by Tim Powers
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 merchant man 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 wordlessly 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, lowceilinged 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 al
l 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 proffered 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 hail.
'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, lie 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 dispirited-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. 'flare 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.
