by Tim Powers
Page 15
There seem to be a few teeth left in the old wizard's head, he reflected. He wasn't mincing any words with Antoku in denying him whatever it was that he was after - filthy opium, it sounded like. I wonder why he's always so apologetic and hinting and equivocal with me. I wish he wouldn't be - knowledge is better than wonder, as my old mother always said.
Shrub leaned in the back door. 'Uh. . . sir?'
'What is it, Shrub?'
'Aren't you going to come fight the Vikings?'
Duffy sighed. 'Don't bother me with these kid games you've somehow failed to outgrow. '
'Kid games? Have you been asleep? A dragon-prowed Viking ship sailed down the Donau Canal early this morning, and stopped under the Taborstrasse bridge. ' Shrub's voice rang with conviction.
Duffy stared at him. 'It's some carnival gimmick,' he said finally. 'Or a travelling show. There haven't been real Vikings for four hundred years. What are they selling?'
'They look real to me,' Shrub said, and scampered out into the yard.
The Irishman shook his head. I'm not, he told himself firmly, going to leave this warm room to go see a troupe of puppeteers or pickpockets or whatever they are. I'm at
least old enough not to be tempted by cheap thrills. But good Lord, whispered another part of his mind. . . a Viking ship.
'Oh, very well,' he snarled after a few minutes, eliciting a surprised stare from a passing cook. The Irishman got impatiently to his feet and strode outside.
The first thing that struck the roof-crowding, street-choking spectators - after the wonder of the painted sail and the high, rearing dragon figurehead had worn off -was the age and dispirited look of these Vikings. They were all big men, their chests sheathed most impressively in scale mail; but the hair and beards under the shiny steel caps were shot with gray, and the northmen eyed the thronged canal-banks with a mixture of apathy and disappointment.
Sitting in the ship's stem, by the steering oar, Rikard Bugge pulled his weary gaze from the Vienna crowd when his lieutenant edged his way aft between the rowing benches and knelt in front of him.
'Well,' Bugge said impatiently, 'what?'
'Gunnar says we're caught fast, captain, in the canal-weed. He thinks we'd better wade in with swords and cut our hull free. '
Bugge spat disgustedly over the rail. 'Does he know where we are? This isn't the Danube, I believe. '
'He is of the opinion that this is Vienna, captain. We apparently turned into this canal last night without realizing we were leaving the river. '
'Vienna? We overshot Tulln, then. It's those damned west winds this past month. ' He shook his head. 'If only Gunnar could navigate. He's lucky a river is all he's got to contend with - what if we were at sea?'
'Listen,' the lieutenant said, a little reproachfully, Gunnar's got problems. '
'So I should smile when he pilots us into a smelly ditch,
to be laughed at by beggars and children?' He pointed expressively at the crowd. 'Well, go on, then. Get them over the side and chopping the water lilies. '
Bugge slumped back, trying to scratch his stomach under the sun-heated mail. But it's no good, he thought. We may as well go home. We'll never find Sigmund or the barrow now, even if they do, as Gardvord swore, exist.
The grizzled captain cast his mind back, nostalgically. now, to the low-roofed, candle-lit room in which he and thirty other retired soldiers of the Hundested parish had sat at a table and cursed in astonishment and outrage at the tale told to them by old Gardvord, while the bitter wind whooped at them from the darkness outside and fumbled at the shutter-latches.
'I know many of you heard the untraceable voice from the Ise fjord yesterday,' Gardvord had missed in that meeting five and a half weeks ago. 'A voice that called, over and over for a full hour yesterday morning, "The hour is come, but not the man"' The old wizard had spread his wrinkled hands. 'It troubled me. I therefore spent most of last night laboriously questioning the senile and reclusive huldre-folk about that prodigy - and it's grim news I got for my trouble. '
'What was it?' Bugge had asked, impatient with the old hedge-magician's narrative style.
With a have-it-then glare, Gardvord turned to him. 'Surter, the king of Muspelheim in the distant south, is leading an army north to capture and destroy the funeral barrow of the god Balder. '
Several of the assembled men had actually gasped at that, for the old legends agreed that when Surter of Muspelheim marched north, Ragnarok, the end of the world, was not far off; a couple of the men had spasmodically blessed themselves, scared by their old pagan heritage into taking cover under the newer Christianity; and one old fellow, gibbering the beginning of a Pater Noster, had even attempted to crawl under the table.
'Odin look away,' Gardvord had sneered. 'The men of the north aren't all they used to be. '
Ashamed by the timorousness of his fellows, Bugge had pounded the table with his fist. 'We will, of course, organize an army to repel Surter. ' This statement put a little heart back into the other old soldiers, and they had nodded with a tardy show of determination.
'Unless,' one nervously grinning man had quavered, 'this is all a fantasy, like the graveyard Stories children invent to scare themselves, and wind up half-believing. '
'Idiot!' Gardvord had shouted. 'You heard the fjord voice yesterday! And the misty huldre-folk were more lucid last night than I've ever known them. ' The old man frowned around the table. 'This is no mere guess-work, my stout warriors. '
Bugge had leaned forward then. 'Who's the man?' he asked. 'The one who hasn't come, though the hour has?'
'It is the man who will lead you. Listen to me now, you complacent fathers and householders, and don't make up your twopenny minds that what I'm saying is necessarily a fable. Do you recall the stories of Sigmund, who drew out Odin's sword easily from the Branstock Oak when no other man in the Volsung's hall could budge it with his best efforts?'
'Certainly,' Bugge had nodded. 'And I also recall what became of that sword when the one-eyed god inexplicably turned on him. Odin shattered it in battle, and Sigmund, left unarmed, was killed by Lyngi's spearmen. '
The magician had nodded. 'That's true. Now listen. Odin has allowed - ordered, rather - Sigmund himself to return to the flesh, to lead you in pushing back Muspelheim's hordes. '
The men around the table had been skeptical, but afraid to let Gardvord see it. 'How will we meet him?' piped up one of them.
'You must sail up the Elbe, through various tributaries and overland crossings, and finally down the Danube. When you have reached the city that is built around Balder's barrow, you'll know it, because,' he paused impressively, 'Sigmund will actually rise from the water to greet you. I suspect the barrow is near the city of Tulln, but I can't be sure. You'll know the spot, in any case, by Sigmund's watery resurrection. '
It proved impossible to raise an army, and so Bugge and twenty comrades, all unmarried or notably restless, had set off by themselves on the difficult land and sea journey. And here, he thought sadly now, our ill-considered quest ingloriously ends. Run aground on a clump of sewer weed in a Viennese canal, hailed by the citizens, who seem to think we're a company of jugglers or clowns. So much for our bid to thwart Surter and Muspelheim, and postpone doomsday.
Bugge shook his head disgustedly as he watched several of his men lower themselves into the canal, gasping and hooting at the chill of the water. We were mad to listen to the old fool, he told himself. It's obvious to me now that the whole tale was just a thirdrate wizard's beery dream.
Duffy' s scabbarded rapier knocked awkwardly against the back of his right thigh as he sprinted past St Ruprecht's Church. He had to slow then, for the street below the north wall was packed with a collection of festive citizens. Housemaids called lewd speculations to each other, young men crouched and flexed their sword arms with a just-in-case air, and children and dogs scampered about in a frenzy of unspecific excitement. The wail-top was
just as crowded, and Duffy wondered how many people would fall off it before the day was over. A little fearful of seeing the moonlit lake again, he was consciously making himself pay exclusive attention to this Viking spectacle.
And how am Ito see what's going on? he asked himself, annoyed by the density of spectators.
He saw Bluto among the mob on the battlements, trying to keep children from uncovering the cannons. Bluto!' the Irishman called in his most booming voice. Damn it, Bluto!' The hunchback turned and frowned at the throng below, then saw Duffy and waved. 'Throw me a rope!' Duffy shouted. Bluto looked exasperated; but nodded and disappeared behind the rim. The Irishman shoved, slipped and apologized his way to the base of the wall. I hope I can climb a rope these days, he thought. It would never do to reach the halfway point and come sliding clumsily back down, in front of what must be just about the entire population of Vienna.
After several minutes a rope came tumbling down the wall, and Duffy seized it before two other viewseekers could. Then, bracing his legs from time to time on the old stones of the wall, he began wrenching himself upward. Below him, in spite of the gasping breaths that roared in his head, he could hear people remarking on him. 'Who's the old beggar climbing the rope?' 'Watch him drop dead after ten feet. '
Oh indeed! thought Duffy angrily, putting a little more vigor into each hoist of the arm. Soon he saw the hunchback's worried face peering down at him from the lip of the catwalk, and it grew closer with every desperate pull on the rope. Finally he hooked one hand over the coping and Bluto was helping to drag him up onto the Warming flagstones, where he lay gasping for a while.
'You're too old to climb ropes,' Bluto panted as he hauled the snaky length in.
'As I. . . just demonstrated,' the Irishman agreed. He sat up. 'I want to see. . . these famous Vikings. '
'Well, step over here. Actually, they're kind of a disappointment. A few are in the canal now, chopping clumps of algae, but the rest just sit around looking wilted. '
Duffy got to his feet and slumped in one of the north-facing crenels. Fifty feet below him was the Donau Canal, and a ship lay in the water under the Taborstrasse bridge, its red and white striped sail flapping listlessly.
'Are they real Vikings?' Duffy asked. 'What are they doing here, anyway?'
Bluto just shrugged.
'I'm going to get a closer look,' Duffy decided. 'Tie that rope around the merlon here and throw it down the outside of the wall. Or no free beer tomorrow night,' he added, seeing the hunchback's annoyed look. The Irishman pulled his gloves out from under his belt and put them on as Bluto dealt with the rope; then he stepped up on the crenellations - to the awe of several little boys - and slipped the rope behind his right thigh and over his left shoulder. 'See you later,' he said, and leaned away from the wall, sliding down the rope and braking with the grip of his right hand. Within a minute he was standing on the pavement next to the canal bank as Bluto pulled the rope up once again.
There were even people out here, elbowing each other and calling sarcastic questions to the dour mariners. Muttering impatient curses under his breath, Duffy walked west along the bank to a cluster, of wooden duck-cages that formed a sort of pier jutting out into the green-scummed water. He cautiously got up on top of the first one - and it held his weight, though the ducks within set up a squawking, splashing clamor. 'Shut up, ducks,' he growled as he crawled out along the cage-pier, for their racket was drawing the amused attention of the canal bank crowd.
When he reached the outmost cage he sat down on it, and was rewarded for all his efforts with a clear view of the grounded but graceful ship. The oars, several of which were broken off short, had been drawn in and stuck upright in holes by the oarlocks, and nearly formed a fence around the deck. Duffy was trying hard to be impressed by the sight, and imagine himself as one of his own ancestors facing such northern barbarians in Dublin Bay or on the plain of Clontarf, but these weary old men languidly hacking at the canal weed put a damper on his imagination. These must be the very last of the breed, he decided, devoting their remaining years to a search for a fitting place to die.
A sharp crack sounded under him, and his perch sagged abruptly. Holy God, he thought, I'll be dumped in the canal if I don't move fast. He shifted back onto another board, which gave way entirely, leaving him hanging by his knees and one hand, nearly upsidedown. There were roars of laughter from the bank. His rapier slid half out of its scabbard; he risked a grab for it, the last plank buckled, and he was plunged into the icy water in a tangle of boards and hysterical ducks. He rolled thrashingly over, trying to swim before his mail shirt could drag him down, and his sword caught against one of the floating planks and snapped in half. 'God damn it!' he roared, snatching the hilt before it sank.
He swam clear of the wreckage, and found the meagre current carrying him downstream, toward the Viking ship and the rippling sheets of green canal scum. None of the northmen had noticed him yet, though the citizens on the wall and the bank were absolutely convulsed with merriment.
Still clutching his broken sword, Duffy dived and swam a distance under the surface - he'd discovered his mail-shirt to be a bearable encumbrance - hoping to avoid the worst of the scum and mockery. It's just possible no one recognized me, he thought as he frogkicked his way through the cold water.
Bugge looked up when he heard splashing by the Larboard gunwale, and at first he thought some Viennese had fallen into the canal and was trying to climb aboard. Then, the blood draining from his wide-eyed face, he saw two slimy green arms appear at the rail, followed a moment later by their owner, a tall, grim-looking man covered with canal scum and clutching a broken sword. In a moment this ominous newcomer had clambered aboard and was standing in a puddle of water between the rowers' benches.
