The Drawing of the Dark

“No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colors of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.”

—William Wordsworth

Chapter One

ALL NIGHT the hot wind had swept up the Adriatic, and from the crowded docks down by the arsenale to the Isola di San Chiara at the western mouth of the Grand Canal, the old city creaked on its pilings like a vast, weary ship; and clouds as ragged as tatters of sailcloth scudded across the face of the full moon, tangling with the silhouettes of a hundred fantastic spires and domes.

In the narrow Rio de San Lorenzo, though, the smoky oil lamp at the bow of the gondola cast more reflections in the water than the moon did, and Brian Duffy reached over the gunwale to stir the black water with his fingers and multiply the points of yellow light. He shifted uneasily on the seat, embarrassed, for he was travelling at someone else’s expense.

“Pull in to the fondamenta,” he growled finally. “I’ll walk to my boat from here.”

The gondolier obediently dug his long pole into the canal bottom, and the tiny craft heeled, paused, and then surged up to the embankment, its prow grating on a submerged step. “Thank you.” Duffy ducked under the awning of the felze and took a long step to a dry stair while the boatman held the gondola steady.

Up on the sidewalk the Irishman turned. “Marozzo paid you to take me all the way to the Riva degli Schiavoni. Bring him back the change.”

The gondolier shrugged. “Perhaps.” He pushed away from the stair, turned his craft gracefully about, and began poling his way back up the glittering watercourse, softly calling, “Stalí!” to draw any possible fares. Duffy stared after him for a moment, then turned on his heel and strode south along the embankment calle toward the Ponte dei Greci, the bridge of the Greeks.

He was reeling just a little because of the quantities of valpolicella he’d consumed that evening, and a sleepy footpad huddled under the bridge roused when he heard the Irishman’s uneven tread. The thief eyed the approaching figure critically, noting the long, worn cloak, evidence of frequent outdoor sleeping; the knee-high boots, down at the heels, and twenty years out of fashion; and the rapier and dagger which looked to be the man’s only valuable possessions. Edging silently back into the shadows, he let Duffy go by unaccosted.

The Irishman hadn’t even been aware of the thief’s scrutiny; he was staring moodily ahead at the tall bulk of the church of San Zaccaria, its gothic design undisguised by the Renaissance adornments that had recently been added to it, and he was wondering just how much he would miss this city when he left. “Only a matter of time,” Marozzo had said over dinner. “Venice is more than half a Turkish possession right now, what with that grovelling treaty they signed eight years ago. Mark me now, Brian—before our hair is completely white, you and I will be teaching the uses of the scimitar instead of the honest straight sword, and our students will be wearing turbans.” Duffy had replied that he’d shave his head and run naked with the jungle pygmies before he’d teach a Turk even how to blow his nose, and the conversation had moved on to other matters—but Marozzo had been right. The days of Venice’s power were fifty years gone.

Duffy kicked a stray pebble away into the darkness and heard it plop into the canal after bouncing twice along the pavement. Time to move on, he told himself morosely. Venice has done its recuperative job, and these days I have to look closely to see the scars I got at Mohács two and a half years ago. And God knows I’ve already done my share of Turk-killing—let this city bow to the Crescent if it wants to, while I go somewhere else. I may even take ship back to Ireland.

I wonder, he thought, if anyone back in Dingle would remember Brian Duffy, the bright young lad who was sent off to Dublin to study for Holy Orders. They all hoped I’d eventually take the Archbishopric of Connaught, as so many of my forefathers did.

Duffy chuckled ruefully. There I disappointed them.

As he clumped past the San Zaccaria convent he heard muted giggles and whispering from a recessed doorway. Some pretty nun, he imagined, entertaining one of the young moneghini that are always loitering around the grounds. That’s what comes of pushing your unwilling daughters into a nunnery to save the expense of a dowry—they wind up a good deal wilder than if you’d simply let them hang around the house.

I wonder, he thought with a grin, what sort of priest I would have made. Picture yourself pale and soft-voiced, Duffy my lad, rustling hither and yon in a cassock that smells of incense. Ho ho. I never even came near it. Why, he reflected, within a week of my arrival at the seminary I’d begun to be plagued by the odd occurrences that led, before long, to my dismissal—blasphemous footnotes, in a handwriting I certainly didn’t recognize, were discovered on nearly every page of my breviary; oh yes, and once, during a twilight stroll with an elderly priest, seven young oak trees, one after another, twisted themselves to the ground as I passed; and of course worst of all, there was the time I threw a fit in church during the midnight Easter mass, shouting, they later told me, for the need-fires to be lit on the hilltops and the old king to be brought forth and killed.

Duffy shook his head, recalling that there had even been talk of fetching in an exorcist. He had scribbled a quick, vague letter to his family and fled to England. And you’ve fled quite a number of places in the years since, he told himself. Maybe it’s time you fled back to where you started. It sounds nicely symmetrical, at any rate.

The narrow calle came to an end at the Riva degli Schiavoni, the street that ran along the edge of the wide San Marco Canal, and Duffy now stood on the crumbled brick lip, several feet above the lapping water, and looked uncertainly up and down the quiet shallows. What in the name of the devil, he thought irritably, scratching the gray stubble on his chin. Have I been robbed, or am I lost?

After a moment three well-dressed young men emerged from an arched doorway to his right. He turned on his heel when he heard their steps, and then relaxed when he saw that they weren’t a gang of canal-side murderers. These are cultured lads, clearly, he reflected, with their oiled hair and their fancy-hilted swords, and one of them wrinkling his nose at the salty, stagnant smell of the nearby Greci canal.

“Good evening to you, gentlemen,” Duffy said in his barbarously accented Italian. “Have you seen, by any chance, a boat I think I moored here earlier in the evening?”

The tallest of the young men stepped forward and bowed slightly. “Indeed, sir, we have seen this boat. We have taken the liberty, if you please, of sinking it.”

Duffy raised his thick eyebrows, and then stepped to the canal edge and peered down into the dark water, where, sure enough, the moonlight dimly gleamed on the gunwales of a holed and rock-filled boat.

“You will want to know why we have done this.”

“Yes,” Duffy agreed, his gloved hand resting now on the pommel of his sword.

“We are the sons of Ludovico Gritti.”

Duffy shook his head. “So? Who’s he, the local ferrier?”

The young man pursed his lips impatiently. “Ludovico Gritti,” he snapped. “The son of the Doge. The wealthiest merchant in Constantinople. To whom you did refer, this evening, as ‘the bastard pimp of Suleiman.’”

“Ah!” said Duffy, nodding a little ruefully. “Now I see what quarter the wind’s in. Well, look, boys, I was drinking, and kind of condemning anyone I could think of. I’ve got nothing against your father. You’ve sunk my boat now, so let’s call it a night. There’s no—”

The tallest Gritti drew his sword, followed a moment later by his brothers. “It’s a question of honor,” he explained.

Duffy breathed an impatient curse as he drew his rapier with his left hand and his shell-hilted dagger with his right, and crouched on guard with the weapons held crossed in front of him. I’ll probably be arrested for this, he thought; engaging in a duello alla mazza with the grandsons of the Doge. Of all the damned nonsense.

The tallest Gritti made a run at the burly Irishman, his jewelled rapier drawn back for a cut and his dagger held at the hip for parrying. Duffy easily ducked the wide swing and, blocking the dagger-thrust with the quillons of his rapier, stepped aside and gave the young man a forceful boot in his satin-clothed backside that lifted him from the pavement and pitched him with an echoing splash into the canal.

Whirling around to face his other two assailants, Duffy knocked aside a sword-point that was rushing at his face, while another struck him in the belly and flexed against his shirt of chain mail.

Duffy punched one of the young men in the face with his rapier pommel and then hopped toward the other with a quick feint-and-slash of his dagger that slit the lad’s cheek from nose to ear.

The Gritti in the canal was splashing about, cursing furiously and trying to find a ladder or a set of steps. Of the two on the pavement, one lay unconscious on the cobblestones, bleeding from a broken nose; the other stood pressing a bloody hand to his cut face.

“Northern barbarian,” this one said, almost sadly, “you should weep with shame, to wear a concealed hauberk.”

“Well for God’s sake,” returned Duffy in exasperation, “in a state where the nobility attack three-on-one, I think I’m a fool to step outside in less than a full suit of plate.”

The young Gritti shook his head unhappily and stepped to the canal edge. “Giacomo,” he said, “stop swearing and give me your hand.” In a moment he had hoisted his brother out of the water.

“My sword and dagger are both at the bottom of the canal,” snarled Giacomo, as water ran from his ruined clothes and puddled around his feet, “and there were more jewels set in their hilts than I can bear to think of.”

Duffy nodded sympathetically. “Those pantaloons have about had it, too, I believe.”

Giacomo didn’t answer this, but helped his younger brother lift the unconscious one. “We will now leave,” he told Duffy.

The Irishman watched as the two of them shuffled awkwardly away, bearing their brother like a piece of broken furniture between them. When they had disappeared among the farther shadows of the calle, Duffy sheathed his weapons, lurched away from the water’s edge and leaned wearily against the nearest wall. It’s good to see the last of them, he thought, but how am I to get back to my room? It’s true that I have, on occasion, swum this quarter mile of chilly brine—once, to impress a girl, even holding a torch clear of the water all the way across!—but I’m tired tonight. I’m not feeling all that well, either. Heavy exertion on top of a full night of eating and drinking always disagrees with me. What a way to end the evening—“by the waters of the San Marco Canal I sat down and puked.” He shut his eyes and breathed deeply.

“Pardon me, sir,” came German words in a man’s voice, “would you happen to speak the tongue of the Hapsburgs?”

Duffy looked up, startled, and saw a thin, white-haired old man leaning from a window two stories above; diaphanous curtains, dimly lit from behind, flapped around his shoulders like pale fire.

“Yes, old timer,” Duffy replied. “More readily than this intricate Italian.”

“Thank God. I can for the moment stop relying on charades. Here.” A white hand flicked, and two seconds later a brass key clinked on the pavement. “Come up.”

Duffy thoughtfully bent down and picked up the key. He flipped it spinning into the air, caught it, and grinned. “All right,” he said.

The stairway was dark and cold, and smelled of mildewed cabbages, but the door at the top, when unlocked and swung open, revealed a scene of shadowy, candle-lit opulence. The gold-stamped spines of leather-and vellum-bound tomes lined a high bookcase along one wall, and ornate tables, shellacked boxes, glittering robes and dim, disturbing paintings filled the rest of the room. The old man who’d hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.

“Sit down, please,” he said, waving at a chair.

“I don’t mind standing,” Duffy told him.

“Whatever you prefer.” He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. “My name is Aurelianus.” Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off. “And what is yours?”

Duffy blinked. “What?”

“I just told you my name—Aurelianus—and asked you for yours.”

“Oh! I’m Brian Duffy.”

Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. It began popping and smoldering, and Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” Duffy gasped, half drawing his dagger.

“I beg your pardon. How rude of me. But it has been a day of... dire gambits, and I need the relaxation.” He sat down and took a long puff at the ember-headed thing, letting aromatic smoke hiss out through his teeth a moment later. “Don’t be alarmed. It’s only a kind of water-snake which, when cured with the proper—ahh—herbs and spices, produces fumes of a most... beneficial sort.”

“Huh!” The Irishman shook his head and slid his dagger back into its sheath. “Have you got any more mundane refreshments to offer a guest?”

“I am remiss. You must excuse me. Extraordinary circumstances... but yes, there is a fair selection of wines in the cabinet by your right hand. Cups behind you.”

Duffy opened the cabinet and chose a bottle of sauternes, and deftly twisted the plug out of it.

“You know your wines,” Aurelianus said, as Duffy poured the golden wine into a cup.

The Irishman shrugged. “You don’t happen to own a boat, do you? I’ve got to get to San Giorgio, and three clowns sank the boat I had.”

“Yes, so I heard. What’s in San Giorgio?”

“My room. My things. It’s where I’m currently living.”

“Ah. No, I don’t have a boat. I have, though, a proposal.”

Duffy regarded Aurelianus skeptically. “Oh? Of what?”

“Of employment.” He smiled. “You are not, I imagine, as wealthy as you have been at times in the past.”

“Well, no,” Duffy admitted, “but these things come in waves. I’ve been rich and poor, and will doubtless be both again. But what did you have in mind?”

Aurelianus took a long puff on the popping, sizzling snake, and held the smoke in his lungs for a good ten seconds before letting it out. “Well—whoosh!—by your accent I’d judge you’ve spent a good deal of time in Austria.”

The Irishman looked annoyed, then shrugged and had another sip of the wine. “That’s true. I was living in Vienna until three years ago.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I beg your pardon; I don’t mean to pry. I don’t know why I have such difficulty in coming to the point.” He ran the thin fingers of one hand through his hair, and Duffy noticed that he was trembling. “Let me explain: I have become the owner of the Zimmermann Inn.”

Duffy raised his eyebrows politely. “Where’s that?”

Aurelianus looked surprised. “In Vienna,” he said. “Don’t you—oh, of course. You’ve been away for three years. Before I took over it was called the St. Joseph Monastery.”

“Oh yes. Where the Herzwesten beer comes from. You haven’t shut down the brewery, I trust?”

Aurelianus laughed softly. “Oh no.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Duffy drained his glass. “How in hell did you get the Church to sell the place?”

“Actually, I inherited it. A prior claim on the land. Very complicated. But let me continue—I’m now running the place as an inn, and not doing a bad business. Vienna is a good location, and the Herzwesten brewery has as good a reputation as the Weihenstepan in Bavaria. My problem, though, you see, is that I haven’t got—”

There was a hesitant rap-rap-rap at the door, and Aurelianus jumped. “Who is it?” he called in an agitated voice.

The answer came in a Greek dialect. “It’s Bella. Let me in, little lover.”

Aurelianus clenched his fists. “Come back later, Bella. I’ve a guest.”

“I don’t mind guests. I like guests.” The latch rattled.

The old man pressed a hand to his reddening forehead. “Go away, Bella,” he whispered, so quietly that Duffy barely heard it.

“Yoo hoo, guest!” came the raucous, liquor-blunted voice from beyond the door. “Tell the old juggler to let me in.”

Good Lord, Duffy thought; domestic embarrassments. Pretend not to notice. He crossed to the bookcase and began squinting at the Latin titles.

“I’ve got news,” Bella whined ingratiatingly. “Worth a ducat or two, I think you’ll agree.”

“News about what?” rasped Aurelianus.

“El Kanuni, as my dark-skinned friends say.”

“You’re a worthless trollop, Bella,” the old man sighed unhappily, “but come in.” He unlocked the door.

Preceded by an overpowering reek of stale perfume and grappa, a middle-aged woman in a somewhat sprung-at-the-seams skirt flounced into the room. “Give me some wine, for the Virgin’s sake!” she exclaimed, “lest I catch my death of the vapors.”

“For whose sake?” Aurelianus inquired savagely. “Forget the wine. Vapors would be a blessing, considering what you’ve got already.”

“Envy will rot your pale liver, little monk.” The woman grinned. Duffy, having at least rudimentary manners, made a show of being absorbed by the books to the exclusion of all else.

Aurelianus turned to him apologetically. “Will you, sir, be so good as to excuse us for a moment?” He was all but wringing his hands with embarrassment.

“Of course,” Duffy assured him with an airy wave. ‘I’ll divert myself with your excellent library.”

“Fine.” The robed man took the woman roughly by the arm and led her to the far corner of the room, where they proceeded to converse in heated whispers.

Duffy buried his nose in a book, but, being a cautious man, strained his ears to catch as much as he could. He heard Bella’s hoarse voice say, “The word is they’ve begun assembling the akinji in Constantinople...” Aurelianus asked a question about supplies and the Janissaries, but Duffy couldn’t follow the woman’s answer.

News of the Turks, the Irishman thought. It’s all you hear these days. I wonder why this old bird’s so interested.

“All right, all right,” Aurelianus said finally, flapping his hands at the woman. “Your personal speculations don’t interest me. Here... here’s some money. Now get out. But first put that dagger back.”

Bella sighed sadly and took a jewelled dagger out of the prodigious bosom of her dress. “I was only thinking a woman needs to be able to protect herself.”

“Hah!” The old man chuckled mirthlessly. “It’s the Turk sailors that need protection, you old vampire. Out!”

She left, slamming the door, and Aurelianus immediately lit several incense sticks in the candle flame and set them in little brass trays around the room. “I’d open a window,” he said, “but in very old towns you never know what might be flying past in the darkness.”

Duffy nodded uncertainly, and then held up the book he’d been leafing through. “I see you’re a student of swordplay.”

“What have you got there? Oh yes, Pietro Moncio’s book. Have you read it?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, it was Moncio and Achille Marozzo I was dining with this evening.”

The old man blinked. “Oh. Well, I haven’t used a sword myself for a number of years, but I do try to keep up with developments in the art. That copy of della Torre there, in the dark vellum, is very rare.”

“It is?” remarked the Irishman, walking back to the table and refilling his glass. “I’ll have to sell my copy, then. Might make some money. I wasn’t real impressed with the text.”

Long cobwebs of aromatic smoke were strung across the room, and Duffy fanned the air with a little portfolio of prints. “It’s getting murky in here,” he complained.

“You’re right,” the old man said. “I’m a damnable host. Perhaps if I open it a crack...” He walked to the window, stared out of it for a moment, and then turned back to Duffy with an apologetic smile. “No, I won’t open it. Let me explain quickly why I called you in, and then you can be on your way before the fumes begin seriously to annoy you. I’ve mentioned the Zimmermann Inn, of which I am the owner; it’s a popular establishment, but I travel constantly and, to be frank, there is often trouble with the customers that I can’t control even when I’m there. You know—a wandering friar will get into an argument with some follower of this Luther, a bundschuh leftover from the Peasants’ War will knife the Lutheran, and in no time at all the dining room’s a shambles and the serving girls are in tears. And these things cut into the profits in a big way—damages, nice customers scared off, tapsters harder to hire. I need a man who can be there all the time, who can speak to most customers in their native languages, and who can break up a deadly fight without killing anybody—as you did just now, with the Gritti boys by the canal.”

Duffy smiled. “You want me to be your bouncer.”

“Exactly,” agreed Aurelianus, rubbing his hands together.

“Hm.” Duffy drummed his fingers on the table top. “You know, if you’d asked me two days ago, I’d have told you to forget it. But... just in the last couple of days Venice has grown a little tiresome. I admit I’ve even found myself missing old Vienna. Just last night I had a dream—”

Aurelianus raised his eyebrows innocently. “Oh?”

“Yes, about a girl I used to know there. I wouldn’t really mind seeing her—seeing what she’s doing now. And if I hang around here those three Gritti lads will be challenging me to a real combat in the official champ clos, and I’m too old for that kind of thing.’

“They probably would,” Aurelianus agreed. “They’re hot-headed young men.”

“You know them?”

“No. I know about them.” Aurelianus picked up his half-consumed snake and re-lit it. “I know about quite a number of people,” he added, almost to himself, “without actually knowing them. I prefer it that way. You’ll take the job, then?”

Oh, what the hell, Duffy thought. I would never have fit in back in Dingle anyway, realistically speaking. He shrugged. “Yes. Why not?”

“Ah. I was hoping you would. You’re more suited for it than anyone I’ve met.”

He knotted his hands behind his back and paced about the cluttered room. “I’ve got business in the south, but I’d appreciate it if you could start for Vienna tout de suite. I’ll give you some travelling money and a letter of introduction to the Zimmermann brewmaster, an old fellow named Gambrinus. I’ll instruct him to give you another lump sum when you arrive there. How soon do you think that can be?”

Duffy scratched his gray head. “Oh, I don’t know. What’s today?”

“The twenty-fourth of February. Ash Wednesday.”

“That’s right. Monico had a gray cross on his forehead. Let’s see—I’d take a boat to Trieste, buy a horse and cross the tail end of the Alps just east of there. Then maybe I’d hitch a ride north with some Hungarian lumber merchant; there’s usually no lack of them in those parts. Cross the Sava and the Drava, and then follow the old Danube west to Vienna. Say roughly a month.”

“Before Easter, without a doubt?” Aurelianus asked anxiously.

“Oh, certainly.”

“Good. That’s when we open the casks of bock, and I don’t want a riot in the place.”

“Yes, I’ll have been there a good two weeks by then.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Aurelianus poured himself a cup of the sauternes and refilled Duffy’s. “You seem familiar with western Hungary,” he observed cautiously.

The Irishman frowned into his wine for a moment, then relaxed and nodded. “I am,” he said quietly. “I fought with King Louis and Archbishop Tomori at Mohács in August of ’twenty-six. I shouldn’t have been there; as an Austrian at the time, Hungary was nothing to me. I guess I figured Vienna was next on the Turk’s list.” No sense telling him about Epiphany, Duffy thought.

The wine was unlocking Duffy’s memories. The sky had been overcast, he recalled, and both sides had simply milled about on opposite sides of the Mohács plain until well after noon. Then the Hungarian cavalry had charged; the Turkish center gave way, and Duffy’s troop of German infantry had followed the Hungarians into the trap. That was as hellish a maelstrom as I ever hope to find myself in, he thought now, sipping his wine—when those damned Turks suddenly stopped retreating, and turned on the pursuing troops.

His mouth curled down at the corners as he remembered the sharp thudding of the Turkish guns and the hiss of grapeshot whipping across the plain to rip into the Christian ranks, the whirling scimitars of the weirdly-wailing Janissaries blocking any advance, and the despairing cry that went up from the defenders of the west when it became evident that the Turks had outflanked them.

“You obviously have luck,” Aurelianus said, after a pause. “Not many men got clear of that.”

“That’s true,” Duffy said. “I hid among the riverside thickets afterward, until John Zapolya and his troops arrived, the day after the battle. I had to explain to him that the idiot Tomori had attacked without waiting for him and Frangipani and the other reinforcements; that nearly everyone on the Hungarian side—Louis, Tomori, thousands more—was dead, and that Suleiman and his Turks had won. Zapolya cleared out then, ran west. I ran south.”

The old man stubbed his smoking snake out in an incense bowl and reluctantly exhaled the last of the smoke. “You’ve heard, I suppose, that Zapolya has gone over to the Turkish side now?”

Duffy frowned. “Yes. He just wants to be governor of Hungary, I guess, and will kiss the hand of whoever seems to own it. I can still hardly believe it, though; I’ve known him since 1515, and he was making raids against the Turks even then. Of all the things I would have sworn were impossible...”

Aurelianus nodded sympathetically. “If we could rely on impossibilities we’d all be better off.” He crossed the room and sat down at a cluttered desk. “But excuse me—I did not mean to stir up your past. Here,” he said, lifting a cloth bag from an opened drawer, “is five hundred ducats.” Duffy caught the toss and slid the bag into a pocket. “And here,” Aurelianus went on, flourishing a sheet of paper, “I will write a letter of introduction.” He dipped a pen in an inkpot and began scribbling.

Duffy had long ago found it handy to be able to read upside-down, and now casually glanced across the writing table at Aurelianus’ precise script.

“My dear Gambrinus,” Duffy read, “the bearer of this note, Brian Duffy,” (here Aurelianus paused to draw deftly a quick, accurate sketch of the Irishman), “is the man we’ve been looking for—the guardian of the house of Herzwesten. See that he is paid five hundred ducats when he arrives, and subsequently whatever monthly salary you and he shall agree upon. I will be joining you soon; mid-April, probably, certainly by Easter. I trust the beer is behaving properly, and that there is no acidity this season.—Kindest regards, AURELIANUS.”

The black-robed old man folded the letter, poured a glob of thick red wax onto it from a little candle-heated pot, and pressed a seal into it. “There you go,” he said, lifting away the seal and waving the letter in the air to cool the wax. “Just hand this to the brew-master.”

Duffy took the letter. The seal, he noticed, was a representation of two dragons locked in combat. “What are my duties to be?” he asked. “Tell me again.”

Aurelianus smiled. “Just as you said yourself: the bouncer. Keep the riffraff out. Keep the peace.”

The big Irishman nodded dubiously. “Seems odd that you’d have to come to Venice to find somebody to work in an Austrian tavern.”

“Well I didn’t come here to do that. I’m here for entirely different reasons. Entirely. But when I saw the way you dealt with those boys out front I knew you were the man this job called for.”

“Ah. Well, all right. It’s your money.” The wind must be up, Duffy thought. Listen to that window rattle!

Aurelianus stood up. “Thank you for helping me out in this matter,” he said quickly, shaking Duffy’s hand and practically pulling him to the door. “I’ll see you in a month or so.”

“Right,” agreed Duffy, and found himself a moment later standing on the dark landing while the door clicked shut behind him. Now there’s an odd fellow, he thought as he groped his way down the stairs. I’ll be very curious to see if there actually are five hundred ducats in this bag.

A stale liquor scent lingered at the foot of the stairs, and Bella sidled out of the shadows when he reached the bottom. “The little eunuch gave you some money, didn’t he?”

“I beg your pardon, lady,” Duffy said. “Nothing of the sort.”

“Why don’t you and me go drink some wine somewhere?” she suggested. “There’s lots I could tell you about him.”

“I’m not interested in him. Excuse me.” Duffy slid past her to the pavement outside.

“Maybe you’d be interested in a little feminine companionship.”

“Why would that concern you?” he asked over his shoulder as he strode away. She shouted something after him in a rude tone of voice, though he missed the words. Poor old woman, he reflected. Gone mad from cheap Italian liquor. Shouting harsh words at strangers and harrying poor weird old men.

He glanced at the sky—an hour or so after midnight. No sense now, he thought, in going back to San Giorgio; the only thing worth mentioning that waits for me there is a landlord, justly angry about my failure to pay rent. I’d better find some kind of rooming house to spend the night in, and then get an early start tomorrow. A few hours’ sleep in a moderately clean bed is what I need right now. It’s been a tiring night.

“Stand aside, grandfather, we’re trying to unload cargo here.”

Duffy glared fiercely at the lean young dockworker, but moved obediently away. The morning sunlight was glittering like a handful of new-minted gold coins on the water, and Duffy was squinting and knuckling his eyes. He’d been told to look for a Cyprian galley called the Morphou, which was scheduled to make a stop at Trieste on its way home; “Look for a triangular sail with three sad eyes on it,” a helpful little Egyptian had said. “That’ll be the Morphou.”

Well, he thought irritably, I don’t see any damned three eyes. Half these ships have their sails reefed anyway.

He sat down on a bale of cotton and watched disapprovingly the activity of all these loud, wide-awake people around him. Dark-skinned children, screaming to each other in a tangle of Mediterranean languages, ran past, flinging bits of cabbage at an indignant, bearded merchant; tanned sailors swaggered up from the docks, looking forward to impressing the Venetian girls with their foreign coins and fine silk doublets; and old, granite-faced women stood vigilantly over their racks of smoked fish, ready to smile at a customer or deliver a fist in the ear to a shoplifter.

Duffy had awakened at dawn in a malodorous hostel, feeling poisoned by the liquor he’d drunk the night before but cheered by his memory of opening the cloth bag beneath a flickering street lamp to discover that it did indeed contain five hundred ducats. And there are five hundred more waiting for me in Vienna, he thought, if I can just find this filthy Cyprian Morphou.

The gray-haired Irishman struggled to his feet—and a man on a porticoed balcony a hundred feet behind him crouched and squinted along the barrel of a wheel-lock harquebus; he pulled the trigger, the wheel spun and sprayed sparks into the pan and a moment later the gun kicked against the man’s shoulder as its charge went off.

A ceramic jar beside Duffy’s ear exploded, stinging his face with harsh wine and bits of pottery. He leaped back in astonishment and pitched over the bale of cotton, cursing sulphurously and wrenching at his entangled rapier.

The gunman leaned out over the balcony rail and shrugged. On the pavement below, two men frowned impatiently, loosened the daggers in their sheaths, and began elbowing their way through the crowd.

On his feet now, Duffy clutched his bared sword and glared about fiercely. It’s probably one of those furioso Grittis, he thought. Or all three. And after I was so patient with them last night! Well I won’t be this morning.

A tall, feather-hatted man, whose moustache appeared to be oiled, strode up to the Irishman and smiled. “The one who fired at you is escaping in that boat,” he said, pointing. Duffy turned, and the man leaped on him, driving a dagger with vicious force at at the Irishman’s chest. The hauberk under his much-abused doublet saved Duffy from the first stab; he caught the assassin’s wrist with his right hand before another blow could be delivered, and then, stepping back to get the proper distance, ran his rapier through the man’s thigh. Feather-hat sank to his knees, pale with shock.

I’m leaving Venice none too soon, Duffy reflected dazedly. He noticed with annoyance that his hands were trembling.

The frightened merchants and dockworkers were hurrying away, so he noticed immediately the two figures that were sprinting toward him—one was a stranger, one was young Giacomo Gritti, and both carried drawn knives.

“Fetch the guardia, for God’s sake!” Duffy yelled shrilly at the crowd, but he knew it was too late for that. Sick with tension, he drew his own dagger and crouched behind his crossed weapons.

The stranger leaped ahead of Gritti, his arm drawn in for a solid stab—and then his eyes widened in pained astonishment, and he pitched heavily forward on his face, Gritti’s dagger-hilt standing up between his shoulder blades.

Separated by ten feet, Gritti and Duffy stared at each other for a moment. “There are men waiting to kill you on the Morphou,” Gritti panted, “but the old Greek merchantman anchored three docks south is also bound for Trieste. Hurry,” he said, pointing, “they’re casting off the lines right now.”

Duffy paused only long enough to slap both weapons back into their sheaths, and nod a curt and puzzled thanks, before trotting energetically away south, toward the third dock.

Chapter Two

AFTER A BIT of token frowning and chin-scratching, the merchantman’s paunchy captain agreed to let Duffy come aboard—though demanding a higher-than-usual fare “because of the lack of a reservation.” The Irishman had learned long ago when to keep quiet and pay the asking price, and he did it now.

The ship, he observed as he swung over the high stern, was notably dilapidated. God, dual steering oars and a square, brailed sail, he noted, shaking his head doubtfully. This one is old enough for Cleopatra to have made an insulting remark about it. Well, it’s probably made the Venice to Trieste run more times than I’ve pulled my boots on, so I suppose it’s not likely to founder on this trip. He sat down in the open hold between two huge amphorae of wine, and set one of the weather cloths, a frame of woven matting, upright in its notches in the gunwale. There, he thought, leaning back against it, I’m hidden from view at last, by God.

The sailors poled the vessel out past the clusters of docked galleys, and then the sail was unfurled on its dozen brailing lines, and bellied in the cold morning wind. The antique ship heeled about as the brawny steersman braced himself against the overlapping oar handles, and they were under way.

The captain sauntered about the deck criticizing the labors of his men until the Lido had slipped past on the starboard side; he relaxed then and strode to the stern, where Duffy was now perched on a crate, idly whittling a girl’s head out of a block of wood with his dagger. The captain leaned on the rail next to him and wiped his forehead with a scarf.

He nodded at Duffy’s sword. “You a fighting man?”

The Irishman smiled. “No.”

“Why are you so anxious to get to Trieste?”

“I’m going to enter a monastery,” Duffy said, paring the line of the girl’s cheek.

The captain guffawed. “Oh, no doubt. What do you think you’re going to find in a monastery?”

“Vows of silence.”

The captain started to laugh, then frowned and stood up. He thought for a moment, then said, “You can’t carve worth a damn,” and stalked off to the narrow bow. Duffy held the block of wood at arm’s length and regarded it critically. He’s right, you know, he told himself.

The heavy-laden old vessel made poor time, despite the “new” lead sheathing which the captain announced, proudly, had been put on by his grandfather; and the quays of Trieste were lit with the astern sunset’s orange and gold by the time the craft was docked. The captain was barking impatient orders at his tired crew as they kicked the wedges away from the step and lowered the mast backward across the decks, and Duffy unobtrusively climbed the ladder and walked up the dock toward the tangled towers and streets of the city. Many of the windows already glowed with lamplight, and he was beginning to think seriously about supper. He increased his pace and tried to estimate which section of town would be likely to serve good food cheaply.

The whitewashed walls of the narrow Via Dolores echoed to the clumping of Duffy’s boot-heels as the salt-and-dried-fish smell of the docks receded behind him. An open door threw a streak of light across the pavement, and laughter and the clinking of wine cups could be heard from within.

Duffy strode into the place and was cheered by the hot draft from the kitchen, redolent of garlic and curry. He had taken off his hat and begun to untie his long, furred cloak when a man in an apron hurried over to him and began chattering in Italian.

“What?” the Irishman interrupted. “Talk slower.”

“We,” the man said with labored distinctness, “have—no—room. Already too many people are waiting.”

“Oh. Very well.” Duffy turned to go. Then he remembered his hat and turned around; a priest at a nearby table was nodding approvingly to the man in the apron, whom Duffy had surprised in the act of blessing himself. After a moment Duffy worldlessly took his hat and stalked outside.

Provincial idiots, he thought angrily as he shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged further up the street. Never seen a non-Mediterranean face in their lives, I guess. Thought I was some kind of bogey.

Patches of sapphire and rose still glowed in the late-winter sky, but night had fallen on the streets. Duffy had to rely on the light from windows to see his way, and he began to worry about footpads and alleybashers. Then, with a sound like branches being dragged along the cobbles, the swirling skirts of a heavy rain swept over him. Good God, he thought desperately as the cold drops drummed on the brim of his hat, I’ve got to get in out of this. I’m liable to catch an ague—and my chain mail shirt is already disgracefully rusted.

He saw an open door ahead, and loped heavily toward it, splashing through the suddenly deep-flowing gutter. Do I actually hear a mill-wheel pounding, he wondered, or is that just some overtone of the storm? No tavern sign was visible, but vine leaves were hung over the lintel, and he smiled with relief, when he’d stepped inside, to see the sparsely populated tables. They won’t tell me they’re too full here, he thought, beating the water off his hat against his thigh. He went to an empty table, flung his cloak on the bench and sat down next to it.

This is an odd place, he reflected, looking around; that drunken old graybeard by the kitchen door appears to be the host. Gave me a courtly nod when I came in, anyway.

A young man emerged from the kitchen and padded across the room to Duffy’s table. “What can we do for you?” he asked.

“Give me whatever sort of dinner is in the pot, and a cup of your best red wine.”

The lad bowed and withdrew. Duffy glanced curiously at the other diners scattered around the dim, low-ceilinged room. The rain had apparently got them down. They all seemed depressed—no, worried—and their smiles were wistful and fleeting. Duffy took the block of wood from his pocket and, unsheathing his dagger, recommenced his whittling.

When the food arrived it proved to be a bit spicier than he liked, and it all seemed to be wrapped in leaves, but the wine—of which they brought him a full flagon—was the finest he’d ever tasted. Dry but full-bodied and aromatic, its vapors filled his head like brandy. “Incredible,” he breathed, and poured another cup.

After quite a while Duffy regretfully decided that the bas relief he’d been cutting into the surface of the table was no good. He shook his head and put his dagger away. Someone must have refilled the flagon, he thought, when I wasn’t looking. Perhaps several times. I can’t remember how many cups of this I’ve had, but it’s been a respectable quantity. He glanced blurrily around, and noticed that the room was crowded now, and more brightly lit. I must be drunker than I thought, he told himself, not to have noticed these people arrive. Why, there are even a couple of people sitting with me now at this table. He nodded politely to the two bearded fellows.

Duffy knew he should try to snap out of this wine fog. I’m an idiot, he thought, to get drunk in an unknown tavern in a foreign city.

The young man who’d served him was standing on a table, playing a flute, and most of the people in the place were whirling in a mad dance, singing a refrain in a language Duffy couldn’t place. The old bearded host, too drunk now even to stand unaided, was being led around the room by a gang of laughing boys. The poor old wino, Duffy thought dizzily—mocked by children. They’re probably the ones that tied those ridiculous vine leaves in his hair, too.

Duffy could hear the mill-wheel rumble again, deeper and more resonant than before, like the pulse of the earth. The high, wild intricacies of the flute music, he now perceived, were woven around that slow, deep rhythm.

Suddenly he was afraid. A dim but incalculably powerful thought, or idea, or memory was rising through the murky depths of his mind, and he wanted above all to avoid facing it. He lurched to his feet, knocking his wine cup to the floor. “I’m...” he stammered. “My name is...” but at the moment he couldn’t remember. A hundred names occurred to him.

The bearded man next to him had picked up the cup, refilled it with the glowing wine, and profferred it to the Irishman. Looking down, Duffy noticed for the first time that the man was naked, and that his legs were covered with short, bristly fur, and were jointed oddly, and terminated in little cloven hooves.

With a yell Duffy ran toward the door, but his own legs weren’t working correctly, and he made slow progress. Then he must have fallen, for he blacked out and dropped away through hundreds of disturbing dreams... he was a child crying with fear in a dark stone room; he was an old, dishonored king, bleeding to death in the rain, watched over by one loyal retainer; he stood with two women beside a fire on a midnight moor, staring into the black sky with a desperate hope; in a narrow boat he drifted on a vast, still lake; he sat across a table from a shockingly ancient man, who stared at him with pity and said, “Much has been lost, and there is much yet to lose.” The dreams became dim and incomprehensible after that, like a parade dwindling in the distance, leaving him finally alone in a land so dark and cold it could never have known the sun.

Several kicks in the ribs woke him. He rolled over in the chilly mud and brushed the wet gray hair out of his face.

“Damn my soul,” he croaked. “Where in hell am I?”

“I want you to leave this city,” came a man’s voice.

Duffy sat up. He was in an empty, puddled lot between two houses. The rain had stopped, and the blue sky shone behind the crumbling storm clouds. He looked up into the angry and worried face of a priest. “You’re...” Duffy muttered, “you’re the priest who was in that first place I went last night. Where they turned me away.”

“That’s right. I see you found... another host, though. When are you leaving Trieste?”

“Damn soon, I can tell you.” Pressing both hands into the mud, he struggled to his feet. “Ohh.” He rubbed his hip gingerly. “I haven’t slept in the rain since I was eighteen years old. We middle-aged types would do well to avoid it,” he told the priest.

“I didn’t sleep in the rain,” the priest said impatiently.

“Oh. That’s right. I did. I knew one of us did.”

“Uh...” The priest frowned deeply. “Do you need any money?”

“No, actually—wait a moment.” His hand darted to his doublet, and he was a little surprised to find the hard bulge of the money bag still there. “Huh! No, I’m flush at the moment, thank you.”

“All right. Be out of town today, then—or I’ll tell eight of the biggest men in my parish to get sticks and beat the daylights out of you and throw you into the ocean.”

Duffy blinked. “What? I—listen, I haven’t done any—you little cur, I’ll rip the livers out of your eight farmers.” He took a step toward the priest, but lost his balance and had to right himself with two lateral hops. This jolted him so that he had to drop onto his hands and knees to be violently sick on the ground. When he got up again, pale and weak-kneed, the priest had left.

I wonder who he thinks I am, Duffy thought. I hate misunderstandings of this sort.

Cautiously he now asked himself, What did happen last night?

Very simple, spoke up the rational part of his mind hastily; you were stupid enough to get falling-down-drunk in a foreign bar, and they beat you up and dumped you in this lot, and you’re lucky you look so seedy that no sane man would think of lifting your purse. Those dreams and hallucinations were of no significance. None at all.

His teeth were chattering and he shivered like a wet cat. I’ve got to get moving, he thought; got to find a friendly inn where I can pull myself together, clean up a bit. Buy some supplies. And then get the hell out of Trieste.

Taking a deep breath, he plodded unsteadily back down the Via Dolores.

Two hours later he was stepping out of a steaming tub and rubbing his head vigorously with a towel. “How’s my breakfast coming?” he called. When there was no answer he padded to the door and opened it. “How’s my breakfast coming?” he bawled down the hall.

“It’s on the table waiting for you, sir.”

“Good. I’ll be there in a minute.” Duffy took his newly dried woolen trousers from a chair by the fireplace and pulled them on. He’d got them in Britain many years ago; and though they now consisted more of patches than of British wool, and the Italians laughed at the garment and called him an ourang outan, he’d become accustomed to wearing them. And in a late winter Alpine crossing I’ll be glad I’ve got them, he nodded to himself. He flapped into his twice-holed leather doublet, jerked on his boots and tramped out to breakfast.

The innkeeper had laid out a bowl of some kind of mush with eggs beaten into it, black bread with cheese, and a mug of hot ale. “Looks great,” Duffy said, dropping into a chair and setting to.

Four other guests sat nibbling toast at the other end of the table, and peered curiously at the burly, gray-haired Irishman. One of them, a thin man in a baggy velvet hat and silk tights, cleared his throat.

“We hear you are crossing the Julian Alps, sir,” he said.

Duffy frowned, as he was wont to do when strangers expressed interest in his plans. “That’s right,” he growled.

“It’s awfully early in the season,” the man observed.

Duffy shrugged. “Too early for some, perhaps.”

The innkeeper leaned in from the kitchen and nodded to Duffy. “The boy says he’s got all the rust out of your mail shirt,” he said.

“Tell him to shake it in the sand a hundred more times just for luck,” said Duffy.

“Aren’t you afraid of the Turks?” spoke up a woman, apparently Baggy-hat’s wife.

“No, lady. The Turks couldn’t be this far north this early in the year.” And I wish I could say the same about bandits, he thought. Duffy busied himself with his food, and the other guests, though whispering among themselves, asked him no more questions.

They’re right about one thing, he admitted to himself; it is early. But hell, I’ll be prepared, the weather’s good, and the Predil Pass is certain to be clear. It’ll be an easy crossing—not like the last one, coming south in September and October of 1526, half-starved and with my head bandaged up like a turban. He grinned reminiscently into his ale. That’s probably how I made it alive through the Turk-infested wastes of Hungary—Suleiman’s boys, if they saw me, must have seen that bandage and figured I was one of their own.

The innkeeper leaned in again. “The boy says if he gives it a hundred more shakes it’ll come apart.”

Duffy nodded wearily. “He’s probably right. Okay, have him beat the sand out of it, gently, and oil it.” He stood up, nodded civilly to his fellow guests, and walked to his room.

His rapier lay on the bed and he picked it up, sliding his hand into the swept-hilt guard. The worn leather grip had become contoured to his fingers, and drawing the blade from the scabbard was like pulling his arm out of a coat sleeve. He had buffed the old sword and oiled it, and the blade gleamed shiny black as he sighted along it and then flexed it a bit to get rid of an annoying recurrent curve. He whished it through the air once or twice. Take that, Turkish infidel.

A knock sounded at the door. “Your hauberk, sir.”

“Ah. Thank you.” Duffy took the disspirited-looking garment and stared at it judicially. Why, he thought, it doesn’t look that bad. Some of the iron links had broken away here and there and been replaced with knotted wire, and the sleeves were uneven and ragged at the wrists, but on the whole it was still a valuable piece of armor.

A little wooden box lay on a chair, and Duffy opened it and looked at the collection of threads, dust, lint, feathers and shredded wood. He poked his finger in it—good and dry, he noted approvingly. Under it all was a small, round piece of glass, which he made sure was not broken. He closed the box and slipped it into the inside pocket of his doublet.

Time to go, he told himself. He took off the doublet, put on two rust-stained cotton undershirts and pulled the hauberk over them, ignoring the rattle of a couple of links falling to the floor. He shouldered on his doublet, belted on his rapier and dagger, and, picking up his fur cloak and hat, left the room.

“Landlord! Here.” He dropped several coins into the innkeeper’s palm. “By the way, where can I buy a horse?”

“A horse?”

“That’s what I said. A horse. Equus. You know.”

“I guess I could sell you one.”

“A hardy beast? Able to carry me over the Alps?”

“Certainly, if you treat him right.”

“He’d better make it. Or I’ll come back here and do something awful.”

Duffy concluded his examination of the horse with a long stare into its eyes. “How much for him?”

“Oh...” The innkeeper pursed his lips. “Sixty ducats?”

“Forty it is.” Duffy gave the man some more coins. “I’m not kidding when I say I’ll be back here, angry, if he drops dead.”

“He’s a good horse,” the innkeeper protested. “I’ve cared for him since he was born. Assisted at his birth.”

“Good heavens. I don’t want to hear about it. Listen, I’ll need some food, too. Uh... four, no, five long loaves of bread, five thick sticks of hard salami, a week’s worth of whatever kind of grain the horse likes, two gallons of dry red wine, a bottle of really potent brandy... and a sack of onions, a handful of garlic cloves and two pounds of white cheese. Put all that in four sacks and tell me how much it adds to my bill.”

“Yes, sir.” the innkeeper turned and started back toward the building.

“And I mean potent brandy,” Duffy called after him. “Dare to give me watered-down stuff and I’ll be back here even if the damned horse can fly.”

Chapter Three

THE SUN STILL LINGERED in the morning side of the sky when Duffy left Trieste, riding east, angling up through the foothills toward the white teeth of the Julian Alps. He’d stopped once more before leaving the city, to buy a pair of leather breeches and a knapsack, and he was wearing both items now. The bright sun sparkled at him from the new brooks that ran down through the hills, but he could still see the white steam of his breath, and he was glad he’d picked up a good pair of gloves during his stay in Venice.

Hunching around in the saddle, he nodded to the blue patch on the horizon that was the Gulf of Venice. So long, Mediterranean, he thought. It’s been a pleasant interlude here, with your sunshine, Madeira wine and dark-eyed girls—but I guess I’m by nature more at home in the colder northern lands. God knows why.

The Irishman tilted back his hat and shook his head bewilderedly. Odd, he thought, how it got so weird there at the end. The Gritti boys try to kill me three-on-one Wednesday night, and then one of them saves my life and directs me to a safe ship next morning. And how did he know I needed a Trieste-bound ship, anyway? The Venetian citizens seem to know more about my business than I do myself.

And what is my business, anyway? I still can’t see why that little old black-clad jack-in-the-box—God, I can’t even remember his name—gave me all this money. Am I really the only man he’s met capable of keeping the peace in his Austrian tavern? And since when do bouncers get this kind of money? It seems to me they’re usually doing well if they get mere room and board. Oh, don’t question it, old lad, he advised himself. The money’s real, that’s what counts.

The road wound now through tall evergreens, and the chilly air was spicy with the smell of pine. Duffy filled his lungs and smiled nostalgically. Ah, that’s a smell from home, he thought. Austria, I’ve missed you.

And, he admitted uneasily, I’ve missed you, too, Epiphany. Good God—Duffy suddenly felt old—she’s probably got a child by now. Maybe two of them. Or—he brightened—maybe that gargoyle Hallstadt fell off his horse one day while out hawking, leaving the old girl single and rich. Ho ho. Of course she might not speak to me. Steward, dump chamber-pots on that derelict at the front door. A quick vision of Duffy, befouled and berserk, kicking his way through a dining hall window, the ghastly spectre at the feast.

The thump of unhurried hoofbeats interrupted his reverie. He turned and saw, riding lazily fifty yards behind, a sturdy fellow wearing the laced-leather tunic and slung bow of a chamois hunter. Duffy waved politely but, not wanting conversation, didn’t slow his pace.

Finally he focused his mind on the idea that was bothering him most. Could it be, he asked himself reluctantly, that I’m becoming a serious drunkard? I’ve been drinking since I was eleven, but it’s never before given me hallucinations and blackouts. Well, you’re getting older every day, you know. Can’t expect to be able to toss it down the way you did when you were twenty. After this journey I’ll stick to beer for a while, he promised himself, and not a lot of that. I certainly don’t want to start seeing goat-footed people again.

The way was steeper now. A muddy slope, furred with brown clumps of pine needles, rose at his left hand, a similar one fell away at his right, and the tall pine trees stood up from every height like bushy green spectators seated in tiers. Bird-screeches echoed through the woods, and squirrels on high branches regarded the horse and man with great interest. Duffy flapped his arms and hooted at them and they fled in astonishment.

He was overtaking another rider, a fat friar on a plodding mule. The man appeared to be asleep, rocking loosely in the saddle and letting his mount navigate. Quite a busy road for this time of year, Duffy reflected.

Suddenly it was quieter. What sound just stopped? he asked himself. Oh, of course—the hoofbeats of the chamois hunter’s horse. Duffy turned around again—and abruptly rolled out of the saddle as an iron-headed arrow split the air six inches over his saddle-bow. Somersaulting awkwardly across the path, boots flailing, he dived in a semi-controlled slide down the steep right-hand slope. For thirty feet he cut gouges in the mud and matted pine needles, then his clutching hand caught a tree root and he pulled himself hastily to his feet. He was behind a wide trunk and, he prayed, invisible to anyone on the road above.

He wiped cold mud off his face with a trembling gloved hand and tried to quiet his breathing. A bandit, by God, Duffy thought. I hope he leaves that poor friar alone. This makes three attempts on my life in three days—quite a coincidence. And it is simply a coincidence, he told himself firmly.

“Do you see his body?” asked someone up on the road.

“I tell you, idiot, you missed,” came an answer. “Your arrow bounced away through the trees. He’s hiding down there.”

After a long pause the first speaker, more quietly now, said, “Well that’s great.”

Who’s this other man, Duffy wondered. And Where’s the friar? Or is that the friar? I wish I could see up there.

“Hey,” one of them shouted. “I know you can hear me. Come up right now and we won’t hurt you.”

Is that so, Duffy thought with a mirthless grin. Is that so, indeed?

“You know I’ve got a bow up here. I can just wait. You’ve got to come out some time, and I’ll put an arrow through your eye when you do.”

Well, if it comes to that, the Irishman reasoned, I can wait until dark and then creep unseen back up the hill and cut your vociferous throat, my friend. Where can my horse and supplies be getting to? Strange breed of bandits you two are, not to have gone after him instead of me.

There was silence from above for several minutes, then abruptly the rattle and slither of two men sliding down. “Careful! Do you see him?” one of them yelled.

“No,” the other one shouted. “Where are you going? We’ve got to stay close.”

When he judged that one of them was just about to slide past his tree, Duffy unsheathed his rapier and leaped out into the man’s path. It was the fat friar, waving a long sword, and he screeched in terror and blocked Duffy’s thrust more by luck than skill. He collided heavily with the Irishman and both of them skidded down the steep, wet incline—the fortes of their blades despérately crossed—unable to check their quickening slide. Duffy, keeping the friar’s sword blocked with his own, tried to twist around and see what lay in their path. A blunt tree-branch in my back, he thought grimly, would pretty well conclude this.

The friar’s trailing robe caught on a spur of rock, and he was jerked to a stop while the swords disengaged and Duffy slid on. Freed at last from the awkward corps-à-corps, the Irishman quickly dug in with the toes of his boots, his right hand and his sword pommel, and had soon dragged to a halt, sending a small avalanche of ripped-up dirt tumbling down the slope. Then he worked his boots into the hillside to get a firm footing.

The other bandit was climbing and hopping with panicky haste down the hillside, but he was still well above Duffy and the friar.

Then the fabric tore, and the friar was on his way again. He tried to block Duffy’s sword as he’d done before, but this time the Irishman whirled his extended point in a quick feint disengagé, and the friar slid directly onto it, taking the sword through his belly. It was Duffy’s hilt that stopped the man’s downward course, and his face was less than a foot away from the Irishman’s. The friar flailed his sword convulsively, but Duffy caught the wrist with his free hand and held it away. The two men stared at each other for a moment.

“You’re no real friar,” Duffy panted.

“You... go to hell,” the man choked, and then sagged in death.

Propping the corpse up with his right hand, Duffy pulled his sword free, and let the body tumble away down the hill. He looked up. The chamois hunter was braced against a rock and a tree trunk about twenty feet up, unable to descend any further without being at the mercy of Duffy’s rapier. The man carried a sword of his own, but didn’t seem confident with it. The bow had been left up on the road.

“Come on, weasel,” Duffy gritted. “Show us a little of that courage you had five minutes ago when you tried to shoot me in the back.”

The man licked sweat off his upper lip and glanced nervously over his shoulder, up the slope. Clearly he was wondering if he could scramble back to the road before the Irishman could catch up with him and run him through.

“Don’t think I’ll hesitate,” Duffy called, guessing the man’s thoughts.

The chamois hunter reached out and scraped the ground with his sword blade, sending pebbles and clumps of leaves pattering down onto the Irishman.

Duffy laughed uproariously, sending echoes ringing through the trees. “Too late now, my friend, to begin tilling the soil! I don’t know where you and your fat companion had your swords hidden when you were riding, but you should have left them there.” A fist-sized rock bounced painfully off his head. “Ow! All right, you son of a dog...” Duffy began scrambling up the slope in a rage.

The man dropped his sword, turned, and scampered away upward like a startled squirrel. Duffy, being heavier and unwilling to relinquish his own sword, was left behind despite his ferocious efforts to catch up.

It may go badly, he realized, if he gets to the road and has time to draw his bow. Duffy stopped to catch his breath, and dug a stone out of the dirt. He tossed it up and caught it to judge its weight. Not bad. Drawing his left arm back and resting it against a tree limb, he relaxed and waited for a sight of the timorous bandit whose crashing, gasping progress must have been audible a mile away.

Finally he was visible, pausing at the lip of the road, silhouetted against a patch of sky. Duffy’s arm lashed forward, flinging the stone upward with all the strength he could muster. A second later the bandit twitched violently and fell backward, out of sight.

Got you, you bastard, Duffy thought as he resumed his upward climb. It took him several minutes to work his way up the hillside, but when he stood at last on the road he’d still heard nothing from the stone-felled bandit. I suppose I hit him in the head and killed him, the Irishman thought glumly.

He brightened, though, when he saw his horse, the supplies still intact, nosing the muddy ground a hundred feet away. “Hello, horse,” he called, walking up to the beast. The horse lifted its head and regarded its owner without enthusiasm. “And where were you, beast, when I was being done in down the hill? Hah?” The horse looked away, clearly bored. Duffy shook his head sadly and swung into the saddle. “Onward, you heartless creature.”

By early afternoon the road had become a wide ledge angling steeply up the sloping face of a rock wall. Well-worn stones were pressed into the ground to serve as pavement, and the precipice side was bordered with a frail, outward-leaning fence of weathered sticks. When the sun hung only a few finger’s-breadths above the western peaks Duffy came upon the St. James Hospice, a narrow-windowed, slate-roofed building nestled between two vast wings of Alpine granite.

Couldn’t have timed it better, the Irishman thought as he led his horse up the path to the hospice. If those two assassins hadn’t delayed me this morning, I’d have got here too early, and been tempted to press on for some other, probably not half so nice, shelter for the night. The heavy front door swung open as Duffy dismounted, and two monks strode across the snowy yard.

“Good evening, stranger,” said the taller one. “Brother Eustace will take your horse around to the stable. Come with me.” Duffy followed the monk inside and took off his hat and cloak as the door was drawn shut. The narrow vestibule was lit by a torch hung on the wall in an iron sconce, and a half dozen swords were stacked in one corner. “We insist,” said the monk, “that all of our guests leave their weapons here.”

Duffy grinned as he unsheathed his sword and handed it to the monk. “Sounds like a good idea, if you get everybody to go along with it.”

“Not difficult,” the monk said, setting Duffy’s rapier with the others. “Any who won’t comply spend the night outside.”

After the evening meal, the half-dozen guests sat around the great fireplace and drank brandy. Several sat in wooden chairs, but Duffy lay stretched on the floor, his head pillowed on the flank of a big sleeping dog. The Irishman had allowed himself a cup of brandy, having chosen to regard it as a precaution against the cold.

Tacitly agreeing not to discuss the motives for their travelling, the guests passed the time by telling stories. An Italian told a morbid tale about a well-born girl keeping the severed head of her stable-boy lover in a flowerpot, and watering with her tears the plant that grew from it. The monk who’d let Duffy in related a riotous and obscene story of erotic confusions in a convent, and Duffy told the old Irish story of Saeve, the wife of the hero Finn Mac Cool, and how she was metamorphosed from a faun.

A tubby old gentleman had begun to recite a long poem about the Emperor Maximilian lost in the Alps, when the front door of the hospice banged open. A moment later a burly man in the heavy boots and coat of a guide strode into the room, impatiently brushing snow out of his moustache.

“A cold night, Olaus?” asked the monk, getting up to pour a cup for the newcomer.

“No,” said Olaus, gratefully taking the liquor. “The winter is packing up and returning north.” He took a long sip. “But there are monsters out tonight.”

Duffy looked up, interested. “Monsters?”

The guide nodded as he sat down by the fire. “Aye. Griffins, snake men, demons of every sort.”

“Did you see them, Olaus?” the monk asked, giving the other guests a broad wink.

Olaus shook his head gravely. “No. Damn few men see them and live. But today on Montasch I heard them singing choruses in the mountain, and coming here I crossed in the snow several tracks of unnatural feet. I wonder what it is that’s got them roused.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the monk said airily. “It’s probably some monster holiday today. They’ve opened their casks of Spring beer, I’ll bet.”

Olaus, aware that he was being ribbed, lapsed into sulky silence.

That reminds me, Duffy thought—I wonder how the Herzwesten Bock beer is coming. I trust this Gambrinus fellow knows his business, and hasn’t let it go bad. Duffy yawned. The brandy, on top of the day’s exertion, was making him sleepy. He stood up carefully, so as not to wake the dog.

“I believe I’ll turn in, brother,” he said. “Where would I find a bunk?”

The monk turned to the Irishman with a smile Duffy had seen before on the faces of old nuns attending to wounded soldiers—the easy grin of one who has pledged neutrality, and can afford to be courteous to all sides and factions. “Through that door,” he said, pointing. “Breakfast is at dawn.”

A little puzzled, Duffy nodded and walked to the indicated door, wondering briefly, and for no reason at all, whether the monk’s incredulity at Olaus’ statements might have been feigned. It was a pointless thought, and he threw it away.

There were twenty bunks in the next room, mounted in the walls like bookshelves. Duffy left his boots on the floor and climbed up into a high bunk. A blanket lay on the boards, and he stretched out on it, pulling his cloak over himself and using his knapsack for a pillow. In the next room he could hear the low mutter of the other guests saying a prayer. Got out just in time, he thought with a grin. He rolled over and went to sleep, dreaming of a Viennese girl named Epiphany.

It snowed during the night, and when Duffy went out to the stable next morning to saddle his horse, the air was so cold that his teeth hurt when he inhaled. The horse shook his head and snorted indignantly, unable to believe he was expected to work at this hour.

“Wake up, now,” Duffy told him as he climbed into the saddle. “The sun’s up, and it’ll burn off this damned mist before ten o’clock. By noon we’ll have forgot what this was like.”

The fog hung on with tenacity, though, as if its wispy fingers were curled resolutely around every rock outcropping. Duffy was into the Predil Pass now, and to his right the precipice edge of the path dropped away as sharp and clean as a knife cut, giving the mist the illusion of a glowing wall to complement the dark stone wall at his left. Once, to test the depth of the invisible abyss, he pulled a stone out of the mountain face and tossed it out past the lip of the path. There was no sound of it striking anything.

At what he estimated was midmorning, the path widened as it curled over the broad shoulder of the Martignac ridge. Travellers’ shrines, cairns and “stone men” marked the way clearly, even in the fog, and Duffy sat back comfortably and began to sing.

“Has aught been heard of the Fulgory Bird

in the isles to the west of Man?

For hither the gilded galleys of men

have sailed since the world began.

With painted sails and mariners’ songs

We come with trumpets and brazen gongs

To procure that for which His Majesty longs,

The remarkable Fulgury Bird.”

Dimly through the vapors, Duffy had been seeing for some time a ridge paralleling his own, and now, glancing at it, he saw riding across it the silhouette of a vast horse and rider. “God preserve us,” Duffy gasped, snatching instinctively at his hilt. That man is twenty feet tall, at least, he thought. Olaus was right.

The dim giant had reached for his own sword, so Duffy whirled his rapier out and brandished it—and the giant did exactly the same. The Irishman relaxed a little, skeptically. Then he resheathed his sword. So did the giant. Duffy now stretched out his arms and flapped them slowly, like a ponderous bird, and the shadowy rider simultaneously performed the same action.

Duffy laughed with relief. “No need to be scared, horse,” he said. “It’s simply our shadow on the mist.” The horse flapped his lips disgustedly.

The milky brightness of the air was too dazzling and disorienting to stare into, and the Irishman kept his eyes on his hands, the path and the markers that jogged past. When he glanced at the shadow rider again, he was astonished to see a whole parade of silhouettes pacing along. He peered uneasily at the gray forms, and then stiffened with real fear.

One was a bird-headed animal with the body of a huge cat, and folded wings bobbed on its long back as it walked. Behind it trod a thing like a lizard, with the grotesque, wattled head of a rooster. A basilisk, or I’m a father confessor, Duffy thought as sweat began to trickle into the collar of his cloak. There were other figures in the murky, silent procession—dwarfs, monstrous crabs, and things that seemed to be nothing but knots of writhing tentacles. All of the shadows hopped, hobbled or strode along steadily, as if they’d walked for hours and were still leagues short of their destination. And in their midst rode stiffly the mounted figure that was Duffy’s own shadow.

Like a child that fears it has seen a white, eyeless face moaning at the window, Duffy scarcely dared to breathe. He slowly turned away from the phantom ridge and stared straight ahead, where, to his horror, he could see a blurry outline in the fog. I suppose I’d see something behind me, too, he thought, but there’s no way I’m going to turn around. One part of his mind, which he was trying hard to ignore, was fearfully shrilling over and over again, What do they want? What do they want? His rational side advised him to avoid sudden moves and wait for the fantastic beasts to go away.

They didn’t. When the glow in the sky began to dim with the approach of evening, Duffy was still being paced by his silent fellow travellers. The hollow chill of fright had, during the long day’s ride, given way to a sort of unreal, fatalistic wonder. The horse, though, didn’t even seem aware of the creatures.

With the numb calmness of a man in shock, Duffy halted his horse—the fabulous animals halted, too—and set about making camp under a low overhang of rock. I’m obviously either doomed or insane, he thought, but I may as well be warm. He set about collecting kindling, and even walked very near one of the monsters to pick up a particularly good stick; the creature, some sort of dog-faced bird, bowed and hopped back.

The Irishman crawled under the hood of rock and arranged the bits of wood in a pile. He took out his wooden tinder box and laid a few pinches of the carefully hoarded fluff at the base of the wood pile. The fog rendered the magnifying glass useless, so he dampened one corner of the tinder with a few drops of the brandy and then struck sparks from his sword hilt with the pommel of his knife. The clink... clink... clink was the only sound in the cold silence. Finally a frail brush-stroke of flame danced over the wood, and a minute later the fire had swelled enough to illuminate Duffy’s meagre shelter. Acutely aware of being the only human within a dozen icy miles, he blessed the fluttering-flag sound of the fire because of the way it masked the ominous quiet of the blackness beyond.

He drank a good deal of the brandy, and then curled up in his fur cloak. It was now possible for him to suppose the monsters had been an illusion, an effect of the diffused sun, the mist and the snow. They’ll be gone in the morning, he told himself.

They weren’t. When he opened his eyes at dawn his heart sank to see a semicircle of tall gargoyle figures a dozen feet away from him; snow piled on their wings and horned heads showed that they had stood thus all through the night, and if it hadn’t been for the bright alertness in every eye he would probably have tried to believe they were statues.

When he had roused and fed his unconcerned horse, nibbled a bit of salami and washed it down with cold wine, two of the things stepped back, opening the semicircle. Duffy obediently got into the saddle and rode forward, and the two that had stepped back strode ahead to lead the way as the rest got into motion behind the Irishman.

The sky on this Sunday morning was a clear cobalt blue, against which the mountain peaks might have seemed to be razored out of crumpled white paper if the sense of vast distance and space had not been so overwhelming. Duffy’s steaming breath plumed away behind him in the thin, icy air of these cathedral heights, and he felt that he was treading the very rim of the world, closer to the kingdoms of the sky than to the warm heart of earth.

At one point there was a choice of ways around a towering granite shoulder: a new route, curling down to the left, whose well-maintained shrines and cairns indicated steady traffic, and a route that tacked steeply up, which, though a few old markers showed along it through drifts of snow, had clearly not been in use for at least several seasons; the odd parade wound its way without a pause up over the old path. Duffy frowned, having vaguely hoped to run into some large party of travellers that would chase these fantastic animals away. He turned and peeked at the dozen or so in his train. I suppose it doesn’t matter, he reflected hopelessly. It would have had to be a damned large party anyway, and notably stout-hearted.

They shifted again, when the glittering sun was a few degrees past meridian. There were no markers to define this new, cliff-walled path, but a certain evenness and regularity implied that it had, at one time, been meant for traffic.

Duffy was near panic. Where are these things taking me? he almost whimpered aloud. We’re still moving roughly east, thank God, but we’re now several miles north of where I should be. Can I possibly ditch these beasts? And having done that, could I retrace the way back to the original path?

Their steep road changed direction several more times, and seemed with every league gained to become straighter and more consistent in width and surface. It was late in the afternoon, and Duffy was trying to work up the nerve to nudge his horse out of the procession, when, simultaneously, all of the hitherto-silent creatures joined voices in what might have been called song. It was a number of sustained single notes, like undiminishing reverberations of a dozen gigantic gongs, and the chord they combined in, echoing up and down the rock-walled pass and ringing away into the empty sky, actually filled the Irishman’s eyes with tears, so great was the sense it conveyed of inhuman grandeur and loneliness. And as the song swelled, and rose by tremendous steps up some alien scale, the ascending pass levelled out onto an expansive plateau of snow-dusted stone.

Despite his profound surprise, Duffy simply closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again to stare. Tremendously old, weather-rounded pillars of uneven height stretched away across the top of the mountain, in two columns separated by nearly half a mile of crumbled pavement. Even the shortest of the pillars presented its eroded top to the sky a dozen feet over Duffy’s head, and every one of them was wide enough to have housed a small temple.

The two guides ahead of him stepped aside, and Duffy’s horse moved forward unprompted to take the lead. At a stately pace Duffy and his weird retinue proceeded down the center of the vast lane defined by the two ranks of pillars. The red sun hung directly behind, and the Irishman realized that if one were standing at the other end of the plateau, staring this way, the sun would be seen to sink precisely at the western end of the gargantuan, unroofed hall.

By God, said Duffy to himself, I wonder what this place looked like when it did have a roof, however many thousand years ago? Picture hundreds of torches carried by the congregation assembled on the exquisitely worked mosaic pavement; the images painted on the high, arched ceiling; and up front, the marble altar, taller than a man but dwarfed by the towering statue that stood behind it, the statue of a woman looking out over the heads of the faithful, directly into the eye of the setting sun...

Duffy breathed deeply several times, fearing that the rarefied mountain air might be inducing delirium. Take it easy, lad, he pleaded with himself—you were on the verge of losing the distinction between imagining and remembering.

The walk across the plateau face took nearly an hour, and when the Irishman reached the other side his yards-long shadow had preceded him by several minutes. A wide square mark lay before him, and looking closely he saw that it was a gap in the crumbled paving, as if someone had carefully ripped up a square section of it... or, it occurred to him, as if something had stood there before the floor was put down, but had since been removed. Nervously he glanced left and right, and his heart sank to see two weathered columns of stone that, despite the blurring imparted by the storms of thousands of Alpine winters, were clearly the feet and ankles of a vanished colossus.

Duffy found that he was trembling, and reached around into a saddlebag to fish out the brandy. He unstoppered the bottle, but before he could raise it to his lips the horse carried him across the dozen yards that separated the two stone feet, and his chill abruptly left him. Since it was in his hand, he took a swig of the liquor—warm from having lain next to the horse’s flank—but now it was a sip to help savor the beauty of the place, and not a gulp of oblivion to drive it out of his mind.

An old stairway, wind-buffed to a sort of bumpy ramp, led away down the mountain side from the end of the plateau, and Duffy looked at the high peaks still lit by the sun, seeming to see in their outlines the shapes of primeval walls and battlements. He was in the shadow now, and the Alpine cold was gathering intensity along with the darkness, so he nudged the horse into the shelter of a leeward alcove, dismounted, and set about bedding down for the night. At last he lay wrapped in his cloak, wedged between the blanketed body of the horse and the wall of rock, watching the sky darken behind the stony silhouettes of his guides until all was a uniform black.

Chapter Four

FIVE DAYS LATER Johannes Freiburg sat in the taproom of the St. Mungo Inn and, putting down his mug of ale, nodded to the wide-eyed old man sitting across the table from him. “That’s what I said. Escorted by every demon in the Alps. It was just at sunset, and I was crossing the Drava bridge with my goats, when I heard all this singing—hundreds of voices, all glass-rim high, whirling like birds around this one weird tune—and I figured for a second it was God and all the saints, come for me at last. So I turned around, back toward the moutnain, and here comes this tall, gray-haired man on a limping horse, riding down the path with the red sunlight on him like his own personal lantern; and behind him, perched on every ridge and crag, there were ranks and ranks of demons with bird heads, and wiverns, and every damned kind of monster you ever heard of, all singing like a church choir.”

The old man crossed himself and gulped. “More ale here,” he quavered to the innkeeper. “So who was he?” he asked his companion. “Beezlebub?”

“I don’t know. I took off pretty quick—didn’t want to let him get close enough to bewitch me—but he looked... Oh my God, that’s him just walked in the door.”

Duffy didn’t even notice the old man who clapped his hands over his face and, squeaking shrilly, bolted out of the room as he entered it. The Irishman crossed to the bar and calmly asked for a cup of beer. His face was haggard and there were new wrinkles around his eyes. When his beer had been drawn he took it to a back table and sat down to drink it slowly, unaware of Freiburg’s intense, awed stare.

Well, thought Duffy, I can’t pretend that was delirium tremens—not lasting six days like that. He sighed and shook his head. I really was escorted through the Predil Pass by a crew of fantastic beasts only hinted at even in mythology. They guided me, led me around areas I later saw to be unstable snow, kept me on whatever track that was. They always maintained a respectful distance, too, and bowed when I approached them! It was as if... as if I were a revered and long-absent king passing through their district.

He remembered the odd fear he’d felt a week ago in that mad tavern in Trieste—a fear of recognizing or remembering something. That’s another thing to worry about, he thought; maybe the goat-footed man was real, not a hallucination at all. Hell, he was an everyday sight compared to the company I’ve kept during these past six days.

The tavern door swung open and a stout, bearded man clumped in, wearing flared-top boots that came up to his thighs. He glanced angrily around the room. “Damn it, Freiburg,” he growled, “have you seen Ludvig? He said he’d be drinking in here.”

Freiburg bobbed his head. “Yes sir, Mr. Yount. He... uh... just dashed out the back door.”

“Saw me coming, did he? The lazy old monkey—I’ll break his jaw for him. He knows we—”

Freiburg was jiggling in his chair, winking, shaking his head and waving his hands. Yount stared at him in amazement, then caught on that the shepherd had something confidential to whisper to him.

Yount leaned down. “What the hell is it?”

“Don’t blame Ludvig,” the shepherd whispered. “He’s just scared of demons, which that gray-haired man over there is on intimate terms with.”

Yount glanced across the room at Duffy, who was still staring morosely into his beer. “Oh, hell,” the bearded man said to Freiburg, “you damned peasants can’t take two steps without finding something to put the fear of the devil into you.”

“Hey, it’s true,” protested the shepherd. “I’m not making it up—”

“Oh, no doubt. Like last year, when you crucified all the cats in town because they were witches’ familiars.”

“Now look, Mr. Yount, there were apparitions—”

Yount made a rude suggestion concerning what stance Freiburg should assume the next time he met an apparition. “Now where’s my whimpering clerk? In here? Good Lord, hiding among the brooms and buckets. Out, Ludvig, you coward. We’ve got to be on the road, get those hides to Vienna before the rains can rot them.”

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 hisssed, “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 mid-morning 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 Raab. 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 grog-gily 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 out-run 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 hat-brim 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, Duffy leaped 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’ countesy. “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.

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 Duffy could 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.

Duffy stared 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 that 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. Duffy gripped 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 Duffy was 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?”

Duffy nodded.

“So am I. I’ve been hired to organize the city’s artillery.”

“Oh? You know about that stuff, do you?”

“It’s what I do. I’m a freelance bombardier. What is it that’s bringing you to Vienna?”

“Nothing so dramatic. I’ve been hired to be the bouncer at an inn there.”

“Hah! These Viennese range far afield for their employees. There was no local talent?”

The Irishman shrugged. “Apparently not. The guy who hired me—weird little man named Aurelianus—”

“Aurelianus?” Bluto exclaimed. “Black clothes? Trembly? Afraid to open windows?”

Duffy frowned, mystified. “That’s him. How did you know?”

“I met him two months ago, in Bern. He’s the one who hired me to take charge of the artillery.” For a minute or two they rode along in silence. Finally Bluto spoke. “I don’t suppose there have been murderers chasing you around, have there?”

“Well... there has been an incident or two.”

“Ah. I might hazard a guess, then, that there are those, enemies of Aurelianus, perhaps, who don’t want us to get to Vienna.”

Duffy snorted skeptically. “Who’d care whether or not the Zimmermann Inn gets a new bouncer?”

“I couldn’t say. I wonder, though, who else he’s hired, and for what.”

“Have you...” Duffy began. “Have you run into any odd types, besides common murderers? Stranger... things... that pay uncalled-for attention to you?”

The hunchback stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Aren’t murderers enough? What kind of ‘things’ do you mean? Lions? Wolves?”

“Yes,” said the Irishman quickly. “Wolves. I’ve been plagued by them.”

Bluto shook his head. “No. But then we’re coming from different directions. Wouldn’t be likely to run across the same sorts of beasts.”

“That’s true,” assented Duffy, letting the discussion drop. That’s odd, though, he thought. Bluto has apparently seen no supernatural creatures at all. Why have I seen so many?

At midafternoon their horses’ hooves clattered on the Leitha Bridge, and by sunset they had reached the high, stone, battlement-crowned walls of Vienna.

“God, she’s big,” Bluto remarked as they rode up to the Carinthian Gate. “Have you ever been here before?”

“I used to live here,” Duffy said quietly.

“Oh. Can you tell me where I could spend the night? I want a bit of rest before I present myself to the city council.”

Duffy frowned. If there’s one thing I don’t want right now, he thought, it’s company. But he’s a decent sort, and if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have this horse. “I imagine they’d give you a room at the Zimmermann. Aurelianus owns it. Did he give you some kind of letter of introduction?”

“Yes. Sealed with two fighting dragons.”

“Well, show that seal to the innkeeper. I doubt if he’d even charge you any money.”

“Good idea. I’m much obliged to you.”

They rode under the old stone arch and clip-clopped at a leisurely pace up the Kartnerstrasse. Duffy breathed deeply, enjoying the smoky smell of the city. Damn my eyes, he thought, it’s good to be back. I remember riding down this very street sixteen years ago with Franz von Sickingen’s knights, to go push the French away from the Rhine. Yes, and I remember coming back, too, blind and half-paralyzed by a sword-cut in the base of the skull. The physicians told me I’d never again be able to get out of a chair unaided, much less fight. Hah. Brandy, my Irish blood and Epiphany made liars of them. I was reading, walking with a cane and giving fencing lessons a year later; and by the time I was thirty-three, and had let my hair grow over my collar in back, you wouldn’t know I’d ever taken a wound.

“Where is this Zimmermann Inn?” asked Bluto, peering around.

“Up this street a bit farther, just off the Rotenturmstrasse.”

“How are the accommodations?”

“I don’t know. In my day it was a monastery. But they’ve always made great beer—even back in the days when it was a Roman fort, I understand.”

People on the street paused to stare at the two barbarous-looking riders; Duffy tall, burly, and gray, and Bluto gnarled and hunchbacked, his long sword-hilt thrusting up from behind his shoulder like a cobra whispering in his ear. In the courtyard of St. Stephen’s Cathedral children pointed at them and giggled.

And off to our port side, Duffy thought grimly, silhouetted by the sunset, is St. Peter’s Church, where Epiphany married Max Hallstadt in June of ’twenty-six. I haven’t seen her since that afternoon, when she told me I’d behaved disgracefully at the wedding. She was right, of course.

And here I am home again, three years and a few scars later. Returning in dubious triumph to keep bums from throwing up on the Zimmermann’s taproom floor.

The sky was darkening fast now, and clear for the first time in several nights. Duffy winked a greeting at the evening star. “We go left here,” he said.

Three blocks later the Irishman pointed. “That’s her, on the left. As I recall, the stables are around back.” It was a long, two-storeyed, half-timbered building with an overhanging shingled roof and three tall chimneys. Yellow light gleamed cozily in nearly all the windows, and Duffy was looking forward almost carnally to a big mug of mulled Herzwesten ale and a real bed.

The stable boys reeled a little, and smelled of beer, but Duffy told the hunchback this was to be expected in the stables of any fine inn. They left the horses there and strode—rolling a bit from the hours in the saddle—back up the alley to the street and the front door.

They paused in the vestibule, under a ceiling fresco depicting an unusually jovial Last Supper. “You want to see the innkeeper,” Duffy said, “and I’ve been told to report to the brewmaster. God knows why. So I may see you later tonight, or I may not.”

Bluto grinned. “Got a little girl or two you want to get re-acquainted with, hey? Well; I won’t tag along. In any case, I know now where to come for the best beer in Vienna, right?”

“That’s right.” They shook hands, and Bluto pushed open the public room door while Duffy stepped through the one marked Servants.

A thin-faced woman gasped when she saw him, and nearly dropped her tray of beer mugs. “It’s all right, daughter,” Duffy told her, reaching out to steady the tray. “I haven’t come to rape the help. Can you tell me where I’d find—” he glanced at the envelope, “—Gambrinus? The brewmaster?”

“Certainly, sir,” she quavered. “He’s in the cellar—down those stairs at the end of the hall—testing the spring beer.”

“Thank you.” Duffy walked down the hall to the indicated archway, and descended the dark stairs slowly and noisily to avoid giving a similar fright to the brewmaster. There were many steps, and when he finally stood on the damp flags of the floor he figured he was about thirty feet below ground level. The air was steamy and rich with the smell of malt, but for the moment he could see nothing in the dimness.

“What can I do for you, stranger?” came a deep, relaxed voice.

“Are you Gambrinus?”

“Yes. Will you have a cup of new schenk beer?”

“Thank you, I will.”

Duffy could see dimly now, and sat down on an upturned bucket, dropping his knapsack beside him. A clean-shaven old man with thick white hair drew a cupful of draft beer from a keg nearby and passed it to him. “We won’t make any more schenk this year,” he said gravely. “When these kegs are empty we’ll open the bock.”

“Well, fine,” Duffy said. “Look, I met a man named Aurelianus in Venice a few weeks ago, and he said I should give you this.” Here he handed him the somewhat travel-stained letter. Gambrinus broke the seal and scanned the writing. He must spend a lot of time down here, Duffy realized, to be able to read in this darkness.

The Irishman looked around, interested. I’ve poured down gallons of Herzwesten beer, he thought, but this is the first time I’ve seen, however dimly, the cellar where it’s brewed. The ceiling was lost in shadow, but scaffolds were braced around copper tubs that stood an easy twenty feet above the floor, and long pipes slanted into and out of several of the old brick walls. Bell-shaped oak kegs lay everywhere; full ones were stacked narrow-side-down several layers deep along one wall. Gambrinus was sitting on an empty one, and other empties were scattered about as if someone had used them for bowling pins in a particularly wild game. The large tun-tubs in which the actual fermentation took place were not visible, and Duffy assumed they were behind one of the walls.

Gambrinus looked up at Duffy curiously. “He seems to think you’re the man we’re looking for,” he said. “And I guess he’d know. Here.” He scribbled in red chalk on the back of the letter. “Show this to the innkeeper and he’ll give you your money.”

“All right.” Duffy drained the cup and got to his feet. “Thanks for the beer.”

Gambrinus spread his hands. “Thank God for it.”

Duffy nodded uncertainly, then picked up his old knapsack and climbed back up the stairs to the main floor.

The same serving woman he’d startled before was returning with an armload of empty pitchers. “Did you find him?” she asked, still a little uneasy.

“Yes.” Duffy smiled. “Now can you tell me where the innkeeper is?”

“Werner? Certainly. He’s the heavy-set gentleman drinking burgundy at the end of the bar in the taproom.” She squinted at him. “Didn’t you used to live around here?”

“I’m not certain yet,” he told her. “Thanks.”

I guess that dog-faced old fellow is the one, Duffy thought as he weaved his way through the crowded dining room to the raised, slightly offset area that was the taproom. The old, room-long monastic tables had been sawn into thirds and distributed about the hall in a less regimented way, and several obviously new chandeliers cast a bright radiance into every corner. I can almost see, Duffy thought with a grin, the outraged ghosts of old monks peering in through these windows.

He sat down beside the small-eyed man. “You, sir, are the innkeeper here?”

Werner stared at him mistrustfully. “Why?”

“I’ve got this letter—”

“Another freeloader! Aurelianus obviously wants to ruin us. Listen, if you intend to steal any lead or brass from the rooms, I swear to Christ—”

Duffy laid one hand softly but heavily on the bar, and Werner halted in his tirade. “I’m not a freeloader,” the Irishman said quietly. “Aurelianus hired me to keep the peace here. So stop shouting.”

“Oh. He did? Sorry. Let me see that.” Duffy handed him the letter. “Well, I see our cellar-hermit has approved it. Uh... five hundred ducats? That’s simply out of the question. Obviously a mistake. I’ll let you sleep here, somewhere, and you can eat with the kitchen help—tonight you can even drink as much beer as you like!—but this money is out of the—”

“You won’t meet the terms of the letter?” Duffy asked in a conversational tone.

“Certainly not. It’s some kind of mistake.”

Duffy stood up. “Then I’m leaving Vienna in the morning. Explain to Aurelianus when he gets here that I left because you wouldn’t comply with his written instructions. Right now I’ll take you up on that all-the-beer-you-can-drink offer.”

“Wait a minute,” Werner protested, getting flustered. “If you’re not taking the job... but... are you really leaving in the morning?”

“Bright and early.”

Werner gulped some of his wine unhappily. “Very well,” he said finally. “I’ll pay you. I guess he can’t blame me for his mistakes and Gambrinus’ carelessness. I’ll get the money tomorrow sometime. We can fix a wage for you then, too.” He glared at Duffy out of his pouchy red eyes. “But hear me—there will be no fights, not even a harsh word, in here. Understand? If I have to pay this kind of money for a bouncer, he’s going to do one hell of a good job.”

The Irishman grinned and clapped the innkeeper on the back. “That’s the spirit, Werner lad! I’ll earn my keep. You’ll bless the day I arrived.”

“Go drink your beer.”

Duffy stepped down to the dining room level and walked across to a table by the wall so that he could keep an eye on the entire hall. Looks like a fairly quiet place, he thought as he sat down; though I can see I’ll have to crack down on vandalism. Someone’s been carving on this table.

The thin serving woman was back, handing out foaming mugs and pitchers of beer, and Duffy beckoned to her. “Bring me a big mug of mulled ale, miss, and draw one for yourself—it’s on the house. I’m the new chucker-out here.”

She smiled wearily. “I’ll be happy to. You won’t get insulted, though, if I check that with Werner.” Then she cocked her head. “You’re Brian Duffy, aren’t you? The old landsknecht fencing master?”

He sighed. “Well, yes. I am. Who are you?”

“Anna Schomburg. Everybody figured you died years ago, fighting the Turks in Hungary.”

“Must have been somebody else. Uh, tell me, Anna, do you remember a girl named Epiphany Vogel?”

“Girl? Hah. Yes, I remember Epiphany Hallstadt. She got married, you know.”

“Where is she now?” Duffy kept his voice in a casual tone. “Where could I find her?”

“Right here, if you wait long enough. She works the morning shift.”

“Damn it, Anna, where’s my suffering beer?” came an impatient call from another table.

“Whoops.” Anna picked up her tray again. “See you later,” she said, and whisked away.

Duffy was stunned. Could this girl be telling the truth? If so, he thought, what an amazing coincidence! I never used to think much of coincidences, but these days I practically trip over them in the street. Well by God, I’ll wait right here until morning; pull my hat down over my face and then whip it off when she walks up to take my order. Guess who, Piff! Ho ho.

But why is she working here? In a damned inn? Hallstadt was rich. I guess the money dissolved away somehow, as God knows I’ve seen it do myself. Maybe old Hallstadt works here too, brushing out the dirty pitchers in some back room. How very far all of us mighty have fallen.

Two men had begun shouting at each other at the table nearest his. Uh-oh, time to earn your keep, the Irishman told himself as he quickly got to his feet. “Gentlemen!” he said. “What’s the trouble?”

The men actually paled when they stared up at the craggy, gray-stubbled face of the new bouncer, and saw the well-worn hilts of his dagger and sword.

“Well,” spoke up one of them after a moment, “Otto here says the Pope can’t predict the weather.”

Duffy looked shocked. “Whose mother?”

Otto blinked. “No,” he said, “I told him the Pope—”

“I don’t want to hear any filthy lies about the Pope and this gentleman’s mother,” Duffy said in a low but outraged tone of voice. “Are you drunk, to talk this way?”

“You misunderstand,” protested the first man. “We were—”

“I understand perfectly. Your disgraceful talk has offended everyone in the room”—Actually no one was paying any attention.—“and I think you two had better buy a round of beer for the whole lot, including me, by way of apology.”

“What? Good Lord, we don’t have that kind of money on us. Can’t—”

“Tell the innkeeper I said you could open an account. He’ll be pleased. And then keep your voices down. If I hear you squabbling again I’ll come over here and cut out your bowels.”

Duffy sat down again just as Anna set his beer on the table. “What did you tell those men?” she asked.

“Told them I’d knife them if they didn’t shut up. If Werner ever lets you take a break, draw yourself a beer and join me. Tell me what-all’s been going on during these three years.”

“All right. It’ll be a few minutes yet.”

Duffy watched her hurry away, and admired, as he always did, the sidling, half-on-tiptoes dance of an experienced barmaid carrying a tray across a crowded room.

Half an hour later Anna slumped down at his table. “Whew,” she breathed. “Thanks for the beer. It’s life and breath and mother’s milk to me at times like this.” She brushed a strand of damp hair back from her forehead and took a deep swig from her mug. “So where have you been for three years,” she asked, setting the beer down, “if not in hell, like everybody thought?”

“In Venice,” Duffy told her, “which is where I met Aurelianus, who gave me this job.”

“Oh, yes,” Anna nodded. “Our absentee landlord. I’ve only seen him once or twice—he gives me the creeps.”

“I can see how he might, holding burning snakes in his mouth and all. When did he get this place? I don’t remember seeing him around when I lived here.”

“He got here about a year ago. From England, I think, though I might be wrong on that. He had a paper, signed by the bishop, saying that the St. Christopher Monastery belonged to him. His ancestors owned the land, apparently, and never sold it. The abbot sent a protest, of course, but the bishop came out here in person. Told them yes, this little old bird owns the place, all you monks will have to go somewhere else. The bishop didn’t look happy about it, though.”

“They just turned all the old monks out?”

“Well, no. Aurelianus bought them another place on the Wiplingerstrasse. They were still pretty upset about it, but since the Diet of Spires it’s become popular to take property away from the Church, and everybody said Aurelianus had behaved generously.” She chuckled. “If he hadn’t promised to keep the brewery going, though, the citizens would have hanged him.”

“He must be rich as Jakob Fugger.”

“He’s got the finances, beyond doubt. Spends it everywhere, on all kinds of senseless things.”

In an offhand voice the Irishman now turned to the subject uppermost on his mind. “Speaking of money,” he said, “wasn’t Max Hallstadt rich? How come Epiphany’s working?”

“Oh, he looked rich, with his big house and his land and his horses, but it was all owed to usurers. He kept borrowing on this to pay the mortgage on that, and one day he looked over the books and saw he didn’t own anything, and that eight different moneylenders could validly claim to own the house. So,” Anna said with a certain relish, “he laid a silver-plated wheellock harquebus on his carved mahogany table, knelt down in front of it and blew his lower jaw off. He meant to kill himself, you see, but when Epiphany came running in to see what the bang was, he was rolling around on the carpet, bleeding like a fountain and roaring. It took him four days to die.”

“Good Jesus,” Duffy exclaimed, horrified. “My poor Epiphany.”

Anna nodded sympathetically. “It was rough on her, that’s true. Even when everything was auctioned off, she still owed money to everybody. Aurelianus, to do him justice, did the generous thing again. He bought all her debts and now lets her work here at the same wage the rest of us get.”

Duffy noticed Bluto sitting with a stout blonde girl a few tables away. The hunchback gave him a broad wink.

“Where is she?” Duffy asked. “Does she live here?”

“Yes, she lives here. But tonight she’s off visiting her father, the artist. He’s dying, I believe. Going blind for sure, anyway.”

He nodded. “He was going blind three years ago.”

Anna glanced at him. “I remember now,” she said. “You were sweet on her, weren’t you? That’s right, and then she married Hallstadt and you took off to Hungary, after shouting a lot of rude things at the wedding. Everybody knew why you went.”

“Everybody’s an idiot,” the Irishman said, annoyed.

“No doubt. Here, you finish my beer. I’ve got to get back to work.”

The room had been swept before the lights were snuffed out, but mice darted across the old wood floors in the darkness, finding bits of cheese and bread in the corners and around the table legs. Every once in a long while a muffled cough or door-slam sounded from upstairs, and the mice would stop, suddenly tense; but ten seconds of silence would restore their confidence and they’d be scampering about again. A few paused to nibble the leather of two boots under one of the wall tables, but there was tastier fare elsewhere, and they didn’t linger there.

When the sky began to pale behind the wavy window glass, the mice knew the night was nearly over. Occasional carts rumbled by on the cobbled street, crows shouted at each other from the rooftops, and a man tramped by the windows, whistling. Finally the rattle of a key in the front door lock sent them bolting for their holes.

The heavy door swung open and a middle-aged woman hobbled in. Her graying hair was tied back in a scarf, and her fingers were clumsy with the keys because of the woolen gloves she wore. “Well, how does the place look this morning, Brian?” she inquired absently.

Duffy stood up. “It’s good to see you, Piff.”

“Yaaah!” she shrieked, flinging her keys across the room. She stared at him in utter horror for a second, then sighed and dropped unconscious to the floor.

For God’s sake, Duffy thought as he ran across the room to the crumpled figure, I’ve killed her. But why did she speak to me if she didn’t know I was here?

Bare feet thumped down the stairs. “What have you done to her, you monster?” shouted Werner, who stood draped in a wrinkled white nightshirt on the first landing. He waved a long knife menacingly at the Irishman. “Who’ll serve breakfast this morning?”

“She’s only fainted,” Duffy said angrily. “I know her. I said hello to her and she was startled, and fainted.”

Other voices sounded now on the stairs. “What’s happened?” “That gray-haired drunkard we saw last night just knifed the old lady who serves breakfast.” “That’s right. He tried to rape her.” “Her?”

Oh God, Duffy thought, cradling Epiphany’s head, this is the worst so far. Worse than the wedding. At least that had a little dignity, smacked of respectable tragedy. This is low farce.

Epiphany’s eyes fluttered open. “Oh, Brian,” she said. “It really is you, isn’t it? And I’m not crazy or haunted?”

“It’s me sure enough. Pull yourself together now and explain to these citizens that I haven’t murdered you.”

“What citizens... ? Oh Lord. I’m all right, Mr. Werner. This gentleman is an old friend of mine. I came upon him suddenly and it gave me a fright. I’m terribly sorry to have waked you.”

Werner looked a little disappointed. “Well, in the future conduct your horseplay on your own time. That goes for you, too, uh, Duffy.” The innkeeper disappeared up the stairs, and the curious guests, muttering “horseplay?” in several tones of voice, went back to their rooms.

Duffy and Epiphany remained sitting on the floor. “Oh, Brian,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I thought for sure you were dead. They said nobody but Turks survived the battle of Mohács.”

“Well, damn few, let’s say,” the Irishman corrected. “But if you thought I was dead, why did you speak to me when you walked in? I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought someone had told you I was in town.”

“Oh—old women get into silly habits,” she said sheepishly. “This last year, since Max died, I’ve... when I’m alone... well, I talk to your ghost. Only a sort of game, you know. I’m not going mad or anything. It’s just that there’s more variety in it than in talking to myself all the time. I certainly never thought you’d answer.”

Half saddened and half amused, Duffy hugged her. Unbidden, the words of the old man in his Trieste dream came back to him: Much has been lost, and there is much yet to lose.