Duffy looked up. 'You're heading for Vienna?' he asked.
All three faces swivelled toward him, two of them pale and fearful and one thoughtful, appraising. 'That's right, stranger,' Yount said.
'I'd be glad to pay you to carry me,' Duffy said. 'My horse went lame on a... sort of forced march through the Alps, and I can't wait around for him to get straightened out. I wouldn't be much extra weight, and if you run across any bandits I imagine you'd be glad of another sword.'
'For the love of God, master,' Ludvig hissed, 'don't -''Shut up,' Yount snapped. 'Take holy water baths if you have to, or tattoo a cross on your forehead - I choose our personnel.' He turned to Duffy, who was highly puzzled by these reactions. 'Certainly, stranger. You can ride along. I'll charge you ten ducats, to be doubly refunded in the event that you help us repel any bandits.'
Ludvig began weeping, and Yount clouted him in the side of the head. 'Shut up, clerk.'
Birds were calling to each other through the trees as Yount's modest caravan got under way. Four barrel-chested horses were harnessed to the lead wagon, on the buckboard- of which sat Yount and the clerk, while Yount's two sons, having shed their shirts, were stretched out on the bundled hides to get a tan. There was another wagon being towed behind, and Duffy was sprawled across its bench, half napping in the midmorning sun. Little boys lined the road as the wagons rolled by, raising a cheer to see the departure of the cargo that had for two days given their town the pungent smell of a tannery. The Irishman tipped his hat. So long, horse, he thought. I believe you're better off without me.
In the morning sunshine, as he watched the birds hopping about on the new-budding branches and listened to the creaking and rattling of the carts, it was easy for him to regard the disturbing meetings in the mountains and Trieste as flukes, chance glimpses of survivals from the ancient world. Those things do still exist, he told himself, in the darker corners and cubbyholes of the world, and a traveller ought not to be upset at seeing them once in a while.
They camped that night by the banks of the Lab. Ludvig was careful to keep a distance between Duffy and himself, and always to sit on the opposite side of the fire; to make his feelings perfectly clear, every half hour or so he fled behind one of the parked wagons and could be heard praying loudly. Yount's sons, though, got along well with the Irishman, and he showed them how to play tunes on a piece of grass held between the thumbs. They grinned delightedly when he finished up his performance with a spirited rendering of a bit from Blaylock's Wilde Manne, but Ludvig, hiding behind a wagon again, howled to God to silence the devil-pipes.
'That's enough,' Yount said finally. 'You're scaring the daylights out of poor Ludvig. It's getting late anyway - I think we'd all better turn in.' He banked the fire and checked the horses' tethers while his sons crawled into sleeping bags and Duffy rolled himself up in his old fur cloak.
Clouds were plastered in handfuls over the low sky next morning, and Yount fretted for his hides. 'To hell with breakfast, boys,' he shouted, slapping the horses awake, 'I want us five miles north of the river five minutes from now.' Duffy climbed up onto the buckboard of the trailing wagon, turned up his frayed collar and resumed his interrupted sleep.
It was an oddly out-of-tune bird call that woke him again. I think that was a curlew, he told himself groggily as he sat up on the wagon bench, but I never heard one with such a flat voice. Then the call was answered, from the other side of the road, in the same not-quite-true tone
- and Duffy came fully awake. Those aren't curlews, he thought grimly. They're not even birds.
Trying to make it look casual, he stood up, balanced a moment on the footrest and then leaped across the gap• onto the leading wagon's back rail. He pulled himself over the bar, clambered across the rocking bales of hides -nodding cheerfully to the two young men as he passed -and tapped Yount on the shoulder. 'Keep smiling like I am,' he told him, ignoring the trembling Ludvig, 'but give me a bow if you've got one. There are robbers in these woods.'
'Hell,' grated Yount. 'No, I don't have a bow.'
Duffy bit his lip, thinking. 'You certainly can't outrun them with this rig. I'd say you've got no choice but to give up once they make their entrance.'
'To hell with that. We'll fight them.'
Duffy shrugged. 'Very well. I'll go back to the rear wagon, then, and try to keep them from cutting it loose.' He crawled back across the hides, told the boys to go talk to their father in a minute, and then half-climbed, half-leaped back to his own wagon.
Back up on the driver's bench, he pulled his hatbrim down over his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep. He kept his hands near his hilts, though.
A low tree branch sprang up into the air as the wagons passed under it, and four men leaped catlike to the caravan. Two of them tumbled sprawling onto the bundles in the second wagon, and Duffy was on his feet and facing them in an instant, his sword singing out of the scabbard.
One of them was now brandishing his own sword, and threw a powerful wood-chopping cut at Duffy's skull; the Irishman parried it over his head and riposted immediately with a head-cut of his own. The man hopped back out of distance, but Duffy managed to steer his descending blade so that it nicked the man's sword wrist.
'Hah!' the Irishman barked. 'Robbers, Yount! Keep the horses moving.'
Three men on horseback, he noticed now, were galloping alongside. Good God, Duffy thought, they really do have us. The two bandits in the wagon, swords out and points in line, made a stumbling but combined rush at him. Braced on the bench, though, Duffy had the steadier position - he knocked one blade away with his dagger and, catching it in the dagger's quillons, twisted the sword out of the man's hand and flipped it over the rail. The other man's blade he parried down, hard, so that it stuck in the wood of the bench-back for a second while the Irishman riposted with a poke in the trachea. Clutching his throat, the bandit rolled backward over the side rail. The other man, disarmed and facing Duffy's two blades, vaulted the rail and dropped to the ground voluntarily.
Perhaps ten seconds had passed since the two men had leaped from the tree onto the wagon. Duffy turned to see how the lead wagon was faring. One of Yount's sons was snapping the reins and shouting abuse at the laboring horses. Yount and his other son, both bleeding from minor cuts, were waving axes and holding at bay two of the robbers, who crouched at the rear of the first wagon.
Before the men on horseback could shout a warning, Duffyleaped again across the gap between the wagons, whirling his sword in a great horizontal arc, and a head bounced in the dust of the road a moment later. The other bandit, whom Duffy had only knocked sprawling, scrabbled frantically for his fallen sword, but the Irishman lunged at him with the dagger, burying it to the hilt under the man's jaw.
Two of the three riders were now leaning from their saddles and hacking at the hawser connecting the two wagons. 'God,' Duffy breathed wearily, getting up. He leaned out from the rail and brought the flat of his sword down hard on the skull of one of the galloping horses. The beast screeched, stumbled and fell in a thrashing somersault, pitching its rider headfirst onto the road. The horse behind tripped over the fallen one, and it too went tumbling.
The last rider, finding himself the only remaining representative of the robber gang, fell back, dismayed and uncertain.
'You'd be wise to go home while you still can,' Duffy called to him.
Oh no, he thought, a moment later - he's got reinforcements. Two more riders were coming up fast from behind. Their swords were out and held low, and Duffy didn't relish the prospect of fighting them. They'll be passing that discouraged one in a second, he thought, and when he sees he's got support I'll have three of them to deal with.
Then Duffy blinked in astonishment, for one of the new riders had, in passing, casually leaned out and driven his blade through the back of the slower-riding robber. Why, they're reinforcements for us, the Irishman thought with relief. He grinned and sat back as one of them drew alongside, a blond, curly-haired young man.
'It's good to see you, lads,' Duffy called. 'Though a sooner appearance -' He leaped backward then like a startled cat, for the rider had made a terribly quick cut at his face. The sword point nicked the end of the Irishman's nose and then drove in at his chest; but Duffy had his own sword up by now, and parried the thrust.
'What's going on?' Yount called. 'Who are these bastards?'
'I don't know,' Duffy shouted, trying a feint and thrust at the young rider. The man effortlessly got a bind on Duffy's blade, and his parry and riposte were one movement. Not bad, considering he's fighting from the back of a horse, Duffy thought as he leaped back again and the stranger's sword lightly clipped his doublet.
The wagon rocked violently as the other of the pair leaped from his horse and swung aboard from the far side. Damnation, Duffy thought, whirling around just in time to block a flank cut from this new passenger, these boys are quick.
Yount and his son, hefting their axes, began clambering over the back rail of the first cart.
'Don't get yourselves hurt,' the young man called to them. 'It's him we want.' He pointed at Duffy.
'I told you!' howled old Ludvig, peering above the foremost bench-back. 'He's a devil!'
There was a quick whiz-and-thump then, and the young man cocked his head uncertainly, and a moment later toppled forward, a feathered arrow jutting from his back.
God help us, Duffy thought hysterically, what now?
'Keep the horses moving,' he yelled. 'We've got to get clear of this madhouse.'
There were men - little men - in the shrubbery beside the road. Duffy looked more closely, and saw to his astonishment that they were dwarfs, carrying bows and dressed in little suits of chain mail. The blond rider saw them too, paled, and spurred his horse to flee; before he'd got ten yards, though, a dozen hard-driven arrows had found the gaps between his ribs and he rolled out of the saddle as his horse galloped on.
The wagons rattled along down the road, the fletching-feathered corpse rolled limply to a stop, and the dwarfs slung their bows and knelt with lowered heads as Yount's hide shipment passed by.
The ranks of kneeling dwarfs stretched nearly a quarter of a mile, on both sides of the road. The Irishman slowly wiped his sword and sheathed it, but no one in the wagons spoke until the last dwarf had been five minutes' passed.
'They... rescued you, didn't they? The dwarfs?' Yount's voice was thoughtful.
Duffy shrugged gloomily. 'I don't know. I guess they did.'
'I've carted hides through these woods for years,' Yount said. 'I've seen bandits before. This is the first time I've seen dwarfs.'
'They bowed to him!' Ludvig called fearfully. 'They knelt when he went by! He's the king of the dwarfs!'
'Oh, for God's sake, clerk,' Yount said irritably, 'he's taller than I am.'
Duffy sat down on one of the bales, discouraged by these new developments. I hate times, he thought, when it seems like there's a.. .worldwide brotherhood whose one goal is to kill Brian Duffy. That's the kind of thing which, true or not, it's madness to believe. And even weirder is the brotherhood that seems to be dedicated to
helping me. Why' for instance, did Giacomo Gritti save my life in Venice last week? Why did all the monsters in the Julian Alps get together to guide me through the pass? And now why did these dwarfs - famous for their sullen, secretive ways - turn out in droves and kill my attackers?
'I won't ride with him.' Ludvig was in tears. 'I'm a devout man, and I won't travel with a king of dwarfs and mountain devils.'
Hmm, the Irishman thought uneasily - how did he hear of my Alpine guides?
'Shut up,' barked Yount, his voice harsh with uncertainty. 'We'll be in Vienna tomorrow afternoon, if we hurry. Whatever you are, stranger, I said you could ride with us, and I won't turn you out now, especially after you saved us from those highwaymen.'
'Then turn me out,' Ludvig said. Stop the wagons and let me get my stuff.'
Yount waved at him impatiently. 'Shut up and keep still.'
'I'm not joking,' the clerk said. 'Stop the wagons or I'll jump out while they're moving.'
Duffy stood up. 'Yes, Yount, you'd better put on the brakes. I'll walk from here. I don't want to deprive you of your clerk-he'd die for sure out here alone.
The old hides trader looked doubtful; clearly he'd be happy to be rid of the upsetting Irishman, but didn't want to violate travellers' courtesy. 'You're sure you want to leave us?' he asked. 'I won't force you off, even to save poor idiot Ludvig.'
'I'm sure. I'll do fine out here. If I get in any trouble I'll just whistle up some dwarfs.'
The wagons squeaked and lurched to a halt as Duffy shouldered on his knapsack, bundled up his fur cloak and swung to the ground. Yount's Sons sadly waved farewell
-clearly they'd found him much more interesting a
companion than the pious clerk. Duffy waved, and the wagons strained and heaved into motion again.
The Irishman cursed wearily and sat down under a tree to have a gulp or two of wine, for it had been an exhausting morning. I suppose, he told himself, savoring the lukewarm and now somewhat vinegary chianti, I could somehow have avoided this maroonment; turned on old Ludvig and hissed, If you don't shut up and let me ride along, I'll have my good pal Satan chase you from here to Gibraltar. Ho ho. Duffy cut himself chunks of cheese, salami, onion and bread, and washed it all down with some more of the wine. Then he rubbed a split garlic clove around the cut in his nose, to keep it from mortifying.