The Drawing of the Dark

The Irishman looked around and spotted Eilif, sitting with a couple of other landsknecht captains at a table by the wall. Several men stepped out of his way and he crossed to the table and sat down. Bits of bread and sausage-ends on the table top told Duffy that the captains had been there since dinner.

'Brian,' said Eilif, 'meet Jean Vertot and Karl Stein, captains of two of the Free Companies.'

Duffy nodded at the two men. Stein was tall and rangy, with an old scar curling vertically through the network of wrinkles around his left eye and down his cheek; Duffy had met him fifteen years ago, during the fighting on the Rhine. Vertot was a burly giant whose full beard was still pure black, despite at least two decades of being captain of one of the most savage bands of landsknechten - or lasquenets, as they were known in his native Normandy - in all of Europe.

'What are you drinking, Duffy?' asked Stein in a gravelly voice. Then before Duffy could answer Stein had reached behind him and snared one of the men from his own company. 'Ebers,' he said, 'bring us over the cask of that bock beer.'

'The cask, sir?' repeated Ebers doubtfully. 'Isn't it bolted down? How about -Damn you, if you were this slow to obey me in battle

we'd all have been wiped out years ago. You've got your orders - go!'

Duffy had opened his mouth to voice his preference for wine, but now shut it. I guess I can't turn down the beer, he thought helplessly, now that poor Ebers is off risking his life to bring it to us. He shrugged inwardly and turned to Stein with a smile. 'Bock beer? In October? Where does Fenn get that?'

'It's Herzwesten,' Stein said. 'The owner of the Zimmermann Inn - what's his name, Eilif? He hired your company.'

'Aurelianus,' Eilif answered.

'That's right. Aurelianus evidently saved a lot of the spring production for just such an emergency as this -'The broad wave accompanying the statement took in, Duffy gathered, the Turkish ranks massed outside the city, - 'and now he's distributing all of it among the troops. It's been twelve days now, and there must be ten thousand soldiers of one sort or other in the city; I'm amazed there's still any left.'

'Maybe it's like the loaves and the fishes,' Duffy suggested.

'I like this fellow Aurelianus' miracle better,' commented Vertot.

'Anyway, Duff,' said Eilif, who hadn't followed that last exchange, 'I called you over here because poor old Bobo was killed out there today. Tomorrow morning all the landsknecht captains and their lieutenants are meeting at the Zimmermann Inn with von Salm and some highly placed boys to ask for more money - our feeling is that we've got them over a barrel, you see - and we want to be well-represented. You, therefore, are hereby promoted to the post of lieutenant.'

'Me?' Duffy felt vaguely frightened by the sudden conjunction of drinking the Herzwesten bock and visiting the Zimmermann Inn. For the first time in five months he felt his sense of independence begin to waver. Maybe none of this, he thought, from Bobo's death to Ebers' beer-fetching mission, was accidental. 'But good God, Eilif, I'm your most recently acquired man! A dozen of your old wolves deserve the post more than I do, and they'll probably mutiny if I'm put over them.' There was shouting from the other end of the room, and the sound of splintering wood.

'To hell with that,' said Eilif carelessly. 'They've tried to mutiny before, and with a lot more cause than that. I have a talent for putting down mutinies. Besides, you are the man for the job - few of my lads have had the years of experience you have, and you're lots smarter than they are.'

'And for you to refuse,' Vertot pointed out with a smile, 'would almost Constitute a mutiny right there.'

'Duffy knows that,' snapped Eilif.

'Of course,' acknowledged the Irishman. 'And I'm not going to refuse.' He looked away and saw Ebers,

a cask under one arm, elbowing angry drinkers out of his way as he struggled back toward the table.

'The beer arrives,' Stein pronounced, getting to his feet. I He drew his sword with a ringing rasp of steel and I confronted Ebers' pursuers. 'What he has done was by my

order!' he shouted. 'Back, you dogs, unless you want to leave here carrying your livers in your hands.'

The gang of irate landsknechten fell back, grumbling about the privileges of rank. Ebers set the cask on the table and saluted. 'Mission accomplished, sir.'

'Well done. Draw yourself a cup and then go away.

'That's settled, then,' said Eilif, who had opened the tap and was filling several cups from the steady brown stream. 'You'll accompany me to the Zimmermann in the morning.' He turned the tap off and set one of the filled mugs in front of the Irishman, then commenced wiping up the puddle of spilled beer with a crust of bread.

'Right.' Duffy took a deep breath and drained half the mug at one draught. Damn, he thought. The stuff is good. Eilif, chewing with relish on the soggy bread, seemed to be of the same opinion.

Fenn stumped up to the table, pivoting expertly on his wooden leg. 'What's the riot here?' he inquired, grinning wolfishly. '1 run a quiet, family-type place.'

'We know you do, Fenn, and that's why we brought your excellent beer over here for safekeeping,' Duffy told him, 'away from those damn drunkards.' By way of punctuation he drank off what remained in his cup and refilled it.

'Am I to understand you are buying the whole cask?'

'That's right,' confirmed Stein. 'In celebration of Duffy's promotion to lieutenant.'

'Hah!' barked Fenn, pounding his peg leg on the floor in what was evidently a substitute for slapping his knee. 'Duffy? The human wineskin? A wise move! That way you're sure to have Dionysus and Silenus and Bacchus watching over you.' The Irishman looked up suspiciously at the last name, but Fenn was just laughing good-naturedly. 'This calls for a song!' the host shouted.