by Tim Powers
Landing on his feet, Duffy swept several extended swords out of line with a momentous flail of Calad Bolg, and his shoulder-straining return stroke cut one man nearly in half; the others fell back, frightened, for the real use of the longsword had been a lost art for at least a century. The Irishman, though, waded in with the thing, whirling it in deft panics and devastating ripostes as if he'd used one all his life.
A furious crashing and snapping sounded in the tree branches above, and Duffy's force was joined by five of the winged sentinels. Appalling when seen at close range with their long, tusked muzzles and fishlike eyes, they flapped heavily to and fro in the clearing, tearing at the heads of the opposite force, and twice lifted a man a dozen yards in the air to tear at him with tooth and claw before releasing the mangled body to fall back into the press.
John Zapolya, loitering toward the rear, deflected with his dagger the sword of one of the northmen, and put his own rapier-point into the man's neck. As the body fell away he stepped back and looked quickly around him. This was a disaster. He'd have to flee if reinforcements didn't arrive within seconds -Then, as he looked over the warriors' heads toward the northeast, a hard smile narrowed his eyes. 'Hang on, men!' he shouted to his panicky band of renegade Hungarians. 'Here come some of our own!'
Duffy turned around just in time to parry a scimitar wielded by a swooping creature of the same species, though of obviously different allegiance, as the things that were decimating the Hungarians. It blocked his riposte, but the force of the blow flung the creature flat on the ground, and it thrashed once and then went limp in death; and before the next one came at him be had a second to notice the stilt-soled sandals on the thing's misshapen feet.
The battle was joined in deadly earnest now, and retreat was no one's option any longer. An unholy racket compounded of shouts, sword-clangs, inhuman screeches and the flapping of heavy wings crashed away through the trees, as the two forces surged in tangled eddies back and forth, and the airborne warriors tore at each other overhead; sorcerous blue fire snapped and leaped from the spot where Aurelianus defended the King against three of the afrits. Noticing this last development, Duffy chopped and hewed his way back through the chaos of struggling bodies toward the King. With the longsword he was wreaking tremendous damage on the Hungarians, who, on the uneven and crowded ground, could not bring into play the natural advantages of their newer, lighter rapiers.
Another figure was angling through the press toward Aurelianus' position, and Antoku Ten-no was cutting nearly as wide a swath as Duffy. The Oriental wielded a long, two-handed sword of alien design and was, like the Irishman, managing to keep out of any close, corps-a-corps confrontations that would put him at the mercy of a short dagger. And when Duffy caught the blade of one of the Hungarians low and split his skull with the answering stroke, it was Antoku alone who stood between him and the embattled Aurelianus.
The eyes of the Oriental lit with recognition, though Duffy's registered no more than one competent warrior's quick appraisal of another. 'Ah, now, darling of the west,' hissed Antoku, 'what - ahh!' He hopped backward and managed to catch a jarring cut on his hilt, and a moment later to deflect over his head a backhanded remise.
Evidently angry at not being listened to, he swung in with a roundhouse chop at Duffy's ribs. Duffy yanked his hilt down to belt level and let the Oriental's sword rebound ringingly from the upright blade, and then he lunged forward.
Antoku's face had one instant to gape in horror before the fiercely driven edge sheared half of it away. As the body crumpled, the Irishman paused only long enough to strike off the maimed head before running forward toward Aurelianus and the King.
The crouching sorcerer was desperately flinging his
arms about, directing the bolts of blue light that were jumping, ever more weakly, from the ground up toward the three hovering, flapping devils, whose claws and scimitars licked hungrily down at him. The magical lightning appeared to be doing no more now than jolting the creatures, and they were beginning to close in.
'Merlin!' the Irishman shouted hoarsely. 'Use it all up in one flash!' He stopped and turned, staring back at the fight.
Falling to his knees, the exhausted sorcerer threw both arms toward the closest afrit, and with a thundering crack a man-thick blast of sunfire arced up from the soil and punched the thing out of the sky.
Duffy turned and leaped even as the first echoes were booming in the trees and Aurelianus was toppling forward onto the ground. Calad Bolg, swung overhead at the apex of the leap, clanked through the spinal column of one of the blinded devils. The thing screeched and thrashed heavily to earth as the Irishman landed bent-kneed and spun away toward the remaining one, which was flapping sightlessly upward, chittering in panic and becoming entangled in the branches. It was out of Duffy's reach, but two of the King's winged guards noticed its plight and, arrowing across the clearing, made short work of the creature.
Leaning on his sword and panting like a bellows, Duffy surveyed the scene: the Hungarian force was routed, and being pursued south toward the Wienerwald track by several of the remaining northmen; the wagon stood where he'd left it, though surrounded now by sprawled corpses, and one of the horses slumped dead in the harness; and Rikard Bugge sat on the grass, humming a tune and knotting a length of bloodspotted cloth around his thigh. Duffy glanced toward the prostrate Fisher King, who smiled wanly and held up two crossed fingers.
Aurelianus got shakily to his feet and leaned against a tree trunk. 'That was.. .close to the bone,' he gasped, speaking contemporary Austrian again. 'You're all right, Brian?'
All right? Duffy thought irritably. Why shouldn't I be all right? Then the sword slipped from his numb fingers and he looked quickly around, suddenly conscious of great fatigue.
'What the hell just happened?' he asked, trying to keep the shrillness of sudden fright out of his voice.
Aurelianus, staring at the battle-debris down the slope, nodded almost absently. 'You don't remember.'
'No, damn it - the last thing I remember is... seeing the flying sentries stoop from the sky.'
The sorcerer nodded. 'I thought so. It was Arthur who fought here.
Duffyturned, punching a finger toward the magician. 'It was not,' he shouted. 'I'll remember in a moment- I've often seen people temporarily lose the memory of something rough, some violent action.' Savagely he kicked the hideous foot of the dead afrit, and added, in a whisper, 'Which this evidently was.' He paced back and forth, pursing his lips as he stepped around the wide burned spot in the grass. 'Very well,' he snapped finally, pointing down the slope, 'who are those men?'
'Hungarian, mostly,' answered Aurelianus calmly. 'I have hopes, though not much confidence, of finding Zapolya's corpse among them. The one halfway up here is Antoku. You apparently killed him.'
'Who? Oh, the mandarino? Oh.' Duffy shrugged. 'I guess that's good.'
'Yes.'
'What the hell went wrong, anyway, with all your turn-'em-around and get-'em-lost spells?'
The wizard frowned defensively, with a furtive glance down at the King? Nothing. These lads didn't have the sorcerous talents to penetrate my magical camouflage
.but I guess they had enough skill in forestcraft to follow someone who did.' He had got his breath back now, and stepped briskly away from the trunk. 'Round up those of our lads who can stand,' he told Duffy, 'and get them to carry the King to the wagon. I'd counsel you to jettison the dead horse, too. I'll see to the wounded.' To the King he added, 'Excuse me, Sire,' then he started down the slope.
Duffy stooped to pick up his dropped sword, and noticed which one it was. 'Hey,' he called after the wizard. 'Why was I using this? I thought.. .he and I .agreed it was outmoded.'
Aurelianus half-turned. 'That was when you and he were kind of talking in unison,' he called. 'I guess when it's him alone, he still prefers it. Good thing I thought to bring it along.' He strode onward a few paces, then stooped to examine one of the wounded northmen.
'Take it easy, lad,' said
the Fisher King to Brian, softly. 'I know it's hard. But if it were easy, they'd have got somebody else to do it.'
Duffy stared after Aurelianus and shrugged helplessly. 'Then it must be easy,' he said, 'because it certainly looks like they've got somebody else to do it.'
* * *
Book Three
'And there was a tumult as of great battles out upon the plain that night, and shifting fires no man could explain, and wonders in the sky...'
-from the journal of
Kemal Pasha Zadeh,
official scribe to the Sultan
Suleiman el Kanuni
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
The square of early afternoon sunlight had shifted a few inches up the plaster wall, and Brian Duffy straightened up a bit more to keep his face clear of it; if he didn't get up and move soon, he knew, he'd have to give up staying above it and slide down almost prostrate on the bench in an attempt to get his face under the dazzling beam instead.
'Do you want one or not?' the young man who stood in the doorway repeated, a little impatiently. He jiggled a tiny gray manlike figure on the end of a string.
Duffy blinked owlishly at him and had a long sip of lukewarm red wine to postpone the effort of answering. The boy is far too elegantly dressed, the Irishman decided. Those baggy blue sleeves, ornamentally slashed to admit puffs of red satin, are good enough for swaggering in front of the ladies, but when it's fighting to be done give me old leather and thick-backed gloves. 'Are you going to go out dressed that way?' he asked. 'If so, I hope that's your second-best suit.' Then, remembering the lad's question, he answered,, 'No, thank you. I don't need any mandrake roots. I'll just duck and weave and take my chances.'
The young landsknecht shook his head dubiously and replaced the ugly little root in his pouch. 'It's your life,' he conceded. 'Say, when were you born?'
Several joking answers occurred to the Irishman, but he was too sleepy to voice them. 'Huh?' he contented himself with saying.
'What month were you born in?'
'Uh. . .March.'
'Hm.' The young man pulled a chart out of his pouch and scrutinized it. 'Well, you'd be better off if you were a Libra or a Cancer, but being a Pisces you needn't fear being shot in the feet.' He grinned, bowed and walked outside.
'Do you mean it won't happen, or I just shouldn't fear it?' Duffy called after him, but got no reply.
Though he was sitting up as straight as he could, the sun was now lancing at his eyes from the top of the window. Not wanting to be found slouched on his back messily finishing a cup of wine just before combat, he swung his legs down off the bench and stood up and stretched, thus accidentally spilling the rest of the wine onto the dirt floor. Well, he thought, taking it philosophically, it was about time to get ready anyway. He sat down on one of the. bunks and pulled on his boots, then stood and picked up his sword, hauberk, doublet and helmet, and walked outside into the shifty and heatless mid-October sunlight.
A series of warehouses in the southeast corner of the city had been hurriedly converted to barracks, and several companies of landsknechten, including Eilif's, were quartered in them. Duffy emerged from the southernmost of them and pushed his way into the mob of mercenary soldiers assembled in a square of the Schwarzenbergstrasse. He found the table at which Eilif's armsmaster was dispensing harquebuses, and took a long-barrelled matchlock and pouches of powder and balls.
'Duff,' the old soldier said, 'I've got a wheellock back here I was saving. You want to take it?'
'You take it,' Duffy told him with a grin. 'Last time I tried to fire one of them I got my hair caught in the wheel. Had to retreat waving a sword and dagger, with the damned gun attached to my head.'
'I won't call you a liar,' the man said amiably, handing Duffy several lengths of matchcord.
The Irishman carried all his stuff away to one side of the square and laid it on a curb while he put on his hauberk and leather doublet. Sporadic gunfire popped and spattered from the top of the wall, and he looked up for a moment. That'll be the sharpshooters, he thought, warming up with some long-distance covering fire from rifled guns. He listened, but could hear no answering gunfire from outside the walls. He sat down and began the task of loading his matchlock. Vienna had been totally invested by the Turks now for twelve days.
The young man he'd seen in the barracks, whose mandrake root dangled now from his belt, ambled up and watched Duffy's efforts critically. 'Your matchcord is supposed to go through that little metal tube on top of the barrel,' he pointed out helpfully. 'So the sparks from your first shot don't light it in the middle somewhere.'
Duffy sat back and grinned up at him, squinting against the sun. 'Well now, that's the first time ever heard that,' he said gently. 'Here I thought that tube was for grating cheese with, after the battle.'
A white-bearded landsknecht who was crouched several feet away looked up from whetting his sword and barked a laugh. 'If you young calves could grasp the idea of aiming,' he said, 'you'd see how that match-guide can be used as a sight. Hell, Duffy's an old soldier; he wouldn't let his cord get near the flashpan.'
'I've been known to do some beastly things, but never that,' the Irishman agreed.
Guns cracked again along the wall and the young mercenary jumped, immediately hopping through a few practice sword-thrusts to disguise the involuntary motion. An eddy in the breeze brought down to the street the curried smell of gunpowder. Straightening and stretching after his extempore exercises, he asked Duffy offhandedly, 'Do you think this is it?'
'Hm? What's what?'
'This sortie this afternoon. You think this'll be the one that breaks the siege one way or the other?'
The older man laughed scornfully, but Duffy just smiled and shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'They know they can't hold that little rise. It's mainly a gesture. So we make another gesture: we run out there and push them back. Men will be killed, but this won't be a decisive encounter.'
'Well, when will there be a decisive encounter?' In his efforts to keep his expression unconcerned, the lad had let some hysteria enshrill his voice. 'If they back off, why don't we just keep pushing?' he went on, in a deeper voice. 'Or for matter of that, if we fall back, why don't they?'
Duffy carefully laid his loaded gun on the pavement. 'Why, because we're old veterans, on both sides. The landsknechten know the wages of hot-headed charges -and those Turks out there are Janissaries, the best fighting men in the East. They're not just fierce, like the akinji or the iayalars; they're smart as well.'
'Ah.' The young man looked then across the street at the shot-scarred faces of the nearer buildings. 'They're... Christians, aren't they?' he asked. 'The Janissaries?'
'Well, they were,' Duffy said. 'The Turks conscript them from Christian families inside the Ottoman Empire, but they take them before the age of seven. Then they bring them up as the most fanatical Moslems and highest-favored soldiers of the Sultan. They've been baptized, yes, but you couldn't call them Christians any longer.'
The lad shuddered. 'It's like the old stories of draugs or changelings. To take our own people away, and change them, and then send them back to destroy the place they can no longer even recognize as their fatherland.'
'True,' agreed Duffy. 'The men we'll be shooting at this afternoon could well be the sons of men who fought beside the knights at Belgrade.'
'As men further west will be shooting at our turbanned sons if we don't turn them back,' the young man said. 'But we shouldn't have any trouble holding out, should we? I mean even if the Imperial reinforcements don't come?'
'it's a race,' Duffy said, 'to see which gives out first:
our walls or their supplies. At night you can already hear their miners digging away at the foundations underground.'
'Defeatist talk! snapped the white-bearded mercenary, hopping nimbly to his feet and whirling his newly sharpened sword in a whistling circle over his head. 'It takes a besieging force a hell of a lot longer to undermine a city's walls than to shatter them
down with big guns. You'll notice they've got nothing but light cannon out there -good for arcing over the walls to break windows and knock in a few roofs, but useless for battering a way inside. Fix your mind on what a lucky thing it's been that the heavy rains these past months forced the Turks to leave all their heavy artillery bemired on the muddy road behind them!'
He strode away, still brandishing the blade, and the somewhat cheered young man wandered off a few moments later.
Duffy remained sitting where he was, frowning and suddenly wishing he'd had more wine that morning; for the old landsknecht's words had reminded him of the last time he'd spoken to Aurelianus, just a day or so before the Irishman had left the Zimmermann Inn to live in the barracks.
It had been a bright morning in mid-May five months earlier, and the old sorcerer had approached him in the Zimmermann dining room, smiling as he set down beside Duffy's beer a small wooden chest that rattled as if it were full of pebbles.
'Suleiman and his entire army left Constantinople yesterday,' he said. 'Let's you and me go for a walk out by the east end of the Donau Canal.'
Duffy sipped his beer. 'Very well,' he said, for it was a pleasant day and he hadn't been out of the city in weeks, 'but I don't think we'll be able to see them - much less hit them with your collection of slingstones.'
'Not hit them with them, no,' Aurelianus agreed cheerily. 'Come on, now, finish your beer while I go tell Marko to saddle us a couple of horses.'
Duffy was happy to comply, for Epiphany was due back before long; and she'd shown a tendency, lately, to burst into tears every time he spoke to her. The most recent example had occurred in the dining room during dinner.
Shuddering at the uncomfortable recollection, he drained the beer and followed Aurelianus outside. He helped Marko saddle the second horse, and mounted quickly. 'After you,' he said to the sorcerer with as sweeping a bow as is possible on horseback.
