A minute or so later he stood up, set his hat firmly on his gray head, and trotted away northward, following the wagon tracks in the dusty road. His relaxed, jogging pace sent the miles pounding away behind beneath his boots; toward midafternoon he permitted himself a rest stop, but within five minutes he was moving again. His breathing by this time was not as easy and synchronized to his pace as it had been when he started, but he forced himself, gasping and sweating, to cover as much ground as possible before nightfall.
The sky had already begun to glow in-.the west when he rounded a curve in the road and saw before him the narrow eastern arm of the Neusiedler Lake, gleaming like tarnished silver under the darkening heavens. An abandoned-looking ferry dock and pulley were tucked into a cove to his left. Time to rest at last, he thought, sitting down right in the road and groping for his wineskin. Nobody could expect me to try to cross the lake at this hour.
A dot of orange light waxed and waned on the north shore. That must be Yount, Duffy thought. I've nearly kept up with him, in spite of being on foot.
The ground was damp, making him think of snakes and ghouls, so he climbed an oak and settled himself in a
natural hammock of branches that curled up around him like the fingers of a cupped hand. He had a supper of more bread, cheese, salami and wine, followed by a suck at the brandy bottle to keep off the chill. Then he hung his knapsack on a limb, wrapped up in the old cloak and heaved about on his perch until he found a comfortable posture.
Weariness and brandy made him sleep soundly in his treetop bed, but some time after midnight he was awakened by hoarse, deep-voiced calls. What the hell, he thought groggily; a gang of men on the road. Then he froze
- for the voices sounded from above, and the speakers, unless Duffy was the victim of some kind of ventriloquism, were moving across the sky.
He couldn't recognize the language in which they called to each other, but it sounded eastern; Egyptian, he thought, or Turkish, or Arabic. Can this be real, he wondered, or is it some madness brought on by the brandy?
With a sound like banners flapping in a stiff wind, the voices whirled away to the north, and Duffy permitted himself a deep sigh of relief when he heard them echoing over the lake.
Never in my life, he thought, trying to relax again, have I been so mobbed by the supernatural as during this last week and a half, since leaving Venice. He could recall two or three odd sights during his childhood - an elderly gentleman he'd seen fishing on the banks of the Liffey, who'd disappeared when the young Duffy had looked away for a moment; two clouds that had uncannily resembled a dragon and a bear fighting above the Wicklow hills; a tiny man that had crouched on a tree branch, winked at him, and then hopped and scuttled away through the foliage - but it was easy, thirty years later, to believe they'd been games or dreams. These recent events, though, were hopelessly real. I wonder what's
brought them all out of their holes, he thought. I wonder what's up.
He had begun to drift off to sleep again when a series of screams sounded faintly from the north; even from a distance Duffycould hear the stark fear in them. Good Lord, he thought, that must be Yount's group. The flying things are over there. He sat up - then shrugged helplessly and lay back down against the branches. What can I do? he thought. It's the middle of the night, the moon is down, and I'm on the other side of the lake. Even if I was still with them I don't think I could do anything against whatever those things are.
In a few minutes the screaming had stopped. The Irishman had another pull at the brandy - and another -and then closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
The next morning Duffy climbed down from his bending, creaking tree while a furious wind from the west flapped his cloak and blew his long hair into his face. When he dropped to the ground, bits of twigs and leaves were whipping through the air like debris dashed before a flood, and the gray clouds twisted in agonized tangles of muscular forms and ragged veils across the sky. Good Jesus, Duffy thought, holding his hat onto his head, I could believe this is the end of the world.
He walked down the road to the lake, leaning into the wind with every step and clutching the collar of his cloak to keep it from whirling away like a furry bat. I wonder, he thought, if I can possibly manipulate the ferry in this weather. I can give it a try, he decided - wondering, at the same time, why he was in such a hurry to get to Vienna. Am I that anxious to see Epiphany? He had for the moment nearly forgotten Yount.
The lake looked like a vast pane of glass across which an invisible army was marching in nailed boots; the wind tossed it into hundreds of individual currents and flecked
it with whitecaps. He glanced down the beach at the ferry platform, dreading the task of hauling the barge back across the lake, and was surprised to see the ferry moored on this side already. I know it wasn't here last night, he thought. Who hauled it back?
He plodded across the littered shore toward the platform, and suddenly noticed the old man standing in the ferry's bow. Although his fluttering hair and beard were as white as bones, he was fully six feet tall, broad shouldered and muscled like a wrestler. In spite of the chilly wind he wore only a loincloth and sandals.
'Two coins to cross,' the old man said, his deep voice effortlessly undercutting the screech of the wind.
Duffy clumped along the platform and stepped carefully into the ferry. 'What kind of coins?' he gasped, fumbling under his cloak. Thank God he's willing to risk a crossing, he thought; I damned well wouldn't, if it were my ferry.
'What do I care?' the ferryman growled. 'Two coins.'
Bless these unworldly backwoods men, Duffy thought, and dropped two sequins into the old man's leathery palm before sitting down on a section of bench somewhat sheltered from the wind by the high gunwale. The old ferrier untied the moorings, then braced his knotted legs below the bulwark and began laboriously pulling in the guide rope, and the flat craft, swinging and bucking in the agitated water like a fish on a leash, began moving away from the dock platform.
Duffystared at the man in amazement, having expected to find, on one shore or the other, oxen turning a wheel. He's doing all the pulling himself, he marvelled. And in a sea like this? His heart will burst in two minutes. 'Let me help you with that,' the Irishman said, getting cautiously to his feet.
'No,' said the ferrier. Stay where you are.' He does
sound tired, Duffy thought as he shrugged and took his seat again, but with a more long-term weariness, in which this effort this morning is no more remarkable than the all-but-worthless coins I gave him.
Duffy glanced ahead across the choppy water, and suddenly remembered the calls and screams he'd heard the night before. I wonder, he thought with something of his boatman's weariness, if those screams across the lake really were Yount's party. I suppose they were. I'd like to think those flying things had nothing to do with me, but I think perhaps old Ludvig was right after all. I was a Jonah to Yount's people.
He looked nervously up at the shredding sky, half fearing to see bat-winged black figures wheeling above. Then it occurred to him that, whatever they had been, they couldn't help being blown away east by this fierce wind. It's as if their presence here itched the earth, he thought, and it's sneezing.
The guide-rope was pulled tight across the water and thrummed like a bass lute string each time the old man clutched it. Duffygripped the rail and held on, still half-expecting the old man to drop dead.
By imperceptible stages, though, the shoreline worked nearer, and eventually the ferry's ragged bow bumped the pilings of the north side dock. Duffy stood up. 'Well, sir,' he said, 'thank you for the extraordinary -'
'Get out of the boat now,' the old man told him.
The Irishman frowned and climbed out. Laconic, these rural types are, he thought.
There was a clearing littered with torn hides and splintered wood and the trampled remains of a campfire, but he could see no bodies. He wasn't sure whether to feel better about that or not.
Chapter Five
Toward midday the wind died down. It had blown away the cloud cover, and the sunlight began to make Duffy sleepy, so he laid his cloak under a tree and stretched out on it, dozing in the dappled evergreen shade.
He was snapped awake an hour later by a sound that was lately becoming uncomfortably familiar to him: the clang of swords. He got up, rolled his cloak, and padded a few yards deeper into the woods. This, at least, he resolved, is a fight I stay out of.
'Get the bastard!' someone was calling. 'Don't you see him?'
'No,' echoed a reply. 'He was down in that thicket a second ago.'
'Well - Oh Jesus-' Three quick clangs followed, and a gasping cry.
There was silence for a few moments, then the second voice spoke up again. 'Bob? Did you get the hunchback or did he get you?'
There was no answer. It's my guess the hunchback got Bob, Duffy thought with a hard grin.
Footfalls crackled somewhere near him, and he breathed a curse. Surrounded, he thought. I may have to climb a tree.
Exploding abruptly out of a bush in a spray of broken twigs and leaves, a little curly-haired man with an absurdly long sword leaped at the Irishman, whirling a quick cut at his head. Not having his own sword out, Duffy leaped up and parried the cut with the heel of his boot, and the
impact flung him two yards away. The little man followed up the attack furiously, but Duffy had scrambled up and drawn his rapier now and was parrying the blows fairly easily, for the little man's two-handed sword was too heavy to be used deceptively.
I'm going to have to riposte soon, Duffy thought, exasperated, or he'll break my blade. 'What is this?' Duffy asked, blocking a hard cut at his chest. 'I've done nothing to you!'
The hunchback - for, the Irishman noticed, that's who it was - stared at him for a moment, choked with rage. 'is that right?' he yelled finally, redoubling his attacks. 'You call all that nothing do you? Watch, while I do nothing to your filthy entrails.'
First demons, Duffy thought unhappily, and now madmen. I guess I've got to kill him.
He shifted his sword to his inside line, inviting a cut at the shoulder. When he goes for it, he calculated, I'll parry outside, feint a direct riposte to his inside line, then duck around his parry and put my point in his neck.
The hunchback cocked his arm for the expected blow, but at that moment four armed men strode up through the tangled brush. 'Kill them both,' growled one of the newcomers, and they advanced with their points extended.
'God, help us,' gasped Duffy, alarmed by this escalation. 'We can finish our fight later,' he barked to the hunchback. 'Deal with these boys now.'
The little man nodded, and they turned on their four attackers. Duffy engaged the swords of two of them, trying to draw one into an advance so he could put a stop-thrust in his face, but the hunchback leaped at his pair, whirling maniacal hammer-strokes at them. The forest resounded like a dozen smithies.
Duffy struck down one of his opponents with a lucky remise that sheared across the man's throat; the other man
tried an attack while Duffywas thus occupied, but the Irishman bounded back out of distance immediately and let the blade swish through the air unobstructed. I'll cripple this one, he thought, and then grab my stuff there and run like a bastard. That crazed hunchback will just have to be satisfied with dismembering the next stranger he meets.
Beating aside a badly aimed thrust, Duffy threw himself forward in a punta sopra mano- but when his leading foot hit the ground the boot heel snapped off and he fell, twisting desperately in mid-air to keep his sword between himself and his attacker. Blows rained down on Duffy for a good ten seconds - while he lay in the leaves, parried desperately and tried to riposte at the man's legs - and then there was a meaty chunk and the man fell on him.
Duffy got his sword point up in time to spit the man under the breastbone, but when he threw the corpse aside and hopped to his feet, he saw a deep, spine-severing cleft dividing the dead man's back.
'I already got him,' explained the hunchback, wiping sweat off his forehead. 'What kind of move was that, anyway? Diving on the ground like that?'
Duffy grinned sourly. 'It would have been a damned good move if you hadn't split my boot heel a few minutes ago.' He looked past the hunchback, and saw the other two men sprawled gorily in the clearing. 'I suppose you still want to kill me?'
The hunchback frowned. 'Uh, no.' He wiped the blade of his two-handed sword and slid it into a scabbard slung over his shoulder. 'I owe you an apology for that. These weasels have been following me for days, and I took you for one of them. I'm sorry about your boot.'
'Don't worry about it. One of these lads doubtless has feet my size, and I see they were all high-class bravos, well-shod.'
'I never could have stood the four of them off alone,'
the hunchback said. 'I'm indebted to you.' He stuck out his right hand. 'I'm Bluto, a Swiss.'
Duffy shook his hand. 'Brian Duffy, an Irishman.'
'You're far from home, Duffy. Where's your horse?'
'Well...' Inquisitive little bugger, he thought. Still, he did save my life - after jeopardizing it in the first place. 'I'm afoot.'
'Just out for a stroll, eh? Well, these gentlemen had horses. They left them tethered in a clearing about a half mile back. When you've chosen a pair of boots, perhaps you'd care to select a horse.'
Duffy laughed and wiped his sword off on the dead man's shirt. 'All right,' he said, 'let's go take a look at them.'
Half an hour later the two men were riding north. Duffy allowed himself a gulp of the wine, which was running low, and offered the wineskin to Bluto.
'No, thank you,' the hunchback said. 'Not right now, or I'll get sick. You're bound for Vienna, I assume?'