The Drawing of the Dark

official scribe to the Sultan

Suleiman el Kanuni

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Chapter Fifteen

The square of early afternoon sunlight had shifted a few inches up the plaster wall, and Brian Duffy straightened up a bit more to keep his face clear of it; if he didn't get up and move soon, he knew, he'd have to give up staying above it and slide down almost prostrate on the bench in an attempt to get his face under the dazzling beam instead.

'Do you want one or not?' the young man who stood in the doorway repeated, a little impatiently. He jiggled a tiny gray manlike figure on the end of a string.

Duffy blinked owlishly at him and had a long sip of lukewarm red wine to postpone the effort of answering. The boy is far too elegantly dressed, the Irishman decided. Those baggy blue sleeves, ornamentally slashed to admit puffs of red satin, are good enough for swaggering in front of the ladies, but when it's fighting to be done give me old leather and thick-backed gloves. 'Are you going to go out dressed that way?' he asked. 'If so, I hope that's your second-best suit.' Then, remembering the lad's question, he answered,, 'No, thank you. I don't need any mandrake roots. I'll just duck and weave and take my chances.'

The young landsknecht shook his head dubiously and replaced the ugly little root in his pouch. 'It's your life,' he conceded. 'Say, when were you born?'

Several joking answers occurred to the Irishman, but he was too sleepy to voice them. 'Huh?' he contented himself with saying.

'What month were you born in?'

'Uh. . .March.'

'Hm.' The young man pulled a chart out of his pouch and scrutinized it. 'Well, you'd be better off if you were a Libra or a Cancer, but being a Pisces you needn't fear being shot in the feet.' He grinned, bowed and walked outside.

'Do you mean it won't happen, or I just shouldn't fear it?' Duffy called after him, but got no reply.

Though he was sitting up as straight as he could, the sun was now lancing at his eyes from the top of the window. Not wanting to be found slouched on his back messily finishing a cup of wine just before combat, he swung his legs down off the bench and stood up and stretched, thus accidentally spilling the rest of the wine onto the dirt floor. Well, he thought, taking it philosophically, it was about time to get ready anyway. He sat down on one of the. bunks and pulled on his boots, then stood and picked up his sword, hauberk, doublet and helmet, and walked outside into the shifty and heatless mid-October sunlight.

A series of warehouses in the southeast corner of the city had been hurriedly converted to barracks, and several companies of landsknechten, including Eilif's, were quartered in them. Duffy emerged from the southernmost of them and pushed his way into the mob of mercenary soldiers assembled in a square of the Schwarzenbergstrasse. He found the table at which Eilif's armsmaster was dispensing harquebuses, and took a long-barrelled matchlock and pouches of powder and balls.

'Duff,' the old soldier said, 'I've got a wheellock back here I was saving. You want to take it?'

'You take it,' Duffy told him with a grin. 'Last time I tried to fire one of them I got my hair caught in the wheel. Had to retreat waving a sword and dagger, with the damned gun attached to my head.'

'I won't call you a liar,' the man said amiably, handing Duffy several lengths of matchcord.

The Irishman carried all his stuff away to one side of the square and laid it on a curb while he put on his hauberk and leather doublet. Sporadic gunfire popped and spattered from the top of the wall, and he looked up for a moment. That'll be the sharpshooters, he thought, warming up with some long-distance covering fire from rifled guns. He listened, but could hear no answering gunfire from outside the walls. He sat down and began the task of loading his matchlock. Vienna had been totally invested by the Turks now for twelve days.

The young man he'd seen in the barracks, whose mandrake root dangled now from his belt, ambled up and watched Duffy's efforts critically. 'Your matchcord is supposed to go through that little metal tube on top of the barrel,' he pointed out helpfully. 'So the sparks from your first shot don't light it in the middle somewhere.'

Duffy sat back and grinned up at him, squinting against the sun. 'Well now, that's the first time ever heard that,' he said gently. 'Here I thought that tube was for grating cheese with, after the battle.'

A white-bearded landsknecht who was crouched several feet away looked up from whetting his sword and barked a laugh. 'If you young calves could grasp the idea of aiming,' he said, 'you'd see how that match-guide can be used as a sight. Hell, Duffy's an old soldier; he wouldn't let his cord get near the flashpan.'

'I've been known to do some beastly things, but never that,' the Irishman agreed.

Guns cracked again along the wall and the young mercenary jumped, immediately hopping through a few practice sword-thrusts to disguise the involuntary motion. An eddy in the breeze brought down to the street the curried smell of gunpowder. Straightening and stretching after his extempore exercises, he asked Duffy offhandedly, 'Do you think this is it?'

'Hm? What's what?'

'This sortie this afternoon. You think this'll be the one that breaks the siege one way or the other?'

The older man laughed scornfully, but Duffy just smiled and shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'They know they can't hold that little rise. It's mainly a gesture. So we make another gesture: we run out there and push them back. Men will be killed, but this won't be a decisive encounter.'

'Well, when will there be a decisive encounter?' In his efforts to keep his expression unconcerned, the lad had let some hysteria enshrill his voice. 'If they back off, why don't we just keep pushing?' he went on, in a deeper voice. 'Or for matter of that, if we fall back, why don't they?'

Duffy carefully laid his loaded gun on the pavement. 'Why, because we're old veterans, on both sides. The landsknechten know the wages of hot-headed charges -and those Turks out there are Janissaries, the best fighting men in the East. They're not just fierce, like the akinji or the iayalars; they're smart as well.'

'Ah.' The young man looked then across the street at the shot-scarred faces of the nearer buildings. 'They're... Christians, aren't they?' he asked. 'The Janissaries?'