The Drawing of the Dark

'Me and everybody else in Vienna.'

In the lamplit dimness of the kitchen hail several hours later Duffy strode up and down on the creaking boards, and hefted a sword with a dissatisfied air. 'Well,' he told Eilif, who sat on a barrel nearby, 'I'll be grateful for the loan of it until I can get a sword made for me, but I wouldn't want to stay with this one.'

The Swiss mercenary scratched his gray-shot beard. 'Why not?'

'Look,' said the Irishman, now rocking the rapier back and forth on his right palm, 'the balance is wrong. All the weight's in the blade. I'd need a ten pound pommel, and then it'd be too heavy to feint with.'

'What do you want to feint for? Hit 'em hard straight off, and keep hitting 'em hard.'

'I feel safer with the option. Also, look at that guard -it's just a loop of steel. Do you think a man couldn't get his point in under that, and clip off all my fingers with one poke?'

'God's hooks, Brian, why do you worry so much about the point? It's only effeminate Spaniards and Italians that use it - mainly because they don't have the strength or courage for a good chop.' He swung an imaginary sword in a mighty arc. 'Hah! Parry that, you Estebans and Julios!'

Duffy grinned. 'For your sake, Eilif, I hope you never run into Esteban or Julio. He'll have you looking like St Sebastian after they pulled out all the arrows.'

'Is that so? I believe you spent too much time in Venice, Duff, that's all.'

'No doubt. Well in any case, thank you. With this I can certainly deal with such swordsmen as are in Vienna. Uh, except, possibly, for a few of the landsknechten,' he added, seeing Eilif's quick frown.

'Possibly a few,' the Swiss agreed judiciously. 'It sounds like the dining room's filling up,' he observed, cocking a thumb at the double door. 'Hadn't you better be getting in there?'

'No. I'm ditching it tonight,' the Irishman told him. 'Aurelianus suggested I give the innkeeper a respite from my abrasive personality for a bit - every time the man speaks to me he gets so angry he has to go unwind at that poet Kretchmer's house, where he's apparently something of a lapdog. Spent last night there after I allegedly tried to blow up the stables.' Duffy sheathed the new

sword and strapped it to his belt. 'Drink up my share, though, will you?'

'Rely on me.'

Duffy left the building through the kitchen, thrusting his hands deeply into the pockets of his cloak as the chilly wind found him. Patchy clouds hurried across the face of the just-past-full moon, and the gothic and medieval rooftops showed up dimly frosted against the sky's deep black. Feeling like a goblin of shadows, Duffy made his way silently past several oases of warm light and music, on a course that would lead him to the wide Rotenturmstrasse and, after a left turn, to the north gate of the city. Aurelianus had paid some of the local lads to keep a watchman's vigil on the Viking ship, and he had suggested that tonight Duffy earn his keep by checking up on them.

The west wind was sluicing down the street like water down a channel, and to stop his cloak from flapping around his ankles the Irishman turned left into an alley that would take him to the north gate by way of St Ruprecht's Church.

He was aware of comforting domestic smells now, seeping out from under doors and around window shutters: hot bread, and cabbage, and wood burning in fireplaces. It was on just such a night as this, he reflected, about fifteen years ago, that I first met Epiphany Vogel. She was about twenty-five, a slim - well, skinny, to be precise - dark-haired girl who somehow managed, as some people can think in a foreign language, actually to think in whimsy and endearing nonsense; forever depressed or elated over incomprehensible trifles, and supporting her statements with misquoted snatches of poetry and Scripture.

I was sitting, Duffy recalled, for a portrait by her father, who was then still a respected painter. It was supposed to be a picture of John the Baptist or somebody, and he had

accosted me in a tavern, telling me I possessed exactly the visage he required. The painting, which come to think of it was called St Michael the Archangel, had taken several weeks to finish, and by the end of that time I was hopelessly in love with his daughter.

And here the year 1529 finds us: Vogel is a mad, blind old drunkard, Epiphany is a gray drudge with nearly all the spice pounded out of her, and I'm a scarred old tomcat with a poor attitude and no prospects, and all of us sitting dumbly in the path of the vigorous Turkish onslaught. The Irishman laughed and did a few capering jig steps: for it seemed to him that, though that was unarguably how it would look to an outsider, and even to himself, it still wasn't quite the whole story.

He was crossing a small square that ringed a dormant fountain when a flapping from above made him glance up, and his quiet thoughts scattered like startled sparrows -for two black, man-shaped creatures were spiralling down toward him out of the sky. The moonlight gleamed on their billowing wings, curved scabbards and - a puzzling note

- their high-soled clog shoes.

Horrified, Duffy reflexively snatched at his sword, but his darting left hand never reached the hilt.

He was abruptly seized, not externally but from within, as if a hitherto-unsuspected fellow-driver had shoved him away and taken the reins. In a helpless panic he watched his own left hand draw his dagger instead, and then deeply plough its razor edge across his right palm, so that blood was spilling out even before the blade was clear.

Hold off, devils, he thought hysterically. Give me two minutes and Ill evidently chop myself to bits, and save you the trouble. With all the strength of his mind he struggled to regain control of his body, but it seemed that the more he tried to resist his present state, the more complete it became.

His slashed right hand drew the sword now, and held it down, so that the point scraped on the flagstones; blood trickled through his fingers and ran under the looped guard onto the blade. His left hand hefted the shell-hilted dagger

- as the tall creatures folded their wings and touched down, their stilted shoes knocking on the flags - and extended it in a cautious en guarde.

Seen at this distance of only a dozen feet, the things did not really look very human. Their eyes were far too big, and their foreheads sloped back parallel with their long, many-fronded ears; their shoulders were broad but hunched, and a fixed, wolflike grin curled under their muzzles. Even as Duffy gathered these first impressions one of them raised to its lips a tiny pipe and began to play a shrill, wild melody.

Duffy growled a curse in a language he didn't understand and, painfully dragging his sword behind him on the pavement, made a long hop toward the piper and slashed at its head with the dagger.

The thing leaped back out of distance, blinking and confused. Its companion chittered in obvious disappointment and pointed at the Irishman's sword, down the channel of which his blood had already run all the way to the tip - then the creature drew a long scimitar and, poised tense as an insect, advanced on Duffy while the piper stepped back and resumed its eerie playing.