The Drawing of the Dark

now, pottering comfortably about in the old Irish cottage in which he'd spent his boyhood, but had after a while found one thing that didn't fit with his memories of the place: a trap door in the flags of the floor, still half-hidden by a rug someone had kicked aside. For some reason the sight of it filled him with fear, but he worked up the nerve to grasp its ring and lift it on its grating hinges. Climbing down into the cellar this revealed, he found himself in an archaically opulent chamber. His attention, though, was drawn to a stone bier on which lay the body of a man; a king, or a god even, to judge by the tragic dignity expressed in every line of the strong, sorrow-creased face. Duffy stood over the body - and then had recoiled all the way into wakefulness, glad of Shrub's knock at the door.

Duffy now shook his head, trying to shake from it the memory of the last few seconds of the dream; for, though the figure on the bier was not alive, it had opened its eyes and stared at him.. .and for a moment Duffy had been looking up at himself, through the dead king's eyes.

* * *

Chapter Seven

Bluto pushed the wind-blown hair out of his face and squinted along the barrel of the iron cannon. 'Give her a shove left,' he said. Two sweating, shirtless men seized the gun's trunnions and, groaning with the effort, pulled the barrel an inch or two to the left. 'Good,' said the hunchback, hopping up, 'I reckon she's in line. Give the ball a last tap with the rammer in case we've joggled it loose.'

Duffy leaned back and watched as one of the burly men snatched up the rammer and shoved it into the muzzle. I'm damned glad it's not me wrestling these guns around in the dawn mist, the Irishman thought.

'What are you shooting at this time, Bluto?' he asked.

The hunchback leaned out over the parapet and pointed. 'Notice that white square, about half a mile away? Can't see it too well in this light, but that's as it should be. It's a wood frame with cloth tacked over it. I had these boys build it and run out there and set it up. We're pretending it's Suleiman's tent.' His assistants grinned enthusiastically.

These poor crazy bastards enjoy this, Duffy realized. It's play to them, not work.

Bluto hobbled to the breech and shook black powder into the vent hole. 'Where's my linstock, damn it?' he yelled. One of the gunnery men stepped forward proudly and handed him the stick with the smoldering cord coiled around it. 'Deus vult,' the hunchback grinned, and, standing well to the side, leaned over and touched the glowing cord-end to the cannon vent.

With a booming crack that numbed Duffy's abused eardrums and echoed from the distant trees, the gun lurched backward, gushing an afterburn of nearly transparent flame. Blinking through the great veil of acrid smoke that now churned over the parapet, Duffy saw a spurt of dust and bracken kicked into the air a dozen feet to the left of 'Suleiman's tent'.

'Ha ha!' crowed Bluto. 'Very respectable, for a first try! You there - yes, you - give the barrel a kick from your side, will you? Then sponge her out and get ready to re-load.' He turned to Duffy. 'I'm finally getting this city's artillery in order. In the first two weeks we were in town, all I did was scrape rust out of the bores. These idiots left the guns uncovered during the rains; didn't even put the tompions in the muzzles. I believe the council looks on these things as some sort of.. .iron demons, able to fend for themselves.'

'Bluto,' the Irishman said quietly, 'you more or less have charge of Vienna's arsenal until the Imperial troops arrive, don't you? Right. Well, listen - have you noticed any thefts of powder?'

The hunchback shrugged. 'I haven't checked the quantities. Why?'

Duffy gave him a succinct version of the previous night's events. 'It blew out two stalls in the stable,' he concluded. 'Killed two horses and scared the hell out of every man and beast within three blocks.'

'Good Lord, a petard,' Bluto said in surprise. 'Hung on the brewery door?'

'That's right. I'm beginning to wonder whether, weird as it sounds, some rival brewery might be trying to put us out of business.'

'But Herzwesten doesn't have any rivals,' Bluto

pointed out. 'The nearest commercial brewery is in Bavaria.'

'That's right,' admitted Duffy. 'Well, I don't know - a rival inn, a resentful monk...' He shrugged.

Bluto shook his head in puzzlement. 'I'll run an inventory of the whole arsenal. Maybe powder isn't the only thing someone's been stealing.'

'She's ready to load, sir,' panted one of the gunnery men.

'Very well, out of the way.' The hunchback picked up the long ladle-pole and dipped it like a shovel into the powder cask. He hefted it once or twice. 'That's three pounds,' he judged, and slid it into the bore; when it clicked against the breech he turned it over and pulled the empty ladle out. Then he rammed the wad in, followed by the six-pound ball. 'Now then, gang,' he said with a grin, 'let's see if we can knock Zapolya's hat off. Give me the linstock.'

'I thought you said it was Suleiman,' Duffy said, a little sourly. A year had gone by since the Hungarian governor had defected to the Turks, but Duffy had known the man long ago, and it still galled him to hear Zapolya and Suleiman equated as enemies of the west.

'We figure they're both in there, playing chess,' Bluto explained.

The hunchback touched off the charge, and again the cannon roared and heaved and coughed forth a great gout of smoke to hang over the battlements. A couple of seconds later a tree to the left of the target abruptly collapsed, slapping up another cloud of dust.

'Closer still,' Bluto said, 'You - give her another kick.'

Duffy got to his feet. 'I can't linger here all morning,' he said. 'We broach the bock tomorrow, and I've got things to do in the meantime.

'See you later, then,' Bluto said, preoccupied with the

gun. 'I'll drop by for a mug or two if it's on the house.