The Drawing of the Dark

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?'

'Well, they were,' Duffy said. 'The Turks conscript them from Christian families inside the Ottoman Empire, but they take them before the age of seven. Then they bring them up as the most fanatical Moslems and highest-favored soldiers of the Sultan. They've been baptized, yes, but you couldn't call them Christians any longer.'

The lad shuddered. 'It's like the old stories of draugs or changelings. To take our own people away, and change them, and then send them back to destroy the place they can no longer even recognize as their fatherland.'

'True,' agreed Duffy. 'The men we'll be shooting at this afternoon could well be the sons of men who fought beside the knights at Belgrade.'

'As men further west will be shooting at our turbanned sons if we don't turn them back,' the young man said. 'But we shouldn't have any trouble holding out, should we? I mean even if the Imperial reinforcements don't come?'

'it's a race,' Duffy said, 'to see which gives out first:

our walls or their supplies. At night you can already hear their miners digging away at the foundations underground.'

'Defeatist talk! snapped the white-bearded mercenary, hopping nimbly to his feet and whirling his newly sharpened sword in a whistling circle over his head. 'It takes a besieging force a hell of a lot longer to undermine a city's walls than to shatter them down with big guns. You'll notice they've got nothing but light cannon out there -good for arcing over the walls to break windows and knock in a few roofs, but useless for battering a way inside. Fix your mind on what a lucky thing it's been that the heavy rains these past months forced the Turks to leave all their heavy artillery bemired on the muddy road behind them!'

He strode away, still brandishing the blade, and the somewhat cheered young man wandered off a few moments later.

Duffy remained sitting where he was, frowning and suddenly wishing he'd had more wine that morning; for the old landsknecht's words had reminded him of the last time he'd spoken to Aurelianus, just a day or so before the Irishman had left the Zimmermann Inn to live in the barracks.

It had been a bright morning in mid-May five months earlier, and the old sorcerer had approached him in the Zimmermann dining room, smiling as he set down beside Duffy's beer a small wooden chest that rattled as if it were full of pebbles.

'Suleiman and his entire army left Constantinople yesterday,' he said. 'Let's you and me go for a walk out by the east end of the Donau Canal.'

Duffy sipped his beer. 'Very well,' he said, for it was a pleasant day and he hadn't been out of the city in weeks, 'but I don't think we'll be able to see them - much less hit them with your collection of slingstones.'

'Not hit them with them, no,' Aurelianus agreed cheerily. 'Come on, now, finish your beer while I go tell Marko to saddle us a couple of horses.'

Duffy was happy to comply, for Epiphany was due back before long; and she'd shown a tendency, lately, to burst into tears every time he spoke to her. The most recent example had occurred in the dining room during dinner.

Shuddering at the uncomfortable recollection, he drained the beer and followed Aurelianus outside. He helped Marko saddle the second horse, and mounted quickly. 'After you,' he said to the sorcerer with as sweeping a bow as is possible on horseback.

They rode out of the north gate, and then let the horses choose their own lazy pace southeast across fields of new grass starred with peonies. After about two miles Aurelianus bore left, toward the willow-banked southern arm of the canal, and soon they were drawing to a halt in the waving green shade.

'What do you intend to do with that box of rocks?' asked Duffy finally; he hadn't inquired during the ride, not wanting to let Aurelianus know how curious he was.

'Make rain magic. They're meteoric stones - bits of falling stars,' replied the sorcerer, dismounting and scrambling down to the water's edge.

'Rain magic, hey?' Duffy peered up into the cloudless