The Drawing of the Dark

The wizard frowned defensively, with a furtive glance down at the King? Nothing. These lads didn't have the sorcerous talents to penetrate my magical camouflage

.but I guess they had enough skill in forestcraft to follow someone who did.' He had got his breath back now, and stepped briskly away from the trunk. 'Round up those of our lads who can stand,' he told Duffy, 'and get them to carry the King to the wagon. I'd counsel you to jettison the dead horse, too. I'll see to the wounded.' To the King he added, 'Excuse me, Sire,' then he started down the slope.

Duffy stooped to pick up his dropped sword, and noticed which one it was. 'Hey,' he called after the wizard. 'Why was I using this? I thought.. .he and I .agreed it was outmoded.'

Aurelianus half-turned. 'That was when you and he were kind of talking in unison,' he called. 'I guess when it's him alone, he still prefers it. Good thing I thought to bring it along.' He strode onward a few paces, then stooped to examine one of the wounded northmen.

'Take it easy, lad,' said the Fisher King to Brian, softly. 'I know it's hard. But if it were easy, they'd have got somebody else to do it.'

Duffy stared after Aurelianus and shrugged helplessly. 'Then it must be easy,' he said, 'because it certainly looks like they've got somebody else to do it.'

* * *

Book Three

'And there was a tumult as of great battles out upon the plain that night, and shifting fires no man could explain, and wonders in the sky...'

-from the journal of

Kemal Pasha Zadeh,

official scribe to the Sultan

Suleiman el Kanuni

* * *

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.