The Drawing of the Dark

'He doesn't approve of them?'

'Huh.' Duffy, though leery of the innovative firearms

himself, shook his head wonderingly. 'Well, I hope we don't run up against someone who does approve of them.'

'Why don't you see if you can coax those beery Aesir into the wagon,' the sorcerer suggested, 'while I get the lads to harness up a couple of horses.'

Twenty minutes later the crowded wagon creaked and bounced out of the city through the west gate; once outside, they were soon deserted by the gang of prancing, cheering boys that had accumulated around the vehicle during the ride from the Zimmermann Inn. Guided by Aurelianus, the horses picked their way through the unpaved lanes between the livestock pens and were soon trotting briskly' through open meadows of new spring grass, along the only wide track that led over the near hills and up into the dense Wienerwald, the Vienna woods.

When they had traversed perhaps a mile, the wizard slowed the horses and yanked the reins so that they'd step over the shallow ditch on the right side of the path. Then the wagon lurched and rocked up a patchily shadowed slope, between occasional twisted trees. Twice they got stuck, and both times Duffy and the northmen climbed out, wrestled a wheel free of some entanglement, and laboriously gave the vehicle a gasping, back-wrenching shove to give the horses a little slack in which to get moving. Finally they had crested the first hill and were precariously teetering down the far side; Aurelianus was leaning ineffectually on the back brake, and the wagon would have rolled over the horses and tumbled into the narrow ravine if Duffy hadn't flipped the old wizard over backward into the packed northmen and borne down on the brake himself.

'You just call directions, huh?' the Irishman shouted, angry at having been scared.

Aurelianus stood up in the wagon bed and leaned his

elbows on the back of the driver's bench. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I never brought a wagon here before. That's right, kind of slant it cross the slope. And then take it between those two big oaks.'

'Right.' The northmen bunched up on the uphill side of the wagon and leaned parallel to the slope, while Duffy did some tricky work with the brake and reins.

The wagon's shadow, which had been stretched out in front of it across the damp, grassy earth, abruptly swung around like the boom of a jibing sailboat; in a moment it lay almost directly behind them, and the morning sun was in Duffy's eyes. He gasped and locked the brake. 'What the hell happened?' he exclaimed. 'Did we hit slippery mud? I didn't feel anything.'

'Keep going,' Aurelianus said. 'You're still on course.

Pay no attention to any whirling effects - they're just a

few local direction-confusion and disorientation spells I

laid down a number of years ago.

'Oh.' It occurred to Duffy that this would not only make it difficult to get into the area, but difficult also to get out, especially in a panicky haste. He glanced furtively to both sides, looking for skeletons of any wayfarers who might have blundered into this wall-less labyrinth. He didn't see any bones, but, glancing up, he did see figures circling high in the air - figures he thought were hawks until he looked more steadily and saw the manlike forms between the vast wings. He quickly snapped his gaze back to the landscape ahead, uneasy to think that it was he who had called those things out of their deep retreat.

He sneaked a glance over his shoulder to see how Bugge and his men were taking these outre phenomena, and was surprised to see no dismay or fear in their faces. Several were watching the fliers, but all seemed tensely cheerful. Bugge grinned at the Irishman and muttered something in Norse, so Duffy grinned back and raised a clenched fist before returning his attention to the horses. Well, why should I be worried, he thought; nobody else is.

They proceeded for another hour into the wooded hills, and three more times the sun did its trick of shifting about in the sky. The whole adventure had by this time taken on a dreamlike unreality to the Irishman, and if the wagon had rolled up across the side of the sky, swerving between clouds, he would not have thought it incongruous.

Finally the wagon bumped down through a narrow, greenery-roofed tunnel, in which gravity for one awful moment seemed to be pulling upward, and emerged into a small glade.

For a moment Duffy just sat, clutching the edges of the seat and trying to get his bearings - that last bit of sorcery had convinced him that the wagon was going into a forward tumble - then he opened his eyes and saw the cabin.

It was a low, thatch-roofed, stone-walled, one-storey affair, and could credibly have been five years old or five hundred. He glanced questioningly at Aurelianus, who nodded. 'This is the place,' the wizard said.

Duffy bounded over the side onto the grass. 'Let's get him and get the hell out of these woods, then. Bugge! Come in, drag your lads out of there! There's work to be done, old kings to be carried about!'

'This is entirely the wrong spirit,' Aurelianus protested, climbing down beside the Irishman. 'Now listen, there's a question you must ask and one you mustn't, so -'

'Damn it, I'll ask any questions that occur to me, and none that don't. Come on now, lead the way. You're the one that knows him, after all.' He strode toward the cabin with the sorcerer scurrying alongside and the stolid northmen bringing up the rear.

'All this is difficult enough,' Aurelianus complained, 'without you acting like a damned -'What did you think you were going to get, when you.. .placed your order for me? A tame, all-powerful

giant who'd cheerfully jump at your every order? If so, you made a mistake - you didn't want King Arthur, you wanted a village idiot.'

The sorcerer threw up his hands. 'Maybe you've got a point and maybe you haven't,' he said. 'Quiet now, here we are.' He rapped respectfully on the thick oaken door, and a faint voice answered within. Frowning a warning at Duffy, Aurelianus opened the door and led the way inside.

Duffy followed, and was surprised; he had expected to see the same depressing gloom that cloaked Aurelianus' chamber at the inn, and the same sort of ominous and ill-smelling objects scattered carelessly about. Instead he saw a pleasant, sunlit room, aired by two open windows; the only jarring note was several handfuls of mud caked on the foot of the bed. The Irishman didn't look at the man in the bed, but turned to his northmen and, with expressive grunts, began pantomiming the act of lifting the occupant and carrying him outside. It looked as if he were imitating a careless furniture mover.

'Brian,' came a weak but humorous voice from behind him. 'Surely it's Brian Duffy?'

Duffy turned and looked at the King, who was sitting up in the bed. He was clean-shaven, though his white hair hung down around his shoulders, and his face was seamed with what the Irishman thought must have been centuries of experience. Aside from the bandage around his hips, he didn't appear to be in bad shape.