The Drawing of the Dark

Bugge dropped to his knees, and the rest of the Vikings on board followed his example. 'Sigmund!' he gasped. 'My men and I greet you and await your orders.'

Duffy didn't understand Norse, but he understood that these Vikings had somehow mistaken him for someone -and who could that be? He simply stood there and looked stem, hoping some solution would present itself.

There was a commotion on the bridge above; several people shouted quit shoving! and then Aurelianus leaned out over the rail. 'What is this?' he called anxiously. 'I missed the beginning.'

Duffy waved at the kneeling northmen. 'They seem to think I'm somebody else.'

Bugge glanced timidly up, saw Aurelianus' white-fringed, eye-patched face peering down at him, and simply pitched forward onto the deck. 'Odin!' he howled. The other mariners also dropped flat, and the ones in the water, peeking now through the oarlocks, whimpered in the clutch of real awe.

'This is very odd,' Aurelianus observed. 'Did they say who they believe you are?'

'Uh. . .Sigmund,' said the Irishman. 'Unless that means who the hell are you.'

'Ah!' said Aurelianus after a moment, nodding respectfully. 'We're dealing with the real thing here, beyond a doubt!'

'What the devil do you mean? Get me out of here. I'm a laughingstock - covered with filth and carrying a broken sword.'

'Hang onto the sword. I'll explain later.' With more agility than Duffy would have expected, the eternally black-clad old man vaulted the bridge rail and landed in a relaxed crouch on the ship's central catwalk. Then, to the Irishman's further surprise, Aurelianus strode confidently to the prostrate captain, touched him on the shoulder and began to speak to him in Norse.

Duffy simply stood by, feeling like a clown, as the Viking captain and his crew got reverently to their feet. Bugge answered several questions Aurelianus put to him, and then crossed to where the Irishman stood and knelt before him.

'Touch his shoulder with your sword,' Aurelianus told him. 'Do it!'

Duffy did it, with as much dignity as he could muster.

Very good,' Aurelianus said with a nod. 'Ho!' he called to the interested gawkers on the shore. 'Bring some sturdy planks here, quick! Captain Bugge and his men are ready to disembark.'

It was a bizarre parade that Epiphany saw marching up the street, heralded by the wild barking of dogs. She stood in the Zimmermann's doorway and gaped at these twenty-one armed Vikings being led by what appeared to be a revivified drowned man. Then, paling, she recognized him.

'Oh, Brian!' she wailed. 'They've killed you again!' Immediately Aurelianus was behind her shoulder, having somehow got into the building unnoticed. 'Shut up,' he hissed. 'He's in fine health, just fell in the canal. He can tell you all about it later. Right now get back to work.'

Duffy led his gray warriors around back to the stables, and said hello to Werner, who was fastidiously picking up some lettuce leaves that had fallen out of a garbage bin.

'What's this?' the innkeeper demanded. 'Who are these boys?'

Duffy answered as he'd been told to. 'They're twenty-one Danish mercenaries Aurelianus has hired to help defend the city against the Turks.'

'What Turks? I don't see any Turks - just a crowd of old vagabonds who'll drink up my beer. And what did somebody dip you in? This is too foolish. Get them out of here.'

The Irishman shook his head. 'Aurelianus is in the dining room,' he said. 'You'd better go talk to him.'

Werner wavered. 'You won't do anything out here while I'm gone...?'

'Well.. .he told me to turn the horses out of the stables so these gentlemen can sleep there. He said it's a mild Spring, and the horses ought to be able to survive the night air, and during any cold spells they could spend the night in the kitchen.'

'Horses in my kitchen? Vikings in my stable? You're out of your mind, Duffy. I'll -

'Go talk to Aurelianus,' the Irishman told him again.

The Vikings regarded the ranting innkeeper with great curiosity, and one of them asked him something in Norse.

'Silence from you, lout!' Werner barked. 'Very well, I'll go ask him about this. I'll tell him to get rid of the whole gang of you - including you, Duffy! My opinion carries weight with him, or perhaps you didn't know!'

'Good!' Duffy grinned. 'Go acquaint him with it.' And he gave Werner a hearty slap on the back that propelled him half the distance to the kitchen door. Actually, though, the Irishman thought as he turned to the stable, Werner is the only one that makes sense anymore. Why in hell should we take in these decrepit Danes? They're sure to be always either rowdy-drunk or morose; and either way we'll get no work out of them.

'Now then, lads!' the Irishman called, clapping his hands to get their attention. 'We movee horsies out of stable into yard, eh?'

The northmen all grinned and nodded, and even helped out once they saw what he was doing. 'Hey, Shrub!' Duffy shouted when all the horses stood looking puzzled on the cobbles. 'Bring us some beer!'

The boy peered around the kitchen door jamb. 'Are those friendly Vikings?' he queried.

'The friendliest,' Duffy assured him. 'Get the beer.'

'My men are not to be served alcoholic beverages,' came a solemn voice from behind him. 'The Irishman turned, and sighed unhappily to see Lothario Mother-tongue frowning regally at him.

'Oh, they're your men, are they, Lothario?'

'Indeed. It's been several lifetimes since we last met, but I recognize the souls behind their eyes. Bedivere!' he cried, attempting to embrace Bugge. 'Ow, damn it,' he added, for Bugge had elbowed him in the stomach. 'Ah, I see. Your true memories are still veiled. That will doubtless be remedied when Ambrosius arrives.' He turned to the Irishman now. 'You may even be somebody yourself, Duffy.'

'That'd be nice.'

'It carries responsibilities, though. Heavy ones. When you're a martyr, as I am, you must count your life a trifle.'

'I'm sure you're quite correct there,' Duffy told him. 'But surely there's a dragon or something that needs killing somewhere? I don't want to detain you.'

Mothertongue frowned at Duffy's tone. 'There are matters awaiting my decisions,' he admitted. 'But you're not to give these men alcohol; they're clean-living Christians.. .underneath it all.'

'Of course they are.'

A cask of beer was carried out a minute or so after Mothertongue's exit, and Duffy filled twenty-two mugs. 'Drink up, now, you clean-living Christians,' he told the northmen, unnecessarily.

Chapter Nine

By late afternoon the northmen were snoring in the hay, exhausted by their journey and made drowsy by the three kegs of beer they'd emptied. Duffy, nearly asleep himself, sat at his customary table in the dining room and watched the serving women ply brooms, mops and damp cloths about the walls and floor.

Presently listless footsteps dragged up to the front door and Bluto slouched in through the vestibule. He saw Duffy and started laughing. 'Poseidon! You've taken a bath, I perceive, but you still smell like the canal.'

The Irishman smiled sourly. 'Go ahead and laugh,' he said. 'Those northmen think I'm God or somebody.' He waved in grudging invitation toward the other chair at the table. 'How was your day?'

'Oh, not good.' Bluto sat down heavily. 'Beer here, someone! A kid stuck his head in one of my best culverins and threw up.

'That'll surprise the Turks,' Duffy observed.

'No doubt. Listen, Duff, do you really think it's likely Suleiman will be coming here? It's awful far north, in Turkish terms.'

Duffy shrugged. 'Unless Suleiman dies - and is replaced by a pacifist Sultan, which is nearly a contradiction in terms - I'd say certainly, the Turks will try to take Vienna. After all, why. should they stop now? They've been moving steadily up the Danube: Belgrade in 'twenty-one, Mohacs, Buda and Pest in 'twenty-six . . .and it's not

as if Suleiman will be meeting a terribly-organized front. Charles is too busy fighting the French king, Francis, to send us any troops, and Ferdinand alone won't be able to do much. Pope Clement has sent the customary good wishes, and little else. And then we've got good old Martin Luther wandering around saying idiot things like "to fight against the Turks is to resist the Lord, who visits our sins with such rods." Two years ago I'd have said Zapolya was our firmest hope against them, and now of course he's signed up as Suleiman's lackey. Actually, the Holy Roman Empire, the whole West, has never been so ripe for overthrow.'

Bluto shook his head worriedly. 'Right, then, so they come. Do you think we can turn them back?'

'I don't know. You're the gunnery man. But I think if we do rout them it'll be mainly because natural circumstances have weakened them - the weather, overstretched supply lines, things like that. They'll be far from home, after all.'

'Yes.' The hunchback's beer was delivered, and he sipped it moodily. 'Duff, as my closest friend, will

'Hell,' the Irishman interrupted, 'you've only known me a month.'

'I'm aware of that, of course,' Bluto went on stiffly, making Duffy wish he hadn't spoken. 'As my closest friend, I'm asking you to do a favor for me.'

'Well, of course,' said Duffy, embarrassed as he always was by any manifestation of sentiment.

'If I should happen to be killed.., will you see to it that my body is cremated?'

'Cremated? Very well,' Duffy said slowly. 'The priests wouldn't like it, but I guess there'd be no reason for them to hear about it. You might outlive me, of course. Why do you want to be cremated?'

Bluto looked uncomfortable. 'I guess if you accept the charge you deserve the explanation. Uh. . .my father was a hunchback, like myself. The whole line may have been, for all I know. He died when I was two years old. A cousin told me the following story, late one night; he was drunk, but swore it was true, that he'd been there.'

'For God's sake,' said Duffy. 'Been where?'

'To my father's wake. Be quiet and listen. My father committed suicide, and the local priest said everybody's ancestors would be dishonored if my father was to be buried in consecrated soil. It was just as well - I don't think the old man would have wanted it anyway. So a bunch of his friends carted his body to an old pagan burial ground a few miles outside of town.' He had another pull at his beer and continued. 'There was a little house there, with a table, so they dug a grave right out front, broke out the liquor and laid the corpse out on the table. But he was a hunchback, as I've said, and he wouldn't lie flat. It wouldn't do to celebrate the wake with him face down, either - bad luck or something - so they found a rope somewhere, ran it over Dad's chest, and tied it under the table so tightly that he was actually pressed flat. So, now that the guest of honor was properly reclining, they hit the liquor. By nightfall a lot of other people had shown up; they were all crying and singing, and one of them was embracing the corpse.. .and he noticed the bowstring-taut rope.

'Uh-oh.'

'Right. Nobody was watching him, so he sneaked out his knife and sawed through the rope. My father's corpse, with all that spring-tension suddenly released, catapulted right out the window. It scared the devil out of the mourners until the knife-wielder explained what he'd done. They went outside to bring the body back in, and saw that it had landed just a few feet to one side of the grave they'd dug. So they dragged him back inside, tied him down again, moved the table a little, made a few bets, and cut him loose again. Boing. Out he went. On the fourth shot he landed in the grave, and they filled it in and went home.'

'Good holy Christ!' Duffy exclaimed. 'I think your cousin was lying to you.'

'Maybe. But I want to be burned.'

'Look, just because something like that happened to your father -,

'Burned, Duff.'

'Oh, very well. I'll see to it, if I survive you.' They shook hands on it.

Looking over the Irishman's shoulder, Bluto remarked in a more casual tone, 'Hm! The mandarino is giving one of us the fish-eye.'

Duffy shifted around in his chair, and found himself once again meeting the cold stare of Antoku Ten-no. 'You're right,' he said, repressing a shudder as he turned back to Bluto. 'An unpleasant customer, beyond doubt.'

'Speaking of your customers,' said the hunchback, 'at what hour will you actually broach the bock tomorrow?'

'Can't get your mind off that, can you? Oh, tomorrow evening about five, I guess. I'll see you then, I assume.'

'Me and everybody else in Vienna.'

In the lamplit dimness of the kitchen hail several hours later Duffy strode up and down on the creaking boards, and hefted a sword with a dissatisfied air. 'Well,' he told Eilif, who sat on a barrel nearby, 'I'll be grateful for the loan of it until I can get a sword made for me, but I wouldn't want to stay with this one.'

The Swiss mercenary scratched his gray-shot beard. 'Why not?'

'Look,' said the Irishman, now rocking the rapier back and forth on his right palm, 'the balance is wrong. All the weight's in the blade. I'd need a ten pound pommel, and then it'd be too heavy to feint with.'

'What do you want to feint for? Hit 'em hard straight off, and keep hitting 'em hard.'

'I feel safer with the option. Also, look at that guard -it's just a loop of steel. Do you think a man couldn't get his point in under that, and clip off all my fingers with one poke?'