?'

Duffy scratched his chin. 'Seems to me it did.'

'No! Slowed us down a trifle, perhaps.'

The Irishman proffered his hand as the other mercenaries relaxed and turned back to their beer. 'The name's Eilif, isn't it?'

'It is. Sit down, lad, tell me what troop you're with. Sorry I took you for a steward.'

'You weren't far from the mark, really,' Duffy admitted, dragging up a bench and straddling it. 'Ah, bless your heart, Anna,' he added as she arrived with mugs and a pitcher and the bundle for Epiphany's father. 'Actually I'm not with any troop. I'm the bouncer at this inn.

Eilif snorted as he poured foaming beer into two mugs. 'Christ, Duff, that's little better than being the man that sweeps off the doorstep in the morning. No, it won't do. Won't do! But fortunately you are in the right place at the right time.'

'Oh?' Duffy had been having his doubts.

'Well, certainly. I ask you: is Suleiman planning to come up the Danube straight toward where we're sitting, and bring along every mad-dog Turk from Constantinople? He is indeed! And will there be battles, forced marches, panics, exodi, sackings of towns? Unless I'm much mistaken! And who best reaps from such grim sowings?'

The Irishman grinned reminiscently. 'The mercenaries. The landsknechten.'

'Correct! Not the knights, locked up in their hundred pounds of plate armor oven, as noisy and unwieldy as a tinker's cart, and not the bishops and kings, who have a stake in the land and can't scamper off to a better position; and God knows it isn't the citizens, with their homes getting burned, their daughters raped and their very ribs sticking out from starvation. No, lad, it's us - the professionals, who fight for the highest bidder and know the situation firsthand and can look out for ourselves with no one's help.'

'Well, yes,' Duffy acknowledged. 'But I can remember times the landsknechten caught hell along with everyone else.'

'Oh yes. It's to be expected any time, and you always take your chances. But give me a war over peace any day. Things are clear in a war, people fall in line and don't argue or talk back. Women do what's expected of them without you having to go through all the preliminary miming they usually expect. Money becomes less important than -horseshoe nails, and everything is free. I say thank God for Luther, and King Francis, and Karlstadt, and Suleiman, and trouble-makers everywhere. Hell, when the big boys keep tossing the whole chessboard to the ground after every couple of moves, even a pawn can keep from being cornered if he's clever.'

A slow smile deepened the lines of Duffy's cheeks as he savored the memories Eilif's words woke in him: visions of mad, sweaty charges under smoke-streaked skies, of looking out over shattered battlements at the patterns of soldiers' campfires that provided the only pinpoints of light in the night of raped cities, of wild, torchlit revels in overthrown halls, and of refilling his cup from a spouting, axed brandy cask.

'Yes, Duff,' Eilif went on, 'you'll have to get in on it all. Now the Imperial troops are expected any day, but you're too dire an old wolf to march rank-and-file with that lot of sanctimonious youngsters.' The Irishman grinned at Eilif's typical mercenary's contempt for regular soldiers. 'Fortunately there are a dozen independent companies of landsknechten in town that would take you on this very minute, with the credentials you've piled up over the years; even one or two you've served with, probably. After all, lad, it's what you know best, and it's a seller's market right now.'

Before Duffy could reply, the street door swung open and a man in a long green robe swept into the room, the almond eyes in his high-cheekboned golden face darting about to scan the others present.

'What the hell is that?' demanded Eilif in an outraged tone of voice.

'Our mandarino,' Duffy told him. 'No morning here is complete without a visit from him.'

The Oriental looked anxiously across the room at Anna. 'Is there yet any word of Aurelianus?' he called.

The silent black man in the corner looked up, his eyes alight.

'No,' replied Anna patiently. 'But he is, as I've said, expected daily.'

'I think I know what it is, captain,' piped up one of Eilif's companions. 'I believe it's a snake waiting for the old wizard to smoke him.'

Amid the general hilarity that followed this, the robed man glanced scornfully at their table. 'The livestock certainly are noisy in Vienna.'

'What? Oh, livestock, is it?' roared the Swiss who'd spoken, suddenly enraged. He stood up so violently that the bench fell over behind him, spilling two of his companions onto the oak floorboards. 'Get out of here right now, monkey, or I'll make cattle feed out of you.'

The Oriental frowned, then his narrow lips curled up at the corners. 'Why, I think I'll stay.'

After a moment's pause Eilif threw two coins down on the table. 'Two Venetian ducats on our boy Bobo.'

'Covered,' said Duffy, producing two coins. The rest of the landsknechten began shouting and making bets of their own, and the Irishman kept track of the money.

Bobo kicked a few benches aside and cautiously circled the slender Oriental, who just revolved on a heel and watched impassively. Finally the Swiss leaped forward, lashing out at the other man's head with a heavy fist - but the robed man simply crouched under the rush and then instantly bounced up again with a whirl of arms that sent Bobo somersaulting through five feet of air into, and finally through, one of the leadpaned front windows. The abrupt percussive crash died away into the clink and rattle of individual pieces of glass on the cobblestones outside, and after a few moments Duffy could hear Bobo's gasping

groans wafting in with the cold breeze that now swept through the hole.